From the Corner of His Eye

trick."
        Everyone regarded him expectantly, as if there would be more magic, as if flipping a coin into another reality was something you saw every week or two on the Ed Sullivan Show, between the acrobats and the jugglers who could balance ten spinning plates on ten tall sticks simultaneously.
        "Well," Tom said, "those people who think it's just a trick generally react bigger than you folks, and you know it's real."
        "What else can you do?" Maria asked, further astonishing him.
        Abruptly, without a cannonade of thunder, without artillery strikes of lightning, the storm broke. As loud as marching armies, rain tramped across the roof.
        As one, those around the table raised their eyes to the ceiling and smiled at the sound of the downpour. Barty, with patches over his empty sockets, also looked up with a smile.
        Perplexed by their peculiar behavior, even slightly unnerved, Tom answered Maria's question. "I'm afraid there's nothing else I can do, nothing more of a fantastic nature."
        "You did just fine, Tom, just fine," Agnes said in a consoling tone that she might have used with a boy whose performance, at a piano recital, had been earnest but undistinguished. "We were all quite impressed."
        She pushed her chair back from the table and got to her feet, and everyone followed her example.
        Rising, Celestina said to Tom, "Last Tuesday night, we had to switch on the lawn sprinklers. This will be much better."
        Looking toward the nearest window, where the wet night kissed the glass, he said, "Lawn sprinklers?"
        The expectation with which Tom had been greeted on his arrival was as thin as the air at Himalayan heights compared to the rich stew of anticipation now aboil.
        Holding hands, Barty and Angel led the adults into the kitchen, to the back door. This procession had a ceremonial quality that intrigued Tom, and by the time they stepped onto the porch, he was impatient to know why everyone-except he and Wally-was emotionally airborne, one degree of altitude below euphoria.
        When all were gathered on the porch, lined up across the head of the steps and along the railing, in chill damp air that smelled faintly of ozone and less faintly of jasmine, Barty said, "Mr. Vanadium, your quarter trick is really cool. But here's something out of Heinlein."
        Sliding one hand lightly along the railing, the boy quickly descended the short flight of steps and walked onto the soggy lawn, into the rain.
        His mother, gently pushing Tom to the prime view point at the head of the stairs, seemed unconcerned about her child's venture into the storm.
        Impressed by the sureness and swiftness with which the blind boy negotiated the steps and set off across the lawn, Tom didn't initially notice anything unusual about his stroll through the deluge.
        The porch light wasn't on. No landscape lighting brightened the backyard. Barty was a gray shadow moving through darkness and through the darkling drizzle.
        Beside Tom, Edom said, "Hard rain."
        "Sure is."
        "August, 1931. Along the Huang He River in China. Three million seven hundred thousand people died in a great flood," Edom said.
        Tom didn't know what to make of this bit of information, so he said, "That's a lot."
        Barty walked in a ruler-straight line from the porch toward the great oak.
        "September 13, 1928. Lake Okeechobee, Florida. Two thousand people died in a flood."
        "Not so bad, two thousand," Tom heard himself say idiotically. "I mean, compared to nearly four million."
        About ten feet from the trunk of the oak, Barty departed his straight route and began to circle the tree.
        After just twenty-one days, the boy's adaptation to blindness was amazing but clearly the gathered audience stood in anticipation of something more remarkable than his unhalting progress and unerring sense of direction.
        "September 27, 1962. Barcelona, Spain. A flood killed four hundred forty-five people."
        Tom would have edged to his right, away from Edom, if Jacob hadn't flanked him. He remembered the odd comment that the more dour of the twins had made about the Bakersfield train wreck.
        The enormous canopy of the oak didn't shelter the lawn beneath it. The leaves spooned the rain from the air, measuring it by the ounce, releasing it in thick drizzles instead of drop by drop.
        Barty