Page 5 (2/2)
At times like this, when his concentration on a task was total, Arnie would not tolerate anyone being too near to hirow agitated
When enthralled by a project, he ht pass days in silence except for wordless reactions to any attempt to interrupt his work or to invade his personal space
More than eighteen years separated Carson from Arnie He’d been born the year that she moved out of her parents’ house Even if he’d been spared from autism, they would not have been as close as many brothers and sisters, for they would have shared so few experiences
Following the death of their parents four years ago, Carson gained custody of her brother He had been with her ever since
For reasons that she could not fully articulate, Carson had coentle, withdrawn child She didn’t think she could have loved him more if he had been her son rather than her brother
She hoped that soh either in the treateneral or in Arnie’s particular case But she knew her hope had little chance of being fulfilled
Now she pondered the es he had made to the outer curtain wall of the castle coularly spaced buttresses that doubled as steep flights of stairs by which defenders could reach the ays behind the battlements
Recently Arnie had seemed to bethat he sensed soently determined to prepare for it He could not build a real castle, so he took refuge in this fantasy of a fortress home
CHAPTER 12
RANDAL SIX CROSSES SPHINX with XENOPHOBE, finishing the last crossword puzzle in the book
Other collections of puzzles await him But with the coainst the fearsome disorder of the world He has earned protection
He will be safe for a while, although not forever Disorder builds Chaos presses at the walls Eventually he will have to fill more patterns of empty boxes withchaos entrance to his private space
Tee of his bed, and presses a call button on his nightstand This will suular schedule because he cannot eat when obsessed with crossword puzzles He will let food grow cold rather than interrupt the is his tray and places it on the worktable While this attendant is present, Randal Six keeps his head bowed to discourage conversation and to prevent eye contact
Every word he speaks to another person diain, Randal Six eats his lunch Very neatly The food is white and green, as he likes it Sliced turkey breast in cream sauce, mashed potatoes, white bread, peas, beans For dessert, vanilla ice cream with creme de menthe
When he finishes, he dares to open his door and slide the tray into the corridor He quickly closes the door again, and feels as safe now as he ever does
He sits on the edge of his bed and opens his nightstand drawer The drawer contains a fewbeen educated by direct-to-brain data downloading, Randal Six is encouraged by Father to open himself to the world, to stay abreast of current events by thevarious periodicals and newspapers
He cannot tolerate newspapers They are unwieldy The sections becoes fallout of order
Worse, the ink The ink comes off on his hands, as if it is the dirty disorder of the world
He can wash the ink aith enough soap and hot water in the bathroom that adjoins this chamber, but surely some of it seeps into his pores and thence into his bloodstreaion, infecting hiazines in the drawer, however, is a story that he tore froo This is his beacon of hope
The story concerns a local organization raising research funds to find a cure for autism
By the strictest definition of the affliction, Randal Sixvery ly encouraged him to better understand himself as a first step toward a cure, Randal reads books on the subject They don’t give hi the first ht be wrong with him, when he had still been able to tolerate newspapers, he read about the local charity for autisnized himself in descriptions of the condition He then realized that he was not alone
More important, he has seen a photo of another like hiraphed with his sister, a New Orleans police officer
In the photo, the boy isn’t looking at the canizes the eva-
sion
Incredibly, however, the boy is s He looks happy
Randal Six has never been happy, not in the four hteen-year-old Not once Not for a moment Occasionally he feels sort of safebut never happy So for hours
The boy in the photo is Arnie O’Connor He smiles
Maybe Arnie is not happy all the tie that Randal needs Arnie has a secret to happiness Randal needs it so bad he lies awake at night desperately trying to think of soet it
Arnie is in this city, so near Yet for all practical purposes, he is beyond reach
In his four months of life, Randal Six has never been outside the walls of Mercy Just being taken to another floor in this very building for treathborhood of New Orleans is as unaccessible to him as a crater on the moon Arnie lives with his secret, untouchable
If only Randal can get to the boy, he will learn the secret of happiness Perhaps Arnie will not want to share it That won’t et it
Unlike the vast majority of autistics, Randal Six is capable of extree is almost equal to his fear of the disordered world
He has hidden this capacity for violence from everyone, even fro bad will happen to him He has seen in Father a certaincoldness
He puts the newspaper photo in the drawer once azines In hisArnie
Arnie is out there on the moon in New Orleans, and Randal Six is drawn to him like the sea to lunar tides
CHAPTER 13
IN THE SMALL diainst one wall, and stacks of paperbacks stood on every flat surface Evidently Jelly liked to read while theto a door different from the one by which they had entered, the fat h there Ben left a special box for you"
While Jelly went to fetch the box, Deucalion was drawn to the old projector, no doubt original to the building This monstrous piece of machinery featured enormous supply and take-up reels The 35h a labyrinth of sprockets and guides, into the gap between the high-intensity bulb and the lens
He studied the adjustment knobs and worked forward until he could peer into the cyclopean eye of the projector He reears, wheels, and motors
Across the balcony, the ht illusion of life upon the big screen
Deucalion’s own life, in its first decade, had often seemed like a dark illusion With ti him to retreat into carnivals, into monasteries