‘That crowd’s looking pretty threatening to me,’ he said to Granger, pressing his face to the window. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if they try breaking in.’
‘Couldn’t we try throwing them out a few cans of food?’ asked Season. ‘Wouldn’t that show them we meant well?’ Mike Bull shook his head. ‘If they think we’ve got food to spare, just to keep them at bay, that’ll only get them worked up even more. Besides, we don’t want to help to prolong their stamina, do we? – not even for one day. Give them two, three days, they’ll be weak as kittens. Then, if we’ve managed to keep them out, they’ll either die, or they’ll try someplace else.’
Sally, rubbing sleep from her eyes, came up and put her arms around Season’s waist. Season stroked her hair, and then bent down and kissed her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It just seems to me that for active church-members, everybody here is acting pretty damn uncharitable.’
Mike Bull said, ‘Listen, lady – this might not seem like charity – but charity’s no use at all unless it works. If we open the doors of this supermarket and let everybody in, our whole stock of food – five months of food – is going to be gone in five minutes. Tomorrow, we’ll be hungry. Now, what’s the point of that? Do you want to see your daughter starve? Do you want to see her ribs showing through her skin? Because if you do, that’s the way to do it.’
‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said Season, defensively. ‘I don’t want Sally to starve and I don’t want to starve myself. But look at those people out there. They’re just ordinary people, like all of us.’
‘They didn’t follow the Church of the Practical Miracle,’ said Mike Bull, in a level voice. ‘And this, to me, is the practical miracle, with the emphasis on practical. Our people surviving this famine, and coming out the other side.’
Season turned to Granger. ‘I can see why your church was so popular,’ she said, caustically. ‘You were only interested in miracles that helped your unworthy little selves. Wholesome, capitalist, racially-selective, no-bussing. Proposition-thirteen, private-medicine-oriented miracles.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Mike Bull. ‘We let in Hispanics. We even let in blacks. Tony there – he’s Italian – he was going to join.’
‘I haven’t seen any blacks or Hispanics here in the supermarket,’ said Season.
Granger laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘Regretfully, we couldn’t contact everybody in time,’ he said.
‘Besides,’ put in Mike Bull, ‘what are you being so critical about? This church has saved your life, hasn’t it? And your daughter’s life? Just be thankful you’re not out there with all of those hungry people!’
Season was about to say something sharp in reply, but she checked herself. Maybe she was just tired, and frayed, and depressed. Maybe she was sick of being imprisoned in this supermarket, sick of the lines for the washroom every morning, sick of the evening sing-songs and the daily arguments, sick of the whole way in which the Hughes Supermarket had become a microcosm of American smalltown thinking – we’re okay because we’re in here with our food, buddy, and just you keep your distance.
Season was a smart, bright girl; a city girl. In the city, you learned how to be aggressive and you learned how to survive. But somehow, sitting on your own little pile of stuff wasn’t what real survival was all about. Real survival was working things out with other people – taking the risk to relate. Amongst these smug, quasi-religious Californians, Season felt even more alienated than she had on South Burlington Farm.
‘Granger,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I apologise. You offered to help me and I accepted your offer. I didn’t have any right to slander your beliefs.’
But Granger didn’t answer. Granger was looking at her with a bright, mesmerised glassiness in his eyes that made her involuntarily turn around, to see if there was someone standing behind her.
‘Granger?’ she repeated. Even Mike Bull frowned. ‘You’re right,’ Granger said, in a hoarse, slow voice. ‘You’re absolutely right.’
‘I’m right? What are you talking about?’
Granger raised his hand, two fingers extended, a gesture unnervingly reminiscent of Jesus.
‘Those people out there – they deserve the benefits of our faith – they deserve the miracles – just as much as we do—’
‘Granger,’ said Mike, taking his arm. ‘Why don’t you come and have a cup of hot coffee, and maybe some cookies? I know Nan Mameweck just brewed up.’
‘No, you misunderstand me,’ breathed Granger. ‘I’m being tested here. This is my test. This is how my faith is being put through its ultimate workout. Don’t you see it? How God has spoken to me, through Season here? How God has arranged this whole situation, this entire interface, so that I can discover at last what practical miracles really are?’
‘Granger, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ said Mike. ‘I mean, really.’
‘You don’t remember John, chapter six, verse five, when the five thousand followed Jesus to the mountain, and Jesus said to Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’
Mike Bull glanced outside at the restless crowds. ‘Well, yes,’ he said awkwardly, ‘but the plain fact is that we just don’t have enough.’
‘That’s it!’ cried Granger, ‘that’s absolutely it! The gospel is repeating itself! I have said to you – how are we going to feed all those people out there – and you, like Philip, have said the modem equivalent of what Philip said, which was. Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. But Jesus had asked Philip this question to test him, right? Because it’s written in the Bible that Jesus knew what he would do.’
Mike Bull stared at Granger, face to face, for a long time. Granger was trembling, and there was white spittle at the corners of his mouth. ‘Okay – sure,’ said Mike, uncertainly. ‘But what are you going to do?’
‘A miracle,’ said Granger. ‘A contemporary, practical miracle. Maybe not the feeding of the five thousand, but certainly the feeding of the five hundred.’
‘It can’t work,’ Mike Bull told him, with hushed earnestness. ‘Granger, it just can’t work.’
‘Do you think Philip believed the miracle that Jesus performed would work? Of course he didn’t. The only way that anybody can ever believe in a miracle is to see it happen in front of his eyes. Now, go to the stockroom and bring me five packs of that crispbread and two cans of tuna.’
‘Granger—’
Granger seized the front of Mike Bull’s shirt, not angrily, but with intense religious passion. ‘It’s what we believe in, Mike. It’s what we actually believe in. And now’s our chance to show that it can happen for real. We can work a miracle, Mike, just the way Jesus did. Others have done it. Others did it in Jesus’s time, and Jesus didn’t mind. He approved of it. We can work this miracle, and at the same time we can purge ourselves of all of our selfishness and our greed. Don’t you understand me? This one act is going to be our salvation.’
Season said, ‘Granger, if you go out there, they could very well kill you.’
Granger shook his head. ‘No, no chance of that. I know whose voice comes out of your mouth, Season. You’ve tested me before. Tested me hard, when I thought that I was testing you. They won’t hurt me, those people out there. Especially when they see what I’m bringing them. Especially when they clear up after they’ve eaten, and realise how much they’ve left over.’