. . .
“I cannot stop,” says Tom. He tilts his head arrogantly to the side. “I have yet to make the crowning hat.”
“Your parents are worried about you,” says Mr. Loggins. “The principal is worried about you. Quite frankly, so am I.”
“Once,” says Tom softly, looking at his hands, “I was bullied. Did you know that?”
. . .
Tom looks up.
“I was insecure,” he says. “Because I had lost myself. I was shy and meek and human, and it shone from me. The bullies said, ‘look, there! That boy is human. He doesn’t have even the tiniest bit of parasitic serpent DNA. I bet the scrolls of Lemuria don’t even talk about him! Let’s beat him up, because we can!’”
This statement is not accurate. Tom is dramatizing the speech of the bullies for effect.
“But now,” says Tom, “they do not. First I became too uncool even to bully — not just human, but less than human. They became afraid to beat up stinking Tom in his stinking dead hats, lest something of my shame rub off. Now I have risen in their estimation; they see this hat and an occult tremor shivers through them: they fear to trouble me, and make haste to clear my path. I have lost nothing and gained much, Mr. Loggins; wherefore should you be concerned?”
Mr. Loggins is listening to the sound of the words and not the substance.
He asks with some concern: “Are you being bullied, Thomas?”
Tom gives him a withering look.
. . .
Then the look in Tom’s eyes softens.
“You must know it too,” he says, “mustn’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“There is a fire in you, isn’t there, Mr. Loggins? An unfinished destiny? Something that was set aside for you, but which you were never strong enough to reach? Something you were for but —
“What’s the point? No, better to abandon dreams. Better to settle for a life without purpose than to grasp without success at dreams. You set it all aside, you drowned the little fires in you, you could not weave them together into a flame, and now —
. . .
“Now, to look at you, you must have a bustling, portly wife, and a limping dog; two drooling babies, Mr. Loggins, or one, or three; a fine collection of bottle-caps, is it? And second-place trophies in bowling? Cricket, maybe? Golf? And you wonder, where did your life go, Mr. Loggins? Where did the magic go? Is this really how it was all supposed to be? You wonder, when did you die, Mr. Loggins? When did some janitor scrub out the flame in you and leave only some great lump to lay around behind?”
“What?” says Mr. Loggins. “My wife, I, my dog —”
Mr. Loggins glares at him.
“If you’ve been reading my files, Mr. Thomas —”
. . .
“I’m sure you’re a good man,” says Tom. “I’m sure. But have you ever stopped to dare to notice that life is hard? Have you ever met a problem that you can’t solve, Mr. Loggins, and said, ‘I will solve it anyway?’”
His voice slips into pride, hubris, gloat, for a moment: “— because I have, but — ah, ah, but that’s not the point —”
. . .
Gentler, “Or do you just hide, Mr. Loggins, and do your best, and give a dopey look, and hope that if you fail somebody else will come along and make it right? What do you think will happen here, Mr. Loggins, if you cannot help me? Somebody else will solve it, won’t they? The system will step in, won’t it? The Agency? It’s all right to give up on me, isn’t it, Mr. Loggins? I’m just an ex-ophidian planet-inheritor in a wicked hat. You don’t have to care. Only —”
Tom hesitates.
“— only I think that perhaps I am obliged to care about you.”
. . .
Mr. Loggins has been reddening, his fists gone tight with anger, but Tom has stumbled onto Mr. Loggins’ counseling script and there he momentarily finds his ground.
“This isn’t about me, Tom,” he says.
But:
“Of course it’s about you,” says Tom. He is on his feet now. His face is practically glowing with the dream-wroth. “It’s always been about people like you. How could I have been so blind?
. . .
“It’s never been for me,” Tom realizes. “I am just the vehicle, I am just the medium. Oh, Tom. Oh, Tom. That’s your old hubris coming back, that is. I actually thought it was for me. Haha. Ha ha!”
Mr. Loggins opens his mouth but Tom silences him with a voice like a whip of sound.
“I am given to the world, Mr. Loggins, for people like you, to save those who haven’t dared to dream, and maybe because they couldn’t.”
. . .
Tom steps forward. He rests his hand on Mr. Loggins’ desk. His voice is strangely pleading.
“It’s not your fault, Mr. Loggins. It’s not wrong of you to be a lump. I don’t want you to think that that’s your fault. It’s just that nobody’s ever made a hat for you. Nobody’s ever infected your DNA with parasitic serpent DNA. Nobody’s ever given you a destiny. It’s not that you’ve failed to transcend humanity. It’s just, you’ve never gotten your chance.”
“This is you projecting,” blusters Mr. Loggins, “is what it is.”
. . .
“You’ve been so broken,” says Tom. “Did anybody ever even write an awful Lemurian prophecy about you? Do you even understand what it is like to make a hat? To do science? To make something amazing out of purpose and out of will? Has anyone ever even given you that much, Mr. Loggins, a chance to be amazing, a chance to be part of something, a chance to —
“It’s the best,” Tom says, interrupting himself, as if he were saying: please understand me.
. . .
“Hasn’t that been stolen from you? Can you really go through your life without the fire, Mr. Loggins? Can you really live asleep?”
It is too much. Mr. Loggins is on his feet. “We are off the topic, and get back from my desk, you little scat!”
Tom Friedman smiles sleepily:
“Here,” he says.
He takes the hat by the brim. He lifts it off. He casually drops it on Mr. Loggins’ head.
“Straighten up, Mr. Loggins,” he smiles. “See the one thing. Become one thing. Wake up.”
. . .
“I don’t,” starts Mr. Loggins.
He stops.
He tries again: “I don’t —”
There is something rising in him now. There are rivers of sensation rising from the feet of him to his crown. He takes deep breaths but he cannot control them. He is dizzy and lines of light splay themselves across his field of view, as if he were standing in a dissolving, rising world.
His eyes roll up. They flutter madly. His body twitches. It gives a jerking dance. One hand comes down hard on his desk, half-supports him, as he topples heavily to the floor.
Tom frowns.
“Mr. Loggins?”
. . .
Something has gone wrong with the atmospheric pressure in the room. Tom’s ears hurt. The room swims. Mr. Loggins looks up at Tom and his eyes — his eyes —
Through the pupils and the irises of them the hat has torn a jagged line of amber glow.
“Bloody hell,” whispers Mr. Loggins. “— bloody hell.”
“What did it make you, sir?” asks Tom, affecting chipperness, even though he feels as if something has gone wrong. Perhaps, he thinks, it is only that I have taken off the hat.
. . .
He is dizzy. He shouldn’t be dizzy. He can understand why Mr. Loggins might be dizzy, sort of, but why —
Mr. Loggins is pulling himself upright again and there is murder in his expression.
Tom swallows.
He tries to connect with Mr. Loggins. He reaches out with his eyes, tries to forge an understanding with the man, tries to see into his heart and show something of his own, but the light form his eyes does not reflect; Tom’s smile isn’t met, but rather falls into the rage writ across Mr. Loggins and is swallowed, unechoed, drowned.
It is as if Tom has suddenly become a thing to Mr. Loggins and not a human.
People haven’t looked at him like that in a while! He’d almost forgotten what it was like.
. . .
Tom’d almost —
He is weak, suddenly. He is a child, suddenly. He is pale and shivering like a rabbit caught by a serpent’s eyes.
His inspiration abandons him.
His cockiness abandons him. His smile starts twitching at one edge.
That look devolves him; before those eyes he is just a desperate, frightened boy who hasn’t even got his hat on.
He licks his lips. “Mr. —” he starts. He swallows. He is going to say “Mr. Loggins?”
Mr. Loggins lunges.
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