It

4th or so, when school was called in again, everything is a total blank. It isn’t murky or hazy; it is just completely gone. With one exception: I seem to remember Bill screaming about something called the dead-lights.’
Bill’s arm jerked convulsively. It struck one of his empty beer bottles, and the bottle shattered on the floor like a bomb.
‘Did you cut yourself?’ Beverly asked. She had half-risen.
‘No,’ he said. His voice was harsh and dry. His arms had broken out in gooseflesh. It seemed that his skull had somehow grown; he could feel
(the deadlights)
it pressing out against the stretched skin of his face in steady numbing throbs.
‘I’ll pick up the — ‘
‘No, just sit down.’ He wanted to look at her and couldn’t. He couldn’t take his eyes off Mike.
‘Do you remember the deadlights, Bill?’ Mike asked softly.
‘No,’ he said. His mouth felt the way it did when the dentist got a little too enthusiastic with the novocaine.
‘You will.’
‘I hope to God I don’t.’
‘You will anyway,’ Mike said. ‘But for now . . . no. Not me, either. Do any of you?’
One by one they shook their heads.
‘But we did something,’ Mike said quietly. ‘At some point we were able to exercise some sort of group will. At some point we achieved some special understanding, whether conscious or unconscious.’ He stirred restlessly. ‘God, [ wish Stan was here. I have a feeling that Stan, with his ordered mind, might have had some idea.’
‘Maybe he did,’ Beverly said. ‘Maybe that’s why he killed himself. Maybe he understood that if there was magic, it wouldn’t work for grown-ups.’
‘I think it could, though,’ Mike said. ‘Because there’s one other thing we six have in common. I wonder if any of you have realized what that is.’
It was Bill’s turn to open his mouth and then shut it again.
‘Go on,’ Mike said. ‘You know what it is. I can see it on your face.’
‘I’m not sure I know,’ Bill replied, ‘but I think w-we’re all childless. Is that ih-it?’
There was a moment of shocked silence.
‘Yeah,’ Mike said. ‘That’s it.’
‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ Eddie spoke up indignantly. ‘What in the world does that have to do with the price of beans in Peru? What gave you the idea that everyone in the world has to have kids? That’s nuts!’
‘Do you and your wife have children?’ Mike asked.
‘If you’ve been keeping track of us all the way you said, then you know goddam well we don’t. But I still say it doesn’t mean a damn thing.’
‘Have you tried to have children?’
‘We don’t use birth control, if that’s what you mean.’ Eddie spoke with an oddly moving dignity, but his cheeks were flushed. ‘It just so happens that my wife is a little . . . Oh hell. She’s a lot overweight. We went to see a doctor and she told us my wife might never have kids if she didn’t lose some weight. Does that make us criminals?’
‘Take it easy, Eds,’ Richie soothed, and leaned toward him.
‘Don’t call me Eds and don’t you dare pinch my cheek!’ he cried, rounding on Richie. ‘You know I hate that! I always hated it!’
Richie recoiled, blinking.
‘Beverly?’ Mike asked. ‘What about you and Tom?’
‘No children,’ she said. ‘Also no birth control. Tom wants kids . . . and so do I, of course,’ she added hastily, glancing around at them quickly. Bill thought her eyes seemed overbright, almost the eyes of an actress giving a good performance. ‘It just hasn’t happened yet.’
‘Have you had those tests?’ Ben asked her.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ she said, and uttered a light laugh that was almost a titter. And in one of those leaps of comprehension that sometimes come to people who are gifted with both curiosity and insight, Bill suddenly understood a great deal about Beverly and her husband Tom, alias the Greatest Man in the World. Beverly had gone to have fertility tests. His guess was that the Greatest Ma n in the World had refused to entertain even for a moment the notion that there might be something wrong with the sperm being manufactured in the Sacred Sacs.
‘What about you and your wife, Big Bill?’ Rich asked. ‘Been trying?’ They all looked at him curiously . . . because his wife was someone they knew. Audra was by no means the best-known or the best-loved actress in the world, but she was certainly part of the celebrity coinage that had somehow replaced talent as a medium of exchange in the latter half of the twentieth century; there had been a picture of her in People magazine when she cut her hair short, and during a particularly boring stretch in New York (the play she had been planning to do Off Broadway fell through) she had done a week-long stint on Holly wood Squares,