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He looks now at his palms as if to find the soot still there He shakes hilances over at the corpses on the bed

Jeb and Jeanie Duchamp, he says What do you think of that?

What’s to think of it?

They took the quick way out, he says Must of been right after it all started, they been dead for a while Cleaned up the house, got gussied up, and sed a bunch of Neuess not

She looks at the: She hates the dead

So as your plan next? Moses Todd asks If things here didn’t work out, where were you headed?

I don’t know, she says Hadn’t thought that far Maybe north

Niagara Falls? he asks

Niagara Falls

I was there once, he muses You stand on the top of a cliff by the falls and lean over the rail, it’ll take your breath away

That’s what I heard

Too bad, he says, referring to the unfortunateof her plans

Yeah, she says, too bad

Hey, Moses Todd says, gesturing with a nod toward the corpses on the bed, did you notice their ears?

What about eets up and walks to the side of the bed and leans over Co from each of their ears is a little runnel of blood, dried black and crusty against the gray cheeks

She sits back down in the chair

Someone took care of em, she says So they wouldn’t co to ponder? Who do you reckon did it? Jeb could of done Jeanie, of course, but who did him? Whoever it was didn’t want to uess What you think? Son or daughter--weeping as they are forced to put the finishin touch on death? Nosy neighbor? State police doin a last evacuation sweep? Who do you reckon?

I don’t know, she says There’s lots of people around who’ll do the right thing It ain’t everybody who’s bad

Now that’s a true thing, he says He nods and s as you ever said

Anyway, she goes on, the Ducha to me now

Moses Todd looks at her curiously

Not touched by their tragedy? he asks

It ain’t no tragedy It’s just foolishness--the kind I can’t tolerate The kind that makes them worse than the meatskins

How?

At least theThey keep on and keep on till the very last ot notions of takin themselves out of the world

Many people find the world intolerable, the way it’s beco different since I been in it

Moses Todd se

I’oes on I want to kno’s it becootMoses Todd starts to answer and then considers, thinking about his answer, as if it were of paraht Then he continues:

It got loneso eyes

People weren’t lonesome before? she says

People were The world wasn’t

She nods

And here’s another thing, she says Before, back in the basement, you said I ain’t evil How come you said that?

Cause it’s true

What do you know about it?

I can tell, he says siirl

But you never answered ry Just grievin like everybody else Only you don’t like to admit it to yourself It ain’t so complicated

She turns this over and over in her head It never quite co of truth to it She puts his response away in a pocket in the back of her mind to think about it later