“Of course—‘West Virginia.’ I knew this.” Edna Mae smiled, a childish-sly smile, to hide her confusion. “—I was testing you, Luther.”
Edna Mae had not noticed that her wadded tear-dampened tissue had fallen to the floor and so quickly I stooped to pick it up and hide it away in my pocket. Trying not to think that the Edna Mae of a few months ago would have been stricken with embarrassment, at such personal carelessness for which she’d often scolded the children. As she’d have been at the sight of herself in the rumpled raincoat with matted hair brushed behind her ears, a smear of lipstick on her mouth and what might have been spots of “rouge” on her sallow cheeks.
On the walk outside the hall several members of the congregation were waiting for us, for we would drive home together in a kind of caravan, into the night.
Reverend Dennis and the others were speaking excitedly of the meeting. I was sorry to seem abrupt with them for I could not trust myself to speak in a normal way, after Professor Wohlman’s words that had entered my heart. Also it was painful to me, to observe others speaking with my dear wife, and Edna Mae attempting to answer them, for I did not like the way their eyes moved over her, the women’s eyes especially, with the greed of birds pecking in the dirt.
It was not like me to avoid speaking with Reverend Dennis whom I revered as a true Christian minister, nor was it like me to be rude to the minister’s wife. All I recall is that quickly we walked away to our car that was parked close by—that is, with my hand gripping Edna Mae’s arm I urged her to walk as quickly as she could. If Edna Mae was surprised to see these familiar faces, in this unfamiliar setting, there was no time for her to exclaim. Behind us was the murmur which I am not sure if I heard—Poor Edna Mae!
In our car, Edna Mae lapsed almost at once into sleep, beside me. Where once my dear wife would have been alert and anxious about my driving at night on the interstate, where trailer-trucks come roaring up behind you flashing lights to blind you in the rearview mirror, and to pass dangerously close at eighty miles an hour, now Edna Mae took no mind at all of the situation like a creature that cares only to curl up to sleep.
It seemed to me that Edna Mae had drawn up her bare legs beneath her as a child might, to sleep. Yet each time I glanced at her, I saw that this was not so and that she was slumped sitting-up in the seat, her head flung back and her mouth open.
Soon her breathing was damp-sounding, a kind of hoarse pant. Since Daphne, Edna Mae either did not sleep at all, or slept too much—a heavy, sodden sleep from which she could hardly be wakened. (It was disagreeable to hear the children shouting at their mother to wake her where she might have fallen asleep on a sofa perhaps, even at times on the living room or kitchen floor. Especially Dawn’s exasperated voice—“Mawmaw! Wake up!”)
In this heavy sleep Edna Mae was breathing strangely, as she’d begun to do in recent months. For several seconds she would seem to cease breathing as I listened, though trying not to listen, and counting seconds when she had ceased to breathe—one, two, three . . .six, eight, ten—before there came a catch in her throat like the clicking-open of a wet lock, and a sudden snorting noise of such loudness she was awakened, drawing in breaths like a drowning person . . . But soon then she lapsed back into sleep again, and after a few minutes cease to breathe. Ever more often this would happen, and I would nudge my dear wife, and say her name to urge her to breathe, for this strangeness did not happen when she was awake but only when she was sleeping very deeply, so that it was a matter of Edna Mae remembering to breathe, as others of us, for some reason, do not need to remember.
What would happen to Edna Mae, if I did not wake her, to rouse her to breathe? Was there an understanding in this, sent by God, that I was to interpret?—badly it worried me, like picking off tiny thorn-seeds from my trouser cuffs, that you can never come to the end of picking-off, for I did not understand.
Though knowing that Operation Rescue was to be a turn in my heart. This, I seemed to know even before we’d made our plans to drive to West Virginia.
Thinking calmly how the Professor had looked into my heart, he had seen me.
Pray for our brave martyrs. And pray for ourselves . . .
For weeks I had been planning to attend Defending the Defenseless. But I had not thought that Edna Mae would accompany me on such a long drive, for she has been unwell. It was surprising to me, she’d suddenly said Take me with you, Luther—I am afraid to be alone in the house without you. You have to watch over me.