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Baptism in Blood(21)



“Up there?”

Bobby felt himself blushing furiously. “At the camp. You know. She does typing for that Ms. Meyer up there—”

“At the camp,” Mrs. Michaels echoed. “My, my. I wouldn’t like that, if it was somebody I loved. Aren’t you worried about her? Don’t you get anxious that they’ll do something to her? Or to the baby?”

“She keeps her Bible with her. She puts on the honor of the Lord like an armor, like Reverend Holborn said.”

“Yes, yes, I know. But those people.” Mrs. Michaels shook her head. Bobby saw it in the rearview mirror. “It’s just that you hear so many things. And you know what people like that are like. No discipline. No respect. Abso­lutely anything might happen.”

“She just goes up there to type,” Bobby said firmly.

“There was a case in Tennessee just a couple of months ago,” Mrs. Michaels continued. “It was a horrible thing. Worshipping the Devil. Having sexual intercourse with babies. Eating flesh and drinking blood. The world isn’t what it was when I was young.”

“No,” Bobby said.

“If I were you, I’d put my foot down just as soon as she came home. You know what young girls are like, espe­cially young wives. They want to help so much, they think they can do anything. They don’t believe they can ever get into trouble. If I were you, I’d tell her right out, you don’t really need the money she makes in that place. You can do without it as long as she stays at home.”

“Yes,” Bobby said dully, and then thought: But we can’t do without it; we can’t afford to have Ginny stay home. How would we ever pay the rent?

He had gotten to the junction of the Hartford Road. He pumped the brakes lightly—anything more definite and they would have spun right out and landed in a ditch—and eased the van into a left turn. There was no one around anywhere, no other traffic, no sign of life in any of the small brick ranch houses that lined both sides of this street. Bobby let himself pick up a little speed.

The camp, the camp, the camp, he thought.

And then it was crystal clear to him, really, what he had been so angry about before, what he had been trying not to remember. He never stopped worrying about Ginny when she was up there. He never stopped wondering what happened to her, if any of them ever tried to touch her, if she ever thought about touching any of them. The horrible thing was that it excited him, all this thinking about women. It made him big and hard and dizzy all at once.

The Devil is a good psychologist, the Reverend Holborn was always saying, and Bobby had to agree. The Devil was a hypnotist, that was it, and any minute now he was going to drag Bobby Marsh down into Hell with him. It was going to happen as sure as this storm was going to be over tomorrow—unless he did something about it.

What Bobby Marsh hated most was feeling as if he were paralyzed. That was the way he felt when he thought about jobs or the way his money went out before it had come in. That was the way he felt when he recalled trying to learn things while he was still at school.

There was no need for him to feel paralyzed here, though. There was no need for him to feel helpless about the camp. He was a soldier of Christ, and armed with his faith and the glory of the Lord, he could stop the Devil himself in his tracks.

I’m going to do that, too, Bobby decided, as soon as this storm is over.

I’m going to go right on up to that camp and have it out with that Meyer woman once and for all.

I have been washed in the blood of the lamb, Bobby told himself.

And suddenly realized he was grinning.





8


THE REVEREND HENRY HOLBORN couldn’t remember when he’d taken off his jacket and tie. It must have been hours ago, when they were first getting the kitchen in the basement ready to feed a couple of thousand people. He couldn’t remember what he’d done with his jacket and tie, either. They had to be floating around somewhere in the main room, where there were four thousand three hundred fifty seats. The seats radiated out in graduated arcs from the central core of the altar—except that to Henry Holborn, it wasn’t really an altar. It was a stage. Henry Holborn had been brought up Catholic. He didn’t believe in all that any­more—the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; the Mass as the re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross—but it still seemed silly to him to call by the name “altar” what was really only a platform, with nothing much on it. The altars of his childhood had been elaborate affairs, made of marble, holding vessels of silver and gold. Maybe if the Catholic Church had stuck with that kind of thing, Henry Holborn would have stuck with the Catholic Church. Instead, the Catholic Church had gone all Protestant-y. The marble altars were exchanged for plain wooden tables. The Mass was rewritten until it sounded like a text­book for social workers. Nobody kneeled at the Commu­nion rail anymore, even if there was still a Communion   rail to kneel at.