The Harvest

Kindle said, “We’re talking armed guards here?”

“Handguns,” Tyler said.

Abby: “Is that necessary, Colonel?”

Tyler smiled his gentle smile. “I hope it isn’t, Mrs. Cushman. I trust it won’t be. But we’d be stupid to take an u

(“Holy crow,” Kindle said softly.)

And more such items, none offered for a vote, but the Colonel pausing briefly for “objections,” which never came. It was businesslike, Beth thought. A little dizzying, however.

There was something about the radio: Makepeace and Joey were a joint committee and controlled access. Communication with Helpers—there was a Helper in every one of these microscopic towns—would be strictly through a designated representative: Tim Belanger. “Helper communication should be kept to a minimum, in my opinion, since we’ve all suffered at the hands of the Travellers, and I’m not sure we should place absolute trust in their emissaries, though I’ll be the first to admit they’ve been useful from time to time.”

Finally a motion to adjourn. Hands shot up. Kindle whistled appreciatively from the back row. “Fast work, Colonel.” Tyler looked mildly irritated. “You can voice your dissent at any time, Mr. Kindle. That’s what this forum is all about. However, we’re adjourned.”

“We sure are,” Kindle said.

Matt had picked up some material for Beth at a local lending library—a Red Cross first-aid handbook with a chapter on traumatic injuries, which he had a

But the meeting had run late… she might not show up.

Might not want to, Matt thought. It was cold in his RV. A lot of people were sleeping indoors tonight. Kindle had been warning people about turning on long-disused oil furnaces ever since they passed that burned-out section of Twin Falls, and gas furnaces weren’t working anymore, anywhere, for no known reason. But the Travellers had been scrupulous about electricity. Kindle had hooked up expensive space heaters, the kind with gravity switches to turn off the juice if somebody knocked the thing over. Heat a room, let people camp in it. It was reasonably safe and it took the chill off some arthritic bones, including Miriam’s.

But Matt preferred his camper. He had converted the RV into a combination of home and consulting office. It provided a little continuity in a world that had turned so many things so completely upside-down.

He picked up another library book, a Raymond Chandler mystery, its urban setting so distant in time and circumstance that it felt like science fiction. And he switched on a battery light and settled down.

The wind came briskly along the dry margins of the Snake River and rocked the RV on its old, loose shocks. Matt found his attention drifting: from the book to Tyler, the election, the boy who had wandered into camp this afternoon…

He was yawning when Beth knocked.

She let herself in. Matt checked his watch. “Beth, it’s late—”

“I know. Everybody’s asleep.” She hesitated. “I came to explain.”

About the election, she obviously meant. Explain, Matt noted. Not apologize. “It’s all right,” he said.

“No.” She frowned. “It’s not all right. I don’t want to leave it hanging. Matt, it’s not that I don’t trust you or you haven’t done a good job. Everybody knows you have. But when you were standing up there, it just seemed like… you just looked so fucking tired.”

Had he? Well, maybe. Was he tired?

More than he dared admit.

She said, “It might have been the wrong thing to do.”

“You did what seemed right at the time. That’s all anybody can ask.”

“It just seemed like you didn’t really want the job.”

“I didn’t.”

“But you don’t want Colonel Tyler to have it.”

“Well—no.”

“He doesn’t seem like a bad person.”

“That’s not the issue. He didn’t just take over the Committee, Beth, he bulldozed it. Ten minutes of Colonel Tyler, and what do we have? Restricted access to Helpers. Restricted access to the radio. The camp under an armed guard.”

Beth looked uneasy. “You make it sound sinister.”

“It is sinister.”

“I think he’s just used to the military way of doing things.”

Colonel Tyler, by his own testimony, had left the military almost fifteen years ago. It wasn’t force of habit that had put him in charge tonight. It was careful pla

And something else. Matt sensed in the Colonel a certain restlessness, an impatience that always seemed about to break out into violence. Catch him in a quiet moment and you’d find Tyler tapping his foot to some i

But he couldn’t say this to Beth without sounding paranoid or petty. Anyway, her vote hadn’t mattered any more than Chuck Makepeace’s vote, or Bob Ganish’s. It was only bad timing that made it seem that way.

She had done what she thought was the right thing, and in the end maybe her call was as good as his.

She said, “I guess I should leave.”

“Only if you want to.”

Tentatively: “You’re not angry?”

“No.” He realized he wasn’t.

She sat beside him. Relieved, weary, she put her head against him.

He stroked her long hair and listened to the night wind tugging at the corners of the RV. He would never get used to these inland plains. He missed the sea.

He thought about Beth—all the aspects of Beth Porter. The neglected, sullen Beth: the Beth who had tattooed WORTHLESS on her shoulder, who had baited Joey Commoner until Joey felt compelled to pull a knife.

And this other Beth. Beth treating Jacopem’s anxiety with the anodyne of her own calm. Beth studying anatomy textbooks with the dedication of a monk.

Something clean and strong rising out of all the garbage in her life. “Joey’s standing watch,” she said. “He has a campfire on the highway facing west.”

“Did he see you come?”

“No. Anyway, I’m tired of worrying about Joey. He’s acting like an asshole.”

“Maybe a dangerous one.”

“Joey and his pocketknife? I doubt it.”

“After what you said that night…”

“I shouldn’t have. I know. But he doesn’t own me. He never did.”

“We’re a fragile community. I don’t want to create one more problem.”

“Then should I leave?” Challenging him. “Beth—you know you don’t have to.”

“I want to stay a while longer.”

“Then stay.”

A cold night. A little warmth.

Chapter 27

Destinations

The caravan of ten dusty RVs and trailers, led by Colonel Tyler in a four-wheel-drive Ford pickup, turned south on Interstate 84 toward Utah.

Tyler drove with the windows rolled down, admitting a breeze so dry it made his lips bleed. He drove at a cautious, steady pace. Sometimes he felt fettered by the train of ponderous vehicles behind him. But it was a privilege, he thought, to blaze the trail. To see the way ahead.

The highway seemed wider for being empty. Periodically he passed an abandoned truck or car, and it was nice to know that in an emergency the Committee could siphon gas from one of these. But no emergency arose. Most of the roadside gas stations had functional pumps, and Joey Commoner and Bob Ganish had been scrupulous about keeping the convoy’s engines in decent repair.