“Don’t crowd him,” a voice was saying. “Give him air, for God’s sake.”
He was lying on something hard, a blur of faces hanging over him, though he saw Lois and Phil clearly, their arms around each other. Wherever he looked, they were there.
His arm was leaking and he waited for Lois to bandage it.
“Stand back,” someone yelled. Sirens going off from all parts of the world. A woman was crying.
“Don’t worry,” Peter said, raising his arm, without the effort of lifting it, to show them that he was all right.
“Look at that,” the crowd was saying. “Look at that arm.”
“You see,” he said, “nothing to worry about. I’m all right.”
The boy smiled. The rain. Lois bent to kiss him.
“The truth is,” he said, “I can’t be killed.” They all embraced. He had never felt so much love.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Phil, Lois—it’s the truth. I can’t be hurt. It’s impossible to kill me.”
He wondered after all—the weather making communication difficult—if they had understood what he was saying. When he closed his eyes he saw that the storm had passed over, the sky now like the inside of a shell. It was all right. As no one before or maybe ever again, he was flying. What more could he want? He wanted. He was, it was true, never satisfied.
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A Man to Conjure With Page 28
