At night I used to imagine I was perishing in a hellish prison, condemned for deeds I had not done. And brother Hank was the trusty old turnkey, making his nightly rounds, testing the bars with his ubiquitous nightstick as they did in all the Jimmy Cagney thrillers. Lights out! Lights out! Reverberating clash of power-operated gates; toot of the curfew. At my desk, in the forbidden light of a stashed candle, I fashion elaborate prison-break schemes involving smuggled tommy-guns, split-second timing, and cocksure cohorts with names like Johnny Wolf and Big Louie and The Arm, all of whom respond instantly to my signal tap on the plumbing: zero hour. Footsteps running across the dark yard. Searchlights! Sirens wailing! Two-dimensional figures in blue pop into sight on the walls, scattering machine-gun fire over the melee as the dead pile up. The prisoners retreat, snarling. The break is thwarted. Or so it appears to the casual eye. But this is just a ruse; Wolf and Big Louie and The Arm have been sacrificed to diversion in the yard, a mere distraction action, while I—and Mother—tunnel to freedom beneath the river. I laughed a moment at the flickering drama and the dreamer that had written it (he draws his head back in—“Sure, tunneling underneath the river; to freedom”—back in from the cold, pine-smoky night into the smell of mothballs and mice. . . .), then began looking about the room to see if I could find any other remnants of this little playwright or his product. (He can’t close the window; it is jammed open. He leaves and goes back to sit on the bed . . .) I discovered nothing more in the room except a box of ancient comic books beneath the windowbox. (He eats the cold pork and one of the pears, looking straight ahead at the still-open window. The smell of burning pine reaches him, chill and dark. . . .) I sat for a time on the bed, wondering what my next move would be, while I leafed through a few of the black-outlined adventures of Plastic Man, Superman, Aquaman, Hawkman, and, of course, Captain Marvel. There were more Captain Marvels in the box than all the various other assorted marvels put together. (He puts the plate on the floor and takes his jacket from the bed and bends to lay it aside on a chair; as he straightens back up, that beam of light that he has been so carefully avoiding catches him full in the face.. . .) My one great hero, Captain Marvel, still head and shoulders above such late starters as Hamlet or Homer (the beam holds him—“I used to imagine the wicked Sir Mordred doing his best to ensnare that nimble marauder of his castle. Gallant Sir Leland of Stanford who knows every secret tunnel and hidden stone stairway from the highest tower to the deepest dripping dungeon”—spears his face and holds it spitted there like some stage illusion head produced by hidden mirrors...) and still my favorite over all the rest of the selection of super-doers. Because Captain Marvel was not continuously Captain Marvel. No. When he wasn’t flying around batting the heads of archfiends together he was a kid about ten or twelve named Billy Batson, a scrawny and ineffectual punk who could be transformed, to the accompaniment of lightning and thunder, into a cleft-chinned behemoth capable of practically anything.  (He sits for a very long time, looking at the light exploding through the hole in the wall. Outside the sound goes on in demented and insensate voodoo cadence. . . . “I used to dance to the crackle of electrodes and sing along with switches activating stiff-legged golems.” And the rest of the semi-lit room sifts out of his seeing . . .) And all this kid had to do to bring off this transformation was say his word: Shazam: S for Solomon and wisdom; H for Hercules and strength; and so on with Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. “Shazam.” I said the word softly aloud into the chilly room, smiling at myself but thinking: maybe it wasn’t really Captain Marvel that was my hero; maybe it was Billy Batson and his magic word. I always used to try to figure out what my word was, my magic phrase that would turn me instantly enormous and invulnerable...(Finally the rest of the room is gone. There is just that bright hole, like a lone star in a black sky swelling to nova proportions—“I used to weave ectoplasmic afghans from the wispy effluvium left in the wake of Invisible Men . . .”) In fact, wasn’t that perhaps what I was still searching for? My magic word? (The light draws at him, pulling him up from the bed. . . .) The notion interested me; and I had leaned to examine the page more closely when I realized where the light came from that was illuminating my book: from the hole. From that forgotten hole in my wall that had once been my eyepiece to the hard and horny facts of life. From the hole that had opened into my mother’s room. (He slides slowly across the floor in his stockinged feet. “I used to be shorter.” The spot of light moves from his eye down his face, from his face down his neck— “When I was ten years old and awakened in my flannel pajamas by werewolves next door, I used to be much shorter”—from his neck down his chest, becoming smaller and smaller until he stands against the wall and the spot is a silver coin in his pocket. . . .) I stared at the point of light across the room. I was amazed that Hank hadn’t plugged it by now, and for a crazy moment thought he had perhaps arranged for me to see the hole again, as he had arranged my room for my arrival. And maybe! he’d even arranged the room next door as well! (He touches the lighted rim of the small opening, feeling the notches made by the meat knife, smooth now, as though the passage of light has worn away the sharp edges—“I used to know its every notch. . . .”)It was an odd anxiety. For a moment it was all I could do (kneeling: “I used to—”) to force myself to take the peek (kneeling and shivering with the chill: “I used to see awful—”) that would prove my fears foolish (“. . . see awful ah! . . . Ahhh.”). But one look was all I needed. I gave a sigh, then walked back to the bed for the pear and cookies. I munched them together happily, chiding my foolish trepidation and reminding myself that, luckily, time waits for no one, not even a schizophrenic with delusional tendencies. . . . Because the room had in no way whatsoever resembled my mother’s. I sat on the bed again for a long, indecisive moment, feeling pretty well draine............