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Show 112 and Rising 22 one laughed or traded gossip with their foot resting on the bumper of a parked car. The sun with no perimeters had bleached the scene dead white and dimensionless. "Shut up," she screamed, jabbing her fingers into her ears. On the cot, eight-year old Elizabeth woke, her hair coiled in wet ringlets against her cheeks. She dipped her hand into the bucket. "Suck, baby," she whispered, tapping the baby's lips with her finger. Esther patted Elizabeth's wet curls and slumped onto the cot. But then she heard a car t o i l i ng over the washboard road. She hurried to the canvas flap. It was Alf, home too early. " I t ' s not your job is it?" she asked as he slammed the car door. " I t ' s Sam Cookson. He walked out of the vegetable cooler where he makes out the menus, h i t the heatblast of those oil stoves and just keeled over, right in front of everybody." "Why'd you come home?" "We need you, Esther." "Why?" "The doctor's at the other end of the project and can't be reached. I t ' s hotter than Hades, and you know what that means for a corpse. I told them you had dressed the dead before. You know, for the church, for our twins." "Alf, does i t matter to you that I'm dying?" "Oh, my songbird. Wilting in this desert." He patted her breasts. "Don't." She pushed his hand away. |
