Colene’s mother was inside. She had had a considerable adjustment of information and attitude during the evening and night, but now was stable. It was clear that she intended to do right by Colene, and could now be trusted.
Colene brought out a map. “This is us,” she said, pointing to a spot on it. “This is the doctor’s office. This is City Hall. We need to go to the one, and then the other. I think you’d better ride Seqiro, so that others think you’re a man and a horse.” She flashed him a winning smile, again making him want to embrace her. As she was probably aware. “And nothing more. Tomorrow we’ll drive down to Texas and get married.”
“We can fit him in the car,” Colene’s father said. “He doesn’t need to ride the horse.”
“And leave the horse in our yard?” Colene asked.
“Well—” The man’s brow furrowed. “Where did that horse come from anyway? I thought it was just you and Darius and Nona.”
“Seqiro is a very special horse,” she answered, sliding by his question as Seqiro adjusted his mind so that he no longer thought it remarkable that a horse should have appeared on the scene. The neighbors had already been given the impression that the tent had been in the yard for some time, and was not at all remarkable or interesting.
They went outside. Colene had projected the image of the route in the map to Seqiro, so that he would know the way. Then she got into the car with her parents. “We’ll wait for you,” she said.
“I don’t like this any better than you do,” Darius told Seqiro as he climbed up on the wadded blankets Nona had fashioned in lieu of a saddle. They had removed the regular harness with the supplies, so that the horse was unencumbered. “I know you are not a servant beast, and I am not a practiced rider.”
You are lighter than my normal burden. It will be easier for me to divert attention if we look normal by this culture’s standards.
That was one of the things about Seqiro: he never stood on false pride. He simply did what was necessary.
Because it is your way. Were you to become angry, I would share that emotion. My attitude is defined by that of the human I am with, as is my intelligence.
They started out. Because the horse was in tune with Darius’ mind, there was no problem about riding; Seqiro compensated for any imbalance in his posture automatically, and did not surprise him with any motion. Because Seqiro was a large horse, and in good health, he moved along at a good rate though merely walking. Cars passed them on the road, avoiding them. They had no fear of a collision, because Seqiro tracked the minds of the drivers, making sure.
“Did you get the information on the Sin Eater?” Darius asked.
Seqiro filled him in on it. There had been a rape a month ago. The rapist had not been caught, but an anonymous tip had charged a fifteen-year-old boy called Raphael. The police had picked him up, but let him go for lack of proof. Since then, Raphael, once nicknamed Raff, had been renicknamed “Rape.” The neighborhood had condemned him. He had not been punished by the law, so the community was punishing him instead.
Amos had taught Raff in a remedial class, so knew him. The boy was slow, with just enough intelligence to get by on a minimal basis, but not mean. He had low self-esteem, and was generally the object of cruel teasing. He was no rapist. When the charge was made, Amos had taken the trouble to verify the police report: Raff had been released uncharged because tissue typing had shown he could not have been the rapist. He had merely had the bad fortune to live in the neighborhood where the rape had occurred.
But somehow the police report had not been publicized, so there had been no direct refutation of the charge. That was the start of the trouble. News of the charge had spread rapidly, but not news of the exoneration. So Raff remained guilty, in the eyes of the neighbors. That guilt was destroying him. Other youths were not supposed to play with him, and no girl was allowed near him. He got spat on when he walked the halls of school, and was regularly beaten up by other youths. When anything went wrong. Raff was blamed. It was a joke, for some of the things were impossible, but there was a large, hard core of belief that he was guilty of anything they thought he might be guilty of.
Amos had tried to tell people that Raff was innocent, but they had brushed him off. They knew he was guilty.
In Amos’ mind there were three reasons for this. Two of them were simple: Raff was stupid, and Raff was not one to stand up for himself. Thus he was an easy target. But it was the third that really bothered Amos: Raff was a Sin Eater.
There was a Sin Eater in every backward neighborhood. In every small town where the folk ranged toward the lower end of the scales of education, income, and ambition. There was always somebody who was the designated object of contempt. The people needed someone on whom to vent their irritation, anger, or despair. They needed to have someone to blame. For anything. Someone who was plainly inferior. Someone to punish for the frustration of the neighborhood. Raff had become that person.
They didn’t accept his exoneration because they didn’t want to. Never mind about fairness; they needed their Sin Eater. Raff was too convenient to let go. It was simpler to maintain a scapegoat than to address intractable grievances such as inadequate education, low wages, and rampant crime.
That was why Amos hadn’t told Colene about it. He saw it as an insoluble problem. He railed against it, but it was impossible to convince people of what was true when they were enamored of what was false. Raff was the victim of the community’s need to degrade someone. It was easier than trying to lift themselves out of their own Sloughs of Despond.
“Their own whats?”
Seqiro dug into the voluminous ancillary material he had culled from Amos’ pedantic mind. It turned out that this was a classical reference deriving from a work of literature titled Pilgrim’s Progress, where there were some bad geographical regions, such as vast bogs or sloughs.
“Oh, we passed through one of those on the way here,” Darius said. “Burgess had to float us across it.”
But the reference was actually religious. A sect called the Catholics applied it to a sect called the Protestants, and vice versa. Amos, however, used it in a social sense: it was as if all the people of this region were stuck in a mire, and instead of seeking positive ways to extricate themselves, they preferred to beat down someone else, preferably one who couldn’t defend himself. Amos’ disgust permeated the concept.
“I like Amos better as I get to know him,” Darius remarked. “But I don’t see how we can help Raff. He should move to another community.”
But Raff’s family was too poor to move. That was part of it: the Sin Eater couldn’t readily escape. He was locked into the position, and just had to accept the abuse.
Seqiro moved along the streets. It seemed there were signals which directed people and cars when to move and when to stop. The horse couldn’t see those, but he didn’t need to; he picked up the information from the minds of the people, and had no trouble. In fact a number of people admired the huge animal, especially the children, and most of all the young girls. To many of them, a horse was the ultimate creature.
“That is the way it is with Colene,” Darius said. “She longed for a horse, and you were the horse she longed for.”
I longed for a girl, and she was the girl I longed for. But it was you she was searching for.