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Show 70 A high, eerie sound cut harshly into Karl's fog-filled head; Aunt Augusta whispered that the sound was Maggie Rose, screaming. It went on endlessly until Karl heard his father shouting (his father, who never shouted), "They were my children, too! Do you think you're the only one who feels grief?" His mother's screams had stopped then, but for months afterward her eyes were wild and hollow. Not until Henry was born did she smile again, and her smile had been unused for so long that it looked ghostly. After her children died, Maggie Rose hated both God and the Culleys. The dirty, poorly fed Culley children had somehow survived the diphtheria they gave to the Kerners, the diphtheria that killed two of Maggie Rose's clean, well nourished, fiercely loved children. But because hatred of God was unnatural in Catholic-born-and-bred Maggie Rose, after a while she hated only the Culleys. "What were their names again?" Henry asked. "Kurt, and Kara. See, Henry, when Mom and Pop started having children, they decided to give all of us names beginning with K, to go with Kerner. The boys had German first names and Irish middle names -- Karl Patrick, and Kurt Brendan. The girls had it the other way around, Irish first names and German middle names -- Kathleen Hilda and Kara Augusta." "What's my middle name?" "You don't have one," Karl answered. "After Kurt and Kara died, Mom broke the pattern. No more Ks. They named you Henry, without any middle name at all." |
