Report from the Interior (27 page)

… the colors felt more vivid than any colors you had seen before, so lustrous, so clear, so intense that your eyes ached.

… spaceships landed out of the night sky …

In the face of evil, God was as helpless as the most helpless man …

… you live in dread of the morning when the cup will slip out of your hand and break.

… a vast collection of biographies with stark black silhouette illustrations interspersed among the pages of text.

… games that always ended with a last-second touchdown pass …

Poe was … too florid and complex a writer for your nine-year-old brain to grasp …

The following year, you wrote your first poem, directly inspired by Stevenson …

Holmes and Watson, the dear companions of your solitary hours …

But best of all, most important of all, the thing that solidified your bond with Edison to the point of profoundest kinship, was the discovery that the man who cut your hair had once been Edison’s personal barber.

… mock battles in your suburban backyards, pretending to be fighting in Europe (against the Nazis) or on some island in the Pacific (against the Japanese) …