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first, until we landed a couple of punches and he could tell how mad we was. Then he got all confused. I think he was actually reluctant to punch at girls. Zinging paper clips and stones at girls and babies, that was one thing. But punching with his fists was something else, and he got confused.
    All of a sudden, Norman, he yelled, "Jeezus, lookit that!" and he stood right up out of the bushes and pointed down to where Gunther was huddled on the rock.
    "You just wait till your daddy hears that you yelled 'Jeezus', Norman Cox," I told him, but I turned and looked where he pointed.
    It still makes my heart near stop to tell of what we seen. I think back on it, and I can see it in my mind's eye still, with everything moving sort of slow motion the way they do it sometimes on television or in the movies. I see it like that, slow and rolling, all the colors bright and real, but no sound. There must have been sound. Gunther must have yelled. But when I think back on it, I don't hear no sound.
    What I see is this: Veronica and Gunther's mother, moving slow through the water of the creek, with her skirt hiked up so's her legs was all exposed, and even her underthings as well. And her hair was down, hanging loose. I never even knew Mrs. Bigelow had that long, hanging-down hair. Whenever I seen her up till then, it was always tied up tight in a knot. But here she was, moving toward Gunther, who was staring at her, all frightened-like. I suppose he'd never seen that hanging-down hair before, neither.
    Gunther's face was bloody, still, though I think it wasn't running down no more, just dried there sticky on his cheek. And when his mother reached him there—this is the part that makes my heart near to stopping when I think back on it—she picked him up and held him the way you would hold a tiny baby, the way she never held Gunther when he
was
a tiny baby. And she put her face down close to his and we could see that she was licking the blood from his cheek. We could see her tongue, and Gunther's scared look. And she did, she licked at the blood the way a mother cat or dog would do for its baby.
    Then—I can see this part still, too, slow and no sound—right there, standing in the creek, she pulled open the buttons on the top of her dress. I wanted to turn my eyes away. I was shamed on behalf of Veronica and I wanted to look away, but I was scared, so scared for Gunther, there in the arms of this woman who looked like a wild stranger with her hair all falling around her shoulders, and with one breast right there exposed, and Gunther grabbed up in her arms.
    She tried to make him nurse. He squirmed and tried to wrest hisself away, but she grabbed and twisted at his face, where she had licked the blood, and she tried to make him nurse.
    Now I can hear the sound, thinking back. Now she took Gunther and—still with her dress tore open—she put him in the water. Put his head under and all. Veronica and I both started to run back, splashing and slipping through the creek. We tried to get back to pull Gunther out, to pull his head up so he could breathe. We wasn't that far away. And so we ran toward them, and we could hear what she was calling out again and again while she held him down there in the water.
    "I baptize thee!" she was crying out. "I baptize thee! Who believes in me shall not perish!"
    Dragonflies was still darting all around, as if September hadn't changed none. But we could see the splashing where Gunther was fighting her, trying to get loose, trying to breathe. And Veronica and me could have got there and pulled him out. But Sweet-Ho got there first. Sweet-Ho came tearing down that bank from the vacant lot faster than anything I ever seen. She didn't even take off her shoes, just tore into that creek fully clothed and grabbed Gunther up from where he was.
    It had all happened so fast that Gunther was okay, coughing all choky-like but breathing and everything. He probably hadn't been under the water for more