I could hardly speak to my father that night. I avoided him.
At the creeping edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects mixed with reality and my room walked full of people from all the books I had read—all to evaporate as my father's face grew, from a cluster of white foreheads and myriads of eyes, into him.
"Johnnie, wake up ... are you sick?"
"Please go away from me and let me alone." I turned my face to the wall in loathing.
"I'll call a doctor."
The doctor came. He felt my pulse. Put something under my tongue. Whispered my father in a room, apart. Left.
My father returned, dejected, yet trying to act light and merry.