The One That Got Away was written in 1981 and 1982 long before Forrest Gump or The Silence of the Lambs. It was revised slightly in 1989 to reflect the collapse of the Soviet Union. What is interesting about attempts to publish it is not that it was rejected by every major publisher but the nature of the rejection letters it received. Typical of these was one by Bob Guccioni of Penthouse who wrote, "This is really well written, but it's too weird for me. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole." It really does seem to violate a lot of boundaries.

The One That Got Away

by

Magdvin Cszgarna

For J. who calls herself the rapist's worst nightmare:

It does my heart good to know that every night

you're out there somewhere in America,

with your gun and your knife and your seven years of martial arts,

looking for bad guys.

What is it, eight so far?

Good hunting, precious.

"That one... That one's Jewish," said the fascist chief of the Greek secret police to his underling as they examined the photographs taken the previous evening at a democratic socialist rally.

"Only half Jewish," replied the aide.

"They're the worst," said the chief of police with disgust. "They think they're better than everybody."

From Z by Costa Gavras

I

Born in 1910, John Marlowe was a second generation, Irish American son of a New York City police sergeant. Somewhere in the past one of his ancestors had married an Englishman, but neither his father nor his mother nor his seven brothers and sisters, four of whom eventually took holy orders, ever doubted their faith in the Roman Catholic Church. They were straight and narrow people who were stern but affectionate with John, their sixth child and a favorite, who throughout his childhood followed his family tradition of Catholicism, though eventually as a young adult he did so mostly on the surface to maintain pleasant relations with his family.

As a small child John had few problems, was obedient and even devout, but upon reaching puberty he discovered, with the assistance of a neighbor boy a year older than himself, that he was possessed of terribly intense sexual desires. He rarely masturbated less than three times a day, often more, and walked around filled with fear of eternal hellfire, but he was unable to control his right hand whenever he was alone. "Lord, Jesus, forgive me. I can't help myself," he thought over and over as his hand stroked up and down. He was tormented both because he believed he sinned and because he soon came to lie to his confessors about the frequency of his sinning. It is doubtful anyone ever was as relieved upon discovering St. Paul's admonition, "Better to marry been to burn in hell," as John Marlowe was.

Born in 1912, Tessie Cohen was the third and last daughter of immigrant, intellectual, Russian Jews who had not married until reaching their early thirties. If the Marlowe family questioned nothing their religion taught them, the Cohens went to the opposite extreme. They made no attempt to hide their Jewish origins but rejected their religious heritage. The urged their daughters to accept the world as a place without black or white but with only shades of gray, a place where it was essential to adapt to the omnipresence of ambiguity. Tessie's two older sisters managed to do this. Tessie was a different story.

At the age of six after a funeral Tessie had asked, "What happens when you die?"

She had been told, "Nobody knows. Some people think they know, but they don't. Don't bother about what happens after you die. Think about what happens before you die." For Tessie this just was not a satisfactory answer, and she spent the rest of her life looking for one she could live with more comfortably.

Tessie discovered masturbation all by herself at the age of eight when she rubbed something, it felt good, and she kept rubbing it. As it was in John Marlowe, the sex drive in Tessie was very strong, but far from being a terrible source of fear and guilt for her, Tessie found it the only relief she had from the outside world which she saw as a frightening place filled with news of wars, famines and murders.

"Oh, God, if you're really there the way they say you are," prayed Tessie during most of her childhood orgasms, "I swear I'll be a good girl if you'll just let Heaven be like this." Accordingly she was an obedient, docile child but never told her parents or sisters why for fear they would make her ask permission each time she wanted to "make myself happy," as she called it, the way she had to ask if she wanted a cookie, or they might tell her to clean the living room or peel potatoes first, or worse still tell her "no" because she had not finished all her vegetables at dinner.

What is the point of opening a book with an account of the childhood masturbatory habits of two people who died no less than eighty years ago? A series of their choices placed them in nearby bungalows during the summer of 1932 at Lake George, New York. They met, and driven both by their physical passions and their emotional needs and limitations, they fell in love, and the point is that their love produced a son who grew up to be the one that got away.

II

In 1931 John's father called in a favor with an upstate police buddy to get his son a job with a game warden in the Lake George area. John disliked the city and had wanted to live in the country ever since the age of eight when he had visited a relative on a farm in New Jersey.

In the summer of 1932 Tessie's parents sent her on a vacation to Lake George with her older, married sister. The elder Cohens hoped the relaxed, rural surroundings would have a positive effect on Tessie whose increasingly withdrawn and psychotic behavior was something they were unable to acknowledge as more than severe shyness.

Every afternoon when he came home from work, John passed Tessie sitting on the on the rocker on her porch, and finally he got up the nerve to tip his hat and say, "Nice day, isn't it?"

For a moment the fog in which Tessie had immersed herself drifted apart, and she saw her tall, well-built, blond neighbor for the first time. The sultry, languid tone with which she said, "Yes, isn't it?" set John Marlowe's body on fire. He had been fantasizing about Tessie for weeks, and the sound of her voice seemed to confirm everything he had imagined. Tessie, who had been very sheltered by her parents and never been even remotely courted, promptly fell in love with John, who was the first man outside her family to whom she had spoken in several months.

Tessie's sister, Rosa, only left Tessie alone late in the afternoon when she took the mile a half walk to the Post Office to pick up her daily letter from her husband back in the city. Rosa knew even the small number of people in town made Tessie uneasy and assumed she was unlikely to get into trouble if left alone on the porch for an hour.

John began picking small bouquets of wildflowers for Tessie who smiled and said little more than "Thank you," when she received them. She hid these tokens from her sister but held them to her cheek at night in bed.

John had been raised with brothers and sisters who never had dated, and he had no idea of what to do next in his courtship of this mysteriously silent woman whose name he had learned by checking with the owner who had rented them their bungalow. He was mildly troubled by the discovery she was a Jew but pushed consideration of this into the back of his mind.

Tessie eyed John carefully several times and recognized his attraction to her was serious. On some levels she knew she was different from most people, needed to be taken care of, and she knew her only hope of marriage, something she equated with at least some semblance of normalcy and something she earnestly desired, was to find a man who accepted this.

One afternoon as he handed her a few flowers, Tessie looked John straight in the eye and said, " I'm terribly shy. I can't stand to be around people at all. I never go out. Would that bother you?"

"Er... No. I don't care for crowds myself," replied John not sure where this, their first conversation, might be leading but trying to be agreeable.

"But you can work and earn money and go shopping and things like that, can't you?"

"Well... Yes."

"Okay, I'll marry you," said Tessie.

"Ah... Er... Ah," stammered John blushing bright red and causing Tessie to giggle.

John stood there his mind completely blank until Tessie said, "You'd better go now before my sister gets home. I'll come over to your cabin tonight after she's asleep. Bye now." John wandered off in a state of total confusion with no idea of what to make of what just had happened. He was sure she was joking but had no idea how to deal with it. He hardly noticed her promise to visit him that night

At about 11:30 PM he was sound asleep when Tessie enter his room, took off her clothes and got into bed with him. Neither knew much about sex, but they made love eleven times in the next six hours.

Neither spoke. For John it was all his fantasies come true. Even while they were not making love, he held her tightly in his arms and felt an almost electric sensation of warmth from her whole body as he strove to get as much of his skin in contact with as much of hers as possible. For Tessie the line between fantasy and reality already was sufficiently blurred that much of this night was no different for her from any number of nights which had preceded it.

Not long after the sun rose, Tessie got out of bed and said, "I have to go now. We're going to go back to the city in a few days. Stay away for me until then. I'll comeback as soon as I can, and we'll get married."

John looked up from the bed drowsily unsure of what to make of what had happened but with St. Paul's admonition uppermost in his mind. At first he said nothing, but then he glanced down and noticed a small, red stain on the sheet. "You were a virgin," he said immediately unsure of whether or not he had said the right thing.

"Of course I was a virgin. The Beautiful Princess always is a virgin," said Tessie as she walked quietly out the door never imagining in her gentle dream world that there ever could be one like the one that got away.

III

Tessie assumed, correctly of course, that her family would try to prevent her marriage to this stranger who she was certain was not Jewish, so she decided to keep all her plans to herself. Since the underage marriage of a high school classmate had been annulled and she was unsure what could be done to her legally after her marriage, Tessie also decided not to tell her family anything even after the wedding. She would just disappear.

With this in mind Tessie was attentive to everything on her trip home; where they got on the bus, what landmarks they passed, where the terminal in the city was, which subway train they took and what stop they get off at on their way to their apartment building. All this was a terrible strain on her because it forced her out of her inner world which she loved dearly, but she promised herself that once this awful ordeal of contact with outsiders was over, she never would subject herself to such torture again. She resolved to be a good housewife and exactly that, a wife who stayed in the house.

She was not alone at home until her older, unmarried sister's vacation was over a few days later, but as soon as she was, she called the city clerk's office and found out what documents were necessary to obtain a marriage license. Then she called the bus terminal to find out the bus schedule and the cost of the ticket. After that she went to the bathroom and threw up for half an hour.

Tessie found the strain of talking to strangers traumatic, and she was tempted to abandon her goal, particularly when she remembered she would have to wait in line to buy her bus ticket and then have to tell the clerk where she was going, but at last she thought, "I want this a lot, more than anything else in the world, and this is the only way I'll ever get it. I used to be able to force myself to talk to people, and I can do it again now. If I do this, the whole rest of my life will be all right, and I'll be the Beautiful Princess for always."

Tessie went to the cigar box at the back of her father's dresser drawer, the box were all her family's important papers were kept, and found her birth certificate. She also took $20.00 from the hiding place behind the loose panel in her mother's closet where her mother kept the family's emergency money. "There's still $65.00 left," she thought. "They never touch this money anyway. They'll be all right without it for while. I'll have John send it back to them before they even miss it."

Tessie filled a large cardboard box with everything she thought she might need, mostly warm clothes to survive the upstate winter which she knew was much colder than winter in the city. She also packed her two dolls and teddy bear as well as "Woolie," her security blanket. She tied all this neatly with twine from the large ball the Cohens saved in a kitchen drawer.

It was still before 10:00 AM and the bus did not leave until a few minutes before noon. Everything was going perfectly. Her parents were working in their cigar store. Her sister, Ruth, was back at her secretarial job, and no one would notice she was gone until they came home for dinner.

One last thing was necessary to make her escape perfect, a false lead about where she had gone. She carefully wrote the following note and left it on the kitchen table:

"Dear Mamma and Poppa and Ruthie and Rosa,

William and I have eloped to Florida in his car. I'll send you a postcard from Miami.

Love,

Tessie."

The strain involved in going out the apartment door alone was staggering for Tessie. She swayed dizzily as she made her way down the three flights of stairs to the street, but she had enough presence of mind to wait on the landing between floors until a woman who had been in the second floor hall returned to her apartment. No one on the block recognized her as she made her way to the subway. On the train she sat looking out the window so she would not have to acknowledge any of her fellow passengers, and since it was late morning, there were few.

The bus station stop came, and Tessie grabbed the box with her possessions and went straight to the terminal only looking up from the concrete a few times to insure she was going in the right direction. Strangely enough the crowds in the street bothered her less than she had expected because she found her ability to completely deny their existence, to pretend she was totally alone, increased with the number of people around her.

First there were three people in the line ahead of her, then two, then only one. "This is it," she thought. "This is the worst part of it. If I can hold myself together through this, I'll make it." Tessie's stomach churned. Twice she tasted acid at the back of her throat and swallowed hard. Her heart beat as if it was about to burst, and her head felt as if someone had stabbed a huge knife through the top of her skull, but she managed to thrust her $20.00 bill through the grate and blurt out, "Lake George, one-way," while staring at her hands on the counter.

Tessie never knew if the clerk noticed her distress or even looked at her. All she saw were his hands as he pushed her ticket and her change at her. "Gate four. 12:06. Twenty minutes. Baggage check over there," was all he said.

Tessie went to the baggage door and with immense difficulty managed to write, " Tess Marlowe, Lake George, N. Y." on her box at the clerk's instruction. After that she immediately ran the ladies room, and for the second time in as many hours suffered severe stomach convulsions. This time because her stomach was already empty, they were quite painful, but at last they subsided and finding herself alone in the restroom, she quickly washed her face.

"Tess Marlowe," she thought looking in the mirror. "That sounds good. I never cared much for 'Tessie.' I like the name of the lady in the novel much better. She died such a romantic death, too. 'Tess' never would go with 'Cohen,' but it sounds fine with 'Marlowe.' From now on I'm ' Tess.'"

From the restroom she went directly to the bus which was already boarding and handed her ticket to the driver. She found an empty pair of seats near the back of the bus, took off her jacket and placed it on one to make it look as if both were taken. Then she sat down with her face toward the window.

For the next ten hours Tess did not move. Fortunately the bus was half empty, and no one spoke to her. She listened carefully as the driver called out the town names whenever they stopped, and over and over she told herself, "Only a few more miles... Only a few more miles and I'll never have to go through anything like this again... I'll be able to live happily ever after."

Finally Tess recognize the gas station she had taken note out on the trip south, and this time when the bus stopped, she knew it would be time to get off. She had become quite relaxed, but now she would have to deal with another person again. She would have to talk to the driver to get her carton. She trembled slightly, took a few deep breaths and was a bit dizzy, but it passed.

Tess had watched the driver unload baggage for other passengers at earlier stops, and she had figured out how she wanted to handle the situation. She would wait for the driver to be right next to luggage, walk over quickly at the last instant and say, "That box with the string on it," just as she had managed, "Lake George, one-way."

She practiced saying, "That box with the string on it," several times until she felt as sure of herself as she could, and then just as the driver was becoming impatient, she when over to him and pointed to her box. It was all by itself, and it was on the ground at her feet before Tess could say a word. Whatever may have been the cause of the driver's haste, Tess was grateful for it as well as for the fact that no one else had gotten off at Lake George. She relieved to self in the darkness behind a tree, picked up her carton and began walking up the deserted street.

Just as the last time she had come to John Marlowe's cabin, she let herself in quietly, undressed and climbed into bed with her sleeping Prince Charming,. They made love all night blissfully unaware of the what that usually led to... or what it only once led to... the one that got away.

IV

Surprisingly enough Tess had little difficulty on the day she and John got married. This was partially due to the fact that John was there to do everything for her except sign her name and say her "I do," but mainly it was because her fantasy of the Beautiful Fairly Princess included a wedding to the Handsome Prince. As she went on her way to the county courthouse and the judge who would perform the ceremony, she saw herself surrounded by throngs of her cheering subjects. It was a day on which she had no need to fear the evil courtiers and their assassins who generally pursued her because for once it was they who were afraid, afraid of what her loyal people would do to them if they tried to harm her on this, the most significant day of her life.

John Marlowe told the one person he knew at all well in Lake George, his landlord, that he had gotten married. He also made up an almost plausible story about how his wife was terribly shy and he would introduce her to him after she had settled into the town. Since the landlord was not a friendly fellow, he never even asked after Mrs. Marlowe despite living only two cabins away. Prominent people in the town showed little interest in John's life because he was an outsider, and as soon as it was learned he was not living in sin with the young woman who occasionally sat on the cabin porch, the matter was closed. No one called on them or invited them over for dinner, and this was what John wanted, solitude for himself and his odd but pleasant wife. When it became too cold to stay in their summer cottage, they moved their few belongings into a larger, better insulated house to serve as caretakers for the elderly, wealthy, local owner who had taken to going south for the winter.

And what of the actual relationship between Tess and John? It was quite ordinary and happy. Tess fell upon her chosen role of housewife with great zeal. She cooked, washed, ironed, dusted, swept etc. with such care and frequency that their house was always spotless. All John had to do which was outside the usual male sphere in the 1930s was marketing. He was never too clear on how Tess resolved the conflict between being a fairy princess and doing housework, but he learned quickly never to ask her questions about things like that because they would make her sit motionless for hours. The answer actually was quite simple. Tess still had enough grasp on reality to know that as the ordinary wife of an ordinary game warden there were numerous tasks which reasonably could be expected of her. Furthermore she loved her husband dutifully and deeply wished to please him, and she saw the performance of these chores as away to show her love.

They spent the long winter evenings telling each other about the mundane events of their days, listening to the radio, and sometimes playing card games they had learned as children. They retired early and made love several times almost every night. Often they spent whole weekends in bed. When they slept, they slept wrapped in each other's arms. The intense loneliness each had known before meeting the other was gone, but there was always the fear it could return, a fear which only could be assuaged by constantly clinging to the beloved, the source of all emotional and physical gratification.

It might be noted in passing at this point that within a few days of her departure from New York City the thought of her parents and sisters ceased to cross Tess' mind. They never had had a significant part in her fantasy life, and although she did not dislike them or have much friction with them, they simply were not very real for her; real in the sense that the phantoms she had created were the basic realities of her life and John corresponded to one of these phantoms while they did not, real and the sense that her not yet even conceived son was already "The Beloved Heir Apparent," a kind hearted, gentle child who would grow up to be all that was good in the world, surely not like the one that got away.

V

It was over a year before Tess became pregnant, but since she kept little track of the passage of time in general or her menstrual cycle in particular, she was over five months pregnant before she finally became aware she was expecting a child. John wanted her to go to a doctor, but Tess adamantly refused insisting he should deliver their child. Since John had assisted a local veterinarian in several animal births, he was not unversed in the birthing process, and he reluctantly consented to Tess' decision.

Tess was quite healthy physically, and her pregnancy was uneventful. James Sean Christopher Marlowe, probably the most totally unknown figure of any importance in modern history, entered this world at 6:08 AM on November 8, 1934. His delivery was quick and easy. It seemed that even this early in life James knew his mother was psychologically fragile and that he did not wish to place any more strain on her than absolutely necessary.

John Marlowe took his infant son to a doctor to be examined and then registered his birth. James appeared to be a normal, healthy baby, and despite his mother's mental condition, his infancy was ordinary. Tess breast fed him and held him in her arms for hours a time particularly in the afternoon when the housework was done. John was fascinated by his son and relieved to find he rarely cried. He played with him constantly.

One important fact that John Marlowe perceived was that this additional strain was about all Tess could handle. She carried James on long walks in the woods but still had no contact with other people. Furthermore she spent even more time than before rocking quietly in her chair looking dazed and lost in her dream world. John realized there were people who entered such worlds and stayed in them permanently, and he wanted to keep Tess from doing this. Even an ideally easy child like James took a major portion of his wife's limited energies. He assumed, probably correctly, that another one would push her irretrievably over the brink into total insanity. John both loved his wife and wanted what was best for her emotional stability as well as feared how awful his life would become without the continuous physical gratification he derived from her strong sexual appetite. Accordingly John introduced Tess to several forms of sexual relations which could not result in pregnancy.

John had written his parents of his marriage not long after it taken place, but he had lied that Tess was a Catholic. Neither of his parents liked to travel, and he made repeated excuses about work so he and Tess would not have to go to New York City for her to be introduced to his family. Two of his brothers and two of his sisters could not easily travel because they were members of holy orders of the Catholic Church, and the other three felt in one degree or another that if John would not come to them out of respect for their parents, they would not go to him. John knew a lot more pressure would be brought to bear on him and Tess to go to New York City if his family knew they had had a child, the elder Marlowe's first grandchild, so since John had no idea how he could resist such coercion from his somewhat domineering parents, he simply neglected to notify them of James' birth. John initially had conflicted feelings about not having James baptized, but when he thought about all the questions a priest might ask if he were to seek to have the rite performed, he decided against it.

The first five years of James' life were uneventful, quite nearly normal. He idolized his father and adored his mother. He was neither timid nor adventurous. He preferred to stay near whichever parent he was with at the time, but if they walked away from him either in a store or in the woods, he did not become alarmed. His father occasionally took him shopping on weekends, but although he did see other children, he never really played with them. Accordingly the only realistic information he received about the outside world in this crucial stage of development was from his father. Since this influence, however much James managed to distort it later, formed much of the basis of his adult personality, it might be worthwhile to devote a paragraph or two to what it was and how it had arisen.

John Marlowe had been a small child who initially had been picked on by larger children. Having been a sheltered favorite before reaching school age, at first he had not known how to defend himself, and for long time he had suffered grievously from the cruelty of other children. Eventually he had begun to defend himself with a genuinely suicidal fury, not hoping so much to prevent future attacks which he considered inevitable as intending to make his tormentors experience at least some of the pain he did himself. He had fought brutally and without regard for notions of what then was judged "dirty" fighting. He had clawed, bit, kicked and gouged like the cornered animal he often had been. To his amazement the attacks had stopped. That he became an outcast for these actions meant little to him because he already had been one to some degree for being a weakling. John Marlowe did not want his son to undergo the agony he had as a child so he devoted a great deal of time and energy to teaching is son that anything one did to defend oneself was right as long as it was effective and to training his son that he should literally go berserk if he was attacked. The only restraint put on this was the warning never to direct this violence toward someone with whom he merely disagreed or from whom he could walk away.

John Marlowe also had come to the conclusion that other than for willingness to defend oneself with all possible vigor it was very bad to stand out for any reason either good or bad because a person was more free to act if he or she was not noticed. Long before being sent to school James was taught, for example, to master lessons completely and then deliberately make an error or two so he would do well in school but never attract attention as the best or worst of anything. James wished deeply to please his parents who were, after all, his only source of human warmth, so he followed his father's instructions assiduously and unquestioningly. John Marlowe also consciously decided that he had endured great torment because of the fears instilled in him by his Catholic upbringing, so he avoided giving his son any religious training, however, this latter probably was not as great a factor as was the indoctrination with the dual values of violence and inobtrusiveness in leading James toward becoming the one that got away.

VI

Whether it arose from interest in cowboy movies, from being the son of a law enforcement officer, from the notion of the "great equalizer" in the mind of a small, often bullied boy or from some other factor or combination of factors, John Marlowe was fascinated by guns, all sorts of guns; rifles, shotguns, pistols, revolvers. If it went bang and launched projectiles, John Marlowe was an authority on it. From childhood he had read extensively about firearms, and when he had moved to Lake George and had begun working with the game warden, he had started collecting and shooting them, mostly at inanimate targets; clay pigeons, tin cans and paper bulls eyes but occasionally at animals, usually for food. Although his salary was not munificent, his wife spent virtually no money, and even after marriage he was able to continue acquiring low-cost, good-quality guns. He practiced frequently, reloaded his own ammunition to save money and was an excellent shot.

As might be expected of a small boy who I idolized his father, James wanted to be involved in whatever his father was doing. James was barely four when his father showed him how he rolled the fired cartridge cases across the lubricating pad before placing them in the shell holder and forcing them in and out of the resizing die by pulling down and up on the reloading press handle, after which he carefully wiped off all the lubricant from the cases with a rag.

At first James was unsure why his father spent so much time so many evenings sitting at the little table which was bolted to the floor, but he recognized both that it was a great privilege to assist his father in this chore and that it was extremely important to be meticulous in following his father's instructions or someone might be hurt badly. Fully intent on never letting down his father, James saw to it that not the slightest smear of grease remained on a shell case when he put it back in its place in the cartridge box.

John Marlowe first took James up to the meadow where he practiced shooting when James was five. He had bought a used .22 caliber rifle with a cut down stock which was not too big for his son. The elder Marlowe spent more than half an hour repeating to his son an extensive lecture on gun safety before letting him shoot. At this most impressionable age James was deeply imbued with the rules that one never, never, never pointed a gun at something which one did not intend to shoot and one treated all guns as if they were loaded. John Marlowe made it clear to his son that most fathers either never taught their sons to shoot or did not do so until they were much older. James saw his father was placing a great trust in him and understood even the most minor infraction of any of the numerous rules his father had made him learn by heart meant it would be another year before he got a second chance to shoot. In spite of the great temptation to let his mind wander during this long, dull, and repetitive lecture, James focused his mind completely on everything his father said, not so much because he wanted to be permitted to shoot the gun now instead of a year later but because he could sense his father was counting on him to prove his judgment was correct, that even though he was only five years old, he was mature enough to behave properly. He knew that however disappointed he himself might be if he failed and had to wait an entire year to try again, his father would be even more disappointed that his only son had failed to prove trustworthy in spite of his father's best efforts to instruct him, and James knew he would not fail his father, not now, not ever.

Finally the safety lecture was over. Then James partially disassembled his rifle and named all its parts. At last his father asked him if he remembered the little drawing of how to align the front and rear sights with the target, and James nodded that he understood. It was the last moment his father could consider his son an ordinary child, the last moment before the first signs of James strange and phenomenal gifts were to become apparent.

John Marlowe placed a row of empty tin cans on a log about fifteen feet from his son, handed him the rifle and a cartridge and carefully watched to see if he handled them correctly. He did. The elder Marlowe had no expectation his son would hit one of the targets and was quite surprised when he saw that can jump straight back off the log. For a moment he was confused when his son looked up and asked him, "Did I do it right, Daddy?" because it was obvious the target had been hit, and that was right, but then he realized what his son meant, and he had the first of what eventually would prove to be several insights into the odd workings of his son's mind when he realized his son was only peripherally interested in hitting the target because his speech had implied that success involved handling the gun safely.

Wanting to make sure his son did not waver in his devotion to safety, John Marlowe made a show of looking to see that his son had kept the muzzle of the rifle pointing away from him even though James had turned only his body toward him to speak. He saw the barrel was still pointed at the row of cans and said, "Yes, son, that's how you do it. If you want to talk between shots, you keep it pointed at the targets just like your doing now. Think you can hit another one?"

"Yes, sir," said James as his father handed him another cartridge,. A second can was promptly knocked off the log, then a third, and a fourth. By this time the elder Marlowe had noticed his son was able to hold the rifle almost perfectly steady, so he knew the four hits were clearly not luck as he first had thought they might be.

"Let's move back a bit."

"Yes, sir," was all his son replied, which in recent months John Marlowe had come to recognize was all his son was likely to reply to almost anything he said.

In fairly quick succession John watched as his son shot down four or five cans at fifteen yards, then thirty yards and finally fifty yards. No longer merely surprised at his son's ability, he was even somewhat dazed as he explained to his son how bullets did not fly in a straight line but were pulled toward the earth by gravity in an arc called a trajectory and one had to move the sight up to compensate for this if one moved back more than fifty yards from a target, information he had not expected to try giving his son for a long time.

"Yes, sir," said James as they walked to the far edge of the meadow, over a eighty yards from the row of cans. Here James finally missed but only once out of ten shots.

As father and son strolled back from the meadow, John Marlowe was silent while he pondered what he had seen. He did not know the remarkable extent of James strange gifts, but he knew what he believed about standing out, so eventually he asked, "Son, do you remember what I told you about drawing attention to yourself?"

"Yes, Daddy, you told me never to do anything which'd make people notice me or tell anyone anything they don't have to know."

"Well, James, shooting is no different than anything else. In fact in shooting its even more important not to stand out. Most little boys couldn't've hit the first can at fifteen feet. I don't know why you did so well, and I'm proud of you, but don't tell anybody about it. Shooting isn't like tennis or golf. People who don't play golf don't care one way or another about golf clubs, but a lot of people hate guns and'd dislike you if they knew you're good with them. That's especially true about New York City if you ever go there."

"Yes, sir, don't worry. I won't let you down... Some of it has to do with Mom, doesn't it? She really would stand out if people saw her, wouldn't she?" asked James finally getting around to a question which had been on his mind for several weeks.

"You're very observant, young man, and that's good. What's more you're wise enough to know not to ask a question like that with anyone around but you and me."

"Yes, sir," replied James, pleased his father had praised them but still waiting for an answer to his question.

"You're right, James. Your mother is a little out of the ordinary. I don't understand it much, and you know how nice she is to us, but she never wants to go out. She's very frightened of people so she counts on you and me to take care of things for her, and I'm going to work with you starting real soon so you'll know how to deal with people and take care of everything that comes up in case I'm busy."

"It's more than that. Sometimes she acts like we're not there."

"There're things in her mind we'll never understand. She sees things that aren't there and makes up stories that aren't true, but it's all right. She isn't lying because she thinks they're true. It's mostly fairy tales like the ones I've read to you before putting you to bed. She makes them up and then believes they're true. She thinks she's a Queen and I'm a King and we're living happily ever after in our palace after I rescued her from and evil witch. You're the Crown Prince and, the Heir Apparent to the throne... Just go along with her on things like that. She's happy, and she's nice to us, isn't she?"

"Yes, very nice."

"Then just figure out as well as you can what'll please her, and do it."

"Yes, sir."

"She's sort of weak in some ways, and we have to look out for her, protect her."

"I'll do my best, Daddy."

"I'm sure you will. I have confidence in you... She cooks great, too. Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir."

Conversations like this when John Marlowe exhorted James to do whatever he possibly could to watch out for his mother were infrequent, but from the stern tone of his father's voice James could tell they were important, and they made a deep and lasting impression on him, so deep and lasting that one of fate's strange quirks caused them to be instrumental in leading James to becoming the one that got away.

VII

That night John Marlowe reflected deeply on what he had seen in his son do earlier in the day. He finally decided that since his son seemed to recognize all the responsibilities of gun handling for a small child under constant adult supervision, he would give James the opportunity to develop the inmate talent he seemed to possess in amazing quantity. From then on almost every day, weather permitting, when he came home from work, John took James up to the meadow and coached him in shooting, first at smaller and smaller stationary targets but before long at moving targets like beer cans John threw over his son's head or shoulders from behind his son at a wide variety of angles. Later in the summer he began to include in James training the use of his own high-quality . 22 Long Rifle semiautomatic pistol. Since James' hand was quite small, it was necessary for him to hold this gun with both hands, so partly because of the inherently superior steadiness of a two handed hold and partly because of his inborn abilities, James rapidly became extremely accurate with small caliber handguns as well as rifles.

Going on the notion that the earlier in life one learned to do something well the more a part of one's second nature it became, the elder Marlowe began assigning his son intensive exercise regimens as preparation for teaching him to shoot larger caliber revolvers and pistols. Most of these exercises, such as squeezing tennis balls, focused on developing the hand and finger muscles necessary for performing the longer, much heavier trigger pull of double action revolvers, but James also did a wide variety of calisthenics with his father every day before dinner.

Not long after coming to Lake George, John Marlowe began to aspire to be a small town law enforcement officer, first a deputy and later a sheriff. Besides becoming friendly with the current officials as well as a few influential year-round residents they introduced him to, John had done two other things which he thought might help him toward his goal. The first was development of his shooting skills. The second was learning everything he could about scientific law enforcement. Just as he bought and read every magazine and book he could find on firearms and their use, so, too, did he read extensively in the criminological literature of the period from about 1900 to 1940. He pored over books on subjects like interrogation techniques, laboratory analysis of evidence and criminal psychology and took copious notes on what he considered the most important points of each topic. More than a little of his motivation in teaching his son to shoot could be found in the notion that his son, too, someday would want to be a smalltown sheriff, and his firearms training eventually might save his life.

Often John would spend long winter evenings telling his son stories of famous criminals and the mistakes they had made which had led to their capture or death. It would be hard to say why young James came to believe that the only difference between these law breakers and the law enforcement personnel pursuing them was that the officers of the law were somehow a bit smarter, that the only reason criminals ever were caught was that they eventually made some slip which the police noticed and used to gain the advantage, but this was the case. The elder Marlowe occasionally did mention the concept of good and evil, but this idea did not seem to "take" with James in the way an innoculation against smallpox can fail to "take."

It was not that James felt drawn to crime. He was not. He scrupulously obeyed his father's admonitions to be honest with him and, for example, never stole small change from his pockets the way most children do at least once, but he saw the outside world as something different, something which was arrayed against him and to which he owed no such allegiance as might be suggested by honesty with outsiders. Since it since never occurred to John Marlowe that his lectures on being honest with him and loyal to his family would strengthen his small son's view that all was fair in dealing with the outside world, he never talked to him about it. He thought all the examples he gave James about the awful fates of criminals would point out the futility of a life of crime and the inevitable triumph of good over evil, but all that evolved in James' mind was a respect for the generally superior intelligence of highly trained officers of agencies like the F. B. I. and disgust for the stupidity of those criminals who were caught. He rooted for the officers while his father recounted their deeds but only because he liked rooting for the winner, not because he wanted to see good defeat evil. If James' father had lived longer and noticed this tendency in his son, he probably would have been able to modify his son's attitudes into ones more socially acceptable, but he did not, and the rest became history, until now unrecorded history but history nevertheless.

During the winter of 1940-1941 John Marlowe explained the complete workings of his reloading press, scale, powder measure and other reloading tools to his son and watched several times as the boy set up everything from scratch and reloaded fifty rounds of first .38 Special, then .45 ACP, and finally .357 Magnum ammunition. He was so impressed with his son's diligence and caution that from then on he had James do all his reloading, a chore James undertook with great satisfaction since he knew it meant his father had placed a trust in him second only to giving him a gun of his own to shoot when he wished. He even showed James how to operate the cauldron, ladle and molds he used to cast his own lead bullets, but he did not permit him to use them.

Since one of the quirks of Tess' insanity had caused her to begin teaching James to read not long after he was three, by this time he was quite capable of reading and understanding his father's reloading manuals. Tess' intention had had to do with James being able to comprehend without assistance the international treaties and royal legal documents he would be faced with if some accident brought him to the throne at an early age. She did not want any son of hers to be cheated by some tricky foreign minister or domestic legislator, but the actual result was that James began reading in his father's library, mostly books by or about famous shootists. He was especially fascinated by and twice read Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting by Ed McGivern. First published in 1938, this intricate and sometimes tedious book is, among other things, a manual of the techniques of the greatest rapid fire handgun shootist who had ever lived. McGivern's phenomenal accomplishments with factory stock revolvers fascinated the child who incorporated most of McGivern's practice regimen into his own daily exercises. Since the elder Marlowe, too, had been awed by the carefully documented accounts of McGivern's speed and accuracy with revolvers and since he felt McGivern, who was a shooting instructor for several law enforcement departments including the Montana Highway Patrol, was an excellent idol for his son, he encouraged James in these additional exercises.

Something else significant which took place at this time was that John Marlowe made a concerted effort to stockpile a large quantity of the components necessary for making cartridges. He believed the war in Europe would lead to shortages of these materials, and he wished to continue his own training. He did not believe Americans would become involved in the war, so he made no real attempt to train his son to care for his mother in the event he was drafted.

The spring of 1941 arrived, and as the weather improved, John began taking his son up to the meadow to practice shooting, only this time James' training included large caliber revolvers, a Smith & Wesson . 38 Special police model and a Colt 45 ACP army model revolver, both with five inch barrels. The elder Marlowe started his son on cartridges with reduced powder charges because James was too small to handle full recoil. In fact his hand was so small he was unable to both hold the handle of the gun and reach the trigger with the same hand. Since he already was accustomed to using both hands on his father's .22 semiautomatic, James only had a slight step to go to holding the handle of the larger gun with his left hand while wrapping his right hand over and in front so his right index finger could squeeze the trigger. His hand was still not quite strong enough to pull the trigger consistently the full distance required to move the hammer using the trigger alone so he could not yet fire double action, but he developed the technique of rapidly raising his right thumb, which was higher on the handle already because his right hand was over and partly higher than his left to reach the trigger, cocking the hammer with his thumb and firing single action. Although this undoubtedly slowed him down, by the middle of summer he was able to do this quickly and accurately enough to shoot a tin can thrown in the air at least twice and often three times before it struck the ground.

Later in the spring John also introduced his son to the use of his snub-nosed detective model Colt .38 Special which James soon could fire from wide variety of positions. James also fired his father's .45 ACP model 1911A Colt semiautomatic a few times, but since he was totally unable to pull the slide back to cock the gun or undo the barrel bushing to field strip and clean the gun without assistance, his father decided he should wait another year or two until he spent much time teaching his son the use of this gun. By the time he reached his seventh birthday, James was well on his way to becoming a great shootist, but the hand of fate had not yet rung the hour that would irrevocably announced the time of his becoming the one that got away.

VIII

From the perspective of our times it is hard to see why people were so fond of saying, "World War II changed everything." It is true it altered life for many people but not nearly so drastically or widely as more recent events disrupted the lives of people two generations later. Be that as it may, the entry of the United States of America into World War II on the side of the Allies had a substantial and direct effect on the life of young James Marlowe.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor John Marlowe recognized that because he would be drafted, he would no longer be in a position to care for his wife. Immediately he called his older brother, Robert, the only financially successful member of his family. Robert Marlowe was an attorney who had amassed a fortune in real estate by anticipating the Depression, hoarding gold and cash from 1923 on and then buying apartment buildings at very low prices. His initial wealth had arisen from partnership in bootlegging interests during Prohibition, but by 1941 his money all had been neatly laundered and was in legitimate investments, but he still retained his habit of hoarding gold and cash. He was ruthless in business, bad-tempered and fanatical in his Catholicism. He was also quite angry with his younger brother for what he saw as John's total disrespect for their parents which was evidenced by John's refusal to come to New York City for any reason, even major family gatherings.

John Marlowe knew this call would provoke a tirade of abuse and an endless description of how their parents, particularly their own dear mother who loved them all also much and to whom they owed everything, had suffered interminable anguish because of his selfishness. He also knew he could not leave his delusional wife and seven-year-old son alone in a small town where they knew almost no one, so he made to call.

James was on the other side of the living room when his father called his older brother. James had been thinking about his recent hunting experience when the call went through, reflecting upon his father's teaching of how to remain almost totally still, breathing slowly and deliberately for hours at a time if necessary, while waiting for his prey. James remembered how strange it had seemed last weekend when the first few minutes in their hiding place had seemed like forever but after that the next two hours had passed as if in a flash, and it had seemed only a moment later that a rabbit had peered into the far end of the meadow eighty-five yards away. James had taken careful aim and squeezed off a shot from his .22 rifle which had killed the rabbit instantly.

The call brought James back to the present. He listened as the voice of the man on the other end of the line grew louder and louder and his father was silent in the face of some awful onslaught. Occasionally his father said, "Yes, Robert," and once even, "Yes, sir." James did not yet know the word "humiliated," but it struck him as very wrong that anyone would talk in such a way to a man as good and wise as his father. James recognized that sometimes a father had to reprimand to child, but his father was not a child, and James could not conceive of any action his father might have done which would have legitimately provoked such a response as this.

"I don't know who Daddy is listening to," thought James, "but I hate him."

From John Marlowe's point of view the call had been worthwhile. Robert had agreed to find a relatively low-priced apartment for him in a good neighborhood, and a week later they packed all their possessions and moved to an apartment in the Bronx. The area was about fifteen or twenty blocks north of Yankee Stadium and a little east of the Grand Concourse, the apartment a small, two-bedroom one for thirty-five dollars per month on the third-floor of an older, walk up building owned by a former bootlegging crony of Robert Marlowe.

The following day, a Saturday, John Marlowe, with his son in tow, walked slowly up Burnside Avenue toward the luxurious University Avenue apartment of his older brother. James was full of wonder at all the huge apartment buildings, some as tall as ten stories, and he observed as much about them as he could. Unfortunately this distracted him from the lecture his father was giving him on how to deal with the uncle and aunt he was about to meet.

"We owe my brother a lot," said John. "He's really not a bed fellow. He found an apartment for us on very short notice, and apartments are scarce."

"But why did we have to move anyway?" said James absently having been told the answer several times and now not even listening as he thought to himself, "Sure can't do any shooting and hunting here, too many people all over the place. I'll bet there's no woods for miles. This stinks."

"You know it's because there's a war going on," said his father. "I have to go and fight some very bad men so you and your mom can be safe."

"Why can't somebody else do it?"

"Because at a time like this all men have to go except young ones like you and ones who're very old."

"Why?" asked James, his child's mind seeing no war about him, and having never really watched the newsreels on the few occasions he had gone to the movies, unable even to conceive of what the ward "war" meant.

"James, you're going to have to stop asking so many questions and start doing as I say. Young man, I'm going away soon, and you're going to have to take care of your mother. You're going to have to do a lot of things boys your age usually aren't called on to do, but I'm counting on you."

With the first mention of the idea that his father was relying on him, needed his help, James became still. His father did so much for him, trusted him so much farther than other boys' fathers did that he knew he never would let his father down. "Yes, Dad, I'll do everything you tell me. I promise I will," said James gravely.

"All right. Now about your uncle... He has a very bad temper, and we don't want to get him angry. When you talk to him, be sure you answer him with 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir' like I taught you.'"

"Yes, sir," said James his mind again totally distracted as he watched the Jerome Avenue elevated train rumble overhead.

John did try to prepare his son for his encounter with his Uncle Robert, but he knew it was futile. There would be the inevitable outbursts, and he only hoped his son would be able to withstand them.

James took his first ride in an elevator in awed silence but observed carefully the procedure of waiting for the door to close and pushing the button for the floor you wanted. When the door to his uncle's apartment opened, he found himself looking slightly up at a short, heavy man with a pasty complexion and a large, reddish nose. He was wearing a shiny, brown robe belted only loosely around his large potbelly. Behind him on an easychair in the living room was a very large woman wearing a housecoat. This, he assumed, was his Aunt Marie, about whom he had been told only that she was an ideal mate for his uncle.

"And who, pray tell, is this?" asked Robert Marlowe obviously unpleasantly surprised.

"This is your nephew, James. James, say 'Hello' to your Uncle Robert."

"Yes, sir. I'm pleased to meet you, sir," lied James as best he could while extending his hand.

Robert Marlowe shook his nephew's hand without looking away from his brother and said, "What kind of nonsense is this? How come you never told us about this child?"

"I'm not sure..." stammered John fully aware of exactly why he had not. "I've had some problems, and I thought..."

"That's just it, you idiot. You never think. How do you think Mother and Father are going to take this?..."

James listened with increasing trepidation as this stranger repeatedly insulted the father he loved and respected. At first James was tempted to run at this horrible man and kick him in the shins as hard as he could, but he observed his father's demeanor and decided there must be some good reason why his father did not respond to this attack, so he chose to follow his father's example.

"Look, Robert," his father finally put in when there was a pause in the long stream of vituperation, "I just wanted to come over and thank you for getting us a place."

"Speaking of us," said Robert Marlowe, "where's you're Mrs.?"

"She's not feeling well."

At this point James' Uncle Robert finally took notice of him. "Come here, boy," he said in an ominous tone which frightened James considerably. "How old are you?"

"Seven, sir," said James standing in front of his uncle.

"Who made you, boy?"

"Excuse me, sir?" asked James not even remotely recognizing the first question of the Baltimore Catechism because he never had been given the slightest hint of religious training, Catholic or otherwise.

"You heard me. Who made you,?" Reiterated James' uncle obviously about to redirect his wrath, this time upon his nephew.

James looked at his father for guidance but read only anxiety in his countenance. "I don't understand, sir," said James.

Robert Marlowe grasped James' ear and turned it sharply causing him to cry out in pain. Dimly through his agony James heard his uncle repeat the incomprehensible question a third time, and summoning all his powers of restraint in obedience to his father's wishes whether stated or implied, James again answered, "I don't understand, sir."

Robert Marlowe continued twisting James' ear while he looked at his brother and said, "What kind of father are you? What kind of heathen do you want to raise? What did you marry, a Jew? Seven years old and he doesn't even know Who made him. Get out of my house, and don't come back until you've seen to it that this heathen brat has had some proper religious education."

James uncle released him, and James felt his father grip his arm and pull him out the apartment door. Somewhere on the periphery of his pain James heard any incredibly harsh woman's voice saying, "You've never been any good, John Marlowe, and you never will be. After all we've done for you, you do this. Your brother should rip your ear off for the awful thing you're doing to that child. How do you think your parents are going to feel about..." The voice drifted off into the distance as he ran down the stairs with his father.

"Hypocrite," muttered his father.

"What's that?" asked James.

"A person who pretends to be good but really isn't," said John. "My brother wants people to think he's moral and decent, but he started out selling alcohol when it was against the law, and all his fortune grew out of his speakeasy money. He breaks the law whenever it suits him. He has no right to act like that with me."

James saw his father's eyes turn inward raging to himself about something in their encounter with his aunt and uncle. James never had understood the word "hate" before, but he did now, and it was the awakening of this feeling which was another step toward his becoming the one that got away.

IX

John Marlowe's spent the next few days taking his son into the local stores teaching him how to shop for everything he could imagine he would ever have to purchase alone. James was told what to look for buying not only meat, fish and vegetables but everything from light bulbs -- shake them to make sure nothing inside tinkles -- to tissue -- make sure the box is full. The elder Marlowe explained to his son about shopping for bargains and repeatedly drilled into his son the importance of always counting his change carefully before leaving the cash register and made sure he understood his right to protest immediately if he was shortchanged. In the event he was given too much, he was told to say nothing and add the extra to the family bankroll.

John took James to a local bank, and after explaining his wife was severely disabled, opened an account which was arranged so that James could come in alone and withdraw funds by himself. John bought James a large, black ledger in which he was specifically instructed to enter all income his father sent him and exactly how it was spent. James seven-year-old mind swam with such details as where to put receipts for this item and that, but he could tell this was all desperately important to his father, not just a test of his growth but the real thing, the rainy day his father had warned him might come when he actually had to count on James to take care of everything, and, as always, James vowed to himself he would not let his father down. The notion of failing his father never even entered his mind because he knew he would do anything necessary to take care of both business and his mother whom he continued to adore in response to the unceasing affection and devotion she showed him. Following his father's advice, he simply considered all the elaborate stories she told him to be fairy tales she made up because she liked creating them herself better than listening to the radio, watching movies or reading books.

John enrolled his son in the local public school and then enlisted in the Army. Fearful of the possible reception and the questions he would be asked, he never went to see his parents. Soon, very soon, he left for basic training, and Tess Marlowe and her son were alone together.

Entering second grade in midyear, James was subjected to a certain amount of hazing, but it was rather limited after he followed his father's instructions and went berserk against the boy who had been the toughest in the class. Although this boy was a bit larger and more than a bit stronger than James, he was totally unprepared for what happened to him that afternoon in the schoolyard after dismissal when, after knocking James books from under his arm, he found himself set upon by a veritable wild animal. Cries of "dirty fighter" were to no avail, and the kicking, clawing, biting onslaught only ended when the other boy broke loose and ran.

This little boy recently had seen a prison/gangster movie in which a squealer had been ostracized and eventually had been driven insane as a result of his solitary confinement in the midst of his fellow prisoners. He decided that the way to get revenge on James was to organize a similar isolation. Little did he imagine James neither noticed it nor would have asked for more if he had. James was already developing into a loner, partly because he knew he could never bring another little boy home because of his mother but also because the energy he otherwise might have directed toward friendship with someone his own age was bound up in devotion to his father.

Academically James did quite well, but he was always sure to make one or two mistakes so he would neither be perfect nor best. As noted earlier, Tess had taught him to read and write and do arithmetic beginning at the age of three so that he could protect himself against unscrupulous ministers of state who might attempt to get him to approve legislation not in his interest. This made most school work very simple for him. He did, however, have some initial difficulties with history as he learned that all of what is mother had told him about the thousand in year history of their kingdom bore no relationship to American History.

And Tess, what about Tess? She merely incorporated John's departure for military training into the events of her fantasy life. Her husband, no longer the Handsome Prince but now the Great King, had had to go off to war at the head of his great army to do battle with the legions of evil which had been besieging their land for many years. Often as she masturbated, she saw visions of him dressed in a sky blue uniform sitting astride a beautiful white horse amidst his generals as he guided his troops to victory from a hilltop overlooking the carnage his army wrecked upon the enemies who had been plaguing her since she was a young girl.

She maintained their home quite carefully against the day of his return; cooked, cleaned, bathed and usually talked quite rationally to James about what he was doing in school, what the weather outside was like and when he thought his father might return. On the other hand she also warned him of the signs to watch out for in order to detect the approach of a dragon, which since he was not yet the big, strong, grown-up dragon slaying prince he someday would be, he would do well to avoid. As long as he lived, James could see himself standing before his mother who was seated on the couch with an anxious look on her face. She had just listened to something such as a multiplication table which was part of the coming day's school work. Before she sent him off to school instead of admonishing him to look both ways before crossing and then only when the light was green, she made him recite, "A good sign that a dragon is nearby is finding fresh, thin, bright gold scales about the size of a fingernail. If they're darker, almost brown, it means they were scraped off the dragon's belly days or even weeks ago, but bright gold means he was there hours or maybe even only minutes ago, and it would be wise to go by another route. You can always tell a dragon is coming toward you if you hear four quick clicking sounds on the concrete because even when a dragon makes himself invisible, he must let each one of his claws down individually as he walks..."

Tess had no idea of what had happened to her parents. In her fantasies she was now the Queen, and order of succession been what it was, this more lest required her to consider her parents dead. Accordingly she prayed for their departed souls, but she did not do this often.

James spent most of his afternoons after school exploring first his own block in the neighborhood and then the adjacent ones for about half a mile in every direction. In Lake George he had known every path and clearing in the several square miles of woods where he had hunted, and he studied and remembered this portion of the central Bronx with equal diligence. Soon he knew which buildings were locked and which were open, where their rear doors were, what their roofs and fire escapes looked like, how tall and easily climbed their rear fences were, which alleys were cul-de-sacs and which could be followed through to the next street, etc. He also carefully reconnoitered the area surrounding the apartment building where his Uncle Robert and Aunt Marie lived. A few times he fantasized about attacking it with great siege engines as if it were the medieval fortress of an evil king and queen both of whom he had to slay in hand to hand combat before he could triumphantly free his mother and father from their musty dungeon.

While he usually was happy on his return from these little adventures, the ones in the neighborhood of his aunt and uncle were very unsatisfying because he knew the scenarios he had made up were unreal. He was a child, and his aunt and uncle were grown-ups who at any moment could exercise awful power over him. Maybe even now they were contemplating coming over and checking up on him and his mother. James was very frightened of the possibility that while his father was away, they might come and take him from his mother leaving her helpless and sending him to a Catholic school where, he had heard, the nuns regularly beat the pupils with large sticks for even the slightest infractions. Once to see what it might be like, he slapped his knuckles fairly hard with a wooden ruler. As might be expected he found it very painful. He vowed to himself never to go without struggling as hard as he could either to resist if it was possible or to flee if it was not. He envisioned living in the streets surviving by fishing money out of gratings the way he had seen a hobo do it, with a long string which had a flat weight tied to one end. On the bottom of this vasoline was smeared so that when it was let down through to a grating to just above the coin and then released to fall the last few inches onto the coin, it stuck and made it possible to reel the coin back up. James even carried a string with a weight and retrieved pennies, nickels, dimes and even an occasional quarter, especially from the subway grates along the Grand Concourse.

Winter passed with James taking care of his responsibilities quite successfully. He never appropriated a nickel for a candy bar that was not entered into the ledger. He went to the bank and deposited his father's checks, went to the stores and shopped, went to the landlord and got rent receipts and went to school and studied, all without incident and all without a great deal of contact with other children.

When spring came, one thing changed which led to an event of major if not the highest significance in James life. When the weather improved and the days grew longer, the neighborhood children begin playing in the streets. Most of them ignored James because he ignored them, but one was different from the others.

Daniel Cooper was worse than the ordinary bully. He was fourteen years old, large for his age and possessed of a genuinely sadistic mentality. He was the oldest of five children whose father was dead and whose mother had little time out from her work as a seamstress to mind her children who were growing up almost wild in the streets. The Cooper family lived in an apartment building directly across the street from James'. James had explored this building as he had many others, but by some stroke of good fortune he had not encountered Danny, as he liked to be called, but eventually the inevitable occurred. James was a few doors from home looking right in front of himself as he walked, making no eye contact with anyone, when he passed Danny on the sidewalk going in the opposite direction.

Suddenly James felt his arm grasped very hard and heard a harsh, adult like voice demand,

"Who're you, little punk?"

At first James struggled to break loose, but the hand held him fast. Instant terror coursed through his heart. He knew he had no one to fall back upon, no one to save him, but summoning all the courage he could, he flew at his assailant with all the force he could muster. Unfortunately for Danny in the long run this defense proved totally ineffectual. Danny held James at arm's-length while he flailed away with both his arms and legs which were too short to reach the body of his tormentor. Danny never had seen a small child whom he could not cow by the sheer force of his large size and brutal presence, and he was becoming enraged at the pain, however minor, he was experiencing from the little fists striking his forearm.

"What's your name, you little prick?" Danny snarled as a crowd of children begin to gather. James only vaguely heard this repetition of the question. When James did not respond, Danny spun him around and began twisting James arm behind his back. "Tell me your name, or I'll break your fucking arm," yelled Danny right into James ear. James screamed in pain but said nothing. Then Danny reached into James' pockets with his free hand and searched until he found his money, forty-seven cents to be exact. " I'm gonna to keep this dough if you don't tell me your name, you little bastard," said Danny.

In spite of the pain, pain worse than he ever had known, James continued trying to wriggle free, and fearing he would lose his prey, Danny pulled him close and put his hand over James' face to hold him firmly against his chest while still twisting James' arm behind his back. Danny held him this way for several seconds during which James could not move at all. Then James suddenly wrenched his head to the side and sank his teeth into Danny's wrist with all the adrenaline enhanced strength he had. His small, sharp teeth broke Danny's skin and sank in clear to the bone. James tasted the salty, sweet sensation of Danny's blood as it flowed into his mouth through the gash he had made. It was now Danny's turn to cry out in pain. He could tell he could break this little animal's arm and he would still not release his jaws, so Danny let go of James intending to hit him with a rabbit punch on the back of his neck hard enough to knock him unconscious, but as soon as he felt his arm freed James eased his bite and ran toward his house. It was only an instant that Danny was too dazed to act, but it was long enough for James to open the front door of his building with the key strung around his neck, enter and shut the door behind him.

Bleeding profusely, Danny ran after him only to find the heavy glass and wooden door shut. His rage was all consuming. Not only had he been humiliated in the presence of at least a dozen of the neighborhood children whom he had regularly terrorized, robbed and for the last year sexually molested, he had suffered this mortification at the hands, or rather the teeth, of someone barely two-thirds his height and one-half his weight. "I'll get you for this, motherfucker. I'll get you for this," Danny yelled as he impotently watched James scurrying up the stairs toward his apartment.

James sat down near the top of the second flight of steps leading to the roof door. It was unlikely anyone would come up that far in the next few minutes, and James wanted to compose himself before seeing his mother. As both the pain in his arm and the taste of blood in his mouth began to subside, fear gripped his heart. He knew he was all alone, had no one to protect him from this awful bully who clearly intended to beat him very badly if he ever got the opportunity, and it was almost inevitable he would. Then an even greater horror enveloped him. What if this bully were to attack him right after he had cashed one of his father's checks? If he stole all his money, he and his mother would go hungry, even might be unable to pay the rent and be thrown into the street. His father had told him how hard it was to find an apartment now that the war was going on, and he knew he would be in terrible trouble if they lost their apartment on account of him.

James knew he had to do something, but he was not sure what. He was tempted to get his father's snub nosed .38 Special revolver and shoot his tormentor, but he recognized that although the gun would neutralize the bigger boy's advantage in size it would be very difficult for him to get away with shooting him in a street full of people, and even if no one was around, he had read enough about ballistics to know an expert could identify which gun a bullet had been fired from, so since he could neither explain the disappearance of one of his father's guns nor keep a murder weapon, he ruled out shooting Danny.

James straightened his clothing, combed his hair and went down to his apartment. He sat quietly as his mother related her day of dealing with assorted ministers and subjects. He ate dinner, listened to a few radio programs and went to bed. Although he was distracted from his fear during the afternoon and evening, his night was full of horrible dreams of being caught and beaten by Danny. One of these which was particularly vivid involved Danny pulling off his leg and beginning to eat him alive.

For the next two days James was filled with fright on his way to and from school. He left his apartment building by the back door and climbed over a fence at the rear so he could emerge a block away in case Danny was guarding the front of his house. As he was coming home from school on Friday, a little blond girl his own age passed him in the street and tauntingly said, "I'd hate to be in your shoes. When Danny catches you, he's gonna kill you. He's sitting on his roof watching the whole neighborhood for you."

Having had little contact with other children, James did not understand this was an exaggeration. He genuinely believed Danny intended to take his life. He imagined how painful it would be to die being kicked and punched to death and dreaded how disappointed his father would be when he learned he had failed to care for his mother. He sneaked in the back away, went to a front staircase window and peeked out the side. Sure enough, there was Danny sitting on the edge of the roof looking up and down the street with a small telescope. James went to his apartment more scared then ever. How could he escape the vengeance of this maniacally vigilant older boy? He could think of nothing. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he dissimulated his anguish in his mother's presence, and when he went to bed, he could not sleep at all. His little body trembled, and his mind was paralyzed by fear of imminent pain and death.

At last around midnight his thoughts cleared briefly, and he said to himself, "This can't go on. I've got to do something. I've got to kill him before he kills me. I can't shoot him, but there are other ways to kill somebody... Maybe I could stab him with a knife... No, he's too big for me even with a knife. He could take it away from me and use it on me... There has to be something..." James mind grew more and more calm as he became confirmed in his decision to kill Danny. All it was now was a matter of devising an effective means.

At last James visualized Danny sitting on top of the wall around his roof, and an instant later he knew what the answer was. He would hide on Danny's roof behind some crates next to the chimney, and as soon as Danny sat down over the edge, he would run at him from behind and push him off. "Now I've got you, you creep," thought James as he set his alarm for six o'clock.

That night as he slept when Danny ran toward him in his dreams, James waited until Danny was about to pounce on him and then reached out and pulled a large lever which suddenly had materialized next to him. Abruptly a small area of sidewalk fell away from under Danny, and James looked down into a pit to watch as alligators thrashed and devoured Danny who screamed in agony. After the alligators were done, James pushed the lever back in place, and it and the pit vanished. James slept soundly for the rest of the night.

James arose quickly at the sound of his alarm clock and shut off the buzzer immediately. In the dark he dressed in his usual street clothes except for one detail. He put on his sneakers so he could move silently across the roof without alerting Danny or giving away his presence to the tenants of the top floor apartments. By 6:15 AM he had made his way across the street, through the side alley and back door and up the stairs to the roof. The old fruit crates he had seen near the chimney when he had explored the building two months ago were still there along with some new ones. Silently he set them up to form a structure which though it maintained the randomness of the previous pile would not only conceal him and permit him to see the entire roof it would also allow him to emerge from its cover rapidly and noiselessly. Wadding some papers for a cushion, James got down on one knee on the cracked, old roofing tar and rested his forearms on a box.

Just in case his hunting blind, and that is was what James called it, did not work and Danny spotted him, James had concealed his mother's seven inch carving knife along the inside of his left sneaker. He thought for a while about how best to employ this if he had to and then decided that at the first sign Danny had discovered him, he would draw his knife with his right hand, hold it behind his back to hide it and charge Danny with his left fist out. When Danny grabbed his left hand, he would stab him as near to the heart as he could get, several times if possible. He also intended to pierce his throat if the got a chance because he knew from butchering game with his father that the throat was the most vulnerable place to drain blood from a body.

His plan made and twice visualized, both his attack plan if all went well and his defense if something went wrong, James’ mind entered the state of timeless alertness he had experienced while hunting for game. The James he knew ceased to exist and was replaced by the serenely confident predator. He could have waited motionless in this position for the entire day, but it was only two hours later James heard steps coming up the staircase to the roof. The door opened, and as soon as it closed, James saw it was Danny. His heart did not beat faster from fear or his mind cloud with hatred. Rather he simply continued in the transcendental waiting/hunting state breathing deeply and evenly as his father had taught him. He was, however, completely ready for action just as he had been the entire two hours he had waited.

Danny looked around the roof and appeared to notice the rearrangement of the boxes. He stared at them for what seemed to James like hours, and James thought, "If he takes one step towards me, I'll have to charge, or I'll be stuck back here where I can't move around. It's too bad I had to change the boxes, but before there was just no way to hide behind them and still see out." At last Danny turned and walked to the front of the building. He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out his telescope. First he leaned over the edge which was about chest high. Resting on his elbows, he surveyed the street below. James eyed his back patiently. A few moments passed, and James began to wonder if Danny was going to sit on the wall the way he had the previous day. James concentrated hard on the image of Danny climbing up on the wall just as he would have focused his visualization on a rabbit coming into the clearing, a hunting technique his father had taught him, and finally Danny lifted his body up onto the wall and began dangling his feet over the edge.

James did not hesitate an instant. Soundleesly he emerged from behind the crates, and keeping low to avoid being seen from the buildings next door and across the street, he ran straight at Danny's back with his fists out and shoved with all his might. Danny's precariously balanced body was easily dislodged from its perch. As soon as he saw Danny was off the roof and heard him begin to scream, James ran to the door and started down the stairs. Listening carefully for people in the halls, he heard no one. As he had expected, everyone living in the front of the building probably rushed to their windows to see what had happened. James raced unobserved to the basement, entered the alley to the rear yard, and crossed by the garbage cans into the basement of the building facing the next street before anyone had entered the hallway in Danny's building. He hid next to the coal bin as two women emptied their trash and spoke in a language he did not understand. Soon they were gone, and James made his way out into the street a block away from his own. He circled around two blocks and entered his apartment building from the rear. Looking out the front staircase window, he saw the blanket covered body, the weeping woman and the small crowd which had gathered. Then he saw the police car pull up.

"The creep is dead," thought James. "He'll never hurt anyone again. I did the right thing, but there's no point in worrying mom. I'll keep this to myself... I guess what I did was murder even if I had to do it... The way murderers get caught is talking too much. It happens all the time in the movies. I'll never tell anyone... It was real smart to push with my fists. That way I didn't leave fingerprints." James went into his apartment well before his mother got up to make breakfast and well on his way to being the one that got away.

X

The memory of what he had done that Saturday morning and what led up to it left James conscious mind quickly. It was not that James was squeamish about having killed someone and was repressing it. He forgot about it because he was indifferent to that fact and considered it unimportant. He had had a problem, and he had solved it. On a deeper level his mind was somewhat altered because he had been faced with a dilemma and had handled it successfully by killing someone, and successful solutions have a way of evolving into behavior patterns. This is not to say James had enjoyed taking Danny's life. He had not, but now he was more predisposed to this response to a difficult situation than he had been before. Of course, since James was still only seven years old, none of this was on a particular verbal or conscious level. If it had been, his words and thoughts would be recorded here. Furthermore James was not even remotely inclined to the notion that every time a bigger child knocked his books out from under his arm that he ought to hunt down and slay this child. For cases of this sort he had his father's advice to go berserk, something which almost always would work with a slightly larger child, particularly a cowardly bully

James had almost completely forgotten Danny by the following Wednesday when he was walking home from an errand a few blocks from his home. Abruptly a little girl about a year younger than himself fell into step with him. Her clothes seemed somewhat messy, her long, auburn hair only partially brushed and her skin a bit dirty, but what was most immediately apparent was the sad, lonely look in her eyes. "You must be glad Danny's dead," said the little girl with a slight lisp.

Who's Danny?" asked James who never had heard the name of his assailant.

"Daniel Brian Cooper," said the little girl. "Don't you know, the bully who twisted your arm the other day, the one who fell off the roof. I was there when he did it to you. I thought you were so brave not giving into him. It must've hurt something awful."

James carefully recorded the name "Daniel Brian Cooper" before noncommittally shrugging his shoulders. "People who talk too much get caught," he thought.

"Well, I'm glad he's dead," said the little girl with unconcealed hatred. "He did bad things to me."

"Like what?" asked James his child's curiosity aroused.

"I can't talk about it. He said he'd killed me if I told."

"But he's dead. He can't hurt you."

"I guess... If you really want to know and you'll be my friend and promise not to tell anybody else, you can come in my house, and I'll tell you. My money works in a factry till late. I'm home alone till midnight. I go to bed all by myself."

"Okay," said James, and she led him into an apartment building across the street from where they had been walking. She took the key around her neck out from under her dress and used it to let them into a third-floor, rear, walk up apartment. James noticed right away it was a lot different from his own. Clothes were strewn everywhere and not just children's clothes but also adult clothes, and the sink was full of dirty pots and dishes. The place smelled funny, too.

"Do you want a glass of milk and some cookies? My mom leaves lots for me. I'll share them with you 'cause you're my friend."

"Sure," said James and, "thanks," when she placed them in front of him on the table.

James glanced silently around the kitchen and the other parts of the apartment which could be seen through the kitchen door. Chaos was everywhere; an unmade bed with newspapers on it, two adults dresses thrown on the couch, a little girl's dress on an easy chair and dirty underwear all over the place. James was not so fastidious as to be repulsed by what he saw, but he was glad his own home was not like this.

"My name's Kathy, Kathleen Delaney. What's yours?"

James Marlowe."

"Do your friends call you 'Jimmy?'"

"No," said James who never had been called "Jimmy."

After a few moments of eating quietly Kathleen said, "I'm glad you're going to be my friend. None of the other kids play with me. They make fun of me all the time."

"Why?" Asked James wondering if he should go near Kathleen if no other child would.

"I shouldn't tell you. You won't play with me, and you'll tease me like everybody else."

"I thought you said you'd tell me everything if I was your friend," said James remembering Kathleen's remark offering to tell him all about Danny.

A pained look crossed Kathleen's face as if she had been betrayed before in this area. "Promise you won't tell anybody and still be my friend and not tease me if I tell you everything?"

"Yes," said James knowing he would not be even remotely inclined to poke fun at her in no matter what she told him because he hated all the teasing he saw children giving each other every day in school. In spite of the fact that he had killed in cold blood, in many ways he was gentle for a child his age and had no desire to hurt someone who was no threat to him. He was also aware he would avoid Kathleen completely if he did not like anything she told him.

"I have a problem," said Kathleen pausing a long time during which James looked across the table at her patiently but impassively. She clearly was searching her limited vocabulary for a discreet way of stating her difficulty and at last went on ambiguously, "Sometimes I have accidents," hoping this would be all she would have to say.

Unfortunately James' response was no help to her six-year-old sensibilities. "Accidents, what kind of accidents?"

Finally after another long pause Kathleen blurted out, "Sometimes I pee my pants. I can't help it. I get scared, and I can't hold it in. I did it a bunch of times in kindergarten. I wasn't the only one, but I did it more than anybody else, and I'm the only one in first grade who's done it. They call me 'Kathy Pee Pants' and won't play with me. Please be my friend anyway. It's not such a bad thing to do. I'll be real nice to you and do anything you want."

A number of considerations passed through James mind. His father had taught him to weigh things carefully and estimate their consequences before making decisions, and James thought this was a good time to think about what he had heard. Oddly enough in spite of the fact that he had been toilet trained well before the age of two and never had had any difficulties since then, he found her bladder problem a matter of indifference. No large amount of attention had been focused on this aspect of his development. Since both his parents had bad memories of their early years, he had been taught to find bodily functions normal and ordinary, not dirty. He even had been told that if he had an accident, he would not be punished, just that he should try not to, and since Kathleen seemed to be trying, nothing more could be asked of her. On the other hand James clearly recognized she was an outcast, and his father's warning about standing out immediately came into his mind.

"I've never seen you in my school. Where you go?" He asked.

"P. S. 119. Where do you go?"

"P. S. 26. I think the street I live on is the border," said James thinking, "She's a little dirty, but she seems nice. She goes to another school so if I come to her house, no one's going to find out and tease me... And I don't have to take her to my house to play... It's too bad my mom's the way she is, but she is. I can't have anybody over... Her mother works. She'll never have to know about me, so she'll never want to call my mom about anything. She's pretty, too, nice long, red hair. I like her nose. It turns up funny."

While James was deliberating, he did not noticed Kathleen becoming increasingly agitated. At this point he did not recognize the importance of his decision for her. Unlike him she was desperately lonely, and this opportunity for a friend, a friend who was older and braver, meant more to her then James could imagine. At last James said, "Okay, if you'll do what I say, I'll be your friend," and to give him his due, he did not mean this in any tyrannical sense. He merely wanted to prevent Kathleen from saying or doing anything which would draw attention on himself and his mother, because by this point he vaguely understood both that certain people who were called "crazy" were locked up and that his mother, however nice she might be, was one of those "crazy" people.

The relief on Kathleen's face could not have been greater if she had been spared from a firing squad. She jumped up, ran around the table and hugged James quite hard. "I will, I will, cross my heart and hope to die... Ooh, I've got to pee... Wanna, watch?" asked Kathleen the excitement of the moment having proved too much for her.

James was not especially eager to accept this offer but heard in her voice a tone which indicated she thought she was suggesting a substantial treat so rather than turning down her gift, he followed her into the bathroom where, to his surprise, she quickly undressed and squatted in the bathtub. "Can I let go? I can't hold it much longer. It's starting to hurt."

"Sure, go ahead," said James indifferently. He did notice for the first time in his life the basic external distinction between boys and girls but felt only minor interest in watching Kathleen urinate. She avoided her feet as well as she could in the narrow tub but seemed disappointed at James' inattention.

"Why don't you pee in the toilet like everybody else?" asked James hiding his increasing confusion.

"I usually do, silly. I did it so you could watch it come out of me. Danny made me do it this way. I hated doing it for him, but I thought you'd like it. I wouldn't mind doing it for you," said Kathleen distressed her gift had gone unappreciated.

"No big thing to me one way or the other. What else did Danny do?"

"While I peed, he'd rub his cock up and down till it squirted baby stuff on me. I hated it when he did that. I only did it cause he said he'd twist my arm till I did, and it hurt something awful. It was all sticky and slimy... But if you want to, I'll let you. You're my boyfriend, and I'll let you do anything you want 'cause you're nice to me."

"What's'baby stuff' and 'cock?'"

"'Cock' is what you've got between your legs where I've got my pussy," she said pointing at her vagina. "When grown-ups want to make a baby, the man puts his cock in the woman's pussy, and he squirts baby stuff in her. Danny told me about it. He stole a book about it. You can't do it till you're grown-up... I'm so glad he's dead. Last week he told me he was going to put his cock in my pussy 'cause it'd make him feel good. I'm still real little down there. It'd hurt horrible... You won't do that to me, will you?"

"No," said James firmly. The account of Danny watching Kathleen was merely silly to him, and the "squirting" business both incomprehensible and mildly distasteful, but the notion of hurting, apparently very badly, a lonely, frightened little girl who seemed quite nice was utterly repugnant to James whose only training about causing pain had been that it was very wrong not to kill an animal as quickly and cleanly as possible or to cause it needless suffering. "I'm glad I killed him, really glad," thought James. He was tempted, very, very tempted, to reveal to Kathleen that he had killed Danny both because of the gratitude he anticipated and the bond a common secret would allow them to share, but he resisted with all the self-discipline his father had taught him, and he recalled one of the maxims his father had made him learn, "It's not a secret if two people know."

"Put your clothes on, Kathy. I won't hurt you. Friends don't do things like that to each other."

He noticed his little playmate's relief as she quickly dressed, ran some water in the tub and asked, "Do you have to pee?"

"Yes," said James realizing he did. "Can I watch... Please?" pleaded Kathleen.

"If you want," said James unbuttoning his fly and relieving himself.

"Did Danny do anything else to you?"

"Sometimes he punched me and twisted my arm, but that's all."

"How long'd he do this to you?"

"'Bout five times, ever since I told him my mom wasn't home afternoons a month ago."

"Did you tell anybody else?"

"No, just him and you."

"Well, from now on don't tell anybody else. You got into a lot of trouble and almost got hurt real bad. That ought to teach you to keep your mouth shut. You can tell me everything 'cause I'm your friend, but if I'm gonna be your friend, I don't want you getting in more trouble so promise me you won't tell anybody anything from now on," said James trying to sound like a much older, wiser big brother, and also trying to ensure that no one would know anything about any relationship he might have with Kathleen.

"I promise."

"Don't tell anybody I come here either, not even your mother."

"I promise."

"Okay," said James bored with bathroom topics and confident Kathleen would keep silent. "Have you got any games? Do you know how to play rummy?"

"Yeah, my mom showed me. I've got a deck. Wanna play?"

"Sure," said James glad to be back on familiar ground, and the two children went back to the kitchen table for an hour. Eventually James said he had to go because his mother would worry about him.

Kathleen asked when he would see her again, and James said he did not know. "Just come home after school, and if I can make it, I will."

"Okay," said Kathleen happier than she ever had been.

James, too, was elated as he walked home. Here at last was a little playmate with whom he could share his afternoons, play cards and board games, draw pictures, make believe, listen to the radio and generally do the things he had seen other children do but which he had missed out on until now. That she was a girl made no difference to him. He was only interested in her eagerness to be his friend and her willingness to please him. Intuitively he recognized this gave him an upper hand, but he did not envisaged exploiting this in any way because it seemed she was genuinely satisfied by the same innocent pastimes he enjoyed. As for her display of sexual precocity he considered it Danny's fault and assumed she would be happy going to the bathroom alone now that she realized he was not interested in the same things Danny was. His lack of interest in sexual matters, which was not surprising for that time at his age, was furthered by the fact that what she had said did little more than repeat an answer his parents had given him when he had asked where he had come from, "When a mommy and a daddy want to make a baby, it grows in the mommy's belly till it's big enough, and then a doctor takes it out," a very advanced answer for 1940. He also had been told not to reveal this information to other children because most parents lied to their children and got very angry if they learned the truth. Since James already had accepted several parental injunctions regarding secrecy, he had had little difficulty adding this to the growing list of things he had to keep to himself.

The spring of 1942 wore on, and James continued his daily life of going to school, running errands and playing with Kathleen . He also regularly performed a series of exercises prescribed by his father most of which were intended to enhance his shooting abilities. By temperament he was a cheerful child, but as the weeks passed, his anticipation of the long-awaited return of his father, however brief he knew it would be, led him to a fever pitch of excitement.

At last the day arrived, and PFC, he had made PFC, John Marlowe came home from basic training. Like almost everyone else in the U.S.A. he had been convinced of the righteousness of the Allied cause before enlisting, and during boot camp James' father had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the belief that this war was, indeed, a conflict between the forces of light and forces of darkness, unquestionably a matter of black and white wholly without gray areas.

The first three days of John Marlowe's leave were school days allowing John and Tess ample time to drink deeply from the cup of their flesh, but each afternoon when he came home, James found his father fully dressed in his uniform prepared to regale his son with stories of what he had learned in basic training; the weapons he had learned to use, the rigorous discipline he had been taught to accept and the honor and glory he intended to bring to his family and country by performing deeds of great valor in defense of good against evil.

John made it clear to his son over and over, " If we fail, if we lose, nothing good will remain in the world. Tyrants will rule the earth and kill anyone who disagrees with them about anything. We are a country ruled by laws. Even the President must obey the laws. In their countries their rulers don't have to follow laws. They can do anything they want, and their people're no better. They do whatever they want because they're stronger than the people they've defeated up till now, and they think that's right just like bank robbers think it's okay to rob banks. They kill and steal and take their pleasure however they want. They're whole nations of outlaws led by madman," he concluded trying to explain the state of the world in terms a seven-year-old could comprehend, and James took his father's words into his mind as well has he could and saw the situation as a battle against armies of bullies like Danny seeking to conquer the small, weak children like himself and Kathleen and then to make them squat in a bathtub to pee before hurting them very badly in ways he was not exactly sure about, ways he knew would be excruciating for him and her but which they in their evil nature would find pleasurable."

To some extent James saw his father as the only thing standing between himself and these horrible tortures. If James had loved his father before for the love he had given him, now James also looked upon his father as a bulwark against the collapse of morality and order in the world. James was not certain what "morality" and "order" meant, but he knew they were important because his father repeated the words several times and expected James to understand them. The best James could come up with was the notion that his father was going to try to prevent the evil people from hurting him and his mother and other nice, weaker people like Kathleen and that if he failed, only the brutally strong, violent and ruthless would survive. Since James did not want to disappoint his father, he acted as if he understood everything his father said.

One very important thing which ought to be noted here is that at this time James did think he understood the difference between good and evil being the governing principles in the world. For him "good" simply implied a world where people were nice to each other, and "evil" implied a world where people could do to each other whatever hurtful things their personal and/or national strength might enable them to get away with. James saw it as a toss up over who might win and thought it possible his father, who symbolized all good things for him, could make a difference. James still had in his mind traces of his mother's teachings that his father was a great king who stood for all the goodness in the world and who actually could lead the forces of good to victory.

James saw himself as good but weak because of his size, and he fervently hoped good would win because he himself had no desire to harm another person in any way and had never grasped how or why other children, or adults for that matter, since his father clearly had indicated this possibility, could derive pleasure from another's fears and pain. Furthermore he dreaded what life would be like into world ruled by armies of Danny's, a world in which he might have to deal with everyone the ways he had Danny himself, an idea he did not relish at all.

The fourth day of John Marlowe's leave was a warm, sunny Saturday, and late morning found James and his father strolling down the Grand Concourse the mile to the Yankee Stadium. John told his son stories of baseball greats he had seen play. James listened in awe as his father talked about Babe Ruth's home runs. James was ecstatic with pride about being seen with his handsome father in uniform and with expectation of his first major league baseball game as he now skipped, now hopped, now ran down the street, but he still listened carefully to the things his father told him, one of which was soon to give James greater knowledge about himself.

"It's wartime, so a lot of the best players are in the service," said John, "but it should be a good game anyway... I sure do wish I could see Ted Williams play. Last year he batted .406. He's the first player in a while to hit over .400. He must be something to see. He came to the big leagues after we moved to Lake George, so I've never seen him. I read in the paper he has eyes so good only one man in ten thousand has 'em as keen. They say even when Bob Feller throws his hundred mile an hour fast ball, Ted Williams can stand there at the plate watching the seams on the baseball turning as it comes toward him..."

John bought them tickets for lower deck seats about ten rows behind home plate near the first base side of the screen. James listened attentively as his father explained the mysteries of keeping box score. His own child's initial response was that it would be quite adequate to follow the scoreboard in center field, but if his father thought this devotion to detail was necessary, he would accept his father's wisdom. "It's very important," his father said. "You have to keep exact records of what you've seen, or you won't be able to use any new facts you've learned to build your understanding... Like I always keep records of what loads I shoot, which ones work better and how different factors effect performance... Baseball isn't quite that precise. You have to be meticulous with guns, but it helps to have box scores of games youve seen."

"What's 'meticulous?'" James asked.

"Very, very careful," John Marlowe stressed realizing he had inadvertently touched on the subject to which he had to refer with the utmost caution in the presence of his small son.

The game began, and John Marlowe's soon noticed his son was observing each pitch with an intensity which surprised him. When the Yankees came to bat and the third inning, James asked, "Can I go down to the screen and watch a few from there? I'll come right back."

"Okay," answered his father, "but only a couple. People don't want you blocking their view."

James ran down to the screen and watched four pitches before returning to his seat saying triumphantly, "I can see 'em, too. I wasn't sure I could back here, but down there I can."

"You can see what?" replied John only partially focused on his son.

"The seams on the baseball turning after the pitcher throws it to the batter like you said about Ted Williams."

"I don't think so, son," said John vaguely aware that where his son had stood at the edge of the backstop screen was over fifty feet behind home plate.

"Honest Dad, I really can. On the slow ones I can even see a few from up here, but down there I can see 'em all."

Knowing his son was scrupulously honest with him, John took his mind away from the game long enough to put together such facts as his son's phenomenal abilities as a shootist and game spotter and asked himself, "Maybe he can... How can I check?" but could devise no immediate test, so he said only said, "We'll talk about it later. Pay attention to the game."

James had no difficulty doing as he was told and watched the remainder of the game with fascination. As they walked back up toward Burnside Avenue after the game and James bubbled over repeatedly with, "Wow, did you see..." His father was a bit distracted. The fact that his son might have very acute vision intrigued him, but he could think of no way to verify his son's claim of being able to see the baseball seams turning as the ball came toward the batter. "It could just be a child's fantasy," John thought. "He may believe he sees them without being able to, but what if he can? I suppose I'll just have to settle for some kind of check on his regular sight and figure if that's unusual, he has the speed vision, too."

"James," he said as he looked east across the Grand Concourse and down Tremont Avenue at the row of store signs, "read me the smallest sign you can see."

James looked down the street, but instead of picking something like the second line of the delic