Selection Event (40 page)

“We came to ask you about the fishing.”

“Oh.” Rusty let himself half-fall into an armchair that creaked loudly. “I don't know if I'm going to get out there today.”

“And while we're here,” Martin said as an afterthought, “Dora?” He took a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket.

Dora came to the kitchen door, holding a folded towel against her full bosom.

Martin took the paper to her. “Rusty mentioned one time that you did some accounting.”

Charlie and Winch barely managed to hide their puzzlement.

“I kept books for a wallpaper store once.”

“Well,” Martin explained, showing her several columns of numbers, “this is a little beyond me, but I was interested in our winter food situation. This is how many pounds of dried pasta we have, this is how many cans of food we have, and this is how much flour Jan-Louise has.”

She pointed to an unlabeled column. “What's this over here?”

“Well, not everyone eats the same amount. I mean we have kids of various sizes and adults.” Martin explained that the numbers or fraction beside each person's name represented his guess of the proportional amount each might be expected to eat. “Now if we figure each adult ate two pounds of food a day and one can of food represents a pound, could you figure how many days we can last on what we have now?”

Dora looked over the page and up at Martin. “Is this really necessary?”

“It would be helpful for our winter months,” Martin said.

Dora sighed and took the paper.

“Multiply the pasta weight by three, flour by two.”

She trudged back into the kitchen.

Martin asked Rusty and Winch what he knew about salmon and within five minutes, Dora came into the room and handed him the paper. “Here. A hundred and twelve days.”

“Thanks. Oh.” He took the bottle out of his jacket pocket. “This was left over from last night.”

She looked at him as though he might have lost his mind. “So?”

Martin went into the kitchen, got a glass from the counter, emptied the bottle into it and pushed it down the counter toward Dora.

Winch was watching very carefully from the doorway, and Rusty was on his feet. Keeping his voice down, Rusty said intensely, “Martin, what the god damned hell are you doing here?”

“How'd you feel this morning when you got up, Rusty?”

“Plugged, and I'm feeling worse every minute because you're pissing me off, Martin. What is this stunt?”

“Would you say you felt hung-over?”

Rusty looked steadily at him, thinking hard. “Yes,” he finally said, “I guess I could say that.”

“Well, Charlie and I were having a disagreement about whether the fruit juice Dora brought last night had anything in it besides juice. The way people were acting, and the way they're hung over this morning, I thought it might have been a possibility. I didn't really think Dora would do a thing like that, and Charlie said for sure he didn't think so. But it's a possibility, and we wanted to find out.” He nodded at the full glass. “I thought she could settle the argument for us.”

“You think it's poison?” she said, almost spitting the word. “You must've woke up stupid this morning,” Dora picked up the glass and drank it down. “Happy? Now I have work to do. You can watch if I drop dead.” She went back to her laundry folding.

Rusty looked at Martin, half angry, half puzzled.

“I'm probably just being overly suspicious,” Martin said.

The conversation was awkward and strained, but Martin persevered and kept it going until he could see Dora in the kitchen, standing beside the table she had stacked with laundry, simply staring at it.

“Dora?” he said, standing up and going in to her. Her eyes rose slowly to meet his. “I apologize for my suspicions. Now, about these numbers, I realized it's multiply the pasta times two and the flour by three. I had it backwards. I'm sorry to bother you with this, but, we need to know where we stand with food before winter.” He gave her back the sheet of numbers.

She snorted and snatched it from his hand and turned to the counter and picked up a pencil.

Martin watched her through the kitchen door. She sat at the counter, her head deeply bent over the page of numbers.

“You timing her?” Rusty asked.

“Just watching.”

“You think she and Josh got us screwed up before he gave us his big talk.”

“High likelihood.”

Rusty and Winch were both also watching Dora.

After ten minutes, Martin called to her, “What'd you come up with this time?”

She didn't answer.

Martin strolled into the kitchen with Winch and Rusty following but hanging back. On the paper she had written what appeared to be long strings of complex equations that trailed off into scratch-outs.

“I must've figured something... wrong here,” she said, still in full concentration.

Martin turned to Charlie and nodded.

“Are you sure you still want me to do this?” Charlie whispered.

“Yes. Now.”

“I'm going to feel really dumb.” Charlie went to the front door, opened it and slammed it shut and stormed back into the room, panting in full desperation, waving his arms in every direction. “The sky!” he shouted. “My god! The sky is on fire! Orange flames, red flames, blue flames, it's an inferno! An inferno! We're all doomed! We're doomed!” 

 Dora stood petrified in the kitchen doorway, her hands across her mouth and her eyes showing white around her irises. She ran to the door, Winch and Charlie lunging aside to get out of her way. The sky appeared to be its normal blue, though hanging far overhead there were a few filamentary cirrus wisps.

On the front porch, Charlie kept up the description, “... streaks of boiling fire... a flaming apocalypse....”

After one upward glance, Dora cringed and cowered against the door, crushed, moaning and praying incoherently.

“I'm sorry, Rusty,” Martin said. “I'm really sorry. Let's help her inside.” When they got her up, Martin brushed her hair from her face. “I'm sorry, Dora,” he said, but she probably didn't hear.

Still weeping and pleading for mercy, Dora lay across the bed, tearing at her clothes. Rusty closed the door to her bedroom.

“I guess you had to do it,” Rusty said quietly.

“I didn't enjoy it.”

“Unlike someone we know, who seems to enjoy screwing our heads around,” Winch said, “and making us think he's our only ticket to the happy life. Why don't I just go up and shoot the son of a bitch, Martin. This is like some kind of scam out of the old times, and we don't need it.”

“Shooting him would be like old times, too.”

“The offer still stands. All you have to do is ask, now or later. I knew I shoulda shot him.”

“Now that we know his secret power,” Martin said, “we can talk to the others. Then if we can wait a week, if he keeps his side of the bargain—”

Winch spat on the ground. “FFC.”

“—no one will have to get hurt. What does that mean?”

“Fat chance. My offer still stands. I know where they are.” He looked at the clock on the wall over the dead television. “We could be finished in twenty minutes.”

“I don't know,” Rusty said.

“Winch, if I asked you to wait....”

“I'd think you were making a big god damned mistake, but I'd wait.”

“Let me talk to Catrin and the others.”

Winch nodded and the room filled with a smoldering silence.

Chapter 75

The others were astonished, but they listened through their hangovers and believed what Martin and the others told them. All but August.

“You lured us all to this place,” he stormed, “telling us we could do what we wanted, and now when you get a little competition, you go nuts! You go
nuts!
  I don't know what you made that poor woman drink, but I know Joshua, I know Dora, and I think you want to be our god damned dictator, that's what
I
think!” 

“That's what you get for thinking,” Winch said .

To the others Martin said, “Now you know what Joshua is capable of. Please be careful.”

Several of them nodded minutely. Several looked away. All of them looked embarrassed.

....

After speaking with Catrin, Xeng, Roy, Charlie, and Rusty, the decision was that they should wait. Everyone agreed. Joshua would hear that his deception had been discovered, and he would soon leave — Martin hoped — probably taking only Dora and August with him. That would be a good thing. As usual, Catrin had spoken the words that stuck with him: “We don't want our history to begin with killing.”

“Hmh,” Winch grunted. “Let's just make sure we have a history.”

....

For two days, nothing happened.

Then, early on the third morning, Joshua moved through the village, appearing at the front step of each of their homes with Dora and August standing quietly behind him. This day he was serious, all business, without his charming smile.

“I have only a brief message,” he told each person who answered the door. “I have been told by the Lord that there is soon to be a second judgment and that those who reject his offer of salvation will surely be lost.”

“You said if we listened to you once, you'd leave,” Martin said.

“The situation is grave,” he said. “Martin, man to man, I want nothing for myself. I am only an instrument. I beg you to heed the call that comes through me from the Lord.”

“What kind of god would choose as his instrument a liar, a cheat, and a person who would drug us, children and all, to get his way? Is this the same god who tortures those who doubt him? Maybe he should present his subjects with some better evidence.”

“I am a flawed vessel,” he confessed. “I have never claimed to be perfect, but none of us is, Martin. Please don't lose your soul to pride.”

“I may lose it to pride,” Martin said, “but I won't lose it to a fool.”

Joshua turned his face to the morning sky. “I have done my best, Lord. I have done my best.”

As he turned to leave, August gave Martin a cold, pitiless glance.

....

“Rusty isn't here,” Dora said tentatively through her screen door. She had been baking and had flour on her hands and a white smudge on her cheek.

“Actually, it was you I wanted to speak to,” Martin said.

The woman drew back from the screen, nervously twisting her apron between her hands.

“I don't want to talk to you.”

“Are you and August leaving with Joshua?”

She nodded nervously. “Yes, we are.”

“When would that be? He gave me his word he would be gone a week after we invited him down. That leaves two days.”

“I don't know those things. He hasn't told us. Are you going to let us go?”

“Of course I am. But I wanted to know when you were leaving.”

“Well....” She shuffled and looked away. “He told us to stay with our families and friends and to wait for his summons.”

“And you have no idea when that will be.”

“No. I don't.”

“Well, thanks, Dora, for telling me what you know.”

She might have said, “...welcome.”

“I'm sorry it's turning out this way.”

She was looking away, past his shoulder, past everything. Then she shut the door between them.

....

Another day went by and Charlie brought Martin word that nothing had changed at Joshua's encampment.

“Tomorrow's the day, then.”

“Then what?” Charlie asked.

“Perhaps we'll ask them to go. Perhaps we'll tell them.”

“Or tell Winch to tell them.”

Martin took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I don't think Winch would have much to say, in words.”

....

That night, Martin was awakened by a banging on his door, a tiny voice calling his name, and light footsteps hurrying through the house. He was not alarmed because Isha had not barked a warning, and then, of his sleepiness, he recognized Solomon's voice.

“Daddy!” He was in their room now, beside their bed, panting hard. “Daddy, Xeng says you have to come quick to Winch's house. He's sick!”

Martin was already climbing into his pants and held a shirt under his arm. “Winch is sick?”

“Yes, Xeng said hurry!”

He rushed past Solomon and left Catrin behind. She was already up and had a candle lit.

The night was cool and all the houses were dark but Winch's, and when Martin got there, one look at Winch and he knew that he was not just sick — something was dreadfully wrong. His eyes were open, fully dilated, staring at the ceiling, probably seeing nothing. Sweat rolled off his face and he continuously murmured under his breath.

Over him stood Xeng, his calm demeanor nearly gone, and at the back of the room, Jan-Louise, whose face had little color.

“What's happened?” Martin whispered to Xeng.