Chapter 24: The Long Table

It took nine nights to bring the last one out of the lane.

On the ninth morning I sat on my crate at the inner gate and put my palm against the last bruised hand.

The milk-white eyes went brown.

I had no more to give than that.

I sat there and shook, and Nolan held the water to my mouth until I could drink it.

"That's all of them," he said.

"That's all."

"Then you can open it."

The bolt had been fused to the post for nine days.

I put my hand on it and thought of nothing hard.

I thought of my father's terrible book about the bear, and the smell of cut hay.

The iron went soft and dark, and the bar slid out of the steel in my hand.

The gate swung wide.

They were all standing in the burnt lane.

Three hundred people, newly cured and newly fed, in borrowed coats and blankets. Some of them were barefoot.

At the front, in a stained black suit, stood the pastor.

Beside him were four church women with their hymnals.

They had stood at my gate on a Tuesday afternoon and prayed over me for being sick.

One of them was holding her hat in both hands.

The branch manager from the bank stood behind them. So did the deputy who had taken my trespass report.

They had been among the dead. I had put my hands on every one of them in the dark.

None of them could look at me.

The pastor went down on his knees in the ash.

"Miss Hartigan," he said. "We told you God would provide."

"You did."

"We laughed at you in front of a crowd."

His voice broke.

"I laughed at you. And you stood at that gate every night with your hands bare, and you gave us back our faces."