..... Cecily scraped her knuckles when she picked up an apple-sized stone from the side of the road, mixing grit and sweat and blood as she palmed the rock and glared at the black dog panting at her from the other side of the ditch.
..... “Stupid ugly critter, look what you made me do,” she said, letting her voice crack upward into a shriek on the last word and using the force of her rage to hurl the rock toward the dog.  He dodged it easily and loped away into the thin trees alongside the highway.
..... Cecily flicked off a few pieces of dirt and stuck her fingers into her mouth.  She shaded her eyes and looked in the direction the dog had gone until she was certain he’d disappeared.
..... “Don’t worry, Cookie,” she said, putting her hands back on the rubber grips of the secondhand stroller and leaning over the infant.  “I got rid of him.”   Cookie smiled at her, and a droplet of sweat trickled down the side of her perfect, tiny nose.
..... “Thank the good Lord,” said Cecily as she began walking, “that you don’t mind the heat.  I don’t know how I ended up with a baby as good as you.”  Cookie smiled again.  She had two itty-bitty teeth poking out of the pink expanse of her lower gums, giving her smiles a ridiculous effect.  Cecily loved it.  She loved everything about her.  And everybody agreed Cookie was the best-behaved baby they’d ever met.  She almost never cried, for one thing, and she had big hazel eyes and fat sticky hands that she held out toward anybody who came near her, almost as though she were saying, “Love me, love me, love me!”  But she didn’t need any extra love—Cecily figured she had more than enough to spare, enough to fill that baby up to bursting and then some.
..... There was no sidewalk on Cecily’s street, and the surface of the road was pitted and strewn with chunks of gravel, so the stroller skittered and bumped as they walked.  It was like a baby rollercoaster for Cookie, and she cooed and chirped with each jolt.  They made wide loops around the melting tar bubbling out of cheaply patched roadwork.  Cecily kept up a constant stream of babble, and Cookie hung on every word.
..... “Tingle, tingle, tangle toes,” chanted Cecily. “She's a good fisherman, catches hens, puts 'em in pens.  Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, apple seed and apple thorn.  Wire, briar, limber lock, three geese in a flock. One flew east and one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.  O-U-T spells out goes he with his great long turkey gobbler’s snout.”
..... Cecily pulled up at the double glass doors of the Dollar General.  She turned the stroller around, put her backside against the door, and made an elaborate show of pulling the stroller through the door with great difficulty.  She loved it when people ran up to pull the door open for her, but today no one did.
..... “Mornin', Deb,” said Cecily.
..... Deb looked up from the magazine she was reading behind the register.  She looked like a traffic barrel with her triple-extra-large orange Dollar General vest wrapped around her big belly.
..... “Mornin', puddin',” said Deb.
..... “We’re just here for a few little things,” said Cecily.  Deb grunted and looked back at her magazine.
..... Cecily dropped four cans of Hormel chili into the bottom compartment of the stroller.  She dawdled in the shampoo aisle, sniffing all the different shampoo scents, and finally settled on lavender.  She strolled to the checkout counter.
..... “Four-sixteen,” said Deb.
..... “I’ll tell you what, it’s hot out there.  They say we’re breaking all kind of records.  Can you believe that?”
..... “Sure can.  My sandals was melting on the pavement yesterday.”
..... “I need to get me some new shoes, too.  Sandals would be good.”
..... Deb handed Cecily back her change.  Cecily shifted her weight from one foot to another, reluctant to leave, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.  She was embarrassed, all of a sudden, by the way she looked and the cheap shampoo she had bought and the way she was just standing there like an idiot while Deb stared at her, and a hot rage filled her up and drained the color from her flushed cheeks.
..... “Well, we’re out of here,” she said, choking back anger and hot tears.
..... Deb didn't seem to notice, already had her big fat nose stuck back in her magazine.  “Get that baby out of this sun.”
..... “Oh, a little sunshine never hurt anybody,” said Cecily, forcing a harsh laugh from her throat as she began her backing-out-of-the-door maneuver.
..... She was relieved to be outside, even in that heat, even on that bumpy-dumpy road where there were always cars coming too fast off the highway, even though the speed limit dropped to twenty-five there.
..... “Almost home, Cookie girl,” Cecily sang over the smiling baby.
..... From the other direction, Cecily could see two boys coming, one of them on a bicycle and one walking.  They were awfully big boys, though, and as they came closer, she saw they were grown men.  She had seen them before, they lived up the road a ways in one of those ramshackle old houses hemmed in by junk and car parts, hens scratching at the dirt out front, but she didn’t know their names.  The one on the bike was pudgy and had a blonde, scraggly beard and big round eyes, big as dinner plates, she thought, with which he stared fiercely at her.  He was riding slowly in order to keep pace with the man who was walking, and he pulled the front wheel sharply back and forth to keep his balance.  The other man was taller and thinner, and he wore glasses that reflected the sunlight painfully into Cecily’s eyes, so not only couldn’t she see where he was looking, but there appeared to be flames in place of his eyeballs.  She felt a flicker of alarm, like an ice cube down her back, as they approached.  The man on the bike turned his head to keep his eyes fixed on her, rotating his head slowly and evenly, like it was mounted on an axle, as they passed on either side of the road.  His face was damp and dirty, and his eyes were so big and bulging and unblinking, they were crazy eyes, and Cecily’s heart went double-time while her hands began to shake on the handle of the stroller, but she forced herself to keep walking one foot and then the other.  She tightened her lips into a grimace that she hoped could pass for a smile.
..... Then they were past, and it was all she could do to keep from turning around to see if the man on the bike was still staring at her.  She was certain that he was.  She could feel those big eyes burning the back of her head.
..... When they reached their driveway, Cecily started running, gravel be damned, and poor Cookie was jolted and bounced all the way to the front stoop.  Cecily dashed inside, hugging Cookie too tightly to her chest, and she actually locked the door behind her, and then ran to the back door and locked that one too, which nobody in their town ever did.  She set Cookie in her bouncy baby chair in front of the fan and went into the bathroom to run cold water on her wrists, then splashed big handfuls over her face and let it run down her neck and into her shirt.  Cecily leaned over the sink until the trembling in her limbs had ceased.
..... She had always been a frightened girl.  Driving too fast, chopping carrots, a barking dog, electrical cords, the rattle of the screen door after dark—all of this made her sweat and shake and clench her jaw.  Being a mother had only intensified her fear.  Now shadows and wind, loud noises or prolonged silence made her pulse pound.  She felt Cookie’s forehead for fever compulsively throughout the day, ran her fingers over every limb and into every fold of skin to check for rashes or wounds.  She worried about herself, too, if she had a sudden cramp in her leg or pain in her chest—what would Cookie do if something happened to her mother?
..... Well, there was always Clancy.  But he worked long hours at the paper recycling plant—in fact, he’d be gone til early morning—and he could hardly be depended upon to care for their baby.  He liked playing with her all right, especially now that she smiled and laughed so much at the silly faces and farting noises he made, but to be perfectly honest, he had wanted a boy.
..... No, Clancy couldn’t handle a baby all by himself.  Cecily needed to stay healthy for little Cookie’s sake.  She needed to eat more, for one thing.  She’d always been too skinny, and even now, less than a year after having a baby, she was back to normal size.  Her sisters-in-law hated her for it, and Clancy joked that he had to be careful or he’d snap her in two.  But Cookie didn’t care about any of that.
..... “Ain’t that right, Cookie girl?” asked Cecily, coming out of the bathroom.  “Don’t you love your momma most of all?”  Cookie had one fat foot in each hand and was trying to shove them both into her mouth.
..... Cecily made herself a bologna sandwich and fed Cookie some mushed up carrots, and then she set to washing up the dishes, but she still felt the terror running just beneath the surface of her skin.  She knew she was being silly, but she couldn’t help herself.  She checked the windows and drew the blinds, even though the light bulb in the living room was burned out, and the room was dark and gloomy without sunlight.  It was cooler, anyway.  She would have liked to have called her mother, who had up and moved to Florida with a fellow she met playing bingo at the Moose Lodge, but she didn’t have a calling card, and they didn’t have long-distance service.  The hours of the afternoon stretched out slowly like a sleepy cat.
..... At five, Cecily drew a bath and pulled Cookie into the water with her.  They splashed and soaped up for the better part of an hour, making sure to scrub between every toe and behind the ears.  When they got out, Cecily turned on all the lights in the house, dressed Cookie in a fresh pink sleeper, fed her, and sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” until the little girl drifted off to sleep in her arms.
..... Then came the long night hours.  Cecily hated when Clancy had to work overnights.  When he was home, he was usually too worn out to do much more than sit and watch TV, but it was nice not being alone, and she could at least hold his hand whenever she liked.  She paced the kitchen, but she wasn’t hungry.  She finally settled down in front of a rerun of Touched by an Angel, which she used to watch with her mother when she was a girl. She cried a little, remembering those tender times with her momma, who liked sit on the couch and brush Cecily’s hair while they watched the show, but as soon as she realized what she was doing, she rubbed the tears away and slapped at her cheeks a few times.
..... It was the silence that first alerted her; there was always some kind of noise where they lived, the distant humming of the highway or the whirring of cicadas or the gulping of bullfrogs.  But there was no noise at all.  Even the neighbors’ hound chained up out back, who hollered all hours of the day and night, had gone silent.  The hairs lifted on the back of Cecily’s neck.
..... She muted the TV.  There—was that a footfall outside?  Was that the low murmur of a man’s voice?  She leaped up from the couch and stumbled, half blind with panic, into the bedroom, to the back of the closet where Clancy kept his guns.  She’d been shooting with him and his brothers only once, and the loud report of the handguns and the violence of their kickback had frightened her.  She didn’t like the oily metallic smell of a gun or the click of the slide locking into place or the rattle of brass-sheathed bullets in a cardboard box. It sounded to her like dry bones.
..... As her fingers touched the grip of Clancy’s 1911, she heard the sound of the doorknob on the back door rattling.  She held her breath.  The lock had been slipping lately, and if you rattled the knob enough, it sometimes came unlocked.  And then, just as she feared, the rattling stopped and the door squeaked open.   Cecily began to cry.
..... “Dear Jesus,” she whimpered, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say to him.
..... She picked up the 1911.  It was heavier than she remembered.  She tried to pull back the slide, but her sweaty fingers slipped off.  She tried again, straining harder, but she couldn’t get it.  She knew she was holding it wrong, at a bad angle, not enough leverage, but she was pulling with all her strength and she still couldn’t get it.  She was going to die.  Then, with a sob, she yanked it into place.
..... Her first thought was for Cookie.  But should she run to the baby’s room, in order to defend her—or should she stay away from the baby altogether in order not to put the thought of the child into their heads?  Their heads—how did she know it was the two men from that morning?  She just knew.  She could feel that dirty man’s crazy eyes burning through the walls, searching for her.
..... Cecily put both hands on the grip and held the gun unsteadily out in front of her like the nose of a missile.  The barrel was heavy and she couldn’t seem to keep it pointed up where she wanted.  Her hands shook so violently, she was surprised they weren’t humming.  She curled her index finger around the trigger; she knew she wasn’t supposed to, she was supposed to keep her finger along the side of the barrel, but she wanted to be ready.  Someone was going to die, and she wanted to be ready.  She could hear footsteps in the back hallway.  They stopped by Cookie’s room.
..... Screaming, out of her mind, Cecily barreled out of her bedroom, across the living and around the corner into the hallway, already squeezing the trigger as she put on the brakes.  But she closed her eyes when she did it, and she could feel her spine arching and her arms drifting upward before she managed to fire off a shot, angled upward into the ceiling above the back door.  Cookie began to wail, and the man dropped to the floor.
..... “Damn it, Cecily, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
..... Clancy.  It was Clancy.  Home early, and he’d not expected to find the door locked.  But why hadn’t he knocked?  Why the hell hadn’t he just knocked?  For a moment, Cecily considered shooting him, just aiming the gun straight at his chest and putting a bullet through his heart.  Her hands were suddenly not trembling any more, and her breathing was steady.  She felt as though she could think clearly for the first time in her life.  She felt born again.
..... Then Clancy was up, pulling the gun from her hands and taking her by the arms, pushing her backwards, shaking her a little, even.
..... “What the hell were you thinking?” he was shouting.  “You could have killed me.”
..... I wanted to kill you, she thought.  I wanted to murder you.  And for the rest of her life, she would never mean anything more.