“Won’t touch a bristle of you, son.”
“Well,” he drawled reluctantly, “all right.”
The door opened. Charlie stood in his bare feet, head down, chin against chest. “Make me invisible,” he said.
“First we got to catch us a bat,” said Old Lady. “Start lookin’!”
She gave him some jerky beef for his hunger and watched him climb a tree. He went high up and high up and it was nice seeing him there and it was nice having him here and all about after so many years alone with nothing to say good morning to but bird-droppings and silvery snail tracks.
/> Pretty soon a bat with a broken wing fluttered down out of the tree. Old Lady snatched it up, beating warm and shrieking between its porcelain white teeth, and Charlie dropped down after it, hand upon clenched hand, yelling.
That night, with the moon nibbling at the spiced pine cones, Old Lady extracted a long silver needle from under her wide blue dress. Gumming her excitement and secret anticipation, she sighted up the dead bat and held the cold needle steady-steady.
She had long ago realized that her miracles, despite all perspirations and salts and sulphurs, failed. But she had always dreamt that one day the miracles might start functioning, might spring up in crimson flowers and silver stars to prove that God had forgiven her for her pink body and her pink thoughts and her warm body and her warm thoughts as a young miss. But so far God had made no sign and said no word, but nobody knew this except Old Lady.
“Ready?” she asked Charlie, who crouched cross-kneed, wrapping his pretty legs in long goose-pimpled arms, his mouth open, making teeth. “Ready,” he whispered, shivering.
“There!” She plunged the needle deep in the bat’s right eye. “So!”
“Oh!” screamed Charlie, wadding up his face.
“Now I wrap it in gingham, and here, put it in your pocket, keep it there, bat and all. Go on!”
He pocketed the charm.
“Charlie!” she shrieked fearfully. “Charlie, where are you? I can’t see you, child!”
“Here!” he jumped so the light ran in red streaks up his body. “I’m here, Old Lady!” He stared wildly at his arms, legs, chest, and toes. “I’m here!”
Her eyes looked as if they were watching a thousand fireflies crisscrossing each other in the wild night air.
“Charlie, oh, you went fast! Quick as a hummingbird! Oh, Charlie, come back to me!”
“But I’m here!” he wailed.
“Where?”
“By the fire, the fire! And—and I can see myself. I’m not invisible at all!”
Old Lady rocked on her lean flanks. “Course you can see you! Every invisible person knows himself. Otherwise, how could you eat, walk, or get around places? Charlie, touch me. Touch me so I know you.”
Uneasily he put out a hand.
She pretended to jerk, startled, at his touch. “Ah!”
“You mean to say you can’t find me?” he asked. “Truly?”
“Not the least half rump of you!”
She found a tree to stare at, and stared at it with shining eyes, careful not to glance at him. “Why, I sure did a trick that time!” She sighed with wonder. “Whooeee. Quickest invisible I ever made! Charlie. Charlie, how you feel?”
“Like creek water—all stirred.”
“You’ll settle.”
Then after a pause she added, “Well, what you going to do now, Charlie, since you’re invisible?”
All sorts of things shot through his brain, she could tell. Adventures stood up and danced like fire in his eyes, and his mouth, just hanging, told what it meant to be a boy who imagined himself like the mountain winds. In a cold dream he said, “I’ll run across wheat fields, climb snow mountains, steal white chickens off’n farms. I’ll kick pink pigs when they ain’t looking. I’ll pinch pretty girls’ legs when they sleep, snap their garters in schoolrooms.” Charlie looked at Old Lady, and from the shiny tips of her eyes she saw something wicked shape his face. “And other things I’ll do, I’ll do, I will,” he said.