firmly pinched the little piggy on his left foot, and then one by one pinched his way to the biggest toe. His attention shifted to his right foot, on which he first pinched the big toe before systematically working down to the smallest.
Throughout this procedure, Barty appeared solemn and thoughtful. When he had squeezed the tenth toe, he stared at it, brow furrowed.
He held one hand in front of his face, studying his fingers. The other hand.
He pinched all his toes in the same order as before.
And then he pinched them in order again.
Agnes had the craziest notion that he was counting them, when at is age, Of course, he would have no concept of numbers.
'Honey,' she said, crouching to peer at him through the vertical slats of the playpen, 'what're you doing?'
He smiled and held up one foot.
'Those are your toes,' she said.
'Toes,' he repeated immediately in his sweet, piping voice. This was a new word for him.
Reaching between the slats, Agnes tickled the pink piggies on his left foot. 'Toes.'
Barty giggled. 'Toes.'
'You're a good boy, smarty Barty.'
He pointed at his feet. 'Toes, toes, toes, toes, toes, toes, toes, toes, toes, toes.'
'A good boy, but not yet a great conversationalist.'
Raising one hand, wiggling the fingers, he said, 'Toes, toes, toes, toes, toes.'
'Fingers,' she corrected.
'Toes, toes, toes, toes, toes.'
'Well, perhaps I'm wrong.'
Five days later, on Barty's birthday morning, when Agnes and Edom were in the kitchen, making preparations for the visits that had earned her the affectionate title of Pie Lady, Barty was in his highchair, eating a vanilla wafer lightly dampened with milk. Each time a crumb fell from the cookie, the boy plucked it off the tray and neatly conveyed it to his tongue.
Lined up on the kitchen table were green-grape-and-apple pies. The thick domed crusts, with their deeply fluted edges, were the coppery gold of precious coins.
Barty pointed at the table. 'Pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie.'
'Not yours,' Agnes advised. 'We've got one of our own in the refrigerator.'
'Pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie,' Barty repeated in the same tone of self-satisfied delight that he used when announcing 'Barty potty.'
'No one starts the day with pie, 'Agnes said. 'You get pie after dinner.'
Thrusting his finger toward the table with each repetition of the word, Barty happily insisted, 'Pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie.'
Edom had turned away from the box of groceries that he was packing. Frowning at the pies, he said, 'You don't think
Agnes glanced at her brother. 'Think what?'
'Couldn't be,' said Edom.
'Pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie.'
Edom removed two of the pies from the table and put them on the counter near the ovens.
After following his uncle's movements, Barty looked at the table again. 'Pie, pie, pie, pie, pie, pie.'
Edom transferred two more pies from table to counter.
Thrusting his finger four times at the table, Barty said, 'Pie, pie, pie, pie.'
Although her hands were shaking and her knees felt as though they might buckle, Agnes lifted two pies off the table.
Jabbing his forefinger at each of the remaining treats, Barty said, 'Pie, pie.'
Agnes returned the two that she had lifted off the table.
'Pie, pie, pie, pie.' Barty grinned at her.
Amazed, Agnes gaped at her baby. The throat lump that blocked her speech was part pride, part awe, and part fear, though she didn't at once understand why this wonderful precociousness should frighten her.
One, two, three, four-Edom took away all the remaining pies. He pointed at Barty and then at the empty table.
Barty sighed as though disappointed. 'No pie.'
'Oh, Lord,' said Agnes.
'Another year,' Edom said, 'and instead of me, Barty can drive the car for you.'
Her fear, Agnes suddenly realized, arose from her father's often expressed conviction that an attempt to excel at anything was a sin that would one day be grievously punished. All forms of amusement were sinful, by his way of thinking, and all those who sought even the simplest entertainment were lost souls; however, those who desired to amuse others were the worse sinners, because they were overflowing with pride, striving to shine, eager to make themselves into false gods, to be praised and adored as only God should be adored. Actors, musicians, singers, novelists were doomed to hell by the very acts of creation which, in their egomania, they saw as the equal of their Creator's work. Striving to excel at anything, in fact, was a sign of corruption in the soul, whether one wanted to be recognized as a superior carpenter or car mechanic, or a grower of prize roses. Talent, in her father's view, was not a gift from God, but from the devil, meant to distract us from prayer, penitence, and duty.
Without excellence, of course, there would be no civilization, no progress, no joy; and Agnes was surprised that this sharp bur of her father's philosophy had stuck deep in her subconscious, prickling and worrying her unnecessarily. She'd thought that she was entirely clean of his influence.
If her beautiful son was to be a prodigy of any kind, she would thank God for his talent and would do anything she could to help him achieve his destiny.
She approached the kitchen table and swept her hand across it, to emphasize its emptiness.
Barty followed the movement of her hand, raised his gaze to her eyes, hesitated, and then said questioningly, 'No pie?'
'Exactly,' she said, beaming at him.
Basking in her smile, the boy exclaimed, 'No pie!'
'No pie!' Agnes agreed. She parenthesized his head with her hands and punctuated his sweet face with kisses.
Chapter 55
For Americans of Chinese descent-and San Francisco has a large Chinese population-1965 was the Year of the Snake. For Junior Cain, it was the Year of the Gun, though it didn't start out that way.
His first year in San Francisco was an eventful one for the nation and the world. Winston Churchill, arguably the greatest man of the century thus far, died. The United States launched the first air strikes against North Vietnam, and Lyndon Johnson raised troop levels to 150,000 in that conflict. A Soviet cosmonaut was the first to take a space walk outside an orbiting craft. Race riots raged in Watts for five fiery days. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law. Sandy Koufax, a Los Angeles Dodger, pitched a perfect game, in which no hitter reached first base. T. S. Eliot died, and Junior purchased one of the poet's works through the Book-of-the-Month Club. Other famous people passed away: Stan Laurel, Nat King Cole, Le Corbusier, Albert Schweitzer, Somerset Maugham? Indira Gandhi became the first woman prime minister of India, and the Beatles' inexplicable and annoying success rolled on and on.
Aside from purchasing the T S. Eliot book, which he hadn't found time to read, Junior was only peripherally aware of current events, because they were, after all, current, while he tried always to focus on the future. The news of the day was but a faint background music to him, like a song on a radio in another apartment.
He lived high, on Russian Hill, in a limestone-clad building with carved Victorian detail. His one-bedroom unit included a roomy kitchen with breakfast nook and a spacious living room with windows looking down on twisty
