‘Yeah,’ he whispered, and again, in a soft-focused flood of enlightenment, ‘yeah-h-h-h…’ He wagged the piece of mesh tubing at her. ‘I saw him. Thompson.’ The tubing caught his eye then and he held it still, staring at it. He shook his head, closed his eyes. ‘I was looking for…’ His voice trailed off.
‘Thompson?’
‘Nah!’ he grunted. ‘I never wanted to see him! Yes I did,’ he amended. ‘I wanted to beat his brains out.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. You see, he—he was—aw, what’s the matter with my head? ’ he cried.
‘Sh-h-h,’ she soothed.
‘I can’t remember, I can’t,’ he said brokenly. ‘It’s like… you see something rising up off the ground, you got to grab it, you jump so hard you can feel your knee-bones crack, you stretch up and get your fingers on it, just the tips of your fingers…’ His chest swelled and sank. ‘Hang there, like forever, your fingers on it, knowing you’ll never make it, never get a grip. And then you fall, and you watch it going up and up away from you, getting smaller and smaller, and you’ll never—‘ He leaned back and closed his eyes. He was panting. He breathed, barely audible, ‘And you’ll never…’
He clenched his fists. One of them still held the tubing and again he went through the discovery, the wonder, the puzzlement. ‘Had this a long time,’ he said, looking at it. ‘Crazy. This must sound crazy to you, Janie.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘You still think I’m crazy?’