Eye for Eye

*Just talk, Mick. Tell us everything. We'll listen.*

Well to start with  I know I was doing terrible things. If you're a halfway
decent person,  you don't go looking to kill people. Even  if you can do it
without touching them. Even if you can do it so as nobody even guesses they
was murdered, you still got to try not to do it.

*Who taught you that?*

Nobody. I  mean it wasn't in the books in  the Baptist Sunday School-- they
spent all  their time telling us  not to lie or  break the sabbath or drink
liquor. Never  did mention killing. Near as I  can figure, the Lord thought
killing  was  pretty smart  sometimes,  like  when Samson  done  it with  a
donkey's  jaw. A  thousand  guys dead,  but that  was  okay cause  they was
Philistines. And lighting foxes'  tails on fire. Samson was a sicko, but he
still got his pages in the Bible.

I figure  Jesus was about the only guy got much  space in the Bible telling
people not  to kill. And even  then, there's that story  about how the Lord
struck down  a guy and his wife cause they held  back on their offerings to
the Christian church. Oh,  Lord, the TV preachers did go on about that. No,
it wasn't cause I got religion that I figured out not to kill people.

You know  what I think it  was? I think it was  Vondel Cone's elbow. At the
Baptist Children's  Home in Eden, North  Carolina, we played basketball all
the time.  On a bumpy dirt  court, but we figured it  was part of the game,
never knowing which way  the ball would bounce. Those boys in the NBA, they
play a sissy game on that flat smooth floor.

We played basketball because there wasn't a lot else to do. Only thing they
ever had on TV was the preachers. We got it all cabled in-- Falwell from up
in  Lynchburg, Jim and  Tammy from  Charlotte, Jimmy Swaggart  looking hot,
Ernest Ainglee looking carpeted,  Billy Graham looking like God's executive
vice-president-- that was all  our TV ever showed, so no wonder we lived on
the basketball court all year.

Anyway,  Vondel Cone  wasn't particularly  tall and he  wasn't particularly
good  at  shooting  and  on the  court  nobody  was  even  halfway good  at
dribbling.  But he  had elbows.  Other guys,  when they  hit you it  was an
accident. But when Vondel's  elbow met up with your face, he like to pushed
your nose out  your ear. You can bet we all learned  real quick to give him
room. He got to take all the shots and get all the rebounds he wanted.

But we got even.  We just didn't count his points. We'd call out the score,
and any basket he  made it was like it never happened. He'd scream and he'd
argue and  we'd all stand there  and nod and agree  so he wouldn't punch us
out,  and then  as soon  as the  next basket  was made,  we'd call  out the
score--  still  not counting  Vondel's  points.  Drove that  boy crazy.  He
screamed till  his eyes  bugged out, but  nobody ever counted  his cheating
points.

Vondel died  of leukemia at the age of fourteen. You  see, I never did like
that boy.

But I learned something  from him. I learned how unfair it was for somebody
to get  his way just because he didn't care how  much he hurt other people.
And when  I finally realized that I was just  about the most hurtful person
in the  whole world,  I knew then  and there that  it just  wasn't right. I
mean, even  in the Old Testament, Moses said  the punishment should fit the
crime. Eye  for eye,  tooth for tooth.  Even Steven, that's  what Old Peleg
said before I killed  him of prostate cancer. It was when Peleg got took to
the hospital  that I left the Eden Baptist  Children's Home. Cause I wasn't
Vondel. I did care how much I hurt folks.

But that  doesn't have nothing to  do with anything. I  don't know what all
you want me to talk about.

*Just talk, Mick. Tell us whatever you want.*

Well I  don't aim to tell  you my whole life story.  I mean I didn't really
start to  figure out anything till  I got on that bus  in Roanoke, and so I
can pretty  much start there I  guess. I remember being  careful not to get
annoyed when  the lady in front of me didn't have  the right change for the
bus. And I didn't get angry when the bus driver got all snotty and told the
lady to  get off.  It just wasn't  worth killing for. That's  what I always
tell myself  when I  get mad. It isn't  worth killing for, and  it helps me
calm myself  down. So  anyway I reached  past her and pushed  a dollar bill
through the slot.

"This is for both of us," I says.

"I don't make change," says he.

I could've  just said "Fine" and  left it at that, but  he was being such a
prick that I had  to do something to make him see how ignorant he was. So I
put  another nickel  in  the slot  and  said, "That's  thirty-five for  me,
thirty-five for  her, and thirty-five for  the next guy gets  on without no
change."

So maybe I provoked  him. I'm sorry for that, but I'm human, too, I figure.
Anyway he was  mad. "Don't you smart off with me, boy.  I don't have to let
you ride, fare or no fare."

Well, fact was  he did, that's the law, and anyway I  was white and my hair
was short so his  boss would probably do something if I complained. I could
have told him what for and shut his mouth up tight. Except that if I did, I
would have  gotten too  mad, and no  man deserves to  die just  for being a
prick. So  I looked down at the floor and said,  "Sorry, sir." I didn't say
"Sorry sir" or anything snotty like that. I said it all quiet and sincere.

If he  just dropped  it, everything would  have been fine, you  know? I was
mad, yes,  but I'd gotten okay  at bottling it in,  just kind of holding it
tight and  then waiting for it to ooze away  where it wouldn't hurt nobody.
But  just as  I turned  to head  back toward  a seat,  he lurched  that bus
forward so hard that it flung me down and I only caught myself from hitting
the floor by catching the handhold on a seatback and half-smashing the poor
lady sitting there.

Some other people said, "Hey!" kind of mad, and I realize now that they was
saying  it to  the driver, cause  they was on  my side.  But at the  time I
thought they  was mad at me, and that plus the  scare of nearly falling and
how mad I already was, well, I lost control of myself. I could just feel it
in me, like sparklers  in my blood veins, spinning around my whole body and
then  throwing off this  pulse that went  and hit  that bus driver.  He was
behind  me,  so I  didn't  see  it with  my  eyes.  But I  could feel  that
sparkiness  connect up  with  him, and  twist him  around inside,  and then
finally it  came loose from me,  I didn't feel it no  more. I wasn't mad no
more. But I knew I'd done him already.

I even  knew where. It was  in his liver. I was a  real expert on cancer by
now. Hadn't  I seen  everybody I ever knew  die of it? Hadn't  I read every
book in  the Eden Public Library  on cancer? You can  live without kidneys,
you can  cut out a lung,  you can take out  a colon and live  with a bag in
your pants, but you can't live without a liver and they can't transplant it
either. That  man was dead. Two  years at the most,  I gave him. Two years,
all  because  he was  in  a bad  mood  and lurched  his  bus to  trip up  a
smart-mouth kid.

I  felt like  piss on  a flat  rock. On  that day  I had gone  nearly eight
months,  since before  Christmas,  the whole  year so  far  without hurting
anybody. It  was the  best I'd ever  done, and I  thought I'd  licked it. I
stepped across the lady  I smashed into and sat by the window, looking out,
not seeing  anything. All I could think was I'm  sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
Did  he have  a wife  and kids? Well,  they'd be  a widow and  orphans soon
enough,  because  of  me.  I could  feel  him  from  clear  over here.  The
sparkiness of his belly,  making the cancer grow and keeping his body's own
natural fire  from burning  it out. I wanted  with all my heart  to take it
back, but  I couldn't. And like  so many times before,  I thought to myself
that if I had any guts I'd kill myself. I couldn't figure why I hadn't died
of my  own cancer  already. I sure enough  hated myself a lot  worse than I
ever hated anybody else.

The  lady beside  me starts  to talk.  "People like  that are  so annoying,
aren't they?"

I didn't want to talk to anybody, so I just grunted and turned away.

"That was very kind of you to help me," she says.

That's  when I realized  she was the  same lady  who didn't have  the right
fare. "Nothing," I says.

"No, you didn't have to do that." She touched my jeans.

I turned  to look at her.  She was older, about  twenty-five maybe, and her
face looked kind of sweet. She was dressed nice enough that I could tell it
wasn't cause  she was poor that  she didn't have bus  fare. She also didn't
take her  hand off my knee, which made me nervous,  because the bad thing I
do is  a lot stronger when I'm actually touching a  person, and so I mostly
don't touch  folks and I don't feel safe when they  touch me. The fastest I
ever killed  a man was when  he felt me up in a bathroom  at a rest stop on
I-85. He  was coughing blood when  I left that place,  I really tore him up
that time, I still  have nightmares about him gasping for breath there with
his hand on me.

So anyway that's why  I felt real nervous her touching me there on the bus,
even  though there  was no  harm in  it. Or  anyway that's  half why  I was
nervous, and the other  half was that her hand was real light on my leg and
out  of the  corner of  my eye  I could  see how  her chest moved  when she
breathed, and  after all I'm seventeen  and normal in most  ways. So when I
wished she'd  move her hand, I  only half wished she'd  move it back to her
own lap.

That was up till she smiles at me and says, "Mick, I want to help you."

It took me a second to realize she spoke my name. I didn't know many people
in  Roanoke, and  she sure  wasn't one of  them. Maybe  she was one  of Mr.
Kaiser's customers, I thought. But they hardly ever knew my name. I kind of
thought for  a second, that maybe she had seen  me working in the warehouse
and asked Mr. Kaiser  all about me or something. So I says, "Are you one of
Mr. Kaiser's customers?"

"Mick Winger,"  she says.  "You got your  first name from a  note pinned to
your blanket  when you were left  at the door of  the sewage plant in Eden.
You chose your last name when you ran away from the Eden Baptist Children's
Home, and you probably chose it because the first movie you ever saw was An
Officer and  a Gentleman. You were fifteen  then, and now you're seventeen,
and you've killed more people in your life than Al Capone."

I got nervous when  she knew my whole name and how I got it, cause the only
way she could know that stuff was if she'd been following me for years. But
when she let on she knew I killed people, I forgot all about feeling mad or
guilty or horny. I pulled the cord on the bus, practically crawled over her
to  get out,  and in about  three seconds I  was off  that bus and  hit the
ground running. I'd been afraid of it for years, somebody finding out about
me. But it  was all the more scary seeing how she  must have known about me
for so  long. It made me feel like somebody'd  been peeking in the bathroom
window all my life and I only just now found out about it.

I  ran for  a  long time,  which isn't  easy  because of  all the  hills in
Roanoke. I ran mostly downhill, though, into town, where I could dodge into
buildings and out their  back doors. I didn't know if she was following me,
but she'd  been following me for  a long time, or  someone had, and I never
even guessed it, so how did I know if they was following me now or not?

And while  I ran, I tried  to figure where I  could go now. I  had to leave
town, that  was sure. I couldn't go back to the  warehouse, not even to say
good-bye, and  that made me feel  real bad, cause Mr.  Kaiser would think I
just ran  off for  no reason, like  some kid who didn't  care nothing about
people counting on him.  He might even worry about me, never coming to pick
up my spare clothes from the room he let me sleep in.

Thinking  about what  Mr.  Kaiser might  think  about me  going was  pretty
strange. Leaving Roanoke wasn't going to be like leaving the orphanage, and
then leaving Eden, and  finally leaving North Carolina. I never had much to
let go  of in  those places. But  Mr. Kaiser had always  been real straight
with me,  a nice  steady old guy, never  bossed me, never tried  to take me
down, even  stuck up for me  in a quiet kind of way  by letting it be known
that he didn't want nobody teasing me. Hired me a year and a half ago, even
though I was lying  about being sixteen and he must've known it. And in all
that time, I never  once got mad at work, or at least not so mad I couldn't
stop myself  from hurting people. I  worked hard, built up  muscles I never
thought  I'd have,  and I  also must've  grown five  inches, my  pants kept
getting so short. I  sweated and I ached most days after work, but I earned
my pay and  kept up with the older guys, and Mr.  Kaiser never once made me
feel like  he took me on  for charity, the way  the orphanage people always
did, like I should thank them for not letting me starve. Kaiser's Furniture
Warehouse was  the first peaceful place I ever  spent time, the first place
where nobody died who was my fault.

I knew  all that before, but right till I  started running I never realized
how bad I'd feel  about leaving Roanoke. Like somebody dying. It got so bad
that for  a while I couldn't  hardly see which way I  was going, not that I
out-and-out cried or nothing.

Pretty soon  I found  myself walking down  Jefferson Street, where  it cuts
through a woody hill before it widens out for car dealers and Burger Kings.
There was cars passing  me both ways, but I was thinking about other things
now.  Trying to  figure why  I never  got mad  at Mr. Kaiser.  Other people
treated me nice before,  it wasn't like I got beat up every night or nobody
ever gave  me seconds or I had to eat dogfood  or nothing. I remembered all
those  people at the  orphanage, they was  just trying  to make me  grow up
Christian and educated. They just never learned how to be nice without also
being nasty.  Like Old Peleg, the  black caretaker, he was  a nice old coot
and told us stories, and I never let nobody call him nigger even behind his
back. But he was  a racist himself, and I knew it on account of the time he
caught me  and Jody Capel practicing who could  stop pissing the most times
in a single go. We both done the same thing, didn't we? But he just sent me
off  and then started  whaling on Jody,  and Jody  was yelling like  he was
dying,  and I  kept  saying, "It  ain't fair!  I done  it too!  You're only
beating on him  cause he's black!" but he paid no mind,  it was so crazy, I
mean it wasn't like  I wanted him to beat me too, but it made me so mad and
before I  knew it, I felt  so sparky that I  couldn't hold it in  and I was
hanging on him, trying to pull him away from Jody, so it hit him hard.

What could I say to him then? Going into the hospital, where he'd lie there
with a tube in his arm and a tube in his nose sometimes. He told me stories
when he  could talk, and just  squoze my hand when  he couldn't. He used to
have a belly on  him, but I think I could have tossed him in the air like a
baby before he died.  And I did it to him, not that  I meant to, I couldn't
help myself, but that's  the way it was. Even people I purely loved, they'd
have mean days, and  God help them if I happened to be there, because I was
like God with  a bad mood, that's what I was, God  with no mercy, because I
couldn't give them nothing, but I sure as hell could take away. Take it all
away. They told me I shouldn't visit Old Peleg so much cause it was sick to
keep going  to watch  him waste away.  Mrs. Howard and Mr.  Dennis both got
tumors from  trying to  get me to stop  going. So many people  was dying of
cancer in  those days  they came from  the county and tested  the water for
chemicals. It wasn't no  chemicals, I knew that, but I never did tell them,
cause they'd just lock  me up in the crazy house and you can bet that crazy
house  would have  a  epidemic before  I been  there  a week  if  that ever
happened.

Truth was  I didn't  know, I just  didn't know it  was me doing  it for the
longest time.  It's just people kept  dying on me, everybody  I ever loved,
and it  seemed like they always  took sick after I'd  been real mad at them
once,  and you  know how little  kids always  feel guilty about  yelling at
somebody  who dies  right  after. The  counselor  even told  me that  those
feelings were  perfectly natural, and of  course it wasn't my  fault, but I
couldn't shake it. And  finally I began to realize that other people didn't
feel that  sparky feeling like I did, and they  couldn't tell how folks was
feeling unless  they looked or asked. I mean, I  knew when my lady teachers
was going to be  on the rag before they did, and you  can bet I stayed away
from them the best I could on those crabby days. I could feel it, like they
was giving  off sparks. And there was other folks who  had a way of sucking
you to  them, without saying a thing, without doing  a thing, you just went
into a room and  couldn't take your eyes off them, you wanted to be close--
I saw that other kids felt the same way, just automatically liked them, you
know? But  I could feel it  like they was on fire,  and suddenly I was cold
and needed to warm  myself. And I'd say something about it and people would
look at me  like I was crazy enough to lock right  up, and I finally caught
on that I was the only one that had those feelings.

Once I  knew that, then all  those deaths began to  fit together. All those
cancers, those  days they lay in hospital  beds turning into mummies before
they was rightly dead, all the pain until they drugged them into zombies so
they wouldn't tear their  own guts out just trying to get to the place that
hurt so  bad. Torn up, cut up, drugged  up, radiated, bald, skinny, praying
for death,  and I  knew I did  it. I began to  tell the minute I  did it. I
began to know what  kind of cancer it would be, and where, and how bad. And
I  was always  right. Twenty-five  people I  knew of,  and probably  more I
didn't.

And it got even worse when I ran away. I'd hitch rides because how else was
I going to get  anywheres? But I was always scared of the people who picked
me up, and  if they got weird or anything I sparked  them. And cops who run
me out of  a place, they got it. Until I figured  I was just Death himself,
with his bent-up spear and a hood over his head, walking around and whoever
came near  hun bought the farm. That was me. I  was the most terrible thing
in  the world,  I was  families broke  up and  children orphaned  and mamas
crying for their dead babies, I was everything that people hate most in all
the world. I jumped  off a overpass once to kill myself but I just sprained
my ankle.  Old Peleg  always said I was  like a cat, I  wouldn't die lessen
somebody skinned  me, roasted  the meat and  ate it, then  tanned the hide,
made it  into slippers, wore them slippers clean  out, and then burned them
and raked the ashes,  that's when I'd finally die. And I figure he's right,
cause I'm  still alive  and that's a  plain miracle after the  stuff I been
through lately.

Anyway that's  the kind of  thing I was thinking,  walking along Jefferson,
when I noticed that  a car had driven by going the other way and saw me and
turned around and came back up behind me, pulled ahead of me and stopped. I
was so  spooked I thought it  must be that lady  finding me again, or maybe
somebody with guns  to shoot me all up like on "Miami  Vice," and I was all
set to take off up the hill till I saw it was just Mr. Kaiser.

He says, "I was heading the other way, Mick. Want a ride to work?"

I couldn't tell him what I was doing. "Not today, Mr. Kaiser," I says.

Well, he knew by  my look or something, cause he says, "You quitting on me,
Mick?"

I was  just thinking, don't argue with me or  nothing, Mr. Kaiser, just let
me go,  I don't  want to hurt  you, I'm so  fired up with  guilt and hating
myself that  I'm just death waiting  to bust out and  blast somebody, can't
you see sparks  falling off me like spray off a wet  dog? I just says, "Mr.
Kaiser, I don't want to talk right now, I really don't."

Right then was the  moment for him to push. For him to lecture me about how
I  had to  learn responsibility, and  if I  didn't talk things  through how
could  anybody  ever make  things  right, and  life  ain't a  free ride  so
sometimes you  got to do things  you don't want to do,  and I been nicer to
you than  you deserve, you're just what they  warned me you'd be, shiftless
and ungrateful and a bum in your soul.

But he didn't say none of that. He just says, "You had some bad luck? I can
advance you against wages, I know you'll pay back."

"I don't owe no money," I says.

And  he says,  "Whatever you're running  away from,  come home with  me and
you'll be safe."

What could I say?  You're the one who needs protecting, Mr. Kaiser, and I'm
the one who'll probably kill you. So I didn't say nothing, until finally he
just nodded  and put his hand on my shoulder  and said, "That's okay, Mick.
If you ever need  a place or a job, you just come on back to me. You find a
place to  settle down for a  while, you write to me  and I'll send you your
stuff."

"You just give it to the next guy," I says.

"A son-of-a-bitch  stinking mean old Jew  like me?" he says.  "I don't give
nothing to nobody."

Well I couldn't help but laugh, cause that's what the foreman always called
Mr. Kaiser  whenever he thought the  old guy couldn't hear  him. And when I
laughed, I  felt myself cool  off, just like as  if I had been  on fire and
somebody poured cold water over my head.

"Take care  of yourself, Mick," he  says. He give me  his card and a twenty
and tucked it into  my pocket when I told him no. Then he got back into his
car and made one of his insane U-turns right across traffic and headed back
the other way.

Well  if he  did nothing else  he got my  brain back  in gear. There  I was
walking along the highway  where anybody at all could see me, just like Mr.
Kaiser did. At least till I was out of town I ought to stay out of sight as
much as I could.  So there I was between those two hills, pretty steep, and
all covered  with green,  and I figured  I could climb either  one. But the
slope on the other  side of the road looked somehow better to me, it looked
more like I just ought to go there, and I figured that was as good a reason
to decide as  any I ever heard of, and so I  dodged my way across Jefferson
Street and  went right into the kudzu caves and clawed  my way right up. It
was dark under the  leaves, but it wasn't much cooler than right out in the
sun, particularly  cause I was working  so hard. It was  a long way up, and
just when I got  to the top the ground started shaking. I thought it was an
earthquake I was so edgy, till I heard the train whistle and then I knew it
was one  of those  coal-hauling trains, so  heavy it could shake  ivy off a
wall  when it  passed. I  just stood  there and  listened to it,  the sound
coming from every direction  all at once, there under the kudzu, I listened
till it went on by, and then I stepped out of the leaves into a clearing.

And there she was, waiting for me, sitting under a tree.

I was too wore  out to run, and too scared, coming on her sudden like that,
just when I thought  I was out of sight. It was just  as if I'd been aiming
straight at  her, all the  way up the hill,  just as if she  somehow tied a
string to  me and pulled me  across the street and up  the hill. And if she
could do that,  how could I run away from her, tell  me that? Where could I
go? I'd  just turn  some corner and there  she'd be, waiting. So  I says to
her, "All right, what do you want?"

She just  waved me on  over. And I went,  too, but not very  close, cause I
didn't know  what she had in mind. "Sit down, Mick,"  says she. "We need to
talk."

Now I'll tell you  that I didn't want to sit, and I  didn't want to talk, I
just wanted to get out of there. And so I did, or at least I thought I did.
I started  walking straight away from her, I thought,  but in three steps I
realized that  I wasn't walking away,  I was walking around  her. Like that
planet thing in science class, the more I moved, the more I got nowhere. It
was like she had more say over what my legs did than me.

So I sat down.

"You shouldn't have run off from me," she says.

What  I mostly thought  of now was  to wonder  if she was  wearing anything
under that  shirt. And  then I thought,  what a stupid time  to be thinking
about that. But I still kept thinking about it.

"Do you promise to stay right there till I'm through talking?" she says.

When  she moved,  it  was like  her clothes  got  almost transparent  for a
second, but not quite. Couldn't take my eyes off her. I promised.

And then all of  a sudden she was just a woman. Not  ugly, but not all that
pretty,  neither, just  looking at  me with  eyes like  fire. I  was scared
again, and  I wanted  to leave, especially  cause now I began  to think she
really was doing something to me. But I promised, so I stayed.

"That's how it began," she says.

"What's how what began?" says I.

"What you  just felt. What I made you feel. That  only works on people like
you. Nobody else can feel it."

"Feel what?" says I. Now, I knew what she meant, but I didn't know for sure
if she  meant what I knew.  I mean, it bothered me  real bad that she could
tell how I felt about her those few minutes there.

"Feel that," she says,  and there it is again, all I can think about is her
body. But it  only lasted a few seconds, and then I  knew for sure that she
was doing it to me.

"Stop it," I says, and she says, "I already did." I ask her, "How do you do
that?"

"Everybody  can  do it,  just  a  little. A  woman  looks at  a man,  she's
interested, and so the  bioelectrical system heats up, causes some odors to
change, and he smells them and notices her and he pays attention."

"Does it work the other way?"

"Men are always giving off those odors, Mick. Makes no difference. It isn't
a man's  stink that gives a woman her ideas. But  like I said, Mick, that's
what everybody can do. With some men, though, it isn't a woman's smell that
draws his eye. It's the bio-electrical system itself. The smell is nothing.
You can  feel the heat  of the fire. It's  the same thing as  when you kill
people, Mick. If you couldn't kill people the way you do, you also couldn't
feel it so strong when I give off magnetic pulses."

Of  course I  didn't  understand all  that the  first  time, and  maybe I'm
remembering it now with words she didn't teach me until later. At the time,
though,  I was  scared, yes,  because she  knew, and  because she  could do
things to me, but I was also excited, because she sounded like she had some
answers, like she knew why it was that I killed people without meaning to.

But when I asked  her to explain everything, she couldn't. "We're only just
beginning to understand it ourselves, Mick. There's a Swedish scientist who
is making  some strides that way. We've sent some  people over to meet with
him. We've read his book, and maybe even some of us understand it. I've got
to  tell you, Mick,  just because we  can do  this thing doesn't  mean that
we're particularly smart or anything. It doesn't get us through college any
faster or  anything. It just means  that teachers who flunk  us tend to die
off a little younger."

"You're like me! You can do it too!"

She  shook her  head. "Not  likely," she  says. "If  I'm really  furious at
somebody, if  I really hate him,  if I really try, and if  I keep it up for
weeks, I  can maybe give him  an ulcer. You're in  a whole different league
from me. You and your people."

"I got no people," I says.

"I'm here, Mick, because  you got people. People who knew just exactly what
you could  do from  the minute you were  born. People who knew  that if you
didn't get  a tit to suck  you wouldn't just cry,  you'd kill. Spraying out
death from your cradle.  So they planned it all from the beginning. Put you
in an orphanage. Let  other people, all those do-gooders, let them get sick
and die, and then when you're old enough to have control over it, then they
look you  up, they tell you  who you are, they bring  you home to live with
them."

"So you're my kin?" I ask her.

"Not  so you'd notice,"  she says. "I'm  here to  warn you about  your kin.
We've been watching you for years, and now it's time to warn you."

"Now  it's time?  I  spent fifteen  years in  that children's  home killing
everybody who ever cared  about me, and if they'd just come along-- or you,
or  anybody, if  you just  said, Mick,  you got  to control your  temper or
you'll hurt  people, if somebody just  said to me, Mick,  we're your people
and we'll  keep you safe, then maybe I wouldn't be  so scared all the time,
maybe I wouldn't go killing people so much, did you ever think of that?" Or
maybe I didn't say all that, but that's what I was feeling, and so I said a
lot, I chewed her up and down.

And then I saw how scared she was, because I was all sparky, and I realized
I was just about  to shed a load of death onto her, and so I kind of jumped
back and  yelled at her to  leave me alone, and  then she does the craziest
thing, she  reaches out  toward me, and  I scream at her,  "Don't you touch
me!" cause if she  touches me I can't hold it in, it'll just go all through
her  and tear  up her  guts inside,  but she  just keeps  reaching, leaning
toward me,  and so I  kind of crawled over  toward a tree, and  I hung onto
that  tree,  I just  held  on and  let  the tree  kind  of soak  up all  my
sparkiness, almost  like I was burning up the tree.  Maybe I killed it, for
all I know. Or maybe it was so big, I couldn't hurt it, but it took all the
fire out of me, and then she did touch me, like nobody ever touched me, her
arm across my back, and hand holding my shoulder, her face right up against
my ear, and she says to me, "Mick, you didn't hurt me."

"Just leave me alone," says I.

"You're  not like  them,"  she says.  "Don't you  see  that? They  love the
killing. They use the killing. Only they're not as strong as you. They have
to be  touching, for  one thing, or  close to it.  They have to  keep it up
longer. They're  stronger than I am,  but not as strong  as you. So they'll
want you, that's for sure, Mick, but they'll also be scared of you, and you
know what'll scare them most? That you didn't kill me, that you can control
it like that."

"I can't always. That bus driver today."

"So you're not perfect. But you're trying. Trying not to kill people. Don't
you see, Mick? You're not like them. They may be your blood family, but you
don't belong with them, and they'll see that, and when they do--"

All I  could think about was  what she said, my  blood family. "My mama and
daddy, you telling me I'm going to meet them?"

"They're calling you now, and that's why I had to warn you."

"Calling me?"

"The way I  called you up this hill. Only it wasn't  just me, of course, it
was a bunch of us."

"I just decided to come up here, to get off the road."

"You just decided to  cross the highway and climb this hill, instead of the
other one? Anyway, that's how it works. It's part of the human race for all
time,  only we never  knew it. A  bunch of  people kind of  harmonize their
bio-electrical systems,  to call for  somebody to come home,  and they come
home, after  a while. Or sometimes a whole  nation unites to hate somebody.
Like Iran and the Shah, or the Philippines and Marcos."

"They just kicked them out," I says.

"But  they  were  already  dying,  weren't  they? A  whole  nation,  hating
together,   they  make   a   constant  interference   with  their   enemy's
bio-electrical system. A constant  noise. All of them together, millions of
people, they  are finally able to  match what you can  do with one flash of
anger."

I thought  about that for a  few minutes, and it came  back to me-- all the
times I  thought how I wasn't even human. So maybe  I was human, after all,
but human like a  guy with three arms is human, or one of those guys in the
horror  movies  I saw,  gigantic  and  lumpy and  going  around hacking  up
teenagers whenever they was about to get laid. And in all those movies they
always try  to kill the guy  only they can't, he  gets stabbed and shot and
burned up and he still comes back, and that's like me, I must have tried to
kill myself so many times only it never worked.

No. Wait a minute.

I got to  get this straight, or you'll think I'm crazy  or a liar. I didn't
jump off that highway overpass like I said. I stood on one for a long time,
watching the  cars go by. Whenever a big old semi  came along I'd say, this
one, and I'd count,  and at the right second I'd say, now. Only I never did
jump. And  then afterward I dreamed about jumping,  and in all those dreams
I'd just bounce off the truck and get up and limp away. Like the time I was
a  kid  and sat  in  the bathroom  with  the little  gardening shears,  the
spring-loaded kind that popped  open, I sat there thinking about jamming it
into  my stomach  right under the  breastbone, and  then letting go  of the
handle, it'd pop  right open and make a bad wound and  cut open my heart or
something. I  was there  so long I fell  asleep on the toilet,  and later I
dreamed about doing it but no blood ever came out, because I couldn't die.

So I never tried to kill myself. But I thought about it all the time. I was
like  those monsters  in  those movies,  just killing  people  but secretly
hoping somebody would catch on to what was going on and kill me first.

And so I says to her, "Why didn't you just kill me?"

And there  she was with her  face close to mine and  she says, just like it
was love talk, she says, "I've had you in my rifle sights, Mick, and then I
didn't do  it. Because  I saw something in  you. I saw that  maybe you were
trying to control it. That maybe you didn't want to use your power to kill.
And so I let you live, thinking that one day I'd be here like this, telling
you what you are, and giving you a little hope."

I  thought she meant  I'd hope because  of knowing  my mama and  daddy were
alive and wanted me.

"I hoped for a long time, but I gave it up. I don't want to see my mama and
daddy, if  they could leave me  there all those years.  I don't want to see
you, neither, if you didn't so much as warn me not to get mad at Old Peleg.
I didn't  want to kill Old  Peleg, and I couldn't  even help it! You didn't
help me a bit!"

"We argued about it,"  she says. "We knew you were killing people while you
tried to  sort things out and  get control. Puberty's the  worst time, even
worse than infancy, and  we knew that if we didn't kill you a lot of people
would die-- and mostly  they'd be the people you loved best. That's the way
it is  for most  kids your age, they  get angriest at the  people they love
most, only  you couldn't help killing  them, and what does  that do to your
mind? What kind of  person do you become? There was some who said we didn't
have the  right to leave you  alive even to study  you, because it would be
like having a  cure for cancer and then not using it  on people just to see
how  fast  they'd  die.  Like that  experiment  where  the government  left
syphilis cases  untreated just to see what the  final stages of the disease
were like, even though  they could have cured those people at any time. But
some of us told  them, Mick isn't a disease, and a bullet isn't penicillin.
I told  them, Mick is something special. And  they said, yes, he's special,
he kills  more than any of  those other kids, and we  shot them or ran them
over with a truck  or drowned them, and here we've got the worst one of all
and you want to keep him alive."

And I was crying cause I wished they had killed me, but also because it was
the first  time I ever thought there was people arguing  that I ought to be
alive, and even though I didn't rightly understand then or even now why you
didn't kill me, I got to tell you that knowing somebody knew what I was and
still chose not to blast my head off, that done me in, I just bawled like a
baby.

One thing  led to another, there, my crying and  her holding me, and pretty
soon I figured out that she pretty much wanted to get laid right there. But
that just made me  sick, when I knew that. "How can you want to do that!" I
says to  her. "I  can't get married! I  can't have no kids!  They'd be like
me!"

She  didn't argue  with me  or say  nothing about  birth control, and  so I
figured out  later that  I was right, she  wanted to have a  baby, and that
told me plain that  she was crazy as a loon. I got  my pants pulled back up
and my shirt on, and I wouldn't look at her getting dressed again, neither.

"I could  make you  do it," she  says to me.  "I could do that  to you. The
ability you  have that lets you  kill also makes you  sensitive. I can make
you lose your mind with desire for me."

"Then why don't you?" I says.

"Why don't you kill if you can help it?" she says.

"Cause nobody has the right," says I.

"That's right," she says.

"Anyway you're ten years older than me," I tell her.

"Fifteen, " she says. "Almost twice your age. But that don't mean nothing."
Or I  guess she  actually said, "That  doesn't mean nothing,"  or probably,
"That doesn't mean anything." She talks better than I do but I can't always
remember the  fancy way. "That doesn't mean a  thing," she says. "You'll go
to your folks, and you can bet they'll have some pretty little girl waiting
for you, and she'll  know how to do it much better than me, she'll turn you
on so  your pants unzip themselves,  cause that's what they  want most from
you. They  want your  babies. As many  as they can get,  because you're the
strongest  they've produced in  all the  years since Grandpa  Jake realized
that the cursing power  went father to son, mother to daughter, and that he
could breed for it  like you breed dogs or horses. They'll breed you like a
stud, but  then when they find  out that you don't  like killing people and
you  don't want  to play  along and  you aren't  going to take  orders from
whoever's in charge there  now, they'll kill you. That's why I came to warn
you. We could feel them just starting to call you. We knew it was time. And
I came to warn you."

Most of  this didn't mean much  to me yet. just  the idea of having kinfolk
was still  so new I couldn't exactly get  worried about whether they'd kill
me or put me out for stud or whatever. Mostly what I thought about was her,
anyway. "I might have killed you, you know."

"Maybe I didn't care," she says. "And maybe I'm not so easy to kill."

"And maybe you ought to tell me your name," says I.

"Can't," she says.

"How come?" says I.

"Because if you decide to put in with them, and you know my name, then I am
dead."

"I wouldn't let anybody hurt you," says I.

She didn't answer that. She just says to me, "Mick, you don't know my name,
but you remember this. I have hopes for you, cause I know you're a good man
and you  never meant  to kill nobody.  I could've made  you love  me, and I
didn't, because I  want you to do what you do by  your own choice. And most
important of  all, if you  come with me, we  have a chance to  see if maybe
your ability doesn't have a good side."

You think  I hadn't thought of that before? When  I saw Rambo shooting down
all those  little brown  guys, I thought,  I could do that,  and without no
gun, either. And if  somebody took me hostage like the Achille Lauro thing,
we wouldn't have to worry about the terrorists going unpunished. They'd all
be rotting  in a hospital in no time. "Are you  with the government?" I ask
her.

"No," she says.

So they didn't want  me to be a soldier. I was kind of disappointed. I kind
of thought I might be useful that way. But I couldn't volunteer or nothing,
cause  you don't  walk into the  recruiting office  and say, I've  killed a
couple dozen  people by  giving sparks off  my body, and  I could  do it to
Castro and  Qaddafi if you like.  Cause if they believe  you, then you're a
murderer, and if they don't believe you, they lock you up in a nuthouse.

"Nobody's been  calling me, anyway," I says. "If I  didn't see you today, I
wouldn't've gone nowhere. I would've stayed with Mr. Kaiser."

"Then why did you take all your money out of the bank?" she says. "And when
you ran  away from  me, why did  you run toward  the highway  where you can
hitch a ride at least to Madison and then catch another on in to Eden?"

And I didn't have no answer for her then, cause I didn't know rightly why I
took  my money  out of  the bank  lessen it  was like  she said, and  I was
planning to  leave town. It was  just an impulse, to  close that account, I
didn't think nothing of  it, just stuffed three hundreds into my wallet and
come to  think of it I really was heading toward  Eden, I just didn't think
of it, I was just doing it. Just the way I climbed up that hill.

"They're stronger  than we are," she says. "So we  can't hold you here. You
have to  go anyway, you have  to work this thing out.  The most we could do
was just get you on the bus next to me, and then call you up this hill."

"Then why don't you come with me?" I says.

"They'd kill  me in two seconds,  right in front of  your eyes, and none of
this  cursing stuff,  either, Mick.  They'd just  take my  head off  with a
machete."

"Do they know you?"

"They know us," she says. "We're the only ones that know your people exist,
so we're the  only ones working to stop them. I won't  lie to you, Mick. If
you join  them, you can find  us, you'll learn how,  it isn't hard, and you
can do this stuff from farther away, you could really take us apart. But if
you join us, the tables are turned."

"Well maybe  I don't want to  he on either side in  this war," I says. "And
maybe now I won't go to Eden, neither. Maybe I'll go up to Washington, D.C.
and join the CIA."

"Maybe," she says.

"And don't try to stop me."

"I wouldn't try," she says.

"Damn straight,"  I says.  And then I just  walked on out, and  this time I
didn't  walk in no  circles, I just  headed north,  past her car,  down the
railroad right of way. And I caught a ride heading up toward D.C., and that
was that.

Except that  along about six o'clock  in the evening I  woke up and the car
was stopping and I  didn't know where I was, I must have slept all day, and
the guy says to me, "Here you are, Eden, North Carolina."

And I about messed my pants. "Eden!" I says.

"It wasn't  far out of my  way," he says. "I'm  heading for Burlington, and
these country  roads are  nicer than the  freeway, anyway. Don't  mind if I
never drive I-85 again, to tell the truth."

But  that was  the very guy  who told me  he had  business in D.C.,  he was
heading there  from Bristol, had to see  somebody from a government agency,
and here  he was  in Eden. It  made no sense  at all, except  for what that
woman told me. Somebody was calling me, and if I wouldn't come, they'd just
put me to sleep  and call whoever was driving. And there I was. Eden, North
Carolina. Scared to death,  or at least scared a little, but also thinking,
if what  she said  was true, my  folks was coming,  I was going  to meet my
folks.

Nothing much  changed in the two years since I  ran off from the orphanage.
Nothing much  ever changes  in Eden, which  isn't a real  town anyway, just
cobbled together from three  little villages that combined to save money on
city services.  People still mostly think of  them as three villages. There
wasn't  nobody who'd  get  too excited  about seeing  me, and  there wasn't
nobody I  wanted to see. Nobody living, anyway. I had  no idea how my folks
might find me, or  how I might find them, but in the meantime I went to see
about the  only people I ever  much cared about. Hoping  that they wouldn't
rise up out of the grave to get even with me for killing them.

It was  still full  day that time of  year, but it was  whippy weather, the
wind gusting and then  holding still, a big row of thunderclouds off to the
southwest, the  sun sinking down to get behind  them. The kind of afternoon
that promises  to cool  you off, which  suited me fine. I  was still pretty
dusty from  my climb  up the hill  that morning, and  I could  use a little
rain. Got  a Coke at a  fast food place and then walked  on over to see Old
Peleg.

He  was buried in  a little cemetery  right by  an old Baptist  Church. Not
Southern  Baptist, Black  Baptist,  meaning that  it didn't  have  no fancy
building  with classrooms  and  a rectory,  just a  stark-white block  of a
building  with a  little  steeple and  a lawn  that  looked like  it'd been
clipped by hand. Cemetery  was just as neat-kept. Nobody around, and it was
dim cause  of the thunderclouds moving through, but  I wasn't afraid of the
graves there,  I just went to  Old Peleg's cross. Never  knew his last name
was Lindley. Didn't sound  like a black man's name, but then when I thought
about  it I realized  that no last  name sounded  like a black  man's name,
because  Eden is  still  just old-fashioned  enough that  an old  black man
doesn't get called  by his last name much. He grew up  in a Jim Crow state,
and never  got around to insisting on being  called Mr. Lindley. Old Peleg.
Not that he ever  hugged me or took me on long walks or gave me that tender
loving care that makes  people get all teary-eyed about how wonderful it is
to have  parents. He  never tried to  be my dad  or nothing. And  if I hung
around him much, he  always gave me work to do and made  damn sure I did it
right,  and mostly  we didn't talk  about anything  except the work  we was
doing, which made me  wonder, standing there, why I wanted to cry and why I
hated myself  worse for  killing Old Peleg  than for any of  the other dead
people under the ground in that city.

I  didn't see  them and  I didn't hear  them coming  and I didn't  smell my
mama's perfume. But I  knew they was coming, because I felt the prickly air
between us. I didn't turn around, but I knew just where they were, and just
how far  off, because they was lively. Shedding sparks  like I never saw on
any living soul except  myself, just walking along giving off light. It was
like seeing  myself from  the outside for  the first time in  my life. Even
when she was making  me get all hot for her, that lady in Roanoke wasn't as
lively as them. They was just like me.

Funny thing was, that wrecked everything. I didn't want them to be like me.
I hated my sparkiness, and there they were, showing it to me, making me see
how a killer looks  from the outside. It took a few seconds to realize that
they  was  scared of  me,  too.  I recognized  how  scaredness looks,  from
remembering  how my  own bio-electrical  system got  shaped and  changed by
fear. Course I didn't think of it as a bio-electrical system then, or maybe
I  did cause  she'd already  told me, but  you know  what I mean.  They was
afraid of me. And I knew that was because I was giving off all the sparks I
shed when I  feel so mad at myself that I could  bust. I was standing there
at Old  Peleg's grave, hating myself,  so naturally they saw  me like I was
ready to  kill half a city.  They didn't know that it  was me I was hating.
Naturally  they figured  I  might be  mad at  them for  leaving me  at that
orphanage seventeen years ago. Serve them right, too, if I gave them a good
hard twist in the gut, but I don't do that, I honestly don't, not any more,
not  standing there  by Old  Peleg who I  loved a  lot more than  these two
strangers, I don't act out being a murderer when my shadow's falling across
his grave.

So I calmed myself  down as best I could and I turned around and there they
was, my  mama and  my daddy. And  I got to  tell you I  almost laughed. All
those years I watched them TV preachers, and we used to laugh till our guts
ached about  how Tammy  Bakker always wore  makeup so thick she  could be a
nigger underneath (it was  okay to say that cause Old Peleg himself said it
first)  and here  was my  mama, wearing  just as  much makeup and  her hair
sprayed so thick she could work construction without a hardhat. And smiling
that same  sticky phony smile, and crying the  same gooey oozey black tears
down her cheeks, and reaching out her hands just the right way so I halfway
expected her to say, "Praise to Lord Jesus," and then she actually says it,
"Praise to  Lord Jesus, it's  my boy," and comes  up and lays a  kiss on my
cheek with so much spit in it that it dripped down my face.

I wiped the slobber with my sleeve and felt my daddy have this little flash
of anger,  and I knew that  he thought I was judging  my mama and he didn't
like it.  Well, I was, I  got to admit. Her perfume  was enough to knock me
over, I swear she  must've mugged an Avon lady. And there was my daddy in a
fine blue suit like a businessman, his hair all blow-dried, so it was plain
he knew  just as well  as I did the  way real people are  supposed to look.
Probably he  was plain embarrassed to  be seen in public  with Mama, so why
didn't  he ever just  say, Mama, you  wear too  much makeup? That's  what I
thought, and  it wasn't till later that I realized  that when your woman is
apt to  give you cancer if  you rile her up, you  don't go telling her that
her face  looks like she slept in wet sawdust and  she smells like a whore.
White trash, that's what  my mama was, sure as if she was still wearing the
factory label.

"Sure am glad to see you, Son," says my daddy.

I didn't know  what to say, tell the truth. I wasn't  glad to see them, now
that I  saw them, because they wasn't exactly what  a orphan boy dreams his
folks is  like. So  I kind of grinned  and looked back down  at Old Peleg's
grave.

"You don't seem too surprised to see us," he says.

I could've  told him  right then about  the lady in Roanoke,  but I didn't.
Just didn't  feel right to tell  him. So I says,  "I felt like somebody was
calling me back here. And you two are the only people I met who's as sparky
as me. If you all say you're my folks, then I figure it must be so."

Mama giggled and she says to him, "Listen, Jesse, he calls it 'sparky.'"

"The word  we use  is 'dusty,' Son,"  says Daddy. "We say  a body's looking
dusty when he's one of us."

"You were  a very dusty baby,"  says Mama. "That's why  we knew we couldn't
keep you. Never seen such a dusty baby before. Papa Lem made us take you to
the orphanage before you even sucked one time. You never sucked even once."
And her mascara just flooded down her face.

"Now Deeny," says Daddy, "no need telling him everything right here."

Dusty. That was no sense at all. It didn't look like dust, it was flecks of
light, so  bright on me that  sometimes I had to squint  just to see my own
hands through the dazzle. "It don't look like dust," I says.

And Daddy says, "Well what do you think it looks like?"

And I says, "Sparks. That's why I call it being sparky."

"Well that's  what it looks like  to us, too," says  Daddy. "But we've been
calling it  'dusty' all our lives, and so I figure  it's easier for one boy
to change than for f-- for lots of other folks."

Well, now,  I learned a lot  of things right then  from what he said. First
off, I  knew he was  lying when he said  it looked like sparks  to them. It
didn't. It looked like what they called it. Dust. And that meant that I was
seeing it  a whole lot brighter  than they could see  it, and that was good
for me  to know, especially because it was plain  that Daddy didn't want me
to know it and so he pretended that he saw it the same way. He wanted me to
think he  was just  as good at  seeing as I  was. Which meant  that he sure
wasn't. And I also  learned that he didn't want me to know how many kinfolk
I  had, cause  he started  to say a  number that  started with F,  and then
caught himself  and didn't say  it. Fifty? Five hundred?  The number wasn't
half  so important  as the  fact that he  didn't want  me to know  it. They
didn't trust me. Well, why should they? Like the lady said, I was better at
this  than they  were,  and they  didn't know  how  mad I  was  about being
abandoned, and  the last thing they wanted to do  was turn me loose killing
folks. Especially themselves.

Well I stood there  thinking about that stuff and pretty soon it makes them
nervous and Mama says, "Now, Daddy, he can call it whatever he wants, don't
go making him mad or something."

And Daddy laughs and says, "He isn't mad, are you, Son?"

Can't they see for themselves? Course not. Looks like dust to them, so they
can't see it clear at all.

"You don't seem too happy to see us," says Daddy.

"Now, Jesse,"  says Mama, "don't go  pushing. Papa Lem said  don't you push
the boy,  you just  make his acquaintance, you  let him know why  we had to
push him out of  the nest so young, so now you explain it, Daddy, just like
Papa Lem said to."

For the  first time right then  it occurred to me  that my own folks didn't
want to come fetch me. They came because this Papa Lem made them do it. And
you can  bet they hopped and said yes, knowing how  Papa Lem used his-- but
I'll get to Papa Lem in good time, and you said I ought to take this all in
order, which I'm mostly trying to do.

Anyway Daddy  explained it just like the lady  in Roanoke, except he didn't
say  a word  about  bio-electrical systems,  he  said that  I was  "plainly
chosen" from the moment of my birth, that I was "one of the elect," which I
remembered from  Baptist Sunday  School meant that  I was one  that God had
saved, though  I never heard of  anybody who was saved  the minute they was
born and  not even baptized or  nothing. They saw how  dusty I was and they
knew I'd  kill a  lot of people  before I got  old enough to  control it. I
asked  them if  they  did it  a lot,  putting a  baby out  to be  raised by
strangers.

"Oh, maybe a dozen times," says Daddy.

"And it always works out okay?" says I.

He got set to  lie again, I could see it by ripples  in the light. I didn't
know lying  could be so plain, which made me glad  they saw dust instead of
sparks. "Most times," he says.

"I'd like  to meet one of  them others," says I. "I figure  we got a lot in
common, growing  up thinking our parents hated us,  when the truth was they
was scared of their own baby."

"Well they're  mostly grown up and gone off," he says,  but it's a lie, and
most important  of all was the  fact that here I as  much as said I thought
they wasn't worth horse pucky as parents and the only thing Daddy can think
of to  say is why I  can't see none of the  other "orphans," which tells me
that whatever he's lying to cover up must be real important.

But I  didn't push him right  then, I just looked  back down at Old Peleg's
grave and wondered if he ever told a lie in his life.

Daddy says,  "I'm not surprised to find you here."  I guess he was nervous,
and had to change the subject. "He's one you dusted, isn't he?"

Dusted. That word made  me so mad. What I done to Old Peleg wasn't dusting.
And being  mad must have changed  me enough they could  see the change. But
they didn't  know what it meant, cause Mama says to  me, "Now, Son, I don't
mean to  criticize, but it isn't  right to take pride  in the gifts of God.
That's why we came  to find you, because we need to teach you why God chose
you to be one of the elect, and you shouldn't glory in yourself because you
could strike  down your  enemies. Rather you  should give all  glory to the
Lord, praise his name, because we are his servants."

I like to puked,  I was so mad at that. Glory! Old Peleg, who was worth ten
times these  two phony white people who tossed me  out before I ever sucked
tit, and  they thought I should  give the glory for  his terrible agony and
death to God? I  didn't know God all that well, mostly because I thought of
him as  looking as pinched up and serious as  Mrs. Bethel who taught Sunday
School when I was  little, until she died of leukemia, and I just never had
a thing  to say to God.  But if God gave  me that power to  strike down Old
Peleg, and God wanted  the glory for it when I was done,  then I did have a
few words to  say to God. Only I didn't believe it  for a minute. Old Peleg
believed in God, and the God he believed in didn't go striking an old black
man dead because a dumb kid got pissed off at him.

But I'm  getting off  track in the  story, because that was  when my father
touched me for the first time. His hand was shaking. And it had every right
to shake,  because I was so  mad that a year  ago he would've been bleeding
from the  colon before he took  his hand away. But I'd  got so I could keep
from killing  whoever touched  me when I  was mad, and the  funny thing was
that his hand shaking  kind of changed how I felt anyway. I'd been thinking
about how mad I  was that they left me and how mad  I was that they thought
I'd be  proud of  killing people but now  I realized how brave  they was to
come fetch me, cause  how did they know I wouldn't kill them? But they came
anyway. And  that's something.  Even if Papa  Lem told them to  do it, they
came, and now I realized that it was real brave for Mama to come kiss me on
the cheek  right then, because if  I was going to  kill her, she touched me
and gave  me a chance to  do it before she  even tried to explain anything.
Maybe it  was her  strategy to win me  over or something, but  it was still
brave. And  she also didn't approve of people  being proud of murder, which
was more points in  her favor. And she had the guts to  tell me so right to
my  face. So  I chalked  up some points  for Mama.  She might look  like as
sickening as Tammy Bakker, but she faced her killer son with more guts than
Daddy had.

He touched  my shoulder and they  led me to their  car. A Lincoln Town Car,
Which they  probably thought would impress me, but  all I thought about was
what it would've been  like at the Children's Home if we'd had the price of
that car,  even fifteen  years ago. Maybe  a paved basketball  court. Maybe
some decent toys that wasn't broken-up hand-me-downs. Maybe some pants with
knees in  them. I never felt  so poor in my  life as when I  slid onto that
fuzzy seat and heard the stereo start playing elevator music in my ear.

There was somebody else in the car. Which made sense. If I'd killed them or
something,  they'd need  somebody  else to  drive the  car,home,  right? He
wasn't  much, when it  came to being  dusty or  sparky or whatever.  Just a
little, and  in rhythms  of fear, too. And  I could see why  he was scared,
cause he  was holding a blindfold in his hands, and  he says, "Mr. Yow, I'm
afraid I got to put this on you."

Well, I  didn't answer  for a second,  which made him more  scared cause he
thought I was  mad, but mostly it took me that long  to realize he meant me
when he said "Mr. Yow."

"That's our  name, Son," says my daddy. "I'm Jesse  Yow, and your mother is
Minnie Rae Yow, and that makes you Mick Yow."

"Don't it figure," says I. I was joking, but they took it wrong, like as if
I was making fun of their name. But I been Mick Winger so long that it just
feels silly  calling myself Yow, and  the fact is it  is a funny name. They
said it like I  should be proud of it, though, which makes me laugh, but to
them it  was the name of God's Chosen People, like  the way the Jews called
themselves Israelites in the Bible. I didn't know that then, but that's the
way they said  it, real proud. And they was ticked off  when I made a joke,
so I helped them  feel better by letting Billy put on-- Billy's the name of
the man in the car-- put on the blindfold.

It was a  lot of country roads, and a lot of  country talk. About kinfolk I
never  met, and  how I'd love  this person  and that person,  which sounded
increasingly unlikely to me,  if you know what I mean. A long-lost child is
coming home  and you  put a blindfold on  him. I knew we  were going mostly
east, cause  of the times I  could feel the sun coming  in my window and on
the back of my neck, but that was about it, and that wasn't much. They lied
to me,  they wouldn't show me  nothing, they was scared  of me. I mean, any
way you  look at  it, they wasn't  exactly killing the fatted  calf for the
prodigal son. I was definitely on probation. Or maybe even on trial. Which,
I might  point out,  is exactly the  way you been  treating me,  too, and I
don't like it much better now than I did then, if you don't mind me putting
some  personal  complaints into  this.  I  mean, somewhere  along the  line
somebody's  going to  have  to decide  whether to  shoot me  or let  me go,
because I  can't control my temper  forever locked up like  a rat in a box,
and the  difference is a rat  can't reach out of the  box and blast you the
way I  can, so somewhere along  the way somebody's going  to have to figure
out that  you better either trust me or kill  me. My personal preference is
for trusting  me, since I've given you more reason  to trust me than you've
given me to trust you so far.

But anyway  I rode along  in the car for  more than an hour.  We could have
gotten to Winston or Greensboro or Danville by then, it was so long, and by
the time  we got there nobody  was talking and from  the snoring, Billy was
even asleep.

I wasn't  asleep, though. I was watching. Cause I  don't see sparks with my
eyes, I  see it with something else, like as if  my sparks see other folks'
sparks, if you catch  my drift, and so that blindfold might've kept me from
seeing the road, but  it sure didn't keep me from seeing the other folks in
the car  with me.  I knew right where  they were, and right  what they were
feeling. Now, I've always had a knack for telling things about people, even
when I couldn't see  nary a spark or nothing, but this was the first time I
ever saw  anybody who  was sparky besides  me. So I sat  there watching how
Mama  and Daddy  acted with each  other even  when they wasn't  touching or
saying a thing, just little drifts of anger or fear or- -well, I looked for
love, but I  didn't see it, and I know what it  looks like, cause I've felt
it. They  were like  two armies camped  on opposite hills,  waiting for the
truce to end at dawn. Careful. Sending out little scouting parties.

Then the  more I got used  to understanding what my  folks was thinking and
feeling toward each other,  the easier it got for me to read what Billy had
going on inside him. It's like after you learn to read big letters, you can
read little  letters, too,  and I wondered  if maybe I could  even learn to
understand people  who didn't  have hardly any  sparks at all.  I mean that
occurred  to me,  anyway, and since  then I've  found out that  it's mostly
true. Now  that I've  had some practice I  can read a sparky  person from a
long  ways off,  and even  regular folks  I can  do a little  reading, even
through walls  and windows. But I found that out  later. Like when you guys
have been watching me through mirrors. I can also see your microphone wires
in the walls.

Anyway it was during that car ride that I first started seeing what I could
see with  my eyes closed, the shape  of people's bio-electrical system, the
color and spin of it, the speed and the flow and the rhythm and whatever, I
mean those are the  words I use, cause there isn't exactly a lot of books I
can read on the  subject. Maybe that Swedish doctor has fancy words for it.
I can only tell  you how it feels to me. And in  that hour I got to be good
enough at  it that I could tell Billy was seared,  all right, but he wasn't
all that  scared of me, he  was mostly scared of Mama  and Daddy. Me he was
jealous of, angry kind  of. Scared a little, too, but mostly mad. I thought
maybe he was mad cause I was coming in out of nowhere already sparkier than
him, but  then it  occurred to me  that he probably couldn't  even tell how
sparky  I was, because  to him it'd  look like  dust, and he  wouldn't have
enough  of a knack  at it to  see much  distinction between one  person and
another. It's  like the  more light you  give off, the clearer  you can see
other people's  light. So I was the one with the  blindfold on, but I could
see clearer than anybody else in that car.

We drove  on gravel for about  ten minutes, and then  on a bumpy dirt road,
and  then suddenly  on asphalt  again, smooth  as you  please, for  about a
hundred yards,  and then we stopped.  I didn't wait for  a by-your-leave, I
had that blindfold off in half a second.

It was like a whole town of houses, but right among the trees, not a gap in
the leaves  overhead. Maybe fifty,  sixty houses, some of  them pretty big,
but the  trees made them half invisible,  it being summer. Children running
all  over,   scruffy  dirty  kids  from   diapered-up  snot-nose  brats  to
most-growed  kids not  all that  much younger  than me.  They sure  kept us
cleaner in the Children's Home. And they was all sparky. Mostly like Billy,
just a  little, but it explained  why they wasn't much  washed. There isn't
many a mama who'd  stuff her kid in a tub if the kid can make her sick just
by getting mad.

It must've been near  eight-thirty at night, and even the little kids still
wasn't in  bed. They  must let their kids  play till they get  wore out and
drop down and fall  asleep by themselves. It came to me that maybe I wasn't
so bad  off growing up in an orphanage. At least  I knew manners and didn't
whip it out and  pee right in front of company, the way one little boy did,
just looking at me while I got out of the car, whizzing away like he wasn't
doing nothing  strange. Like a dog  marking trees. He needed  to so he done
it. If I ever did that at the Children's Home they'd've slapped me silly.

I know how to act with strangers when I'm hitching a ride, but not when I'm
being  company, cause  orphans don't go  calling much  so I never  had much
experience. So I'd've been shy no matter what, even if there wasn't no such
thing as  sparkiness. Daddy was all  set to take me  to meet Papa Lem right
off, but  Mama saw how I  wasn't cleaned up and  maybe she guessed I hadn't
been to the toilet in a while and so she hustled me into a house where they
had a good  shower and when I came out she had  a cold ham sandwich waiting
for me on the table. On a plate, and the plate was setting on a linen place
mat, and there  was a tall glass of milk there, so  cold it was sweating on
the outside of the  glass. I mean, if an orphan kid ever dreamed of what it
might  be like  to have  a mama, that  was the  dream. Never mind  that she
didn't look  like a model in the Sears catalog.  I felt clean, the sandwich
tasted good, and when I was done eating she even offered me a cookie.

It felt good, I'll  admit that, but at the same time I felt cheated. It was
just  too damn  late. I needed  it to be  like this  when I was  seven, not
seventeen.

But she  was trying, and it  wasn't all her fault, so  I ate the cookie and
drank off the last of the milk and my watch said it was after nine. Outside
it was  dusk now, and  most of the kids  were finally gone off  to bed, and
Daddy comes in and says, "Papa Lem says he isn't getting any younger."

He was  outside, in a big rocking chair sitting  on the grass. You wouldn't
call him  fat, but he  did have a belly  on him. And you  wouldn't call him
old, but  he was bald on  top and his hair was  wispy yellow and white. And
you wouldn't call  him ugly, but he had a soft mouth  and I didn't like the
way it twisted up when he talked.

Oh, hell, he was  fat, old, and ugly, and I hated him from the first time I
saw him. A squishy kind of guy. Not even as sparky as my daddy, neither, so
you didn't get to  be in charge around here just by having more of whatever
it was  made us different. I  wondered how close kin he  was to me. If he's
got  children, and  they look  like him,  they ought  to drown them  out of
mercy.

"Mick Yow," he says to me, "Mick my dear boy, Mick my dear cousin."

"Good evening, sir," says I.

"Oh, and  he's got manners," says  he. "We were right  to donate so much to
the Children's Home. They took excellent care of you."

"You donated to the home?" says I. If they did, they sure didn't give much.

"A  little,"  he says.  "Enough  to  pay for  your  food,  your room,  your
Christian education. But no  luxuries. You couldn't grow up soft, Mick. You
had to grow up lean and strong. And you had to know suffering, so you could
be  compassionate. The  Lord God has  given you  a marvelous gift,  a great
helping of his grace, a heaping plateful of the power of God, and we had to
make sure  you were truly worthy  to sit up to the  table at the banquet of
the Lord."

I almost  looked around  to see if there  was a camera, he  sounded so much
like the preachers on TV.

And  he says,  "Mick,  you have  already passed  the  first test.  You have
forgiven your parents for leaving you to think you were an orphan. You have
kept that holy commandment,  Honor thy father and mother, that thy days may
be long upon the land which the Lord thy God hath given thee. You know that
if you had raised a hand against them, the Lord would have struck you down.
For verily  I say  unto you that  there was two  rifles pointed  at you the
whole time, and if  your father and mother had walked away without you, you
would have  flopped down dead in that nigger cemetery,  for God will not be
mocked."

I couldn't  tell if he  was trying to provoke  me or scare me  or what, but
either way, it was working.

"The Lord  has chosen you for his servant, Mick,  just like he's chosen all
of us. The rest  of the world doesn't understand this. But Grandpa Jake saw
it. Long  ago, back  in 1820, he  saw how everybody  he hated had  a way of
dying without him lifting a finger. And for a time he thought that maybe he
was like those old  witches, who curse people and they wither up and die by
the power of  the devil. But he was a god-fearing man,  and he had no truck
with Satan. He was  living in rough times, when a man was likely to kill in
a quarrel,  but Grandpa Jake never  killed. Never even struck  out with his
fists. He  was a  peaceable man, and he  kept his anger inside  him, as the
Lord  commands in  the New  Testament. So  surely he  was not a  servant of
Satan!"

Papa Lem's voice rang  through that little village, he was talking so loud,
and I  noticed there was a  bunch of people all  around. Not many kids now,
all grown-ups, maybe there to hear Lem, but even more likely they was there
to see me. Because it was like the lady in Roanoke said, there wasn't a one
of them was half as sparky as me. I didn't know if they could all see that,
but I could. Compared to normal folks they was all dusty enough, I suppose,
but compared  to me, or  even to my mama  and daddy, they was  a pretty dim
bunch.

"He studied  the scriptures to find out what it  meant that his enemies all
suffered from  tumors and bleeding and  coughing and rot, and  he came upon
the verse  of Genesis where the Lord said unto  Abraham, 'I will bless them
that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.' And he knew in his heart
that the Lord had  chosen him the way he chose Abraham. And when Isaac gave
the blessing of God  to Jacob, he said, 'Let people serve thee, and nations
bow down to thee:  cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he
that  blesseth thee.'  The  promises to  the patriarchs  were  fulfilled in
Grandpa Jake, for whoever cursed him was cursed by God."

When he said those words from the Bible, Papa Lem sounded like the voice of
God himself, I've got  to tell you. I felt exalted, knowing that it was God
who gave such power  to my family. It was to the whole family, the way Papa
Lem told  it, because the Lord promised Abraham  that his children would be
as many  as there was  stars in the sky,  which is a lot  more than Abraham
knew about  seeing how  he didn't have  no telescope. And  that promise now
applied to  Grandpa Jake,  just like the  one that said "in  thee shall all
families of the earth be blessed." So Grandpa Jake set to studying the book
of Genesis so he could fulfill those promises just like the patriarchs did.
He saw  how they went  to a lot of  trouble to make sure  they only married
kinfolk-- you  know how Abraham married  his brother's daughter, Sarah, and
Isaac married  his cousin Rebekah,  and Jacob married his  cousins Leah and
Rachel. So Grandpa Jake left his first wife cause she was unworthy, meaning
she probably wasn't particularly  sparky, and he took up with his brother's
daughter and  when his brother threatened to kill him if  he laid a hand on
the girl, Grandpa Jake run off with her and his own brother died of a curse
which is just exactly  what happened to Sarah's father in the Bible. I mean
Grandpa  Jake worked  it  out just  right. And  he made  sure all  his sons
married their first cousins,  and so all of them had sparkiness twice over,
just like  breeding pointers with  pointers and not mixing  them with other
breeds, so the strain stays pure.

There was  all kinds of other stuff about Lot and  his daughters, and if we
remained faithful  then we would be the meek  who inherit the Earth because
we  were the  chosen people and  the Lord  would strike down  everybody who
stood in our way,  but what it all came down to at the moment was this: You
marry  whoever the  patriarch  tells you  to marry,  and  Papa Lem  was the
patriarch.  He  had  my   mama  marry  my  daddy  even  though  they  never
particularly  liked each other,  growing up  cousins, because he  could see
that they was both specially chosen, which means to say they was both about
the  sparkiest there  was. And  when I was  born, they  knew it was  like a
confirmation of Papa Lem's decision, because the Lord had blessed them with
a kid who gave off dust thicker than a dump truck on a dirt road.

One thing he asked me real particular was whether I ever been laid. He says
to  me, "Have  you spilled  your seed  among the  daughters of  Ishmael and
Esau?"

I  knew what spilling  seed was, cause  we got  lectures about that  at the
Children's Home.  I wasn't sure who the daughters  of Ishmael and Esau was,
but since  I never had a  hot date, I figured I  was pretty safe saying no.
Still, I  did consider a second, because what came to  mind was the lady in
Roanoke, stoking  me up  just by wanting  me, and I was  thinking about how
close I'd come to not being a virgin after all. I wondered if the lady from
Roanoke was a daughter of Esau.

Papa Lem picked up  on my hesitation, and he wouldn't let it go. "Don't lie
to me boy. I  can see a lie." Well, since I could see a lie, I didn't doubt
but what  maybe he could too. But then again,  I've had plenty of grown-ups
tell me they could  spot a lie-- but half the time they accused me of lying
when I  was telling the truth,  and the other half  they believed me when I
was telling  whoppers so big it'd take two big  men to carry them upstairs.
So maybe  he could  and maybe he couldn't.  I figured I'd tell  him just as
much truth as  I wanted. "I was just embarrassed to tell  you I never had a
girl," I says.

"Ah, the deceptions of  the world," he says. "They make promiscuity seem so
normal that  a boy is  ashamed to admit that  he is chaste." Then  he got a
glint  in his eye.  "I know the  children of  Esau have been  watching you,
wanting to steal your birthright. Isn't that so?"

"I don't know who Esau is," says I.

The folks who was gathered around us started muttering about that.

I says,  "I mean,  I know who  he was in  the Bible, he was  the brother of
Jacob, the one who sold him his birthright for split pea soup."

"Jacob was  the rightful  heir, the true  eldest son," says  Papa Lem, "and
don't you  forget it.  Esau is the one  who went away from  his father, out
into the wilderness, rejecting the things of God and embracing the lies and
sins of the world. Esau is the one who married a strange woman, who was not
of the people! Do you understand me?"

I understood  pretty good  by then. Somewhere  along the line  somebody got
sick of  living under the thumb of Papa Lem,  or maybe the patriarch before
him, and they split.

"Beware," says  Papa Lem, "because  the children of Esau  and Ishmael still
covet the blessings of Jacob. They want to corrupt the pure seed of Grandpa
Jake.  They have  enough  of the  blessing of  God  to know  that  you're a
remarkable boy, like Joseph  who was sold into Egypt, and they will come to
you  with their  whorish  plans, the  way Potiphar's  wife came  to Joseph,
trying to  persuade you to give  them your pure and  undefiled seed so that
they can have the blessing that their fathers rejected."

I got to tell  you that I didn't much like having him talk about my seed so
much in  front of mixed company,  but that was nothing  compared to what he
did next. He  waved his hand to a girl standing there  in the crowd, and up
she came.  She wasn't half bad-looking, in a country  sort of way. Her hair
was mousy  and she wasn't altogether clean and  she stood with a two-bucket
slouch, but  her face wasn't bad  and she looked to  have her teeth. Sweet,
but not my type, if you know what I mean.

Papa Lem introduced us.  It was his daughter, which I might've guessed, and
then he says to  her, "Wilt thou go with this man?" And she looks at me and
says, "I will go." And then she gave me this big smile, and all of a sudden
it was  happening again,  just like it  did with the lady  in Roanoke, only
twice as much, cause  after all the lady in Roanoke wasn't hardly sparky. I
was standing  there and  all I could think  about was how I  wanted all her
clothes off her and  to do with her right there in front of everybody and I
didn't even care that  all those people were watching, that's how strong it
was.

And I liked it,  I got to tell you. I mean you  don't ignore a feeling like
that. But  another part  of me was standing  back and it says  to me, "Mick
Winger you  damn fool, that girl's as homely as  the bathroom sink, and all
these people  are watching her make  an idiot out of  you," and it was that
part of me that  got mad, because I didn't like her making me do something,
and  I didn't  like it  happening right  out in  front of everybody,  and I
specially didn't  like Papa Lem  sitting there looking at  his own daughter
and me like we was in a dirty magazine.

Thing is, when I get mad I get all sparky, and the madder I got, the more I
could see how  she was doing it, like she was a  magnet, drawing me to her.
And  as soon  as I  thought of  it like  us being  magnets, I took  all the
sparkiness  from being  mad  and I  used it.  Not to  hurt her  or nothing,
because I  didn't put it on  her the way I did with  the people I killed. I
just  kind of  turned the  path of  her sparks  plain upside down.  She was
spinning it just as fast as ever, but it went the other way, and the second
that started, why, it was like she disappeared. I mean, I could see her all
right, but I couldn't hardly notice her. I couldn't focus my eyes on her.

Papa Lem jumped right to his feet, and the other folks were gasping. Pretty
quick that  girl stopped sparking at me, you can bet,  and there she was on
her knees, throwing up. She must've had a real weak digestion, or else what
I done was stronger  than I thought. She was really pouring on the juice, I
guess, and  when I flung it  back at her and  turned her upside down, well,
she couldn't  hardly walk when they got her  up. She was pretty hysterical,
too, crying about how awful and ugly I was, which might've hurt my feelings
except that I was scared to death.

Papa Lem  was looking  like the wrath  of God. "You have  rejected the holy
sacrament of marriage! You have spurned the handmaid God prepared for you!"

Now  you've got to  know that I  hadn't put  everything together yet,  or I
wouldn't have been so afraid of him, but for all I knew right then he could
kill me with a cancer. And it was a sure thing he could've had those people
beat me to death  or whatever he wanted, so maybe I was right to be scared.
Anyway I  had to think of  a way to make  him not be mad  at me, and what I
came up with must not've been too bad because it worked, didn't it?

I  says to  him, as calm  as I can,  "Papa Lem,  she was not  an acceptable
handmaiden." I didn't watch  all those TV preachers for nothing. I knew how
to talk like the  Bible. I says, "She was not blessed enough to be my wife.
She wasn't  even as  blessed as my mama.  You can't tell me  that she's the
best the Lord prepared for me."

And sure enough, he calmed right down. "I know that," he says. And he isn't
talking like  a preacher any more, it's me talking  like a preacher and him
talking all meek. "You  think I don't know it? It's those children of Esau,
that's what it is, Mick, you got to know that. We had five girls who were a
lot dustier than her, but we had to put them out into other families, cause
they  were like  you,  so strong  they  would've killed  their own  parents
without meaning to."

And I says, "Well, you brought me back, didn't you?"

And he says, "Well you were alive, Mick, and you got to admit that makes it
easier."

"You mean those girls're all dead?" I says.

"The children of Esau," he says. "Shot three of them, strangled one, and we
never found the body of the other. They never lived to be ten years old."

And  I thought  about how the  lady in Roanoke  told me  she had me  in her
gunsights a few times.

But she  let me live. Why? For my seed? Those  girls would've had seed too,
or whatever.  But they  killed those girls  and let me live.  I didn't know
why. Hell,  I still don't, not  if you mean to keep  me locked up like this
for the rest of  my life. I mean you might as well have blasted my head off
when I was six,  and then I can name you a dozen  good folks who'd still be
alive, so no thanks for the favor if you don't plan to let me go.

Anyway, I says to him, "I didn't know that. I'm sorry."

And he  says to me, "Mick, I can see how  you'd be disappointed, seeing how
you're so blessed by the Lord. But I promise you that my daughter is indeed
the best  girl of marriageable age that we've got  here. I wasn't trying to
foist her  off on you because  she's my daughter-- it  would be blasphemous
for me to try  it, and I'm a true servant of the  Lord. The people here can
testify for  me, they can tell you that I'd never  give you my own daughter
unless she was the best we've got."

If  she  was the  best they  got  then I  had  to figure  the laws  against
inbreeding made pretty good  sense. But I says to him, "Then maybe we ought
to wait and see if there's somebody younger, too young to marry right now."
I remembered the story of Jacob from Sunday School, and since they set such
store by  Jacob I  figured it'd work.  I says, "Remember  that Jacob served
seven years before he got to marry Rachel. I'm willing to wait."

That impressed  hell out of him, you can bet. He  says, "You truly have the
prophetic spirit,  Mick. I have no doubt that someday  you'll be Papa in my
place, when  the Lord  has gathered me  unto my fathers. But  I hope you'll
also remember  that Jacob  married Rachel, but  he first married  the older
daughter, Leah."

The ugly  one, I thought, but  I didn't say it. I  just smiled and told him
how  I'd remember  that,  and there  was plenty  of time  to talk  about it
tomorrow, because it  was dark now and I was tired and  a lot of things had
happened to  me today that I  had to think over.  I was really getting into
the spirit of this Bible thing, and so I says to him, "Remember that before
Jacob could dream of the ladder into heaven, he had to sleep."

Everybody laughed, but Papa Lem wasn't satisfied yet. He was willing to let
the  marriage thing  wait  for a  few days.  But there  was one  thing that
couldn't wait. He looks  me in the eye and he says, "Mick, you got a choice
to make. The Lord  says those who aren't for me are against me. Joshua said
choose ye  this day whom ye will serve. And Moses  said, 'I call heaven and
earth to  record this day against you, that I have  set before you life and
death, blessing and cursing:  therefore choose life, that both thou and thy
seed may live.'"

Well I don't think you can put it much plainer than that. I could choose to
live there  among the chosen people,  surrounded by dirty kids  and a slimy
old man telling me  who to marry and whether I could raise my own children,
or I could choose to leave and get my brains blasted out or maybe just pick
up a  stiff dose of cancer.  I wasn't altogether sure  whether they'd do it
quick or slow. I kind of figured they'd do it quick, though, so I'd have no
chance to spill my seed among the daughters of Esau.

So I  gave him my most  solemn and hypocritical promise  that I would serve
the Lord  and live among them  all the days of my life.  Like I told you, I
didn't know whether he  could tell if I was lying or not. But he nodded and
smiled so it looked  like he believed me. Trouble was, I knew he was lying,
and so that  meant he didn't believe me, and that meant  I was in deep poo,
as Mr.  Kaiser's boy Greggy always  said. In fact, he  was pretty angry and
pretty scared, too, even  though he tried to hide it by smiling and keeping
a  lid on  himself. But  I knew  that he  knew that  I had no  intention of
staying  there with  those crazy  people who  knocked up their  cousins and
stayed about  as ignorant  as I ever  saw. Which meant that  he was already
planning to kill me, and sooner rather than later.

No, I better tell the truth here, cause I wasn't that smart. It wasn't till
I was halfway to the house that I really wondered if he believed me, and it
wasn't till  Mama had  me with a  nice clean pair  of pajamas up  in a nice
clean room, and she  was about to take my jeans and shirt and underwear and
make them nice  and clean that it occurred to me that  maybe I was going to
wish I  had more clothes on  than pajamas that night.  I really got kind of
mad before she finally gave me back my clothes-- she was scared that if she
didn't do what I  said, I'd do something to her. And then I got to thinking
that  maybe I'd  made  things even  worse by  not  giving her  the clothes,
because that might make  them think that I was planning to skip out, and so
maybe they weren't planning  to kill me before but now they would, and so I
probably just made things worse. Except when it came down to it, I'd rather
be wrong  about the one thing  and at least have  my clothes, than be wrong
about  the  other thing  and  have to  gallivant  all over  the country  in
pajamas. You  don't get much mileage on  country roads barefoot in pajamas,
even in the summer.

As soon as Mama left and went on downstairs, I got dressed again, including
my shoes, and climbed  in under the covers. I'd slept out in the open, so I
didn't  mind sleeping  in my clothes.  What drove  me crazy was  getting my
shoes on  the sheets. They would've  yelled at me so  bad at the Children's
Home.

I laid there in  the dark, trying to think what I was going to do. I pretty
much knew how  to get from this house out to the  road, but what good would
that do me? I  didn't know where I was or where the  road led or how far to
go, and  you don't cut cross country in North  Carolina-- if you don't trip
over something  in the dark,  you'll bump into some  moonshine or marijuana
operation and  they'll blast  your head off,  not to mention  the danger of
getting your throat bit out by some tobacco farmer's mean old dog. So there
I'd be running along  a road that leads nowhere with them on my tail and if
they wanted  to run me down,  I don't think fear  of cancer would slow down
your average four-wheeler.

I thought  about maybe stealing a car, but I don't  have the first idea how
to  hotwire anything.  It  wasn't one  of the  skills  you pick  up  at the
Children's Home.  I knew  the idea of  it, somewhat, because  I'd done some
reading on  electricity with the books Mr. Kaiser lent  me so I could maybe
try getting  ready for the GED, but there wasn't a  chapter in there on how
to get  a Lincoln running without a key. Didn't  know how to drive, either.
All the stuff  you pick up from your dad or from  your friends at school, I
just never picked up at all.

Maybe I dozed off,  maybe I didn't. But I suddenly noticed that I could see
in the dark. Not see, of course. Feel the people moving around. Not far off
at first,  except like  a blur, but I  could feel the near  ones, the other
ones in the  house. It was cause they was sparky, of  course, but as I laid
there feeling  them drifting  here and there,  in the rhythms  of sleep and
dreams, or walking around,  I began to realize that I'd been feeling people
all along,  only I  didn't know it.  They wasn't sparky, but  I always knew
where they  were, like shadows drifting in the back  of your mind. I didn't
even know  that I knew it,  but they were there.  It's like when Diz Riddle
got him his glasses  when he was ten years old and all  of a sudden he just
went around whooping and yelling about all the stuff he saw. He always used
to see it before,  but he didn't rightly know what half the stuff was. Like
pictures on coins. He knew the coins was bumpy, but he didn't know they was
pictures and writing and stuff. That's how this was.

I laid there and  I could make a map in my brain  where I could see a whole
bunch of  different people, and the  more I tried, the  better I could see.
Pretty  soon it  wasn't  just in  that house.  I could  feel them  in other
houses,  dimmer and  fainter. But  in my mind  I didn't  see no walls  so I
didn't know  whether somebody was in the kitchen or  in the bathroom, I had
to think  it out, and it  was hard, it took  all my concentration. The only
guide  I had  was  that I  could see  electric wires  when the  current was
flowing through them, so  wherever a light was on or a clock was running or
something, I  could feel this thin line, really  thin, not like the shadows
of people.  It wasn't much, but  it gave me some idea  of where some of the
walls might be.

If I  could've just told who  was who I might  have made some guesses about
what they was doing.  Who was asleep and who was awake. But I couldn't even
tell who was a kid and who was a grown-up, cause I couldn't see sizes, just
brightness. Brightness  was the only way  I knew who was  close and who was
far.

I  was pure  lucky I got  so much sleep  during the  day when that  guy was
giving me  a ride from Roanoke  to Eden. Well, that  wasn't lucky, I guess,
since I wished I  hadn't gone to Eden at all, but at least having that long
nap meant  that I had a  better shot at staying  awake until things quieted
down.

There was a clump  of them in the next house. It was hard to sort them out,
cause three  of them was a lot brighter, so I  thought they was closer, and
it took a while to realize that it was probably Mama and Daddy and Papa Lem
along with  some others. Anyway it  was a meeting, and  it broke up after a
while, and  all except Papa Lem  came over. I didn't  know what the meeting
was about, but I  knew they was scared and mad. Mostly scared. Well, so was
I.  But I  calmed myself  down, the  way I'd  been practicing, so  I didn't
accidently  kill nobody.  That kind  of practice  made it  so I  could keep
myself from  getting too lively and  sparky, so they'd think  I was asleep.
They didn't  see as  clear as I did,  too, so that'd help.  I thought maybe
they'd  all come up  and get me,  but no,  they just all  waited downstairs
while one of  them came up, and he didn't come in  and get me, neither. All
he did was go to the other rooms and wake up whoever was sleeping there and
get them downstairs and out of the house.

Well, that scared me  worse than ever. That made it plain what they had in,
mind,  all right.  Didn't want  me giving  off sparks and  killing somebody
close by when they  attacked me. Still, when I thought about it, I realized
that it  was also  a good sign.  They was scared  of me, and  rightly so. I
could  reach farther and  strike harder than  any of  them. And they  saw I
could throw  off what got tossed  at me, when I  flung back what Papa Lem's
daughter tried to do to me. They didn't know how much I could do.

Neither did I.

Finally all  the people  was out of  the house except  the ones downstairs.
There  was others  outside  the house,  maybe  watching, maybe  not, but  I
figured I better not try to climb out the window.

Then  somebody started  walking up  the stairs  again, alone.  There wasn't
nobody else  to fetch down, so  they could only be  coming after me. It was
just one  person, but  that didn't do me  no good-- even one  grown man who
knows how to use  a knife is better off than me. I still don't have my full
growth on me, or  at least I sure hope I don't, and  the only fights I ever
got in  were slugging matches in  the yard. For a  minute I wished I'd took
kung fu lessons instead of sitting around reading math and science books to
make up for dropping out of school so young. A lot of good math and science
was going to do me if I was dead.

The  worst thing  was I  couldn't see  him. Maybe  they just moved  all the
children out  of the house so  they wouldn't make noise  in the morning and
wake me. Maybe they  was just being nice. And this guy coming up the stairs
might just be checking  on me or bringing me clean clothes or something-- I
couldn't tell. So how  could I twist him up, when I didn't know if they was
trying to  kill me or what?  But if he was trying to  kill me, I'd wish I'd
twisted him before he ever came into the room with me.

Well, that  was one decision that  got made for me.  I laid there wondering
what to do for  so long that he got to the top of the stairs and came to my
room and turned the knob and came in.

I tried  to breathe slow and  regular, like somebody asleep.  Tried to keep
from getting too sparky. If it was somebody checking on me, they'd go away.

He didn't go away. And he walked soft, too, so as not to wake me up. He was
real scared. So scared that I finally knew there was no way he was there to
tuck me in and kiss me good night.

So  I tried  to twist him,  to send sparks  at him.  But I didn't  have any
sparks to  send! I mean I  wasn't mad or anything.  I'd never tried to kill
somebody on  purpose before, it was always because I  was already mad and I
just lost control and it happened. Now I'd been calming myself down so much
that  I couldn't  lose control.  I had no  sparks at  all to send,  just my
normal shining shadow, and he was right there and I didn't have a second to
lose so I rolled over. Toward him, which was maybe dumb, cause I might have
run into his knife, but I didn't know yet for sure that he had a knife. All
I was thinking was that I had to knock him down or push him or something.

The only person  I knocked down was me. I bumped him  and hit the floor. He
also cut my back  with the knife. Not much of a cut, he mostly just snagged
my shirt, but  if I was scared before, I was terrified  now cause I knew he
had a knife and  I knew even more that I didn't. I scrambled back away from
him. There was almost  no light from the window, it was like being in a big
closet, I  couldn't see  him, he couldn't  see me. Except of  course that I
could see  him, or at  least sense where he  was, and now I  was giving off
sparks like  crazy so unless he was weaker than I  thought, he could see me
too.

Well, he  was weaker than I  thought. He just kind  of drifted, and I could
hear him swishing the knife through the air in front of him. He had no idea
where I was.

And  all the  time I  was trying to  get madder  and madder, and  it wasn't
working. You can't get mad by trying. Maybe an actor can, but I'm no actor.
So I was scared  and sparking but I couldn't get that pulse to mess him up.
The more I thought about it, the calmer I got.

It's  like  you've  been  carrying around  a  machine  gun  all your  life,
accidently  blasting people  you didn't  really want  to hurt and  then the
first time you really want to lay into somebody, it jams.

So I stopped  trying to get mad. I just sat there  realizing I was going to
die, that after I  finally got myself under control so I didn't kill people
all the time anymore,  now that I didn't really want to commit suicide, now
I was going to get wasted. And they didn't even have the guts to come at me
openly. Sneaking  in the dark to  cut my throat while  I was asleep. And in
the meeting  where they decided to do it, my long  lost but loving mama and
daddy were right there. Heck, my dear sweet daddy was downstairs right now,
waiting for this assassin  to come down and tell him that I was dead. Would
he cry for me  then? Boo hoo my sweet little boy's all gone? Mick is in the
cold cold ground?

I  was mad. As  simple as that.  Stop thinking  about being mad,  and start
thinking about  the things that if  you think about them,  they'll make you
mad. I was so  sparky with fear that when I got mad, too, it was worse than
it ever  was before, built up  worse, you know. Only when  I let it fly, it
didn't go  for the  guy up there swishing  his knife back and  forth in the
dark.  That pulse  of  fire in  me went  right down  through the  floor and
straight to  dear old Dad. I  could hear him scream.  He felt it, just like
that. He felt it.  And so did I. Because that wasn't what  I meant to do. I
only met  him that day, but  he was my father,  and I did him  worse than I
ever did anybody before  in my life. I didn't plan to do it. You don't plan
to kill your father.

All of a sudden  I was blinded by light. For a second  I thought it was the
other kind of light, sparks, them retaliating, twisting me. Then I realized
it was  my eyes  being blinded, and it  was the overhead light  in the room
that  was on. The  guy with the  knife had  finally realized that  the only
reason not to have  the light on was so I wouldn't wake  up, but now that I
was awake  he might  as well see  what he's doing.  Lucky for  me the light
blinded him just as  much as it blinded me, or I'd have been poked before I
saw what hit  me. Instead I had time to scramble on  back to the far corner
of the room.

I  wasn't no  hero.  But I  was seriously  thinking  about running  at him,
attacking  a guy with  a knife. I  would have  been killed, but  I couldn't
think of anything else to do.

Then I thought of something else to do. I got the idea from the way I could
feel the electric current in the wires running from the lightswitch through
the  wall.  That  was  electricity,  and  the  lady in  Roanoke  called  my
sparkiness bio-electricity.  I ought  to be able  to do something  with it,
shouldn't I?

I thought  first that maybe  I could short-circuit something,  but I didn't
think I  had that much electricity  in me. I thought  of maybe tapping into
the  house current  to  add to  my own  juice, but  then I  remembered that
connecting up your body to house current is the same thing other folks call
electrocution.  I mean, maybe  I can tap  into house  wiring, but if  I was
wrong, I'd be real dead.

But I could still  do something. There was a table lamp right next to me. I
pulled off the shade and threw it at the guy, who was still standing by the
door, thinking  about what the scream downstairs  meant. Then I grabbed the
lamp and  turned it on, and then smashed the  light bulb on the nightstand.
Sparks. Then it was out.

I held  the lamp in my  hand, like a weapon,  so he'd think I  was going to
beat off his knife with the lamp. And if my plan was a bust, I guess that's
what  I would've done.  But while he  was looking  at me, getting  ready to
fight me knife against  lamp, I kind of let the jagged end of the lamp rest
on the  bedspread. And then I used my sparkiness,  the anger that was still
in  me. I  couldn't  fling it  at the  guy, or  well I  could have,  but it
would've been like the  bus driver, a six-month case of lung cancer. By the
time he  died of that, I'd  be six months worth  of dead from multiple stab
wounds to the neck and chest.

So I  let my sparkiness build  up and flow out along  my arm, out along the
lamp, like I was making my shadow grow. And it worked. The sparks just went
right on down the  lamp to the tip, and built up and  built up, and all the
time  I was  thinking about  how Papa  Lem was  trying to  kill me  cause I
thought his  daughter was  ugly and how he  made me kill my  daddy before I
even knew him half a day and that charge built up.

It built  up enough. Sparks started jumping  across inside the broken light
bulb, right there against the bedspread. Real sparks, the kind I could see,
not just feel. And in two seconds that bedspread was on fire. Then I yanked
the lamp so the cord shot right out of the wall, and I threw it at the guy,
and  while he  was dodging  I scooped up  the bedspread  and ran at  him. I
wasn't sure  whether I'd catch on  fire or he would,  but I figured held be
too panicked  and surprised to think of  stabbing me through the bedspread,
and sure  enough he didn't, he dropped the knife and  tried to beat off the
bedspread. Which  he didn't do too good, because I  was still pushing it at
him. Then he tried  to get through the door, but I kicked his ankle with my
shoe, and he fell down, stifl fighting off the blanket.

I got the knife and sliced right across the back of his thigh with it. Geez
it was sharp. Or maybe I was so mad and scared that I cut him stronger than
I ever  thought I  could, but it went  clear to the bone.  He was screaming
from the  fire and his leg  was gushing blood and  the fire was catching on
the wallpaper and it occurred to me that they couldn't chase me too good if
they was trying to put out a real dandy house fire.

It also  occurred to  me that I  couldn't run away  too good if  I was dead
inside that  house fire.  And thinking of  maybe dying in the  fire made me
realize that  the guy was burning  to death and I  did it to him, something
every bit  as terrible as cancer, and I didn't  care, because I'd killed so
many people that it  was nothing to me now, when a guy like that was trying
to  kill me,  I wasn't  even sorry  for his  pain, cause he  wasn't feeling
nothing  worse than  Old Peleg  felt, and  in fact  that even made  me feel
pretty good;  because it was like getting even  for Old Peleg's death, even
though it  was me killed them  both. I mean how could  I get even for Peleg
dying by killing somebody  else? Okay, maybe it makes sense in a way, cause
it was  their fault I was  in the orphanage instead  of growing up here. Or
maybe it made sense  because this guy deserved to die, and Peleg didn't, so
maybe somebody  who deserved  it had to die  a death as bad  as Peleg's, or
something. I don't know.  I sure as hell wasn't thinking about that then. I
just knew  that I  was hearing a guy  scream himself to death  and I didn't
even want to help him or even try to help him or nothing. I wasn't enjoying
it, either, I wasn't  thinking, Burn you sucker! or anything like that, but
I knew  right then that I  wasn't even human, I was  just a monster, like I
always  thought, like  in the  slasher movies.  This was straight  from the
slasher movies, somebody burning  up and screaming, and there's the monster
just standing there in the flames and he isn't burning.

And that's the truth. I wasn't burning. There was flames all around me, but
it kind of shied  back from me, because I was so full of sparks from hating
myself so bad that  it was like the flames couldn't get through to me. I've
thought about  that a lot since  then. I mean, even  that Swedish scientist
doesn't know  all about  this bio-electrical stuff.  Maybe when I  get real
sparky  it makes  it so  other stuff  can't hit  me. Maybe that's  how some
generals in  the Civil War used to ride around in  the open-- or maybe that
was that general in World War II, I can't remember-- and bullets didn't hit
them or anything. Maybe  if you're charged up enough, things just can't get
to you.  I don't know.  I just know that  by the time I  finally decided to
open the  door and actually opened  it, the whole room  was burning and the
door was burning and  I just opened it and walked through. Course now I got
a bandage  on my hand to prove that I couldn't  grab a hot doorknob without
hurting myself a little, but I shouldn't've been able to stay alive in that
room and I came out without even my hair singed.

I started  down the hall, not knowing who was still  in the house. I wasn't
used to being able  to see people by their sparkiness yet, so I didn't even
think of  checking, I just ran down the  stairs carrying that bloody knife.
But  it didn't matter.  They all ran  away before  I got there,  all except
Daddy. He was lying  in the middle of the floor in the living room, doubled
up, lying with his head in a pool of vomit and his butt in a pool of blood,
shaking like he was  dying of cold. I really done him. I really tore him up
inside.  I don't  think he even  saw me. But  he was  my daddy, and  even a
monster don't  leave his  daddy for the fire  to get him. So  I grabbed his
arms to try to pull him out.

I forgot  how sparky I was,  worse than ever. The  second I touched him the
sparkiness just  rushed out of me and all over him.  It never went that way
before, just  completely surrounded him like  he was a part  of me, like he
was completely drowning in my light. It wasn't what I meant to do at all. I
just forgot. I was  trying to save him and instead I gave  him a hit like I
never gave nobody before, and I couldn't stand it, I just screamed.

Then I dragged him  out. He was all limp, but even if I killed him, even if
I turned  him to jelly inside, he wasn't going to  burn, that's all I could
think of, that  and how I ought to walk back into  that house myself and up
the stairs and catch myself on fire and die.

But I didn't do  it, as you might guess. There was people yelling Fire! and
shouting Stay back! and I knew that I better get out of there. Daddy's body
was lying  on the grass  in front of the  house, and I took  off around the
back. I  thought maybe I heard some gunshots,  but it could've been popping
and cracking  of timbers in the  fire, I don't know.  I just ran around the
house and  along toward  the road, and if  there was people in  my way they
just got out of  my way, because even the most dimwitted inbred pukebrained
kid in that whole village would've seen my sparks, I was so hot.

I ran till the  asphalt ended and I was running on the dirt road. There was
clouds so  the moon was hardly  any light at all,  and I kept stumbling off
the road into the  weeds. I fell once and when I was getting up I could see
the fire behind me. The whole house was burning, and there was flames above
it in the trees.  Come to think of it there hadn't been all that much rain,
and  those trees  were dry.  A lot more  than one  house was going  to burn
tonight, I  figured, and for a  second I even thought  maybe nobody'd chase
me.

But that was about  as stupid an idea as I ever had. I mean, if they wanted
to kill me before because I said Papa Lem's girl was ugly, how do you think
they felt  about me now that  I burned down their  little hidden town? Once
they realized I was  gone, they'd be after me and I'd be lucky if they shot
me quick.

I even thought about  cutting off the road, dangerous or not, and hiding in
the woods. But I  decided to get as much distance as I could along the road
till I saw headlights.

Just when  I decided  that, the road  ended. Just bushes and  trees. I went
back, tried  to find the road. It must have turned  but I didn't know which
way. I was tripping  along like a blind man in the grass, trying to feel my
way  to  the ruts  of  the  dirt road,  and  of  course that's  when I  saw
headlights away  off toward the  burning houses-- there was  at least three
houses burning  now. They knew the  town was a total  loss by now, they was
probably just leaving enough  folks to get all the children out and away to
a safe  place, while the men came after me. It's  what I would've done, and
to hell  with cancer,  they knew I  couldn't stop them all  before they did
what they wanted to  me. And here I couldn't even find the road to get away
from them. By the  time their headlights got close enough to show the road,
it'd be too late to get away.

I was  about to  run back into  the woods when  all of  a sudden a  pair of
headlights went  on not twenty feet  away, and pointed right  at me. I damn
near wet my pants.  I thought, Mick Winger, you are a dead little boy right
this second.

And then  I heard  her calling to me.  "Get on over here,  Mick, you idiot,
don't stand  there in  the light, get on  over here." It was  the lady from
Roanoke.  I still  couldn't see  her cause  of the  lights, but I  knew her
voice, and I took off. The road didn't end, it just turned a little and she
was parked right where  the dirt road met up sideways with a gravel road. I
got around to the  door of the car she was driving, or truck or whatever it
was--  a four-wheel-drive Blazer  maybe, I  know it had  a four-wheel-drive
shift lever in it-- anyway the door was locked and she was yelling at me to
get in and I was yelling back that it was locked until finally she unlocked
it and I climbed in. She backed up so fast and swung around onto the gravel
in a spin  that near threw me right out the door,  since I hadn't closed it
yet. Then  she took off so fast going  forward, spitting gravel behind her,
that the door closed itself.

"Fasten your seat belt," she says to me.

"Did you follow me here?" I says.

"No, I  just happened to be  here picnicking," she says.  "Fasten your damn
seat belt."

I did, but  then I turned around in my seat and  looked out the back. There
was five  or six  sets of headlights, making  the job to get  from the dirt
road onto the gravel road. We didn't have more than a mile on them.

"We've been looking for this place for years," she says. "We thought it was
in Rockingham County, that's how far off we were."

"Where is it, then?" I says.

"Alamance County," she says.

And then  I says, "I don't  give a damn what county it  is! I killed my own
daddy back there!"

And she  says to me,  "Don't get mad now,  don't get mad at  me, I'm sorry,
just calm down."  That was all she could think of, how  I might get mad and
lose control and kill  her, and I don't blame her, cause it was the hardest
thing I  ever did, keeping myself from busting out  right there in the car,
and it would've killed her, too. The pain in my hand was starting to get to
me, too,  from where  I grabbed the  doorknob. It was just  building up and
building up.

She was driving a lot faster than the headlights reached. We'd be going way
too fast  for a curve  before she even saw  it, and then she'd  slam on the
brakes and  we'd skid and sometimes I couldn't  believe we didn't just roll
over and crash. But she always got out of it.

I couldn't face back  anymore. I just sat there with my eyes closed, trying
to get calm,  and then I'd remember my daddy who I  didn't even like but he
was my  daddy lying there in his blood and his  puke, and I'd remember that
guy who burned to  death up in my room and even though I didn't care at the
time, I sure cared now, I was so angry and scared and I hated myself so bad
I couldn't hold it  in, only I also couldn't let it out, and I kept wishing
I could  just die.  Then I realized  that the guys following  us were close
enough that  I could feel them.  Or no it wasn't  that they was close. They
was just  so mad  that I could  see their sparks flying  like never before.
Well as long as  I could see them I could let fly, couldn't I? I just flung
out  toward  them.  I  don't know  if  I  hit  them.  I  don't  know if  my
bio-electricity is something I  can throw like that or what. But at least I
shucked it off myself, and I didn't mess up the lady who was driving.

When  we hit  asphalt  again, I  found out  that I  didn't know  what crazy
driving was  before. She  peeled out and now  she began to look  at a curve
ahead and then switch  off the headlights until she was halfway through the
curve, it  was the craziest thing I ever saw, but  it also made sense. They
had to be following  our lights, and when our lights went out they wouldn't
know  where we  was for  a minute.  They also  wouldn't know that  the road
curved ahead, and they  might even crash up or at least they'd have to slow
down.  Of course,  we  had a  real good  chance of  ending up  eating trees
ourselves, but she drove like she knew what she was doing.

We  came to  a  straight section  with a  crossroads about  a mile  up. She
switched off  the lights again, and I thought maybe  she was going to turn,
but she didn't, just  went on and on and on, straight into the pitch black.
Now, that  straight section  was long, but  it didn't go on  forever, and I
don't  care how  good a  driver you are,  you can't  keep track of  how far
you've  gone in  the dark.  just when  I thought  for sure we'd  smash into
something, she  let off the gas and reached her hand  out the window with a
flashlight. We  was still going pretty fast,  but the flashlight was enough
to make a reflector  up ahead flash back at us, so she knew where the curve
was,  and it was  farther off than  I thought.  She whipped us  around that
curve  and then  around another,  using just  a couple  of blinks  from the
flashlight, before she switched on her headlights again.

I looked behind us to see if I could see anybody. "You lost them!" I says.

"Maybe," she says. "You tell me."

So I  tried to feel where  they might be, and  sure enough, they was sparky
enough that  I could just barely tell where they  was, away back. Split up,
smeared out. "They're going every which way," I says.

"So we  lost a few of  them," she says. "They aren't  going to give up, you
know."

"I know," I says.

"You're the hottest thing going," she says.

"And you're a daughter of Esau," I says.

"Like hell I am," she says. "I'm a great-great-great-granddaughter of Jacob
Yow, who happened to  be bio-electrically talented. Like if you're tall and
athletic, you can play basketball. That's all it is, just a natural talent.
Only he went crazy and started inbreeding his whole family, and they've got
these stupid  ideas about being the chosen of God  and all the time they're
just murderers."

"Tell me about it," I says.

"You can't  help it," she says. "You didn't have  anybody to teach you. I'm
not blaming you."

But I was blaming me.

She says, "Ignorant, that's  what they are. Well, my grandpa didn't want to
just  keep reading  the  Bible and  killing  any revenuers  or sheriffs  or
whatever who  gave us trouble. He  wanted to find out  what we are. He also
didn't want  to marry  the slut they  picked out for him  because he wasn't
particularly dusty. So he left. They hunted him down and tried to kill him,
but he  got away, and he  married. And he also  studied and became a doctor
and his  kids grew up  knowing that they had  to find out what  it is, this
power. It's like the old stories of witches, women who get mad and suddenly
your  cows start  dying. Maybe they  didn't even  know they were  doing it.
Summonings and love spells  and come-hithers, everybody can do it a little,
just like everybody can  throw a ball and sometimes make a basket, but some
people can do it better than others. And Papa Lem's people, they do it best
of all,  better and better, because  they're breeding for it.  We've got to
stop  them, don't  you see?  We've got  to keep  them from learning  how to
control it.  Because now we know  more about it. It's  all tied up with the
way  the human  body  heals itself.  In  Sweden they've  been changing  the
currents around  to heal tumors.  Cancer. The opposite of  what you've been
doing, but  it's the same principle.  Do you know what  that means? If they
could control it, Lem's  people could be healers, not killers. Maybe all it
takes is to do it with love, not anger."

"Did you kill them little girls in orphanages with love?" I says.

And  she just  drives, she doesn't  say a  thing, just drives.  "Damn," she
says, "it's raining."

The road was slick in two seconds. She slowed way down. It came down harder
and harder.  I looked behind us and there  was headlights back there again.
Way back, but I could still see them. "They're on us again," I says.

"I can't go any faster in the rain," she says.

"It's raining on them too," I says.

"Not with my luck."

And I says, "It'll put the fire out. Back where they live."

And she  says, "It doesn't matter.  They'll move. They know  we found them,
because we picked you up. So they'll move."

I apologized for causing trouble, and she says, "We couldn't let you die in
there. I had to go there and save you if I could."

"Why?" I ask her. "Why not let me die?"

"Let me put it another way," she says. "If you decided to stay with them, I
had to go in there and kill you."

And  I says  to  her, "You're  the queen  of compassion,  you know?"  And I
thought about  it a little. "You're just like they  are, you know?" I says.
"You wanted to get pregnant just like they did. You wanted to breed me like
a stud horse."

"If I  wanted to breed  you," she says, "I  would have done it  on the hill
this morning. Yesterday morning. You would've done it. And I should've made
you, because  if you went with  them, our only hope was  to have a child of
yours that we could  raise to be a decent person. Only it turned out you're
a decent  person, so we didn't  have to kill you. Now  we can study you and
learn about  this from the strongest living  example of the phenomenon" --I
don't know  how to  pronounce that, but you  know what I mean.  Or what she
meant, anyway.

And I  says to her, "Maybe  I don't want you to study  me, did you think of
that?"

And she says to  me, "Maybe what you want don't amount to a goldfish fart."
Or anyway that's what she meant.

That's about  when they started shooting  at us. Rain or  no rain, they was
pushing it  so they got close enough to shoot, and  they wasn't half bad at
it, seeing  as the first bullet  we knew about went  right through the back
window and  in between us and smacked a hole  in the windshield. Which made
all kinds  of cracks in the glass so she couldn't  see, which made her slow
down more, which meant they was even closer.

Just then  we whipped around a corner and our headlights  lit up a bunch of
guys  getting  out  of a  car  with  guns in  their  hands,  and she  says,
"Finally." So I figured they was some of her people, there to take the heat
off. But  at that  same second Lem's  people must have  shot out  a tire or
maybe  she just  got a  little careless  for a  second cause after  all she
couldn't see  too good through the windshield,  but anyway she lost control
and we  skidded and flipped over, rolled over it  felt like five times, all
in slow  motion, rolling and  rolling, the doors popping  open and breaking
off, the  windshield cracking and crumbling away, and  there we hung in our
seat belts,  not talking or nothing, except maybe I was  saying 0 my God or
something and then we smacked into something and just stopped, which jerked
us around inside the car and then it was all over.

I heard water rushing.  A stream, I thought. We can wash up. Only it wasn't
a stream,  it was  the gasoline pouring out  of the tank. And  then I heard
gunshots from back up  by the road. I didn't know who was fighting who, but
if the wrong  guys won they'd just love to catch us  in a nice hot gasoline
fire. Getting out wasn't  going to be all that hard. The doors were gone so
we didn't have to climb out a window or anything.

We were  leaned over on the  left side, so her  door was mashed against the
ground. I says  to her, "We got to climb out my  door." I had brains enough
to hook one arm up over the lip of the car before I unbuckled my seat belt,
and then  I hoisted myself out  and stayed perched up  there on the side of
the car, up in the air, so I could reach down and help her out.

Only  she wasn't climbing  out. I yelled  at her  and she didn't  answer. I
thought for a second she was dead, but then I saw that her sparks was still
there.  Funny, how  I never saw  she had  any sparkiness before,  because I
didn't know  to look for it,  but now, even though it  was dim, I could see
it. Only  it wasn't so dim,  it was real busy, like  she was trying to heal
herself.  The gurgling  was  still going  on, and  everything  smelled like
gasoline. There  was still shooting going on. And  even if nobody came down
to start us  on fire on purpose, I saw enough car  crashes at the movies to
know you didn't need  a match to start a car on fire. I sure didn't want to
be near  the car  if it caught,  and I sure  didn't want  her in it.  But I
couldn't  see how  to climb  down in  and pull  her out.  I mean I'm  not a
weakling but I'm not Mr. Universe either.

It felt like I sat there for a whole minute before I realized I didn't have
to pull  her out my side  of the car, I could pull  her out the front cause
the  whole windshield  was missing  and the  roof: was  only mashed  down a
little, cause there was a rollbar in the car-- that was real smart, putting
a rollbar  in. I jumped off  the car. It wasn't  raining right here, but it
had rained,  so it was slippery and wet. Or maybe  it was slippery from the
gasoline, I  don't know. I  got around the front  of the car and  up to the
windshield,  and I  scraped  the bits  of glass  off with  my shoe.  Then I
crawled partway in and reached under her and undid her seat belt, and tried
to pull her  out, but her legs was hung up under  the steering wheel and it
took forever, it was terrible, and all the time I kept listening for her to
breathe,  and she  didn't breathe, and  so I  kept getting more  seared and
frustrated  and all  I  was thinking  about was  how she  had to  live, she
couldn't be dead, she  just got through saving my life and now she was dead
and she couldn't be and I was going to get her out of the car even if I had
to break  her legs to do  it, only I didn't have to  break her legs and she
finally slid  out and I dragged  her away from the  car. It didn't catch on
fire, but I couldn't know it wasn't going to.

And anyway all I  cared about then was her, not breathing, lying there limp
on the  grass with her neck  all floppy and I was  holding on to her crying
and angry and scared and I had us both covered with sparks, like we was the
same person, just completely  covered, and I was crying and saying, Live! I
couldn't even call her by name or nothing because I didn't know her name. I
just  know I  was shaking  like I  had the  chills and  so was and  she was
breathing now  and whimpering ike somebody just stepped  on a puppy and the
sparks just  kept flowing  around us both  and I felt  like somebody sucked
everything out of me,  like I was a wet towel and somebody wrung me out and
flipped me into a corner, and then I don't remember until I woke up here.

*What did it feel like? What you did to her?*

It felt like  when I covered her with light, it was  like I was taking over
doing  what her own  body should've done,  it was  like I was  healing her.
Maybe I got that idea because she said something about healing when she was
driving the car, but  she wasn't breathing when I dragged her out, and then
she was  breathing. So I want  to know if I healed  her. Because if she got
healed when  I covered her with  my own light, then  maybe I didn't kill my
daddy either, because it was kind of like that, I think it was kind of like
that, what happened when I dragged him out of the house.

I been talking a  long time now, and you still told me nothing. Even if you
think I'm just a killer and you want me dead, you can tell me about her. Is
she alive?

*Yes.*

Well then how  come I can't see her? How come she  isn't here with the rest
of you?

*She had some surgery. It takes time to heal.*

But did  I help  her? Or did  I twist her? You  got to tell me.  Cause if I
didn't help her then  I hope I fail your test and you kill me cause I can't
think  of a  good reason  why I  should be alive  if all  I can do  is kill
people.

*You helped her, Mick.  That last bullet caught her in the head. That's why
she crashed.*

But she wasn't bleeding!

*It was  dark, Mick. You couldn't see. You had her  blood all over you. But
it doesn't matter now. We have the bullet out. As far as we can tell, there
was no brain damage. There should have been. She should have been dead.*

So I did help her.

*Yes. But  we don't know how.  All kinds of stories,  you know, about faith
healing, that  sort of  thing. Laying on  of hands. Maybe it's  the kind of
thing you  did, merging the bio-magnetic field. A  lot of things don't make
any  sense  yet.  There's  no way  we  can  see  that  the  tiny amount  of
electricity  in  a human  bio-electric  system could  influence somebody  a
hundred miles  off, but they summoned  you, and you came.  We need to study
you,  Mick. We've  never had anybody  as powerful  as you. Tell  the truth,
maybe there's never been anybody like you. Or maybe all the healings in the
New Testament-- *

I don't  want to hear about  no testaments. Papa Lem  gave me about all the
testaments I ever need to hear about.

*Will you help us, Mick?*

Help you how?

*Let us study you.*

Go ahead and study.

*Maybe it won't be enough just to study how you heal people.*

I'm not going  to kill nobody for you. If you try  to make me kill somebody
I'll kill you  first till you have to kill me just  to save your own lives,
do you understand me?

*Calm down,  Mick. Don't get angry.  There's plenty of time  to think about
things. Actually  we're glad  that you don't  want to kill  anybody. If you
enjoyed  it, or  even if  you hadn't been  able to  control it and  kept on
indiscriminately killing anyone who enraged you, you wouldn't have lived to
be  seventeen. Because  yes, we're  scientists, or  at least  we're finally
learning enough  that we can start being  scientists. But first we're human
beings, and  we're in  the middle of a  war, and children like  you are the
weapons. If  they ever  got someone like  you to stay with  them, work with
them, you could seek  us out and destroy us. That's what they wanted you to
do.*

That's right,  that's one thing Papa Lem said, I  don't know if I mentioned
it before,  but he said that  the children of Israel  were supposed to kill
every man, woman, and  child in Canaan, cause idolaters had to make way for
the children of God.

*Well, you  see, that's why our branch of the  family left. We didn't think
it was such a terrific idea, wiping out the entire human race and replacing
it with  a bunch of murderous, incestuous  religious fanatics. For the last
twenty years, we've been  able to keep them from getting somebody like you,
because we've  murdered the children that were so  powerful they had to put
them outside to be reared by others.*

Except me.

*lt's a  war. We  didn't like killing  children. But it's  like bombing the
place where  your enemies are building a secret weapon.  The lives of a few
children--  no, that's  a  lie. It  nearly  split us  apart ourselves,  the
arguments over  that. Letting  you live-- it  was a terrible  risk. I voted
against it  every time. And I don't apologize for  that, Mick. Now that you
know what  they are, and you  chose to leave, I'm glad  I lost. But so many
things could have gone wrong.*

They won't  put any more babies out to  orphanages now, though. They're not
that dumb.

*But now we have  you. Maybe we can learn how to block what they do. Or how
to heal the people  they attack. Or how to identify sparkiness, as you call
it,  from a  distance.  All kinds  of  possibilities. But  sometime in  the
future, Mick, you may be the only weapon we have. Do you understand that?*

I don't want to.

*I know.*

You wanted to kill me?

*I wanted to protect people from you. It was safest. Mick, I really am glad
it worked out this way.*

I don't know whether to believe you, Mr. Kaiser. You're such a good liar. I
thought you were  so nice to me all that time because  you were just a nice
guy.

*Oh, he is, Mick. He's a nice guy. Also a damn fine liar. We kind of needed
both those attributes in the person we had looking out for you.*

Well, anyway, that's over with.

*What's over with?*

Killing me. Isn't it?

*That's up to you,  Mick. If you ever start getting crazy on us, or killing
people that aren't part of this war of ours-- *

I won't do that!

*But if you did, Mick. It's never too late to kill you.*
