Love in the Dark

Chapter Six

Days at the church dragged by in listless boredom. Sometimes someone would play the old upright piano, but most people were too tired, too hungry, and too depressed to indulge in music. An old lady died. She was already weak and frail, and the stress of hunger and cold had just pushed her into her grave. Several men went out with shovels, across the road to the old cemetery, and dug her a shallow grave.

George had no idea what day it was, because it didn't matter. Tuesday? Friday? The day was warm and mild, so several people had gone out to sit outside. George sat on the church steps, head down, eyes closed. He was drifting in and out of sleep when he heard someone mutter, "What the hell is that?"

His eyes snapped open, and he struggled to focus them on the anomaly that was moving down the road. He had to blink several times before he made out the shape of a horse, with a woman walking beside it.

"Hey! Hey you there, stop!" It was the man with the rifle again. He aimed his rifle in the general direction of the woman. "You're going to give us that horse."

"What are you doing Joe?" Someone hissed.

"Shut up, John. That horse could feed us all for a week!" He shouldered the rifle and took aim. He wasn't prepared for the woman to pull a sawed-off shotgun off the pack and aim it back at him.

"You shoot my horse, and I will kill all of you."

"I said, give us the horse!"

"Joe!" Pastor Bill hurried to the scene, putting his big body between the woman and the man with the gun. "Joe, put the gun down."

"But PB!"

"I said put the god-damn gun down, Joe!" the mild curse words sounded obscene coming from the mouth of the mild-mannered preacher.

Joe made a face but lowered the gun. The woman did not lower hers.

"Sorry, uh, ma'am. Forgive him. He's just hungry, and he isn't thinking straight."

The woman began walking closer. The horse, without even a rope, followed obediently beside her. She stopped ten paces off from the tall pastor. "You Pastor Bill?"

"Yeah," he lowered his hands.

The woman nodded and lowered the gun. She squinted at him, and then behind him at the people who were sitting in the sun. A few of them had struggled to their feet. The appearance of the strange woman with a horse was the most exciting thing they'd seen in weeks. "My father sent me."

"Your father?"

She nodded but didn't elaborate further. "Come closer."

Pastor Bill looked nervous, but he stepped closer. When he was about five feet from her, she held up her hand. "That's close enough." He stopped on command.

She turned to her horse's pack and struggled with it a moment before she came out with two ten-pound plastic sacks of rice. She dropped them into the Pastor's hands. She went back again and dug out bags of butter beans, stacking them up on top of the rice. She fished out a bulb of garlic and two onions. And finally, she added a canister of salt, pushing it under the man's elbow.

She stepped back and looked behind him at Joe. "If anyone ever threatens my horse again, I will kill them." And without another word she jumped up on the horse's back, settled herself, and galloped off.

Pastor Bill looked down at the food in his arms. It was so heavy he was trembling. "Come," he called to the men behind him. "Help me bring this back to the kitchen." George hurried forward with others to relieve him of his burden.

The pastor looked up at the sky and mouthed a "thank you."

George looked up at the sky, as if he expected to see someone there. Pastor Bill clapped him on the shoulder with his free hand. "The Lord works in mysterious ways, my friend. That right there was an answered prayer."

Seth and his brother arrived in the church yard a few days later. Their apartment building had been torched, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Matthew had heard from someone that the camp at the Brick Church had food and clean water. People in the camps inside the city were sick and starving. Diarrhea was rampant and people were dying. So, they had walked the six miles to the historical church outside of the city limits. The pastor had allowed them to stay, adding their names to a list of about a hundred people that were camped out. Men slept in the church, women slept in the fellowship hall. Married couples and families were given space in some of the classrooms, the narthex, and the church attic. The Pastor and his family occupied the church office.

It was true, they had a clean water source from a mountain spring about a mile away. Every day, men went out with jericans to collect water. They tried to hunt and fish, but they had very limited tools and weaponry for the job. The creek was high with spring floods, and the fish weren't interested in the hook. In the evening, everyone got in line in the fellowship hall, and the volunteers in the kitchen gave everyone a bowl of thin, watery soup with rice and beans floating in the broth. It wasn't much, but it was more than they'd had in the city, so Seth accepted it gratefully. Matthew muttered and whined but he slurped down every last drop.

There was a story circulating around camp that the food had come from an angel on horseback.

"It wasn't an angel," a man beside him scoffed. "Just some broad with a horse."

"Yeah, that's because Joe here tried to shoot the horse."

"Tell me this soup wouldn't be a helluva lot more filling with some meat in it!" the red-faced man protested.

"We all know you haven't got any shells left for that rifle," someone else ribbed him. The girl didn't know that though. She was ready to shoot you dead."

"The angel had a gun?" Seth asked, his eyebrows lifting.

"Hell yeah. I bet hers was loaded too."

"So, a girl with a horse came and dropped off food?" Seth set aside his empty bowl, interested in the story. "Did she have a name."

"Nope, she left without giving a name. She just said her father sent her."

"PB thinks she meant her HEAVENLY father," one of the women interjected. "We'd been praying all morning for a miracle, and then she just walked right up the road."

"The real question, though, is if she will come back. We're trying to ration out the food she gave us, but twenty pounds of rice won't go very far, not with all these people to feed."

Someone sent a dirty look toward Seth and Matt, "Especially when they just keep coming."

"What we need to do is PRAY," the woman insisted.