Before You Know Kindness Part 10

"I didn't think so."

"Should I get my daughter? Or would you like to start with my niece?"

"Whichever, ma'am."

"Please: Call me Sara."

He smiled. "I'll try."

"Thank you."

"Truth is, I'd be happy to start with you."

"Me?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She felt there was something vaguely antagonistic about his relentless use of the word ma'am, ma'am, especially after she'd just asked him to call her Sara. It was as if the word was a small sarcastic dig. especially after she'd just asked him to call her Sara. It was as if the word was a small sarcastic dig.

"All right, then. But may we do this in the kitchen? I would love to finish making the family lunch."

"That would be fine," Howland said. Behind her she heard Nan scuffling down the stairs. Her mother-in-law must have noticed they had company.

JOHN SETON stood paralyzed in a dim aisle in a natural foods grocery store. He was supposed to be on his way back to the hospital in Hanover to keep his sister company during her vigil in the ICU waiting room, but he had spontaneously detoured here to acquire provisions. He couldn't bear to think of Catherine trying to survive on either food from the vending machines or the hospital cafeteria. He realized now, however, that he honestly didn't know how extreme his sister's diet was or what she really liked to eat. And "like" was the guiding principle in his opinion, because whatever he bought was supposed to provide her comfort. He knew his niece consumed dairy products. Did her mother? stood paralyzed in a dim aisle in a natural foods grocery store. He was supposed to be on his way back to the hospital in Hanover to keep his sister company during her vigil in the ICU waiting room, but he had spontaneously detoured here to acquire provisions. He couldn't bear to think of Catherine trying to survive on either food from the vending machines or the hospital cafeteria. He realized now, however, that he honestly didn't know how extreme his sister's diet was or what she really liked to eat. And "like" was the guiding principle in his opinion, because whatever he bought was supposed to provide her comfort. He knew his niece consumed dairy products. Did her mother?

He looked at his watch and thought of the people he had left back at the house in Sugar Hill. He guessed it would be another few hours before they returned to the hospital, too. Now that Spencer was out of danger, he and his mother had agreed it was best if the whole clan didn't crowd into that bleak waiting room until Spencer was awake. Besides, his mother had observed, it was too nice a day to be inside.

He wondered how his niece was doing. He felt that he and Charlotte suddenly shared a very special bond: the bond of idiots. The two of them had nearly killed poor Spencer and probably disabled him for life. The difference between them, of course, was that a twelve-year-old girl was afforded the opportunity to sob alone in her bedroom or (last night) in those hideous Naugahyde orange chairs in the waiting room near the hospital's trauma center. A forty-year-old man was not. He had to rally, stifle that penitent urge to curl up in a closet where no one could see him. He had to answer questions, explain his monumental stupidity, make phone calls. This morning he'd spoken, it seemed, to half of Catherine and Spencer's friends, Spencer's sister, and a pair of top managers from FERAL.

The FERAL calls had actually been worse than the one to Spencer's sister. It was no easy task to explain to vegetarians and animal rights activists that one of their tribal leaders had been shot by his own daughter with a hunting rifle because he'd been mistaken for a deer. While he had been on the phone with the group's director-a stunningly telegenic woman named Dominique with a mane of raven black hair that fell almost to her waist and the greenest eyes he had ever seen on an animal that didn't use a litter box-he had feared briefly that he would be responsible for a second serious injury to a member of FERAL's senior management, by giving the director a stroke. He'd seen the woman before on The CBS Early Show, The CBS Early Show, and so he knew how skilled she was at preventing anyone else from sliding a word of their own into a conversation, but he was still astounded at the way she proceeded to speak for five solid minutes without seeming to breathe after he had broken the news to her. and so he knew how skilled she was at preventing anyone else from sliding a word of their own into a conversation, but he was still astounded at the way she proceeded to speak for five solid minutes without seeming to breathe after he had broken the news to her.

Nevertheless, the call to the deputy director was even more demeaning: Like John he was a lawyer, and he was very sharp. But it was clear on the phone that he was older than John, and he tended to speak with the slow-motion thoughtfulness of a grandfather in a family movie from the 1950s. It was only when the fellow was near the end of each deliberate, carefully considered observation or response to something John had said would he realize how coldly and precisely he had been diminished by this New York City attorney with a slight trace of a southern accent and how little this other lawyer thought of him. John felt not merely like the moron who had nearly killed his brother-in-law: He felt like the public defender from Mayberry, RFD.

The point that both FERAL officials wanted to make sure John understood wasn't simply that his negligence had almost slain their friend and a.s.sociate, Spencer McCullough: It was that his loathsome hobby loathsome hobby and his and his shameful inattention shameful inattention (the former were the high-minded words of the director, the latter the construction of her deputy) had the potential to humiliate FERAL. It simply didn't look good for the organization's communications director to have a brother-in-law who hunted. It made them all look like hypocrites. And-worse, in the opinion of the lawyer-it made the group look laughable. (the former were the high-minded words of the director, the latter the construction of her deputy) had the potential to humiliate FERAL. It simply didn't look good for the organization's communications director to have a brother-in-law who hunted. It made them all look like hypocrites. And-worse, in the opinion of the lawyer-it made the group look laughable.

"But I'm the one who hunts," John had said lamely to the lawyer, when the man had paused to consider how best to twist the knife next. He thought this was a point that should matter.

"Indeed you are, son. Indeed you are. On occasion, we've all made bad choices with our lives," the lawyer responded. "It's a particular shame, however, when those choices cause pain not simply to ourselves but to the people around us we love. Sometimes, you know, people seem sadly oblivious to the reality that their more irresponsible excursions into the realms of misbehavior reflect badly not merely on themselves, but on their families, too. If the president's brother gets arrested for drug abuse, the president is tarnished as well. If the president's teenage daughter gets stopped for underage drinking, the president himself will be sullied. You, John, have not simply injured your brother-in-law; you may have left a deeply troubling blemish on this organization. Sad but true. You have some education-"

"I do not have some some education," John heard himself saying. "I have a law degree from-" education," John heard himself saying. "I have a law degree from-"

"Of course you do, son. Of course you do. That's why I am sure you can understand the way all of us with FERAL may look a tad disingenuous if we do not properly control how this information is disseminated. Have you ever seen the op-ed pages of a newspaper? The section in which there is informed commentary? Well-"

"Yes, I have seen the op-ed pages of a newspaper. I may live in Vermont-I may practice practice in Vermont-but I still read more than my horoscope and the comics!" in Vermont-but I still read more than my horoscope and the comics!"

"Then I am sure you can imagine what could appear on the op-ed pages this week. Or what Jay Leno and David Letterman might be saying one day soon in their monologues. Vegan animal lover gets plugged by a deer rifle. A deer rifle, John-and fired by his own daughter. Our FERAL family would look deeply troubled. Perhaps even deceitful. At the very least, we would appear to lack the courage of our convictions and-"

"I'm sorry!" John finally shouted into the telephone, exasperated after having to listen first to Catwoman's rage and now to the sanctimonious diatribe of this lawyer. "I'm sorry my brother-in-law was shot! But lay off this G.o.dd.a.m.n condescending, holier-than-thou, meat-eaters-are-brainless-barbarians bulls.h.i.+t! I really don't give a rat's a.s.s about your precious FERAL reputation! I care about my brother-in-law and my friend. The truth is, most people view you as a bunch of fanatic sociopaths who try to scare little kids away from hot dogs and want cats to become vegetarians! Okay? That That is your reputation!" Then he hung up. is your reputation!" Then he hung up.

As annoyed as he was with the FERAL attorney, he still felt considerably more angry at himself. He was was sorry! He vowed he'd never pull the trigger on a rifle again. He'd prayed while he was driving to the hospital the night before, while Spencer was in surgery, and then again this morning before he had gotten out of bed. He prayed not simply that Spencer would live but that he wouldn't be crippled when he awoke. sorry! He vowed he'd never pull the trigger on a rifle again. He'd prayed while he was driving to the hospital the night before, while Spencer was in surgery, and then again this morning before he had gotten out of bed. He prayed not simply that Spencer would live but that he wouldn't be crippled when he awoke.

He remembered how the hardest part last night hadn't been having to look Catherine in the eye. It had been having to gaze at Willow-especially when she was looking back at him. At one point his daughter was in the chair beside Charlotte, who was crying. He and Catherine were leaning aimlessly against the walls, but he watched Willow as she patted Charlotte's bare arm. Her touch, in much the same way that it seemed to calm Patrick, soothed her: She put her head down on Willow's lap, and her crying grew silent.

He feared that for as long as he lived he would be an imbecile in the eyes of his daughter, and he couldn't imagine how he could possibly regain a semblance of the admiration she must once-a mere day earlier-have had for him. Sara would understand, he guessed, if only because she was a grown-up and whatever delusions she had of his competence had evaporated in all the years they had been married. She knew his strengths (and almost desperately he tried to remind himself that he did have some), and she wouldn't lose sight of them in this one mistake.

He thought also of his clients, the women and men-invariably guilty but invariably scarred-and their mistakes. The nineteen-year-old heroin addict who lifted cash from the convenience store where she worked and over the course of eight weeks was alleged to have stolen three thousand dollars. The carpenter who tried to make a quick score by bringing a couple blocks of has.h.i.+sh into Vermont from Montreal. The kid from the Northeast Kingdom who took the checkbook of an older neighbor who'd died and thought he could get away with using the checks to catch up on two months of back rent and and treat himself to a couple new CDs. treat himself to a couple new CDs.

There were the men and women who drove drunk (too many to count in his head) and the women who were nothing more than unemployable-uneducated or obese or mentally ill-and thus fell into mischief.

Most of these individuals didn't make one mistake, they made many: Their whole lives were studies in their own bad choices and someone older's unforgivable negligence. And, John realized with both clarity and sadness, they had grown up in broken homes or they had been abused as children or they had been seduced early by drugs...and he had no such excuse.

But then, he reminded himself, he hadn't done what they had. He had committed no crime in either the state where the accident had occurred or the state in which he lived. The state trooper and the officer from Fish and Wildlife were clear on this. Yes, the trooper had confiscated his weapon, but Sara told him that after the two men had inspected the gun by the light in his mother's garage she'd overheard them mumbling that perhaps something they called the extractor was faulty and would turn out to be the real culprit in this disaster.

Consequently, John told himself that he shouldn't be comparing himself to his clients. If he should be comparing himself to anyone, he decided, it should be to those myriad drivers who lead busy lives (he'd become a father again this year) and thus fail to get snow tires on their vehicles before the first winter blizzard and then careen off the road-though even this thought, in the end, offered precious little comfort.

He understood that if anyone other than Spencer had been wounded this way, the civil suit facing him now would be enormous. Gargantuan. Quite likely to test the upper limits of even the umbrella atop his homeowner's insurance policy. He and the gun company might even have wound up as codefendants. Consequently, he guessed that in a twisted, self-interested sort of way he should actually take some comfort in the fact this horror had occurred to his brother-in-law and not to an acquaintance or neighbor. Then he most likely would have been sued.

After all, though Charlotte had fired the weapon, it was he who had knowingly left a live round in the chamber for eight and a half months. What was he thinking? He envisioned the way the gun must have bounced around in the trunk of the car on the way here only two days ago, and he wondered what would have happened if somehow a first pothole had loosened the safety and a second had caused the gun to discharge. What if one of Willow's friends had decided to break one of the house's cardinal rules and had unlocked the cabinet in the guest bedroom in which the rifle was stored? Under normal circ.u.mstances this wouldn't have been cataclysmic because he kept his ammunition in a separate lockbox in his armoire. But what if some child-that rowdy kid in Willow's cla.s.s who wound up playing at their home once in a while because he lived only two houses away, Gregg, for instance-had gotten a hold of the gun with the live round inside it? Willow had nicknamed the kid Little Hoodlum, and the boy took pride in the moniker.

John allowed himself a small shudder. What if something had happened to Willow?

He remembered the precise moment last November when he had expelled the ammunition from the gun-most of it, anyway. Before getting into the car to drive home from the logging trail on which he had parked, he had pushed the magazine release by the trigger guard and caught the four cartridges as they rolled into the palm of his hand. He'd taken his glove off, and the bra.s.s had been cold. Next he cycled the bolt in the action to remove the live round in the chamber, only this time nothing happened. He tried it again, and then a third time. He had a visual picture in his mind of flipping the safety to fire and back to safety-as if this were a computer problem, and he could remedy the situation by simply rebooting-but still the bullet remained stubbornly lodged in the gun. When the bolt was open, he could see clearly the grooves along the rear of the sh.e.l.l's casing, and he even tried freeing the cartridge with his fingers. It was evident quickly that he hadn't a prayer.

And so he had put the four cartridges from the magazine back in their small box and the small box back in his pack. He remembered flipping on the gun's safety and securing the rifle in the gun bag in his trunk before driving home.

He guessed if hunting and guns weren't so new to him, so frightening and foreign, he might have done what his friend Howard Mansfield had suggested and tried to dislodge the live round with a ramrod. Or if he understood more about guns, maybe he wouldn't have been afraid to simply fire the rifle into the sky in the woods.

Likewise, if he hadn't been so busy he would have had the cartridge removed by a professional. If he wasn't short one lawyer and down an investigator in his office. If he didn't have a caseload so big that half the time he couldn't keep his clients' names straight as they besieged him in the corridors of the courthouse during the Wednesday afternoon calendar calls, before they were paraded before the judge. If his daughter hadn't started piano lessons, while continuing ballet and after-school soccer. If his wife hadn't been pregnant. If there hadn't been a new baby in the house. If...if...if...

He shook his head, trying to clear from his mind the notion that he had been preoccupied this last year and therefore could sprinkle some portion of the blame on others. The idea was not simply ludicrous, it was pathetic. He was responsible, and he whispered the words to himself: "I am responsible."

Finally, when he realized that he'd been standing in the same spot in the same aisle for close to ten minutes, he made some decisions. He would bring Catherine a small loaf of freshly baked multigrain bread and local blueberry preserves, a container of vegan granola, and a batch of oatmeal cookies filled with carob chips. It wasn't his idea of comfort food, but he imagined it was the sort of thing Catherine would eat when she was troubled.

CATHERINE HELD THE BUN in which sat the flattened discus of ground beef with both hands-aware that this was precisely the recommendation this very fast-food chain had made some years earlier in its advertising campaign-and took a bite. The burger was delicious. She contemplated eating it slowly so she could savor each mouthful-the wondrously bedewed pickles and lettuce, the tomato slice lacquered with mayonnaise, and, of course, the patty itself, the pieces of meat crushed by her teeth into a glorious, spumescent paste-but the consideration lasted barely seconds. She ate it with the gleeful, rapacious speed of a wild animal who hasn't eaten in days. in which sat the flattened discus of ground beef with both hands-aware that this was precisely the recommendation this very fast-food chain had made some years earlier in its advertising campaign-and took a bite. The burger was delicious. She contemplated eating it slowly so she could savor each mouthful-the wondrously bedewed pickles and lettuce, the tomato slice lacquered with mayonnaise, and, of course, the patty itself, the pieces of meat crushed by her teeth into a glorious, spumescent paste-but the consideration lasted barely seconds. She ate it with the gleeful, rapacious speed of a wild animal who hasn't eaten in days.

When she was done, she glanced around the bright restaurant. The place was filled with the lunchtime crowd, and everyone around her who wasn't feeding French fries to toddlers was eating burgers or fish fillets or chicken nuggets with the same gusto she had evidenced only moments before. Quickly she dabbed at her mouth with the napkin, rubbed a quarter-sized dollop of jasmine-scented antibacterial hand gel into her fingers and palms (it was the smell that mattered more to Catherine than the cleansing properties), and left.

The hospital was three blocks away, and she presumed that Spencer would be unhooked from the ventilator by now. This was good news for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that it meant there was less chance that Spencer's already sizable physical troubles would be compounded by pneumonia. He was going to spend one more night in the ICU before being settled in a bed in a regular hospital room, but she had been made to understand that it was an excellent sign indeed that they were already replacing the ma.s.sive breathing machine that covered his face and his mouth with a mere nasal respirator. She had been surprised, in part because he was still so groggy with anesthesia and painkillers that he was only dimly aware of what had occurred: How close to dying he had come, the reality that he probably faced a crippling disability-possibly even amputation-when he was fully conscious. The fact that his own daughter had shot him.

She put on her sungla.s.ses as she started to walk and popped an Altoids mint into her mouth. She knew she would crunch plenty more once she was in the hospital elevator.

She wondered why she wasn't furious, and why, in fact, she hadn't been furious once in the past fifteen or sixteen hours. Partly, she decided, it was because initially she had been frightened as h.e.l.l. Then, once it was likely that Spencer would live, she was relieved. She had vomited in the ladies' room at the hospital, and at that moment she'd felt a twinge of anger at her brother; but once she emerged back into the waiting room and saw him leaning pathetically against the kiosk for the pay phone-not actually using it, but gripping the faux cubicle walls like they were the sides of a ladder-her hostility had evaporated almost instantly.

She was thankful that she and Spencer had never gotten around to having a serious discussion on Sat.u.r.day about their marriage-or, to be precise, her deepening sense that their marriage was in trouble. As complicated as her life with Spencer was about to become, it would be even worse if it were enc.u.mbered as well by his knowledge that she was unhappy. What kind of convalescence would that be for him? Imagine knowing that your caregiver, the person on whom you are completely dependent, would rather be elsewhere?

She told herself that this accident most a.s.suredly did not mean she was now facing a life sentence in a marriage that hadn't been working or a lifetime of dinners in which she and Spencer barely spoke. It couldn't. Things would get better, or they would end. That hadn't changed...had it?

Charlotte, meanwhile, seemed to be vacillating between inconsolability and catatonia. As a mother she guessed this was normal, and any time Charlotte behaved in a manner that was outwardly normal and age appropriate Catherine took comfort. Still, Charlotte's eyes had grown so red so quickly last night that if her daughter had been a couple of years older Catherine knew she would have a.s.sumed that the deep color change was due more to dope than regret.

As she approached the hospital, she sighed. She thought of the floors and floors of pain in that building right now and the misery that awaited her own husband when he was-finally-completely awake.

SERGEANT NED HOWLAND had been a state trooper for nineteen years, and he had every expectation that he would be promoted to lieutenant within the next eighteen months. He was supremely competent, the princ.i.p.al c.h.i.n.k in his armor being his inability to suffer fools gladly. Alas, most of his job was spent with fools, which was why he guessed he wasn't a lieutenant already. Either they were poor, rural fools who rolled their dad's trucks because they thought they could navigate a sharp Lisbon turn at seventy-five or they were wealthy flatlander fools who moved to northern New England and decided they wanted to bag themselves a ten-pointer but didn't have the slightest idea how to remove a cartridge from a thirty-ought-six when the bolt didn't extract it normally-and then, an even worse sin in Howland's opinion, they viewed themselves as so b.l.o.o.d.y busy and supremely ent.i.tled that they never bothered to take the d.a.m.n rifle to a gunsmith and thus left it sitting around their house or in the trunk of their car. Loaded. Was it any wonder that some poor guy wound up spending the night on a ventilator at Dartmouth-Hitchc.o.c.k? The miracle was that no one was killed. had been a state trooper for nineteen years, and he had every expectation that he would be promoted to lieutenant within the next eighteen months. He was supremely competent, the princ.i.p.al c.h.i.n.k in his armor being his inability to suffer fools gladly. Alas, most of his job was spent with fools, which was why he guessed he wasn't a lieutenant already. Either they were poor, rural fools who rolled their dad's trucks because they thought they could navigate a sharp Lisbon turn at seventy-five or they were wealthy flatlander fools who moved to northern New England and decided they wanted to bag themselves a ten-pointer but didn't have the slightest idea how to remove a cartridge from a thirty-ought-six when the bolt didn't extract it normally-and then, an even worse sin in Howland's opinion, they viewed themselves as so b.l.o.o.d.y busy and supremely ent.i.tled that they never bothered to take the d.a.m.n rifle to a gunsmith and thus left it sitting around their house or in the trunk of their car. Loaded. Was it any wonder that some poor guy wound up spending the night on a ventilator at Dartmouth-Hitchc.o.c.k? The miracle was that no one was killed.

And while he was fairly confident this was indeed just a stupid-SRS-stupid, as in stupid-really-stupid-accident, he figured he better make absolutely certain that there wasn't more going on beneath the surface here. Treat it like an attempted homicide until he knew otherwise. Be thorough. Maybe the daughter hated her dad and plugged him on purpose. Maybe that cousin was involved in some fas.h.i.+on. Maybe the great white hunter from Vermont had fabricated the whole story and loaded the weapon only yesterday because he wanted to...

Howland couldn't finish the sentence, a further indication in his mind that while it was unlikely the state's attorney would want to file criminal charges, it was better to know too much than too little. That was why he took the weapon with him last night and had it stored safely now in the firearms locker. Picked it up off the ground by that apple tree where he found it. If they ever did want to send it to the state firearms laboratory, he wanted to be sure that they had it in their possession.

Now he sat in the red wool easy chair in this Nan Seton's living room, the woman's daughter-in-law and older granddaughter sitting across from him on the couch.

"So you didn't know the weapon had a bullet in the chamber?" he asked the girl, Charlotte, one more time.

The girl nodded sheepishly.

"But you did know the gun had a safety. Correct?"

"I guess."

"You had to switch it from S to F. At least according to your uncle, you did. Before he left for the hospital last night, he told us he was sure the gun was on safety. Do you remember doing that? Switching a little lever from S to F?"

"Sort of."

He could see the girl had been crying, and he was relieved. He really did want this interview now to be nothing more than compulsive busywork.

"Sort of?"

"Uh-huh."

"Did you know that you were releasing the safety?"

"No."

"But Charlotte: You just told me that you knew the gun was on safety. So if you didn't know you were releasing it, what did you think you were doing when you switched the lever from S to F?"

"I was just..."

"Go on."

"I was just, I don't know, flipping it back and forth. I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing. Willow and I had just been at that party, and I was..."

"Yes?"

"I was tired. I'd never seen a gun before-a rifle, anyway-and I was just playing around. I know you shouldn't play with guns, but I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry about all of this," she said, and she shook her head and started to cry. Her aunt squeezed her bare knee rea.s.suringly.

"Is there anything else, Sergeant Howland?" The woman's voice was soothing and serene. He wondered if she sang in a church choir.

"You're a vegetarian, right? Like your dad?" he asked the girl simply. He put his clipboard on the floor and leaned forward in his chair.

"Yes."

"Don't eat any meat?"

"None."

"You love animals?"

"Yes!"

"Then tell me something: Why were you even pretending to shoot a deer? I understand you presumed the weapon was unloaded, but why were you pointing it at what you thought was an animal in the first place?"

She heaved up her shoulders through her tears and said nothing.

"Why were you taking a rifle and aiming it at what you believed was a deer?"

She looked at the rug, at her aunt, and finally at him. She wiped at her cheeks with her fingers. "I guess I was thinking about the garden. I don't know. The vegetable garden. The deer were eating everything, and I just...I just..."

"You just..."

The room grew quiet, except for the girl's sniffles.

"You were just goofing, huh?" he asked her, unsure why he was letting her off the hook. He didn't have children of his own-he had a girlfriend, but in his opinion they were a long way away from even considering marriage, much less starting a family-but he did have a niece about this child's age. Maybe this was why he was throwing her a lifeline now.

"I guess."

He sighed. "That's about what I figured." Then, before another wave of mercy could overwhelm him, he asked quickly-almost abruptly-"Do you and your dad get along?"

There was another long pause while Charlotte gathered herself. He half-expected that the next voice he would hear would be the aunt, and he thought it very possible that she would end the interview right now. She was, after all, married to a lawyer. But then Charlotte was speaking, and she was telling him through her tears, "How can you even ask that? G.o.d, don't you get it? I will never, ever be able to forgive myself for what I did! Never!"

He nodded and picked up his clipboard off the floor. Regardless of what this kid really thought of her father, he decided that she hadn't meant to nearly blow off his arm. She'd simply been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with a gun and accidentally wounded her dad. That was it, case closed. Yes, he would talk to Willow since he was already here, and at some point he would talk to the grown-ups. But he knew there would be nothing in his report that would suggest they file criminal charges, and in the next week or so they would return the gun to that idiot public defender.

At times like these, he concluded, the country didn't merely need stronger handgun laws: It needed laws as well that would demand a knucklehead like John Seton prove he could handle and store a firearm before being allowed to bring one into his home.

EVEN WITHOUT AN OXYGEN MASK covering much of his face, Spencer was still in an ICU bed that terrified both children when they arrived that afternoon, and looked especially horrific to Charlotte. He lay immobile on his back, his whole upper torso swathed in bandages, his wrecked arm encased in a plaster strip and draped across his abdomen. It looked a bit like he was supposed to be saying the Pledge of Allegiance but had gotten lazy with his right hand and hadn't brought it all the way up to his heart. His face, for reasons neither girl understood-the bullet had hit him just below his shoulder, right?-was oddly swollen, making even the catcher's mitts that posed as his ears seem just about the right size for his head. His heartbeat was monitored, there was a crystal clear tube uncoiling up into his nose-the fluid coursing inside it was a disturbingly gastric yellowish brown-and there were a pair of IV drips attached to the arm he could move. His left one. His right arm, it was clear, was in no condition even to scratch an itch that happened to crop up on the skin within half an inch of those fingers. covering much of his face, Spencer was still in an ICU bed that terrified both children when they arrived that afternoon, and looked especially horrific to Charlotte. He lay immobile on his back, his whole upper torso swathed in bandages, his wrecked arm encased in a plaster strip and draped across his abdomen. It looked a bit like he was supposed to be saying the Pledge of Allegiance but had gotten lazy with his right hand and hadn't brought it all the way up to his heart. His face, for reasons neither girl understood-the bullet had hit him just below his shoulder, right?-was oddly swollen, making even the catcher's mitts that posed as his ears seem just about the right size for his head. His heartbeat was monitored, there was a crystal clear tube uncoiling up into his nose-the fluid coursing inside it was a disturbingly gastric yellowish brown-and there were a pair of IV drips attached to the arm he could move. His left one. His right arm, it was clear, was in no condition even to scratch an itch that happened to crop up on the skin within half an inch of those fingers.