Later that day I was walking in the fields when I met this kid with stooped shoulders and unbearable acne. He might have been nineteen. He came loping up to me all furious with this ungainly stick-man stride, like his limbs were too stiff and long, like he was a marionette controlled by a drunk guy. He got right in my face and sneered.

“Look, what’s all this about?” he said. “You hippies or something? I live in this county, and I have a right to know.”

I was a little taken aback. I mean, he really looked pissed, like he wanted to kick my ass. But I held my composure and fake smiled, waiting for the Spirit to give me words. I was getting better and better at doing that.

“We aren’t hippies, no, sir,” I said.

“Sir,” he said. “What a laugh. Nobody calls me sir. I’m just Byron, thank you very much.”

That was something. Maybe I could work with that.

“Well, I’m Lee,” I said. “And what do you do for work, Byron?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t have a job?”

“Oh, I got a job all right,” he said. “I work the counter at the Shell station over in Merton. Press some buttons and sit on my ass. It’s as close to nothing as anyone could ever do and still get paid for it. I’m like a big human ear, you know? I hear things—gossip, talk of the town, all that. That’s how I come to find out about you people.”

“And why did you decide to pay our community a visit today?”

He shrugged. “It’s my day off. What the hell else was I going to do?”

Listen, whispered the Spirit. Pay attention.

“You didn’t want to stay home on your day off, did you?” I said. He shook his head. I saw a glimpse of a woman in a grey terry cloth bathrobe scowling over a pot of boiled hot dogs. “Because your mother is home, right?”

“She’s always home,” he said. “Never leaves, not for anything.”

I could see images now, more and more of Byron’s life flashing before my eyes like a projector cast over the real world straight from Byron’s mind.

“And she’s angry at you, isn’t she?” I said.

“What would you know about my momma?” he said. He was getting angrier and angrier, his face flushing red.

“She makes you help in the kitchen and beats you with a whisk whenever you mess up,” I said. “It doesn’t hurt, but it makes you feel stupid. Everyone makes you feel stupid, isn’t that right? And what does your father do?”

Byron’s jaw hung open, and his fists were balled at his sides. He looked like he was about to snap, about to bust my jaw open.

“Leave my daddy out of it,” he growled.