She clapped her hands in joy. "Sure. Find Johnny."
Why was this tic in his right cheek and this sudden tremor in his hands? Did this child with the bright blue eyes mean so much to him that he could not send her after her mother and brother, that he could not protect her from the men on the other side of the door? Why this sudden sweat all over his body?
"Get—" His voice faltered into silence. A knot as big as his fist was in his throat.
"Find Johnny, daddy," Teresa urged.
Bang! The butt of a rifle crashed against the door, giving Holder the strength that he needed. "Get the hell out of my sight," he said.
She went even easier than Johnny had gone as if the younger they were, the easier this process was. She went laughing and giggling. She was going to find Johnny. This was a game of hide and seek, which she had always enjoyed.
Holder tried to swallow the knot in his throat. He moved to the mirror, stood regarding himself in it. Why was his heart pounding so heavily. He, of all men on earth, knew and could prove, that the human body was only a mental construction, that the very atoms in it were held together by the force of a patterned idea, and by nothing else. The pattern on which the body was constructed, the blue-print for the bones, flesh, and organs, this was an idea, and nothing more. The flesh and bones, the blood and sinew, that gave reality to the idea, were in reality only the bricks and mortar, the lumber and metal, that gave reality to an architect's blue-print of a house. When the house burned down, or was otherwise destroyed, the idea still remained. It, and it alone, had life. It, and it alone, had immortality.
Why was sweat spurting from every pore in his body?
Crash! Behind him, the door fell inward.
"Get the hell out of my sight!" he said staring at his reflection in the mirror.