The conversation took an even stranger turn: 'You mean, these weren't
their original bodies? These were puppets?'
Frowning, Jack dropped to his knees beside the boy.
'Puppets? That's a peculiar thing to say.'
As if in a trance, the boy focused on Tommy's headstone. His gray-blue
eyes stared unblinking.
'Toby, are you okay?'
Toby still didn't look at him but said, 'Surrogates?'
Jack blinked in surprise.
'Surrogates?'
'Were they?'
'That's a pretty big word. Where'd you hear that?'
Instead of answering him, Toby said, 'Why don't they need these bodies
any more?'
Jack hesitated, then shrugged.
'Well, son, you know why--they were finished with their work in this
world.'
'This world?'
'They've gone on.'
'Wwhere?'
'You've been to Sunday school. You know where.'
'No.'
'Sure you do.'
'No.'
'They've gone on to heaven.'
'They went on?'
'Yes.'
'In what bodies?'
Jack removed his right hand from his jacket pocket and cupped his son's
chin.
He turned the boy's head away from the gravestone, so they were
eye-to-eye.
'What's wrong, Toby?'
They were face-to-face, inches apart, yet Toby seemed to be looking
into the distance, through Jack at some far horizon.
'Toby?'
'In what bodies?'
Jack released the boy's chin, moved one hand back - and forth in front
of his face. Not a blink.
His eyes didn't follow the movement of the hand.
'In what bodies?' Toby repeated impatiently.
Something was wrong with the boy. Sudden psychological ailment.
With a catatonic aspect.
Toby said, 'In what bodies?'
Jack's heart began to pump hard and fast as he stared into his son's
flat, unresponsive eyes, which were no longer windows on a soul but
mirrors to keep out the world.
If it was a psychological problem, there was no doubt about the
cause.
They'd been through a traumatic year, enough to drive a grown man--let
