From the Corner of His Eye

arc of cleared glass, the graveyard was revealed in sharp detail, and yet the place remained less than fully familiar to her. Her whole world had been changed by Barty's dry walk in wet weather.
        "That's just… an old joke," she heard herself saying, as from a distance. "You didn't really walk between the drops?"
        The boy's silvery giggles rang as merrily as sleigh bells, his Christmas spirit undampened. "Not between, Mommy. Nobody could do that. I just ran where the rain wasn't."
        She dared to look at him again.
        He was still her boy. As always, her boy. Bartholomew. Barty. Her sweetie. Her kiddo.
        But he was more than she had ever imagined her boy to be, more than merely a prodigy.
        "How, Barty? Dear Lord, how?"
        "Don't you feel it?"
        His head cocked. Inquisitive look. Dazzling eyes as beautiful as his spirit.
        "Feel what?" she asked.
        "The ways things are. Don't you feel… all the ways things are?"
        "Ways? I don't know what you mean."
        "Gee, you don't feel it at all?"
        She felt the car seat under her butt, wet clothes clinging to her, the air humid and cloying, and she felt a terror of the unknown, like a great lightless void on the edge of which she teetered, but she didn't feel what ever he was talking about, because the thing he felt made him smile.
        Her voice was the only dry thing about her, thin and parched and cracked, and she expected dust to plume out of her mouth: "Feel what?
        Explain it to me."
        He was so young and untroubled by life that his frown could not carve lines in his smooth brow. He gazed out at the rain, and finally said, "Boy, I don't have the right words."
        Although Barty's vocabulary was far greater than that of the average 'three-year-old, and though he was reading and writing at an eighth grade level, Agnes could understand why words failed him. With her greater fund of language, she had been rendered speechless by his accomplishment.
        "Honey, have you ever done this before?"
        He shook his head. "Never knew I could."
        "You never knew you could walk where the rain wasn't?"
        "Nope. Not until I needed to."
        Hot air gushing out of the dashboard vents brought no warmth to Agnes's chilled bones. Pushing a tangle of wet hair away from her face, she realized that her hands were shaking.
        "What's wrong?" Barty asked.
        "I'm a little… a little bit scared, Barty."
        Surprise raised his eyebrows and his voice: "Why?"
        Because you can walk in the rain without getting wet, because you walk in SOME OTHER PLACE, and God knows where that place is or whether YOU COULD GET STUCK THERE somehow, get stuck there AND NEVER COME BACK, and if you can do this, there's surely other impossible things you can do, and even as smart as you are, you can't know the dangers of doing these things-nobody could know-and then there are the people who'd be interested in you if they knew you can do this, scientists who'd want to poke at you, and worse than the scientists, DANGEROUS PEOPLE who would say that national security comes before a mother's rights to her child, PEOPLE WHO MIGHT STEAL YOU AWAY AND NEVER LET ME SEE YOU AGAIN, which would be like death to me, because I want You to have a normal, happy life, a good life, and I want to protect you and watch you grow UP and be the fine man I know you will be, BECAUSE USE I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING, AND YOU'RE SO SWEET, AND YOU DON'T REALIZE HOW SUDDENLY, HOW HORRIBLY, THINGS CAN GO WRONG.
        She thought all that, but she closed her eyes and said: "I'll be okay. Give me a second here, all right?"
        "There's nothing to be scared about," Barty assured her.
        She heard the door, and when she opened her eyes, the bay had already slid out of the car, into the downpour again. She called him back, but he kept going.
        "Mommy, watch!" He turned in the deluge with his arms held out from his sides. "Not scary!"
        Breath repeatedly catching in her throat, heart thudding, Agnes watched her son through the open car door.
        Turning in circles, he tipped his head back, presenting his face to the streaming sky, laughing.
        She could see now what she hadn't seen when running with him through the cemetery, because she was looking directly at him. Yet even seeing did not make it easy to believe.
        Barty stood in the rain, surrounded