When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart…

Carol gave his hand a little tug, then a little shake. The organ finally stopped.

The old man kept on singing, Home, home on the range. Billy, knowing that Carol wanted to leave, strode toward the lectern. Carol hastily gathered up her scarf and coat.

It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings.

Bill went up to Reverend Carey, shook his hand, thanked him, and offered him a lift. "No thanks, Bill," said Reverend Carey, "came here in my own car." He said hello to Carol, and Bill thanked him again.

"I think Carol wants to go," he said, his smile edgy.

"Bill, I'm happy to stay," said Carol.

They walked in silence out of the crematorium. The corridor was the bleary kind of yellow or green that looks like vomit and there were echoes, of their feet, of dim voices, of the Angels being gathered up. The modern glass doors swung open and shut, and the air seemed to blast into their faces, tingling and cold.

"Uhhhhh!" sighed Carol. "Feel that good, night air!" She smiled, bright-eyed, trying to be pert and full of pep.

They drove home. Bill's knuckles were white on the steering wheel and he couldn't think why. Carol was silent and looking out the window.

"I'm going to have to do something about all of this," he said. It was a warning. He was saying: I will be going to work in places like that in the future.

"Like what?" said Carol, in a tired voice. She still looked out the window at the snow. "What are you going to do? What can anybody do for them?"

"I don't know," Bill said. He wanted to say something like: Make sure that they know somebody loves them. But he found he couldn't say something like that to Carol.

"Like maybe go to school or something," he murmured.

"You just got out of school," Carol said, lacing the words with scorn. Going back to school of any kind would be to surrender adulthood.

"I mean, go to college or something. Study nights or stuff."

"Oh, that's just great," said Carol miserably.

What am I supposed to do? Carol thought. Work my butt off in some beauty parlor while you hang around with a bunch of creepy college kids like Muffy Havis? And then what? Then I'd have to spend my life with people like in there this afternoon. But Carol couldn't say that to Billy.

None of this was normal. Maybe she wasn't normal. Carol knew what was normal in situations like this. You were supposed to be warm and helpful and understanding and talk sensibly about how they could get by while he studied. She should be telling him how proud of him she was. She wasn't proud of him. The life he was offering would choke her.

"Why can't you just go and get a job at Mr. Hardie's?" she asked him, pleading. A job like everyone else. "What's wrong with staying in the Army, like your father?"

People like you and me, Carol thought, we're better off in something like the Army, Billy. I can see you in the Army. I can see me there with you.

"There's nothing wrong with it." Billy looked impatient. There was a kind of light in his eyes that Carol didn't like, couldn't trust. "But I'd like… I don't know. I'd like some kind of qualification."

Big heart, thought Carol. If you've got such a big heart, what about saving some of it for me?

"What about us?" she asked him. She thought of white gloves, light pink fabrics, beaded purses, the smell of new hairdos. She thought of home.

"It shouldn't make any difference," Billy said.

It shouldn't, it shouldn't, she knew it shouldn't. But it did. The car was warm now, and the hot air coming through the heater smelled of something harsh and itchy. It made the back of their throats go dry. Billy coughed. Carol said nothing. There was something dry and hot and dark between them. Finally it was Billy who said it.

"Maybe it's a mistake getting married this young," he said.

A pause. There was such a slender bridge leading out into the darkness, and Carol saw herself on it in high heels and a black cocktail dress. Black for mourning. Nothing she had been taught was adequate to deal with this. She felt dirty somehow. She felt defenseless.

"Maybe so," Carol whispered, admitting defeat. She dreaded the shame that was to come, and the embarrassment of telephoning friends, of telling her aunts. She contemplated her coming freedom as well, with a lightening of the heart.

"Maybe, you know, it's just a bit too soon, what with the Army and all," said Bill, and coughed again.

That's what they would say to everybody, that they felt they were rushing into things because Billy was about to go off into the Army. She could say that they just felt maybe it was better to wait awhile. Carol could live with that. People would say how sensible they were being. They would know what was going on, but that wouldn't matter. The date for the marriage would be postponed, to some dim future, in some other life.

Goodbye, Billy, she thought. She saw autumn leaves in her mind. That's what he said, when he kissed her goodnight on her chaste doorstep. Goodbye, with something in his voice that had no promise of tomorrow.

About four months later, in the spring, Bill's church started a drive to collect funds for the Home. The Preacher knew what he was doing. The sight of some big ordinary kid like Bill in his Army uniform would be worth ten preachers.

There was a launch party with banners and free punch. Bill gave a speech. He kept it simple and short.

"It says somewhere in the Bible," he began, "that to approach Jesus you've got to be like a little child. Well, that's how some of the people in the Home are. I don't mean that some of them aren't unpleasant or even dangerous, because they are. But they see things differently than we do, and not always in a bad way."

He told the story, as best he could, of Dorothy Gael of Kansas. He told them what he knew of her childhood long ago amid the steam trains and peach orchards and school stoves that smoked and how she had stayed a child. He told the story of how she had died making angels in the snow, and how she went out singing hallelujah to the God she had cursed.

"You see something like that, you know we've all got something inside us," he told them, eyebrows slanting with pained honesty under his tiny Army hat. "We've all got something of worth, even those people in the Home, and they deserve just as good as we can give them."

Money? There was an avalanche of it. Turned out that Bill Davison had a talent for money as well.