Baptism in Blood(3)

“I see that this baby needs changing.”

“You’ve got the kind of soul that ends up in tor­ment,” Ginny went on. “You only think you don’t believe in God. I read this stuff you give me to type. It’s just silly, Dr. Sandler. All this stuff about how old the rocks are. Nobody can know how old the rocks are. That’s just a lot of silliness they taught you at your college, and now you think the Bible isn’t true. But the Bible is true. It’s God’s word from beginning to end. And it’s trying to talk to you.”

“Ginny, the baby needs—”

Ginny reached out and took the baby. “It’s not the same as what goes on up there at the camp,” she told him seriously. “They hate everything about God up there. They hate everything God does, especially saving people. They want everybody on earth to go to Hell with them and keep them company. They’re bad people, Dr. Sandler. I know. I spend hours and hours up there, typing for Ms. Meyer, even though Bobby wants me to quit. It’s a job and we need the money.”

“I know you do.”

Ginny took the baby over to the couch and laid her down on the black leather cushion. Her face was turned away from him. He couldn’t see her eyes. She found her tote bag on the floor and began to take out diapers and wipes.

“There’s something else,” she said. “Something I haven’t even told Bobby about. It worries me.”

“What’s that, Ginny?”

Ginny shuddered slightly. “They’re doing things out there, Dr. Sandler. I wasn’t supposed to see them, but I saw them. They’re doing things in the woods with candles.”

“Candles?”

“Stark naked, too,” Ginny went on. “Sitting in cir­cles in the leaves. I thought they were, you know, doing something private, but then I heard them chanting. To the goddess. I don’t know which goddess. It sounded like hun­dreds of goddesses. There were so many names. They were calling up the spirits of the earth. I heard them say it. And they had knives.”

“Knives?”

“Big long ones. I didn’t see what they did with them. I got out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t want them to know I’d been there. But I’ve been thinking about it. Calling up the spirits of the earth. I figure that has to be the same as the Prince of This World. Don’t you?”

David cleared his throat. He didn’t know where to start with this. “I don’t think so,” he told Ginny carefully. “I think the idea is, they believe that God is in everything and everything is God, even rocks and trees, so the whole earth is holy, even the leaves and the ground—”

“But the earth isn’t holy,” Ginny argued. “The earth has been corrupted. That’s what happened at Adam’s fall.”

Tiffany was twisting and turning on the couch. Her clean new Pampers looked shiny along the waist. Her eyes were bright and round and curious, taking the world in. David wanted to pick her up and take her somewhere where she wouldn’t be taught this kind of nonsense before she could even read.

Instead, he went to the window of the study and looked out. The sky looked even worse than it had when he was on the deck. The wind was doing hard, erratic things to the weather vane that sat on the roof of the next house down the beach. The world looked cold and dirty and wet.

“It really is getting bad out there, Ginny,” he said. “I’m going to go into town now. You ought to go, too. Once this storm hits, there’s going to be a mess.”

“I’ll be praying for your house, Dr. Sandler. I’ll be praying that the Lord preserves this house intact. You re­member that when the storm is over and it’s still standing.”

“I will remember it.”

“Maybe that will be the miracle that brings you to the Lord.” Ginny had been kneeling on the floor beside the couch. Now she stood up and brought Tiffany with her. “You were destined to be saved,” Ginny said fervently. “I knew that the minute I saw you. You were destined to be saved, and no matter what you do, the Lord is going to get you in the end. So you might as well give up and come over right now.”

“I’ll think about it, Ginny.”

“You do that,” Ginny said.

Then she stomped away across the study, to get her pocketbook, to pack up her cross and her pencils and her picture. David watched her move, with that funny bouncy lightness so many of the young women down here had. Her ponytail shivered and jumped. Her eyes seemed to be looking at nothing at all. If she had been born in the North instead of the South, David thought, she would have be­lieved in cheerleading and therapy instead of God and Christ Jesus.