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She spit into a tissue, turned, and charged at me. Her eyes were bloodshot and runny, her face pale. She seized my shoulders and shook and shook while I bawled uncontrollably. Finally, she slapped me hard. My head nearly spun around and my skin stung. I gasped. She rarely, if ever, struck me or Noble like that.

"Talk!"

"He fell off the boulder." I said. Her eyes were so wide now, they looked like two dark tunnels into her brain.

"Fell? What boulder? What do you mean he fell? Where is he? How is he? Tell me quickly," she said shaking me again.

"The big boulder in the creek. He floated away." I said. He must have hit something when he fell. He was bleeding from the head."

Her mouth held open, and then she threw me aside as if I were a large rag doll. Without thinking about what she was wearing, which was only a nightgown and slippers, she charged out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the stairs. I hurried after her, my body so numb I couldn't feel my feet touching the floor. She nearly fell going down the stairs and caught herself on the bannister. Then she waved her arms about as if she was driving away bats, screamed something I couldn't understand, and lunged for the front door. It wasn't until she was outside and down the porch steps that she paused and looked back for me.

"Take me to him!" she shouted. "Take me to that boulder. Hurry!"

I walked quickly ahead of her,

"Faster!" she ordered, her voice like a whip. and I broke into a run until we were in the woods. For a moment I couldn't remember the direction. It put a panic in me. and I spun around and around. My skirt tot caught in some bramble bushes and tore. I fell, but got up instantly.

"Where is he!" Mommy screamed at me.

Desperate. I turned toward an opening and walked faster. A sense of direction returned. and I moved more determinedly toward the roaring sound of the creek. Mommy was right behind me now. When I glanced back at her. I saw her nightgown had been caught on branches and bushes, too, and had a deep rip from her waist across the front of her thighs. She had lost her slippers somewhere behind us and was barefoot. There was already some bleeding about her toes. She was coughing and choking, but she didn't seem to notice or care.

When we reached the creek, I stopped. I immediately realized we were too far up. I plodded along the shoreline, hurrying down toward the big boulder upon which Noble had been sitting..

"He was on that," I said pointing. "Fishing."

"Where is he?" she cried looking about frantically.

"He fell back, and then he floated away." I said. "I tried to get him to come home, but he was stubborn."

I didn't tell her about our tug-of-war with the fishing pole. "I tried to go after him, but its too deep in there." I added.

She moved past me and hobbled along the sides of the creek. I followed, imagining how painful it must be for her to step barefoot around the rocks and broken roots. She paused, looked, and listened.

"Which way?"

I just pointed downstream, where I had last seen his body rebounding off rocks that glimmered in the water, their jagged edges now looking more like jagged teeth.

"Noble!" she screamed. "Noble. Its Mommy. Noble, where are you?"

I joined her and screamed his name as well. The biggest crow I had ever seen swooped down from a tree and soared over the creek before threading its way between two tall pine trees and disappearing. Mommy stopped and watched it and then turned to me, her face crumbling in tearful agony.

"No." she said and shook her head. "No." She swung her arms madly again, just as she had done on the stairway. I thought she looked like someone being attacked by bees.

I stood there and searched over the water, combing the shore of the creek until she stopped swinging her arms, turned, and continued. We plodded along, and then suddenly Mommy paused and brought her hands to her mouth, jabbing her fingers so hard between her teeth, her jaw looked like it would crack.

I studied the creek in the direction she was looking and saw him. His body was caught between two large rocks about five or six feet out in the stream. The water was rushing past his legs and making it seem as if he was kicking. His head was turned away from us. I saw his right arm was below the water. Somehow, his fishing pole had followed along and trapped itself in a nearby set of smaller rocks.

"Noble." Mommy muttered and then shouted. "Noble!"

She stepped into the raging creek and slowly made her way to him. I waited on the shore. With the water rushing about her waist, she gently lowered her hand to

Noble's face and then she lifted his head out of the water so she could kiss his cheek. I watched her embrace him under the arms and bring him to her, holding him against her. The creek rippled and spun around them as if it impishly had them trapped.

Mommy lifted her head away from Noble and tilted it back to scream his name. Her voice echoed and died in my heart. Coughing harder, but

undeterred, she started toward the shore, dragging him along through the water and taking care to keep his head high.

"Mommy?" was all I could manage.