Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic by Phillip Mann Page A

my present height when I was eighteen. I said to myself one day after I had finished mulching the corn stalks, I sat down in the field amid the growing plants and I said, “I am afraid of no man or God.” And it was a revelation to me for it seemed to me when I looked at my father and mother that they were afraid of something but they never knew what.
    I grew up. I continued my running. I continued my excursions outside the dome holding my breath and I took to spending nights away from home. I began to drink the tear-making liquor brewed in the town. It was commonly called Holy Water.
    I think I believed I was something special, something other than clay. And then one day I made love to the wife of one of the farmers who lived in the Rill Hinterland and he caught us. Think of that, if you can imagine it. His face was like something screwed up and thrown away in the rubbish.
    Later he came after me. That was the next great learning in my life for I killed him. I was in the barn where the Holy Water was served and there were about twenty other young people with me. I had my back to the door and the first indication I had that anything was wrong was when the room suddenly fell silent. I turned around and there he was, the farmer. He looked crazy and his face was blotchy. He had a baling hook in one hand. Have you ever seen one of those? No. You still find them on old-habit planets. It’s a sharp hook mounted on a handle so that you can grip it. You dig the hook into bales and then drag them. Well he didn’t say anything. He just stared at me and then he swung the hook low and up. I jumped. I used my hand to parry the blow and the point of the hook went right through the palm of my hand.
    WULF:    Here Wilberfoss offered his left hand and Lily and I could clearly see the pale scar in the center of his palm.
    WILBERFOSS:    I bled like Christ or Francis Dionysos with stigmata, but I had the hook. The blow had unbalanced the man and he fell against me and I closed my right hand around his throat and squeezed. There was nothing he could do. He tried to knee me. He tried to squirm. But I squeezed and my face was only inches from his. I could have kissed him. I saw blood on his lips. I felt the stickiness of my own blood as it ran between us. I saw his eyes stare. I saw the moment of his death. And at that same moment, something in me turned black. I had enjoyed the killin g. I had him bent back against the bar, I could have been embracing him. I enjoyed the killin g and something in me turned black. With his staring eyes in front of me, a small black acorn lodged in my heart and it has never gone away and now it is grown into a black oak tree.
    WULF:    Wilberfoss    was    getting excited in a way that we had observed before. There was no tolerant linkage between his thoughts and his feelings. He was like a human baby, not like a grown man. Lily moved in. She administered a small injection and this stopped Wilberfoss. He sobered and his passion drained away.
    Self-hatred can have many manifestations. To Wilberfoss, his past was so marred and filled with disfigurement that he wanted to obliterate himself, body and spirit. Of course, at this time in his cure, we did not know the depth of his self-loathing. We could only guess at what he meant when he talked about a black oak tree which was growing in his veins.
    WILBERFOSS:    They dragged me off and someone worked the hook from my hand and within minutes it seemed I was under guard in the local dispensary and the nurse was packing my hand with a sweet-smelling balm which numbed it. He also gave me a shot of something which took away my sense of color and made the inside of my mouth dry and when I tried to stand I found I had no strength. Then my father arrived and talked at me but I could not understand a word. Nothing seemed to matter.
    So, hours later, I was sent up in the shuttle, still in a drug-jacket, and then I was sent to hospital and then to prison. I