When they arrived, they were told to wait on a bench in the gardens. Annie asked Mr. Tivot to carry the bag of candies, so it would seem as if he had brought them, while she held the pie and the oranges on her lap. She felt slightly sick with anticipation. Lew soon appeared, escorted by a nurse. Putting her gifts on the bench, Annie ran to him. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks and barely returned her embrace. The nurse said she would come back for him in an hour and that the doctor would like to see Mr. Tivot before he left.

Sitting between them on the bench, Lew didn’t seem in the least interested in their gifts.

“What d’you do around here?” Annie asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “They keep waking me up. I have to tell them my dreams.”

He touched the back of his own neck nervously a couple of times, for some reason, and then bent forward and seemed to be feeling for something under the bench.

“Have you been having bad dreams?” she said.

He nodded.

Annie saw that his dad was leaning away from Lew, covering his own nose and mouth with one hand and staring at him intensely. Abruptly he got up and, without a word, walked toward the institution.

“Pop,” Lew called, as shocked as Annie by his sudden departure. But he just kept walking and entered the main doors.

“I guess he’s going to see that doctor,” Annie said.

Lew closed up again. He hadn’t looked at her once.

“Heidi got chiggers,” she said. “She showed ’em to me.”

He didn’t respond to this either. After a moment, he said quietly, “I’m sorry I shot the store up. I want to say sorry to your pop.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“I’m sorry I said those things about him. Dr. Walthrop said it’s because I did something I didn’t want to do, so I blamed him because…I don’t really know why. I don’t understand him. But he said it wasn’t lying because I believed myself, and that’s different. Weren’t like I knew I was lying, I mean.”

Annie nodded. He was touching his nape again.

“Did you hurt your neck?”

He snatched his hand away. “No.”

Annie’s insides felt as if they had been scraped out. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

Half turning to her now, he whispered, “I feel them sometimes. But they’re scared of Wah’Kon-Tah.”

“Of what?”

“Yesterday, out by those trees, I found a squirrel and the side that was up was okay, but the other side was all maggots. It’s the last breath and it’s death and life, like the old hallelujah Jesus from the shadows.”

“What? What’s Wah’Kon-Tah?”

“Don’t say it so loud.” He looked at her for the first time, and with fear. “You seen a hawk eat a dove? I seen one do it under my window. And there’s nothing left ’cept pinfeathers. And that breath comes and blows on it and it’s cottonwood. Like years ago out by the river when you said it was snow. Summer snow. ’Member?”