“And you? Have you given up?”

“No. I guess I – ” She looked down at the tight fists in her lap. “You have to put your hands on him, don’t you? Cass did that. You know that’s like real pain to him? He can’t stand it – it terrifies him.”

“I know that. It’s your decision.”

Darlene shook her head, more in indecision than a negative response. “He’s happy in his own world. I don’t think he’d like this one much, do you?”

“He might never fully appreciate being – ”

“Human?” She seemed tensed for a fight, or at least a reproach.

“He’s always been that. I think Ira’s only more intense about day-to-day life than we are. It’s not that he’s unaware of the world around him. Ira is frighteningly aware of every detail of the universe. It’s threatening to overload his consciousness. He must pull the plug, shut the world down now and then, or he could not survive. And he knows this. Ira is a very sophisticated human being.”

And because of Ira’s gifts and his strange vision, Charles found him to be exquisitely beautiful.

“The program you have him in now is tailored for the mentally retarded. I’m sure he’s making progress, but that type of school has severe limitations.” He produced the faxed forms with the Dallheim letterhead. “Perhaps you could fill in the medical history while I talk to Ira. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

Before they reached the door to Ira’s room, the boy had begun to sing. Charles recognized the aria from the cemetery concert. Darlene put her hand on the door and hesitated. She smiled as she hovered on this periphery, basking in the music of her mysterious child. Then the door opened, and Ira, suddenly alarmed, stopped singing.

The door closed, and Ira was left alone with the sandwich man. His large visitor sat down on the bed and talked softly for a while, as Ira rocked back and forth on his heels, not listening, blocking it out and searching for a safe place inside his head.

The man stood up and came toward him.

No! Don’t!

Ira backed up to the wall. The sandwich man grabbed him by the shoulders and repeated the words until they became real, intruding on his mind with sense and weight. He was using Dr. Cass’s words.

He remembered Cass’s face before him, forcing the jarring contact of the eyes, holding him by the shoulders, insisting. “Say one thing that is real, that is you, just one thing, just for me.”

Now he said to the sandwich man, “I am afraid.”

The man dropped his hands away. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph of Dr. Cass. “Look at this, Ira. Tell me about the day she died. I know you were there. What did you see?”

Ira said nothing. The sandwich man grabbed his shoulders again. His face was coming closer. His eyes -

“Rocks!” Ira screamed. And then he went rigid, waiting for the man to keep the old rules of the game.

The sandwich man released him. An hour passed in this way. The big man would come toward him, and Ira would concentrate on the words. If he spoke, the sandwich man would back away.

“Who threw the rocks? Do you remember the deputy being there? Deputy Travis?”

Ira started to flap his hands. The man advanced on him. Ira covered his ears and began to rock frantically. The sandwich man pulled Ira’s hands away from his head. The man’s voice was louder now. “Was the deputy there? A man in a uniform?”

Ira nodded, but the sandwich man still held on to his hands, for nodding was not good enough. There were rules.

“Did he throw rocks at Cass?”

“He threw rocks at the dog.”

The man let go of Ira’s hands and lowered his voice. “Did you see people throwing rocks at Cass Shelley?”

“They listened to the blue letter. Cass never said a word. And then she was red. The dog lay down in the dirt. He cried. The deputy hit him with another rock. He didn’t move again. Cass was all red. They left. All quiet.”

He had run from the house, from the bleeding bodies, dog and mistress. He had departed from the road and waded into the thickness of the water, slapping himself, testing the parameters, finding out where his body ended and the bayou began. He kept falling, water filling his mouth and choking him. Then as the muddy liquid was coughed back to the bayou, he knew the edges of self and the beginning of water, even before his father screamed in anguish and rushed into Finger Bayou to drag him back to the solid ground, and finally to home and bed, saying all the while, “Ira, what were you doing there?” But Ira couldn’t answer his father. He was still seeing images of Cass mingling her blood with the dog’s.

The sandwich man came toward him again. “I need a direct answer to a direct question, Ira. Do you know who threw rocks at Cass? Did you see -

“Daddy.” He began to rock, harder and harder, consoling himself as only he could do. He had never looked outside himself for comfort. Outside was only pain.

“What?”

“Daddy threw the first rock at Dr. Cass.” Ira beat his head against the wall.

The sandwich man restrained him. “Your father was part of the mob?”

“Yes!” he screamed, his back sliding along the wall. He sank down to the floor. “Daddy! Daddy threw rocks at Cass!”

“That’s enoughl” His mother stood by the open door, hands covering her face, and she was shaking.

“Mommy, make him go!”

And his tiny mother did make the large man go. She pushed the sandwich man out of the room and slammed the door after him.

Now she came at Ira, falling to her knees in front of him, as he drew in his legs and made himself into a ball. Her hands danced all about his face and body, never touching him, wild to get at him, but fluttering only, like terrified birds that could never light on any branch of arm or leg for fear of causing him fresh pain.

CHAPTER 19

When Charles knocked on Augusta’s door, Henry Roth admitted him and made the common sign for silence. “Augusta has company.”

Charles entered the kitchen as Riker was holding out his identification and detective’s shield for Augusta’s approval.

She bent low and squinted over the small card bearing the detective’s photograph. “I need my eyeglasses. I won’t be but a minute.” She gave Charles a curt nod in passing and hastily disappeared into the other room across the hall.

Glasses?

She had never needed them before. In fact, on the day they met, he had found it odd that she could read the fine print on his business card with no trouble at all.

Now he turned to Riker, who was looking around the room with great interest.

“Let me guess,” said Charles. “You’ve been following Henry.”

“Yeah.” Riker turned around to face the sculptor. He spoke slowly for the benefit of the man he believed to be a deaf lip-reader. “Not your fault, pal. You were pretty good at shaking off that rookie deputy, but you didn’t figure on a second cop, did you?”

Augusta returned with a pair of glasses set low on her nose. The antique frames and thick lenses must have belonged to some ancestor with badly impaired vision. Her eyes were greatly magnified.

Curious.

“Now let’s have a good look,” she said, leaning closer to Riker’s identification card. Now she was staring intently at his face. “Well, that’s a real good picture of you.” She introduced him to Henry and Charles, adding, “Mr. Butler’s been kind enough to help me with a few legal problems settling an estate.”

It was an interesting moment in the complications of deceit. Riker had not acknowledged him, in keeping with the lie that they were unconnected; Augusta was maintaining the executor’s ruse; and Henry appeared to be keeping everyone’s confidence, or, in plain parlance, he ducked. Charles elected to follow suit as he shook hands with Riker.

Augusta went to the stove and began to stir the contents of a pot. “You’ll all stay for lunch, I hope.”