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T HE NEEDLE ON his dash indicated an empty gas
tank but Levi figured he had a good twenty-five miles
left before the car was totally dry. Of more concern to
him were the numerous rattling sounds coming from
underneath the hood, banging and pining like a
machine nearing the end of its life. Keeping a car in
impound for the better part of a decade can do strange
things to it. There was also a putrid smell coming from
the interior that might have turned the stomach of a
weaker man. The upholstery was cracked from baking
in the cruel sun while Levi strained his muscles for
twelve hours each day in the labor camp. Neither he,
nor his car, was offered any shade or rest from the
relentless assault of nature. Now they were getting
acquainted with one another like long lost friends, both
groaning as if suffering from a similar ache.
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The car rolled through the large city park, which was
walled in by the surrounding buildings, and Levi saw
groups with signs outside the dirty window. They were
huddled together in small cliques, looking scared and
exhausted. The protesters had lost their steam, at least
for the evening. Levi sped through the park’s main
thoroughfare, banked a right onto Broadway, and
headed straight for two miles, leaving the midtown
skyscrapers in his rearview.
Levi’s mind traveled back to the lamp and that
ominous note as the car bumped over railroad tracks.
He knew what part of town Burrows Avenue ran
through, and its reputation as a low-income crime
school for delinquents was well deserved. A couple of
teenagers had tried to car jack him in this very spot
years ago, but the event had come to a grinding halt
once they’d recognized his face. The thugs apologized
to the soon-to-be champ but Levi dropped one of them
with a liver shot anyway, just to teach the kid a lesson.
He smiled at the old memory and his current curiosity
held off any concerns for peril. His car pulled to a
sputtering stop as he glanced at the address once
more: 112. He was there.
He heard dogs howling in the distance as he stepped
out of the car and stood in front of an older brick
house with bars on the windows and door, shielding
22
the home from whatever dangers lurked in this
particular neighborhood. “That’s never a good sign,” he
thought. “Surely K.S. doesn’t live in a dump like this.”
He circled the area, taking in his surroundings. The
street bore no activity. No cars passed him by. Levi was
growing frustrated.
“What am I doing here?” he wondered. His eyes
moved to the house and intuition told him that he was
supposed to go in. The porch felt shaky under his feet,
like it was just waiting to crumble if the wind hit it just
right. He reached through the wide metal bars and
knocked hard against the door, which sounded
abrasive in the silence of the night. After a moment, he
heard someone stirring inside the house. Then a voice.
“Who’s there?” The voice was sharp, and female.
Levi thought for a moment and returned, “Are you
K.S.?”
The door cracked open a few inches and he met the
face of a thin woman with blond-dyed hair who was
probably in her forties.
“Ain’t no K.S. here. Now get off my porch.”
Levi was unsure of how to respond. What was he
going to say? I just got out of prison and a note under
my lamp told me to show up here.
“Ma’am, I was sent here by a friend of yours,” he
said, before pausing. “I think.”
23
“What friend? Who you talkin’ about?”
“I don’t… I don’t know exactly.”
“Mister, you best get on out of here or else I’ll get my
husband up out of bed and you don’t want to see him
get all pissy.”
“I know what you’re thinking, but…”
“Listen! I was born on a Tuesday but it wasn’t last
Tuesday. Why are you standing on my porch?”
Levi sighed and confessed, “I don’t really know.”
“Then I don’t know either. Goodbye.”
She slammed the door and Levi began knocking
again. After several moments, he decided it was best to
just leave. Then he remembered the note: 112 Burrows
Avenue . Bring the lamp.
Levi ran to his car, realizing that he had left the lamp
inside. Thinking the lamp itself might be a sort of
token password for entrance, he quickly snatched it
from the passenger seat and ran back up the cracked
steps and onto that shaky wooden porch. He stuck out
his fist to knock on the door but it swung open before
his knuckles made contact.
Towering in the doorway, behind the heavy iron bars,
stood an imposing and obviously irritated man wearing
boxer shorts and wielding a baseball bat.
“You the one bothering my wife?” he asked, almost
hoping the answer was going to be yes.
24
“I’m not trying to bother anyone,” Levi said, knowing
very well he could disarm the man and club him
senseless in less than a second if he felt the urge.
Unless, of course, he was K.S.
“Then why you on my porch?”
Levi held up the lamp so the man could see it.
“Do you recognize this?” Levi asked him. “Does this
mean anything to you?”
The big man glanced down at the lamp, wondering if
perhaps the guy on his porch was a used lamp
salesman who’d mistakenly walked into the wrong
neighborhood. He’d seen stranger things.
“I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling,
partner. Look, it’s time for you to go. You’re bothering
my family.”
Levi then noticed something past the man, behind
him. A young girl of maybe eight or nine lay quietly on
the family’s couch. She seemed unresponsive to all the
fuss they were making.
“Is that your daughter?” Levi asked.
“Yes. And this is my bat. Guess who I’m introducing
you to first.”
The man held the baseball bat in a threatening
manner and it seemed like he was not afraid to let it fly
against someone’s head. But Levi couldn’t take his
eyes off of the girl, who seemed so quiet and
25
undisturbed. He noticed a wheelchair in the corner,
resting beside a broken television.
“Listen to me,” Levi began, “I don’t want to hurt your
family any more than you want to hurt me. But I was
supposed to come here. I don’t know why, but the
person who told me to show up here is someone I kind
of need to trust.”
The imposing man in the doorway relaxed his grip on
the bat.
“Your daughter is sick, isn’t she?” Levi asked,
nodding toward her.
The large man tightened his lips, looked back at his
daughter, then back to the lamp salesman in his
doorway.
“Why you here?” he asked more slowly, and with
more bass in his voice.
“I think I can help her.”
Those words got his attention. Levi wasn’t even sure
why he’d even said it. He still had no idea if he had
been sent to this address to get beaten to death, or to
accomplish some other task that was important to K.S.
Either way, the idea of helping a poor man’s sick
daughter would at least buy him some time to figure
things out until K.S. arrived.
26
The man in the doorway fell silent for a long while.
Levi was out of words himself, so he simply shrugged
as if to say, “What have you got to lose?”
Levi then heard the sound of a pin scraping against
metal and he stood aside as the door guard fell open.
The big man held it open, giving a slight nod of the
head to invite Levi to enter. He took note of Levi’s
mangled hands as he stepped inside, wondering if his
bat would be of any use against a guy like this.
Immediately, the man’s wife rushed into the living
room and loudly admonished her husband: “Don’t let
that crazy man into our home!”
The man put his finger out to silence his wife and
she didn’t look happy about it. Levi slowly approached
the little girl on the couch, his eyes meeting hers. She
didn’t seem to be disturbed by his presence, or the
least bit afraid of him. He placed the old lamp on a
coffee table that sat between them. The girl’s attention
turned to the lamp, her eyes conveying a measure of
curiosity.
Levi felt a new level of humiliation and pressure. He
had no idea why he was standing in this family’s living
room, trying to convince them that he could do
something for them. But he was out of ideas and deep
inside wondered if this whole thing was just a test from
27
his mysterious and jaded friend, K.S., to see how much
mental torture he could endure in one evening.
“Who told you to come here?” the girl’s father asked,
still ready to smack Levi in the head with his bat if he
sensed the slightest move toward his daughter.
“Someone named K.S. I never met him. I was hoping
you knew him.”
The man shook his head “no.”
“That’s what I figured,” Levi sighed.
Levi turned toward the little girl and just stood there,
watching her gaze at the useless trinket in front of her.
He began to feel a sense of mounting pressure. It
seemed to him that a long time had passed since he’d
set the lamp down and now he stood in front of the girl
feeling like an epic loser, or worse, a crazy person.
“Maybe you should turn it on,” the girl’s father
suggested.
“I don’t know if it comes on. There’s no knob and I
can’t find a wick.”
“You don’t know how to turn on your own lamp?”
“I can’t get the glass open to put a candle inside. I
don’t know.”
The wife’s anger began to rise. “Okay, we gave you a
chance and now we can all see this was a mistake.
Best be on your way now. We’ve had enough dealings
28
with you faith healer types, preying on the poor and
desperate. And we’re not giving you our money either.”
Levi had been called many things over the years, but
never a faith healer. His hopes sank to the floor. He
had failed. He didn’t even know what task K.S. wanted
him to accomplish but it was clear that whatever it was
— it wasn’t this.
“Yeah,” the girl’s father agreed. “I think it’s time for
you to go. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come
back.”
“Just wait,” Levi pleaded, still hoping against reason
that K.S. might show his face and end this
embarrassment.
“Look,” the man said, raising his voice. “You are a
crazy person and we don’t want you in our house
anymore. You have ten seconds before I break this
Louisville Slugger over your forehead. Get out! Now!”
Levi turned to the little girl’s parents, pleading with
them to wait. A shouting match ensued and Levi’s
temper began to flare, mostly due to the
embarrassment of having to jump through hoops for
some insane antiques dealer. The big man reached
back to grab his baseball bat as his wife yelled at Levi
in a furious and frightened tone of voice. They both
wanted him gone.
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Given the state of tension among the adults, none of
them had noticed a subtle light emanating from the
lamp on the coffee table. None of them except the little
girl. Her eyes grew wider and wider as she slowly
propped her weight onto an elbow and stared into the
lamp, totally mesmerized. The chaos of furious
argument all around her did nothing to distract the girl
from the draw of the lamp’s sudden light. Within a
matter of seconds, the little girl found herself standing
up, calmly holding the lamp between her tiny hands.
And that’s when the mother saw her standing.
“OH MY GOD!” flew out of her in a gasp. Levi and the
father turned to her at once and the bat fell to the floor
with a clunk and rolled away. The paralyzed little girl
was standing fully erect, holding a lamp that was shot
through with a symphony of dazzling light. Not just
any light, but a surreal, pulsing glow that made it
seem like an atom had been split and the lamp now
contained the energy of a tightly packed nuclear
explosion.
Levi and the girl’s father were frozen in place. The
three of them stood in awe of the lamp’s beauty and
apparent power, wondering if they would soon be
blown into next week as its force pressed against them.
Bathed in intense rays of impossible color, Levi
wondered if this was the end. He had been sent here to
30
die in what would later look like a pipe bomb blast.
Levi looked at the girl, the paralyzed girl who somehow
stood on healthy legs. The light then disappeared in an
instant and the room fell dark. It wasn’t actually dark;
it just seemed that way in the absence of the lamp’s
unusual, otherworldly brightness.
“What is this that I’ve just seen?” he asked himself in
thought.
The girl’s parents ran to her, grabbing onto her with
tears of confused joy. But not Levi. He reached over,
grabbed the lamp, and fled the house, overwhelmed by
terror. He threw open his car door with such violent
force that it almost came unhinged. Tossing the lamp
into the passenger seat, he peeled away into the night
with a thunderous roar. The power that had healed a
little girl’s legs had sent his mind racing.
“What is this that I’ve just seen?” he repeated to
himself.
• • •
It had been more than a week since Levi’s lamp had
healed a girl on 112 Burrows Avenue at the behest of a
stranger. Not that he wasn’t thrilled for the girl or her
family; it wasn’t that. To him, it was more like
discovering that everything you know about the world
31
turns out to be wrong. Levi grew more curious about
K.S. as the days wore on. He had not received any
more notes since the incident and wondered if perhaps
he had done something wrong.
Levi had a lot of time to think about the previous two
weeks’ exploits since his days mostly consisted of
replacing pipes and patching drywall holes at the
apartment building where he spent most of the
daylight hours. He sometimes looked back on his time
at the labor camp with envy: it was grueling work and
danger lurked everywhere, but at least he understood
that world and could navigate it fluidly. There was a
routine. Now that he was a free man, Levi existed in a
world that now seemed foreign to him. Nothing was the
way he remembered it and this K.S. person had
introduced him to an entirely new reality, one in which
strange powers existed beyond his control.
Levi had no fear of men. He’d been in the ring with
the roughest and toughest and had laid them all out,
one by one. But he feared the lamp; not so much the
object itself, but whatever or whomever had the power
to activate it. He was naturally afraid of what he
couldn’t comprehend, and the lamp definitely fit into
that category.
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