hospital? Only one reason, you're so bad off they don't want you to move.
He decided to take a quick inventory of himself, using Dad's self-examination technique for when you got hurt and there was nobody around. "Your attention is like the beam of a flashlight, Billy, and you can move it through your body. You point it at your left foot, then your right. Left hand, right hand. Legs, arms, torso, head."
He felt like he was in one piece, but there was this fuzziness that was strange, and he was definitely sick. What was that, "something, something and palely loitering," from the Shelley poem—or was it Keats? Kelley and Sheets.
He should have won poetry reading at the Speech Fair. Instead, What's-her-name Pugh had won with "My Last Duchess." His poem was "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." The beautiful lady without mercy. Yeah. Every beautiful lady he knew was like that. Amanda wanted football, not poetry. "La Belle Dame . . ." Alone and palely loitering.
And humming. The humming went on and on, rising and falling, and with it that slight jostling. Off in the distance, somebody was playing opera. The humming twisted and turned, merging with the music.
Why in the world was he strapped to his bed? Surely not even a children's ward did that. Maybe—
"Am I still in the ambulance?"
Distantly a voice: "Yes, son. Go to sleep."
Still in the ambulance . . . but then where was it going? Stevensville Central Hospital was on Route 19, wasn't it? Yes. That wasn't but a few minutes from the house. He wasn't sure how long he'd been in this ambulance, but it was certainly longer than five or ten minutes.
He felt a tiny, cold hand on his cheek. Very tiny, very cold. He shuddered and the feeling left him. No hand. At least, not a real one.
Maybe this was all a great big nightmare.
Billy's voice was so melodic, it made Barton's heart ache just to hear it. But its presence was alarming. He mustn't wake up this soon—especially not in the middle of Denver.
Barton himself had been awake for over twenty hours. Along with the highway, the hours swept away behind him in a quivering, hypnotic line. It was now six-thirty in the evening, and he had been driving for fourteen hours and thirty minutes. He had pushed hard, knowing that a confrontation with the boy was inevitable, and that it was going to happen on the road.
He had it all planned, a tender, painful moment. "Billy," he would say, "I will be more to you than your mother and father ever could be. You need me but you don't know it now. You will come to love me as I love you, with a very special love."
The one thing he believed in totally was his love. Nothing so pure, so noble, could be wrong.
Billy would panic and flutter against the straps, and he would cry. Barton would hold him, maybe kiss his cheek, there was nothing inappropriate about that, speak sweetly to him: "We will have a beautiful life together, you will come to love me as I love you . . ." Those words, so incredible, said to his perfect beauty: I love you.
A man before beauty, his head bowed, fighting the urgency to kneel, to adore that which God has made in the image of His faultless self.
"I give you my heart and soul, Billy."
He listened to the hissing of the tires. He whispered, "I give you my soul."
The scanner burped, a trooper calling in position from somewhere in the mountains. It sounded again, a trouble report on the Denver police frequency.
He heard police talking. Then the humming grew and changed, became a whining and got higher. Was that the siren? No, there was no siren. This ambulance didn't have a siren.
A fire . . . there'd been a fire . . . and he was hurt.
The bread maker! It had been responsible for the fire! He knew it, the thing ran so hot! They never should have bought it.
He flew to full wakefulness. "What happened to my mom and dad?"
"Your parents are fine, son! Everybody's just fine. You suffered a little smoke inhalation, that's all."
God help him, he was driving down a
He decided to take a quick inventory of himself, using Dad's self-examination technique for when you got hurt and there was nobody around. "Your attention is like the beam of a flashlight, Billy, and you can move it through your body. You point it at your left foot, then your right. Left hand, right hand. Legs, arms, torso, head."
He felt like he was in one piece, but there was this fuzziness that was strange, and he was definitely sick. What was that, "something, something and palely loitering," from the Shelley poem—or was it Keats? Kelley and Sheets.
He should have won poetry reading at the Speech Fair. Instead, What's-her-name Pugh had won with "My Last Duchess." His poem was "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." The beautiful lady without mercy. Yeah. Every beautiful lady he knew was like that. Amanda wanted football, not poetry. "La Belle Dame . . ." Alone and palely loitering.
And humming. The humming went on and on, rising and falling, and with it that slight jostling. Off in the distance, somebody was playing opera. The humming twisted and turned, merging with the music.
Why in the world was he strapped to his bed? Surely not even a children's ward did that. Maybe—
"Am I still in the ambulance?"
Distantly a voice: "Yes, son. Go to sleep."
Still in the ambulance . . . but then where was it going? Stevensville Central Hospital was on Route 19, wasn't it? Yes. That wasn't but a few minutes from the house. He wasn't sure how long he'd been in this ambulance, but it was certainly longer than five or ten minutes.
He felt a tiny, cold hand on his cheek. Very tiny, very cold. He shuddered and the feeling left him. No hand. At least, not a real one.
Maybe this was all a great big nightmare.
Billy's voice was so melodic, it made Barton's heart ache just to hear it. But its presence was alarming. He mustn't wake up this soon—especially not in the middle of Denver.
Barton himself had been awake for over twenty hours. Along with the highway, the hours swept away behind him in a quivering, hypnotic line. It was now six-thirty in the evening, and he had been driving for fourteen hours and thirty minutes. He had pushed hard, knowing that a confrontation with the boy was inevitable, and that it was going to happen on the road.
He had it all planned, a tender, painful moment. "Billy," he would say, "I will be more to you than your mother and father ever could be. You need me but you don't know it now. You will come to love me as I love you, with a very special love."
The one thing he believed in totally was his love. Nothing so pure, so noble, could be wrong.
Billy would panic and flutter against the straps, and he would cry. Barton would hold him, maybe kiss his cheek, there was nothing inappropriate about that, speak sweetly to him: "We will have a beautiful life together, you will come to love me as I love you . . ." Those words, so incredible, said to his perfect beauty: I love you.
A man before beauty, his head bowed, fighting the urgency to kneel, to adore that which God has made in the image of His faultless self.
"I give you my heart and soul, Billy."
He listened to the hissing of the tires. He whispered, "I give you my soul."
The scanner burped, a trooper calling in position from somewhere in the mountains. It sounded again, a trouble report on the Denver police frequency.
He heard police talking. Then the humming grew and changed, became a whining and got higher. Was that the siren? No, there was no siren. This ambulance didn't have a siren.
A fire . . . there'd been a fire . . . and he was hurt.
The bread maker! It had been responsible for the fire! He knew it, the thing ran so hot! They never should have bought it.
He flew to full wakefulness. "What happened to my mom and dad?"
"Your parents are fine, son! Everybody's just fine. You suffered a little smoke inhalation, that's all."
God help him, he was driving down a
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