Cold Fire

"Bologna sandwiches, chocolate doughnuts. and potato chips, of course. Wouldn't be a picnic without chips. The crinkled kind, okay? Some cheese twists, too. Chips and cheese twists, they go together." ù Holly had never seen him like this: almost boyish, with no apparent weight on his shoulders. He might have been setting out on a camping trip with friends, a little adventure.

She wondered if her own apprehension was justified. Jim was, after all, the one whose presentiments had proven to be accurate. Maybe they were going to discover something wonderful at the mill, unravel the mystery behind the last-minute rescues he had performed, maybe even encounter this higher power to which he referred. Perhaps The Enemy, in spite of its ability to reach out of a dream into the real world, was not as formidable as it seemed.

At the cash register, after the clerk finished bagging their purchases and was making change, Jim said, "Wait a minute, one more thing," and hurried to the rear of the store. When he returned, he was carrying two lined yellow tablets and one black, fine-point felt-tip pen. To Holly, he said, "We'll be needing these tonight.”

When they had loaded the car and pulled out of the parking lot at The Central, heading for the Ironheart farm, Holly indicated the pen and tablets, which she was holding in a separate bag. "What'll we be needing these for?" "I haven't the slightest idea. I just suddenly knew we have to have them.”

"That's just like God," she said, "always being mysterious and obscure.”

After a silence, he said, "I'm not so sure any more that it's God talking to me.”

"Oh? What changed your mind?" "Well, the issues you raised last evening, for one thing. If God didn't want little Nick O'Conner to die up there in Boston, why didn't He just stop that vault from exploding? Why chase me clear across the country and throw me at the boy, as you put it? And why would He up and change His mind about the people on the airliner, let more of them live, just because I decided they should? They were all questions I'd asked myself, but you weren't willing to settle for the easy answers that satisfied me." He looked away from the street for a moment as they reached the edge of town, smiled at her, and repeated one of the questions she had asked him yesterday when she had been needling him: "Is God a waffler" "I would've expected. ”

"What?" "Well, you were so sure you could see a divine hand in this, it must be a bit of a letdown to consider less exalted possibilities. I'd expect you to be a little bummed out.”

He shook his head. "I'm not. You know, I always had trouble accepting that it was God working through me, it seemed like such a crazy idea, but I lived with it just because there wasn't any better explanation.

There still isn 't a better explanation, I guess, but another possibility has occurred to me, and it's something so strange and wonderful in its way that I don't mind losing God from the team.”

"What other possibility?" "I don't want to talk about it just yet," he said as sunlight and tree shadows dappled the dusty windshield and played across his face.

"I want to think it through, be sure it makes sense, before I lay it out for you, 'cause I know now you're a hard judge to convince.”

He seemed happy. Really happy. Holly had liked him pretty much since she had first seen him, regardless of his moodiness. She had perceived a hopefulness beneath his glower, a tenderness beneath his gruffness, a better man beneath the exterior of a lesser one, but in his current buoyant mood, she found him easier than ever to like.

She playfully pinched his cheek.

"What?" he said.

"You're cute.”

As they drove out of Svenborg, it occurred to Holly that the distribution pattern of the houses and other buildings was more like a pioneer settlement than like a modern community. In most towns, buildings were concentrated more densely in the center, with larger lots and increasing open space toward the perimeter, until finally the last structures gave way to rural precincts. But when they came to the city limits of Svenborg, the delineation between town and country was almost ruler-straight and unmistakable. Houses stopped and brushland began, with only an intervening firebreak, and Holly could not help but think of pioneers in the Old West constructing their outposts with a wary eye toward the threats that might arise out of the lawless badlands all around them.

Inside its boundaries, the town seemed ominous and full of dark secrets.

Seen from the outside-and Holly turned to stare back at it as the road rose toward the brow of a gentle hill-it looked not threatening but threatened, as if its residents knew, in their bones, that something frightful in the golden land around them was waiting to claim them all.