Inside a Silver Box by Walter Mosley Page A

been struggling against something: his siblings, the foster care authority, the police … He’d been stalking the streets, likely to fight with anyone he came in contact with. He’d been shot, stabbed, beaten, incarcerated, chained, abandoned, and even raped; this last humiliation he could not admit to his new friend. Every one of those experiences, and dozens of others, were like the door behind which the evil alien race, the Laz, was kept by Used-to-be-Claude. He had walked through each door that contained his suffering. But now under this impossible sky, he couldn’t even lift a finger to get himself into trouble.
    This day was a new day for the first time that Ronnie could remember. He didn’t mind his paralysis. There was nowhere he needed to go.
    *   *   *
    H OURS LATER, WHEN Ronnie wasn’t even paying attention to the tops of trees and depth of blue, he became aware of pain. It was the spot over his left eye where the demon bird had pecked him, where the carnivorous bird took his second beakful of human flesh at the beginning of a feast that might have lasted for days if not for Loraine.
    The pain grew, traveling down his face into his neck and spine. From there it followed the thrumming into his joints. Ronnie could perceive his entire skeleton like a series of burning stars that made him a constellation, the kind Miss Peters had taught him about in the third grade.
    The Dead Man, Ronnie thought, that would be the name of his constellation: a floating corpse thrown out from its coffin by earthquake or flood and then lifted to the heavens by God.
    His joints were like fiery sparklers that children ran around with on the Fourth of July. His being was on fire but still he couldn’t speak a word.
    At one point, he saw off in the woods behind them an impossibly huge animal. It had shaggy brown hair like a Rasta, an egg-shaped head, and big sorrowful eyes looking down on him.
    Ronnie tried to call out, to tell Lorraine about the spectacle and the danger, but he couldn’t move a muscle, and the vision soon faded into the distance.
    *   *   *
    W HEN THE SKY began darkening, the pod slowed gradually until coming to a halt. Lorraine appeared there above him again. This time her face was streaked with sweat.
    “That was great,” she said. “I never felt so good in my life. I bet we went over a hundred miles and I didn’t hardly feel it until we stopped.”
    Ronnie didn’t mind the pain. He was glad to have a friend.
    “We’re next to another pond,” she said. “I’ll bring you some water. I hope you can drink some.”
    Lorraine disappeared for a time and then came back with her cupped hands lined with leaves and brimming with water. She tried to pour the liquid into his mouth but there was no give there. Somehow, though, the water seemed to cause the thrumming and burning sensations to merge.
    Ronnie wanted to crawl out of his skin. He felt like the snakes that Miss Peters had spoken of so often; the creature that shed its skin and emerged bigger and stronger than ever.

 
    SIXTEEN
    F OR HOURS, FROM early evening into night, Lorraine sat next to the seedpod sled, regaling Ronnie with bland stories about her family life: summer camps and chess club, her first kiss and how her father used to carry her on his shoulders.
    “One time my mom took me to Saunders and Son to buy a dress for a birthday party I was supposed to go to,” she said under a sliver moon. “I was five and the birthday girl was Janet Powers. She used to make fun of me because I had a lisp, and so I didn’t want to go. My mom just thought that all little kids were friends and accepted the invitation for me without asking. But when I told her that I didn’t want a dress because I didn’t want to go, and why, she bought me a pair of red cowboy boots and we went to the botanical gardens in Brooklyn instead.”
    Her voice was normal again but she went on and on. To anyone else the stories might have been dreary, but Ronnie hadn’t