But the blood, Melanie thought. They shouldn't get his blood on them. There was AIDS, there were other diseases.
These people needed help but they needed official help.
Eight gray birds, sitting in dark…
Susan, eight years younger than Melanie, was the first one out of the school bus, running toward the injured man, her long, black hair dancing around her in the gusting wind.
Then Mrs. Harstrawn.
Melanie hung back, staring. The driver lay like a sawdust doll, one leg bent at a terrible angle. Head floppy, hands fat and pale.
She had never before seen a dead body.
But he isn't dead, of course. No, no, just a cut. It's nothing. He's just fainted.
One by one the little girls turned to gaze at the accident; Kielle and Shannon first, naturally – the Dynamic Duo, the Power Rangers, the X-Men. Then fragile Emily, whose hands were glued together in prayer. (Her parents insisted that she pray every night for her hearing to return. She had told this to Melanie but no one else.) Beverly clutched her chest, an instinctive gesture. She wasn't having an attack just yet.
Melanie climbed out and walked toward the Cadillac. Halfway there she slowed. In contrast to the gray sky, the gray wheat, and the pale highway, the blood was so very red; it was on everything – the man's bald head, his chest, the car door, the yellow leather seat.
The roller coaster of fear sent her heart plummeting toward the ground.
Mrs. Harstrawn was the mother of two teenage boys, a humorless woman, smart, dependable, solid as vulcanized rubber. She reached under her colorful sweater, untucked her blouse and tore off a strip, making an impromptu bandage, which she wrapped around a deep gash in the man's torn head. She bent down and whispered into his ear, pressed on his chest and breathed into his mouth.
And then she listened.
I can't hear, Melanie thought, so I can't help. There's nothing I can do. I'll go back to the bus. Keep an eye on the girls. The roller coaster of her fear leveled out. Good, good.
Susan crouched too, stanching a wound on his neck. Frowning, the student looked up at Mrs. Harstrawn. With bloody fingers she signed, "Why bleeding so much? Look at neck."
Mrs. Harstrawn examined it. She too frowned, shaking her head.
"There's hole in his neck," the teacher signed in astonishment. "Like a bullet hole."
Melanie gasped at this message. The flimsy car of the roller coaster dropped again, leaving Melanie's stomach somewhere else – way, way above her. She stopped walking altogether.
Then she saw the purse.
Ten feet away.
Thankful for any distraction to keep her eyes off the injured man, she walked over to the bag and examined it. The chain pattern on the cloth was some designer's. Melanie Charrol – a farm girl who made sixteen thousand, five hundred dollars a year as an apprentice teacher of the deaf – had never in her twenty-five years touched a designer accessory. Because the purse was small it seemed precious. Like a radiant jewel. It was the sort of purse that a woman would sling over her shoulder when she walked into an office high above downtown Kansas City or even Manhattan or Los Angeles. The sort of purse she'd drop onto a desk and from which she'd pull a silver pen to write a few words that would set assistants and secretaries in motion.
But as Melanie stared at the purse a tiny thought formed in her mind, growing, growing until it blossomed: Where was the woman who owned it?
That was when the shadow fell on her.
He wasn't a tall man, or fat, but he seemed very solid: muscled the way horses have muscle, close to the skin, rippled and defined. Melanie gasped, staring at his smooth young face. He wore a glossy crewcut and clothes gray as the clouds speeding by overhead. The grin was broad and showed white teeth and she didn't believe the smile for a second.
Melanie's first impression was that he resembled a fox. No, she concluded, a weasel or a stoat. There was a pistol in the waistband of his baggy slacks. She gasped and lifted her hands. Not to her face but to her chest. "Please, don't hurt me," she signed without thinking. He glanced at her moving hands and laughed.
From the corner of her eye she saw Susan and Mrs. Harstrawn stand uneasily. A second man was striding up to them; he was huge. Fat and tall. Also dressed in overwashed gray. Shaggy hair. He was missing a tooth and his grin was hungry. A bear, she thought automatically.
"Go," Melanie signed to Susan. "Let's go. Now." Eyes on the yellow skin of the bus, she started walking toward the seven unhappy young faces staggered in the windows.
Stoat grabbed her by the collar. She batted at his hand, but cautiously, afraid to hit him, afraid of his anger.
He shouted something she didn't understand and shook her. The grin became what the grin really was – a cold glare. His face went dark. Melanie sagged in terror and dropped her hand.
"What's… this?" Bear said. "I'm thinking we… about that."
Melanie was postlingually deaf. She began losing her hearing at age eight, after her language skills were honed. She was a better lipreader than most of the girls. But lipreading is a very iffy skill, far more complicated than merely watching lips. The process involves interpreting movements of the mouth, tongue, teeth, eyes, and other parts of the body. It is truly effective only if you know the person whose words you are trying to decipher. Bear existed in a different universe from Melanie's life of Old English decor, Celestial Seasonings tea and smalltown, midwestern schools. And she had no idea what he was saying.
The big man laughed and spit in a white stream. His eyes coursed over her body – her breasts beneath the high-necked burgundy blouse, her long charcoal-gray skirt, black tights. She awkwardly crossed her arms. Bear turned his attention back to Mrs. Harstrawn and Susan.
Stoat was leaning forward, speaking – probably shouting, as people often did with the Deaf (which was all right because they spoke more slowly and their lip motion was more pronounced when they shouted). He was asking who was in the bus. Melanie didn't move. She couldn't. Her sweaty fingers gripped her biceps.
Bear looked down at the injured man's battered face and tapped his booted foot lethargically against the head, watching it loll back and forth. Melanie gasped; the casualness of the kick, its gratuitousness, was horrifying. She started to cry. Bear pushed Susan and Mrs. Harstrawn ahead of him toward the bus.
Melanie glanced at Susan and shot her hands into the air. "No, don't!"
But Susan was already moving.
Her perfect figure and runner's body.
Her one hundred and twelve muscular pounds.
Her strong hands.
As the girl's palm swung toward Bear's face he jerked his head back in surprise and caught her hand inches from his eyes. The surprise became amusement and he bent her arm downward until she dropped to her knees then he shoved her to the ground, filthying her black jeans and white blouse with dust and mud. Bear turned to Stoat and called out something.
"Susan, don't!" Melanie signed.
The teenager was on her feet again. But Bear was prepared this time and turned to meet her. When he grabbed her his hand found her breasts and lingered there for a moment. Suddenly, he grew tired of the game. He hit her solidly in the stomach and she dropped to her knees, clutching herself and struggling for breath.
"No!" Melanie signed to her. "Don't fight."
Stoat called to Bear, "Where… he?"
Bear motioned toward a wall of wheat. He had a curious expression on his face – as if he didn't approve of something but was afraid to be too critical. "Don't… time… this bullshit," he muttered. Melanie followed his eyes and looked into the shafts of wheat. She couldn't see clearly but from the shadows and dim outlines it appeared to be a man, bending down. He was small and wiry. It seemed that his arm was raised, like in one of those Nazi salutes. It remained poised there for a long moment. Beneath him, she thought, was the form of a person, dressed in dark green.