Chapter 41 Chapter 40

Nick lay restless on his bed in Judge Baker's office.He was naked, wearing only a pair of shorts, sweating all over his body, feeling greasy.The last worry before going to bed was that he was going to die tomorrow morning. Last night, he hadn't closed his eyes because of it.He kept having a fever, and the man in black kept appearing in his sleep, and he always felt that the man in black would take him away from the world while he was sleeping. Strangely enough, the eye that Ray Booth had gouged had been hurting for two days, but by the third day, the sharp pain, like a giant clamp being screwed into the head, had subsided, only in the It's a dull pain.When he tried to see with that eye, he saw only a gray blur in which a figure moved, as if moving, but it was not an eye injury that killed him; it was a bullet that had scratched his leg up.

He left without sanitizing his legs.At the time, because of the severe pain in the eye, he hardly paid attention to it, and the abrasion spread along the right leg to the knee; another day later, the entire side of the right leg was red, and the muscles seemed to start to ache. He once limped over to Dr. Soames' office, brought a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and poured the entire bottle over a wound that had spread to 10 inches long, which was practically an afterthought, for it's too late.By that night, the whole leg was throbbing, just like the feeling when the tooth rotted out. The red blood line from the blood poisoning under the skin had spread from the wound to the surroundings, and the wound began to scab.

On July 1, he went down to Soames' office and searched the medicine cabinet for some penicillin.He found some, hesitated for a moment, and swallowed two pills from one of the sample packs.He knew very well that if his body strongly rejected the penicillin, it would die.But if he didn't swallow the medicine, he would have died worse.The infection spread faster and faster, and he didn't die from the penicillin, but the typhoid fever wasn't going anywhere well either. Until noon yesterday, he had been suffering from a high fever, and he suspected that he was delirious most of the time.He had plenty of food, but he just didn't want to eat it; he just wanted cups of distilled water from Baker's office refrigerator.When he went to bed last night, the refrigerator was almost out of water, and Nick didn't know if he could still get it.When he has a fever, he can't control so much.Soon he was dead, and there was nothing to worry him about anymore.He wasn't afraid of death, but it was a relief to think that the pain and worry would go away from him.He felt throbbing, itching, burning in his legs.

In the days and nights after Ray Booth tried to kill him, his sleep was hardly sleep, a flood of nightmares, as if everyone he had ever known came to say goodbye.Rudy pointed to the blank paper and said, "You are the blank page." His mother helped him draw lines and circles on another blank page to marry him to his pure wife.She said, "Nick, honey, that's you." Jenny Baker turned her head to the other side of the pillow and said, "John, my poor John".In the dream, Dr. Soames repeatedly asked John to take off his shirt.Ray Booth kept saying, "Get him, I'm gonna fuck him, son of a bitch, for murdering me, I'm gonna get him." Unlike the other dreams he'd had in his life, Nick didn't have to. Use lip-reading to understand.He could actually hear what people were saying.The dreams were unbelievably clear.When he woke up with pain, the dream gradually disappeared.When he fell asleep again, new scenes began to emerge again.There were two dreams of people he had never seen before, and when he awoke, these were the two dreams he remembered most clearly.

He was on high ground, and the ground stretched out like a topographical map.This is a desert land, the stars are high in the sky, and beside him is a man, no, not a person, just a silhouette.As if cut out from reality, standing next to him is actually the back of a person, and there is a black hole in the figure, and the figure whispers: If you kneel down and worship me, everything you see will belong to you. you all.Nick shook his head, wanting to walk away from the terrible cliff, afraid that the figure would stretch out its black arms and push him over the edge. "Why don't you talk? Why do you just shake your head?"

In the dream, Nick made a movement that he had done many times in his waking hours.Putting his fingers to his lips, and then his palms to his throat... and then he heard himself say very clearly, in a rather melodious voice: "I can't talk loudly, but I can speak softly." "But you can speak up, if you want to, you can." Nick reached out to touch the figure, and his fear was washed away in a moment of surprise and ecstasy.But when his hand approached the figure's shoulder, the figure turned cold, as if he had scorched it.He pushed the figure away violently, and ice had already formed on his knuckles.The figure had approached him, and he could hear the voice of the figure in black, the chirping of birds foraging for food at night in the distance, and the endless whistling of the wind.He was dumbfounded by the strange feeling.He savored a new realm, which he had never experienced before, and now it had appeared.He is listening to voices.He seemed to know what was what without being told.They sound beautiful.A beautiful sound, and he ran his fingers through his shirt, marveling at the rustle of his fingernails on the cotton.

The man in black turned and walked towards him again, and Nick was terrified. This fellow, whatever it was, did not perform miracles in vain. "If you kneel down and beg me." Nick put his hands to his face because he wanted everything the man in black had shown him on the desert highlands: cities, women, wealth, power.But all he wanted to hear was the delightful sound of his nails on his shirt, the ticking of a clock in an empty house after midnight, and the patter of rain. But the man in black said no, and the cold feeling came over him again, and he was pushed down, falling headfirst and toe-to-toe, passing through the clouds, and finally fell into a cornfield.

Fields of corn? Yes, cornfields.It was another dream, blended together like this, there was no dividing line between dreams, it was almost indistinguishable.He was in the cornfield, the green cornfield.Smells of summer earth, cow dung and growing crops.He got up and started walking towards the path he saw in the field.He stopped when he felt he could see rippling among the arrow-like green leaves and other vegetation in the July cornfield. --music? Yes, what a unique kind of music.In the dream he thought, "So that's what he meant?" It was coming from straight ahead, and he followed the sound to see if this unique, coherent, beautiful sound came from something called " "Piano" or "horn" or "violin" or other instruments.

What you breathe in your nostrils is the heat of the scorching heat, there is a blue sky above your head, and beautiful music comes from your ears.Nick experienced unprecedented happiness in his dream.When he approached the place where the sound came out, singing came along with the music. The voice was as old as black leather, and the words were coherent. The song was like stew, and it would not lose its inherent flavor even if it was heated frequently.Nick was fascinated, and he followed the sound. "I came to the garden alone, The dew still glistened on the roses. The singing I heard came to my ears.

The Son of God is open. He walked with me, he talked with me, tell me i belong to him We stay here and share the joy together. No one else knows. " When the song ended, Nick pushed aside the corn bushes and walked to the end of the path. In the open space in the field was a small log cabin, a shed at best, with a rusty garbage can on the left and a swing made of old tires on the right. .It hangs from an apple tree, twisted but green and full of life.The porch stretched out at a slant, a tangle of old clutter hanging on greasy supports, the windows were wide open, and the warm summer breeze blew the battered white curtains.From the roof stood a jagged and blackened galvanized iron chimney that jutted out at an old odd angle of its own.The house was in the open, surrounded by endless fields of corn, interrupted only to the north by a dirt road that stretched to the horizon; only then did Nick know where he was: Nebraska was West Omaha, Osceola is further north, and beyond the dirt roads Columbus sits on the north shore of the Platte.

Sitting on the porch was the oldest woman in America, a Negro with lax white hair and a homely dress.She looked so thin, the afternoon wind could almost blow her away.Sending her high into the blue sky could take her all the way to Fort Jules, Colorado.The instrument she was playing (perhaps the instrument that held her in place so that her body would not leave the ground) was a "guitar," and that's what Nick thought a "guitar" sounded like in his dream, It was wonderful, and he thought he could just stay where he was for the rest of the day, watching the old black woman propped up on the porch, surrounded by the vast cornfields of Nebraska, standing west of Omaha, A little north of Osceola in Pokery, listen carefully, her face is wrinkled like an uninhabited state map, with rivers and canyons lining her dark skinny cheekbones, Below the jawbone was a precipice, and the hummock-like bony protuberances of her forehead, and the cavernous eye sockets. She started singing to the old guitar again. "God, are you coming here? oh god!will you come here God will you come here? Because, now is the time when you are needed. Oh, now is the time to need you. Now, exactly. " Hey boy, who brought you here? She put the guitar across her lap like a child, and beckoned him to come forward, and Nick approached her, and he said he just wanted to hear her sing, and it was beautiful. Ok!Singing is divine, now I sing most of the day..., how did you deal with that man in black. He freaked me out, I was scared. Of course you are afraid, child, even a tree at dusk, if you saw it, you would be afraid.We are all mortal, praise God. But how do I tell him no?How can I tell? how do you breathehow do you dreamNo one knows.But you come to see me.Any time.They all call me Mama Abagil.I think I'm the oldest woman in these areas and I make my own softbread.You can bring your friends here anytime, boy. But how can I get out? God bless you, boy, no one can get out of here.Just think of the best place, and come whenever you want.I thought, here I am.Don't go too far.Well, come and see me, I'm right here... ...here, right here... He woke up gradually until Nebraska was out of the dream, the smell of corn, and the wrinkled, dark face of Abagil's mother.What is left in front of me is the real world, and the dream world has been replaced little by little. He is now in Soyo, Arkansas, and his name is Nick Andros, and he hasn't spoken a word, never heard a "guitar"...but he's alive. He sat up from the bed, hung his legs on the edge of the bed and shook them back and forth, looking at the wound, the swelling of his legs had subsided a little.Just a little throbbing.My wounds are healing, he thought, relieved.I think I'm going to be fine. He got up from the bed and limped towards the window in his shorts.The legs are stiff, but this stiffness can be removed with some exercise.He looked at the quiet town outside the window, and it was no longer Shuoyou, but Shuoyou's bones. He knew that he had to leave today.He won't get very far, but at least he has a start. where to?Well, he thought he knew.Dreams were just dreams, but at first he was able to go to the Northwest.Go to Nebraska. On the afternoon of July 3, at about 1:15, Nick rode his bicycle out of town.In the morning he packed up his knapsack and packed some extra penicillin as a spare, and some canned food.He drank Kemper's tomato juice and Chef Boyard's steamed buns, both of which were his favourites.He packed several boxes of pistol ammunition and carried a water jug.Out on the street, he pokes around in the garage until he finds what he's looking for.A ten-speed bike that was just right for his weight.He drove slowly and cautiously down the main street.His injured leg also began to heat up. He drove west, and Shadow followed him on his bicycle.He drove past the elegant but cold houses on the outskirts of the city, the detachments of which still stood in the shadows. That night he camped at a farmhouse 10 miles west of Shuoyo.He was nearly in Oklahoma by the evening of the Fourth of July.Before going to bed, he stood in another farm, looked up to the sky, and saw a meteor with a white flame piercing the night sky.He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.No matter what the future holds, he's glad he's alive.