Announcer: “When exactly, Mrs. Collins, do you anticipate the, eh, the end of the world?”
Clara: “Well, we don’t rightly know, but if you’re worryin’ about it like you better be, then I’d say to you you’d better come along with us right now, on account of it’s apt to happen jist any moment!” Back to the network.
He wasn’t able to catch them by car after all. Crowds blocked the way. People milled in every street. Mostly strangers. Lot of cars with out-of-state licenses. He parked as near to the back edge of town as he could, took up the speedgraphic, set out in a light jog. He decided to cut across the acreage that the city had just bought for purposes of luring industry. Hoped to cut the parade off. The lope over those untended fields was not easy: irregular, high with dried grass and shrubs that bit and clutched at his ankles, lot of junk to trip him up. He saw the crowds, though, just swelling out onto the mine road from the edge of town. Helicopter circling overhead, no doubt photographing his lone gallop crosscountry toward the Brunists: lost lamb returning to the fold, or messenger with the Word. Sky beyond the helicopter was gray with fat ripe clouds.
He angled more sharply so as to get ahead of the advancing masses. Out in front: several cars, many of them with tripods and other equipment strapped on top. Big TV outfit rolled along in front, followed by an enormous crowd that just didn’t seem to end. A kind of flood at that: the Brunists bubbling down the road like a spread of white foam, and at the edges, like dark scum, the welter of the curious, the doubters, the hecklers, the indignant. He aimed toward a grove of trees, saw that if his wind lasted he’d make it before the Brunists with a couple minutes to spare. The helicopter came roaring down over his head and onto the Brunists, there to hover like a great speckled insect.
His wind lasted, but barely. He staggered up against one of the trees, gasping, pulled out a smoke. His side ached, one ankle hurt. He tucked the camera between his knees, lit up, then sighted the camera on the road in front of him, just as a couple cars shot by.
“Real scene,” somebody said behind him.
Miller looked around, noticed for the first time that he shared the grove with three or four other cameramen. The guy who had addressed him had come up from behind, now stood looking over Miller’s shoulder. Young kid. Shaggy. Cocky.
“Did you catch the rumpus this morning at the R.C. place?”
“Guess I missed that,” Miller said, still panting.
“Apocalyptic,” the kid said. “Laid into altars with mining picks, swiped a lot of stuff.”
Miller could see the front ranks now: Giovanni Bruno, gaunt, lugging what did indeed look like a coal pick, head held high, hair flowing, legs kicking out vigorously against the restraint of the tunic, narrow bony feet, bare, beating down the hard ruts of the road; on either side of him, Abner Baxter and Ben Wosznik, singing lustily and bearing the two banners, a German police dog trotting at Wosznik’s heels.
The photographer unwrapped a red pack of gum, shoved about half of it in his mouth, offered Miller some. “No, thanks.” So, in went the rest.
Behind the three men walked the Nortons, side by side, faces collapsed in grief and maybe a kind of horror, but their step measured and determined. On either side, more or less in single file, marched the women of West Condon, led by Clara Collins and Sarah Baxter. Mixing in and trailing back down the road: scores of East Condoners, no, hundreds! Some wielded torches, some silver candlesticks, part of the morning’s loot, no doubt. And, in the middle, borne on—
“Now you won’t believe this,” the photographer said, working his jaws mightily around the gum, “but you see that little Seenyora Two Hung Lo? There in the middle with the little fat fella? Well, they both been to college.”
“Is that so?” Miller was getting his breath back. He dropped his butt to his feet, ground it out, pulled out another.
“Degrees and everything.” The kid lifted his camera, took a photo. Somehow, his doing that made the camera in Miller’s hand grow cold and heavy. The front ranks of the procession had pulled nearly abreast of them. “You wouldn’t think brainy types like that could get their asses in such a silly sling, now wouldja?”
“Hard to figure.”
“You said it, man.” The gum cracked and popped. Miller felt chills ripple through him, seeing the thing now clearly, jogging slightly, back and forth, back and forth, to the rhythm of their song. “Now that poor little piece of dead snatch they’re toting, that’s a different story.” On the shoulders of six men. Litter was what looked like a lawn chair, folded down flat. She was just no color at all. Something between the dull aluminum of the chair frame and the vapid gray of the darkening sky. Fresh white tunic, too big for her — a grotesquely ironic thought occurred to him, and, yes, it was probably true … they probably found that tunic in her closet, or a drawer, and thought … Her mouth gaped open, lips drawn dry; he licked his own self-consciously. One hand pointed rigidly heavenward, the other downward. Eyelids half-open over a filmy opaque surface. It was so unreal a thing, he could register no emotion except horror. Marcella! He shuddered, closed his eyes, opened them. “They say she died with her hand aimed up at the Old Man like that, and that was what made that redheaded bugger see the light.” Miller just couldn’t attach her to this brittle blue corpse that rocked on the road before him. The run here had weakened him, had made him sweat; now the sweat was cold as death on him and all his tendons were gone to rot. He leaned up against the tree to keep from buckling, flicked his cigarette into the ditch, lit a new one. Marcella. He saw her name on his desk blotter, heard her gay laughter, smelled her body on his, saw the intricate turn of a lightly tanned wrist, tasted the newness of her mouth. Marcella. Marcella Bruno. Was it something in her he had loved … or something in himself he had hated? He felt old. “Well, the word is she got banged by the guy who grinds out the local scandal sheet. He was a big cat in the club, but he cut out on them and got into her. She went off her nut and, so they say, finally knocked herself off. Now that’s pretty wild too, I admit, but that’s something I can understand.”
“Where’d you hear all that?”
“Oh, I dunno. You pick things up. You just drag in? There’s a couple lambent skin pix making the rounds at the flophouse that this wiseguy took of himself laying the meat to her. Big guy, about as tall as Papa Spook out there, but twice as wide.” The kid popped his gum, spat out the side of his mouth, photographed Marcella’s cadaver. “Gives you a weird feeling,” he said. “In one of the photos she’s just like that, one arm up, one down, looking scared. Like it was all planned.” Weird feeling.
Behind the body marched alternate pallbearers, large numbers of out-of-towners among them. Willie Hall and a heavyset man dragged along a little red wagon, in which, huddled miserably, sat Emilia Bruno, ancient, dark, withered, looking very ill indeed, yellowish eyes cast upward toward where her daughter rocked above her. Some of the men carried large wooden crosses at least four feet tall, roughly hewn from tree branches. Miller saw three or four of them. Then came the young, a disordered, emotional, wildly singing lot, dozens of them, all sizes. The four Baxter redheads stood out. Carl Dean Palmers hopped backwards in front of them, leading them in their singing:
“O the sons of light are marching since the coming of the dawn,