Monday Mourning

The blanket unfolded and slid between Anne’s body and the floor. I felt my way to an end, wrapped one corner around each hand, and began backing out of the room and down the hall."

"Anne weighed a thousand pounds. I tried to reassure her, gagged.

I hadn’t taken time to check for a pulse. Was she alive?

Please, God!

I tugged at my homemade travois, gaining inches with each burst. My arms and legs turned to rubber.

I heaved and heaved, coughing and panting, every cell shrieking for air. Now and then I flinched as something exploded or crashed in the house.

Hours after setting out, I made the turn into the front hall. My eyes burned. My chest burned. My stomach burned.

Leaning a hand on the doorframe, I bent and vomited more bile. I wanted to sit down, to curl into a ball and sleep.

When my stomach settled, I regripped the blanket.

The parlor was now an inferno. Flames crawled the woodwork, devoured the secretary, engulfed the couch. Things popped and spit, sending sparks toward the front hall and foyer. I was past feeling. Past thinking. I knew only to pull, back up a foot or two, and pull again.

The front entrance lay five yards behind me.

Three.

Two.

My mind chanted a mantra, urging my body not to fail.

Get through the foyer.

Over the jamb.

Onto the stoop.

When Anne’s legs cleared the doorway, I dropped to the ground and placed my fingertips on her throat.

No palpable pulse.

I collapsed onto Anne.

“You’ll be fine, old friend.”

Black dots swirled behind my eyelids.

Sleet pelted my back. The ground felt icy against my knees.

Around me, a cacophony of noise. I struggled to make sense of it.

Sobbing.

Was that Anne? Katy?

The yawing and spitting of flames.

Ticking.

Rain on the magnolia? No.

What rail yard?

The rumble of distant engines.

Muted honking.

Coyotes wailing far off in the desert.

Not coyotes. Sirens.

The dots congealed into solid black.

38

I AM OF THE OPINION THAT HOSPITALS ARE TO BE AVOIDED. PEOPLE die there.

Ten hours after arriving by ambulance, I rose, pulled on the sweats Charbonneau had given me at Catts’s house the previous night, and left General.

How? I walked out.