The Best of Gene Wolfe

given, tasting the sweet, sticky icing and hoping for a raisin.

“Mr. Parker,” Nitty said softly. “Mr. Parker.”

After a time, Mr. Parker said, “Yes.”

“He—this boy George—might be able to get them, Mr. Parker. You recall how you and me went to the building that time? We looked all around it a long while. And there was that window, that old window with the iron over it and the latch broken. I pushed on it and you could see the glass move in a little. But couldn’t either of us get between those bars.”

“This boy is blind, Nitty,” Mr. Parker said.

“Sure he is, Mr. Parker. But you know how dark it was in there. What is a man going to do? Turn on the lights? No, he’s goin’ to take a little bit of a flashlight and put tape or something over the end till it don’t make no more light than a lightnin’ bug. A blind person could do better with no light than a seeing one with just a little speck like that. I guess he’s used to bein’ blind by now. I guess he knows how to find his way around without eyes.”

A hand touched Little Tib’s shoulder. It seemed smaller and softer than the hand that had helped him across the creek. “He’s crazy,” Mr. Parker’s voice said. “That Nitty. He’s crazy. I’m crazy, I’m the one. But he’s crazier than I am.”

“He could do it, Mr. Parker. See how thin he is.”

“Would you do it?” Mr. Parker asked.

Little Tib swallowed a wad of roll. “Do what?”

“Get something for us.”

“I guess so.”

“Nitty, build a fire,” Mr. Parker said. “We won’t be going any farther tonight.”

“Won’t be goin’ this way at all,” Nitty said.

“You see, George,” Mr. Parker said. “My authority has been temporarily abrogated. Sometimes I forget that.”

Nitty chuckled somewhere farther away than Little Tib had thought he was. He must have left very silently.

“But when it is restored, I can do all the things I said I would do for you: get you into a special class for the blind, for example. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, George?”

“Yes.” A whip-poor-will called far off to Little Tib’s left, and he could hear Nitty breaking sticks.

“Have you run away from home, George?”

“Yes,” Little Tib said again.

“Why?”

Little Tib shrugged. He was ready to cry again. Something was thickening and tightening in his throat, and his eyes had begun to water.

“I think I know why,” Mr. Parker said. “We might even be able to do something about that.”

“Here we are,” Nitty called. He dumped his load of sticks, rattling, more or less in front of Little Tib.

Later that night Little Tib lay on the ground with half of Nitty’s blanket over him, and half under him. The fire was crackling not too far away. Nitty said the smoke would help to drive the mosquitoes off. Little Tib pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes and saw red and yellow flashes like a real fire. He did it again, and there was a gold nugget against a field of blue. Those were the last things he had been able to see for a long time, and he was afraid, each time he summoned them up, that they would not come. On the other side of the fire Mr. Parker breathed the heavy breath of sleep.

Nitty bent over Little Tib, smoothing his blanket, then pressing it in against his sides. “It’s okay,” Little Tib said.

“You’re goin’ back to Martinsburg with us,” Nitty said.

“I’m going to Sugar Land.”

“After. What you want to go there for?”

Little Tib tried to explain about Sugar Land, but could not find words. At last he said, “In Sugar Land they know who you are.”

“Guess it’s too late then for me. Even if I found somebody who knew who I was I wouldn’t be them no more.”

“You’re Nitty,” Little Tib said.

“That’s right. You know I used to go out with those gals a lot. Know what they said? Said, ‘You’re the custodian over at the school, aren’t you?’ Or, ‘You’re the one that did for Buster Johnson.’ Didn’t none of them know who I was. Only ones that did was the little children.”

Little Tib heard Nitty’s clothes rustle as he stood up, then the sound his feet made walking softly away. He wondered if Nitty was going to stay awake all night; then he heard him lie down.

Little Tib’s father had him by the hand. They had left the hanging-down train, and were walking along one of the big streets. He could see. He knew he should not have been noticing that particularly, but he did, and far behind it somewhere was knowing that if he woke up he would not see. He looked into store windows, and he could see big dolls like girls’ dolls wearing fur coats. Every hair on every coat stood out drenched with light. He looked at the street and could see all the cars like big, bright-colored bugs.

“Here,” Big Tib said; they went into a glass thing that spun them around and dumped them out inside a