“It’s just money, baby,” said Crystal. “Easy come, easy go.”

Under the dual influence of alcohol and complacency they slept soundly that night. The moon glowed on the roof of the bus. It was the yard sale, not Axelrod’s Garage, that had lightened its load, Alice realized. She thought about the little pregnant girl twirling a strand of hair around a finger. “Will it hurt?” she had asked. Linda felt as if all the rocks in the United States had been piled on top of her.

From the beginning it was an unusual birth. The girl had come in early in the afternoon. By six she was fully dilated, but the amniotic sac had not ruptured. The contractions were regular and closely spaced, but the girl just lay there. “Push!” Alice said. “It will be over quicker if you push.” Her shift ended, but she did not go home. At ten when she checked the girl again, a bulge had formed in the sac, stretched so thin it was transparent. Peering in through that thin, clear membrane, Alice saw a little fist appear and open into a little hand, and then the baby’s face floated into view. It was not at all like the first sight she usually had of a baby’s face, all squashed and mashed and screwed up from pressure and discomfort. This little face had a wondering look. It seemed to gaze out into the light quizzically, and then retreat, as if to pause and consider. At last the sac ruptured, the water rushed out, and the baby was born all at once.

“Is it over?” the girl asked.

“Almost over now, honey.” Alice delivered the placenta, dried the baby off, bundled it in a flannel blanket, and tucked it in at the mother’s side. She said what she always said, “You have a healthy baby.” But the mother closed her eyes and turned her head away.

Car headlights at night show up flaws in lawn mowing, and when Alice pulled into her driveway, she noticed a shaggy beard of grass around the bus where she had not been able to reach with the mower. There would be a dead rectangle of grass in the exact shape of a VW bus. She worked efficiently. On her way past the bus, she opened both its double doors on the house side, and starting with the yard-sale leftovers on the porch, she began to load it up, from the back to the front. Adam and Eve went in first. Then the fringed scarves and damp underwear from the bathroom in plastic bags. She packed all the bead-working supplies in a box. She did not try to be quiet, and Jeremy and Crystal came out of the spare room and stood dazed and mute. Jeremy was the first to catch on. He pulled on a T-shirt and then his shoes, hopping on first one foot and then the other.