Joe L. Hensley

“ Your mind speaks in a language we do not understand, in figures and equations that are not real to us. Those things lie all through your mind—on the surface we have sensed only your pity for us and your hate for the shadowy ones around you, the ones we do not know. ”

“ The milky, white eyes surveyed him, the hands remained locked securely over those of the mother. The thin carven features of the children were emotionless, waiting.
He strove for rational meaning within his brain. These are my sons—they can not see or hear or speak. They are identical twins—born with those defects.
Take two children, blind them, make them deaf to all sound, cut away their voices. They are identical twins, facing the same environment, sharing the same heredity of blasted chromosomes. They will have intelligence and curiosity that increases as they mature. ”

“ The blind often also develop a sense almost like radar which allows them to perceive an object ahead of them and gives them the ability to follow twisting paths.
Take one child and put him under the disability that the twins were born with. As intelligence grows so does single bewilderment. The world is a puzzling and bewildering place. Braille is a great discovery—a way to communicate with the unknown that lies beyond.
But the twins had shown almost no interest in Braille.
He reached back down for the tiny hands. ”

“ He had seen them before imperfectly in the disquieting dreams. "She must go with us for she can no longer exist here," the voice said softly. "Perhaps there are others like us to come—we do not yet know what we are or whether there will be others like us. ”

“ The doctor had said it was a miracle she had lived this long. He stood away from the bed for a moment watching before he went on out to the porch. The twins moved back into what had become a normal position for them in the past months: One on each side of the bed, their thin hands holding Mary's tightly, the milky blind eyes surveying something that could not be seen by his eyes. Sometimes they would stand like this for hours. ”

“ Don't you realize that the government that punished the men I worked with for their 'criminal negligence' is the same government that commissioned them to do that work—that officials were warned and rewarned of the things that small increases in radiation might do and that such things might not show up immediately—and yet they ordered us ahead? ”

“ Others had not been so lucky. When a whole people panic then an object for their hate must be found. A naming. An immediate object. He remembered the newspaper story that began: "They lynched twelve men, twelve ex-men, in New Mexico last night ..."
Have I been wrong? Have I done the right thing? He remembered the tiny hands in his own, the blind eyes.
Those hands. Why do they make me feel like ... ”