Looking back he realized he had unwittingly mimicked Omensetter's habitual manner, for how otherwise would Omensetter have gone home through the rain, if he had wished to, but like one in his natural element, gently at ease, calmly collecting his pleasures. If this was a consequence of simply shaking hands, it made him a kind of deadly infection. I am inhabited, Furber said. Ah god, I am possessed. He would sit in his study for hours, searching his mind for some clue to the nature of the creature, the source of what he grimly called "Omensetter's magic," while from his window he would watch the pigeons wheeling to occupy his eyes. Finally he sought out Omensetter himself when Omensetter was strolling in the fields. Why do you inhabit me, he cried, why do you possess my tongue and turn it from the way it wants to go? Leave me, Omensetter, leave us all. He came abruptly on the man, blurting out his speech before his resolution left him and shouting in his excitement, though the words came just as he'd prepared and frequently rehearsed them. Omensetter halted and turned slowly to face Furber, who must have seemed to have lit like a crow behind him. The fellow's eyes were huge, their gaze steady; his whole body was listening, pointing toward Furber like a beast; yes, like a beast, a cow, exactly: wary, stupid, dumb; yes, as he thought back there was nothing in his manner that could be ascribed to an animal higher, and he had never replied; yet Omensetter had not come to church again, he had returned to skipping stones on the river where the people saw his example and said he was a godless man, while Furber preached against frivolity with heat.
It was truly astonishing the way his stones would leap free of the water and disappear into the glare. Omensetter always chose them carefully. He took their weight in his palm and recorded their edges with his fingers, juggling a number as he walked and tossing the failures down before he curled his index finger around their rims and released them as birds. Furber chose his own stones carefully too. In the beginning, when he had failed so miserably and lost his congregation, he had fallen upon the garden like a besieger and torn away its weeds. You've been in mourning long enough, he declared, enjoying his joke sufficiently he repeated it to Flack who nodded without smiling and responded in his rich contralto: yes, he was a gentle man; a remark which enraged Furber so much that like Moses he flung down the rock he was carrying and shouted: let that be noon and midnight — there; following his words with laughter to cover his confusion.
Now he strode briskly from stone to stone, circling the sixty. How differently we give the semblance of life to the stone, he thought. And it did seem a stone until it skipped from the water… effortlessly lifting… then skipped again, and skipped, and skipped. . a marvel of transcending… disappearing like the brief rise of the fish, a spirit even, bent on escape, lifting and lifting, then almost out of sight going under, or rather never lifting from that side of things again but embraced by the watery element skipping there, skipping and skipping until it accomplished the bottom. Pike's nothing but a shadow himself, merely a thin dim swimming something alongside the boat, a momentary tangle, a whistle of light. The hat too — passing around them, turning, wetly bobbing was due, eventually, to absorb too much, to sag, close up and sink. Omensetter threw horseshoes the same way. He sent them aloft and the heart rose with them, wondering if they'd ever come back, they seemed so light. A soft tish… and the shoe might slip beneath the surface of the air like the Chinese sage, or painter was it? who disappeared into his picture, except that Omensetter managed this miracle for things, for stones and horeshoes, while doing nothing to untie or lighten himself — no, he heavily and completely remained. Pike died of his love, his stone said. Omensetter's stones did not skip on forever either, though they seemed to take heart, or did they renew their fear? from their encounter with the water; but despite this urging each span was less, like that shortness of breath which grows the greater, the greater effort is required — and plip…….. plip… plipplippliplish was their hearts' register and all they were.
Tell me, Mr. Rush, in that uncustomary country, are you comfortable by this time? A child, for all his fright at first, grows used to life too, swells to a fondness even, and sucks on its sweets till they loosen his jaws. Or do you worry whether your bones will be up to the next leap when it will be the end of you again, poor thing… oh well, the water will take you on, or the fire, though there'll be new responsibilities as always, new risings required, you'll never escape those—but weren't you one, when you lived on air, who badgered the body about spirit? Ghosting's what we've always called for. Be above yourself, that's what we've urged — Pike, you and I — the hanker for the other side. We've no reason to complain, then, if our crotch is cracked by a hurdle. But I wonder — you might know now — is it a lie? What ease instead to melt into the body's arms and be one's own sweet concubine. And Omensetter? Is he, in his fashion, like us? Is it cruel to tease stones so? What's your view now you've splashed under? Whatever he gives them, it lasts only a moment. There's no help for it, they have to come down to a stone's end.