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Veronica slipped once just before she got to the bushes, and sprawled in the creek for a minute, so's she was muddy and wet up to the armpits when she got her footing and stood back up. Me, I was wet from splashing along behind her. The two of us, dripping wet and steamy mad, crashed through into the bushes where Norman was. Ordinarily I wouldn't take on Norman Cox—he's in sixth grade same as me and Veronica, but he's a lot bigger, he wears shoes the size of a full-grown man—but seeing poor old Gunther, who never hurt nobody, whimpering like that. Well, that gave both of us the strength and the nerve to go charging into the bushes with our fists flying.

  Norman, he was laughing at first, until we landed a couple of punches and he could tell how mad we was. Then he got all confused. I think he was actually reluctant to punch at girls. Zinging paper clips and stones at girls and babies, that was one thing. But punching with his fists was something else, and he got confused.

  All of a sudden, Norman, he yelled, "Jeezus, lookit that!" and he stood right up out of the bushes and pointed down to where Gunther was huddled on the rock.

  "You just wait till your daddy hears that you yelled 'Jeezus', Norman Cox," I told him, but I turned and looked where he pointed.

  It still makes my heart near stop to tell of what we seen. I think back on it, and I can see it in my mind's eye still, with everything moving sort of slow motion the way they do it sometimes on television or in the movies. I see it like that, slow and rolling, all the colors bright and real, but no sound. There must have been sound. Gunther must have yelled. But when I think back on it, I don't hear no sound.

  What I see is this: Veronica and Gunther's mother, moving slow through the water of the creek, with her skirt hiked up so's her legs was all exposed, and even her underthings as well. And her hair was down, hanging loose. I never even knew Mrs. Bigelow had that long, hanging-down hair. Whenever I seen her up till then, it was always tied up tight in a knot. But here she was, moving toward Gunther, who was staring at her, all frightened-like. I suppose he'd never seen that hanging-down hair before, neither.

  Gunther's face was bloody, still, though I think it wasn't running down no more, just dried there sticky on his cheek. And when his mother reached him there—this is the part that makes my heart near to stopping when I think back on it—she picked him up and held him the way you would hold a tiny baby, the way she never held Gunther when he was a tiny baby. And she put her face down close to his and we could see that she was licking the blood from his cheek. We could see her tongue, and Gunther's scared look. And she did, she licked at the blood the way a mother cat or dog would do for its baby.

  Then—I can see this part still, too, slow and no sound—right there, standing in the creek, she pulled open the buttons on the top of her dress. I wanted to turn my eyes away. I was shamed on behalf of Veronica and I wanted to look away, but I was scared, so scared for Gunther, there in the arms of this woman who looked like a wild stranger with her hair all falling around her shoulders, and with one breast right there exposed, and Gunther grabbed up in her arms.

  She tried to make him nurse. He squirmed and tried to wrest hisself away, but she grabbed and twisted at his face, where she had licked the blood, and she tried to make him nurse.

  Now I can hear the sound, thinking back. Now she took Gunther and—still with her dress tore open—she put him in the water. Put his head under and all. Veronica and I both started to run back, splashing and slipping through the creek. We tried to get back to pull Gunther out, to pull his head up so he could breathe. We wasn't that far away. And so we ran toward them, and we could hear what she was calling out again and again while she held him down there in the water.

  "I baptize thee!" she was crying out. "I baptize thee! Who believes in me shall not perish!"

  Dragonflies was still darting all around, as if September hadn't changed none. But we could see the splashing where Gunther was fighting her, trying to get loose, trying to breathe. And Veronica and me could have got there and pulled him out. But Sweet-Ho got there first. Sweet-Ho came tearing down that bank from the vacant lot faster than anything I ever seen. She didn't even take off her shoes, just tore into that creek fully clothed and grabbed Gunther up from where he was.

  It had all happened so fast that Gunther was okay, coughing all choky-like but breathing and everything. He probably hadn't been under the water for more than half a minute. As soon as he got his breath back he started to screech like I never heard Gunther screech, not even when he was a baby. Sweet-Ho held him against her for comfort. Then she handed him to Veronica because their mother needed comfort, too.

  Mrs. Bigelow was standing there in the creek with her skirt hiked up and her bosom all exposed, and she was smiling same as always. Smiling and smiling and smiling, with that empty look in her eyes. Sweet-Ho, talking real quiet and calm, buttoned up her dress all gentle-like and took her hand. She led her up the creek bank and through the field toward home. Veronica and I followed behind with Gunther. He had quieted his screeching and was just shuddering and sobbing into Veronica's shoulder.

  It was like we was a family, walking. It was like Sweet-Ho was mother to us all, firm and loving and holding the hand of the most troublesome child. The rest of us stumbled along, wet and scared, through the high grass, and not one of us knowing what had happened or what it meant.

  We passed Millie Bellows's house, and I could see her there on her porch, peering over the railing at us, all curious-like, nosy, and evil-tempered, but she held her tongue and didn't call nothing for a change. She watched is all.

  Off in the distance I could see Norman Cox, too, as we passed his house. He was standing on the steps watching, and for once he didn't call out nothing either. He had a scared look, same as us. Pelting pebbles and calling names, that was nothing special. But now it was as if there was something new in all our lives, and it might bring real harm.

  5

  Old Gunther, he wasn't any the worse for wear after having such a mortifying experience, being pelted with stones and licked and drowned and baptized all in the space of five minutes. But I suppose when you're only four years old nothing surprises you much.

  Mrs. Bigelow went off to the hospital again, the very same day that she baptized Gunther in the creek. Sweet-Ho took her home and fussed over her, humming comforting songs and such, smoothing her hair, taking off her wet clothes, and then when Mrs. Bigelow went to sleep, finally, still smiling like she always done, Sweet-Ho called Veronica's father at his office, where he usually went on Saturdays. She told him in a solemn voice to get hisself straight home because there was trouble.

  So he came home, and together he and Sweet-Ho helped Mrs. Bigelow into one of them gauzy dresses she always liked, and then he took her to the car. Me and Veronica and Gunther stood on the porch and watched. We was still wearing our wet clothes, but the hot sun mostly dried them after a while, until we was all three somewhat mussed and mossy-smelling, and later Sweet-Ho would look at us and wrinkle her nose and tell us to change.

  She didn't wave. We thought she might, from the car—Mrs. Bigelow, I mean—but she kept her head down and didn't look back, so we was all three waving at nothing. The car kicked up some dust and pebbles from the driveway and then it drove away. Sweet-Ho had been watching from the kitchen door, and after they was gone she opened it, and we heard that creaky sound it always made. She looked at us standing there.

  "It wasn't your fault," she said, all gentle-like.

  Gunther wasn't even paying no attention. He was examining the spring on the screen door to figure out what made it squeak. And me, I knew it wasn't my fault. But I could see that Veronica needed to hear that. It was Veronica who looked at Sweet-Ho with questions in her face.

  "I'm sorry," Sweet-Ho said to Veronica. "I'm sorry I didn't realize sooner that she was gone. I was trying to watch her real careful, because I could see that something in her imagination was making her more agitated. But I took my eyes away, thinking she was resting—"

  "I don't know what you mean by agitated. She's
crazy, that's what," Veronica said, looking at the porch floor.

  "Your mama's sick, is all," Sweet-Ho said. "It's a good thing for her to go to the hospital. Maybe they can make her well. We have to hope that, anyhow."

  Veronica nodded her head. "She scared me," she said in a whisper to Sweet-Ho.

  "Come on in, all of you," Sweet-Ho said. That's when she wrinkled her nose, smelling us when we filed past her through the door. "Change out of those ruined clothes so that you smell human, and then come down to the kitchen and I'll give you lemonade."

  "She did, Sweet-Ho," Veronica said, all desperate-like. "She scared me something terrible."

  "I know." Sweet-Ho put her hands on Veronica's shoulders. She had a way of doing that sometimes, which made you feel how strong she was, even though her hands wasn't especially big, any more than the rest of her was. Shoot, I don't think Sweet-Ho ever grew none after she married Ginger Starkey. But she had this strength in her that you could feel when you needed to feel it.

  I took Gunther on upstairs to clean him up and change his clothes, and Veronica stood there for a while with Sweet-Ho, feeling that strength.

  At suppertime Mr. Bigelow came home, just him in the car, and he said that Veronica's mother would stay at the hospital for a while until she was better. We was eating in the Bigelows' kitchen, me and Sweet-Ho and Veronica and Gunther, when he came in, and he sat down at the table with us. Sweet-Ho handed him a plate with some food on it. Mr. Bigelow thanked her and once or twice he picked up a fork and poked at the food, but I noticed he didn't eat none. Sadness makes you lose your appetite, I expect.

  Veronica asked her daddy if I could stay after supper so we could finish working on the family trees. I was surprised because I thought they was already done. We each had them tucked in our notebooks to take to school on Monday. But I didn't say nothing, and Mr. Bigelow said sure, as long as Sweet-Ho didn't mind.

  Then he stopped to think. "You know," he said, "in view of what's happened, I think it might be a good idea if you and Rabble stayed in the guest room tonight, Sweet-Ho. Would you mind?"

  "Nossir," Sweet-Ho said. "I could be right there in case Gunther is wakeful."

  Mr. Bigelow nodded his head. "I'd appreciate it," he said.

  Veronica went with me down to the garage so's I could get my night things and Sweet-Ho's. Walking across the yard I asked her, "Why did you say we had to finish the family trees? I thought they was all done."

  "Yours is finished," Veronica said in an angry voice. "But I'm going to make a new one. I'm not going to have my mother on my new one at all."

  Later, after I had my nightgown on, I went into Veronica's room, down the hall from the guest room where me and Sweet-Ho was to stay. I have to confess that I like Veronica's room, even all frilled up like it is. The bed has one of them roofs on it, all ruffles, and the wallpaper is a whole mess of flowers, pink and white. It's like a movie star's room, if you don't look at the wall where Veronica has taped up dog pictures right on top of the wallpaper.

  Veronica was sitting there cross-legged on her bed, in her blue pajamas. She had her crayons all laying about on the bedspread, and a pack of construction paper spread out. There was a blue sheet of construction paper on a book across her knees, and she was drawing in a whole new set of apples.

  I picked the old one up off the floor where she had thrown it, and looked at the apple that said "Alice Mayhew Bigelow." Veronica didn't look at me. I felt kind of timid, even though Veronica was my closest bosom friend. She was drawing in them new apples with hard, firm lines, but she hadn't put new names in them yet.

  I watched her put in her own name, and then Gunther's, same as before. She looked up, finally.

  "I almost needed to put in 'dec' after Gunther's name," she said. "She almost killed Gunther."

  "She was only baptizing him," I said. "That's the way they do it down at the Baptist church, Veronica, dipping their heads right in under the water. It's not meant to kill, only to save. My grandma was Baptist."

  "Well, my mother's not. My mother's Episcopalian, and at the Episcopal church they only dribble a few drops, nothing near like what she did to Gunther. And don't try to tell me, Parable Starkey, that at the Baptist church they do it with their dress all ripped open indecent."

  "Well, no. Baptists are always buttoned up tight."

  "So, see? She's crazy as can be, and I don't want her apple on my tree." Veronica bit her lip and bent her head and went back to printing names in the apples. She put in her daddy's name: "Philip Bigelow." Then she started in on my cousins, the ones I had loaned her.

  I wandered over to the open window and looked out. It was dark outside, and there was a breeze, so that tree branches were moving. Through the big oak tree I could see one lighted window—the kitchen one—over in Millie Bellows's house, and I supposed that she was in there, puttering about, doing her dishes, grumbling and complaining.

  Closer by, there was lots of windows lighted up at the Coxes' house. Mrs. Cox, she wasn't so bad; maybe she was playing the piano or writing letters or something. Mr. Cox, probably he was reading his Bible, or putting lots of papers together with his billion paper clips. Norman, I couldn't even guess, but I was sure he was up to no good. In school, Norman was always drawing pictures with bombs and tanks and laser guns and such; sometimes, when we was all supposed to be doing silent reading, Mrs. Hindler would walk all casual-like to the back of the room where Norman's desk was. Then she'd swoop down, pick up the paper he'd been drawing on, and hold it up with a look like she was holding something extra-distasteful. And she'd say, "Weaponry again, Mr. Cox?" before she crumpled it and threw it into the wastebasket.

  Looking over at the lighted upstairs windows in their house, I figured maybe Norman was in his room building weaponry for real. If the oak tree wasn't in the way—and maybe when the leaves came off later in the fall, it wouldn't be—he could aim something like a bazooka right into Veronica's window from their house.

  It sent a downright chill through my spine, thinking about getting blasted with a bazooka while standing there all innocent, in my nightgown.

  Gunther cried out suddenly from his room, a sleepy sort of wail, and we heard Sweet-Ho go in to him.

  "Gunther never cried at night," Veronica said in that new, angry voice. "Never since he was a baby, till now."

  She stared at the paper in her lap and suddenly commenced to scribble hard in that one empty apple, the mother apple. She scribbled it all dark green, so hard that a hole came through in the paper.

  Then Veronica started to cry, too. Not a sleepy wailing like Gunther, but a choking, muffled-up crying that made her shake all over and cover her face with her hands. After a minute both Mr. Bigelow and Sweet-Ho heard it and came in to offer comfort. I crept away, off to the guest room, and went to bed, because I didn't know what else to do.

  In the morning, me and Veronica helped Sweet-Ho do 52 the breakfast dishes. Mr. Bigelow, in his bathrobe, sat at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper, and he read to Gunther from the funnies. Gunther was still in his pj's, eating his banana real careful-like so's he wouldn't smear it on the paper.

  "See?" Mr. Bigelow said, pointing to the pictures for Gunther's eyes to follow. "Here Snoopy's walking down the street, wearing his helmet, and look, Gunther, here in the next picture, he says, 'The Red Baron fearlessly maneuvers his craft.'"

  Gunther grinned and reached up with his nonba-nana hand to stroke his daddy's cheek. I watched. I never before saw Mr. Bigelow early in the morning, not shaved yet, and I liked how sweetly Gunther patted his daddy's whiskers.

  There was a knock at the kitchen door, and Sweet-Ho wiped her hands dry and went to open it. There was Mrs. Cox, all dressed for church, with an aquamarine hat perched on her head. She was all color-coordinated as if she was an ad for Sears, with aquamarine shoes, too, and a pink suit with aquamarine trim, and a pink ruffled blouse. Her lipstick was the same shade of pink.

  Me and Veronica and Sweet-Ho was all dressed—not fancy, but d
ressed—and I looked over at Mr. Bigelow in his bathrobe, to see if maybe he was embarrassed. But he just looked up at Mrs. Cox and smiled hello.

  She came in and laid a basket on the table. "I hope I'm not disturbing you so early," she said. "Norman and I are on our way to church—he's out in the car. But I wanted to drop this little casserole off for you, Philip. And to say I'm so sorry for your trouble."

  "Sorry for your trouble" is what folks in Highriver always say when something has gone wrong. It covers just about everything; me and Veronica even said it to Norman when his dog got squashed by the J. C. Penney's truck. You can say it if somebody's septic tank overflows or if they get the flu real bad and miss a niece's wedding in Clarksburg, as happened to Miss Elizabeth Stevenson over on West Stanley Street last spring.

  "Do you have time for coffee, Mrs. Cox?" Sweet-Ho asked. "There's still half a pot hot."

  But she said no. "Thank you, dear. But Norman's being obstreperous, as usual. I have to get him down to Sunday school, and the choir's holding an extra rehearsal before this morning's service. So I mustn't be late. You'll let me know if I can be of help?"

  When she was gone, me and Veronica lifted the foil on the top of the casserole to peer inside and see what it was before Sweet-Ho put it in the refrigerator.

  "Chicken with stuff on it," Veronica announced.

  Sweet-Ho leaned over and looked. "It's that Family Circle recipe she uses," she said. "She always brings this to PTA potlucks. It's pretty good, too. We can have it for dinner."

  "Look!" Veronica said, and she pointed through the kitchen window. "Here comes Millie Bellows!"

  We all looked, and it was true. Millie Bellows, wearing the same old housedress she always wore, hunched over and with her face scrunched into a frown almost as scary as a fist, was inching her way down the road toward the Bigelows' house. She was carrying a plate with a bright red shiny mound on it. The mound was wobbling with each slow step she took.