A Maidens Grave

through them just like you get through the good times, and you keep going.” He stopped abruptly, forgetting completely the end of his speech, which he improvised as “So there. I just wanted to say that.”
    Angie stepped closer and touched his arm. She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “I’m very glad you told me that, Charlie. I think fidelity is the most important trait in a relationship. Loyalty. And you don’t see much of it nowadays.”
    He hesitated. “No, I guess you don’t.”
    “I’m going down to the motel and visit the girls and their parents. Would you like to come with me?” She smiled. “As a friend and fellow threat management team member?”
    “I’d be delighted.” And to Budd’s unbounded relief she didn’t slip her arm through his as they walked to the van to tell Potter where they would be and then proceeded to the squad car for the short drive to the Days Inn.
     
    They sat in the killing room, the entrance to hell, tears on all their faces.
    What was happening now—only a few feet in front ofthem—was worse than they’d ever imagined. Let it be over soon, Melanie thought, her fingers twitching this mute plea. For the love of God.
    “Don’t look,” she finally signed to the girls. But they all did look—no one could turn away from this terrible spectacle.
    Bear lay atop poor Mrs. Harstrawn, her blouse open, her skirt up to her waist. Numb, Melanie watched the man’s naked ass bob up and down. She watched his hands grip one of Mrs. Harstrawn’s breasts, as white as his own bloated skin. She watched him kiss her and stick his wet tongue into her unresponsive mouth.
    He paused for a moment and looked back into the main room. There, Brutus and Stoat sat before the TV, drinking beer. Laughing. Like Melanie’s father and brother would sit around the TV on Sunday, as if the small black box were something magic that allowed them to talk to one another. Then Bear reared up, hooked his arms beneath Mrs. Harstrawn’s knees and lifted her legs into the air. He began his ungainly motion once again.
    Melanie grew calm as death.
    It’s time, she decided. They couldn’t wait any longer. Never looking away from Bear’s closed eyes, she wrote a note on the pad of paper that Brutus had torn from her hands earlier. She folded it tightly and slipped it into Anna’s pocket. The girl looked up. Her twin did too.
    “Go into corner,” Melanie signed. “By gas can.”
    They didn’t want to. They were terrified of Bear, terrified of the horrible thing he was doing. But so emphatic was Melanie’s signing, so cold were her eyes that they moved steadily into the corner of the room. Once again Melanie told them to take Mrs. Harstrawn’s sweater.
    “Tie it around gas can. Go—”
    Suddenly Bear leapt up off the teacher and faced Melanie. His bloody organ was upright and glistened red and purple. The overwhelming scent of musk and sweat and woman’s fluid made her gag. He paused, his groin only a foot from her face. He reached down and touched her hair. “Stop that fucking spooky shit. Stop . . . with your hands . . . that bullshit.” He mimicked signing.
    Melanie understood his reaction. It was common. Peoplehave always been frightened by signing. It was why there was such a strong desire to force the deaf to speak and not use sign language—which was a code, a secret language, the hallmark of a mysterious society.
    She nodded slowly and lowered her eyes once more to the glistening, erect penis.
    Bear strode back to Mrs. Harstrawn, squeezed her breasts, knocked her legs apart, and plunged into her once again. She lifted a hand in a pathetic protest. He slapped it away.
    Don’t sign.  . . .
    How could she talk to the girls? Tell the twins what they had to do?
    Then she happened to recall her own argot. The language that she had created at age sixteen, when she’d risked getting her knuckles slapped by the teachers—most of them Others—for using ASL or SEE at the Laurent Clerc School. It was a simple language, one that had occurred to her while watching Georg Solti conduct a silent orchestra. In music the meter and rhythm were as much a part of the piece as the melody; she’d kept her hands close to her chin and spoke to her classmates through the shape and rhythm of her fingers, combined with facial expressions. She’d shown all her students the basics of the language—when she compared different types of signing—but she didn’t know if the twins recalled enough to