Baptism in Blood(8)

“Probably the same things that happened to you in New York,” Stephen said. “I met you in New York.”

Lisa gave him a sideways, look. “You may have met me in New York, but I didn’t change in New York. Maggie changed in New York. She changed a lot. I remember her from when she got accepted at that silly college of hers. She was all ruffles and charm bracelets. She was the kind of girl people’s mothers always called ‘sweet.’”

“You must have been in the cradle.”

“I was eight.”

Eight, Stephen thought. That must make Maggie—what? Forty? He squinted in the direction of the bell tower roof. This was the kind of thing he ought to talk to Lisa about. She was the one who was born here. She was the one who ought to care. The Methodist Church was the oldest building in Bellerton. It was the only one still standing that had existed at the time of the American Revolution. Everything else had been destroyed one way or another: burned down in skirmishes during the Civil War; gone to rot; bulldozed for the newer and shinier and brighter and smaller mock-Greek revival places everybody here pre­ferred to live in. The truth about Lisa was that she would bulldoze it all and put up split-levels if anybody ever gave her a chance. Lisa had no sentimentality at all and no feel­ing for history.

“You ought to come inside,” she said now. “We’ve got to pack a few things up and go to the high school. They say that storm is going to come right through the middle of town.”

“I’m worried about the church,” Stephen said. “About the tower. It’s such an old building.”

“You can’t take the church to the high school, Ste­phen. It won’t fit into the car.”

“That isn’t what I’m trying to say.”

“You can’t stay here, either.” Lisa tapped her foot against the pavement, impatient. “This is a major hurricane we’re talking about. It’s already done I don’t know how much damage. If you get in the way of it, it will blow you right to China.”

“I was thinking that maybe we could put something on the bell tower roof. Plywood boards. Something to pro­tect it.”

“If you were going to do something like that, you would have had to start days ago. It’s too late now, Ste­phen. Let’s get our things and go.”

“I will go. In a minute. I just want to stay here and—think for a while.”

“Think,” Lisa repeated. She turned on her heel and started to walk away from him, back across the front lawn, back to the porch. She didn’t turn around and tell him to be careful. She didn’t even tell him to hurry up again. She just went.

Once, Stephen thought, he spent all his time imagin­ing what Lisa was like without her clothes on. He sat across from her in restaurants and thought of the way her small breasts swelled as they hung, light and active, under the curve of her shoulders. He sat next to her on buses and thought of the way her thighs flowed into her hips, smooth and restless and very clean. Now he imagined her locked in closets and shut away in cardboard boxes, tied up and gagged, silent, sexless, free of him.

Stephen turned to go back into the house himself, but as he did he saw Ginny Marsh coming down the sidewalk at him, bouncing along with Tiffany in her Snugli sling. Ginny was not one of Stephen’s parishioners—like half of everybody else, she went to one of those big fundamentalist churches on the outskirts of town—but he knew her to talk to from seeing her around town. He knew the baby, too, because she was a good baby to play with for a man who felt uncomfortable around infants. He was worried that they were both going to be as blown away as Lisa said every­body would be. He had never been in a hurricane before, but he could feel the badness of it in the wind. The air around him was so full of water, he found it hard to breathe.

“You should be home,” he said, flagging Ginny down. “Or at the high school. There’s going to be a storm.”

Ginny stopped and adjusted Tiffany on her front. “Hello, Mr. Harrow. We’ll be all right. We’re headed up to the camp.”

“The camp?”

“That’s got to be the highest place in Bellerton,” Ginny said. “I don’t think they’re going to get any water at all up there. Unless the Lord is sending a flood.”

“I think the Lord promised Noah not to do that again. I think it’s supposed to be the fire next time.”

The quote meant nothing to Ginny. “Our pastor says God can do anything He wants to do, and that makes sense to me. Doesn’t it make sense to you?”

“Of course.”

“I’m not worried about drowning up there, Mr. Har­row. I’m worried about those women. And you would be, too, if you realized.”