(urth) Short Story 77: The Eyeflash Miracles Part 1

[Marc Aramini]

*THE EYEFLASH MIRACLES*

“The Eyeflash Miracles” first appeared in *Future Power* in 1976 and is
reprinted in *The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other
Stories. *Much of the identification of more obscure Oz references in the
summary will rely on the work of William Ansley from the Urth Mailing List,
though some allusions from the first novel and the movie are easily
recognizable.

DETAILED SUMMARY WITH OZ REFERENCES:

The story begins with a quote from Anatole France’s “Procurator of Judea”
in which Pontius Pilate reviews his career in Judea, and when the topic of
Jesus of Nazereth comes up, he says, “I cannot call him to mind.”

Little Tib, a blind boy, feels and listens to a train coming. He finds a
nearby body of water and drinks from it. He hopes to find Sugarland. The
authoritative voice of Mr. Parker calls out to him that he should be in
school, and another voice, that of Nitty, an ex-custodian, yells out not to
hurt the child.

Nitty says the boy needs food and helps Little Tib across, while Mr. Parker
says, “Fishing … that’s what most of them do.” Mr. Parker speaks of
Grovehurst School in Martinsburg and enrolling Little Tibb, inquiring of
his documentation and retinal pattern card. Nitty says they are two or
three hundred kilometers from there, heading to Macon, and that the boy
doesn’t have papers: “Why he got to have papers? He ain’t no dog!”

When Mr. Parker realizes the boy doesn’t have retinas, he says, “A ghost.
We’re seeing a ghost, Nitty. Sociologically he’s not real – he’s been
deprived of existence.” All funds and identification are linked to retinal
patterns in this society. Little Tib cries, and when Nitty says he has
never seen a ghost, Mr. Parker breaks down, too: “You dumb bastard. All my
life there’s been nobody around but dumb bastards like you.”

Nitty hatches a plan to have the blind boy infiltrate the central records
computer system, since he would be more useful than a man with sight there.
Mr. Parker has lost his position (he says “temporarily abrogated”), as has
Nitty. He promises that when his position is restored he will get Little
Tib enrolled in a school.

That night Tib thinks of the last thing he saw, red and yellow flashes like
a real fire, and a golden nugget against a field of blue. Nitty says they
are going to Martinsburg, but Tib says he wants to go to Sugarland, because
there “they know who you are” (It is probably the location of his family's
home).

Nitty says that in his life the only ones that truly knew him was little
children. Lying by the fire, Tib dreams of his father. They walk through a
glass turnstyle door past shopping centers, rising in a glass elevator to
reach a man in a white coat who examines Tib through a retinal scanner. The
man concludes, “We don’t know who this child is, but he certainly isn’t
anyone.”

When Tib awakes, he hears the fire and soon sees flowers, knowing that they
in turn can see him, before witnessing a miraculous city descend from the
sky.

This is a distorted but recognizable reference to a scene in the twelfth
chapter of *The Marvelous Land of Oz,* entitled "Mr. H. M.Woggle-Bug, T.
E." Here, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and Tip … are trying to get back
to the Emerald City and are blocked by an enchantment that makes them see a
field of sunflowers. These sunflowers whirl when they look at them and
dazzle their vision and mystify them so they don't know which way to go.
When the Tin Woodmen tries to cut them down, they stop spinning and a
girl's face appears at the center of each. The Woodman is too tender
hearted to try to cut the flowers down after this, but they finally realize
that the flowers are an illusion and by shutting their eyes they are able
to pass beyond the field. (Ansley)

“Then the city came down like a cloud and settled on a hill in front of
him. As soon as it was there it pretended that it had been there all the
time, but Little Tib could feel it laughing underneath.”

This also represents the first hint of a vision in the conceivably waking
world for Little Tib, as it is unclear if he has fallen asleep or not,
though the text shows him waking up after witnessing the apparitions. Green
towers which look like glass and high walls evoke the Emerald City of Oz .
Tip rushes to enter, asking to see the King, and the gate man pulls him
through a window and puts glasses on him which become lines painted on his
face. (In the Oz books, green glasses were employed by the Wizard to make
visitors see the entire city as green – part of his charlatanry); here,
since the vision of the marvelous city is from inside Tib [or, if it is
external, is there because of Tib] the perception that makes the city
wondrous is a part of him, symbolized by the glasses simply having no
external existence, becoming a part of Tib.

The gardens of the city are sidewise, and the palace wall “was made by
trees holding hands.” Tib sees the “king” descending stairs from the
clouds: “She was a beautiful woman, and although she did not look at all
like her, Little Tib knew that she was his mother.” (Ozma was disguised as
the boy Tip by the witch Mombi in *The Marvelous Land of Oz* and was then
reinstated as the rightful ruler of Oz, yet this city has parallels to the
City of God and Vishnu’s Vaikuntha as well). When Tib awakens, it is to
darkness.

They determine to catch a train. Mr. Parker talks about the light modern
train design, and says, “There only remained the awkward business of the
crews … Fortunately it was found that mechanisms of the same type that had
already displaced educators and others could be substituted for railway
engineers and brakemen. Who would have believed that running a train was as
routine and mechanical a business as teaching a class?”

Nitty carries Little Tib when they catch the train, and Mr. Parker goes to
sleep. Nitty tries to describe the passing landscape, saying there is
nothing but pinewood forests with animals. “You like animals, George? Bears
and big old cats.” (Of course echoing the “Lions and tigers and bears” of
Oz fame). Nitty tells Tib that Mr. Parker’s mind was augmented to make him
a better superintendent, and the loss of the upgrades and his job has made
him crazy and sometimes dangerous.

Here Tib begins to display signs of pallor and fever, which accompanies
many of his miracles throughout the story (this time, the healing of Mr.
Parker’s fractured mind). Nitty sees a bear waving at them from the woods
as two railway patrolwomen accost them. Mr. Parker wakes up and begins to
address the two women as if they were new teachers under his jurisdiction.
They think he has been “shooting up on chalk” and also indicate that Nitty
does not have to assume colloquial speech patterns for their benefit. (His
exaggerated ethnic speech patterns were a charade for Mr. Parker’s
benefit). The railway police tell them to get off at Howard and leave, but
then toss a gas grenade into the car on their way out. Little Tib imagines
himself on the hill above the creek, and “a kiteflying west wind was
blowing” – this purifies the boxcar and blows all the gas out of the can as
well. Afterwards, Mr. Parker returns to normal and feels as if he has
awakened from a long dream. Tib has grown very hot and feverish, and the
sound of the wheels becomes like “the rushing blood in the heart of a
giantess.”

Tib enters another dream state, dominated by red: red leaves red grass, red
birds, and even faces in the trunks of trees. A cardinal flickers to his
shoulder and Tib says he wants to stay there forever, walking down that
path. The cardinal assures him, “You will, my son,” and makes the sign of
the cross. He comes across a red and white striped house and encounters a
copper man. He hears hammering in the hills. The copper man says that the
giant is making the noise. Tib winds up the copper man’s TALKING ACTION
keyhole so that they can communicate. The man of copper says that his words
will blow away the mist concealing the giantess. She has an enormous broom
that continually swings at a passing rat.

Tib senses that this giantess, too, “was Little Tib's mother, but he sensed
that she would not know him – that she was cut off from him in some way by
the mists, and the need to strike at the rat.” Tiktok says she is only
hitting at it once, but over and over, indicating that Tib will die if the
broom catches him and sweeps him away; he says he can stop it. Tib winds
his MOVING ACTION key and Tiktok looks into his eyes, where Tib sees his
own reflected with “little flames in them like the flames of two candles in
church, and the flames were going out.” Finally, Tib attempts to wind
Tiktok's thinking key so that he can answer the question, “Don't you know
me?”, but there is no key.

 The trees with faces in their trunks are from the movie (the scene in the
apple orchard). The place where the leaves, grass, etc. are all red is in
the Land of Oz; it is the portion know as the Country of the Quadlings or
Quadlingland. In the Oz books the Munchkins are only one of the four major
groups who live in Oz. To the north live the Quadlings, to the east live
the Munchkins (blue), to the south live the Gillykins (red) and to the west
live the Winkies (yellow). And in the center is the Emerald City where
things are, of course, green. Oz is first described this way in *The
Marvelous Land of Oz.*


  The copper man is Tiktok, "Smith & Tinker's Patent
Double-Action,Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking
Mechanical Man," as it says at the beginning of his instruction manual. He
is introduced in *Ozma of Oz* and appears in many books thereafter. Wolfe
got a few details wrong (in the book he has one keyhole in the middle of
his back and one under each arm and one key fits all of them) but his
copper man is unmistakably Tiktok, who is often referred to as a copper man
in the Oz books. One of the great pleasures of the Oz books is the
illustrations. Wolfe obviously remembers the pictures of the characters;
the drawings often showed details that Baum did not describe but that Wolfe
does, such as Tiktok's mustache.


  The giant version of Little Tib's mother is based on a giant in *Ozma of
Oz*. The giant in the book is another clockwork man, made of iron, by the
same manufacturer as Tiktok. All the iron giant can do is pound the path
that runs by him with his giant hammer; he is meant to discourage people
from using the path. But if you move quickly and time it just right, you
can run under his hammer. Otherwise you will be crushed. In a typical Wolfe
touch, when Little Tib comments to Tiktok that he remembers his mother
trying to hit a rat with a broom just once, Tiktok replies that she *is*
only swinging the broom once, but that moment is occurring over and over.
(Ansley)


 Tib awakens to a baby crying in a doctor's office and the touch of a
strange woman who has “the hard cold hands of the copper man. Embarrassed,
Tib finds himself on Nitty's lap, his stick gone. He says hello to a little
girl with only one leg and hears the “*Bam. Bam. Bam*.” sound of the
giantess' broom. The girl's mother warns her not to let Tib touch her face
with his dirty hands. When Tib feels the little girl's artificial leg, he
notices “a rubber thing with metal under it, and metal strips like the
copper man's neck going down at the sides. Little Tib reached inside them
and found her leg again, but it was smaller than his own arm.”

 He thinks of walking amongst the spinning flowers towards the green city
and the girl's leg grows to full size. The mother screams. Tib still has a
fever and the doctor's office refuses to see him without a retinal scan.
The doctor's employee says, “They'll think he might be in the country
illegally. Once an investigation like that starts, you can never stop it.”

 Mr. Parker asserts that he is himself ill and that Nitty must leave so the
boy must accompany him in to see the doctor. The doctor gives him
medication for influenza. Nitty and Mr. Parker later discuss their plans to
reprogram the machine. “You work that program right and that machine will
find out they need a man running it again. Need a maintenance man too. Why
does a man feel so bad if he don't have real payin'- work to do – tell me
that.”

 Tib comes to the realization that he must have dreamed the healing, and
that the other world in which he can see must be the real world. After
sleeping for a bit, they decide to hitchhike to Martinsburg. Nitty tells
him to wash to get rid of his tear streaks, and when they go down to the
creek Nitty pours water over Little Tib's head and ducks him under in a
classic baptism scene. As they are hitchhiking, Nitty assures Little Tib
that they will get a ride before ten because of his prayers. Tib says Nitty
should pray for a job, and the older man says, “I did that, right after I
lost my old one. Then I saw Mr. Parker again and how he had got to be, and
I started going around with him to look after him. So then I had a job –
I've got it now Mr. Parker's the one that doesn't have a job.”

 Tib prays, begging that he would even ride with cattle or garbage. A bus
stops and welcomes them to the “temple of Deva”. The bus' driver, Dr.
Prithivi, is a syncretic spirtualist who wears a cross with three crossbars
on his neck. Dr. Prithivi claims to be a doctor of the soul: “If someone is
sick a physician should be summoned. Should they be evil they should summon
me.” Nitty comments that no one would seek that aid – for the evil one
would be making money. Dr. Prithivi says that all men are evil but few make
money. The bus stops at a road side park so that they can “recreate”
themselves. Looking over the high view from the park, Dr. Prithivi recalls
his boyhood in the Himalayas, where he once saw a leopard in his garden.

 Little Tib tries to picture a leopard or even a cat, and eventually sees a
lion standing on its hind feet in front of him, with a red ribbon knotted
in its mane dancing to “the remembered flute music of Dr. Prithivi's
laughter.” Tib dances with the lion over the air, whose description matches
that of the lion from *The Wizard of Oz*. The crowd pulls him back from the
ledge.

Dr. Prithivi says that Tib must be presented to the god and unveils his
six-armed statue of Deva holding syncretic symbols of many of the world's
major religions (and even a phallus thrown in for good measure). Tib
imagines being crushed on the stones below and pictures them in his mind,
and soon sees himself pressed against a wall of stone in a rocky land. He
follows the shadows into the mountain until he hears a tapping as of
marbles poured on a floor and sees torches kindled. (After the baptism and
the dance with the lion , the fantasy of his visions are no longer
relegated to dreams, and freely interact with the waking world – his visit
to the gnome kingdom here echoes his later trip to the dark realm of the
computer in the County Administrative Building). Here gnomes with axes
accost him, stating they are a police state and that Tib will be drafted
into the labor force. They take him to their king sitting on his cushions
behind gold curtains, who accuses Tib of trespassing and asks how he
pleads. Asking for mercy, Tib says that trespasses should be forgiven,
while the Gnome King sees it as an admission of guilt. The lights go out
and Tib manages to run away as the gnomes struggle in the dark, but soon he
sees another faint light which he wills to be Mr. Parker and Nitty near a
cold water creek.

Instead, it is a forest of silver and gold trees emitting light, the sky a
vault of cold stone. Grapefruit sized fruit dangles from the trees, and
when he pulls one off he sees that it unscrews (the grass which had been
gems turning into “real grass in some way, or perhaps a carpet or a
bedspread”). Inside the fruit are hot meat and gravy and other food “so hot
and dry he did not even try to put them in his mouth.” He finds hot tea and
manages to drink a bit despite the heat, finally in the dark again.

Knowing that he is waking up, Tib hears “the noise of hundreds and hundreds
of picks” and a star shaped shadow in a new light congeals into a gnome
coming after him, then an army of gnomes with arms “sticking out at every
angle, so that it looked like one gnome with a hundred arms, all reaching
for him.” This image of the gnomes and their sounds will resemble the
possessed demon legion of the computer Tib will soon find when he finally
confronts the darkness in Martinsburg. In addition, the demon depicted on
the side of Prithivi's bus, Hiranyakasipu, has a name which means “clothed
in gold” or “soft cushions” - and the king of the gnome's throne is fitted
with real gold curtains, as he sits on a bed spread with linked diamonds.
These gnome scenes, too, are based on Oz books. Baum elected to spell gnome
without the g to avoid confusions in pronunciation.


 The nomes are introduced in *Ozma of Oz.* The land outside the Nome
King's cave is very much as Wolfe describes it. Baum's Nome King's
throne room is similar to Wolfe's description, but there are
differences. Baum's nomes are constantly digging with picks and
shovels when they are not smelting gold or hammering it in their
smithies. They only stop when the Nome King needs them to serve as
soldiers.
The Metal Forest is described in *Tik-Tok of Oz* (Chapter 19, "King
Kaliko"). It is a sort of treasury for the nomes. Again some details
differ from Wolfe's description. The major one is that the cave of the
Metal Forest also contains living trees called Hotel Trees which bear
Three-Course Nuts (described in Chapter 22: "Kindly Kisses"). The
fruits are cocoanut-sized [sic] and unscrew into three sections (soup,
main course and dessert) but they are obviously the source of Little
Tib's golden fruit. (Ansley)The heat of the meal stems from the
terrible fever Tib has after actually walking on air, and he awakens
in a motel which Dr. Prithivi has paid for by taking up a collection.
Nitty believes the hot tea in Tib's dream was the ice water and
medicine he administered to the boy.	Nitty calls Prithivi, and when he
arrives they discuss the lion that Tib saw. Prithivi says his bus has,
“a picture of a man with a lion's head.  It is Vishnu destroying the
demon Hiranyakasipu. … It was Vishnu also who circled the universe in
two strides; this is a kind of dancing on air perhaps.”  He goes on to
discuss the significance of the lion – it symbolizes Christ (a winged
lion is the badge of St. Mark), it is the emblem of the tribe of
Judah, and the son-in-law of Mohammed was called the Lion of God.
Prithivi indicates the lion represents Christ because they were
thought to lick their cubs to life, which are born dead. Prithivi
asserts that the hand of god is in all.  Mr. Parker prefers other
paranormal explanations, such as levitation, rather than a spiritual
one for Tib's miracle.  Prithivi lets Little Tib know his plan to have
him star as Krishna in a play, which will ultimately give Mr. Parker
time to enter the County Administration Building and reprogram the
computer. 	Nitty identifies Little Tib as a wonder-worker who cured
Mr. Parker of his mental problems and says that even Jesus did not
always know when he performed miracles. “You don't have to believe he
was God.  He was a real man, and he did those things.  He cured all
those people, and he walked on that water. … Saint Peter walked on it
too.  Saint Peter saw Him.  But what I'm wondering about is, if it is
the boy, what would happen to you if he was to go away?”	Mr. Parker
describes how to unlock the County Building to Tib and they hear the
music of Dr. Prithivi's play, which Tib identifies as remote and
foreign. Mr. Parker says, “What you sense is remoteness in time … It's
like an old, old thing that never knew when to die, that's still
wandering over the earth.”  	Tib says, “It never was here before, was
it? … Then maybe it isn't an old thing at all.” He remembers a baby he
once saw, which he had thought “was old until everyone told him it was
very new, and it would be alive, probably, when its mother was an old
woman and dead.  He wondered who would be alive a long time from now –
Mr. Parker, or Dr. Prithivi.” This talk probably invokes religious
ideologies such as the coming of Christ and other myths in antiquity –
if they have never been “here” before, then they are new, though the
ideas and their very being is not necessarily of this time. 	They lift
Tib through the bars in the window and he proceeds in the darkness
until “the funniest-looking man Little Tib had ever seen” shows up and
offers to go ahead of him. The Clothes Man, as Tib considers him, says
sighted people in the light see things that are there, while blind
people in the dark see things that aren't there. He also says that his
brain came from the Wizard himself, revealing that he is the Scarecrow
of Oz. Tib comes to a locked door and the Scarecrow says he could get
through it if only he had the ruby slippers. It seems that Tib is
teleported through the door; he then goes up the stairs to hear the
computer calling out to him amidst a terrible sound like thunder and
dropping stones which reminds him of his encounter with the gnomes.

 It identifies itself as many and legion, and Tib instructs them to “Get
out”, at which point the computer goes dead and the Scarecrow tells him
they are gone, though Tib might encounter them again. Tib opens the door
and they return to act in Prithivi's play.

Prithivi gives him a flute as a prop, which Tib knows he can use to feel
his way as a walking stick, and introduces him to the performer playing
Indra. Prithivi recaps the story of Krishna (see Religious Allusions below)
and instructs Tib not to drop the mountain when he lifts it in the play.
When the gong strikes thrice, Tib is to exit the bus and go onstage.

Left alone with Indra, Tib notices that he is not from this region. Indra
says he is from the capital, Niagara, and begins to tell him a story of
women who wanted to do something nice for the world, so they volunteered
their eggs for genetic modification “that would make the girls and boys
smarter and stronger and healthier.” Scientists studied these children
along with control groups of regular children, brought from farm, ranch,
and factory families from neighboring towns. (The experiments were done in
Houston, and the Sugarland Tib seeks is but a few miles away from there).

When the children turn six, strange things happen:

“People and animals – sometimes even monsters – were seen in the corridors
and therapy rooms who had never entered the complex and were never observed
to leave it. Experimental animals were freed – apparently without their
cages having been opened. Furniture was rearranged, and on several
different occasions large quantities of food that could not be accounted
for was fond in the common rooms.”

They notice that the strange events coincided with the examinations of the
genetically improved children. Tib insists, “I'm not one of those.” The
groups were separated in two but the paranormal activity continued to be
observed for both groups. A belief that the mutations could occur
spontaneously spurred those in central data processing to enable the
retinal scanners to identify these individuals. No abnormalities were found
amongst the children, so the President “under the present unsettled
economic conditions” in the fear of social unrest, pushed to terminate the
experiment. “The brains and spinal cords of the boys and girls involved
would be turned over to the biologists for examination.” Little Tib says he
knows this story: the three Wise Men warn Joseph and Mary, so they take
Jesus to Egypt. Indra says, “No … that isn't this story at all.” He then
reveals that an individual was identified at a retinal station, but the
normal detention methods involved burning out the retina of the criminal
(which rendered criminals helpless and was accomplished quite cheaply with
sodium vapor light overvoltage). Alas, the subject could never be
identified in this fashion again and in this case they failed to accost the
suspect.

They did find that it was one of the boys involved in the experiment as a
control. The scientists and government people knew that it could not really
be one of the controls and believed that “one of the mothers – possibly one
of the fathers, but more likely one of the mothers – saw it coming a long
way off and exchanged infants to save her own. It must have happened years
before.”

Tib says, “Like Krishna's mother.”

Indra replies, “Yes. Gods aren't born in cowsheds.” Indra says that he will
kill the boy soon, and the thunder prompts Nitty to come in and call them
out so that they show can start.

When Tib ascends the seven stairs to the stage, he can see a village of mud
houses and people all around him, with a mountain in the distance “and
beyond the mountain a marvelous sky full of palaces and chariots and
painted elephants; and beyond the sky, more faces than he could count.”

He believes that this is Prithivi's dream, one so strong that the angels
had come to make it true, or “Dr. Prithivi's dream working through him. He
thought of what Indra had said – that his mother was not his real mother,
and knew that could not be so.” He pipes a music that isn't his, and Indra
comes, “his face … a carved, hooked-nose mask. In his right hand he had a
cruel sword that curved and recurved like a snake, and in his left a
glittering eye.” Tib knows that the eye is to record any of the strange
things that surround him and that Indra cannot strike without that
evidence. The rain comes (echoing the play's story of Indra's anger [he is
the god of rain and thunderstorms] when Krishna's usurps his worship in
favor of the mountain).

When everyone runs for cover, Indra and Tibb are left alone. The Tin
Woodsman appears with his ax, declaring that wood has never stood long
against him, and cuts off Indra's mask. Tib recognizes his father and the
Tin Woodsman asks, “Don't you know me, Georgie?” indicating that the father
was once enamored of the Oz books. George reassures his son that he need
fear no longer, but as he steps forward, he strikes with his sword. The Tin
Woodsman intercepts the blow. It becomes dark, and Tib realizes he is still
standing in front of the computer, “with the devils not yet driven out.”

His father sits down with him on the ledge and begins to explain why he has
to hunt for his son: the subsistence farming his people have done is
becoming obsolete, and they will become extinct like other useless animals,
so “we've got to join them before it's too late.” His father knows that the
“great men and kings and queens and Presidents” he dreamed of being related
to in school are really not a part of his family, but recognizes that Tib
is a prodigy and healer. “You're our ticket. Everybody was born for
something, and that was what you were born for, son. Just because of you,
the family is going to get in before it's too late.”

He touches his father's face, and again it comes off, revealing a metal
mask. He says he is the president's man now and that Tib's mother is in a
different division, probably in Atlanta (gee-seven).

“Inside himself he said forever that that was not his real mother, and this
was not his real father; that his real mother and father were the mother
and father he had had at the old place he would keep them inside for
always, his real mother and father.” He cries, and the mask comes off once
again to reveal his father's face, saying that it is actually the Federal
Reserve Card and being so poor all the time that has driven him to this
betrayal, as well as the conditioning. Tib runs away and bumps into Nitty.

The next day Little Tib is taken to a school for special classes for the
blind. Since the computer no longer works, Mr. Parker offered his services
and sent a woman named Ms. Munson to get Tib for the school. On the fifth
day of school, he hears his father's voice in the corridor, calling himself
Mr. Jefferson. He takes Little Tib out front, to send Tib to Niagara for
examination. As they are walking, Tib sees a small man in front of him in a
bright green coat – the Wizard of Oz. Tib asks to be freed, and the Wizard
warns that if he is caught again it will be for good. “You remind me of a
friend of mine named *Tip*. Tip with a* p.* A *b* is just a *p* turned
upside down … Tip turned out to be the ruler of all of us in the end, you
know,” the Wizard says. Then Tib sees two realities at once, and time seems
to reverse so that Tib's father is once again about to pull him from the
school. This time, he gives his name as George Tibbs rather than Jefferson
and claims to be from the Office of Biogenetic Improvement through his dirt
farming expertise– part of the agricultural program.

[Tib] thought about what he was going to do, and not running. Then about
Krishna, because he had been Krishna. Had Krishna run? Or had he gone back
to fight the king who had wanted to kill him? He could not be sure, but he
did not think Krishna had run. Jesus had fled into Egypt, he remembered
that. But he had come back. … He remembered talking about the Jesus story
to his father when they were sitting on the stage. His father had brushed
it aside; but Little Tib felt it might be important somehow.

As Tib sits there, his chair bothers him: “The chair was hard - harder than
any rock he had ever sat on. He felt the unyielding wood of its arms
stretching to either side of him while he thought. There was something
horrible about those arms, something he could not remember.” (It seems this
could echo the crucifixion of Jesus, a dim memory of something horrible,
and Tib makes his decision).

Tib escapes in the crowd of children and walks away from the school, until
he hears the whistle of a train He heads toward it. He sees a little girl
ahead of him, “so he knew she was an angel.” She will not tell him her
name, but says he can call her Dorothy, claiming he fixed her leg. She says
she can help him, telling him what to look out for. She tells him a shaggy
man is ahead, and Tib once again runs into Nitty, who says Mr. Parker
forgot him.

“Well, little blind boy, Mr. Parker is white … and when a white man has
been helped out by a black one, he likes to forget it sometimes.” To Tib,
“black and white seemed very unimportant.” Nitty says it works the other
way, too, and Tib introduces Dorothy to him.

The final Oz character referred to in “The Eyeflash Miracles” is the
Shaggy Man. A character with this name first appears in *The Road to
Oz*, the fifth Oz book. He is a hobo Dorothy meets in Kansas, near her
Uncle's farm, when she is trying to find her way home. He and Dorothy
become magically lost and, after many adventures, find their way to
Oz, just in time for Ozma's birthday party. The Shaggy Man appears in
most of the Oz books that follow *The Road to Oz*, at least briefly.
Wolfe breaks the pattern of the story here. Until this point, all of
the Oz characters were in Little Tib's dreams or visions and they had
very little, if any lasting reality in the "real" world of the story.
But Nitty is a real person and he also is identified with an Oz
character. (Ansley)

Here Nitty asks if Sugarland is real, and Tib says it's in Texas. They walk
hand in hand down the railroad ties turning yellow in the light of the
setting sun, soon starting to skip.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20140915/40418d40/attachment-0001.htm>