“Jake, I’ve seen this thing, too. Just today. At the top of the bell tower.”
Trading his pencil for another, Jacob said, “He comes here.”
“To this room, Jake? When did he come?”
“Many times he comes.”
“What does he do here?”
“Watches Jacob.”
“He just watches you?”
The sea began to flow from the pencil. The initial tones and textures committed to the paper suggested that the water would be undulant, ominous, and dark.
“Why does he watch you?” I asked.
“You know.”
“I do? I guess I forgot.”
“Wants me dead.”
“You said earlier that the Neverwas wants you dead.”
“He’s the Neverwas, and we don’t care.”
“This drawing, this hooded figure—is he the Neverwas?”
“Not scared of him.”
“Is this who came to see you when you were sick that time, when you were full of the black?”
“The Neverwas said, ‘Let him die,’ but she wouldn’t let Jacob die.”
Either Jacob saw spirits, as I did, or this death figure was no more a spirit than had been the walking boneyard.
Seeking to establish the reality of it, I said, “Your mother saw the Neverwas?”
“She said come, and he came just the once.”
“Where were you when he came?”
“Where they all wore white and squeaked in their shoes and used the needles for medicine.”
“So you were in the hospital, and the Neverwas came. But did he come in a black robe with a hood, with a necklace of human teeth?”
“No. Not like that, not back in the long ago, only now.”
“And he had a face then, didn’t he?”
In graded tones, the sea formed, full of its own darkness, but brightened elsewhere by reflections of the sky.
“Jacob, did he have a face in the long ago?”
“A face and hands, and she said, ‘What’s wrong with you,’ and the Neverwas said, ‘What’s wrong is with him,’ and she said, ‘My God, my God, are you afraid to touch him,’ and he said, ‘Don’t be a bitch about it.’”
He lifted his pencil from the paper because his hand had begun to tremble.
The emotion in his voice had been intense. Toward the end of that soliloquy, his mild speech impediment had thickened.
Concerned that I might drive him into withdrawal by pressing too hard, I gave him time to settle.
When his hand stopped trembling, he returned to the creation of the sea.
I said, “You are being such a help to me, Jake. You are being a friend to me, and I know this isn’t easy for you, but I love you for being such a friend to me.”
He glanced almost furtively at me, then returned his gaze at once to the drawing paper.
“Jake, will you draw something especially for me? Will you draw the face of the Neverwas, the way he looked in the long ago?”
“Can’t,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure you have a photographic memory. That means you remember everything you see, in great detail, even from long before the ocean and the bell and the floating away.” I glanced at the wall with the many portraits of his mother. “Like your mother’s face. Am I right, Jake? Do you remember everything from long ago as clear as if you just saw it an hour ago?”
He said, “It hurts.”
“What hurts, Jake?”
“All of it, so clear.”
“I’ll bet it does. I know it does. My girl has been gone sixteen months, and I see her clearer every day.”
He drew, and I waited.
Then I said, “Do you know how old you were that time in the hospital?”
“Seven. I was seven.”
“So will you draw me the face of the Neverwas, from that time in the hospital when you were seven?”
“Can’t. My eyes was funny then. Like a window with the rain and nothing looks right through it.”
“Your vision was blurred that day?”
“Blurred.”
“From the sickness, you mean.” My hope deflated. “I guess it might have been blurred.”
I turned back one tablet page to the second drawing of the bone kaleidoscope at the window.
“How often have you seen this thing, Jake?”
“More than one thing. Different ones.”
“How often have they been at the window?”
“Three times.”
“Just three? When?”
“Two times yesterday. Then when I woke from the sleep.”
“When you woke up this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve seen them, too,” I told him. “I can’t figure out what they are. What do you think they are, Jake?”
“The dogs of the Neverwas,” he said without hesitation. “I’m not scared of them.”
“Dogs, huh? I don’t see dogs.”
“Not dogs but like dogs,” he explained. “Like really bad dogs, he teaches to kill, and he sends them, and they kill.”
“Attack dogs,” I said.
“I’m not scared, and I won’t be.”
“You’re a very brave young man, Jacob Calvino.”
“She said…she said don’t be scared, we wasn’t born to be all the time
scared, we was born happy, babies laugh at everything, we was born happy and to make a better world.”
“I wish I’d known your mother.”
“She said everyone…everyone, if he’s rich or he’s poor, if he’s somebody big or nobody at all—everyone has a grace.” A look of peace came over his embattled face when he said the word grace. “You know what a grace is?”
“Yes.”
“A grace is a thing you get from God, you use it to make a better world, or not use it, you have to choose.”
“Like your art,” I said. “Like your beautiful drawings.”
He said, “Like your pancakes.”
“Ah, you know I made those pancakes, huh?”
“Those pancakes, that’s a grace.”
“Thank you, Jake. That’s very kind of you.” I closed the second tablet and got up from my chair. “I have to go now, but I’d like to come back, if that’s all right.”
“All right.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“All right, okay,” he assured me.
I went to his side of the table, put a hand on his shoulder, and studied the drawing from his perspective.
He was a superb renderer, but he wasn’t just that. He understood the qualities of light, the fact of light even in shadow, the beauty of light and the need for it.
At the window, though the winter twilight lay a few hours away, most of the light had been choked out of the blizzard-throttled sky. Already the day had come to dusk.
Earlier, Jacob had warned me that the dark would come with the dark. Maybe we couldn’t expect that death would wait for full night. Maybe the gloom of this false dusk was dark enough.
CHAPTER 44
OUTSIDE ROOM 14, AFTER I LEFT JACOB WITH the promise to return, Rodion Romanovich said, “Mr. Thomas, your questioning of that young man—it was not done as I would have done it.”
“Yes, sir, but the nuns have an absolute rule against ripping out fingernails with pliers.”
“Well, even nuns are not right about everything. What I was about to say, however, is that you drew him out as well as anyone could have done. I am impressed.”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m circling close to it, but I’m not there yet. He has the key. I was sent to him earlier in the day because he has the key.”