Centerville

Chapter 18

183 Chapter 18 Long after the minister had gone inside and the officers had left, he lay awake, aware of Nancy also lying wakeful next to him. Prior to going to bed he’d walked through the house, checking the locks on the windows and doors. Then he’d spent twenty minutes or more at the front window, watching to see if the police were driving past the house as they’d promised. He’d done these things, even though he felt they didn’t matter. George Fowler was a member of his congregation, but the man was also a killer, and it startled him to think he’d spent all those hours with such a person. As he was readying for bed, Nancy tried to get him to talk to her. “Why won’t you tell me what happened?” she asked him. “What did he do? Did he have a gun? Did he threaten you?” While he’d always kept things from her in his position as a minister , they had never been this personally affecting. He told her he couldn’t talk about it, and then he lay awake in bed, falling asleep a few hours later. But at six-thirty, just a half hour past dawn, he was wide-awake again. Nancy stirred, and he rubbed her back until he was convinced she was asleep, then he went downstairs and made 184 himself coffee. When Sandi came down dressed for school, he encouraged her to stay home. “You can take a day off after everything that happened last night,” he said, but she insisted she was ready to go. “I’ll drive you,” he told her, as he went outside to wait, nervous about her leaving the house. Several minutes later she got into the car sullenly with her books and lunch, perching on the seat next to him without fastening her seat belt, as if she might bolt. The sun was still close to the horizon, and when he glanced over to look at her, he couldn’t see her face in the glare. He expected her to ask about what had happened the night before, but she didn’t ask anything. “What happened with Bert last night? Did you and Harry find her?” he said. “No,” Sandi answered. He turned toward her, feeling a prick of alarm. “Does anyone know where she is?” “She walked over to the bus station and got a ticket.” “Why?” He waited a second for her to answer, but she didn’t. “Does her mother know about it? Are they going to be able to find her?” “Harry went over to tell her mother after he dropped me off last night. He said they would probably be able to get the police to bring her back.” She turned away from him to face the window. He wanted to ask more questions, but they had reached the high school, and as soon as he stopped the car, she jumped out. Feeling aimless, he drove back to his house and drank the coffee he’d made. He paged through the magazine that lay on the counter, thinking about last night. Johnson’s smiling face in the photos taken at his Texas ranch now struck the minister as oblivious. The president’s 185 face didn’t acknowledge anything that had happened that summer —the weeks of rioting or the escalating war that played nightly on the television screen with images of body bags and American soldiers plodding through rice fields, lighting the thatched roofs of villagers’ huts. Finishing his coffee, the minister turned the magazine face down, rinsed his cup in the sink, and put it away. A few minutes later, he found himself in his car headed toward the church. It didn’t occur to him that last night had been traumatic and he should stay home. Instead, he told himself he had work to do. He wanted to be at the church in case there were questions from the police, and he needed to write the sermon he would give on Saturday at the large memorial service. He was caught up inside of his own mind, split off from anything he was feeling. The last thing he could imagine was talking to anyone, so when he turned into the parking lot, he was irritated to see one of the officers from last night standing next to his patrol car...