Darkness upon the Land
Chapter 44

Preparations for the fais do do were simple enough. Although it rained earlier in the afternoon, as it seemed to rain more than usual this time of year, the precipitation let up by the time they finished chores and were ready to head into town. Alexia decided to wear her best jeans, which she topped off with a ruffled blue blouse. Reuben wore a mostly purple shirt with yellow and blue pinstripes, which he left untucked again in order to conceal the pistol.

Each of them toted a bowl of salad in baskets tied on the bikes’ handlebars as they rode to the church. Several other attendees arrived around the same time, and Alexia chatted with a couple as they strolled to the gymnasium of the parish’s small elementary school. Reuben checked his pistol again, and they entered the building.

The compact compound was located across the parking lot of the church. Although Alexia had never attended classes here, enough functions had been held in the gym that regularly doubled as a meeting/dining hall to make her familiar with the school’s layout. There were no bleachers for this multi-purpose room, and the tables for the food were lined near the far wall. At the other end of the gym, near a back door that led to educational offices, a low stage had become the gathering point for an impromptu but surprisingly complete band that was trying to form.

Several men and a couple of women were plinking around on guitars, a fiddle, a mandolin, a flute, and even an accordion and a bodhran drum. While they were trying to figure out what all songs most of them knew how to play, Alexia and Reuben neared Father Nick, who was wearing blue jeans with his clerical shirt.

They exchanged greetings, and Reuben commented, “I see you’ve given up dressing like a sinner.”

He smiled. “It’s all part of trying to get back to normal. And besides, no matter how I’m dressed, I’m always a sinner.”

“That one’s about murder, too,” one of the band members commented, and then he asked in a loud voice, “Father, are there any songs we’re not allowed to play?”

The priest scanned the musicians. “Use your best judgment.” Then his expression became so stern it was obvious he was faking it. “And if you don’t, confession begins at four-thirty on Saturday.”

The group whooped in acknowledgment.

They set their food out with the other dishes strongly influenced by fresh garden vegetables, and the musicians made a few attempts at piecing together some compositions. Then another participant carrying a couple of cases walked up to the ensemble. Alexia noticed the distinct shape of one of them, but Reuben was in conversation with an older gentleman and missed the arrival of that instrument. That was when she heard her companion claim to be from Mississippi.

Her attention snapped to him, but Reuben made no acknowledgment of her quizzical frown. Why on earth wouldn’t he acknowledge Missouri as his home state?

The newest band member was chatting with the others as he opened the cases. “Yeah,” he drawled, “I figured there’d be plenty of guitars, which is why I went ahead and brought my brother’s banjo. But I don’t know much about playing it.”

Reuben’s gaze shot to the stage upon the word banjo. He quickly wrapped up his conversation with the elder and apologized that he needed to leave.

“I think I just heard they need a banjo player.” He offered as his excuse.

She watched him walk up to the other musicians and ask about the instrument. The other fellow gladly handed it and the picks to him, and he adjusted the strap over his shoulder and fiddled with arranging the picks on his fingers before tuning it. After a few strums to confirm the key was correct, he launched into some warm-up scales. And then, with that memory of his, he quickly played the first stanza of Jerusalem Ridge, which was one of the few Bluegrass songs she recognized.

She had to admit it – he was good. The notes rang crisp and clear and he had a penchant for throwing in several extras that created a full, harmonious melody.

“That sounded like a real tune,” one of the band members quipped.

“Imagine that.” Reuben grinned as he glanced around the ensemble. “A tune from a banjo. I was worried that since you all had an accordion already you wouldn’t allow another squalling instrument to foul things up.”

The owner of that other instrument also grinned. “That’s all right, buddy, we can just take turns every few rounds.”

“Good idea. I think there’s a law against an accordion and a banjo playing at the same time.”

The other player chortled. “Even if there isn’t, it’s probably still a mortal sin.”

“My only regret is that we don’t also have a bagpipe.” Reuben nodded. “That way we could offend everybody.”

The band broke into laughter, and she knew she was on her own for the rest of the evening.

There was nothing wrong with that. Alexia had plenty of other people to visit with, and once the group got their act together they began playing a variety of Cajun, Swing, and Bluegrass music. She even secured a couple of dance partners for some of the quicker melodies. And then Reuben and the accordion player “tried to start a riot” by beating out their own rendition of Dueling Banjos.

“Father!” The squeezebox master hollered. “Set aside a whole hour for me tomorrow!”

A few tunes later, while she nibbled on some veggies and dip during a performance of Julie Ellie, she noticed Myra Hoffman in a very animated conversation with Reuben during one of his breaks from playing. Alexia almost stopped in mid bite as she watched them.

Myra was around twenty years old and had long, blonde hair she had drawn up in a tousled upsweep that left tendrils twirling around her face. Although like everybody else she was thinner than a month ago, she still had all the right curves, and the red dress she wore was almost risqué for a church setting. While she smiled and laughed and sometimes touched her fingertips gracefully to her sternum as though subtly pointing to her cleavage, Reuben did a lot of grinning and chuckling also while he sipped his bottle of – wait. Was that beer?

Since when did he start drinking beer and standing out in a crowd and lying to people about his home state? And since when did he start carousing with provocative women? Myra wasn’t even his type. She was prissy and shallow and bemoaned a broken fingernail as a traumatic event. Except for body type, she was nothing like Jodi.

Oh. Maybe that was sufficient for him. Maybe all the comradery he used to have with Jodi was based more on her build than their shared interests. Maybe he wasn’t as deep a guy as she had always thought he was.

Wait a minute … oh no … she wasn’t starting to like him, was she?

The whole concept caused the headache that had started a few minutes ago to pulse again. What else was going wrong in her brain if she was starting to take a shine to Reuben Baldridge? He was really just an extension of her mother, her eyes and ears and mouth for those times she couldn’t be around personally.

Wait a minute … was that part of Mѐre’s plan? Did that explain why she was suddenly so insistent the two of them should go off together and have fun? Now that the odds were against Alexia getting to lead an independent life working with disadvantaged children, did her mother think the next best course was to get her bonded to him? Yeah, her mom would probably like to have Reuben as a son-in-law, and if he couldn’t go home maybe he would be receptive to that scheme as well.

Wait a minute … he had abandoned her for a banjo and was enjoying a good flirt with Myra Hoffman. Okay, so he was exonerated, but that kind of put her back where she started. It would be ridiculous to even consider they could be anything more than friends. The whole scenario made her headache worse and also caused her stomach to churn. She made it a point to ignore Reuben and continue to enjoy the rest of the evening.

But enjoyment became harder to come by. As her headache worsened and the queasiness increased into a widespread malaise over the next fifteen minutes, she realized she’d made a terrible mistake. Everything here was homemade, so she’d assumed she wasn’t succumbing to an artificial additive. But somebody must have had something that survived the confiscating and raiding.

And to make matters worse, she suspected it was monosodium glutamate. Of all the manmade ingredients that had lurked out there, MSG caused her worst reaction. Her exaggerated response to the influences of cuisine meant the glutamate that changed the chemistry in her brain caused her whole system to go into a panic mode. It was even theorized too much of this stuff could kill her.

She could have kicked herself if she wasn’t so concerned about getting this potential poison out of her metabolism. Her first recourse to minimize its effects was to make herself vomit so that no more of the chemical would be absorbed. But since there was unlikely to be any ipecac syrup lying around, she was probably going to have to stick a finger down her throat. That was an exercise she’d never done before, and didn’t look forward to. But she started heading to the bathroom nevertheless.

She had gone only a few steps when an unshaven young man in ragged clothes burst through the doors of the vestibule that led from outside into the gym. She was one of only a few people who noticed his entrance immediately, but he got everybody’s attention as he screamed out.

“Stop it! It’s not funny!”

Some gasps interjected while the tune of Vien Dans Mu J’oin shuddered to silence. Nobody moved as they stared at the man blocking the main entrance – and exit – of the room. He looked completely disheveled. His stained slacks and ripped shirt were rumpled, his brown hair was unruly, and it was hard to tell the difference between his stubble and the dirt on his face.

“What are you looking at?” He cried out to them. “I told you it wasn’t funny!”

He reached under his shirt and whipped out a semiautomatic pistol from the waistband of his pants. He pointed it at the crowd.

This time the gasps were accompanied by a few quick screeches.

“Stop looking at me!”

Several people did glance away nervously, but Father Nick, who was in the portion of the crowd nearest the band, took a couple of slow steps forward.

“I’m sorry,” he stated calmly.

Alexia was amazed at how controlled his voice remained, but the ache in her head throbbed harder and her hands trembled from something other than fear.

A few individuals started to shuffle toward the rear exit beyond the stage. They were acting on the wise plan to get out of there, but the intruder swung the pistol toward them.

“Don’t you go anywhere! You just want to play tricks on me!”

They immediately obeyed, and Father Nick took another step forward. “I don’t want to trick you. I want to help you. I can see that you need help.”

He adjusted his aim to the priest. Other people began inching away from the firing zone, and she located Reuben, who was also on that side of the room, because Myra shrank behind him and grabbed his arm. This time he ignored her.

“Liar!” The intruder yelled. “It’s a trick! You’re all planning against me!”

This was really, really bad. Even if she dared to resort to an outburst in front of all these witnesses, she had no idea how effective it would be. There was nothing between her and the interloper, and she wasn’t sure how much interference her weakened condition might cause. All she knew for sure was that if she did produce one, its adverse effects would be exaggerated.

“We don’t want to hurt you.” Father Nick continued his deliberate advance. “And you don’t want to hurt any of these people.”

“I said stop!”

The priest obeyed. “Go ahead and let them go. Please. You and I can talk about what’s bothering you. See if we can get you some help.”

Myra was tugging on Reuben’s arm and whispering frantically to him. Apparently he wasn’t moving out of range quickly enough for her, but she also didn’t want to lose him as a human shield.

That quiet commotion must have caught the gunman’s notice. He shifted the pistol toward Reuben and shouted, “This time I’ll make you stop!”

Just like the attack at the infirmary, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

The weapon fired at the same instant Father Nick, arms lifted, stepped in front of Reuben. At that very instant Alexia screamed “NO!” Her grasping hand flew out toward the pistol as though she believed she could pluck it from the intruder’s grip.

The trespasser staggered as his arm flew wildly into the air and the pistol discharged again. Father Nick and Reuben, both apparently unscathed, leaped toward him simultaneously. No sooner did the priest smash the gun out of his hand with a downward blow than Reuben pounced upon the intruder and wrestled him to the floor.

Shouts and yells echoed all around her. Some people dashed to assist them while others scrambled to loved ones or safer locations.

Her head swam, and the room seemed to rotate around her. Alexia sank to one knee and both hands as she tried desperately not to black out. Around her people chattered incessantly, and there must have been a few that gathered around her.

“Did he hit her?”

“Are you all right?”

She had to summon all her will power to murmur one word. “Rube.”

“Did you see what happened? Is she all right?”

“I don’t see any blood.”

“What made him stumble like that?”

She strained harder. “Rube.”

Reuben was the only one who would know what to do, and she knew that if she didn’t receive help quickly, her condition could deteriorate beyond retrieval.

Someone placed a hand on her shoulder. “Reuben’s all right.”

She shook her head. “Rube!”

“Reuben!” Someone else shouted. “Alexia’s asking for you.”

“It looked like she did something.”

“But what? What happened to her?”

She sensed Reuben kneel beside her. “You better lie down and have some pemmican.”

She shook her head. “MSG.”

“I tell you, she did something.”

His tone was perturbed. “What?”

She tried to jerk her head toward the tables of food without knocking herself over. “MSG.”

“Maybe he just stumbled because he’s out of his gourd.”

“No, she did something.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, although a bit distracted. “She threw a book.” He leaned closer to her and muttered, “Have you thrown up yet?”

Alexia shook her head.

“I didn’t see any book.”

“How could she have thrown a book?”

Father Nick’s voice suddenly broke into the chatter. “Of course she threw a book. I saw the whole thing.”

Reuben grasped her by the arms and began pulling her to her feet as he announced, “I need to get her to the restroom.”

“You sure it was a book?”

“Father said he saw what happened.”

Somebody else slipped another arm around her and helped him escort her to the lavatory. She was too busy grasping for consciousness to realize who it was.

Please God, don’t let her pass out yet. She might never awaken from this one.

Reuben helped to support her as they entered the room and she kneeled before the toilet. She knew there was something she needed to do, but the edges of her vision began filling with white that seeped determinedly toward the center.

“Can’t,” she gasped.

She felt him grasp her more firmly by the forehead. “I’ll beg for forgiveness later.”

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