Chapter 35

• Her Night visitor
• Christina Parker married Greg Townsend just after graduating from high school. She was eighteen at the time, and Greg was twenty-five. Greg never advanced past the tenth grade, so he was forever locked into a dead-end job as a laborer. They lived in a run-down shack near the railroad yards. That was all they could afford on his laborer's salary with the B & O railroad. Greg spent his days, and sometimes evenings, loading and unloading boxcars. He was typically exhausted most nights when he got home. His usual evening routine consisted of eating dinner, plopping down in front of the TV and consuming one beer after another until bedtime or until he passed out; whichever came first. That soon took a terrible toll on their sex life.
• Christina desperately wanted a baby, and Greg wanted a son, but in the eight years they had been married they'd had no luck in producing a child. Christina's doctor suggested invitro fertilization, but it was too expensive, and Greg balked at the idea because people would think he wasn't man enough to get his own wife pregnant. It was a constant source of unhappiness for them both. Christina prayed every night that she would be able to get pregnant. She fell into depression, and Greg began to drink himself into unconsciousness every night.