“Henry,” Edna said. “You ought to at least listen when I talk to you. Catherine’s had a call from the teachers’ union , and they’re hopping mad. The schedule on the new contracts was supposed to be out weeks ago—and has Franklin done a single thing about it? No, he hasn’t. Of course he hasn’t. He’s a piss-poor businessman, if you ask me. The only reason that shop of his stays in business is that too many of the new people don’t know a lug nut from a cherry tree. And it’s not only the teachers’ contracts. It’s that damned school building, too. He was going to fix that up and get the building back on schedule, you remember that? Well, there it sits, and not a brick has been moved for six months. Honestly, what do people think they’re doing when they vote for a man like that? I always said I thought it would make sense to give intelligence tests to people before we let them vote, but whenever I say that you all look at me like I’ve gone over to Hitler.”
“Catherine can handle the teachers’ union ,” Henry said. “And she’s lucky enough not to have anything to do with the building. We’ll muddle through until we get them out of here.”
“Are you sure we’re going to get them out of here?” Edna said.
“Every other town that’s gone through this has done it,” Henry said. “Hell, the entire state of Kansas did it. People don’t actually want Creationism in the schools, no matter what they say. When they know that that’s what’s on offer, they vote for somebody else. I think we have to live with this until the spring, and then there will be another vote and we’ll take back over. Don’t you want to do something about this stuff you brought me? You look to me as if you’re buying huge piles of rocks nobody is going to be able to move.”
“I’ll move them,” Edna said. “Don’t you mind about it. What about that man Gary Albright brought in? Have you met him?”
Henry blinked. “He got here about a minute and a half after you did. I saw him get out of Gary’s truck when you were using the ladies’.”
Edna nodded. “Now, there’s something I approve of. I looked him up on the Internet, and I asked some people I know in Harrisburg. He’s not just a big noise, he’s very good. And he’s not about money. I don’t know if that’s a character trait or a matter of circumstances. He’s about to marry a ton of it. Still, you’ve got to wonder what Gary Albright is up to. You have to wonder what any of those people are up to. I don’t trust anybody who says he gets down on his knees and talks to an imaginary friend every night. It’s bad enough if he’s lying, but it’s worse if he’s telling the truth. Marcey’s still screaming. Can you hear it?”
Henry could hear it. He was sure everybody could hear it. Down the street from the shop the noise ended up being something in the background after a while, but you never lost the understanding that it was there. If you were actually in the building where it was happening, though, that was something else. Then it was like a form of torture. Marcey was not only loud, she was extremely high pitched and could hold a note damned near forever.
“Listen,” Edna leaned over Henry’s desk. Her eyes were lit up. They glittered. “I heard something. And not only from one place, and it wasn’t just idle gossip. I heard the federal judge they’ve got coming down here for the trial is getting death threats. Lots of them. I heard the FBI has been called in. They think there’s going to be an assassination attempt.”
“Really,” Henry said.
Edna sat back in her chair. She was smiling. “Well,” she said, “what can you expect? Religion is a form of insanity, isn’t it? And you never do know what crazy people will do.”
3
Miss Marbledale had heard the rumors about the death threats to the judge for the same reason everybody else had: because Edna Milton had been spreading them. She was not particularly upset about them, and she didn’t expect she would ever have to be, because she was fairly sure that they were nothing but Edna getting some attention again, just like the time Edna claimed that the Bush administration was spying on her peace group. Catherine Marbledale had almost as little use for Edna Milton and her peace group as she had for Franklin Hale and anything he was involved in. It was all part and parcel of the same thing. It was all another manifestation of a descent into irrationality. Miss Marbledale had pinned it the first time she realized that conspiracy theories were no longer the exclusive province of village cranks and village drunks. Now half her students thought that the Republicans had blown up the Twin Towers themselves, or that the Democrats were in secret negotiations to get the UN to invade Washington and suspend the Constitution in favor of European law. It all depended on who their parents were. None of their parents made any sense at all.