every time she swallowed, crrmmp, it meant it was all over and there was nothing to do about it or say or even ask, and then she would take another bite of toast as hard and shivery as gritting your teeth, and start the whole thing all over again. Her mother said he wasn’t coming home ever any more. That was what she said, but why wasn’t he home eating breakfast right this minute? Because he was not with them eating breakfast it wasn’t fun and everything was so queer. Now maybe in just a minute he would walk right in and grin at her and say, “Good morning, merry sunshine,” because her lip was sticking out, and even bend down and rub her cheek with his whiskers and then sit down and eat a big breakfast and then it would be all fun again and she would watch from the window when he went to work and just before he went out of sight he would turn around and she would wave but why wasn’t he right here now where she wanted him to be and why didn’t he come home? Ever any more. He won’t come home again ever any more. Won’t come home again ever. But he will, though, because it’s home. But why’s he not here? He’s up seeing Grampa Follet. Grampa Follet is very, very sick. But Mama didn’t feel awful then, she feels awful now. But why didn’t he come back when she said he would? He went to heaven and now Catherine could remember about heaven; that’s where God lives, way up in the sky. Why’d he do that? God took him there. But why’d he go there and not come home like Mama said? Last night Mama said he was coming home last night. We could even wait up a while and when he didn’t and we had to go to bed she promised he would come if we went to sleep and she promised he’d be here at breakfast time and now it’s breakfast time and she says he won’t come home ever any more. Now her Aunt Hannah folded her napkin, and folded it again more narrowly, and again still more narrowly, and pressed the butt end of it against her mouth, and laid it beside her plate, where it slowly and slightly unfolded, and, looking first at Rufus and then at Catherine and then back at Rufus, said quietly, “I think you ought to know about your father. Whatever I can tell you. Because your mother’s not feeling well.”
Now I’ll know when he is coming home, Catherine thought.
All through breakfast, Rufus had wanted to ask questions, but now he felt so shy and uneasy that he could hardly speak. “Who hurt him?” he finally asked.
“Why nobody hurt him, Rufus,” she said, and she looked shocked. “What on earth made you think so?”
Mama said so, Catherine thought.
“Mama said he got hurt so bad God put him to sleep,” Rufus said.
Like the kitties, Catherine thought; she saw a dim, gigantic old man in white take her tiny father by the skin of the neck and put him in a huge slop jar full of water and sit on the lid, and she heard the tiny scratching and the stifled mewing.
“That’s true he was hurt, but nobody hurt him,” her Aunt Hannah was saying. How could that be, Catherine wondered. “He was driving home by himself. That’s all, all by himself, in the auto last night, and he had an accident.”
Rufus felt his face get warm and he looked warningly at his sister. He knew it could not be that, not with his father, a grown man, besides, God wouldn’t put you to sleep for that, and it didn’t hurt, anyhow. But Catherine might think so. Sure enough, she was looking at her aunt with astonishment and disbelief that she could say such a thing about her father. Not in his pants, you dern fool, Rufus wanted to tell her, but his Aunt Hannah continued “A fatal accident”; and by her voice, as she spoke the strange word, “fatal,” they knew she meant something very bad. “That means that, just as your mother told you, that he was hurt so badly that God put him to sleep right away.”
Like the rabbits, Rufus remembered, all torn white bloody fur and red insides. He could not imagine his father like that. Poor little things, he remembered his mother’s voice comforting his crying, hurt so terribly that God just let them go to sleep.
If it was in the auto, Catherine thought, then he wouldn’t be in the