Baptism in Blood(106)

Betsey brushed hair out of her face with the flat of her hand. “That’s what everybody’s saying, and that’s the offi­cial word, too, but I’ve heard other things. You just sit here for a while and you’ll hear other things, too.”

“One of them says that Zhondra Meyer was mur­dered,” Naomi Brent said, tossing her head backward, meaning to take in all the reporters in the room. “But no­body’s buying it. It’s just what they want to think. They don’t want to imagine for a minute that one of their pre­cious New Yorkers could come down here and cause a lot of mayhem and blame it on us.”

Betsey had gone away to get some coffee. Now she came back again, cup in hand. “It’s true, what Naomi says. They want to make us look like a bunch of murdering cre­tins. They think we go to church on Wednesday nights and have fits.”

“I, for one, think it makes perfect sense that Zhondra Meyer killed them,” Naomi Brent said. “Not that I think that she was worshipping the Devil or anything like that. I don’t believe that people really worship the Devil. No of­fense meant, Reverend.”

“No offense taken,” Henry Holborn said automati­cally.

“They think we’re all violent and dangerous down here,” Betsey said, “and ignorant, too. You should hear the way they talk to me sometimes. It makes me sick.”

“And they lie, too,” Naomi said. “They lie to make their stories come out better. They only interview people the rest of us would consider a little odd. They only listen to what they want to hear. But it’s true, you know. It makes much more sense that Zhondra Meyer killed them.”

The man on the stool on Henry’s other side stirred. He was a young man, with hair that hung a little too far over his ears, and eyes that looked ready to fall out of his head. He had a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich in front of him and a big plate of fries, but he didn’t seem to have touched either.

“Wait a minute now,” he said. “What about Susan Smith? She was a southerner from a small town. She was religious. She killed her children.”

“Susan Smith was a mentally disturbed girl with a history of depression,” Naomi Brent said, “and she wasn’t religious. She didn’t belong to any church that I ever heard of.”

“She talked about God all the time,” the reporter said. “She talked about her faith. What do you call reli­gious?”

Betsey had disappeared again. Now she was back, with Henry’s tuna fish sandwich on a plate.

“I call religious giving your life to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,” she said. “I call it making a com­mitment to the Lord, not just mouthing off about how God is up there somewhere and you’re sure He loves you be­cause you can just feel it.”

“Oh, Lord,” Naomi Brent groaned.

“It wasn’t Zhondra Meyer who started all that talk about worshipping the devil,” the reporter said. “It was some preacher. And you’ve got to admit. Religious people aren’t very tolerant.”

“Oh, tolerant,” Naomi said. “We’re tolerant enough if people just behave themselves.”

“But that’s the point,” somebody else said now, an­other reporter from another part of the room, a woman. “People have a right to live their lives as they see fit. They shouldn’t have to deal with people who are trying to im­pose their religion on everybody else.”

Naomi raised her eyes to heaven. “Why is it,” she demanded, “that when religious people try to tell other people what they feel is right and wrong, that’s imposing their religion, but when secular people do it, it’s free speech?”

“And what about the high school?” Betsey said. “According to the Supreme Court, it’s just A-okay for the high school to have an Atheists’ Club, but it can’t have any religious club, because that’s establishing religion.”

“But it would be establishing religion,” the first re­porter said. “The religious clubs wouldn’t be just clubs. They’d be recruiting organizations. The point would be to coerce more people into believing in Christianity.”

“The Atheists’ Club is a recruiting organization,” Naomi said. “They’re always putting up signs announcing how they’re going to have a presentation that might change your mind about God if you only heard it. And besides, this isn’t about God at all, I don’t think. This is about homosex­uals.”

“I don’t think homophobia is a very attractive trait,” the young reporter said stiffly.