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Now this was pretty exciting, because my purpose in trying to reach China was to acquire a magic baseball bat made of superior Chinese ash that would, I was quite certain, allow me to add a homerun to the no hitter I was planning to pitch in the World Series. Spurred by the cheers of the crowd, I redoubled my efforts and squinted intensely at the billowing figure in the refracted air.

He seemed to be waving his hand, calling me to him. I began to feel a bond between us, like we were working together against some kind of powerful tide. I drew my hands up and carefully formed a circle with my fingers. Thus, looking through my improvised telescope, I blocked out the rest of the world and was able to focus on the dark figure without distraction. (I had found this method useful in previous experiments.)

Just as I thought I was starting to really see something, I had a feeling something elemental was collapsing in the world around me. There was a kind of "fffffffooooop" sound. A few leaves tumbled through the air. I was distracted, looked high into the tree and inadvertently blasted my eyes by looking full at the disk of the late afternoon sun. When I looked down again, my eyes full of whirling powder blue spots, there he was, jumping over the irrigation ditch, a little black boy...naked as a jay bird.

I remember being quite embarrassed by his lack of clothes. As remarkable as the event was, I think I was more concerned by the possibility that my parents would come out and see me playing with a naked black boy, something one didn't do after the age of three or four in Sweetwater, Texas. I said "Where's your pants?" After all he didn't even put his hand over his talliwagger, a clear sign of poor breeding.