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Sarah had begun to wonder desperately what went on in that house when she was away at work. It was true that Dean's legs could be made to shuffle along like those of a rickety pull toy when it was absolutely necessary to get him from this place to that, but it was an enormous chore, and the man, despite great loss of weight, was very heavy. Jo would never help her.

But often, when she came home from work, Sarah would find Dean in different clothing, lying or sitting up motionless, in another part of the house. When Sarah asked Jo how she managed him Jo would only reply, with an annoyed, impatient shrug of her shoulders, it's not so hard as you make it out to be.' But Sarah knew that it was.

The rain continued throughout Saturday. In the afternoon, the sky was dark, and the ground was sodden. Great pools of water had formed in the flat lawns, drowning the grass and beating the first summer blossoms back into the earth. In the bedroom, Sarah had insisted on raising the blinds and pulling back the curtains so that what little daylight there was might come into the room.

'Dean don't like the light', said Jo, again ensconced in the char at the foot of the bed. Jo was always in the way when Sarah wanted to get anything done.

'Dean's got his eyes covered up', said Sarah shortly, 'and it don't matter to him whether there's light or not.'

'The light shrinks his bandages. Makes 'em tight', argued Jo, but Sarah thought that she had made this reason up and therefore ignored it.

Sarah pulled the sheets off her husband, and then pulled him to the right side of the bed. Then she went round to the other side, and took the sheets out. Then she had to drag him on to the bare mattress so that she could remove the sheets altogether. It was a great, difficult, infuriating ritual to change Dean's bed, but she hated the way slow healing smelled.

It occurred to Sarah suddenly that she led a hard life - a tiring boring job all week long, every day, and then come home in the evening, and nurse her husband, without comfort, without thanks. The weekend was spent in cleaning the house. It was this train of thought that prompted Sarah to say to her mother-in-law then, 'You 're here the whole damn day, Jo, why can't you help with Dean? Why can't you do something around the house?'

'You're his wife, it's you that ought to take care of him', Jo replied unhesitatingly.

'What about the house? The house belongs to you. You ought to help with things', Sarah continued.

'I don't charge you nothing to live here, so there's no reason that I ought to help. What you do is for your rent, and from what I see, dust in the corners, and things not picked up like they should be, you're getting the place cheap, Sarah. I think real cheap.'

Sarah shook her head, and continued to tuck the sheets in all around the bed. The subject was dropped and when the two women began to talk again, the subject was of course the deaths of the policeman and his wife. Becca Blair had come over just after breakfast that morning with the latest news, got from Mrs Nelson by way of Mary-Louise and Margaret.

'First', Becca said, 'they had to send out for five children's coffins for them Coppage kids that got burnt up, and that was only Wednesday night. And now the undertaker says if another grownup dies in Pine Cone, and he's full size, he's gone have to put him direct in the ground, 'cause he is running out of caskets.'

'And we were talking to James Shirley Thursday morning. And now he's dead.'

'Well', Jo said at this point, 'looks like you ought to stay inside, Sarah. Anybody you talk to dies that very same day!' She cackled at her little joke, and Becca stared at the fat woman strangely. The series of deaths was hardly a joking matter, she thought.

'Who's gone take care of the funeral?' asked Sarah in an attempt to change the subject.

'James's sister is coming down from Montgomery to head up ever'thing. She used to work at the plant, 'fore you were there, 'fore you married Dean, in fact', said Becca. 'But she and her husband moved up to Montgomery about two years ago. He sells insurance but he's still real nice, what I remember of him. Only saw him twice, and one of them times he had his back to me.'

But now it was late afternoon, and still raining, it's real bad, nine people dead in three days', sighed Sarah. 'I just hate to think about that ice pick!'

'Well', said Jo, with a smile that was inappropriate to the subject, 'a ice pick can't be no worse than a gun blowing up in your face, tearing the teeth right out of your gums, ripping your eyelids off.'

Sarah was shocked that Jo would say such things in the hearing of Dean (if Dean could hear); it could only make him feel much worse.

Jo continued, but without the inappropriate smile, 'Them people are all dead now, and who gives a damn? Nobody cares any more about them than they cared about Dean! I care about Dean, and I'm the only one! The only reason you're here, Sarah, is that you're married to him and you can't get away. He's your responsibility. He's not mine. I own this house. I could throw him and you out on the sidewalk and not even wait till the rain let up, and nobody could say a word. But I'm not. I want Dean here with me. It was worse when Dean got his head blown off than when his daddy got bit by a infected 'coon down where we had the blackberry bushes. And
he
died! Dean didn't die, but I don't know he's ever gone get out of that bed 'less we pull him out of it!'

Jo could easily see Sarah's discomfort, but she went on with hardly a pause. 'He likes to hear it, likes to hear what happened to these people, he wants to know he's not the only one in Pine

Cone that suffered. Serves 'em all right. It's their fault that Dean, my boy, is right there in that bed and not off enjoying himself in Southeast Asia. He wanted to get out of this town, get out of the trap he had got hisself into.' Here Jo glanced up at Sarah and it was obvious that she considered that Sarah was part of the millstone around the neck of her son. 'I'm not sorry, not sorry for a bit of it.'

Sarah faltered, 'Are you... sure that's what he's thinking? Did he tell you that? He didn't say nothing, did he, Jo?' The worst part of all this was the uncertainty.

'He don't need to talk to me, Sarah. I know what he's thinking. He's hearing eveiything, and he don't need to say nothing, not so long as I'm here with him. It's worked out real good that you 're at the plant ever' day, because you wouldn't be no company for him anyway. You don't know what he wants, you don't know what he's thinking - and I do. That's why I let you change the sheets and stuff, 'cause you're his wife, and you ought to be doing
something
for him. I sit here all the day long, when I suppose I could be out doing other things, sit here all day long just keeping Dean company. I don't mind, 'cause Dean is my boy. Even though you think it's hard to look him in the face, I don't.'

Sarah trembled. Jo was being vicious, but for the most part it was an accurate representation of their situation.

The rain finally let up during supper that Saturday night, and the sky cleared almost immediately. The moon was on the wane.

Jo Howell was in fine spirits and Sarah was at a loss to account for them. Her first thought was that it had something to do with the nine deaths that week - but that was uncharitable - and Sarah then supposed it was just as likely that Jo was pleased with having got so much the better of her during the argument that afternoon.

But now, at any rate, Jo was a little more agreeably disposed towards her daughter-in-law. 'Sarah', she said, Nvhy don't we all do something tonight?'

Sarah was very surprised. Was 'we all' meant to include Dean? Or who else? Or what* could they possibly do together? 'Well', said Sarah cautiously, 'like what? What do you want to do?'

'Why don't you go ask Becca if she'll take us out to the drive-in tonight?'

'Well', said Sarah, "all right. But who's gone take care of Dean when we're gone?'

'What do you mean!' cried Jo, 'you don't think we'd leave Dean here, do you, when we went out to the picture show! Dean always loved the picture shows, and they was times he went to the drive-in three times a week even when they was showing the same things.'

'Will he be all right, just sitting up for two, three hours like thai in the car?' asked Sarah.

'I'll sit in back with Dean', said Jo. 'Why don't you just go ask Becca if she'll take us out there.'

Becca was agreeable to this proposition, with one proviso: 'I won't go look at no monsters on the screen. I cain't do that. There we are out in the middle of the country, ever'thing black all around us, out in the middle of nowhere, and I'm s'posed to look at monsters jumping out of the bushes

Sarah reassured her. They were going to see
John Goldfarb Please Come Home
and
Harlow,
on a double bill.

'Well', said Becca, 'that's all right. Maybe it'll do Dean a little good, get him out of that house, get him out of that bed.'

'You don't mind that Jo's going?' said Sarah doubtfully.

'Honey', said Becca, and hugged Sarah, 'if I could, I'd give you the world, and then fence it in. Taking Jo to the drive-in is not as bad as some things I could name.'

'Like what?' laughed Sarah.

'Well', said Becca, thoughtfully, 'it's probably not gone be as bad as, say, spending the rest of my life with Mike.' Mike was Becca's ex-husband, who used to beat her.

Becca and Sarah asked Margaret to go along with them, but the young girl cried, 'Ohhh, Mama! You are going to the drive-in tonight! Tonight is Saturday night! Only high school people go on Saturday night! I'm going! I am going with Mary-Louise. We have got a double date - I already told you about it - with the Beasley twins. And I don't want you to park anywhere near us, you hear me!'

Becca laughed, and said that she would not, that she wasn't going to spy on her.

'Well', said Margaret, a little ashamed that she had put her mother off so, 'we can meet at a certain time in the refreshment stand if you want to.'

Becca laughed again, and said that the reason that they were going, really, was to take Jo and Dean.

Margaret looked darkly at Sarah. 'Dean's going to the pictures?'

Sarah nodded. 'Jo says he'll enjoy it.' Margaret said nothing. 'And even if he don't, maybe we will.'

It was a strange evening. Becca parked at the very edge of the lot, so that people wouldn't stare in at Dean when they passed by on their way to the refreshment stand. Jo had propped him up in a corner of the back seat, with blankets and pillows arranged all around him, and provided him a running commentary on the two films, crying out at appropriate moments things like: 'Did you see how she did that?' or 'I wouldn't put up with something like that! Would you, Dean?' or 'Somebody's like to get hurt they keep on that way!'

Sarah suggested that since the night was very warm and humid, she and Becca might sit outside. Becca took up this notion gladly, and retrieved a beach blanket from the trunk of the automobile, and spread it on the ground so they could lean against the car. Here they sat cross-legged, and watched the previews, the cartoons, and the two films. But sometimes they talked quietly together, about Jo and Dean, about their work at the factory, and about the summer lightning that broke every ten seconds over the western horizon.

The next morning at breakfast, Sarah asked Jo, 'Did Dean like the movies?'

Jo nodded. 'He liked it a lot. He liked getting out and doing things, just like he used to. He ought to do more things like that.'

Sarah said nothing. But she knew that Dean had been stuck like a straw figure in the comer of the back seat, that he had not moved at all, had not even shifted his posture for comfort, had not even tilted and slipped from his own weight. Jo had a peculiar notion of what it was to 'get out and do things'.

All the Coppage family were buried in the cemetery in Brundidge, where Larry Coppage's wealthy kin had a large lot and an option on as many more square feet of property adjacent. It was an option that was now exercised though the family had never anticipated that the grave sites would fill so quickly. Though Larry was well liked throughout Pine Cone, and was thought to be the best of all his large, moneyed family, most of the town did not want to mingle and mourn with the owners of the Pine Cone Munitions Factory. They used the recent rain as an excuse for not attending.

The funeral service for Thelma and James Shirley was held on Sunday, in the afternoon, at the Baptist church; it was respectably attended. Dorothy and Malcolm Sims, with little Mary between then, had one pew to themselves; the one directly behind contained more distant relatives of the husband and wife, whom Thelma and James themselves had never seen except at someone else's funeral; another was filled with county policemen and their wives. There were neighbours and friends, those who knew James Shirley only by sight, and those who were only idly curious to attend the funerals of two who had died so violently. These last were disappointed that Dorothy Sims had insisted on closed coffins.

James Shirley was known and respected in the black area of Pine Cone, and therefore the choir loft in the back of the church, reached by narrow winding stairs from the vestibule, was packed with men and women paying their respects to the dead. Gussie was recognised as the chief mourner among them, and given the place with the best view of the pulpit and the two coffins, which stood, end to end, on trestles before it.