Lost by Gary; Devon Page B

stroked the air. She didn’t know when her mother came or where she came from, but she was there, holding her at the waist and forehead. “That’s it. Get it out. Let it all out.” The room and the side of her mother’s face swam out of Mamie’s focus. She couldn’t find Sherman. Her father had picked up the telephone.
    â€œRay, put that down and help me,” her mother said. “What’s the doctor or the police or anybody else going to do anyhow … after all this time?”
    Mamie couldn’t remember being taken to bed that night or how the two heart-shaped pillows from the sofa came to be under her head. She awoke in her petticoat as Sherman lifted her in his arms. Nestling upright against his chest, she put her tired arms around his throat and shoulder in a loose hug. “Are you okay, Sherman?” she murmured.
    She could feel him nod against her hair.
    â€œWhat time is it?” she asked, her voice as droopy as her eyes.
    â€œAlmost daylight,” he said.
    â€œWhere are you taking me?” she asked. Slowly the room wheeled; she nodded against him lightly as he walked. Still blinking with sleep, she glanced down the back slope of his shirt, seeing the cuffs of his pants and the slide of the carpet beneath them.
    â€œFar away,” he said. Blades of cut grass were stuck to the backs of his shoes.
    Mamie batted her eyes hard. “My purse,” she moaned, still woozy. They went back for it; he turned and stooped and she caught the strap in her fingers; they turned again.
    The door to her room rasped as it opened and they went through it, with Mamie jogging gently against him. They crossed to the top of the stairs. “Are we going right now?” she said.
    â€œI’m taking you to a safe place,” he said.
    The pictures in the stairwell loomed up and passed beside her as they went down the stairs. “One last thing I gotta do,” he said, “then I’ll come after you.” He turned on the halfway landing and went on down, and she bounced with him, the top of the stairs receding and curving away with every downward step. “Something smells funny,” she said, “like gas.” Her voice snagged and bumped on his shoulder. “I think I smell smoke.”
    â€œI’ve got it ready to blow,” he said. “Everything’s fixed. It’s already started.”
    â€œWhy?” she said, still yawning, fighting sleep. “Is Toddy comin’ with us?”
    â€œHe’s all right. He’s asleep.”
    As they cut through the foyer, he dropped almost to his knees and they moved down and up like climbing a ladder. “Put this around you,” he said, and covered her with a quilt.
    â€œIt’s wet,” she said.
    â€œThat won’t matter,” he said.
    She squirmed under it, shrinking from its icy chill, and she felt it run wet on her cheek. She wiped at it with the hand she kept around his shoulder and saw a dark stain. It took a moment for her to realize that it was blood. “Oh, Sherman, did you hurt yourself again?”
    They went through the kitchen. “It’s not so bad,” he said, “just a nick.”
    She tried to twist forward and sit on the perch of his forearm, but he held her pressed tight with his hand between her shoulder blades. “But it’s getting on me. All over my petticoat.”
    â€œThen we’ll have to take it off.”
    Later, she would remember him telling her to cover her mouth with the wet quilt as they went through the basement door and he turned sideways in the doorway to swing the door shut with his elbow. The air was mottled dark and hazy in the basement—one lonely cricket chirped along with the methodic grind of his shoes. She peered above her wet mask.
    Great swarming coils of smoke hung between the black studs.
    In the last few minutes of night, as the warm rising dew eddied and idled on the ground and the Chinaman