In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien Page A

snakes finally ate each other's heads. Think about it. The mathematics get weird." In other letters he wrote about the great beauty of the country, the paddies and mountains and jungles. He told her about villages that vanished right before his eyes. He told her about his new nickname. "The guys call me Sorcerer," he wrote, "and I sort of like it. Gives me this zingy charged-up feeling, this special power or something, like I'm really in control of things. Anyhow, it's not so bad over here, at least for now. And I love you, Kath. Just like those weirdo snakes—one plus one equals zero!"
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    When he was young, nine or ten, John Wade would lie in bed with his magic catalogs, drawing up lists of the tricks he wanted—floating glass balls, colorful fekes and tubes, exploding balloons with flowers inside. He'd write down the prices in a little notebook, crossing out items he couldn't afford, and then on Saturday mornings he'd get up early and take the bus across town to Karra's Studio of Magic in St. Paul, all alone, a forty-minute ride.
    Outside the store, on the sidewalk, he'd spend some time working up his nerve.
    It wasn't easy. The place scared him. Casually, or trying to be casual, he'd gaze into the windows and stroll away a few times and then finally suck in a deep breath and think to himself: Go—Now, he'd think—Go!—and then he'd step inside, fast, scampering past the glass display cases, letting his head fill up with all the glittering equipment he knew by heart from his catalogs: Miser's Dream and Horn of Plenty and Chinese Rings and Spirit of the Dark. There were professional pulls and sponge balls and servantes—a whole shelf full of magician's silks—but in a way he didn't see anything at all.
    A young orange-haired woman behind the counter would flick her eyebrows at him.
    "
Your
she'd cry.
    The woman made his skin crawl. Her cigarette voice, partly. And her flaming carrot-colored hair.
    "You!" she'd say, or she'd laugh and yell, "Hocus-pocus!" but by that point John would already be out the door. The whole blurry trip terrified him. Especially the Carrot Lady. The bright orange hair. The way she laughed and flicked her eyebrows and cried, "You!"—loud—as if she
knew
things.
    The ride home was always dreary.
    When he walked into the kitchen, his father would glance up and say, "Little Merlin," and his mother would frown and put a sandwich on the table and then busy herself at the stove. The whole atmosphere would tense up. His father would
stare out the window for a time, then grunt and say, "So what's new in magic land? Big tricks up your sleeve?" and John would say, "Sure, sort of. Not really."
    His father's hazy blue eyes would drift back to the window, distracted and expectant, as if he were waiting for some rare object to materialize there. Sometimes he'd shake his head. Other times he'd chuckle or snap his fingers.
    "Those Gophers," he'd say. "Basketball fever, right? You and me, pal, we'll catch a game tomorrow." He'd grin across the table. "Right?"
    "Maybe," John would say.
    "Just maybe?"
    "I got things to do."
    Slowly then, his father's eyes would travel back to the window, still searching for whatever might be out there. The kitchen would seem very quiet.
    "Well, sure, anything you want," his father would say. "Maybe's fine, kiddo. Maybe's good enough for me."
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    Something was wrong. The sunlight or the morning air. All around him there was machine-gun fire, a machine-gun wind, and the wind seemed to pick him up and blow him from place to place. He found a young woman laid open without a chest or lungs. He found dead cattle. There were fires, too. The trees and hootches and clouds were burning. Sorcerer didn't know where to shoot. He didn't know what to shoot. So he shot the burning trees and burning hootches. He shot the hedges. He shot the smoke, which shot back, then he took refuge behind a pile of stones. If a thing moved, he shot it. If a thing did not