Frances knew that now, knew it so deep in her bones that her body quaked with the knowledge. The barber pole was just a barber pole now; not the Northern Star, the red and white of His passion and pain, His protecting veil over her. There was only the open Book before her, open to the last page of the last chapter, where the screaming things of judgment were—the screaming red things that would not go away and would only die and die. Would this finally be the last time he made her witness? Other times came to her: a long, white, empty boat, the sound of booming gun blasts fading over the long water and a spreading red-ink stain over the bow and stern, spreading to meet the horizon. . . . A high tower, the misleading pop of rifle shots, a mother trying to fall protectively over her baby carriage and then falling down to the concrete: another rifle crack and then another. . . . A lick of night flame creeping up the side of a tent and whipping around the base and rising up with a sonic boom to form a ball of hell that grew and grew, engulfing everything, the animals, the circus, the spectators.
