Billy looked at her steadily. Rebecca found herself afraid of him suddenly, for the first time since the day he had arrived, when a coldness had coursed through her on first seeing him. Now it happened again, only worse. He seemed to be made of ice. All the warmth that had built up in him since he had arrived seemed to have evaporated, leaving a thing frigid and black as space.
Billy turned away from her, and in the silence of the cold, stony room, they finished their work.
Another man came to see Melinda that week. He stayed in her office a long time, arguing with her. The three of them could not hear what was said, only that she was shouting at him, madder than she had ever been, and his shouts were finally drowned out by hers. After he left, quickly, with his coat thrown over his bag and his face red, Melinda stayed in her room with the door shut for the rest of the day and night. For the first time they ate dinner without her in the cold kitchen.
Things went on as usual. The winter was not a hard one, but it seemed harder without John there to help. Marsh caught a cold, which turned to pneumonia because he stayed out too long, chopping wood. He had to be taken to the hospital but was back in two weeks, stronger than ever. There were snowball fights, and sledding, and one night when it warmed to the freezing mark in January, they built a bonfire and danced around it, staying out most of the night. Melinda's eyes glistened. She was dressed in her thickest coat, with only her red face showing. She wore huge red mittens. The mittens, and the warmth of the fire, had driven the hurt from her hands. A great ball of a moon rose in the deep black sky over the trees, outlining the three children and the old woman like pale ghosts. She told them what it had been like when she was a girl.
"Things were not too different than they are tonight," she said. "I remember doing this all the time. My brother George and I were always out at night, all year long. We had a cadre of friends that were always there and always had something to do. We spent a lot of time in graveyards on nights like this." She paused to blow warm air into her mittens. "We told spook stories, and played hide-and-seek behind the gravestones. Nobody was afraid of death then," she said. Her voice trailed off for the briefest moment and she looked at the moon. She laughed. "But we had great fun. George and I were always together. My father raised us alone and he was almost never there. George and I took care of each other." A memory illuminated her from within. "One time George dressed himself as a ghost, in a sheet, and carried a candle in front of him. He chased me all over the churchyard. He was always playing tricks like that. Another time he and his cronies dug a shallow hole and he got down into it with a straw in his mouth so he could breathe. They covered him with dirt and dragged a gravestone to the head of it and then told me they'd found a stone we'd been looking for for a long time. When I got over to it, they made sure I stood right up next to where my brother's arm was, and he reached up and grabbed me, right through the dirt. Then he sat up and pulled me down." There were tears of joy in the corners of her eyes, and they laughed with her. "Oh, how I screamed! I think I yelled for two days straight. I never went to the graveyard with George and his buddies again, I can tell you.''
"What happened to George?" Rebecca asked.
Melinda looked down at her as if discovering that she was not talking to herself. "He died a long time ago, Rebecca. He was a reporter in Chicago. He was killed trying to save a family in a house fire. He had an insurance policy he used to laugh about, which some broker he had interviewed talked him into taking out, which ended up giving me all the money to run this place. Sometimes I miss him."
Their bonfire had burned down to a glowing stack of embers and was in danger of going out. The moon had climbed up high, making their fire nearly insignificant. Melinda slapped her hands together, wincing slightly.
"I'd say we best be going in. Anybody know what time it is?"
Marsh tilted - his watch up toward the moon. "Two o'clock."
"Two in the morning? Gracious!" Her eyes lingered on the fire. "It has been fun, though." She rose, grimacing with the returning pain in her joints. She held her arms out at her sides, a hen sheltering her chicks, signaling them to follow. "Into the house and be quick," she said. "I'll wager we can sleep a bit late tomorrow. We've got enough wood inside, so I can't see it makes any difference. I want you in bed in ten minutes, and lay an extra comforter on; it feels like the temperature's dropping again."
She fell in behind them, looking back once more at the dying fire. A thick log crumbled in on itself, spitting up a futile shower of red sparks. "Well, well," she said quietly and, seeing them waiting for her on the porch, followed them in. She did not go to her room but to her office, shutting the door soundlessly behind her.
Spring came early to March, and Melinda took to her bed.
The man who had argued with her in the winter came again. This time they knew he was a doctor because he brought a nurse with him. Only once did Melinda fight him. They heard the argument because the nurse had left the door open a crack and Melinda's voice rose above the others. "I'll stay here, and I'll die here if need be," she said obstinately. "You won't get me to a hospital, so don't try." There was more mumbled discussion, and then they heard Melinda's voice again, louder this time. "Don't you think I know? I'm no fool. Just tell me what has to be done. I'll die here if anywhere . . ." Then the nurse closed the door.
Weeks passed. They helped her as best they could. There were infrequent visits from the doctor that always ended with him storming out. Melinda seemed to rally, appearing one morning in her robe to shoo them out of the kitchen while she lit the fire herself and made breakfast. She walked a little slower, and her face was thinner and more lined, but her eyes were still bright. She seemed the same old Melinda. Then late one morning, a week after that, she dropped a watering can while reaching up to sprinkle a plant on a windowsill, and had to be half carried to bed. This time she sank into the pillows until they almost swallowed her.
The next day, while Rebecca and Billy were sharing a cigarette behind the barn, Marsh appeared. His face was white.
"You're here to tell us she's dead," Rebecca started to say, but Marsh cut her off, shaking his head.
"There's a man and woman here for us. For you and me," he said to Rebecca. "They're' having a big ruckus up at the house. They're taking us away to some desert town. Melinda didn't tell us about it, and there's nothing ready." He looked like he was in shock, his eyes meeting Billy's now as he spoke. "They're straightening it all out. They want Rebecca and me to leave in an hour."
The cigarette in Rebecca's fingers burned her and she dropped it. For a moment there was only the sound of a high breeze in the treetops near the house. Then Marsh said, "It's for real, Rebecca."
Rebecca turned and held Billy, putting her arms around him.
"I'm not leaving you here," she said, "and Marsh won't either. There's no way they can take us without you."
But they all knew it would happen.
In an hour the two of them were gone. They left quietly with two tall people, who had the same look as all the others who came to take children away from Melinda. Rebecca and Marsh were handled like precious porcelain. The man and woman gave Rebecca a doll with big eyes, and Marsh a red metal truck, then they placed them carefully in the back seat of their station wagon and got in and drove off. Melinda stayed in her room. Marsh and Rebecca looked back at Billy, who stared at them silently from the porch.
A week went by.
Billy prepared Melinda's meals; she ate them herself, or with his help, but she would not look at him. She seemed very angry. Her eyes, slightly duller now but still filled with a fire, stared past or through him when he came into her room. Some days she could not lift a spoon to her lips. Beneath her covers there seemed nothing but a flat board, no human shape. Occasionally she cried out, in the night or in the afternoon, and Billy came to help her through it as best he could, mostly just standing there while her body was consumed with pain and covered with sweat until she settled down into an uneasy sleep once more. When she was awake at night, and not in pain, she prayed. Her prayers had a savage quality to them, as if she were demanding an answer to some question. One night, in the throes of hallucination, she cried out, "Leave him, then! He's lost to us both!" before sinking back into sleep.
The dour doctor came a final time, and she shouted at him feebly. But when he left, he was not angry and his car drove off slowly.
"Billy," Melinda called, in a hiss almost. He went to her. She was propped up in bed; she had diminished so much that the pillows behind her appeared enormous. Her hands rested on her lap before her, one over the other. They looked already dead, insubstantial as air. She looked at him now. With her eyes, she motioned for him to sit on the bed.
"I'll be dead in an hour," she began. There was no time for him to say anything. "This hour as well as any is fine with me." Her voice was like fierce silk. The strength of it built with every word she spoke.
"Rebecca and Marsh are gone. All the others are gone. That makes me happy. All I ever wanted was for someone to take all my children away from me." Her voice caught, and she had to wait for breath to return to her throat. "This may sound foolish, but death doesn't hurt me. Every time one of those couples came to take one of my boys or girls, I died. But in that death there was birth, because I knew they were all going on to a better, fuller life.
"I apologize to you for the way I've acted toward you the past month or so," she said. "It was not kind of me. But there was a reason. I've been wrestling with myself"—she smiled faintly—"and that was quite a fight." The smile vanished. "I've been trying not to hate you, boy."
Her eyes were nearly on fire, and she was somewhere between crying and screaming. When she next spoke, there was a catch in her voice and she shook her head weakly from side to side. "To think I could ever hate one of my boys or girls, even for a moment. For days I wrestled, Billy. At first I thought it was myself I was hating, my failure. No one likes to fail. I never failed before." Real anger crept into her voice. "I never failed, Billy. I had boys in here who were raped by their fathers, girls who were raped by their own mothers. There were girls who were turned into prostitutes before they were school age. I had boys here who had been beaten so bad that they flinched when you raised a hand to tousle their hair. I died for every one of them. All I did was give them time, and cold and hot weather, and wood chopping and other chores, and my own poor love. And all the evil eventually bled out of them. It all bled out." Her face was red, her fist clenched so tightly that the weak and dying veins in her arm stood out. "With some of them they were down so deep, the evil, ugly things, that it took years and years—but I knew that it would all come out in the end, like coughing up blood, and then the healing could begin. Always, Billy. Until I found you.
She sank back into the pillows, some of the fire out of her.
"You scare me, Billy. You scare me down to my bones because I know, and always knew, that no matter how many years I gave you, how many years of waiting and patience and time, that you would never let me die for you. Whatever's down deep in you is never going to come out, because it's what you are. Nobody put it there, and it can't be bled out. It is you."
Her face was gray as ash, and she sank deeper into the pillows, closing her eyes as more of the anger drained out of her, along with her strength. She shook her head feebly before reopening her eyes, and when she did, there was not anger but awe and a kind of terror in them.
"You're looking for someone," she said, staring into his dark eyes. "I knew that from the moment I saw you on that bus."
She took his hand in her own arthritic claw, and held it with surprising force. She rose up on one elbow, lifting herself by will alone. There was blind fury in her eyes. She hissed, "And when you find that someone, terrible things are going to happen." She grabbed him more tightly by the arm, her face close to his. "And there's nothing I can do about it." She held him by the arms, like a bird with something in its talons, something it wanted but wasn't sure it should take. "Tell me who you're looking for!"
She was drained then. She gave a short gasp and fell back, her arms dropping to the blankets, lifeless. She looked into Billy's calm face. "I love you so much, Billy," she whispered, and then she closed her eyes, and saw his face no more, and released her last soft whisper of breath.