Omensetter's luck, they said. Furber thought he could distinguish Omensetter's noises from the rest. What good was a wall that didn't blind and deafen? He could see and hear them as well as if he were on the beach beside them, smoking like a green branch against mosquitoes. Fingering the ivy he touched them more closely than if he held a still attached hank of their hair in his hand. It was a strange method of communication, skipping space and contravening causal laws. He remembered, on those rare occasions when his family entertained in the evenings after his bedtime, how the sounds of their voices would tease and draw him, how the laughter seemed to him so wondrously musical, so richly dipped in something sweet, like jelly in chocolate sometimes, that his mouth filled, and he would creep to the stairhead, straining to make it all out, then smelling them too, their perfume and tobacco, the fragrance of warm cakes and coffee rising with the click of their cups and spoons and their low bubbling speech, and once in a while a word would stand out clearly amid their scraping chairs and rustling garments, bewitching him. How he hated sleep. The world — how did it dare — went on without him while he slept, went on happily — this was proof — for everything he wanted and missed and felt should exist existed just beneath him, as close at hand while out of reach as his own insides, yet tomorrow when he was released and woke and went downstairs the rooms would be stale and unfriendly, a forgotten saucer, maybe, would disgust him, and his parents would be lethargic, cross, and awkward with objects. It had finally occurred to him that he was the figure that altered the sum, just as his presence on the beach so much later had subtracted from everyone's pleasure. So his family and his family's friends were happy because he slept. If he died in the night as he sometimes hoped, thinking to punish them, they would not weep but would pass the hours of his death dipping cookies in their coffee, chuckling, and swirling cream in their frail scalloped cups. Tree, ball, wagon: they were greener, firmer, smoother without him. Hoops, the street: it was intolerable they did not need him, but when he lay in his bed they were more completely. Sleep was bearable only if the whole world slept, he'd decided; yes, we must all sleep together, that was just; and these thoughts, the words "sleep together," without his in the least understanding why at the time, had suddenly awakened the monster in him. Then he'd cruelly scraped his ears and listened at the stairhead like a deer. He thought he heard their clothing parting. Certainly they giggled at the flesh they showed. He saw through the barriers of wall and floor the pale tangle of their limbs. Later he understood what people feared in fearing ghosts. Strange forms smoked along the stairs. Shapes moved vaguely in sheets. Holding his throat he'd risen and wobbled to his bed and sought sleep as he'd sought it ever since: as a friend and lover — further: as a medicine and god.
Watchman. What a monstrous liar. He hadn't stopped their games at all. They'd stopped their ears, so he made useless noises. Composing sentences he flew down. Kek. Is this a Sunday thing? Ke-kek. Now when he closed his eyes… hullabillyhooly… what went on?… that?
Creep away, sneak away, leak away — hide.
There are animals hunting in Furber's inside.
What will they find there? What will they eat?
Lungs, liver, the kidneys, and watery meat.
Much later than that lying moment on the stair, in the flower-decked pavilion of his dreams, he'd made love too — to handsome monsters virtuous as witches, their bodies flung full length upon divans, rows of mouths along their limbs beseeching kisses, bald vaginas drawing wind; for he was constantly deceived by sleep. Of course it would not give him peace, and as he'd gradually come to realize it was his own heart he'd heard on the stairs, these visions had entered his dreams to take their place. Sometimes, gratefully, he was a long silk multicolored handkerchief a magician drew with tantalizing slowness from his fist. Triumphantly, no butterfly more beautiful, he would emerge, and with a snap, unfurl. He was so slender the wind made him wiggle. Then the face of the magician would fall near. Cosmetic smoothed his cheeks. The handkerchief would fold about his nose.
Behind the wall, farther than the stair had been, he thought he heard them clearly: Omensetter and his dog, the children and the jays, floating sticks and splashing, the slow lap of the water on the shore. Well my watch won't run without me. I'm the works. Another one for Tott. Ghost, gnome, witch, companions of the night's mare (as Tott insisted, eyeing him eagerly to see how he took it, disappointed each time): at least they needed him if they wanted to exist at all. Cruel, frightening, wicked as they were they waited like a school of playmates underneath his window. Often, awake, he would hear them call.
Here I come a-riding
like a wild west scout, if I spy you hiding,
Pike, you're out out OUT.
Nevertheless, and it gave Furber courage to remember it in all of Gilean's amazement at Omensetter's luck there was suspicion; in all of their thanksgiving there was a measure of ingratitude; in all their admiration — yes, it would not be too strong to say their feverish love — there was no little envy. Well why not? Natural. Who hadn't envy of the animals? He had, certainly, his share. They were the trunk of his life — these envious feelings. He'd made his return on such a theme: Uncle Simon burning — the same theme that had earlier been his ruin, a poetically appropriate recovery, he thought. He'd pulled out his pockets. I am showing what's inside me: look. Right here. Toothpick. Corner of a coupon. Penny. Ball of lint. Then how he'd preached — preached burning — and got them back. Pride — confessed. Arrogance — confessed. Error — confessed. Anger — confessed. Sorrow, despair, failure, shame — confessed. Contrition, oh yes that — confessed. He might as well have advertised upon his sign: This Sunday: Your Well-loved Preacher's Personal Parts Exposed; Next Sunday: A Sooty Scoundrel's SelfAbuse. Humility, love, faith — confessed. So well confessed he was invited to do the toothpick bit in Windham. Uncle Simon, of course, was too local-river reference; but what a large career its burning had. Limb after limb, he said, the great proud church, he said, ulcerous and scaling, burned in the heart of the water. Burned on the skin of the river. Sank. Burned in the belly of the water. Burned. Moved in the blood of the river. Sank. Lodged in the muddy bottom, burning. Burned and burned. Ah, and they came like cattle, in droves, butting and shoving. Furber pulled at his shirt, undid his cuffs, released his collar. And you know more of God than I, he said. And he recited as much as he dared of his night at the stone — oh legendary Pike, oh worthy soulcollector — and of the whole desperate time preceding, and how he'd dragged himself before them, week after week, and watched them dwindle. Was I a king of Judah all that time? 1 was. I was. For I chattered like a swallow. Like a crane, I clamored, waving my arms. I moaned like a dove. My eyes were worn with weeping, with staring at my feet and at the floor, with the effort of going forth against new things. My hands were pinched with prayer and my ankles bruised. But He broke my bones like a lion. Day to night. He brought me to my end. No, by god, no tub-thumping for him, no rattling tambourines. He got them, even invented as it mostly was, with large words largely put — not a syllable of low speech — and he let this achievement quiet his conscience. When he had spoken, slowly, with long silences between them, his closing words (the same for each sermon in the series): He brought me to my end; he heard sniffling, and often saw a run of tears.