14
   HE STOPPED JUST OUTSIDE the bookstore and flipped open the riddle book again, this time to page one, where there was a short uncredited introduction.
   "Riddles are perhaps the oldest of all the games people still play today," it began. "The gods and goddesses of Greek myth teased each other with riddles, and they were employed as teaching tools in ancient Rome . The Bible contains several good riddles. One of the most famous of these was told by Samson on the day he was married to Delilah:
   'Out of the eater came forth meat,
   and out of the strong came forth sweetness!'
   "He asked this riddle of several young men who attended his wedding, confident that they wouldn't be able to guess the answer. The young men, however,' got Delilah aside and she whispered the answer to them. Samson was furious, and had the young men put to death for cheating—in the old days, you see, riddles were taken much more seriously than they are today!
   "By the way, the answer to Samson's riddle—and all the other rid­dles in this book—can be found in the section at the back. We only ask that you give each puzzler a fair chance before you peek!"
   Jake turned to the back of the book, somehow knowing what he would find even before he got there. Beyond the page marked ANSWERS there was nothing but a few torn fragments and the back cover. The section had been ripped out.
   He stood there for a moment, thinking. Then, on an impulse that didn't really feel like an impulse at all, Jake walked back inside The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind.
   Calvin Tower looked up from the chessboard. "Change your mind about that cup of coffee, O Hyperborean Wanderer?"
   "No. I wanted to ask you if you know the answer to a riddle."
   "Fire away," Tower invited, and moved a pawn.
   "Samson told it. The strong guy in the Bible? It goes like this—"
   " 'Out of the eater came forth meat,' " said Aaron Deepneau, swing­ing around again to look at Jake, " 'and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' That the one?"
   "Yeah, it is," Jake said. "How'd you know—"
   "Oh, I've been around the block a time or two. Listen to this." He threw his head back and sang in a full, melodious voice:
   " 'Samson and a lion got in attack,
   And Samson climbed up on the lion's back.
   Well, you've read about lion killin men with their paws,
   But Samson put his hands round the lion's jaws!
   He rode that lion 'til the beast fell dead,
   And the bees made honey in the lion's head.'"
   Aaron winked and then laughed at Jake's surprised expression. "That answer your question, friend?"
   Jake's eyes were wide. "Wow! Good song! Where'd you hear it?"
   "Oh, Aaron knows them all," Tower said. "He was hanging around Bleecker Street back before Bob Dylan knew how to blow more than open G on his Hohner. At least, if you believe him."
   "It's an old spiritual," Aaron said to Jake, and then to Tower: "By the way, you're in check, fatso."
   "Not for long," Tower said. He moved his bishop. Aaron promptly bagged it. Tower muttered something under his breath. To Jake it sounded suspiciously like fuckwad.
   "So the answer is a lion," Jake said.
   Aaron shook his head. "Only half the answer. Samson's Riddle is a double, my friend. The other half of the answer is honey. Get it?"
   "Yes, I think so."
   "Okay, now try this one." Aaron closed his eyes for a moment and then recited,
   "What can run but never walks,
   Has a mouth but never talks,
   Has a bed but never sleeps,
   Has a head but never weeps?"
   "Smartass," Tower growled at Aaron.
   Jake thought it over, then shook his head. He could have worried it longer—he found this business of riddles both fascinating and charm­ing—but he had a strong feeling that he ought to be moving on from here, that he had other business on Second Avenue this morning.
   "I give up."
   "No, you don't," Aaron said. "That's what you do with modern rid­dles. But a real riddle isn't just a joke, kiddo—it's a puzzle. Turn it over in your head. If you still can't get it, make it an excuse to come back another day. If you need another excuse, fatso here does make a pretty good cup of joe."
   "Okay," Jake said. "Thanks. I will."
   But as he left, a certainty stole over him: he would never enter The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind again.

15
   JAKE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN Second Avenue, holding his new purchases in his left hand. At first he tried to think about the riddle—what did have a bed but never slept?—but little by little the question was driven from his mind by an increasing sense of anticipation. His senses seemed more acute than ever before in his life; he saw billions of coruscating sparks in the pavement, smelled a thousand mixed aromas in every breath he took, and seemed to hear other sounds, secret sounds, within each of the sounds he heard. He wondered if this was the way dogs felt before thunderstorms or earthquakes, and felt almost sure that it was. Yet the sensation that the impending event was not bad but good, that it would balance out the terrible thing which had happened to him three weeks ago, continued to grow.
   And now, as he drew close to the place where the course would be set, that knowing-in-advance fell upon him once again.
   A bum is going to ask me for a handout, and I'll give him the change Mr, Tower gave me. And there's a record store. The door's open to let in the fresh air and I'll hear a Stones song playing when I pass. And I'm going to see my own reflection in a bunch of mirrors.
   Traffic on Second Avenue was still light. Taxis honked and wove their way amid the slower-moving cars and trucks. Spring sunshine twin­kled off their windshields and bright yellow hides. While he was waiting for a light to change, Jake saw the bum on the far corner of Second and Fifty-second. He was sitting against the brick wall of a small restaurant, and as Jake approached him, he saw that the name of the restaurant was Chew Chew Mama's.
   Choo-choo, Jake thought. And that's the truth.
   "Godda-quarder?" the bum asked tiredly, and Jake dropped his change from the bookstore into the bum's lap without even looking around. Now he could hear the Rolling Stones, right on schedule:
   "I see a red door and I want to paint it black,
   No colours anymore, I want them to turn black …"
   As he passed, he saw—also without surprise—that the name of the store was Tower of Power Records .
   Towers were selling cheap today, it seemed.
   Jake walked on, the street-signs floating past in a kind of dream-daze. Between Forty-ninth and Forty-eighth he passed a store called Reflections of You. He turned his head and caught sight of a dozen Jakes in the mirrors, as he had known he would—a dozen boys who were small for their age, a do/en boys dressed in neat school clothes: blue blazers, white shirts, dark red ties, gray dress pants. Piper School didn't have an official uniform, but this was as close to the unofficial one as you could get.
   Piper seemed long ago and far away now.
   Suddenly Jake realized where he was going. This knowledge rose in his mind like sweet, refreshing water from an underground spring. It's a delicatessen, he thought. That's what it looks like, anyway. It's really something else—a doorway to another world. The world. His world. The right world.
   He began to run, looking ahead eagerly. The light at Forty-seventh was against him but he ignored it, leaping from the curb and racing nimbly between the broad white lines of the crosswalk with just a per­functory glance to the left. A plumbing van stopped short with a squeal of tires as Jake flashed in front of it.
   "Hey! Whaddaya-whaddaya?" the driver yelled, but Jake ignored him.
   Only one more block.
   He began to sprint all-out now. His tie fluttered behind his left shoulder; his hair had blown back from his forehead; his school loafers hammered the sidewalk. He ignored the stares—some amused, some merely curious—of the passersby as he had ignored the van driver's out­raged shout.
   Up here—up here on the corner. Next to the stationery store.
   Here came a UPS man in dark brown fatigues, pushing a dolly loaded with packages. Jake hurdled it like a long-jumper, arms up. The tail of his white shirt pulled free of his pants and flapped beneath his blazer like the hem of a slip. He came down and almost collided with a baby-carriage being pushed by a young Puerto Rican woman. Jake hooked around the pram like a halfback who has spotted a hole in the line and is bound for glory. "Where's the fire, handsome?" the young woman asked, but Jake ignored her, too. He dashed past The Paper Patch, with its window-display of pens and notebooks and desk calculators.
   The door! he thought ecstatically. I'm going to see it! And am I going to stop? No, way, Jose! I'm going to go straight through it, and if it's locked, I'll flatten it right in front of m—
   Then he saw what was at the corner of Second and Forty-sixth and stopped after all—skidded to a halt, in fact, on the heels of his loafers. He stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, hands clenched, his breath rasping harshly in and out of his lungs, his hair falling back onto his forehead in sweaty clumps.
   "No," he almost whimpered. "No!" But his near-frantic negation did not change what he saw, which was nothing at all. There was nothing to see but a short board fence and a littered, weedy lot beyond it.
   The building which had stood there had been demolished.

16
   JAKE STOOD OUTSIDE THE fence without moving for almost two minutes, surveying the vacant lot with dull eyes. One comer of his mouth twitched randomly. He could feel his hope, his absolute certainty, draining out of him. The feeling which was replacing it was the deepest, bitterest despair he had ever known.
   Just another false alarm, he thought when the shock had abated enough so he could think anything at all. Another false alarm, blind alley, dry well. Now the voices will start up again, and when they do, I think I'm going to start screaming. And that's okay. Because I'm tired of tough­ing this thing out. I'm tired of going crazy. If this is what going crazy is like, then I just want to hurry up and get there so somebody will take me to the hospital and give me something that'll knock me out. I give up. This is the end of the line—I'm through.
   But the voices did not come back—at least, not yet. And as he began to think about what he was seeing, he realized that the lot wasn't com­pletely empty, after all. Standing in the middle of the trash-littered, weedy waste ground was a sign.
   MILLS CONSTRUCTION AND SOMBRA REAL ESTATE
   ASSOCIATES ARE CONTINUING TO REMAKE THE FACE OF
   MANHATTAN !
   COMING SOON TO THIS LOCATION:
   TURTLE BAY LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS!
   CALL 555-6712 FOR INFORMATION!
   YOU WILL BE SO GLAD YOU DID!
   Coming soon? Maybe... but Jake had his doubts. The letters on the sign were faded and it was sagging a little. At least one graffiti artist, BANCO SKANK by name, had left his mark across the artist's drawing of the Turtle Bay Luxury Condominiums in bright blue spray-paint. Jake wondered if the project had been postponed or if it had maybe just gone belly-up. He remembered hearing his father talking on the telephone to his business advisor not two weeks ago, yelling at the man to stay away from any more condo investments. "I don't care how good the tax-picture looks!" he'd nearly screamed (this was, so far as Jake could tell, his father's normal tone of voice when dis­cussing business matters—the coke in the desk drawer might have had something to do with that). "When they're offering a goddamn TV set just so you’ll come down and look at a blueprint, something's wrong!"
   The board fence surrounding the lot was chin-high to Jake. It had been plastered with handbills—Olivia Newton-John at Radio City, a group called G. Gordon Liddy and the Grots at a club in the East Village, a film called War of the Zombies which had come and gone earlier that spring. NO TRESPASSING signs had also been nailed up at intervals along the fence, but most of them had been papered over by ambitious bill-posters. A little way farther along, another graffito had been spray-painted on the fence—this one in what had once undoubtedly been a bright red but which had now faded to the dusky pink of late-summer roses. Jake whispered the words aloud, his eyes wide and fascinated:
   "See the TURTLE of enormous girth!
   On his shell he holds the earth
   If you want to run and play,
   Come along the BEAM today."
   Jake supposed the source of this strange little poem (if not its meaning) was clear enough. This part of Manhattan 's East Side was known, after all, as Turtle Bay . But that didn't explain the gooseflesh which was now running up the center of his back in a rough stripe, or his clear sense that he had found another road-sign along some fabulous hidden highway.
   Jake unbuttoned his shirt and stuck his two newly purchased books inside. Then he looked around, saw no one paying attention to him, and grabbed the top of the fence. He boosted himself up, swung a leg over, and dropped down on the other side. His left foot landed on a loose pile of bricks that promptly slid out from under him. His ankle buckled under his weight and bright pain lanced up his leg. He fell with a thud and cried out in mingled hurt and surprise as more bricks dug into his ribcage like thick, rude fists.
   He simply lay where he was for a moment, waiting to get his breath back. He didn't think he was badly hurt, but he'd twisted his ankle and it would probably swell. He'd be walking with a limp by the time he got home. He'd just have to grin and bear it, though; he sure didn't have cab-fare.
   You don't really plan to go home, do you? They'll eat you alive.
   Well, maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't. So far as he could see, he didn't have much choice in the matter. And that was for later. Right now he was going to explore this lot which had drawn him as surely as a magnet draws steel shavings. That feeling of power was still all around him, he realized, and stronger than ever. He didn't think this was just a vacant lot. Something was going on here, some-tiling big. He could feel it thrumming in the air, like loose volts escaping from the biggest power-plant in the world.
   As he got up, Jake saw that he had actually fallen lucky. Close by was a nasty jumble of broken glass. If he'd fallen into that, he might have cut himself very badly.
   That used to be the show window, Jake thought. When the deli was still here, you could stand on the sidewalk and look in at all the meats and cheeses. They used to hang them on strings. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did-knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
   He looked around thoughtfully and then walked a little farther into the lot. Near the middle, lying on the ground and half-buried in a lush growth of spring weeds, was another sign. Jake knelt beside it, pulled it upright, and brushed the dirt away. The letters were faded, but he could still make them out:
   TOM AND GERRY'S ARTISTIC DELI
   PARTY PLATTERS OUR SPECIALTY!
   And below it, spray-painted in that same red-fading-to-pink, was this puzzling sentence: HE HOLDS US ALL WITHIN HIS MIND.
   This is the place, Jake thought. Oh yes.
   He let the sign fall back, stood up, and walked deeper into the lot, moving slowly, looking at everything. As he moved, that sensation of power grew. Everything he saw—the weeds, the broken glass, the clumps of bricks—seemed to stand forth with a kind of exclamatory force. Even the potato chip bags seemed beautiful, and the sun had turned a discarded beer-bottle into a cylinder of brown fire.
   Jake was very aware of his own breathing, and of the sunlight falling upon everything like a weight of gold. He suddenly understood that he was standing on the edge of a great mystery, and he felt a shudder—half terror and half wonder—work through him.
   It's all here. Everything. Everything is still here.
   The weeds brushed at his pants; burdocks stuck to his socks. The breeze blew a Ring-Ding wrapper in front of him; the sun reflected off it and for a moment the wrapper was filled with a beautiful, terrible inner glow.
   "Everything is still here," he repeated to himself, unaware that his face was filling with its own inner glow. "Everything."
   He was hearing a sound—had been hearing it ever since he entered the lot, in fact. It was a wonderful high humming, inexpressibly lonely and inexpressibly lovely. It might have been the sound of a high wind on a deserted plain, except it was alive. It was, he thought, the sound of a thousand voices singing some great open chord. He looked down and realized there were faces in the tangled weeds and low bushes and heaps of bricks. Faces.
   "What are you?" Jake whispered. "Who are you?" There was no answer, but he seemed to hear, beneath the choir, the sound of hoof-beats on the dusty earth, and gunfire, and angels calling hosannahs from the shadows. The faces in the wreckage seemed to turn as he passed. They seemed to follow his progress, but no evil intent did they bear. He could see Forty-sixth Street, and the edge of the U.N. Building on the other side of First Avenue, but the buildings did not matter— New York did not matter. It had become as pale as window-glass.
   The humming grew. Now it was not a thousand voices but a million, an open funnel of voices rising from the deepest well of the universe. He caught names in that group voice, but could not have said what they were. One might have been Marten. One might have been Cuthbert. Another might have been Roland—Roland of Gilead.
   There were names; there was a babble of conversation that might have been ten thousand entwined stories; but above all was that gor­geous, swelling hum, a vibration that wanted to fill his head with bright white light. It was, Jake realized with a joy so overwhelming that it threatened to burst him to pieces, the voice of Yes; the voice of White; the voice of Always. It was a great chorus of affirmation, and it sang in the empty lot. It sang for him.
   Then, lying in a cluster of scrubby burdock plants, Jake saw the key... and beyond that, the rose.

17
   HIS LEGS BETRAYED HIM and he fell to his knees. He was vaguely aware that he was weeping, even more vaguely aware that he had wet his pants a little. He crawled forward on his knees and reached toward the key lying in the snarl of burdocks. Its simple shape was one he seemed to have seen in his dreams:
   He thought: The little s-shape at the end—that's the secret.
   As he closed his hand around the key, the voices rose in a harmonic shout of triumph. Jake's own cry was lost in the voice of that choir, lie saw the key flash white within his fingers, and felt a tremendous jolt of power run up his arm. It was as if he had grasped a live high-tension wire, but there was no pain.
   He opened Charlie the Choo-Choo and put the key inside. Then his eyes fixed upon the rose again, and he realized that it was the real key— the key to everything. He crawled toward it, his face a flaming corona of light, his eyes blazing wells of blue fire.
   The rose was growing from a clump of alien purple grass.
   As Jake neared this clump of alien grass, the rose began to open before his eyes. It disclosed a dark scarlet furnace, petal upon secret petal, each burning with its own secret fury. He had never seen anything so intensely and utterly alive in his whole life.
   And now, as he stretched one grimy hand out toward this wonder, the voices began to sing his own name... and deadly fear began to steal in toward the center of his heart. It was as cold as ice and as heavy as stone.
   There was something wrong. He could feel a pulsing discord, like a deep and ugly scratch across some priceless work of art or a deadly fever smoldering beneath the chilly skin of an invalid's brow.
   It was something like a worm. An invading worm. And a shape. One which lurks just beyond the next turn of the road.
   Then the heart of the rose opened for him, exposing a yellow dazzle of light, and all thought was swept away on a wave of wonder. Jake thought for a moment that what he was seeing was only pollen which had been invested with the supernatural glow which lived at the heart of every object in this deserted clearing—he thought it even though he had never heard of pollen within a rose. He leaned closer and saw that the concentrated circle of blazing yellow was not pollen at all. It was a sun: a vast forge burning at the center of this rose growing in the purple grass.
   The fear returned, only now it had become outright terror. It's right, he thought, everything here is right, but it could go wrong—has started going wrong already, I think. I'm being allowed to feel as much of that wrongness as I can bear... but what is it? And what can I do?
   It was something like a worm.
   He could feel it beating like a sick and dirty heart, warring with the serene beauty of the rose, screaming harsh profanities against the choir of voices which had so soothed and lifted him.
   He leaned closer to the rose and saw that its core was not just one sun but many... perhaps all suns contained within a ferocious yet fragile shell.
   But it's wrong. It's all in danger.
   Knowing it would almost surely mean his death to touch that glowing microcosm Init helpless to stop himself, Jake reached forward. There was no curiosity or terror in this gesture; only a great, inarticulate need to protect the rose.

18
   WHEN HE CAME BACK to himself, he was at first only aware that a great deal of time had passed and his head hurt like hell.
   What happened? Was I mugged?
   He rolled over and sat up. Another blast of pain went through his head. He raised a hand to his left temple, and his fingers came away sticky with blood. He looked down and saw a brick poking out of the weeds. Its rounded comer was too red.
   If it had been sharp, I'd probably be dead or in a coma.
   He looked at his wrist and was surprised to find he was still wearing his watch. It was a Seiko, not terribly expensive, but in this city you didn't snooze in vacant lots without losing your stuff. Expensive or not, someone would be more than happy to relieve you of it. This time he had been lucky, it seemed.
   It was quarter past four in the afternoon. He had been lying here, dead to the world, for at least five hours. His father probably had the cops out looking for him by now, but that didn't seem to matter much. It seemed to Jake that he had walked out of Piper School about a thou­sand years ago.
   Jake walked half the distance to the fence between the vacant lot and the Second Avenue sidewalk, then stopped.
   What exactly had happened to him?
   Little by little, the memories came back. Hopping the fence. Slip­ping and twisting his ankle. He reached down, touched it, and winced. Yes—that much had happened, all right. Then what?
   Something magical.
   He groped for that something like an old man groping his way across a shadowy room. Everything had been full of its own light. Everything— even the empty wrappers and discarded beer-bottles. There had been voices—they had been singing and telling thousands of overlapping stories.
   "And faces," he muttered. This memory made him look around apprehensively. He saw no faces. The piles of bricks were just piles of bricks, and the tangles of weeds were just tangles of weeds. There were no faces, but—
   —but they were here. It wasn't your imagination.
   He believed that. He couldn't capture the essence of the memory, its quality of beauty and transcendence, but it seemed perfectly real. It was just that his memory of those moments before he had passed out seemed like photographs taken on the best day of your life. You can remember what that day was like—sort of, anyway—but the pictures are flat and almost powerless.
   Jake looked around the desolate lot, now filling up with the violet shadows of late afternoon, and thought: / want you back. God, I want you back the way you were.
   Then he saw the rose, growing in its clump of purple grass, very close to the place where he had fallen. His heart leaped into his throat. Jake blundered back toward it, unmindful of the beats of pain each step sent up from his ankle. He dropped to his knees in front of it like a worshipper at an altar. He leaned forward, eyes wide.
   It's just a rose. Just a rose after all. And the grass—
   The grass wasn't purple after all, he saw. There were splatters of purple on the blades, yes, but the color beneath was a perfectly normal green. He looked a little further and saw splashes of blue on another clump of weeds. To his right, a straggling burdock bush bore traces of both red and yellow. And beyond the burdocks was a little pile of dis­carded paint-cans. Glidden Spread Satin, the labels said.
   That's all it was. Just splatters of paint. Only with your head all messed up the way it was, you thought you were seeing—
   That was bullshit.
   He knew what he had seen then, and what he was seeing now. "Camouflage," he whispered. "It was all right here. Everything was. And … it still is."
   Now that his head was clearing, he could again feel the steady, harmonic power that this place held. The choir was still here, its voice just as musical, although now dim and distant. He looked at a pile of bricks and old broken chunks of plaster and saw a barely discernible face hiding within it. It was the face of a woman with a scar on her forehead.
   "Allie?" Jake murmured. "Isn't your name Allie?"
   There was no answer. The face was gone. He was only looking at an unlovely pile of bricks and plaster again.
   He looked back at the rose. It was, he saw, not the dark red that lives at the heart of a blazing furnace, but a dusty, mottled pink. It was very beautiful, but not perfect. Some of the petals had curled back; the outer edges of these were brown and dead. It wasn't the sort of cultivated flower he had seen in florists' shops; he supposed it was a wild rose.
   "You're very beautiful," he said, and once more stretched his hand out to touch it.
   Although there was no breeze, the rose nodded toward him. For just a moment the pads of his fingers touched its surface, smooth and velvety and marvellously alive, and all around him the voice of the choir seemed to swell.
   "Are you sick, rose?"
   There was no answer, of course. When his fingers left the faded pink bowl of the flower, it nodded back to its original position, growing out of the paint-splattered weeds in its quiet, forgotten splendor.
   Do roses bloom at this time of year? Jake wondered. Wild ones? Why would a wild rose grow in a vacant lot, anyway? And if there's one, how come there aren't more?
   He remained on his hands and knees a little longer, then realized he could stay here looking at the rose for the rest of the afternoon (or maybe the rest of his life) and not come any closer to solving its mystery. He had seen it plain for a moment, as he had seen everything else in this forgotten, trash-littered corner of the city; he had seen it with its mask off and its camouflage tossed aside. He wanted to see that again, but wanting would not make it so.
   It was time to go home.
   He saw the two books he'd bought at The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind lying nearby. As he picked them up, a bright silver object slipped from the pages of Charlie the Choo-Choo and fell into a scruffy patch of weeds. Jake bent, favoring his hurt ankle, and picked it up. As he did so, the choir seemed to sigh and swell, then fell back to its almost inaudible hum.
   "So that part was real, too," he murmured. He ran the ball of his thumb over the blunt protruding points of the key and into those primi­tive V-shaped notches. He sent it skating over the mild s-curves at the end of the third notch. Then he tucked it deep into the right front pocket of his pants and began to limp back toward the fence.
   He had reached it and was preparing to scramble over the top when a terrible thought suddenly seized his mind.
   The rose! What if somebody comes in here and picks it?
   A little moan of horror escaped him. He turned back and after a moment his eyes picked it out, although it was deep in the shadow of a neighboring building now—a tiny pink shape in the dimness, vulnerable, beautiful, and alone.
   I can't leave it—I have to guard it!
   But a voice spoke up in his mind, a voice that was surely that of the man he had met at the way station in that strange other life. No one will pick it. Nor will any vandal crush it beneath his heel because his dull eyes cannot abide the sight of its beauty. That is not the danger. It can protect itself from such things as those.
   A sense of deep relief swept through Jake.
   Can I come here again and look at it? he asked the phantom voice.
   When I'm low, or if the voices come hack and start their argument again? Can I come back and look at it and have some peace?
   The voice did not answer, and after a few moments of listening, Jake decided it was gone. He tucked Charlie the Choo-Choo and Riddle-De-Dum! into the waistband of his pants—which, he saw, were streaked with dirt and dotted with clinging burdocks—and then grabbed the board fence. He boosted himself up, swung over the top, and dropped onto the sidewalk of Second Avenue again, being careful to land on his good foot.
   Traffic on the Avenue—both pedestrian and vehicular—was much heavier now as people made their way home for the night. A few passersby looked at the dirty boy in the torn blazer and untucked, flapping shirt as he jumped awkwardly down from the fence, but not many. New Yorkers are used to the sight of people doing peculiar things.
   He stood there a moment, feeling a sense of loss and realizing some­thing else, as well—the arguing voices were still absent. That, at least, was something.
   He glanced at the board fence; and the verse of spray-painted dog­gerel seemed to leap out at him, perhaps because the paint was the same color as the rose.
   "See the TURTLE of enormous girth" Jake muttered. "On his shell he holds the earth." He shivered. "What a day! Boy!"
   He turned and began to limp slowly in the direction of home.

19
   THE DOORMAN MUST HAVE buzzed up as soon as Jake entered the lobby, because his father was standing outside the elevator when it opened on the fifth floor. Elmer Chambers was wearing faded jeans and cowboy boots that improved his five-ten to a rootin, tootin six feet. His black, crewcut hair bolted up from his head; for as long as Jake could remem­ber, his father had looked like a man who had just suffered some tremen­dous, galvanizing shock. As soon as Jake stepped out of the elevator, Chambers seized him by the arm.
   "Look at you!" His father's eyes flicked up and down, taking in Jake's dirty face and hands, the blood drying on his cheek and temple, the dusty pants, the torn blazer, and the burdock that clung to his tie like some peculiar clip. "Get in here! Where the hell have you been? Your mother's just about off her fucking gourd!"
   Without giving Jake a chance to answer, he dragged him through the apartment door. Jake saw Greta Shaw standing in the archway between the dining room and the kitchen. She gave him a look of guarded sympathy, then disappeared before the eyes of "the mister" could chance upon her.
   Jake's mother was sitting in her rocker. She got to her feet when she saw Jake, but she did not leap to her feet; neither did she pelt across to the foyer so she could cover him with kisses and invective. As she came toward him, Jake assessed her eyes and guessed she'd had at least three Valium since noon . Maybe four. Both of his parents were firm believers in better living through chemistry.
   "You're bleeding! Where have you been?" She made this inquiry in her cultured Vassar voice, pronouncing been so it rhymed with seen. She might have been greeting an acquaintance who had been involved in a minor traffic accident.
   "Out," he said.
   His father gave him a rough shake. Jake wasn't prepared for it. He stumbled and came down on his bad ankle. The pain flared again, and he was suddenly furious. Jake didn't think his father was pissed because he had disappeared from school, leaving only his mad composition behind; his father was pissed because Jake had had the temerity to fuck up his own precious schedule.
   To this point in his life, Jake had been aware of only three feelings about his father: puzzlement, fear, and a species of weak, confused love. Now a fourth and fifth surfaced. One was anger; the other was disgust. Mixed in with these unpleasant feelings was that sense of homesickness. It was the largest thing inside him right now, weaving through everything else like smoke. He looked at his father's flushed cheeks and screaming haircut and wished he was back in the vacant lot, looking at the rose and listening to the choir. This is not my place, he thought. Not anymore. I have work to do. If only I knew what it was.
   "Let go of me," he said.
   "What did you say to me?" His father's blue eyes widened. They were very bloodshot tonight. Jake guessed he had been dipping heavily into his supply of magic powder, and that probably made this a bad time to cross him, but Jake realized he intended to cross him just the same. He would not be shaken like a mouse in the jaws of a sadistic tomcat. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again. He suddenly realized that a large part of his anger stemmed from one simple fact: he could not talk to them about what had happened—what was still happening. They had closed all the doors.
   But I have a key, he thought, and touched its shape through the fabric of his pants. And the rest of that strange verse occurred to him: If you want to run and play, /Come along the BEAM today.
   "I said let go of me," he repeated. "I've got a sprained ankle and you're hurting it."
   "I'll hurt more than your ankle if you don't—"
   Sudden strength seemed to How into Jake. He seized the hand clamped on his arm just below the shoulder and shoved it violently away. His father's mouth dropped open.
   "I don't work for you," Jake said. "I'm your son, remember? If you forgot, check the picture on your desk."
   His father's upper lip pulled back from his perfectly capped teeth in a snarl that was two parts surprise and one part fury. "Don't you talk to me like that, mister—where in the hell is your respect?"
   "I don't know. Maybe I lost it on the way home."
   "You spend the whole goddamn day absent without leave and then you stand there running your fat, disrespectful mouth—"
   "Stop it! Stop it, both of you!" Jake's mother cried. She sounded near tears in spite of the tranquilizers perking through her system.
   Jake's father reached for Jake's arm again, then changed his mind. The surprising force with which his son had torn his hand away a moment ago might have had something to do with it. Or perhaps it was only the look in Jake's eyes. "I want to know where you've been."
   "Out. I told you that. And that's all I'm going to tell you."
   "Fuck that! Your headmaster called, your French teacher actually came here, and they both had beaucoup questions for you! So do I, and I want some answers!"
   "Your clothes are dirty," his mother observed, and then added tim­idly: "Were you mugged, Johnny? Did you play hookey and get mugged?"
   "Of course he wasn't mugged," Elmer Chambers snarled. "Still wearing his watch, isn't he?"
   "But there's blood on his head."
   "It's okay, Mom. I just bumped it."
   "But—"
   "I'm going to go to bed. I'm very, very tired. If you want to talk about this in the morning, okay. Maybe we'll all be able to make some sense then. But for now, I don't have a thing to say."
   His father took a step after him, reaching out.
   "No, Elmer!" Jake's mother almost screamed.
   Chambers ignored her. He grabbed Jake by the back of the blazer. "Don't you just walk away from me—" he began, and then Jake whirled, tearing the blazer out of his hand. The seam under the right arm, already strained, let go with a rough purring sound.
   His father saw those blazing eyes and stepped away. The rage on his face was doused by something that looked like terror. That blaze was not metaphorical; Jake's eyes actually seemed to be on fire. His mother gave voice to a strengthless little scream, clapped one hand to her mouth, took two large, stumbling steps backward, and dropped into her rocking chair with a small thud.
   “Leave. . me... alone," Jake said.
   "What's happened to you?" his father asked, and now his tone was almost plaintive. "What in the hell's happened to you? You bug out of school without a word to anyone on the first day of exams, you come back filthy from head to toe... and you act as if you've gone crazy."
   Well, there it was—you act as if you've gone crazy. What he'd been afraid of ever since the voices started three weeks ago. The Dread Accu­sation. Only now that it was out, Jake found it didn't frighten him much at all, perhaps because he had finally put the issue to rest in his own mind. Yes, something had happened to him. Was still happening. But no—he had not gone crazy. At least, not yet.
   "We'll talk about it in the morning," he repeated. He walked across the dining room, and this time his father didn't try to stop him. He had almost reached the hall when his mother's voice, worried, stopped him: "Johnny... are you all right?"
   And what should he answer? Yes? No? Both of the above? Neither of the above? But the voices had stopped, and that was something. That was, in fact, quite a lot.
   "Better," he said at last. He went down to his room and closed the door firmly behind him. The sound of the door snicking firmly shut between him and all the rest of the round world filled him with tremen­dous relief.

20
   HE STOOD BY THE door for a little while, listening. His mother's voice was only a murmur, his father's voice a little louder.
   His mother said something about blood, and a doctor.
   His father said the kid was fine; the only thing wrong with the kid was the junk coming out of his mouth, and he would fix that.
   His mother said something about calming down.
   His father said he was calm.
   His mother said—
   He said, she said, blah, blah, blah. Jake still loved them—he was pretty sure he did, anyway—but other stuff had happened now, and these things had made it necessary that still other things must occur.
   Why? Because something was wrong with the rose. And maybe because he wanted to run and play... and see his eyes again, as blue as the sky above the way station had been.
   Jake walked slowly over to his desk, removing his blazer as he went. It was pretty wasted—one sleeve torn almost completely off, the lining hanging like a limp sail. He slung it over the back of his chair, then sat down and put the books on his desk. He had been sleeping very badly over the last week and a half, hut he thought tonight he would sleep well. He couldn't remember ever being so tired. When he woke up in the morning, perhaps he would know what to do.
   There was a light knock at the door, and Jake turned warily in that direction.
   "It's Mrs. Shaw, John. May I come in for a minute?"
   He smiled. Mrs. Shaw—of course it was. His parents had drafted her as an intermediary. Or perhaps translator might be a better word.
   You go see him, his mother would have said. Hell tell you what's wrong with him. I'm his mother and this man with the bloodshot eyes and the runny nose is his father and you're only the housekeeper, but he'll tell you what he wouldn't tell us. Because you see more of him than either of us, and maybe you speak his language.
   She'll have a tray, Jake thought, and when he opened the door he was smiling.
   Mrs. Shaw did indeed have a tray. There were two sandwiches on it, a wedge of apple pie, and a glass of chocolate milk. She was looking at Jake with mild anxiety, as if she thought he might lunge forward and try to bite her. Jake looked over her shoulder, but there was no sign of his parents. He imagined them sitting in the living room, listening anxiously.
   "I thought you might like something to eat," Mrs. Shaw said.
   "Yes, thanks." In fact, he was ravenously hungry; he hadn't eaten since breakfast. He stood aside and Mrs. Shaw came in (giving him another apprehensive look as she passed) and put the tray on the desk.
   "Oh, look at this," she said, picking up Charlie the Choo-Choo. "I had this one when I was a little girl. Did you buy this today, Johnny?"
   "Yes. Did my parents ask you to find out what I'd been up to?"
   She nodded. No acting, no put-on. It was just a chore, like taking out the trash. You can tell me if you want to, her face said, or you can keep still. I like you, Johnny, but it's really nothing to me, one way or the other. I just work here, and it's already an hour past my regular quitting time.
   He was not offended by what her face had to say; on the contrary, he was further calmed by it. Mrs. Shaw was another acquaintance who was not quite a friend... but he thought she might be a little closer to a friend than any of the kids at school were, and much closer than either his mother or father. Mrs. Shaw was honest, at least. She didn't dance. It all went on the bill at the end of the month, and she always cut the crusts off the sandwiches.
   Jake picked up a sandwich and took a large bite. Bologna and cheese, his favorite. That was another thing in Mrs. Shaw's favor—she knew all his favorites. His mother was still under the impression that he liked corn on the cob and hated Brussels sprouts.
   "Please tell them I'm fine," he said, "and tell my father I'm sorry that I was rude to him."
   He wasn't, but all his father really wanted was that apology. Once Mrs. Shaw conveyed it to him, he would relax and begin to tell himself the old lie—he had done his fatherly duty and all was well, all was well, and all manner of things were well.
   "I've been studying very hard for my exams," he said, chewing as he talked, "and it all came down on me this morning, I guess. I sort of froze. It seemed like I had to get out or I'd suffocate." He touched the dried crust of blood on his forehead. "As for this, please tell my mother it's really nothing. I didn't get mugged or anything; it was just a stupid accident. There was a UPS guy pushing a hand-truck, and I walked right into it. The cut's no big deal. I'm not having double vision or anything, and even the headache's gone now."
   She nodded. "I can see how it must have been—a high-powered school like that and all. You just got a little spooked. No shame in that, Johnny. But you really haven't seemed like yourself this last couple of weeks."
   "I think I'll be okay now. I might have to re-do my Final Essay in English, but-"
   "Oh!" Mrs. Shaw said. A startled looked crossed her face. She put Charlie the Choo-Choo back down on Jake's desk. "I almost forgot! Your French teacher left something for you. I'll just get it."
   She left the room. Jake hoped he hadn't worried Mr. Bissette, who was a pretty good guy, but he supposed he must have, since Bissette had actually made a personal appearance. Jake had an idea that personal appearances were pretty rare for Piper School teachers. He wondered what Mr. Bissette had left. His best guess was an invitation to talk with Mr. Hotchkiss, the school shrink. That would have scared him this morn­ing, but not tonight.
   Tonight only the rose seemed to matter.
   He tore into his second sandwich. Mrs. Shaw had left the door open, and he could hear her talking with his parents. They both sounded a little more cooled out now. Jake drank his milk, then grabbed the plate with the apple pie on it. A few moments later Mrs. Shaw came back. She was carrying a very familiar blue folder.
   Jake found that not all of his dread had left him after all. They would all know by now, of course, students and faculty alike, and it was too late to do anything about it, but that didn't mean he liked all of them knowing he had flipped his lid. That they were talking about him.
   A small envelope had been paper-clipped to the front of the folder.
   Jake pulled it free and looked up at Mrs. Shaw as he opened it. "How are my folks doing now?" he asked.
   She allowed herself a brief smile. "Your father wanted me to ask why you didn't just tell him you had Exam Fever. He said he had it himself once or twice when he was a boy."
   Jake was struck by this; his father had never been the sort of man to indulge in reminiscences which began, You know, when I was a kid... Jake tried to imagine his father as a boy with a bad case of Exam Fever and found he couldn't quite do it—the best he could manage was the unpleasant image of a pugnacious dwarf in a Piper sweatshirt, a dwarf in custom-tooled cowboy boots, a dwarf with short black hair bolting up from his forehead.
   The note was from Mr. Bissette.
   Dear John,
   Bonnie Avery told me that you left early. She's very concerned about you, and so am I, although we have both seen this sort of thing before, especially during Exam Week. Please come and see me first thing tomorrow, okay? Any problems you have can be worked out. If you're feeling pressured by exams—and 1 want to repeat that it happens all the time—a postponement can be arranged. Our first concern is your welfare. Call me this evening, if you like; you can reach me at 555-7661.Illbe up untilmidnight.
   Remember that we all like you very much, and are on your side.
   A votre sante'
   Len Bissette
   Jake felt like crying. The concern was stated, and that was wonderful, but there were other things, unstated things, in the note that were even more wonderful—warmth, caring, and an effort (however misconceived) to understand and console.
   Mr. Bissette had drawn a small arrow at the bottom of the note. Jake turned it over and read this:
   By the way, Bonnie asked me to send this along—congratulations!!
   Congratulations? What in the hell did that mean?
   He flipped open the folder. A sheet of paper had been clipped to the first page of his Final Essay. It was headed FROM THE DESK OF BONITA AVERY, and Jake read the spiky, fountain-penned lines with grow­ing amazement.
   John,
   Leonard will undoubtedly voice the concern we all feel—he is awfully good at that—so let me confine myself to your Final Essay, which I read and graded during my free period. It is stun­ningly original, and superior to any student work I have read in the last few years. Your use of incremental repetition (". . . and that is the truth") is inspired, but of course incremental repetition is really just a trick. The real worth of the composition is in its symbolic quality, first stated by the images of the train and the door on the title page and carried through splendidly within. This reaches its logical conclusion with the picture of the "black tower," which I take as your statement that conventional ambitions are not only false but dangerous.
   I do not pretend to understand all the symbolism (e.g., "Lady of Shadows," "gunslinger") but it seems clear that you yourself are "The Prisoner" (of school, society, etc.) and that the educational system is "The Speaking Demon." Is it possible that both "Roland" and "the gunslinger" are the same authority figure—your father, perhaps? I became so intrigued by this possibility that 1 looked up his name in your records. I note it is Elmer, but I further note that his middle initial is R.
   I find this extremely provocative. Or is this name a double symbol, drawn both from your father and from Robert Brow­ning's poem "Childe Roland to theDarkTowerCame"? This is not a question I would ask most students, but of course I know how omnivorously you read!
   At any rate, I am extremely impressed. Younger students are often attracted to so-called "stream-of-consciousness" writing, but are rarely able to control it. You have done an outstanding job of merging s-of-c with symbolic language.
   Bravo!
   Drop by as soon as you're "back at it"—I want to discuss possible publication of this piece in the first issue of next year's student literary magazine.
   B. Avery
   P. S. If you left school today because you had sudden doubts about my ability to understand a Final Essay of such unexpected richness, I hope I have assuaged them.
   Jake pulled the sheet off the clip, revealing the title page of his stunningly original and richly symbolic Final Essay. Written and circled there in the red ink of Ms. Avery's marking pen was the notation A +. Below this she had written EXCELLENT JOB!!!
   Jake began to laugh.
   The whole day—the long, scary, confusing, exhilarating, terrify­ing, mysterious day—was condensed in great, roaring sobs of laughter. He slumped in his chair, head thrown hack, hands clutching his belly, tears streaming down his face. He laughed himself hoarse. He would almost stop and then some line from Ms. Avery's well-meaning cri­tique would catch his eye and he would be off to the races again. He didn't see his father come to the door, look in at him with puzzled, wary eyes, and then leave again, shaking his head.
   At last he did become aware that Mrs. Shaw was still sitting on his bed, looking at him with an expression of friendly detachment tinctured with faint curiosity. He tried to speak, but the laughter pealed out again before he could.
   I gotta stop, he thought. I gotta stop or it's gonna kill me. I'll have a stroke or a heart attack, or something.
   Then he thought, 7 wonder what she made of "choo-choo, choo-choo?," and he began to laugh wildly again.
   At last the spasms began to taper off to giggles. He wiped his arm across his streaming eyes and said, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Shaw—it's just that... well … I got an A-plus on my Final Essay. It was all very... very rich... and very sym... sym..."
   But he couldn't finish. He doubled up with laughter again, hold­ing his throbbing belly.
   Mrs. Shaw got up, smiling. "That's very nice, John. I'm happy it's all turned out so well, and I'm sure your folks will be, too. I'm awfully late—I think I'll ask the doorman to call me a cab. Goodnight, and sleep well."
   "Goodnight, Mrs. Shaw," Jake said, controlling himself with an effort. "And thanks."
   As soon as she was gone, he began to laugh again.

 21
   DURING THE NEXT HALF hour he had separate visits from both parents. They had indeed calmed down, and the A + grade on Jake's Final Essay seemed to calm them further. Jake received them with his French text open on the desk before him, but he hadn't really looked at it, nor did he have any intention of looking at it. He was only waiting for them to be gone so he could study the two books he had bought earlier that day. He had an idea that the real Final Exams were still waiting just over the horizon, and he wanted desperately to pass.
   His father poked his head into Jake's room around quarter of ten, about twenty minutes after Jake's mother had concluded her own short, vague visit. Elmer Chambers was holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. He seemed not only calmer but almost zonked. Jake wondered briefly and indifferently if he had been hitting his mother's Valium supply.
   "Are you okay, kid?"
   "Yes." He was once again the small, neat boy who was always com­pletely in control of himself. The eyes he turned to his father were not blazing but opaque.
   "I wanted to say I'm sorry about before." His father was not a man who made many apologies, and he did it badly. Jake found himself feeling a little sorry for him.
   "It's all right."
   "Hard day," his father said. He gestured with the empty glass. "Why don't we just forget it happened?" He spoke as if this great and logical idea had just come to him.
   "I already have."
   "Good." His father sounded relieved. "Time for you to get some sleep, isn't it? You'll have some explaining to do and some tests to take tomorrow."
   "I guess so," Jake said. "Is Mom okay?"
   "Fine. Fine. I'm going in the study. Got a lot of paperwork tonight."
   "Dad?"
   His father looked back at him warily.
   "What's your middle name?"
   Something in his father's face told Jake that he had looked at the Final Essay grade but hadn't bothered to read either the paper itself or Ms. Avery's critique.
   "I don't have one," he said. "Just an initial, like Harry S Truman. Except mine's an R. What brought that on?"
   "Just curious," Jake said.
   He managed to hold onto his composure until his father was gone... but as soon as the door was closed, he ran to his bed and stuffed his face into his pillow to muffle another bout of wild laughter.

22
   WHEN HE WAS SURE he was over the current fit (although an occasional snicker still rumbled up his throat like an aftershock) and his father would be safely locked away in his study with his cigarettes, his Scotch, his papers, and his little bottle of white powder, Jake went back to his desk, turned on the study lamp, and opened Charlie the Choo-Choo. He glanced briefly at the copyright page and saw it had originally been published in 1942; his copy was from the fourth printing. He looked at the back, but there was no information at all about Beryl Evans, the book's author.
   Jake turned back to the beginning, looked at the picture of a grin­ning, blonde-haired man sitting in the cab of a steam locomotive, consid­ered the proud grin on the man's face, and then began to read.
   Bob Brooks was an engineer for the Mid-World Railway Company, on the St. Louis to Topeka run. Engineer Bob was the best trainman The Mid-World Railway Company ever had, and Charlie was the best train!
   Charlie was a 402 Big Boy Steam Locomotive, and Engineer Bob was the only man who had ever been allowed to sit in his peak-seat and pull the whistle. Everyone knew the WHOOO-OOOO of Charlie's whistle, and whenever they heard it echoing across the flat Kan­sas countryside, they said, "There goes Charlie and Engi­neer Bob, the fastest team between St. Louis and Topeka !"
   Boys and girls ran into their yards to watch Charlie and Engineer Bob go by. Engineer Bob would smile and wave. The children would smile and wave back.
   Engineer Bob had a special secret. He was the only one who knew. Charlie the Choo-Choo was really, really alive. One day while they were making the run between Topeka and St. Louis, Engineer Bob heard singing, very soft and low.
   "Who is in the cab with me?" Engineer Bob said sternly.
   "You need to see a shrink, Engineer Bob," Jake murmured, and turned the page. Here was a picture of Bob bending over to look beneath, Charlie the Choo-Choo's automatic firebox. Jake wondered who was driv­ing the train and watching out for cows (not to mention boys and girls) on the tracks while Bob was checking for stowaways, and guessed that Beryl Evans hadn't known a lot about trains.
   "Don't worry," said a small, gruff voice. "It is only I."
   "Who's I?" Engineer Bob asked. He spoke in his big­gest, sternest voice, because he still thought someone was playing a joke on him.
   "Charlie," said the small, gruff voice.
   "Hardy har-har!" said Engineer Bob. "Trains can't talk! I may not know much, but I know that! If you're Charlie, I suppose you can blow your own whistle!"
   "Of course," said the small, gruff voice, and just then the whistle made its big noise, rolling out across the Mis­souri plains: WHOOO-OOOO!
   "Goodness!" said Engineer Bob. "It really is you!"
   "I told you," said Charlie the Choo-Choo.
   "How come I never knew you were alive before?" asked Engineer Bob. "Why didn't you ever talk to me before?"
   Then Charlie sang this song to Engineer Bob in his small, gruff voice.
   Don't ask me silly questions,
   I won't play silly games.
   I'm just a simple choo-choo train
   And I'll always be the same.

   I only want to race along
   Beneath the bright blue sky,
   And be a happy choo-choo train
   Until the day I die.
   "Will you talk to me some more when we're making our run?" asked Engineer Bob. "I'd like that."
   "I would, too," said Charlie. "I love you, Engineer Bob."
   "I love you too, Charlie," said Engineer Bob, and then he blew the whistle himself, just to show how happy he was.
   WHOOO-OOO! It was the biggest and best Charlie had ever whistled, and everyone who heard it came out to see.
   The picture which illustrated this last was similar to the one on the cover of the book. In the previous pictures (they were rough drawings which reminded Jake of the pictures in his favorite kindergarten book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel), the locomotive had been just a locomotive—cheery, undoubtedly interesting to the '40s-era boys who had been this book's intended audience, but still only a piece of machin­ery. In this picture, however, it had clearly human features, and this gave Jake a deep chill despite Charlie's smile and the rather heavy-handed cuteness of the story.
   He didn't trust that smile.
   He turned to his Final Essay and scanned down the lines. I'm pretty sure Blame is dangerous, he read, and that is the truth.
   He closed the folder, tapped his fingers on it thoughtfully for a few moments, then returned to Charlie the Choo-Choo.
   Engineer Bob and Charlie spent many happy days together and talked of many things. Engineer Bob lived alone, and Charlie was the first real friend he'd had since his wife died, long ago, in New York .
   Then one day, when Charlie and Engineer Bob returned to the roundhouse in St. Louis, they found a new diesel locomotive in Charlie's berth. And what a diesel locomotive it was! 5,000 horsepower! Stainless steel cou­plers! Traction motors from the Utica Engine Works in Utica, New York ! And sitting on top, behind the genera­tor, were three bright yellow radiator cooling fans.
   "What is this?" Engineer Bob asked in a worried voice, but Charlie only sang his song in his smallest, gruffest voice:
   Don't ask me silly questions,
   I won't play silly games.
   I'm just a simple choo-choo train
   And I'll always be the same.

   I only want to race along
   Beneath the bright blue sky,
   And be a happy choo-choo train
   Until the day I die.
   Mr. Briggs, the Roundhouse Manager, came over.
   "That is a beautiful diesel locomotive," said Engineer Bob, "but you will have to move it out of Charlie's berth, Mr. Briggs. Charlie needs a lube job this very afternoon."
   "Charlie won't be needing any more lube jobs, Engi­neer Bob," said Mr. Briggs sadly. "This is his replace­ment—a brand-new Burlington Zephyr diesel loco. Once, Charlie was the best locomotive in the world, but now he is old and his boiler leaks. I am afraid the time has come for Charlie to retire."
   "Nonsense!" Engineer Bob was mad! "Charlie is still full of zip and zowie! I will telegraph the head office of The Mid-World Railway Company! I will telegraph the President, Mr. Raymond Martin, myself! I know him, because he once gave me a Good Service Award, and afterwards Charlie and I took his little daughter for a ride. I let her pull the lanyard, and Charlie whistled his loudest for her!"
   "I am sorry, Bob," said Mr. Briggs, 'Taut it was Mr. Martin himself who ordered the new diesel loco."
   It was true. And so Charlie the Choo-Choo was shunted off to a siding in the furthest corner of Mid-World's St. Louis yard to rust in the weeds. Now the HONNNK! HONNNK! of the Burlington Zephyr was heard on the St. Louis to Topeka run, and Charlie's blew no more. A family of mice nested in the seat where Engi­neer Bob once sat so proudly, watching the countryside speed past; a family of swallows nested in his smoke­stack. Charlie was lonely and very sad. He missed the steel tracks and bright blue skies and wide open spaces. Sometimes, late at night, he thought of these things and cried dark, oily tears. This rusted his fine Stratham head­light, but he didn't care, because now the Stratham head­light was old, and it was always dark.
   Mr. Martin, the President of The Mid-World Railway Company, wrote and offered to put Engineer Bob in the peak-seat of the new Burlington Zephyr. "It is a fine loco, Engineer Bob," said Mr. Martin, "chock-full of zip and zowie, and you should be the one to pilot it! Of all the Engineers who work for Mid-World, you are the best. And my daughter Susannah has never forgotten that you let her pull old Charlie's whistle."
   But Engineer Bob said that if he couldn't pilot Char­lie, his days as a trainman were done. "I wouldn't under­stand such a fine new diesel loco," said Engineer Bob, "and it wouldn't understand me."
   He was given a job cleaning the engines in the St. Louis yards, and Engineer Bob became Wiper Bob. Some­times the other engineers who drove the fine new diesels would laugh at him. "Look at that old fool!" they said. "He cannot understand that the world has moved on!"
   Sometimes, late at night, Engineer Bob would go to the far side of the rail yard, where Charlie the Choo-Choo stood on the rusty rails of the lonely siding which had become his home. Weeds had twined in his wheels; his headlight was rusty and dark. Engineer Bob always talked to Charlie, but Charlie replied less and less. Many nights he would not talk at all.
   One night, a terrible idea came into Engineer Bob's head. "Charlie, are you dying?" he asked, and in his smallest, gruffest voice, Charlie replied:
   Don't ask me silly questions,
   I won't play silly games,
   I’m just a simple choo-choo train
   And I'll always be the same.

   Now that I can't race along
   Beneath the bright blue sky
   I guess that I'll just sit right here
   Until I finally die.
   Jake looked at the picture accompanying this not-exactly-unexpected turn of events for a long time. Rough drawing it might be, but it was still definitely a three-handkerchief job. Charlie looked old, beaten, and forgotten. Engineer Bob looked like he had lost his last friend... which, according to the story, he had. Jake could imagine children all over America blatting their heads off at this point, and it occurred to him that there were a lot of stories for lads with stuff like this in them, stuff that threw acid all over your emotions. Hansel and Gretel being turned out into the forest, Bambi's mother getting scragged by a hunter, the death of Old Yeller. It was easy to hurt little kids, easy to make them cry, and this seemed to bring out a strangely sadistic streak in many story-tellers... including, it seemed, Beryl Evans.
   But, Jake found, he was not saddened by Charlie's relegation to the weedy wastelands at the outer edge of the Mid-World trainyards in St. Louis . Quite the opposite. Good, he thought. That's the place for him. That's the place, because he's dangerous. Let him rot there, and don't trust that tear in his eye—they say crocodiles cry, too.
   He read the rest rapidly. It had a happy ending, of course, although it was undoubtedly that moment of despair on the edge of the trainyards which children remembered long after the happy ending had slipped their minds.
   Mr. Martin, the President of The Mid-World Railway Company, came to St. Louis to check on the operation. His plan was to ride the Burlington Zephyr to Topeka, where his daughter was giving her first piano recital, that very afternoon. Only the Zephyr wouldn't start. There was water in the diesel fuel, it seemed.
   (Were you the one who watered the diesel, Engineer Bob? Jake wondered. I bet it was, you sly dog, you!)
   All the other trains were out on their runs! What to do?
   Someone tugged Mr. Martin's arm. It was Wiper Bob, only he no longer looked like an engine-wiper. He had taken off his oil-stained dungarees and put on a clean pair of overalls. On his head was his old pillowtick engi­neer's cap.
   "Charlie's is right over there, on that siding," he said. "Charlie will make the run to Topeka, Mr. Martin. Charlie will get you there in time for your daughter's piano recital."
   "That old steamer?" scoffed Mr. Briggs. "Charlie would still be fifty miles out of Topeka at sundown!"
   "Charlie can do it," Engineer Bob insisted. "Without a train to pull, I know he can! I have been cleaning his engine and his boiler in my spare time, you see."
   "We'll give it a try," said Mr. Martin. "I would be sorry to miss Susannah's first recital!"
   Charlie was all ready to go; Engineer Bob had filled his tender with fresh coal, and the firebox was so hot its sides were red. He helped Mr. Martin up into the cab and backed Charlie off the rusty, forgotten siding and onto the main track for the first time in years. Then, as he engaged Forward First, he pulled on the lanyard and Charlie gave his old brave cry: WHOOO-OOOOO!
   All over St. Louis the children heard that cry, and ran out into their yards to watch the rusty old steam loco pass. "Look!" they cried. "It's Charlie! Charlie the Choo-Choo is back! Hurrah!" They all waved, and as Charlie steamed out of town, gathering speed, he blew his own whistle, just as he had in the old days: WHOOOO-OOOOOOO!
   Clickety-clack went Charlie's wheels!
   Chuffa-chuffa went the smoke from Charlie's stack!
   Brump-brump went the conveyor as it fed coal into the firebox!
   Talk about zip! Talk about zowie! Golly gee, gosh, and wowie! Charlie had never gone so fast before! The countryside went whizzing by in a blur! They passed the cars on Route 41 as if they were standing still!
   "Hoptedoodle!" cried Mr. Martin, waving his hat in the air. "This is some locomotive, Bob! I don't know why we ever retired it! How do you keep the coal-conveyor loaded at this speed?"
   Engineer Bob only smiled, because he knew Charlie was feeding himself. And, beneath the clickety-clack and the chuffa-chuffa and the brump-hrump, he could hear Charlie singing his old song in his low, gruff voice:
   Don't ask me silly questions,
   I won't play silly games,
   I'm just a simple choo-choo train
   And I'll always be the same.

   I only want to race along
   Beneath the bright blue sky,
   And be a happy choo-choo train
   Until the day I die.
   Charlie got Mr. Martin to his daughter's piano recital on time (of course), and Susannah was just tickled pink to see her old friend Charlie again (of course), and they all went back to St. Louis together with Susannah yanking hell out of the train-whistle the whole way. Mr. Martin got Charlie and Engineer Bob a gig pulling kids around the brand-new Mid-World Amusement Park and Fun Fair in California, and
   you will find them there to this day, pulling laughing children hither and thither in that world of lights and music and good, wholesome fun. Engineer Bob's hair is white, and Charlie doesn't talk as much as he once did, but both of them still have plenty of zip and zowie, and every now and then the children hear Charlie singing his old song in his soft, gruff voice.
   THE END
   "Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games," Jake mut­tered, looking at the final picture. It showed Charlie the Choo-Choo pulling two bunting-decked passenger cars filled with happy children from the roller coaster to the Ferns wheel. Engineer Bob sat in the cab, pulling the whistle-cord and looking as happy as a pig in shit. Jake sup­posed Engineer Bob's smile was supposed to convey supreme happiness, but to him it looked like the grin of a lunatic. Charlie and Engineer Bob both looked like lunatics... and the more Jake looked at the kids, the more he thought that their expressions looked like grimaces of terror. Let us off this train, those faces seemed to say. Please, just let us off this train alive.
   And be a happy choo-choo train until the day I die.
   Jake closed the book and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he opened it again and began to leaf through the pages, circling certain words and phrases that seemed to call out to him.
   The Mid-World Railway Company... Engineer Bob... a small, gruff voice... WHOO-OOOO... the first real friend he'd had since his wife died, long ago, in New York... Mr. Martin... the world has moved on … Susannah...
   He put his pen down. Why did these words and phrases call to him? The one about New York seemed obvious enough, but what about the others? For that matter, why this book? That he had been meant to buy it was beyond question. If he hadn't had the money in his pocket, he felt sure he would have simply grabbed it and bolted from the store. But why? He felt like a compass needle. The needle knows nothing about magnetic north; it only knows it must point in a certain direction, like it or not.
   The only thing Jake knew for sure was that he was very, very tired, and if he didn't crawl into bed soon, he was going to fall asleep at his desk. He took off his shirt, then gazed down at the front of Charlie the Choo-Choo again.
   That smile. He just didn't trust that smile.
   Not a bit.

23
   SLEEP DIDN'T COME AS soon as Jake had hoped. The voices began to argue again about whether he was alive or dead, and they kept him awake. At last he sat up in bed with his eyes closed and his fisted hands planted against his temples.
   Quit! he screamed at them. Just quit! You were gone all day, be gone again!
   I would if he'd just admit I'm dead, one of the voices said sulkily.
   I would if he'd just take a for God's sake look around and admit I'm clearly alive, the other snapped back.
   He was going to scream right out loud. There was no way to hold it back; he could feel it coming up his throat like vomit. He opened his eyes, saw his pants lying over the seat of his desk chair, and an idea occurred to him. He got out of bed, went to the chair, and felt in the right front pocket of the pants.
   The silver key was still there, and the moment his fingers closed around it, the voices ceased.
   Tell him, he thought, with no idea who the thought was for. Tell him to grab the key. The key makes the voices go.
   He went back to bed and was asleep with the key clasped loosely in his hand three minutes after his head hit the pillow.