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right?"
        "Our little girl's going to walk backward her whole life if you drive in reverse all the way to the hospital."
        "If it is a little girl, she's going to be exactly don't think I could handle two of you." he said.
        "We'll keep you young."
        With great deliberation, Joey shifted gears and followed the drive way to the street, where he peered left and then right with the squint-eyed suspicion of a Marine commando scouting dangerous territory. He turned right.
        "Make sure Edom delivers the pies in the morning," Agnes reminded him.
        "Jacob said he wouldn't mind doing it for once."
        "Jacob scares people," Agnes said. "No one would eat a pie that Jacob delivered without having it tested at a lab."
        Needles of rain knitted the air and quickly embroidered silvery patterns on the blacktop.
        Switching on the windshield wipers, Joey said, "That's the first time I've ever heard you admit that either of your brothers is odd."
        Not odd, dear. They're just a little eccentric."
        "Like water is a little wet."
        Frowning at him, she said, "You don't mind them around, do you, Joey? They're eccentric, but I love them very much.
        "So do I," he admitted. He smiled and shook his head. "Those two make a worrywart life-insurance salesman like me seem just as light hearted as a schoolgirl."
        "Your turning into an excellent driver, after all," she said, winking him.
        He was, in fact, a first-rate driver, with an impeccable record at the age of thirty: no traffic citations, no accidents.
        His skill behind the wheel and his inborn caution didn't help him, However, when a Ford pickup ran a red traffic light, braked too late, and slid at high speed into the driver's door of the Pontiac.

Chapter 9
        
        ROCKING AS IF AFLOAT on troubled waters, abused by an unearthly and tormented sound, Junior Cain imagined a gondola on a black river, a carved dragon rising high at the bow as he had seen on a paperback fantasy novel featuring Vikings in a longboat. The gondolier in this case was not a Viking, but a tall figure in a black robe, his face concealed within a voluminous hood; he didn't pole the boat with the traditional oar but with what appeared to be human bones welded into a staff. The river's course was entirely underground, with a stone vault for a sky, and fires burned on the far shore, whence came the tormenting wail, a cry filled with rage, anguish, and fearsome need.
        The truth, as always, was not supernatural: He opened his eyes and discovered that he was in the back of an ambulance. Evidently this was the one intended for Naomi. They would be sending a morgue wagon for her now.
        A paramedic, rather than a boatman or a demon, was attending him. The wail was a siren.
        His stomach felt as if he had been clubbed mercilessly by a couple of professional thugs with big fists and lead pipes. With each beat, his heart seemed to press painfully against constricting bands, and his throat was raw.
        A two-prong oxygen feed was snugged against his nasal septum The sweet, cool flow was welcome. He could still taste the vile mess of which he had rid himself, however, and his tongue and teeth felt as if they were coated with mold.
        At least he wasn't vomiting anymore.
        Immediately at the thought of regurgitation, his abdominal muscles contracted like those of a laboratory frog zapped by an electric current, and he choked on a rising horror.
        What is happening to me.
        The paramedic snatched the oxygen feed from his patient's nose and quickly elevated his head, providing a purge towel to catch the thin ejecta.
        Junior's body betrayed him as before, and also in new ways that terrified and humiliated him, involving every bodily fluid except cerebrospinal. For a while, inside that rocking ambulance, he wished that he were in a gondola upon the waters of the