A Stillness in Bethlehem(117)

My God, Candy thought, as the scream went on and on, higher and higher. I think I’ve killed him.

She hadn’t killed him. He was lying on the floor, hunched into a fetal ball, screaming and crying, but he was alive enough. Franklin Morrison came rushing up and grabbed him by the shoulder. Candy kicked the shoes off her feet and turned away.

“I want to have him arrested,” she said. “He tried to kill me. I want to have him arrested for attempted murder.”

“It’s true,” Mrs. Johnson piped up, her round little matron’s face thrusting itself toward Franklin Morrison’s stunned one, her look of innocence so perfect that only Candy knew she had to be lying. “It’s true,” Mrs. Johnson said again. “He went for her throat. And I’ll testify to that in court.”

Candy George closed her eyes and told herself:

Your name is Candace Elizabeth Spear.

And you are going to be all right.





Six


1


GREGOR DEMARKIAN KNEW THAT there were people in town who were afraid the killings would have the wrong effect on the Celebration. They worried that people would get nervous and leave in droves, destroying any hopes Bethlehem had of having a happy new year. He wasn’t worried. He’d spent over twenty years of his life officially involved with murder. He knew what people were like. The bleachers around the seats he shared with Bennis and Father Tibor were sparsely populated for that night’s performance, but all the other bleachers were crammed full, even fuller than they’d been the night before. The vast American public was irresistibly drawn to other people’s danger. That was why network television was full of series about violent detectives.

The second night of the Bethlehem Nativity play was full of donkeys and camels, although why that was so, Gregor was not able to explain. This was a night of imagination, where a lot of events had been added that appeared in none of the ordinary accounts of Christ’s birth. At one point, the audience was treated to at least part of a Jewish wedding. Gregor thought that whatever the writers and producers had done might be of some scholarly interest, since Tibor was intent throughout, but since Gregor had no scholarly interests of his own, he couldn’t have said. He contented himself with waiting, and being happy that Bennis seemed to have given in and decided to munch her way through one of Tibor’s brown paper bakery bags, and thinking about what he was going to have to do. He was sorry Kelley Grey was not in the seat beside him, although he’d have been surprised if she’d come, even if he hadn’t known she had something else to do for the evening. Bennis noticed her being gone, too, and remarked on it, both at the intermission and when the play was over.

“If I was that woman, I’d never sit in bleachers again,” she said. “Gregor, what are you up to? You’ve been halfway to Mars all night.”

“I’m not up to anything. Is Tibor falling asleep?”

Bennis leaned over, to find Tibor peering suspiciously at his program and not asleep at all. All the other bleachers were emptying out. Their own, already mostly empty, was the scene of a few last-minute scrambles. Tibor was ignoring it all.

“He’s trying to find out what source they used,” Bennis sighed, “and he keeps expecting to come up with someone like Raymond Brown—”

“Not Raymond Brown, Bennis, please, he’s always looking for natural explanations for miracles—”

“Whichever,” Bennis said. “Some hot biblical scholar, at any rate. And I keep telling him he’s not going to find it. Whoever wrote this play just made all that stuff up.”

“You do not make up events in the life of Christ and His Mother,” Tibor said.

“Sure you do. Think about Nikos Kazantzakis. Think about Martin Scorsese. Think about—”

“I have enough to think about, Bennis. Have you finished your muffins?”

Bennis fished around inside the bag and came up with a muffin. “Pumpkin bread,” she said solemnly. “Tibor got them for me special. I’ve already had six.”

“What was the alternative?” Gregor asked her.

“Death by hanging.” She put the muffin back in the bag. “Gregor, are you sure you’re all right? Are you sure you’re not up to something dangerous?”

“If you mean something you can help me with, no. I have to go talk to Franklin Morrison for a moment. I’d have talked to him before this but he had to take a young man to jail. Franklin’ll be free by now. Then I’m going to come right home.”

“And you don’t want to tell me what this is about?”

“He doesn’t need to tell you what this is about,” Tibor said, “he needs only to let you eat. Eat all the muffins, Bennis, you are looking much too thin. It could be bad for you.”