Word turned around, but too late. When Mack looked, the alien or motorcycle rider was just turning away, so when Word turned, the corridor was empty.

Mack didn't like it when Ceese acted weird, and he was sure acting weird now, gripping Mack's neck so hard it was like he was trying to break a pencil with one hand. So Mack tore away and took off up the corridor the other way, to ask the nurse at the counter what was happening with the man they brought in.

"I don't know if I should tell you," the nurse said. "You're not his next of kin or legal guardian."

"Well, I was sure his guardian when he needed somebody to find him in the bushes and carry him to safety," said Mack.

"You carried him?"

Mack shrugged. Didn't matter whether she believed him or not. "He wouldn't be here if I didn't hear him in the bushes."

"You're Ura Lee Smitcher's boy, aren't you?"

Mack nodded.

She nodded, too, and picked up the phone.

A few minutes later, Miz Smitcher was down there with them and hearing their story. "I guess we just want to know what's happening with the old guy," said Ceese, when they were through telling just enough of the truth to avoid having to spend time with a psychiatrist.

So Miz Smitcher went off and got permission from a doctor, on the basis that these were the boys who found the man, and she'd be with them. Pretty soon they were in a draped-off space gathered around the man's bed. His leg was in a cast and his chest was wrapped up and he had a needle stabbing the back of his hand, connected up by a tube to a bag hanging from a hook.

But the cast and the wrappings and the sheet were all so clean that it was actually an improvement. And seeing him asleep like that made Mack feel safer somehow. Not that he'd felt all that threatened when Puck was awake. But then, maybe he had felt a little bit afraid, but just didn't admit it to himself.

Talk about fire. Talk about intensity. It's like he thought he was Superman and he was going to use his X-ray vision to bore a hole right through the man's head.

"Did you know him?" asked Mack.

It took a moment before it registered on Word that Mack was talking to him.

"Me? No."

"But you saw him before."

Word shrugged.

"Then why do you hate him so bad?"

Word looked at him, startled, and then laughed. "I never heard you were crazy."

"Then you haven't been paying much attention," said Ceese.

Miz Smitcher looked at them like they were all crazy. "Let's leave this poor man alone," she said, and ushered them all out.

Word drove them home, with Ceese sitting in the front seat beside him and Mack in the back, looking for bloodstains, but there wasn't anything at all.

"You cleaned this up pretty good," said Mack.

"There wasn't much to clean," said Ceese. "He didn't bleed much."

"Dad's still going to make me get the car detailed," said Word. "He hates that guy. Wants every trace cleaned off."

"So your dad knows him?" asked Ceese.

Word shook his head. "Nobody knows him. But he came to our door once. I let him in. And then he left again."

"You let him in?" Ceese asked. "A guy like that, in your house?"

Word nodded. "My dad thinks I don't remember. Nobody else in the family even remembers.

And for a while I didn't—for an hour or so. Then it all came back to me. Mom was sick in the bedroom, and Dad got home and went in there and then that guy came to the door and... I let him in."

"What did he do?" asked Mack.

"I don't get it," said Mack. "If you wanted to stop him, how could you also not want to stop him?"

"You can't imagine it till it happens to you. All of a sudden it's like you don't even have a vote on what your body does and thinks and feels. You can think about how you don't want to do it, but at the same time, all you want in the world is to please that son of a bitch."

Mack could see Ceese stiffen a little.

"Come on, Ceese," Mack said. "You said 'son of a bitch' in front of me often enough."

Word gave a sharp little bark of a laugh. "Sorry."

"I just didn't realize this man's been around so long," said Mack. "How long ago was it?"

Word laughed again. "How old are you?" he asked.

"Thirteen and two months," said Mack. "Since the day I was found, anyway, and Miz Smitcher says I couldn't have been born very long before that."

"Then that man came to our house thirteen years and two months ago," said Word.

Mack thought about that for a minute. And added into his calculations the way Ceese was glaring at Word.

"So he had something to do with me, too, is that what you're saying?" asked Mack.

"Let's just say that when he came to our house, he had all kinds of empty grocery bags on his belt and in his pockets. But when he left, there was a baby in one of them."

Mack felt a rush of feeling, like his blood was trying to move to different parts of his body all at once. He was a little faint, even.

"And you didn't say anything?" said Ceese softly.

"Nobody would have believed me," said Word.

"Why not?" said Ceese.

"Because my mother wasn't pregnant an hour before," said Word. "But I caught a glimpse of her through the door and her belly was swollen up and... who's going to believe that? Especially when she didn't remember it even happened, half an hour later? She swelled up, had the baby, and forgot all about it in about two hours. You don't believe it even now."

"Yeah," said Ceese. "We do."

"Because of him," said Word. "Because of Bag Man."

"Mr. Christmas," said Ceese.

Puck, thought Mack. "So am I your..."

"I don't know," said Word. "You might be my brother. Or my half brother. But considering that things like that are impossible in the real world, I'm not altogether sure that you exist." He laughed again, that harsh laugh that said he really didn't think it was funny. "And if you do, what put you in my mother's uterus? Who could I tell? Who could I ask? All I could do was watch. I saw Ceese find you. And soon I heard that Miz Smitcher had taken you in. So you were okay."

"And what if I hadn't found him?" said Ceese. "Or what if Raymo..."

"I knew Raymo," said Word. "I wouldn't have let anything happen."

"So you just watched," said Mack. "Like Miriam watching Moses in the bulrushes."

"So you're a Bible reader," said Word.

"I listened in Sunday school," said Mack.

"Exodus. Moses was in danger of being murdered by Pharaoh's men, so they put him a basket and floated him down the river. I suppose today it would be a grocery bag, and he'd be set down in a field by a drainpipe."

"I'm not Moses," said Mack. "And nobody was trying to kill me."

Both Ceese and Word laughed grimly at that, then glanced at each other. Both of them probably wondering what danger the other one had known about.

"Do you read Shakespeare?" asked Mack.

Word shrugged. "My father almost named me William Shakespeare Williams. Instead of William Wordsworth Williams. So I might have been called Shake instead of Word."

"Or Speare," said Ceese helpfully.

"That would have guaranteed I never got a date in high school," said Word, and this time his laugh was a little more real.

"What can you tell me about Puck and the queen of the fairies?" asked Mack.

"Puck? Why?"

"Why? You think that Bag Man's an overgrown fairy or something?"

"Just asking," said Mack. "But if you don't know, I guess I'll have to read about it."

"Good luck on Shakespeare," said Word. "It's written in a foreign language. I heard a black linguist from Berkeley once say that English-speaking people are the only ones who never get to read Shakespeare in their native language. Instead we have to suffer through reading his stuff in the kind of English they were speaking back in 1600."

"I got through Shakespeare okay," said Ceese. "Romeo and Juliet. King Lear."