At six, he almost fell asleep, but he jerked awake again. He went downstairs and made himself a pot of strong black coffee, and drank it looking out over the grassy wasteland that led to Schoolhouse Beach and the ocean.

*

The next morning, he parked the Chevy pickup outside the school gates and walked Toby up to the classroom door. Mrs. Novato smiled when she saw him, and they shook hands.

“Mr. Fenner,” said Mrs. Novato. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” said Neil. “I just thought I’d come along to make sure Toby was okay.”

Toby saw Linus, and tugged his hand away from Neil to run after him. Mrs. Novato smiled, and said, “They’re a couple of menaces, those two, when they get together.”

Neil gave her a quick, uncertain smile in reply.

“Mind you,” said Mrs. Novato, “I prefer boys with spirit. It’s the spirited ones who always do the best. Did you know that Senator Openhauer went to school here? He was one of the most disobedient pupils we ever had, or so the principal says.”

“Mrs. Novato,” put in Neil, uncomfortably, “I’m kind of worried about Toby. He says he saw a man here yesterday, out by the school fence, and whatever happened, that man scared the living daylights out of him.”

“He saw a man? Here?”

“Just before he fainted, he told us. Some man in a long, white old-fashioned duster coat, and a beard, and a broad-brimmed hat.”

Mrs. Novato frowned. Behind her, in the classroom, the children were running around and flicking paper pellets. She turned around for a moment, and called: “Class! Let’s have some silence!” Immediately, the children were hushed. Mrs. Novato always meant what she said, and if you disobeyed you got to write out the Pledge of Allegiance ten times.

She turned back to Neil. Thinking very carefully, she said, “I know Toby’s a truthful boy, Mr. Fenner. I never knew him tell him a lie. But I was out there when he fainted, and there wasn’t anybody in sight.”

“He couldn’t have run off?”

Mrs. Novato pointed toward the fence. “You can see for yourself. It’s wide open for two hundred, three hundred feet. If there had been a man there, I would have seen him for sure.”

Neil rubbed the back of his neck and looked out across the hills. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like Toby to make things up. He was sure that he saw this man, and he dreamed about him last night.”

Mrs. Novato laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “I shouldn’t worry about it too much, Mr. Fenner. A lot of the children have been having bad dreams of late. I think it’s become the class craze to have nightmares. Children are very psychologically suggestible, and I think they’ve gotten themselves into what you might call a state of, well, very mild hysteria.”