nineteen seventyone through week ending April twenty-fourth, nineteen seventyone.”
Irene jotted down the words savant and autism? next to his name. “Thank you, Mose. May I speak with Max again?”
An effortless switch. “Real ball of fire, that Mose,” said Max.
“Rights and dignity of all alters,” Irene cautioned him.
“Sorry. Okay-the fire. I spent a couple months in the hospital, they performed three separate skin grafts, then-”
“Excuse me, Max. I understand burns are terribly painful. Is there an analgesic alter in the system?”
“Unhappily, no. Morphine helped. So did rapid switching. And when all else failed, Lyssy the Sissy.”
“May I speak with Lyssy?”
“I don't think he's available at the moment. He had rather a bad fright that night we were hiding out in the old jail-I haven't heard from him since.”
“Perhaps another time.”
“Perhapssss.” Irene's lisp. Max continued in his own voice. “Okay-fire, pain, operations. A few months in the hospital, then almost a year in the Umpqua County Juvenile Facility awaiting trial on charges of murder, arson, and attempted murder. No bail- there was nowhere for me to go anyway.
“The ranch wasn't bad-that's where I learned to raise chickens. After lights out, the boys would stage fights. Call-outs, they called them. No holds barred-anybody could call out anybody else. And if you didn't fight, everybody got a free crack at you.
“Then one summer morning my lawyer comes out to the ranch to tell me all the charges have been dropped. He said Miss Miller had changed her story, told the DA that Kronk had attacked her and I had come to her defense, that the fire was an accident. I wasn't sure how to take it-whether she was trying to protect me, to make it up to me somehow, or whether she was just afraid I'd turn her in about the sex. I'd never told anybody about that.
“Then the lawyer told me Miss Miller wanted me to come back to live with her again, and how did I feel about that? I grabbed my gear out of my footlocker and drove away with him and never looked back. The only person I even said good-bye to was my best friend Buckley. Black guy from Compton. He and I had been inseparable. I was already good at martial arts and wrestling-or anyway, Lee was-”
“May I…” Irene began.
Alter switch.
“… speak with Lee.”
He was already there. Poised body language, somehow tense and calm at the same time. He'd puffed out his chest, and he was unconsciously pumping his fists until the veins stood out on his forearms.
“I didn't know shit about street fighting.” Each word was weighed carefully before it emerged from between lips pressed so tightly together that the full, bowed shape of Maxwell's lips had become two thin, cruel lines. “Bucky whipped my ass good our first fight. After we buddied up, he taught me his secret. It saved my life more than once.”
Lee paused to take a sip of water from the glass on the threelegged table. The forest animals had grown used to the therapy sessions. A squirrel scampered across the dry needles; jays quarreled in the lower branches of the firs; somewhere high overhead in the forest canopy an invisible woodpecker was noisily at work. “That's all I got to say.”
The next time Maxwell spoke, it was as Christopher. Irene was attuned enough by now to recognize the soft, melodic voice.
“I remember I was confused at first. Instead of heading back towards town, the lawyer drove east, into the mountains. He told me Miss Miller had bought Scorned Ridge for us to live in. I remember thinking it was a little peculiar, the way he dropped me off near these, these ruins — the place was an unholy mess, the buildings falling down, the meadow overgrown. He didn't even get out of the car. Just handed me my duffel, yelled, ‘Good luck, kid,’ and roared off back down the hill.”
Christopher closed his eyes. Irene understood that he was back there again, standing by the side of the blacktop.
“I pick up my duffel and head for the house. The screen door is swinging on one hinge. Skreeeek, skreeeek. Front door's boarded up. I hear her calling me from the back of the house. Her voice is so different, but still so… her. She's in the kitchen heating water for tea. Wearing an old-fashioned black dress. She turns around. Oh Jesus, oh god.”
Irene reached out, put her hand on his shoulder. Christopher opened his eyes, looked around wildly, then relaxed visibly when he saw it was Irene. He tried to make a joke out of it.
“Oh, mama! I don't think I can go back there twice.”
She told him what she'd have said to any patient. “But you must, Christopher. You have to confront the past in order to realize that it is the past. You have to relive it in order to get to the place where you can hold it as a memory, and not keep reexperiencing it subconsciously as a current event.”
“But it is a current event,” he moaned. “Everything's a current event. Mose never forgets anything.” He grabbed his head between his hands, pressing his strange smooth palms tightly against his temples.
“It's not about forgetting, it's about forgiving,” said Irene. “Understanding and forgiving yourself. You're carrying a crushing burden of guilt around with you.”
It was Max who looked up, his head in his hands. “Sister, you don't know the half of it,” he said sardonically.
“Tell me.”
“The first one's name was Mary Malloy.”
63
Miss Miller could have had the place renovated by professionals-her father had left her a considerable nest egg-but she didn't like having anyone else around to look at her, so Maxwell (to use the collective term) worked alone whenever possible.
Or as alone as a multiple can ever be. Mose scanned two handyman's encyclopedias and dozens upon dozens of do-it-yourself books into his prodigious memory, and the various alters turned themselves into carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, as necessary, according to their talents and interests. When he did have to hire outside help, Maxwell would work alongside them-he never had to watch anybody do a job twice.
And he was extremely motivated. All the energy he used to put into martial arts, wrestling, fighting at Juvie, sex with Miss Miller, he threw into the renovation, working from dawn to dusk seven days a week. By the time that first winter rolled around, the house was habitable-he'd never been prouder of anything in his life.
It was mid-March when Maxwell, as Christopher, stopped into the Old Umpqua Feed Barn to get some advice about chickens- he was thinking about starting a flock. Mary Malloy was behind the counter. A more objective observer might have noted that she was a younger Miss Miller-same strawberry blond hair, delicate cheekbones, milkmaid skin, slender frame. All Christopher knew was that he was a goner the minute he laid eyes on her.
They started talking. She said she loved chickens, used to raise them when she was a little girl, down on the farm. The more they talked, the more they found they had in common. Mary was an orphan, too. After her parents died, the Jehovah's Witnesses took her in. A bunch of them lived in one of the big old turn-ofthecentury houses at the edge of town, down by the river.
Thereafter, it was always Christopher who visited the feed barn. On his third trip he got up the courage to ask her for a date. He was eighteen, but shy and backward with girls his own age-he'd never even dated one. Mary agreed, but said they had to keep it quiet. If the other Witnesses had found out she was seeing somebody outside the faith, they'd have shunned her. Kicked her out of her apartment, turned their backs to her on the street. She'd have been a complete outcast. For her it would have been like losing her home, her family, and her friends simultaneously.
So even after they started dating regularly, they kept a low profile. If they went to see a movie, for instance, she'd sneak out and meet him at the theater.
At this point, their relationship was still innocent. Bearing a burden of guilt both for the abuse he'd suffered
