Riders In The Sky Part 52

"Casey."

He turns sharply, with a scowl, but says nothing when he sees the look on Beatrice's face, how her hands are clasped at her stomach as if trying to hold it in.

"Pakistan," she says. Stops. Takes a breath. "Pakistan has launched another missile into India. They claim it's an accident, like the others, but no one thinks India's listening." Her eyes close, open. "And China has declared war on Australia, Casey. Britain and the Commonwealth are mobilizing. It's ..." She can't find the words, or doesn't want to use the ones she's thinking, and she closes the door, cuts him off.

With a low moan of frustration, he braces his hands against the posts that hold up the roof on either side of the screen door, and for a moment he sees himself as Samson about to bring the Temple down around his ears.

"Fat chance," he mutters, but just for the heck of it, he pushes anyway, not very hard and only for a few seconds. Then his arms drop, his head bows and shakes, and he thinks maybe it's time to let the others figure it out, because it's too much for him, and there's no time to play the lone hero. There's no time ... to be ...

He blinks slowly.

The lone gunman.

He blinks again.

Cautions himself not to smile as he presses a calming hand against his chest.

Too soon; you could be wrong.

A lungful of cold air, another, and he returns inside and stands under the arch.

He points at the television. "Turn that off."

"But Reverend Chisholm," Reed protests.

"Now."

Cora scrambles to obey, and the children leave their places on the floor and gather around their mother, in her chair beside the couch.

"It's coming," he says. "You know it is. You've seen the sky. John, was there anything ... I don't know how to put it. Not magical, exactly. Not..." He taps the heel of his hand against his brow. "Like what I think I saw, I mean. You understand?"

"Sure," John answers. "And no, not really. It wasn't ordinary, not by anyone's definition, but it certainly wasn't anything like a monster tidal wave."

"Jude." He looks to her and the kids, and spreads his hands.

Moonbow wrinkles her brow, looks to her sister, and says, "She-Eula, I mean-she made some people better. So they could-"

"-fight us," Starshine finishes. "And ride horses and shoot guns." She shrugs. "Like that."

"Nothing like the wave?"

Moonbow makes a face. "In the desert? Don't be silly."

Casey c.o.c.ks an eyebrow at her and, before anyone can move, crosses the room and picks her up by the waist. Holds her at arm's length while she kicks her legs, then pulls her close and plants a big and loud kiss on her brow.

"You," he declares, "are a certified genius, my girl."

Moonbow ducks her head and blushes, and sneers at her giggling sister. When he puts her down, she stands beside him and holds his hand shyly; he doesn't try to pull away.

"Silly, she says," Casey tells them. "Don't be silly, it's the desert. Well, this is an island. This"-he stamps on the floor-"is an island! This is the island. Lady Harp asked me why this place, and I told her I didn't rightly know. I still don't, except that this is the place where we have to be, and if the past is a teacher, there won't be a tidal wave to get in our way."

Cora's face is twisted in confusion. "I don't get it. They're coming on .. . what, a boat?"

"With horses?" Reed says.

"Right." Casey watches them, willing them, demanding they put aside what their imaginations are feeding.

Starshine yells, "The causeway!"

And Casey says, "You're right. Now get your coats. It's time."

4.

Casey watches them on the porch. Excited. Afraid. Watching the emerald sparks and scarlet fire light the clouds, and make them darker.

Lord, he thinks, there's one more thing, if You don't mind. Something special. For those kids.

He opens the door and grabs Jude's arm, pulls her inside before she can stop him.

"Just be a minute," he tells her daughters, and takes her into the kitchen, eases her away from the door.

"I don't understand," she says, trembling so hard the veil ripples and sways.

You don't have to," he tells her softly.

And before she can stop him, he cups her cheeks in his hands, and feels the cold and feels the heat and feels the bone beneath his fingers and the flesh beneath his palms and the blood in her veins and the breath in her lungs and he whispers, "For your girls," and yanks his hands away.

Jude grabs his arm to keep her balance, blinking rapidly, breathing hard.

"Okay," he says, breathing a little heavily himself. "Okay, Jude, let's go, they're waiting." But when she reaches for the veil, he takes her wrist gently and shakes his head. "For later," he tells her. "Maybe nothing, but it's for later."

On the porch they waste a few minutes arguing about how they're all going to fit in one car, and raise a ragged cheer when Lyman Baylor pulls up.

"Commandeer him," Casey tells John. "I don't think you'll have to explain."

They rush out into the wind, into the first icy pellets of rain, shrieking at the cold while scarlet and emerald flash above them.

"Casey?"

It's Beatrice, and he shakes his head.

"I told you, I don't know."

"In that case," and she tugs at his arm until he bends over, and she kisses him on the cheek. A feather kiss. An angel's kiss. "Just in case," she says, pulling her scarf over her head.

"Maybe not," he says as he opens the screen door for her, and when she looks up at him before leaving, he knows what she's thinking, and he knows she's probably right-miracles are for special people, and we ... we're only different.

8.

1.

S.

carlet fire in the clouds becomes serpentine lightning reaching for the ground; emerald sparks become the rain. The wind throws whitecaps far up the Savannah River, rips old branches from old trees and spins them into cars and houses and a storefront church whose blue and red neon cross explodes into blue and red sparks; the rain Is at first a few stinging droplets that soon become a shower that soon becomes a downpour that raises rivers in gutters and smears dirt across windows and turns side streets into creeks quickly filling the drains; lightning scorches power fines and creates pockets of night before real night arrives, strikes the wing on an airliner that almost makes it to Atlanta; thunder prowls.

Celebrations are canceled, no one can move in the storm; churches fill, and churches empty; a comedian jokes about the end of the world; a riverboat flounders, a bridge sags and moans; a weatherman tells his radio audience that as fierce as the storm is it's too fierce to last long.

Waves swell and rise and pound the jetties and shift the boulders; the traffic light over Midway and Landward jerks and tugs on its wires; lights go out; lights come on; there's a rumbling underground as if the island's going to shift.

Scarlet fire.

Emerald sparks.

They sit in the white Continental in the parking lot of the Lobster Hut. No one has spoken for quite some time, but there's nothing much left to say.

Eula, in the backseat, hums a tune to herself, snapping the fingers of one white-gloved hand, tapping a foot against the floorboard, her head swaying side to side. A knowing smile on her lips.

Joey bounces with impatience. He keeps wiping his window with a palm, frowning at the rain. He tries playing with his six-guns, but they're no fun anymore. He puts his hat on, he takes it off, he finally drops it on the seat and wipes the window again.

Susan has her hands still on the steering wheel, and every so often she turns it, just a little, as if she's still driving. When lightning strikes the ground a few yards down the road, she can smell burning tar.

The engine is off.

The only sound is Eula's humming, and the thunder. Always the thunder.

Norville Cutler cowers in his cell, curled into the corner, and watches the rain on the window a few feet above his head.

"d.a.m.nit, Norville," Cribbs says from the adjoining cell, "you stop acting like a baby, for Christ's sake? It's only a little rain, for crying out loud."

"It's gonna be bad," Cutler says, knees drawn to his chest. "Ain't ever seen it this bad."

"Oh, you have to. G.o.d almighty, back in, when was it? Seventy-six? Seventy-four? Water up to our a.s.ses, somebody's d.a.m.n boat floating down the street? G.o.d almighty, now that was a storm. Compared to that, this is just p.i.s.sing."

Cutler tries to push harder against the wall. "But that didn't have those colored lights and all."

Cribbs rolls his eyes. "More pollution, you idiot. You got more pollution, you got more colors. That's why you see so many beautiful sunsets. More c.r.a.p in the air, that's all. Just more c.r.a.p in the air."

Thunder makes the building vibrate.

Cutler yells and ducks his head.

Jasper grabs a couple of bars and bellows for a deputy. He's been doing that for over an hour; no one's come yet to see him.

"Jesus, Casey," John complains, reaching over the steering wheel to give a swipe at the windshield, try to clear some of the condensation away. "We're going to drown before we even get there. Jesus."

"Watch it, son," Casey tells him.

John looks at him and curls his lip.

Casey grins.

Kitra stands in her living room, ordering herself to remain calm. It's only a winter storm, she's seen enough of them before, all she has to do is make sure all the candles are ready for the inevitable, and what's in the freezer is ready to be transferred to the picnic cooler where she's already laid in some ice.

Lightning makes her jump; it fills the room with glaring white.

Thunder makes her whimper; it's too close, too d.a.m.n close.

If she weren't so angry, she'd be petrified.

Lyman has left her, and that's about all she can concentrate on. He's left her alone to take care of things for his return. She wished she were a swearing woman, because the right, the proper words were hard to come by just now.

And to make it worse, she saw him drive by only a few minutes ago, trailing behind the car that belongs to one of Chisholm's friends. Not a honk. Not a quick stop to explain what he was doing. If she hadn't been checking the window seals just then, she would have never known it, never seen him go by.

She would have, in time, thought he'd been killed by a falling branch, or lightning, or some other horrid thing.

Not a honk.