V

Look at yourself, boy,” Blue would say to Sin-Sin. “Read you like a book. How you gonna keep folks out of your soul?”

“What? What did I do?”

“You think you got something missing, don’t you, boy?”

“Huh?”

“I can see it in the shape your body makes when you move through these trees. All slouched over and into yourself, like a big old empty fisheye in the middle of your chest. You think I’m the only one what sees it? The only one what know?”

“Know what?”

“About what you think is gone.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do, boy. Sure you do. Take your time and let your body feel and remember. It’s still there, you the only one what thinks it’s gone.”

“What’s gone? I don’t think nuthin’s gone.”

“What about your daddy?”

“Don’t got no daddy.”

“Everybody gots a daddy, boy. Even you. Let me see your hand. I’m gonna rub some of the green from this leaf on it. There. See the way them lines come together in the middle? What kind of shape that look like to you?”

“Looks like a wide-open eye.”

“It is a eye. You gotta eye right in the middle of your hand. The Old Ones say you got one of these, you got all kind of power. You can touch things and know them. You can put your hand to something broken and make it feel all right. You can see all kinds of things with that hand, boy. You sit yourself down and look on it for a while. Look in it and see, but don’t use your eyes. Use what you got inside to see.”