Chapter 10
  WITH A CRASH as loud as the dire crack of heaven opening on Judgment Day, the Ford 
pickup broadsided the Pontiac. Agnes couldn't hear the first fraction of her scream, and 
not much of the rest of it, either, as I the car slid sideways, tipped, and rolled.
  The rain-washed street shimmered greasily under the tires, and the intersection lay 
halfway up a long hill, so gravity was aligned with fate against them. The driver's side 
of the Pontiac lifted. Beyond the windshield, the main drag of Bright Beach tilted 
crazily. The passenger's side slammed against the pavement.
  Glass in the door next to Agnes cracked, dissolved. Pebbly blacktop like a dragon flank 
of glistening scales hissed past the broken window, inches from her face.
  Before setting out from home, Joey had buckled his lap belt, but because of Agnes's 
condition, she hadn't engaged her own. She rammed against the door, pain shot through her 
right shoulder, and she thought, Oh, Lord, the baby!
  Bracing her feet against the floorboards, clutching the seat with her left hand, 
fiercely gripping the door handle with her right, she prayed, prayed that the baby would 
be all right, that she would live at least long enough to bring her child into this 
wonderful world, into this grand creation of endless and exquisite beauty, whether she 
herself lived past the birth or not.
  Onto its roof now, the Pontiac spun as it slid, grinding loudly against the blacktop, 
and regardless of how determinedly Agnes held on, she was being pulled out of her seat, 
toward the inverted ceiling and also backward. Her forehead knocked hard into the thin 
overhead padding, and her back wrenched against the headrest.
  
  She could hear herself screaming once more, but only briefly, because the car was 
either struck again by the pickup or hit by other traffic or perhaps it collided with a 
parked vehicle, but whatever the cause, the breath was knocked out of her, and her 
screams became ragged gasps.
  This second impact turned half a roll into a full three-sixty. The  Pontiac crunched 
onto the driver's side and jolted, at last, onto its four  tires, jumped a curb, and 
crumpled its front bumper against the wall of  a brightly painted surfboard shop, 
shattering a display window.
  Worry Bear, big as ever behind the steering wheel, slumped side  a s in his seat, with 
his head tipped toward her, his eyes rolled to one  and his gaze fixed upon her, blood 
streaming from his nose. He  said, "The baby?"
  "All right, I think, all right," Agnes gasped, but she was terrified  that she was 
wrong, that the child would be stillborn or enter the world  damaged.
  He didn't move, the Worry Bear, but lay in that curious and surely  uncomfortable 
position, arms slack at his sides, head lolling as though it were too heavy to lift. "Let 
me ... see you."
  She was shaking and so afraid, not thinking clearly, and for a moment she didn't 
understand what he meant, what he wanted, and then she saw that the window on his side of 
the car was shattered, too, and that the door beyond him was badly torqued, twisted in 
its frame. Worse, the side of the Pontiac had burst inward when the pickup plowed into 
them. With a steel snarl and sheet-metal teeth, it had bitten into Joey, bitten deep, a 
mechanical shark swimming out of the wet day, shattering ribs, seeking his warm heart.
  Let me ... see you.
  Joey couldn't raise his head, couldn't turn more directly toward her ... because his 
spine had been damaged, perhaps severed, and he was paralyzed.
  "Oh, dear God," she whispered, and although she had always been a strong woman who 
stood on a rock of faith, who drew hope as well as air with every breath, she was as weak 
now as the unborn child in her womb, sick with fear.
  She leaned forward in her seat, and toward him, so he could see her more directly, and 
when she put one trembling hand against his cheek, his head dropped forward on neck 
muscles as limp as rags, his chin Against his chest.
  Cold, wind-driven rain slashed through the missing windows, and voices rose in the 
street as people ran toward the Pontiac-thunder in the distance-and on the air was the 
ozone scent of the storm and the more subtle and more terrible odor of blood, but none of 
these hard details could make the moment seem real to Agnes, who, in her deepest 
nightmares, had never felt more like a dreamer than she felt now.
  She cupped his face in both of her hands and was barely able to lift his head, for fear 
of what she would see.
  His eyes were strangely radiant, as she had never seen them before, as if the shining 
angel who would guide him elsewhere had already entered his body and was with him to 
begin the journey.
  In a voice free of pain and fear, he said, "I was ... loved by you."
  Not understanding, thinking that he was inexplicably asking if she loved him, she said, 
"Yes, of course, you silly bear, you stupid man, of course, I love you."
  "It was... the only dream that mattered," Joey said. "You ... loving me. It was a good 
life because of you."
  She tried to tell him that he was going to make it, that he would be with her for a 
long time, that the universe was not so cruel as to take him at thirty with all their 
lives ahead of them, but the truth was here to see, and she could not lie to him.
  With her rock of faith under her, and breathing hope as much as ever, she was 
nevertheless unable to be as strong for him as she wanted to be. She felt her face go 
soft, her mouth tremble, and when she tried to repress a sob, it burst from her with 
wretched force.
  Holding his precious face between her hands, she kissed him. She met his gaze, and 
furiously she blinked away her tears, for she wanted to be clear-sighted, to be looking 
into his eyes, to see him, the truest part of him in there beyond his eyes, until that 
very last moment when she could not have him anymore.
  People were at the car windows, struggling to open the buckled doors, but Agnes refused 
to acknowledge them.
  Matching her fierce attention with a sudden intensity of his own, Joey said, 
"Bartholomew."
  They knew no one named Bartholomew, and she had never heard the name from him before, 
but she knew what he wanted. He was speaking of the son he would never see.
  "If it's a boy-Bartholomew," she promised.
  
  "It's a boy," Joey assured her, as though he had been given a vision. Thick blood 
sluiced across his lower lip, down his chin, bright arterial blood. "Baby, no," she 
pleaded.
  She was lost in his eyes: She wanted to pass through his eyes as Alice had passed 
through the looking glass, follow the beautiful radiance that was fading now, go with him 
through the door that had been opened for him and accompany him out of this rain-swept 
day into grace.
  This was his door, however, not hers. She did not possess a ticket to ride the train 
that had come for him. He boarded, and the train was gone, and with it the light in his 
eyes. She lowered her mouth to his, kissing him one last time, and taste of his blood was 
not bitter, but sacred.