"Aren't you going to go get him?"
"No. He'll go back to sleep in a few minutes."
"He's hungry!" She felt her cold cheeks redden with anger. "Are you letting him starve to death?"
"I've got formula for him. Don't you get it, Mother? I love Drummer. I'm not going to let anything hap -"
"Balls," Natalie said, and she strode past her daughter into the hallway. She reached out, found a light switch, and turned on the overhead light. It stung her eyes for a few seconds, and she heard Mary pick up the gun again. Natalie continued into the guest bedroom, turned on a lamp, and looked at the crying, red-faced baby wrapped in a coarse gray blanket on the bed. She wasn't prepared for the sight of such a small infant, and her heart ached. This child's mother – Laura Clayborne they said her name was – must be ready for an asylum by now. She picked up the crying infant and held him against her. "There, there," she said. "It's all right, everything's going to be all -"
Mary came into the room. Natalie saw the animal cunning in her daughter's eyes, the years of hardscrabble living etched on her face. Mary once was a beautiful, vivacious young woman, the belle of the ball in Richmond society. Now she resembled a bag lady, used to living under train trestles and eating out of cast-iron pots. Natalie looked quickly away from her, before her eyes were overpowered by the waste of a human being. "This child's hungry. You can hear it in his crying. And he needs his diaper changed! Damn right, you don't know the first thing about taking care of a baby, do you?"
"I've had some practice," Mary said, watching her mother rock Drummer with a gentle motion.
"Where's the formula? We're going to warm some up and feed this child, right this minute!"
"It's in the car. You'll walk down to the boathouse with me, won't you?" It was a command, not a question. Natalie hated the boathouse; it was where Grant had hanged himself from an overhead rafter.
When they returned, Natalie switched on the kitchen stove and warmed a bottle of formula. Mary sat at the small table and watched her mother feed the freshly diapered Drummer, the Colt near at hand. The shine of light on her mother's diamond rings drew Mary's attention. "That's right, that's right," Natalie crooned. "Baby's having a good dinner now, isn't him? Yes, him is!"
"Did you ever hold me like that?" Mary asked.
Natalie ceased her crooning. The baby sucked noisily at the nipple.
"What about Grant? Did you hold him like that, too?"
The nipple popped out of the infant's mouth. He made a little wailing sound of need, and Natalie guided the nipple back into his cupid's-bow lips. What would Mary do, she wondered, if she were to suddenly turn away, walk out of this house with David Clayborne, and get into the car? Her gaze fixed on the Colt and then skittered away.
Mary read it. "I'll take my son now," she said, and she stood up and lifted Drummer away from her mother. Drummer kept feeding, staring up at her with big, unfocused blue eyes. "Isn't he pretty? I almost had a wreck looking at him. He's so pretty, isn't he?"
"He's not your son."
"Talking shit," Mary crooned to Drummer. "Talking shit shit shit, yes she is."
"Please listen to me! It's not right! I don't know why you did this, or what… what's in your mind, but you can't keep him! You've got to give him up! Listen to me!" she insisted as Mary turned her back. "I'm begging you! Don't put this child in danger! Do you hear me?"
Silence, but for the sucking. Then: "I hear you."
"Leave him with me. I'll take him to the police. Then you can go on wherever you want to, I don't care. Lose yourself. Go underground. Just let me take that child back where he belongs."
"He's already where he belongs."
Natalie glanced at the pistol again, lying on the table. Two steps away. Did she dare? Was it loaded, or not? If she picked it up, could she use it if she had to? Her mind careened toward a decision.
Mary held the baby with one hand and retrieved the gun with the other. She tucked it down in the waistband of her faded denims. "Mother," she said, and she looked into Natalie's face with her cold, intense eyes in that hard and bitter face, "we don't live in the same world. We never did. I played the game for as long as I could stand it. Then I knew: your world would break me if I didn't fight back. It would grind me down, put me in a wedding dress and give me a diamond ring, and I would look across the dining room table at some stupid stranger and hear the screams of injustice every day of my life, but by then I'd be too weak to care. I'd live in a big house in Richmond with foxhunt paintings on the walls, and I'd worry about finding good help. I'd think that maybe we should have nuked Vietnam, and I wouldn't give a shit about whether the pigs billy-clubbed students in the streets and whether the Mindfuck State got fat on the bodies of the uneducated masses. Your world would have killed me, Mother. Can't you understand?"
"All that is past history," Natalie answered. "The fighting in the streets is over. The student rebellions, the protests… all of it is gone. Why can't you let it go?"
Mary smiled thinly. "It's not gone. People just forgot. I'm going to make them remember."
"How? By committing more murders?"
"I'm a soldier. My war didn't end. It'll never end." She kissed Drummer on the forehead, and her mother flinched. "He's part of the next generation. He'll carry on the fight. I'll teach him what we did for freedom, and he'll know the war's never over." She smiled into the baby's face. "My sweet, sweet Drummer."
Natalie Terrell had thought for over twenty years that her daughter was unbalanced. Now it came at her in a savage rush: she was standing in a kitchen with a madwoman who held a bottle of formula to an infant's lips. There was no way to reach her, she was beyond touching, a resident of a world of twisted patriotism and midnight slaughters. For the first time, she feared for her own life.
"So you sent them to the beach house," Mary said, still looking at Drummer. "That was motherly of you. Well, they'll find out soon enough that I'm not there. The pigs won't be kind to you, Mother. You may get a taste of the whip."
"I did it because I didn't want to see that child hurt, and I hoped -"
"I know what you hoped. That you could put me in your fist and mold me, like you tried to mold Grant. No, no; I won't be molded. I suppose I can't stay here much longer, can I?"
"They'll find you wherever you go."
"Oh, I've done pretty well up until now." She looked at her mother, and saw she was afraid. It made her feel both elated and very sad. "I'll take one of your rings."
"What?"
"One of your rings. I want the one with the two diamonds side by side."
Natalie shook her head. "I don't know what you -"
"Take off that ring and put it on the table," Mary said; her voice had changed. It was a soldier's voice again, all daughterly pretense gone. "Do it right now."
Natalie looked at the ring Mary meant. It was worth seven thousand dollars, and had been given to her as a birthday gift by Edgar in 1965. "No," she said. 'Wo. I won't."
"If you don't take it off, I'll do it for you."
Natalie's chin lifted, like the prow of a battleship. "All right, come ahead.",
Mary moved fast; she held Drummer in the crook of her left arm and was upon Natalie before she could back away. Mary's hand grasped her mother's. There was a fierce pull, some pain as skin was torn and the finger was almost wrenched from its socket, and the ring was gone.
"Damn you to hell," Natalie rasped, and she lifted her right hand and slapped Mary Terror across the face.
Mary smiled, a handprint splayed across her cheek. "I love you, too, Mother," she said, and she put the ring with its double diamonds into her pocket. "Would you hold my baby?" She gave Drummer to Natalie, and then she walked purposefully into the den and yanked the telephone from its wall socket. She flung the telephone against the wall and smashed it to pieces as Natalie stood with tears in her eyes and the baby in her arms. Mary offered her mother another smile as she passed her on the way out the front door. She drew her pistol, put the first bullet through the Cadillac's left front tire and the second bullet through the right rear tire. She returned to the house, bringing with her a whiff of gunsmoke. When they'd walked down to the boathouse to get the formula, Mary had made her mother stand far enough away so Natalie couldn't tell she was in a van, not a "car," what make it was or what color. That was for the best; when her mother got back to civilization, she would sing like a little teakettle to the pigs. Mary took Drummer back from Natalie's trembling hands, her mother's face drawn and pallid. "Will you stay in the house, or do I have to take your shoes?"