Is Mrs. Nasters's recovery proof that Nellie can heal people just like the channeler and psychic said? And then it occurs to me. If Nellie can heal, does that mean she can reverse the damage to Willie Mae?

Ned says he will drop me at home and get his tape recorder and make a few phone calls in town about this story and then come back and pick up Mrs. Parks. He wants to interview people. If the h.o.r.ehound story isn't going to work out, why, this is even better! Faith healing in Ma.s.sachusetts!

I think we'd better hurry and find Nellie a place to have her gatherings. After this article comes out, people will probably arrive by the hundreds.

Mrs. Parks puts her h.o.r.ehound candy in her patent leather purse and promises to wait for Ned. They will go to the hospital together and she will introduce him to Mrs. Nasters.

Ned drives me and Ginny to the parking lot and we run back to my house to explain things to my mother while he makes his phone calls. My mother is pleased everyone is better. She is making dinner preparations. H.K. isn't here but whether he has gone home of his own accord or whether my mother has sent him home, we can't tell, and it isn't the type of thing my mother will volunteer. Ginny is staying for dinner so she and I help my mother set the table and play with Hershel and Max and Maya. It feels happy and like old times. No one is dying.

The sun is leaning heavily in the sky, ready to fall in its nightly plunge, when Ned comes grimfaced across the sand and I see my mother read his expression and go to meet him. He leans into her ear and she stops, her eyes large. Her hands go to her mouth.

They walk toward us. Has Mrs. Naster died after all? But no, it is Mrs. Parks.

The Funeral.

My Eleventh Adventure.

It is a terrible thing and Ned saw it happen. He was making calls at the public phone booth by the Dairy Queen when a car drove right into its plate gla.s.s wall. He rushed over and there was Mrs. Parks slumped over the wheel. He gave her mouth-to-mouth without success until the first responders arrived. At first he thought she must have had a heart attack because although the Dairy Queen's gla.s.s wall was ruined, Mrs. Parks didn't have a scratch on her. But no, the paramedics explained to him as they pulled something out of her throat, she had choked on a hard candy. That was probably what caused her to lose control of the car, they speculated.

"She should have waited for me. I could have given her the Heimlich maneuver," says Ned.

"It was probably the thrombosis that finally got her," says my mother.

"It was the h.o.r.ehound," I say, because I'm pretty sure Nellie cured the thrombosis. "The paramedics said she choked on it."

"I suppose the thrombosis might have exploded, causing her to choke on the h.o.r.ehound," says Ned musingly.

"The h.o.r.ehound we gave her." I say "we" to be charitable because it was undeniably all his idea.

I wait for the horror of this to hit him so I can console him but it doesn't seem to occur to Ned that maybe he is responsible.

We don't feel much like having a barbecue now. We sit around and eat a little rice.

Later, Mrs. Merriweather comes over and asks my mother if she could do the eulogy. The funeral is to be on Wednesday. Mrs. Parks's only living relative is her sister and she is flying out from California. Mrs. Merriweather called her. My mother says certainly she will do the eulogy.

"Because you're a famous poet," says Mrs. Merriweather.

My mother winces but Mrs. Merriweather doesn't notice.

"I think Mrs. Parks would like having a famous poet do her eulogy and attend her funeral."

"Of course we will be there. We will all be there," says my mother, and then offers Mrs. Merriweather a little rice, but she says she cannot stay. She has other arrangements to make.

"The funeral is scheduled for one o'clock. I've already checked with Nellie," says Mrs. Merriweather.

"One o'clock it is," says my mother.

It will be my first funeral. Then I remember the Gourd children.

"I can't go," I say suddenly. Ned and my mother look down at me.

"Don't be silly," says my mother. "Of course you will be there. We will all be there."

So now I have something new to worry about. I have no idea what to do with the Gourd children. I can hardly bring them to a funeral.

Mr. Fordyce! If he is not going to the funeral maybe he will take them.

It is sober in church the next day. Everyone knows about the terrible accident. I keep waiting for Ned to realize that if he hadn't given Mrs. Parks the candy she wouldn't have died, but he seems to be skating through the service with a clear conscience and a relaxed face.

After church I keep thinking about this, Ned's easy conscience, while we are waiting to shake Nellie's hand-and it is taking a long time because Nellie is not only shaking hands now, she is laying one on each person's shoulder as he leaves. I think she sees herself as a combination of church and free clinic. Finally I can stand it no longer.

"You gave her that candy," I whisper to Ned.

"What?" he says, bending down to hear me better.

"The candy she choked on. If you hadn't given it to her, she wouldn't have died."

"Look, Bibles," he says. He has started calling me this since my mother told him how I deliver Bibles with Nellie. For some reason he finds this hilarious. "If you're going to live, then something is going to have to die to feed you. Everything we eat was alive at some point. Just by eating you're going to cause trouble. I figure, every day I'm doing something like giving someone candy they're going to choke on-"

He is interrupted by Nellie, who places a large, meaty hand on his shoulder. He grabs it with both of his, gently removes it and gives it a friendly shake.

"Nellie," I whisper to her when she gets to me. "You did it. You cured Mrs. Nasters and Mrs. Parks. We should find you a gathering place today after we deliver Bibles."

"I could feel that thrombosis break up under these hands. I could feel Mrs. Nasters become whole. Praise Jesus. But I got no time for Bibles or anything else. I've got a funeral to prepare for," Nellie whispers back.

I have a sudden inspiration. "What about the church as a gathering place?"

Nellie looks nervous for a second. Her mouth twitches. "It's holy business, this healing, but I don't know as it's exactly churchly business, if you know what I mean. Now, move on, move on, you're holding up the line," she says, and yanks me out of the way with the hand she has been using for shaking.

Because I don't have to deliver Bibles I go right to Mr. Fordyce's. He is sitting at his table reading and eating blueberries. The summer has moved on. I tell him about the funeral and he says of course he will watch the children but I must ask Mrs. Gourd if this is okay with her. I lie and say I will. I have no alternative because I am sure she would say no as it is not the deal we have struck. And I'm sure my mother would say yes, I must come to the funeral.

At dinner the sea is not bloodred but a grim gray. There isn't much conversation. No airplane rides over the sand. No stories of bones. My mother says, "It is very odd that Caroline and H.K. weren't at church. They never miss."

Ned doesn't say anything. He shovels food in and watches the gray water turn to black.

Wednesday I drop the Gourd children at Mr. Fordyce's. He says he is all ready for them. He has gone to the bookstore and bought Now We Are Six because he thinks they will like this poetry. He has bought the book Mud Pies and Other Recipes because he thinks it would be fun to make mud pies with them. I promise to get them the very second the funeral is out and he says, "Take your time."

At the funeral my mother reads a poem she has written for both the old ladies and their fruited hats. People in the church sigh as they listen to it. Several wipe their eyes. It turns out we all think about the fruited hats and what it means to have them gone. Of course, when my mother wrote the poem she thought Mrs. Nasters was going to die, but Mrs. Nasters, although she will one day die like the rest of us, is, for now, better. It makes the poem slightly less poignant. I think that it is death alone that makes things poignant.

Mrs. Merriweather is sitting next to me. It is only when she bends down and whispers in my ear that I notice how gray her hair is. "These things seem to mark the pa.s.sing of one generation and the movement along the line for the rest of us, as if we are all on a conveyor belt to death."

"Jesus, lady, lighten up, you're giving me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s," says Ned.

"Besides, she seems better," I say.

"Shhh," says Mrs. Parks's sister, who is sitting right behind us. "I don't know what you mean by better. She's dead."

"I meant Mrs. Nasters," I explain.

"Shhh," says Mrs. Parks's sister again.

My mother goes on. "Sometimes I think the fated car trip was a blessing. Since the thrombosis was going to take her soon, that when it did she was on the happy errand of going to visit a new friend."

Dr. Callahan looks up suddenly. He is sitting in the front row. He says in a matter-of-fact voice, "That's bursitis, Felicity. Not thrombosis."

"No, I mean what would have killed her eventually, sooner rather than later, she gave us to believe, was the thrombosis. She was very worried about it," says my mother, "which is why I was saying-"

"She didn't HAVE a thrombosis," says Dr. Callahan. "She had bursitis. She came to see me for a couple of simple cases of bursitis. One in her heel and one in her shoulder. Very painful but hardly life-threatening."

Then he folds his hands and goes back to looking out the window. It is a perfect summer day with wonderful c.u.mulus clouds floating by. All our eyes stray there.

"Oh dear," says my mother. "But..." And here she leans down and says this very quietly, meaning to talk only to Dr. Callahan. But it is a small church and we can hear from our seats six rows back. "She thought she had a thrombosis."

"Yes, I know," says Dr. Callahan. "And if I explained the difference once to her, I explained it a dozen times."

"But she said you told her she couldn't travel by air. That her leg would explode."

"Nonsense. I would never say such a foolish thing. What I said was that if she took one of those long-haul flights to California she should get up and walk around. That people get blood clots sometimes from sitting for such lengthy periods. It's what I tell all my patients who take long airplane trips."

"Oh," says my mother.

There is a pause.

"Then there was nothing much wrong with her, really?"

Mrs. Parks's sister speaks up suddenly. "She wrote to me that she had a thrombosis and could not travel. She said you told her that."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," says Dr. Callahan.

"Dr. Callahan, please," says my mother, looking worriedly at Mrs. Parks's sister. "I know for a fact that if she could have visited her sister she would have. Why, I was driving her there myself at her request because she believed she couldn't fly."

"n.o.body drove to see me," says Mrs. Parks's sister. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"We never got there," mumbles my mother.

"What happened?" demands Mrs. Parks's sister.

"Oh, uh," says my mother, looking uncomfortable, "this and that."

"I'm telling you, she was in the PINK of health," says Dr. Callahan. "And that's what I told her. The pink. The silly fool wanted to go into the hospital. I made the big mistake of telling her that I had just sent Mrs. Nasters there. It is my opinion that you send one old lady to the hospital and they all want to go."

One of the older women in the congregation stands up and leaves the church.

"Really, Dr. Callahan," says my mother mildly.

"All right, all right, the point I'm making is that I wasn't about to send perfectly healthy old ladies to take up beds at our overcrowded hospital. But she just kept demanding to go to Lincoln Memorial."

"I think I can say for certain that my sister had no desire to visit the Lincoln Memorial," says Mrs. Parks's sister, looking more and more confused and upset. "She would have told me that."

"I felt her thrombosis break up beneath my hands," bellows Nellie.

"Balderdash," says Dr. Callahan. "She had no thrombosis."

"Everyone seems to think she had one except you," says Mrs. Parks's sister. "It couldn't be that you're wrong, could it?"

"Oh no, the doctor is never wrong," says a little old lady clearly miffed at Dr. Callahan's earlier slight.

"I think it's all been an unfortunate mistake," says my mother quietly.

"Or a case of very bad communication," says Mrs. Parks's sister, looking directly at Dr. Callahan.

"I resent that. I did my very best to communicate to Mrs. Parks exactly what was the matter with her but she wasn't having it. I told her clearly she had bursitis. I only told her about the blood clots on plane trips because she said she might be flying to see her sister if she couldn't get out of it...."

He pauses here meanly and my mother keeps opening her mouth as if maybe the right words will come out on their own, but they don't.

"MAYBE," says Dr. Callahan, "I should start posting everyone's diagnosis at the town hall so we can all read the straight facts and put a stop to these rumors and people will stop accusing me of telling people they have things that they don't."

"NO!" cry several people in the congregation, and we all turn quickly to see which ones.

"Well, then," says Dr. Callahan with a thin smile.

"Fie on Western medicine!" booms a voice from the back. It is Nellie, who has stood up, but for a second it sounds like the voice of G.o.d.

"I'd say that's one doctor who's too big for his britches," says the little old lady.

I find her in the audience and wonder why she isn't wearing a fruited hat.

"Or one preacher who's got delusions of grandeur," says someone else.

"WELL, SHE WAS A DEAR WOMAN AND I LOVED HER!" shouts my mother above the noise, and this quiets everyone and reminds them why we are here.

There is a somber silence. Someone has died. Everyone sits quietly for a few minutes. It does not matter suddenly who believes what or who is wrong and in the stillness of that church we say goodbye.

Later, as everyone is filing out, Mrs. Parks's sister is heard saying that she expected better from a famous poet.

Ned puts his arm around my mother's shoulders and heads down the aisle of the church. My mother promises Mrs. Parks's sister that she will help her clean out Mrs. Parks's house on Sat.u.r.day and this mollifies her somewhat. "Well," says the sister, sniffing disdainfully. "I suppose really that eulogies are hard to do. I suppose you did the best you could."

"Well, of course I did," says my mother, and Ned leads her out.

When they get outside Ned asks my mother what she wants to do but she looks preoccupied and doesn't seem to hear him. She is watching people leave the church and craning her neck as if looking for someone.

"Not here again," she says worriedly. "Neither of them. Not Henry and not Caroline. I wonder why."