16

Here it was, another Saturday night, God knew what time, and . . . he was finished.

He stared down at the neatly stacked sheets of note paper before him, and shook his head. Not bad, Jacob. He had been afraid to look at his watch, but now that it was all over, that the white heat had possessed him and let him go, leaving him with one of the best sermons he had ever written, he brought his wrist in front of his eyes. One-thirty.

Could it be? One-thirty in the morning, and he was actually done? He hadn't worked that fast since the first few weeks he had come here—and even then it had been because he had arrived armed with a clutch of partially finished sermons, hammered out in school and during the long summer while he and Mary waited for his appointment to go through, when he had worked as a clerk in a supermarket because he had refused to let his parents support them. One-thirty. Not bad at all. And here he was, still seated in his comfortable chair in his study, not pacing the floor of the church like a lunatic or beating his fists futilely against one of the pew railings. He had drunk two cups of coffee, smoked one pipe, and—he looked down again at the neat sure handwriting, the thoughts still freshly laid out in his mind as they were on the paper—well, he was done.

It was remarkable. A mere month ago he had been a wreck, questioning his faith as well as his life. Now he felt surer about himself than he had in years. He had even called Joe Marchini about it. The priest had laughed like a hyena, but there had been a few moments before they hung up when Marchini had gotten as serious as he had ever heard him. "Well, Jake," he'd said, "you can see that there was just no way I could make you understand until it happened to you. I think you'll agree that it's one of the damnedest manifestations of God's will that you could ever imagine. We're so used, in this business of ours, to calling down His works on other people, but until He does something like this to you, you don't really know what it's all about. It's like leaving your rookie year behind to become a veteran. I don't really know how to explain it."

"Neither do I, Joe," he had said, and then they had both hung up, almost simultaneously, neither having to say the word "good-bye." They knew the call was over, and what it had all been about. And Jacob knew then that what Marchini had said was true: it was like being tested, and getting the exam back with an A on it,

But how had it happened? How had it turned around so quickly? That was nearly as much a mystery as the testing itself. He knew it had to do with Billy, but why? What was it about the boy that had pulled this response from so deep within him? What had made him believe in himself, in mankind, in God, again?

Because the boy needs you.

That was it. There was something about Billy, some mysterious want or need that Jacob felt compelled to fulfill. The fact that he didn't know what it was only increased his certainty that the boy needed him. He had thought for a time that possibly it was a reaction fostered by the fact that he didn't have a son of his own, but he had dismissed that. There was a gulf, a deep empty hole, in this boy, something that was almost frightening in its intensity, and Jacob Beck wanted to find out what was missing and provide it.

Billy needs you.

He looked down again at the neatly scrawled notes of his sermon, then turned out the lamp on his desk and left his office. One-thirty in the morning. This would be the first time he got any kind of sleep on a Saturday night since he could remember. Now that he thought about it, he wondered if he would be able to sleep. He was so used to staying up all night on Saturday that he might end up battling sleeplessness. Well, at least he could pass the time pleasantly for once, watching television or reading a book instead of agonizing over a line of scripture he didn't care about.

He went to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator to see if there was anything worth eating. Nothing. He straightened up and yawned, realizing that maybe he was tired after all and that he might as well try to sleep. He could always get up if insomnia assaulted him.

He trudged up the stairs. Passing Billy's room, he saw light under the door.

He hesitated, weighing whether or not he should investigate. The boy deserved his privacy. But it really was too late for him to be up. He listened at the door, heard nothing. He knocked lightly, then eased open the door and stepped in.

The lamp next to the bed was on. But the bed was unmade, the coverlet drawn smoothly over the pillow.

"Billy?" he called tentatively.

He located the boy's figure seated in a straight-backed chair drawn up to the window.

"Are you all right?" he asked, moving closer.

The boy seemed to be staring out through the window, into the night.

"Billy?" Jacob said again, reaching out for him.

The boy turned around, and Jacob Beck gasped and nearly fell into the two bottomless black wells that were Billy's eyes. Beck stumbled forward, reaching out his hand for support, and suddenly Billy's eyes were gone and Jacob's father was standing there, staring balefully down at him. "A preacher," he began with disdain, but then he vanished and Beck was holding onto the back of Billy's chair, and Billy was regarding him calmly, with the same flat copper eyes he always had.

"What . . ." Jacob Beck gasped, sitting down on the bed and trying to orient himself. Billy regarded him dispassionately.

"What happened to me?" Beck asked.

The boy's gaze was as level as winter ice on a pond.

Beck looked at the boy, sitting quietly facing him in his chair, and shook his head. Nothing must have happened. The room was the same as it had always been, the window the same window, the chair the same. Billy had turned to face him just as he would have expected after he'd entered the room and called to him. His father was not there, Billy's eyes were not huge black endless wells sucking him in, nothing had happened. It had all been there and gone so quickly.

"Is something wrong?" Billy asked.

"No, nothing's wrong," Beck answered, not sure yet if he believed it.

The boy waited for him to say something.

"I . . . was just wondering if you were all right," he said. Nothing had happened. "I saw your light on."

"I couldn't sleep."

Beck's breathing was back to normal. The chair, the boy, everything was as it should be. "Neither can I," he said. "I just finished my sermon for tomorrow and now I don't know if I'll be able to go to bed." Nothing had happened. "Would you like to watch television with me?"

"No," Billy answered.

"Is anything bothering you?"

The boy shook his head and turned back to the window.

A chill went through Beck, thinking that if the boy turned around again, there would be those black eyes, that huge figure of his father . . . He diverted himself with the fact that he thought he detected the faint aroma of tobacco smoke.

"Billy . . ." he began, but decided not to bring it up.

He sat for a few uncomfortable moments, then stood and looked down at the boy. "If you need me, for anything, you can always come to me," he said to Billy's back.

Billy faced the black night through the window.

Jacob went to the doorway and looked back. He'd told the boy to come to him if he ever needed him. But he wondered if he meant it. Doubt had crawled into his head once again. Maybe this elation at finding himself had been a false dawn. Maybe the boy didn't need him after all. Maybe that hole he saw in the boy did not exist. Maybe it was merely the makeup of an alien being, the unknown, unknowable inner territory of someone or something so inhuman as to be incomprehensible.

Maybe something had happened.

Billy had not moved. He sat in his chair, staring into blackness. Maybe that's all there was: blackness. Jacob Beck felt a shiver of that emptiness pass through him. A gulf opened somewhere in his heart. He saw, once more, the empty pit that was life. What was life? A thing that meant nothing, something that was only there, a joke with no punch line except death.

Maybe there isn't anything after all.

He pushed the thought from his mind. Nothing had happened, and the boy still needed him. To his immediate relief, he saw that the peace that he had attained, the inner surety of his own vocation and life, was still there, though somewhat dimmed. The whole battle, he realized, had not been won, but he still believed that victory would be its outcome.

He closed the door to the boy's room and went back downstairs to his office to wait out the rest of the long night.