Josh’s eyes are rolled back, and his eyelids are open. His body is stiff.
“Ahhhh,” Emma cries out, before covering her mouth with her right hand.
She runs her fingers across her lips. They are moist. She remembers now. She remembers how she tingled and felt warm inside when she kissed Josh’s neck. She remembers closing her eyes to rest a moment when her head got light, and her stomach full.
Emma punches Josh with her right foot.
He doesn’t move.
She punches him harder with her foot, kicking him. He doesn’t move.
Emma leans over Josh, tucking her hair behind her ears, and placing her lips against his, gently, to feel with her cheek if he is breathing.
She holds her lips against his, and closes her eyes.
She remembers to see if he is breathing.
He is not.
“Oh!” Emma says, falling back on her hands and bottom to the floor. “Oh, Josh. You’re dead, Josh. Oh! My goodness, you are dead Josh!
“Oh!”
Emma clutches the post Josh was leaning on when she arrived, pulling herself to her feet. She walks to the barn door and looks across to the parsonage. She can barely see the house on the thin-moon, partly cloudy night. But lights are glowing from the kitchen at the parsonage.
Emma sees an image moving behind the curtain.
“Dear Goodness,” she says. “They’re home.”
She wonders what time it is. But it doesn’t matter. She’s got to get home. Fast. Emma looks at Josh, wondering if she should leave him there, or do something with him. She thinks about the old well, behind the barn. Nobody uses it. The water is tainted. Nobody even ever goes back there, not since Michael left.
Michael. Oh, Michael, Emma thinks.
But Josh. Right now, she must do something with Josh.
Emma looks to the left, and to the right, to make sure nobody is coming. The highway is quiet. She hears the dog barking in the distance and crickets chirping, and sees by the thin moon, riding high.
She walks to Josh, and bends down, placing her hands under his shoulder. Emma clasps her hands under Josh’s armpits, pulling him toward the barn door. His boots drag in the dusty barn floor, leaving two parallel lines, like the tracks of a small road.
“Goodness, Josh,” Emma says, digging her heels into the ground. “You are heavy.”
Emma stops, dropping Josh to the ground. His head plunks with a thud. She unfastens her sandals to gain better footing, tossing them near the barn door. She clutches Josh under his armpits, pulling toward the well with all the strength and traction she can muster.
Slowly, Emma inches Josh toward the well. She leans him against brick and mortar circular wall surrounding the well opening, wiping sweat dripping from her brow and into her eyes with the backs of her hands. Emma counts, “one, two, three…” and on that she bends her knees, keeping her back straight, and grabbing Josh under his armpits while facing him.
Emma pushes upwards with her thighs, raising Josh off the ground. When his waist clears the top of the well wall, she thrusts his torso backwards. Josh flings head first into the well, his feet flopping over and in from the gravity pull.
Again, she counts, “one, two, three…” and on that, she had hears a big splash.
“Goodbye, Josh,” Emma said.
Emma brushes off her dress. She wipes sweat from her brow. She picks up her sandals and fastens them to her feet. She starts walking away from the barn to the parsonage. Emma climbs over the barbed-wire fence by the road surrounding the Denton farm, walking across the road and parsonage grounds to her home.
When Emma opens the front door, her mother, waiting in the kitchen, greets her in an instant at the sound of the close.
“I do declare Emmaline Margaret Mays,” her mother shouts. “Where have you been? Tell me, where have you been child?”
“I’m not a child, mother.”
Emma keeps walking, toward her room. She can hear her mother’s footsteps, coming from the kitchen toward the hallway, in the same path she has walked. Her mother emerges in Emma’s room, standing before her.
“Emmaline!” her mother says, her hands on her hips. “I asked you a question. Where have you been child? You said you were going home from church. We come home. You are not here.
“So tell me: Where have you been child?”
“I was. I did. I’m here.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Emma. You have not been here, God is my witness.”
“I was walking home, and I just kept walking, thinking,” Emma says.
“You’ve never been home this late Emma,” her mother says.
“What time is it?”
“It’s quarter after ten. Your father has been asleep for half an hour. He told me to tell him when you got home.”