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no need for this sort of ruckus!” The nurse glared at Roy. “As soon as there’s anything to hear, you’ll be told.”
    “But we don’t know what’s wrong with my husband,” said NolaBee in a strange, humble voice. “What’s happened to him?”
    The nurse stared at her, taking in the old kimono beneath the disreputable sweater, the paper curlers. Then her scornful gaze turned to Roy, who had not yet put on her shoes or socks, her glance rising disdainfully to the curly brown hair that had been blown into a tumbleweed during the ride in the rumble seat. Her glance slid over Marylin to her immaculately polished saddle shoes bought on sale for a dollar because they were scuffed. “That’s for the surgeon to tell you,” she said coldly.
    “Surgeon?” asked Marylin. “But I thought . . . Nurse, hasn’t he had a heart attack?”
    The nurse backed through the left door.
    Before it swung shut, Roy caught glimpses of a corridor that was empty except for a stretcher. She opened her mouth and began to scream.
    The nurse bobbed back. “Quit that racket,” she hissed.
    “What’s wrong with my Pa?” Roy howled.
    “You damned little Okie charity case, don’t you know you’re in a hospital?”
    “Where is my Pa?” Roy shrieked.
    “He’s in the operating room,” snapped the nurse with a malevolent glare. “He was shot in the chest. Doctor’s trying to get out the bullet, and I shouldn’t be surprised if all this caterwauling has jarred his hand.”
    Roy’s screams halted abruptly.
    NolaBee said in a flat, questioning tone, “A gunshot?”
    They stared at one another.
    “There must have been a robbery,” said Marylin dully. “Don’t you think so, Roy?”
    Roy couldn’t answer. She was biting her lower lip to prevent her sobs from welling up.
    “He’ll be all right, Mama, he’ll be all right,” said Marylin, her cheeks streaked with tears.
    All through the morning they sat on the hard, cold couch, NolaBee gripping Marylin’s hand. They were in an isolated part of the hospital and nobody came by except an old black woman swishing a broad, Lysol-soaked mop. She obviously didn’t know anything, but that didn’t stop Roy from inquiring about Mr. Chilton Wace.
    Roy felt as if she were suspended too high in a swing so that her stomach was eternally dropping away from her. Pa, oh Pa, you must get well, you must. Horrible itches erupted on her freckled arms and legs.
    NolaBee reproved in a strangely pitched voice, “You’re not a monkey, Roy.”
    Roy stopped scratching herself. Another itch became excruciating: unconsciously, she flayed it with her nails.
    The big clock over the door ticked with agonizing slowness to eleven-forty-eight.
    Then the same short, fat nurse emerged through the doors.
    The Waces rose, facing her.
    “Dr. Winfield asked me to tell you that Mr. Wace never regained consciousness,” she said without inflection. “He expired a few minutes ago.”
    The widow and two orphans burst into spasms of grief that are natural in moments of disaster. NolaBee sank into Marylin’s arms.
    Roy flung herself onto the chill, comfortless couch, her sobs quickly ceasing. She was shivering with a chill more intense than she had ever experienced. Pa, oh Pa, how could you leave me utterly alone forever?
    *   *   *
    Mr. Roth came over that afternoon, bearing a large, almond-filled coffee ring. He wept real tears when he passed on the little information he possessed. He had quit work around midnight, leaving Chilton to finish counting the Levi’s coveralls—“Our biggest-selling item, we stock every size,” he explained. This morning he had returned to find his shop ransacked and his employee bleeding and unconscious in a heap of denim. Until now, he apologized, he’d been stuck down at the police station. “I’ll find out for you about the workmen’s comp,” he promised as he left.
    That Friday he returned with the forms. The Wace family would get $500 in cash, and $50 a month—$25