He had not left the room, had scarcely moved from his desk. He had been aware for some time, subconsciously, of the smell of hot food. In his mind, he had ticked that off as one more thing going according to plan. Plenty was not. But the mobile kitchen, earmarked for his headquarters, had evidently come up; the women volunteers were heating beans in cauldrons, firing up the coffee makers, opening stacks of gallon fruit cans, running bread through the slicer. The high school’s windows had been boarded up with plywood. A large kerosene stove was shedding heat and smoking slightly in the corner. Canvas had been nailed temporarily across the big crack in the roof. An engineer had made his inspection and assured everybody the high school wouldn’t collapse. There were plenty of kerosene lamps. For people in other rooms who didn’t have heaters, there had been an issue of coats and sweaters, collected from God knew where by God knew whom. A bevy of determined housewives, wearing arm bands and having nothing better to do, had come in with brooms and dustpans, raised a fearful dust, and cleaned out the plaster and loose debris.
