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often defied his control.
    She watched him as he perused the tables, searching for VCR tapes. In his excitement he brushed against one little girl, sending her armload of computer games to the ground. “Excuse me,” Grace heard him say, as if on cue. “Excuse me.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you?” the girl’s mother cried. “You almost knocked her down!”
    But Zack did not help the girl pick up what she’d dropped; Zack just ran on to the next table. Grace hurried up to the woman. “I’m so sorry,” she said, kneeling to retrieve the games. “He didn’t mean to be rude.”
    â€œIs he with you?” The woman’s upper lip curled in disgust.
    â€œHe’s my son,” explained Grace, handing the games back to the child. “He’s autistic.”
    â€œWell, he needs to be more careful.” The woman turned to her daughter. “Are you alright, Jenna?”
    â€œI think so,” the little girl whined, turning injured eyes on Grace.
    â€œCome on.” The mother grabbed her hand. “Let’s just pay for these and get out of here.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Grace called as the woman strode off, her daughter following like a wounded duck. She looked around for Zack. He was now several tables away, rummaging through a laundry basket of videotapes. As much as he liked cartoons and exercise videos led by bikini-clad women, what he prized most were family videos—total strangers toasting the bride at weddings or belly-flopping into swimming pools at back yard cook-outs. He would watch them for hours, sometimes rewinding the same scene over and over . That’s not uncommon for autistic people , his therapist once told her. We think it’s how they figure out behavioral cues. You know, how people react to each other.
    Though Grace found it unsettling and slightly creepy, Zack took endless pleasure in the antics of strangers. Never did he talk about the people, or express any desire to meet them. He just dissected little slices of their lives, over and over again. She watched as he rifled through the basket, discerning as an oenophile seeking an aged bottle of port.
    While Zack shopped the videos, she stepped back to look at what was left of her old neighborhood. In the distance she could see the top of the Spanish Oak, still standing majestically behind the Russell house. After Teresa had turned up dead beneath it, Leslie and Richard Shaw had led a drive to have the tree cut down. “It holds too many horrible memories,” they said. “People will say it’s haunted. It will lower our property values.” But the Cherokees had risen up in protest. Though it was no longer on tribal land, they called the tree Undli Adaya, or Big Brother Tree, and regarded it as holy. Ultimately it had been spared, much to the delight of the new developers, who were now using its stylized silhouette as their logo.
    Grace turned away from the tree to watch Zack as he finished looking through the one basket of VCR tapes and began making his way through the other merchandise strewn along the tables. She
followed him at a distance. His initial excitement had cooled, making his movements slower and his passage through the crowd less disruptive. Still, she noticed that once people realized they were standing beside a forty-two-year-old man ogling exercise videos, they quickly moved away.
    What’s going to happen to you, Zack? she wondered, rubbing her arms against a sudden chill. She was almost sixty, an adjunct art professor living on a small salary and child support from her ex-husband. Though she made enough to keep them afloat now, what would happen to them when she retired? What would happen to Zack when she grew too old to drive him to these stupid yard sales? Or when in a rage, he might strike out and break her arm or hip?
    Don’t think about that now, she told herself. Today’s a good day. He’s happy.