Folk of the Fringe Page 3

  "A metaphor," said Brother Deaver. He was smiling. He always got some kind of thrill out of knowing a fancy name for things.

  Just like that, and Teague had got them out of despair and into hoping again. Made them all wonder why nobody had thought of taking apart the carts and just walking into the woods. Maybe it was because they were city people who thought of freeways as things you couldn't get off of except at places with an arrow and the word EXIT. But Tina thought it was probably because they all expected to die; some of them were maybe even disappointed they weren't already dead. Or not disappointed, exactly. Ashamed. Living just didn't have all that much attraction to them. Even the children. They weren't ready to walk on and greet death with hymns and rejoicing, but they might well have sat there waiting for death to stumble over them. Till Teague came back.

  They moved the carts as far into the underbrush on the north side of the road as they could, then unloaded them and carried all the bundles up to the chain-link fence. Teague carried heavy wire-clippers with him—this wasn't his first time going through a fence, obviously—and he made them notice how he cut low. "You got to crawl through," he said, "but then they can't see the cut from the road, and they're less likely to follow you."

  "You think they aim to follow us?" asked Marie, scared.

  "Not the highway patrol," said Teague. "I don't think they care. But if the mobbers see a new break in the fence—"

  "We'll crawl," said Tina. And if she was willing to crawl through, nobody else could complain about it. But she had merely spoken what the others needed to hear, to get them moving, to keep them safe. The question of whether she herself was actually going to crawl through anything was still very much undecided.

  Once the cart was unloaded, they carefully dismantled the two-by-four frames that bound each pair of bikes together. Teague wouldn't let them do it, though, till he had looked carefully at every lashpoint. Tina liked him better and better. He wasn't in such a hurry that he got himself into a mess. He took the time to make sure he could make things work right later on.

  She also noticed that he did none of the unloading and carrying. Instead he watched constantly, looking up and down the freeway and into the woods. One time he ran up the hill, skinnied under the chain-link fence, and climbed a tree fast as a squirrel. He was back down a minute later. "False alarm," he said.

  "Story of my life," said Pete.

  "Pete's a fireman," said Annalee.

  "Was," said Brother Deaver.

  "I am a fireman," said Pete. "Till I die I'm a fireman." He spoke fiercely.

  Brother Deaver backed off. "I meant no harm."

  Teague lost his temper for a second. "I don't give a flying—"

  He didn't finish, cause right then he caught Tina's eye and she looked at him just like a misbehaving child in Primary. She had a look that could tame the wildest brat. She used it on bishops and stake presidents too sometimes, and they calmed down even quicker than the kids.

  Brother Deaver felt the need to say the obvious. "I hope you'll continue to watch your language around the children."

  Teague never took his gaze from Tina's eyes. "I know I'll sure as heck watch my language around her."

  "Tina Monk," she said.

  "Sister Monk," said Brother Deaver.

  "Tell those kids not to make a path up there," said Teague. "Walk in different places through that open grassy place."

  The bikes and two-by-fours got through fine. So did everybody except Teague and Tina. And there she stood, looking at that little bitty hole and feeling exactly how thick she was from front to back. How tired she was. How she wasn't in the mood to shinny through there with everybody watching. How she wasn't altogether sure she could do it without help. She imagined Brother Deaver or Pete Cinn grabbing two hands onto her wrists and pulling and pulling and finally collapsing in exhaustion. She shuddered.

  "Well, go on," she said to Teague. "I'll come on later."

  Brother Deaver and Pete Cinn started to argue with her, but Annalee shut them up and made them pull stuff over the crest of the hill.

  "Sister Monk," said Annalee, "we aren't going nowhere without you, so you might as well make up your mind and get through there."

  "The only way I'll get through is if you cut that fence from top to bottom and I walk through," she said.

  "Can't do that," said Teague. "Might as well put up a flashing neon sign."

  "Good-bye and God bless you all," said Tina. She started walking down the hill.

  Teague fell in step right beside her. "Maybe you're a dumb lady, after all, ma'am, and that's fine with me. But when I scared those little ones, it was you they went to."

  "I can't shimmy under that fence, not uphill," she said.

  "You're about wore out, I guess," said Teague.

  "I'm about a hundred and fifty pounds too heavy, is what."

  "I'll push you."

  "If you lay a hand on me I'll break it off."

  He laid his hand on her shoulder. "OK, I've touched it. Skin with a lot of fat under it. So what. Get up there and I'll push you under the fence."

  She shuddered at the touch of his hand, but she also knew he was right. There were lots of reasons to die, but dying because you couldn't stand the humiliation of some man pushing his hands into your fat and pushing you up a hill—that wasn't a good enough reason.

  "If you get a hernia, don't expect me to knit you a truss," she said.

  Back at the fence, she made Annalee go up the hill. "You keep everybody on that side. I don't want anybody watching this."

  Tina noted with satisfaction that Annalee may be contrary sometimes, but not when it counts. As soon as she was on her way up the slope, Tina sat down with her back toward the fence, then lay down.

  "On your stomach," said Teague.

  "I plan to dig in with my heels."

  "And then how do I push you without giving offense, ma'am? Crawl through and grab saplings on the other side."

  She rolled over. He immediately shoved his hands into her thighs and started pushing. It was a hard shove he had—the boy was strong. And it didn't feel humiliating. It felt plain irresistible. He was moving her at a good clip without her even helping. And uphill, too.

  "Maybe I've been losing weight," she panted. With all her weight on her lungs, she didn't have much breath.

  "Shut up, ma'am, and grab onto something."

  She shut up and grabbed a sapling and pulled. With all her strength, sliding herself forward, feeling him pressing upward on her thighs, feeling the grass tear loose under her breasts and belly, the dirt slide into her clothes, the chain-link pushing down on her back. Her arms had never pulled so hard in her life. She could hardly breathe.

  "You're through."

  So she was. Covered with dirt and sweat from neck to knees, but through the fence. She got up onto all fours, then rolled over to a sitting position, feeling, as always, like a rotating planet. She sat there to rest for a moment. While she did, Teague rolled the cut flap of chain-link back down and tied one corner of the bottom in place with a short piece of twine he took out of his pocket.

  "Let's go," he said. He held out a hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. Then he stood there, holding her wrist, looking at her face. "I don't want you carrying anything. I don't want you so much as holding hands with a little kid who gets tired."

  "I'll pull my weight," she said.

  "And nothing else," he said. "From the look of you, I'd say you're ten miles from a heart attack."

  "Stroke," she said. "In my family, it's strokes."

  "I mean it," Teague insisted. "And if you get tired, you make everybody stop and rest."

  "I'm not going to slow them down just because I'm—"

  "Fat," he said.

  "Right," she said.

  "I'll tell you, ma'am. They need you, and they need you alive. You pull nothing, you carry nothing, you drink whenever you're thirsty, and you rest whenever you're tired."

  "And I tell you that I'm in better shape
than you think. I was custodian at the church, I worked my body all day every day, and furthermore I never smoked a single cigarette or drank a drop of liquor from the day I was born."

  "You're telling me why you ain't dead already," said Teague. "I'm telling you how not to be dead tomorrow. You watch. You stay alive on this trip of yours, you'll thin out."

  "Don't tell me what to do."

  "Walk up this hill."

  She turned around and started walking up. Briskly, to show him she could do it. Ten paces later, her right leg gave out. Gave right out, and she stumbled and fell on her face. Not a bad fall, since she was going uphill anyway. He helped her up, and she let him half-pull her the rest of the way. It was plain that she had used herself up, at least for one day. They made their camp right there on the far side of the hill, just a hundred yards farther on than the gap where they came through. Teague wouldn't let them light a fire, and he spent most of the time till dusk scouting around or climbing trees and looking.

  It was a warm night, so they slept right there in the woods on the far side of the hill, out of sight of the road, out of sight of everything. Yet they could hear, not all that far off, the crackling of a fire and folks laughing and talking. Couldn't make out the words, but they were having fun.

  "Mobbers?" whispered Pete.

  "Barbecue," said Teague.

  Citizens of Winston. Protected by the law. A couple of miles away, mobbers hoping to kill and strip passersby. And in between them, quiet, listening, Tina Monk, breathing heavily, the pain in her unaccustomed muscles making it impossible to sleep, her weariness making it unbearable to be awake. Laughter. Pleasant company. Someone had all those things tonight, all those things that come with peace. How dare they have peace, when their highway patrolmen sent a dozen souls to what they thought was certain death? You are responsible, you laughers, you friends and lovers, you are the ones in whose name those stolid killers acted. You.

  Then she slept and dreamed of crawling through tight places. Cramming her bulk into a narrow shaft, her clothing climbing up her body as she thrust herself farther in, farther, until she could put the cover on. Then lying there in the heat, the close air, hearing shooting, the sound of it echoing, amplified through the air-conditioning system; and screams. Every bullet meant for kin of hers. Brothers and sisters, all of them, screaming in pain and terror while Tina Monk, building custodian, Primary president, choir leader, cowered in the air-conditioning system trying to keep her breathing soft enough that no one would find her. They shot her husband at the top of the stairs down into the furnace room. When she finally opened the door, it was Tom's body she had to shove out of the way in order to open it, Tom's blood that made prints of her shoes as she walked up the stairs. His sweet and patient face, she saw it now in her mind as she slept her dark unquiet sleep.

  Herman Deaver knew that he had no authority. Bishop Coward could say he was in charge, as the only high priest in the group, but it wasn't spiritual leadership they needed. This wasn't a prophetic journey; there was no Lehi to wake up with dreams that told them where to go; there was no divine gift of a liahona with pointers on it to show the way. There wasn't even a trace of manna on the ground in the morning, just dew soaking them, making the morning stiff and clinging and miserable.

  I can explain, very clearly, how Shakespeare's Hamlet is in fact not contemplating suicide in the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy, but rather deciding whether to endure suffering as a Christian or take vengeful action. What Herman Deaver could not explain, to himself or anyone else, was why he, a high priest, a temple-going Saint, a professor of literature, why he was so terribly sorry to be alive. I apologize. My mistake. An oversight. An error of scheduling. If only you had sent a reminder. To be or not to be was not the question at all. Hamlet did not care about vengeance or justice. What he wanted was his father back. Good intentions—but he took away his friend Laertes' father instead. Now we're alike, eh what? Even steven. Get up, Deaver. Set an example, even if you aren't the leader. You're the chaplain now, that's what you are, so at least keep morale up by being perky and chipper and energetic. Ignore that pain from your burning prostate. It isn't agony yet. Not till you take the first leak of the day.

  "The boys' lavatory is that stand of bushes over there," said Sister Monk.

  Since his eyes were closed, Deaver didn't know if she meant him or not. But he took it as if she did, and struggled to his feet, squinting to see as the first sunlight slanted through the branches. It burned, it burned, it burned; the sunlight, his prostate, the urine tearing at him as it passed out of his body and sizzled on last year's leaves. When I was young I never thought it would be such agony to do this. I never thought at all. I can feel all my bones.

  This much courtesy they still had: they didn't start the meeting till he was back. Or perhaps they hadn't noticed yet that he wasn't in charge. That Peter, so young and strong, that he was more listened to; that Tina Monk, always forceful and now more so than ever, that she now made decisions in her simple forthright way. Perhaps they thought of this as "giving counsel." But the decision was made before he spoke. He didn't mind this. He welcomed it. Decisions were not his strong suit. Teaching was his strong suit. They could make decisions; then he would explain to them why it was a good idea. That's the skill of the scholarly critic. Explaining after the fact why somebody was great, who everybody already agrees was great. The metaphor of the freeway as river, with portages around the rapids, that was far easier for him to comprehend than the way this gentile, Teague, made sense of what he saw when he stared at the uninterrupted wall of forest green.

  "We need you," Pete was saying. "We got no right to ask it, but we need you to guide us or we'll never get there."

  "Get where?" Ah, a sensible question. Of course Teague goes straight to the point. Get where? To heaven, to the celestial glory, Jamie Teague. To life eternal, where we will know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent.

  "To Utah," said Tina. Oh yes. The immediate destination. The short-term destination. How far-sighted of me. Over-sighted.

  "You're crazy," said Teague.

  "Probably," said Tina.

  "Not really," said Pete. "Where else can people like us go?"

  "That's two thousand miles away. For all you know, all kinds of bombs landed there. It might be hot as D.C."

  "There was still radio for a while. Utah wasn't hit bad."

  "Or wiped out by plague."

  "There'll be something," said Pete.

  "You hope."

  "We know." Pete grinned. "We may not look like much to you, but out there Mormons are in charge. I promise you that wherever there's four Mormons, there'll be a government. A president, two counselors, and somebody to bring refreshments."

  Deaver laughed. He remembered that jokes like that were funny. Some others joined in. Mostly children who didn't get the joke, but that was good. It was good for the children to laugh.

  Deaver couldn't help but be hurt, though, when Teague looked for confirmation, not to him, but to Sister Monk.

  "It's true," she said. "We've been preparing for this for years. We knew it was coming. We tried to warn everybody. Put no trust in the arm of flesh. Your weapons will mean nothing. Only trust in the Lord, and he will save you."

  "How's he been doing so far for you folks?" asked Teague.

  It was a bitter and terrible question, so Deaver knew that he was the only one who could answer it. "You understand that the promise refers to large groups. America as a whole. The Church as a whole. Many individuals will suffer and die."

  Teague only now seemed to realize that he had maybe given offense. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "It's a natural question," said Deaver. "In the Book of Mormon, the prophets Alma and Amulek were forced to watch as their enemies threw whole families of the faithful into a fire and burned them alive. Why doesn't God reach out and save these people, Amulek asked. And Alma said, Death tastes sweet to them; why should the Lord prevent it? But the wicked must be allowed to do the
ir wickedness, so that everyone will know that their terrible punishment is just. Then Amulek said, Maybe they'll kill us, too. And Alma said, If they do, then we'll die. But I think the Lord won't allow it. Our work is not yet done."

  Deaver could feel their eyes on him, could hear how their breathing had become quiet. The children especially, they listened to him, they watched his lips as he spoke. He knew that they understood what the story meant to them. Our work is not yet done, that's why we're alive.

  But don't ask me what our work is. Don't ask me what we're supposed to accomplish, if by some miracle we survive a two-thousand-mile journey through hell until we reach the kingdom of God on the mountains.

  Teague did not break the silence; Deaver knew from that that he was a sensitive man, despite his youth, despite the fact that he was a gentile. For the first time it occurred to him that Teague might even be a potential convert. Wouldn't that be a miracle, to baptize a new member here in the wilderness!

  "The Church will be strong in Utah," said Tina Monk. "And you can bet we won't be much safer anywhere else than we were in Greensboro and Winston."

  "You're Mormons, right?" said Teague.

  "You mean you only just now guessed that?" said Annalee. She was always disrespectful and sharp-tongued. Deaver heard that marriage had mellowed her. He was grateful he never knew her before.

  "You never said right out," said Teague.

  "Does it make a difference?" asked Deaver. Will you not help us, now that you know we are—what is the term?—the cult of the anti-Christ? The secret worshipers of Satan? Secular Humanists masquerading as Christians in order to seduce impressionable young people and lead them into unspeakable abominations?

  "It does if you're going to Utah," said Teague.

  "I-40 to Memphis," said Pete. "Then up to St. Louis and I-70 to Denver. After that, who knows? They might even have trains running or buses."

  "Or a weekly space shuttle flight," said Teague.

  "Don't underestimate the resourcefulness of the Mormon people," said Deaver.

  "Don't underestimate how much trouble a few nukes, some biological warfare, and the collapse of civilization can cause," said Teague. "Not to mention how the climate's changed. How do you know Utah isn't buried under glaciers?"