Purposeless. Frings stood with Carla and Eunice Prendergrast before Father Womé, who, still in his chair, stared back at them with vacant eyes. Eunice crouched down to Womé’s level and urged him to speak, to show some consciousness of the situation around him. Womé didn’t respond. Frings tried to figure out the problem: Shock? Drugs? A trance? Spiritual exhaustion? All of these?
It should have been pathetic, Womé in this state during a moment of acute crisis. But somehow it wasn’t. He was still a presence.
The drums were all silent, their noise replaced by the din of people outside the shanties. Frings heard violence in the pitch, but it might have been because he knew who was out there; what their intent was.
Frings conferred with Carla and Eunice. The crowd was beginning to ebb away, probably unaware of the mob outside the shanties, so consuming had been the ceremony. Eunice didn’t seem to know if most of these people still planned to abandon the shanties that night or if the ritual in the Square had fortified them enough to stay. Frings couldn’t believe they’d stick around after the murder they’d witnessed on top of everything else.
Carla leaned against Frings, sagging with fatigue. Eunice called over those in her group of women who remained in the Square.
Frings rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the urgency of the situation and also his inconsequence. He watched Eunice talk with her women until he heard a murmur from the remaining crowd behind him and turned to see Mel Washington, bearded and drawn, walking toward Eunice with Betty Askins and Warren Eddings in his wake.