The Lonely Polygamist Part 34

"Sir!" shouted the orderly, as if Golden were a foreigner or a senior citizen, or some infernal combination of both. "Sir! Stop, please, sir! Right there, we've got a chair here for you, have a seat and we'll take care of you, sir!" Another orderly slipped behind Golden with the chair and together, as if they were all in on the same vaudeville routine, they executed a maneuver that had Golden falling backward in the chair and being wheeled off toward the emergency room, head lolling.

After some X-rays, a few st.i.tches, and the setting of a broken pinky finger, he was installed in a semiprivate room where Trish and Nola were allowed to visit. They arrived just before the attending physician, who wore his silver hair pulled back in a neat little pigtail, entered the room waving an X-ray exposure around as if it were a Polaroid he was trying to hurry along. His name tag said FULDHEIM FULDHEIM, and he was, Trish noted, wearing clogs.

"Well, Mr. Richards," he said. "We've been involved in some kind of altercation, have we?"

"Looks like it," Golden said. In his light blue smock he was laid out on the white expanse of the bed like a halibut on ice. A perfect tonsure had been shaved in the crown of his head, his wound sewn up with thirteen sutures and swabbed with Betadine. His nose looked a half-size too big and had gone a dusky purple around the bridge. Along with the eclectic collection of facial welts and bruises he now wore several bandages of various shapes and sizes.

"And you've already spoken to law enforcement, I take it?"

"That comes next, I think," Golden said.

"Your injuries are mostly superficial, Mr. Richards, except one." He held up the X-ray to the overhead light and Trish and Nola gathered in to look. Dr. Fuldheim traced something with his finger, but all Trish could make out was a ghostly opalescence. "That dark line? That's a hairline fracture to the skull. You were struck with something, Mr. Richards? Some blunt object?"

"A shovel?" said Golden.

"A shovel," said Dr. Fuldheim.

"Or an axe handle. Could've been any number of things."

The doctor made a sour face and gave his pigtail a tug as if to confirm it was still attached to his head. "Whatever it was, you are now the proud owner of a grade-three concussion, which will entail your taking it easy for the next while. We'll keep you here overnight for observation. You're also dehydrated, possibly malnourished, with a couple of cracked ribs, and the ER nurse noted that you have some kind of burn on your left side. May I take a peek?"

Golden lifted his arm and the doctor spread open the gap in the smock to reveal a shiny raised welt a few inches above the hip.

"Dare I ask where this came from?"

"A cattle prod?" Golden said.

"A cattle prod," said the doctor.

"Give a pretty good jolt, those things."

"A cattle prod," the doctor repeated.

"I think that's what it was."

The doctor cast an accusatory glance toward Nola and Trish. "And you're family, I take it?"

"We're his wives wives," Nola said, showing her teeth. "Half of 'em, anyway. The other two are upstairs."

The doctor forced a thin smile, looked at Golden and back to the two women, to see if there was a joke he was missing out on. Clearly, he was dealing with crazy people.

When Sheriff Fontana arrived, Dr. Fuldheim seized the opportunity to escape into the hall. What relief Trish felt at the sight of the sheriff, who brought with him an Aqua Velvascented familiarity to this surreal morning, the calming influence of a man in uniform, one who made daily scrutiny of life's strife and ugliness while managing to hold a steady gaze. If there was anyone who could sort this out, tell them exactly what was happening and why, he could.

"Ladies," he said, removing his hat and placing one hand gently inside its crown. His thin face bore all the pits and facets of a roughly napped arrowhead. "I'll need a few minutes alone with your husband. After that, you can feel free to do with him as you see fit."

They went out in the hall to wait, and the only thing Nola had to say was, "A cattle prod cattle prod?"

Beverly had come down from Rusty's room to wait with them when the sheriff emerged. He inquired about Rusty's condition and Beverly told him that nothing had changed, that they could only wait to see which way he would go. The sheriff nodded, turned his watery eyes on each one of them in turn. He explained that Golden wanted to talk to them one at a time, alone.

"It's not my place to say so," he said, before making his way to the exit, "but I hope you'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think there's a good chance he's gonna need it."

One by one they went in to him. Later, they would compare notes, and find that what he told each of them was remarkably consistent. First, he made his confessions: the p.u.s.s.yCat Manor, Ted Leo, Huila, all of it. He explained that, though he had not technically committed adultery and thereby broken his sacred marital covenants, he had carried on a secret relationship with a woman who was not his wife. He had lied, he had coveted, he had l.u.s.ted in his heart. He had betrayed his wives and his children and, maybe worst of all, had put them in harm's way; what had happened to Rusty, he believed, was a result of the selfish and shortsighted choices he had made.

He would understand if they left him, he told each of them, he deserved no less. If they did leave, he would do everything he could to support each wife and her children until she found a better situation. And then he told them how sorry he was. The sorrys sorrys, when they started, fairly boiled out of him. He had held up well, if a little stiffly, under the stress of open confession, but when it came to contrition, it was as if he were letting down his defenses and getting comfortable in the presence of an old and beloved friend; he let the sorrys sorrys fly. He was sorry for his complacency, his chronic boneheadedness, his propensity for worry and gloom. He apologized for his abdications of duty and authority, his bland and deferential ways, his flaws of character and lapses in judgment too many and comically varied to name. He was ashamed of his financial failings and romantic shortcomings, his jags and silences, sorry for all the lost and forgotten details, the sorrows gone unattended, for his willingness to concede everything and anything for one blessed moment's peace. But mostly he was sorry, so sorry, for Glory, for losing her and, once she was gone, for not being able to let her go; for Jack, for not properly mourning him; and for Rusty-here his voice faltered, and a look of sharp and crippling pain flashed across his face-for the boy he had never really gotten to know, and never would. fly. He was sorry for his complacency, his chronic boneheadedness, his propensity for worry and gloom. He apologized for his abdications of duty and authority, his bland and deferential ways, his flaws of character and lapses in judgment too many and comically varied to name. He was ashamed of his financial failings and romantic shortcomings, his jags and silences, sorry for all the lost and forgotten details, the sorrows gone unattended, for his willingness to concede everything and anything for one blessed moment's peace. But mostly he was sorry, so sorry, for Glory, for losing her and, once she was gone, for not being able to let her go; for Jack, for not properly mourning him; and for Rusty-here his voice faltered, and a look of sharp and crippling pain flashed across his face-for the boy he had never really gotten to know, and never would.

He gritted his teeth, shook his head. He was sorry, above all else, for how very sorry he was, sorry enough that he would do everything he could not to be sorry for anything ever again.

When he was finished he looked at Trish and waited. As was customary, she had been the last to take her turn, which meant he had given a version of this address four times now, and though he looked depleted by the effort, pale and shrunken on the white expanse of hospital linen, there was a flat resolve in his eyes she had never seen before; he held her stare and did not look away. Whether this was merely a symptom of his concussion or something more lasting was hard to say.

Outside, it was a bright morning, the sky a high flawless blue, but here, within the circ.u.mference of the pleated privacy curtain, they were caught in a pocket of dim air that smelled of floor wax. He kept quiet, waiting, the bruises around his eyes dark as seawater. Clearly, he wanted a reaction or a response, something, but she had only one question: Who was this person she had married? This man who courted strange women and built brothels in secret and went out to get himself roughed up by the shady elements of the world only to be back in time for breakfast?

They gazed in speculation at each other, holding the stare until Trish couldn't stand it any longer. "And what's her name?"

"Who?"

"This girlfriend of yours." Such a petty thing to say under the circ.u.mstances, but in her shock she couldn't decide if the question came out of anger or spite or simple, plain old curiosity.

"Huila," he said.

"Huila." She nodded, thinking, How could you How could you not not fall for a woman with such a name? fall for a woman with such a name?

"And she's beautiful?"

Golden nodded. "No," he said.

"And you love her?"

This got him, finally; he looked away, down at the sc.r.a.ped knuckles of his hands, turning them over in his lap as if he'd never seen them before. Much more quickly than she would have expected, he said, "I don't know. I guess I do, or did. But that doesn't mean I've ever loved you any less."

At this, she could only smile; he couldn't have given her a more perfect, watertight answer. Because this, after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no finite commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity-even the confused and cheating heart of the man in front of her, even the paltry thing now clenched and faltering inside her own chest-could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of G.o.d itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of mult.i.tudes without end.

JUST A MIXED-UP BOY The days that followed were an exercise in controlled chaos; the wives circulated from Las Vegas to Virgin and back again, trying to keep the houses running, the children washed and fed and on top of their schoolwork, while in the meantime shuttling them back and forth to Las Vegas, in groups of threes and fours, so they could have the chance to visit their brother while he still lived. The doctors, and there seemed to be more of them than anyone could keep track of, agreed on one basic point: Rusty could go at any time. Though they had been able to stop most of the bleeding, and the swelling was under control, the metal fragments still embedded in his brain had done too much damage already and threatened to do more. One of them could drift or shift, causing a new hemmorhage, damaging a part of the brain that controlled a vital function or inducing a catastrophic stroke. As one doctor-a tall, craggy sort who prided himself on his western-style plainspokenness-had explained to Trish: they could do further surgery now, which would almost certainly end the boy's life or leave him in a permanent vegetative state, or they could wait for the end to come in its own good time.

Of the wives, only Rose stayed in Las Vegas for the long haul, unwilling to leave her son's bedside except to use the bathroom and occasionally take a quick meal in the cafeteria; if her child was going to pa.s.s on, she intended to be there to see him off. The worry that the shock of this tragedy might push her, once and for all, over the slippery edge of her sanity had quickly vanished; if anything, the opposite had happened. Within hours of arriving at the hospital a bit of color returned to her cheeks, a clarity to her eyes. She asked the doctors about EKG readouts, kept an eye on the heart monitor and IV, and in her quiet way quizzed the nurses over antibiotics and morphine dosages. It turned out that at the age of nineteen she had defied her parents by going off to a nursing school in Colorado, where she spent two years before coming back to Utah to attend to her ailing mother, who refused to see a doctor or set foot in a hospital, who would put her fate in no hands but G.o.d's. By the time her mother died-of a liver condition that could have been easily treated with medication-Rose had lost her scholarship and burned through most of her meager savings. As if it had been prearranged by those mysterious and unpredictable hands of the Almighty, she ended up, just like her sisters and her mother and her mother's mother before her, a woman of the Principle, a plural wife.

Rose was not the only one who seemed to have been fundamentally altered by the events of the past few days; what to make of Beverly, sitting in the waiting room with a lost, almost bovine cast to her eyes, some sternness in her broken, watching One Life to Live One Life to Live in the company of a large Filipino family? Or of Golden, who came and went with his fearfully puffy face and racc.o.o.n mask, the cords of his neck pulled tight with anger or irritation, slamming doors and making gruff noises like a shambling revenant who had left his old mild and deferential self behind? in the company of a large Filipino family? Or of Golden, who came and went with his fearfully puffy face and racc.o.o.n mask, the cords of his neck pulled tight with anger or irritation, slamming doors and making gruff noises like a shambling revenant who had left his old mild and deferential self behind?

No, very little made sense anymore. On her way back to the hospital from Virgin Trish had stopped off at a used book store to pick up a few Harlequins for Rose, thinking she could use a little distraction, something to lose herself in for a few hours. She left the stack of books on the bedside table, hoping it wouldn't bother Rose that Trish knew her badly kept secret, and when she came back she found Rose on one side of Rusty's bed and Beverly on the other, both so absorbed in their books-No Place for a Lady and and The Bride Wore Spurs The Bride Wore Spurs, respectively-that neither could be bothered to look up when Trish entered the room.

Through all of this only Nola seemed to have managed to keep a grip on herself. She gave back rubs and pep talks to children and adults alike, handed out loose change for the vending machine and reminded them all, with her bursts of high-octane chatter and her ability to cry and laugh with equal vigor, that while all the moping and mournful whispering was understandable, it sure as heck wasn't doing anybody any good.

It was Nola who called Trish into Golden's room the morning after he had been admitted. With the encouragement of some pain medication, he had slept through the rest of the day and the following night. Once up, he groaned and stumbled around half blind like a bear just out of his winter den. There was a tiny nurse shouting at him to lie back down, he could not leave without being given clearance by a doctor, and Nola was doing her best to direct him back to his bed, but he was having none of it, crackling loudly in his paper smock and tangling himself in the IV tube, letting it be known that he wanted to be left alone. He wanted to go see his son. He wanted to know where his pants were.

Even when Sheriff Fontana arrived carrying a canvas knapsack, Golden did not calm down. He ripped the IV needle out of his hand and complained to the sheriff that someone had absconded with his shoes. The sight of her husband shocked Trish; in his severely undersized gown, with his ripening face and pathetically pale and mottled limbs, he looked like he had aged twenty years and lost as many pounds.

"Maybe you'd like to rest easy for a minute," the sheriff suggested. "I've come to talk to you about your boy."

Immediately Golden quit agitating. He slumped back onto the bed and waited for the news.

Sheriff Fontana, creaking like an old wooden bridge, explained that their search of Old House and the grounds of the Spooner place had turned up a few things. He opened his sack and displayed the items they'd found hidden in the closet of the boy's bedroom: three battered homemade notebooks, stapled together from stacks of cheap composition paper, a spool of fuse cord, several canisters of black powders-a couple of them nearly empty-a Luden's tin full of magnetized iron filings, a few comic books, a magazine called Ukrainian Lovelies Ukrainian Lovelies, a partially gnawed Bit-O-Honey, some loose rocks and rusty nails, a paperback copy of Improvised Explosive and Incendiary Devices for the Guerrilla Fighter Improvised Explosive and Incendiary Devices for the Guerrilla Fighter, and a few items that had gone missing from the various houses in the last couple of months: a small quartzite Mayan figure from Trish's mantel, one of Rose's embroidered pillowcases, a silver serving spoon that had once belonged to Beverly's grandmother, and several bras of various colors and sizes.

"Bit of a pack rat, this one," said the sheriff dryly. "Among a whole lot of other things, what you're looking at is the ingredients for a pretty serious firecracker and pointers on how to build it."

Golden gave one of the canisters an idle shake. "He did this...himself?"

The sheriff nodded. "Looks like it. You read those notebooks, it comes pretty clear. What we got here, I think, is just a mixed-up boy wanting a little attention." Golden rifled through one of the notebooks, scanning page after scribble-filled page. Later, Trish would read every word of them herself, something spiking through her chest at seeing her own name written so often and fondly in the boy's fierce hand, wondering at the level of detail and invention, the spectacularly long and angry lists, the crude but loving doodles of naked eyeb.a.l.l.s and swirling explosions and daggers dribbling blood, the plots and schemes of such impressive unlikelihood they revealed a kind of brave and dogged faith. Stung by guilt, she would remember the sheriff's words-just a mixed-up boy wanting a little attention-and she would realize how culpable all of them were, the whole family, how they had stood by, doing nothing, while Rusty slid away into the abyss. But what would stay with her for a long time to come was the fallen look on Golden's face as he read, the way his eyes lost focus and his cheeks sagged with the unbearable weight of his failure to preserve and protect his son from his own failures as a father, from failures of genetics and circ.u.mstance and fate, from failure itself.

"What we'll need now," said the sheriff quietly, "is to figure out where he got his hands on these things. You don't have"-he tipped back one of the canisters-"red magnesium flash powder just laying around the house, do you?"

Golden did not respond, still lost in the notebooks, but Trish and Nola shook their heads.

"I'm pretty sure I know most of the names in here-family members, kids from school-but there's one that shows up a few times that I don't recognize. Any of you know somebody named June?" Trish flushed at the sound of the name, at the recognition that June was almost certainly the source of the bomb-making ingredients, but when the sheriff fixed her with his watery gaze she found herself shaking her head again.

After the sheriff left, she counted to twenty, excused herself, and ran down the hall, catching him just as he'd donned his felt hat and was pushing through the gla.s.s doors into the unreasonably bright Las Vegas morning.

"I think-" she began, but her throat closed on her and suddenly she wasn't sure what she'd come to say; it occurred to her that she no longer had a clear impression of who she was or where her allegiances lay.

The sheriff removed his hat again, tucked it gently against his belly as if it were a sleeping kitten. "Anything you could tell me, that'd be fine. But don't go rushing to say something you'll regret."

To her, this didn't sound at all like the kind of thing an officer of the law should say to a potential witness or informant, but, strangely, it was what gave her the encouragement she needed to tell him what she knew. She told him about June: where he lived, about his relationship with Rusty, and that she was certain he had not knowingly supplied the boy with explosives.

"He's a good man," she said.

"Course he is," said the sheriff, glancing up at the sun. "I don't doubt it a bit."

A NEW PLAN Rusty lasted longer than anyone expected. The doctors had been pessimistic about his chances to survive the night, much less a week, and after ten days they decided he'd stabilized well enough to be transferred to St. George, where the family could carry on their vigil with much less in the way of inconvenience.

It was the day before this relocation that Golden called a special family meeting at Big House. n.o.body could remember a special family meeting being called for a very long time; the family gathered twice a week for the Summit of the Wives and for Family Home Evening-to attempt to muster them all into one place at any other time or for any other reason would have been an act of senseless self-punishment. But this was a new dispensation in the Richards family; everyone was acting weirdly, stepping cautiously and speaking in altered voices, every day arriving empty and strange like an alien craft lowering itself out of the sky.

They a.s.sembled in the family room, the little ones, as had become their habit, standing on the hearth or scaling the rock fireplace a few feet so they could get a better view. The only ones not in attendance were Rusty, of course, and Rose, who was still in Las Vegas arranging the final details of Rusty's transfer to St. George. Golden stood at the margin where the carpet met the linoleum of the kitchen, looking over the room and running through the list of names to make sure everyone was present; you could see his lips move as he whispered each name, could almost hear the singsong tune echo inside his head. And then he went quiet, as if waiting for the chatter to die down, though no one had made a peep.

Most of his bruises had faded by now, but he still bore the drained and slightly puckered look of a corpse. His pants did not seem to fit him anymore-his belt bunched his pants at the waist-and his normally expressive mouth, with its large teeth always ready to reveal themselves, had fallen into a straight, grim line. He had spent the last week either sitting at Rusty's bedside or speaking on the phone and going on long, mysterious errands that no one dared ask him about.

Today, in the family room filled with expectant bodies, he did not hem and haw and purse his lips, as was his usual practice when speaking in front of a group. He simply nodded once and gave them the news.

He had a new plan for the family, he said, a plan he had already put in motion, and he thought it was about time they all heard about it. Earlier that day he had finalized the sale of Old House to that nice little s...o...b..rd couple from Canada who had been offering to buy it for years with the idea of turning it into a bed and breakfast. The proceeds of the sale would be used pay off his business debts-to save Big Indian Construction from bankruptcy, essentially-but mostly to fund the large-scale renovation of Big House, which would begin as soon as possible. The plan was to build a three-thousand-square-foot addition onto the south portion of Big House, making it large enough to fit them all under its single roof. He'd done a lot of praying and soul-searching since Rusty's accident, and decided that if they were going to be a family, a real family who loved and watched out for each other, this was the only way.

He cleared his throat. He wondered if there were any questions.

Everyone, of course, was already looking at Beverly, who had been making the plans and decisions around here before most of them were born, who was the source and matrix of every policy and agenda that had ever remotely affected the family's interests. On some level even the little ones understood this, but it was immediately clear to them, as it was to everyone else, that this new plan, and all that it implied, came as a surprise to Beverly. Just like the rest of them she sat speechless, looking around as if hoping for some kind of clarification, wearing an expression of puzzled shock.

"You mean," said Naomi, her voice rising with dismay, "we're going to be living together together?" Golden nodded.

"All of us?" cried Jame-o. of us?" cried Jame-o.

"All," said Golden.

If, as it appeared, Golden had a.s.sumed this announcement would be greeted with a sober acceptance befitting the situation, he was sorely mistaken. A squall of murmuring and moaning raced through the room, and then some of the kids began to cry outright. Only the Three Stooges, who jostled and gave each other five, seemed at all pleased.

"Mom!" wailed Sybil, the tears already starting. "Say something!"

For once, Nola was caught speechless. She shrugged, an uncertain grin wavering on her face. Finally, she said, "And we're all supposed to live where where while this renovation is taking place?" while this renovation is taking place?"

"Right here, in Big House," Golden said. "It's going to be cramped, and we're going to have to be patient with each other, work around each other, but it'll be good for us, it's exactly what we need."

Trish, who was standing behind the couch and trying to console a weeping and inconsolable Josephine, made eye contact with Nola, who then shot a look at Beverly. This was entirely new territory for the sister-wives; they had never, as a group, been taken off guard in quite this way; if they were going to protest or make some kind of last-ditch play, it would have to happen now. But they were caught, Trish realized, in a bind of their own making. Long before she had ever come onto the scene, the wives had been pleading with Golden to take control, to embrace his G.o.d-given patriarchal authority, to please, for the love of heaven and earth, make a decision decision once in a while. And now that he had gone and embraced his G.o.d-given patriarchal authority in the fullest and most audacious of ways, what was there for any of them to say? once in a while. And now that he had gone and embraced his G.o.d-given patriarchal authority in the fullest and most audacious of ways, what was there for any of them to say?

And what's more, this new situation might actually work to their benefit, Trish decided, at least for some. Despite the grand bother of it all, the inevitable squabbles and turf wars, the further loss of privacy and individual ident.i.ty, Nola and Rose would almost surely come out ahead; according to the indisputable bylaws of domestic provenance, Big House was their their house, house, their their domain-no matter how many additions were made to it or who came to live under its roof-and if the house was the body and the family its soul, then Nola and Rose would be exercising much more control over the body-and therefore the soul-of the Richards clan in the years to come. domain-no matter how many additions were made to it or who came to live under its roof-and if the house was the body and the family its soul, then Nola and Rose would be exercising much more control over the body-and therefore the soul-of the Richards clan in the years to come.

And if she was willing to look at it in the right way, Trish, too, would be gaining something: a place at the bright center of things to which she could return from the exile of her loneliness and grief, where Faye could learn to be a friend, a sister, maybe even a normal little girl.

Only Beverly would be losing on every account. Not only would her beloved Old House be taken from her, but many of the perks and privileges she enjoyed as the first and only lawfully wedded wife; in a single stroke she would become a refugee, stripped of all of the ent.i.tlements of home, forced to start over in a strange and hostile land. So did she protest, did she fume, did she bring to bear all her legendary powers of persuasion and resolve? Hardly. She sat stiff-backed and mute in her chair like a defendant under the echo of a guilty verdict, hands folded meekly in her lap, as if this were the outcome she expected all along.

Wisely, Golden did not allow more time for his audience to formulate additional questions or commentary; he excused them all, and they scattered into the warm afternoon with wailing and gnashing of teeth, to face the prospect of an uncertain and very crowded future.

ONLY THE BODY Another night, and she couldn't find her way into sleep. Strangely, her insomnia had nothing to do with the fact that she was sleeping on an army surplus cot that squeaked and groaned pitifully every time she moved; or that her new quarters-Big House's utility closet-smelled of bleach and old mop and something vaguely mineral and sharp that may have been urine; or that at this moment Cooter, who was used to having the room to himself, was now tucked snugly into her ribs, occasionally stretching to dig his hind paws into her sensitive flesh, snoring and sighing his way through a heedless sleep that made her grind her molars with jealousy. No, what was keeping her awake was her own mind-spinning with the possibilities and decisions of her new situation-and her own body, which felt like a piece of fruit left too long on the vine, swollen with the carefully h.o.a.rded juices of a hundred sunny days, wanting only to be plucked and eaten, ready to burst.

When, in a fit of insomniac exasperation, she threw off her blanket and planted her feet on the cold concrete floor, Cooter groaned and rolled onto his back, making little growls of annoyance at having his slumber disturbed.

"Keep it to yourself," she advised, and not for the first time wondered how, after everything, all the strife and sorrow of her life, she had been given this reward: bunking in a utility closet with a flatulent dog.

As had become her nightly habit, she padded out into the hall to make her tour of the house. She was met first, as always, by the strange sight of her husband, stretched out on the Barge at the edge of the dim dining room. In the chaos and rancor that accompanied the ma.s.s relocation to Big House, n.o.body had given much thought to where Golden would sleep. That first night he had the good sense to spend in the cab of his pickup, where he wouldn't have to listen to the squabbling and backbiting and on-the-hour outbursts caused by twenty-six irritable children crammed into a s.p.a.ce barely adequate for half as many. The second night, after coming home to find the house in a free-for-all, the children madly circling the racetrack, trying to burn off the stress of their new circ.u.mstance, he stepped into the flow of bodies and shouted for them to stop. He decreed that from that day hence there would be no more running on the racetrack. "No more!" he croaked, and because he had spent the entire day long bargaining with subs and crew bosses and haggling with the boneheads at the county offices, calling in every favor he could think of to get this renovation up and running as soon as possible, his voice had gone hoa.r.s.e, with a raspy ba.s.s undertone. He sounded, Nola commented, a little like Johnny Cash. "No more!" he boomed again in his Johnny Cash voice, and the children, frozen in their tracks, stared at him in wonder.

He gave an order for the older boys to retrieve the Barge from where it had been stashed behind the toolshed after the Todd Freebone episode. He had them place it directly in the entryway to the dining room-where it would serve to block racetrack traffic as well as make the pa.s.sage from family room to dining room one giant inconvenience-and, after a spartan dinner of cube steak and cold peas, wrapped himself in a scratchy, brightly striped Mexican blanket and fell immediately unconscious in its lumpy embrace.

The ploy worked for a couple of days until the racetrack's primeval call proved too strong to resist. By Friday of that week the children were already back to their laps, charged with the pure joy that comes with performing a strictly forbidden act in the company of others, bounding off the Barge's cushions and arms, doing the Flying Dutchman and the Fosbury Flop, the little ones swarming over the back of it like lemmings off a cliff.

Their father would never again make so much as a peep about the racetrack. Some mornings, if he did not vacate the Barge quickly enough, the early risers, usually the young ones in footsie pajamas, would clamber over him as if he were nothing but a part of the furniture, and with an expression of pained tolerance he would submit himself to the abuse of their sharp knees or badly groomed toenails as they hauled themselves up by an ear or a handful of belly fat, occasionally using his big head for a stepping-stone.

Upstairs, she walked the long hall, keyed in to the house's audible frequencies, the collective drone of sleeping bodies, the sighing vents, the rasp of skin against sheets. On Golden's orders the children had been divided randomly among the rooms, separated only by gender. Amazingly, after those first few difficult nights, things had calmed down considerably. Here was Alvin sharing a bed with both Herschel and Clifton, here were sworn enemies Novella and Josephine wrapped in the same blanket, the lion lying down with the lamb if Trish had ever seen it. And here was Faye, one arm thrown over the hip of her sister and new best friend Fig Newton; when Trish had given Faye the option of sleeping with her in the utility closet or braving one of the upstairs bedrooms, she had chosen the latter without so much as an attempt at sparing her mother's feelings.

Back in the closet, Trish fished the envelope from the secret pocket inside her suitcase, and for the thirtieth or fortieth time read the letter it contained.

Dear Trish,If only I was brave enough to talk to you in person, but you should know that writing this letter is taking every sc.r.a.p of courage I have. I can't tell you how terrible I feel about Rusty. Of course I am largely responsible for what happened and while I would do anything, give anything to make it right, all I can offer is my deepest regret and sorrow.I wanted to tell you that I've decided to move away. To where, I haven't really decided yet, but I can't stay here. (Even though the sheriff's office has cleared me of wrongdoing, it won't stop the people here from blaming me, and rightfully so. You've probably seen the story in the paper. Whenever I go out now, people point and stare.) So I'll be leaving in the next couple of weeks after I sell my equipment. Which is why I'm writing. I'd like to invite you to come with me. I don't know where I'm going or what I'm going to do, and I know how absurd it must sound, especially under the circ.u.mstances. You already have a life and a family and you're probably laughing as you read this, but I can't get over the idea that I may never see or speak to you again. So I decided, for once in my life, to take a chance. Would it sound like something out of your favorite romance novel if I said that I would do everything I could to give you the happiness you deserve? Yes, it probably would. So I will stop before I embarra.s.s myself anymore. I won't even pretend to hope that you'll consider my offer, so I'll just say that the hours I've spent with you are the most precious and happy of my life.Your friend always, June One week ago today that she had found the letter stuck in her screen door. She had pulled up in front of the duplex, intending, after moving her possessions to Big House, to make one final sweep of the place. She had been thinking about how the same drive she had taken hundreds, maybe thousands of times, with the same evening sun dipping behind the same broken mountains, could turn, in the wake of catastrophe, beautifully strange: frogs calling out from some wet ditch, the scent of cooling tar, the violet light of dusk caught in the bowl of a lost hubcap, a troupe of quail sprinting single-file down the middle of the road.

She was also thinking-marveling, really-about how her life could be so easily picked up and moved, how the collected sum of her shrinking existence could fit into a Volkswagen Rabbit with room to spare.

June's pickup had been pulling away just as she arrived. Though she waved, he seemed to turn his head away and hide under the bill of his cap. She'd thought about it many times, but had not found the right time to visit him since the accident; she figured he might have difficulty understanding why she'd sold him out to the sheriff. And then she read the letter, standing in the empty living room of a shabby house for which she was already nostalgic, and hadn't slept more than an hour at a time since.

It helped to lose herself in the new routine of her days: a morning and afternoon of babysitting and domestic duty at Big House, her four-hour shift at the hospital, and then back to her utility closet, where she would spend another restless night. Her evenings at the hospital she liked the most: the quiet order of the place, the squeak and clatter of gurneys and carts, the sweet chemical smell of X-ray exposures, the rustle of sensible nurse hosiery, the predictable disturbances quickly and efficiently resolved. They'd installed Rusty at the far end of the old ward-which in a bygone era had served as the region's only cotton mill-in a room with high ceilings hung with coils of painted ductwork, a single narrow window, and one wall still showing some of its original hand-thrown brick.

Rose had arranged it so that along with her daily eight-to-four shift, Beverly, Nola, Trish and even Golden would each be responsible for a four-hour block and Rusty would be attended to around the clock. With the blessing of the nursing staff, many of whom had family ties to the Virgin polygamists, she showed them how to keep his tongue and lips moist with ice chips, how to change his diapers and give him his sponge baths and swab his gums with lemon glycerine, the proper way to work his muscles and joints to stave off atrophy, the whole while being sure to speak or sing to him, to hold his hand, as if he could be tied down, by the cords of voice and touch alone, to the world of the living.

It was quite something to watch Rose care for her son. She worked with a focus Trish had never seen her bring to anything else in her life; to concentrate on one child to the exclusion of everything else, this she could do. Her eyes shone, her neck rigid in constant surveillance, her movements deliberate and sure even as she lifted bandages to check for infection, the body of the boy beneath her administering hands so pale and flawless it seemed to give off a light of its own.

She did not seem to dwell for a second on the idea, as Trish was inclined to, that Rusty had only a minimal chance of survival, that even if he managed to hold on for weeks or months, he would never again be the boy they had known.

Though Rose gave him a sponge bath every morning, Trish made it a point to do the same at the beginning of her shift; there was not much they could do for him now, she decided, except keep him company and keep him clean. Nurse Pickless, a wry, thin-as-a-nail ranch widow who had worked battlefield hospitals in Italy and Korea, was there to supervise her first attempt. Trish prepared the soapy solution in a washbasin, removed Rusty's gown, and by the time she had his diaper undone was finding it hard to ignore the rigid and insistent erection contained therein. "Well, howdy-do," said Nurse Pickless to the erection. And then, to Trish, "Usually it'll take quite a bit of advanced sponging to get one worked up as this. The male of the species, my laws. Once in a while we'll get a comatose ninety-year-old whose body seems to think it's eighteen again, all pumped and primed for a Sat.u.r.day night."