Milt Rand dragged his bleeding psyche around thecountly and returned home.

He would sit and watch the woods from his glassedin back porch, drink beer, watch the fireflies in the shadows, the rabbits, the dark birds, an occasional fox,sometimes a bat.

He had been fireflies once, and rabbits, birds, occasionally a fox, sometimes a bat.

The wildness was one of the reasons be had moved beyond suburbia, adding an extra half-hour to his commuting time.

Now there was a glassed-in back porch between himand these things he had once been part of. Now he wasalone.

Walking the streets, addressing his classes at the institute, sitting in a restaurant, a theater, a bar, he was vacantwhere once he had been filled.

Fherc aie no books which tell a man how to bringback the power he has lost.He tries everything he can think of, while he is waiting.Walking the hot pavements of a summer noon, crossingagainst the lights because traffic is slow, watching kidsin swimsuits play around a gurgling hydrant, filthy watersluicing the gutter about their feet, as mothers and oldersisters in halters, wrinkled shirts, bermudas and sunburntskins watch them, occasionally, while talking to oneanother in entranceways to buildings or the shade of astorefront awning. Milt moves across town, heading nowhere in particular, growing claustrophobic if he stops forlong. his eyebrows full of perspiration, sunglasses streakedwith it, shirt sticking to his sides and coming loose, stickingand coming loose as he walks.

Amid the afternoon, there comes a time when he hasto rest the two fresh-baked bricks at the ends of his legs.He finds a tree-lawn bench flanked by high maples, easeshimself down into it and sits there thinking of nothingin particular for perhaps twenty-five minutes.

Hello.

Something within him laughs or weeps.

Yes, hello, I am here! Don't go away! Stay! Please!

You are—like me... .

Yes, I am. You can see it in me because you are whatyou are. But you must read here and send here, too, I'mfrozen. I—Hello? Where are you?

Once more, he is alone.

He tries to broadcast. He fills his mind with the thoughtsand tries to push them outside his skull.

Please come back! I need you. You can help me. Iam desperate. I hurt. Where are you?

Again, nothing.

He wants to scream. He wants to search every room inevery building on the block.

Instead, he sits there.

At 9:30 that evening they meet again, inside his mind.

Hello?

Stay! Stay, for God's sake! Don't go away this time!Pleu\e 'i/in't' Listen. 1 need you! You can help me.

How^ What is the master?

I'm like you. Or was, once. I could reach out with mym'nd ami be olhrr places, other thinv., other people. Ican't do it now, though. I have a blockage. The power willnot come. I know it is there. I can feel it. But I can't use.. . Hello?Yes, I am still here. I can feel myself going away,though. I will be back. I ...

Milt waits until midnight. She does not come back.It is a feminine mind which has touched his own. Vague,weak, but definitely feminine, and wearing the powerShe does not come back that night, though. He paces upand down the block, wondering which window, whichdoor...

He eats at an all-night cafe, returns to his bench, waits,paces again, goes back to the cafe for cigarettes, beginschain-smoking, goes back to the bench.

Dawn occurs, day arrives, night is gone. He is alone, asbirds explore the silence, traffic begins to swell, dogswander the lawns.

Then, weakly, the contact:

/ am here. I can slay longer this time, I think. How canI help you? Tell me.

All right. Do this thing: Think of the feeling, the feelingof the out-go, out-reach, out-know that you have now.Fill your mind with thai feeling and send it to me as hardas you can.

It comes upon him then as once it was: the knowledgeof the power. It is earth and water, fire and air to him.He stands upon it, he swims in it, he warms himself by it,he moves through it.

It is returning! Don't stop now!

Fm sorry. I must. I'm getting dizzy.. ..

Where are you?

Hospital ...

He looks up the street to the hospital on the corner,at the far end, to his left What ward? He frames the thought but knows she isalready gone, even as he does it.

Doped-up or feverish, he decides, and probably out fora while now.

He takes a taxi back to where he had parked, driveshome, showers and shaves, makes breakfast, cannot eat.

He drinks orange juice and coffee and stretches outon the bed.

Five hours iater he awakens, looks at his watch, curses.

All the way back into town, he tries to recall the power.It is there like a tree, rooted in his being, branching be-hind his eyes, all bud, blossom, sap and color, but noleaves, no fruit. He can feel it swaying within him, pulsing, breathing; from the tips of his toes to the roots ofhis hair he feels it. But it does not bend to his will, it doesnot branch within his consciousness, furl there it leaves,spread the aromas of life.

He parks in the hospital lot, enters the lobby, avoidsthe front desk, finds a chair beside a table filled withmagazines.

Two hours later he meets her.

He is hiding behind a copy of Holiday and looking forher.

/ am here.

Again, then! Quickly! The power! Help me to rouse it!

She does this thing.

Within his mind, she conjures the power. There is amovement, a pause, a movement, a pause. Reflectively,as though suddenly remembering an intricate dance step,it stirs within him, the power.

As in a surfacing bathyscaphe, there is a rush of distortions, then a clear, moist view without.She is a child who has helped him.A mind-twisted, fevered child, dying ...He reads it all when he turns the power upon her.Her name is Dorothy and she is delirious. The powercame upon her at the height of her illness, perhaps because of it.

Has she helped a man come alive again, or dreamedthat she helped him? she wonders.

She is thirteen years old and her parents sit besideher bed. In the mind of her mother a word rolls overand over, senselessly, blocking all other thoughts, thoughit cannot keep away the feelings: Methotrexate, methotrexate, metholrexate, meth ...In Dorothy's thirteen-year-old breastbone there areneedles of pain. The fevers swirl within her, and she is allbut gone to him.

She is dying of leukemia. The final stages are alreadyarrived. He can taste the blood in her mouth.^ Helpless within his power, he projects: ^ You have given me the end of your life and your finalstrength. I did not know this. I would not have asked itof you if I had.Thank you, she says, for the pictures inside you.Pictures?

Places, things I saw ...

There is not much inside me worth showing. Youcould have been elsewhere, seeing better.I am going again ...Wait!

He calls upon the power that lives within him now, fusedwith his will and his sense, his thoughts, memories, feelings. In one great blaze of life, he shows her Milt Rand.

Here is everything I have, all I have ever been thatmight please. Here is swarming through a foggy night,blinking on and off. Here is lying beneath a bush as therains of summer fall about you, drip from the leaves uponyour fox-soft fur. Here is the moon-dance of the deer,the dream drift of the trout beneath the dark swell, bloodcold as the waters about you.

Here is Tatya dancing and Walker preaching; here ismy cousin Gary, as he whittles, contriving a ball within abox, all out of one piece of wood. This is my New Yorkand my Paris. This, my favorite meal, drink, cigar, restaurant, park, road to drive on late at night; this is whereI dug tunnels, built a lean-to, went swimming; this, myfirst kiss; these are the tears of loss; this is exile andalone, and recovery, awe, joy; these, my grandmother'sdaffodils: this her coffin, daffodils about it; these are thecolors of the music I love, and this is my dog who livedlong and was good. See all the things that heat the spirit,cool within the mind, are encased in memory and one'sself. I give them to you, who have no time to know them.