“Why, then I suppose the water will be next,” Bullock said.
“We’ll get to it,” I said.
“What I’ve been trying to tell you,” Brother Jobe said. “You see, all these individuals in the town trying to live like it’s still old times, each on its own, each family alone against the world. You can’t have that in these new times or things will fall apart. See what a splendid show Mr. Bullock is running here,” he said, evidently for my benefit. “Everyone has a part to play and does its job and the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts. Am I right? That’s exactly like how we do in New Faith, only we bow to a higher authority. You never got Jesus, I take it, sir.”
“Never did,” Bullock said.
“Well that’s a goldurn shame. Ever tempted to try?”
“Not really.”
“How about your folks on the farm here?”
“My people are free to believe what they want to believe.”
“Maybe some of them would like to take a look over our way, then, and come to the Lord.”
“I don’t have any to spare, Brother Jobe. I just lost four hands on the river. Robert,” Bullock turned once again to me, his patience visibly ebbing. “Why don’t you talk to the Reverend Holder and the other men over there and see if you can get them going on repairing that water system. Brother Jobe here is right. You people over in town need to show a little initiative.”
“Loren and I aim to start a laundry operation,” I said, surprising myself by sounding so deliberate.
Brother Jobe perked up. “First I heard of it.”
“Where will you do this,” Bullock said.
“In the old Wayland-Union Mill,” I said.
“Well then you’d better fix the water supply.”
“Of course.”
“I can cast you some lengths of concrete pipe here,” Bullock said “and get them over to you, if that’d help. You’ve got at least six feet of head on the Battenkill in two locations up there. You could be running hydroelectric for the whole town. There’s enough metal parts lying around this county to build a steam locomotive, if you looked hard enough. We built a five-kilowatt generator out of the automotive scrap on Bacon Hill.”
I couldn’t help but feel that Bullock was looking to purchase Brother Jobe’s goodwill as a tactical measure.
“I like the sound of that,” Brother Jobe said, rubbing his hands. “I’ll tell you what: we’ll examine those water pipes right away. We have the manpower to repair them and we’ll do it. And we’ll see to the electric this summer, if your offer to lend a little guidance still stands. And my offer still stands to help out in case your boat crew don’t report back. I’ve got some fellows that have been trained in this sort of thing.”
“What? Military types?”
“Holy Land vets.”
“Really? Well, great,” Bullock said, pushing away from the table. “It was sure nice of you to visit. We don’t get many breaks from the routine here.”
“You notify me if you want our boys to help turn up those boys of your’n. They’re stout fellows, upright and fearless.”
“Very kind of you.”
“And maybe you’ll consider starting up those wheels of justice.”
“I’ll consider those things.”
“It’s been an honor to meet you too, sir,” Brother Jobe said. “But say, if you’re not going to eat the rest of that fine hamburger, why I’d like to take it with me, if you don’t mind. It’s been years since I’ve seen such a thing and, you know, waste not want not, especially in these times.”
“Of course,” Bullock said with a strange broad smile that didn’t seem altogether natural, while he handed the plate to Brother Jobe. “By the way, this hamburger came from one of our oxen.”
“You don’t say?”
“His name was Dick.”
“What happened to him?”
“Freak accident. A scaffold fell on him down at the new cane mill and crushed his spine. We had to put him down.”
“My condolences. Well, he sure come to a tasty end, though.”
“Come back some time for hot dogs,” Bullock said. “We make those here too.”
The sky had darkened and it looked like a storm was gathering when we stepped outside. On the way back to town in the cart, not much was said. I suppose we were both lost in our own thoughts. But as we passed the old Toyota lot just west of town, Brother Jobe surprised me by muttering, as if to himself, “That fellow is a dangerous man.”
Nineteen
Lightning played crazy patterns on the walls all night, though the storms stayed off in the distance and no rain fell. I kept waiting for it to come closer, work its fury, and be over. Even more, I longed for a cool front to drive off the relentless heat. At times I imagined that maybe it wasn’t thunder and lightning at all but a terrific battle beyond the horizon between whatever was left of the great war machines-though I hadn’t seen an airplane in the skies for years, civilian or military. In any case, the distant storms kept me awake, so I got out of bed and sat in a soft chair by the window to watch the sky until I was satisfied that it was indeed lightning and not Armageddon. I must have fallen to dozing there because I woke up with a jerk. I quickly recognized that the scream which woke me up was real, not in a dream, and noticed an orange glow reflecting off the side of Lucy Myles’s house next door. I strapped on my sandals and hurried outside.
Lucy was out in her yard in her nightclothes.
“Someone’s house is burning down,” she said.
An orange aura flickered over the nearby rooftops. A hot wind blew leaves and dust down the street, as if every loose particle in town was being prompted into motion by unseen forces. I rushed around the block toward the fire, joined by half-clad neighbors, till we all converged in front of the Watling house on Salem Street. Flames licked through the tall windows of the broom shop and up into a dormer. The fire visibly gathered strength in the few seconds that I stood there gaping at it. Bonnie Sweetland, the Watlings’ next-door neighbor, was screaming. Loren and Jane Ann, Jason LaBountie, Sam Hutto, Andrew Pendergast, Tom Allison, Terry Einhorn and his older boy, Teddy, the Copelands and their kids, Larry Russo the baker, who generally started work before dawn, and many others all soon arrived on the scene, some halfdressed, many carrying buckets. Even Heath Rucker and Dale Murray, the constable and our mayor, showed up. Bruce Wheedon, a foreman on Deaver’s farm, who was the nominal chief of our pathetic fire department, appeared with a huge box wrench, but was not able to open the valve on the nearby hydrant. Who knows how many years it had been since the valve head had been turned, and I was not aware that anybody went around testing them. The nut was rusted frozen.
Loren tried banging the wrench handle with a big rock. He only succeeded in snapping off the handle from the box end. Bruce cursed and there was some yelling back and forth, and Doug Sweetland dragged his garden hose over, which got everybody to stop yelling until they realized that we couldn’t fill the buckets fast enough with it, and then Charles Pettie, the town cobbler and bass fiddle player in our music circle, showed up with a yard-long Stillson wrench that must have weighed thirty pounds. Two men pushed and one pulled the long handle until the valve nut turned with a shriek and water started flowing out of the hydrant. Everybody cheered and rapidly formed a bucket brigade. But it was soon obvious that our flung buckets made no impression on the fire.
All this happened quickly, no more than a few minutes. Meanwhile, other women joined Bonnie Sweetland in screaming and pointing up into the end dormer where two figures, Britney and Sarah, were dimly visible huddled together inside. Tom Allison brought over an aluminum extension ladder and threw it against the eaves below the dormer. At the same moment, the needles of a big white pine tree close by the most involved end of the house reached kindling temperature and exploded into flame. Bruce Wheedon yelled at the bucket men to forget the Watling house and start wetting down the Sweetland’s place next door so it wouldn’t catch, and they all rushed to reform the bucket line there. Up on the ladder, Tom smashed the window in the dormer, but Britney remained frozen inside clutching the girl. I tossed my bucket aside, rushed around the back of the house, and slipped in the kitchen door.