"Yeah." Grunting. Something dragged. She could hear Milo up there, crying, crying. "Yeah. I've got him. He's light, Jan. He's so light."
She climbed onto the freezer. She was barefoot, in her nightgown, the steel lid burning cold under her feet, and she didn't feel any of it. She reached up into the hole, and a pair of legs came down into her arms, skinny legs in corduroy pants and dirty white tube socks, and then the rest of him, Del lowering him by the armpits, a boy in a filthy Cincinnati Reds jacket two sizes too big, the sleeves rolled into fat doughnuts at his wrists.
He weighed nothing. He weighed seventy-six pounds. Less.
She got him down off the freezer somehow, her knees nearly buckling, and laid him on the concrete floor of the garage, and then she thought, no, not here, it's too cold, and then she thought, no, the air, he needs the air, and she shouted for Del to open the big door. Del dropped out of the scuttle hole and hit the freezer and then the floor, and she heard him gasp and stagger, and then he was hauling up the garage door by hand, the springs shrieking, and the night came in, black and enormous and so cold it burned.
Janet knelt over Kevin Doyle in the wind.
"Kevin. Kevin, honey. Can you hear me?"
His eyes were half open. His lips were pale and his face was gray-white, and there was vomit on his chin and on the front of his jacket. He was breathing; she could see his chest moving, fast and shallow. She put two fingers against the side of his neck. His pulse was racing under her fingertips like a bird's.
"Kevin. Look at me. I'm Mrs. Pruitt. From across the street. You know me."
His eyes rolled toward her, didn't focus, rolled away. "Head hurts," he mumbled.
"I know it does, honey. I know. Can you squeeze my hand?"
His fingers closed weakly on hers. They were ice-cold.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. That's good. That's real good." She looked up. Del was standing over her, the flashlight still in one hand, his face white as paper. Milo had come down out of the scuttle and was standing beside Kevin's head, sniffing at his hair, butting at his cheek with his forehead, a low steady sound in his throat that wasn't purring and wasn't crying. "Del. Go call an ambulance. Tell them carbon monoxide. Tell them an eleven-year-old boy, conscious, confused, vomiting, carbon monoxide from a kerosene heater. Tell them he's hypothermic too. Then bring me every blanket in the linen closet. Go."
He went. She heard his bare feet slapping across the kitchen floor, heard him snatch the phone off the wall, heard his voice, high and fast and nothing like Del's voice, saying the address, saying it again.
She bent over the boy. She got him onto his side so he wouldn't choke if he was sick again. She kept her fingers on his pulse. The wind blew his hair back from his forehead and she saw the cowlick, the same as in the picture on the milk carton.
"You're okay," she told him. "You hear me, Kevin? You're okay. We've got you. Help is coming. You just keep breathing for me. In and out. Good. In and out."
His lips moved. She bent closer.