could fly why couldn't I make the wood fly? And I knew I could! I leaned forward and flipped a finger under half a dozen sticks, concentrating as I did so. They lifted into the air and hovered. I pushed them into the shed, guided them to where I wanted them and distributed them like dealing a pack of cards. It didn't take me long to figure out the maximum load, and I had all the wood stacked in a wonderfully short time. I whistled into the house for my flashlight. The mine was spooky and dark, and I was the only one of the gang with a flashlight. 'I told you to stack the wood.' Dad looked up from his milk records. 'I did,' I said, grinning. 'Cut the kidding,' Dad grunted. 'You couldn't be done already.' 'I am, though,' I said triumphantly. 'I found a new way to do it. You see-' I stopped, frozen by Dad's look. 'We don't need any new ways around here,' he said evenly. 'Go back out there until you've had time to stack the wood right!' 'It is stacked,' I protested. 'And the kids are waiting for me!' 'I'm not arguing, son,' said Dad, white-faced. 'Go back out to the shed.' I went back out to the shed-past Mother, who had come in from the kitchen and whose hand half went out to me. I sat in the shed fuming for a long time, stubbornly set that I wouldn't leave till Dad told me to. Then I got to thinking. Dad wasn't usually unreasonable like this. Maybe I'd done something wrong. Maybe it was bad to stack wood like that. Maybe-my thoughts wavered as I remembered whispers I'd overheard about Bethie. Maybe it-it was a crazy thing to do-an insane thing. I huddled close upon myself as I considered it. Crazy means not doing like other people. Crazy means doing things ordinary people don't do. Maybe that's why Dad made such a fuss. Maybe I'd done an insane thing! I stared at the ground, lost in bewilderment. What was different about our family? And for the first time I was able to isolate and recognize the feeling I must have had for a long time-the feeling of being on the outside looking in-the feeling of apartness. With this recognition came a wariness, a need for concealment. If something was wrong no one else must know-I must not betray… Then Mother was standing beside me. 'Dad says you may go now,-' she said, sitting down on my log. 'Peter-' She looked at me unhappily. 'Dad's doing what is best. All I can say is: remember that whatever you do, wherever you live, different is dead. You have to conform or-or die. But Peter, don't be ashamed. Don't ever be ashamed!' Then swiftly her hands were on my shoulders and her lips brushed my ear. 'Be different!' she whispered. 'Be as different as you can. But don't let anyone see-don't let anyone know!' And she was gone up the back steps, into the kitchen. As I grew further into adolescence I seemed to grow further and further away from kids my age. I couldn't seem to get much of a kick out of what they considered fun. So it was that with increasing frequency in the years that followed I took Mother's whispered advice, never asking for explanations I knew she wouldn't give. The wood incident had opened up a whole vista of possibilities-no telling what I might be able to do-so I got in the habit of going down to the foot of our pasture lot. There, screened by the brush and greasewood, I tried all sorts of experiments, never knowing whether they would work or not. I sweated plenty over some that didn't work-and some that did. I found that I could snap my fingers and bring things to me, or send them short distances from me without bothering to touch them as I had the wood. I roosted regularly in the tops of the tall cottonwoods, swan-diving ecstatically down to the ground, warily, after I got too ecstatic once and crash-landed on my nose and chin. By headaching concentration that left me dizzy, I even set a small campfire ablaze. Then blistered and charred both hands unmercifully by confidently scooping up the crackling fire. Then I guess I got careless about checking for onlookers because some nasty talk got started. Bub Jacobs whispered around that I was 'doing things' all alone down in the brush. His sly grimace as he whispered made the 'doing things' any nasty perversion the listeners' imaginations could conjure up, and the 'alone' damned me on the spot. I learned bitterly then what Mother had told me. Different is dead-and one death is never enough. You die and die and die. Then one day I caught Bub cutting across the foot of our wood lot. He saw me coming and lit for tall timber, already smarting under what he knew he'd get if I caught him, I started full speed after him, then plowed to a stop. Why waste effort? If I could do it to the wood I could do it to a blockhead like Bub. He let out a scream of pure terror as the ground dropped out from under him. His scream flatted and strangled into silence as he struggled in midair, convulsed with fear of falling and the terrible thing that was happening to him. And I stood and laughed at him, feeling myself a giant towering above stupid dopes like Bub. Sharply, before he passed out, I felt his terror, and an echo of his scream rose in my throat. I slumped down in the dirt, sick with sudden realization, knowing with a knowledge that went beyond ordinary experience that I had done something terribly wrong, that I had prostituted whatever powers I possessed by using them to terrorize unjustly. I knelt and looked up at Bub, crumpled in the air, higher than my head, higher than my reach, and swallowed painfully as I realized that I had no idea how to get him down. He wasn't a stick of wood to be snapped to the ground. He wasn't me, to dive down through the air. I hadn't the remotest idea how to get a human down. Half dazed, I crawled over to a shaft of sunlight that slit the cottonwood branches overhead and felt it rush through my fingers like something to be lifted-and twisted-and fashioned and used! Used on Bub! But how? How? I clenched my fist in the flood of light, my mind beating against another door that needed only a word or look or gesture to open, but I couldn't say it, or look it, or make it. I stood up and took a deep breath. I jumped, batting at Bub's heels that dangled a little lower than the rest of him. I missed. Again I jumped and the tip of one finger flicked his heel and he moved sluggishly in the air. Then I swiped the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead and laughed-laughed at my stupid self. Cautiously, because I hadn't done much hovering, mostly just up and down, I lifted myself up level with Bub. I put my hands on him and pushed down hard. He didn't move. I tugged him up and he rose with me. I drifted slowly and deliberately away from him and pondered. Then I got on the other side of him and pushed him toward the branches of the cottonwood. His head was beginning to toss and his lips moved with returning consciousness. He drifted through the air like a waterlogged stump, but he moved and I draped him carefully over a big limb near the top of the tree, anchoring his arms and legs as securely as I could. By the time his eyes opened and he clutched frenziedly for support I was standing down at the foot of the tree, yelling up at him. 'Hang on, Bub! I'll go get someone to help you down!' So for the next week or so people forgot me, and Bub squirmed under 'Who treed you, feller?' and 'How's the weather up there?' and 'Get a ladder, Bub, get a ladder!' Even with worries like that it was mostly fun for me. Why couldn't it be like that for Bethie? Why couldn't I give her part of my fun and take part of her pain? Then Dad died, swept out of life by our Rio Gordo as he tried to rescue a fool Easterner who had camped on the bone-dry white sands of the river bottom in cloudburst weather. Somehow it seemed impossible to think of Mother by herself. It had always been Mother and Dad. Not just two parents but Mother-and-Dad, a single entity. And now our thoughts must limp to Mother-and, Mother-and. And Mother-well, half of her was gone. After the funeral Mother and Bethie and I sat in our front room, looking at the floor. Bethie was clenching her teeth against the stabbing pain of Mother's fingernails gouging Mother's palms. I unfolded the clenched hands gently and Bethie relaxed. 'Mother,' I said softly, 'I can take care of us. I have my part-time job at the plant. Don't worry. I'll take care of us.' I knew what a trivial thing I was offering to her anguish, but I had to do something to break through to her. 'Thank you, Peter,' Mother said, rousing a little. 'I know you will-' She bowed her head and pressed both hands to her dry eyes with restrained desperation. 'Oh, Peter, Peter! I'm enough of this world now to find death a despair and desolation instead of the solemnly sweet calling it is. Help me, help me!' Her breath labored in her throat and she groped blindly for my hand.
