“Sometimes I work my brother over,” he said. “I make him squirm, I’ve made him cry. He doesn’t know how I do it. I’m smarter than he is. I don’t want to do it. It makes me sick.”

Kate picked it up as though it were her own conversation. “They thought they were so smart,” she said. “They looked at me and thought they knew about me. And I fooled them. I fooled every one of them. And when they thought they could tell me what to do—oh! that’s when I fooled them best. Charles, I really fooled them then.”

“My name is Caleb,” Cal said. “Caleb got to the Promised Land. That’s what Lee says, and it’s in the Bible.”

“That’s the Chinaman,” Kate said, and she went on eagerly, “Adam thought he had me. When I was hurt, all broken up, he took me in and he waited on me, cooked for me. He tried to tie me down that way. Most people get tied down that way. They’re grateful, they’re in debt, and that’s the worst kind of handcuffs. But nobody can hold me. I waited and waited until I was strong, and then I broke out. Nobody can trap me,” she said. “I knew what he was doing. I waited.”

The gray room was silent except for her excited wheezing breath.

Cal said, “Why did you shoot him?”

“Because he tried to stop me. I could have killed him but I didn’t. I just wanted him to let me go.”

“Did you ever wish you’d stayed?”

“Christ, no! Even when I was a little girl I could do anything I wanted. They never knew how I did it. Never. They were always so sure they were right. And they never knew—no one ever knew.” A kind of realization came to her. “Sure, you’re my kind. Maybe you’re the same. Why wouldn’t you be?”

Cal stood up and clasped his hands behind his back. He said, “When you were little, did you”—he paused to get the thought straight—“did you ever have the feeling like you were missing something? Like as if the others knew something you didn’t—like a secret they wouldn’t tell you? Did you ever feel that way?”

While he spoke her face began to close against him, and by the time he paused she was cut off and the open way between them was blocked.

She said, “What am I doing, talking to kids!”

Cal unclasped his hands from behind him and shoved them in his pockets.

“Talking to snot-nosed kids,” she said. “I must be crazy.”

Cal’s face was alight with excitement, and his eyes were wide with vision.

Kate said, “What’s the matter with you?”

He stood still, his forehead glistening with sweat, his hands clenched into fists.

Kate, as she had always, drove in the smart but senseless knife of her cruelty. She laughed softly. “I may have given you some interesting things, like this—” She held up her crooked hands. “But if it’s epilepsy—fits—you didn’t get it from me.” She glanced brightly up at him, anticipating the shock and beginning worry in him.