1

The day he left home his mother was drunk. She was almost always drunk. Usually she would begin at noon, with the advent of the soap operas, gently milking a bottle of scotch throughout the day and into the night, but today she was drunk by early afternoon. She was sitting in the rocker in her bedroom, talking to Billy as if he were there.

"Good boy," she cooed, "my little Billy boy. Does he love his momma? Does he love her?" The rocker moved back and forth in the darkness. "Does he kiss her up and tell her he loves her?" She embraced herself, imagining that he was doing this and telling her how he needed and loved her, what he had done that day at school, what he wanted for his birthday. "Will he give his momma a kiss?"

She stood abruptly, knocking the scotch bottle over onto the thick carpet and spilling what was in her glass. She dropped the glass onto the carpet and stood all the way up. In the living room she heard the television talking to itself. What time was it? Two? Three? The blinds were closed in the bedroom and she pinched two slats open to look outside. Dark. Gray and raining. Four o'clock? Did it matter? "Little Billy boy," she muttered, and took a few halting steps toward the door, finding the knob and then leaning against the door for a moment without opening it. "Kiss your momma, Billy boy," she whispered, closing her eyes and actually falling asleep momentarily. She began to slip down the door, then woke up, leaning back and pulling it open.

The hall light was on, and she blinked into the brightness. She was steadier. Straight ahead was the bathroom, and just to the right of that was Billy's room. The door was closed, a soft line of light visible under it.

"Billy?" she said, her voice not much above a whisper, stepping toward the closed door. "Billy?"

There was no answer.

She put her fingertips to the knob, wanting to grasp it firmly but holding back. A need in her so strong it overwhelmed her made her lean against the wall, and she began to sob. She wanted more than anything in the world to throw open the door, rush into the room, and hold him to her tightly; wanted to kiss his face and hands and call him her own Billy boy. The need was so physical and immediate that it, and the alcohol, overruled her sense and she opened the door and went in.

The lights were on in the room, all of them, including the reading lamp over his hard-backed chair in the corner. He was sitting in the chair, and he looked up at her as she stumbled in.

She almost muttered an apology, but the alcohol, and the need, again overtook her and she approached him. "Billy . . ." she began, holding her hands out, but all at once she realized what she was doing. He looked up at her, silently. Those eyes of his . . .

She stood still, suddenly not knowing what to do, her hands coming alive on their own, wanting to reach out at him, clutch him to her, but instead fluttering out before her and then dropping to her sides. She hugged herself. She felt like a trapped, cornered animal. He was looking at her with those eyes. What did those eyes mean? They were not accusatory, not hateful, not loving, not warm, not cold. They were the eyes of something from somewhere else. They could not be human eyes.

"Billy," she said, and abruptly she began to sob into her hands, those uncontrollable appendages that said more sometimes than eyes or face ever could. She dropped to her knees before him, crying without control, for herself, for him. "Billy, Billy," she sobbed, and she felt no hands upon her to comfort her. She knew that if she looked up at this moment, she would see him calmly watching her. If he spat upon her, it would be better, since then she would know what kind of monster he was, be able to place him in her heart and act from that knowledge. But to not know what he felt, what he was . . .

She opened her eyes; he was watching her as if she were an insect under a magnifying glass. Or was he? Her heart leapt, for there was a glint at the corner of his eyes, wasn't there? A tear? Something human?

It was gone in a moment, and it may well have never been there. The eyes were blank as glass, silent and calm as the light of candles, and she doubted if she had seen what she thought she had. Could this really be her son? Could this cold thing masquerading as a little boy really have come from her warm flesh?

The alcohol mastered her.

"Billy," she said, pulling his small body against her.

"Mother," he said evenly.

She pushed back from him, her eyes wide. "You're a monster!" she screamed. "How can you be my son? Who are you?"

His eyes regarded her emotionlessly.

"Who in God's name are you!" She slapped him, harder than she'd thought she could. His head snapped to one side, and then slowly came back to face her again.

"Oh, Billy," she began, gasping at what she had done, but then her voice rose. "No!" she shouted. "I'm not sorry! How could I be sorry? Do you know," she said, half hysterical now, backing to the wall and leaning against it as she railed at him, "that your father left because of you? He couldn't stand being around you. You made him afraid. You scared him. Do you know that when I was carrying you, before you were born, you were cold inside me? I had nightmares about you, that you were dead in my womb, or that you were alive and something worse." Tears were streaming down her cheeks, streaking her mascara, and she was spasmodically smoothing back her hair with her hands. "Once, I dreamed that I was on the delivery table, and you were born, and when you came out of me, you weren't a baby. You were an old man with a wrinkled face, slowly pulling yourself out from within me with gnarled root-hands. And then when you were really born, when I came out of the drugs, and the doctor looked down at me, I thought for sure that you were stillborn. It was the way the doctor looked at me. I began to cry but he told me it wasn't that, and when I asked him what was wrong, he told me everything was fine. But I knew something was wrong." His eyes were turned toward her, hooded under the reading lamp, staring at her dispassionately. "And then they brought you to me, and I held you up and looked you over, head to toe, and there was nothing wrong with you at all until I held you up over me and looked into your eyes." She had almost forgotten he was there now, she had bottled up these thoughts for so long that she just spilled them out, to herself, to him, to no one. She looked at him again, and there was as much fear in her voice as anything. "Your eyes were like copper pennies—dead man's eyes. That doctor saw it, and I saw it, and your father saw it." She sobbed into her hands quietly for a moment. "All the trouble started then, all the trouble. Your father drunk and gone, and me like this, all the trouble . . . All I wanted was a little boy!" she screamed. "All I wanted was a little Billy to kiss and hold!"

She rushed at him, holding her fists above him and screaming into his face. "I hate you!" The fists were poised, the muscles straining in her arms and in her clenched hands. "I hate you! You're not my little Billy."

Her fists relaxed and she fell to her knees on the carpet in front of him, covering her face with her hands. "Oh, Billy, why can't you be like that day at the ocean? I love you so much."

Something churned in her stomach. She rose with a cry, stumbled to the bathroom, and knelt over the bowl. She vomited, scotch pumping out of her like rejected poison. Her stomach heaved, and suddenly she was very weak. She made her way, half senseless, to the hallway and into the bedroom, and collapsed onto the bed, her arms over her eyes, crying weakly, "Billy, Billy," until she faded into rough sleep.

2

He left an hour later. He rose quietly and packed a small bag, taking a blanket, a few cans of food, some fruit, and a bedroll his father had bought the year before he left, when he had said they might go camping together, and he took an extra shirt. There was a box in the upper right-hand corner of his dresser, filled with dimes and dollars and quarters, and he emptied it, putting the coins into his two front pockets and the bills in his back pocket.

The afternoon was gray and chilly. There was rain left in the air, but by the feel of things the sky would clear before long and there would be autumn sunshine. He had a long walk to the bus station. There was no one else out except a few kindergarten children running noisily home. The only other signs of life were a few chirping birds and a newspaper truck that grumbled past him and then disappeared. He cupped his jacket about his neck, flipping up the collar, and walked on.

The bus depot was empty except for the sleepy clerk behind the counter. Billy put down the exact fare and got the ticket he requested. Immediately he went out to the bus that stood with its door open, its interior lights lit against the still-gray sky. The driver was just lifting the plastic white lid off a cup of steaming coffee. He barely glanced at Billy as he took the boy's ticket and waved him into the back. "Any seat you want, sport," he said, and then snapped open his newspaper. Half an hour later the bus left, with only six passengers aboard.

By the time the bus passed through three more towns, the sun was out and there were twenty passengers on board. By late afternoon, it was nearly full and out on the highway. Billy sat in a window seat two-thirds of the way back, his eyes staring at the passing scenery. A woman dressed like a librarian sat down beside him and tried to engage him in conversation. He ignored her and she soon lost herself in a crochet project that she unfolded from her enormous handbag.

As the sun went down, directly in his line of vision to the west, he took a small apple from his pack and ate it silently, packing the core into a napkin and storing it in his pocket. He turned again to the window, where the western sky was violet.

"Are you on your way to visit a relative?"

The question came from the woman next to him. He turned and saw her looking steadily at him, her crochet work completed in her lap. He turned back to the window.

"You're traveling all by yourself?" Her voice was kind but probing.

He nodded, not turning away from the window. Outside, a row of white clapboard houses, all alike but for different-colored shutters, flashed by, blowing in the dusk, and then a line of small-town stores: hard-ware, bar, Woolworth's, McDonald's. Then another row of white houses.

"It's stopped raining," the woman commented. "This afternoon I thought it would never stop raining."

Again Billy nodded.

There was silence for a moment.

"Who are you running away from?" she asked in the same matter-of-fact tone. Billy ignored her.

"I said, who are you running away from?" Her voice was quiet, but she placed a hand on his arm, then moved it to his chin to turn his face toward her. She did it gently, but with firmness.

"Who?" she repeated, giving the word a short, hard inflection.

Billy stared at her.

"Don't use those eyes on me," she said. "I saw right away those eyes have power. Speak."

Billy said nothing for a moment, then said, "I left home."

She looked at him blankly, waiting for him to go on.

"I left my mother."

She had a strange face, stern yet softly formed. It was the kind of face you saw on women who worked farms alone all their lives, whose husbands had been killed in some war or other. Weather-beaten faces still in some awe of the world, worn but still filled with hardness and life. She looked to be fifty or sixty years old.

She regarded him quietly for a few moments, then pursed her lips and nodded. "That I believe," she said. "Nothing worse, maybe. From the look of you, I thought you were running from something bad." She opened her baggy purse, which was made of silk-like material with a brass twist at the top, and rummaged, finally taking out something small, yellow, and hard.

"Put this in your mouth," she said.

She set it in Billy's hand and waited.

"It's only a lemon drop," she said, lifting his hand until he took it under his own control and put the candy in his mouth. "Good," she went on. "Now we have to decide what to do with you."

Billy started to look away, out the window again, but she pulled him around roughly.

"You'll listen to me," she said, and now her voice was not so gentle. "You've got a bad look about you. I don't like that. I can feel something going on inside you." She delved into her bag again, taking out another yellow candy, which she put in her own mouth. "Have you done something wrong?"

After a moment, Billy shook his head.

"Stealing, cheating, something like that?"

"No."

She sighed. "Worse?" Her voice was as persistent as water running over rock.

"No," he said.

"You sure?" She sounded almost worried.

He stared at her.

She shook her head and squeezed his arm. "You're lying to me," she hissed. There were tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.

"I'm not lying," he said.

She let his arm go.

She looked away from him for a moment.

Her body was trembling. She slowly brought herself under control before speaking to him again. "You'll have to excuse me. It disturbs me that you're lying to me. It's in your eyes. I've seen other eyes like yours. They were on boys that made me cry, too." She turned away, then turned back to him and said harshly, "How old are you?"

"Eleven."

"God." She took hold of him suddenly, and drew him to her, holding him. "What could have happened to you in eleven years?" She let him sit up again, shift away from her. She was talking more to herself now than to him. "I've seen boys and girls whose parents did things to them I could never imagine. Sex things, and beatings, and worse. I found a boy once who had been locked in a room for three years without ever seeing the sun. Three years without sunshine. He was pale as ivory. His eyes were so hurtful of daylight that he had to wear sunglasses whenever he went out. I found a little girl whose father had shaved her head so that she'd look like a boy, then he beat her twice a week with a hose, calling her his whore-boy." She was nearly crying.

She caught herself and looked at Billy again. "You don't have to tell me," she said quietly. "Not now."

When they reached a town called Petersboro, she got her suitcase down from the rack above and took Billy's backpack in her other hand. She got out into the aisle, ignoring a grumbling passenger behind her who wanted to get by, and waited for Billy to get out in front of her. He did so slowly, and she kept close to him when they departed the bus.

"This way," she said sternly, indicating with her head that they should move past the line of taxis and passengers waiting to board. "We'll walk it."

They soon passed onto a country road bordered by low fences and uncropped hedge. There was a near-full moon out to guide them. The road turned into a dirt lane lined by oaks. The rain had plastered falling leaves to the ground, making a wet carpet. "You getting cold?" she asked him, seeing that he seemed to be shivering in his golf jacket. He said nothing, and without a word she removed the shawl she wore over her coat and put it around him.

A half hour later they passed a small black mailbox with a rooster painted on it. "Turn down here," she said. She followed him onto a cobbled path, which led along a line of white birches. Through the half-denuded branches was visible a house or barn of some sort, with dark shingles and a dark roof. There was the sound of sawing wood somewhere near.

As they passed under the trees, the sawing ceased. "Melinda!" a high voice called, and from the other side of the house three children appeared, the oldest, holding a wood saw and perspiring, looking to be twelve or so. The others were a year or so younger, about Billy's age.

"We've been waiting for you," the oldest said, scowling at Billy.

"I missed the early bus," Melinda said, putting down the bags. "The bank had a new girl who didn't believe I had a brother named George who left me all that money." She turned to Billy. "I met somebody on the bus. We might as well do the introductions now. It's kind of pretty in this moonlight anyway." She paused, seeing that the others were staring at Billy.

The boy with the saw said, "Jesus," and the others said nothing, but their stares told what they were thinking.

"I don't want to hear a thing," Melinda said. "You all know what has to be done, so let's do it." She held a hand out in a circle, pointing to each in turn. "This is John, with the saw, and next to him, Rebecca and Marsh. That's short for Marshall. Rebecca and Marsh are brother and sister." She put her hand on Billy's shoulder. "This is Billy Potter, and he's going to be with us for a while." The others were silent. "Take his bag in," Melinda said. "Unpack it in the room next to mine. Put the empty bag in the attic. Then get back to what you were doing."

There was no discussion as they went off to do what Melinda told them.

"Put some late supper on, Rebecca!" she called after them, and the girl, her pigtails whipping as she turned, nodded and ran off.

"Well," Melinda said, "it's as bad as I thought. Maybe worse. If they noticed it, there's a lot that has to be done." She bent down to pull the shawl closer around Billy's shoulders, and led him to the front door.

"We'll do what has to be done," she said in an odd voice, pulling Billy closer as they passed into the house.

3

Weeks passed. And with their passing, a routine developed. Each morning, Billy rose at six and went out to the barn. By then the chickens had laid their eggs, and he cleaned up after them, collecting whatever they produced. Then he swept the kitchen and the hallways and swept the stairs. By then it was time for breakfast.

They ate together, in the huge stone-floored kitchen. At night it was the coldest room in the house, but in the morning, after the stove had been lit, there was no warmer place. The table was big, and they filled one end of it, Melinda sitting at the head and the others in the places to either side of her. Billy's place was next to Rebecca's, and it was with Rebecca that he had his first fight. It began when she asked him to pass the sugar one morning.

Billy ignored her, looking down into his cereal.

"I said, pass the sugar," Rebecca repeated.

"You heard the girl," Melinda said, staring down sternly from the head of the table. "She asked you to do something."

Billy sat stone-still.

"You heard her," Melinda said, "now hear me. Pass the sugar like you were asked."

Rebecca didn't wait for him, but pushed her chair back, standing and leaning heavily over Billy to bring the sugar bowl across. On the way she dropped half of the bowl's contents into his cereal.

"Sorry," she said, smirking as she sat down again.

There was utter silence for a moment, before John began to laugh scornfully. Then, carefully, Billy lifted his bowl of cereal and dumped it into Rebecca's lap.

They rolled out of their chairs and wrestled to the floor. The others rooted encouragement to Rebecca. Melinda made sure she was slow in getting up to stop it. Billy held Rebecca about the waist, but she had him by the hair and was yanking at it. Billy finally let out a yelp, letting go of her and rolling over, pushing his arms up to make her loosen her grip on his hair. It didn't work, but he discovered that she winced when he dug into her ribs. She tried to stifle her groan of laughter, but it was obvious that she was ticklish, and before long the fight had turned decisively in Billy's favor.

"That's enough," Melinda said, lording over them when Billy had his opponent pinned mercilessly beneath him, drawing great painful explosions of laughter from her as he dug his fingers into her sides.

After that the ice had broken, and the tight family that was Melinda's opened to admit a new member. Though Billy still held his distance from them, a part of him seemed to have warmed. He began to smile, and whenever he passed Rebecca, in a hallway or outside during chores, he could not help holding his hands out before him and moving his fingers in a tickling motion—which produced a flinching smile from the girl.

The seasons clocked leisurely by. Autumn became winter, winter rounded into spring. Papers were produced somewhere along the line, signed by Billy's mother, giving Melinda legal custody of the boy. When she told him about this, he seemed unmoved—though something in him, something tiny, seemed to stir. There was spring baseball, then summer baseball, and by the end of August, Billy and Marshall were friends, sharing adjoining rooms. Their world settled into a quiet turning, with day leading to night and night leading to month to year. And then suddenly it was autumn again, and Melinda was telling Billy that it was time for school.

She called him to her study, a dark-paneled room with scant sunlight in the back of the house, filled with books and her half-working typewriter and her filing cabinet and more dusty afternoon sunlight.

"They're a nice bunch at school, but they can get a little rough," she told him, "and if they see anything different in a boy, they're liable to get on you. I have a feeling they'll get on you, Billy." She looked futilely for something on her desk, then reached down into her huge bag, finally producing a cigarette. "I won't tell you to be careful, because I know you can take care of yourself. I'm sure you've been through this before. But I'll tell you to be patient. Don't fight back. Try to find your place"—she paused—"like you found it here. I don't know if you've noticed it, but John resents you. He thinks you've taken his place. I've tried to talk to him about it, but he's a stubborn boy."

There seemed to be something else she wanted to add, a coda or elaboration, but she said nothing. She settled back into her chair, running her hands one over the other and stubbing out her cigarette.

"Damned arthritis," she said. "It doesn't pay to be old, Billy. All the pieces wear down. Your body begins to laugh at you. Bodies don't laugh at young people. They laugh at the old, though. It's the price the old pay; they gain in years and knowledge, but the body says, 'Hold on there. Where do you think you're going with all that learning? Ain't much time left to use it.'" She waved an impatient hand at her own thoughts and drew another cigarette out of her bag, carrying with it a lemon drop, which she handed to Billy. She lit the cigarette and coughed, a light rasp. She let the smoke drift out of her mouth and nostrils. "And cigarettes don't make you any younger.

"By the way, I know you've been sneaking cigarettes with Rebecca during chores, so don't tell me you haven't," she said. "It's nothing to me, except that I wish you wouldn't do it. It's not good for you. I started when I was a little older than you, and every time I smoke one of these damned things now, I can feel it sucking a little life out of me. I suck in the smoke, and when I blow it out, a little of me goes with it. I can forbid you, but I've always believed that when one man lords over another, he'd better only do it in things he's prepared to accomplish himself. I've lorded over you a lot of ways, but since I don't follow my own preaching in this case, I can't do anything but beg you not to do as I do. Can't command, only beg." Again her thoughts slipped into another stream, segueing into a planned tangent. She drew a long puff before going on.

"Have you been happy here, Billy?" She was staring up at the ceiling, but there was nothing but attention in her manner.

Billy answered, without hesitation, "Yes."

"Happier than you've ever been?"

"Yes.”

"Good. You going to continue to be happy?" She was striving for just the right words.

"Do you want me to leave?" Billy asked simply.

Her chair creaked as she leaned her weight down forward, facing him squarely and putting her elbows down on her desk. "No, I don't want that." She gazed into his eyes, looking for what she wanted to see and not finding it.

"I want you to stay here for a long time," she said. She put her hand across the desk, touching him for the first time since the day on the bus. "I want you to be as happy as you ever can be. There's nothing but love for you here. There always will be. I think if you went away today, I'd cry—even more than if Rebecca or Marsh or John were to leave. Sometimes one of my boys or girls does go, and it puts a little hole in my heart, just as if someone had dug it out with a spade. But the hole fills in real soon, because always when they leave, it's to something better, a new home with new folks to bring them up like real parents. My knowing that there's something better for them fills in the hole. But if you were to leave now, or anytime soon, I think the hole would be bigger and I don't think it would fill in." Again she chose her words carefully. "Because I don't think you could be happier anywhere else now, and I get a bad feeling in me that if you were to leave, it would only come to worse for you. I get feelings like that, and they've always been right so far." She took another long puff on her cigarette, then discovered that it was down to the filter and rubbed it into her ashtray. "And the fact that you wouldn't be happier anywhere else than this makes me sad, because—"

Suddenly she drew herself up, letting her mouth close around her thoughts and leaning back in her chair. She was heading someplace she didn't want to go. At least not yet.

"I only meant to tell you," she said softly, reaching out an aching, arthritic hand to put it on his shoulder, "that school can be a tough time. So don't hesitate to talk to me, or Marsh, or anybody about it." She waved a hand at the door and smiled. "Now go give Rebecca a hand out back with the rest of that lawn trimming." She squeezed his shoulder before letting him go. "And don't let me catch the two of you smoking—I can still tear into you when I catch you at it."

As he left the room, she was staring at the ceiling and there was another cigarette in her palsied hand, its thin trail of smoke spiraling upward with her thoughts.

4

School began, in the kind of cool-hot, blue-sky weather it always does, and they were rough on him, just as she'd predicted. John paved the way for this. Maybe Melinda had known this would happen, because John was more jealous of Billy's special place than the others. John stoked the coals, but there were others who fanned the flames. They circled him warily at first, looking for the quiet opening in this quiet boy, and soon they found it when he refused to play ball with them in the yard at lunchtime.

They singled him out the next day when he refused to join in a game of Johnny-ride-the-pony. There was a crowd, and this emboldened a freckle-faced kid a year older than Billy named Jim Crane.

"You some kind of faggot?" Crane asked, and there were a few sniggers from the others: mostly boys, but a couple of girls had gathered, too.

Billy said nothing. Hands at his sides, he began to turn away.

Crane held out a tentative finger, poking at Billy's chest lightly; he was a few inches taller.

Billy looked at him evenly. "I don't want to play."

" 'Cause you're a faggot, right?" Again Crane pushed his finger into Billy's chest.

"I just don't want to."

There was an uneasy murmur from the crowd—a mixture of uneasiness at Billy's refusal to be rattled and an ebbing of confidence in Crane's handling of the situation. Jim Crane sensed this, with the radar that all children carry that measures what others think of them.

Billy's eyes were unblinking, and Crane began to feel uneasy.

The back part of the group had peeled away, leaving for other playground amusements. Jim Crane sensed he was losing his audience. He was seventh-grade class president and couldn't afford to look foolish.

"I know," he said in a loud voice, so that it would carry to those who were leaving and possibly pull them back, "what you are." Again he pushed a finger into Billy's chest, harder and yet more tentative, as if he knew he was crossing some border and was unsure of himself. "You're the boy with penny eyes." There were a few titters of approval, so he continued, more confident. "You're a freak. And a faggot."

Jim Crane felt Billy's copper eyes staring at him. Suddenly, he was filled with apprehension, even as he continued to speak. There was too much peer pressure, too much at stake, for him to stop. "You don't play because you're a freak. John told me that."

Something stirred deep in Billy Potter's eyes. He hadn't moved an inch, hadn't brought his hands up from his sides, hadn't even balled his fingers into fists to show that he was hurt or upset. His eyes hadn't blinked, but now, though they hadn't even widened, they seemed to deepen to black.

Jim Crane cried out and threw his hands in front of his face. He stumbled back a step, nearly falling, and saw that those around him were moving off to other parts of the playground.

And then the blackness was gone from Billy's eyes. They were just the copper brown they had always been. Billy still had not moved. "I don't want to play," he said in the same even, flat tone he had used before.

"Okay," Jim Crane muttered, and turned, making his way to the farthest part of the playground.

5

John avoided Billy after that. But soon John left. A couple with neatly pressed clothes, the mother in pink and the man in a conservative gray suit, along with a thin girl with big dark eyes who smiled smugly at them all, came to take him one Sunday afternoon. They spent some time in Melinda's office, and their occasional precise laughter was heard, muffled, through the door. Then John was summoned, his hair combed and his bag—the same one he had carried into the house after running away from his abusive father two years before, and which had been pulled down from the attic from the pile of bags and ragged suitcases—packed to bursting with his clothes and few possessions. The door to the office was open partway for him. He put his bag down outside and turned to see Marsh, Billy, and Rebecca standing there. There was a strange mixture of triumph and sadness on his face. He took a step toward them, but then he was called into the office.

They parted outside a little while later, when Melinda and the fresh-smelling parents and the little girl with dark eyes and John emerged from the house. The little girl stared at Billy. They walked to a neat, new-looking black Chevrolet sedan parked out front. The man and woman put John's bag in the trunk and began to talk with Melinda, and the girl, still staring at Billy, got into the car, and once again John turned to see the three of them waiting for him on the porch. He walked awkwardly to Marsh and Rebecca and kissed them both.

The man said, "Come along, son, we have a long trip," his voice showing that he looked forward to making it. John turned to Billy and said, "Sorry." He looked away quickly, then said, turning back for a moment before walking to the car and getting in, "You'll never find a home. This will never happen to you."

Melinda closed the door to her office after the black car drove off: She stayed in there alone until suppertime. The three children set out the places slowly, only catching themselves after setting out John's dish and then putting it away. Rebecca turned to Billy, the dish still in her hand, the cabinet open behind her, and said, "Someone will take you, Billy. It'll happen for all of us."

Billy looked at her steadily. Rebecca found herself afraid of him suddenly, for the first time since the day he had arrived, when a coldness had coursed through her on first seeing him. Now it happened again, only worse. He seemed to be made of ice. All the warmth that had built up in him since he had arrived seemed to have evaporated, leaving a thing frigid and black as space.

Billy turned away from her, and in the silence of the cold, stony room, they finished their work.

Another man came to see Melinda that week. He stayed in her office a long time, arguing with her. The three of them could not hear what was said, only that she was shouting at him, madder than she had ever been, and his shouts were finally drowned out by hers. After he left, quickly, with his coat thrown over his bag and his face red, Melinda stayed in her room with the door shut for the rest of the day and night. For the first time they ate dinner without her in the cold kitchen.

Things went on as usual. The winter was not a hard one, but it seemed harder without John there to help. Marsh caught a cold, which turned to pneumonia because he stayed out too long, chopping wood. He had to be taken to the hospital but was back in two weeks, stronger than ever. There were snowball fights, and sledding, and one night when it warmed to the freezing mark in January, they built a bonfire and danced around it, staying out most of the night. Melinda's eyes glistened. She was dressed in her thickest coat, with only her red face showing. She wore huge red mittens. The mittens, and the warmth of the fire, had driven the hurt from her hands. A great ball of a moon rose in the deep black sky over the trees, outlining the three children and the old woman like pale ghosts. She told them what it had been like when she was a girl.

"Things were not too different than they are tonight," she said. "I remember doing this all the time. My brother George and I were always out at night, all year long. We had a cadre of friends that were always there and always had something to do. We spent a lot of time in graveyards on nights like this." She paused to blow warm air into her mittens. "We told spook stories, and played hide-and-seek behind the gravestones. Nobody was afraid of death then," she said. Her voice trailed off for the briefest moment and she looked at the moon. She laughed. "But we had great fun. George and I were always together. My father raised us alone and he was almost never there. George and I took care of each other." A memory illuminated her from within. "One time George dressed himself as a ghost, in a sheet, and carried a candle in front of him. He chased me all over the churchyard. He was always playing tricks like that. Another time he and his cronies dug a shallow hole and he got down into it with a straw in his mouth so he could breathe. They covered him with dirt and dragged a gravestone to the head of it and then told me they'd found a stone we'd been looking for for a long time. When I got over to it, they made sure I stood right up next to where my brother's arm was, and he reached up and grabbed me, right through the dirt. Then he sat up and pulled me down." There were tears of joy in the corners of her eyes, and they laughed with her. "Oh, how I screamed! I think I yelled for two days straight. I never went to the graveyard with George and his buddies again, I can tell you.''

"What happened to George?" Rebecca asked.

Melinda looked down at her as if discovering that she was not talking to herself. "He died a long time ago, Rebecca. He was a reporter in Chicago. He was killed trying to save a family in a house fire. He had an insurance policy he used to laugh about, which some broker he had interviewed talked him into taking out, which ended up giving me all the money to run this place. Sometimes I miss him."

Their bonfire had burned down to a glowing stack of embers and was in danger of going out. The moon had climbed up high, making their fire nearly insignificant. Melinda slapped her hands together, wincing slightly.

"I'd say we best be going in. Anybody know what time it is?"

Marsh tilted - his watch up toward the moon. "Two o'clock."

"Two in the morning? Gracious!" Her eyes lingered on the fire. "It has been fun, though." She rose, grimacing with the returning pain in her joints. She held her arms out at her sides, a hen sheltering her chicks, signaling them to follow. "Into the house and be quick," she said. "I'll wager we can sleep a bit late tomorrow. We've got enough wood inside, so I can't see it makes any difference. I want you in bed in ten minutes, and lay an extra comforter on; it feels like the temperature's dropping again."

She fell in behind them, looking back once more at the dying fire. A thick log crumbled in on itself, spitting up a futile shower of red sparks. "Well, well," she said quietly and, seeing them waiting for her on the porch, followed them in. She did not go to her room but to her office, shutting the door soundlessly behind her.

6

Spring came early to March, and Melinda took to her bed.

The man who had argued with her in the winter came again. This time they knew he was a doctor because he brought a nurse with him. Only once did Melinda fight him. They heard the argument because the nurse had left the door open a crack and Melinda's voice rose above the others. "I'll stay here, and I'll die here if need be," she said obstinately. "You won't get me to a hospital, so don't try." There was more mumbled discussion, and then they heard Melinda's voice again, louder this time. "Don't you think I know? I'm no fool. Just tell me what has to be done. I'll die here if anywhere . . ." Then the nurse closed the door.

Weeks passed. They helped her as best they could. There were infrequent visits from the doctor that always ended with him storming out. Melinda seemed to rally, appearing one morning in her robe to shoo them out of the kitchen while she lit the fire herself and made breakfast. She walked a little slower, and her face was thinner and more lined, but her eyes were still bright. She seemed the same old Melinda. Then late one morning, a week after that, she dropped a watering can while reaching up to sprinkle a plant on a windowsill, and had to be half carried to bed. This time she sank into the pillows until they almost swallowed her.

The next day, while Rebecca and Billy were sharing a cigarette behind the barn, Marsh appeared. His face was white.

"You're here to tell us she's dead," Rebecca started to say, but Marsh cut her off, shaking his head.

"There's a man and woman here for us. For you and me," he said to Rebecca. "They're' having a big ruckus up at the house. They're taking us away to some desert town. Melinda didn't tell us about it, and there's nothing ready." He looked like he was in shock, his eyes meeting Billy's now as he spoke. "They're straightening it all out. They want Rebecca and me to leave in an hour."

The cigarette in Rebecca's fingers burned her and she dropped it. For a moment there was only the sound of a high breeze in the treetops near the house. Then Marsh said, "It's for real, Rebecca."

Rebecca turned and held Billy, putting her arms around him.

"I'm not leaving you here," she said, "and Marsh won't either. There's no way they can take us without you."

But they all knew it would happen.

In an hour the two of them were gone. They left quietly with two tall people, who had the same look as all the others who came to take children away from Melinda. Rebecca and Marsh were handled like precious porcelain. The man and woman gave Rebecca a doll with big eyes, and Marsh a red metal truck, then they placed them carefully in the back seat of their station wagon and got in and drove off. Melinda stayed in her room. Marsh and Rebecca looked back at Billy, who stared at them silently from the porch.

A week went by.

Billy prepared Melinda's meals; she ate them herself, or with his help, but she would not look at him. She seemed very angry. Her eyes, slightly duller now but still filled with a fire, stared past or through him when he came into her room. Some days she could not lift a spoon to her lips. Beneath her covers there seemed nothing but a flat board, no human shape. Occasionally she cried out, in the night or in the afternoon, and Billy came to help her through it as best he could, mostly just standing there while her body was consumed with pain and covered with sweat until she settled down into an uneasy sleep once more. When she was awake at night, and not in pain, she prayed. Her prayers had a savage quality to them, as if she were demanding an answer to some question. One night, in the throes of hallucination, she cried out, "Leave him, then! He's lost to us both!" before sinking back into sleep.

The dour doctor came a final time, and she shouted at him feebly. But when he left, he was not angry and his car drove off slowly.

"Billy," Melinda called, in a hiss almost. He went to her. She was propped up in bed; she had diminished so much that the pillows behind her appeared enormous. Her hands rested on her lap before her, one over the other. They looked already dead, insubstantial as air. She looked at him now. With her eyes, she motioned for him to sit on the bed.

"I'll be dead in an hour," she began. There was no time for him to say anything. "This hour as well as any is fine with me." Her voice was like fierce silk. The strength of it built with every word she spoke.

"Rebecca and Marsh are gone. All the others are gone. That makes me happy. All I ever wanted was for someone to take all my children away from me." Her voice caught, and she had to wait for breath to return to her throat. "This may sound foolish, but death doesn't hurt me. Every time one of those couples came to take one of my boys or girls, I died. But in that death there was birth, because I knew they were all going on to a better, fuller life.

"I apologize to you for the way I've acted toward you the past month or so," she said. "It was not kind of me. But there was a reason. I've been wrestling with myself"—she smiled faintly—"and that was quite a fight." The smile vanished. "I've been trying not to hate you, boy."

Her eyes were nearly on fire, and she was somewhere between crying and screaming. When she next spoke, there was a catch in her voice and she shook her head weakly from side to side. "To think I could ever hate one of my boys or girls, even for a moment. For days I wrestled, Billy. At first I thought it was myself I was hating, my failure. No one likes to fail. I never failed before." Real anger crept into her voice. "I never failed, Billy. I had boys in here who were raped by their fathers, girls who were raped by their own mothers. There were girls who were turned into prostitutes before they were school age. I had boys here who had been beaten so bad that they flinched when you raised a hand to tousle their hair. I died for every one of them. All I did was give them time, and cold and hot weather, and wood chopping and other chores, and my own poor love. And all the evil eventually bled out of them. It all bled out." Her face was red, her fist clenched so tightly that the weak and dying veins in her arm stood out. "With some of them they were down so deep, the evil, ugly things, that it took years and years—but I knew that it would all come out in the end, like coughing up blood, and then the healing could begin. Always, Billy. Until I found you.

She sank back into the pillows, some of the fire out of her.

"You scare me, Billy. You scare me down to my bones because I know, and always knew, that no matter how many years I gave you, how many years of waiting and patience and time, that you would never let me die for you. Whatever's down deep in you is never going to come out, because it's what you are. Nobody put it there, and it can't be bled out. It is you."

Her face was gray as ash, and she sank deeper into the pillows, closing her eyes as more of the anger drained out of her, along with her strength. She shook her head feebly before reopening her eyes, and when she did, there was not anger but awe and a kind of terror in them.

"You're looking for someone," she said, staring into his dark eyes. "I knew that from the moment I saw you on that bus."

She took his hand in her own arthritic claw, and held it with surprising force. She rose up on one elbow, lifting herself by will alone. There was blind fury in her eyes. She hissed, "And when you find that someone, terrible things are going to happen." She grabbed him more tightly by the arm, her face close to his. "And there's nothing I can do about it." She held him by the arms, like a bird with something in its talons, something it wanted but wasn't sure it should take. "Tell me who you're looking for!"

She was drained then. She gave a short gasp and fell back, her arms dropping to the blankets, lifeless. She looked into Billy's calm face. "I love you so much, Billy," she whispered, and then she closed her eyes, and saw his face no more, and released her last soft whisper of breath.

He spent the next hour packing. He went to the attic and found his backpack, by itself now, neatly placed on a shelf that had, in its time, held hundreds of suitcases and bags. He brought it down to the kitchen. He put a few cans of food and a can opener in it, along with a half loaf of bread and a nearly empty jar of peanut butter. In a flour tin next to the sink were some one-dollar bills and a couple of fives, used mainly to pay the paper boy. He put the bills in his jacket pocket.

Outside, the day was bright and sunny. At the front gate he stopped to loosen the straps of his backpack, adjusting for his growth since the last time he had worn it.

Past the cobbled path, in one of the oaks lining the dirt road, a bird trilled once, twice, three times.

Billy passed beneath it, and kept walking. This time, he knew where he was going.

8

Careful.

In James Monk's vision, he was standing in a field of low-cut grass, green as the leaves of fresh oak. It was spring, and the sun was just before noon, and there were May clouds, fat and not too high, surrounded by the bluest sky there could be. He could taste spring, coming out of the ground, melting away what winter was left, pushing up through the grass and the wet soil and into the blue sky because there was new life everywhere. There were trees around the edge of the field, far away, but he could smell and feel them from where he was. They were brown and wet, and their leaves were wet and so full that their green would come off on his fingers. The sun was warm on him. There was music somewhere: Mozart. And across the field, from the brown, wet green trees, from out of the earth and the spring itself, came the child.

It walked as if it was one with the soil and the sky, pure and innocent, face new-born, eyes clear and wet as the leaves of the trees; there were no furrows in the brow, the lips were red and full, the eyes gold like the sun, the body naked like God's own body. And it came to James Monk, walked slowly to him, and put its arms up and held him. It held James Monk in its arms like a mother holds a baby, held his head against the softest of breasts, held his hair in pure hands, stroked his eyes and neck, ran thin warm fingers over his lips, his cheeks, the curve of his nose and chin . . .

Careful.

There came a noise, and James Monk quickly put his dream away. He filed it as succinctly as the paints and papers he sorted, the crayons, the pads of art paper, the smocks. He paused in his work, cocked his head away from the shelves in the supply closet and waited for a repeat of the mouse-sound that had taken his hands away from their work, his mind away from . . .

Careful.

There it came again: the sound of small feet walking, shoes on floorboards. Shoes on floorboards. He heard the light click of a door closing against its lock, and a sudden trail of fear crawled up his back. He looked to the door of the supply closet, a mere three feet away. Memory came to him of that other time, in that other school, when the same kind of door had swung closed on him, when the light had gone out and he had heard harsh muffled laughter outside, laughter that only increased with his panic and his cries for help, his poundings on the door, the frightful tearing of his fingernails against ungiving wood, the unmoving lock, the darkness, the shelves moving in around him, the darkness . . .

The footstep sound again, and then the lights went out.

They went on again. As abruptly as his breath abandoned him it returned, leaving a charge of electric fear running through him. Somewhere far off, he thought he heard a generator whining back to life. And then the memory of those footsteps outside came back to him, those steps, the click of a door.

"Who's there?"

The weakness of his voice disappointed him, so he repeated the question with more strength. There was no answer. He edged to the open door of the supply room, his hands out before him, fearing at any moment that it would swing shut toward him, the lights blink out for good, the clawing and the screaming start again . . .

Careful.

That foot sound again.

He reached the door and pushed with both hands against it.

He looked out.

There was no one there.

He stepped out of the supply closet, his heart pounding in his chest, his hands still tightly pressed against the door. The classroom was empty. There were ten rows of chairs, each seat turned up against its back, the blackboard clean and washed, the easels flat against the far wall, the windows along the other wall showing late Saturday sunlight beginning to darken into March night.

He looked toward the front of the room and saw that the door to the classroom was closed.

Fear took hold of him again. He knew he had left it open. Working Saturdays was by far easier than during the week, with all the distractions of unruly students, but it made him uneasy to be alone in such a large building. He knew the custodian was downstairs, probably drunk by now in front of Wide World of Sports. Maybe he had been responsible for the lights going out. But James Monk knew he had left that door open.

He marched quickly across the room and reopened it, peering out into the hallway to see that it was empty, a long tunnel of tomblike marble floors and flat green student lockers.

There came a sound behind him.

Again his heart moved. He turned to see the desks empty, the blackboard clean, the easels still as toy soldiers, the supply closet door.. .

Closed.

"Who's in that closet? Come out immediately!"

His words were shrill, hysterical. He immediately regretted using them, but they had come up from his stomach and chest in a spasm of fear.

"Don't fool with me! Come out here now!"

He wanted to run but knew he could not do that. He knew that if he ran that would be the end of him. It must be a student in there and the fact that he was soft, could be had, would spread like wildfire. James Monk wouldn't last another week in this school. Perhaps if he had stood up for himself that other time, in that other school, had stood before them all and denounced them instead of shrieking like a madwoman when they locked him in the closet—then, well, maybe he wouldn't have had to go through what he did, the stretch of almost a year before another job came, months of torture and self-doubt, his vision his only comfort.

He could not afford to let it happen again.

"Come out here!"

His voice had gained stability. Moving to his desk, his eyes all the while on the door of the supply closet, he felt for and then found the right-hand drawer where he kept his rulers. He withdrew one, feeling the cool line of steel edging along one side. Somehow, it made him feel strong.

"I'm going to open that door, and I promise you we'll be in Mr. Carstair's office eight o'clock Monday morning. You'll get a month's detention!" He lowered his voice, still hiding his panic. "Come out on your own and we'll talk about it."

He heard movement in the closet and then something was knocked over. But the door stayed closed.

"That's it, my friend. You're in big trouble."

His hand tightened on the ruler and he moved forward, overcoming his legs, which wanted to turn him around and run him away. This was where he had to fight back. He put his hand on the knob, his eyes not seeing how the hand trembled, and yanked the door open.

The supply closet looked empty.

It wasn't.

In the corner, a box filled with rolls of poster paper rocked toward him, then back. There was, Monk knew, a space behind it.

"Stand up this minute," James Monk hissed.

One hand moved to the box, the other rose above his head with the ruler in it, and at that moment someone stood up.

James Monk made a strange sound, something between a gasp of astonishment and fulfillment. What came out of his mouth was "Oh." The ruler lowered in his hand. He backed away as the figure stood all the way up.

"It's me," it said.

"Yes . . ." James Monk said, confused.

"Did I frighten you? I didn't mean to."

"No, I . . . You didn't frighten me." He found it difficult to concentrate.

"I'm here for you now."

James looked into the copper eyes. "You . . ." he said.

He had been transported to somewhere else. The sky was brightening, he felt the warmth of a high sun on the back of his neck, the green of the far trees was startling. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He still knew, somewhere way in the distance of his mind, what day it was, that when he had come to school this morning it had been a Saturday in March and that there had been gray clouds laid against the sky, high and flat as a blackboard, that a few flurries had dusted the sidewalk ahead of him before he entered the building. He knew that it was that same day outside, that it was getting dark and would soon be night. But a marvelous change had taken place. Spring was here. Spring had arrived, pushing the gray sky and flurries away with it. It was spring, his spring. He looked down and saw, felt, the brush of soft new grass against his feet; he felt the greenness of it, tasted the air itself. All the pores in his body were open mouths, drinking in the exact moment, obsessed, filled with it. And there before him, radiant, full, living, was . . .

His vision.

"I'm here for you," the child said.

"Yes."

"I belong to you!'

"Yes."

The creature came and put its hand on his arm.

Careful.

"Wait," he said suddenly, sharply, looking into the brightness of those sunlit eyes.

"Is something wrong?" the child asked.

His mind was on fire.

"I have to be careful," James Monk said.

"It's all right," the child said.

"I can't ..."

"You can. It's all right." The child brushed his cheek with its fingers, smoothed the thin hair softly back from his forehead.

"But—"

Suddenly, he knew what was wrong. He was never meant to be fulfilled. There was no possibility of his vision ever being consummated. In his mind, for a moment, one burning thought connected with another.

It's a trick.

"It's not a trick," the child said.

The thoughts separated, burned away to white ashes.

"But—"

"Do you hear music?"

He heard it. It rose like a feather across his cheek, then wrapped around him like the soft wind in May. Mozart. A beautiful ache, delicate as spun silver around white clouds, liquid notes rolling like blood. Life itself. He saw his mother as he had as a baby, saw the soft longing look in her eyes, felt the touch of beauty on him. His mind once more was free to float above the earth, out of his own body, exalted. He was music. And then the two moments merged, became tearful, exact, beauty itself, and he looked up to see the child, its eyes burning warm like the sun, its hand, white as milk, touching his head, the smile, the smile of an angel, the fingers, milk-white, caressing him, holding him as a mother holds its baby, brushing his brow, his hair, his neck . . .

"Do you hear the music, James?" it said to him, this mother and child, and in his moment of attainment he cried.

"Yes! Yes!"

He saw something held above its angel's body, in its pure-white hand. It was silver, like the clouds and moon, a painful, gleaming, radiant thing. The creature brought it down toward him, and then beautifully across his throat like the bow of a violin across its singing strings.

Mozart.

Spring and music went away. The lights went out, and the door clicked shut on him, and there was laughter, and, finally, James Monk screamed.

The Reverend Jacob Beck thought, The night is dark.

The night is always dark. He laughed to himself, a low sound that echoed around the church as if he had barked through a microphone.

The night is always dark.

Here was another profound thought for another profound sermon. He sat down on a bench and rubbed his eyes. What time was it? He held his watch up toward the small light that always burned in the back of the church, but it wasn't enough for him to be able to tell accurately. Something o'clock in the morning. Another long Saturday night and he was where he always ended up on Saturday night.

The windows were still dark, so perhaps it was only four o'clock—he had two more hours to suffer, before his brain would do what it always finally did.

The night is dark.

He laughed again, sure now that it must be nowhere near dawn, because his mind would give him nothing but this.

He yawned. Then, leaning forward, making the bench creak like loud cracking knuckles, he pulled a many-folded piece of paper from his back pocket and smoothed it out for the twentieth time. "Hate the evil," it read, "and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate."

And so on, he thought. But what came next?

He didn't know.

He stared straight ahead, trying to find something in his thoughts to hold on to. Abruptly, without thinking, he brought his fist down on the bench in front of him. He was startled to see that the force of his blow had actually cracked the wood.

Why did I do that?

He knew why: he was spending another insomniac Saturday night in an empty church trying to figure out what to say the next day when the church was full. He had a single line of biblical dialogue in front of him, something that had looked good a month ago when he'd pulled it out of the Book of Amos, something that had looked like he might be able to build on it. And now, as always, he had . . . nothing. There was nothing in his head.

Why did I really do that?

He stared hard at the splintered wood of the railing. He knew the answer to this also. But did he want to think about that? It wasn't because of the sermon. After all, he had always had this problem with sermons, right from the beginning, and he knew that eventually, just as dawn broke, the ideas would start to coalesce; and that before seven o'clock in the morning he would have in his hands a complete text, written out word by word on note paper; and that he would deliver it at eleven o'clock and it would sound good coming from his mouth and they would all go home and think about it, some of them think it profound even, maybe one or two of them even think hard about it, think about it so that it would change their lives . . .

He barked a laugh again, hearing it bang around the walls like a hardball, and he knew what was wrong with him.

I don't believe any of it. They don't listen, and I don't change them. "And even if I do," he said out loud, "I don't care!"

His fist came down hard again. This time he felt pain in his hand. Easy, Jacob.

He leaned back and took a long breath, closing his eyes and letting his mind clear.

So that was it. I don't care. All the talking and the social work, the teas, the smiling old ladies with hands like dried apples—he didn't care about any of it. He thought of those hands laid gently on his own, so lightly that if he pressed them they would fall apart like old parchment, the eyes giving away the truth not in the smiles, not here for long, almost gone, almost gone . . . dead . . .

And to where?

Who cares?

He raised his hand and then slowly lowered it, looking once more at the paper he held without reading it.

He knew how foolish he was being, that this was something they all went through. Had to go through. He'd been told about it long ago, by a Catholic priest no less, who had gone too far with the after-dinner bran-dies one night and confessed that he had once lost his faith altogether. "Two years," he had said, his eyes misting over in a kind of wonderment. "For two years I didn't know what I was doing, didn't give a crap about any of it." His eyes came back to Jacob, and he put his finger on the rim of his glass. "It was around the time of the Vietnam War, and I nearly became an alcoholic." He laughed. "The Vietnam War, when everybody looked at everything they were doing and decided it didn't mean anything. I thought about leaving the priesthood, about becoming anything else, a folk singer, a riverboat captain"—he held his glass up in a toast—"what do you want to be when you grow up, Father Marchini?" Again he laughed, but there was as much seriousness as drunkenness in his eyes. "And I nearly did, Jake. I nearly chucked it out the window, right onto the sidewalk. Then one day I came back to my room, looked at the bed with the crucifix over it, at the little table, the thirteen-inch color television, the little shelf of books—and everything was all right again."

"Just like that?"

Father Marchini shrugged. "Damned if I know how it happened, Jake. After that, I couldn't understand why I had ever doubted any of it." He took a lengthy sip from his glass and regarded it. "God, I haven't had this much alcohol in a long time." He looked back at Reverend Beck. "But I found out that I was a damned fool to think that I had been the only one going through it." He waved his glass. "Ego, ego. After I talked about it I found that there was only one priest out of all I knew who had never gone through something like it. And he was another story altogether." He looked off somewhere, smiling. "Father Farady, the Marine of priests—but, like I said, that's another story."

After they had had a final drink, Marchini had told him, grinning, "So worry only if it doesn't happen to you, Jake. Which won't make it any easier." He laughed. "But I imagine it happens even to Unitarians, like you, who believe in nothing but the human race; but must even come to doubt man, which, believe me, is a lot easier than doubting Him." This had been their last toast of the evening.

Even Unitarians like yourself.

Which made it all the harder for him, because there had never seemed to be anything to come to doubt. He looked again at his piece of paper: "Hate the evil, and love the good." What in God's name was so hard about that? That was just being a human being. What was there to disagree with? Nothing. But that wasn't the point. The point was . . .

I don't care anymore.

He rose, and looked at the windows. He had been wrong. The formerly dark sky was beginning to tint with color, a blue-black that always led to dawn. He held up his watch but still could not read it—though it must be close to five o'clock instead of four. That meant that soon his mind would begin to work. And he would write out that sermon, easily, and they would all listen to it, and go home, and . . . nothing.

You're a jerk, Beck.

Father Marchini, whom he had grown up with, had once jested to him that if you couldn't be a Unitarian, you couldn't be anything. But Jake knew that wasn't true, just as Marchini did. (They had once had another all-night session arguing over what religion really was. Pathway to God, or man? He remembered they had ended up agreeing on something, but was too drunk to remember what. But that had been the joy of it.) He knew that believing in man was even harder in many ways than believing in God. Not that God was left out of it, but putting such a heavy burden on such a cracked mechanism as man could strain anyone to the limit.

Maybe you don't believe in yourself anymore.

Ah.

Or maybe you just need a vacation.

He found himself laughing, this time genuinely, and that took some of the hurt away. Maybe things would resolve themselves before too long. He knew that Mary had begun to notice his moods. Maybe he was reaching the crisis point. Soon he would do what Marchini had done: either walk into the room and see everything as it was and as it should be, or leave Mary and his daughter and his pastorage and . . . become a folk singer.

He laughed, and his fingers tightened on the slip of paper in his hand, and suddenly he knew what his sermon would say.

He left the church, and for the next twenty minutes he wrote furiously, filling the legal pad on his office desk with his badly spelled script. Then, looking out the window, he saw the sun, now a ball resting on the treetops, signaling the true birth of another Sunday.

For an unusual moment, calm descended upon him. There was something about watching dawn come that made him forget the turmoil his mind had been in. The event—the rising of the sun, which could be seen as just the astronomical start of another day, a day just as the one before—could also be seen as a miracle of beginning. Maybe that was what was wrong with him: he had forgotten how to look at things. He pushed the finished sermon aside and swiveled his chair to look straight out into the dawn. There were dew-covered trees out there, birds were beginning to sing, flowers were opening to look into the sun as he was, living things . . .

His mood was broken by a soft knocking on his study door.

"Mary?" he called out, turning toward the sound. The door opened. He was surprised to see his wife up this early; usually she was a sound and long sleeper and wouldn't be up for another couple of hours. He knew immediately by the look on her face, by her tangled hair and the fear in her eyes, that something had happened. For a moment the sense of foreboding that had come over him earlier in the church returned.

"What's wrong, Mary?"

"Jacob, please come."

"What is it?"

"Please . . . " Her voice shook.

"Mary, are you all right? Christine—"

"Christine is fine." Her hands fluttered before her, as she tried to straighten her thoughts. "Come with me, Jacob."

He rose from his chair, puzzled. He followed her across the front hallway, past the rows of inlaid bookshelves fat with old volumes, untouched books in locked, keyless cases that had been through pastor after pastor. Someone had once told him that there were presentation copies from Hawthorne to Melville in there, which had only deepened his resolve to someday find that key.

Mary pushed open the deeply oiled door into the pantry, and they passed through it into the short hallway that led to the path between church and pastorage.

"Mary, where are you going?"

"Just follow, Jacob." She wrapped her bathrobe tightly around her and pushed through the door. The early air was chilly and damp, and he caught up to her and put his arm around her. She was shivering. She looked up at him for a moment, and her eyes were like those of a hunted animal.

"Mary," he began, but she pushed ahead, using her latchkey and throwing open the side door to the church, and walked steadily, as if in a trance, to the center aisle and then down it toward the back. Reverend Beck noted now how this place that had been nearly pitch-black an hour ago was filled with rosy light, how the benches gave off a warm waxed glow and the windows were filled with morning. In a few hours the light would be complete in here, and he would stand before a full congregation . . .

"Back here, Jacob."

She was at the rear of the church. For a moment he thought she would push open the great doors and let all of the morning into the place. But at the last row of benches she stopped. She turned her head to the side. Her hand came out of her bathrobe. He saw how white it was as she pointed.

"There."

He looked, and in the half-light he saw what she indicated—a bundle of clothing that solidified as he watched into a huddled figure. It was a young boy. He had been lying on the bench, a backpack under his head for a pillow. Now he sat up. He stared at the two of them, regarding them out of a strange, silent face. The boy had copper eyes, with a calm in them so deep and purposeful that Jacob Beck felt an involuntary shudder pass through him.

"I woke up and felt I had to come out here," Mary said. "I don't know why, but I had to. I thought that something had happened to you. But when I got by the side entrance, I saw you weren't here, and I became afraid. But I couldn't leave. I had to come and look. He was lying there."

"There's nothing to be afraid of, Mary," Beck said.

Jacob Beck held his shivering wife tightly. He had never seen her like this before. He turned to the boy, who still sat quietly at the far end of the bench, looking at them out of those eyes.

"Who are you?" Reverend Beck asked, trying to make his voice both kind and commanding.

The boy had turned away from him to unfold a neatly creased black golf jacket and put it on. He picked up his rucksack.

"Who are you?" Jacob Beck repeated.

"My name is Billy Potter," the boy said calmly.

There was an infinite moment of silence as Jacob Beck realized that the boy must have been with him, alone in the church, the whole night.

10

Awake.

Billy Potter's eyes opened. The ceiling rippled; a thick, long bar undulated like the surface of the ocean seen from a great height. He heard a whirr somewhere, and the lap of water against a shore.

He sat up.

The shades in the room were half drawn, but still the brightness of the day outside streamed in. The room was large; the walls were bright peach, with wallpaper showing tiny flowers. The furniture was white lacquer. There was one tall bookcase, with only one shelf filled with books, the rest lined with knickknacks and a row of identically faced dolls dressed in different national costumes. There were stuffed animals everywhere—bears, mostly, with rabbits, a large pig, and something huge and white wearing a Mexican sombrero and sunglasses. A Snoopy poster, framed, was mounted over the desk, next to which was a box filled with record albums.

There was an aquarium on a wrought iron stand on the other side of the desk; the slap of the ocean came from its gurgling pump, and the rippling on the ceiling from the outside light reflected from its surface. A few fish moved lazily within, finning their way through a stone castle and around green plastic plants. One large, cautious thing in the shape of a goldfish hid in one corner near the bottom, moving its fins listlessly and barely staying off the pebbles.

Billy put his feet on the floor. His shoes and socks were on the desk chair, his shirt and pants draped carefully over the back. He put them on. His rucksack was hung over the back of the chair. One of the straps had been opened. He refastened it. He left the backpack where it was and went to the door.

It opened with a creak onto a long silent hallway bordered in dark wood. There were other rooms. There was a bathroom with a huge white porcelain tub on black lion's feet, and a toilet with a pull chain on an overhead box. There was another bedroom, large and dark blue, with a huge poster bed, and filled with dark oiled furniture that resembled the wood in the hallway and looked like it had been built with the house. Across from the bedroom was a small room with a sewing machine in it; next to that, a room with a television, couch, and a couple of stuffed chairs. At the end of the hall was another bathroom, similar to the first but much smaller, with just a porcelain washstand and toilet.

At the end of the hallway was a huge, tall window. There was a tree close by, but its branches were sparse and the window had an almost unimpeded view of the town. There was brown rolling lawn, the sharp line of a tree-lined road, and, beyond that, a dense cluster of white houses trimmed in blue or white. To the left, close by, was a traffic light marking the main street, a pleasantly wide ribbon of small shops and the newer, necessary effluvia of any modern town: a McDonald's, a fried chicken franchise, a Burger King a scant two blocks from its rival. Beyond the main road, another dense cluster of trees and houses, roofs barely visible, and, at the edge of vision, a cleared area with a square red brick structure that was the grammar school, the chain-link fence, the swing set, and the high slide just apparent.

Billy turned from the window. There was a wide stairway, and he went down it to the first floor of the house. He walked through the kitchen, the dining room, a wide entranceway, and a living room with Victorian furniture in it, dust-free but so stuffy it looked like dust must be jammed into the furniture, generations of it waiting to burst out. Everything smelled of lemon polish and age.

He opened the front door.

The day assaulted the Victorian atmosphere of the house. Billy stepped out into air that was a little chilly, which told him that it was still morning.

He heard faint sounds from around the side of the house. He walked that way. There was the small garden he had walked through the night before, filled with roses. Then he stood before the side entrance to the church. From within, he heard a single voice, rising and falling.

He opened the door and went in. There was a short hallway, then an open area that almost looked like a stage. At a lectern stood the man who had taken him from the back of the church. The view Billy had was like that from the wings of a stage; he saw the man in profile.

"So these are simple words," the man was saying. "'Hate the evil, and love the good.' Deceptively simple. You might ask, 'Isn't it easy to love good and hate evil, simply because good is good and evil is bad?' Think about it." He gestured with his hands. "Man is a funny creature. Hating evil sounds logical, but evil is so often easy to take, so common, that it is easier to accommodate it than to hate it. And accommodation can be, in its own way, a kind of love. Evil makes itself easy to love . . ."

There was a narrow, winding stairway to Billy's left. He ascended it. The man's voice was muffled at first, then began to come back to him, amplified and echoing. The staircase opened onto a narrow loft with a pipe organ against the back wall. The organ was covered with a tarp. Billy sat on the single bench and looked out as the man at the lectern below him went on.

"Think of little things," he said, holding up his index finger. "Think of voting, for instance. How many times, when Election Day rolls around, have you thought, Why bother? I know I have. Maybe it's raining outside, or there's an early snow, or it's just plain cold. It's a day off for many of us, and the temptation is there just to stay in bed and watch TV. We think it doesn't make any difference. The same politicians always win, and politicians are all the same. The good thing to do, the right thing, would be to go out to the school and vote, no matter what the weather is, no matter what you feel about politicians. But what's the easier thing to do? Can you honestly say you'd love to do the good thing in that situation? I can't. You'd love to do the bad thing—and many of us often do. And that's just a small example."

There was a pause in Reverend Beck's talk, and Billy saw him look up and see him in the organ loft. Surprise crossed the man's face. Then he turned back to his notes.

"We can take nothing for granted," Reverend Beck continued. "That is the lesson of today's reading. Good demands of us; to love good and to hate evil is constant work. It's not as easy or as simple as it sounds. To paraphrase, if I might, 'Good is a harsh mistress.' But, if we are to make ourselves better human beings, we must be willing to take that mistress on."

There was a stirring as Reverend Beck tapped his notes back into square. He held up a hand. "Before we go on, I should mention our upcoming cake sale . . ."

Billy looked at those below him. The church was about three-quarters full: bald men in shirts and ties, women in dresses holding babies, impatient teenagers moving restlessly in their seats. There were two older women; a family of four boys poking one another, their parents turning to quiet them with a slap or whispered warning; an old woman and her husband, eyes upturned to Reverend Beck, attentive. Near the front on the left side sat a boy with short black hair, with a tall man and woman and a little girl.

As if feeling heat on the back of his neck, the boy rubbed there with his hand, and then he turned, looking up at the organ loft. His eyes went, wide. He mouthed a word, staring for a moment until the tall woman, sitting beside him, said something to him and laid her hand on his arm, gently turning him around. The boy glanced behind him again, up at the loft, but now it was empty.

Billy descended the steps and crossed the hallway to the side entrance of the church. He opened the door and went out. He stood for a moment looking at the sky; the sun was high now and it looked as though autumn would hold off for at least another day. It would be warm later, the advent of Indian summer in this late September.

He felt in his pocket where his cigarettes were and found they were missing. His matches, too. The other things he kept in there—loose change, a tiny pocketknife on the end of an empty key chain he had bought in a vending machine in a gas station washroom in Virginia—were still there.

Suddenly he was very tired. He thought of the bed he had left, the unaccustomed, soothing softness of it. He had to sleep. He knew that, before long, he would grow used to sleeping in a soft bed again, just like he would grow used to all the other things that went with staying in one place with other people. In time, he would grow used to the routine of daily living again, and his back, which had slept on the ground for these past months, would conform to the curve of a soft mattress.

At least while he was here. While he did what he had to do.

He walked back to the empty house.

11

She was back in the tent.

In the house, empty while Jacob conducted service next door, in the dark, in the bathroom with the door locked and the light off and her eyes closed, with her hands clenched and her back against the door, even with her eyes screwed so tight that tears were drawn from them with her mind screaming, Mary Beck was back in the tent.

God, tell me what to do!

She heard the sounds, and even smelled fresh-cut sawdust on the tent floor. She heard wooden folding chairs being creakingly sat upon. Coughs. The sound of spitting. Moaning and, from somewhere in the back, sobbing and the sound of a soothing voice. The sound of chant-like reading. An errant laugh, quelled. The close-by, crushing press of human flesh and spirit.

"Go on," her mother said to her.

She didn't want to go. She never wanted to. She would hide back here with her fear and they would all go away. She would be alone in a grass field, lying in the grass like that girl in the painting called Christina. She would be that girl, alone with only herself, and God somewhere way up there above the clouds, above the moon even, like He was supposed to be. He wouldn't be here next to her, in her mother, putting His hand around her heart and pulling the bottom out from her stomach, telling her what to do. She would be that girl, she would be Christina . . .

"Mary, go."

The stern voice, the stern face. God's conduit.

She opened her eyes.

"Please, Mother."

The look: the blazing deep certainty on her mother's face that stretched down to her very fingers, the nails hot, the flesh sinewy as cooked meat, the blaze of glory itself . . .

"Go."

Had her mother's face always been like that? The thin long lines, set mouth, sharp bony chin and thin-fleshed cheeks. Gray hair, always pulled back, knotted in the back with a rubber band. The thin body, the frame of a scarecrow, the look that knew what the world was and accepted no other way but her own.

No. Not always like that. The hardness had not always been there; the face and body were the same but the hardness had been added that day in that other tent, when Mary had opened her mouth to say those words, words she would take back now and swallow, hold down with all the bile, words that had changed the world and made her mother hard.

She went.

There was almost applause. It seemed there should be; the same rustle, small intake of breath, whispers of recognition, as at any talk show or lecture. She thought that if there ever really was applause, she would flee, away from her mother and God, away from everything. That would be the end of it; she would live up in the mountains, in a cave or an abandoned cabin. When winter came, she would cover herself with leaves and tree bark, deep and warm, and she would hibernate and think of nothing, and no one would find her.

The lights were hot; they were always too hot. There were June bugs out tonight, and mosquitoes as big as thumbnails. She looked up; at the top of the center pole, where it was dark green from the shadows made by the artificial light and canvas, a lone wasp circled. He landed on the pole, took off, alighted again.

Already they were starting up from the back aisles, beginning to move out into the long line that would be endless, the line of sunken faces, eyes that begged, hopeless hungry stares, rasping breath, clutching fingers, the words, "Please, please . . ."

"Brothers and sisters," Uncle Henry said. His long gray-panted leg was tall as a smokestack as he stood next to her. She refused to look up at him.

She closed her eyes.

Oh, God. What is it you want me to do?

She saw that face again; that first face. How old was she then? Five years old. The same sawdust, the same smell of tent and summer sweat, the same anticipation. She had been out in one of the folding chairs with her mother, next to the aisle. She remembered her feet swinging because they didn't reach the floor. She remembered someone in the back singing "Precious Lord" in a low voice, almost under the breath, ashamed or unwilling to share it. She remembered a fat man across the aisle from her, slapping at mosquitoes on his neck, the brown spot on his huge, almost bald head looking purple under the lights. She remembered the endless line filing past her, the cripples, the legless in wheelchairs, the bone-thin, the wheezing, the coughing, the weeping fat women with older women on their arms. They passed her like frames in a movie film, one frame for each broken human being.

And then one of them, a man with long matted hair, and a beard and sores on his face, and spittle on his lips, collapsed in the aisle next to her. He moaned and held his arms out blindly. And without thinking she held out her hand over him. And then she cried out the one word that changed her life. "Light!" she cried. For there was a great light where the man had been, a great mass of luminescence, near perfect in its fullness but for a spot, a blemish in the perfection, and she cried, "His leg! His leg!"

And then they carried him off, and the doctors looked at his leg and found what was wrong there, and then their eyes were always on her. They called her a reader, and the hardness came to her mother's eyes, the hard light of a calling, and the lines of people came to her, and there were tents all summer long, the same tents and smells, and the churches and school auditoriums and halls in the winter, Uncle Henry driving them through the freeze to see the people, see their light and tell them where to look, reading them, the mouths and eyes that begged, "Read! Tell me what it is!"

God, please tell me . . .

The mosquitoes were frenzied now. The heat of the lights, the closeness of the human bodies, the smell of hot blood, drove them around the tent in slapping clouds. The wasp, Mary saw, had settled on the pole and clung still as death, watching in the near shadows what happened below. Was that God? she thought. Was that Him up there, watching to see that she did His will, waiting to sting her with the poison of death if she did not do as He commanded?

She tugged her eyes away from the wasp onto Uncle Henry's bearded face, the stain of tobacco on his teeth, the breath of tobacco on his lips as he knelt beside her. "They're ready, child," he said.

Her mother took her arm.

She was led to the edge of the steps. Through her sandals she felt the uneven slats of wood sinking beneath her tiny weight, pushing her forward. She looked at the floor. There was an awful hush; even the mosquitoes seemed to quiet.

Her mother said into her ear, pulling aside the yellow bangs of her straight hair. "Now." She shut her eyes.

There was a body there. She did not look at or feel it, but her mind saw it. She saw broken light. She felt arms on her, clutching fingers, old skin like a turkey's throat, but her mind saw the shaping light, felt its contours, and suddenly she came to a place where the light was dim and weak, as if the brightness in the rest had been shielded or the source pulled away.

She brought her mind away, opening her eyes, forgetting what she would see. There was the face that went with the arms, the withered face, the hopeless eyes like claws, digging into her, pleading with her, "Please, please tell me how to be well."

Mary shut her eyes again, holding them closed as tight as she could. Tears wanted to come because she could not say that the woman's heart would get better, could not tell her that she would soon die, the light was so dim, that it had grown weaker even as Mary had looked at it.

She felt the woman's hand on her arm, gripping her, waiting for the answer, the sentence of death, and she only said, "Your heart," two soft words, and then the woman's hands were pried gently from her and she heard sobbing as the woman was led away. And then there was another presence before her, another light to hold in her mind, and her own heart shook not with joy but with despair because if she opened her eyes once more, she would see the same face, an endless line of the same face, out through the flaps of the tent and into the dark night, the procession of the dead and dying, the endless, endless line . . .

God, tell me what to do!

Remembering, with the hard bathroom door at her back, Mary bit her lip so hard that a rush of salty blood covered her tongue.

Plea—

Out in the hallway, she thought she heard a sound. Suddenly alert, she listened, but there was nothing, and she slumped back against the door.

Please, tell me!

She remembered the first night her mother brought her to read in the tent. There was thunder, and lightning so intense it had a sound of its own, a crack that fought with the loud thumping roars of thunderclaps and filled the July night with God's fury.

She hid under the bed with her teddy bear. Her blouse was soaked with sweat. She tried to clamp her eyes shut but the cracks of lightning made shadows even through her closed lids. The rumble of thunder shook the house, and hot wet rain beat against the side of her bedroom wall in whacking sheets, trying to break in at her. The rain fell so hard it drove through the closed shutters, pelting warm water on the floor, splashing out to hit her bare leg. She held her bear so tightly he threatened to burst.

"I won't go, Tam," she told the bear. As she said it she heard Uncle Henry hitching up the horses outside her window, shouting to the farm helper Reddy through the drenching storm. Tears ran down her face, only the salty taste making them different from the drops beating in through the window.

She opened her eyes and looked at the teddy bear, a crumpled thing that stared up at her half blindly, one button eye lost. A white flash of lightning made his face horrible.

Outside, Uncle Henry's shouts to Reddy stopped. The rain slackened. She knew Uncle Henry was in the house now. Soon her mother would come for her. As the hall clock struck the hour of seven, her mother's voice came: "Mary, it's time."

She pulled back farther under the bed, clutching the bear.

"Mary," her mother called.

The rain beat for a moment longer and then stopped, leaving the sharp, clean smell of ozone. Water dropped from the roof outside into a depression of dirt outside her window. The world smelled like July, after a storm.

The door to her room opened. Mary felt her mother enter as much as heard her. "Mary?" she called impatiently, but then the tone changed by the end of the word. Mary hugged the bear, looked out as two thin legs, bearing feet in two old shoes, stopped before the bed.

"Mary?" her mother said. Her voice had a tone Mary had not heard since she was a baby. Her mother bent down, her face dropping below the line of the bed, becoming visible to the girl.

"Come out, Mary," she said softly.

Mary crawled out. Her mother's hand brushed back her hair. She sat on the bed, next to her mother, her face buried in her mother's dress.

She heard Uncle Henry come to the door, and start to say, "We—" but then he stopped and went away. Her mother's hand rested on her head, stroking her hair.

Her mother said, "Are you scared, Mary?"

"Yes."

"Don't be. This is what God wants you to do."

"It's not!" she bawled. "He would never want me to do something I'm afraid of!" And then she was crying, and her mother held her even tighter.

"What are you afraid of?"

"I'm scared of telling them they have to die!"

"That's nothing to be frightened of. All of these people—you'll be helping them. Their light is God's own light, in them." After a moment her mother said, "God is speaking to you, Mary. He's speaking to you through me. And He's telling me that this is a great gift He's given you, and that there's nothing for you to be afraid of. He will always tell you what to do." She could feel the strength in her mother's arms. "God gave you this gift to root out Satan, Mary. That's the real reason why you must read. If you were to read Satan, you would find him out, because there would be a sickly light, nearly black emptiness, because God's light has been taken from him." She held Mary away from her, and there was an almost prophetic gleam in her eye. "If you were to root Satan out, it would be because God wanted you to, and I would be there to tell you what He wants."

Oh, God, tell me what to do!

She remembered the look on her mother's face when she left to marry Jacob, the cold certainty in her mother's grim eyes that said, "This is not what God wants. This voice in your heart is Satan's voice."

There came a sound outside the bathroom door.

Who could that be? She could hear the distant, muffled sound of voices singing a hymn, which meant that Jacob's service had not ended. Christine would be there assisting him, taking Mary's own place after she had told Jacob she did not feel well and wanted to stay in bed.

Could it be the boy?

"Who's out there?" she called.

The footsteps stopped outside the bathroom door.

Mary held her breath.

The footsteps moved away from her, down the hallway. She heard a door close and then nothing.

It must have been the boy.

Oh, God. Mother.

In all the years since she had left her mother, since she had married Jacob and become his wife, she had thought she had done the right thing. But listening to that other voice, the one in her heart, had been the wrong thing after all. As her mother had known, that voice had been Satan's, tempting her, leading her away from her reading and the true calling that God wanted her to take, the searching out of Satan.

And now her mother was gone, and she had to beg Him to tell her what to do, alone. God, please help me!

Because she had found what He had wanted her to.

That morning, when she had discovered the boy sleeping in the back of the church, huddled there like a lost animal, her mind had unconsciously opened when she put her hand on him and she had read him, and there had been only a weak, dull light.

Nearly black emptiness.

12

Someone called his name.

He heard the lap of the shore, the gurgle of water in the fish tank, but now when he opened his eyes there was no ripple on the ceiling and only a small light in the room. The ceiling was pale orange. He saw, in the corners of his vision that weren't covered by the figure standing over him, the long grotesque shadows of the stuffed animals in the room, distorted pigs and bears, orange in the glow of the lamp on the desk.

"Billy?" the figure over him called again. It was the man who had found him in the back of the church.

Billy sat up and looked at him.

The man blinked, and then a genuine smile spread across his face. "Thought you were going to sleep forever," he said. "You feel all right?" He reached out and touched the boy's forehead with the back of his hand. Billy didn't resist.

"I'm all right," he said.

"Do you know you've been in this bed since yesterday morning? It's Monday night now. I was about to make my wife call the doctor. Then I told her to wait until I saw if I could wake you myself." He smiled.

Billy pulled his legs up out of the covers and started to put his clothes on.

The man put his hand on Billy's arm. "Hold on there, partner," he said. His voice assumed an air of quiet authority. Again he put the back of his hand to Billy's forehead, then felt his neck under the chin and around the back. "Are you sure you're okay? You don't feel sick?"

Billy reached down for his shoes next to the bed. "No."

"How long has it been since you had a good night's sleep?"

"A while," he answered simply.

"I saw you in the organ loft yesterday. When I came back here and found you asleep, I thought for a moment there must be two of you. You must have really been tired to go back to bed."

Billy said nothing.

"Well . . ." The man was looking down as if weighing options. "Okay. We'll let it go at that. You hungry?"

"Yes."

"You're just in time for supper. The bathroom's down the hall; wash up and get dressed, and come downstairs to the dining room in five minutes."

Billy nodded.

Beck stood up, hesitated at the end of the bed, then almost stopped and turned at the doorway. Instead he walked down the hallway and descended the stairs to the floor below.

Billy dressed and went down.

There was the smell of cooking vegetables. There was the odor of peas and carrots, and potatoes, and the meaty smell of gravy along with the sharply pleasant burned odor of roasted chicken. He heard the clatter of silverware in the kitchen, the murmur of voices. Someone laughed in a young girlish voice, and he heard Reverend Beck laughing immediately and then the girlish voice turned to a protesting squeal. He walked into the bright light of the kitchen to see Beck sitting at the table with a girl of thirteen or so. For a moment the scene froze like a still photograph: the reverend with his hands entwined in the air in the shape of bird's wings, swooping at his daughter's head; the girl just beginning to duck away, her mouth open, trying to suppress a laugh and at the same time form the words, "Stop, Daddy!" even though she didn't want him to stop; Mrs. Beck nearby, just setting a plate down, frowning at the two of them. The photograph became a moving picture and the scene changed dramatically: Mary looked up with the dish in her hand, her frown turning to a look of sullen wariness; Jacob Beck turning his attention away from his daughter, saying, “Ah,”as his eyes met Billy's; and his daughter, her laughter instantly replaced by self-consciousness, staring down at the table in front of her.

"I see you really are awake," Jacob Beck said. He smiled and stood, regarding the boy closely. "We've certainly got enough to eat." He took his daughter by the arm gently, still looking at Billy. "This is Christine. You've been staying in her room the last couple of nights."

Christine and Billy studied each other silently.

Beck turned to introduce his wife, but she had suddenly disappeared into the kitchen.

They ate in near silence. What normally would have been a talkative dinner table became awkwardly quiet, with Jacob Beck's occasional attempts at conversation quickly failing. But the uneasiness of the table was eventually replaced by amazement as they watched Billy eat. It was as if the boy had not touched food in months. Though it was obvious that someone had trained him in table manners, he ate his food—three helpings of everything—with an almost frightening zeal. It was like watching a highly trained animal eat with a knife and fork. When he had finished .a second piece of apple pie and was holding his plate out for more, Jacob Beck could contain his amazement no longer.

"Good Lord," he said with a laugh, "you're a bottomless pit!"

"I'm hungry," Billy replied.

From the other side of the table, Mary Beck stared silently at the boy.

"When was the last time you had a sit-down meal like this?" Jacob asked.

Billy paused before answering. "Four months."

"Heavens!" He reached out for the boy, but the look on his wife's face made his hand fall to the table before it settled on Billy's. "And just what have you been eating for the past four months?"

"Bread, mostly. Sometimes I found dead things."

"Dead things?" Christine said, her voice filled with revulsion.

"Raccoons. Once, a dead snake."

It was the way he said it, the cool even voice, more than what he said, that sent a small chill through Jacob Beck.

"Yech," Christine said, covering her mouth with her napkin.

"I think we've had enough of this conversation," Mary said coolly. "Jacob, talk to the boy in your study." She got up and left the table, Christine still making faces and pushing away the remainder of her uneaten dessert.

The boy sat still as a statue. To keep their talk from looking like an interrogation, Beck had moved the lamp away from the edge of the desk, where it didn't cut across the boy's face so sharply. He also turned on the lamp on the side table near the door, to soften up the room. He'd always thought of this room as a friendly place, with warm light and himself ready to listen to any problem with an open ear, but somehow, with this boy sitting perfectly straight in the chair in front of him, he couldn't dim the feeling that the room was in the cellar of some police station and he was the tough cop with the rubber hose in his back pocket.

"Did you have enough to eat?" he said to the boy, putting as much wry warmth into his voice as he could. Long ago he had mastered the art of voice, as many professionals who counsel for a living do, and no matter how he thought or felt, he could always automatically make his tone soothing or cajoling, whatever was needed.

"No," Billy said simply.

Jacob put surprise on his face. "You nearly ate us out of house and home!"

"I'm hungry."

"Before we go to bed later, I'll see if I can sneak a little snack out of the refrigerator." Billy gazed silently at him.

Beck leaned back in his swivel chair, putting his hands behind his head. He looked down at Billy from under partly closed eyes. "You know," he said, letting his manner change from conspiratorial to serious, "you present quite a little problem for me."

Billy sat motionless.

Beck angled forward, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. "Would you like to stay here with us for a while?"

"Yes," Billy said.

"All right," Beck replied, smiling. "I think we can arrange that. My wife and I would be very pleased if you would stay until we can find out where you belong."

"Here."

"Excuse me?"

"I belong here."

Beck tried not to register the surprise he felt. He let a moment go by, then said, "What I'm really leading to, Billy, is that I have to find out where you came from, who your parents are, where you belong. You know what I mean, don't you?"

"The woman I lived with died."

"I see. Was she your mother?"

"No."

"Do you have a mother?"

Billy was silent. Then he said, "I lived with a woman named Melinda, who ran a home, but she died. So I left."

"You mean a foster home? Wasn't anyone there when she died?"

"No"

Jacob Beck picked up a pencil and began to tap the eraser end on the blotter of his desk. "Wasn't there anyone from a state agency to take care of you when Melinda died?"

"I didn't wait."

"So you left? How?"

"Hitchhiked. Slept in places I found."

"What kind of places?"

"In the desert. Side roads."

Despite his uneasiness with this solemn boy, Beck felt a rush of feeling. He had an image of the boy alone in the dark, rolled in a blanket by the side of a highway or out in the desert somewhere with night noises all around, noises that would scare anyone, the sound of prowling animals, and this young boy with just a backpack and a rolled-up blanket and a golf jacket, strange, metallic-brown eyes open, staring soberly at the dark night. For a brief moment tears welled behind his eyes, but he blinked them back.

"Billy," he said slowly, "is there anything else you can tell me about Melinda? Where she lived, what town or state her home was in?"

The boy said nothing.

"I see," Beck said. "We'll talk about this again." Impulsively, he leaned forward. "I want you to know that I only want to help you. We all do. I'll fix up one of the guest rooms, and that will be yours while you're here. I should tell you that while you're here, you'll have to play by the rules, though." He leaned back. "You'll have to keep your room clean, help around the house, with the dishes, things like that; I might even need you to help me with some things around the church." He paused. "And I should tell you that I can't allow smoking. I committed a little sin by going through your things after you fell asleep. I took the cigarettes and matches. You're too young and I just can't allow it. Do you understand?"

Billy said nothing, and then he nodded. Jacob Beck studied the boy. "Can I ask you a question?"

Billy's, eyes were unblinking.

"Billy," Beck went on, "you said that this is where you belong. When you left your last home, did you travel all that way, all those months, heading for this specific place?"

The boy was silent.

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Billy stared at him, a serious little boy in old clothes, sitting on a chair in front of a man he probably thought foolish. For a moment Beck felt the same emptiness he had felt in the church on Saturday night. Here was an enigma of a boy, and he felt inadequate in front of him. I don't care. But then it dawned on him that that wasn't it at all. For the first time in a long while, Beck realized that he was genuinely interested in something. He did care. The boy intrigued him. Here was a soul shrouded in some sort of mystery, and he wanted to help him and discover the answer to what that mystery was. A tiny thrill went through him. He realized that he felt alive again, for the first time in a long while.

Maybe this is how it happens.

He thought of his friend Father Marchini. What Marchini had said would happen was happening. It was as if a light switch that had been inadvertently turned off had been turned on again. At least, there was a flicker of hope, of faith in both himself and in God, that hadn't been there for a long time.

All because of this strange boy.

It's not all bullshit after all, he thought. He looked at the boy. I do care.

"Can I go?" Billy asked matter-of-factly.

"Yes, of course," Beck answered. "I'll bring you that snack from the refrigerator, like I promised."

He sat with his hands on the desk before him as the boy got up and walked out of the room. There was a warm feeling in him as the boy closed the door behind him. Perhaps this was what he had been waiting for. But as the door clicked shut, an irrational, tiny thought came into his mind, one that didn't quite dampen the new confidence he had attained but one that nevertheless sent a chilly tendril up his back.

Maybe he suddenly had his faith back because he was going to need it.

13

In the cold of an orange dawn, Potty Johnson whistled "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." He always started the day with that, or some other Christmas carol, "Joy to the World," or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," or, sometimes, "Silver Bells." The fact that the holiday was nearly three months away didn't matter; it could be the Fourth of July and he'd still start the hot muggy morning with "White Christmas" or "The Christmas Song" or whatever else came into his head.

It was the clink of milk bottles that made him think of Christmas. They sounded like sleigh bells. That and the fact that he started working when the sun was not yet up, at the time he always used to get up on Christmas morning with his brother and sister when he was a kid. Every morning when he loaded the cages of bottles into the truck and they began to jingle, in the hour before dawn, no matter what day it was, winter or summer, it was cold outside, and he could close his eyes at that magic moment and pretend that he was back there in his childhood skin, with his brother and sister, in his father and mother's house, and that the tree was waiting -in shadow downstairs, with dark outlines of presents all around, in neatly stacked piles, the smell of balsam hitting their nostrils—he in front, Bobby and Marian butting up against him from behind, whispering to him to hurry up. But he would take only one step down at a time, knowing that this was the only time during the whole year you could do this—that an hour from now it wouldn't be the same, all the presents would be opened, and Mother and Father would be yawning their way into the kitchen to make coffee (that alone, the coffee, would dull the balsam smell), the lights would be on, the sun coming up. (Was there snow this year? Yes!) In short, it would all be over. This was the moment to kiss, the moment when it was all still ahead, each step a step closer in anticipation, the rising excitement, the glowing single moment of each year just ahead, a step closer, step closer . . .

"Come on, Potty!" Marian would finally say, moving past him followed by their brother. But still he would linger, not wanting this moment to end, wanting it to go on forever. He would leave all the rest—the presents and the hugs and the thank you's and Father opening a box with the same ties in it—he would give it all up—the presents, even, for this supreme moment to last always. Another step down, he heard Bobby and Marian around the corner in the hallway, themselves lingering, waiting for him to catch up, not wanting to go in just yet, maybe afraid to go in without him, afraid that somehow the spell would be broken since this was the way they always did it. Another step, hand on the railing near the bottom, brushing past the three long barber-pole-striped stockings that hung between the iron of the railing, something heavy at the bottom of the first one (it had to be an orange in the toe—there was always an orange in the toe), then a light brush of the other two stockings—which would wait till the end for exploration, since they were always of secondary importance to what waited in the living room.

"Potty, come on!" Bobby whisper-shouted to him. And with a sigh he suddenly found that his unslippered foot was off the carpet of the stairs and on the cool-cold floor of the tiled hallway.

"Coming," he whispered back.

Still he lingered at the bottom of the stairs, his hand on the railing, looking up at the darkness above from which they had descended. He almost wanted to go back up, start all over again . . .

Hearing the impatient groans of his brother and sister, he let go of the railing and followed them into the mouth of the kitchen.

No coffee yet. There was only the smell of a kitchen cleaned the night before in anticipation of a holiday. There was the clean odor of Comet in the sink, and the faint smell of fruit. That was from Mr. Antonela's basket, the one he came over with every Christmas Eve from his own fruit market. There were things in there they never ate any other time: dates and figs, golden raisins as big as knuckles, damson plums from the Mideast, oranges so huge they wouldn't fit in the toe of any stocking, apples shined so red they hurt the eyes, two kinds of pears—skinny pale and fat green—figs on strings like necklaces, grapefruit ready to explode.

They stuck their heads in a little farther, past the kitchen smells, past the fruit . . .

There. From the family room just to the left, an odor that slapped at them, made them dizzy. Their fingers buzzed with anticipation at the smell of . . .

The tree. There, in the darkness, it looked like a sentinel over Christmas, with a smell like nothing else, grabbing the nose like outdoors, indoors. Outside, a balsam was a tree; inside, it was Christmas.

"Can you see anything?" Bobby said anxiously. He was behind his two older siblings, pushing against them, trying to peer into the room.

"Wow," Potty said, still lost in the smell of the tree. But his eyes were beginning to adjust to the outlines of what lay in the treasure room.

Outlines. Silhouettes, piles of dark boxes set against the barely dawning sky that leaked through the big windows. His eyes ran over this mountain range of Christmas presents: odd angles of the unknown, the faintly made-out profile of an asked-for gift, a contour that might be the sled Potty had asked for, or the wagon Bobby wanted, or might be something else entirely, wonderful on its own.

They stood in the entranceway, three short steps down into Wonderland—three abreast with their eyes straining, noses still sniffing tree smell. Still, they wouldn't take that step. Still, Potty wanted it all to go on.

Dawn grew a little bit lighter, sent the mysterious mountains into almost three dimensions, made faint letters appear on boxes, gave corners to others, made the sled into what had to be a sled, runner nearly visible.

"That one's mine!" Bobby cried suddenly, running past the other two, jumping down the short steps to run across the room to where his presents lay stacked on a stuffed chair.

"That's for me!" Marian shouted a moment later, then she, too, was down into the room, slippered feet hurrying her to another stack on the couch and to a neighboring rocking chair, with recognizable Marian-type things on it.

Still, Potty hesitated. Why does it have to end!

He stepped down.

And then the sun came up, and the coffee went on, and sleepy Mom and Dad were there, and everything was opened, and . . .

The magic bled away.

Bottles chimed one against the other.

Potty smiled. He pulled his wire rack from the truck, thinking about how lucky he was to be a milkman, one of the few left. Milkmen coming with glass bottles was something else he remembered from his youth. He knew he was a romantic. Actually, being a milkman was pretty tedious, but the fact that he worked at a time of day when he could think about all these things, and was not bothered with other people, made it bearable.

He felt something cold and wet on his neck. He looked up, and it was . . .

Snowing.

"Holy cats." This was not just a chance dusting. There were big fat flakes coming down, dancing around one another and laying themselves like sleepers on the ground around his feet. And suddenly there was a smell in the air like snow—not like the first snow of the year but as of a particular snowfall, a special one, and suddenly it smelled like . . .

Christmas.

"Jumping cats," Potty said. The sky was now filled with snow. It was building up around his feet. Unbelieving, he stepped back and sat on the bumper of the truck, putting the milk bottles down. They clinked. He watched as snowflakes clung to the sides of the milk bottles, white against white. A few melted, running down the glass, but the others kissed the bottles, sticking to them.

There was a lot of snow falling, and Potty tried to remember if the sky had been clear when he'd set out on his rounds. After all, it was only the beginning of October. It wasn't even Halloween yet. Had they ever had a snow this early? He couldn't remember it ever happening. Usually the first snow came around Thanksgiving, and usually it was a powdering that he would watch from his schoolroom window. It would remind him of the coming holiday, with the parades on TV with Santa at the end, which meant that Christmas was on the way. Heck, hadn't the stars been out when he left the plant? Hadn't he watched the first orange of dawn push up at the horizon after he'd made his first couple of stops?

The snow was ankle-deep.

What's going on?

Then he knew.

The sound came from above him, high in the swirls of snow. He remembered one Christmas Eve when it had snowed like this. That was the special snowfall he'd remembered. He'd been out in the fields at the edge of town with Bobby and with Luke Marple, talking about the next day, all of them hoping it would snow like the radio said it might. And, just as they started for home, it had begun to snow. Big flakes, just like this. They'd begun to whoop and dance around one another as if a prayer had been answered.

But he hadn't heard this sound then.

He heard it now. God, it can't be. It was up there, high in the snowy clouds, part of the snow, belonging to it, just like he'd thought about it that same night when he and Bobby and Luke had seen the snowfall start. He'd lain in his bed that night, knowing the magic hour was not far off, waiting for sleep, listening through the snow for that sound, that wonderful sound.

He reached down and picked up his wire basket of milk bottles, and made the sound along with it.

"Bells!" he shouted. "Sleigh bells!" He stared up, one arm moving the basket of milk bottles, clinking them in time with the sound above, the other arm waving over his head as if in signal. "Here!" his arm was saying. The sleigh bells grew louder. He could hear the individual tap of them against the reins, the swish of something large drawn through the air—he could hear, just hear, a muffled cry and a faint, faint laugh. The snow was up to his shins, but he danced and danced and shouted into the maelstrom, "Here! Here!"

He knew it was descending. In the snow his eyes were a blind man's, but so were his ears. He could sense each movement in the naked air. He felt a swish past him. Then he gasped and shouted, his mouth open with pleasure as he saw, just poked out of the snow clouds over his head, the long cool line of a sleigh runner and the flat bottom of a hoof. It pulled up and away, and he heard and felt it circle before it landed. He heard a loud bump and a laugh behind his milk truck, then the snorting of reined animals.

He felt the weight of something heavy out there in the snow.

"Is it you?" he cried. "Is it?"

Someone laughed the right laugh.

"It can't be," Potty Johnson said. He knew it couldn't be. But it was. Why? But why not? Each morning he had relived the happiest time of his life, pushing from his mind the fact that his brother, Bobby, had been killed in Lebanon by a suicide bomber; that Marian, whom he hadn't seen in three years, was unhappily married in California to someone everyone could see right from the beginning would be no good to her, to someone she had fought with them about, had run away and married, and now didn't even send Christmas cards, trapped at home with a child she didn't want and two-thirds an alcoholic; that his parents had divorced when he was fifteen and his brother and sister were only twelve and ten; that the happy life he had thought they'd always have had gone to ashes in the space of three short months, when his mother couldn't take the fact that his father had been cheating on her with various women for ten years and just got tired of taking it, tired of trying to wait until all the kids were grown and out of the house, so she just left and let the lawyers do the rest. He had been able to forget it all every morning, what his own life was: thirty-five, divorced, full of the memories of his fights with his wife over having kids, since she didn't want to have any and he did, remembering what it was like to be a kid, the things he could give his own kids, the Christmases he could give them. "Big baby," Janice had called him, with affection when they'd first married, later in derision, and finally in hate. "You dream about something that probably never really existed," she spat at him that last time, when she'd moved out of the house, not back to her mother like she'd said, but to live with the guy she'd worked for as a secretary, whom she'd probably been screwing for a year or two . . .

The sleigh bells jangled.

He heard that laugh again. And now he didn't care. It had to be real because sometimes your dreams come true, just like Walt Disney said. Here was his dream coming true. He was back in his childhood, it was Christmas, and Santa was here. "Ho-ho!" he heard out in the swirling snow, on the other side of the truck. One of the reindeer snorted. And then he heard his name. "Potty!" Santa called, his bass voice filled with mirth. "Potty, where are you?"

"Here!" he said, and then he was up on his feet, stumbling over the milk bottles ("Ching! Ching!" they answered) and moving around the truck into the clouds of snow. It was nearly up to his knees. He plowed through, feeling it soak through his pants to his skin.

"I'm coming!" he shouted, and in answer he heard Santa laugh.

He was surrounded by a fog of white. He began to shiver. He was aware of how cold it must be if it was snowing like this. There were snowflakes sticking to his eyelids, pushing against his face, making it difficult to see. He heard more laughter, and he moved toward it. He was very cold. He shivered, like the time when he'd gone swimming one summer night, forgetting to bring a towel, just peeling off his clothes while his brother watched, and when it suddenly turned cold and the chill night air got to him, he felt the way he did now.

"Potty, where are you!" the chuckling voice called.

"Here! I'm coming!" Potty shouted breathlessly. He fell, but his hand brushed across something thick and solid, and when he grabbed it, he knew it was the runner of the sleigh.

"Santa?" he asked, standing up. His hand moved over the smooth cherry-red surface of the sled. It was trimmed in polished gold, a thin perfect line of fresh-cut holly laced around it. His bare hand touched the reins, brown leather as supple as a baby's skin. The front was hollowed wide for its single passenger, lined in green brocade. He put his hand out into the blinding snow and found the warm flank of a reindeer, hard and bristle-haired. The animal moved from side to side and chuffed breath from its mouth. "Santa?" he called into the snow.

"Potty? Back here!"

"Yes!" Potty said. He stumbled to the rear of the sleigh. He saw a flash of moving red and then everything was swallowed up by whipping snow. His hands found the sleigh and he moved alongside until he felt something made of burlap, stretched tight and filled with jutting objects. He felt as high as his hand could reach, standing on the runner of the sled, but still he couldn't reach the top of the bag. As he moved around behind the sleigh, the bag only grew in dimension.

He said, "Wow," just as he had on Christmas mornings so long ago.

An old feeling came to him: he didn't want this to end. He knew he was coming to the open end of the bag. When that happened, the surprise would be gone. All the toys would spill out around him, and Christmas would be over. He felt things under the folds of the bag—curves that told him he was touching a boat, a box that felt like a model airplane, a dog with button eyes, a baseball bat, a wagon. Was this the wagon he had asked for that Christmas and not gotten? Though he was nearly sightless, he had touched the open rim of the bag, his searching fingers finding the long black handle of the wagon.

"Potty," a voice said from behind. He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. The hand was black-gloved below, a rim of rich white fur bordering a velvet red sleeve. Potty blinked, and could just make out the white beard, the red-apple cheeks, the shining blue eyes and napped red cap inches from his own face.

"Potty, it's all for you." The voice was his father's voice the way Potty wanted it to be. It was Santa Claus's voice, every day of the year. This voice never got mad for no reason, never said things it didn't mean; didn't order him to his room, taunting him with his nickname, telling him that they'd called him that because he hadn't been potty-trained until he was nearly six, that he'd wet the bed nearly every night and spent endless fruitless hours on the toilet seat trying to learn; this voice never yelled at his mother, calling her a frigid slut and screaming that he was sick of them all.

"All for you, Potty." The smiling, white-bearded man gently pressed Potty's shoulders, so that he would turn around to the bag. He didn't want to yet. He wanted to wait, to savor it. But he turned because Santa wanted him to. He looked into the bag. It was dark, so long and so deep he couldn't see anything at first. Then, down at the bottom, he saw something. There was a pile of boxes down there, all angles and bright colors and wrappings. His presents were stacked a mile high on top of his red wagon. There was everything he'd ever wanted down there—the microscope, the butterfly kit, the ant farm, the rock polisher, the autograph model Harmon Killebrew glove, the six-foot glider made of white Styrofoam, the radio-controlled boat.

But it was all so far away.

"Santa," he said, and when he turned, Santa's face was there in front of his, the snow forming a halo behind it. Santa's face was bright and merry, and his beard was fluffed and his cheeks were red. But his eyes had turned from twinkling blue to bright sun, the color of summer days far from Christmas.

"Santa," Potty said, and Santa smiled and once again turned him around by the shoulders. Potty saw the bag open wide as he fell down into it, the presents down there getting closer, rising toward him. Then all the sharply angled new boxes and brightly colored wrappings, the bows on top, the spanking new wagon with red hub capped wheels and black enameled handle, the one he wanted so badly—all of it was gone, and where everything had been, where his wagon had been, was only a hard shiny thing, a laughing flat face with huge copper eyes and red flaming cheeks and a laughing mouth filled with rows and rows of sharp grinning teeth and he fell at the horrid laughing thing that became the ground.

14

Again, a routine was established. Each morning Billy rose at six-thirty and, after making his bed and straightening his room, went down the long stairway to breakfast. Breakfast was different here than it had been at Melinda's; though everyone met at roughly the same time, there was not the same feeling at the table as there had been at Melinda's house. Everyone here was preoccupied with their own day's beginning. Reverend Beck was still half asleep at this time of the morning (except on Sundays when he’d been up all Saturday night working on his sermon and hadn’t slept at all), and what little wakefulness he was able to muster went toward concentrating on his day’s duties ahead. Mrs. Beck was busier serving breakfast than anything else. She usually sat down to eat when the others were about to get up and leave. Only Christine was on the same schedule as Billy, but her initial interest and curiosity in him had cooled. The two of them were at a stalemate. She ignored him unless she had something specific to deal with.

“Christine, did you finish that math homework last night?” Jacob Beck asked, putting down the copy of Time magazine he’d been peering at.

“Yes,” she said, looking at her plate.

“All of it?”

“Most.”

Jacob leveled his gaze at her.

“I finished almost everything,” Christine protested. “There were a couple of problems I couldn’t get. I’ll do them in homeroom.”

“Billy, did you finish your work last night?” Jacob asked.

“Yes,” the boy answered.

“If Billy could . . . ” Jacob began but Christine pushed herself away from the table.

“Because I’m not Billy,” she said angrily, getting up and stalking to the front hallway. She threw on her coat, and a moment later stormed out the front door.

From the kitchen, Mary Beck gave her husband the hard, changed look she had been giving him often lately.

When Billy left the house, Christine turned away, facing down the block so that the full back of her jacket was to him. The morning was chilly and crisp. Leaves that had danced in the wind the night before now rested quietly on the sidewalks and in the gutter. They showed the first not-quite bright colors of early autumn; their cousins to follow would be riotous compared to their serenity.

The bus was late. Christine moved the toe of one sneaker nervously back and forth through the leaves. She looked up the block for the bus, and switched her schoolbooks from arm to arm. Finally, she turned to face Billy. "You were staring at me!" she screamed. "What is it with you? Why don't you go away, back to your parents or wherever you came from!"

Billy was silent.

"Why did you have to come here?" she said. "You've got my father eating out of your hand, but don't think that's going to get you anywhere. You're a creep, just like they say you are. Everybody knows it."

At that moment the bus appeared, huffing to a stop at the curb.

"Stay away from me!" Christine said, moving ahead of him onto the bus, threading her way to a back seat and looking behind to make sure he didn't follow.

Billy climbed quietly into the vehicle and sat in the third seat from the front behind the bus driver, near the window. It was always empty for him. The seat next to him would remain unoccupied all the way to school, even if the bus was crowded and some of the others had to stand in the aisle.

Billy's day wore inevitably on, through English and geography, a study period and then math. In math class, Christine sat only two seats in front of him, and she squirmed when Ms. Bates, the teacher, asked them to turn in their written homework.

The lunch bell rang. There was an avalanche of children into the halls, through the cafeteria and out into the school yard.

Billy went to the corner where he always sat, with his lunch bag beside him and his back against an oak tree. Sometimes he faced the school yard, watching the games of tag and stickball. Today, he faced the other way, toward the chain-link fence that separated the school from the rest of the world. He watched the trucks go by, the mothers with strollers, the occasional hooky-playing student sneaking out the front gate to Miller's deli or to have a smoke in an alley across the street. Today there was the slow progress of the knife-sharpener man's truck as it rolled smoothly up the road. Its tinkling bells announced its arrival, and the huge open window on the wooden side of the ancient truck announced that it was open for business. No one stopped it.

From behind, someone said Billy's name. It was a statement, not a question. Billy turned his head. He put his sandwich down carefully on its wax paper next to the other half.

It was John, from Melinda's house. The same John he had seen in Jacob Beck's church, staring up at him from the pew below.

Silence stretched between them. Behind them, the knife-sharpener man's truck moved slowly away, the tinkle of its bells dimming.

"Why are you here?" John asked.

"This is where I belong," Billy replied.

"Why?"

Billy's face was blank.

"You'll live with the Becks for a while," John said, "but it won't last. They won't want you. No one will. They'll all be afraid of you."

"Are you?"

There was a sudden tight movement of John's Adam's apple, a nervous movement of his hands at his sides, that said more than his mouth could.

"I saw what you did to Jim Crane in the school yard that day," John said. There was a quiver in his voice. "I saw your eyes." Desperate anger rose in John's voice. "I knew Melinda liked you better than the rest of us. I saw that the day she brought you home. She told me once you needed her more. But I never believed that. I think you used her. I think you fooled her like you fooled everybody else. You fooled Marsh and Rebecca, too." He balled one of his fists and banged it against his side. A tear snaked down one cheek. His face was flushed. "You know where I came from? My father came home from work one day and kicked me out. He'd done the same thing to my mother. But now he had another woman, and he didn't want me around to remind him of my mother. He didn't even give me a chance to take anything with me. I had a baseball-card collection, and . . ." Hot tears rolled down his face, and he wiped at them with his sleeve. He glanced quickly to see that no one else in the school yard was near them, before the unstoppable flow of his words, of what was in him, forced him to go on. "He didn't even let me get that! I had a glove, and my new sneakers, and . . ." He paused, calming himself before going on. "Most of it my mother had given me. When Melinda found me, I'd been eating out of garbage cans for a month. She took me in and people loved me there. Only my mother had ever loved me." His eyes filled with red anger. "And then you came. Everything they gave to me—Melinda, Marsh, and Rebecca—they gave to you. I thought I'd found a new home, and then you came.

"And now you're here, and you want to steal it all again. You couldn't stand to see that I got everything I ever wanted, so you followed me here. I wouldn't be surprised if you killed Melinda before you came here. I don't care what you are. You're not going to take everything away from me again."

Christine appeared, stopping about ten feet away. "John, you okay?" she asked.

"I'll be right there," John answered. The flush had begun to recede from his face.

Christine walked a few steps away, stopping to wait for him.

John looked down at Billy, whose facial expression had not changed. The same steady gaze met him.

"Just stay away from me," John hissed, pointing a finger down at Billy. "I don't care what you are. Don't bother me, or this time I'll make sure you get taken care of."

He walked away quickly to meet Christine, who took his hand. They talked as they retreated, glancing back once at Billy before joining a group of boys and girls, one of them a tall boy with long blond hair and tight jeans who laughed and shouted "Hey!" as the crowd drifted to the other side of the playground.

Billy picked up his sandwich. It lay on wax paper on top of his lunch bag. He turned toward the chain-link fence again. The knife-sharpener's truck was long gone. Across the street someone came out of the deli, a man in a gray sweatshirt with a tool belt around his waist and a thin cigar in his mouth. He cradled a large paper bag in one hand. He shaded his eyes with his other hand and looked up one side of the street. Then he walked down the block away from the school. Near the end of the block he met two other men sitting on the lowered tail end of a pickup truck. He rested the bag there, and the three of them laughed over something one of them said and began to eat.

Overhead, a bird landed in the tree, announcing its arrival with three sharp notes. Billy glanced up; the bird met his gaze, one eye cocked to the side. It flapped its deep blue wings and went to a neighboring tree, where it perched, regarding him curiously.

Billy looked through the chain-link fence. Then a long, sharp set of clangs, the bell signaling the end of lunch, sounded behind him. Down at the end of the block, the three men and their pickup were gone. A torn paper bag in the gutter was the only evidence that they had ever been there. In the tree next to the one he sat under, the bird had taken flight.

Billy gathered up the remains of his lunch. He put everything into the paper bag, closing the top and folding it neatly over.

He rose, taking the bag with him, and went back to school.

15

Hate.

The world was bright with it. There was nothing else. The world was a copper thing, seen through cool eyes. It thought of its self-control, and deep inside, behind the cold mask, it laughed even as it wanted to scream, to flail out, bring its arms up and strike and strike until there was red everywhere, let its tongue lash out and bite, its fingers grab and rip until the nails were raw with blood, its legs kick and break bones. It wanted to butt with its head, take hammer and knife and scream as it hit and hit again, hearing the sound of breaking bones that was music. It wanted to hear screaming voices, voices begging for release; it wanted to grind broken teeth beneath its foot, push teeth back into gagging mouths until those mouths were filled with them, choked on them, and the eyes bugged out, cheeks flushed purple-black, tongue pushed out futilely, begging, flailing, begging, dying . . .

There came a sound from outside, and it looked out the window. Below, on the street, two teenagers were walking by, arm in arm. The boy was taunting the girl, tickling her at the waist, and she was moving away from him and then back, their hands interlocking. Under a streetlamp, they stopped and abruptly kissed, then the boy's fingers went to her side and tickled her. She broke away laughing, but then they kissed again, longer and harder. They walked on, arm in arm, talking, out of the lamplight and back into the night.

A want filled it greater than any it had ever known. It longed to open the window and climb out, as it had on other nights, and follow the girl and boy. They would probably go into the park; it had seen other teenagers go there, into one of the secluded spots by the pond or under the stone bridge that spanned the stream that fed it. There were other places, at the far end of ball fields, by the unused bandstand, and it would be easy for it to track them to one of these spots. What then? Perhaps it would become one of their teachers or parents, appearing out of nowhere to scold them. Or perhaps--yes, better yet—an angel, an apparition from the heaven they would so shortly inhabit, come to tell them their love would last forever. It could almost see their rapt faces, their young, lightly-pimpled complexions spread into happy smiles, contemplating the life of bliss their puppy love would flower into. And then? Then it would metamorphose before their eyes into—something else. Most of these stupid teenagers went to see all the horror movies, and so it would turn from angel to devil, a reptilian horror in green, crusted skin with a sewage-like odor. Its face would be the face of a huge, enraged lizard, eyes wide and yellow, nostrils flaring, the teeth sharp and white and long. It would scream at them in its deep voice that it knew what they had been doing, that they would go to hell for it, and that it had come to take them. And then it would let the girl watch as it pounced on the boy, who would put up a fierce doomed struggle, and it would bite him with its teeth, letting the girl see as it ripped at her boyfriend's flesh, tearing it in great strips from his body, biting deep into his arm or leg, through the bone, letting the boy and girl hear the sound of the boy's bones being snapped, and then the girl would scream and try to tear it away and it would turn on her, brandishing the head of her boyfriend, and laugh and howl into her face, "You will go to hell! You will go to hell!"

And then in the morning, someone strolling through the park would find their two bodies, suicides, the illusions it had twisted out of the light in their bodies long dissipated by the time they'd be found, strung up side by side from a tree, apparently just another lovesick couple filled with hopelessness, unaware that in reality they had been hanging themselves with their own hands while their eyes and brains were seeing themselves consumed by the devil.

That was what it wanted to do; what it wanted to do right now was climb through the window; as it had so many other nights, and follow those two stupid young lovers and kill them, kill them—

But it would not. And it would do none of those other things, those things it longed to do, ripping flesh, the world in red and the cracking sound of breaking bones and torn limbs filling its ears . . .

At least not yet. There would be time for all these things, if it only continued to be, as that silly fag art teacher had kept saying to himself—

Careful.

For even as the fires raged deep inside, the fires that wanted to lash out, to burn and rape and tear limb from socket, even as the fires burned as hot as the core of the sun, it continued to look at the world through eyes as cool as the dead emptiness of space between stars. Because, a long time ago, it had learned patience, and cunning—had learned to be . . .

Careful.

There had been close calls, times when a flash of what it knew and could perform had leaked out, mostly before it was ready to use these things, but at those times it had been lucky, and the damage had been minimal and mended. There was a memory of the day it had discovered not only its powers and urges, but the need for temperance, and that had been the luckiest day of all. It could not have been more than a year old, but it remembered the day as if it had been its birthing day itself. In many ways it had been. The day was sunny and blue, early June by the weather, with summer still held at bay by high spring. The world smelled like flowers. There were clouds overhead, so high they seemed part of another world. It was lying in its stroller, in a park somewhere, and it was looking up at those clouds when suddenly it realized what they looked like. They looked like the light it saw when it touched its mother or anyone else. And it knew what it wanted to do. Those clouds were beautiful—high and as fluffy as cotton balls. But it wanted to make them turn black, shred them to bits, rip them with its teeth. And it knew it could do that to the light it saw when it touched its mother, could rend that light, twist and deform it. A burst of insight went through it; its entire being filled with a fierce dark knowledge and it knew who it was. And what it could do. It looked at the low walls that imprisoned it, the padded dark blue vinyl of the stroller where it lay, with the sun bonnet folded back, and it wanted to mash that carriage to shreds of plastic and stuffing. It wanted to make the flowers it smelled wither and die, make them reek instantly like mold and rotting earth, make the day turn sour, fill it with burning rain and thunderheads, the wind howling, make the tops of fresh green trees whip one against another, ripping each other to pulpy bits. It wanted to do all these things.

It felt a vast, exhilarating power tearing through its veins, and suddenly, with an uncontrollable urge, it wanted to do all these things now. It reached its hands up, and willed the day to turn black. Nothing happened. Rage consumed it; it began to beat its fists wildly on the sides of the stroller, tried to rip the plastic from its frame with its tiny hands, crying and crying.

"What is it?" a face said above it. The mother. The face was huge, the mouth downturned in a silly pout filled with concern, the eyes filled with both caring and something else. Fear? Not quite, but something like it.

Suddenly, looking up at that face, it longed to rip those huge, caring cow eyes out, tear the flesh from the mouth

A look of alarm crossed the mother's face. It had gone too far, it knew; and now it learned its first lesson. It pulled back until there was only concern on the mother's face, and that thing below fear, and it turned its cries into whimpers and then managed, with all of its raging will, to put a small smile on its face.

"There, there, that's better," the mother said. It felt the mother's hands upon it, huge hateful things, and it saw the soft strong light that was in the mother and wanted to rend that light with its hands, but it cooed and laughed, and the mother smiled. "There, such a fright you gave me!"

It heard another voice, and the mother turned her head away, talking to someone else: ". . . all right now, everything's all right," it heard the mother say to the new voice. Then there was a new face peering down at it, a face it hadn't seen before: old and small, like a chimpanzee's, wrinkles around the mouth and eyes, nose pitted with age, only the eyes bright. The old man smiled down at it, reached a bent finger in, and tickled it under the chin. "Is the baby good now?" the old man said in a high, silly voice. "Is the baby good?" The old face retreated, and once more it heard the two voices, the mother and the old man, conversing on the park bench.

The cloud overhead was passing out of its line of vision. It thought about what had happened. It knew the power was in it to do the things it wanted, but it knew now that it would take time to be strong enough. Like all of the other, noxious things it must learn to do—crawl, walk, talk, eat with a spoon, and drink from a cup—this, too, must be learned slowly. But it would learn. It would learn to walk and then run, and then, slowly, it would learn to . . .

The old face blocked out the cloud again and hung over it. "Good little baby?" the cracked lips asked. It saw where a spot of drool sat toad-like on one corner of the old man's mouth; the teeth were age-yellow and there was a breath of garlic and red wine and age. Seventy years of odors drifted from the old man's mouth—toothpaste, and apples, and garlic—seventy years of rotted food and decay.

Without hesitation, it reached up a tiny hand and touched the old man's face. The old man drew back for a moment, the eyes widened in surprise, but then he let its hand rest on his face. Inside, it felt something happen. It felt a tiny window behind its eyes open, and as its hand lay on the old man's cheek, as it saw the old man's light, the light of life itself, it saw a tiny spot in his chest that was not as luminous as the rest. And then, as its tiny fingers stroked the old man's cheek, a gesture that made the old man laugh with misunderstood pleasure as it probed the old man's fractured light, it began to teach itself how to bend the light and make it do whatever it wanted. It could, it knew, make the old man see whatever it wanted him to, could make him see the things in his mind, his long-dead son, killed in the war, his daughter, who had run away, his wife, who, even now, lay childish and dying in the home across the park. Or it could shape the light, could go to that small weak luminescence in the chest and . . .

It stared into the old man's eyes and knew there was something it could do now. Something safe, that no one would know about. Just as it had learned to crawl, it was learning this now. It let the rage fill it, let the hate run through its body as the old man cooed above him, and then it opened its eyes wide and twisted that little weak spot of light.

The old man stopped cooing. Another spot of spittle, and then another, appeared on his lips. His cracked hand reached up toward his face, waving at something it couldn't quite see, and his eyes grew glazed. The old face moved up and away, and then the mother was shouting and the old man's face was completely gone and the mother was screaming for help. It heard a sound come from the old man, a dry crackle like a bunch of sticks being broken, and then nothing.

There were more sounds of alarm around him, more people running toward them, but it just cooed and waved its hands in the air as no one bothered with it, reached up at the next fat white cloud rolling overhead . . .

Hate.

So it had learned hate, but at the same time it had learned patience. And it had grown. And the hate, the deep golden hate that was in it, grew and matured along with its body. A calm descended over its exterior, a beautiful mask that it formed and shaped year by year until it was all but invisible, though the storm raged on inside. It was a storm that all but consumed it, a fiery reactor with its always burning core unquenchably hot—but it was something, this hot hate, that it learned to control and nurture. The core wanted to explode and fill the world around it with the destructive loathing it felt, but it taught itself to rein in the power, to let it grow slowly along with its body, until the time when it needed to hide no longer, when it was old enough, and strong enough, to let the power explode from deep within. And even when it discovered that its strength had grown to the point that it didn't even need to use the touch of its hands to effect its power—that its mind alone could feel the lifelight, twist and deform it to its will—still it was patient.

It waited, and it grew.

When the time came, it would rend branch from tree, leaf from branch, limb from body . . .

When the time came. Until then, it was . . . careful. It took an outlet for its hatred here and there, feeding the reactor within itself without letting on that it existed. Now and then, it bent and shaped the light on an isolated victim, learning a new way to use its power.

Someday, it knew, it would need all of its power. But it knew that when the time came, it would be ready.

When the time came . . .

Hate.

16

Here it was, another Saturday night, God knew what time, and . . . he was finished.

He stared down at the neatly stacked sheets of note paper before him, and shook his head. Not bad, Jacob. He had been afraid to look at his watch, but now that it was all over, that the white heat had possessed him and let him go, leaving him with one of the best sermons he had ever written, he brought his wrist in front of his eyes. One-thirty.

Could it be? One-thirty in the morning, and he was actually done? He hadn't worked that fast since the first few weeks he had come here—and even then it had been because he had arrived armed with a clutch of partially finished sermons, hammered out in school and during the long summer while he and Mary waited for his appointment to go through, when he had worked as a clerk in a supermarket because he had refused to let his parents support them. One-thirty. Not bad at all. And here he was, still seated in his comfortable chair in his study, not pacing the floor of the church like a lunatic or beating his fists futilely against one of the pew railings. He had drunk two cups of coffee, smoked one pipe, and—he looked down again at the neat sure handwriting, the thoughts still freshly laid out in his mind as they were on the paper—well, he was done.

It was remarkable. A mere month ago he had been a wreck, questioning his faith as well as his life. Now he felt surer about himself than he had in years. He had even called Joe Marchini about it. The priest had laughed like a hyena, but there had been a few moments before they hung up when Marchini had gotten as serious as he had ever heard him. "Well, Jake," he'd said, "you can see that there was just no way I could make you understand until it happened to you. I think you'll agree that it's one of the damnedest manifestations of God's will that you could ever imagine. We're so used, in this business of ours, to calling down His works on other people, but until He does something like this to you, you don't really know what it's all about. It's like leaving your rookie year behind to become a veteran. I don't really know how to explain it."

"Neither do I, Joe," he had said, and then they had both hung up, almost simultaneously, neither having to say the word "good-bye." They knew the call was over, and what it had all been about. And Jacob knew then that what Marchini had said was true: it was like being tested, and getting the exam back with an A on it,

But how had it happened? How had it turned around so quickly? That was nearly as much a mystery as the testing itself. He knew it had to do with Billy, but why? What was it about the boy that had pulled this response from so deep within him? What had made him believe in himself, in mankind, in God, again?

Because the boy needs you.

That was it. There was something about Billy, some mysterious want or need that Jacob felt compelled to fulfill. The fact that he didn't know what it was only increased his certainty that the boy needed him. He had thought for a time that possibly it was a reaction fostered by the fact that he didn't have a son of his own, but he had dismissed that. There was a gulf, a deep empty hole, in this boy, something that was almost frightening in its intensity, and Jacob Beck wanted to find out what was missing and provide it.

Billy needs you.

He looked down again at the neatly scrawled notes of his sermon, then turned out the lamp on his desk and left his office. One-thirty in the morning. This would be the first time he got any kind of sleep on a Saturday night since he could remember. Now that he thought about it, he wondered if he would be able to sleep. He was so used to staying up all night on Saturday that he might end up battling sleeplessness. Well, at least he could pass the time pleasantly for once, watching television or reading a book instead of agonizing over a line of scripture he didn't care about.

He went to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator to see if there was anything worth eating. Nothing. He straightened up and yawned, realizing that maybe he was tired after all and that he might as well try to sleep. He could always get up if insomnia assaulted him.

He trudged up the stairs. Passing Billy's room, he saw light under the door.

He hesitated, weighing whether or not he should investigate. The boy deserved his privacy. But it really was too late for him to be up. He listened at the door, heard nothing. He knocked lightly, then eased open the door and stepped in.

The lamp next to the bed was on. But the bed was unmade, the coverlet drawn smoothly over the pillow.

"Billy?" he called tentatively.

He located the boy's figure seated in a straight-backed chair drawn up to the window.

"Are you all right?" he asked, moving closer.

The boy seemed to be staring out through the window, into the night.

"Billy?" Jacob said again, reaching out for him.

The boy turned around, and Jacob Beck gasped and nearly fell into the two bottomless black wells that were Billy's eyes. Beck stumbled forward, reaching out his hand for support, and suddenly Billy's eyes were gone and Jacob's father was standing there, staring balefully down at him. "A preacher," he began with disdain, but then he vanished and Beck was holding onto the back of Billy's chair, and Billy was regarding him calmly, with the same flat copper eyes he always had.

"What . . ." Jacob Beck gasped, sitting down on the bed and trying to orient himself. Billy regarded him dispassionately.

"What happened to me?" Beck asked.

The boy's gaze was as level as winter ice on a pond.

Beck looked at the boy, sitting quietly facing him in his chair, and shook his head. Nothing must have happened. The room was the same as it had always been, the window the same window, the chair the same. Billy had turned to face him just as he would have expected after he'd entered the room and called to him. His father was not there, Billy's eyes were not huge black endless wells sucking him in, nothing had happened. It had all been there and gone so quickly.

"Is something wrong?" Billy asked.

"No, nothing's wrong," Beck answered, not sure yet if he believed it.

The boy waited for him to say something.

"I . . . was just wondering if you were all right," he said. Nothing had happened. "I saw your light on."

"I couldn't sleep."

Beck's breathing was back to normal. The chair, the boy, everything was as it should be. "Neither can I," he said. "I just finished my sermon for tomorrow and now I don't know if I'll be able to go to bed." Nothing had happened. "Would you like to watch television with me?"

"No," Billy answered.

"Is anything bothering you?"

The boy shook his head and turned back to the window.

A chill went through Beck, thinking that if the boy turned around again, there would be those black eyes, that huge figure of his father . . . He diverted himself with the fact that he thought he detected the faint aroma of tobacco smoke.

"Billy . . ." he began, but decided not to bring it up.

He sat for a few uncomfortable moments, then stood and looked down at the boy. "If you need me, for anything, you can always come to me," he said to Billy's back.

Billy faced the black night through the window.

Jacob went to the doorway and looked back. He'd told the boy to come to him if he ever needed him. But he wondered if he meant it. Doubt had crawled into his head once again. Maybe this elation at finding himself had been a false dawn. Maybe the boy didn't need him after all. Maybe that hole he saw in the boy did not exist. Maybe it was merely the makeup of an alien being, the unknown, unknowable inner territory of someone or something so inhuman as to be incomprehensible.

Maybe something had happened.

Billy had not moved. He sat in his chair, staring into blackness. Maybe that's all there was: blackness. Jacob Beck felt a shiver of that emptiness pass through him. A gulf opened somewhere in his heart. He saw, once more, the empty pit that was life. What was life? A thing that meant nothing, something that was only there, a joke with no punch line except death.

Maybe there isn't anything after all.

He pushed the thought from his mind. Nothing had happened, and the boy still needed him. To his immediate relief, he saw that the peace that he had attained, the inner surety of his own vocation and life, was still there, though somewhat dimmed. The whole battle, he realized, had not been won, but he still believed that victory would be its outcome.

He closed the door to the boy's room and went back downstairs to his office to wait out the rest of the long night.

17

What the hell is a housewife anyway?

Long, slow morning was passing into long, slow afternoon. For Allie Kramer, that meant only that it was now high noon and she could, in good conscience, have her first drink of the day. "Cocktail time!" She laughed sarcastically, shuffling in her bedroom slippers from the television room to the kitchen. With practiced ease she opened the cabinet over the stove. She didn't even bother to look as she pulled down the Jim Beam bottle from its familiar spot. She drew a drinking glass from another cabinet, ice from the refrigerator, and poured a good two inches of bourbon, filling the rest of the glass with water.

Housewife. If ever there was an obsolete term, that was it. "Cheers," she said, facing the refrigerator. The whine of the television in the other room only increased her annoyance, and she drank the bourbon down fast, then quickly fixed another. On the way back to the television room she felt a sudden rush of lightness from the first drink. She swayed, bumping into the wall and knocking a picture askew. She turned to look at the portrait of her husband and herself in wedding dress: Ralph in morning coat, rented top hat in his hand, she in a white gown her sister had lent her because she didn't have enough money to get her own—mostly because Ralph had insisted she quit work a good two months before they got married.

To be a housewife.

"Jerk," she said, raising the glass to the crooked picture of Ralph on the wall.

He was a jerk. And it was all his fault. All of it. The man still lived in 1952, expecting her to play Lucy to his Ricky. She wouldn't have minded so much if he made a bundle, but he only brought home enough each month to barely cover their living expenses. Whenever she complained about it, which she did loudly and often, he put his hands out piously and said, "No wife of mine is going to work." "How many wives have you got?" she wanted to ask him, but the question was foolish, because Ralph was such a jerk he couldn't even keep one wife happy. Not in any sense of the word.

She sat down heavily in her TV chair and faced the set. The Price Is Right was on. But she didn't look at it. Happy, she thought, and that, of course, was the real problem. Because the fool couldn't even keep her happy in bed.

She knew part of the problem was that she was home all the time. But that didn't help. For a while she thought maybe there was something wrong with her. She'd be home all day, cooking (which she hated) and cleaning (which she despised), and the only thing she could think about was sex. While she made the bed, she'd fantasize about Ralph coming home unexpectedly. He'd sneak up behind her, throw her down on the half-smoothed sheets, and take her with a wild look in his eyes. Or she'd be cleaning the kitchen and the thought would come into her mind of him suddenly grabbing her, pushing her up against the refrigerator, and doing it right there, standing up. Or on the dining-room table. Or on the living-room couch, or the floor in front of the fire. Or in the hallway, or the garage.

Sometimes, in the beginning, she had been so horny by the time he got home that she had barely let him take off his topcoat before making little suggestions to him. He had frowned the first few times, saying he was tired, but she had been so insistent that he finally gave in one night. The experience had been so unlike what she had dreamed about (the bastard fell asleep right after!) that she had let him put her off after that, accepting his excuses when he said how hard his day had been, or his favorite, "Let's wait till Sunday afternoon, like we always do. I'll be up for it then." The idiot hadn't even seen the pun in his own words.

Eventually, she had stopped trying altogether, even on Sunday afternoons. And that seemed fine with Ralph, which only infuriated her. "What do you expect me to do around this goddamn place all day long, play tiddlywinks? If we had a kid, I could see staying home, but this is crazy! And I'm going crazy!" But he had only frowned and said, "No wife of mine—"

"This wife of yours isn't getting enough!"

"Well . . ." he'd started, going into his litany, and she'd just let the subject drop.

So she had started to fantasize about other partners. One day she got a piece of junk mail, which she tore open. Ready to throw it out, she saw that it was a sex catalog. There were books and movies advertised, and pictures of sex devices. Something in her recoiled, but then she sat down in front of the TV and flipped through, looking over each picture. The men all looked like they enjoyed what they were doing. The women looked . . .

Happy.

She threw the catalog out, partly out of fear that Ralph would find it, but she found herself dwelling on what had been in it. One of the picture books had been called Hot Deliverymen, and she imagined what it would be like to have the oilman come to the house and suddenly put the moves on her. She tried not to dwell on the fact that their own oilman was fat and dumpy, with a mole on the side of his nose. This one would be tall, with dark eyes. He would put his hand on her, and touch her there and there, and she would melt in his arms. She would fight to get her clothes off and he would take his off, and they'd do it on the rug, and in the bathroom on top of the sink, and then they'd go into different positions. He would know just what he was doing, touching her in that place, putting his mouth down there like Ralph wouldn't. ("It's . . . dirty down there," he'd said once, rising by rote into the boring missionary position.) The deliveryman would do those things for her, and she would be happy.

She looked down and saw that her glass was empty once more. Shit. The Price Is Right was over, the soaps coming on. She got up and flipped the channel to her favorite one. The voices were young, filled with just-suppressed sexual desire. ("You know how I feel about you, Amanda." "Do you?" "I wish we could . . ." "Yes?" "I wish we could make love right now. If only Roderick wasn't still in your life . . .") Eventually on the soaps they got everything they wanted. She knew it was all fantasy, but that didn't help. Her whole life had become fantasy.

She sidled back to the kitchen and made another drink. Better ease up, she thought. Normally she wasn't into her third bourbon until two in the afternoon. "Screw it," she immediately said, thinking of the pile of wash in the bathroom hamper, the dirty venetian blinds in the bedroom that Ralph had been getting after her about, the porch that needed sweeping, the walls, the floors, the rugs, the . . .

She poured an extra finger of alcohol into the glass, watching it spread like amber ink through the water.

She went back into the living room, sitting down with a sigh in front of the set. There they were on the screen, Roderick and Amanda, fighting again, fighting about Rick her secret lover, the man who made her happy. . .

The front doorbell rang.

"Oh, shit," she said, trying to get up with the drink still in her hand and splashing some of it onto her housedress. "Shit. Shit!" The doorbell rang insistently, and she shouted, "Just a minute, dammit!" while trying to wipe at the smelly bourbon on her sleeve. She put the drink down on the rug, where it tipped at a precarious angle on the shag. She reached the front door as the bell rang a fifth time.

"Dammit, what—" she began angrily, but stopped when she saw who it was.

"You call for a plumber, ma'am?" He was tall and black-haired. His eyes were dark gray, like those of the men on the soap operas. They were the kind of bright eyes that played with you, telling you things that the lips didn't. Mischievous. Toying. His eyes were smiling at her.

". . . a plumber?" he asked.

She said, "No," but immediately changed it to, "Yes. Yes, I'm having trouble with my . . . sink."

"Sure thing," he said, smiling; his smile was a bit tilted, making him look rakish when he used it. As he brushed past her, she felt a warm thrill course through her.

She closed the door and turned to him. He said, "Where's the problem?" But he had already put down his toolbox and was unbuttoning the top of his work shirt. "It's . . ." she said, but the answer to the question disappeared as he put his hand out and touched her dress gently, just above the waist.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, beginning the sentence with wonder in her voice, ending it trying to sound coquettish, like one of the girls on the daytime soaps. She still felt the place where his finger had touched, a warm glow budding out from it through the rest of her.

He had his shirt off. He had a well-muscled chest covered with soft black hairs—the way a man's chest should look.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" she asked teasingly, and he took her arms and drew her to him. She let out a shuddering sigh.

Happy.

She felt his hands working gently on her, moving around to unbutton her dress, slipping it down and removing it. Unhooking her bra, he cupped her breasts briefly as he brought it away from her body. He stepped back, drawing his pants off.

Heat moved through her. He lowered her to the rug. She felt the soft, long white knap of it moving against her back and buttocks (I wish I'd vacuumed it like Ralph wanted!).

"What are you doing to me?" she moaned, staring up into his playful dark eyes.

"This," he said.

He touched her there. She felt a bolt of pleasure, like a gate opening to let sunlight stream through. It was what she had dreamed of. He lifted her gently, easing her into one of those positions she had seen in the dirty catalog. She moved her hands underneath, helping him, looking deep into his marvelous eyes. . .

His eyes. There was something in them that made her hesitate. She stopped moving beneath him. She felt his hands freeze, then start to caress her again, moving where she wanted them to, doing what she wanted them to.

His eyes were not right. The gray had turned to copper. Suddenly, she saw what he really was, what he was really doing.

She screamed. She went stiff, throwing her hands at him.

He stood up. He was no longer the man with sultry eyes and muscled chest. Staring down at her where she lay drunkenly on the rug was a child with miniature suns for eyes, and a grim mouth.

"Ralph!" she screamed. "Help me!" The child stepped toward her.

She screamed again, peddling back on the rug until she came up against her TV chair, knocking the bourbon glass over on the rug, filling the room with a sickly sharp-sweet alcoholic odor.

"Take me, Allie," the child said, taking another step. "Have me." Its serious little mouth spread suddenly into a horrifying grin. Its eyes were sucking her in. "I'll be your lover. I'll be anything you want."

"What are you doing!" Allie shouted, trying to look away from those pitted eyes but unable to.

It smiled again, that horribly unfitting grin. "Be happy, Allie."

Allie screamed. The child bent down and touched her. Suddenly it was not the child anymore but the repairman. He smiled down into her face. His gray eyes danced as he moved her the right way, touched her where it was right. He said, "Yes, Allie." Yes. Her screaming had stopped; she was happy. They would do it here, and then they would go into the kitchen and climb onto the table, and then into the laundry room, and on the car in the garage, and then he would tie her to the bed and they would do it again and again and again until she wanted to . . .

"Die, Allie," he said sometime later, smiling his roguish soap opera smile up at her. She did. And the child, standing there in the dirty bedroom in the untidy house, said, "Happy."

18

The Mifflins arrived at two o'clock. Sharp. They climbed out of the same late-model black Chevrolet Billy had seen them in when they had come to take John away from Melinda's.

Billy saw them from the upstairs window in his room. They came up the walk, the girl and her mother in front, the man and John behind. The front doorbell rang. Mrs. Beck's footsteps sounded in the hall and then there were words of greeting. A little while later Christine knocked once on his door, telling him curtly to come down to dinner.

Billy went downstairs. They were already seated at the dining room table. He went to the single empty chair, between Reverend Beck and Christine. The Mifflins were at the far end, John and Martha sandwiched between their parents.

As Billy sat down, Richard Mifflin said, "This must be the young man I've heard so much about."

He smiled, but there were hard lines around his eyes. He glanced at John before turning his attention back to Jacob Beck. "I want to thank you again for asking us over, Reverend."

Beck nodded pleasantly. "I figured if you wanted to talk, we might as well do it with full stomachs."

At first it was another quiet meal. The adults exchanged small talk, but the children were, for the most part, silent. John sat looking down sullenly at his plate, occasionally trading glances with Christine, who made sure she was busy helping her mother in the kitchen as much as possible. Only Martha Mifflin showed any willingness to participate, insinuating herself into the conversation whenever possible.

"I did a school report on the stock market last week, didn't I?" she said brightly when the talk at the table turned to financial matters. She faced her mother, who smiled obligingly, and Jacob Beck felt compelled out of politeness to say, "That's very nice, Martha. Did you learn a lot about Wall Street?"

"I got an A," she boasted, not offering any further information. Her eyes were large and very dark, and she had a pouting mouth. Her hair looked as though it had been artificially curled and colored a dark honey-blond.

"I try to encourage my kids to look into a lot of things," Richard Mifflin said proudly. He put his hand on John's head, ruffling his hair. "This fellow here is going to play basketball next year."

John continued looking down at his plate.

"I'm going to be a cheerleader when I go to high school," Martha bragged.

Annoyed at the girl's manner, which was beginning to give him a headache, Jacob Beck changed the subject. "Wasn't it terrible about that woman on Market Street hanging herself the other day?" he said, offering the first thing that came into his head, instantly realizing the mistake he had made.

"I thought it was just terrible," Janet Mifflin said immediately. At the hint of gossip she brightened.

Her husband smiled slyly at her. "You just like the fact that the woman turned your committee work down last year."

"Well it was terrible," Janet Mifflin said. "The way they found her and all." She glanced around the table, avoiding the children's eyes, trying to talk over them. "You know what I mean," she said, making a motion at the front of her dress as if she was taking her blouse off.

"Yes, it was terrible," Mary Beck said, her eyes on Billy.

"Julie Matheson swears she was having an . . . affair," Janet Mifflin went on, even the disapproving look from her husband failing to stop her now. "She thinks it was that man Allie Kramer's husband used to go fishing with. From Kipperton. They stopped going fishing together last summer, after they had a fight. Julie says the fight was over Allie."

Richard Mifflin said, "I think, with the children here, we should—"

"Well, it's true," his wife countered.

"It's not true. You don't know it is. From what I heard, Ralph Kramer and his Kipperton friend had a fight over a bank loan. And besides," he continued, caught up in the mild argument with his wife, "supposedly she killed herself because of all the credit she'd run up. Ralph found out about it and he was going to kick her out."

"Credit?" Janet Mifflin snorted. "She hanged herself in the bedroom, over the bed, naked, over credit?"

"I think . . ." Jacob Beck began, as Richard Mifflin turned to him.

"I'm sorry, Reverend," he said, a trace of anger still evident in his voice.

"There have been three suicides in this town in the past month," Janet Mifflin said, refusing to give up. "First that fag . . ." She hesitated, blushing. "Excuse me, that art teacher at the school, then that milkman who jumped from the Harris Building downtown, now Allie Kramer." She gazed around the table conspiratorially. "Isn't that strange?"

"Well, actually it is," Jacob Beck said carefully. "Suicide is a terrible thing. And sometimes it comes in waves. Around the holidays and such."

Mary Beck got up and went into the kitchen.

"That may be true," Richard Mifflin said, but this—"

"I heard in school that Mr. Monk liked to touch little boys," Martha said mischievously.

Janet Mifflin's eyes widened. "The art teacher? Who told you that, Martha?"

"Well . . ." she said noncommittally.

"I've never heard anything so disgusting in my life," Janet Mifflin said indignantly. "To think that no one checked into rumors like that. To think they had a man like that working with children!"

"It was probably just gossip," her husband said, sensing a chance to resume their argument.

"But to think"—she pointed at John, who quickly looked away—"that our boy might have been exposed to—“

"Now Janet—" Richard Mifflin interjected.

"Ah, dessert!" Jacob Beck announced. He indicated his wife, who stood grimly in the entranceway to the dining room with a huge platter of brownies. Beck took them from her and set them down near the Mifflin end of the table. In a moment the Mifflins were busy with them, and, as Jacob Beck had hoped, the conversation turned to more mundane things.

"I have to admit," Janet Mifflin effused, that having children is wonderful." She paused to put another brownie on her plate. "Especially"—she patted her stomach, making a face—"when you don't have to go through that nine-month business every time."

Beck noticed that the wine decanter, which had made its way down to the Mifflin end of the table near the beginning of the meal and had stayed there, next to Janet Mifflin, was now nearly empty.

"Janet . . ." Richard Mifflin warned.

"I'm just joking," she said waving her hand at him. "My little Martha is wonderful, but that pain—" She broke off, shivering. She paused to empty her glass. "And then you go through all that work, and they bring you the little baby, and it doesn't even look human at all. It looks like"—she gestured with her glass—"I don't know, a Martian or something. All shriveled up, with those little eyes." She shivered again.

"That's quite enough," Richard Mifflin said.

"I'm only joking, dear," his wife replied mildly. She looked lovingly at her two children. "I only meant to say thank God for adoption. It makes everything so much easier. And anyway, after you get past all that birth business, kids aren't the big problem they're supposed to be."

Jacob Beck said, smiling, "It's not all roses. I remember Christine filling the bathtub with Jell-O when she was three. It took Mary two days to get it out." He looked at his wife, who only managed a distracted smile.

"I once did that," Martha Mifflin interjected.

"No you did not!" her mother said with a gasp as she set the now empty wine decanter on the table.

"Yes. When you were away. I did it to Mrs. Breckenridge, the housekeeper."

Janet Mifflin put her hand to her chest. "My little Martha did that? It must have been that Breckenridge woman's fault. We were always having trouble with her. I remember—"

"Richard," Jacob Beck said brightly, "what do you think of the football season so far?"

"I don't quite know." Mifflin frowned, and Beck remembered that Mifflin was a basketball fan and didn't follow football.

There was a lull in the conversation. The afternoon hung around them. Even Janet Mifflin was silent, rolling her empty wineglass between her fingers. Beck was about to say something when Martha Mifflin blurted out, "Billy left the school yard Friday, at lunchtime."

"Really?" Jacob Beck said, realizing as he spoke that it was an impolite thing to say, an extension of the fact that he had been about to speak and hadn't been able to hold his tongue. Everyone had unconsciously turned toward Billy.

"Is that true?" Mary asked the boy quickly.

"I really don't think this is the time—" Jacob began.

"I bet he went to do something bad," Martha continued smugly.

"Answer me," Mary persisted, suppressed anger in her voice. "Did you leave the school yard on Friday?"

Billy pushed back his chair and stood. He walked from the room.

"Come back here!" Mary Beck exclaimed hysterically, but Jacob held up his hand and said, "Let him go."

"Well I saw him," Martha Mifflin said.

"Would anyone like more coffee?" Jacob Beck offered, a little too loudly.

The room was dark when Beck opened the door. A reflection of light from the hallway showed Billy in his chair, facing the window. A chill went through Jacob. He ignored it and closed the door behind him, leaving it open a crack to let a line of illumination into the room.

He sat on the bed and said softly, "I want to talk to you."

Billy didn't turn toward him, and again a chill wanted to take over Reverend Beck, but he pushed it away.

Silence stretched in the darkness. Beck said, "Billy, I had a talk with John's father. He says that you and John were at the same adoption home and that this woman Melinda took care of both of you. He says that John is very upset that you're here. John thinks you're bothering him for some reason."

Billy stared into the darkness.

Beck gripped the boy's arm and turned him until Billy faced him. He hesitated for a moment, afraid of what he might see, but when the boy faced him, it was with his somber visage and blank, calm copper eyes.

"Are you bothering John Mifflin?" Beck asked.

Billy said, in a steady voice, "He came to me in the school yard and told me to stay away from him."

"You haven't gone near him?"

"No."

Beck relaxed his hold on the boy's arm, realizing that he had been gripping it. "Did you have any trouble with John when you were at Melinda's house?"

"Yes."

"Was there a reason?"

"No."

"Billy, did you follow John Mifflin here?" The boy stared levelly through Jacob. "Tell me, Billy."

Silence.

A flash of rage passed through Beck. He wanted to take the boy by the shoulders and shake him, or bring his hand across Billy's mouth. This frightened him momentarily; he had never raised a hand to his own daughter, never mind any other child, but then he realized that the source of his anger was the same as that which had made him smash his fist against the pew in the chapel that Saturday night. It was emotional impotence. He wanted badly to reach Billy, but the boy would not let him.

The moment of anger passed.

"Listen to me," Beck said gently. "John's father told me about Melinda, where the house was and who to locate about her records. I want you to know that I have to look into this. Since you won't tell me, I have to find out where you're from and who, if anyone, you belong with. It's the law, Billy, and it's also the right thing to do. I want very much for you to stay here, but I have to do these things. You're sure there's nothing else you want to tell me?"

It was as if he wasn't there; the boy was staring out into the darkness, his small back straight against the chair, his hands unmoving in his lap.

Another wave of anger passed through Beck, but he held it in check. He put a hand on the boy's shoulder and got up. "I was going to talk about smoking cigarettes, but that can wait."

He left the room, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

Billy turned toward the window. And, in the darkness, his eyes turned into two deep, black wells.

19

Satan.

The night was chilly. Mary Beck drew her shawl up around her shoulders. She considered going back for her jacket, but the fear that she might lose him made her tighten the shawl around her and block the cold from her mind.

Her steps echoed thinly down the path.

She opened the front gate slowly, because the grinding noise its old hinges made might alert him that he was being followed. She left the gate open.

He was a block ahead of her, across the street, standing by one of the tall brick pillars at the entrance to the park. There was a lit cigarette in his hand. He brought it up to his mouth and drew deeply on it, blowing out the smoke slowly in a practiced way. A shiver went through Mary, making her draw the shawl even closer about her. Satan. The way Satan would smoke.

He took another drag on the cigarette and then dropped it, crushing it with his sneaker. He walked into the park.

Cautiously, Mary made her way to the park entrance and looked in. He had stopped under a lamp and stood motionless. He looked as though he was measuring the night, sniffing it, almost.

He resumed walking.

She kept a good distance behind him. The path wound gently, with a light every thirty feet. Soon the entrance was lost to sight. Another shiver passed through Mary.

What if he wanted me to follow him? What if he knows I'm here?

Satan could do that, couldn't he?

No, even Satan could not do all things. Only God could do that. But Satan could try to trick her.

She remembered her Aunt Stella, Uncle Henry's wife, with her Bible stories. It was this big woman with thick legs and shoes that always hurt her ("Blast it, Eleanor," she would always tell Mary's mother, "I think the Lord gave me two feet on each leg, the way mine feel!") who had finally convinced Mary that she should use her gift of reading. "Can't see why He would have given it to you if He didn't want you to use it. Just keep your head about it," she'd said with the kind of simple logic that Mary's mother, or Uncle Henry, with his constant, inscrutable head nodding and mutterings that everything, no matter how trivial or monumental, was "God's way," did not possess.

One night Aunt Stella, with her shoes off and her bunioned, aching feet propped on a pillow set on a cane-backed chair, pulled close to the sofa, told Mary about Jesus being tempted by the devil. "Oh, Satan was a wise-tail, he was. He tried to tempt Jesus every which way he could think of. He thought that Jesus would be so hungry after fasting for forty days and nights that he could get just about anything out of Him. He says to Jesus, 'If you're God's son, turn these stones to bread.' But Jesus, He ain't fooled at all. He tells Satan that man doesn't need bread to live, only the word of God." Aunt Stella laughed, a throaty sound, like a bull-frog's. "Guess after forty days without food, Jesus was used to not eating. Anyway, then Satan tries to get Jesus to kill Himself, telling Him that if He throws Himself off a high place, angels will come to catch Him in midair. But Jesus tells him to forget it. He's not going to fall for that. Then Satan takes Him up to the highest place around, and shows Him all that there is to see, and tells Jesus that he'll give it all to Him if Jesus'll just fall down and worship him. Satan must have been weak from the heat! Heck, Jesus owned it all already! He tells Satan so, and then tells him to beat his horned tail out of there."

Aunt Stella lifted her feet off the pillow with a grunt, and rubbed at them for a few moments. "Well, little girl," she said at last, "the thing is, you can't trust old Satan. He'll say anything, do anything, to get you to follow him. Then—wham! He's got you. Heck, if he thought he could fool Jesus Himself, think what he'd try to do to you and me! Lord, these feet hurt so!"

Mary thought how Satan had fooled Aunt Stella.

It was Aunt Stella who had told her to marry Jacob Beck when everyone else was set against it. With her direct manner she'd said simply, "Heck, any pig in his pen can see you love the man. That's God's way if anything is. Was the same way with your Uncle Henry and me—though Lord knows why I ever fell for that man." She laughed. "All he ever does anymore is mumble and stare at the sky looking for God's judgment. Wasn't like that till your momma started filling his soft head with all kinds of strange ideas. Them being brother and sister and all, must run in the family. 'Fraid your momma filled your own head with some strange thoughts, but I pray you'll get over them. Heck! Go away with this Jacob—marry him! And him being a man of the cloth, can't see how you could lose!"

How wrong Aunt Stella had been.

The last time Mary saw Aunt Stella she was sitting on the front porch waving goodbye with one hand, the other rubbing at her foot, the rest of the family locked tight and silent in the house. She had only heard from her once since, in the letter her aunt had written to tell her her mother had died, and to tell her in her direct way not to get any foolish ideas that her leaving had had anything to do with it. "Your momma was sad to see you go," the letter read, "but when the Lord rings your telephone, you answer, and there's not anybody else in the world has anything to do with it one way or another."

She thought about how wrong Aunt Stella had been about that, too.

Up ahead, the boy stopped. He stood half in, half out of a sharp cone of light from a park lamp. He reached into his black golf jacket and drew out his pack of cigarettes. He put one to his mouth and expertly lit it.

He was still as a statue, only the glowing coal of the tip of the cigarette showing life. Again he appeared to be testing the world around him.

He walked on, the cigarette still in his mouth.

Mary's sense told her to turn back, but she followed until he stepped off the path suddenly and disappeared into the gloom.

Mary froze; and then she heard a sound: someone walking toward her.

A figure passed into and out of the lamplight just ahead. Mary quietly left the walkway, stepping behind a convenient stand of bushes.

She looked behind her, trying to find Billy, but he was nowhere to be seen. She thought again of Aunt Stella's words. Maybe he was right behind her now, reaching out in the darkness. But then she spied the glowing tip of his cigarette, off away from her, near to where he'd abandoned the footpath.

The approaching figure walked into the illumination of the next lamp. It was a heavyset old man, his shirttail showing beneath his dirty jacket. He stopped and belched, a long, self-absorbed sound. Then he turned toward Mary's hiding place and began to talk.

Paralyzed with fear, Mary thought she had been discovered. Then she saw in the man's hand a long clear bottle, half filled with sloshing clear liquid, and she realized that he was talking to no one in particular.

"So I coulda done it," he said, holding the bottle out before him as if offering it to a friend. "I coulda. An' he knew it."

Behind Mary, the still-glowing end of Billy's cigarette did not move.

"An' he tol' me no. He tol' me no." By now the drunk had his head bowed on his chest, his speech taking on a melancholy inflection. "Wha' the heck," he said. Suddenly he put down his bottle unsteadily on the flagstone path and stumbled toward the bush behind which Mary hid.

He pushed into the front branches, mumbling an apology to himself. Mary heard the zip of his fly. He urinated on the other side of the bush, singing as he did so: "So Molly, she says she's a hooker, an' Fred, he says she's a whore . . ."

Mary backed away, looking for Billy's cigarette as the drunkard finished his song: "So Captain O'Malley says, 'Book her!' and Sergeant O'Rourke says, 'Wha' for?' "

The drunk zipped up his fly and stepped away from the bushes, tripping as the heel of his shoe caught the edge of the stone path. " 'Scuse me, beg your pardon," he said, laughing. He located his bottle, picked it up on the second try, and stumbled away.

Mary turned to look for Billy's cigarette, but it was gone.

She stood where she was. Satan's tricks. She had never felt so alone in her life. Maybe this is how he had tricked her, using the passing drunkard to take her attention away from himself. Maybe he had lit that cigarette knowing she would look for it, and then he had put it out. Maybe he was coming toward her in the dark, getting closer with each breath she took, each breath Satan drawing closer . . .

She stepped out onto the footpath and walked quickly toward the exit. She didn't care if the boy saw her now.

Night sounds assaulted her. There were trees bordering a turn of the trail ahead. A solid clutch of fear gripped her. She slowed, passing them.

She ran, sure she heard a sound close behind, as if someone had stepped out from behind one of the trees.

"Mary," she thought she heard her mother's voice call.

Satan's tricks.

She cried out and ran faster.

The stone pillars at the exit became visible and, beyond them, the comforting light of the street.

"Mary," the voice called once more.

"No!"

Closer. Her legs carried her faster. She fled toward the pillars and then was between them, feeling a rush of relief.

Someone stepped from behind one of them and took hold of her.

She screamed, throwing her fists out blindly.

"'Scuse me, lady," the old drunk said, stumbling back against the pillar. He raised his hand to a nonexistent hat. He tilted his bottle into his mouth, then slid purposefully down the pillar until he sat at its base. Again he began to sing his barroom song: "An' Molly she says she's a hooker . . ."

Gasping, Mary stumbled up the street away from him.

God, help me! Tell me what to do!

Ahead, she saw the dark mass of the church and parish house, the comforting iron line of the fence. Still sobbing, she reached the gate.

It was open.

And, as she looked up, she saw the window to Billy's room, up on the second floor, closing and the shadow of the boy moving away from it.

20

Danny French was still in front of the classroom when the bell rang.

"Hurry up!" Fred Grainger, who was sitting next to Billy, shouted, and French got back to his seat as the doorknob turned and Mr. Gleason walked into the room.

"Today—" Gleason began, setting his briefcase down on his desk, but suddenly Martha Mifflin stood up.

"Danny French drew something on the blackboard," she said. She smiled primly and sat down, hands folded on her desk.

Danny French's thin face turned red.

"Well," Mr. Gleason said, "let's see how Mr. French's art career is coming along." He pushed his thick glasses up on his nose, a habitual action that he performed every minute or so since they continuously slipped down. He was balding and going to fat.

Gleason went to the chart covering the blackboard. He gave it a sharp tug downward at one corner, but it wouldn't rise. He tried again, but nothing happened. He pulled it down from the middle, and then from the other end, succeeding finally in gently raising it above the blackboard.

There was a burst of laughter, mostly from the back, where Danny French and his friends sat. Gleason studied the characterization on the blackboard. It showed a small body with two clownish shoes on, one filled in with white chalk, the other left blank. The rest of the figure was rumpled. The most prominent feature was the huge head on top of the body. It made up nearly the entire top half of the image. There were two little eyes and a round mouth, with a curl of hair at the very top. The drawing was labeled, "Egghead."

"I'll see you after class," Gleason said to Danny French. He erased the caricature.

From his seat behind Billy, Danny French leaned over and whispered in his ear, "My buddy John Mifflin tells me you've been buggin' his ass."

Billy stared at the front of the room.

"You hear me, weirdo?" French said. He took the sharpened tip of his pencil and pressed it into Billy's back.

"He heard you," Fred Grainger said. "He's just too tough to answer."

Both boys, along with another who sat behind French, laughed.

"Listen, weirdo," French said, pressing the pencil tip harder into Billy's back, "John Mifflin's a friend of mine. If you even breathe near him, I'll beat your fucking brains out."

He jammed the pencil into Billy's back, eliciting more laughter from the others.

As Gleason, with help from another boy, got the chart in front straightened out, French took the pencil away from Billy's back.

"I warned you," he hissed. He turned to his friends and said, "Chickenshit," which made them laugh some more.

"That's enough from you, Mr. French," Gleason said angrily.

"I was just—" French protested, pushing his straight blond hair back from his face. "I've had it. Get out."

“But—"

"Go to the principal's office. If I find out you didn't go straight there, I'll make sure you're not only jugged for a month but that your parents are called down here today to beg the school not to expel you."

"It was just a joke—"

"I said get out!"

French stalked out of the room, pushing Billy's shoulder hard as he rose from his seat.

Gleason watched the boy go, then turned to the class. "Does anybody remember where we were yesterday?"

Martha Mifflin raised her hand. "We were doing matter," she said smugly.

"Yes," Gleason said.

He thumbed through the text on his desk, then went to the blackboard and drew a small circle with something orbiting it. As he did so, Fred Grainger stood halfway up, forming a huge oval around his head with his arms and waving his laced fingers at the top, like the lock of curly hair on Danny French's blackboard picture.

Hearing laughter, Gleason turned around to see only a sea of noncommittal faces, except for Martha Mifflin's.

"Mr. Gleason," she began raising her hand.

"That's all right, Martha. It's time we got some work done."

Searching in vain for a few moments, he finally found the blackboard pointer, hanging in its accustomed spot on a hook next to the blackboard. He pushed his glasses up and pointed to the drawing on the blackboard. "Anyone know what this is?" he asked, smiling,

Hands went up.

"Roger?" Gleason called on a boy with bushy eyebrows.

"The Copernican system?" Roger answered.

"Um, no," Gleason said. "A good guess. But if it was, I would have drawn in the other planets. Anyone else?"

Only Martha Mifflin's hand and one other remained.

"Judy?

"Is it the earth and moon?"

"Very good guess. It could be that, but that's not what I'm looking for. Martha, you had an idea?"

Martha Mifflin had lowered her hand. "I was going to say the earth and moon." She gave Judy a hard look.

"I'll give you a hint," Gleason addressed the class, "then I'll tell you. Everything in this room is made out of things just like it."

"Baloney?" Fred Grainger called out from the side of his hand.

Gleason said, "That's made out of them, too." He smiled. "Nobody knows? It's—" Billy raised his hand.

"Want to take a crack at it?" Gleason asked.

"An atom," Billy answered.

Gleason's jaw dropped slightly, his chance to give them the correct answer taken away.

"That's right, Billy." He turned back to the drawing. "An atom. And a very special kind of atom. Anybody know what that could be?"

He kept his back to the class, not giving anyone a chance to answer.

"A hydrogen atom." He faced them. "It's one of the building blocks of the universe. The hydrogen atom is the most abundant atom of all. The stars in the sky, including our own sun, are made of hydrogen. Water is part hydrogen. Lots of things have hydrogen in them—like hydrogen peroxide, which your mom puts on your cuts and scrapes to disinfect them."

A ruckus broke out in the back of the room. Fred Grainger was shooting rubber bands at Carl Peters, one of the best students in the class. As Gleason started down the aisle, the commotion subsided.

"As I was saying," Gleason continued, "everything is made of atoms. Atoms are what make up matter.

"Now," Gleason went on, turning toward the class and pushing up his glasses. "What is matter? Matter is simply everything around us—this desk, the ceiling, the floor, the blackboard, everything. It's all matter, and all of it is made of atoms.

"And what are atoms made of? Well . . ."

Gleason told them about electrons and protons and neutrons for the next half hour. Most jotted notes; some doodled. In the back, Danny French's friends turned on Billy. Whenever Gleason's attention was elsewhere, Fred Grainger, or Joe Shane, or one of the others, would poke Billy or turn to him and say, "Danny's gonna flatten your ass."

"And we're gonna watch," Joe Shane promised at one point.

With a few minutes left till the bell rang, Gleason finished his lecture. "That's all there is to atoms and matter," he said. "It sounds simple, but here's a really intriguing thing. Maybe you've heard this mentioned on Star Trek or one of the other science fiction shows." He pushed his glasses up and a note of excitement crept into his voice. "Though everything we see is made of matter, scientists have proven in the laboratory that there is such a thing as antimatter. It's the exact opposite of matter."

He pushed his glasses up again. "And what do you think would happen if a piece of matter met a piece of antimatter?"

No hands went up.

"Billy?" he said, looking at Billy Potter. "Martha? A guess?"

Billy and Martha stared at each other.

Gleason's face expanded in a satisfied smile. He spread his hands out wide. "What would happen—"

The end-of-period bell rang. Instantly, the class erupted into sound and motion. Above the commotion Gleason yelled, "Do you know what would happen if matter and antimatter met?" He clapped his hands together loudly. "Boom! Complete annihilation! That's what would happen!"

The classroom emptied, leaving Gleason and his excitement behind.

Billy's usual spot at lunch was occupied by Danny French, who stood leaning against the tree. A single long lock of his blond hair swung over his forehead, his thin face pulled into a lopsided smile.

French's friends Joe Shane and Fred Grainger stepped out from behind the tree as Billy neared.

"Couldn't miss this," Shane said.

Thumbs under his belt, Grainger snorted rudely.

Billy stopped before them, holding his lunch bag.

"Mind if we eat here?" French asked. His mouth held its crooked, lazy grin.

Billy passed French and sat down calmly against the back of the tree. He opened his bag and took out his sandwich.

French appeared above him. His smile was gone. He tore the lunch bag from Billy's hand and threw it against the chain-link fence. "You shit," he said menacingly. "Listen to me when I talk."

Billy stared at him.

"I was going to forget about you until that prick Gleason came down on me," French said. His face was red and wild. "But now I feel like hitting something."

His right fist shot out, meeting the side of Billy's face.

Billy went down.

French's cronies laughed. French stepped away. "So much for the scary man," he said. The anger had left his voice. "You know," he said looking down at Billy, "John Mifflin told me you had some kind of power. I told him he was full of it. He bet me ten bucks I couldn't get a thump in on you, that you'd get me with your X-ray eyes or something." He laughed as his two compatriots howled. "So much for Mifflin." He turned to Shane and Grainger. "Let's go collect my money."

"Aren't you gonna thump him again?" Shane asked with disappointment. Billy was slowly pushing himself back up into a sitting position.

"I made my point."

Howling, the three of them strutted away.

Billy sat with his hand against the side of his face. When he brought his hand away, there was blood on it. The area below his eye felt raw and numb.

He sat still for a while, then he walked to the fence. He bent down and picked up his lunch bag. He walked back to the tree, sat down, and ate his lunch.

When the bell rang, he rose and saw, at the other end of the school yard, John Mifflin, with Christine Beck at his side, staring at him and smiling grimly.

21

Shit.

Danny French's knuckles hurt like hell. He hid his hand against his side until the lunch period was over, then he went to the men's room, telling Joe and Fred he was going to sneak a smoke.

When he got a good look at his hand, he saw that the skin had been pulled off the top of all the knuckles. The middle one was swollen big as a cherry. He sluiced cold water over it but there was a sullen, throbbing pain that didn't go away.

He'd never hit anybody that hard before. Hell, he hadn't even meant to hit Billy Potter that hard. It had seemed like his fist had taken on a life of its own. And he knew why, but that was another thing, along with his hand getting banged up, that he wasn't going to tell anybody about. He wasn't even sure he wanted to tell himself. Because the fact was, he'd hit Billy so hard because he was scared of him. If he hadn't hit him hard and quick, he wouldn't have hit him at all.

When Mifflin first told him about Billy Potter, he thought it was funny. Mifflin was a little pussy, but not a bad guy. He'd once given Danny the five bucks he needed when his old man told him that if he didn't come home with a six-pack, he'd beat his head in. From past experience, Danny knew his old man meant it. He'd been punched out so many times that another beating was a sure bet. And something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

So Mifflin had helped him out, and he appreciated it. But when Mifflin had started talking about this Billy Potter, and getting all worked up about how this kid was bothering him, he thought Mifflin was being a pussy.

Joking, he told him as much, but John didn't laugh.

"I'm not shitting you," he said, taking a pull from one of the beers he'd bought for the two of them. As long as Manny Zelcker at the deli let Danny buy beer for his old man, John thought they might as well take advantage of it and have a few themselves in the parking lot behind the movie theater. Danny did the buying, but it was John's money.

"You're full of it," Danny said.

"The kid's scary," Mifflin went on. "It's the way he looks at you. You think he's going to use his eyes like ray guns on you."

"Bullshit."

Mifflin drained his second beer, then, impulsively, flung the empty across the parking lot, where the bottle shattered against the wall of the movie theater.

"You think I'm joking? When I lived at that goddamn orphan home, I saw him take apart a kid at school just by looking at him."

French sipped his own beer and smiled. "I still say bullshit."

"This kid Crane was pretty tough, and the son of a bitch wilted like a flower. He told me Potter's penny eyes went black, and then suddenly it wasn't Potter he was looking at but his dead father, telling him not to fight."

French laughed derisively. "The kid must have pussied out."

"He didn't pussy out. Potter did something to him."

French just shook his head slowly and finished his beer, then twisted the hissing bottle cap off a new one and tossed it aside. "Not me," he said.

Mifflin started on his third beer. It was obvious he hadn't had this many before. "I bet the same thing would happen to you."

French's eyes darkened; but he remembered the other six-pack in the bag for his old man, and the change Mifflin had let him keep. He knew there would be more afternoons with free beers like this ahead. "You're drunk," he said calmly.

"I say you'd pussy out."

Now French got mad. He put his beer down. "You calling me a pussy?"

"No," Mifflin said. "I'm saying you couldn't handle that bastard Potter. All he'd have to do is look at you."

French balled his fists. "I don't take this shit from anybody."

"Ten bucks says you can't hit him."

French relaxed his hands as Mifflin put down his beer, fumbled out his wallet, and rummaged through a wad of ones before pulling out a ten-dollar bill. "This one," he said, folding it and slipping it into his shirt pocket. He found his beer again.

French nodded. "Fine."

"Just hit him," Mifflin said. He was nearly shouting. "You can't hit him once."

"No problem."

Mifflin suddenly changed his expression.

He looked over at French. "Forget it," he said.

"We've got a bet."

"No." The beer in his hand dropped to the ground; it fell over and the foamy contents ran out onto the tarmac. He found his shirt pocket and took the ten out. "I'll give you the money now."

"Give it to me when I hit him," French said.

John was silent for a moment, then said, "I'm afraid he'll do to you what he was going to do to that other guy."

And now he had hit Billy Potter, and he had the money folded tight in the front pocket of his jeans, and he knew what Mifflin had meant.

He had been afraid. For the first time, he'd been afraid of another kid. When he saw Potter walking toward him across the school yard, with an absolutely cool, unconcerned look on his face, he immediately had second thoughts. He'd never seen anybody look like that before. But Shane and Grainger were with him, and there was no way he could walk away. It would have been a pussy thing to do.

It was when he had taken Billy's lunch away and Potter had looked up at him that he really saw what John Mifflin meant. There was nothing in his eyes. It was like looking at two flat pennies. Flat pennies that if he lifted them off would reveal only two deep black wells that never ended.

And he was scared, so scared that if his fist hadn't done its fast work, then he would have turned and run, pussy or not.

He knew that he wouldn't go near Potter again. He'd taken Mifflin's money, but that would be the end of it. If Mifflin got drunk again and had any more big ideas, he would laugh them off. Mifflin would be good for a few more beers, but not if anything involving Billy Potter came up.

French felt the front pocket of his jeans to make sure the ten-dollar bill was still there. Well, it had been worth it for that anyway. He could get his old man a six-pack and still have almost seven bucks left. Maybe a six-pack for himself, some cigarettes, an album over at the record store. His old man would leave him alone for the rest of the week if he brought a six home without being told to.

He pulled up short at the door to Manny's deli. The BE BACK IN TEN MINUTES sign was in the window. Manny Zelcker was always closing for ten minutes, to go upstairs and check on his dog or to take a crap. Damn. And Danny's old man would be home from work in a half hour. Well, he could always cut across the alley out back and get over to Wilson Street to the market. It would cost an extra thirty cents, but it would be worth it to get his old man off his ass.

He made a quick right turn around the side of Manny's and entered the alley. It was cluttered with full garbage cans, waiting for pickup. Behind a stack of milk crates was a bend in the fence that led to an adjoining alley that came out right next to the market.

As he pushed the bend in the fence aside, someone called his name. A chill shot through him. He turned and saw nothing, so he pushed through the fence to the other side.

More garbage cans, more empty milk crates, and Pampers and toilet-tissue cartons. There was the sour milk smell of discarded cheese.

Someone called his name.

It came from somewhere ahead of him. A precarious stack of boxes on top of a trash bin tilted, then fell over. Behind the trash bin, a crouching figure moved.

"Who the fuck are you?" French said.

"Danny?" a muffled voice answered.

Sudden annoyance pushed French's uneasiness aside and he stepped forward, knocking the trash bin aside. "Who the fuck—" he began.

"Remember me?"

The boy standing there was vaguely familiar. He was five or six years old, skinny, with thick horn-rimmed glasses and pale, lightly freckled skin. He wore jeans with rolled up cuffs, and a checked shirt with wide collars.

His lips were thin. There was a peculiar familiar odor . . .

"Puke!" Danny French said in surprise. It was Puke Carteret, a boy he'd known in first grade. They called him Puke because he had something wrong with his perspiration glands and smelled like vomit. Puke Carteret had been the first guy he'd ever beat up on; they'd been in the school yard one day when French decided he didn't like Puke's smell.

When two lunchtime monitors finally got them apart, Puke had a chipped front tooth and a swollen lip. Danny spent the afternoon in the principal's office but, the next day, discovered he was a kind of hero.

"You popped him, Danny," someone said to him.

"Hit him good."

They were afraid of him. He had beaten up a kid for no reason, and they thought he might do the same to them, and they were afraid.

It was a revelation. This must be what his old man felt when he hit his mother. He could get friends and keep them around just by acting tough.

"Remember what you did to me?" Puke said.

"Yeah," French said, smiling. But something wasn't right with Puke Carteret.

"Do I still smell, Danny?" Puke asked.

"Yeah," French said. "Why—" he continued, but then there was a sound at the other side of the alley, behind another trash bin.

Another figure stood up. He was big and beefy, with a dull glint in his eyes. He had been left back two years for failing three subjects. He could barely think.

"Wikowski?" French said. "Charlie Wikowski?”

Wikowski smiled. None of the malevolent glint had left his dull eyes. In second grade Danny had jumped him from behind on the way home from school, hitting him hard twice on the left side of the head, leaving him screaming on the ground with a damaged eardrum.

There was something not right about him, too.

A trash-can cover fell over, and someone else appeared. "It's me, Danny. Duff Peters."

Duff, the small, slow grocery boy whom French punched out one day because a friend dared him to take on someone in high school.

"You broke my arm," Duff said mildly. "I didn't work that whole summer."

"What's going on?" French said.

"Roll call," someone new said. A girl this time, with a smooth, high voice, long red hair, an ascetic face with a slim nose.

"Beverly . . ." French gasped.

". . . Saper," she finished for him. "You threatened to beat up my brother Joey last summer if I didn't take off my panties and show you."

"I know," French said. Again, there was something strange . . .

He knew what it was. None of them had changed. Puke Carteret was still six years old, the same as the day Danny had thrashed him in the school yard. Charlie Wikowski, Duff Peters, were unchanged, Beverly Saper was without the breasts she had grown since he'd done what he did to her at the beginning of summer.

"What's happening?" Danny French demanded. Whatever thrill he had felt at seeing his old conquests had evaporated.

"Just this," Duff Peters said. "We came to tell you we know why you did those things."

"I know why you jumped on me," Puke Carteret said. "I know it was because you thought your mother was the only one in the world who loved you, but that when she left and didn't take you with her, she told your father that you were as rotten as he was because you were a man and all men were garbage.”

"We know all that," Beverly Saper said.

"But we don't care," Duff Peters said. "It makes no difference. You did all those things to us, and that's all that matters."

French saw that they had closed ranks, and realized that he was backed up against the fence between the two alleys. He felt around for the hole, then remembered that it could only be used from the other side, since the fence snapped back and couldn't be pulled back open.

"No . . ." he said.

They advanced on him like Frankenstein monsters, step after slow step. Even Charlie Wikowski's dull eyes filled with purpose.

"We know . . ." one of them said maliciously, and then another one of them touched him and he screamed and jammed his eyes closed, but then they didn't touch him anymore, and he heard someone soothing him, going, "Shhhh."

A soft hand fell on him, the fingers caressing him like feathers. He looked, up to see . . .

"Mother."

Her face was young. She was not scared, her eyes not blackened as they were that last night by his father. She wore lipstick, like she used when she went out shopping with him on Saturday, when he was two years old, when she took him by the hand and they walked together up the street, and the sun shone on him because he was with his mother and she loved him. She was his alone, and his father was working somewhere, getting drunk at lunchtime. But here they were, Mom and baby, and all the world knew that they were the only two. They were made for each other. She looked like that now. Her dress was the same, the blue one that looked and smelled like May, with little yellow and light pink flowers on it. Her hair smelled clean, her neck smelled like clean rose soap when she picked him up and held him, her skin smooth as the skin of a peach. Her eyes were blue as the sky. She loved him. She belonged to him.

"Don't cry, baby," she crooned.

"Mommy," he bawled. "Mommy." She rocked him. In the distance, beyond her clean smell, he smelled aging cheese in the alley. That didn't mean anything. They would leave the alley. She would hold his hand and everyone would see that she belonged to him. Out in the sun, as they walked . . .

"I didn't mean to beat them up, Mommy," he cried.

"But you did," she said softly. She held him away from her and looked into his eyes. "You did," she said. Her eyes were blue, but in the center they were black, and the black expanded to fill her eyes.

"You did," her stern voice said.

"Mommy," he bawled. "No, Mommy."

Her eyes were night-black, and then they turned bright copper gold, and she was not Mommy because her form shrank and there was no Mommy anymore in those copper, pitiless eyes.

"You," Danny French said.

"Yes," it answered, and Danny French said nothing more as the infinite sky dropped on him.

22

"The boy is evil, Jacob."

Jacob Beck couldn't believe the change in his wife. She had always seemed such a strong person—at least he'd always thought so. When, after he'd met her at college, she'd told him the religious background of her family, he could not believe that she could possibly be the product of such an environment. They'd had long talks about her "reading," which she had come to regard as a kind of hysteria brought on by her mother's demands. At the time, he'd taken her complete rejection of her Fundamentalist upbringing in stride—mostly because he was in love with her almost immediately, but also because it seemed natural that anyone with half a brain would turn away from such radicalism in anything, especially in religious belief. It had vaguely disturbed him that she was so willing to go along with whatever he thought was right in the manner of religion, since his own religious beliefs were based on such long and careful thought, but he had just chalked it up to the fact that it was the early 1970s and everybody around him seemed to be reevaluating everything—morals, sexual mores, values that in the 1950s had seemed as solid as rock.

He'd seen a lot of other changes in people since then, especially in the ones who had seemed to change so completely during the 1960s and 1970s. When the pendulum swung way out one way, it often swung back to the other extreme. Student activists became stockbrokers, revolutionaries opened trendy ice cream parlors or sold car insurance.

But it had always seemed to him that Mary was immune to that. She was a quiet woman, but underneath that seemingly frail exterior he had always found a source of strength. She believed in him, in their life, and, if she believed in God, it was one of her own making, one that suited her. Jacob had never thought that the other, older, demanding God would rise up within her to reclaim her.

But that's just what seemed to have happened. The pendulum had swung back for his wife, owing to shock or shaken beliefs or whatever, and he was now seeing a new, frightening side of her. It was almost as if all the doubts and frustrations he had endured the past months had been lifted from his shoulders and dropped squarely on hers. And she had cracked under the weight.

"Mary, how can you—"

"That," she said, pointing a shaking finger at the newspaper that lay open on their bed.

Once again, Beck looked at the article on page 43:

STRANGE DEATH

Curtis Maynard, an itinerant, was found dead just inside the entrance to Willard Street Park this morning by a passerby. Police say Maynard frequented the park at night and was often seen in the vicinity of the entrance, where he usually slept.

Though it was determined that Maynard had consumed at least one quart of whiskey and was legally drunk at the time of his death, police said that the direct cause of death was asphyxiation. Maynard was found with an empty bottle of scotch in his mouth, the neck of the bottle shoved halfway down his throat. "It looks like he tried to swallow the bottle itself," Officer Frederick Ripkin said.

Maynard had no close relatives . . .

"That's the man," Mary said, "that I saw Billy looking at that night in the park."

"But Mary—"

"I knew he was going to be hurt," she told him. "I could feel it."

"Mary," he answered rationally, "can't you understand that all you saw was an old alcoholic taking a pee and a little boy smoking a cigarette? What in heaven's name did you expect to see at eleven o'clock at night in a public park? Kite flyers?"

"I felt it!" she screamed, and for a moment a wild, fanatic light shone in her eyes before she suddenly began to sob and collapsed into Jacob's arms.

This came just when Jacob thought he was making progress with Billy. The boy had come out of his shell a bit, had even gone with him to a high school football game the previous weekend. Jacob had even gotten the boy to admit that he was still smoking cigarettes, but that he would try to quit.

"They help me concentrate," was the boy's way of explaining his habit.

He'd even completely dismissed the incident in the boy's room, realizing that he had been tired and could very well have imagined it.

And there was the matter of the boy's mother. He had located and talked Mrs. Potter into coming for her son. He thought this would solve everything (except, possibly, his own feelings for the boy, since, for the first time, he knew how much he really wished he had a son). Instead, it had seemed to solve nothing. Billy hadn't even acknowledged Beck's statement: "Your mother is coming for you, Billy." In a way he understood, since Mrs. Potter for some reason, out of guilt or because he was a minister, had spilled her guts out to him over the phone, talking for an hour and a half about Billy's father running out on her and her own alcoholism and negative feelings for the boy. She had sworn that she was no longer drinking. Beck had believed her, and though there was a curious tension beneath her words when she promised to come and "try" to take him back, Beck had thought the woman meant well and would do just that.

The fact that Billy might soon be leaving them had done nothing for Mary, either. She had merely shook her head and said, "That will solve nothing." Only Christine seemed genuinely pleased, saying sarcastically, "Now I can have my father back."

Jacob tried to gently pull his trembling wife away, but she clung to him. "I love you, Jacob. No matter what, even if it was wrong for me to leave my mother and to stop my readings, I know that it could never have been a bad thing for me to love you." A long shiver passed through her body. "But that boy is Satan. And he has a hold on you. He has a hold on your heart."

"Mary," he soothed.

"Now I know my mother was right. For a long time, especially after I met you, I fooled myself into believing that she was a hard, bitter old woman and that she was wrong about life. But she was right. There's only one thing in this world to watch for, and that's Satan. And now he's come. Just like my mother told me he would. I wasn't positive. Even after I read that boy, some small part of me told me I must be wrong, but that small part of me, in my heart, was run by Satan himself." She sounded almost as if she were in a trance. "My Aunt Stella always told me Satan played tricks. He played his tricks on Aunt Stella, and on me, but I've found him just the same. He's a little boy who smokes cigarettes. And God still won't tell me what to do."

She sobbed against him, shaking as if taken by a violent chill. "Oh, Momma, I wish you were alive so I could tell you I'm sorry."

From downstairs came the sound of the front door opening and loud sobbing.

"Christine?" Jacob shouted, pulling away from Mary and running for the stairs. He heard Mary cry out and follow.

When he reached the hallway, he found his daughter sobbing helplessly, hugging herself, a young policeman standing awkwardly at her side.

"What happened?" Beck asked, looking from his daughter to the cop.

"There was an accident," the police officer began.

"Oh, Daddy," Christine sobbed, her eyes red-rimmed, and then she ran to him.

Behind them, Mary stood in the doorway.

"Christine," he said, gently pushing her away from him with his hands on her shoulders, "tell me what happened."

"It was . . ." she said, and then recoiled at some memory.

The policeman said, "Your daughter is all right, Reverend Beck. She and her friend had quite a shock, I'm afraid."

The young officer looked as though he had had quite a shock also.

"I'll tell him," Christine said in a low, courageous voice.

Beck sat her down at the kitchen table and held her hand. "Tell me," he said.

"Annie and I were walking home from school," she said haltingly. "We were on the south side of Sullivan Street. Annie said she wanted to go to Manny's deli for a candy bar."

She took a shuddering breath and went on. "So we crossed over. We went into Manny's and Annie got a Clark bar and we looked at the magazines. Then we walked outside."

A shiver passed through her and she stopped speaking. Then she said slowly, "When we passed the alley next to the deli, Annie heard a noise. I heard it, too. It sounded like something was scraping along the ground."

"Go on, baby," Jacob said in a soothing voice.

The next words came out in a sobbing rush. "We looked into the alley and one of the garbage cans near the entranceway was sliding toward the street like something was pushing it. Then it fell over. Danny French was behind it. And he was . . ."

"Christine, baby—"

"Maybe I should—" the police officer interrupted.

"I'll tell him!" Christine shouted. She sobbed, staring up into her father's face. "Daddy, there was a knife stuck into his eye right through the other side of his head!"

"Oh, God," said Beck, a coldness passing through him as he pulled his daughter closer.

When Jacob Beck had thanked the policeman and saw him out, he returned to find Mary still standing rigid in the doorway.

"Tell your father what you told me," she said to Christine.

Beck went to her, and Christine let him rock her in his arms before she stiffened. When she looked at him, her eyes were hard. "Billy had a fight with Danny French in the school yard today."

"Christine—"

"The boy is evil, Jacob," Mary said from her spot in the doorway. Her gaze was level, her voice quiet and assured. "He killed that old man in the park, and he killed Danny French. He killed Allie Kramer. The other mysterious suicides in the paper—he murdered them all. He'll kill us, too."

She looked at her husband with a calm conviction that turned Beck's insides icy. "Billy Potter is Satan, Jacob." Her eyes were hard as stones when she next spoke.

"God will tell me what to do."

23

Emily Potter made it to Tulsa. At Tulsa, where they had a half-hour stopover, she wandered restlessly from the train station into the sunlight. The sun hurt her eyes. She shaded them with her hand, and walked until she found a main street. Proceeding to one end, she did not find what she was looking for, so she retraced her steps, checking with her eyes the shops across the street, and walked the other way.

At the near end of the street, near a highway overpass, she found what she sought. Only then did she tell herself that this was what she was looking for. I'll put it away, she thought, and I won't look at it. I'll give it to Reverend Beck.

There was a little bell over the door that jangled as she went in. For a brief moment she was blinded, her eyes still used to the bright daylight outside. Also, she was confused. It had been a long time.

But it all came back to her. There were bottles set in familiar rows along one wall. She went to one with a label she knew and lifted it from its shelf and brought it to the counter. She checked her watch. In ten minutes the train would leave.

The store proprietor seemed in no hurry to wait on her. He was dusting a line of liter Chablis bottles in the back. He hummed to himself. The counter had a green mat on it, the kind that was made of textured rubber so things wouldn't slip off.

She was about to clear her throat when the proprietor turned and saw her. "Be right with you!" he said brightly. He continued his dusting for a moment longer, then tucked his duster into his belt and shuffled over to the counter. She saw that there was something wrong with his legs—one was shorter than the other and he moved with an unconscious grimace each time he took a step.

"Just this, please," she said when he had reached the back of the counter, knowing that if she did not say that, he would ask her what else she wanted. He looked like the kind of man who would say that, then go on to the weather and maybe politics before getting around to telling her about a wonderful red wine that had just come in from Uruguay. He looked like the kind of man that went into barbershops and stayed there all day when he wasn't working, talking and talking.

"You know—" the storekeeper began. She repeated, "Just this, please."

He shrugged and took her twenty-dollar bill, ringing up the sale on an old wooden cash register. The drawer didn't open, and he clucked and banged the side of it. It still didn't open. She looked at her watch and saw that there were only five minutes until the train left. She didn't want to miss it and be stuck here. She said, "That'll be fine," and took the bottle, tucking it into her shoulder bag. At the doorway, as the little bell tinkled above her, she heard the proprietor call out behind her, "Miss, your change!" as the cash-register drawer opened with an old, muffled ding.

She went back out into the sunshine, again holding her hand over her eyes. Such a long time, she thought. So long. As she walked briskly toward the train station she felt the hard bottle hitting against her side through the shoulder bag. She took the bottle out and held it tightly under her arm.

As she got to her seat, the train pulled out. Her back was covered with perspiration. She was mad, because she was sweaty now from rushing and she didn't want to feel that way. She would be uncomfortable now for the rest of the trip, feeling as if she wanted to change.

When the train had slid into the countryside, she pulled her suitcase down from the overhead rack and opened it. On top was a letter for Billy. She put the bottle deep inside her suitcase, underneath her heavy clothes. It's a present for Reverend Beck, she told herself again, but she knew this was a lie, and as soon as the suitcase was back overhead, she began to think of the bottle.

This was not the way she had planned it. It had started so well. When Reverend Beck had called her, her heart had leaped, because it seemed that an empty place there, a hollow that had been scooped out over a year ago when Billy left, would be refilled. Her heart had actually leaped in joy, and this, more than even the fact that she now knew where he was and would see him again, that he had been found after disappearing from the foundling home, had filled her with hope. She had thought that if such a call ever came, she would be filled with dread, but she had been filled with happiness and this had told her that her life really was made new.

She had not had a drink in over a year—since she had awakened one morning a week after Billy left, in a pool of her own vomit, her gums soaked in blood and one leg numb. Almost two hours went by before she was able to crawl to the telephone and speak into it.

After that, after she had gotten out of the hospital, and, especially, after the therapy they had provided for her, she had vowed never to take another drink. AA meetings had followed, and within five months she was a new person. When word had come that Billy was in a home three states away and that the woman who had taken him in wanted to keep him until she could find a new home for him, she had at first been determined that she would take him home herself and start a new life with him. But something deep within her had reacted with dread, and she knew that if she did that, she would be back on the bottle within a week. So she had said yes to the woman, and Billy was gone from her, and each day she grew stronger.

And then the second call had come, after he had disappeared from Melinda's home, and this time it wasn't dread but joy she felt. This time she knew she could take him back and be his mother.

Joy had welled up within her.

Until she had gotten on the train.

Then all the doubts had come back to her. As the train pulled out, she had felt a tug in her stomach. It was as if someone was in there with a pair of pliers. She thought that she had made a mistake. Maybe she should have let the Unitarian minister adopt him, like he had vaguely hinted. It had been obvious that the man wanted to keep the boy. But at the time, she had been so sure of what she was doing, of the happiness that had invaded her, that she had told him she would come out immediately to see Billy.

On the train, the doubts gnawed away at her, slowly, until, about halfway there, all of her confidence was gone. She had begun to think about living with her son again, about Billy's eyes looking at her, that deep void way at the back, his constant, strange silences masking some sort of powerful fury. He was her son, but she was still afraid of him.

She couldn't back out. She had told Reverend Beck she would be there, Billy knew she would be there, she didn't want to see him again but she did . . .

And then there was a way out. There, in the train, by the small dirty square window, with clusters of fall-bespeckled trees and rows of white and green and brown houses rushing past, as one hand, which had rested on the smoothly worn red vinyl of the seat's armrest for most of the trip, now played absently with her new haircut, the haircut she had gone out to get after that phone call with the minister, when the first blush of her now-fading happiness had still been upon her, as her hand hovered there above her head, full of the thoughts that crowded into her brain—she knew a way out. There was a small hunger deep within her, one that had never gone away, and if she fed it, then all the other fears might disappear, just like they always had. She would not abuse it, this time. She would just let it give her what it had given her at one time, before it got out of hand—a way out, and a dull, pleasing view of her world. She had been drunk when she used to make Billy's sandwiches at lunch, when she cleaned the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays, drunker later when she put something frozen into the oven for their dinner. She had been quietly drunk when Billy went out in the backyard to play, and when he came home from school, she had been able to smile at him, and smile when she bathed him and put him to bed. He had been her little Billy boy. She had smiled because the quiet little face, with the coppery eyes, had, in her drinking dreams, smiled back, called her Mommy, held his hands up to be kissed, begged to be lifted and held close. The face the alcohol showed her made her brave. It made the world into a place she could live in.

She left the bottle in the suitcase until nightfall. Then the sleeping car's lights dimmed, and what few passengers there were went to sleep. Still, she waited until well past midnight. No one took the train anymore. If she had flown, she would have been there a day earlier, but somewhere in her mind, she had thought that taking the train there, and then back with Billy, would be a pleasant thing to do. It was something she had done once when she was a girl, when she had visited her cousins in Vermont. Now she knew that she had really taken the train because it would give her time to think about what she had in the suitcase.

The seat beside her had remained empty through the whole trip. She took her bag down from the overhead rack and opened it. Her hand slid under the top layer of underwear and bras, below the more substantial clothing beneath, instantly locating the hard glass of the bottle. She took it out and tucked it in the seat between her and the window. She closed the bag and left it where it was.

She got up quietly and went to the end of the car. There was a water cooler there, with a dispenser of conical paper cups. She drew the last four of them out and went back to her seat. The train slid into a curve, and she stood still for a moment, feeling the added friction of the clacking wheels as they moved against the track beneath her. Then she sat down.

Her fingers shook as she pulled the wrap of paper from the top of the bottle. She knew what she was doing. There was no reason for her hand to shake. It was not, she suddenly realized, because she was turning her back on what she had over a year to accomplish—her hand was shaking in anticipation. For a brief moment she wondered if she should have bought a second bottle.

The first drink went down smoothly. She thought it would burn, her throat was so unused to it, but it was sweet, like maple syrup. She poured another and screwed the cap back on the bottle, tucking it beside her again. She looked out the window. Clackety clack. The night moved by like black water. There was a flow to it. Somewhere out there was morning, waiting to come to her. The train would get in just before six o'clock.

She looked down and saw that she had already taken the second drink.

Clackety-clack.

She saw also that her hand had already unscrewed the cap from the bottle.

When the sky had brightened to purple, she slipped the empty bottle into her suitcase. The sunrise would be beautiful. She would watch it from her seat, here in the train, and then she would go and see her son again. Suddenly she was crying. She didn't know why. She watched the sun rise, and then the day began with blue sky pushing purple away. The train slowed, then stopped.

She gathered her bags and put her coat on. She knew now that she had been crying for what she had left behind, the world she could have had if she had said no to seeing Billy again. She weighed the two worlds and found that they were equal. She wanted to sit down and cry some more, but she didn't. The train had stopped and it was time to get off.

When she stepped down onto the platform, it smelled like morning in autumn in a medium-sized town—the scent of dewed leaves on the ground, of leaves just breaking away from their trees. It was a little cold taste on her tongue. She went into the small station.

She remembered then that she hadn't even told Reverend Beck when she would be arriving. She had told him the day, and that she would call him when she got in. She looked at the white-faced clock on the wall by the ticket stand: 6:04. It was too early to call. She would wait until eight-thirty or nine.

She wondered when the liquor stores opened here.

One other passenger had gotten off with her, an older woman who immediately got into a waiting yellow taxi and was gone. The ticket booth in the station was open, but no one was standing at the small window. She could hear the snap of turning newspaper pages from the booth. There was the vague, pungent smell of coffee, which made her feel sick.

She sat down on the dark green bench that ran the length of one wall. She stared at the clock: 6:06. A pressure began to build below her stomach. She realized she hadn't gone to the bathroom on the train since four o'clock in the morning. It was at that point that she had known she was lost, because she had smiled at herself in the small, smoke-dirty bathroom mirror on the train, and another face, her old face, had merely stared back at her. She had cried, but then she had gone back to finish the bottle.

She rose, looking down at her bags and contemplating whether to bring them or not. She thought of going over to the ticket booth and asking the seller to watch them for her, but the hard snap of another page being turned told her that he didn't want to be disturbed.

The hell with that, she thought, carrying them with her.

The ladies' room smelled of recently applied disinfectant—a change from the train bathroom, which had smelled as if it hadn't been cleaned in a long time.

She relieved herself. Then she went to the mirror. It was still her old face. Her eyes were red. She drew a comb slowly through her hair, attempting to straighten it out. She wondered again when the liquor stores opened in this town.

The bathroom door opened. It stayed open.

She turned. Her hand went to her mouth, and the comb slipped from her fingers, the tines hitting the floor making a faint ping that resounded slightly with the echo that all public bathrooms have.

For a moment he smiled, the smile she had always seen him with when she had taken the requisite number of drinks and when she had bathed him, the alcohol hiding his real, solemn face from her. He was her Billy again. He had grown. His hair was darker, a bit longer. His face was thinner. He had gained perhaps an inch in height. His clothes hung a little loosely on his frame.

"Hello, Mother."

She made a gesture of confusion with her hands. "How . . . ?"

"I came to see you."

She knew now that taking the liquor into her had been the right thing to do. The fantasy she had had, of meeting him and running to him, telling him that he was her little Billy boy, hugging him to her, was one that could never have come to pass. He was here, and she felt as cold and numb and helpless as she ever had in his presence. He was her boy, had sprung from her loins, and thus she held a love for him that nothing could extinguish, and yet she felt nothing as she stood before him. If she clutched him to her as the genes in her were telling her to, she would shrink back even as she took the flesh of her flesh into her arms. Even as she wanted to shout with happiness, so did she want to scream in anguish, push him away, turn her eyes from him forever. He was here, but he could never belong to her. Nothing had changed.

Billy stepped into the bathroom and let the door close.

"Are you well, Billy?" she asked lamely.

"Yes," he said. Was there a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth? The alcohol was working on her again.

He had taken a step toward her, and, unconsciously, she stepped back. She was almost at the back wall of the ladies' room, could feel a slight cold draft through the frosted windowpane behind her. Billy stared at her calmly.

"I missed you," she said, trying to make herself remember that she really had.

"I know."

"I have a letter for you from your friends Marsh and Rebecca, from Melinda's home."

She bent down, fumbling with the catches on her suitcase. "They say they miss you; there's an address where you can write to them."

The suitcase flipped open, and the letter fell out, along with the empty liquor bottle, which rolled beneath the sink to stop with a hollow sound against the porcelain wall.

"Oh, Billy," she sobbed.

When she looked up, he was …

Smiling.

My God, she thought. Had she really drunk that much? The liquor was doing it for her, just as it had done when he was a baby. His eyes had turned soft and warm, his face had melted into a little boy grin, as if he had just come home from fishing with his friends on a summer afternoon, something he had never done.

"Billy?"

He was smiling, and it was not the liquor. It was real. The liquor coursed through her, but this was real and Billy was being what she always knew he could be. He was her little Billy boy. He had his father's wide smile, the corners of the eyes wrinkling when he smiled, his face glowing, red and healthy. He looked as though he would laugh at any moment.

"Billy, yes!"

"Is this what you want?" he asked.

She felt the cold air of the window at her back. He was standing close in front of her, his face split into an unstopping grin. The features were as rigid as those of a ventriloquist's dummy, a mockery of his face.

"Is this what you want, Mother?"

"Billy, stop!"

His face grew larger, expanded like a balloon, the eyes wide, lips huge, teeth white slabs in his smile, the mouth, the face, growing, growing . . .

"IS . . . THIS . . . WHAT . . . YOU . . . WANT . . . ME . . . TO . . . BE . . . ???" the monstrous face said, the cavernous mouth opening with a whoosh at each word.

"Billy, stop!"

She felt cold air—then something colder, a rip of fabric and a shattering sound, the rush of icy air at her back.

"BILLY!"

The face began to laugh, and then suddenly it was gone. She was looking up from the floor. She saw nothing, an unfocus of ceiling, and then suddenly he was standing over her. She smelled faint autumn, felt the waft of cool breeze behind her. Her back was sticky. She reached beneath herself, felt the floor rise languorously to meet her hand, felt something sharp. Slowly, she brought her hand from beneath her and felt it close around one of the shards, rising slowly in front of her face. Billy was still standing over her. His face was calm, his hair falling over his brow as it always had, his mouth unsmiling. Her Billy boy. She brought her hand up. It was red as paint. The shard was a piece of smoky glass. A leaf wafted into sight above her, blotting out Billy's face for a moment. She felt the leaf settle across her face before falling away. She could not feel or see her hand anymore.

"Billy?" she called weakly. She could not see him. Then he was there. He was there over her, bending down, but his face was not monstrous. It was merely his own face. His eyes were blank copper. His face was calm as ice, and then he smiled, the smile she had always wanted him to have, only with those vacant eyes. He took the shard of glass from her hand and drew it deliberately across her throat. She barely felt it. She heard him walk away. She heard the crinkle of paper as he bent to pick up the letter she had brought for him. The door to the bathroom opened, then closed.

"Billy boy," she breathed, in a whisper, before she went away.

24

Faith.

That was what it all came down to. But what was faith? Belief in something that wasn't there, could not be tested, tasted, smelled, or touched? Hope in the powers of the invisible? Suspension of disbelief. Something that the senses knew was not measurable but nevertheless chose to allow. Faith was a chimera—an impossibly foolish idea. But one that the mind nevertheless accepted. Why?

Because it wanted to. Needed to.

Was that faith?

Without his being able to control them, tears had pushed themselves out of Jacob Beck's eyes. He clasped his hands in mock prayer, and began to sob. He pressed his head down against his fists.

What in hell is happening to me?

He didn't like the answer.

Around him, in the church, there were no echoes, only the sound of his own rational mind beating against itself inside his skull, and the hard rasp of a middle-aged man's crying.

It had fallen apart like a house of cards. All the new reasonings, the renewed hope, the rejuvenated feeling of purpose—all of it had collapsed and was gone. The place he had been before, the ledge of his crisis in faith, was so far above him he could barely see it from the pit he had dropped into. That had been a temporary loss, a questioning. This was the destruction of the temple.

I believe in nothing.

Man was garbage. He was a creature conceived in filth, destined for the ashcan. There was no reason for his existence. Whatever beauty man seemed to possess or create was all illusion, concealing the sewage underneath. How in God's name could man believe in anything? There was nothing to believe in. It all ended the same way—in a wood-walled room, with the worms and maggots tapping on the door and waiting for the dampness to do its work so they could enter and finish the job. It came down to white bones, and the grin that a skull showed because there was no more appropriate look for it than a fixed, mocking smile.

The sobbing fit passed, and Jacob sat up.

His hands, he saw, were red from clutching each other. The nails needed trimming. For a moment the shimmer of tears blurred his vision.

The night is dark, he thought, recalling his futile Saturday evening fights with himself over his sermons.

The day is dark, too, his mind told him, surveying the brightly lit church with its polished rows of oak pews, the red carpet, the clean, velvet-topped rail, the sturdy pulpit.

A passing cloud broke the sunlight in two, then let it come shining back with full force.

The day is dark.

What had been that sermon he had wrestled with that night Billy had come? Hate the evil, and love the good. And what puerile comments had he made? Something about loving good being the hard part. That hating evil was easy, but loving good was difficult. Pure garbage. Then again, maybe not. Loving good was hard, but that wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part was finding good. Good was impossible to find.

Once more, self-pitying tears forced themselves up into his eyes. He held them back, but then they came in a flood and he was weeping into his clasped hands, remembering again the cold white body on the marble slab, the calm, lifeless mouth that would soon be a grinning skull.

They had called him at seven-thirty that morning. When he got there, they brought him down a long marble hallway, then down a wide stairway that led to another long hallway. All of the doors had windows set in them. There was a medicinal smell. The policeman with him opened one of the doors for him, then followed him in. He was the same young, nervous cop that had brought Christine home. He looked as though he had been through a lot in the last couple of days.

Jacob had a feeling the officer was waiting for him to say something.

"She had a note with my number on it?" The policeman said, "Yes, sir."

The attendant opened one of the doors and pulled out a slab. The woman was lying on it. Her face was relaxed, as if filled with a sorrow long suppressed but finally, at the end, resigned.

"You were expecting her today?" the young policeman asked, looking away as the attendant pushed the slab back into the wall.

Jacob replied distractedly, "She didn't tell me she'd be here this early."

"You say you've been taking care of her son?"

Jacob nodded.

They stood in silence. Jacob tried to keep the disturbing thoughts from forming in his head. He turned to the policeman and asked, "Did anyone see this happen?"

"There weren't any witnesses. The ticket seller heard some noises coming from the bathroom, but didn't investigate. The only other person around was a young boy."

The thoughts in Jacob Beck's head came together. As if a shower of ice had suddenly rained down upon him, he felt his blood turn cold. "A young boy?"

"I'd like to talk to him," the policeman said. "The ticket seller said the boy came up to the window and just stood there, staring at him. He said the kid's eyes were like copper pennies."

For Jacob Beck, the world disintegrated.

In the church, with the bright light of day streaming in through the windows, Jacob Beck wept. He had not hated the evil—he had embraced and loved it. He had embraced it as if it were his own, taken it to his heart and sought to strengthen it. What would Joe Marchini say now? What pious bullshit would his old friend the priest spout at him? Something about this only being a temporary setback? That God moves in mysterious ways? If they drank enough scotch, maybe Marchini would tell him about his own second testing and how the Lord watched over him and brought him through with flying colors.

Beck was convulsed by a sob. He had tried to find Billy when he returned from the morgue. He still hadn't wanted to believe what his mind was screaming at him. He wanted to talk to the boy, see if there could possibly be any mistake, hear what the boy had to say. He wanted to help him, if there was anything that could be done. But Billy was gone, the window in his room opened, his jacket missing, Mary's silent, sure stare telling him that what she had said had been right, that the boy was evil, that Jacob had been fooled.

Billy's face floated up before him, copper eyes darkening. The serious, determined look on his features dissolved into a sudden, vicious smile, teeth bared like an animal, willing to kill anyone.

25

On the phone, John Mifflin said, "Are you by yourself?"

Christine Beck said, "Yes." She wanted her voice to sound strong, not girlish, but it wasn't working. She sounded scared. She realized that John sounded scared, too.

"I . . . needed to talk to you," he said.

She drew strength from the fear in his voice. "Tell me what's the matter."

"Where is Billy now?"

She could feel the fear in him, but there was also the sense that he was holding it down, that he had made up his mind about something.

"John," she said, "what are you going to do?"

"Where is Billy?" He sounded almost desperate.

"Let me come over and talk to you."

"No."

"John, please." Her voice was trembling.

He said nothing.

"You saw what he did to Danny!" she begged. "You're the one who told me about what he could do."

There was a pause. "Christine," he said slowly. He sounded like both a little boy and a man. "He killed Danny French. He's killed others, too. You told me your mother said he killed that drunk in the park. I think he can kill anybody he wants to. Nobody would believe me if I tried to tell them. What are we going to do? Wait until he kills everybody? He could do that if he wanted. I think he likes to play with people." A hint of the self-pity that John always seemed to show when talking about Billy crept into his voice. "I watched him a long time, when we were at Melinda's home. He could get anyone he wanted on his side. He's still doing that. If I don't do anything, he'll just keep doing whatever he wants. You said yourself your father was on his side."

He was pleading. Christine's mind was a mass of fears—for John, for herself, for her mother and father.

"Christine, where is he?"

Quietly, she said, "In the park."

There was an intake of relief on the other end. "Are you sure?"

"My mother said he goes there to smoke. She went there after him fifteen minutes ago."

"Thanks."

"John, please," she said, but as the soft click sounded on the other end she was already on her way to find her father.

It took John a while to find the key. His father always kept it under the Bible in the drawer beside his bed, but when John looked there, he found to his dismay that it was gone. He was thinking of other ways to get into the gun case—possibly even breaking open the glass front—when he spotted the key on top of the bedside table, mixed in with some change.

He felt the smooth coldness of the key as he slid it carefully into his jeans. He went cautiously to the den. The door was open, and he thought for a sinking moment that his mother might be in there, or, worse, that his father had returned early from playing golf. But when he said "Hello?" into the room, no one answered. Louder, he said, "Anybody here?" When there was no response, he slipped into the room and closed the door behind him.

The shades were drawn. He turned on the amber-headed light on the desk. The gun case was in the far corner, partially hidden by a square side of the projection television screen. Stepping behind the screen, he slipped the key out of his jeans and deftly fit it into the lock.

There was a solid click and the door swung open smoothly.

There were only two rifles in there now, a .22 and a shotgun. The single time his father had let him try the shotgun it had nearly thrown him to the ground with its kickback. But the .22 he was practiced with. He had advanced to the stage where his father had approved of his shooting at the target range.

He pulled a box of cartridges from the drawer in the bottom of the case. He sat down on the floor to load the rifle. He checked the bore and the sight—everything seemed to be in working order.

He set the rifle against the chair. He was locking the gun case when he froze at a sound behind him.

Someone had entered the room. He waited for the stifled scream of surprise that was his mother's trademark, or his father's stern voice. Neither came.

"What are you doing?"

It was Martha, asking the question in her most annoying voice. She knew full well what he was doing. The tone of her voice told him that, and that she would have to be paid a lot to keep from immediately screaming her discovery throughout the house.

"Dad's taking me to the range," he said mildly.

"He's playing golf and you know it," she said. A smirk spread across her features. "And you know what he'd do to you if he caught you taking one of his guns." Her cloying smile filled her whole face.

"You won't say anything to him about it."

"Why not?" Her face displayed false surprise.

"Because you can't."

John decided that it made no difference—she would do whatever she wanted anyway.

"Now, I don't know . . ." Martha began, but he shrugged her off.

"Do whatever you want," he said, stepping out from behind the television screen with the rifle in his hands.

"Are you going to shoot Billy Potter with that?"

Her voice was saccharine sweet, vilely innocent.

He stopped dead. "What?"

She shrugged. "Everybody knows you think he killed Danny French. Everybody knows you hate him. You told Christine—"

"You little shit," he said, shaking his head. "You were listening in on the extension. Like I said, do what you wa—"

"John," she said.

What he heard made him stop.

It was not her voice. It was like someone had suddenly turned up the volume on a stereo very high, making a rattling, unearthly sound. She had almost spat his name at him.

Her face was the same mock-innocent, sickening sweet . . .

"John," she repeated in the same startling voice. Her mouth split into a smile. There was something strangely familiar about her eyes.

"You really think Billy Potter is a bad boy?" she asked. "Has he ever done anything bad to anyone?"

Her eyes—those copper, burning eyes . "Who . . ." he asked limply.

She laughed. John dropped the gun. The amber lamp on the desk went out.

He stood in the near dark, in the presence of those burning penny eyes.

"Billy," he choked out, suddenly unable to breathe. The darkness had become all-inclusive. "Oh, God, Billy Potter."

"I killed Danny French," Martha's changed voice said. "I killed an old drunk in the park, and a milkman, and a woman in her house. I can kill anyone I want to."

"No . . . no . . ." John trembled, tears running down his reddened cheeks.

"I killed your new parents, too." He could see Martha's wide smile under her eyes in the dim light. "Your new mother is upstairs, one of her silk stockings tightened around her neck. Your father is in the garage. His golf clubs are next to him on the concrete floor, except for the two wooden ones that smashed in his head." Martha's face smiled serenely.

"I was going to kill you," John sputtered in rage. "I was going to kill you before you took it all away."

"Oh? I don't think you'll do that now. I'm going to kill everybody. I'm going to kill Christine, and all your teachers."

"No . . ."

"I can kill anyone I want."

John sensed the naked power behind the words. In an instant, the desk lamp was back on, and the figure of Martha became the science teacher Gleason, Manny Zelcker, his father, then Martha. Then there was another change, and she became a thin, solemn boy with brown hair over one eye and with a black golf jacket on.

"I can be anyone."

John screamed in rage at the figure of Billy Potter standing before him. For the first time, John saw a smile spread over Billy's features. The blank, somber face became animated.

"I'm going to kill you, John," it laughed.

John saw the .22 at his feet and bent to retrieve it. He tried to sight along the barrel at Billy Potter. Miraculously, the gun responded. He aimed and pulled the trigger.

There was a loud report. He felt the recoil against his shoulder. When he looked up, the figure of Billy Potter was sprawled on the carpet by the half-open doorway. There was a neat, round hole in the center of the black jacket next to the zipper. Billy's hands moved feebly. He was gasping, trying to push himself up. There was a look of astonishment on his face. He rose weakly, leaning heavily on his elbows, staring at John. He fell onto his back and, after a few rasping breaths, was still.

A numb excitement overcame John. I can't believe it, he thought. I destroyed him. He thought of his dead father and mother. He thought of Christine, and all the others who would live.

I can't believe he's dead.

"You shouldn't believe I'm dead," said a voice by the doorway.

He looked up. Billy Potter was there. The bullet hole was gone from his jacket. His mouth wore the slight, mean smile he'd shown before.

"You didn't"—Billy laughed, cutting off John's weak protest, firing off his finger like a gun—"get me."

John felt something cold in his hands. He looked down. One hand was clamped on the cold barrel of the .22, the other was gripping the stock awkwardly, the thumb pressed against the trigger. He was looking down into the barrel. He was powerless to move his hands.

"I couldn't let you do it for me," Billy Potter said. But now the voice was Martha's. It was Martha's voice, but the tone was different. The mask had been dropped. The spoiled coquetry had been replaced by a taunting, spiteful hunger.

"After I killed Danny French," Martha's voice said, "you acted just like I knew you would. But I decided that I couldn't let you kill him for me. I want to do that myself."

John moved his head, and stared at the figure in the doorway. It was not Billy Potter. It was his sister, Martha, the little sister he'd lived with for the past two years, the girl with the big mouth and simpering manner who constantly called attention to herself.

"This is really me," she said. "I wanted you to know that. You were going to kill Billy Potter, when it was me, your little sister who lived under the same roof with you, whose breakfast or dessert you sometimes took when you thought I wasn't looking, whose toys you broke, who you pushed in church and who you almost always ignored. I killed everyone, and I intend to do it for a long time." Her smile widened, her teeth were like little ranks of razors set in her wild, ungirlish face. A face with black, depthless eyes.

"Who is Billy Potter?" John asked, as, with a bolt of pure fear, he saw Martha's eyes widen and turn to copper fire and felt his own thumb, over which he had no control, tighten on the trigger of the rifle. "Who is he?"

Martha began to laugh, her little girl body thrown into grotesque paroxysms of mirth. She looked like a horrible little puppet being jerked by some invisible fiend.

"Billy Potter?" she said. Her voice rose to a screech.

Despite his fear, John's eyes were wide with wonder. "Who is he?"

Martha grinned, opening her mouth. "Billy . . . Potter . . . is . . ." she said.

She closed her mouth. The copper in her eyes deepened and burned bright, and John's thumb pulled the trigger. The rifle put a bullet into his brain, and his ears were already unhearing when Martha answered his question.

"Who is Billy Potter?" she asked in the suddenly quiet room as she opened the door wide to leave the shadows and head into daylight.

"Billy Potter is my good half."

26

He wanted a cigarette. He wanted one more than he had ever wanted anything, but the pack in his jacket pocket was empty. There was no time to get another one. He felt the crinkly wrapper with his fingers, the faint smell of tobacco reaching his nostrils. He imagined himself taking a cigarette from the pack, putting it to his lips, and lighting it with a match, slowly drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, tasting it there, letting it out slowly.

He heard something. It was not the sound of the birds, or the cat that had moved through the trees trying to get at them for the past hour. A jogger had come by a half hour ago, a radio strapped to his side, head-phones turned up so loud that Billy could hear the music from where he was: Wagner, one of the Ring cycle operas, horns blaring teutonically. This sound was different. It was the sound he had been waiting for his whole life. It was the sound of himself, a sound deep within his heart and mind. He had heard it before feebly, when he wasn't ready, but now it was clear and strong. It was as if he heard his own heartbeat out loud.

There was no one visible yet. He looked at the sky: late afternoon November, gray, maybe even snow before nightfall. It would be what Melinda had called Thanksgiving snow—the first snow of the late fall, not winter snow but fall snow, magic snow, which made you happy that the year was ending, not sad the way winter snow did. He thought about Melinda for a moment.

He heard the sound again, very near.

He looked around the clearing, into the copse of trees nearby, but saw nothing. He let his power open slightly. He felt a tiny bit of the empty space in him fill. It was a strange feeling. Then there was a sharp pull and he was empty again.

She stepped out into the clearing.

"I'm here," she said.

All the Martha mannerisms were gone—the petulance, the teacher's pet whining. There was just cold clear language from her cold dark eyes.

"You know who I am?" Billy asked quietly. "Who we are?"

She said, "You're the good half, I'm the bad half. One soul split before birth, entering two different bodies." A snake's smile. "I never much cared how or why."

"You know what I have to do," Billy said, letting his power reopen to her.

Her eyes widened slightly in surprise, but she put her smile back on. "Tell me."

"We end it." He opened a little more, pulling her darkness into his own.

She fought it, and he let go.

She said, "That's not what I want." Emotionlessly, he waited for her to tell him more.

"I want this," she said, gesturing with one hand to encompass all around her. "All of it. And you."

"You want to destroy everything?"

"There's no reason not to." She took a step closer, her black eyes flaring for a moment to bright copper in excitement. "You have no idea how this feels," she said. There was obvious enjoyment in her voice. "The mere crushing of a bug, feeling the tiny light go out, is a sensation you've never experienced."

She took another step toward him, and her face was like Lucifer's own—bright, mad, consumed with evil genius. "I was never sure until that day I saw you at that woman Melinda's house, the day we came for John. I was never sure until then that another part of me existed. But when I felt your power, felt you reaching out to me, I knew that if I didn't prepare myself, I could never beat you. Up until then I'd been very discreet, and very careful." She sounded almost proud. "That silly art teacher was a good example. No one cared about him; he'd be forgotten in a week or two. But when you showed up, it was obvious the time for caution was gone. I had to make sure I was strong enough for you. And besides, I enjoy it so much." Her face was suffused with confidence.

Billy held out his arms. "Let me hold you."

Her black eyes glared into his flat copper ones. "You think I don't know what would happen?"

"Matter and antimatter," he said, the slightest of smiles on his face, his arms still held out to her. Slowly Billy's eyes began to deepen to black. For a moment they matched Martha's, but abruptly her serpent's smile disappeared. Her eyes became bright copper as comprehension dawned, and she began to fight back. "I wondered why you stayed away from me until now," she said, "why you stood by while I killed those people. I thought you were afraid. It was because you weren't ready."

"I'm ready now."

He opened wider.

All of Martha's confidence evaporated. She stepped back, putting her hands up before her as if warding off a physical blow. "Let me walk away," she said desperately. "I'll leave you alone."

"You'll keep killing."

Even through the sudden fright and rage, a small, defiant smile appeared.

"If I let you go," Billy said, "you'll grow stronger until I couldn't stop you. You'll kill everyone and everything."

There was a dark glow of anticipation in Martha's dark eyes.

"I can stop you now," he said. Then, gently, he added, "Hold me."

He opened himself wide, willing her to fill his emptiness. It would be quick; there would be light, and maybe a sound like the dissipation of ball lightning. But there would be a tiny, flaring moment before nothingness came, when the two of them would be one—not two in one body, but one, single mind and single soul.

Martha gasped. She knew that she could not defeat him. Not now. She had to get away. She would hide, and if she had enough time, she would develop her power and then she would eat him alive, suck the marrow from his bones, feel his blood run through her teeth.

But not now.

"Martha, hold me." His voice was soft, but she felt herself flowing into him.

"No . . ." she cried.

"Billy!" a voice screamed.

The spell was broken.

One moment, Mary Beck was running toward Billy and Martha. Then they disappeared, and her mother was standing there, looking sternly at her.

But it couldn't be her mother. Could it?

Had her mother come back to forgive her?

"Kneel," her mother said, standing over Mary. Her tone was hard but not the harsh one she had always used.

Mary knelt. She felt as though she were twelve years old again. Her mother's hard, bony, dish-worn hand was on her head. She could feel the bones in her mother's hand through her hair, not resting on her head but gripping it.

"Lord," her mother prayed, speaking through Mary, as if she were a conduit to Jesus, not speaking to the clouds or to heaven but directly to Mary, as if Jesus was in her. "Lord, take thy servant Mary in your arms, and suckle her like the lamb is suckled. Amen."

"Mother—" Mary said.

"Quiet," her mother said. Hard words again. Her mother's hand came away from her head. Mary looked up. It was her mother, wrinkles around her eyes, the thin hawk's nose, the pinched mouth, the hard long chin. The same deep, knowing look in her eyes, back in those wrinkled spaces. She knew what the world was made of, and she knew she was right.

Mary opened her mouth to speak, but the look in her mother's eyes (was that a dark space back there in her mother's eyes?) told her to be still.

"You remember Abraham," her mother said shortly, not a question but a statement.

"Yes," she said.

"What did the Lord say to Abraham? Did he not say, 'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains'?"

"Yes, Mother." Her mother towered above her like a prophet. This is what she had always thought of her mother as: a seer, all-knowing, in touch with God Himself. What her mother said was always right.

"What did Abraham do?" Her mother loomed over her. There was something in her hand. What was it? Mary felt so small and young. She was a girl again, under the bed. Her mother would tell her what to do. What was it, bright and long, in her mother's hand? Her mother's eyes—was that copper in the middle of her mother's eyes? Didn't she know someone with copper in their eyes? Yes. No. She couldn't remember. That long thing in her mother's upraising hand . . .

Her mother said sternly, "If I were Abraham, and you were Isaac, would I not be prepared to deliver—"

Her mother was gone. Mary was still a little girl, with God and her mother telling her what to do, her mother's words that made her tremble coursing through her, but her mother had vanished. There was another girl standing there—a girl she somehow knew, with eyes the color of pennies. Eyes Mary had seen on someone else. On whom? On that boy over there—the boy she knew—but she was just a little girl hiding under the bed from her mother and God, and she couldn't remember.

Billy could not hold Martha and save the woman. When Martha pulled all of her resistance from him, and turned it on Mary Beck, Billy thought he could draw her back to him. But he could not.

She broke away from him, and he pulled back.

"Shall I kill her quickly?" Martha asked mildly. "Or should I do it slowly, to show you how our power can be used in the right way?"

Billy threw himself open. She reeled back, but her smile returned. "You know I'll do it. I would love to watch you stand by helplessly. The great martyr, unable to help one woman.”

"That would be the end."

"It would be worth it. You would still lose. Those others I killed you couldn't help, because you weren't ready, but now you would have a choice. I wonder if you could stand that? Did I tell you I killed your mother? That was before I killed the Mifflins, including your old friend John."

For only the second time in Billy's calm life, he was shaken. She had reached beyond that place he had once visited, when he had first seen the ocean. She had found that place where he had to face the fact that what she did he did, too, because she was him and he had to see what she was truly capable of.

"You can be gotten to, after all?" Martha cooed. "You want a choice? Let me go and I'll leave this place. I'll let this woman and everyone else here live."

"You'll go somewhere else and kill."

“You can catch me?"

"Yes."

Fear burned across her face, but she doused it.

"That's a chance I'm willing to take. What choice do I have?" Her voice turned hard. "Let me go."

"No."

She shrugged, and turned back to Mary Beck. "If that's what you want."

"Put your head down," Mary's mother said.

"Yes."

She was about to die. This was what God wanted. This was what her mother wanted. Finally, she knew. God would take her now, because He had told her mother, just like He had told Abraham, to take her. But there would be no angelic intervention this time. This was what God wanted of her. She finally knew.

And, finally, her mother would forgive her. Mary began to cry. That was not right, but she couldn't help it.

"Die," her mother said. Only, it didn't sound like her mother. The voice was so sharp, filled with triumph.

"Mother?" she asked. She reached up. Her hand hovered in midair. Her mother laughed.

Her hand fell upon her mother, and she read, and there was the dimmest of lights, nearly black emptiness.

"Satan!" she screamed as she felt the point of the knife in her neck.

Billy let Martha go. She saw the knife in Martha's hand drop, saw Mary Beck fall to the ground.

Martha turned to him. "I knew you would give in!" she cried in exultation. They regarded each other for a frozen moment. Then Martha's eyes suddenly widened. "Fool!" she shouted, coming at him with her full power, knocking him to the ground.

His mind was burning. Through flames he saw Martha laughing, moving away from him. He could not follow. "You won't catch me!" she taunted him. She held something up, a letter. "Your friends, Marsh and Rebecca—I'll kill them slowly. You won't catch me!"

Martha ran off, a figure lost in the flames in his head.

His mind burned, and then he heard shouts and saw a man and a girl running toward him. The flames mounted, roaring high in his head, and then they reached his eyes and he cried out and he heard the roar of the ocean.

27

He was on a beach.

He often dreamed of the ocean. Once, when he was four years old, before his father left, his mother and father and he had gone to the seashore. The sun was hot that day, and the air in the car, even with the windows open, was hotter than the air outside. The vinyl seat of the car stuck to his legs below his shorts, and even the rushing air from the open window didn't cool, only felt like someone was holding the nozzle of a hair dryer before his face.

But then the ocean drew near, and the air felt different. There was a salty taste, and the air coming in the window suddenly felt cool and damp. He could almost taste the ocean.

His mother and father in the front seat were already fighting, arguing over which lot to park in, but finally his father, as always, won the shouting match and they pulled into the farthest parking area. They had passed two others that were filled, the signs out front saying they were closed, and then two others that were half full. But his father wanted this lot, because it was closest to where they were going to go to the beach. It looked full.

They drove around for twenty minutes, row after row of parking spaces filled, and his father began to curse louder. His face grew red, as it always did when he got angry, and he began to blame his luck on his wife. "I told you we should have gotten started earlier!" he shouted, turning his face sharply toward her and then back to the windshield, searching for a parking spot. "Didn't I?"

Billy's mother said nothing.

"Give me another beer," his father snapped. At first, his mother sat motionless, but when his father repeated the command, shouting this time, she reached behind her to the red enameled metal cooler at Billy's feet and opened it to take out a can of beer. For a moment her eyes met Billy's, and she looked as though she wanted to say something, but when she saw the calm stare that was always on Billy's face, she just dropped the lid of the cooler and turned around to the front seat.

"Open it up," his father snapped when she handed the beer to him, thrusting it back into her hands.

She opened it and gave it to him.

His mother was beautiful that day. He had seen her modeling her new bathing suit in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom before they left. Some small part of him had wanted to tell her that she was beautiful then, had wanted to run to her the way he knew she longed for him to, but the thing that always kept him from doing these things, would always keep him from doing them, intervened, and he merely went downstairs to gather his pail and shovel like his father had yelled at him to.

They drove around for another ten minutes, his father alternately cursing and draining his beer, and when he had finished the beer, they went out of the lot and back to the one they had passed before with empty spaces in it.

A young lifeguard in pale green bathing trunks and safari hat was just putting the FULL sign out.

"Goddamn," his father spat, giving his mother a dirty look.

They went back to the lot before that one, and after another ten minutes, they found a spot at the farthest end.

His father had another beer as they emptied the car. His mother told Billy to take his shoes off, and the pavement in the parking lot, sprinkled with windblown sand, felt warm and hard and slightly gritty beneath his toes. The air was even sharper now, almost cold, and a breeze came off the ocean and slapped the smell of water gently at him even here, up the slope, out of sight of the water.

He carried his shovel and pail, and a folded paper bag for seashells that his mother had insisted they take along. "I'll put all the nice ones in a jar, after I wash them off, and put it on the mantle in the summertime," she said, which only made his father laugh derisively. His father carried the cooler and a pale striped umbrella that had lain against the wall in the garage for a long time.

They left the parking lot, walking over the wooden railroad ties that bordered the sand, and up over the ridge. The ocean was there. It was vast, a world-filling thing that ate the earth in front of him from horizon to horizon. At the beach, it threw waves indifferently, but farther out it swelled and rolled and moved its giant flanks like a sleeping beast secure in its own power. It was cold and deep and uncaring, a heartless surging expanse of life, and it did something deep inside Billy. It touched that small place within him; the cold vastness of the ocean opened a place he thought could never be reached, and before he knew it, his hands began to tremble and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

He dropped the pail and shovel, and the paper bag, which the wind caught and lost in the parking lot behind them, and stood where he was, and an uncontrollable river, a tributary of the cold sea before him, streamed from his eyes to add its salt to the sand at his feet.

His father was ahead, unmindful of the two behind him, his nearly empty beer in his hand, his thoughts on the next one in the cooler. But his mother turned around and saw him. Suddenly she dropped everything she carried—the picnic basket, the beach ball—and hugged him as if he had just been born.

"Billy, Billy, what is it?" And then she was crying herself, not in sympathy so much as in joy and relief at the openness of her son, her son who was so often away from her, somewhere else, not bonded to her as she was bonded to him.

"Oh, Billy, what's wrong?"

And suddenly the moment was over. He stiffened in her embrace, and the river within him turned back in its course to run within him again. She looked at him as his tears dried, and he was just Billy again.

"I'm all right," he said, only a trace of upset remaining in his even voice.

"What the hell's going on?" his father shouted, returning with only his new beer in his hand, the dropped umbrella and cooler marking his progress ahead of them. As always, his eyes did not meet his son's.

"Billy . . ." his mother began, but then she said, "Nothing," and turned away to retrieve her burdens.

They went on, and they spent the day at the beach, and he swam, and collected a few shells with his mother, whose hand shook whenever she touched him, putting the shells in the pail that his father emptied out in the parking lot before they got in the car, saying they would spill in the trunk and get sand all over everything. And Billy stood and sat and stared at the water, and it did nothing to him the rest of the day the way it did at that first glance. It did nothing further to him because he knew what it was now, what it was to him, the vast swelling indifference of the universe against him, against what he had to do, what he knew deep in the atoms of his heart and blood and mind that he had to do. There was no comfort out there in the world for him, but he had to do it anyway. For he knew, even then, what was missing from him, and what the deep aching missing part of him would do when it grew strong, and he knew, just as a flower knows to create petals and a bee knows to buzz and collect pollen.

And when that moment of swelling self-pity had passed, he looked out upon the ocean and it was only water, a part of the intricate workings of the earth, nothing more.

He was on a beach . . .

He awoke in the room with the rippling ceiling. It undulated like the surface of the ocean, long bars like waves. He heard a distant hum, the lap of water against shore.

He closed his eyes, then reopened them. Voices talked at him. The waves rolled across the ceiling, one after another, water slapping against beach.

"Can you hear me?" a voice said distinctly.

"Yes."

A face moved over him into the water. He knew the face, knew the name that went with it, but it turned away from him and he heard it say, "At least he's alive."

He heard two other voices, saw two other faces he knew.

He was in Christine's room, the one with the peach-colored walls and white lacquered furniture. Knick knacks and dolls. Everything was the same, except that the stuffed animal he had seen that first day, with sunglasses and a Mexican sombrero, was gone.

"How do you feel?" Mary Beck whispered. Her voice was small, filled with concern.

He said nothing, but when he tried to sit up, there was a terrible weight on his body and he found that he did not want to move his head from the pillow.

Billy looked silently up at the three of them—the man, woman, and child. He wanted to close his eyes again. A weariness, the ocean, weighed down on him.

There was awkward silence. Jacob Beck stood over him. "Rest," he said.

He put his hand on Billy's head, and Billy closed his eyes.

28

As before, a routine came to Billy's life. But this time it was different. Each morning, when he awoke at seven, either Jacob or Mary was there to help him sit up in bed. The first week, he could barely do that without gasping in pain, but he quickly learned to numb his mind to the fiery bolt that ran through him below the waist whenever he moved his torso. When he didn't move, it felt as if the lower part of his body had been filled with gravel, leaving a weak, dead feeling around his bones.

At first the doctors thought his spine had been severed. But there was nothing physically wrong with his spine. It was only when an EEG was performed that they discovered that, in effect, his brain had received a severe shock, the cause, as well as the results, unknown.

When all of the speculation was over with, Jacob Beck was met with a shrug and told that either the boy would recover the full use of his lower body or he wouldn't. It was recommended that he be placed in a stable environment and treated with simple physical therapy, which might stimulate his limbs or, at least, keep them from atrophying.

After the first week, when he had mastered the art of sitting up, Billy lowered his feet to the floor. Jacob and Christine were there to help him. He felt the hard rush of gravity strike into his legs. It was as if someone hit the bottoms of his feet with sledgehammers. He felt supporting arms pulling him up as he passed out.

When he awoke, he was alone, and the afternoon sun, lowering through his window, made the peach-colored room look almost orange. Throwing back the covers with an effort, he swung one leg over the side of the bed, then the other, using both his hands to lift each one. In a moment he was balanced on the edge of the mattress, his hands pushing him up gently, then he let himself down to test the floor again. The pain was like a thunderclap, and when he awoke, he was being lifted painfully back into bed by Mary Beck, who was alone in the house. Jacob and Christine had gone to the store, and Mary was hysterical, thinking that Billy had killed himself or that she had killed him lifting him off the floor.

When she had settled him back under the covers, she sat on the edge of the bed. "I know what you did for me in the park," she said gently, staring into his copper eyes. Her hand no longer trembled when it touched him, stroking his forehead. "I know what this gift of mine means now. My Aunt Stella was right." Tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. "I only wish I could help you with it, Billy."

"You can." Billy's soft voice only exaggerated the power of his words. "Maybe that's what you've always been afraid of."

"But you—" she began.

"I can't. A long time ago I found that there are things I can do, and things that are missing from me. And that's something that I don't have. But you're whole."

As Billy spoke, he slowly forced open a window of truth in her. By the time his soft words were finished, the portal stood wide, letting cool fresh air—and light—into her. She felt like the sun itself.

"Oh, Billy," she sobbed, laying her hands on him, seeing the weak, dull glow, the horribly twisted patterns of luminescence that were his legs, feeling herself reach out beyond her hands, taking the light into her hands like a mother lifts her baby, stroking it, singing to it, shaping it.

She was sobbing with joy and revelation when she was finished, and in her weeping baptism she cried the word "Mother" for the first time as a loving benediction devoid of fear or loss.

On that day, Billy began, with weakness at first, to stand on his own legs again.

In another week he was supporting himself through a short pair of parallel bars that had been installed in Christine's room, next to the bed. A few days later he was using a walker, moving to and from the bathroom by himself.

He asked Jacob Beck to find the address of his friends Rebecca and Marsh. When Reverend Beck produced it, Billy thanked him and put it under his pillow.

That night, he used the walker to bring himself to the white lacquered desk, and wrote a letter. There were six carefully worded pages, and he folded them carefully and sealed the envelope, addressing it and asking Reverend Beck to mail it for him. The next day he quietly asked if the letter had been mailed, and when Beck said yes, he said nothing more about it.

The days wore on.

He began to walk, at first with a cane and then without. His unaided movements were stiff at first, the progress of a man on stilts, but gradually his limbs regained their fluidity. He was nearly whole again. Only a deep gnawing ache that sometimes assaulted him was all the reminder he had of what he had been through.

The walker, the parallel bars, the extra blankets and pillows, disappeared from the peach-colored room, but Christine said nothing. When Billy suggested that she move back into her own room, she said no.

"I want it to be your room," she said. "We'll paint it a different color, anything you want."

"The other room is fine," he said calmly.

Her eyes looked away from him and then back, meeting his and then staying there. Quietly, she said, "I keep thinking about all the terrible things I thought about you. I hated you. When John was going to kill you, I didn't care. I only went to the park with my father to make sure John didn't get hurt. I thought the same things John did about you, and I wanted you to die."

Her voice lowered even more, and her eyes stared at the floor. "All my life I've listened to my father preach about love and hate, and good and bad, and none of it meant anything to me. I thought all those terrible things about you, and I was wrong. I wanted you to die, and I was wrong. I don't know if I can ever be forgiven for that."

Billy said, "I forgive you," and then the faintest of smiles crossed his lips.

Christine looked up at him and smiled, too. "Please stay in the room."

He did.

Two weeks later, Jacob Beck brought Billy to the hospital for a thorough checkup. The doctors shrugged again and said that as far as they knew, everything was fine and he could go back to school. Then, on the way home in the car, Reverend Beck told him that he had received approval on adoption papers for him.

"We want you to stay with us, Billy," he said. Though he tried to hide his nervousness, his hands gripped the steering wheel as if it might come off in his hands.

He looked over at Billy, who was staring out through the windshield.

"Billy," he said softly, letting the true feeling of his words speak, "you've changed all of us. You've changed me. I'm a different man now than before you came here. I'm stronger now. You've made me sure about things that have been bothering me for a long time, things that made me question whether life itself was worthwhile. And I think you've seen what you've done for Mary, the things she was going through. We all love you, Billy. That's the best way I can put it.

"I want you to start all over with us here, and forget everything that's happened. I want you to make believe you were just born, in a way." He rushed along, with near desperation in his voice. "You can learn how to play ball. Or the piano, anything you want. I'll teach you how to fish, if you want. And with Christine, it will be like you always had a sister. There's a lot she wants to help you with."

His voice sounded hollow even to himself, but he pressed on, trying to inject the light camaraderie he had so often used in his work, the practiced grin, the easy, joking manner. "Heck, everybody, even Christine, knows I've always wanted a son."

He glanced at the boy, and when they stopped for a light, he turned to Billy. "I never told you," he said, controlling his voice with a supreme effort, "what we told the police about Martha Mifflin. We didn't tell them everything, Billy. But they know enough that they went, to find her for the things she did."

The light changed, and once more Beck was driving, with his knuckles white around the wheel. He was pleading, he knew. "They'll find her, Billy. I don't want you ever to think about any of that again. I only want you to live with us and grow up and be my son. I only want you to be happy." Beck's voice was shaking by the time he finished speaking.

Billy was silent. And, abruptly, the struggle that was going on in Jacob Beck ended. He reached into his pocket and drew out a postcard. It was wrinkled and half torn, as if it had been crumpled, perhaps thrown away and then retrieved and smoothed out. His hand trembling, Jacob Beck handed it to Billy, saying in a nearly strangled voice, "Please, Billy. Isn't there anything I can do, any other way?"

Billy looked at the postcard, which was from Marsh, and then he said, his voice as quiet as it had ever been, "I'm the only one who can stop her."

On the back of the card, written in bold dark ink, was one word: "Yes."

That night, when the house was silent, Billy rose. His clothes were at the end of the bed, and he put them on.

He moved into the hallway. There was near darkness, only the faint glow from a kitchen light left on downstairs pushing up the stairway.

The door to the Becks' bedroom was ajar. They were small hills on the bed, the movement of quiet breathing. At his old room the door was wide open, Christine asleep with one arm thrown over her stuffed animal, the one with the sombrero and sunglasses.

He went to the stairs and descended.

He found his jacket in the hall closet. His knapsack was pushed back on the upper shelf. He pulled a chair over and got it down. Inside was a can of beans and, under that, a half pack of Marlboros, the ones Jacob Beck had taken when he'd first arrived.

From the kitchen he took a few slices of bread, another can of beans. He took a book of matches that lay on the kitchen counter. He packed them carefully in his knapsack and put it on.

At the front door, he hesitated. For a moment the ocean washed over him, then let him go.

He opened the door and walked out into darkness, not looking back.

This time, he knew exactly where to go.

It was getting cold. At Billy Potter's back, the sun, like a ripe orange, sank into the haze of the horizon.

He felt the first ice of desert night-chill creep into him; it settled into his legs with the dull ache he had come to live with. He zipped up his black golf jacket, and turned up the collar. Somewhere far off, a coyote howled once, a long yelp that carried into echoing silence. A mosquito landed on his neck, then another, and he patted them away absently, letting the third draw blood before he caught it with a fingernail, flicking it red and bloated into the air.

With one hand he kept the binoculars steady, trained mostly on the house but occasionally scanning the rest of the town. There had been some movement before suppertime, a chorus of shouts that had turned out to be a Happy Hour brawl in one of the bars. A couple of patrons had made their way into the dusty street, one holding a bloody nose, the other pushed out by the bartender. They had started fighting again, rolling over each other a few times before falling back exhausted in the dust. Their argument, incongruously hard to hear when matched with their full faces in the binoculars, cooled perceptively, and then they helped each other to their feet and stumbled back into the bar.

Now all was quiet.

He kept the binoculars on the house.

Martha would soon be in there. He was surprised she had waited so long to make her move. The only reason was that she was being very cautious.

But she couldn't wait forever. At least Billy hoped. His last pack of cigarettes was growing thin, and it wouldn't be long, a couple of days at most, before he would be forced to go into town and replenish his supplies of water and food. There was no other place for fifty miles, and the thought of hitching that far and back filled him with the certainty that she would do what she wanted and be gone before he returned. He had thought of having Marsh come up to him with supplies, but even that would be too risky. She would know. And if she fled, she would be too strong by the time he caught up with her again. And then it would be too late.

Twilight dropped its purple cloak, and he settled down with a blanket around his shoulders for another long night. The lights in the town, what few there were, winked on, leaving almost all the illumination in the world to the failing sun and, later, to the full sky of stars and the coming moon. But the moon wouldn't rise for a while yet. He thought again of Venus behind and above him, a beacon of the coming blackness.

He kept the binoculars steady on the front porch of the house, looking for the blink of Marsh's flashlight that would tell him Martha was there. There was nothing. Occasionally he swept the glasses around the main street, past the filling station and bus depot and around the backs of the few shacks at the very outskirts of the town.

He knocked a cigarette from his pack and put it into his mouth under the binoculars, lighting it without moving the glasses. He put the pack into his jacket, noting that there were only two more butts in it. His belly growled with hunger, but he ignored it.

No more cigarettes—Melinda and Jacob Beck would like that. For a moment a trace of a smile touched his lips.

He saw something that at first was absorbed by smoke from his cigarette crossing the front of the binocular lenses. He threw the cigarette aside. He kept the binoculars on the exact spot where Marsh should be, jamming them so steady into his eyes that they began to hurt, but saw nothing further. He jerked the glasses over to the street in front of the house but saw no one.

He returned to the front of the house as he saw what he had been waiting for—two short round flashes of light, followed by two long. A warm thrill went up his back. The focus on the glasses was a little off, and his thumb expertly turned the knob until the flashlight beam stood out in blinking relief against the night. Two short, two long.

It was her.

He only hoped Marsh could do what they had planned so many weeks ago in that letter. He knew the house was empty, because he had seen Marsh and Rebecca's parents leaving two hours before, probably going to dinner and the movies, whatever Rebecca had devised.

Billy lowered the glasses and rubbed his eyes. He hadn't realized how tired he was. There had been sleep a long time ago, but he had forgotten when.

Carefully, methodically, Billy packed his things. There was not much—his rucksack with a small camp set Marsh had left hidden up in the hills for him, along with a bedroll. He bundled all this neatly together and threw it over his shoulder. Something caught his eye at the horizon and he looked to see the moon rising.

He walked down the long gentle slope into the town.

He reached the porch and saw Marsh and Rebecca moving away from the side of the house. They stood before him for a second. Marsh pressed a key into Billy's hand. He was taller, and Rebecca had, in the long summer since he had last seen her, turned from girl into woman. Her eyes were deep and fathomless, and when she touched his arm and began to cry as Marsh led her away, Billy felt the weight of the ocean on him and for the briefest moment felt the terrible resolve that had been born with him begin to crumble.

But the moment passed, and Marsh and Rebecca were gone. The moon rising was still his moon, and he was filled with peace.

Billy went into the house and climbed the stairs. For a moment he stood before the locked door. Inside, something like a raging animal screamed and threw itself futilely against the blocked window.

Billy unlocked the door with Marsh's key and went in. He locked the door behind him. "Hello," he said. She glared at him from the farthest corner of the room, crouched like a rabid animal, her eyes the brightest of pennies and filled with depthless fear and hate. His own eyes turned from soft copper to deepest black.

And, as he clasped her tightly to him, he looked into her face, and he heard someone, himself, say, "Me," and he watched the shock of recognition in his own eyes.

THE BOY WITH PENNY EYES

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BUY DIRECT FROM CROSSROAD PRESS & SAVE

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