But this was a wee-hour recognition. By the time the buses rolled into the First Reformed parking lot, twelve hours later, his path seemed clear again. If Frances would only show up, he could sort things out in Many Farms. A cold March breeze was blowing, daffodils blooming along the church’s limestone flanks, the sun bright, the air chilly. In his old sheepskin coat, a clipboard in hand, Russ directed seminarians and alumni advisers in their toting of Crossroads tool chests, cans of Ballerina Pink and Sunshine Yellow, crates of rollers and brushes, Coleman lanterns. A parent adviser, Ted Jernigan, pulled up beside Russ in a late-model Lincoln and suggested that he load the buses closer to the church doors. Ted nodded at the seminarian Carolyn Polley, who was struggling with a tool chest. “That little girl is going to get hurt.”
Russ held up his clipboard, to indicate his supervisory role. “Feel free to pitch in.”
Ted seemed disinclined. He was a real-estate lawyer, a soloist in the church choir, a beefy former U.S. Marine, and thought very well of himself.
“I’m concerned about drinking water,” he said. “Do we have drinking water?”
“No.”
“Why don’t I run down to Bev-Mart and buy us a bunch of five-gallon bottles. Darra said some of the kids last year had diarrhea.”
“I doubt it was from the water.”
“Simple enough to bring some.”
“A hundred and twenty kids, eight days—that’s a lot of bottles.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“The water on the reservation comes from wells. It’s not a problem.”
Ted made the face of a man unused to deferring. It was a mistake, Russ thought, to bring a male parishioner on a trip where he would be subordinate to a junior minister. Russ could well imagine Ted’s opinion of him and his pastoral impracticality, his feeble salary, his indetectable contribution to the general good. The opinion was subtly implicit in Ted’s offer to buy water—to open his fee-fattened wallet, to effortlessly exercise his spending power. Putting him in Russ’s group had been selfish of Ambrose, if not deliberately cruel.
As the family cars streamed in, releasing kids in their paint-smeared jeans and their dirtiest coats, with their Frisbees and their sleeping bags, Russ had eyes for only one car. From within the misery of his suspense he glimpsed the relief of being free of Frances, of receiving a definitive no and moving on, of being anywhere else but where he was. When he finally spied her car on Pirsig Avenue, his misery made the moment of reckoning—whether she was joining him or simply dropping off Larry—feel curiously weightless. Thy will be done. As if for the first time, he appreciated the peace these words afforded.
The peace lasted until she stepped out of her car, wearing her hunting cap. When he saw Larry open the trunk and remove not only a fancy backpack, suitable for alpine trekking, but a large and feminine fabric suitcase, he was flooded with voluptuous presentiment. It swept away his equanimity, exposed its falseness, stopped his breath. He was going to have her.
Secure in his presentiment, he busied himself with his clipboard, checking off the names of Crossroads members in the Kitsillie group. Unlike three years ago, bus assignments were now determined by destination, not by clique. Someone, presumably Ambrose, had drawn a heavy line through Becky’s name. Russ still half hoped and half feared that Becky would change her mind, but when he saw her and Perry pull up in the family Fury, without Marion along to drive it home, he knew she wasn’t coming. She didn’t even get out of the car while Perry retrieved his duffel bag.
As the Fury left the parking lot, Frances marched up to Russ. He pretended to consult his clipboard. “Oh hey,” he said.
Her eyes were glittering with drama. “You didn’t think I’d do it, did you. You didn’t think I had the guts. It looks like you’re stuck with me and my phony self-reproach after all.”
He struggled not to smile. “That remains to be seen.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not going to Kitsillie. Rick wants you in the Many Farms group.”
She drew her head back. “In Larry’s group? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“Larry doesn’t want me anywhere near him. Why did Rick do that?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“Does he think I can’t hack it on the mesa?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“That is extremely annoying. I hope you didn’t make him do that.”
Russ had won the fight against smiling. “No. Why would I?”