Six months later, Jedd Johnson was also resting, in the hospital after a sixth coronary, astounding the doctors by his ability to survive, contentedly assembling a kit computer in his bed awaiting orders to be released. The family had tried a visit to Victory's parents, but her mildly befuddled father was alternately quite aware most of the time, but for brief spells wholly unable to name anyone who came into the room, calling Dixie everything from his mother's name to various saints. Jedd felt the atmosphere too difficult and cut the visit short. The family had been home all of a week when Jedd felt the old familiar squeeze in his chest while swimming and patiently drove himself to the hospital. Sunny didn't have as placid a reaction, sensing that his nine lives were running out faster than a cat from fire, and took to the air in her grief. Hours later, having skipped from updraft to updraft, cutting through clouds and counting stars, she circled lazily down to a landing, deep breathing the smell of tar and mown grass, her thoughts back in order and able to face reality again, but still queasy from an intangible sense of unease she couldn't quite give name to.
That same evening, while Jedd rested in the hospital, after again beating Victory at cards, a frustrated Cobb sat talking with his sister. He had tried again to find employment more suited to his training, again receiving derisive replies from employers resistant to his solutions to all the world problems. He sat, staring at Victory, his crossed, clenched, sweat-beaded arms and hands froze, gestureless on the table. "You told me when I was a kid nothing would stop me - the futures you dangled before me shone..." His arms unfolded, one, burning hot, reaching across the board to grasp Victory's arm, the other hand grasping air like a drowning man's gasps. "They fear me. They actually fear me. So what I'm a damn genius, an explosives expert... it's absurd. All I want is a job. I haven't the courage to, you know." His palms curled up, dead roaches limply joined to his wrists. Ashen streaks stained the dark wood he touched. "Overqualified! Kid, sometimes I know you are the one who understands. Too much like me. Don't follow me - there is no light where I am. Cold. For God's sake stop listening! Hate me. Do you hear? Hate me!" His arms pulled back to cross his chest, to cradle his head, to cut off the light. One drop of sweat rolled down his scalp. It splattered on the table.
Disturbed by this, Victory claimed fatigue and retired, leaving Cobb in the kitchen. She tossed in her bed fitfully, contemplating whether she should get the shotgun, wondering if it would even still work, for it was still moldering behind the refrigerator where Jedd put it after the move, as that had worked for a hiding place in the Georgia home well enough. She decided against it, uncertain of how she would get it out since the light streaming from the kitchen showed Cobb had not yet turned in, got up and locked her door, pushed a dresser in front of it and fell into the exhausted sleep of the body numbed by fear, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, awakened by nothing.
The next morning Victory came out of her room to a coldly silent house and the iron tang of blood in the air, and stood on the threshold of her kitchen unable to cry, beyond a scream. Cobb's body lay flung - a battered rag doll draped backward over the kitchen table. It had no upper chest or head. White bones streaked red groped with splintered, blind ends in search of what - was gone. The right arm and hand curled up in a corner, its sinister mate, palm down before her, rigid in an arrested crawl for the door. The ceiling dripped stalactites of blood. The walls - impressionist murals of fire. Victory could not close her eyes.
She burst from the house in her nightgown, a white spirit dancing between cookie-cutter homes, her mouth open in a silent scream, so highly pitched only the dogs heard it, following her in silent tribute to her terror, then collapsed hours later holding onto a retriever who had stayed by her side, curling up in nightmare filled sleep. From that day on she forced her sleep, recoiled from touch and could not cry.
Jedd immediately got himself released from the hospital when his neighbor, who thought the family a bit crazy anyway and was not greatly surprised at Cobb's suicide, phoned him to tell him his wife had had a breakdown and his brother in law was blown away. The neighbor, who found the speechless and shivering Victory still curled up with the blindly loyal dog in his yard, gently tucked her into the hospital, went to lock up their home, discovered Cobb and called the police, then called Jedd. Evidently the fireworks he thought he heard that last night weren't sky rockets. Jedd found a final wandering tribute to the Martian invasion and the foolishness of mankind that made Cobb's final intentions clear, though his view on the world was no less cloudy to those who had watched from outside his eyes.
What was left of Cobb was removed and turned over to the Saers, who held a closed casket graveside memorial with a glowering, dry-eyed Helga, a weeping Victory who stared in stunned silence at the long forgotten slip of paper that fell from her bible, embraced by a deeply fatigued Jedd, and a stoic, weak Jacob and silent Dixie in attendance, the moist soil of the graveyard filling their heads. Jedd thought it unwise for Victory to be there, but capitulated to her pleas to see off her brother to the peace he had so long desired. Sunny and Ken with Todd and Wanda tagging along kept Victory company, helping her as the service progressed. Fred claimed illness, preventing Dinah or the children from attending.
Walking away from the grave site after the service, Helga bent and hugged Victory, and blessed her for hanging on to Cobb when he screamed as a child, forgave her for abandoning him in his youth to their parents, and thanked her for taking him in during his later years, aware Victory had a right to have her own life too. They walked together for a few moments, Victory lost in her memories of Cobb as a child and Helga consumed by her memories of their courtship and the few months of married happiness they had shared, Helga leaning over to hear the quiet comments of her shorter sister in grief, the wet manicured lawns dappling their shoes.
When the two women caught up with Dixie and Jacob, Helga drew herself to her full height, stood before a stone angel like a living, golden spirit and broke their silence viciously, her immense grief for this gentle, haunted man blazing in her voice as she condemned Jacob and Dixie for leading Cobb to this end. She accused Dixie of being superficial and status conscious, driving Cobb into a desperate search to be famous and important and to achieve enough greatness his mother would finally love him. She then dismissed the sobbing Dixie as not being worth her time to continue to address and turned to Jacob.
She berated Jacob for his loss of faith; he had seen the potential in Cobb and for a brief spell encouraged it, then turned him out into the world not having instilled faith in his son's heart, having lost it himself in his materialism. Greed that had caused the war that finally brought Cobb down to the grave in a slow, painful deterioration as his heart did not have the protection of the Lord to shelter him from the world's horrors and no amount of love she gave him attempting to heal him was enough, for Cobb never had the love of his family that should have given him his foundation.
Jacob turned to Helga and in a spark of lucid thought replied Cobb had been his son and only hope of an heir; the circumstances of his violent birth and subsequent brain damage causing his mental problems was beyond anyone's control, and he had been grieving all of Cobb's life that his heir was not one who carried the Saer name with dignity. For him, Cobb's death was the end of what had been a father's nightmare.
Helga looked at Jacob, scouring his soul with her glare, and soundly slapped his face. On that, she left in the black limousine of the widow, a sudden vacuum in the lives of the Saers.
Jacob took his hysterically wailing wife to the family limousine and rode speechlessly home; Victory and Jedd quietly returned to the South. On the way home Jacob had the car stop, and took Dixie into a church along the way, feeling an irresistible compulsion to seek his God and to see His face. Dixie blindly followed, her sobs subdued now, her black skirts softly following her steps, as he stepped into the cool multicolored light streaming from the stained glass windows, slipped into a row, and knelt to pray, the mark on his face from Helga's hand still stinging, the colored lights ringing his forehead like a halo.
The church was empty and silent, smelling of lemon polish and candles; Jacob and Dixie each pondered their own individual sins, afraid to bring them into the light, drawing within themselves and away from each other in their guilt. A dry shuffle interrupted their reveries as a man came out of a side door to stand in the choir loft. He brightly called out, to see if they minded if he practiced his solo for the upcoming service. Jacob replied in a cracked voice, "no, go ahead."
The man's voice was rich and trained, and his anthem soared through the church rafters, pure in its a capella tones. Jacob stretched, and sat on the pew to listen, closing his eyes, remembering this hymn from his childhood. Dixie, too, retired to the bench, and leaned into Jacob's side silently letting the music take away her pain.
He is gone: towards their goal
World and church must onward roll;
Far behind we leave the past,
Forward are our glances cast;
Still His words before us range
Through the ages as they change;
Wheresoe'er the truth shall lead,
He will give whate'er we need.
He is gone; but we once more
Shall behold Him as before,
In the heaven of heavens the same,
As on earth He went and came.
In the many mansions there,
Place for us He will prepare;
In that world unseen, unknown,
He and we may yet be one.
He is gone; but not in vain,
Wait until He comes again.
He is risen, He is not here,
Far above this earthly sphere,
Evermore in heart and mind
There our peace in Him we find;
To our own eternal friend,
Thitherward let us ascend.
Jacob opened his eyes as the last ringing tones of the youth's anthem echoed in the church, looking up to the rafters as he did years ago as a child. A sense of peace stole over him as the air trembled and angels shimmered into view.
He gathered Dixie to him and quietly left the church to the waiting car.
Over the subsequent years, Jacob's face never lost the mark of Helga's hand, his skin being too old to recover the many tiny broken capillaries it caused, and he frequently touched the reddened skin as a silent reminder of his duty to his remaining children. His decline into senility accelerated, both due to the disease and from his fragile mind bending and breaking under the weight of guilt. Dixie continued draping herself in black, having put away all her clothing with any trace of color, determined to punish herself for her failure as a mother. Both parents hesitantly tried to renew relations with Victory, receiving initially cool, but gradually warming receptions.