the news would spread through Fort Repose, street to street and house to house. He said, “You know Doctor Gunn lost his bag with all his instruments and what drugs he had left, and his glasses. So, if we can, we have to get those highwaymen and that’s why I came to you, Rita.”
“They’re not Pistolville people,” she said. “These Pistolville crackers hardly have got gumption enough to rob each other. Now I heard them described and one of them-the young one with two guns-was probably Leroy Settle, a punk who lived on the other side of town. His mother still lives there, I think. Maybe if you stake out his house you’ll get a shot at him.”
“I don’t want him in particular,” Randy said. “I want them all. I want them and everybody like them.” And he told her what his plan was, exactly, and why he must have the grocery truck and the gasoline, if she had any. He knew he must trust her entirely or not at all.
She listened him out and said nothing.
“If you are left alone here, Rita,” he said, “With all the canned food and other stuff you’ve got, you’re bound to become a target. When they’ve cleaned out what’s on the roads, they’ll start on the houses.”
“I’m way ahead of you.” Her eyes met his steadily. She was evaluating him, and all the chances, all the odds. She made her decision. “I think you can get away with it, Randy.”
“You’re holding gas, then?”
“Certainly I’m holding gas. Fifteen gallons under the back steps. You can have it, and the truck. Anything you don’t use I expect back.”
He rose. “What’re you going to tell people when they see your truck is gone?”
“I’m going to tell them it was stolen. I’m going to tell them it was loaded with choice trade goods and that while I was in the bedroom, attending to Pete, somebody jimmied the ignition and stole it. And to make it sound good I’m going to let off a blast with this gun when you whip out of the driveway. The news will get around fast, don’t worry. It’ll get to the highwaymen and they’ll be looking for the truck. That should help, shouldn’t it?”
“It should make it perfect.”
“Go out the back way. Load the cans in the back of the truck, quietly. There’s enough gas in the tank to take you out River Road. I’ll salute you when you hit the street.”
He said, “You’re a smart girl, Rita.”
“Am I?” She held out her left hand to show the black circle left by the radioactive diamond ring. “I’ve got a wedding band. I was married to an H-bomb. Will it ever go away, Randy?”
“Sure,” he said, hoping it would. “Dan will look at it again when he’s better.”
He walked through the hallway and kitchen and out into the darkness. He found the three five-gallon cans under the back steps, opened the truck’s rear doors, and silently loaded the gaso line. He got in and stepped on the starter. The engine turned over, protesting. Rita had been careless, he guessed, and had forgotten to fill the battery with distilled water, for it was close to dead. He tried again and the engine caught. He nursed the choke until it ran smoothly, backed out of the Hernandez carport, turned sharply in the yard, shifted gears, and roared out on the street. He glimpsed Rita’s silhouette in the doorway, the gun rising to her shoulder, and for an awful instant thought she was aiming at him. Red flame leaped out of the muzzle. At the first corner he cut away from Augustine Road and followed rutted dirt streets until he was clear of Pistolville. He saw no other cars, in motion, on the way home.
It was past eleven when he drove the truck into the garage and closed the doors so no casual passerby or visitor would see it. The lights were out in Florence’s house and in his own house only a single light burned, in his office window. That would be Lib, waiting up for him. He had urged the women to get to bed at their usual hour or earlier, for they planned to go to the Easter sunrise services in Marines Park.
This was good. It was good that they should all be there, so that no one would guess of unusual activity out on River Road. From a less practical standpoint he felt good about it too. He was, as a matter of fact, surprised at their anticipation and enthusiasm. Many things had happened in the past few days and yet their conversation always come back to the Easter services. People hadn’t been like that before The Day. He could not imagine any of them voluntarily getting up before dawn and then walking three miles on empty stomachs to watch the sun come up, sing hymns, and listen to sermons however short. He wished he could walk with them. He couldn’t. It was necessary that he remain there to complete his plans with Sam Hazzard and also to work on the truck. Walking toward the house, he wondered at this change in people and concluded that man was a naturally gregarious creature and they were all starved for companionship and the sight of new faces. Marines Park would be their church, their theater, their assembly hall. Man absorbed strength from the touch of his neighbor’s elbow. It was these reasons, perhaps, that accounted for the success of the old-time Chautauquas. It could be that and something more-the discovery that faith had not died under the bombs and missiles.
She wasn’t upstairs. She was waiting in the gloom of the porch. She said, “I saw you drive it in. It’s beautiful. Did you get the gas to go with it?”
“Total of seventeen gallons including what’s in the tank. We can cruise for a day or two if we take it easy. Are you tired, darling?”
“Not too.”
“If you’re going to be up at five with the others you really ought to be in bed.”
“I’ve been waiting for you, Randy. I worry. I’m not tired, really.”
They walked through the grove down to the dock.
The river whispered, the quarter-moon showed its profile, the stars moved. She lay on her back, head resting on her locked fingers, looking up at the stars.
His eyes measured her-long, slender, curved as if for flight, skin coppery, hair silvered by the night. “You’re a beautiful possession,” he said. “I wish we had a place of our own so I could keep you. I wish we had just one room to ourselves. I wish we were married.”
Instantly she said, “I accept.”
“I’m not sure how we’d go about it. Last I heard the courthouse in San Marco wasn’t operating. For a while it was an emergency shelter like our school. I don’t know what they use it for now but certainly not for issuing marriage licenses. And the county clerk has disappeared. I heard in the park that he took his family and started for an uncontaminated zone in Georgia where he used to live.”
Without moving her head she said, “Randy, under martial law, can’t you make your own rules?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose so.” “Well, make one.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I certainly am. It may be an old-fashioned, Before-The-Day attitude but if I’m going to have children I’d like to be married.” “Children! Are you going to have a baby?” Thought of the difficulties, dangers, and complexities of having a baby, under their present circumstances, appalled him.
“I don’t know. I can’t say that I am, but then again I can’t say that I’m not, can I? I would like to marry you tomorrow before you go off chasing highwaymen.” She turned on her side, to face him. “It isn’t really convention. It is only that I love you very much, and that if anything happened-I don’t have any bad premonitions, dear, but you and I know that a bad thing could happen-well, if anything happened I would want the child to have your name. You’d want that too, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Randy said, “I would want that very much. I’m not going to put the truck on the road until late in the afternoon that’s when the highwaymen took Dan-so there’ll be time.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “It’ll be nice to marry on Easter Sunday.”
He took her hands and drew her up and held her. Over her shoulder he saw a pair of green eyes and a dark snout sliding downstream past the edge of the dock. It was spring and the gators were out of their holes. He had heard somewhere that the Seminoles ate Bator meat. Cut their tails into steaks. It was a source of meat that should be investigated. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about food at this time but he was hungry again.
Chapter 11
Elizabeth McGovern and Randolph Bragg were married at noon that Easter Sunday. The bride wore the same white silk dress she had worn to the sunrise service in Marines Park. She was unsteady on high heels, for she had not worn heels since The Day.
The groom wore his Class A uniform with the bold patch of the First Cavalry Division on his arm and the ribbons of the Korean War and Bronze Star on his chest, along with the blue badge of the combat infantryman. He wore the uniform not because of the wedding but because it was required in the radioed orders to reservists assuming active duty, such as ambushing and killing highwaymen, which he presently intended to do.
