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“We endure.”
“We are the chosen ones. We are the fortunate ones.”
“We are chosen and fortunate.”
“They are the makers; we are the takers.”
“We take what they make.”
“Take this and use it well.”
“We will use it well.”
Once, early in the last decade of the twentieth century, there had been a boy from Enid, Oklahoma,
named Richard Gaylesworthy. I swear that child can read my mind, his mother sometimes said. People
smiled at this, but she wasn’t kidding. And maybe not just her mind. Richard got A’s on tests he
hadn’t even studied for. He knew when his father was going to come home in a good mood and when
he was going to come home fuming about something at the plumbing supply company he owned.
Once the boy begged his mother to play the Pick Six lottery because he swore he knew the winning
numbers. Mrs. Gaylesworthy refused—they were good Baptists—but later she was sorry. Not all six of
the numbers Richard wrote down on the kitchen note-minder board came up, but five did. Her
religious convictions had cost them seventy thousand dollars. She had begged the boy not to tell his
father, and Richard had promised he wouldn’t. He was a good boy, a lovely boy.
Two months or so after the lottery win that wasn’t, Mrs. Gaylesworthy was shot to death in her
kitchen and the good and lovely boy disappeared. His body had long since rotted away beneath the
gone-to-seed back field of an abandoned farm, but when Rose the Hat opened the valve on the silver
canister, his essence—his steam—escaped in a cloud of sparkling silver mist. It rose to a height of
about three feet above the canister, and spread out in a plane. The True stood looking up at it with
expectant faces. Most were trembling. Several were actually weeping.
“Take nourishment and endure,” Rose said, and raised her hands until her spread fingers were just
below the flat plane of mist. She beckoned. The mist immediately began to sink, taking on an
umbrella shape as it descended toward those waiting below. When it enveloped their heads, they
began to breathe deeply. This went on for five minutes, during which several of them hyperventilated
and swooned to the ground.
Rose felt herself swelling physically and sharpening mentally. Every fragrant odor of this spring
night declared itself. She knew that the faint lines around her eyes and mouth were disappearing. The
white strands in her hair were turning dark again. Later tonight, Crow would come to her camper, and
in her bed they would burn like torches.
They inhaled Richard Gaylesworthy until he was gone—really and truly gone. The white mist
thinned and then disappeared. Those who had fainted sat up and looked around, smiling. Grampa
Flick grabbed Petty the Chink, Barry’s wife, and did a nimble little jig with her.
“Let go of me, you old donkey!” she snapped, but she was laughing.
Snakebite Andi and Silent Sarey were kissing deeply, Andi’s hands plunged into Sarey’s mousecolored
hair.
Rose leaped down from the picnic table and turned to Crow. He made a circle with his thumb and
forefinger, grinning back at her.
Everything’s cool, that grin said, and so it was. For now. But in spite of her euphoria, Rose thought
of the canisters in her safe. Now there were thirty-eight empties instead of thirty-seven. Their backs
were a step closer to the wall.
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