Leola left the supper on the stove every afternoon before she left and he put it on the table. His head ached and his nerves were taut. He sat down on the kitchen stool and remained there, sunk in his depression. He wondered if he could infuriate Johnson enough to make him leave of his own accord. Last night what had enraged him was the Jesus business. It might enrage Johnson, but it depressed him. Why not simply tell the boy to go? Admit defeat. The thought of facing Johnson again sickened him. The boy looked at him as if he were the guilty one, as if he were a moral leper. He knew without conceit that he was a good man, that he had nothing to reproach himself with. His feelings about Johnson now were involuntary. He would like to feel compassion for him. He would like to be able to help him. He longed for the time when there would be no one but himself and Norton in the house, when the child's simple selfishness would be all he had to contend with, and his own loneliness.
He got up and took three serving dishes off the shelf and took them to the stove. Absently he began pouring the butterbeans and the hash into the dishes. When the food was on the table, he called them in.
They brought the book with them. Norton pushed his place setting around to the same side of the table as Johnson's and moved his chair next to Johnson's chair. They sat down and put the book between them. It was a black book with red edges.
"What's that you're reading?" Sheppard asked, sitting down.
"The Holy Bible," Johnson said.
God give me strength, Sheppard said under his breath.
"We lifted it from a ten cent store," Johnson said.
"We?" Sheppard muttered. He turned and glared at Norton. The child's face was bright and there was an excited sheen to his eyes. The change that had come over the boy struck him for the first time. He looked alert. He had on a blue plaid shirt and his eyes were a brighter blue than he had ever seen them before. There was a strange new life in him, the sign of new and more rugged vices. "So now you steal?" he said, glowering. "You haven't learned to be generous but you have learned to steal."
"No he ain't," Johnson said. "I was the one lifted it. He only watched. He can't sully himself. It don't make any difference about me. I'm going to hell anyway."
Sheppard held his tongue.
"Unless," Johnson said, "I repent."
"Repent, Rufus," Norton said in a pleading voice. "Repent, hear? You don't want to go to hell."
"Stop talking this nonsense," Sheppard said, looking sharply at the child.
"If I do repent, I'll be a preacher," Johnson said. "If you're going to do it, it's no sense in doing it half way."
"What are you going to be, Norton," Sheppard asked in a brittle voice, "a preacher too?"
There was a glitter of wild pleasure in the child's eyes. "A space man!" he shouted.
"Wonderful," Sheppard said bitterly.
"Those space ships ain't going to do you any good unless you believe in Jesus," Johnson said. He wet his finger and began to leaf through the pages of the Bible. "I'll read you where it says so," he said.
Sheppard leaned forward and said in a low furious voice, "Put that Bible up, Rufus, and eat your dinner."
Johnson continued searching for the passage.
"Put that Bible up!" Sheppard shouted.
The boy stopped and looked up. His expression was startled but pleased.
"That book is something for you to hide behind," Sheppard said. "It's for cowards, people who are afraid to stand on their own feet and figure things out for themselves."
Johnson's eyes snapped. He backed his chair a little way from the table. "Satan has you in his power," he said. "Not only me. You too."
Sheppard reached across the table to grab the book but Johnson snatched it and put it in his lap.
Sheppard laughed. "You don't believe in that book and you know you don't believe in it!"
"I believe it!" Johnson said. "You don't know what I believe and what I don't."
Sheppard shook his head. "You don't believe it. You're too intelligent."
"I ain't too intelligent," the boy muttered. "You don't know nothing about me. Even if I didn't believe it, it would still be true."
"You don't believe it!" Sheppard said. His face was a taunt.
"I believe it!" Johnson said breathlessly. "I'll show you I believe it!" He opened the book in his lap and tore out a page of it and thrust it into his mouth. He fixed his eyes on Sheppard. His jaws worked furiously and the paper crackled as he chewed it.
"Stop this," Sheppard said in a dry, burnt-out voice. "Stop it."
The boy raised the Bible and tore out a page with his teeth and began grinding it in his mouth, his eyes burning.
Sheppard reached across the table and knocked the book out of his hand. "Leave the table," he said coldly.
Johnson swallowed what was in his mouth. His eyes widened as if a vision of splendor were opening up before him. "I've eaten it!" he breathed. "I've eaten it like Ezekiel and it was honey to my mouth!"
"Leave this table," Sheppard said. His hands were clenched beside his plate.
"I've eaten it!" the boy cried. Wonder transformed his face. "I've eaten it like Ezekiel and I don't want none of your food after it nor no more ever."
"Go then," Sheppard said softly. "Go. Go."
The boy rose and picked up the Bible and started toward the hall with it. At the door he paused, a small black figure on the threshold of some dark apocalypse. "The devil has you in his power," he said in a jubilant voice and disappeared.
After supper Sheppard sat in the living room alone. Johnson had left the house but he could not believe that the boy had simply gone. The first feeling of release had passed. He felt dull and cold as at the onset of an illness and dread had settled in him like a fog. Just to leave would be too anticlimactic an end for Johnson's taste; he would return and try to prove something. He might come back a week later and set fire to the place. Nothing seemed too outrageous now.
He picked up the paper and tried to read. In a moment he threw it down and got up and went into the hall and listened. He might be hiding in the attic. He went to the attic door and opened it.
The lantern was lit, casting a dim light on the stairs. He didn't hear anything. "Norton," he called, "are you up there?" There was no answer. He mounted the narrow stairs to see.
Amid the strange vine-like shadows cast by the lantern, Norton sat with his eye to the telescope. "Norton," Sheppard said, "do you know where Rufus went?"
The child's back was to him. He was sitting hunched, intent, his large ears directly above his shoulders. Suddenly he waved his hand and crouched closer to the telescope as if he could not get near enough to what he saw.
"Norton!" Sheppard said in a loud voice.
The child didn't move.
"Norton!" Sheppard shouted.
Norton started. He turned around. There was an unnatural brightness about his eyes. After a moment he seemed to see that it was Sheppard. "I've found her!" he said breathlessly.
"Found who?" Sheppard said.
"Mamma!"
Sheppard steadied himself in the door way. The jungle of shadows around the child thickened.
"Come and look!" he cried. He wiped his sweaty face on the tail of his plaid shirt and then put his eye back to the telescope. His back became fixed in a rigid intensity. All at once he waved again.
"Norton," Sheppard said, "you don't see anything in the telescope but star dusters. Now you've had enough of that for one night. You'd better go to bed. Do you know where Rufus is?"