کتاب 02-13

13

It did, too. Her name returned to her just before dawn, came back to her almost as soon as she stopped trying to remember it. Her subconscious coughed it up without any warning, in much the way it would sometimes supply her with the answer to a question in a crossword that had been stumping her.

She did not wake coughing smoke again. There were no more hot flashes burning up her T-shirts in the night. At the next chapel, Carol sat at the pipe organ to play “Spirit in the Sky,” and the congregation rose to sing. They roared and stamped like drunk sailors in a Melville story, full of grog and scaring the seagulls with their sea chanteys, and Harper bellowed with them, bellowed till her throat ached.

And they shone, all of them together, Harper, too. Her eyes blazed like lamps, her skin hummed with warmth and pleasure, her thoughts soared away from her like a kestrel rising on a hot summer updraft, and for a few weeks everything was almost all right.