But he had felt that night, while his wife kept the children
over by the road — he had rushed them from the house when he saw that the barn was on fire — as he watched the enormous flames flying into the nighttime sky, then heard the terrible screaming sounds of the cows as they
died, he had felt many things, but it was just as the roof of his house crashed in, fell into the house itself, right into their bedrooms and the living room below with all the
photos of the children and his parents, as he saw this happen he had felt — undeniably — what he could only think was the presence of God, and he understood why angels had always been portrayed as having wings, because there had been a sensation of that — of a rushing sound, or not even a sound, and then it was as though God, who had no face, but was God, pressed up against him and conveyed to him without words — so briefly, so fleetingly — some message that Tommy understood to be: It's all right, Tommy.
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley «Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child,» Norman Mailer infamously remarked in 1971, less than one year before Arbus
died and
over nine years after she snapped a
photo of a scrawny blond boy who actually did have grenade in hand.