‘As well as can be expected,’ answered Season. ‘This isn’t exactly the Beverly Hills Hotel.’
‘The Beverly Hills Hotel is a smoking ruin,’ said Granger. ‘It was raided on Thursday night, and two famous actresses were raped and tortured to death. So just be glad that this isn’t the Beverly Hills Hotel.’
‘What’s it like outside?’ asked Season.
‘The looters are still there, waiting for us to weaken. But we won’t weaken, of course. Mike Bull calculates that we have a good five months of food in here, and I can tell you that we’ll still be eating meat and fruit while those looters out there die of starvation and disease.’
Season looked up at him narrowly. ‘You still think we’re chosen, don’t you? You still think we deserve to live while those people out there all deserve to die.’
Granger smiled. ‘It is not for me to question the ways of God. God has decided many times before to test the spiritual and moral strength of his creation – with fires, and floods, and plagues. Now we have famine. Don’t you think, after all, that a famine is a fitting test for a nation that for decades has surfeited itself on steak, and candies, and sheer fat? This country has been so gluttonous that police chiefs have been forced to cut the pay of their officers if they don’t lose weight; and did you hear that they had to campaign against obesity amongst students at the Oral Roberts University? America has been a nation of pigs for too long, out of sheer greed, and God has seen fit to punish us for it. Only those who have faith in the practicality of his Word will be saved.’
‘I don’t believe in the practicality of his Word. Why should I be saved?’
‘Because you are one of my loved ones; and, in time, I know that you will come to understand that what I say is true.’
‘It’s not what you say that concerns me,’ said Season. ‘It’s what you do.’
Granger raised a hand, and said, ‘O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. Sing unto the Lord: for his anger endureth but a moment: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Season. ‘A prayer for everlasting sexual licence? Cry tonight, but get your rocks off tomorrow?’
Granger slowly shook his head from side to side. ‘You’re so resentful, aren’t you? So angry. But there isn’t any need to be. You should feel happiness, that the Lord has protected you in this country’s terrible time of trouble. You should feel content. You should forget the past and consider the happiness of tomorrow.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget those Hell’s Angels,’ whispered Season. ‘And I don’t think I’ll ever forget you.’ There was venom in her voice, undiluted, and crackling with hostility. Granger flinched, as if she had spat at him.
‘I think I have other people to talk to,’ he said, rubbing his cheek slowly with the back of his hand. ‘You’ll forgive me?’
It was an unfortunate choice of words. But Season didn’t retaliate any more. She simply turned away, and left Granger standing there, uncertain and irritated. After a while, he resumed his beatific smile, and continued on down the bottled fruit shelves, blessing his uncomfortable flock, and wishing them a safe and prosperous day.
By noon on Friday, they had reached the outskirts of Liberal, Kansas, only a few miles from the Oklahoma line. Ed pulled the Chevy wagon in to the side of the dusty highway, and wiped the sweat from his face. Behind the Chevy, the small untidy convoy of cars and wagons pulled up at the side of the road, too, and out climbed farmworkers and their wives and children, stretching themselves and lighting cigarettes and rubbing their faces with towels and handkerchiefs.
Della, sitting next to Ed, laid her hand on his arm and said, ‘How are you feeling? Are you okay?’
Ed nodded. ‘I think so. Just tired, that’s all.’
‘Do you want me to drive?’ asked Peter Kaiser, from the back.
‘Later, yes,’ said Ed. ‘We hit sixty-six at Tucumcari. New Mexico; and I want to keep us driving through New Mexico at night. You can take over then.’
Shearson, wedged in a corner, bejewelled with beads of sweat like a Chinese Buddah, said, ‘Is there any danger of getting anything to eat at this juncture? It is lunchtime, you know.’
Ed glanced at the clock on the dash. ‘We’ll stop to eat once we’re out of Kansas. You can have a swig of water if you like.’
‘Dear God for an ice-cold martini and a basket of cold pheasant,’ murmured Shearson.
Without turning around, Ed said, ‘Senator – if you’re going to talk food all the way to Los Angeles – you’d better get out now. The situation’s bad enough without you adding your frustrated gourmet fantasies to it.’
‘I shall remember you, Hardesty, when all of this is over,’ Shearson growled. ‘I shall remember you as the only man alive who ever managed to force me to diet. Not even my doctor could make me give up oysters Rockefeller; but you did. I shall have your entrails one of these days.’
‘On toast?’ asked Della. ‘Or à la mode?’
Lennie Merritt, one of the stockhands, came walking up to Ed’s wagon, brushing the flies away from his face.
‘Mr Hardesty?’ he asked.
‘What is it, Lennie?’
‘My little boy Peter’s real sick back there. Brought up his breakfast, and won’t take nothing but sips of water. I’ve talked to my wife, sir, and the Billingtons, who are riding in there with us, and I’m afraid we’ve decided to pull out of the convoy and stay here for a while. My wife has an aunt in Dodge City, and we reckoned on travelling back up there.’
Ed looked down at the man’s pinched, sweaty face, his eyes squinting against the glare of the sun. He looked like one of those labourers in those A. B. Frost paintings that Season was always going on about.
‘You know how risky it’s going to be, out on your own?’ he asked Merritt. He didn’t really have to put that question; he asked it more for the sake of his own conscience than to dissuade Merritt from going.
Merritt, of course, nodded. Nobody could have failed to miss the carcasses of burned-out trucks and cars that were strewn along the highway; or driven through abandoned communities like Greensburg and Minneola, where boarded-up houses and looted stores were now visited only by family dogs, fiercely hungry and scavenging for food, without realising how dangerous the countryside had become.
‘All right,’ said Ed. ‘Give my love to your wife, and take a whole lot of care. You understand?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Merritt. ‘And Mr Hardesty, sir?’
‘Yes?’
Lennie Merritt dropped his gaze. ‘I just want to say that I’m sure sorry we never got the time to work the farm out the way we should have done. I think you would have made a real good boss.’
‘Thanks, Lennie,’ said Ed, and sat silent for a long time as the man trudged slowly back to his dusty green car.
‘Are we going to move on?’ asked Shearson Jones. ‘Or are we going to sit here in this heat until we melt into pools of human grease?’
‘You speak for yourself, Senator,’ said Karen, from the tail compartment, where she was sitting amongst hurriedly-stacked cans of corned beef and carrots and peas, and two large polythene containers of water, which sloshed loudly as they drove along.
‘It’s okay,’ said Ed. ‘We’re leaving.’
He blew the horn three times, waved his arm out of the window, and the farmworkers hurried back to their cars and started up their motors.
‘You should have been on Wagon Train,’ said Shearson, sarcastically.
‘You should have been on The Gang Show,’ retorted Karen.