“With your experience in healing, surely you’ve seen people in shock before.”

“Yes.”

“Well, the body goes into a survival stance. Sometimes the feet and hands get cold because all the blood is reserved for the vital organs. What Martha needs is to be kept warm, and she needs lots of loving. I think she’ll come out of it just fine, but she’ll need lots of care.”

“Could a . . . could a dog, or a wolf or something do this to her?”

“I suppose it’s possible. Sure, if she’d been attacked. I don’t see any marks on her.”

“No, I know—it’s just that when I tried to look inside, I saw . . .” She saw the skeptical look on Doc’s face. “Nothing, it was just an idea.”

“Keep her warm and pay a lot of attention to her, Fern. I think she’ll be all right. Bring her back next week.”

By the next week Martha was walking by herself. The week after that she began feeding herself with her hands. It was two years before she was again toilet trained, and Doc Pearson said the brain damage was permanent. There was only a slight ability to learn. Severely retarded, as a result of a trauma. Fern grew to accept it.

Harry did not. Harry looked into homes for the retarded and spoke daily of taking Martha to one of them, insisting on it, but Fern wouldn’t even listen. She wiped the saliva that drooled from the corner of Martha’s mouth and talked softly in her ear. They began to fight bitterly over the situation, Harry’s voice rising in temper, Fern trying to quiet him down, telling him that it was love and care she needed.

Harry hated the sight of Martha, and razzed and jeered every time she learned something new. When she began to dress herself, she would tend to button her dress wrong or put it on inside out, and Harry would stomp out of the house, shouting that the sight of her made him sick, and something had to be done, because he couldn’t live the rest of his life looking at a retard.

Fern understood his fear and shame and anger. Harry was a sensitive man who just couldn’t deal with the disappointment of a child who was not right. His faith couldn’t handle it. To Harry, God was punishing them all, God hated them, they had somehow gone against his wishes, and had been cast out of his grace. And, of course, it was all Fern’s fault.