There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cooking stove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds.
Airplanes, Bill thought, airplanes and radio and movies. She never saw anything like that come in. She was in the Home, instead. Like she was safe from it.
The Preacher was asking them to sing a hymn. There was a rustling of paper as people found it in the book. The music started too soon.
The Angels looked lost. They couldn't find the place in the book-or even the book itself. Carol was trying to be nice and help one of them, her smile fixed and thin, but the old woman next to her had frail hands that mumbled the pages aimlessly while her eyes were fixed on the mystery of Carol's young face, with its short, slightly bouffant hair and its magenta lips. One of the male Angels was singing, very loudly, in a bellowing, tuneless voice:
Bill thought of the book.
When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached the edge of the sky in all directions.
Drapes were pulled back. The coffin began to move. People kept singing.
Even the grass was not green…
The coffin was swallowed up. Carol wasn't singing. Bill could tell from the rigid way Carol was standing that she was holding her breath. Bill felt sweat trickle from his ears onto his collar. The curtains closed. It's like the old days, Bill thought, like the old days were being swallowed up as well. Nobody knows.
When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart…
Carol gave his hand a little tug, then a little shake. The organ finally stopped.
The old man kept on singing,
It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings.
Bill went up to Reverend Carey, shook his hand, thanked him, and offered him a lift. 'No thanks, Bill,' said Reverend Carey, 'came here in my own car.' He said hello to Carol, and Bill thanked him again.
'I think Carol wants to go,' he said, his smile edgy.
'Bill, I'm happy to stay,' said Carol.
They walked in silence out of the crematorium. The corridor was the bleary kind of yellow or green that looks like vomit and there were echoes, of their feet, of dim voices, of the Angels being gathered up. The modern glass doors swung open and shut, and the air seemed to blast into their faces, tingling and cold.
'Uhhhhh!' sighed Carol. 'Feel that good, night air!' She smiled, bright-eyed, trying to be pert and full of pep.
They drove home. Bill's knuckles were white on the steering wheel and he couldn't think why. Carol was silent and looking out the window.
'I'm going to have to do something about all of this,' he said. It was a warning. He was saying: I will be going to work in places like that in the future.
'Like what?' said Carol, in a tired voice. She still looked out the window at the snow. 'What are you going to do? What can anybody do for them?'
'I don't know,' Bill said. He wanted to say something like: Make sure that they know somebody loves them. But he found he couldn't say something like that to Carol.
'Like maybe go to school or something,' he murmured.
'You just got out of school,' Carol said, lacing the words with scorn. Going back to school of any kind would be to surrender adulthood.
'I mean, go to college or something. Study nights or stuff.'
'Oh, that's just great,' said Carol miserably.
What am I supposed to do? Carol thought. Work my butt off in some beauty parlor while you hang around with a bunch of creepy college kids like Muffy Havis? And then what? Then I'd have to spend my life with people like in there this afternoon. But Carol couldn't say that to Billy.
None of this was normal. Maybe she wasn't normal. Carol knew what was normal in situations like this. You were supposed to be warm and helpful and understanding and talk sensibly about how they could get by while he studied. She should be telling him how proud of him she was. She wasn't proud of him. The life he was offering would choke her.
'Why can't you just go and get a job at Mr. Hardie's?' she asked him, pleading. A job like everyone else. 'What's wrong with staying in the Army, like your father?'
People like you and me, Carol thought, we're better off in something like the Army, Billy. I can see you in the Army. I can see me there with you.
'There's nothing wrong with it.' Billy looked impatient. There was a kind of light in his eyes that Carol didn't like, couldn't trust. 'But I'd like… I don't know. I'd like some kind of qualification.'
Big heart, thought Carol. If you've got such a big heart, what about saving some of it for me?
'What about us?' she asked him. She thought of white gloves, light pink fabrics, beaded purses, the smell of
