“Mr. and Mrs. Smith?” he asked.

Herb took a deep breath. “Yes. We are.”

Vera shut her Bible with a snap.

“Would you come with me, please?”

That's it, Sarah thought. The walk down to the small private room, and then the news. Whatever the news is. She would wait, and when they came back, Herb Smith would tell her what she needed to know. He was a kind man.

“Have you news of my son?” Vera asked in that same clear, strong, and nearly hysterical voice.

“Yes. “Dr. Strawns glanced at Sarah. “Are you family, ma'am?”

“No,” Sarah said. “A friend.”

“A close friend,” Herb said. A warm, strong hand closed above her elbow, just as another had closed around Vera's upper arm. He helped them both to their feet. “We'll all go together, if you don't mind.”

“Not at all.”

He led them past the elevator bank and down a hall-way to an office with CONFERENCE ROOM on the door. He let them in and turned on the overhead fluorescent lights. The room was furnished with a long table and a dozen office chairs.

Dr. Strawns closed the door, lit a cigarette, and dropped the burned match into one of the ashtrays that marched up and down the table. “This is difficult,” he said, as if to himself.

“Then you had best just say it out,” Vera said.

“Yes, perhaps I'd better.”

It was not her place to ask, but Sarah could not help it. “Is he dead? Please don't say he's dead…

“He's in a coma. “Strawns sat down and dragged deeply on his cigarette. “Mr. Smith has sustained serious head injuries and an undetermined amount of brain damage. You may have heard the phrase “subdural hematoma” on one or the other of the doctor shows. Mr. Smith has suffered a very grave subdural hematoma, which is localized cranial bleeding. A long operation was necessary to relieve the pressure, and also to remove bone-splinters from his brain.”

Herb sat down heavily, his face doughy and stunned. Sarah noticed his blunt, scarred hands and remembered Johnny telling her his father was a carpenter.

“But God has spared him,” Vera said. “I knew he would. I prayed for a sign. Praise God, Most High! All ye here below praise His name!”

“Vera,” Herb said with no force.

“In a coma,” Sarah repeated. She tried to fit the information into some sort of emotional frame and found it wouldn't go. That Johnny wasn't dead, that he had come through a serious and dangerous operation on his brain-those things should have renewed her hope. But they didn't. She didn't like that word coma. It had a sinister, stealthy sound. Wasn't it Latin for “sleep of death”?

“What's ahead for him?” Herb asked.

“No one can really answer that now,” Strawns said. He began to play with his cigarette, tapping it nervously over the ashtray. Sarah had the feeling he was answering Herb's question literally while completely avoiding the question Herb had really asked. “He's on life support equipment, of course.”

“But you must know something about his chances,” Sarah said. “You must know… “She gestured helplessly with her hands and let them drop to her sides.

“He may come out of it in forty-eight hours. Or a week. A month. He may never come out of…… there is a strong possibility that he may die. I must tell you frankly that's the most likely. His injuries… grave.

“God wants him to live,” Vera said. “I know it.”

Herb had put his face into his hands and was scrubbing it slowly.

Dr. Strawns looked at Vera uncomfortably. “I only want you to be prepared for… any eventuality.”

“Would you rate his chances for coming out of it?” Herb asked.

Dr. Strawns hesitated, puffed nervously on his cigarette. “No, I can't do that,” he said finally.

The three of them waited another hour and then left. It was dark. A cold and gusty wind had come up and it whistled across the big parking lot. Sarah's long hair streamed out behind her. Later, when she got home, she would find a crisp yellow oak leaf caught in it. Overhead, the moon rode the sky, a cold sailor of the night.

Sarah pressed a scrap of paper into Herb's hand. Written on it was her address and phone number. “Would you call me if you hear something? Anything at all?”

“Yes, of course. “He bent suddenly and kissed her cheek, and Sarah held his shoulder for a moment in the blowing dark.

“I'm very sorry if I was stiff with you earlier, dear,” Vera said, and her voice was surprisingly gentle. “I was upset.”

“Of course you were,” Sarah said.

“I thought my boy might die. But I've prayed. I've spoken to God about it. As the song says, “Are we weak and heavy-laden? Cumbered with a load of care? We must never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in “prayer. "”

“Vera, we ought to go along,” Herb said. “We ought to get some sleep and see how things look in the…”

“But now I've heard from my God,” Vera said, looking dreamily up at the moon. “Johnny isn't going to die. It isn't in God's plan for Johnny to die. I listened and I heard that still, small voice speaking in my heart, and I am comforted.”

Herb opened the car door. “Come on, Vera.”

She looked back at Sarah and smiled. In that smile Sarah suddenly saw Johnny's own easy, devil-may-care grin-but at the same time she thought it was the most ghastly smile she had ever seen in her life.

“God has put his mark on my Johnny,” Vera said, “and I rejoice.”

“Good night, Mrs. Smith,” Sarah said through numb lips.

“Good night, Sarah,” Herb said. He got in and started the car. It pulled out of its space and moved across the parking lot to State Street, and Sarah realized she hadn't asked where they were staying. She guessed they might not know themselves yet.

She turned to go to her own car and paused, struck by the river that ran behind the hospital, the Penobscot. It flowed like dark silk, and the reflected moon was caught in its center. She looked up into the sky, standing alone in the parking lot now. She looked at the moon.

God has put his mark on my Johnny and I rejoice.

The moon hung above her like a tawdry carnival toy, a Wheel of Fortune in the sky with the odds all slugged in favor of the house, not to mention the house numbers-zero and double zero. House numbah, house numbah,

y'all pay the house, hey-hey-hey.

The wind blew rattling leaves around her legs. She went to her car and sat behind the wheel. She felt suddenly sure she was going to lose him. Terror and loneliness woke in her. She began to shiver. At last she started her car and drove home.

There was a great outpouring of comfort and good wishes from the Cleaves Mill student body in the following week; Herb Smith told her later that Johnny received better than three hundred cards. Almost all of them contamed a hesitant personal note saying they hoped Johnny would be well soon. Vera answered each of them with a thank-you note and a Bible verse.

Sarah's discipline problem in her classes disappeared. Her previous feeling that some returning jury of class consciousness was bringing in an unfavorable verdict changed to just the opposite. Gradually she realized that the kids were viewing her as a tragic heroine, Mr. Smith's lost love. This idea struck her in the teacher's room during her free period on the Wednesday following the accident, and she went off into sudden gales of laughter that turned into a crying jag. Before she was able to get herself under control she had frightened herself badly. Her nights were made restless with incessant dreams of Johnny-Johnny in the Halloween Jekyll-and-Hyde mask, Johnny standing at the Wheel of Fortune concession while some disembodied voice chanted, “Man, I love to watch this guy get a beatin,” over and over. Johnny saying, “It's all right now, Sarah, everything's fine,” and then coming into the room with his head gone above the eyebrows.