Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

Pretty soon I found myself walking down Jefferson Street, where it cuts through a woody hill before it widens out for car dealers and Burger Kings. There was cars passing me both ways, but I was thinking about other things now. Trying to figure why I never got mad at Mr. Kaiser. Other people treated me nice before, it wasn’t like I got beat up every night or nobody ever gave me seconds or I had to eat dogfood or nothing. I remembered all those people at the orphanage, they was just trying to make me grow up Christian and educated. They just never learned how to be nice without also being nasty. Like Old Peleg, the black caretaker, he was a nice old coot and told us stories, and I never let nobody call him nigger even behind his back. But he was a racist himself, and I knew it on account of the time he caught me and Jody Capel practicing who could stop pissing the most times in a single go. We both done the same thing, didn’t we? But he just sent me off and then started whaling on Jody, and Jody was yelling like he was dying, and I kept saying, “It ain’t fair! I done it too! You’re only beating on him cause he’s black!” but he paid no mind, it was so crazy, I mean it wasn’t like I wanted him to beat me too, but it made me so mad and before I knew it, I felt so sparky that I couldn’t hold it in and I was hanging on him, trying to pull him away from Jody, so it hit him hard.

What could I say to him then? Going into the hospital, where he’d lie there with a tube in his arm and a tube in his nose sometimes. He told me stories when he could talk, and just squoze my hand when he couldn’t. He used to have a belly on him, but I think I could have tossed him in the air like a baby before he died. And I did it to him, not that I meant to, I couldn’t help myself, but that’s the way it was. Even people I purely loved, they’d have mean days, and God help them if I happened to be there, because I was like God with a bad mood, that’s what I was, God with no mercy, because I couldn’t give them nothing, but I sure as hell could take away. Take it all away. They told me I shouldn’t visit Old Peleg so much cause it was sick to keep going to watch him waste away. Mrs. Howard and Mr. Dennis both got tumors from trying to get me to stop going. So many people was dying of cancer in those days they came from the county and tested the water for chemicals. It wasn’t no chemicals, I knew that, but I never did tell them, cause they’d just lock me up in the crazy house and you can bet that crazy house would have a epidemic before I been there a week if that ever happened.

Truth was I didn’t know, I just didn’t know it was me doing it for the longest time. It’s just people kept dying on me, everybody I ever loved, and it seemed like they always took sick after I’d been real mad at them once, and you know how little kids always feel guilty about yelling at somebody who dies right after. The counselor even told me that those feelings were perfectly natural, and of course it wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t shake it. And finally I began to realize that other people didn’t feel that sparky feeling like I did, and they couldn’t tell how folks was feeling unless they looked or asked. I mean, I knew when my lady teachers was going to be on the rag before they did, and you can bet I stayed away from them the best I could on those crabby days. I could feel it, like they was giving off sparks. And there was other folks who had a way of sucking you to them, without saying a thing, without doing a thing, you just went into a room and couldn’t take your eyes off them, you wanted to be close—I saw that other kids felt the same way, just automatically liked them, you know? But I could feel it like they was on fire, and suddenly I was cold and needed to warm myself. And I’d say something about it and people would look at me like I was crazy enough to lock right up, and I finally caught on that I was the only one that had those feelings.

Once I knew that, then all those deaths began to fit together. All those cancers, those days they lay in hospital beds turning into mummies before they was rightly dead, all the pain until they drugged them into zombies so they wouldn’t tear their own guts out just trying to get to the place that hurt so bad. Torn up, cut up, drugged up, radiated, bald, skinny, praying for death, and I knew I did it. I began to tell the minute I did it. I began to know what kind of cancer it would be, and where, and how bad. And I was always right.

Twenty-five people I knew of, and probably more I didn’t.

And it got even worse when I ran away. I’d hitch rides because how else was I going to get anywheres? But I was always scared of the people who picked me up, and if they got weird or anything I sparked them. And cops who run me out of a place, they got it. Until I figured I was just Death himself, with his bent-up spear and a hood over his head, walking around and whoever came near him bought the farm. That was me. I was the most terrible thing in the world, I was families broke up and children orphaned and mamas crying for their dead babies, I was everything that people hate most in all the world. I jumped off a overpass once to kill myself but I just sprained my ankle. Old Peleg always said I was like a cat, I wouldn’t die lessen somebody skinned me, roasted the meat and ate it, then tanned the hide, made it into slippers, wore them slippers clean out, and then burned them and raked the ashes, that’s when I’d finally die. And I figure he’s right, cause I’m still alive and that’s a plain miracle after the stuff I been through lately.

Anyway that’s the kind of thing I was thinking, walking along Jefferson, when I noticed that a car had driven by going the other way and saw me and turned around and came back up behind me, pulled ahead of me and stopped. I was so spooked I thought it must be that lady finding me again, or maybe somebody with guns to shoot me all up like on “Miami Vice,” and I was all set to take off up the hill till I saw it was just Mr. Kaiser.

He says, “I was heading the other way, Mick. Want a ride to work?”

I couldn’t tell him what I was doing. “Not today, Mr. Kaiser,” I says.

Well, he knew by my look or something, cause he says, “You quitting on me, Mick?”

I was just thinking, don’t argue with me or nothing, Mr. Kaiser, just let me go, I don’t want to hurt you, I’m so fired up with guilt and hating myself that I’m just death waiting to bust out and blast somebody, can’t you see sparks falling off me like spray off a wet dog? I just says, “Mr. Kaiser, I don’t want to talk right now, I really don’t.”

Right then was the moment for him to push. For him to lecture me about how I had to learn responsibility, and if I didn’t talk things through how could anybody ever make things right, and life ain’t a free ride so sometimes you got to do things you don’t want to do, and I been nicer to you than you deserve, you’re just what they warned me you’d be, shiftless and ungrateful and a bum in your soul.

But he didn’t say none of that. He just says, “You had some bad luck? I can advance you against wages, I know you’ll pay back.”

“I don’t owe no money,” I says.

And he says, “Whatever you’re running away from, come home with me and you’ll be safe.”

What could I say? You’re the one who needs protecting, Mr. Kaiser, and I’m the one who’ll probably kill you. So I didn’t say nothing, until finally he just nodded and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “That’s okay, Mick. If you ever need a place or a job, you just come on back to me. You find a place to settle down for a while, you write to me and I’ll send you your stuff.”

“You just give it to the next guy,” I says.

“A son-of-a-bitch stinking mean old Jew like me?” he says. “I don’t give nothing to nobody.”