Green Desert - Chapter 2.5.6 - Vata

Pí‘oro handed me the car keys. I wore my slippers––hardly appropriate footwear for driving. He shouldn’t have closed the door in Tamé’s face. I shuffled across the entryway. A door closed behind me––the garage door in the kitchen.

A loud thump in the hallway. I stopped, halfway to the door, and turned around. “Bhanar dear, let Tamé in, please.”

The kind boy leapt up as I headed for the hallway. Had Pí‘oro merely bumped into the wall? But it shook the floor too much for that. He must have tripped. But he didn’t say anything, not even a grunt. I hurried.

Bhanar reached the corner ahead of me and did a doubletake down the hall. “Pí‘oro!” He lunged out of sight. Sıpa‘ı loped after him.

What happened to Pí‘oro? My mind raced with my old heart. A heart attack? A stroke? Was he already dead?

“He is breathing?”

My husband’s large body splayed on the carpet, facedown. Bhanar knelt at his head. The dog licked my husband’s face. A handgun stuck out the back of Pí‘oro’s pants.

“Pulse?”

The child put two fingers to Pí‘oro’s throat, waited an eternity. Finally, “Yes.”

I let go a lungful of air. But it still might be a stroke. “Take him to the chapel.”

Bhanar grabbed the gun, checked the safety, stuck it in his shorts’ pocket. “To the what?”