Зенна Гендерсон - Pottage

If you'd rather they didn't know about it at first, keep it as our secret. Mr. Diemus told me not to bother them with explanations or reasons. I'll make it right with your parents when the time comes." I paused to swallow and blink away a vision of me leaving town in a cloud of dust, barely ahead of a posse of irate parents. "Now, everyone, busy," I said briskly. "I Remember the Home." There was a moment heavy with decision and I held my breath, wondering which way the balance would dip. And then—surely it must have been because they wanted so to speak and affirm the wonder of what had been that they capitulated so easily. Heads bent and pencils scurried. And Martha sat, her head bowed on her desk with sorrow. "I don't know enough words," she mourned. "How do you write toolas?" And Abie laboriously erased a hole through his paper and licked his pencil again. "Why don't you and Abie make some pictures?" I suggested. "Make a little story with pictures and we can staple them together like a real book." I looked over the silent busy group and let myself relax, feeling weakness flood into my knees. I scrubbed the dampness from my palms with Kleenex and sat back in my chair. Slowly I became conscious of a new atmosphere in my classroom. An intolerable strain was gone, an unconscious holding back of the children, a wariness, a watchfulness, a guilty feeling of desiring what was forbidden. A prayer of thanksgiving began to well up inside me. It changed hastily to a plea for mercy as I began to visualize what might happen to me when the parents found out what I was doing. How long must this containment and denial have gone on? This concealment and this carefully nourished fear? From what Karen had told me it must be well over fifty years—long enough to mark indelibly three generations. And here I was with my fine little hatchet trying to set a little world afire! On which very mixed metaphor I stiffened my weak knees and got up from my chair. I walked unnoticed up and down the aisles, stepping aside as Joel went blindly to the shelf for more paper, leaning over Miriam to marvel that she had taken out her Crayolas and part of her writing was with colors, part with pencil—and the colors spoke to something in me that the pencil couldn't reach, though I'd never seen the forms the colors took. The children had gone home, happy and excited, chattering and laughing, until they reached the edge of the school grounds. There, smiles died and laughter stopped and faces and feet grew heavy again. All but Esther's. Hers had never been light. I sighed and turned to the papers. Here was Abie's little book. I thumbed through it and drew a deep breath and went back through it slowly again. A second grader drawing this? Six pages—six finished adult-looking pages. Crayolas achieving effects I'd never seen before—pictures that told a story loudly and clearly. Stars blazing in a black sky, with the slender needle of a ship, like a mote in the darkness. The vastly green cloud-shrouded arc of the earth against the blackness. A pink tinge of beginning friction along the ship's belly. I put my finger to the glow. I could almost feel the heat. Inside the ship, suffering and pain, heroic striving, crumpled bodies and seared faces. A baby dead in its mother's arms. Then a swarm of tinier needles erupting from the womb of the ship. And the last shriek of incandescence as the ship volatilized against the thickening drag of the air. I leaned my head on my hands and closed my eyes. All this, all this in the memory of an eight-year-old? All this in the feelings of an eight-year-old? Because Abie knew—he knew how this felt. He knew the heat and strivings and the dying and fleeing. No wonder Abie whispered and leaned. Racial memory was truly a two-sided coin. I felt a pang of misgivings. Maybe I was wrong to let him remember so vividly. Maybe I shouldn't have let him… I turned to Martha's papers. They were delicate, almost spidery drawings of some fuzzy little animal (toolas?) that apparently built a hanging hammocky nest and gathered fruit in a huge leaf basket and had a bird for a friend. A truly out-of-this-world bird. Much of her story escaped me because first graders—if anyone at all—produce symbolic art and, since her frame of reference and mine were so different, there was much that I couldn't interpret. But her whole booklet was joyous and light. And now, the stories… I lifted my head and blinked into the twilight. I had finished all the papers except Esther's. It was her cramped writing, swimming in darkness, that made me realize that the day was gone and that I was shivering in a shadowy room with the fire in the old-fashioned heater gone out. Slowly I shuffled the papers into my desk drawer, hesitated and took out Esther's. I would finish at home. I shrugged into my coat and wandered home, my thoughts intent on the papers I had read. And suddenly I wanted to cry —to cry for the wonders that had been and were no more. For the heritage of attainment and achievement these children had but couldn't use. For the dream-come-true of what they were capable of doing but weren't permitted to do. For the homesick yearning that filled every line they had written —these unhappy exiles, three generations removed from any physical knowledge of the Home. I stopped on the bridge and leaned against the railing in the half dark. Suddenly I felt a welling homesickness. That was what the world should be like—what it could be like if only—if only… But my tears for the Home were as hidden as the emotions of Mrs. Diemus when she looked up uncuriously as I came through the kitchen door. "Good evening," she said. "I've kept your supper warm." "Thank you." I shivered convulsively. "It is getting cold." I sat on the edge of my bed that night, letting the memory of the kids' papers wash over me, trying to fill in around the bits and snippets that they had told of the Home. And then I began to wonder. All of them who wrote about the actual Home had been so happy with their memories. From Timmy and his "Shinny ship as high as a montin and faster than two jets," and Dorcas' wandering tenses as though yesterday and today were one: "The flowers were like lights. At night it isn't dark becas they shine so bright and when the moon came up the breeos sing and the music was so you can see it like rain falling around only happyer"; up to Miriam's wistful "On Gathering Day there was a big party. Everybody came dressed in beautiful clothes with flahmen in the girls' hair. Flahmen are flowers but they're good to eat. And if a girl felt her heart sing for a boy they ate a flahmen together and started two-ing." Then, if all these memories were so happy, why the rigid suppression of them by grownups? Why the pall of unhappiness over everyone? You can't mourn forever for a wrecked ship. Why a hidey hole for disobedient children? Why the misery and frustration when, if they could do half of what I didn't fully understand from Joel and Matt's highly technical papers, they could make Bendo an Eden? I reached for Esther's paper. I had put it on the bottom on purpose. I dreaded reading it. She had sat with her head buried on her arms on her desk most of the time the others were writing busily. At widely separated intervals she had scribbled a line or two as though she were doing something shameful. She, of all the children, had seemed to find no relief in her remembering. I smoothed the paper on my lap. "I remember," she had written. "We were thursty. There was water in the creek we were hiding in the grass. We could not drink. They would shoot us. Three days the sun was hot She screamed for water and ran to the creek. They shot The water got red." Blistered spots marked the tears on the paper. "They found a baby under a bush. The man hit it with the wood part of his gun. He hit it and hit it and hit it. I hit scorpins like that. "They caught us and put us in a pen. They built a fire all around us. 'Fly' they said 'fly and save yourselfs.' We flew because it hurt. They shot us." "Monsters," they yelled, "evil monsters. People can't fly. People can't move things. People are the same. You aren't people. Die, die, die." Then blackly, traced and retraced until the paper split: "If anyone finds out we are not of earth we will die." "Keep your feet on the ground." Bleakly I laid the paper aside. So there was the answer, putting Karen's bits and snippets together with these. The shipwrecked ones finding savages on the desert island. A remnant surviving by learning caution, supression, and denial. Another generation that pinned the evil label on the Home to insure continued immunity for their children, and now, a generation that questioned and wondered—and rebelled. I turned off the light and slowly got into bed. I lay there staring into the darkness, holding the picture Esther had evoked. Finally I relaxed. "God help her," I sighed. "God help us all." Another week was nearly over. We cleaned the room up quickly, for once anticipating the fun time instead of dreading it. I smiled to hear the happy racket all around me, and felt my own spirits surge upward in response to the light-heartedness of the children. The difference that one afternoon had made in them! Now they were beginning to feel like children to me. They were beginning to accept me. I swallowed with an effort. How soon would they ask, "How come? How come I knew?" There they sat, all nine of them —nine, because Esther was my first absence in the year— bright-eyed and expectant. "Can we write again?" Sarah asked. "I can remember lots more." "No," I said. "Not today." Smiles died and there was a protesting wiggle through the room. "Today we are going to do. Joel." I looked at him and tightened my jaws. "Joel, give me the dictionary." He began to get up. "Without leaving your seat!" "But I—!" Joel broke the shocked silence. "I can't!" "Yes, you can," I prayed. "Yes, you can. Give me the dictionary. Here, on my desk." Joel turned and stared at the big old dictionary that spilled pages 1965 to 1998 out of its cracked old binding. Then he said, "Miriam?" in a high tight voice. But she shook her head and shrank back in her seat, her eyes big and dark in her white face. "You can." Miriam's voice was hardly more than a breath. "It's just bigger—" Joel clutched the edge of his desk and sweat started out on his forehead. There was a stir of movement on the bookshelf. Then, as though shot from a gun, pages 1965 to 1998 whisked to my desk and fell fluttering. Our laughter cut through the blank amazement and we laughed till tears came. "That's a-doing it, Joel!" Matt shouted. "That's showing them your muscles!" "Well, it's a beginning." Joel grinned weakly. "You do it, brother, if you think it's so easy." So Matt sweated and strained and Joel joined with him, but they only managed to scrape the book to the edge of the shelf where it teetered dangerously. Then Abie waved his hand timidly. "I can, teacher." I beamed that my silent one had spoken and at the same time frowned at the loving laughter of the big kids. "Okay, Abie," I encouraged. "You show them how to do it." And the dictionary swung off the shelf and glided unhastily to my desk, where it came silently to rest. Everyone stared at Abie and he squirmed. "The little ships," he defended. "That's the way they moved them out of the big ship. Just like that." Joel and Matt turned their eyes to some inner concentration and then exchanged exasperated looks. "Why, sure," Matt said. "Why, sure." And the dictionary swung back to the shelf. "Hey!" Timmy protested. "It's my turn!" "That poor dictionary," I said. "It's too old for all this bouncing around. Just put the loose pages back on the shelf." And he did. Everyone sighed and looked at me expectantly. "You come to me," I said, feeling a chill creep across my stiff shoulders. "Lift to me, Miriam." Without taking her eyes from me she slipped out of her seat and stood in the aisle. Her skirts swayed a little as her feet lifted from the floor. Slowly at first and then more quickly she came to me, soundlessly, through the air, until in a little flurried rush her arms went around me and she gasped into my shoulder. I put her aside trembling. I groped for my handkerchief. I said shakily, "Miriam, help the rest. I'll be back in a minute." And I stumbled into the room next door. Huddled down in the dust and debris of the catchall storeroom it had become, I screamed soundlessly into my muffling hands. And screamed and screamed! Because after all—after all! And then suddenly, with a surge of pure panic, I heard a sound—the sound of footsteps, many footsteps, approaching the schoolhouse. I jumped for the door and wrenched it open just in time to see the outside door open. There was Mr. Diemus and Esther and Esther's father, Mr. Jonso. In one of those flashes of clarity that engrave your mind in a split second I saw my whole classroom. Joel and Matt were chinning themselves on nonexistent bars, their heads brushing the high ceiling as they grunted upward. Abie was swinging in a swing that wasn't there, arcing across the corner of the room just missing the stovepipe from the old stove, as he chanted, "Up in a swing, up in a swing!" This wasn't the first time they had tried their wings! Miriam was kneeling in a circle with the other girls and they were all coaxing their books up to hover unsupported above the floor, while Timmy vroomm-vroomed two paper jet planes through intricate maneuvers in and out the rows, of desks. My soul curdled in me as I met Mr. Diemus' eyes. Esther gave a choked cry as she saw what the children were doing, and the girls' stricken faces turned to the intruders. Matt and Joel crumpled to the floor and scrambled to their feet. But Abie, absorbed in his wonderful new accomplishment, swung on, all unconscious of what was happening until Talitha frantically screamed, "Abie!" Startled, he jerked around and saw the forbidding group at the door. With a disappointed cry, as though a loved toy had been snatched from him, he stopped there in midair, his fists clenched. And then, realizing, he screamed, a terrified panic-stricken cry, and slanted sharply upward, trying to escape, and ran full tilt into the corner of the high old map case, sideswiping it with his head, and, reeling backward, fell! I tried to catch him. I did! I did! But I caught only one small hand as he plunged down onto the old woodburning heater beneath him. And the crack of his skull against the ornate edge of the cast iron lid was loud in the silence. I straightened the crumpled little body carefully, not daring to touch the quiet little head. Mr. Diemus and I looked at each other as we knelt on opposite sides of the child. His lips opened, but I plunged before he could get started. "If he dies," I bit my words off viciously, "you killed him!" His mouth opened again, mainly from astonishment. "I—" he began. "Barging in on my classroom!" I raged. "Interrupting classwork! Frightening my children! It's all your fault, your fault!" I couldn't bear the burden of guilt alone. I just had to have someone share it with me. But the fire died and I smoothed Abie's hand, trembling. "Please call a doctor. He might be dying." "Nearest one is in Tortura Pass," Mr. Diemus said. "Sixty miles by road." "Cross country?" I asked. "Two mountain ranges and an alkali plateau." "Then—then—" Abie's hand was so still in mine. "There's a doctor at the Tumble A Ranch," Joel said faintly. "He's taking a vacation." "Go get him." I held Joel with my eyes. "Go as fast as you know how!" Joel gulped miserably. "Okay." "They'll probably have horses to come back on," I said. "Don't be too obvious." "Okay," and he ran out the door. We heard the thud of his running feet until he was halfway across the schoolyard, then silence. Faintly, seconds later, creek gravel crunched below the hill. I could only guess at what he was doing—that he couldn't lift all the way and was going in jumps whose length was beyond all reasonable measuring. The children had gone home, quietly, anxiously. And after the doctor arrived we had improvised a stretcher and carried Abie to the Peterses' home. I walked along close beside him watching his pinched little face, my hand touching his chest occasionally just to be sure he was still breathing. And now—the waiting… I looked at my watch again. A minute past the last time I looked. Sixty seconds by the hands, but hours and hours by anxiety. "He'll be all right," I whispered, mostly to comfort myself. "The doctor will know what to do." Mr. Diemus turned his dark empty eyes to me. "Why did you do it?" he asked. "We almost had it stamped out. We were almost free." "Free of what?" I took a deep breath. "Why did you do it? Why did you deny your children their inheritance?" "It isn't your concern—" "Anything that hampers my children is my concern. Anything that turns children into creeping frightened mice is wrong. Maybe I went at the whole deal the wrong way, but you told me to teach them what I had to—and I did." "Disobedience, rebellion, flouting authority—" "They obeyed me," I retorted. "They accepted my authority!" Then I softened. "I can't blame them," I confessed. "They were troubled. They told me it was wrong— that they had been taught it was wrong. I argued them into it. But, oh, Mr. Diemus! It took so little argument, such a tiny breach in the dam to loose the flood. They never even questioned my knowledge—any more than you have, Mr. Diemus! All this—this wonder was beating against their minds, fighting to be set free. The rebellion was there long before I came. I didn't incite them to something new. I'll bet there's not a one, except maybe Esther, who hasn't practiced and practiced, furtively and ashamed, the things I permitted—demanded that they do for me. "It wasn't fair—not fair at all—to hold them back." "You don't understand." Mr. Diemus' face was stony. "You haven't all the facts—" "I have enough," I replied. "So you have a frightened memory of an unfortunate period in your history. But what people doesn't have such a memory in larger or lesser degree? That you and your children have it more vividly should have helped, not hindered. You should have been able to figure out ways of adjusting. But leave that for the moment. Take the other side of the picture. What possible thing could all this suppression and denial yield you more precious than what you gave up?" "It's the only way," Mr. Diemus said. "We are unacceptable to Earth but we have to stay. We have to conform—" "Of course you had to conform," I cried. "Anyone has to when they change societies. At least enough to get them by until others can adjust to them. But to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you! Why, the other Group—" "Other Group!" Mr. Diemus whitened, his eyes widening. "Other Group? There are others? There are others?" He leaned tensely forward in his chair. "Where? Where?" And his voice broke shrilly on the last word. He closed his eyes and his mouth trembled as he fought for control. The bedroom door opened. Dr. Curtis came out, his shoulders weary. He looked from Mr. Diemus to me and back. "He should be in a hospital. There's a depressed fracture and I don't know what all else. Probably extensive brain involvement. We need X rays and—and—" He rubbed his hand slowly over his weary young face. "Frankly, I'm not experienced to handle cases like this. We need specialists. If you can scare up some kind of transportation that won't jostle—" He shook his head, seeing the kind of country that lay between us and anyplace, and went back into the bedroom. "He's dying," Mr. Diemus said. "Whether you're right or we're right, he's dying." "Wait! Wait!" I said, catching at the tag end of a sudden idea. "Let me think." Urgently I willed myself back through the years to the old dorm room. Intently I listened and listened and remembered. "Have you a—a—Sorter in this Group?" I asked, fumbling for unfamiliar terms. "No," said Mr. Diemus. "One who could have been, but isn't." "Or any Communicator? Anyone who can send or receive?" "No," Mr. Diemus said, sweat starting on his forehead. "One who could have been, but—" "See?" I accused. "See what you've traded for—for what? Who are the could-but-can'ts? Who are they?" "I am," Mr. Diemus said, the words a bitterness in his mouth. "And my wife." I stared at him, wondering confusedly. How far did training decide? What could we do with what we had? "Look," I said quickly. "There is another Group. And they—they have all the persuasions and designs. Karen's been trying to find you—to find any of the People. She told me—oh, Lord, it's been years ago, I hope it's still so— every evening they send out calls for the People. If we can catch it—if you can catch the call and answer it, they can help. I know they can. Faster than cars, faster than planes, more surely than specialists—" "But if the doctor finds out—" Mr. Diemus wavered fearfully. I stood up abruptly. "Good night, Mr. Diemus," I said, turning to the door. "Let me know when Abie dies." His cold hand shook on my arm. "Can't you see!" he cried. "I've been taught, too—longer and stronger than the children! We never even dared think of rebellion! Help me, help me!" "Get your wife," I said. "Get her and Abie's mother and father. Bring them down to the grove. We can't do anything here in the house. It's too heavy with denial." I hurried on ahead and sank on my knees in the evening shadows among the trees. "I don't know what I'm doing," I cried into the bend of my arm. "I have an idea but I don't know! Help us! Guide us!" I opened my eyes to the arrival of the four. "We told him we were going out to pray," said Mr. Diemus. And we all did. Then Mr. Diemus began the call I worded for him, silently, but with such intensity that sweat started again on his face. Karen, Karen, come to the People, come to the People. And the other three sat around him bolstering his effort, supporting his cry. I watched their tense faces, my own twisting in sympathy, and time was lost as we labored. Then slowly his breathing calmed and his face relaxed and I felt a stirring as though something brushed past my mind. Mrs. Diemus whispered, "He remembers now. He's found the way." And as the last spark of sun caught mica highlights on the hilltop above us, Mr. Diemus stretched his hands out slowly and said with infinite relief, "There they are." I looked around startled, half expecting to see Karen coming through the trees. But Mr. Diemus spoke again. "Karen, we need help. One of our Group is dying. We have a doctor, an Outsider, but he hasn't the equipment or the know-how to help. What shall we do?" In the pause that followed I became slowly conscious of a new feeling. I couldn't tell you exactly what it was—a kind of unfolding—an opening—a relaxation. The ugly tight defensiveness that was so characteristic of the grownups of Bendo was slipping away. "Yes, Valancy," said Mr. Diemus. "He's in a bad way. We can't help because—" His voice faltered and his words died. I felt a resurgence of fear and unhappiness as his communication went beyond words and then ebbed back to speech again. "We'll expect you then. You know the way." I could see the pale blur of his face in the dusk under the trees as he turned back to us. "They're coming," he said, wonderingly. "Karen and Valancy. They're so pleased to find us—" His voice broke. "We're not alone—" And I turned away as the two couples merged in the darkness. I had pushed them somewhere way beyond me. It was a lonely, lonely walk back to the house for me— alone. They dropped down through the half darkness—four of them. For a fleeting second I wondered at myself that I could stand there matter-of-factly watching four adults slant calmly down out of the sky. Not a hair ruffled, not a stain of travel on them, knowing that only a short time before they had been hundreds of miles away—not even aware that Bendo existed. But all strangeness was swept away as Karen hugged me delightedly. "Oh, Melodye," she cried, "it is you! He said it was, but I wasn't sure! Oh, it's so good to see you again! Who owes who a letter?" She laughed and turned to the smiling three. "Valancy, the Old One of our Group." Valancy's radiant face proved the Old One didn't mean age. "Bethie, our Sensitive." The slender fair-haired young girl ducked her head shyly. "And my brother Jemmy. Valancy's his wife." "This is Mr. and Mrs. Diemus," I said. "And Mr. and Mrs. Peters, Abie's parents. It's Abie, you know. My second grade." I was suddenly overwhelmed by how long ago and far away school felt. How far I'd gone from my accustomed pattern! "What shall we do about the doctor?" I asked. "Will he have to know?" "Yes," said Valancy. "We can help him but we can't do the actual work. Can we trust him?" I hesitated, remembering the few scanty glimpses I'd had of him. "I—," I began. "Pardon me," Karen said. "I wanted to save time. I went in to you. We know now what you know of him. We'll trust Dr. Curtis." I felt an eerie creeping up my spine. To have my thoughts taken so casually! Even to the doctor's name! Bethie stirred restlessly and looked at Valancy. "He'll be in convulsions soon. We'd better hurry." "You're sure you have the knowledge?" Valancy asked. "Yes," Bethie murmured. "If I can make the doctor see— if he's willing to follow." "Follow what?" The heavy tones of the doctor's voice startled us all as he stepped out on the porch. I stood aghast at the impossibility of the task ahead of us and looked at Karen and Valancy to see how they would make the doctor understand. They said nothing. They just looked at him. There was a breathless pause. The doctor's startled face caught the glint of light from the open door as he turned to Valancy. He rubbed his hand across his face in bewilderment and, after a moment, turned to me. "Do you hear her?" "No," I admitted. "She isn't talking to me." "Do you know these people?" "Oh, yes!" I cried, wishing passionately it were true. "Oh, yes!" "And believe them?" "Implicitly." "But she says that Bethie—who's Bethie?" He glanced around. "She is," Karen said, nodding at Bethie. "She is?" Dr. Curtis looked intently at the shy lovely face. He shook his head wonderingly and turned back to me. "Anyway this one, Valancy, says Bethie can sense every condition in the child's body and that she will be able to tell all the injuries, their location and extent without X rays! Without equipment?" "Yes," I said. "If they say so." "You would be willing to risk a child's life—?" "Yes. They know. They really do." And I swallowed hard to keep down the fist of doubt that clenched in my chest. "You believe they can see through flesh and bone?" "Maybe not see," I said, wondering at my own words. "But know with a knowledge that is sure and complete." I glanced, startled, at Karen. Her nod was very small but it told me where my words came from. "Are you willing to trust these people?" The doctor turned to Abie's parents. "They're our People," Mr. Peters said with quiet pride. "I'd operate on him myself with a pickax if they said so." "Of all the screwball deals—!" The doctor's hand rubbed across his face again. "I know I needed this vacation, but this is ridiculous!" We all listened to the silence of the night and—at least I—to the drumming of anxious pulses until Dr. Curtis sighed heavily. "Okay, Valancy. I don't believe a word of it. At least I wouldn't if I were in my right mind, but you've got the terminology down pat as if you knew something—. Well, I'll do it. It's either that or let him die. And God have mercy on our souls!" I couldn't bear the thought of shutting myself in with my own dark fears, so I walked back toward the school, hugging myself in my inadequate coat against the sudden sharp chill of the night. I wandered down to the grove, praying wordlessly, and on up to the school. But I couldn't go in. I shuddered away from the blank glint of the windows and turned back to the grove. There wasn't any more time or direction or light or anything familiar, only a confused cloud of anxiety and a final icy weariness that drove me back to Abie's house. I stumbled into the kitchen, my stiff hands fumbling at the doorknob. I huddled in a chair, gratefully leaning over the hot wood stove that flicked the semidarkness of the big homey room with warm red light, trying to coax some feeling back into my fingers. I drowsed as the warmth began to penetrate, and then the door was flung open and slammed shut. The doctor leaned back against it his hand still clutching the knob. "Do you know what they did?" he cried, not so much to me as to himself. "What they made me do? Oh, Lord!" He staggered over to the stove, stumbling over my feet. He collapsed by my chair, rocking his head between his hands. "They made me operate on his brain! Repair it. Trace circuits and rebuild them. You can't do that! It can't be done! Brain cells damaged can't be repaired. No one can restore circuits that are destroyed! It can't be done. But I did it! I did it!" I knelt beside him and tried to comfort him in the circle of my arms. "There, there, there," I soothed. He clung like a terrified child. "No anesthetics!" he cried. "She kept him asleep. And no bleeding when I went through the scalp! They stopped it. And the impossible things I did with the few instruments I have with me! And the brain starting to mend right before my eyes! Nothing was right!" "But nothing was wrong," I murmured. "Abie will be all right, won't he?" "How do I know?" he shouted suddenly, pushing away from me. "I don't know anything about a thing like this. I put his brain back together and he's still breathing, but how do I know!" "There, there," I soothed. "It's over now." "It'll never be over!" With an effort he calmed himself, and we helped each other up from the floor. "You can't forget a thing like this in a lifetime." "We can give you forgetting," Valancy said softly from the door. "If you want to forget. We can send you back to the Tumble A with no memory of tonight except a pleasant visit to Bendo." "You can?" He turned speculative eyes toward her. "You can," he amended his words to a statement. "Do you want to forget?" Valancy asked. "Of course not," he snapped. Then, "I'm sorry. It's just that I don't often work miracles in the wilderness. But if I did it once, maybe—" "Then you understand what you did?" Valancy asked smiling. "Well, no, but if I could—if you would— There must be some way—" "Yes," Valancy said, "but you'd have to have a Sensitive working with you, and Bethie is it as far as Sensitives go right now." "You mean it's true what I saw—what you told me about the—the Home? You're extraterrestrials?" "Yes," Valancy sighed. "At least our grandparents were." Then she smiled. "But we're learning where we can fit into this world. Someday—someday we'll be able—" She changed the subject abruptly. "You realize, of course, Dr. Curtis, that we'd rather you wouldn't discuss Bendo or us with anyone else. We would rather be just people to Outsiders." He laughed shortly, "Would I be believed if I did?" "Maybe no, maybe so," Valancy said. "Maybe only enough to start people nosing around. And that would be too much. We have a bad situation here and it will take a long time to erase—" Her voice slipped into silence, and I knew she had dropped into thoughts to brief him on the local problem. How long is a thought? How fast can you think of hell—and heaven? It was that long before the doctor blinked and drew a shaky breath. "Yes," he said. "A long time." "If you like," Valancy said, "I can block your ability to talk of us." "Nothing doing!" the doctor snapped. "I can manage my own censorship, thanks." Valancy flushed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be condescending." "You weren't," the doctor said. "I'm just on the prod tonight. It has been a day, and that's for sure!" "Hasn't it, though?" I smiled and then, astonished, rubbed my cheeks because tears had begun to spill down my face. I laughed, embarrassed, and couldn't stop. My laughter turned suddenly to sobs and I was bitterly ashamed to hear myself wailing like a child. I clung to Valency's strong hands until I suddenly slid into a warm welcome darkness that had no thinking or fearing or need for believing in anything outrageous, but only in sleep. It was a magic year and it fled on impossibly fast wings, the holidays flicking past like telephone poles by a railroad train. Christmas was especially magical because my angels actually flew and the glory actually shone round about because their robes had hems woven of sunlight—I watched the girls weave them. And Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, complete with cardboard antlers that wouldn't stay straight, really took off and circled the room. And as our Mary and Joseph leaned raptly over the manger, their faces solemn and intent on the miracle, I felt suddenly that they . were really seeing, really kneeling beside the manger in Bethlehem. Anyway the months fled, and the blossoming of Bendo was beautiful to see. There was laughter and frolicking and even the houses grew subtly into color. Green things crept out where only rocks had been before, and a tiny tentative stream of water had begun to flow down the creek again. They explained to me that they had to take it slow because people might wonder if the creek filled overnight! Even the rough steps up to the houses were becoming overgrown because they were seldom used, and I was becoming accustomed to seeing my pupils coming to school like a bevy of bright birds, playing tag in the treetops. I was surprised at myself for adjusting so easily to all the incredible things done around me by the People, and I was pleased that they accepted me so completely. But I always felt a pang when the children escorted me home—with me, they had to walk. But all things have to end, and one May afternoon I sat staring into my top desk drawer, the last to be cleaned out, wondering what to do with the accumulation of useless things in it. But I wasn't really seeing the contents of the drawer, I was concentrating on the great weary emptiness that pressed my shoulders down and weighted my mind. "It's not fair," I muttered aloud and illogically, "to show me heaven and then snatch it away." "That's about what happened to Moses, too, you know." My surprised start spilled an assortment of paper clips and thumbtacks from the battered box I had just picked up. "Well, forevermore!" I said, righting the box. "Dr. Curtis! What are you doing here?" "Returning to the scene of my crime," he smiled, coming through the open door. "Can't keep my mind off Abie. Can't believe he recovered from all that—shall we call it repair work? I have to check him every time I'm anywhere near this part of the country—and I still can't believe it." "But he has." "He has for sure! I had to fish him down from a treetop to look him over—" The doctor shuddered dramatically and laughed. "To see him hurtling down from the top of that tree curdled my blood! But there's hardly even a visible scar left." "I know," I said, jabbing my finger as I started to gather up the tacks. "I looked last night. I'm leaving tomorrow, you know." I kept my eyes resolutely down to the job at hand. "I have this last straightening up to do." "It's hard, isn't it?" he said, and we both knew he wasn't talking about straightening up. "Yes," I said soberly. "Awfully hard. Earth gets heavier every day." "I find it so lately, too. But at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you—" I moved uncomfortably and laughed. "Well, they do say: those as can, do; those as can't, teach." "Umm," the doctor said noncommittally, but I could feel his eyes on my averted face and I swiveled away from him, groping for a better box to put the clips in. "Going to summer school?" His voice came from near the windows. "No," I sniffed cautiously. "No, I swore when I got my Master's that I was through with education—at least the kind that's come-every-day-and-learn-something." "Hmm!" There was amusement in the doctor's voice. "Too bad. I'm going to school this summer. Thought you might like to go there, too." "Where?" I asked bewildered, finally looking at him. "Cougar Canyon summer school," he smiled. "Most exclusive." "Cougar Canyon! Why that's where Karen—" "Exactly," he said. "That's where the other Group is established. I just came from there. Karen and Valancy want us both to come. Do you object to being an experiment?" "Why, no—" I cried, and then, cautiously, "What kind of an experiment?" Visions of brains being carved up swam through my mind. The doctor laughed. "Nothing as gruesome as you're imagining, probably." Then he sobered and sat on the edge of my desk. "I've been to Cougar Canyon a couple of times, trying to figure out some way to get Bethie to help me when I come up against a case that's a puzzler. Valancy and Karen want to try a period of training with Outsiders—" that's us—he grimaced wryly, "to see how much of what they are can be transmitted by training. You know Bethie is half Outsider. Only her mother was of the People." He was watching me intently. "Yes," I said absently, my mind whirling, "Karen told me." "Well, do you want to try it? Do you want to go?" "Do I want to go!" I cried, scrambling the clips into a rubber-band box. "How soon do we leave? Half an hour? Ten minutes? Did you leave the motor running?" "Woops, woops!" The doctor took me by both arms and looked soberly into my eyes. "We can't set our hopes too high," he said quietly. "It may be that for such knowledge we aren't teachable—" I looked soberly back at him, my heart crying in fear that it might be so. "Look," I said slowly. "If you had a hunger, a great big gnawing-inside hunger and no money and you saw a bakery shop window, which would you do? Turn your back on it? Or would you press your nose as close as you could against the glass and let at least your eyes feast? I know what I'd do." I reached for my sweater. "And, you know, you never can tell. The shop door might open a crack, maybe—someday—"