From the back seat, Stevie answered quietly, "Yes, Dad."

He had opted for the white lie.

"Son," he said, "actually most people don't feel all that different, really. It's OK if you don't."

"I do, though," said Stevie. He didn't sound insistent. Just reporting a fact.

"Oh really?" asked Step. "What does it feel like?"

Stevie seemed to think about this for a moment. "Like the Holy Ghost is in me."

For a moment it seemed like the perfect response. For a moment Step thought, Of course Stevie feels the gift of the Holy Ghost, though I never did as a child, because he has always been sensitive to spiritual things, and I never was.

Step thought then of how much Stevie sounded like Lee Weeks just before Sunday school today. God is in me. God is speaking inside me. Whatever it was that Lee had said. Stevie might be spiritually sensitive, or he might be deluded.

Step realized that he was seeing him through the psychiatrist's eyes. How easy would it be for a psychiatrist to distinguish between Stevie's simple language of faith and Lee Weeks's weird certainty that God had chosen him? Probably it wasn't a problem- Lee might be strange, but he wasn't certifiable or anything. And of all people Dr. Weeks would certainly take Stevie's pure faith in the religion of his parents in stride.

Certainly DeAnne was taking Stevie's answer without any kind of skepticism. She reached over and cupped her hand over Step's right hand where it rested on the gear shift. Our son is so pure in heart, she seemed to be saying, that he can sense the Spirit of God when it enters him.

"What did you think when your father was confirming you?" asked DeAnne.

"I don't know," said Stevie.

"I mean, what did you think of the blessing he gave you?"

"Fine," said Stevie.

"Let's not quiz him," said Step to DeAnne. But what he was really thinking was, Do you have to remind him of how inadequate my blessing was?

"Sorry," said DeAnne, her feelings hurt a little.

"Nothing to be sorry about," he said.

Stevie spoke up from the back seat. "Dad?"

"Yes, Door Man?"

"You said that I'd bring joy and peace to my friends."

"And family," said Step.

"Well I don't know how," said Stevie.

"But that's what the gift of the Holy Ghost is for," said Step. "To show you how."

"But what if the Holy Ghost doesn't tell me?"

"Then maybe it isn't time for you to do anything about it yet. Or maybe you just haven't learned how to hear what the Spirit of God is saying. Or maybe you aren't supposed to do anything yet."

"Oh," said Stevie. A moment passed. Stevie said, "I'd really like to."

"Like to what?" asked DeAnne.

"Make them happy."

"Make who happy?" asked DeAnne.

You know who he means! Step wanted to shout.

"Jack and Scotty and David," said Stevie. The imaginary friends. Only now there were three.

"Stevie," said DeAnne. "Who is David?"

"Just another kid we play with," said Stevie. "Me and Scotty and Jack."

Stevie might have been confirmed, and the Lord may or may not have given Step words to speak in his confirmation, but the fact remained that Stevie was still living in a world where invisible friends came to play with him. And today he had added another. Or was it today?

DeAnne asked, "Did David just ... move in or something? I don't remember you talking about him before."

Move in, yes, that's a good one, thought Step. Let's pretend that these friends actually live in the neighborhood and have families and new ones just "move in" from time to time.

"He's been around for a while," said Stevie. "I think he was born in Steuben cause he talks southern and I can't understand him all that well yet. I mean I can, but I have to listen slower."

All right, DeAnne, thought Step. You were right. He needs to see a psychiatrist or somebody, anyway. I've never heard him talk about his imaginary friends this way. As if they had real lives. He must be spinning out their biographies faster than Step was coming up with code for Hacker Snack on the 64. You knew this, DeAnne. You've heard this sort of thing before. No wonder you were so upset. No wonder you insisted. This is too much for us alone.

When they pulled into the driveway Bappy's pickup truck was out front. "On Sunday?" asked Step.

As if he had heard the question, Bappy came around from the back yard. "Y'all at church?" he asked. "I come by at about four thinking you was bound to be back from church but nobody was here."

"We had a special meeting," said Deanne. "Stevie got baptized today."

"Well that's something," said Bappy "That's really something. So y'all don't baptize babies either, eh?"

"Are you Baptist?" asked Step.

"Well, my daddy was a Pentecostal minister, and he was a real dunker, he put 'em all the way under and held 'em down till the sins were all drownded and so were the ones who found Jesus, I'll tell you. Why, some of

'em came up with a mouthful of mud, he pushed 'em down so far!" DeAnne and Step joined in Bappy's laughter, but Step was thinking, I don't like making light of baptism, not today, not in front of the kids.

"Well," said Step, "anyway I'm sorry we weren't here. Have you waited long?"

"Oh, I didn't wait at all," said Bappy. "I figured, I know I oughta ask 'em first, but here I am and there's the tent flies in the back yard and I gotta do something about 'em, and it's not like I'm gonna make a mess that I don't clean right up."

"Is that what those cobwebby things on the trees are?" asked DeAnne. "Tent flies?"

"Them eggs hatch and the worms can eat every leaf right off the tree," said Bappy. "So I bag 'em up and prune 'em off. Got my truck mostly filled now, and you won't have any more of them wormy things dropping off on your kids under the trees."

"Yay!" shouted Robbie. "Those are really icky!" He charged around back, Betsy hard on his heels.

"Well I got 'em all," said Bappy. "Or almost. I will have 'em all by the time the day's over."

Step wasn't comfortable having Bappy doing yardwork on the Sabbath. But he knew that it really wasn't his business. Bappy wasn't his employee, he was the landlord's father, and if he chose to do yardwork on Sundays, well, it wasn't Step's job to control it.

"Step, would you go round the kids up out of the back yard?" DeAnne asked.

Step headed into the back yard and found Robbie and Betsy circling the tree like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, though they would never know the reference because somewhere between Step's childhood and his children's, that story had been discovered to be a monstrously poisonous thing that would turn otherwise innocent children into bigots. I guess there's no hope for me, thought Step. I see kids running around in circles, I think of tiger butter.

Bravely Step stuck a hand into the circle of children and emerged with a child attached to it; then the other hand, and the other child. "Come on into the house," he said, "if you want supper."

"He got the webs!" shouted Robbie.

It was true. The tree had been pruned back, and now was missing all but two of the branches that had been covered with a mass of white web; even those were now wrapped in large plastic garbage bags, waiting to be cut off and disposed of. It wasn't hard to imagine Bappy's wiry body climbing around in the trees. He's in better shape than I am, thought Step. But then, he doesn't have to work around the corner from a candy machine.

When Step got the kids into the kitchen and DeAnne had sent them off to change out of their Sunday clothes, she asked him, "Where's Stevie?"

"He wasn't in the back yard," said Step. "I thought he came in with you."

"I thought he took off when the other kids did."

"He's in here somewhere."

"No he's not, Step. I unlocked the back door, and he'd have to come in past me, and I know for a fact that he didn't. So he's still outside, and I don't like it that you didn't see him with the other kids."