On Monday morning, Bill ran up the steps of the Home. He'd had an idea.

First he went to see Dotty. She sat in a wheelchair with her beautiful smile focused far away.

"Good morning, Dotty," he said. "This is Bill."

She didn't respond.

"Remember me? After the TV show?"

She began to hum nervously, in a high, frail, barely audible voice, shutting him out. That old song again.

Bill knelt by her chair and hung his head. A fine help you've been, Bill Davison. Between you and that television that got brought in here because of you, this old lady is worse than ever.

"I'm sorry, Dotty," he told her, whispering. He didn't want anyone else on the staff to hear. People had been fired for caring too much.

Then he went to see Gwen Anderson, in Admin.

Gwenny was one of his mother's many friends, a funny little widowed lady whose conversation Bill permitted himself to find tedious. It ran in a tight repetitive circle of cooking and homemaking. He had not visited Gwen since coming to work at the Home, and he felt bad about that. He felt worse now. He was going to ask a favor of her.

It was a bit better when he saw her. She let him off easy.

"Bill!" she exclaimed. "Hiya, honey. You haven't been to see me. I was just telling your mother."

"Oh. You know how it is. There's so much stuff to be done before the wedding and all."

Bill felt guilty again. He talked to her about the church's Christmas plans, and about the seat covers his mother was making for her, and how delicious her lemon sponge was. He also talked about the wedding, though he was surprised at how little he had to say about it. So was Gwenny. There was just a little lurch in her face as he ran out of things to tell her.

"Well, a February wedding will be such a treat," she said. "It'll come just when it seems that winter will never end. You must be real happy."

"Real happy, yeah," said Bill. "Carol's a good girl."

"I bet," said Gwenny. Her glasses seemed to smile for her.

And finally, Bill felt able to say, "Gwen, there's a patient here and I feel real sorry for her. Any chance that there'd be a file on her or something? I'd really like to know a bit more about her."

Gwenny was only too pleased to help. The files were supposed to be confidential but there wasn't an untrustworthy bone in Bill Davison's body. The file was big and fat. Bill could sit there in the office since the boss was late. Gwenny unfolded the wax paper around the white bread sandwiches that she took to work in place of breakfast. Breakfast made her feel sick. She ate daintily as Bill read.

Old Dynamite's name really was Dorothy Gale, or rather Gael. The spelling was different. That's what the latest reports said, but maybe they were wrong. Bill went all the way back through limp brown folders to the oldest layer of papers. There was a stiff shiny folder, with printed scrolls and lettering with leaves intertwined. Waposage Home for the Mentally Incapacitated, it said. There was a paper dated 1899:

Subject is well known to local people in the Abilene area under a variety of names and is a known vagrant thought to sleep in rough places including outbuildings or railway sheds. It is thought that she survives through petty theft from orchards and gardens, though it is thought she spent some years in and around Wichita. Records there do show a registration of a Dorothy Gael as a "singer" and common prostitute. She has shown belligerence and violence to officers of the law and is regarded by some people as a public menace. Apprehended in the course of a theft, she attacked a woman in Abilene and has been convicted of causing an affray in the same town. It was the recommendation of the judge that the woman be taken into state care for her own sake and for the sake of the community.

Subject shows some signs of religious mania. She frequently quotes Scriptures and sings hymns in a garbled and sometimes sacrilegious fashion. Her own hard experiences and corrupt nature make a bitter mockery of the sacred words, denying all comfort and salvation. Her oaths are such to blast the ear of the most hardened habitue of lowlife, entwining the Savior and lustful remarks in one evil net.

When not excited by theft or song, the subject is frequently to be found in a kind of trance that suggests alcohol poisoning or the more extreme forms of withdrawal noted in patients of this kind. In care she can sit without movement of any kind for hours. But do not be fooled, for she is capable of flaring up suddenly in a mighty rage, during which the stoutest men in the establishment have difficulty restraining her. Care will need to be taken to make sure the patient, whose hard life seems only to have served to make her physically strong, is kept under a degree of restraint.

She is a woman lost to the world, to sense, and to God.

Bill folded the file shut and sat and stared. Maybe, he thought there are some things you can't go into too deeply. There's no help for them and no solace. Common prostitute. Blast the ear of the most hardened habitue. It was like staring into the pit. So where did the beautiful smile come from?

"Thanks, Gwen," he murmured darkly, and passed the file back to her.

"These people, Bill," she said, "they're like the rocks. You can dash yourself to pieces against them, and it won't help."

That's what everyone says, Bill thought as he smiled to Gwenny and thanked her. Everybody says don't get too wrapped up in them. But God, God commands us to love everyone. God says to find the lamb that is lost. And all these good people are telling me to forget, just close the file and put it away.

He went back to Dotty and pulled up a chair and sat next to her.

"You used to be a singer," he said.

There was a pause. "Yup," she answered him, abruptly.

A silence. Where to go from here?

"Where did you sing?" he asked, after having to think.

"Church," she said, and drew herself up and sniffed. Another long silence. "Nobody ever told me I could sing. Nobody ever asked me to sing. I just found out. So I'd sleep in one town and go to church in another. Sing in the choir. Till they found out who I was. Drove me out."

"Drove you out?" He was appalled.

Dotty didn't answer. Her jaw jutted out, and she jerked it in decrepit defiance. She pretended to brush something off her knee. "Couldn't have the likes of me singing in church."

Let those of you who are without sin…

"That wasn't very Christian of them," he said.

"Totally and completely Christian," she answered him. "Look what they did to the Indians."