“I’ll take Zuli now. Person’s weary and must sleep.” Gently Bee rose with her slung over his shoulder and carried her off along the river path toward the bridge downstream, whistling softly as he padded off.

Everyone had drawn back to leave Bolivar with Sappho. He held her head with his fingers flexing, moving, and for the first time in a quarter of an hour, her lips groped to form words. “Good … Here! Good,” was all she said and then in a hoarse shudder she expelled her breath and was still.

Bolivar rose. “The person who was Sappho is dead.”

Jackrabbit spoke to his kenner, cermoniously repeating, “The person who was Sappho is dead.”

The bell tolled more slowly. Barbarossa dodged through the gathering people, carrying a plank. He laid it on the ground and Luciente moved forward to help Jackrabbit and Bolivar lift Sappho from the cot and place her on the plank. White Oak and Aspen, shaken with weeping, turned to each other to embrace. Bolivar’s knuckles were clenched white on Jackrabbit’s arm. The freckles on his hand stood out like the blotches on aged skin. White Oak steadily stroked Aspen’s cropped head.

Jackrabbit was one of the four people who lifted a corner of the plank and began to carry Sappho into the filmy strands of rain. Aspen’s thick grown hair lay like a bouquet of shiny grasses wedged under the small claw hands folded on Sappho’s narrow chest. Aspen, White Oak, and Bolivar stumbled along behind the body, White Oak walking with her arm around Aspen, Bolivar going along ahead of them in stiff dignity, as if the only joints in his body were in his bare knees. Luciente fell in behind them with Connie. “Where are we going? To the undertaker?”

“The family, the lovers, the closest friends sit with the body to loosen their grief. After supper everybody in the village will gather for a wake in the big meeting hall where we politic, watch holies, hold indoor rituals.”

“When is the funeral?”

“Funeral?” Luciente consulted the kenner. “We have no such. All night we stay up together speaking of Sappho. Then at dawn we dig a grave and lay the body in. Then we plant the mulberry tree Sappho wanted. Someone will go to the tree nursery in Marion for one. Then before we go to bed, we visit the brooder and signal the intent to begin a baby.”

“Right away? That’s heartless. One in, one out!”

“Why heartless? In a week traditionally, when we are caught up on work and sleep, we discuss into which family the child should be born and who are to be mothers. We begin by meditating on the dead.”

“It just seems … cheap somehow. No funeral, no undertaker. Just shovel them in.”

“Connie, your old way appears barbaric to us, trying to keep the rotting body. To pretend we are not made of elements ancient as the earth, that we do not owe those elements back to the web of all living … For us a good death is one come in the fullness of age, without much pain and in clear mind. A full life is a used life! Person should be tired … . You should sit in on the wake with us! You’ll see. It feels beautiful, it feels good. You’ll see what beauty Jackrabbit makes–person and Bolivar spectacle together. Bolivar is a ritual maker. I myself will perform tonight with my drums–which we should scamp over and get after we set up at the meetinghouse.”

“Something is wrong!” She felt a threat shaking her. “Let go, Luciente. Let me go!”

“With haste, Connie!” Luciente stepped back and Connie faded through into the chair in the dim day room. Nurse Wright was slapping her to and fro till her jaw ached.

“Please … don’t!”

“Thought you’d … withdrawn.”

“I feel real funny today. I think I slept or passed out. The medication … I felt real funny after I took it today.”

Nurse Wright was a motherly woman in her fifties, but overworked. She had given up and just drifted along in the ward, leaning heavily on her attendants. Connie liked her but felt she couldn’t be relied on. Nurse Wright peered into her eyes. “Ummm. I’ll mention it to the doctor. Maybe you’re on the wrong dosage.”

“I think I’m kind of sensitive to drugs, maybe,” she said meekly. She was still shuddering with the force of the transition. Her heart pounded wildly and Nurse Wright, taking her by the wrist, pursed her lips at the pulse.

“I’ll mention it to the doctor. You may be on too high a dosage, or maybe not. He’ll say in the end. Now, on your feet.”

She rose shakily. “I feel funny.”

“Come along now. It’s time to get in line for your supper.”

NINE

“They’re moving us all on a special ward,” Skip said. “Here in the medical building.”

“Who says?” Connie asked. Rumors had galloped back and forth through their little group for two weeks.

“Fats, the friendly attendant. He says pretty soon we’ll all be moved onto a ward fixed up for us.”

“Men and women both? A locked ward?” Even if it was locked, at least she could get to be on the same ward as Sybil again.

“I think locked.” Skip pulled a long face. “They don’t act like they’re fixing to turn us loose. I got a funny letter from my father, saying they’re real proud I’ve been picked to be in a pilot project for special attention, and they hope I’ll cooperate and get well. That we’re lucky to have such a famous doctor, written up in Timemagazine.”

“Redding?”

“The same. But they’re even more bowled over by a Dr. Argent, who’s head of some institute.”

“Dr. Argent? There’s nobody around here like that.”

“Beats me. What bothers me is that the hospital’s been after them to sign a permission for something.”

She hugged herself, trying to summon up the nerve. Skip had his own clothes, he always seemed to have a little cash, even cigarettes. “Skip … could you loan me a little to call my niece in New York City? I haven’t had a visit since I got here. I know if I talk to her, I can get her to bring me some money and some of my clothes. They’re ashamed, and they’re pretending I don’t exist since they sent me up.”

“My folks guilt‑trip over sending me to the state hospital. They don’t come either, but they deposit an allowance.” Skip fished out a pouch he wore under his shirt. He had made it in Occupational Therapy. She longed for OT privileges but couldn’t get them because Mrs. Richard had put down bad things in her record. OT was just an hour every other week (the men went one week and the women the next) playing with clay or cutting out leather, but it was something to do. Of course you couldn’t really relax because the OT had to justify her job by writing a report too (“patient withdrawn, made woman with overdeveloped sexual features”), but it was some kind of change. Skip stuck the pouch back under his shirt and slid a dollar into her hand. “Hope it does you something.”

She hid the dollar in the secret compartment under the bottom flap of her shopping‑bag‑within‑a‑shopping‑bag–both wearing dangerously thin and mended twice on the handles. “Thanks, Skip. Listen, if I can get her, she’ll come through. She has to.”

“They don’t like us, you know, We’re lepers … . You know what the last experiment was they pulled on me? They stuck electrodes on my prick and showed me dirty pictures, and when I got a hard‑on about men, they shocked me. Whatever they’re into here, it can’t be that painful, right?”

As they sat on the bench waiting for Acker, the denim psychologist, to give them some new test, she felt better. She had a secret key to the world, if only she got permission to use the phone that night.

The time they could make phone calls was fixed: after supper, before roll call. She waited in line to ask permission.

Sharma asked, “Please can I have some toilet paper?”

“Again? What are you doing in the bathroom, Sharma?”

“It’s the medication. It makes me have to pee all the time, Nurse, honest.”

“It doesn’t do that to any other patient. Why would it do that to you? If you didn’t play with yourself, you wouldn’t have to pass urine every five minutes.” Two sheets of toilet paper doled out.