Зенна Гендерсон - The Anything Box

their finished breath has done this to me. Only time and the Hidden Ones know
if sight is through for me.
"One was concerned for me. One peered at me when first my steps began to
waver. He hurried me away from the others and sat away from me and watched
with me as the lights went out. He was concerned for me—or was studying me.
But I am blind."
"And you?" asked Veti of Dobi. "It harmed you not?"
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"I took care," said Dobi. "I came not close after the first meeting. And
yet . . ." he turned the length of his thigh. From hip to knee the split flesh
glinted like the raking of a mighty claw. "I was among the trees when a kutu
screamed on the hill above me. Fire lashed out from the Strangers and it
screamed no more. Startled, I moved the branches about me and—s-s-s-s-st!" His
finger streaked beside his thigh.
"But Deci—"
Dobi scattered his dust handprint with a swirl of his fingers. "Deci is
like a scavenging mayu. He follows, hand outstretched. 'Wait, wait,' he cried
when we turned to go. 'We can lead the world with these wonders.'"
"Why should we lead the world? Now there is no first and no last. Why
should we reach beyond our brothers to grasp things that dust will claim?"
"Wail him dead, Veti," rumbled Tefu. "Death a thousand ways surrounds him
now. And if his body comes again, his heart is no longer with us. Wail him
dead."
"Yes," nodded Dobi. "Wail him dead and give thanks that our coveti is so
securely hidden that the Strangers can never come to sow among us the seeds of
more Viats and Tefus."
"The Strangers are taboo! The coveti path is closed." So Veti wailed him
dead, crouching in the dust of the coveti path, clutching in her hands the
kiom Deci had given her with his heart. Viat's mother sat with her an
hour—until Veti broke her wail and cried, "Your grief is not mine. You pinned
Viat's kiom. You folded his hands to rest. You gave him back to earth. Wail
not with me. I wail for an emptiness— for an unknowledge. For a wondering and
a fearing. You know Viat is on the trail to the Hidden Ones. But I know not of
Deci. Is he alive? Is he dying in the wilderness with no pelu to light him
into the darkness? Is he crawling now, blind and maimed up the coveti trail? I
wail a death with no hope. A hopelessness with no death. I wail alone."
And so she wailed past the point of tears, into the aching dryness of
grief. The coveti went about its doing, knowing she would live again when
grief was spent.
Then came the day when all faces swung to the head of the coveti trail. All
ears flared to the sound of Veti's scream and all eyes rounded to see Deci
stagger into the coveti.
Veti flew to him, her arms outstretched, her heart believing before her
mind could confirm. But Deci winced away from her touch and his face half
snarled as his hand, shorn of three fingers and barely beginning to
regenerate, motioned her away.
"Deci!" cried Veti, "Deci?"
"Let—let—me breathe." Deci leaned against the rocks. Deci who could outrun
a kutu, whose feet had lightness and swiftness beyond all others in the
coveti. "The trail takes the breath."
"Deci!" Veti's hands still reached, one all unknowingly proffering the
kiom. Seeing it, she laughed and cast it aside. The death mark with Deci alive
before her? "Oh, Deci!" And then she fell silent as she saw his maimed hand,
his ragged crest, his ravaged jacket, his seared legs —his eyes— His eyes!
They were not the eyes of the Deci who had gone with eagerness to see the
Strangers. He had brought the Strangers back in his eyes.
His breath at last came smoothly and he leaned to Veti, reaching as he did
so, into the bundle by his side.
"I promised," he said, seeing Veti only. "I have come again to fill your
hands with wonder and delight."
But Veti's hands were hidden behind her. Gifts from strangers are suspect.
"Here," said Deci, laying an ugly angled thing down in the dust before
Veti. "Here is death to all kutus, be they six-legged or two. Let the Durlo
coveti say again the Klori stream is theirs for fishing," he muttered.
"Nothing is theirs now save by our sufferance. I give you power, Veti."
Veti moved back a pace.
"And here," he laid a flask of glass beside the weapon. "This is for dreams
and laughter. This is what Viat drank of—but too much. They call it water. It
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is a drink the Hidden Ones could envy. One mouthful and all memory of pain andgrief, loss and unreachable dreams is gone.
"I give you forgetfulness, Veti." Veti's head moved denyingly from side toside. "And here." He pulled forth, carelessly, arms-lengths of shining fabricthat rippled and clung and caught the sun. His eyes were almost Deci's eyesagain.
Veti's heart was moved, womanwise, to the fabric and her hands reached forit, since no woman can truly see a fabric unless her fingers taste its body,flow, and texture.
"For you, for beauty. And this, that you might behold yourself untwisted bymoving waters." He laid beside the weapon and the water a square of reflectingbrightness. "For you to see yourself as Lady over the world as I see myselfLord."
Veti's hands dropped again, the fabric almost untasted. Deci's eyes againwere the eyes of a stranger.
"Deci, I waited not for things, these long days." Veti's hands cleansedthemselves together from the cling of the fabric. Her eyes failed before Deciand sought the ground, jerking away from the strange things in the dust."Come, let us attend to your hurts."
"But no! But see!" cried Deci. "With these strange things our coveti canrule all the valley and beyond and beyond!"
"Why?"
"Why?" echoed Deci. 'To take all we want. To labor no more save to ask andreceive. To have power…"
"Why?" Veti's eyes still questioned. "We have enough. We are not hungry. Weare clothed against the changing seasons. We work when work is needed. We playwhen work is done. Why do we need more?"
"Deci finds quiet ways binding," said Dobi. "Rather would he have shoutingand far, swift going. And sweat and effort and delicious fear pushing him intoaction. Soon come the kutu hunting days, Deci. Save your thirst for excitementuntil then."
"Sweat and effort and fear!" snarled Deci. "Why should I endure that whenwith this . . ." He snatched up the weapon and with one wave of his handsheared off the top of Tefu's house. He spoke into the dying thunder of thedischarge. "No kutu alive could unsheath its fangs after that, except as deathdraws back the sheath to mock its finished strength.
"And if so against a kutu," he muttered. "How much more so against theDurlo coveti?"
"Come, Deci," cried Veti. "Let us bind your wounds. As time will heal them,so time will heal your mind of these Strangers."
"I want no healing," shouted Deci, anger twisting his haggard face. "Norwill you after the Strangers have been here and proffered you their wonders inexchange for this foolish fringing devi." Contempt tossed his head. "For thedevi in our coveti, we could buy their sky craft, I doubt not."
'They will not come," said Dobi. "The way is hidden. No Stranger can everfind our coveti. We have but to wait until—"
"Until tomorrow!" Deci's crest tossed rebelliously, his voice louder thanneed be. Or perhaps it seemed so from the echoes it raised in every heart. "Itold—"
"You told?" Stupidly, the echo took words.
"You told?" Disbelief sharpened the cry.
"You told!" Anger spurted into the words.
"I told!" cried Deci. "How else reap the benefits that the Strangers—"
"Benefits!" spat Dobi, "Death!" His foot spurned the weapon in the dust."Madness!" The flask gurgled as it moved. "Vanity!" Dust clouded across themirror and streaked the shining fabric. "For such you have betrayed us todeath."
"But no!" cried Deci. "I lived. Death does not always come with theStrangers." Sudden anger roughened his voice. "It's the old ways! You want nochange! But all things change. It is the way of living things. Progress—"
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"All change is not progress," rumbled Tefu, his hands hiding his blindness.
"Like it or not," shouted Deci. 'Tomorrow the Strangers come! You have yourchoice, all of you!" His arm circled the crowd. "Keep to your homes like Peguor come forward with your devi and find with me a power, a richness—"
"Or move the coveti again," said Dobi. "Away from betrayal and foolishgreed. We have a third choice."
Deci caught his breath.
"Veti?" his whisper pleaded. "Veti? We do not need the rest of the coveti.You and I together. We can wait for the Strangers. Together we can have theworld. With this weapon not one person in this coveti or any other canwithstand us. We can be the new people. We can have our own coveti, and takewhat we want—anything, anywhere. Come to me, Veti."
Veti looked long into his eyes. "Why did you come back?" she whispered withtears in her voice. Then anger leaped into her eyes. "Why did you come back!"There was the force of a scream in her harsh words. She darted suddenly to therocks. She snatched the kiom from the dust where it had fallen. Before Devi knew what was happening, she whirled on him and pinned death upon his raggedjacket. Then with a swift, decisive twist, she tore away the pelu and droppedit to the dust.
Deci's eyes widened in terror, his hand clutched at the kiom but dared nottouch it.
"No!" he screamed. "No!"
Then Veti's eyes widened and her hands reached also for the kiom, but nopower she possessed could undo what she had done and her scream rose withDeci's.
Then knowing himself surely dead and dead unbeloved, already entering theeternity of darkness of the unlighted kiom, Deci crumpled to the ground. Underhis cheek was the hardness of the weapon, under his outflung hand, the beautyof the fabric, and the sunlight, bending through the water, giggled crazily onhis chin.
One dead unbeloved is not as much as a crushed flower by the path. For theflower at least there is regret for its ended beauty.
So knowing Deci dead, the coveti turned from him. There was for memory ofhim only an uncertainty to Veti's feet and a wondering shock in Veti's eyes asshe turned with the others to prepare to move the coveti.
The wind came and poured over the dust and the things and Deci.
And Deci lay waiting for his own breath to stop.
Turn the Page
When I was in the first grade, my teacher was magic. Oh, I know! Everyonethinks that his first teacher is something special. It's practically aconvention that all little boys fall in love with her and that all littlegirls imitate her and that both believe her the Alpha and Omega of wisdom—butmy teacher was really magic.
We all felt it the first day when finally the last anxious parent wasshooed reluctantly out the door and we sat stiff and uneasy in our hard,unfriendly chairs and stared across our tightly clasped hands at Miss Ebo,feeling truly that we were on the edge of something strange and wonderful, butmore wonderful than strange. Tears dried on the face of our weeper as wewaited in that moment that trembled like a raindrop before it splinters intorainbows.
"Let's be something!" Miss Ebo whispered. "Let's be birds."
And we were! We were! Real birds! We fluttered and sang and flitted fromchair to chair all around the room. We prinked and preened and smoothed ourheads along the brightness of feathers and learned in those moments the fiercethrobbing restlessness of birds, the feathery hushing quietness of sleepingwings. And there was one of us that beat endlessly at the closed windows,scattering feathers, shaking the glass, straining for the open sky.
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Then we were children again, wiggling with remembered delight, exchanging
pleased smiles, feeling that maybe school wasn't all fright and strangeness
after all. And with a precocious sort of knowledge, we wordlessly pledged our
mutual silence about our miracle.
This first day set the pace for us. We were, at different times, almost
every creature imaginable, learning of them and how they fitted into the world
and how they touched onto our segment of the world, until we saw fellow
creatures wherever we looked. But there was one of us who set himself against
the lessons and ground his heel viciously down on the iridescence of a green
June-bug that blundered into our room one afternoon. The rest of us looked at
Miss Ebo, hoping in our horror for some sort of cosmic blast from her. Her
eyes were big and knowing—and a little sad. We turned back to our work,
tasting for the first time a little of the sorrow for those who stubbornly
shut their eyes against the sun and still curse the darkness.
And soon the stories started. Other children heard about Red Riding Hood
and the Wolf and maybe played the parts, but we took turns at being Red Riding
Hood and the Wolf. Individually we tasted the terror of the pursued—the
sometimes delightfully delicious terror of the pursued—and we knew the blood
lust and endless drive of the pursuer—the hot pulses leaping in our veins, the
irresistible compulsion of hunger-never-satiated that pulled us along the
shadowy forest trails.
And when we were Red Riding Hood, we knew under our terror and despair that
help would come—had to come when we turned the page, because it was written
that way. If we were the Wolf, we knew that death waited at the end of our
hunger; we leaped as compulsively to that death as we did to our feeding. As
the mother and grandmother, we knew the sorrow of letting our children go, and
the helpless waiting for them to find the dangers and die of them or live
through them, but always, always, were we the pursuer or the pursued, the
waiter or the active one, we knew we had only to turn the page and finally
live happily ever after, because it was written that way! And we found out
that after you have once been the pursuer, the pursued and the watcher, you
can never again be only the pursuer or the pursued or the watcher. Ever after
you are a little of each of them.
We learned and learned in our first grade, but sometimes we had to stop our
real learning and learn what was expected of us. Those were the shallow days.
We knew the shallow days when they arrived because Miss Ebo met us at the
door, brightly smiling, cheerily speaking, but with her lovely dark eyes quiet
and uncommunicative. We left the door ajar and set ourselves to routine tasks.
We read and wrote and worked with our numbers, covering all we had slighted in
the magic days before—a model class, learning neat little lessons, carefully
catching up with the other first grades. Sometimes we even had visitors to
smile at our industry, or the supervisor to come in and sharply twitch a
picture to more exact line on the bulletin board, fold her lips in frustration
and make some short-tempered note in her little green book before she left us,
turning her stiff white smile on briefly for our benefit. And, at day's end,
we sighed with weariness of soul and burst out of class with all the unused
enthusiasm of the day, hoping that tomorrow would be magic again. And it
usually was.
The door would swing shut with a pleased little chuckling cluck and we
would lift our questioning faces to Miss Ebo—or the Witch or the Princess or
the Fairy Godmother—and plunge into another story as into a sparkling sea.
As Cinderella, we labored in the ashes of the fireplace and of lonely
isolation and of labor without love. We wept tears of hopeless longing as we
watched the semblance of joy and happiness leave us behind, weeping for it
even though we knew too well the ugliness straining under it —the sharp bones
of hatefulness jabbing at scarlet satin and misty tulle. Cinderella's miracle
came to us and we made our loveliness from commonplace things and learned that
happiness often has a midnight chiming so that it won't leak bleakly into a
watery dawn, and finally, that no matter how fast we run, we leave a part of
us behind, and by that part of us, joy comes when we turn the page and we
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finally live happily ever after, because it is written that way.
With Chicken Little, we cowered under the falling of our sky. We believedimplicitly in our own little eye and our own little ear and the aching of ourown little tail where the sky had bruised us. Not content with panickingourselves with the small falling, we told the whole world repeatedly and atgreat length that the sky was falling for everyone because it fell for us. Andwhen the Fox promised help and hope and strength, we followed him and let ourbones be splintered in the noisome darkness of fear and ignorance.
And, as the Fox, we crunched with unholy glee the bones of little fools whoshut themselves in their own tiny prisons and followed fear into death ratherthan take a larger look at the sky. And we found them delicious and insidious.
Mrs. Thompson came down to see Miss Ebo after Chicken Little. There must besome reason why Jackie was having nightmares—maybe something at school? AndMiss Ebo had to soothe her with all sorts of little Educational Psychologyplatitudes because she couldn't tell her that Jackie just wouldn't come out ofthe Fox's den even after his bones were scrunched to powder. He was afraid ofa wide sky and always would be.
So the next day we all went into the darkness of caves and were littleblind fish. We were bats that used their ears for eyes. We were small shiningthings that seemed to have no life but grew into beauty and had the wisdom tostop when they reached the angles of perfection. So Jackie chose to be one ofthose and he didn't learn with us any more except on our shallow days. Heloved shallow days. The other times he grew to limited perfection in hisdarkness.
And there was one of us who longed to follow the Fox forever. Every day hiseyes would hesitate on Miss Ebo's face, but every day the quietness of hermouth told him that the Fox should not come back into our learning. And hiseyes would drop and his fingers would pluck anxiously at one another.
The year went on and we were princesses leaning from towers drawing love tous on shining extensions of ourselves, feeling the weight and pain of lovealong with its shiningness as the prince climbed Rapunzel's golden hair. We,as Rapunzel, betrayed ourselves to evil. We were cast into the wilderness, webought our way back into happiness by our tears of mingled joy and sorrow.And—as the witch—we were evil, hoarding treasures to ourselves, trying to holdunchanged things that had to change. We were the one who destroyed lovelinesswhen it had to be shared, who blinded maliciously, only to find that allloveliness, all delight, went with the sight we destroyed.
And then we learned more. We were the greedy woman. We wanted a house, acastle, a palace—power beyond power, beyond power, until we wanted to meddlewith the workings of the universe. And then we had to huddle back on thedilapidated steps of the old shack with nothing again, nothing in our laxhands, because we reached for too much.
But then we were her husband, too, who gave in and gave in against hisbetter judgment, against his desires, but always backing away from a no untilhe sat there, too, with empty hands, staring at the nothing he must share. Andhe had never had anything at all because he had never asked for it. It was astrange, hard lesson and we studied it again and again until one of us wasstranded in greed, another in apathy, and one of us almost knew the right answer.
But magic can't last. That was our final, and my hardest, bitterest,lesson. One day Miss Ebo wasn't there. She'd gone away, they said. Shewouldn't be back. I remember how my heart tightened and burned coldly insideme when I heard. And shallow day followed shallow day and I watched,terrified, the memory of Miss Ebo dying out of the other kids' eyes.
Then one afternoon I saw her again, thin and white, blown against theplayground fence Like a forgotten leaf of last autumn. Her russety dressfluttered in the cold wind and the flick of her pale fingers called me fromclear across the playground. I pressed my face close against the wire mesh,trying to cry against her waist, my fingers reaching hungrily through to her.
My voice was hardly louder than the whisper of dry leaves across a path.
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"Miss Ebo! Miss Ebo! Come back!"
"You haven't forgotten." Her answer lost itself on the wind. "Remember.Always remember. Remember the whole of the truth. Truth has so many sides,evil and good, that if you cling to just one, it may make it a lie." The windfreshened and she fluttered with it, clinging to the wire. "Remember, turn thepage. Everyone will finally live happily ever after, because that's the wayit’s written!"
My eyes blurred with tears and before I could knuckle them dry, she was gone.
"Crybaby!" The taunt stung me as we lined up to go back indoors.
"I saw her!" I cried. "I saw Miss Ebo!"
"Miss Ebo?" Blank eyes stared into mine. There was a sudden flicker wayback behind seeing, but it died. "Crybaby!"
Oh, I know that no one believes in fairy tales any more. They're forchildren. Well, who better to teach than children that good must ultimatelytriumph? Fairy tale ending—they lived happily ever after! But it is writtenthat way! The marriage of bravery and beauty—tasks accomplished, perilsurmounted, evil put down, captives freed, enchantments broken, humanityemerging from the forms of beasts, giants slain, wrongs righted, joy coming inthe morning after the night of weeping. The lessons are all there. They'retold over and over and over, but we let them slip and we sigh for ourchildhood days, not seeing that we shed the truth as we shed our deciduousteeth.
I never saw Miss Ebo again, but I saw my first grade again, those whosurvived to our twenty-fifth anniversary. At first I thought I wouldn't go,but most sorrow can be set aside for an evening, even the sorrow attendant onfinding how easily happiness is lost when it depends on a single factor. Ilooked around at those who had come, but I saw in them only the tatteredremnants of Miss Ebo's teachings.
Here was the girl who so delighted in the terror of being pursued that shestill fled along dark paths, though no danger followed. Here was our wingedone still beating his wings against the invisible glass. Here was our pursuer,the blood lust in his eyes altered to a lust for power that was just ascompulsive, just as inevitably fatal as the old pursuing evil.
Here was our terror-stricken Chicken Little, his drawn face, his restless,bitten nails, betraying his eternal running away from the terror he sowedbehind himself, looking for the Fox, any Fox, with glib, comforting promises.And there, serene, was the one who learned to balance between asking too muchand too little—who controlled his desires instead of letting them control him.There was the one, too, who had sorrowed and wept but who was now coming intoher kingdom of children.
But these last two were strangers—as I was—in this wistful gathering ofpeople who were trying to turn back twenty-five years. I sat through theevening, trying to trace in the masks around me the bright spirits that hadrun with me into Miss Ebo's enchantment. I looked for Jackie. I asked for Jackie. He was hidden away in some protected place, eternally being his darkshining things, afraid—too afraid—of even shallowness ever to walk in thelight again.
There were speeches. There was laughter. There was clowning. But always theunderlying strain, the rebellion, the silent crying out, the fear and mistrustThey asked me to talk.I stood, leaning against the teacher's desk, and looked down into the
carefully empty faces.
"You have forgotten," I said. "You have all forgotten Miss Ebo."
"Miss Ebo?" The name was a pursing on all the lips, a furrow on the brows.Only one or two smiled even tentatively. "Remember Miss Ebo?"
"If you have forgotten," I said, "it's a long time ago. If you remember, itwas only yesterday. But even if you have forgotten her, I can see that youhaven't forgotten the lessons she taught you. Only you have remembered the
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wrong part. You only half learned the lessons. You've eaten the husks andthrown the grain away. She tried to tell you. She tried to teach you. Butyou've all forgotten. Not a one of you remembers that if you turn the pageeveryone will live happily ever after, because it was written that way. You'reall stranded in the introduction to the story. You work yourselves all up tothe climax of terror or fear or imminent disaster, but you never turn thepage. You go back and live it again and again and again.
"Turn the page! Believe again! You have forgotten how to believe inanything beyond your chosen treadmill. You have grown out of the fairy taleage, you say. But what have you grown into? Do you like it?" I leaned forwardand tried to catch evasive eyes. "With your hopeless, scalding tears at nightand your dry-eyed misery when you waken. Do you like it?
"What would you give to be able to walk once more into a morning that isa-tiptoe with expectancy, magical with possibilities, bright with a suredelight? Miss Ebo taught us how. She gave us the promise and hope. She taughtus all that everyone will finally live happily ever after because it iswritten that way. All we have to do is let loose long enough to turn the page.Why don't you?" They laughed politely when I finished. I was always the turnerof phrases. Wasn't that clever? Fairy tales! Well— The last car drove awayfrom the school. I stood by the fence in the dark schoolyard and let the nightwash over me.
Then I was a child again, crying against the cold mesh fence—hopeless,scalding tears in the night.
"Miss Ebo. Miss Ebo!" My words were only a twisted shaping of my mouth."They have forgotten. Let me forget too. Surely it must be easier to forgetthat there is a page to be turned than to know it's there and not be able toturn it! How long? How long must I remember?"
A sudden little wind scooted a paper sibilantly across the sidewalk . . .forever after . . . forever after . ..
Stevie and The Dark
The Dark lived in a hole in the bank of the sand wash where Stevie liked to play. The Dark wanted to come out, but Stevie had fixed it so it couldn't Heput a row of special little magic rocks in front of the hole. Stevie knew theywere magic because he found them himself and they felt like magic. When youare as old as Stevie—five—a whole hand of years old—you know lots of thingsand you know what magic feels like.
Stevie had the rocks in his pocket when he first found The Dark. He hadbeen digging a garage in the side of the wash when a piece of the bank cameloose and slid down onto him. One rock hit him on the forehead hard enough tomake him cry—if he had been only four. But Stevie was five, so he wiped theblood with the back of his hand and scraped away the dirt to find the bigspoon Mommy let him take to dig with. Then he saw that the hole was great bigand his spoon was just inside it. So he reached in for it and The Dark cameout a little ways and touched Stevie. It covered up his hand clear to thewrist and when Stevie jerked away, his hand was cold and all skinned acrossthe back. For a minute it was white and stiff, then the blood came out and ithurt and Stevie got mad. So he took out the magic rocks and put the little redone down in front of the hole. The Dark came out again with just a littlefinger-piece and touched the red rock, but it didn't like the magic so itstarted to push around it. Stevie put down the other little rocks—the roundsmooth white ones and the smooth yellow ones.
The Dark made a lot of little fingers that were trying to get past themagic. There was just one hole left, so Stevie put down the black-see-throughrock he found that morning. Then The Dark pulled back all the little fingersand began to pour over the black rock. So, quick like a rabbit, Stevie drew amagic in the sand and The Dark pulled back into the hole again. Then Steviemarked King's X all around the hole and ran to get some more magic rocks. He
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found a white one with a band of blue around the middle and another yellowone. He went back and put the rocks in front of the hole and rubbed out theKing's X. The Dark got mad and piled up behind the rocks until it was higherthan Stevie's head.
Stevie was scared, but he stood still and held tight to his pocket piece.He knew that was the magicest of all. Juanito had told him so and Juanitoknew. He was ten years old and the one who told Stevie about magic in thefirst place. He had helped Stevie make the magic. He was the one who did thewriting on the pocket piece. Of course, Stevie would know how to write afterhe went to school, but that was a long time away.
The Dark couldn't ever hurt him while he held the magic, but it was kind ofscary to see The Dark standing up like that in the bright hot sunshine. TheDark didn't have any head or arms or legs or body. It didn't have any eyeseither, but it was looking at Stevie. It didn't have any mouth, but it wasmumbling at Stevie. He could hear it inside his head and the mumbles werehate, so Stevie squatted down in the sand and drew a magic again—a bigmagic—and The Dark jerked back into the hole. Stevie turned and ran as fast ashe could until the mumbles in his ears turned into fast wind and the sound of rattling rocks on the road.
Next day Arnold came with his mother to visit at Stevie's house. Steviedidn't like Arnold. He was a tattle-tale and a crybaby even if he was a wholehand and two more fingers old. Stevie took him down to the sand wash to play.They didn't go down where The Dark was, but while they were digging tunnelsaround the roots of the cottonwood tree, Stevie could feel The Dark, like along deep thunder that only your bones could hear—not your ears. He knew thebig magic he wrote in the sand was gone and The Dark was trying to get pastthe magic rocks.
Pretty soon Arnold began to brag.
"I got a space gun."
Stevie threw some more sand backwards. "So've I," he said.
"I got a two-wheel bike."
Stevie sat back on his heels. "Honest?"
"Sure!" Arnold talked real smarty. "You're too little to have a two-wheelbike. You couldn't ride it if you had one."
"Could too." Stevie went back to his digging, feeling bad inside. He hadfallen off Rusty's bike when he tried to ride it. Arnold didn't know itthough.
"Could not," Arnold caved in his tunnel. "I've got a BB gun and a real sawand a cat with three-and-a-half legs."
Stevie sat down in the sand. What could you get better than a cat withthree-and-a-half legs? He traced a magic in the sand.
"I've got something you haven't."
"Have not." Arnold caved in Stevie's tunnel.
"Have too. It's a Dark."
"A what?"
"A Dark. I've got it in a hole down there." He jerked his head down thewash.
"Aw, you're crazy. There ain't no dark. You're just talking baby stuff."
Stevie felt his face getting hot. "I am not. You just come and see."
He dragged Arnold by the hand down the wash with the sand crunching underfoot like spilled sugar and sifting in and out of their barefoot sandals. Theysquatted in front of the hole. The Dark had pulled way back in so theycouldn't see it.
"I don't see nothing." Arnold leaned forward to look into the hole. "Thereain't no dark. You're just silly."
"I am not! And The Dark is so in that hole."
"Sure it's dark in the hole, but that ain't nothing. You can't have a dark,silly."
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"Can too." Stevie reached in his pocket and took tight hold of his pocketpiece. "You better cross your fingers. I'm going to let it out a little ways."
"Aw!" Arnold didn't believe him, but he crossed his fingers anyway.
Stevie took two of the magic rocks away from in front of the hole and movedback. The Dark came pouring out like a flood. It poured in a thin streamthrough the open place in the magic and shot up like a tower of smoke. Arnoldwas so surprised that he uncrossed his fingers and The Dark wrapped around hishead and he began to scream and scream. The Dark sent a long arm out toStevie, but Stevie pulled out his pocket piece and hit The Dark. Stevie couldhear The Dark scream inside his head so he hit it again and The Dark fell alltogether and got littler so Stevie pushed it back into the hole with hispocket piece. He put the magic rocks back and wrote two big magics in the sandso that The Dark cried again and hid way back in the hole.
Arnold was lying on the sand with his face all white and stiff, so Stevieshook him and called him. Arnold opened his eyes and his face turned red andbegan to bleed. He started to bawl, "Mama! Mama!" and ran for the house asfast as he could through the soft sand. Stevie followed him, yelling, "Youuncrossed your fingers! It's your fault! You uncrossed your fingers!"
Arnold and his mother went home. Arnold was still bawling and his motherwas real red around the nose when she yelled at Mommy. "You'd better learn tocontrol that brat of yours or he'll grow up a murderer! Look what he did to mypoor Arnold!" And she drove away so fast that she hit the chuckhole by thegate and nearly went off the road.
Mommy sat down on the front step and took Stevie between her knees. Stevielooked down and traced a little, soft magic with his finger on Mommy's slacks.
"What happened, Stevie?"
Stevie squirmed. "Nothing, Mommy. We were just playing in the wash."
"Why did you hurt Arnold?"
"I didn't. Honest. I didn't even touch him."
"But the whole side of his face was skinned." Mommy put on herno-fooling-now voice. "Tell me what happened, Stevie."
Stevie gulped. "Well, Arnold was bragging ’bout his two-wheel bike and—"Stevie got excited and looked up. "And Mommy, he has a cat withthree-and-a-half legs!"
"Go on."
Stevie leaned against her again.
"Well, I've got a Dark in a hole in the wash so I—"
"A Dark? What is that?"
"It's, it's just a Dark. It isn't very nice. I keep it in its hole withmagic. I let it out a little bit to show Arnold and it hurt him. But it washis fault. He uncrossed his fingers."
Mommy sighed. "What really happened, Stevie?"
"I told you, Mommy! Honest, that's what happened."
"For True, Stevie?" She looked right in his eyes.
Stevie looked right back. "Yes, Mommy, For True."
She sighed again. "Well, son, I guess this Dark business is the same asyour Mr. Bop and Toody Troot."
"Uh, uh!" Stevie shook his head. "No sir. Mr. Bop and Toody Troot are nice.The Dark is bad."
"Well, don't play with it any more then."
"I don't play with it," protested Stevie. "I just keep it shut up withmagic."
"All right, son." She stood up and brushed the dust off the back of herslacks. "Only for the love of Toody Troot, don't let Arnold get hurt again."She smiled at Stevie.
Stevie smiled back. "Okay, Mommy. But it was his fault. He uncrossed hisfingers. He's a baby."
The next time Stevie was in the wash playing cowboy on Burro Eddie, he
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heard The Dark calling him. It called so sweet and soft that anybody would
think it was something nice, but Stevie could feel the bad rumble way down
under the nice, so he made sure his pocket piece was handy, shooed Eddie away,
and went down to the hole and squatted down in front of it.
The Dark stood up behind the magic rocks and it had made itself look like
Arnold only its eyes didn't match and it had forgotten one ear and it was
freckled all over like Arnold's face.
"Hello," said The Dark with its Arnold-mouth. "Let's play."
"No," said Stevie. "You can't fool me. You're still The Dark."
"I won't hurt you." The Arnold-face stretched out sideways to make a smile,
but it wasn't a very good one. "Let me out and I'll show you how to have lots
of fun."
"No," said Stevie. "If you weren't bad, the magic couldn't hold you. I
don't want to play with bad things."
"Why not?" asked The Dark. "Being bad is fun sometimes—lots of fun."
"I guess it is," said Stevie, "but only if it's a little bad. A big bad
makes your stomach sick and you have to have a spanking or a sit-in-the-corner
and then a big loving from Mommy or Daddy before it gets well again."
"Aw, come on," said The Dark. "I'm lonesome. Nobody ever comes to play with
me. I like you. Let me out and I’ll give you a two-wheel bike."
"Really?" Stevie felt all warm inside. "For True?"
"For True. And a cat with three-and-a-half legs."
"Oh!" Stevie felt like Christmas morning. "Honest?"
"Honest. All you have to do is take away the rocks and break up your pocket
piece and I'll fix everything for you."
"My pocket piece?" The warmness was going away. "No sir, I won't either
break it up. It's the magicest thing I've got and it was hard to make."
"But I can give you some better magic."
"Nothing can be more magic." Stevie tightened his hand around his pocket
piece. "Anyway, Daddy said I might get a two-wheel bike for my birthday. I'll
be six years old. How old are you?"
The Dark moved back and forth. "I'm as old as the world."
Stevie laughed. "Then you must know Auntie Phronie. Daddy says she's as old
as the hills."
"The hills are young," said The Dark. "Come on, Stevie, let me out.
Please—pretty please."
"Well," Stevie reached for the pretty red rock. "Promise you'll be good."
"I promise."
Stevie hesitated. He could feel a funniness in The Dark's voice. It sounded
like Lili-cat when she purred to the mice she caught. It sounded like
Pooch-pup when he growled softly to the gophers he ate sometimes. It made
Stevie feel funny inside and, as he squatted there wondering what the feeling
was, lightning flashed brightly above the treetops and a few big raindrops
splashed down with the crash of thunder.
"Well," said Stevie, standing up, feeling relieved. "It's going to rain. I
can't play with you now. I have to go. Maybe I can come see you tomorrow."
"No, now!" said The Dark. "Let me out right now!" and its Arnold-face was
all twisted and one eye was slipping down one cheek.
Stevie started to back away, his eyes feeling big and scared. "Another
time. I can't play in the wash when it storms. There might be a flood."
"Let me out!" The Dark was getting madder. The Arnold-face turned purple
and its eyes ran down its face like sick fire and it melted back into
blackness again. "Let me out!" The Dark hit the magic so hard that it shook
the sand and one of the rocks started to roll. Quick like a rabbit, Stevie
pressed the rock down hard and fixed all the others too. Then The Dark
twisted itself into a thing so awful looking that Stevie's stomach got sick
and he wanted to upchuck. He took out his pocket piece and drew three hard
magics in the sand and The Dark screamed so hard that Stevie screamed, too,
and ran home to Mommy and was very sick.
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Mommy put him to bed and gave him some medicine to comfort his stomach andtold Daddy he'd better buy Stevie a hat. The sun was too hot for a towheaded,bareheaded boy in the middle of July.
Stevie stayed away from the wash for a while after that, but one day Burro
Eddie opened the gate with his teeth again and wandered off down the road,
headed for the wash. It had been storming again in the Whetstones. Mommy said,
"You'd better go after Eddie. The flood will be coming down the wash this
afternoon and if Eddie gets caught, he’ll get washed right down into the
river."
"Aw, Eddie can swim," said Stevie.
"Sure he can, but not in a flash flood. Remember what happened to Durkin's
horse last year."
"Yeah," said Stevie, wide-eyed. "It got drownded. It even went over the
dam. It was dead."
"Very dead," laughed Mommy. "So you scoot along and bring Eddie back. But
remember, if there's any water at all in the wash, you stay out of it. And if
any water starts down while you're in it, get out in a hurry."
"Okay Mommy."
So Stevie put on his sandals—there were too many stickers on the road to go
barefoot—and went after Eddie. He tracked him carefully like Daddy showed him—
all bent over—and only had to look twice to see where he was so he'd be sure
to follow the right tracks. He finally tracked him down into the wash.
Burro Eddie was eating mesquite beans off a bush across the wash from The
Dark. Stevie held out his hand and waggled his fingers at him.
"Come on, Eddie. Come on, old feller."
Eddie waggled his ears at Stevie and peeked out of the corner of his eyes,
but he went on pulling at the long beans, sticking his teeth way out so the
thorns wouldn't scratch his lips so bad. Stevie walked slow and careful toward
Eddie, making soft talk real coaxing-like and was just sliding his hand up
Eddie's shoulder to get hold of the ragged old rope around his neck when Eddie
decided to be scared and jumped with all four feet. He skittered across to the
other side of the wash, tumbling Stevie down on the rough, gravelly sand.
"Daggone you, Eddie!" he yelled, getting up. "You come on back here. We
gotta get out of the wash. Mommy's gonna be mad at us. Don't be so mean!"
Stevie started after Eddie and Eddie kept on playing like he was scared. He
flapped his stringy tail and tried to climb the almost straight-up-and-down
bank of the wash. His front feet scrabbled at the bank and his hind feet
kicked up the sand. Then he slid down on all fours and just stood there, his
head pushed right up against the bank, not moving at all.
Stevie walked up to him real slow and started to take the old rope. Then he
saw where Eddie was standing:
"Aw, Eddie," he said, squatting down in the sand. "Look what you went and
did. You kicked all my magic away. You let The Dark get out. Now I haven't got
anything Arnold hasn't got Dern you, Eddie!" He stood up and smacked Eddie's
flank with one hand. But Eddie just stood there and his flank felt funny—kinda
stiff and cold.
"Eddie!" Stevie dragged on the rope and Eddie's head turned—jerky—like an
old gate. Then Eddie's feet moved, but slow and funny, until Eddie was turned
around.
"What's the matter, Eddie?" Stevie put his hand on Eddie's nose and looked
at him close. Something was wrong with the burro's eyes. They were still big
and dark, but now they didn't seem to see Stevie or anything—they looked
empty. And while Stevie looked into them, there came a curling blackness into
them, like smoke coming through a crack and all at once the eyes began to see
again. Stevie started to back away, his hands going out in front of him.
"Eddie," he whispered. "Eddie, what's the matter?" And Eddie started after
him—but not like Eddie—not with fast feet that kicked the sand in little
spurts, but slow and awful, the two legs on one side together, then the two
legs on the other side—like a sawhorse or something that wasn't used to four
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legs. Stevie's heart began to pound under his T-shirt and he backed awayfaster. "Eddie, Eddie," he pleaded. "Don't, Eddie. Don't act like that. Begood. We gotta go back to the house."
But Eddie kept on coming, faster and faster, his legs getting looser so
they worked better and his eyes staring at Stevie. Stevie backed away until he
ran into a big old cottonwood trunk that high water brought down after the
last storm. He ducked around in back of the trunk. Eddie just kept on dragging
his feet through the sand until he ran into the trunk too, but his feet kept
on moving, even when he couldn't go any farther. Stevie put out one shaky hand
to pat Eddie's nose. But he jerked it back and stared and stared across the
tree trunk at Eddie. And Eddie stared back with eyes that were wide and shiny
like quiet lightning. Stevie swallowed dryness in his throat and then he knew.
"The Dark!" he whispered. "The Dark. It got out. It got in Eddie!"
He turned and started to run kitty-cornered across the wash. There was an
awful scream from Eddie. Not a donkey scream at all, and Stevie looked back
and saw Eddie—The Dark—coming after him, only his legs were working better now
and his big mouth was wide open with the big yellow teeth all wet and shiny.
The sand was sucking at Stevie's feet, making him stumble. He tripped over
something and fell. He scrambled up again and his hands splashed as he
scrambled. The runoff from the Whetstones was coming and Stevie was in the
wash!
He could hear Eddie splashing behind him. Stevie looked back and screamed
and ran for the bank. Eddie's face wasn't Eddie any more. Eddie's mouth looked
full of twisting darkness and Eddie's legs had learned how a donkey runs and
Eddie could outrun Stevie any day of the week. The water was coming higher and
he could feel it grab his feet and suck sand out from under him every step he
took.
Somewhere far away he heard Mommy shrieking at him, "Stevie! Get out of the
wash!"
Then Stevie was scrambling up the steep bank, the stickers getting in his
hands and the fine silty dirt getting in his eyes. He could hear Eddie coming
and he heard Mommy scream, "Eddie!" and there was Eddie trying to come up the
bank after him, his mouth wide and slobbering.
Then Stevie got mad. "Dern you, old Dark!" he screamed. "You leave Eddie
alone!" He was hanging onto the bushes with one hand but he dug into his
pocket with the other and pulled out his pocket piece. He looked down at
it—his precious pocket piece—two pieces of popsicle stick tied together so
they looked a little bit like an airplane, and on the top, lopsided and
scraggly, the magic letters INRI. Stevie squeezed it tight, and then he
screamed and threw it right down Eddie's throat—right into the swirling nasty
blackness inside of Eddie.
There was an awful scream from Eddie and a big bursting roar and Stevie
lost hold of the bush and fell down into the racing, roaring water. Then Mommy
was there gathering him up, crying his name over and over as she waded to a
low place in the bank, the water curling above her knees, making her stagger.
Stevie hung on tight and cried, "Eddie! Eddie! That mean old Dark! He made me
throw my pocket piece away! Oh, Mommy, Mommy! Where's Eddie?"
And he and Mommy cried together in the stickery sand up on the bank of the
wash while the flood waters roared and rumbled down to the river, carrying
Eddie away, sweeping the wash clean, from bank to bank.
And a Little Child-—
I have arrived at an age—well, an age that begins to burden my body sometimes,but I don't think I'd care to go back and live the years again. There'rereally only a few things I envy in the young—one thing, really, that I wish I
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had back—and that's the eyes of children. Eyes that see everything new,everything fresh, everything wonderful, before custom can stale or life hastwisted awry. Maybe that's what Heaven will be—eyes forever new.
But there is sometimes among children another seeing-ness—a seeing thatgoes beyond the range of adult eyes, that sometimes seem to trespass even onother dimensions. Those who can see like that have the unexpected eyes— theeerie eyes—the Seeing eyes.
The child had Seeing eyes. I noticed them first when the Davidsons movedinto the camping spot next to ours on the North Fork. The Davidsons we knewfrom previous years, but it was our first meeting with their son Jerry, andthe wife and child he had brought home from overseas. One nice thing aboutcamping out is that you don't have to be bashful about watching other peoplesettle in. In fact, if you aren't careful, you end up fighting one of theirtent ropes while someone else hammers a peg, or you get involved in where totoe-nail in a shelf on a tree, or in deciding the best place for someone elseto dip wash-water out of the creek without scooping gravel or falling in. Evenbeing a grandmother twice over doesn't exempt you.
It was while I was sitting on my favorite stump debating whether to changemy shoes and socks or let them squelch themselves dry, that I noticed thechild. She was hunched up on a slanting slab of rock in the late afternoonsunshine, watching me quietly. I grinned at her and wiggled a wet toe.
"I suppose I ought to change," I said. "It's beginning to get cold."
"Yes," she said. "The sun is going down." Her eyes were very wide.
"I've forgotten your name," I said. "I have to forget it four times beforeI remember." I peeled off one of my wet socks and rubbed a thumb across thered stain it had left on my toes.
"I'm Liesle," she said gravely. "Look at the funny hills." She gesturedwith her chin at the hills down the trail.
"Funny?" I looked at them. They were just rolling hills humping ratherabruptly up from the trail in orderly rows until they merged with the aspenthicket. "Just hills," I said, toweling my foot on the leg of my jeans. "Thegrass on them is kind of thick this year. It's been a wet spring."
"Grass?" she said. "It looks almost like—like fur."
"Fur? Mmm, well, maybe." I hopped over to the tent and crawled in to findsome dry socks. "If you squint your eyes tight and don't quite look at it." Myvoice was muffled in the darkness of the tent. I backed out again, clutching arolled pair of socks in my hand. "Oh, geeps!" I said. "Those gruesome oldpurple ones. Well, a few more years of camping out and maybe they'll go theway of all flesh."
I settled back on my stump and turned to the child, then blinked at thefour eyes gravely contemplating me. "Well, hi!" I said to Annie, the child'smother. "I'm just forgetting Liesle's name for the last time."
Liesle smiled shyly, leaning against her mother. "You're Gramma," she said.
"I sure am, bless Pat and Jinnie. And you're wonderful to remember mealready."
Liesle pressed her face to her mother's arm in embarrassment.
"She has your eyes," I said to Annie.
"But hers are darker blue." Annie hugged Liesle's head briefly. Then "Come,child, we must start supper."
" 'By, Gramma," said Liesle, looking back over her shoulder. Then her eyesflickered and widened and an odd expression sagged her mouth open. Annie'stugging hand towed her a reluctant step, then she turned and hurriedly scootedhi front of Annie, almost tripping her. "Mother!" I heard her breathlessvoice. "Mother!" as they disappeared around the tent.
I looked back over my own shoulder. Liesle's eyes had refocused themselvesbeyond me before her face had changed. Something back there—?
Back there the sun was setting in pale yellow splendor and purple shadowswere filling up the hollows between the hills. I've climbed little hills likethose innumerable times—and rolled down them and napped on them and battedgnats on them. They were gentle, smooth hills, their fine early faded, grassy
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covering silver against the sun, crisply tickly under the cheek. Just hills.Nothing could be more serene and peaceful. I raised an eyebrow and shrugged.You meet all kinds.
That night the Davidsons came over to our campfire and we all sat around inthe chilly, chilly dark, talking and listening—listening to the wind in thepines, to the Little Colorado brawling its way down from Baldy, the sounds oftiny comings and goings through the brush—all the sounds that spell summer tothose of us who return year after year to the same camping grounds.
Finally the fire began to flicker low and the unaccustomed altitude wasmaking us drowsy, so we hunted up our flashlights and started our before-bedtrek across the creek to the Little Houses hidden against the hillside. Men tothe left, girls to the right, we entertained briefly the vision of tiledbathrooms back home, but were somehow pleasured with the inconvenience becauseit spelled vacation. We females slithered and giggled over the wetlog-and-plank bridge across the creek. It still had a grimy ghost of snowalong its sheltered edge and until even as late as July there would be aragged snowbank up against the hill near the girls' Little House, with violetsand wild strawberries blooming at its edge. Things happen like that at ninethousand feet of elevation. We edged past the snowbank—my Trisha leading thegroup, her flashlight pushing the darkness aside imperiously. She was followedby our Jinnie—Pat is a goat and goes to the left—then came Mrs. Davidson,Annie and Liesle, and I was the caboose, feeling the darkness nudging at myback as it crowded after our lights.
Since the Little House accommodates only two at a time, the rest of ususually wait against an outcropping of boulders that shelters a little from asoutheast wind which can cut a notch in your shinbones in less time than ittakes to tell it.
I was jerkily explaining this to Annie as I stumbled along thesemiovergrown path—it hadn't received its summer beating-down yet. I wasreaching out to trail my hand across the first boulder, when Liesle gasped andstumbled back against me, squashing my toe completely.
"What's the matter, child?" I gritted, waiting for the pain to stopshooting up my leg like a hot fountain. "There's nothing to be afraid of. YourMommie and I are here."
"I wanna go back!" she suddenly sobbed, clinging to Annie. "I wanna gohome!"
"Liesle, Liesle," crooned Annie, gathering her up in her arms. "Mother'shere. Daddy's here. No one is home. You'll have fun tomorrow, you'll see." Shelooked over Liesle's burrowing head at our goblinesque flashlighted faces."She's never camped before," she said apologetically. "She's homesick."
"I'm afraid! I can't go any farther!" sobbed Liesle. I clamped Jinnie's armsharply. She was making noises like getting scared, too—and she a veteran ofcradle-camping.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," I reiterated, wiggling my toe hopefully.Thank goodness, it could still wiggle. I thought it had been amputated.Liesle's answer was only a muffled wail. "Well, come on over here out of thewind," I said to Annie. "And 111 hold her while you go." I started to takeLiesle, but she twisted away from my hand.
"No, no!" she cried. "I can't go any farther!" Then she slithered like aneel out of Annie's arms and hit off back down the trail. The dark swallowed her.
"Liesle!" Annie set off in pursuit and I followed, trying to stab somehelpful light along the winding path. I caught up with the two of them on thecreek bridge. They were murmuring to each other, forehead to forehead. Annie'svoice was urgent, but Liesle was stubbornly shaking her head.
"She won't go back," said Annie.
"Oh, well," I said, suddenly feeling the altitude draining my blood out ofmy feathery head and burdening my tired feet with it. "Humor the childtonight. If she has to go, let her duck out in the bushes. She'll be okaytomorrow."
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But she wasn't. The next day she still stubbornly refused to go that lastlittle way to the Little House. Jerry, her father, lost patience with her."It's utter nonsense!" he said. "Some fool notion. We're going to be up herefor two weeks. If you think I'm going to dig a special—
"You stay here," he said to Annie. He grabbed Liesle's arm and trotted herbriskly down the path. I followed. I make no bones about being curious aboutpeople and things—and as long as I keep my mouth shut, I seldom get a doorslammed in my face. Liesle went readily enough, whimpering a little, halfrunning before his prodding finger, down the path, across the bridge, alongthe bank. And flatly refused to go any farther. Jerry pushed and she doubleddown, backing against his legs. He shoved her forward and she fell to herhands and knees, scrambling back along the path, trying to force her way pasthim—all in deathly panting silence. His temper flared and he pushed her again.She slid flat on the path, digging her fingers into the weedy grass along theedge, her cheek pressed to the muddy path. I saw her face then, blanched,stricken—old in its fierce determination, pitifully young in its bare terror.
"Jerry—" I began.
Anger had deafened and blinded him. He picked her up bodily and starteddown the path. She writhed and screamed a wild, despairing scream, "Daddy!Daddy! No! It's open! It's open!"
He strode on, past the first boulder. He had taken one step beyond theaspen that leaned out between two boulders, when Liesle was snatched from hisarms. Relieved of her weight, his momentum carried him staggering forward,almost to his knees. Blankly, he looked around. Liesle was plastered to theboulder, spread-eagled above the path like a paper doll pasted on awall—except that this paper doll gurgled in speechless terror and was slowlybeing sucked into the rock. She was face to the rock, but as I gaped in shock,I could see her spine sinking in a concave curve, pushing her head and feetback sharper and sharper.
"Grab her!" I yelled. "Jerry! Grab her feet!" I got hold of her shouldersand pulled with all my strength. Jerry got his hands behind her knees and Iheard his breath grunt out as he pulled. "O God in Heaven!" I sobbed. "O Godin Heaven!"
There was a sucking, tearing sound and Liesle came loose from the rock. Thethree of us tumbled in a tangled heap in the marshy wetness beyond the trail.We sorted ourselves out and Jerry crouched in the muck rocking Liesle in hisarms, his face buried against her hair.
I sat there speechless, feeling the cold wetness penetrating my jeans. Whatwas there to say?
Finally Liesle stopped crying. She straightened up in Jerry's arms andlooked at the rock. "Oh," she said. "It's shut now."
She wiggled out of Jerry's arms. "Gramma, I gotta go." Automatically Ihelped her unzip her jeans and sat there slack-jawed as she trotted down thepath past the huge boulder and into the Little House.
"Don't ask me!" barked Jerry suddenly, rising dripping from the pathside."Don't ask me!"
So I didn't.
Well, a summer starting like that could be quite a summer, but insteadeverything settled down to a pleasant even pace and we fished and hiked andpicnicked and got rained on and climbed Baldy, sliding back down its snowslopes on the seats of our pants, much to their detriment.
Then came the afternoon some of us females were straggling down the trailto camp, feet soaked as usual and with the kids clutching grimy snowballssalvaged from the big drift on the sharp north slope below the Salt House. Thelast of the sun glinted from the white peak of Baldy where we had left theothers hours ago still scrabbling around in the dust looking for more Indianbone beads. We seemed to be swimming through a valley of shadows that werealmost tangible.
"I'm winded." Mrs. Davidson collapsed, panting, by the side of the trail,lying back on the smoothly rounded flank of one of the orderly little hills
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near the creek.
"We're almost there," I said. "If I get down, I won't get up again short ofmidnight."
"So let it be midnight," she said, easing her shoulders back against thesoft crispness of the grass. "Maybe some robins will find us and cover us withstrawberries instead of strawberry leaves. Then we wouldn't have to cooksupper."
"That'd be fun," said Leslie, hugging her knees beside Mrs. Davidson.
"Oh, Liesle!" Jinnie was disgusted. "You don't think they really would, doyou?"
"Why not?" Liesle's eyes were wide.
"Oh, groan!" said Jinnie, folding up on the ground. "You'd believeanything! When you get as old as I am—"
"What a thought!" I said, easing my aching feet in my hiking boots. "Do yousuppose she'd ever be ten years old?" I looked longingly at the cluster oftents on the edge of the flat. "Oh, well," I said and subsided on the hillbeside the others. I flopped over on my stomach and cradled my head on myarms. "Why! It's warm!" I said as my palm burrowed through the grass to theunderlying soil.
"Sun," murmured Mrs. Davidson, her eyes hidden behind her folded arm. "Itsoaks it up all day and lets it out at night."
"Mmmm." I let relaxation wash over me.
"They're sleeping a long time," said Liesle.
"Who?" I was too lax for conversation.
"The beasts," she said. "These beasts we're on."
"What beasts?" It was like having a personal mosquito.
"These ones with the green fur," she said and giggled. "People thinkthey're just hills, but they're beasts."
"If you say so." My fingers plucked at the grass. "And the green fur grewall around, all around—"
"That's why it feels warm," said Liesle. "Don't pull its fur, Gramma. Itmight hurt it. 'Nen it'd get up. And spill us on the ground. And open its bigmouth—and stick out its great big teeth—" She clutched me wildly. "Gramma!"she cried, "Let's go home!"
"Oh, botheration!" I said, sitting up. The chill of the evening was like asplash of cold water. "Say, it is getting cold. We'll catch our death oflive-forevers if we lie out here much longer."
"But it's so warm and nice down here," sighed Mrs. Davidson.
"Not up here," I shivered. "Come on, younguns, I’ll race you to the tent."
The moonlight wakened me. It jabbed down through a tiny rip in the tentabove me and made it impossible for me to go back to sleep. Even with my eyesshut and my back turned, I could feel the shaft of light twanging almostaudibly against my huddled self. So I gave up, and shrugging into afleece-lined jacket and wriggling my bare feet into my sneakers, I duckedthrough the tent flap. The night caught at my heart. All the shadow and silverof a full moon plus the tumble and swell, the ivory and ebony of cloudswelling up over Baldy. No wonder the moonlight had twanged through the tent.It was that kind of night—taut, swift, far and unfettered.
I sighed and tucked my knees up under the jacket as I sat on the stump.There are times when having a body is a big nuisance. Well, I thought, I'llstay out long enough to get thoroughly chilled, then I'll surely sleep when Icrawl back into my nice warm sleeping bag. My eyes followed the dark serratedtreetops along the far side of the creek to the velvety roll of the smallhills in the moonlight upstream, the thick silver-furredbeasts-who-slept-so-long. I smiled as I thought of Liesle.
Then there she was—Liesle—just beyond the tent, her whole body taut withstaring, her arms stiffly flexed at the elbows, her fingers crooked, her wholeself bent forward as though readying for any sudden need for pursuit—orflight.
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She made an abortive movement as though to go back into the tent, and thenshe was off, running towards the hills, her bare white feet flashing in themoonlight. I wanted to call after her, but something about the stillness ofthe night crowded the noise back into my throat, so I took after her, glad ofa good excuse to run, fleet-footed and free, through the crispness of thesilver night. A little farther, a little faster, a little lighter and Iwouldn't even have had to touch the ground.
I lost sight of Liesle, so I leaned against a tree and waited for my breathto catch up with me. Then I saw her, a wisp of darkness in her worn flannelpajamas, moving from one small hill to another, softly tiptoeing away acrossthem until the shadow of the aspen grove on the slope above swallowed her up.There was a pause as I wondered if I should follow, then she reappeared withthe same soft, careful step. She stopped just a few feet from me and plumpedherself down between two rounded knolls. She shivered in the icy air andsnuggled down tight in the curving corner. I could hear her talking.
"Move over, you. Keep me warm. There's eight of you. I counted. I like youin the night, but I'm scared of you in the day. You don't belong in the day."She yawned luxuriantly and I saw that she was sinking slowly between those twograssy hills. "You really don't belong in the night, either." Liesle went on."You better go back next time it's open." Only her head was visible now. Shewas all but swallowed up in the—in the what?
"Liesle!" I hissed.
She gasped and looked around. Suddenly she was sprawling out in the openagain on the sloping hillside, shivering. She glanced back quickly and thenbegan to cry. I gathered her up in my arms. "What's going on here, Liesle?"
“I had a dream!” she wailed.
I carried her back to the camp, sagging a little under her weight. Justbefore I dumped her down in front of her tent, I swear she waved over myshoulder, a furtive, quick little wave, back at the little sleeping hills.
Next day I determinedly stayed in camp when everyone else galloped off intothe far distance toward Katatki to look for arrowheads. I had to make a noise like elderly and weary, and I know my children suspected that I was up to somemischief, but they finally left me alone. The dust had hardly settled on thecurve downcreek before I was picking my way among the beast-hills.
I caught myself tiptoeing and breathing cautiously through my mouth,startled by the crunch of gravel and the sudden shriek of a blue jay. I satdown, as nearly as I could tell, between the same two hills where Liesle hadbeen. I pulled up a tuft of grass with a quick twinge of my thumb and fingers.Grass—that's all it was. Well, what had I expected? I unlimbered my shortprospector's pick and began to excavate. The sod peeled back. The sandy soilunderneath slithered a little. The pick clinked on small rocks. I unearthed abeer cap and a bent nail. I surveyed my handiwork, then shoved the dirt backwith the head of the pick. Sometimes it's fun to have too much imagination.Other times it gets you dirt under your fingernails.
I trudged back toward camp. Halfway there I stopped in mid-stride. Had Iheard something? Or felt something? A movement as of air displacing? I turnedand walked slowly back to the hillside.
Nowhere, nowhere, could I find the spot where I'd been digging. I kneltdown and picked up the only loose object around. A rusty beer cap.
The Davidsons' vacation was nearly over. We had another week after theywere to leave. I don't know how it happened—things like that are alwayshappening to us— but we ended up with Liesle and Jinnie jumping up and downecstatically together as all grownups concerned slowly nodded their heads. AndI had an extra grandchild for the next week.
Of course, Liesle was a little homesick the first night after her folksleft. After Jinnie had fallen asleep, she looked over at me in the glow of theColeman lantern, with such forlornness that I lifted the edge of my sleepingbag and she practically flung herself into it. It was a tight squeeze, butfinally she was snuggled on my shoulder, the crisp spray of her hair tickling
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my chin.
"I like you, Gramma," she said. "You're warm."
"You're warm, too," I said, feeling heat radiating from the wiry little
body. I don't know what prompted my next question. Maybe it was that I wanted
there to be something in Liesle's play-pretend. "Am I as warm as the beasts?"
I felt her startled withdrawal. It was like having a spring suddenly coil
beside me.
"What are they going to do when it starts snowing again?" I asked into the
awkward silence.
"I don't know," said Liesle slowly. "I don't know any beasts. Besides their
fur would keep them warm."
"It looks like just grass to me," I said. "Grass withers when cold weather
comes."
"It's 'sposed to look like grass," said Liesle. "So's no one will notice
them."
"What are they?" I asked. "Where did they come from?"
"I don't know any beasts," said Liesle. "I'm going to sleep."
And she did.
Liesle might as well have gone on home for all the outdoor activity she got
that week with us. Bad weather came pouring through the pass in the mountains,
and we had rain and fog and thunder and hail and a horrible time trying to
keep the kids amused. My idle words had stuck in Liesle's mind and festered in
the inactivity. She peered incessantly out of the tent flap asking, "How long
will it rain? Is it cold out there? It won't snow will it? Will there be ice?"
And when we had a brief respite after a roaring hailstorm and went out to
gather up the tapioca-sized stones by the buckets-full, Liesle filled both
hands and, clutching the hail tightly, raced over to the small hills. I caught
up with her as she skidded to a stop on the muddy trail.
She was staring at the beast-hills, frosted lightly with the hail. She
turned her deep eyes to me. "It's ice," she said tragically.
"Yes," I said. "Little pieces of ice."
She opened her hands and stared at her wet palms. "It's gone," she said.
"Your hands are warm," I explained.
"Warmness melts the ice," she said, her eyes glowing. "They're warm."
'They could melt the little ice," I acknowledged. "But if it really froze—"
"I told them to go back," said Liesle. "The next time it's open."
"What's open?" I asked.
"Well," said Liesle. "It's down the path to the Little House. It's the
rock—it's a empty—it's to go through—" She slapped her hand back and forth
across her pants legs, ridding them of the melted hail. Her bottom lip was
pouted, her eyes hidden. "It doesn't go into any place," she said. "It only
goes through." Anger flared suddenly and she kicked the nearest hill. "Stupid
beasts!" she cried. "Why didn't you stay home!"
We started packing the day before we were to leave. Liesle scurried around
with Jinnie, getting under foot and messing things up generally. So I gave
them a lot of leftover odds and ends of canned goods and a box to put them in
and they spent hours packing and unpacking. I had dismissed them from my mind
and submerged myself in the perennial problem of how to get back into the
suitcases what they had originally contained. So I was startled to feel a cold
hand on my elbow. I looked around into Liesle's worried face.
"What if they don't know the way back?" she asked.
"Of course they know the way back," I said. "They've driven it a dozen
times."
"No, I mean the beasts." She clutched me again. "They'll die in the
winter."
"Winter's a long way off," I said. "They'll be all right."
"They don't count like we do," said Liesle. "Winter's awful close."
"Oh, Liesle, child," I said, exasperated. "Let's not play that now. I'm
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much too busy."
"I'm not playing," she said, her cheeks flushing faintly, her eyes refusing
to leave mine. "The beasts—"
"Please, honey lamb," I said. "You finish your packing and let me finish
mine." And I slammed the suitcase on my hand.
"But the beasts—"
"Beasts!" I said indistinctly as I tried to suck the pain out of my
fingers. "They're big enough to take care of themselves."
"They're just baby ones!" she cried. "And they're lost, 'relse'n they'd
have gone home when it was open."
"Then go tell them the way," I said, surveying dismally the sweat shirt and
slacks that should have been in the case I had just closed. She was out of
sight by the time I got to the tent door. I shook my head. That should teach
me to stick to Little Red Riding Hood or the Gingerbread Boy. Beasts, indeed!
Late that evening came a whopper of a storm. It began with a sprinkle so
light that it was almost a mist. And then, as though a lever were being
steadily depressed, the downpour increased, minute by minute. In direct
proportion, the light drained out of the world. Everyone was snugly under
canvas by the time the rain had become a downpour—except Liesle.
"I know where she is," I said with a sigh, and snatched my fleece-lined
jacket and ducked out into the rain. I'd taken about two steps before my shoes
were squelching water and the rain was flooding my face like a hose. I had
sploshed just beyond the tents when a dripping wet object launched itself
against me and knocked me staggering back against a pine tree.
"They won't come!" sobbed Liesle, her hair straight and lank, streaming
water down her neck. "I kept talking to them and talking to them, but they
won't come. They say it isn't open and if it was they wouldn't know the way!"
She was shaking with sobs and cold.
"Come in out of the wet," I said, patting her back soggily. "Everything
will be okay." I stuck my head into the cook tent. "I got 'er. Have to wring
her out first" And we ducked into the sleep tent.
"I told them right over this way and across the creek—" her voice was
muffled as I stripped her T-shirt over her head. 'They can't see right over
this way and they don't know what a creek is. They see on top of us."
"On top?" I asked, fumbling for a dry towel.
"Yes!" sobbed Liesle. "We're in the middle. They see mostly on top of us
and then there's us and then there's an underneath. They're afraid they might
fall into us or the underneath. We're all full of holes around here."
"They're already in us," I said, guiding her icy feet into the flannel
pajama legs. "We can see them."
"Only part," she said. "Only the Here part. The There part is so'st we
can't see it." I took her on my lap and surrounded her with my arms and she
leaned against me, slowly warming, but with the chill still shaking her at
intervals.
"Oh, Gramma!" Her eyes were big and dark. "I saw some of the There part.
It's like—like—like a Roman candle."
"Those big heavy hills like Roman candles?" I asked.
"Sure." Her voice was confident. "Roman candles have sticks on them, don't
they?"
"Look, Liesle." I sat her up and looked deep into her eyes. "I know you
think this is all for true, but it really isn't. It's fun to pretend as long
as you know it's pretend, but when you begin to believe it, it isn't good.
Look at you, all wet and cold and unhappy because of this pretend."
"But it isn't pretend!" protested Liesle. "When it was open—" She caught
her breath and clutched me. I paused, feeling as though I had stepped off an
unexpected curb, then swiftly I tucked that memory away with others, such as
the rusty beer cap, the slow ingestion of Liesle by the hills—
"Forget about that," I said. "Believe me, Liesle, it's all pretend. You
don't have to worry."
For a long rain-loud moment, Liesle searched my face, and then she relaxed.
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"Okay, Gramma." She became a heavy, sleepy weight in my lap. "If you say so."
We went to sleep that last night to the sound of rain. By then it hadbecome a heavy, all-pervading roar on the tent roof that made conversationalmost impossible. "Well," I thought drowsily, "this is a big, wet,close-quotes to our summer." Then, just as I slipped over into sleep, I wassurprised to hear myself think, "Swim well, little beasts, swim well."
It may have been the silence that woke me, because I was suddenly wideawake in a rainless hush. It wasn't just an awakening, but an urgent push intoawareness. I raised up on one elbow. Liesle cried out and then was silent. Ilay back down again, but tensed as Liesle muttered and moved in the darkness.Then I heard her catch her breath and whimper a little. She crawled cautiouslyout of her sleeping bag and was fumbling at the tent flap. A pale watery lightcame through the opening. The sky must have partially cleared. Lieslewhispered something, then groped back across the tent. I heard a series ofrustles and whispers, then she was hesitating at the opening, jacket over herpajamas, her feet in lace-trailing sneakers.
"It's open!" she whimpered, peering out. "It's open!" And was gone.
I caught my foot in the sleeping bag, tried to put my jacket on upsidedown,and got the wrong foot in the right shoe, before I finally got straightened upand staggered out through an ankle-deep puddle to follow Liesle. I groped myway in the wet grayness halfway to the Little House before I realized therewas no one ahead of me in the path. I nearly died. Had she already been suckedinto that treacherous gray rock! And inside me a voice mockingly chanted, "Notfor true, only pretend—"
"Shut up!" I muttered fiercely, then, turning, I sploshed at fullstaggering speed back past the tents. I leaned against my breathing tree tostop my frantic gulping of the cold wet air, and, for the dozenteenth time inmy life, reamed myself out good for going along with a gag too far. If I hadonly scotched Liesle's imagination the first—
I heard a tiny, piercingly high noise, a coaxing, luring bird-like sound,and I saw Liesle standing in the road, intent on the little hills, her righthand outstretched, fingers curling, as though she were calling a puppy.
Then I saw the little hills quiver and consolidate and Become. I saw themlift from the ground with a sucking sound. I heard the soft tear of turf andthe almost inaudible twang of parting roots. I saw the hills flow into motionand follow Liesle's piping call. I strained to see in the half light. Therewere no legs under the hills—there were dozens of legs under—there werewheels—squares —flickering, firefly glitters—
I shut my eyes. The hills were going. How they were going, I couldn't say.Huge, awkward and lumbering, they followed Liesle like drowsy mastodons inclose order formation. I could see the pale scar below the aspen thicket wherethe hills had pulled away. It seemed familiar, even to the scraggly rootspoking out of the sandy crumble of the soil. Wasn't that the way it had alwayslooked?
I stood and watched the beast-hills follow Liesle. How could such a troopgo so noiselessly? Past the tents, through the underbrush, across thecreek—Liesle used the bridge—and on up the trail toward the Little House. Ilost sight of them as they rounded the bend in the trail. I permitted myself abrief sigh of relief before I started back toward the tents. Now to gatherLiesle up, purged of her compulsion, get her into bed and persuaded that ithad all been a dream. Mockingly, I needled myself. "A dream? A dream? Theywere there, weren't they? They are gone, aren't they? Without bending a bladeor breaking a branch. Gone into what? Gone into what?"
"Gone into nothing," I retorted. "Gone through—"
"Through into what?" I goaded. "Gone into what?"
"Okay! You tell me!" I snapped. Both of us shut up and stumbled off downthe darkened path. For the unnum-beredth time I was catapulted into by Liesle.We met most unceremoniously at the bend in the trail.
"Oh, Gramma!" she gasped. "One didn't come! The littlest one didn't come!
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There were eight, but only seven went in. We gotta get the other one. It'sgonna close! Gramma!" She was towing me back past the tents.
"Oh, yipes!" I thought dismally. "A few more of these shuttle runs and Iwill be an old woman!"
We found the truant huddled at the base of the aspens, curled up in acomparatively tiny, grass-bristly little hillock. Liesle stretched out herhands and started piping at the beast-hill.
"Where did you learn that sound?" I asked, my curiosity burning even in amad moment like this one.
"That's the way you call a beast-hill!" she said, amazed at my ignorance,and piped again, coaxingly. I stood there in my clammy, wet sneakers, andpresumably in my right mind, and watched the tight little hillock unroll andmove slowly in Liesle's direction.
"Make him hurry, Gramma!" cried Liesle. "Push!"
So I pushed—and had the warm feeling of summer against my palms, the sharpfaint fragrance of bruised grass in my nostrils, and a vast astonishment in mymind. I’ll never get over it. Me! Pushing a beast-hill in the watery chill ofa night hour that had no number and seemed to go on and on.
Well anyway, between Liesle's piping and my pushing, we got the Least-onepast the tents (encore!) across the creek and down the trail. Liesle ranahead. "Oh, Gramma! Gramma!" Her voice was tragedy. "It's closing! It'sclosing!"
I hunched my shoulders and dug in with my toes and fairly scooted that dumbbeast down the path. I felt a protesting ripple under my hands and a recoillike a frightened child. I had a swift brief vision of me, scrabbling on thetrail with a beast-hill as Jerry had with Liesle, but my sudden rush pushed usaround the corner. There was Liesle, one arm tight around a tree trunk, theother outstretched across the big gray boulder. Her hand was lost somewhere inthe Anything that coalesced and writhed, Became and dissolved in the middle ofthe gray granite.
"Hurry!" she gasped. "I'm holding it! Push!"
I pushed! And felt some strength inside me expend the very last of itselfon the effort. I had spent the last of some youthful coinage that could neverbe replenished. There was a stubborn silent moment and then the beast-hillmust have perceived the opening, because against my fingers was a suddenthrob, a quick tingling and the beast-hill was gone—just like that. Theboulder loomed, still and stolid as it had been since the Dawn, probably—justas it always had been except—Liesle's hand was caught fast in it, clear uppast her wrist.
"It's stuck." She looked quietly over her shoulder at me. "It won't comeout."
"Sure it will," I said, dropping to my haunches and holding her close."Here, let me—" I grasped her elbow.
"No." She hid her face against my shoulder. I could feel the sag of herwhole body. "It won't do any good to pull."
"What shall we do then?" I asked, abandoning myself to her young wisdom.
"Well have to wait till it opens again," she said.
"How long?" I felt the tremble begin in her.
"I don't know. Maybe never. Maybe—maybe it only happens once."
"Oh, now!" I said and had nothing to add. What can you say to a child whosehand has disappeared into a granite boulder and won't come out?
"Liesle," I said. "Can you wiggle your fingers?"
Her whole face tightened as she tried. "Yes," she said. "It's just likehaving my hand in a hole but I can't get it out."
"Push it in, then," I said.
"In?" she asked faintly.
"Yes," I said. "Push it in and wiggle it hard. Maybe they'll see it andopen up again."
So she did. Slowly she pushed until her elbow disappeared. "I'm wavinghard!" We waited. Then— "Nobody comes," she said. And suddenly she was
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fighting and sobbing, wrenching against the rock, but her arm was as
tight-caught as her hand had been. I hugged her to me, brushing my hand
against the rock as I quieted her thrashing legs. 'There, there, Liesle."
Tears were wadding up in my throat. I rocked her consolingly.
"O God in Heaven," I breathed, my eyes closed against her hair. "O God in
Heaven!"
A bird cried out in the silence that followed. The hour that had no number
stretched and stretched. Suddenly Liesle stirred. "Gramma!" she whispered.
"Something touched me! Gramma!" She straightened up and pressed her other hand
against the boulder. "Gramma! Somebody put something in my hand! Look,
Gramma!" And she withdrew her arm from the gray granite and held her hand out
to me.
It overflowed with a Something that Was for a split second, and then flaked
and sparked away like the brilliance of a Roman candle, showering vividly and
all around to the ground.
Liesle looked at her hand, all glittering silver, and wiped it on her
pajamas, leaving a shining smudge. "I'm tired, Gramma," she whimpered. She
looked around her, half dazed. "I had a dream!" she cried. "I had a dream!"
I carried her back to the tent. She was too exhausted to cry. She only made
a weary moaning sound that jerked into syllables with the throb of my steps.
She was asleep before I got her jacket off. I knelt beside her for a while,
looking at her—wondering. I lifted her right hand. A last few flakes of
brilliance sifted off her fingers and flickered out on the way to the floor.
Her nails glowed faintly around the edges, her palm, where it was creased,
bore an irregular M of fading silver. What had she held? What gift had been
put into her hand? I looked around, dazed. I was too tired to think. I felt an
odd throb, as though time had gone back into gear again and it was suddenly
very late. I was asleep before I finished pulling the covers up.
Well! It's episodes like that—though, thank Heaven, they're rather
scarce—that make me feel the burden of age. I'm too set in the ways of the
world to be able to accept such things as normal and casual, too sure of what
is to be seen to really see what is. But events don't have to be this bizarre
to make me realize that sometimes it's best just to take the hand of a child—a
Seeing child—and let them do the leading.
The Last Step
I don't like children.
I suppose that's a horrible confession for a teacher to make, but there's
nothing in the scheme of things that says you have to love the components of
your work to do it well. And that's all children are to me—components of my
work. My work is teaching and teaching is my life and I know, especially in a
job handling people, that they say it helps to like people, but love never
made bricks build a better wall—loving never weeded a garden and liking never
made glue stick harder. Children to me are merely items to be handled in the
course of earning my living and whether I like them or not has nothing to do
with the matter. I loathe children outside of school. I avoid them, and they
me. There's no need for school to lap over into other areas of living any more
than a carpenter's tools should claim his emotions after he leaves work.
And the pampering and soft handling the children receive—well, I suppose
those who indulge in it have their justifications or think they have, but all
it accomplishes as far as I can see is to pad their minds against what they
have to learn—a kind of bandage before the wound, because educating children
is a pushing forcibly of the raw materials of intelligence into an artificial
mold. Society itself is nothing but a vast artificiality and all a teacher is
for is to warp the child into the pattern society dictates. Left alone, he'd
be a happy savage for what few brief years he could manage to survive—and I'd
be out of a job. At any rate, I believe firmly in making sure each child I
handle gets a firm grip on the fundamental tools society demands of him. If I
do it bluntly and nakedly, that's my affair. Leave the ruffles and lace edging
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to others. When I get through with a child he knows what he should know forhis level and knows it thoroughly and no love lost on either side. And if hecries when he finds he is to be in my class, he doesn't cry long. Tears arenot permitted in my room.
I've been reading back over this. My tense is wrong. I used to teach. Iused to make sure. Because this is the fifth day.
Well, when the inescapable arrives— But how was I to know? A person is whathe is. He acts as he acts because he acts that way. There's no profit inconsidering things out of the pattern because there's no armor againstdeviation. Or has there been a flaw in my philosophy all this time? Are thereother values I should have considered?
Well, time, even to such an hour as today brings, has to be lived through,so I'm writing this down, letting the seconds be words and the minutesparagraphs. It will make a neat close-quote for the whole situation.
I was in a somewhat worse mood on Monday than I usually was because I hadjust been through another utterly useless meeting with Major Junius. You'dthink, since he is military, that he wouldn't bother himself about suchfoolishness even if parents did complain.
"Imagination," he said, tapping his fingertips together, "is an invaluableasset. It is, I might say, one of the special blessings bestowed upon mankind.Not an unmixed blessing, however, since by imagination one plagues oneselfwith baseless worries and fears, but I feel that its importance for thechildren should not be minimized."
"I don't minimize it," I snapped. "I ignore it. When you hired me to comeout here to Argave and paid my space fare to bring me here, you knew myfeeling on the matter. I am not without reputation."
"True, true." He patted his fingers together again. "But you are robbingthe children of their birthright by denying them such harmless flights offancy, their fairy tales and such imaginative literature."
"Time for such nonsense later," I said. "While I have them, they will learnto read and write and do the mathematics expected of them on this level, butby my methods and with my materials or I resign."
He puffed and blew and sputtered a little, clearly hating me and toyingwith the idea of accepting my resignation, but also visualizing the 130children with only three teachers and Earth a four-month journey away. When Isaw that, as usual, he would do nothing decisive, I got up and left.
I went out to my detested ground duty. The children were due to arrivemomentarily, dropping in giggling clusters from the helitrans that broughtthem out to Base from their housing. Their individual helidrops would landthem in the play yard, and after unstrapping themselves and stacking thehelidrops in the racks, they would swarm all over the grounds and I wassupposed to be at least a token of directed supervision, though what childneeds to be shown how to waste his time?
The children came helling down—as slang would inevitably have it—and theday began. I usually made my tour of the grounds along the fences that boxedus securely against the Argavian countryside, the sterilites along their baseseffectively preventing Argavian flora or fauna from entering. More nonsense.If we want Argave, we shouldn't try to make it a Little Earth. And those of usfool enough to people this outworld military installation should acceptwhatever Argave has to offer— the bad with the good. It's near enoughEarth-type that not many would die.
But to get back to the playground. One corner of it is a sandbox area wherethe smaller children usually played. That morning, I noticed some of the olderboys in that area and went over to see what playground rules they werebreaking. As it happened, they weren't breaking any. They were playing nearthe sandbox, but closer to the fence where Argavian rains had washed out thetopsoil and, combined with the apparent failure of one of the sterilites, haddeveloped a small rough area complete with tiny Argavian plants—a landscape in
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miniature. The boys didn't notice me as I stood watching them. They had begunone of those interminable games—nonsense games—where they furnish a runningcommentary to explain the game to themselves as they go along. There werethree boys. I don't know their names because they hadn't been in my class andI never bother with other children. They were older boys, maybe fourth level.They were huddled at one end of the rough area, inspecting a line of tinymetal vehicles such as boys usually have stuffed among the junk in theirpockets.
"And this," said the brown-haired one, "has Captain Lewis' family in it.Mrs. Lewis and the three kids and LaVerne, the maid—**
"What about the new baby?" the redhead asked. Brown rocked back on hisheels and looked at the car, then at Red. "It isn't born yet," he said.
"It might be by then," said Red. "Better mention it or it'll be left out."
"Goes," said Brown. And he half chanted, "This is the car for Mrs. CaptainLewis and the three kids and La-Verne and the new baby—or babies." He lookedover at Red without a smile. "It might be twins."
"Goes," said Red. "Now that's all except the teachers." "There's only onecar left," said the blond-haired boy. "A little one."
"You're sure?" asked Brown. "Can't it be a big one?"
"No, it's a little one." Red wasn't looking at anyone. He seemed to bepeering through his lashes at nothing— or something?
"Goes," said Blond. "Miss Leaven, Mr. Kaprockanze, and Miss Robbin—"
Red glanced quickly over at Blond as his voice dropped. "And Her," he said.
"Do we hafta take Her?" asked Blond. "This would be an awful good time toget rid of Her."
"We can't," said Red. "It's total. Anyway, do good to those whodespitefully use you and persecute you and do all manner of evil against youunjustly—"
"Goes," said Blond. "I learned that, too, but you said it wrong."
"Well, we hafta anyway," said Red. "Now. Ready?" The three boys lookedsolemnly at one another. Then their eyes closed, their intent faces turnedupward and their lips moved silently.
Blond spoke. His voice was shaken with desolation that seemed almost real."Will there be time?" he choked.
"Yes," said Red. "We'll have five days. If we can fair-the-coorze by then,we’ll make it. Ready?"
Again, that short pause and then Red put his forefinger on the roof of thevehicle that headed the column and nudged it forward slowly over an almostunnoticeable line that was apparently meant for a road. The two other boysbegan nudging the other vehicles along.
I turned and left them, caught by something in their foolish play: MissLeaven, Mr. Kaprockanze and Miss Robbin—I felt a sudden sick twang inside methat I thought I had long outgrown. Such foolishness to be upset by children'snonsense. But the roll call echoed in my head again. Miss Leaven, Mr.Kaprockanze and Miss Robbin. My name is Esther Corvin. I must be Her.
As is my invariable practice, at dismissal I left school at school andretired immediately to my quarters. I spent the evening playing bridge in theQuarters Lounge with a number of the other civilian employees of the Base and,near midnight, stood in my gown at my window looking out on the Argaviannight—which is truly splendid with three colored moons and a sky crowded withtight clusters of brilliant stars.
Quite uncharacteristically, I lingered at the window until I was shiveringin the heavily scented Argavian breeze. Then I suddenly found myself leaningfar out over the sill, trying to catch a glimpse of the corner of the schoolyard, madly wondering if those vehicles were toiling minutely forward throughthe Argavian night. Something must be wrong with me, I thought. And took ananti-vir before I went to bed.
I had no idea that the incident would be prolonged. Consequently I was
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astonished and mildly annoyed to see the three boys huddled in the corner thenext morning. I determinedly stayed away from them, even going so far as toturn one end of jump rope for some of the girls to divert my attention. Myhelpfulness was more of a hindrance. The children were so startled by my offerthat none of them could jump more than twice without missing. Finally, theystood dumbly looking at each other with red-splotched cheeks, so Irelinquished the rope and left them. I drifted over to the corner to see—tofind out—well, bluntly, I was irresistibly drawn to the corner.
Blond was knuckling tears out of his eyes. Tears in public? From a boy hisage?
"You didn't hafta—" he choked.
"Did so," said Red, his face shadowed and unhappy. "It's the coorze, can'tyou see? Besides, I didn't do it. It just will be—"
The two sat staring at a vehicle that had been smashed under the fall of aplum-sized pebble that had rolled down the side of a miniature ravine. Brownwas busy nudging another vehicle very slowly along the precarious rim of theroad that edged around the pebble.
"Goes," said Blond. "But they were our best friends—"
"Goes," said Red, blinking and sniffling quickly. Then briskly: "Get therest of them around there now. We hafta get to The Knoll before night."
I don't know what possessed me then. I almost ran to the office and rangthe bell five minutes early. "There!" I thought triumphantly as I jabbed thebutton. "It's night and you didn't get to The Knoll."
I was ashamed of myself all the rest of the day. I pride myself on being apractical, down-to-earth sort of person—and for me to be rocked by such utternonsense! Actually to feel that I was participating in such foolishness!
That night in Quarters, I tried to analyze the situation. What were theboys doing? Did boys customarily make themselves so much a part of their playthat they wept over their games? Why did I react so strongly that I wascompelled to participate?
I lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling patterned by the glow of themoons and found my pulses insisting The Knoll, The Knoll, The Knoll. I probeddeep into my memory. What did The Knoll connote to me? BЧитать дальше