He laughed uproariously. Then stopped. "S he won't let me drive anymore. I had to walk all the way over here.
Look. My feet are bleeding."
It was true. When he sat down in the grass and held up his feet for inspection, Step could see even by the light from the porch that they were badly lacerated, with bits of gravel and road dirt ground into the wounds.
"That must hurt," said Step.
"I'm above pain," said Lee. "That's how I know I'm on the verge of my power. Pain means nothing to me. I could break you in half and you couldn't hurt me. I could break you up into pieces."
Step thought of Lee talking to Robbie in this condition and shuddered with retroactive dread.
"It's time for your test," said Lee. "To see if you're worthy to be my servant and accompany me into immortality."
Step could think of several ways to enter immortality, and he didn't want any of them to happen right now, least of all with Lee Weeks. "I don't intend to take any tests," said Step.
"Fine," said Lee. "But I'll bet you can't guess how I faked Mom out about the medicine."
Step said the first thing that came to mind. "You hid the pill in your chewing gum."
Lee cackled with glee. "That was the test! You passed it!"
"One question? The whole test?"
"That's it. I'm going to take you with me now." Lee scrambled to the hedge on all fours, and started searching for something. A gun? Step didn't intend to wait to find out.
"Wait a minute," said Step. "What about my test for you?"
"You don't test me," said Lee. "I'm God, you idiot."
"So you say," said Step. "Anybody can say that."
"But I'm invisible."
"Not to me."
"What's your test, then?" asked Lee.
"Let me go in and get it."
"Get what?"
"The test. It's an object, and you have to tell me where I got it. If you're God, you'll know."
"I already know what it is," said Lee. "God already knows what your whole test is. When I asked you, that was a joke."
"OK," said Step. "Wait there."
He unlocked the front door, went inside, and locked it behind him. He called Stevie's name as he headed for the phone. Dr. Weeks's number was ringing when Stevie got into the kitchen. "Go get me Robbie's ball. Tell Robbie I need it right now, and bring it to me."
Then Dr. Weeks answered.
"Are you looking for Lee?" asked Step.
"Is he there?"
"Naked and talking about taking me into immortality with him. He might have a gun."
"Lee isn't violent," she said.
"His feet are badly injured. I think you'll want an ambulance."
"We'll be right there. Don't let him leave." She hung up.
Stevie came back with the ball. Robbie had followed him. "Go back to Betsy's room, boys," said Step.
"Stay there and don't leave."
Back outside, the door locked behind him, Step held out the ball. "Do you recognize this?"
"I called it, and it came to me," said Lee. "I have called it again, and you have brought it unto me."
"How did I get this ball, Lee? If you're God, you'll know."
"You got it from Robbie, of course," said Lee.
"No, Robbie got it from me. It was a present. So I ask you again, how did I get this ball?"
Lee tried several answers, but as soon as he spoke, he immediately refused to let Step tell him whether he was right or not. "This is very hard," said Lee. "You have great powers, Brother Fletcher. You are able to conceal this knowledge from me."
The guessing game lasted until the ambulance and Dr. Weeks arrived ten minutes later.
"You tricked me, you bastard," said Lee.
"That was the test," said Step. "To know that the ball wasn't the test."
Lee's fury turned to disappointment. "Then I failed."
"You aren't God, Lee. You're just a nice kid with a serious problem."
Lee stood impassively as the men from the ambulance took him by the arms. Dr. Weeks came up to him, baring the needle of a syringe.
"Please don't, Mom," said Lee. "You'll ruin everything. It'll all be wasted."
"You need to sleep," said Dr. Weeks.
"I need to sleep with you," said Lee, laughing. "Isn't that what your precious Freud said? I need to kill Dad and sleep with you."
"How did you get off your medicine this time?"
"Step knows," said Lee.
"He hid it inside his chewing gum," said Step.
Lee looked crestfallen. "You told."
Dr. Weeks pushed the plunger down and Lee watched, fascinated, as the fluid went into his arm. "Is this the fast stuff?"
"Yes," said Dr. Weeks.
It was true. By the time they got him to the ambulance, Lee wasn't walking under his own power. They strapped him down inside. "Take him right in," Dr. Weeks told them. "They're expecting him. I'll be there very soon."
They drove off. Dr. Weeks stood there on the lawn, facing Step. "Thank you," she said.
"It must be hard," said Step. "Being a psychiatrist, and having a manic-depressive child."
"Lee is the reason I became a psychiatrist. So I could understand him."
"And do you?"
"No," she said. "Not when he's like this. Not even when he's not like this. I think he likes his madness better. I think he doesn't want to get well." She smiled wanly. "You don't like me, Mr. Fletcher."
"I think you should have warned us about Le e when he joined the Church."
"When one is alone and at wit's end," she said quietly, "one seizes upon even the tiniest hope."
"Did you think we could heal him?" asked Step, thinking of Sister LeSueur and wondering if she would think herself up to the job.
"No," she said. "But I thought, since you believed ... as you believe ... that God talks to human beings ... I thought you might accept him."
"We did," said Step. "As best we could."
"And I, too," said Dr. Weeks. "As best I can."
After she left, he rummaged through the hedge, looking for whatever it was that Lee had been reaching for.
It wasn't a weapon after all. It was the Book of Mormon that the missionaries had given him.
The autumn wore on, the routine changing but not in any important way. Jerusha brought along a physical therapist on her October visit, and he told Step that what he was doing, stretching out Zap's muscles and moving his limbs through their full range of motion, was not only good but essential. "It's like his brain doesn't have the normal connections to his muscles. When he shoots off a command, it does too much, which is why he kicks so hard, but then it disappears, just like that, and so he can't sustain anything. By himself he can't keep his limbs limber, so to speak. So you have to keep his tendons from tightening up on him. Same thing they do for coma patients."
"We'll have to do this for how long?" asked Step.
"Till he finds some alternate neural pathway to let him do it for himself. He will, you know. Just give him time."
It was encouraging, and now DeAnne and Step took turns twice a day, flexing and extending all of Zap's joints. Robbie and Stevie even picked up on it-Stevie silently, wordlessly doing exactly what he had seen Step and DeAnne do; Robbie far too rough and ne ver quite correctly, so that they had to insist that he only do "Zap bending" when they were there.
DeAnne's hardest job with Zap was bathing him. Zap didn't cry much-only when he was in real pain, which happened mostly when she fed him formula and he didn't burp enough. However, bathtime was torment for him. For some reason the water terrified him. Maybe, Step speculated, because gravity was the one constant, the one thing that felt in control in his life, and in the water the gravity just wasn't there the same way. DeAnne only answered, Maybe, but who can know? What mattered was that bathtime was the only time that Zap ever got really upset, and then he was frantic, and his desperate cries just tore DeAnne apart, because she couldn't help him feel better and yet she couldn't give up bathing him, either. Finally what she evolved was a song that she called "Tubby Time for Jeremy." It was completely absurd and the first time she realized Step was listening to her she blushed and stopped, but he insisted she teach him the words and he sang along with her, so she wasn't embarrassed anymore.