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She ht up the rear There was a crunch of tires on gravel and Terry pulled into the drive in a silver-gray Mercedes sedan Must be nice, I thought The gate rolled shut I waited while Olive emptied the rocery bag She picked up the newspaper and tucked that in, too, then grabbed the par-cel

"You need help? I can take soot it" She laid the parcel across the bag, securing it with her chin while she fu toward the driveway, plumed tail aloft I heard the clink of liquor bottles as Terry set his bags down on the concrete He began to coil up a garden hose the yard," he said Olive got the door open and gave it a push The telephone started to ring I glanced back as she tossed the parcel toward the hall table

What happened next was too swift to absorb There was a flash of light, a great burst that filled e cloud of white s outith a deadly velocity A fireball seemed to curl across the thresh-old like a wall of water with a barrier rereen in its path turned black At the sa low-frequency boom that hurtled ht against a tree trunk like a rag doll, shoes gone, toes pointing straight up I saw Olive fly past h coe and dropped her in a heap My vision shiht show of the retina, acco of my heart My brain,but the sent and harsh

The explosion had deafened me, but I felt neither fear nor surprise Eistered the event, nothing made any sense Had I died in that ret, and I understood how liberating sudden death one and a crater appeared where the hall table had been The foyer was open to the air, surrounded by coronas of charred wood and plaster, burning e flakes of pale blue and pale brown floated down like snow Grocery ite of pickles, cocktail onions, and Scotch I had taken in both sight and sound, but the appa-ratus of evaluation hadn’t caught up with me yet I had no idea what had happened I couldn’t remeht relate to past events Here ere in this new configuration, but how had it couessed that one and I was conscious of singed hair and flash burns I put a hand up, a fro fro To , but no words were co blow and blood poured down his face He appeared to be in pain, but theinef-fectually I turned to see where Olive was

For one confused ht I saw a pile of torn foxes, their bloodied pelts confirht, these aniet ripped to shreds every day The harsh splattering of red against the soft white fur seemed obscene and out of place And then, of course, I understood what I was looking at The blast had opened her body, exposing tangles of bloody flesh, yellow fat, and jagged bone along her back-side I closed my eyes By then, the smell of black poas overlaid with the scent of woodsmoke and cooked flesh Carefully I pondered the current state of affairs

Olive had to be dead, but Terry seeht perhaps at soht I’m comfy for now The tree trunk provided back support, which helped, as I was tired Idly, I wondered where one I sensed ain, confused faces were peering into otten as going on, except that I was cold

Time must have passed Men in yellow slickers pointed hoses at the house, swords of water cutting through the flames Worried people crouched in front of me and worked their mouths some more It was funny

They didn’t see So sole to such purpose with no visible effect And then I was on h ain, wishing that the reeling of the world would stop before I got sick In spite of the fire, I was shivering