minute I had the prickly feeling you get when you are watching a
movie and find that you know just what is going to happen next.
You're puzzled and a little spooked until you realize that the reason
you can predict the action so exactly is because you've seen the same
thing happen somewhere else a long time ago. I forgot the feeling when
I remembered why the kid wasn't watching the palmetto flats. But I
couldn't help wondering why he'd turned to watching the sky instead.

"What're you looking for up there, Joey?" I asked.

He didn't move and from the tone of his voice I got the impression
that he only half heard me.

"I'm moving some stars," he said softly.

I gave it up and went on to my own trailer without asking any more
fool questions. How can you talk to a kid like that?

Doc Shull wasn't in, but for once I didn't worry about him. I was
trying to remember just what it was about my stumbling over Joey's
wheelchair that had given me that screwy double-exposure feeling of
familiarity. I got a can of beer out of the ice-box because I think
better with something cold in my hand, and by the time I had finished
the beer I had my answer.

The business I'd gone through with Joey outside was familiar because
it _had_ happened before, about six weeks back when Doc and I first
parked our trailer at the Twin Palms court. I'd nearly stumbled over
Joey that time too, but he wasn't moving stars then. He was just
staring ahead of him, waiting.

He'd been sitting in his wheelchair at the west end of the
carpet-grass strip, staring out over the palmetto flats toward the
highway. He was practically holding his breath, as if he was waiting
for somebody special to show up, so absorbed in his watching that he
didn't know I was there until I spoke. He reminded me a little of a
ventriloquist's dummy with his skinny, knob-kneed body, thin face and
round, still eyes. Only there wasn't anything comical about him the
way there is about a dummy. Maybe that's why I spoke, because he
looked so deadly serious.

"Anything wrong, kid?" I asked.

He didn't jump or look up. His voice placed him as a cracker, either
south Georgian or native Floridian.

"I'm waiting for Charlie to come home," he said, keeping his eyes on
the highway.

Probably I'd have asked who Charlie was but just then the trailer door
opened behind him and his mother took over.

I couldn't see her too well because the lights were off inside the
trailer. But I could t