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policemen grabbed him and shoved him facedown onto the bags of cans. Pap tried to get up.
    The policemen were doing something to his arms. Pap didn’t want them to. Suddenly Pap felt the bags break, and he heard cans rolling.
    “My cans!” Pap cried. He was struggling in the cans now, sending them on their way faster.
    The policemen got him to his feet, took his shotgun, handcuffed him, and threw him into the back of a police car. At one time it would have taken the entire police force to do this, but that was before Pap became seventy-two years old.
    They started the police car and drove away while the people were coming out of Woolco and Winn Dixie. One by one the people lined up to tell the policeman with the notepad about Pap threatening them.
    All this time the 2,147 pop and beer cans were rolling down Spring Street, across the Sumter intersection, and through the municipal parking lot. From there they rolled into White Run Creek. They were clicking like wood chimes.
    In White Run Creek they started downstream, bobbing with the currents, turning the creek silver where the sun hit them.

CHAPTER 6
See-Through Eyelids
    It was Tuesday morning. Junior was dreaming, as he always did just before he woke up, that he could see through his eyelids.
    This dream had become so real to Junior that he believed he could actually do it. Without opening his eyes, he could see his room and his window and the tree outside the window and the beautiful picture of his mother on Sandy Boy. In the picture his mother was leaning off the back of the horse, upside down, one foot in a strap behind the saddle. Sometimes Junior turned the picture around so he could see his mother right side up.
    One time, in first grade, the teacher had said, “Now, boys and girls, I want you all to close your eyes because I want you to imagine something.”
    Dutifully Junior had closed his eyes and he had, through his eyelids—he was willing to swear this on a stack of bibles—through his eyelids he had seen Mrs. Hodges adjust her brassiere.
    This morning he knew, without opening the first eye, that he was somewhere he did not want to be. Beneath him the sheets were stiff and clean. There was a funny smell in the air. There was too much light. Somewhere outside the room a lot of people were doing stuff. Wheels were rolling. Ladies and men talking. A dread fell over him like a cover.
    He opened his eyes and gasped with fear. It was the first time in his life he had awakened and not known where he was. He was either in a hospital or a prison, maybe a prison hospital. He had watched enough television to figure that out.
    “I got to get out of here,” he muttered.
    He tried to sling his legs over the side of the bed, but they wouldn’t go. It was as if his legs were actually attached to the foot of the bed. He sat up; threw back the sheet.
    His legs were in white stiff things. They wouldn’t budge. It was yesterday all over again, only now it was his legs that wouldn’t work instead of his winged arms.
    He began to cry. Under the white stiff things, where he couldn’t get at them, his legs hurt. They hurt a lot. Just trying to sling them over the side of the bed had made pain shoot through his whole body.
    “What’s wrong?”
    Junior couldn’t have been more startled if God had spoken to him. He had not even been aware that anyone else was in the room. He glanced around so fast, his neck popped.
    A redheaded boy in the next bed was watching him with interest.
    “I don’t know,” Junior gasped.
    “You must have been in an accident.”
    All the horror came back to him then. “I fell off a barrrrrrn,” he wailed. He flung himself back against his pillow.
    “A barn?”
    Junior twisted his head from side to side, too miserable now to speak.
    “What were you doing on a barn? Making like a rooster? Er-er-errrrrrrrr-err! ” The boy flapped his arms at his sides.
    Junior nodded, dumb with misery and pain.
    “You were playing rooster? No kidding? You could