she added, over the distant growl of thunder. 'This may flood the underpasses!'
Jennie pulled out, with a backward wave.
She hurried into the backyard to gather up the kids; Ryan and Jill were only too happy to come inside, but Rod sassed her. 'I want to watch!' he said. 'It's not here yet! You think I'm gonna melt if I get a little wet?'
Toni gave his rump a little smack for the sass. 'You get in that house when I tell you to, mister,' she scolded, shagging him inside after the other two. 'You're not too big for me to spank; you better remember that!'
Ryan and Jill went to their rooms, and she assumed that Rod followed. She went straight to the kitchen to turn on a radio; they didn't have cable anymore, and she didn't trust the television in a thunderstorm. Jennie was right to warn her. The antenna that Rod had put up before they got cable was too high and he had never taken it down; it was on a tower that made it the tallest thing in the neighborhood, and whenever there was lightning, she was always afraid it would get hit. Rod laughed at her for her fears, but she would never allow the set on during a storm if he wasn't there to insist on it.
Outside, the sky turned black, and the kitchen went as dark as if the sun were setting. She tuned in right in the middle of a National Weather Service bulletin; they were always so scratchy and full of static she had to concentrate to make out what the man was saying. Strong winds, damaging hail, severe thunderstorm. . . . Not even a 'watch'; this one, as any fool could see, was already here. No talk of tornadoes, though-
She caught the sound of the television from the living room, and hurried in to find young Rod messing with it in the gloom of the living room. The only light came from the screen.
'You get away from that!' she snapped. 'I have told you and told you, don't use the TV in a thunderstorm!'
'I wanta see Doppler Six radar,' Rod whined, defiantly. 'Chill out, Ma! Nothing's gonna happen! You talk like some kind of hystric! And you act like you want me t' grow up t' be a fag!'
Now that-except that the word was 'hysteric,' not 'hystric'-was straight from his father's mouth. Bad enough to hear it from Rod-but this was too much.
She saw red and was about to give him that spanking she had promised-but before she could move to give his fanny a real tanning, she saw something else instead.
The Indian.
It rose up from the shadows behind the television set, where it had either been lurking, or been doing something to the television set. Ryan came up behind her, and grabbed for her hand with a gasp.
This time the Indian did not disappear when she turned her full attention on it; she was looking straight at it, and although Rod didn't seem to see it, Ryan beside her did, and shrank against her, whimpering.
It grinned at her, a nasty, snide grin. Like a wolverine, she thought, crazily. Like a bear trap. Like-like the Devil, just before he takes a soul!
And it vanished.
Rod was still messing with the television. 'There!' he said in triumph, as the picture came in, the Channel Six weatherman standing in front of an image of a Doppler Radar scan. 'I need to tune-'
His hand was on the dial, just as lightning hit the antenna above them.
The next half hour was hell on earth.
Toni found herself on the dining room floor, Ryan beside her, with no memory of how they had gotten there. She scrambled to her feet and dashed into the living room, vaguely aware that every hair on her head was standing on end, and feeling a kind of tingle in her hands and feet, as if they'd been asleep.
Young Rod was collapsed in a heap beside the television. The back of the set had blown out, and glass shards were embedded in the wall behind the set.
Rod's outstretched hand was black and crisped. He wasn't moving.
She didn't scream; she didn't panic. 'Ryan,' she said, very clearly and out of some kind of unholy calm, 'call 9 -1-1. Tell them your brother's been hit by lightning. If our phone doesn't work, go next door and use theirs, and give them our address. If the phone does work, make the call, then go next door to Mrs. Nebles. Take Jill. Stay there.'
'But Ma-' Ryan burbled, clearly terrified.
'Go now,' she yelled, fiercely, and then all her concentration was on the child who needed her. She ran across the living room and fell to her knees beside Rod. She put him over on his back, carefully, in case there was a spinal injury, feeling under his chin for a pulse.
No pulse. No breathing.
She had never done CPR except on a dummy, but it all came back to her now. She tilted his head back, made sure his airway was clear, covered his mouth and nose with her mouth, and breathed.
Once. Twice. Then pump his chest. She didn't need to be too careful; he wasn't so small that she'd crack his ribs.
Breathe. Pump. Breathe. Pump. Don't forget to breathe for yourself, or you 'II pass out.
At some point, she heard sirens over the sound of the pouring rain and the thunder outside. She ignored them as she ignored everything else.
Breathe. Pump. Breathe-
Hands pulled her away; she fought them for a moment, until she saw it was the paramedics in their bright yellow slickers, then she let them take over, surrounding Rod with their machines and their expertise.
Other people came crowding in; firemen, Mrs. Nebles, the neighbor with Ryan and Jill. She couldn't see Rod for all the bodies around him, but she heard the pure tone of a flat-lined EKG, then heard someone say 'Clear!', and then everyone pulled away.
She heard the snap of the fibrillator, heard someone curse. The flat tone continued.
She collapsed into the chest of whoever was holding her, sobbing as hysterically as her two remaining children. She would never forget that horrible, unwavering tone for as long as she lived.
They tried, over and over again, to get Rod's heart started. But the tame lightning of their machines could not restart what the wild lightning had stopped.
Finally, they pronounced Rod dead on the scene, covered him up with a rubber sheet, and took him away, into the rain, in an ambulance, but one with the lights and siren dead. She rode in the back, with the paramedic holding her hand, awkwardly.
She was no longer crying, no longer screaming with the pain of her loss. She was numb, now; after the ambulance ride, after the session at the hospital with the doctors and the paperwork--how could they bother with paperwork at a time like that?-after the call to Rod, missing him by minutes. They'd left a policeman at her home, the nurses told her, patting her hand. The policeman would tell him. He would come soon, to help her with all this.
But he never came, and she stumbled through it all alone. Thank God Mrs. Nebles had said she would take care of Ryan and Jill. Thank God the paramedics had reminded her to bring her purse. What she couldn't remember was in the papers she kept in her purse.
Insurance. Why? she had wanted to scream. People to notify. Recounting it all to the police.
Still Rod did not come.
Surely he would come and take her home.
But he didn't come, and finally the nurses took pity on her and called the neighbor who had Ryan and Jill, asked Mrs. Nebles to keep the kids overnight, then sent her home with another policeman rather than a taxi. They probably didn't trust her to remember what her own address was. . . .
Rod's car was in the driveway; she walked up to the silent, darkened house, still numb, not knowing what she was going to say to him. Suddenly, she was afraid for him-how could he be expected to bear up under this? Rod was his image, his golden child! He must be half insane; no wonder he hadn't come to the hospital!
She pulled open the door-and there he was, staring at her. She opened her mouth, the tears starting again.
But as it happened, he didn't give her a chance to say anything.
He simply dragged her inside, face full of-not the grief she had expected, but silent fury. He dragged her into the living room, to the spot in front of the TV, where Rod had died. He shoved her down on her knees on the spot where he had lain.
He screamed at her, as she knelt there, unable to move or think. Screamed at her that this was all her fault- she was a slut, a whore, an unfit mother-she had caused Rod's death, to make way for her own favored brats, who
