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God,” she pronounced. “That hand is a curse. He has shown you His power.” She looked at me, her face stricken with disappointment, then fled from the courtyard to her room, where she shut herself for the rest of the afternoon.
    For several days after, she avoided me. Then one morning, a servant came to my bedchamber as I was dressing and presented me with a new glove. I didn’t need to ask who had sent it. I wanted to throw it across the room. I wanted to send it back torn. But I put it on. When I went down, my mother was waiting in the courtyard. With a brief flick of her eyes she confirmed the glove’s presence. After that, she never again mentioned my hand.
    I WAS NOW A GREAT MAN. I rode through the city, shouting across the rabble to other young courtiers I had met, and involved myself in Hippodrome politics, supporting the Blues, as my father had, and standing feasts for the chariot racers. Heraclius had kept his promise of reward. It had been announced that at the Feast of Palms I would be granted an income and subpatrician rank, which, among other privileges, would allow me a title, the use of blue ink, and the right to be drawn in a carriage by four brown ponies.
    A month after my return, I received perhaps my greatest honor: an invitation to dine at an imperial banquet in the Triclinium of the Nineteen Couches. I sent for the tailor and commissioned a new tunic, and when the evening came I daubed myself with scent. As I was leaving, I could hear my mother in her room, murmuring her constant prayers. I ignored them, and once I stepped into my litter I slipped off my glove and tossed it to a servant. At the dinner I was given a poor seat, far from Heraclius—a hundred men separated us—and near the twelve paupers. But I was there. I belonged. The musicians played airy tunes, the tableware glittered in the lamplight, and the emperor, I was certain, had looked at me with approval.
    It was when the wine was being poured and I had begun talking to the youth on my right—the son of a Bithynian tax farmer—that one of the paupers, seated toward the middle of their table, leapt up and hissed at me. I had noticed him giving me twitchy glances and had hoped it would end there. His beard was matted, his skin burnt to leather, and after he hissed again he pointed at me with a pheasant bone and shouted, “Blood on his hand!” The entire room fell silent and stared. I sat as still as I could, and as my heart beat I felt each pulse’s tremble. Someone seemed to be squeezing my chest, denying me all but the tiniest spoonfuls of breath. The rumors of Theodosios’s gelding had grown more detailed in the recent days, and I feared that at last I had been caught out.
    But then a soldier pulled the pauper from where he stood. The next dish, turtles cooked in their shells, was brought. Everyone returned to their conversations as if nothing had happened. They were all well-practiced courtiers. A madman, two or three said. The Bithynian began rattling on about some gossip he’d heard concerning the Greens’ new bearkeeper, and at the next table a general from the east assured his neighbors that the recent Saracen unrest, during which they’d proclaimed a prophet (such an idea raised laughter), would be put down by winter. And yet I couldn’t return so easily. Those latest rumors held that Theodosios had retreated farther into the desert, and since that night there had been no new miracles. As I reclined, I saw again his twisted face. I heard his cries, felt his bloody manhood in my palm, and thought of what my mother had said. A curse.
    The musicians changed songs. A slave reached over my shoulder and pulled apart my turtle shell. I hid my hand under the table and forced my mouth into a smile. I had served an empire that would last forever, I had become the son my father died wanting. There could be no regret.

EAST TEXAS LUMBER

     
     
    B ACK FROM LUNCH, I stood in the early June sun pulling two-by-sixes for somebody