A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

The Young Shall See Visions, and the Old Dream Dreams KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

Nell rubs a hand on her knickers and grips the bat tightly. Her topknot is coming loose. She can see strands of hair hanging in front of the wire frames of her glasses.

“What’s the matter, four-eyes? You nervous?”

She concentrates on the ball Pete holds in his right hand instead of the boys scattered across the dusty back lot. Any minute now, he’ll pitch, and if she thinks about the ball instead of the names, she’ll hit it.

“You hold that bat like a girl,” T.J. says from first base.

Nell keeps staring at the ball. She can see the stitches running along its face, the dirty surface disappearing into Pete’s fist. “That’s because I am a girl,” she says. It doesn’t matter if T.J. hears her. All that matters is that she spoke.

“Pitch already!” Chucky yells from the grassy sideline.

Pete spits and Nell grimaces. She hates it when he spits. With a sharp snap of the wrist, he releases the ball. It curves toward her.

She jumps out of its way and swings at the same time. The ball hits the skinny part of the bat, close to her fingers, and bounces forward.

“Ruuun!” Chucky screams.

She drops the bat and takes off, the air caught in her throat. She’s not good at running; someone always tags her before she gets to base. But the sweater-wrapped rock that is first base is getting closer and still she can’t hear anyone running behind her. She leaps the last few inches and lands in the middle of the rock, leaving a large footprint in the wool. A few seconds later, the ball slams into T.J.’s palm.

“You didn’t have to move,” T.J. says. “The ball was gonna hit you anyway.”

“Pete always does that so that I can’t swing.” Nell tugs on her ripped, high-buttoned blouse. “He knows I hit better than any of you guys, so he cheats. And besides, the last time he did that I was bruised for a week. Papa wasn’t gonna let me play anymore.”

T.J. shrugs, his attention already on the next batter.

“Nell?”

She looks up. Edmund is standing behind third base. His three-piece suit is dusty and he looks tired. “Jeez,” she says under her breath.

“What?” T.J. asks.

“Nothing,” she says. “I gotta go.”

“Why? The game’s not over.”

“I know.” She pushes a strand of hair out of her face. “But I gotta go anyway.”

She walks across the field in front of the pitcher’s mound. Pete spits and barely misses her shoe. She stops and slowly looks up at him in a conscious imitation of her father’s most frightening look.

“Whatcha think you’re doing?” he asks.

“Leaving.” Her glasses have slid to the edge of her nose, but she doesn’t push them back. Touching them would remind him that she can’t see very well.

“Can’t. You’re on first.”

“Chucky can take my place.”

“Can’t neither. He’s gotta bat soon.”

She glances at Chucky. He’s too far away to hear anything. “I can’t do anything about it, Pete. I gotta go.”

Pete tugs his cap over his eyes and squints at her. “Then you can’t play with us no more. It was dumb to let a girl play in the first place.”

“It is not dumb! And you’ve gone home in the middle of a game before.” She hates Pete. Someday she’ll show him that a girl can be just as good as a boy, even at baseball.

“Nell.” Edmund sounds weary. “Let’s go.”

“He’s not your pa,” Pete says. “How come you gotta go with him?”

“He’s my sister’s boyfriend.” She pushes her glasses up with her knuckle and trudges the rest of the way across the yard. When she reaches Edmund, he takes her arm and they start walking.

“Why do you play with them?” he asks softly. “Baseball isn’t a game for young ladies.”

He always asks her that, and once he yelled at her for wearing the knickers that Karl had given her. “I don’t like playing dollies with Louisa.”

“I don’t suppose I’d like that much either,” he says. When they get far enough away from the field, he stops and turns her to him.

There are deep shadows under his eyes and his face looks pinched.

“I’m not going to take you all the way home. I just came because I promised I would.”

“You’re not gonna see Bess?”

He shakes his head, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out the slender ring that cost him three months’ wages. The diamond glitters in the sunlight. “Karl’s back,” he says.

Nell traced the nameplate. Karl Krupp. She hadn’t imagined it; the name didn’t disappear under her touch like so many other things did. Her fingers, with their swollen knuckles and fragile bones, looked defenseless beside that name. Slowly she let her hand fall back onto the cold metal rim of her walker. He would be how old now? When she had been ten, he had been twenty-five — a fifteen-year difference that would now make him…ninety-five. She glanced at the door to his room. It hadn’t been open since he arrived, and that frustrated her. She wanted to see how badly age had changed him.

She supposed it hadn’t changed him much, since he was in.

Household 5. The other residents were reasonably intelligent and ambulatory — except for Sophronia. But the nurses had removed her as soon as her senility became evident. Nell’s own memory lapses and growing tendency to daydream worried her. She wasn’t sure how much provocation the nurses needed before they moved her to a more restrictive household.

Nell lifted her walker and moved away from the door. She didn’t want Karl to catch her snooping. Her name was different and she certainly didn’t look like the scrawny tomboy he had known, but she didn’t want him to know that she was watching him until she knew exactly what she was going to do.

Karl slouches indolently in the settee. His long legs stretch out before him and cross at the ankles, his left arm is draped across the armrest, and his finely chiseled head rests against the upholstered back. He should not be comfortable, but he clearly is.

Bess sits in the armchair across from him, leaning forward. Wisps of hair frame her flushed face, her eyes sparkle, and her hands — looking naked without Edmund’s ring — nervously toy with her best skirt.

Nell lets the door swing shut. Karl doesn’t turn at the click, but instead says in his deep, rich baritone, “Is that my Nell?”

She freezes, not expecting the well of emotion that voice raises in her. She imagines herself running to him and burying her face in his neck, then pulling back and slapping him with all her strength.

“Nelly, it’s Karl.” Bess can’t quite keep the happiness from her voice.

“I know,” she says, flicking dried mud off her thumb. She is covered with sweat, her glasses are dirty, and her topknot is coming loose. She probably doesn’t even look like a little girl.

“Nelly…”

She hates the nickname almost as much as she hates Bess’s tone.

“I’m gonna go wash up.”

“Go around front so you don’t get mud on the floor.”

Nell suppresses a sigh and turns around to let herself out. Just then her father opens the door, bringing with him the scents of tobacco and hair tonic. He ignores his youngest daughter’s appearance and starts to go into the parlor.

“Who owns the fancy Model-T? Is it yours, Edm—?”

He stops just inside the parlor and Nell takes a step forward so that she can see everything. Karl rises quickly and extends his hand.

Bess is biting her lower lip, and Papa has flushed a deep scarlet.

“I told you,” he says in his lowest, angriest voice, “never to cross my threshold again.”

“Mr. Richter, things have changed.”

“I don’t care if you’ve become the richest man in the world. You are not welcome here.” Papa’s voice grows even softer. “Now get out.”

“Sir, please—”

“Get. Out. Or must I escort you?”

With one swift, graceful movement, Karl sweeps his hat off the table and places it jauntily on his head. He nods at Bess, steps around Papa, and musses Nell’s hair as he goes out the door.

Papa doesn’t move until he hears the automobile crank up. Then he says tightly to Bess, “You know he’s not allowed to be here.”

“But he’s different. He’s got a new job in Milwaukee, and he’s got prospects, Papa.”

“Fine. Let him find another girl.”

Nell leans back against the door. They have forgotten that she’s there.

“Papa.” Bess rises out of the armchair. In her high-buttoned shoes, she is almost as tall as her father. “Things are better. He promised.”

“Oh? Did he promise he would never hit you again, or did he just talk about money?”

Bess whirls away and looks out the window. “Papa, that’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not fair.” Papa pulls his watch from his pocket, opens it, and then closes it without looking at the face. “But I don’t want him back. After he hit you, I heard Nelly crying herself to sleep every single night.”

Nell’s face grows warm. She thought no one knew.

Papa stuffs his watch back into his pocket and adjusts his waist-coat. “Now, I would like some dinner.”

Nell slips out the front door and heads around the house to the pump. Her body is shaking. She remembers Bess’s swollen and bruised face, but she also remembers the fun they had laughing on the front porch with Karl. Her tears those nights hadn’t been just for Bess. They had also been for those summer afternoons filled with laughter, lemonade, and Karl mussing her hair!

Even though it was difficult, Nell liked to walk. She felt that each slow step added a minute to her life. Without her walker, she would have to use a wheelchair — and the wheelchair was a sign of weakness. Lifting the walker and then taking a step gave her the same sure feel that she used to have after hitting a home run the way Karl had taught her to.

Sometimes she spent the entire day walking up and down the hallways. She got to go outside on those rare occasions when her family visited. They took her out so that they could avoid talking.

Each household was painted a different color. The walls in Household 5 were robin’s egg blue and covered with artwork done”

by the residents. Shortly after Karl arrived, a painting of a multi-colored spiral had gone up beside his door.

Nell found her gaze drawn to the painting. She pushed her glasses up so that she could study it. The spiral had rungs, like a ladder. At the bottom, instead of a signature, was a notation that tugged at a memory she couldn’t reach: deoxyribose nucleic acid. She read the phrase twice, then saw with a start that Karl’s door was open. Strains of a Chopin etude slipped into the hallway. Intrigued, she leaned closer.

The residents were encouraged to fill their rooms with their personal effects. Most rooms had a television set, a stuffed armchair covered with a quilt, and a cross on prominent display. But Karl’s room was lined with bookcases, and the bookcases were full. Karl stood near the door, holding a book in his hand.

“It’s the pretty woman from across the hall.” His voice hadn’t changed. It was still rich and full, and it still sent shivers down her back. His black hair had become silver and his skin was covered with delicately etched lines. Age hadn’t bent him. He extended his hand. His movements were as graceful as ever. “Would you care to come and visit for a moment?”

Nell found herself staring at his hand. The last time she had seen it, it had been covered with blood. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m taking my walk.”

“Surely you have just a moment—?” He inclined his head toward her, waiting for her to give him her name.

“Eleanor,” she said.

“Eleanor?” He took a step back so that she could pass him. She hesitated, then smiled a little bit at herself, realizing that this was the man who had given her a taste for charm.

“A moment.” She turned her walker and started toward him, feeling awkward for the first time in years.

He watched her shuffling movements. “Arthritis?”

She shook her head. “I broke both hips pinch-hitting for some Little Leaguers in 1975. The doctors said I’d never walk again.”

“Did you win?”

She looked up at him, startled to find herself only a foot away.

“I’m walking, aren’t I?”

He chuckled. “No, no. The game.”

“Oh.” She pushed the walker through the doorway. Bookcases made the entrance narrow. His room smelled like ink and old books.

“We lost by three runs.”

“It’s a shame,” he said quietly. “You should always win your last game.”

She stopped near the window. He had a view of the back parking lot. “Who says it was my last game?”

She turned and looked at his room, then. It was filled with books.

A desk covered with papers stood in the center of the floor and a stereo, like the one her granddaughter was so proud of, took up a shelf of one of the bookcases. The bed in the far corner was neatly made and covered with a manufactured spread.

“Would you like to sit?” He pulled a chair back for her. Nell shook her head.

“Tea then?” He reached behind him and plugged in a coffee machine. Cups, canisters, and vials filled with liquid rested beside the machine.

“What are you doing here?” Nell’s question slipped out. He turned sharply to look at her. Nell felt herself blush. “I mean, you don’t look as if you need to be here.”

He smiled and the lines cascaded into wrinkles. “My grand-nephew runs this place. He figures I’m getting too old to live alone.”

“But there are other places to stay if you’re in good health. You don’t seem to need medical care.”

“I don’t yet.” He hooked his thumb in his front pockets and leaned against the door frame. Nell wondered if he’d stop her if she tried to leave. “I’m helping him with some research.”

Nell glanced again at the desk. Some of the papers lying there were covered with the same spiral that was near the door.

“We’re trying to find a way to slow down the aging process,” he said. “You’ve heard of Leonard Hayflick?”

“No.”

“Hayflick is a biologist who found that cells have a clearly defined life span. He figured that the life span was determined by the number of cell divisions instead of chronological age. But some cells deteri-orate before they reach their maximum divisions. And that, some believe, causes aging. Follow me?”

Nell realized she had been staring at him blankly. “Sorry.”

“Let me put it simply,” he said. “Everyone can live to a certain maximum age, but not everyone reaches that age because of physical deterioration. What we’re trying to do is prevent that physical deterioration so that people can live out their entire lives.”

“What is this maximum age?” Nell asked.

Karl shrugged. “We don’t know. But some people have claimed that they were well over a hundred. And I just read about a woman recently whose baptismal records prove she is a hundred and twenty.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“You asked, Nelly.”

Nell’s entire body went cold. She gripped her walker tightly and tried to think of a way she could get out of the room.

He took a step toward her, and she cringed.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I should have let you know right away that I knew who you were. My family stayed in Wisconsin, Nell.

They let me know what was going on in your life. I knew you were here well before I came.”

“What are you going to do?” Her voice trembled.

He took another cautious step toward her. “Well, first, Nelly, I’d like to explain about Bess.”

“No,” she said and her fear was as real as it had been that sunlit July morning when he had clamped his bloody hand against her mouth. “If you don’t let me out of here, I’m going to scream.”

“Nelly—”

“I mean it, Karl, I’m going to scream.”

He opened his hands wide. “You’re free to go, Nell. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done it a long time ago.”

She pushed the walker before her like a shield. Her hands were slipping on the metal. As she passed Karl, she didn’t look at him.

The walls seemed narrower and the distance to her room much too short. When she got inside, she closed the door, wishing that it would lock. But she knew that part of her fear was irrational. There wasn’t much a ninety-five-year-old man could do to her here, not in this home filled with bright lights and young nurses. All she had to do was scream and someone would come to her. They didn’t ignore screams in Household 5.

Nell tugs at her knickers. No matter how tightly she ties them, they always stay uncomfortably loose about the waist. She has been reluctant to slide into a base like Chucky tells her to because she’s afraid that if she does her knickers will come off.

She takes the path that goes through Kirschman’s apple orchard.

Mr. Kirschman hates it when the kids take the shortcut through his orchard, but they do anyway.

As she turns the corner to the center of the orchard, someone clamps a hand over her mouth and drags her back against the tree.

The hand is tight and slippery. It smells like iron.

“Nelly, promise not to scream if I let you go?”

The voice is Karl’s. She nods. Slowly he releases her.

“What were you trying to do?”

He raises a grimy finger to his lips. His dark hair stands out in sharp relief to his pale skin. “I don’t want you to go any farther, okay? I want you to go back and get your father right away. Promise?”

Nell nods again. She’s staring at his stained white shirt and she realizes that it is covered with blood. She wipes at her mouth and her hand comes away bloody.

“Nell—”

She turns and starts to run, not realizing until she’s rounded the corner that she’s disobeyed Karl. There, lying across the orchard path, is her sister. Bess’s hair is strewn about her, and her blouse is covered with blood.

“Nell,” it’ll be okay, just—”

Nell screams. Karl is standing behind her. She pushes him out of her way and runs down the orchard path toward home. This time running seems easy although the air still catches in her throat. She can’t hear Karl behind her, and as she nears the house, she knows she’s safe. Karl won’t hurt her, Karl would never hurt her. The only one Karl hurts is Bess, and that is Bess’s fault because she doesn’t listen to Papa and now it’s too late, it’s all too late because Nell has left her there, bleeding and helpless, with Karl, the man who hurts her, the man whose hands are covered with blood.

“Did I ever tell you that my sister was murdered?”

Anna smoothed her already neat skirt and sighed. “Yes, Mother.”

Her tone said, A thousand times, Mother. Do I have to hear it again?

Nell clutched her hands in her lap, trying to decide if she should continue. Anna would never believe her. Even though she was fifty-five, Anna rarely thought about anything more serious than clothing and makeup. And, of course, she had never known her Aunt Bess.

“I saw the man who killed her.”

Anna suddenly became stiff, and her eyes focused on something beyond Nell’s shoulder.

Nell’s heart was pounding. Her oldest, Elizabeth, would have listened. But Bess had been dead for six years. “I think I told you this once,” Nell said. “But the man who killed her — his name was Karl — also killed her fiance, Edmund. And they never caught him.

And it used to frighten me, thinking that someday he’d come back for me.”

“That was a long time ago, Mother.” Anna’s voice had an edge to it.

“I know.” Nell’s fingers had grown cold. “But I wouldn’t be telling you now if it weren’t important.”

Anna looked at her mother full in the face, a deep, piercing look.

“Why is it important now?”

“Because he’s here,” Nell whispered. The words sounded too melodramatic, but she couldn’t take them back. “He’s across the hall.”

Anna took a deep breath. “Mother, even if he were here, there’s nothing he could do. He probably doesn’t even remember you.”

“He remembers,” Nell said. “I talked to him.”

“Even so.” Anna reached out and took Nell’s hand. Her palm was warm and moist. “He’s an elderly man. He probably won’t live long.

If we called the police and they verified what you said, he probably wouldn’t even make it to trial. I mean, who else knows about the murder, besides you?”

“My father knew and—”

“Anyone living?”

“No.” Tears were building in Nell’s eyes. She blinked rapidly.

“Then it would be your word against his, and frankly, Mother, I don’t think it’s worth it. I mean, what can you gain now? He’ll die soon and then you won’t have to worry.”

“No.” A tear traced its way down Nell’s cheek and stopped on her lips. She licked it away quickly, hoping Anna didn’t see. “He won’t die soon.”

Anna frowned. “Why not?”

“He’s working on an experiment to prolong his life.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mother.” Anna pulled her hand away. “How many other people have you told this piece of nonsense to?”

“I haven’t—”

A nurse knocked on the door and walked in. She set a tray next to Nell’s armchair. “I have your medication, Nell.”

Nell reached over and took the Dixie cup. The liquid inside was brown. “This doesn’t look like my medication.”

She looked up in time to see Anna shaking her head at the nurse.

“Just drink it, Nell,” the nurse said in her fakely sweet voice, “and it’ll be all right.”

Nell took a sniff of the cup. The contents smelled bitter. “I really don’t want it.”

“Mother,” Anna snapped. Then in a confidential tone to the nurse, she said, “Mother is having a bad day.”

“The past few days have been difficult,” the nurse said. “She hasn’t gone to meals and she won’t leave her room at all.”

“Is that true, Mother?”

Nell swirled the liquid in her cup. Sediment floated around the bottom. Suddenly she realized that it didn’t matter. No one would care if Karl poisoned her. She put the cup to her lips and drank before she could change her mind.

The liquid bit at her tongue like homemade whiskey. She coughed once and then set the cup down. “I don’t see why you want to know,”

she said.

Anna pursed her lips. “Mother, really.”

Nell rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, but she couldn’t make the taste go away. She grabbed the side of her chair and got to her feet. Her hips cracked slightly when she stood. The nurse handed her the walker.

“Where are you going, Nell?”

Nell didn’t reply. She moved the walker toward the sink, and got herself a drink of water.

“I’m afraid my mother may not be well,” Anna said softly. “She was just telling me that the man across the hall murdered her sister, and she’s afraid that he’s after her.”

“Mr. Krupp? I wouldn’t think so. He’s been bedridden since he came here.”

“Maybe you should say something.” Anna stopped speaking as Nell turned around. Nell made her way back to the armchair. The nurse took her arm as she sat down.

“Nell, I understand the man across the hall frightens you.”

Nell looked up at the nurse’s round face, trying to remember her name without glancing at the name tag. “No. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Your daughter was saying that he made you nervous.”

The name tag said DANA, L.P.N. “I haven’t even seen him and he’s very quiet. Why would that make me nervous?”

The nurse smiled and picked up the tray. “I was just checking, Nell.”

Anna waited until the nurse left before speaking. “Why did you lie to her, Mother?”

“I don’t know why you come visit me,” Nell said.

Anna slid her chair back and stood up. “I don’t know either sometimes. But I’m sure I’ll be back.” She picked up her coat and slung it around her shoulder. “And, Mother, it’s better for you to socialize, you know, than to stay locked up in your room. Talking to other people will give you something to think about, so that your mind won’t wander.”

She walked out. Nell waited until she could no longer hear the click of Anna’s high heels on the tile floor. “My mind doesn’t wander,” she murmured. But the nurse had said that Karl was bedridden, and he had looked so healthy to her. Nell sighed and then frowned. What would he be doing in Household 5 if he couldn’t get out of bed?

Nell picks up the bat and takes a practice swing. Her dress sways with her, but she won’t wear the knickers Karl gave her. Bess has been dead for a week, and Nell is lonely.

“What are you doing here?” Chucky asks. They are alone. The other boys haven’t arrived yet.

“Wanna play,” she says.

He frowns. “In a dress? Where are your knickers?”

“Threw them out.” She hits the bat against the dirt like she’s seen Pete do.

“You can’t run in a dress.”

“I can try.” Her anger is sharp and quick. She hasn’t been able to control her moods since Bess died. “I’m sorry.”

Chucky ducks his head and looks away. “It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and looks at the playing field. The grass has been ruined near the bases. Sometimes she thinks baseball is the only dream she has left. Now, with Bess dead and Karl gone, even that seems impossible. “I’ll just go home.”

“No,” Chucky says. “I mean, you can play.”

She smiles a little and shakes her head. “Not in a dress. You were right.”

“Wait.” He touches her arm and then runs to his house, letting the porch door slam behind him. She goes to home base and swings the bat again, pretending that she has hit a home run. It is a good feeling, to send the ball whistling across the creek. She loves nothing more. If only she were a little boy, she could play baseball forever.

Karl once told her that she could turn into a boy when she kissed her elbow. She tried for weeks before she realized that kissing her own elbow was impossible. She will never be a boy, but she will be good at baseball.

Chucky comes back. He thrusts some cloth into her hand. “Here,” he says.

She unfolds it. He’s given her a pair of frayed and poorly mended knickers. “Chucky?”

“They don’t fit me no more. Maybe they’ll fit you.”

“But isn’t your brother supposed to get them?”

“Nah,” he says, but doesn’t meet her eyes.

“I don’t want to take them if it’ll get you in trouble.”

“It won’t.” He studies her, sees that she’s unconvinced. “Look, you’re the best hitter on the team. I don’t want to lose you.”

She smiles, a real smile this time, one that she feels. “Thanks, Chucky.”

Nell resumed her walks again, making sure that she took them around medication time.

Karl’s door remained closed for days, but she finally caught him in the hallway, switching Dixie cups on the trays.

“You’re switching my medication,” she said. She stood straight, leaning on her walker, knowing that he couldn’t touch her in the halls.

“Yes, I am,” he replied.

She swallowed heavily. She hadn’t expected him to admit it.

“Why?”

“I guess I kinda feel like I owe you, Nell.”

“For killing Bess?”

He set the cup down on the tray marked with her room number.

His hand was trembling. “I didn’t kill Bess,” he said quietly. “I killed Edmund.”

“You’re lying.”

He shook his head. “I was going to meet Bess that morning in the orchard. We were going to run away together. Edmund got there first, and he killed her. So I went and I killed him.”

Nell could feel the power of that morning, the sunlight against her skin, his bloody fingers across her lips. “Why — didn’t you tell somebody?”

“I still committed a murder, Nelly.”

That’s why he had told her to get her father. That’s why he had never come back to kill her, too. “Why—” She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. “Why did you come back here?”

“Wisconsin is my home, Nell.” He was leaning on the cart for support. “I wanted to die at home.”

“But your experiment?”

He smiled. “I’ve outlived most of my siblings for a good twenty years. And the formula wasn’t quite right for me at first. We’ve changed it, so yours is better from the start.”

“Mine?”

“Nelly.” He bowed his head slightly and ran his fingers through his thick, silver hair. The gesture made her think of the old Karl, the one who had taught her how to laugh and how to hit home runs.

“What did you think? That I was poisoning you?”

She nodded.

“I’m not. I’m trying the drug on you. I know I should have asked, but you didn’t trust me, and it was just easier to do it this way.”

“Why me?” she asked.

“Lots of reasons.” The cart slid forward slightly and he had to catch himself to keep from falling. “I don’t know many people who still play baseball when they’re seventy years old. Or learn to walk again when the doctors say they can’t. You’re strong, Nelly. The power of your mind is amazing.”

“But what if I don’t want to live any longer?”

“You do or you wouldn’t be out here, trying to catch me.”

“I have caught you.” The hallway was empty. Usually it was full of people walking back and forth.

“I know,” Karl said. “What are you going to do? Call a nurse, tell them to arrest me? There’s no statute of limitations on murder, you know.”

Nell studied him for a moment. He was thin and his skin was pale. He was ninety-five. How much longer could he live?

“I don’t want any more of your medication,” she said.

He stood motionlessly, waiting for her to say something else.

She moved her walker forward, on the other side of the cart. “And I don’t want to talk anymore.”

She didn’t let herself look back as she slowly made her way down the hall. Imagine if she could walk without a walker, without pain.

Imagine if she could live longer than her father, who had died when he was ninety-eight. She wasn’t ready to give up living yet. Some days she felt as if she had only just started.

When she reached her own door, she stopped and looked back at Karl’s. Once she had believed in Karl and his miracles. She did no longer.

The world has reduced itself to the ball clutched in Pete’s hand.

“Throw it straight,” Chucky yells.

Pete spits. Nell barely notices. She watches that ball, knowing that when he throws it she will hit it with all her strength. Time seems to slow down as the ball whizzes toward her. She knows how the ball will fly, where it will end up, and she swings the bat down to meet it. There is a satisfying crack as they hit and time speeds up again.

“Holy cow!” Chucky cries, but Nell ignores him as she drops the bat. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the ball sail over the creek.

She runs as fast as she can. Her right foot hits first base, and she keeps going, flying, like the ball. It disappears into the weeds behind the creek as her left foot hits second. Her glasses bounce off her nose between second and third, and she is navigating according to color.

Her lungs are burning as her left foot hits the rock that is third base.

“Go, Nelly! Go!”

She runs toward the blurred shapes behind home. There is a stitch in her side and her entire body aches, but she keeps moving. She leaps on home base and her team cheers, but she can’t stop. She has run too hard to stop right away, and she crashes into Chucky, who hugs her.

“Great!” he says. “That was great!”

She stands there, savoring the moment. Karl would have been proud of her. But Karl would never know. She wipes the sweat off her forehead and says, “I lost my glasses.”

As Chucky trudges out to retrieve them, she realizes she can get no higher than this; her tiny girl’s body, for all its batting accuracy, will prevent her from going on. But she doesn’t care. If she can’t play on a real team, she will hit home runs until she is a hundred, long after these boys are dead.

“That was great, Nelly,” Chucky says as he hands her her glasses.

“Really great.”

She checks the lenses, which haven’t cracked, and then bends the frame back into shape. “Not bad for a girl,” she says with a glance at T.J. Then she goes over to the grass and sits at the end of the line, hoping that she’ll get another chance at bat.

The sound of running feet woke Nell up. She had heard that sound before. Someone had died or was dying and they wanted to get him out before the other residents knew.

She grabbed her glasses and got out of bed, carefully making her way to the door. They were gathered in front of Karl’s room. Two men wheeled a stretcher out. The body was strapped in and the face was covered. Quickly they pushed him out of sight.

She crossed the empty hallway. The tile beneath her feet felt cold and gritty. They had left Karl’s door open, and she stopped just outside it, catching the smell of death under the scent of ink and books.

“Nell?” One of the nurses started down the hall toward her.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Mr. Krupp? I’m afraid so. I’m sorry if it disturbed you.”

“No, not really,” Nell said. She drew her nightgown closely about her chest. She was getting cold.

“He probably shouldn’t have been in this household,” the nurse said. “He was much too sick, but his family wanted him to have a private room.”

Nell wondered how the nurse expected her to believe that.

One glance inside Karl’s room made it obvious that he hadn’t been bedridden. Nell surveyed the room once more. The desk top was bare and the vials were gone, but otherwise it looked the same.

The nurse finally reached her side. Nell recognized her as the round-faced one who usually gave her her medicine, Dana, LPN.

“How did you get out here?” Dana LPN asked.

“Walked,” Nell said.

Dana LPN shot her a perplexed look. “Well, let’s get you back to bed, shall we?”

She put her arm around Nell’s waist and helped her back to the room. The support wasn’t necessary until they reached the door.

When Nell saw her walker in its usual place beside the bed, her knees buckled.

“Nell?”

Nell straightened herself and pushed out of the nurse’s grasp. She made her way to the side of the bed and lightly touched her walker.

“I’m fine,” she said.

She climbed into the bed and lay there until she heard the nurse’s footsteps echo down the hall. Then she got up and walked slowly around her room.

You’re strong, Nelly, he had said. The power of your mind is amazing.

She walked to the door and stared at Karl’s empty room across the hall. The drawing was still there, its spirals twisting like a mal-formed ladder. Beneath the stunned joy that she was feeling, frustration beat at her stomach. She would never know if it was her own determination or Karl’s bitter medicine that made her legs work again, just as she would never know if he had actually killed her sister or if he had been lying. She wanted to believe that it was the power of her own mind, but her mind’s healing took time. She had started to walk within days of receiving the medication.

Nell went back to the bed and sat down, wondering what Anna would say when she learned that her mother could walk again.

Then Nell decided that it didn’t matter. What mattered was that her feet which had run bases, chased two children, and carried her through decades of living worked again. Once she had vowed to hit home runs until she was a hundred. And maybe, just maybe, she would.