House of Prayer No. 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Right on the spot, the brothers-in-law took some pipes and welded together a cannon that shot old golf balls about a hundred yards. You can take it back to Virginia with you, they told the child when they were leaving, giving him the cannon, and they said good luck to the father about his invention, even if they didn’t understand it. When the family got home from Louisiana, the invention company didn’t understand the invention and they didn’t want it, either.
    In the mail are test results. One test result says the mother is most likely pregnant again. The other test result says the special child is eligible for a special school if the father can afford it.
    The father goes down to check on his underwater property. While he and his family have been away in Louisiana, the idiots at the dam finally adjusted the water levels on the lake just right.The shoreline is exactly where he and the German had predicted it would be. In the lowering fluctuations of the lake all the German’s beautiful sand has washed along the father’s shoreline and blanketed his property with long, broad beaches. Where the German’s beautiful beaches had been are ugly slick stretches of slippery red clay corrupted through and through by the black roots of drowned trees.
Zat iss in der past, you must let it go
, the father tells the angry German. The German and his family move away.
    In the fall the special child starts second grade. His second-grade teacher is Miss Caroon. Miss Caroon has seen his test results, so she lets him spend as much time as he wants reading
The Boxcar Children
and Mark Twain in the cloakroom while the other children struggle with Dick and Jane and Baby Sally and Spot. Miss Caroon lets him wear his father’s Army helmet in the classroom if he wants to, and she lets him try to pass off the wad of Confederate money he always carries. At Thanksgiving, when he draws the Pilgrims coming to the New World in a Chinese junk greeted by Indians selling Live Bait and Cold Beer, she hangs his picture on the wall with all the rest without extraordinary comment.
    Miss Caroon gives the children in her class a list of words from which to make a story. In the stories the class turns in, dogs get up on the furniture when they aren’t supposed to or someone finds a coin. From the special child she receives “The Ancient Castle,” in which a Good King goes away to conquer an enemy and while he is gone an Evil King comes and lays siege to the Good King’s castle. The Evil King’s men scale the walls, and some of the Good King’s favorite men are shot full of arrows andbeheaded. Just when all seems to be lost, everyone looks up and sees a brilliant flash of light on a distant hill. It is the sun shining off the Good King’s shield. The Good King and his men come and slaughter the Evil King and all the Evil King’s men. The people in the Good King’s castle are so happy, they have a huge banquet and feast on roast duck and turkey. After they have eaten all they can eat, they begin singing the Good King’s favorite songs. Miss Caroon reads the child’s story out loud to the class. She especially likes the last sentence in the story and takes her time sounding it out—
And the singing went on for days
.
    Miss Caroon hands back the stories, and the child receives an A-minus because he misspells “Ancient” in the title. This is a very good story, she tells the child. When his mother comes to visit on Parents’ Day, Miss Caroon tells her that her son is a special child, that he could be a writer someday if he wanted to be one. The mother shakes her head sadly and tells Miss Caroon the truth. She has to tell Miss Caroon that all the child wants to be when he grows up is the man who walks around the monkey house all day with a nail on the end of a stick.

    SAY YOU ARE THE SPECIAL CHILD . Say one reason you are special is because there is something wrong with your legs. You