Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself…
—Henry James
She lay in bed next to him after she woke. It would be another couple of hours before he’d stir, and given what the morning held she let herself linger. They hadn’t shown each other much affection the last six months and she wanted to get used to his feel again. She wanted him to know that after forty-three years she loved him and his body as much as ever, even if these days it was increasingly because of the memories it held.
Last night there was thunder and lightning, unusual for November in the Owens Valley. The sound like rending metal across the still-dark sky. Just two days earlier it was 80 degrees and a forty-mile-an-hour south wind sanded Bishop with dust from Owens Lake’s corpse. The air tasted like alkali in the rain.
Heavy drops from the sycamore next to the house slapped the shingles. Lorna thought how it had been sixteen years since they’d reroofed the house. Sixteen years of rain, thunderstorms, dust storms, droughts, snow, blizzards. She could remember a few of them but mostly the memories were like the delirious shapes in cumulonimbus clouds, delineated not in sharp contrasts but ever-changing convections and cornices.
She did remember the first big rain after the roof was finished. The contractor’s men had barely hammered the last nail into the last shingle when the heavens opened up and it rained for a week. On the fourth day the little slope in their front yard subsided, and the county sent a backhoe and dump truck to clear the street. She’d stood in knee-deep mud directing the driver along the fence line in the orange flashing light. She’d looked up at the house. The new roof shimmered in the rain light, and the living room window cast a yellow path home through the horizontal downpour. She nearly wept for joy. Vernon asked her what was wrong and she’d smiled and loved him as much in that moment as she ever had.
A couple of years later a big tree came down on the road and they’d been stuck on the hill for a week before the county—
She stopped herself. Her mind wandered like that more and more these days. Vernon joked that her brain was a three-ring circus: the real world was in the middle, but on the fringes there were always a couple of dancing bears and an elephant vying for attention. Lorna was convinced that if she was a kid today she’d be diagnosed with ADHD. Half the students in her tenth grade history class were on medication for it.
Still, as she used to point out to her fourth graders, there was a difference between thinking and stalling. Lorna knew she was stalling.
She forced herself out of bed.
It was still dark when she stood at the front window sipping a mug of coffee. She left the lights off. The habit was partly for Vernon and partly because she liked slipping into the morning at her own pace, without the disconcerting snap of electric light.
Their blue ranch-style house was two stories (really, a story and a half, the scullery and living room having no rooms above them) and formed an L with the garage. Lorna saw her silhouette against the garage door in the half-fogged glass. She thought of the construction paper silhouettes she’d taught her students to make with a flashlight and a steady hand, back when she taught elementary school. She felt a familiar pang and pushed it away. Vernon never wavered that she’d made the right decisions.
Beyond her silhouette a light drizzle flickered in the orange glow of the light at the bottom of the driveway. Ground fog hid the woods on the other side of County Road 182 and beyond them Bill McClatchy’s pasture, a hundred acres of high desert grass where he grazed Angus and Blackface. Adjacent to that was the end of the Bishop Airport runway. She could just see the hangars and the planes sitting ghostlike on the tarmac. In the distance, ten miles across the valley, low-slung clouds obscured the base of the jagged eastern Sierras. She could see Mount Whitney’s 14,593 feet even in the stormy pre-dawn. When you’d lived in the Owens Valley your whole life you saw the mountains in your sleep. You saw them through walls, from a thousand miles away, and in the worst gale. They were part of you.
After sixty-three years she still marveled how these late autumn mornings made her feel as though she could be anywhere, or nowhere at all.
She finished her coffee. It was a quarter past five and she was about to leave the house alone for the first time in two months.
Two months earlier, to the day, she’d been robbed at knifepoint in the house she’d shared with Vernon for thirty-seven years (even as her husband—the marine who slept so lightly during the war that a half-century later at the annual spaghetti dinner in Sacramento his surviving platoon mates still talked about how S.Sgt. Teague was never out for more than ten minutes at a stretch, and how that fact saved their bacon more than once—slumbered eight feet above her).
Her assailant had held the blade to her throat in the scullery in the spot where she now stood rinsing her mug. She touched the place on her neck and felt the cold memory of steel. She put the mug on the drying rack and walked to the parlor, willing herself not to glance at the top the refrigerator where there used to be a black and yellow Chock Full O’ Nuts can with a pink index card taped to it labeled, Adventures Fund.
It had been the first day of real summer. California seasons are not particularly concerned with such mundane considerations as the earth’s position and angle relative the sun, much less the abstractions of the Gregorian calendar.
It is possible, indeed more than likely, for there to be a two-week snow in June one year followed by a months-long winter drought the next. Even though it was still April when Lorna pushed open the back screen door that morning, she felt summer on the wind like a dried snakeskin brushing her cheek. It rasped through the sycamore branches (and there was a difference too in the way the bear paw-shaped leaves fluttered, a barely perceptible increase in their angle relative to the ground, which changed also the way the orange morning light caught them) and through the twin aspens by the chicken coops. She’d stood on the little back porch thinking, Mesquite, and the memory of summer lemonade tickled her tongue.
She’d watered the flower beds along the side fence, the herb garden in the back corner, and two big patches where they grew vegetables. She loved walking between and among the five short cornrows and inhaling the sweet smell of zucchini flowers and the tangy scent of tomatoes.
The western sky above the White Mountains glowed the color of eggplant. She carried a bucket of feed to the little chicken coop between the aspens. They’d purchased a dozen laying hens and two roosters to add to what they’d taken to calling The Farm. Vernon wanted goats and maybe even a couple of horses, and they’d agreed that chickens were a prudent first step. They built the coop out of eucalyptus and set it between the big trees so the hens would have some shade. They entered and exited at will via a little ramp.
She knew something was wrong when the hens didn’t peck the air when she raised the lid of the coop. She looked at them for a moment before she realized their eyes were focused on something behind her.
Todd Cranston was waiting behind one of her beloved trees.
d
Todd was a walking mean streak who’d landed in Lorna’s eleventh grade history class five years before. According to Principal Reveta Boward he came from a broken family that dragged from one trailer camp to the next and one town to the next, Bakersfield to Bishop. He had a history of bullying, first as victim and then as perpetrator. He went to jail three times before his seventeenth birthday and was arrested another half dozen times. In an all too familiar progression he got into trouble with drugs. Which these days in rural areas like the Owens Valley meant crystal meth.
Pretty soon rumors swirled that Todd had fallen in with the valley’s most notorious meth cook, Stevie Hankins. Stevie was in Lorna’s class himself two years before Todd. He lived in a double-wide he’d hauled to the top of the mountain seven miles behind and 2,000 feet above Lorna and Vernon’s street. He roared up the road in a bright red Ford F-250 at all hours blasting heavy metal. Twice a month a mysterious twin-engine plane landed at Bishop Airport and Stevie disappeared for three or four days. Everyone assumed he hired the plane to distribute his poison to other towns in Kern, Tulare, and Fresno counties, collectively known as the Crystal Triangle.
She had felt little empathy when Todd walked into the principal’s office the Friday before the semester started, and not much more when he introduced himself with a paralyzing stutter. Huh-huh-hu-hi, M-Ms. Tuh-Tuh-Tuh-Teague.
He was skinny and six feet tall, with arachnid limbs and a shambling gait that reminded Lorna of a tarantula hunting at night. Despite his sharp, angular frame his features were soft, mismatched, and poorly-defined, like a Mr. Potato Head a curious child had microwaved to see what would happen. His eyes were dull blue and his skin was covered in what Lorna hoped was acne. He wore a threadbare black t-shirt with a Harley-Davidson logo, a pair of jeans with enough stains for a Rorschach test, and a pair of unlaced red Converse All-Stars. A solid layer of Mojave dust covered his face and hair. Lorna smelled something mean when he slumped into the chair next to her. Suh-suh-suh-sorry I’m late, Mrs. Buh-Buh-Buh-Boward. Huh-had some wuh-wuh-work to fuh-fuh-fuh-fuuuhhhh-inish.
That was about as much communication as she got out of Todd. He sat somnolently in class every day looking at her with those dull blue eyes. No, she decided one day, he was watching her. Studying her. Like the drug he sold Todd infected Lorna’s classroom. She started thinking of him as Todd the Tumor. The worst part was he was one of the smartest kids Lorna ever encountered. He turned his work in on time, every time, as if he knew what she thought of him and gained sick pleasure defying even that. It wasn’t long before she needed a glass of wine before she could bring herself to mark another red A on his work.
By the time he dropped out the week before Thanksgiving, Lorna was a bundle of raw nerves. Her students improved once he was gone but Lorna never again felt the easy joy of standing in front of her classroom. Stevie Hankins had shaken it, and Todd Cranston crushed what remained.
When she reached into the coop the chickens flapped and cackled madly. One of the hens pecked at her arm and Lorna recoiled. A hand slapped across her mouth and wrenched her neck to the right. Colors exploded in her eyes, then went gray, and of those first moments she remembered only that his hand felt like sandpaper and smelled like gasoline and black licorice.
She felt something cold against her throat. She tried to scream but the hand stayed on her mouth. A man snarled, Sh-sh-shut the f-fuck up, tuh-tuh-teacher! You make aaaahhh sound an-an-and I’ll c-c-cu-cut you. Got it-t?
Lorna managed a wide-eyed nod. The sandpaper slid off her lips. He wedged a knee between her legs, shoved her against the chaotic coop, then half-turned her to face him. The ground wobbled.
She said, My—my God. Todd, is it you?
Her own voice sounded like the squeak of a mouse. He grinned a yellow and black missing tooth grin. His eyes were dead and malicious. He was high as a kite. Guh-glad you remember mu-me.
Todd, what are you—
Nuh-need to mu-make a wuh-wuh-withdrawal. Guh-got some buh-buh-bills.
Lorna started to say they didn’t have anything, but Todd spun her around viciously and slapped his hand back over her mouth. He put his face close to her left ear. Now, h-here’s what’s g-gonna hap-happen. Wuh-we’re goin’ in ta-ta-to yer h-h-ouse, aaaand yuh-yuh-you’re gonna guh-give me every buh-buck you got. Muh-make a n-noise, I’ll cuh-cut you. Under-stuh-stuh-stand?
His spit coated her ear. Her breakfast churned in her stomach and her legs went slack. She’d have fallen if Todd hadn’t held her.
She nodded helplessly.
He half-walked and half-dragged her along the path to the house muttering staccato curses about the still-cackling chickens. The familiar creak of the screen door sounded jarringly out of place, like a New Year’s horn at a funeral. Todd used the knife to steer her and they walked like Siamese twins.
He whispered, I wah-want every suh-suh-cent you got. Aaaand I’ll tuh-take what-eh-eh-ever juh-juh-jewelry you got t-t-too. Muh-muh-make a ssssound a-and I’ll c-c-c-c-cut, and more spit dripped into her ear. Guh-got it?
She nodded again and led him to the scullery. He kept the knife in the small of her back while she stood tiptoe and retrieved the Chock Full O’ Nuts can. She lost her balance and something tickled her back. Todd made a strange sound. The wound would require a dozen stitches and a tetanus shot.
Todd looked almost grateful when she gave him the can. She’d whispered, There’s almost a thousand dollars. My jewelry is upstairs, but my husband is up there sleeping.
He seemed about to say something. For a moment he even looked like the kid that beneath it all he still was. Then he bared his drug-rotted teeth and knocked Lorna to the floor with a vicious backhand. From somewhere in the hot, rippling light like Mojave summer she heard him run out of her house and down her gravel driveway. A minute later an engine started and roared away.
She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. There was only the strange shimmer. She wasn’t even sure if she was still in the scullery.
Vernon didn’t find her for another hour.
d
At the front door Lorna caught a chill. The thermometer next to the doorbell read thirty-eight. The chill deepened to her bones and she fought the temptation to run upstairs and back to bed. Back to Vernon, her marine. Her side would still be warm and he’d tuck up against her in his sleep like he always did.
Instead she took a deep breath. It was this morning, or never. Just to the end of the driveway, she told herself. That will be a start.
She pulled on her boots and Vernon’s oilcloth slicker. She paused at the Parsons table by the front door, considering the loaded military-issue .45 in the drawer.
She stepped into the cold air.
Bullfrogs croaked and from the backyard she heard one of the chickens cluck uneasily. The brick walk curved in a semicircle around a Meyer lemon tree to the corner of the garage. She walked to the tree and paused. Now that she was out here it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. She almost wanted to laugh at herself for letting it take so long. Absently, she picked a lemon while considering what to do with her rediscovered freedom.
Far down in the valley there was a flash of red lights and, a moment later, the distant peal of a train whistle. Three staccato blows in quick succession then a sustained wail. The crossing on Millwright Avenue was six miles away across Highway 16. The train’s lights angled through the fog like a scythe glinting in moonlight as it swiped at the trees along the tracks. She counted silently while the crossing lights flashed. It was a short one, only forty-seven seconds. Probably fifty or sixty cars, three engines, maybe a stag. When the crossing lights blinked out, she glanced toward the little forest grove across the street.
Had it not been for a faint splotch of red light against an acacia tree in the ravine on the other side of the street Lorna never would have seen the airplane. Had the morning been ten minutes brighter she would have missed it for sure. There’d be no telling when someone would have found it.
It was there, and she saw it, recognizing instantly that a plane had gone off the runway, likely in the night during the storm. Forgetting about the significance of the morning’s mission, she raced down the driveway and across the street.
She clambered down the ravine and slogged through mud and low branches and grass. Stepping around the trunk of a waterlogged oak, she saw the airplane’s tail wedged into the side of the ravine about a hundred feet away. Its right wing stuck into the air like a broken arm, the engine dripping oil like blood. The plane had come to rest upside down.
She knew right away no one could have survived the crash. The airplane was facing backward and between it and the runway was a huge gash in the dirt where it had hit the ground. The impact had sheared the left engine completely off its mounts and driven a tangle of oak branches and leaves into the cabin. If the pilot and copilot were in that twisted metal wreck they were probably cut to pieces. She shuddered again and steadied herself against the tree.
There was a noise beyond the wreckage. She silently rebuked herself, Lorna, you old fool, what if coyotes or a wildcat found the plane? But as she listened in the stillness she realized the sound wasn’t made by an animal. Someone was moaning from the airplane’s cockpit.
Her own voice came out as something little more than a whisper. Is anybody there? Hello?
The bullfrogs momentarily ceased, the last of their calls echoing from the trees across McClatchy’s field.
Lorna advanced until her eyes were level with the inverted copilot’s window. She sighed with relief. There wasn’t anyone in the seat. The roof was crushed in, and wires and metal hung out everywhere like the guts of a slaughtered steer. At her feet black mud glittered with chunks of shatterproof glass. She ducked under the fuselage to the pilot’s side. There were just more oak leaves and branches, mud spattered on the instrument panel and floor. It smelled as though it had been there longer than a few hours.
The main cabin door was hanging open. They’d survived after all. They’d crawled out and made it to the road.
She heard the sound again. She took a step closer to the door and peered inside. An eye blinked from within the small forest inside the cabin. When it saw her it went wide. It said, Mrs. Teague? Is that you?
Lorna was dimly aware of a sour taste in her mouth, the croak of a bullfrog, the sun fighting through the clouds. But she couldn’t feel anything, or even force any part of her body to move. She felt weightless.
The eye said, Shit. Luh-Losin’ my f-f-f-fuckin’ mind. Seeing my eleventh guh-grade history teacher in a suh-swamp. G-Goddamn it. Goddamn it the fuck to Hell.
The voice wasn’t coming from the eye anymore, nor from anywhere inside the shattered truck. It came from up in the mountains, whispering like the devil wind. It started repeating, No, no, you’re ruh-real—you’re really stuh-stuh standing there… Mrs. Teague… Help me… help me… help me, becoming more insistent, For God’s sake, why’re you stuh-standing there? I’m buh-buh-bleeding… Help me, goddamn it! Those two muh-muh-motherfuckers left me here to die!
The voice was silent a moment. Inside the cabin the branches breathed weakly, leaves fluttering as they might have in a spring breeze. Then the voice was coming from the eye again, and for the first time in ten years Lorna heard Todd Cranston as he’d sounded the first day of school. Before the drugs.
He said, If you d-d-don’t guh-guh-get help, I’m guh-guh-guh-gonna die.
Lorna heard herself reply matter-of-factly, I expect that’s true.
S-s-so you’ll huh-huh-help me?
I don’t know. I haven’t decided. With another chill she realized it was true.
The eye bugged. Duh-duh-decide what? This is l-l-l-life and d-d-d-death! Even yuh-you can g-g-g-get that, cuh-cuh-can’t you? I can’t fffffeel anything below my wuh-waist, and everything else h-h-huh-hurts like huh-huh-Hell. The fuh-fuh-fuck else you ni-ni-need to know?
Don’t curse, Todd.
The eye laughed. Jesus H. Christ. Stuh-stop being a wah-wah-washed-up t-t-teacher long enough to c-c-c-call a fuckin’ amm-ambulance.
Lorna said, more sternly, Todd, don’t curse. It’s not as simple as you think.
He needed to understand. She wanted to teach him. It would take time but at long last she would make him see.
Sure enough, the eye barked, It is sssssimple. Wuh-wuh-one foot front’ve the other tuh-tuh-’til you get to the fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-phone. Aaaaaand thuh-thuh-three n-numbers, n-n-nine, wuh-one, one.
Even through his stutter he said nine-one-one like he was addressing an uncooperative, not-too-bright six-year-old. She wouldn’t fall for his trap, not this time. She kept her composure. It made her feel powerful. She said, It’s been a matter of life and death with you for a long time now, Todd. You’ve been helping that Stevie Hankins make poison up in the hills. You bring it down to poison people. You don’t even sell it to grown-ups who can make their own decisions, but to children who don’t know any better. I can’t help you unless you acknowledge what you’ve done.
It was the right thing to say. She knew how to handle bad eggs. She always had, it was just that boys like Todd and Stevie had made her forget. But now he would see how much harm he’d inflicted. She’d make him see.
The eye chuckled. If it m-m-makes you fuh-feel any buh-better, when the c-c-c-c-cops find what’s in buh-buh-buh-back of this puh-puh-plane, I’ll be out’ve b-business for a llllllong-assed t-time. If I li-live luh-luh-long enough to g-g-g-get arrested.
There were chemicals in Todd’s tortured consonants and addiction in his agonized vowels. She imagined she was in her classroom, addressing a bad egg while her other students watched in quiet deference. Like they’d used to.
She said, Todd, our tempers never get us anywhere. You mustn’t let yours get the best of you so often. It’s bad for you. Now, here you are, asking for my help, which I’m willing to give. But we won’t get anywhere until you understand what got you here.
Mrs. Teague, why d-don’t you do us both a fuh-fuh-favor, and go call a f-fucking ambulance before I d-d-d-die in this duh-ditch.
The mockery was gone. The voice was low and threatening. Well, she knew how to deal with this sort of outburst. A few minutes of time to think would set him back in his place. Without another word, she stood up. She crossed back to the trail.
He called something behind her but she ignored it.
He would learn, one way or another.
She returned to the wreck ten minutes later with a blanket and a thermos of coffee. The eye blinked a few times before it focused on her. Jesus f-f-f-f-fucking Christ, what tuh-took you so long? Where’s the am-blance?
His speech was muddy. The stuttering was nearly gone, as if his body was starting to save every ounce of energy. Even though it was getting light it was still cold, and the wind had picked up again. Lorna decided he was getting towards hypothermia. The blanket and coffee would fix that and then they could continue their conversation. He would come around. She could tell.
She leaned through the passenger door and threw the blanket over the branches. I brought you some coffee.
She poured a cup out of the thermos and offered it to him. The eye stared at the steaming liquid. The fuck’m I s’pposed to d-do with this?
I thought you’d like to stay warm while we talk.
The eye bugged out like a cartoon again, and Lorna stifled a giggle. It looked so silly, she thought, dangling there in that seatbelt. It said, You’ve lost yer shit, Mrs. Teague. You’re off your fuh-fucking tuh-trolley.
Lorna shook her head. You cursed like that in class, remember? Oh, Todd, you were such a troubled child. But, I was right about you. Is this what you thought your life would be like? Is this what you wanted?
A change came across the eye. The cockiness, the arrogance, vanished. For the first time that morning, it looked genuinely afraid. You’re right, Mrs. Teague. I let you have it. And I’m suh-sorry. Is that what you want?
A wave of gratitude washed over her, but Todd just couldn’t help himself. If it muh-means so much to you I’m fucking sorry th-th-that I was too much for you to handle when I was suh-suh-seventeen fucking years old. I’m suh-sorry you were so fucking bad at your job. I’m sorry...
His strength failed him and he took a series of gasping, rattling breaths. His breathing sounded liquid.
Lorna sighed. He’d almost fooled her, but a bad egg would always be a bad egg. And Todd wasn’t just bad, he was poisoned to his core. She thought maybe if he bled a little bit more the poison would bleed out. She said, I used to want your apology, but we’re past that. You have to admit what you’ve done with your life. Admit how many lives you’ve ruined. Admit to each and every dream you’ve destroyed with your poison.
The eye closed, and the branches and leaves shook. Lorna was shocked to hear quiet laughter. You g-got no clue what you’re tuh-talking about.
Lorna said sternly, Oh, I think I do, young man. Before you and Stevie Hankins, my students never had the problems they have today. They didn’t get pregnant, they didn’t come to class smelling of alcohol or drugs. They didn’t write obscenities on their homework or use them in the classroom. It was your doing. You and that Stevie. All of it.
The eye laughed again. Those things were going on a long tuh-time before I came along, Mrs. Teague. Maybe you’re just g-g-getting old.
Lorna felt herself losing control of the situation. It was like a bad dream coming back to haunt her. That’s not true. Something changed after you came into my life, Todd. You and that bast—that boy, Stevie. You put a curse on my school and it’s never lifted. I’ve prayed for it to end, I’ve prayed for a return to the days when youngsters were bright and full of hope and the only problems were cigarettes and sometimes a girl who got into trouble. But your curse is too strong. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. It’s too much for me, Todd, whatever you did to my classroom. I can’t go there anymore without seeing you. I can’t walk into my backyard without seeing you. I can’t even walk into my kitchen. And that smell you always had—
The eye started laughing again. I’s kidding before but now I’m sure’ve it. You’re fucking nuh-nuts. Sure, teacher, I made you a joke. Wuh-wasn’t the time B-Brian B-B-Benjamin reminded you the Suh-Soviet Union’s guh-gone. ’Member when you thought Lincoln was P-P-President during World War One? That’s muh-my favorite.
Lorna hadn’t used corporal punishment in decades but now she leaned into the cabin and shook the branches as hard as she could. There was a strange sound from the eye. She was inches from it. You’re doing what you’ve always done, confusing the issue. You’re trying to take control. But I know it wasn’t me, it was you!
Todd gasped, Couldn’t have been you n-n-n-never should’ve been aaaaah high school teacher in the fuckin’ first place. S-s-s-sure, it was me all along. It was—
Lorna pushed harder on the branches. She had to make him stop talking so she could finish what she had to say. She was the authority and they wouldn’t get anywhere until he accepted that.
She pushed on the branches.
She pushed one branch in particular and it went forward, down into the cab, down toward the eye.
It cut his scream short.
Lorna was almost screaming now herself, a tone of voice she’d never used before in class. Children were angels. They were innocent vessels, waiting for their teachers and parents to fill them up with goodness. Everything came apart when you came along. The children weren’t good anymore. Parents didn’t care anymore. The school wasn’t a sacred place anymore. My class wasn’t. All because of you!
A sound like mud gurgled from the branches and she let go. The eye let out an almost imperceptible noise, like the sound of a plastic ketchup bottle.
Her voice was raw. Todd, do you understand everything I just said? Will you admit what you’ve done at last?
There was no reply. She reached, slowly, through the branches toward where the eye had been, half expecting something to reach out and drag her into the airplane. But nothing happened. She pushed deeper and deeper, until she felt Todd’s skin. She pressed and heard what sounded like an exhalation.
She stepped back from the door. I hope that didn’t hurt, Todd, I just wanted to make sure you were still there. I’ll get the ambulance now. I’m glad you listened. I think we understand each other now. I think now maybe you’ll change your ways, won’t you?
The eye didn’t speak.
Suddenly Lorna wanted to be as far away from Todd Cranston and the crashed plane as she could. She scrambled, stumbling, up the ravine and through the grass and mud to the road. Oak branches tore at her face. She ran faster than she’d run in years, maybe even in her entire life.
She flew through the door and flung open the Parson’s table drawer. The black pistol, and all its power, lay on a white cloth like some sort of holy relic whose power until now she’d only dimly comprehended.
Vernon was at the kitchen table when the front door slammed open hard enough to crush the stopper and knock a chunk of plaster out of the wall. He took one look at Lorna clawing at the drawer where they kept his old marine-issue .45, and jumped to his feet. His bowl of cereal crashed to the floor and he ran to her. My God, Lorna, what’s the matter? Have you been crying? Lorna, honey, sit, sit. Just calm down and tell me what happened.
He took the gun out of her hand and put it back in the drawer.
Lorna looked at Vernon. It was as if she hadn’t seen him in twenty years. He looked younger. He looked like the photograph on the mantel, in his uniform the day he received his stripes. She almost cried at how handsome he was.
Of course Vernon looked younger. The curse had been lifted. She couldn’t wait to look in the mirror.
She started to tell him what had happened in the ravine but when she opened her mouth the only thing that came out was laughter. They stood there in the doorway, fog swirling into the living room, and Lorna laughed and laughed until tears ran down her face.