The custard cups were lined up in rows on the kitchen table. Kathi was wearing a big white pin with red letters that said IT’S A CHILD, NOT A CHOICE. Rose sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and put her chin in her hands.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“About what?” Kathi asked her.
“About the camp, really. Now that Zhondra Meyer’s gone, it probably won’t last long.”
“Now that Zhondra Meyer’s gone, it won’t last at all,” Kathi said with satisfaction. “What I heard is that that fancy family of hers from up in New York is on their way down here already, or their lawyers are, and that’s going to be the end of the lesbians in Bellerton. I just hope I get a chance to go up there and see it when they throw them out.”
“The problem,” Rose said, “is that they’ll be back.”
“But how?” Kathi looked confused. “They wouldn’t have anyplace to go.”
“I’m not saying that these particular women will be back,” Rose said. “I’m saying that once it starts, it never finishes. You have to be vigilant all the time.”
“Vigilant how?”
“Well, I was thinking about forming a group. A churchwomen’s group, with women from all the different Christian churches, you know the ones I mean, not only Henry Holborn’s. We could get together and sort of monitor things, keep our eye on what’s going on in town, so that something like this couldn’t get set up within our borders ever again.”
“But how could we do that? The camp was on private property.”
“We could picket,” Rose said, beginning to see her way to the end of this. “We could go out there and make noise. They do it all the time, the lesbians and the secular humanists and all the rest of them. Why shouldn’t we?”
“We do do it, don’t we?” Kathi asked. “With pro-life.”
“Pro-life is different. Pro-life is a special case. I’m talking about our everyday lives here. I’m talking about the air we breathe and the atmosphere we bring our children up in.”
“It sounds like a lot of work.”
“It is a lot of work,” Rose said. “But it’s a good idea, believe me. And if we work hard enough, we’ll never be saddled with another lesbian camp again, or anything like it. We’ll never have to watch the homes we live in be eaten up by the filth that comes spewing out of a place of that kind.”
Kathi looked worse than confused. “Well,” she said. “Actually, that was one of the few things I liked about them up there. They were so clean all the time.”
Rose got up out of the chair and went to the stove to make coffee. There was no use talking to Kathi, of course. She didn’t have the brains God gave a flea. But Rose was sure she was right, even without Kathi to confirm it. Rose was sure that this was the best idea she had ever had in her life.
They would form an army of women, that was what they would do, and once they were armed and ready, nobody would ever dare to go against them.
3
AS SOON AS HE’D heard, Bobby Marsh had gone over to the jail to tell Ginny about what had happened with Stephen Harrow, and for the first time in weeks he had been feeling almost good. It was late, long past visiting hours, but he knew that Jackson would let him in. Jackson and Clayton were pretty loose about Ginny’s visiting hours anyway. Now, with Stephen Harrow having confessed, they would have to let Ginny out into the world as soon as possible. In the old days, that would have been right away, as soon as Clayton was able to find his key to the cell, but these days Bobby understood that Clayton had to follow procedures. It was the Supreme Court that had done that, and the federal government, which just went to show how the government in Washington was always interfering in people’s lives and making things worse. Bobby wanted to grab Ginny up in a bundle and take her home to her own bed. By all rights, he should be able to. Even without that in the offing, though, Bobby thought Bellerton was really beautiful, one of the finest towns on earth. In the dark like this, with the streetlights on, it seemed to glitter and glow. Bobby took in Rose MacNeill’s big Victorian house, and Charlie Hare’s feed store, and Maggie Kelleher’s bookshop. Town Hall loomed up in front of him like a big brick temple. There were people who wanted to go away to big cities, like Los Angeles and Miami. There were people who wanted to go away to Europe. Bobby wanted to stay right here.
He went in the police department entrance on Town Hall’s side, and waved to Jackson as he came down the hall. The police department was otherwise empty. They must all be out at the hospital or the morgue or someplace, or maybe State Police headquarters. Bobby didn’t know where they were, and he didn’t care. Stephen Harrow was dead. Stephen Harrow had confessed. The world was all right again. Jackson came out into the hall with a big ring of keys in his hand.