pulled-levered - shinnied-swung herself so fast up through the tree, arriving at the 
boy's side while red streaks still enlivened a sky that was repainting itself purple. She 
stood in the crook of limbs with him, and her delighted laughter rang down through the 
cathedral oak. 1975 through 1978: Hare ran from Dragon, Snake fled from Horse, and '78 
bounced to the beat, because disco ruled. The reborn Bee Gees dominated the airwaves. 
John Travolta had the look. Rhodesian rebels, grasping the dangers inherent in any battle 
between equals, had the manful courage to slaughter unarmed women missionaries and 
schoolgirls. Spinks won the title from Ali, and Ali won it back from Spinks.
  On the morning in August that Agnes came home from Dr. Joshua Nunn's office with the 
results of tests and with a diagnosis of acute myeloblastic leukemia, she asked that 
everyone pack up and caravan, not to deliver pies, but to visit an amusement park. She 
wanted to ride the roller coaster, spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl, and mostly watch the 
children laugh. She intended to store up the memory of Barty's laughter as he had stored 
up the sight of her face in advance of the surgery to remove his eyes.
  She didn't hide the diagnosis from the family, but she delayed telling them the 
prognosis, which was bleak. Already, her bones were tender, packed full of mutated 
immature white cells that hindered the production of normal white cells, red cells, and 
platelets.
  Barty, thirteen years old but listening to books at a postgraduate college level, had 
no doubt studied leukemia while they were awaiting the test results, to prepare himself 
to fully understand the diagnosis on first receiving it. He tried not to look stricken 
when he heard acute myeloblastic, which was the worst form of the disease, but he 
appeared more ghastly in his pretense than if he had revealed his understanding. Had his 
eyes not been artificial, his stiff-upper-lip pose would have been utterly unconvincing.
  Before they set out for the amusement park, Agnes pulled him aside, held him close, and 
said, "Listen, kid of mine, I'm not giving up. Don't think I ever would. Let's have fun 
today. This evening, you and I and Angel will convene a meeting of the North Pole Society 
of Not Evil Adventurers"-the girl had become the third member years ago" and all truths 
will be told and secrets known. "
  "That silly thing," he said, with a half-sick note in his voice.
  "Don't you say that. The society isn't silly, especially not now. It's us, it's what we 
were and how we are, and I do so much love everything that's us."
  In the park, rocketing along on the roller coaster, Barty had an experience, a reaction 
to more than the canted turns and steep plunges. He grew excited in much the way that 
Agnes had seen him excited when grasping a new and arcane mathematical theory. At the end 
of the ride, he wanted to get back on immediately, and so they did. There are no long 
waits for the blind at amusement parks: always to the head of the line. Agnes rode twice 
again with him, and then Paul twice, and finally Angel accompanied him three times. This 
roller-coaster obsession wasn't about thrills or even amusement. His exuberance gave way 
to a thoughtful silence, especially after a seagull flew within inches of his face, 
feathers thrumming, startling him, on the next-to-last rollick along the tracks. 
Thereafter, the park held little interest for him, and all he would say was that he'd 
thought of a new way to feel things-by which he meant all the ways things are-a fresh 
angle of approach to that mystery.
  After the amusement park, no hospital for the Pie Lady. With Wally near, she had a 
doctor all her own, capable of giving her the anticancer drugs and transfusions that she 
required. While radiation therapy is prescribed for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, it is 
much less useful to treat myeloblastic cases, and in this instance, it wasn't deemed 
helpful, which made treatment at home even easier.
  In the first two weeks, when she wasn't on pie caravans, Agnes received guests in 
numbers that taxed her. But there were so many people she wanted to see one last time. 
She fought hard, giving the disease all the what-for that she could, and she held fast to 
hope, but she received the visitors nonetheless, just in case.
  Worse than the tenderness in the bones, the bleeding gums, the headaches, the ugly 
bruises, worse than the anemia-related weariness and the spells of breathlessness, was 
the suffering that her battle caused to those whom she loved. More frequently as the days 
passed, they were unable to conceal their worry and their sorrow. She held their hands 
when they trembled. She asked them to pray with her when they expressed anger that this 
should happen to her-of all people, to her, and she wouldn't let them go until the anger 
was gone. More than once, she pulled sweet Angel into her lap, stroked her hair, and 
soothed her with talk of all the good times shared in better days. And always Barty, 
watching over her in his blindness, aware that she would not be dying in all the places 
where she was, but taking no consolation from the fact that she would continue to exist 
in other worlds where he could never again be at her side.
  As terrible as the situation was for Barty, Agnes knew that it was equally difficult 
for Paul. She could only hold him in the night, and let herself be held. And more than 
once, she told him, "If worse comes to worst, don't you go walking again."
  "All right," he agreed, perhaps too easily.
  "I mean it. You have a lot of responsibilities here. Barty. Pie Lady Services. People 
who depend on you. Friends who love you. When you came on board with me, mister, you 
bought into a whole lot more than you can walk away from."
  "I promise, Aggie. But you're not going anywhere."
  By the third week of October, she was bedridden.
  By the first of November, they moved his mother's bed into the living room, so she 
could be in the center of things, where always she had been, though they admitted no 
guests now, only members of their family with its many names.
  On the morning of November third, Barty asked Maria to inquire of Agnes what she would 
like to have read to her. "Then when she answers you, just turn and leave the room. I'll 
take it from there."
  "Take what from there?" Maria asked.
  "I have a little joke planned."
  Books were stacked high on a nearby table, favorite novels and volumes of verse, all of 
which Agnes had read before. With time so limited, she preferred the comfort of the 
familiar to the possibility that new writers and new stories would fail to please. Paul 
read to her often, as did Angel. Tom Vanadium sat with her, too, as did Celestina and 
Grace.
  This morning, as Barty stood to one side listening, his mother asked Maria for poems by 
Emily Dickinson.
  Maria, puzzled but cooperative, left the room as instructed, and Barty removed the 
correct book from the stack on the table, without anyone's guidance. He sat in the 
armchair at his mother's side and began to read:
  "I never saw a Moor-never saw the Sea-Yet know I how the Heather looks-And what a 
Billow be."
  "
  Pulling herself up in the bed, peering at him suspiciously, she said, "You've gone and 
memorized old Emily."
  "Just reading from the page," he assured her.
  "I never spoke with God-Nor visited in Heaven-Yet certain am I of the spot-As if the 
Checks were given."
  "Barty?" she said wonderingly.