The last words came audibly as I clutched the foot of the bed, waiting until the wave subsided. Then, slowly, deliberately, quietly and unhurried, I lifted the mattress Seth lay on and bent its edges enough to get it out of the bedroom. I hovered it in the kitchen. Glory and I both staggered as the house swayed underfoot-swayed and steadied.
“Have you something to put over him to keep the rain off?” I asked, “I can’t extend my shield that far and lift that much at the same time.”
“Our slickers,” said Glory, her eyes intent on me with that different took in them. “They’ll help a little.”
“Get them then,” I said, “and you’ll have to get on the mattress, too, to keep him covered.”
“But can you-” Glory began.
“I will,” I said, holding my Quietness carefully in my mind. ” Hurry-the house is going.”
Hastily, Glory snatched the two yellow slickers from the nails behind the front door. She scrambled into one and spread the other over Seth. “His head, too,” I said, “or he’ll nearly drown. You’d better cover your head, too. It’ll be easier to take. Hurry! Hurry!”
Glory gave one look at the hovering mattress and, setting her lips grimly, crawled on and lay beside Seth, one arm protectively across his chest. She’d hardly closed her eyes before I started the mattress out the door. The house began spinning at the same time. By the time we got outside, it had turned completely around and, as we left it, it toppled slowly into the creek and was lost in the tumult of the waters.
It’s no more than the windows and siding, I whispered to myself. In fact, it’s less because there’s no glass to break. But all my frantic reassurances didn’t help much. There were still two olives hanging on my ability to do the inanimate lift and transport them: Doggedly I pushed on, hardly able to see beyond the cascade of rain that arched down my shield. Below me the waters were quieting because they were getting so deep that they no longer quarreled with the boulders and ridges. They smothered them to silence. Ahead and a little below me, rain ran from Glory and Seth’s slickers, and the bed, other than where they lay, was a sodden mess.
Finally I could see the entrance of the mine, a darker blot in the pervading grayness. “There it is, Glory!” I cried.
“We’re almost there. Just a little-” And the pain seized me. Gasping, I felt myself begin to fall. All my power was draining out thinly-my mind had only room for the all-enveloping anguish. I felt the soggy end of the mattress under one arm, and then two strong hands grabbed me and began to tug me onto the bed.
“Try-” Glory’s voice was almost too far away. “Help yourself! Onto the bed! Help yourself!”
Deliberately I pushed all thought of pain aside. As though in slow. motion I felt myself lift slightly and slide onto the end of the bed. I lay half on half off and tried to catch my breath.
“Debbie,” Glory’s voice came calmly and deliberately.
“We’re almost in the water. Can you lift us up a little?”
Oh no, I thought. It’s too much to ask! Let me rest.
Then for no reason at all I heard Jemmy’s voice again.
“Where’s Glory and Seth?” as though in some way I were responsible. 1 am! I cried to myself. I am responsible for them. 1 took their lives in my hands when we left the bedroom. Even before that! 1 made myself responsible for them when they took me in—
With infinite effort I pushed myself into the background and reached out again to lay hold on The Power and, slowly, the bed rose from the lapping of the waters and, slowly, it started again toward the mine entrance and I held Glory’s hand in such a bruising grasp you would have thought I was birthing something or someone out there in the pelting rain.
The events of the next few minutes ran hurriedly and clear, but as far removed from me as though I were watching everything through the wrong end of binoculars. I settled the mattress near the glowing wheel. Glory was off in unflurried haste. She spread my bedclothes and got me undressed by the light of the nickel she had propped up on a ledge on the wall. I cried out when I felt the warmth of my tekla nightgown gliding over my head. I’d forgotten the clothes for Child Within! The muddy waters were tumbling all their softness and smallness now.
Another pain came and when it subsided, Glory had brought a coffee pot from somewhere—one of those huge enameled camp pots-and had filled it from somewhere and put it on the wheel-stove to heat. The cases were gone from our pillows and they lay beside my bed torn into neat squares in a little heap, topped by a battered old jackknife with one sharp blade open. One of the thin blankets had been ripped in four.
Glory’s face appeared over me, rugged, comforting.
“We’re doin’ fine,” she said. “Me and Seth had a few things stashed here in the mine. Seth’s breathing better. You got nothing to worry about now ‘ceptin’ Child Within. Nothing to worry about there neither ‘ceptin’ what you’ll name him now that he won’t be within any more.”
“Oh, Glory!” I whispered and turned my cheek to press against her hand.
From there on, I was three people-one who cried out and gasped and struggled with the pain and against the pain and was bound up in the blindness of complete concentration on the task at hand, and an accusing one-one sitting in judgment. And the third me was standing before the bar of that judgment, defenseless and guilty.
The indictment was read from the big Book.
“I was hungry,” came the accusation, “‘and they fed me.”
“I ate their food,” I admitted. “Unearned-“
“I was naked and they clothed me-“
“‘Now we can have decent clothes,’” I heard myself saying again.
“I was a stranger and they took me in-“
“I condescended to let them care for me,” I admitted.
“I was in the prison of my grief and they visited me.”
