A Bone to Pick Page 0,68

the shoulders," I whispered, holding this tiny, bloody, vulnerable thing. "One more push should do it," I said bracingly, having no idea at all what I was talking about. But it seemed to hearten Lynn, and she started pulling herself together again. I wished that she could take a break, so I could, but I had told her the truth out of sheer ignorance. Lynn pushed like she was in the Olympics of baby extrusion, and the slippery thing shot out of her like a hurtling football, or so it seemed to me. And I caught it. "What?" asked Lynn weakly.

It took me a second of sheer stupidity to understand her. I should be doing something! I should make it cry! Wasn't that important? "Hold it upside down and whack it on its back," Marcia said. "That's what they do on TV."

Full of terror, I did so. The baby let out a wail. So it was breathing, it was alive! So far so good. Though still hooked up to Lynn, this child was okay for now. Should I do something to the umbilical cord? What? And I heard sirens coming, thank the Lord.

"What?" Lynn asked more urgently.

"Girl!" I said jerkily. "A girl!" I held the little thing as I had seen babies held in pictures and made plans to burn the rose pink nightgown. "Well," said Lynn with a tiny smile, as pounding began on the front door, "damn if I'm going to name it after you."

It took some time to sort out the situation in Jane's little house, which seemed more crowded than ever with all the policemen in Lawrenceton. Some of the policemen, seeing Arthur's former flame kneeling before his new wife, both bloody, assumed I was the person to arrest. They could hardly put cuffs on me or search me, though, since I was holding the baby, who was still attached to Lynn. And when they all realized I was holding a newborn baby and not some piece I'd ripped from Lynn's insides, they went nuts. No one seemed to remember that there'd been a break-in, that consequently the burglar might be on the scene.

Arthur had been out on a robbery call, but when he arrived he was so scared he was ready to kill someone. He waved his gun around vaguely, and when he spotted Lynn and the blood he began bellowing "Ambulance! Ambulance!" Jack Burns himself pushed right by the Rideouts to use the phone in the bedroom. Arthur was by me in a flash, babbling. "The baby!" he said. He didn't know what to do with his gun.

"Put the gun away and take this baby," I said rather sharply. "It's still attached to Lynn, and I don't know what to do about that." "Lynn, how are you?" Arthur said in a daze.

"Honey, put a towel over your suit and take your daughter," Lynn said weakly. "My - oh." He holstered his gun and reached down and took a towel off the stack I'd brought out. I wondered if Jane could ever have imagined her monogrammed white cotton towels being used for such a purpose. I handed the baby over with alacrity, and stood up, trembling from a cocktail of fear, pain, and shock. I was more than glad to vacate my position between Lynn's legs. One of the ambulance attendants ran up to me then and said, "You the maternity?

Or have you been injured?"

I pointed a shaky finger at Lynn. I didn't blame him for thinking I'd been seriously hurt; I was covered with smears of blood, some of it Lynn's, some of it Torrance's, a little of it mine.

"Are you all right?"

I looked to the source of the voice and found I was standing next to Torrance.

This was so strange.

"I'll be okay," I said wearily.

"I'm sorry. I was never cut out to be a criminal." I thought of the inept break-ins, Torrance not even taking anything to make them look like legitimate burglaries. I nodded.

"Why did you do it?" I asked him.

Suddenly his face hardened and tightened all over. "I just did," he said. "So when Jane dug up the skull, you dug up the rest of the body and put the bones by the dead end sign?"

"I knew no one would clean up that brush for years," he said. "And I was right. I was too scared to carry the bones in my trunk, even for a little while. I wailed till the next night when Macon went over to Carey's, and