Slowly, I moved my hand under his pillow until I made warm contact with his own. He was holding his rosary. He moved his hand away until my fingertips touched only the cool beads.
He fell asleep in small starts, resisting it. As if, I imagined, the sandman had hold of his ankle and was slowly tugging him under, all against his will. As if he struggled to remain awake. I looked at the lozenges of light on the wall, one was a rectangle, one was a crucifix. I tried out a few prayers, but since the nightmare I had described was a lie, there was nothing, really, to ask protection from. I heard my brother’s knee or his hand or the ball of his foot strike the wall now and again as he was tugged under. A thump and then a thump, and then I knew he was sleeping.
Alice McDermott is the author of six novels and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Charming Billy, her fourth novel, won the National Book Award, was short-listed for the Dublin IMPAC award, and was a New York Times bestseller. The recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, Ms. McDermott is currently the Richard A. Macksey Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She lives outside Washington with her husband, a neuroscientist, and three children.
CHARMING BILLY. Copyright © 1998 by Alice McDermott. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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eISBN 9781429929707
First eBook Edition : April 2011
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Charming Billy Page 26