Read Online Gibbon's Decline and Fall by Sheri S. Tepper - Free Book Online

story toward its close. “Do you still do show-and-tell at your meetings?”
    â€œWe still do, bragging on ourselves.”
    â€œWell, this year when you’re doing show-and-tell, show them all the news accounts and tell them you’re defending Lolly Ashaler.”
    Carolyn felt a chill, a premonitory horror that she resolutely denied. “You’re really serious about this. I don’t want to fail you, dear, but—”
    â€œYou’re blaming yourself for something that wasn’t your fault,” Stace said firmly. “It wasn’t. Dad says so, too.”
    She heaved a deep breath, giving up. “I won’t promise to defend the girl, but I’ll do what I can. I’ll talk to her, I’ll even make sure she gets a proper defender, but I won’t take it on personally if it interferes with the meeting.”
    Stace nodded, opened her mouth to speak, but Carolyn beat her to it.
    â€œI mean it. I won’t do it if it interferes. Since Aggie missed the last meeting, I particularly want to see her.”
    She needed someone to turn to. Someone besides Hal to discuss this recent problem with. Hal was too close; it was like talking to herself. She needed someone else, someone level and sane who would look her in the eye and tell her she was imagining things. Someone, perhaps, with a pipeline to the Almighty. The fact that she would even think such a thing was the measure of Carolyn’s distress. She had shut off that particular pipeline to the Almighty a lifetime ago.
    Stace came over and gave her a hug, kissing her on the cheek, squeezing the sore arm again as she stared at hermother in the mirror, her own face pleading. “You’ll see what I mean when you see her. You were talking about mutilation. Life has chopped on her a good bit. Just talk to her, Mom. Please.”
    Then she was gone, out and away, with the dogs bugling her departure as they had her arrival, leaving Carolyn with the picture before her, staring into the faces of her friends. Between the DFC and Hal, she hadn’t been Crespinized. She hadn’t declined and fallen—not too badly. She’d had, was having, a good life.
    Despite her fear, maybe she owed something to someone who had declined and fallen through no fault of her own, if Stace’s judgment was correct.
    Hector whined urgently outside the kitchen door. Carolyn went to let him in, Fancy and Fandango at his heels. They followed her back to the bedroom, flopped themselves down onto and around the bedside rug while she went into the bathroom to pick up the clothing she’d left piled about. Jeans, shirt, underwear, and jacket into the wash. She’d put grain in the jacket pocket, which shouldn’t go into the wash. She put a tissue on the vanity counter and turned out the pocket atop it. One or two oat flakes, half-caught in the seam. But she’d had a pocketful.
    No. She’d fed Hermes.
    Everything went away, like the light in the TV set when the power failed, dwindling to a dot, everything narrowing into a cone of awareness that ended in a buzzing nothing. She came to herself, head pressed between her hands on the chill tile of the countertop. She couldn’t have fed Hermes because Hermes was dead. Gentle Hermes had been killed by dogs. Last month.
    It must have been one of the rams she’d fed.
    But the rams didn’t come to the fence. Besides, all five of them had been there, by the watering trough. So who or what had put its soft lips to her palm?
    She found herself crying, helplessly, stupidly. What a foolish thing to be making a fuss over! Silly! No harm done! She’d made a mistake, that’s all. When she talked with Aggie, that’s what Aggie would tell her, she’d simply made a mistake.
    Though it wasn’t a mistake. She knew it wasn’t a mistake. The soft lips had been there, on her palm. The presence had been there, as it often was. The unquiet, the undying friend. The