From the Corner of His Eye

Spruce Hills, Oregon, the daughter of a minister.

Chapter 58
        
        AGNES ALWAYS ENJOYED Christmas Eve dinner with Edom and Jacob, because even they tempered their pessimism on this night of nights. Whether the season touched their hearts or they wanted even more than usual to please their sister, she didn't know. If gentle Edom spoke of killer tornadoes or if dear Jacob was reminded of massive explosions, each dwelt not on horrible death, as usual, but on feats of courage in the midst of dire catastrophe, recounting astonishing rescues and miraculous escapes.
        With Barty's presence, Christmas Eve dinners had become even more agreeable, especially this year when he was almost-three-going-on-twenty. He talked about the visits to friends that he and his mother and Edom had made earlier in the day, about Father Brown, as if that cleric-detective were real, about the puddle-jumping toads that had been singing in the backyard when he and his mother had arrived home from the cemetery, and his chatter was engaging because it was full of a child's charm yet peppered with enough precocious observations to make it of interest to adults.
        From the corn soup to the baked ham to the plum pudding, he did not speak of his dry walk in wet weather.
        Agnes hadn't asked him to keep his strange feat a secret from his uncles. In truth, she had come home in such a curious state of mind that even as she'd worked with Jacob to prepare dinner and even as she'd overseen Edom's setting of the table, she hesitated to tell them what had happened on the run from Joey's grave to the station wagon. She fluctuated between guarded euphoria and fear bordering on panic, and she didn't trust herself to recount the experience until she had taken more time to absorb it.
        That night, in Barty's room, after Agnes had listened to his prayers and then had tucked him in for the night, she sat on the edge of his bed. "Honey, I was wondering… Now that you've had more time to think, could you explain to me what happened?"
        He rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. "Nope. It's still just something you gotta feel."
        "All the ways things are."
        "Yeah."
        "We'll need to talk about this a lot in the days to come, as we both have more time to think about it."
        "I figured."
        Softened by a Shantung shade, the lamplight was golden on his small smooth face, but sapphire and emerald in his eyes.
        "You didn't mention it to Uncle Edom or Uncle Jacob," she said.
        "Better not."
        "Why?"
        "You were scared, huh?"
        "Yes, I was." She didn't tell him that her fear had not been allayed by his assurances or by his second walk in the rain.
        "And you," Barty said, "you're never scared of anything."
        "You mean… Edom and Jacob are already afraid of so much."
        The boy nodded. "If we told 'em, maybe they'd have to wash their shorts. "
        "Where did you hear that expression," she demanded, though she couldn't conceal her amusement.
        Barty grinned mischievously. "One of the places we visited today. Some big kids. They saw this scary movie, said they had to wash their shorts after."
        "Big kids aren't always smart just because they're big."
        "Yeah, I know."
        She hesitated. "Edom and Jacob have had hard lives, Barty'' "Were they coal miners?"
        "What?"
        "On TV, it said coal miners have hard lives."
        "Not only coal miners. Old as you are in some ways, you're still too young for me to explain. I will someday."
        "Okay."
        "You remember, we've talked before about the stories they're always telling."
        "Hurricane. Galveston, Texas, back in 1900. Six thousand people died."
        Frowning, Agnes said. "Yes, those stories. Sweetie, when Uncle Edom and Uncle Jacob go on about big storms blowing people away and explosions blowing people up… that's not what life's about."
        "It happens," the boy said.
        "Yes. Yes, it does."
        Agnes had struggled recently to find a way to explain to Barty that his uncles had lost their hope, to convey also what it meant to live without hope-and somehow to tell the boy all this without burdening him, at such a young age, with the details of what his monstrous grandfather, Agnes's father, had done to her and to her brothers. The task was beyond her abilities. The fact that Barty was a prodigy six times over