I comforted him as best I could. Which probably wasn’t very well.
The talk finally turned into less frightening and destructive channels. The plate-glass windows, the market’s obvious weak point, were mentioned. Mike Haden asked what other entrances there were, and Ollie and Brown quickly ticked them off-two loading doors in addition to the one Norm had opened. The main IN’OUT doors. The window in the manager’s office (thick, reinforced glass, securely locked).
Talking about these things had a paradoxical effect. It made the danger seem more real but at the same time made us feel better. Even Billy felt it. He asked if he could go get a candy bar. I told him it would be all right so long as he didn’t go near the big windows.
When he was out of earshot, a man near Mike Haden said, «Okay, what are we going to do about those windows? The old lady may be as crazy as a bedbug, but she could be right about something moving in after dark.»
«Maybe the fog will blow over by then,» a woman said.
«Maybe,» the man said. «And maybe not.»
«Any ideas?» I asked Bud and Ollie.
«Hold on a sec,» the man near Haden said. «I’m Dan Miller. From Lynn, Mass. You don’t know me, no reason why you should, but I got a place on Highland Lake. Bought it just this year. Got held up for it, is more like it, but I had to have it.» There were a few chuckles. «Anyway, I saw a whole pile of fertilizer and lawn-food bags down there. Twenty-five-pound sacks, most of them. We could put them up like sandbags. Leave loopholes to look out through …»
Now more people were nodding and talking excitedly. I almost said something, then held it back. Miller was right. Putting those bags up could do no harm, and might do some good. But my mind went back to that tentacle squeezing the dog-food bag. I thought that one of the bigger tentacles could probably do the same for a twenty-five-pound bag of Green Acres lawn food or Vigoro. But a sermon on that wouldn’t get us out or improve anyone’s mood.
People began to break up, talking about getting it done, and Miller yelled: «Hold it! Hold it! Let’s thrash this out while we’re all together!»
They came back, a loose congregation of fifty or sixty people in the corner formed by the beer cooler, the storage doors, and the left end of the meat case, where Mr. McVey always seems to put the things no one wants, like sweetbreads and Scotch eggs and sheep’s brains and head cheese. Billy wove his way through them with a five-year-old’s unconscious agility in a world of giants and held up a Hershey bar. «Want this, Daddy?»
«Thanks.» I took it. It tasted sweet and good.
«This is probably a stupid question,» Miller resumed, «but we ought to fill in the blanks. Anyone got any firearms?»
There was a pause. People looked around at each other and shrugged. An old man with grizzled white hair who introduced himself as Ambrose Cornell said he had a shotgun in the trunk of his car. «I’ll try for it, if you want.»
Ollie said, «Right now I don’t think that would be a good idea, Mr. Cornell.»
Cornell grunted. «Right now, neither do I, son. But I thought I ought to make the offer.»
«Well, I didn’t really think so,» Dan Miller said. «But I thought-»
«Wait, hold it a minute,» a woman said. It was the lady in the cranberry-colored sweatshirt and the dark-green slacks. She had sandy-blond hair and a good figure. A very pretty young woman. She opened her purse and from it she produced a medium-sized pistol. The crowd made an ahhhh-ing sound, as if they had just seen a magician do a particularly fine trick. The woman, who had been blushing, blushed that much the harder. She rooted in her purse again and brought out a box of Smith Wesson ammunition.
«I’m Amanda Dumfries,» she said to Miller. «This gun … my husband’s idea. He thought I should have it for protection. I’ve carried it unloaded for two years.»