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As the many fires broke through the roofs of the burning buildings, a column of heated air rose more than two and a half miles high and one and a half miles in diameter.... This column was turbulent, and it was fed from its base by in-rushing cooler ground-surface air. One and one and a half miles from the fires this draught increased the wind velocity from eleven to thirty-three miles per hour. At the edge of the area the velocities must have been appreciably greater, as trees three feet in diameter were uprooted. In a short time the temperature reached ignition point for all combustibles, and the entire area was ablaze. In such fires complete burn-out occurred; that is, no trace of combustible material remained, and only after two days were the areas cool enough to approach.

Eliot, rising from his seat in the bus, beheld the firestorm of Indianapolis. He was awed by the majesty of the column of fire, which was at least eight miles in diameter and fifty miles high. The boundaries of the column seemed absolutely sharp and unwavering, as though made of glass. Within the boundaries, helixes of dull red embers turned in stately harmony about an inner core of white. The white seemed holy.

14

EVERYTHING WENT BLACK for Eliot, as black as what lay beyond the ultimate rim of the universe. And then he awoke to find himself sitting on the flat rim of a dry fountain. He was dappled by sunlight filtering down through a sycamore tree. A bird was singing in the sycamore tree. "Poo-tee-weet?" it sang. "Poo-tee-weet. Weet, weet, weet." Eliot was within a high garden wall, and the garden was familiar. He had spoken to Sylvia many times in just this place. It was the garden of Dr. Brown's private mental hospital in Indianapolis, to which he had brought her so many years before. These words were cut into the fountain rim:

"Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled."

Eliot found that someone had dressed him for tennis, all in snowy white, and that, as though he were a department store display, someone had even put a tennis racket in his lap. He closed his hand around the racket handle experimentally, to discover whether it was real and whether he was real. He watched the play of the intricate basketwork of his forearm's musculature, sensed that he was not only a tennis player, but a good one. And he did not wonder where it was that he played tennis, for one side of the garden was bounded by a tennis court, with morning-glories and sweet peas twining in the chicken wire.

"Poo-tee-weet?"

Eliot looked up at the bird and all the green leaves, understood that this garden in downtown Indianapolis could not have survived the fire he saw. So there had been no fire. He accepted this peacefully.

He continued to look up at the bird. He wished that he were a dicky bird, so that he could go up into the treetop and never come down. He wanted to fly up so high because there was something going on at ground-zero that did not make him feel good. Four men in dark business suits were seated chockablock on a concrete bench only six feet away. There were staring at him hard, expecting something significant from him. And it was Eliot's feeling that he had nothing of significance to say or give.

The muscles in the back of his neck were aching now. They couldn't hold his head tipped back forever.

"Eliot—?"

"Sir—?" And Eliot knew that he had just spoken to his father. He now brought his gaze down from the tree gradually, let it drop like a sick dicky bird from twig to twig. His eyes were at last on level with those of his father.

"You were going to tell us something important," his father reminded him.

Eliot saw that there were three old men and one young one on the bench, all sympathetic, and listening intently for whatever he might care to say. The young man he recognized as Dr. Brown. The second old man was Thurmond McAllister, the family lawyer. The third old man was a stranger. Eliot could not name him, and yet, in some way that did not disturb Eliot, the