Reading Online Novel

Baptism in Blood(5)



Rose’s eyes went to the Methodist Church on the other end of Main Street. They baptized little babies there, and teddy bears, too, if someone wanted them to. Women wore good dresses and little hats. The organist knew how to play Bach. It was the most liberal church in town, and Stephen Harrow was the most liberal minister.

Rose smoothed her hair again, opened the pantry door, and went out into the hall. Kathi was standing in the dim light, wearing a denim overall jumper and a T-shirt. She was plump and overeager, like a badly trained dog. Rose could hear the roof creaking above her head and the whistle of the wind. If it was like this now, before the storm had really started, it was going to be a very bad day.

“We should lock up and head over to the high school,” Rose told her. “This is going to be awful”

“Oh, I know,” Kathi said breathlessly. “I know. I’ve been packing things away in cupboards all morning.”

“Good.”

“It seems like everybody in town has been working and working,” Kathi said. “Boarding up windows. Do you think we ought to board up some windows?”

“I wouldn’t know how to start.”

“These windows are small compared to the ones at the bookstore. And the feed store, too. That has—what do you call it—plate glass.”

“That’s what you call it.”

“I wish we could board up the stained glass windows, though. It would be a shame to lose those. They’re so pretty.”

There was the sound of bells in the air—inside bells, tinkling like fairy queens, the bells that rang every time anybody opened the shop’s front door. Rose and Kathi looked up at once.

“I wonder who that could be at a time like this,” Kathi said. “It couldn’t be anybody wanting to buy some­thing.”

“Put the books in there up on higher shelves,” Rose said. “I’ll go see who it is myself.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Miss MacNeill. I’ll just run on out—”

“I’ll go see for myself,” Rose repeated. Then she turned her back on Kathi and walked swiftly away, down the hall, toward the sound of someone walking around the front rooms, picking things up and putting them down again. The walking made her feel a little better—a little lighter, a little less old. The movement of air across her face made her feel dizzy.

When she got to the door to the front rooms, Rose stopped and looked through the spy hole. Then she closed her eyes and counted to ten. The woman wandering around the framed pictures of Christ on the cross and guardian angels standing watch over the beds of children was no one Rose knew, but she was certainly someone Rose recognized. She was one of those women from up at the camp. Unless they’d just arrived that morning, Rose knew every one of the camp’s residents by sight.

A heavyset woman with hair cropped short and. freckles on her nose. A sloppy woman dressed in a frayed blue cotton shirt and tight synthetic-fabric shorts in very bright red. Rose wrinkled her nose in distaste. It only went to show you. Men were necessary for women. Without men around, women let themselves go all to hell. You could see it in those women from the camp. You could see it in those lesbians.

A sudden vision of Zhondra Meyer came into Rose’s mind: the tall thinness, the high cheekbones, the big dark eyes. Rose pushed the vision away and opened the door to the front rooms. The woman in there was wandering around among the displays, looking dazed. She stopped in front of a pile of pastel kitchen tiles with the Mother’s Prayer printed on them and blinked.

“Excuse me,” Rose said. The woman jumped. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

The woman looked down at the Mother’s Prayer again. Then she turned away. She really was a homely woman, Rose thought. Her skin was terrible. Her hair was like straw. Now she was blushing, sort of, mottling up and look­ing strained. Rose had a sudden urge to shake her by the shoulders and put her on a diet.

“Oh,” the woman said. “Yes. I was looking—for a baptism, you know—for a—”

Most of the women who came into Rose’s shop were looking for something to buy for a baptism. Either that or they wanted Christian books and didn’t think they were going to get to Raleigh-Durham anytime soon to shop in a real Christian bookstore. There were stories all over town about the kind of baptisms that went on up at the camp, though. Rose didn’t know whether to believe the stories or not. She went behind the checkout counter and picked up a little stack of bookmarks with the face of Jesus printed on them, preserved under laminate that could be cleaned with a wet sponge.

“You can’t want to buy something for a christening now,” Rose said. “Don’t you realize there’s a storm com­ing?”