register that the rest of the car was smashed. I had left him kneeling over my father’s crumpled form, stuffing his own shirt, already blood-soaked, against the side of my father’s neck. “And stay in the house with Flora. You’re under orders!”)
Quickly I circled the downstairs—no Flora, though at some point she had found time to work on the milk damage. Wet kitchen towels had been carefully laid across the sofa cushion, and the assaulted sketch pads placed facedown on a dry towel. I stopped by my room long enough to change into my Keds, which were better for running up and down hills, and then galloped upstairs to check out all the rooms so I could truthfully say I’d looked everywhere. If someone wasn’t in the house, you could hardly be under orders to stay in it with them.
There were two hospitals in town, St. Benedict’s on the south side, and Mission on our side. Mission was only twelve blocks from the entrance to Sunset Drive, and as I skidded down our driveway—this descent less effortless than the one when the cognac was fresher—I could already hear the approaching ambulance.
My father could not die because Finn had been on the spot to save him. And why had he been on the spot? Because he had been out looking for me. My mind raced ahead, binding up the wounds and preparing a desirable outcome. I had worried that my father would find fault with Finn, but how could you find fault with the person who had saved your life? They would become fast friends, the Starling Peake room would be the Devlin Patrick Finn room, Finn would help repair Old One Thousand and drive me to school and attend the local junior college. Even if he didn’t get his status revised and be eligible for the GI Bill, my father would pay the tuition. If only there was more money! But we would manage somehow. In five years, when I turned sixteen, I’d have my driver’s license and could get an after-school job.
When I rounded the first curve I saw the parked ambulance below with its front spotlight trained on the woods. There was a police car, as well, and a fire truck was just arriving. Men tumbled out of vehicles and shouted back and forth and carried handheld searchlights toward the spot where my father lay. From my invisible vantage point above the activity, I seemed to split in half. One half could not suppress the thrill of elation rising in my throat at the enthralling spectacle of human beings organizing themselves to save a life, while the other recoiled from the possibility that my father might die, or indeed was already dead, and that my life would be completely changed.
Now they were carrying him out of the woods. Bare-chested Finn, holding one of the searchlights, followed, directing the high-powered beam on them loading the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Unable to make out whether they had covered up my father’s face (which I knew from the movies was a bad sign), I edged closer. Still invisible in the dark on the other side of the road, I risked another couple of yards until I could make sure that I really did see the oxygen mask over the face and white wrappings around the neck.
Now that they were getting ready to close the doors, I felt it would be all right to declare myself. Finn couldn’t begrudge me speaking to the men who were carrying away my own father.
I stepped forward to cross to their side of the road, tripped over something substantial, and fell down with a cry. Now the light was on me as I picked myself up from the pavement.
“Another one!” a man cried as the light moved away from my face and shone on the crumpled body of a woman in a blue dress.
XXIX.
“I let you sleep as long as you could,” Mrs. Jones said, opening the blinds in Nonie’s room to let in the bright, sunny day.
“What time is it?”
“Almost ten.”
“Where is Finn?”
“He left last night. After I came. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, but tell me again.”
“Well, he phoned and said for me to come—you’d said where to find my number—and I got here as quick as I could. You were here on the bed, with the blanket over you. He said you had refused to get undressed in case you were needed. Do you remember me helping you get into your pajamas and washing your face?”
“Why did it need washing?”
“There was dried blood on it. He said something about you hurting your knee, and I cleaned it off, too. How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts. I want you to tell me where everyone is.”
Mrs. Jones pulled over Nonie’s dressing table bench and sat down close to me. She was not the sort of person to plop down on your bed. The stoic slabs of her cheeks lay calm and flat against her bones. Her gray gaze was direct without being probing or judging. “Your father is in the hospital. The preacher from your church is with him and will be coming to tell you how he is. Mr. Finn has seen your father, too.”
“Where is Finn now?”
“There’s arrangements have to be made. Mr. Finn is tending to those.”
“What kind of arrangements?”
“Well, he had to get in touch with her people. And fix up things with the railroad to get her home. Oh dear, I never did know what to call her.”
“You mean get her body home.”
“That’s what I mean. Would you like me to bring you something or would you rather go to the kitchen?”
“Thank you, I’m not hungry.”
“I squeezed lemon juice all around those spill marks on the sofa cushion and put it out in the sun. What was spilled on it?”
“I spilled some milk.”
“Well, it ought to dry up fine, then. The drawing books didn’t fare as well, but you can still see the pictures. One of them of her is real good, it’s a pity it got spoiled.”
“What time is Father McFall coming?”
“Right after the hospital, he said.”
“I better get dressed.”
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” said Mrs. Jones.
Beryl Jones, Nonie said, was one to answer your questions or carry out instructions “and stop right there. She doesn’t elaborate, argue, or say what she would do. Would there were more like her!”
You could trust Mrs. Jones to give you her candid responses and respectfully desist from opinions, whereas Father McFall was not one to hold back when he thought you were in error, which is why I thought it safest to be fully dressed and on my guard to receive whatever he deemed me ready for.
But when he arrived, he didn’t treat me as sternly as I had anticipated. Taking my hands in his, he asked almost humbly, “Helen, how can I serve you? Tell me what I can do.” For the first time I noticed how the dry, wrinkled folds of his neck hung down like an old dog’s over his clerical collar. Though it was the kind of thing you expected to hear from waiters or gas station attendants, his choice of words for the occasion completely disarmed me.
“I n-need,” I began. Then harsh, barking sobs burst out of me and I had to wait for them to run their course. “Nobody will tell me anything,” I began again, “and I need to
“What do you need to know, Helen?”
“Is my father going to die?”
“He’s pretty banged up and there are some problems, but thanks to that young soldier’s quick thinking, he’s not going to die.”
“What did Finn do?”
“He packed his shirt against the ruptured artery and then he stood on top of it with his heavy boot till the ambulance came.”
“Can I go and see my father?”
“Not just yet, but I’ll come and see you every day, maybe twice a day, and bring you reports. Why don’t we go in the living room and sit down?”
