Dark Benediction Read Online Free PDF Page A

furious, and he kept on being furious all through the following day. At me. Cleo began agreeing with him to some extent, and I felt like a heel.
    " You want Kenny to get the full treatment?" I grumbled. "You want him to wind up a sob-story child?"
    " Certainly not, but it was cruel, Rod. The boy never had a happier moment until you . . ."
    "All right, so I'm a bastard. I'm sorry."
    That night Abe Sanders (Captain Chronos) came hack alone, in slacks and a sport shirt, and muttering apologies. It developed that the Wednesday evening shows always had a children's panel (Junior Guardsmen) program, and that while they understood that Kenny couldn't come, they had wanted to have him with the panel, in absentia, by telephone.
    "Please, Dad, can't I?"
    The answer had to be no . . . but Kenny had been glaring at me furiously all day, and it was a way to make him stop hating me . . . still, the answer had to be no ... the publicity . . . but he'd be delighted, and he could stop hating my guts for kicking them out.
    " I guess so, if the offer's still open."
    "Dad!"
    The offer was still open. Kenny was to be on the show. They rehearsed him a little, and let him practice with the tape recorder until he got used to his voice.
    On Wednesday evening, Kenny sat in the hall doorway to the living room, telephone in his lap, and stared across at Sanders' face on the television screen. Sanders held another phone, and we beard both their voices from the set. Occasionally the camera dollied in to a close shot of Sanders' chuckle, or panned along the table to show the juvenile panel members, kids between eight and sixteen. There was an empty chair on Sanders' right, and it bore a placard. The placard said "KENNY WESTMORE."
    It lasted maybe a minute. Sanders promised not to mention Kenny's address, nor to mention the nature of his illness. He did neither, but the tone of conversation made it clear that Kenny was in bad shape and probably not long for this world. Kenny had stage fright, his voice trembled, and he blurted something about the search for a cure. Cleo stared at the boy instead of the set, and my own glance darted back and forth. The cameraman panned to the empty chair and dollied in slowly so that the placard came to fill the screen while Kenny spoke. Kenny talked about stamp collections and time machines and autographs, while an invisible audience gaped at pathos.
    "If anybody's got stamps to trade, just let me know," he said. "And autographs ..."
    I winced, but Sanders cut in. "Well, Kenny—we're not supposed to mention your address, but if any of you Guardsmen out there want to help Kenny out with his stamp collection, you can write to me, and I'll definitely see that he gets the letters."
    "And autographs too," Kenny added.
    When it was over, Kenny had lived . . . but lived.
    And then the mail came in a deluge, forwarded from the network's studio. Bushels of stamps, dozens of autograph books, Bibles, money, advice, crank letters, and maudlin gushes of sugary sympathy . . . and a few sensible and friendly letters. Kenny was delighted.
    "Gee, Dad, I'll never get all the stamps sorted out. And look!—an autograph of Calvin Coolidge! . . ."
    But it never turned him aside from his path of confident but mysterious purpose. He spent even more time in his room, in the garage, and—when he could muster the energy—back in the maple woods, doing mysterious things alone.
    "Have they found a cure yet, Dad?" he asked me pleasantly when an expected letter came.
    " They're ... making progress," I answered lamely.
    He shrugged. "They will . . . eventually." Unconcerned.
     
    It occurred to me that some sort of psychic change, unfathomable, might have happened within him—some sudden sense of timelessness, of identity with the race. Something that would let him die calmly as long as be knew there'd be a cure someday. It seemed too much to expect of a child, but I mentioned the notion to Jules when I saw him again.
    "Could be," be admitted. "It