Joe laughed, reared back his great burly head and just roared. Sean loved to watch Joe laugh, especially if it was at one of his own stories. Joe had a full ginger beard, ringing the bottom half of his face and spreading down over his neck and onto his upper chest. When he laughed in full the beard shook, his mouth opened and his straight hard upper teeth showed, lined up like grinning sentinels against the roof of his mouth. Sean almost feared the staggering display of Joe’s laughter, but when it was for him, he basked.

"The poor son of a bitch!" Joe gasped out. "First—what was it? The damn truck breaks down, then the leopards, then the na-tives—" Joe had a distinctive cadence that reminded Sean of John Cleese at his most agitated—"then the poor fellow thinks he’s safe…Ah, where d’you get them, Sean?"

Sean didn’t know. He’d been telling tall tales as long as he could remember. It had never been difficult for him; in fact, it was an almost unconscious process at times. Sometimes the stories came unbidden, and from nowhere Sean’s head would begin wheeling and spiraling with the makings of a great tale. Other times, and these more often, there was a seed; a news story about a man getting hit by a bus, and Sean would immediately take the threads he could gather and begin spinning. Suddenly the man was a wild child who’d been raised by wolves, experiencing the city for the first time. The man would be called Kruf, or Noz, or something strangely exotic though monosyllabic, and Sean would imagine in pitying detail the cheap suit the poor misfit would wear, not quite long enough in the cuffs, one point of a blue clip-on tie sticking out at an odd angle from his stiff-starched collar.

This Noz or Zar or Brun would be innocently savoring his first-ever cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, standing before a newsstand trying to decipher the headlines of the Times or the Post but getting constantly distracted by the cover of Jugs or Chunky Asses, when a pigeon would unceremoniously shit on his head. Dismayed, Nob or Buz would look up, grunt, protest, and shake his dirty-nailed fist, and at that moment, some tool on rollerblades would speed by, snatching poor Og’s new DKNY shoulder bag, knocking the hot coffee on him in the process. Stunned for a moment while an NYU photography student took pictures of our bewildered friend for his study in Urban Immediacy, Shnok or Diz would take a moment to decide where the worst trouble was coming from, then he’d dash across the street after the rollerblade thief. But Roc or Bob or Tim would be unused to these odd foot-coverings called "loafers," and would do a classic face plant right in the middle of West 44^th Street. And that would be the point at which the bus, with our young hero totally unawares, would come barreling through, carrying 67 geriatric Jerseyites toward the 2 PM matinee of Les Mis, and make our wolf-boy’s first day in the city his last.

Wherever it sprang from, Sean always had a story to tell. It was a compulsion. And luckily for him, his new neighbor Joe was a captive audience. Even on his weaker days, Sean knew he could make Joe laugh to beat the band. They were sitting together in Sean’s apartment, about four beers to the wind apiece, following another triumphant Yankee game, and Sean was in full swing, moving toward the climax of his tale.

"Well go on, then," said Joe when he’d gotten breath back, his avuncular face flushed, his beard sprawling in unkempt poufs from his face. God, his beard’s like a separate person, thought Sean.

"Well now I forget where I was, Joe, when you laugh like that," said Sean, beaming uncertainly.

"The demons, my boy," Joe winked back.

"Of course! The demons." Sean paused a moment, puzzled. "Well, out come these creatures—much bigger than humans, nine or ten feet tall, at least—with slick-looking skin and hair reaching out toward him like snakes. Lionel knew he was in huge trouble. He had enough experience as a missionary to deal with natives or lions—"

"—Leopards."

"Hm? Oh that’s right. Or leopards…but this was like nothing he’d ever seen. Ten of these creatures, red-skinned and spiny, with shining green eyes like a cat’s he’d had once, only diabolical." Sean paused again; he felt his head spinning a little. He tried to recover and go on, grinning in what he hoped was a diabolical fashion. Joe laughed. Sean’s grin faltered.

"Uh…they surrounded him, making a tighter and tighter circle around the unlucky priest, who held out his crucifix." Sean held his two hands before him as though grasping a cross, turning frantically this way and that, his level of melodrama building. Joe chuckled, lightly.

"Back, spawn of Satan!!" Sean cried out, in the character now, spinning in the midst of the imagined creatures, his eyes wildly afire.

"Then they closed," Sean went on, quietly, "and they closed…their wings stretching with a leathery sound, like a thousand creaking doors to hell—" his voice rose again at this—"Lionel screamed out prayers and exhortations to God and to the devil as well, but—to no avail…" Sean collapsed to his knees and was silent, his face tensed, his eyes looking nowhere.

"Then, what, my boy? The payoff!" cried Joe.

"What?" Sean looked up from his abstraction. Joe’s head was lit from behind; his bald pate shone, the fringe of hair around it glowing like an orange halo. His mouth and that twisted beard spread wide in an anticipatory grin; his eyes, with their vaulted-roof eyebrows raised, wide and waiting, burning.

"And…" Sean sputtered, "That’s it. That’s the last thing he ever saw."

There as a silence of about ten seconds, while Sean breathed and stared at Joe, who watched the crazed and sweating boy, still kneeling on the floor at his feet.

Then Joe burst out laughing.

When Joe had gone home that night, Sean continued to drink alone. The TV blinked and flashed its blank blue messages silently across his face as he sat, sipping his seventh Bud Light. He had put the TV on mute hours ago and never shut it off.

What happened tonight, his buzzing head kept asking. True, his stories had a way of putting the main character in one disastrous situation after another, the total effect building to a level so cataclysmic as to leave the world of tragedy and launch into the most improbable slapstick. But this had been different.

He had read of a missionary back in the ‘60s, Father Lionel Banks, who’d been mauled and killed by a leopard in Africa. At least, that had been the conclusion when his body was found. It had been picked nearly clean, then the bones had been charred. Therein lay the mystery. The authorities figured the bones had spontaneously combusted from the dry heat of the desert summer, and closed the case.

Of course the story sparked Sean, and when he got home from working at the video store, the movie in his mind began to take shape.

He’d met Joe when he was working one night, nearly four months ago. Joe was renting some obscure British and American medieval-type movies, and a copy of Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail.

"This is one of my favorite movies, man," Sean had said to the customer. He always tried to add a little personal touch to what would otherwise be a monkey’s job.

"Do you know I’ve never seen it?" said Joe, cocking an eyebrow.

"No shit? And you a Brit—right?"

"Yes—Manchester in fact. Listen, my dear boy, I’m new in the area and I need to get a video card."

They chatted a bit more while Joe filled out the info. It turned out that the man was a professor of medieval history at Oxford, and was doing a visiting professorship at NYU. The movies were research—he was planning on teaching a class on the images of medieval times in cinema.

"Not an area I’d explored really in depth before," Joe said, handing the form over.

Looking at the form Sean figured out the guy was living right across the street from him—an odd coincidence, but after all, this was New York.

"Hey, man, you’re my neighbor," Sean said when he saw the address.

"Am I now?"

"Yeah—hey, if you need anything, I know this town’s rough when you first get here—come on over. I’m in 291, apartment 2B."

"That’s very kind of you—you could perhaps fill me in a bit about life here?"

"Sure thing. Hey, you like baseball?"

"One of the first things I should learn, I suppose, if I’m going to be in America."

"Well, stop by tonight if you’re free and watch the game with me and have a few beers."

"Thank you, son."

"Sure thing. But bring the flick."

"The—"

"Holy Grail, man!"

"Right, yes, of course!"

And so it had begun. From the beginning of baseball season when they’d met, the odd pair would periodically hang out, have some beers (Joe even learned to like it cold), and watch a game or a movie. Often, they would talk about England and America, or about their lives. But after the first story that Sean ever tried out on Joe, their visits invariably had one thing in common. Each time Sean made something up to tell Joe it became crazier, grander, more epic than the one before it. Joe seemed to bring out the bard in Sean; his material had never been more lavish or more entertaining. Joe even took to calling him Scheherazade at times.

So after the Yanks and Sox game tonight had ended, it was storytime. But something had gone wrong. Somehow, the story had been telling him.

Sean glanced out his little dirty window to where Joe lived. On the opposite side of one of the Village’s many tiny side streets, Joe occupied the second floor of an ancient but charming brownstone. By another odd coincidence it faced the second-floor window of Sean’s closetlike studio, with its rickety futon couch and efficiency kitchenette.

Sean saw the light go on across the way and quickly got up and turned out his own light. Standing against the wall a few feet from the window, he watched, every muscle still, as the portly professor moved past his own window and switched on the light in the kitchen. The Joe moved back past the window and switched off the light he’d originally turned on. All of this was done very methodically, slowly, while Sean listened to his own breathing and cursed himself for forgetting to turn off the TV, which still blinked and jumped behind him.

Joe came back to the window and looked out. He paused a moment, took a deep breath that made his considerable belly swell, then threw the window open in one smooth, forceful motion. Sean could hear the sudden inrush of wind, the footsteps, talking and honking in the streets a story below, though that didn’t make any sense. His own window was closed.

Joe stared out the window and across the way, seemingly straight at Sean. He can’t possibly see me, thought Sean, who was still against the wall but able to see out the window at an angle. Joe would have to be angled as well in order to see him, but he was staring straight out. The side glow from the kitchen made it look as though Joe’s face was producing a light of its own as he slowly smiled across the street.

Just before he closed the window again, Joe winked.

That night Sean had the dream, the dream that had crept somehow into his story of Lionel Banks. It was a recurring dream that he’d never told anyone until tonight: he is standing in a moonlit field, he has no idea where, when ten demonlike creatures appear from the mist. He cannot see their faces; he only knows that their presence means his doom. They surround him, their wings creaking like a hundred mastheads in a high wind—

He woke, for the fifth time that night. He looked over from his futon bed to the window. Joe’s lights were all out.

The TV was still on. He thought he’d finally remembered to turn it off before he went to sleep. He flailed around under the couch/bed for the remote, found it, and looked up at the screen. Comedy Central was showing Holy Grail, the part where the knight gets his arms and legs chopped off and is still trying to fight. Without sound, it wasn’t funny. He shut it off, turned over, and realized he’d been wrong. Across the way, the blue light of a television flashed its intermittent signals of hilarity and woe in Joe’s apartment.

The next day Sean got up around 11 a.m. and showered, noting with some pleasure that the water stayed much hotter much longer than usual. He’s just been thinking about that, though he hadn’t called the super about it yet. Steaming and happy (though slightly hung over), Sean moved toward the kitchen in his towel, relishing the idea of his first cup of coffee. He opened the cabinet above the sink to grab the coffee can—

But there it was, hot in the pot, already made. Odd. He must have prepared it before he’d gone to sleep; pushed the button before he went in to take his shower…Sean shook his head to clear it, poured himself a cup, and went to the window.

"Shit." Looking out, he noticed that it was already well into the fifth shitty, rainy day in a row; the kind of rain that did nothing to bust through the New York July heat-and-humidity stew. "Can’t we get just one nice fucking day?" He turned away from the window and sat on the sill, sipping, delaying his walk to work as long as possible. He had to go in at one.

About ten minutes later, as he moved to leave, Sean noticed he didn’t have his keys. His eyes scanned the small room and there they were: sitting in the middle of his coffee table.

In the middle of a sunbeam.

Sean strode down the street with purpose, looking around at the newly beautiful day. The air had a strange tang to it, as though it were carrying lightning on its back and couldn’t discharge it. But it was warm, not hot, and a breeze kicked up and pushed Sean along.

Meanwhile the usual pageant rumbled around him: hookers in doorways, homeless folks with their sandwich-board signs and change cups (one, always Sean’s favorite, stomped around shouting Barry Manilow songs all day and wore a sign that said, "Will shut the fuck up for food"), arty students and young professionals strutting past the mob, couples of all types walking comfortably, hand-in-hand. All was altered somehow, though; all charged with possibility.

As he turned the corner Sean heard shouting from a nearby building. Looking up, he saw three painters, balancing atop a rickety scaffolding. Two of them were arguing, a perfect prescription for disaster, Sean thought. He watched a while, amused, as they squabbled over…Sean wasn’t sure what. The direction of their strokes? How many coats to apply? He could hear little besides the swearing that peppered the conversation, so he began to invent dialogue for this in his head; it might become a story later. As he watched, the painter on the right began shaking his brush in front of the middle guy’s face. Flick, thought Sean. As if on command, the paintbrush-wielder reared his brush back and then quickly forward, spattering paint on the middle guy’s face. Sean, somewhat astonished, chuckled. Meanwhile, the black guy on the left was painting on, obliviously; he was wearing headphones. Sean imagined the music inside him, the heavy thrum and bass of rap music. The painter started to move, to dance. Endless possibilities, thought Sean. The original screamer had turned from the middle guy and was now staring at the left-hand guy, who was dancing more enthusiastically now, moving his roller in time, one hand up on his left ear, pressing the music closer. Sean heard it: poom, bap! Poom, bap!…and suddenly, he could hear all.

"And what the hell do you think you’re doing, you empty-headed fuck? Do you hear me, boy?" the right-hand painter, ostensibly the foreman, was shouting at the man with the headphones. "We’re here to do a job, not dance around, ya fuckin’ ballerina." The foreman grabbed the headphones and walkman from the man and threw them off the scaffolding, out into the air.

"Hey what the fuck you doin’, man? You ruined my headphones, whattup!? I’m doin’ the job! Whassyour problem!"

"I’ll tell you what my problem is. You’re my problem, boy," said the foreman. "What do you think this is, some kind of…"

Support group for the rhythmically challenged?

"…of—support group for the rhythmically challenged, you fuck?"

Sean nearly dropped his bag to the sidewalk. Everything seemed to stop for a moment. What the hell was happening? But he could only stare up at them and keep spinning.

"Who you callin’ rhythmically challenged," the guy on the left retaliated. "I bet you dance like…"

Mr. Rogers with a hernia.

"…like Mr. Rogers with a hernia, man!" The guy on the left laughed, surprised at his own joke.

"Yeah, what the hell, dude?" the guy in the middle finally spoke up again. "He wasn’t hurting anyone, he’s just getting the job done with a little flair, is all. Back the fuck up, dude."

"Why don’t you two losers just do your goddamn job? And I don’t want any more lip from you, boy."

"You just call me ‘boy’ one more time," the black guy menaced.

This could get interesting, thought Sean, up on that rickety thing…and back and forth the scaffolding started to sway. He could feel his contempt for the foreman building; oh, what an ass he could make him look…

"I’m in charge here," the foreman went on. Watch that wet paint, "and I say when, and what, and how a job’s gonna get done around here. Now I don’t want yyaahh!" And down the foreman went, slipping in the paint, on his ass. Sean cracked up, the two other painters followed suit. This was getting better and better.

Now just try to get up, and the foreman struggled, and cursed, but his feet could find no purchase on the tiny scaffolding, and he just kept scrabbling, like the bug he was.

"Ain’t he just like…like a bug, man, caught in a puddle!" said the black guy, wiping the paint off his face and laughing. "I had enough of this shit, man, I quit."

"I’m with you, dude," said the middle guy, and the two made ready to climb down. Oh, one for good measure, just a foot, thought Sean toward them, and the middle guy gave the foreman a little kick, which sent him into new scrabblings and cursings until he was finally on his feet, holding onto the railings.

Sean watched, as if in a dream, as a dump truck full of dirt came around the corner.

Forgive me this, thought Sean, and, grinning from ear to ear in anticipation, put into the foreman’s mouth the only words that would make the perfect thing happen.

From deep in his throat the foreman growled: "Get back here, you nigger."

There was a pause, enough for the black guy to turn around and look at the guy slowly, menacingly. "What the fuck you say?" And here comes the truck, the black guy gave the foreman a right to the jaw that sent him over the side after the headphones, and four stories down poompf into the soft dirt in the truck. Stunned, the foreman did nothing for a moment, and the other two stood on the scaffolding, looking terrified. Come on, it’s funny, and the foreman sat up, stuck all over with dirt and splotches of white paint. Sitting up in the truck he looked like a startled Holstein cow. Sean laughed. The two men up on the scaffolding roared. And Sean, dazed, kept on walking to work.

Sean began to understand, slowly, what was happening to him, though he almost refused to believe it. Where last night he’d felt like he was losing control of the stories, now he seemed to be actually making them happen. What could this mean? He had to tell Joe—all day, he almost couldn’t wait to see the man. Why this urgency to tell him, in particular, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t question it. He passed the time making a coworker drop a pile of videos he was precariously balancing in his arms; blinking out the lights in the store, then closing it, claiming a power outage, for an hour while he and the other people on the shift smoked out. Once, for fun, he aimed his thoughts squarely at a tub of microwave popcorn a customer was holding, and the thing started popping and rising uncontrollably in the guy’s hands. This was great; this was what he had always wanted. But why now?

At around seven o’clock he stepped out to the small park near the store and sat on a bench, eating the sandwich he’d brought for dinner. The sun was almost down; the tree behind him filled with birdsong. All the time, he sat and contemplated, considered the possibilities: could he get the girl who came into the store every Friday night with her hulk of a boyfriend to go out with him? Could he influence his landlord to lower his rent? Better yet, could he get a new place, a better place, and make the landlord charge a pittance for it?

"You could decide who the next president will be," said a voice suddenly close to his ear. "You could destroy a small country. You’re not thinking big enough, my boy," whispered the unmistakable Northern brogue.

"How…how did you know what happened?" Sean felt his legs and innards turn to water; if he hadn’t been sitting, he’d have fallen.

"I’ve been watching, old chap," Joe went on. "Waiting. Once I found you, you just needed a little push, a little practice." He sighed, almost wistfully. "Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for this opportunity?" He chuckled wryly, low in its throat. "No, of course you don’t. You have no concept at’all." Sean continued to stare straight ahead; the older man was leaning on the back of the bench behind him, his mouth close to Sean’s ear. "You could go straight to the top with this, son. Don’t you realize the power you have, here?" He tapped one finger on the side of Sean’s head. Sean jumped and looked over at Joe for the first time. He gasped; Joe looked at least ten years older than he had the night before, and seemed to be aging before his eyes.

"What’s…what’s happening to you?"

"My time’s running out, dear boy, now that you’ve discovered your…gift. And no, this process your imagination cannot stop. But there is one thing you can do for me." Sean went on staring, in horror, as the great ginger beard slowly transformed, growing thinner, greyer, as the mounds of flesh on the man’s cheekbones began to wither to bone.

"My God, Joe, you’re dying! What’s happening?"

"Don’t worry, son, just help me. You have to give yourself over."

"What are you saying?"

"This power you have…you’re only beginning to realize it. You don’t even know what to do with it, do you? You’re just out for a few laughs…and I understand that." Joe’s voice was starting to falter, to quaver like an old man’s. "But I, oh I would be able to use it, to employ it…wouldn’t you like to change the world, Sean?"

Joe’s hand was now in a visegrip on Sean’s shoulder; the hand felt like ice. Sean became aware that his forehead was wet, and so was his crotch; he’d pissed himself.

"Now, Sean, that’s not very manly of you, is it? Come on, now, we can make this easy, or we can make it hard. Your choice, of course. You can choose anything, now."

Sean summoned his mind at this, and looked into Joe’s face. The eyes, green and great, were almost translucent, glowing, and in a flash he saw inside the man’s thoughts. It seemed Joe had some sort of shield up against Sean’s mind, but Sean could see bits and pieces: a burning village, black-haired women and children running from the houses; a trench, like he’d seen in Holocaust documentaries, filled four-deep with skinny corpses; an ornately dressed man, perhaps a king, lowering his head to the guillotine; a medieval battlefield, the mud red from so much blood spilt, and a man in armor on a horse, screaming silently, both of his arms missing, the stumps gushing. It wasn’t funny without sound.

"You see me, don’t you," Joe was saying.

Sean gulped, felt warmth rising in his throat. "Yes."

"I don’t have much time left. I need a new…shell. You’re not using this body to its full capacity, my dear boy, you must see that! So much young sinew, such a finely made face…and you, frittering away your life in a video store, getting high and making painters fall from scaffolds." Joe was tracing the lines of Sean’s face with a diminishing finger, still holding his shoulder with his other clawish hand.

Sean felt a current beginning to run between his ears; a kind of stream, in his right ear where Joe continued to whisper, through his head and then swirling about inside his skull. This was an inroad, he suddenly knew; Joe was making his slow and stealthy way into him, keeping him distracted and paralyzed with fear and promises of glory. He didn’t know how to shut it off, how to set up roadblocks the way Joe had done. But then Joe had years and years of practice, didn’t he.

"That’s right, son, you win the big prize of the day. You guessed it. About once a generation someone like you comes along. An ordinary person, with extraordinary gifts. Your Lionel Banks was one. But he…got away from me.

"Father Lionel Banks?" Sean slurred. His lips felt like fuzzy balloons.

"Oh, yes. He was a bona fide healer, not one of these phonies, but he wasn’t interested in exploring the possibilities…I guess you could say I’m just a very high-aiming opportunist. After all, someone’s got to put these things to use! Ah, but power is always wasted on the decent and the mediocre. You should have seen Genghis Khan when I first met him. Pathetic." Sean just breathed, trying to keep his thoughts for his own just a little longer, while Joe went on. "Of course, the medieval period was my favorite: so much originality in the torture field, and the weapons—why, you could chop a man’s limbs clear off, and through chain mail at that, with one swing of those medieval broadswords. Those flimsy foils of the Renaissance period did nothing for me. There was gunpowder shortly after that, and that was fun, but I still miss the old-fashioned sweep of metal, that unmitigating clang it made against plate armor…ah, those times…Are you ready, my boy? There’s so much waiting for us."

Sean felt Joe getting deeper and deeper, his thoughts becoming less outside his head, more his own. It was terrifying, and somehow thrilling; he began to let himself go.

"Imagine the wars you’ll wage with just a flick of your mind, Sean," Joe was droning on like a hypnotist, "imagine the glory you’ll achieve. The women you’ll have…you could be anything, do anything. Don’t resist anymore, it will only hurt a moment."

Sean closed his eyes. What did he have to lose, after all? His life was pretty meaningless. He was twenty-six. He worked in a video store. He would like to make movies someday, maybe revive the genre of the screwball comedy. But what of that? It would never happen to him. Maybe this way it would.

"Could we…could I…make movies?" Sean slurred through slack lips.

"Movies? Of course. That’s what we’re all about. The world is our silver screen. We’ll rewrite the great tragedies—"

"—and the comedies?"

"Oh, what good are comedies, son? They don’t show you real life. It’s all about suffering, and who comes out on top. From now on, it’ll be you. Doesn’t that count for anything?"

Joe’s mind was leaking farther and farther into Sean’s; the line between them was becoming blurry. Sean opened his eyes a slit. Night had nearly fallen; few people were walking around in the business district. No one noticed the boy, sitting slack on the park bench, and the ancient man turning to a skeleton at his side. As the barrier between the minds softened, Sean could see more of Joe’s history, moving chronologically like a film retrospective, every episode bloodier, more horrifying than the last. Until at last, he saw himself, a black cape flying from his shoulders, walking toward the camera of his mind, a flaming world behind him. His eyes were glowing, a green-yellow, like a cat he’d once had.

Sean gathered the strength that his own mind had left, and began to dream. He could feel Joe’s thoughts reeling in momentary confusion, then he saw them: ten demons, each at least ten feet tall, coming out of the trees that surrounded the bench. At their appearance, Joe stiffened.

"Sean…stop this, now, you don’t know what you’re doing," Joe said. With his doubts, his hold on Sean’s mind weakened. Sean dreamed harder, and sound came: the aching pull of twenty flexing wings, like an immense circus tent swaying against a hurricane.

Sean opened his mouth, and whispered. "Then they closed…and closed…" The creatures, demons or no, came closer, and Sean felt their breath hot on his face. He welcomed it. He looked at them through his slitted eyes: they were lovely, graceful, not really like demons at all. Their leathery skin shone with inner fire, their eyes glowed, not with malice, but benevolence. Their wings were touching each other now, making an impenetrable circle. They were closing, and Joe was panicking.

"Sean! Stop this, now. This is only a dream. You’re wasting it! What are you doing!!"

Sean opened his eyes in full. The creatures moved closer, tighter, the circle became hotter and hotter. A cloud of mist, or steam, surrounded them, but as they approached, Sean finally could see their faces, not just their eyes, their terrible wings. Their faces were all colors, shining: silver, gold, red, blue, a color for each one, and their hair, streaking in unfathomable lengths from their sleek foreheads, poured down and in and surrounded Sean and Joe with their luminescence. The hair had a life of its own, like Joe’s beard, Sean thought, then laughed aloud at this absurdity. That beard had fallen away already; there was only this heat, this hair that bound them even as he watched, the eyes that consumed them. He only vaguely heard Joe’s protestations now; his mind was strong, and he let the dream take them.

The next morning, nobody could say what had happened. In a tiny park adjacent to a small video store, a park bench stood, or tried to: the entire middle section had been burned out. The ends leaned into the ground prayerfully, the charred grass between them still smoked. There didn’t seem to be any signs of life around the site, except the sound, that visitors there occasionally reported, of a door that needed oiling, or an old tree leaning in the wind, and what sounded for all the world like a young man, laughing his head off.