“You want champagne,” Vito said, and hoisted himself out of the tub, “you get champagne.”
Marion Claude Wheatley had slept soundly and for almost twelve hours. That was, he decided, because no matter what else one could say about the Pine Barrens, it was quiet out here. No blaring horns, or sirens, no screeching tires, and one was not required to listen to other people’s radios or televisions.
But on reflection, he thought as he got out of bed and started to fold the bedding to take back to Philadelphia with him, it was probably more than that. He had noticed, ever since he had understood what the Lord wanted him to do, and especially when he was actually involved in something to carry out the Lord’s will, that he was peaceful. It probably wasn’t the “Peace That Passeth All Understanding, ” to which the prayer book of the Protestant Episcopal Church referred so frequently, and which the Lord had promised he would experience in Heaven, but it was a peace of mind that he had never before experienced in his life.
It seemed perfectly logical that if one was experiencing such an extraordinary peace, one would be able to sleep like a log.
Before he made his breakfast, he put the bedding into a suitcase, turned the mattress, and then carried the suitcase out and put it in the trunk of the rental car.
He fired up the Coleman stove and made his breakfast. Bacon and eggs, sunny side up, basted with the bacon fat, the way Mother used to make them for him when he was a kid, served on top of a slice of toast. Mother had thought dipping toast into an egg yolk was rather vulgar; placing the egg on a slice of toast, so that when the yolk was cut, it ran onto the toast accomplished the same purpose and was more refined.
He didn’t have toast, of course. There was no toaster. And if there had been, there was no electricity to power a toaster. He thought again of the pluses and minuses of getting a gasoline-powered generator and bringing it out here to the farm. There was a new generation of small, truly portable generators. He had spent the better part of an hour taking a close look at the ones Sears Roebuck now had.
The one he liked best advertised that it produced 110-volt alternating current at five amperes, and burned one-half gallon of unleaded gasoline per hour. The recommended load was up to 1,500 watts. That was more than enough to power a toaster. It was enough to power a small television. And it would pose no problem, if he had such a generator, to install some simple wiring and have electric lighting over the sink, next to his chair, and in the bedroom.
That would mean, he had thought at first, that he could do away with the Coleman lanterns, which would be nice. But then he realized that 1.5 KW was not adequate to power more than one electric hotplate, which meant that the procurement of a generator would not mean that he could dispense with the Coleman stove.
And then he realized that he didn’t really want to come out here and watch television, so there was no point in getting a generator to provide power for that purpose.
And then, of course, there were the obvious downsides to having a generator. For one thing, it would make noise. He didn’t think that he would really be willing to put up with the sound of a lawnmower engine running at two-thirds power hour after hour. And it would, of course, require fuel. He would have to bring at least five gallons of unleaded gasoline every time he came to the farm. Carrying gasoline in cans was very dangerous.
It would be much better, he concluded again, not to get a generator. Besides, if he went ahead and got one, there was a very good chance that he wouldn’t get to use it very much. Once he had disintegrated the Vice President, all sorts of law enforcement people would begin to look for him. He thought there was very little chance that they would not sooner or later find him.
If indeed, in carrying out the Lord’s will at Pennsylvania Station, he didn’t end his mortal life.
When he finished breakfast, he pumped the pump and filled the sink in the kitchen with foul-tasting water, added liquid Palmolive dish soap, and washed the plates