“Crap,” he said, out loud, into the wind. The wind was high and wild and strong. Nobody was going to hear him.
Bobby got the van’s side door open and looked in. The interior was very clean. Reverend Holborn always kept the things that belonged to the church clean. Bobby took a thick cotton blanket off one of the seats and started back across the parking lot to Mr. and Mrs. Michaels.
“Can the old man run?” he asked Mrs. Michaels. “It’s very wet out there.”
“Maybe you could bring the van closer,” Mrs. Michaels said. “Maybe that would work out better.”
“If I bring it closer, we won’t be able to get him in,” Bobby pointed out. He kicked at the trapezoid concrete blocks that were lined up at the edge of the overhang. Lots of fast-food restaurants had them, but he had never understood why. Probably to keep people from doing just what Mrs. Michaels wanted him to do now.
“We could make him run,” Mrs. Michaels said finally. “Not very fast, but a little. He’s very weak.”
“I don’t think I can carry him,” Bobby said. “He’s too tall for me.”
“Of course you can’t carry him, dear. Let’s just run him out there, together. That ought to work as well as anything. And then once we’ve got him in the van, we can make him warm and cover him up.”
Bobby thought of the cotton blanket. “Right,” he said. He grabbed one of Mr. Michaels’s arms and tried to guide the old man to the edge of the overhang. Mr. Michaels seemed to be resisting.
“He gets very stubborn these days,” Mrs. Michaels said. “He gets an idea into his head, and there isn’t a thing you can do with him.”
Bobby held old Mr. Michaels’s arm even tighter. The door to the van was still open. Bobby was sure rain was pouring in there, getting the carpets soggy. Reverend Holborn always took such good care of all the things that belonged to the church. Bobby could hear him already, chiding gently, criticizing gently, in that super-Christian tone of voice that always made Bobby’s head ache.
“Come on,” Bobby said. “Let’s move him. On the count of three.”
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Michaels said.
Bobby locked his grip in place, put his head down, and began to run forward. He felt as if he had to drag both of them along with him. Mrs. Michaels was holding back. The run across the parking lot seemed to last forever. His socks got soaked through. His baseball hat blew off in the wind. The rain plastered his hair to his skull and made him very cold.
“Here we are,” he said when they drew up close to the van. Old Mrs. Michaels seemed to be panting. Bobby pushed Mr. Michaels through the van’s side door and let the old woman climb in after him. Old Mr. Michaels immediately sat down on the van floor and curled into a fetal position. Bobby slid the side door shut and ran around to climb into the front bucket seat.
“We’ve got a problem,” Mrs. Michaels said as Bobby started the engine. “He’s gone into one of his frozen periods. I can’t get him moved.”
“That’s okay,” Bobby said.
“But it isn’t okay,” Mrs. Michaels said. “There’s that law about the seat belts. He can’t be wearing a seat belt if he’s curled up like that on the floor.”
“It’s all right, really. I don’t think some cop is going to stop us to find out if we’re wearing our seat belts in all this mess. The cops are going to have better things to do.”
“Well,” Mrs. Michaels said. “If you say so. But I’d think this is when they would want to know if you were wearing your safety belts. In a mess like this.”
Bobby began to ease the van out of the parking lot. He went very, very slowly, because it was raining so hard now that the windshield wipers were virtually useless. He had the heat turned way up, too, because it was suddenly very cold, as cold as he could ever remember it being in North Carolina. He thought it was a good thing he would have to stick to the access roads and stay off the interstate to get where he was going. He wouldn’t want to be in front of somebody who thought the best thing to do at a time like this was to hurry.
“Well, now,” Mrs. Michaels said. “I almost forgot. Where’s that sweet little wife of yours this morning? Are we meeting her at the church?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said, suddenly uneasy. “I hope so.”
“You mean you don’t know where she is at a time like this? What about the baby?”
“The baby’s with Ginny,” Bobby said. “It’s not that. She went to work this morning. I don’t know if she got back down in time or if she got stuck up there.”