The Year the Lights Came On Read Free Page B

neat, certain figure, accountable and rhythmic. I preferred to think I was accountable, not accidental.
    The reason it was necessary to understand and accept the reference to age separation, was that there were inevitable occasions when someone, somewhere, would exercise their right as an Official and request Facts of the Family. It happened each year at the beginning of the school term: we had to introduce ourselves to classmates we had known all our lives, and we were expected to know the names, ages, and whereabouts of our brothers and sisters. To me, this was an ordeal considerably more agonizing than the multiplication table, but I had learned a dependable system: my answer was a monotone reading of names, slyly clicked off on behind-the-back fingers; I had ten older brothers and sisters and ten fingers (God is marvelous in the way He complements things). Each brother and sister was a finger, a special finger.
    I would say, “My name is Colin Wynn, and the way you say it is Co-lin, not Col-in. I have a little brother, named Garry. He lives at home and gets what he wants.”
    Then I would continue: “I have a lot of older brothers and sisters. Some of them live at home; some do not. Their names are…”
    And I would begin with Wesley. Wesley was the little finger of my left hand. Lynn was my ring finger. And I would work my way around the left hand—“Louise, who is the oldest one living at home… Hodges… Susan (who was the thumb of my left hand)… Frances (little finger, right hand)… Ruth… Thomas, who was killed when I was little… Amy… And, Emma, who is my oldest sister.” Emma was the thumb of my right hand. According to our equation, Emma was twenty years older than me.
    Each year, I offered the same recitation. Each year, the teacher oohed over the unusual size of my family. Each year, my classmates giggled.
    Because we were the Stair-Step Triplets, Wesley and Lynn and I were extremely close. We even behaved as triplets at times. But Lynn, being a girl, was not entirely reliable as a playmate, especially when we were very small. She was inclined to play Doll and House and Princess—fantasies that were as confining as they were senseless. Wesley and I were far more serious. We performed games requiring strength and cunning, daring and justice. He was Batman; I was Robin. He was Red Ryder; I was Little Beaver. He was the Green Hornet; I was Kato. He was Captain Marvel; I was Captain Marvel, Jr. Occasionally, Lynn would agree to masquerade as Mary Marvel. Usually, though, it was Wesley and me.
    We were close, the three of us. But Wesley and me… Wesley and me—it was special, that closeness.
    And it was beautiful.
    He was my brother, and I was prejudiced, but in those years when it was easy to trust unreservedly in the magic of people, I regarded Wesley as the most gifted person I knew, or would ever know. He was an Always There person. Once—I was eleven, I think—I was certain I saw a cosmic blessing descend on Wesley.
    He had walked out of the sunlight into the shade, and the sun twisted and bent to follow him. Wesley had presence, and that presence filled the emptiness of many moments and many lives. In his sometimes-sad face, people recognized the simplicity of a powerful confidence (faith?) that could not be tempted, or distorted. I once heard my mother say, “I just gave him birth; Wesley got what he is from somewhere else.”
    I believe that. Wesley was born with a divine appointment to be special.
    *
    But in 1947, when Time became placeable for us, Wesley was thirteen years old. He had not reached the considerable influence of his manhood. He was merely a leader of boys—me and Freeman and R. J. and Otis and Jack Crider and Paul Tully and a few others who were reared south of Banner’s Crossing, in the community of Emery, in the county of Eden, in the state of Georgia. Emery was south of Royston and Royston was northeast of Atlanta by one hundred miles, and east of Athens by thirty