Зенна Гендерсон - Pilgrimage

I REMEMBER THE HOME
I heard the sudden intake of breath that worked itself downward from Miriam to Talitha and then the rapid whisper that informed Abie and Martha. I heard Esther's muffled cry and I turned slowly around and leaned against the desk.
"There are so many beautiful things to remember about the Home," I said into the strained silence. "So many wonderful things. And even the sad memories are better than forgetting, because the Home was good. Tell me what you remember about the Home."
"We can't!" Joel and Matt were on their feet simultaneously.
"Why can't we?" Dorcas cried. "Why can't we?"
"It's bad!" Esther cried. "It's evil!"
"It ain't either!" Abie shrilled, astonishingly. "It ain't either!"
"We shouldn't." Miriam's trembling hands brushed her heavy" hair upward. "It's forbidden."
"Sit down," I said gently. "The day I arrived at Bendo Mr. Diemus told me to teach you what I had to teach you. I have to teach you that remembering the Home is good."
"Then why don't the grownups think so?" Matt asked slowly. "They tell us not to talk about it. We shouldn't disobey our parents."
"I know," I admitted. "And I would never ask you children to go against your parents' wishes, unless I felt that it is very important. 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 ticked 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 vasty green cloud-shrouded arc of 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 bad 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.
"Monster '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, suppression 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 lightheartedness 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 you 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 un-hastily 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. "Miriam?" She clasped her hands convulsively. "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 Jimmy 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 wood-burning 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 oЈ 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 oЈ 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 Valancy'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. 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 being overgrown because they were so 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 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 oЈ 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-" he grimaced wryly, "-that's us-to see how much oЈ 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-"
"I'D LIKE to talk with her a minute," Lea said to Karen as the chattering
group broke up. "May I?"
"Why, sure," Karen said. "Melodye, have you a minute?"
"Oh, Karen!" Melodye threaded the rows back to Lea's corner.
"That was wonderful! It was just like living it for the first time again, only underneath I knew what was coming next. But even so my blood ran cold when Abie-" She shuddered.
"Bro-ther! Was that ever a day!"
"Melodye," Karen said, "this is Lea. She wants to talk with you."
"Hi, fellow alien," Melodye smiled. "I've been wanting to meet you."
"Do you believe-" Lea hesitated. "Was that really true?"
"Of course it was," Melodye said. "I can show you my scars-mental, that is-from trying to learn to lift." Then she laughed. "Don't feel funny about doubting it. I still have my 3 A.M-ses when I can't believe it myself." She sobered. "But it is true. The People are the People."
"And even if you're not of the People," Lea faltered, "could they-could they help anyway? I don't mean anything broken. I mean, nothing visible-" She was suddenly covered with a sense of shame and betrayal as though caught hanging out a black line of sins in the morning sun. She turned her face away.
"They can help." Melodye touched Lea's shoulder gently.
"And, Lea, they never judge. They mend where mending is needed and leave the judgment to God." And she was gone.
"Maybe," Lea mourned, "if I had sinned some enormous sins I could have something big to forgive myself so I could start over, but all these niggling nibbling little nothingnesses-"
"All these niggling little, nibbling little nothingnesses that compounded themselves into such a great despair," Karen said.
"And what is despair but a separation from the Presence-"
"Then the People do believe that there is-?"
"Our Home may be gone," Karen said firmly, "and all of us exiles if you want to look at it that way, but there's no galaxy wide enough to separate us from the Presence."
Later that night Lea sat up in bed. "Karen?"
"Yes?" Karen's voice came instantly from the darkness though Lea knew she was down the hall.
"Are you still shielding me from-from whatever it was?"
"No," Karen said. "I released you this morning."
"That's what I thought." Lea drew a quavering breath.
"Right now it's all gone away, as though it had never been, but I'm still nowhere and going nowhere. Just waiting. And if I wait long enough it'll come back again, that I know. Karen, what can I do to-not to be where I am now when it comes back?"
"You're beginning to work at it now," Karen said. "And if it does come back we're here to help. It will never be so impenetrable again."
"How could it be?" Lea murmured. "How could I have gone through anything as black as that and survived-or ever do it again?"
Lea lay back with a sigh. Then, sleepily, "Karen?"
"Yes?"
"Who was that down at the pool?"
"Don't you know?" Karen's voice smiled. "Have you looked around at all?"
"What good would it do? I can't remember what he looked like. It's been so long since I've noticed anything-and then the blackness-But he brought me back to the house, didn't he? You must have seen him-"
"Must I?" Karen teased. "Maybe we could arrange to have him carry you again. "Arms remember when eyes forget.' "
"'There's something wrong with that quotation," Lea said drowsily, "'But I'll skip it for now."
It seemed to Lea that she had just slipped under the edge of sleep when she heard Karen.
"What!" Karen cried. "Right now? Not tomorrow?"
"Karen!" Lea called, groping in the darkness for the light switch. "What's the matter?"
"The matter!" Karen laughed and shot through the window, turning and tumbling ecstatically in midair.
"Nothing's the matter! Oh, Lea, come and be joyful!" She grabbed Lea's hands and pulled her up from the bed.
"Not Karen! No!" Lea cried as her bare feet curled themselves away from the empty air that seemed to lick at them.
"Put me down!" Terror sharpened her voice.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" Karen said, releasing her to plump gently down on her bed. She herself flashed again across the room and back in a froth of nightgowny ruffles. "Oh, be joyful! Be joyful unto the Lord!"
"What is it!" Lea cried, suddenly afraid, afraid of anything that might change things as they were. The vast emptiness began to cave away inside her. The blackness was a cloud the size of a man's hand on the far horizon.
"It's Valancy!" Karen cried, shooting away back through the window. "I have to get dressed! The baby's here!"
"The baby!" Lea was bewildered. "What baby?"
"Is there any other baby?" Karen's voice floated back, muffled. "'Valancy and Jemmy's. It's here! I'm an aunt! Oh, dear, now I'm well on the way to becoming an ancestress. I thought they would never get around to it. It's a girl! At least Jemmy says he thinks it's a girl. He's so excited that it could be both, or even triplets! Well, as soon as Valancy gets back-" She walked back through the door, brushing her hair briskly.
"What hospital did she go to?" Lea asked. "Isn't this pretty isolated-"
"Hospital? Oh, none, of course. She's at home."
"But you said when she gets back-"
"Yes. It's a far solemn journey to bring back a new life from the Presence. It takes a while."
"But I didn't even notice!" Lea cried. "Valancy was there tonight and I don't remember-"
"But then you haven't been noticing much of anything for a long time," Karen said gently.
"But anything as obvious as that!" Lea protested.
"Fact remains, the baby's here and it's Valancy's-with a little co-operation from Jemmy-and she didn't carry it around in a knitting bag!
"Okay, Jemmy, I'm coming. Hold the fort!" She flashed, feet free of the floor, out the door, her hairbrush hovering forlornly, forgotten, in midair, until it finally drifted slowly out the door to the hall.
Lea huddled on the tumbled bed. A baby. A new life. "I had forgotten," she thought. "Birth and death have still been going on. The world is still out there, wagging along as usual. I thought it had stopped. It had stopped for me. I lost winter. I lost spring. It must be summer now. Just think! Just think! There are people who found all my black days full of joyful anticipation-bright jewels slipping off the thread of time! And I've been going around and around like a donkey dragging a weight around a stake, winding myself tighter and tighter-" She straightened suddenly on the bed, spread-eagling out of her tight huddle. The darkness poured like a heavy flood in through the door-down from the ceiling-up from the floor.
"Karen!" she cried, feeling herself caught up to be crammed back into the boundaryless nothingness of herself again.
"No!" she gritted through her teeth. "Not this time!" She turned face down on the bed, clutching the pillow tightly with both hands. "Give me strength! Give me strength!" With an effort, almost physical, she turned her thoughts. "The baby-a new baby-crying. Do babies of the People cry? They must, having to leave the Presence for Earth. The baby-tiny fists clenched tightly, eyes clenched tightly shut. All powder and flannel and tiny curling feet. I can hold her. Tomorrow I can hold her. And feel the continuity of life-the eternal coming of God into the world. Rockabye baby. Sleep, baby, sleep. Thy
Father watches His sheep. A new baby-tiny red fingers to curl around my finger. A baby-Valancy's baby-"
And by the time dawn arrived Lea was sleeping, her face smoothing out from the agony of the black night. There was almost triumph upon it.
That evening Karen and Lea walked through the gathering twilight to the schoolhouse. The softly crisp evening air was so clear and quiet that voices and far laughter echoed around them.
"Wait, Lea." Karen was waving to someone. "Here comes Santhy. She's just learning to lift. Bet her mother doesn't know she's still out." She laughed softly.
Lea watched with wonder as the tiny five-year-old approached them in short abrupt little arcs, her brief skirts flattening and flaring as she lifted and landed.
"She's using more energy lifting than if she walked," Karen said softly, "but she's so proud of herself. Let's wait for her. She wants us."
By now Lea could see the grave intent look on Santhy's face and could almost hear the little grunts as she took off until she finally landed, staggering, against Lea. Lea steadied her, dropping down beside her, holding her gently in the circle of her alms.
"You're Lea," Santhy said, smiling shyly.
"Yes," Lea said. "How did you know?"
"Oh, we all know you. You're our new God-bless every night."
"Oh." Lea was taken aback.
"I brought you something," Santhy said, her hand clenched in a bulging little pocket. "I saved it from our 'joicing party for the new baby. I don't care if you're an Outsider. I saw you wading in the creek and you're pretty." She pulled her hand out of her pocket and deposited on Lea's palm a softly glowing bluey-green object. "It's a koomatka," she whispered. "Don't let Mama see it. I was s'posed to eat it but I had two-" She spread her arms and lifted up right past Lea's nose.
"A koomatka," Lea said, getting up and holding out her hand wonderingly, the glow from it deepening in the dusk.
"Yes," Karen said. "She really shouldn't have. It's forbidden to show to Outsiders, you know."
"Must I give it back?" Lea asked wistfully. "Can't I keep it even if I don't belong?"
Karen looked at her soberly for a moment, then she smiled.
"You can keep it, or eat it, though you probably won't like it. It tastes like music sounds, you know. But you may have it-even if you don't belong."
Lea's hand closed softly around the koomatka as the two turned toward the schoolhouse. "Speaking of belonging-" Karen said, "it's Dita's turn tonight. She knows plenty about belonging and not belonging."
"I wondered about tonight. I mean not waiting for Valancy-" Lea shielded her
eyes against the bright open door as they mounted the steps.
"Oh, she wouldn't miss it," Karen said. "She'll listen in from home."
They were the last to arrive. Invocation over, Dita was already in the chair behind the desk, her hands folded primly in front of her. "Valancy," she said, "we're all here now. Are you ready?"
"Oh, yes." Lea could feel Valancy's answer. "Our Baby's asleep now,"
The group laughed at the capitals in Valancy's voice.
"You didn't invent babies," Dita laughed.
"Hah!" Jemmy's voice answered triumphantly. "This one we did!'"
Lea looked around the laughing group. "They're happy!" she thought. "In a world like this they're happy anyway! What do they have as a touchstone?" She studied the group as Dita began, and under the first flow of Dita's words she thought, "Maybe this is the answer. Maybe this is the touchstone. When any one of them cries out the others hear-and listen. Not just with their ears but with their hearts. No matter who cries out-someone listens-"
"My theme," Dita said soberly, "is very brief-but oh, the heartbreak in it.
It's "And your children shall wander in the wilderness.' " Her clasped hands tightened on each other.
"I was wandering that day…"
WILDERNESS
"WELL, HOW do you expect Bruce to concentrate on spelling when he's so worried about his daddy?" I thumbed through my second graders" art papers, hoping to find one lift out of the prosaic.
" 'Worried about his daddy'?" Mrs. Kanz looked up from her spelling, tests. "What makes you think he's worried about him?"
"Why, he's practically sick for fear he won't come home this time." I turned
the paper upside down and looked again.
"I thought you knew everything about everyone," I teased.
"You've briefed me real good in these last three weeks. I feel like a resident instead of a newcomer." I sighed and righted the paper. It was still a tree with six apples on it.
"But I certainly didn't know Stell and Mark were having trouble." Mrs. Kanz was chagrined.
"They had an awful fight the night before he left," I said. "Nearly scared the waddin' out of Bruce."
"How do you know?" Mrs. Kanz's eyes were suddenly sharp. "You haven't met Stell yet and Bruce hasn't said a word all week except yes and no."
I let my breath out slowly. "Oh, no!" I thought. "Not already! Not already!"
"Oh, a little bird told me," I said lightly, busying myself with my papers to hide the small tremble of my hands.
"Little bird, toosh! You probably heard it from Marie, though how she-"
"Could be," I said, "could be." I bundled up my papers hurriedly. "Oops! Recess is almost over. Gotta get downstairs before the thundering herd arrives."
The sound of the old worn steps was hollow under my hurried feet, but not nearly so hollow as the feeling in my stomach.
Only three weeks and I had almost betrayed myself already. Why couldn't I remember! Besides, the child wasn't even in my room. I had no business knowing anything about him. Just because he had leaned so quietly, so long, over his literature book last Monday-and I had only looked a little ….
At the foot of the stairs I was engulfed waist-deep in children sweeping in from the playground. Gratefully I let myself be swept with them into the classroom.
That afternoon I leaned with my back against the window sill and looked over my quiet class. Well, quiet in so far as moving around the room was concerned, but each child humming audibly or inaudibly with the untiring dynamos of the young-the mostly inarticulate thought patterns of happy children. All but Lucine, my twelve-year-old first grader, who hummed briefly to a stimulus and then clicked off, hummed again and clicked off. There was a short somewhere, and her flat empty eyes showed it.
I sighed and turned my back on the room, wandering my eyes up the steepness of Black Mesa as it towered above the school, trying to lose myself from apprehension, trying to forget why I had run away-nearly five hundred miles-trying to forget those things that tugged at my sanity, things that could tear me loose from reality and set me adrift …. Adrift? Oh, glory! Set me free! Set me free! I hooked my pointer fingers through the old wire grating that protected the bottom of the window and tugged sharply. 01d nails grated and old wire gave, and I sneezed through the dry acid bite of ancient dust.
I sat down at my desk and rummaged for a Kleenex and snoozed again, trying to ignore, but knowing too well, the heavy nudge and tug inside me. That tiny near betrayal had cracked my tight protective shell. All that I had packed
away so resolutely was shouldering and elbowing its way . . .
I swept my children out of spelling into numbers so fast that Lucine poised precariously on the edge of tears until she clicked on again and murkily perceived where we had gone.
"Now, look, Petie," I said, trying again to find a way through his stubborn block against number words, "this is the picture of two, but this is the name of two ….
After the school buses were gone I scrambled and slid down the steep slope of the hill below the gaunt old schoolhouse and walked the railroad ties back toward the hotel-boarding house where I stayed. Eyes intent on my feet but brightly conscious of the rails on either side, I counted my way through the clot of old buildings that was town, and out the other side. If I could keep something on my mind I could keep ghosts out of my thoughts.
I stopped briefly at the hotel to leave my things and then pursued the single rail line on down the little valley, over the shaky old trestle that was never used any more, and left it at the railings dump and started up the hill, enjoying fiercely the necessary lunge and pull, tug and climb, that stretched my muscles, quickened my heartbeat and pumped my breath up hard against the top of my throat.
Panting I grabbed a manzanita bush and pulled myself up the last steep slope. I perched myself, knees to chest, on the crumbly outcropping of shale at the base of the huge brick chimney, arms embracing my legs, my cheek pressed to my knees. I sat with closed eyes, letting the late-afternoon sun soak into me. "If only this could be all," I thought wistfully. "If only there were nothing but sitting in the sun, soaking up warmth. Just being, without questions." And for a long blissful time I let that be all.
But I couldn't put it off any longer. I felt the first slow trickling through the crack in my armor. I counted trees, I counted telephone poles, I said timestables until I found myself thinking six times nine is ninety-six and, then I gave up and let the floodgates open wide.
"It's always like this," one of me cried to the rest of me. "You promised! You promised and now you're giving in again-after all this time!"
"I could promise not to breathe, too," I retorted.
"But this is insanity-you know it is! Anyone knows it is!"
"Insane or not, it's me!" I screamed silently. "It's me! It's me!"
"Stop your arguing," another of me said. "This is too serious for bickering. We've got problems."
I took a dry manzanita twig and cleared a tiny space on the gravelly ground, scratching up an old square nail and a tiny bit of sun-purpled glass as I did so. Shifting the twig to my other hand I picked up the nail and rubbed the dirt off with my thumb. It was pitted with rust but still strong and heavy. I wondered what it had held together back in those days, and if the hand that last held it was dust now, and if whoever it was had had burdens….
I cast the twig from me with controlled violence and, rocking myself forward, I made a straight mark on the cleared ground with the nail. This was a drearily familiar inventory, and I had taken it so many times before, trying to simplify this complicated problem of mine, that I fell automatically into the same old pattern.
Item one. Was I really insane-or going insane-or on the way to going insane? It must be so. Other people didn't see sounds. Nor taste colors. Nor feel the pulsing of other people's emotions like living things. Nor find the weight of flesh so like a galling strait jacket. Nor more than half believe that the burden was lay-downable short of death.
"But then," I defended, "I'm still functioning in society and I don't drool or foam at the mouth. I don't act very crazy, and as long as I guard my tongue I don't sound crazy."
I pondered the item awhile, then scribbled out the mark.
"I guess I'm still sane-so far."
Item two. "Then what's wrong with me? Do I just let my imagination run away with. me?" I jabbed holes all around my second heavy mark. No, it was
something more, something beyond just imagination, something beyond-what?
I crossed that marking with another to make an X.
"What than I do about it then? Shall I fight it out like I did before? Shall I deny and deny and deny until-" I felt a cold grue, remembering the blind panic that had finally sent me running until I had ended up at Kruper, and all the laughter went out of me, clear to the bottom of my soul.
I crosshatched the two marks out of existence and hid my eyes against my knees again and waited for the sick up-gushing of apprehension to foam into despair over my head. Always it came to this. Did I want to do anything about it? Should I stop it all with an act of will? Could I stop it all by an act of will? Did I want to stop it?
I scrambled to my feet and scurried around the huge stack, looking for the entrance. My feet cried, No no! on the sliding gravel. Every panting breath cried, No no! as I slipped and slithered around the steep hill. I ducked into the shadowy interior of the huge chimney and pressed myself against the blackened crumbling bricks, every tense muscle shouting, No no! And in the wind-shuddery silence I cried, "No!" and heard it echo up through the blackness above me. I could almost see the word shoot up through the pale elliptical disk of the sky at the top of the stack.
"Because I could!" I shrieked defiantly inside me. "If I weren't afraid I could follow that word right on up and erupt into the sky like a Roman candle and never, never, never feel the weight of the world again!"
But the heavy drag of reason grabbed my knees and elbows and rubbed my nose forcibly into things-as-they-really-are, and I sobbed impotently against the roughness of the curving wall. The sting of salty wetness across my cheek shocked me out of rebellion.
Crying? Wailing against a dirty old smelter wall because of a dream? Fine goings on for a responsible pedagogue!
I scrubbed at my cheeks with a Kleenex and smiled at the grime that came off. I'd best get back to the hotel and get my face washed before eating the inevitable garlicky supper I'd smelled on my way out.
I stumbled out into the red flood of sunset and down the thread of a path I had ignored when coming up. I hurried down into the duskiness of the cottonwood thicket along the creek at the bottom of the hill. Here, where no eyes could see, no tongues could clack at such undignified behavior, I broke into a run, a blind headlong run, pretending that I could run away-just away! Maybe with salty enough tears and fast enough running I could buy a dreamless night.
I rounded the turn where the pinky-gray granite boulder indented the path-and reeled under a sudden blow. I had run full tilt into someone. Quicker than I could focus my eyes I was grabbed and set on my feet. Before I could see past a blur of tears from my smarting nose I was alone in the dusk.
I mopped my nose tenderly. "Well," I said aloud, "that's one way to knock the nonsense out of me." Then immediately began to wonder if it was a sign of unbalance to talk aloud to yourself.
I looked back uphill when I came out of the shadow of the trees. The smelter stack was dark against the sky, massive above the remnants of the works. It was beautiful in a stark way, and I paused to enjoy it briefly. Suddenly there was another darkness up there. Someone had rounded the stack and stood silhouetted against the lighter horizon.
I wondered if the sound of my sorrow was still echoing up the stack, and then I turned shamefaced away. Whoever it was up there had more sense than to listen for the sounds of old sorrows.
That night, in spite of my outburst of the afternoon, I barely slipped under the thin skin of sleep and, for endless ages, clutched hopelessly for something to pull me down into complete forgetfulness. Then despairingly I felt the familiar tug and pull and, hopelessly, eagerly, slipped headlong into my dream that I had managed to suppress for so long.
There are no words-there are no words anywhere for my dream. Only the welling of delight, the stretching of my soul, the boundless freedom, the warm
belongingness. And I held the dearness close to me-oh, so close to me!-knowing that awakening must come ….
And it did, smashing me down, forcing me into flesh, binding me leadenly to the earth, squeezing out the delight, cramping my soul back into finiteness, snapping bars across my sky and stranding me in the thin watery glow of morning so alone again that the effort of opening my eyes was almost too much to be borne.
Lying rigidly under the press of the covers I gathered up all the tatters of my dream and packed them tightly into a hard little knot way back of my consciousness. "Stay there. Stay there," I pleaded. "Oh, stay there!"
Forcing myself to breakfast I came warily into the dining room at the hotel. As the only female-type woman guest in the hotel I was somewhat disconcerted to walk into the place when it was full and to have every hand pause and every jaw still itself until I found my way to the only empty seat, and then to hear the concerted return to eating, as though on cue. But I was later this morning, and the place was nearly empty.
"How was the old stack?" Half of Marie's mouth grinned as she pushed a plate of hotcakes under my nose and let go of it six inches above the table. I controlled my wince as it crashed to the table, but I couldn't completely ignore the sooty thumbprint etched in the grease on the rim. Marie took the stiffly filthy rag she had hanging as usual from her apron pocket, and smeared the print around until I at least couldn't see the whorls and ridges any more.
"It was interesting," I said, not bothering to wonder how she knew I'd been there. "Kruper must have been quite a town when the smelter was going full blast."
"Long's I've been here it's been dyin'," Marie said. "Been here thirty-five years next February and I ain't never been up to the stack. I ain't lost nothing up there!"
She laughed soundlessly but gustily. I held my breath until the garlic went by. "But I hear there's some girls that's gone up there and lost-"
"Marie!" Old Charlie bellowed from across the table. "Cut out the chatter and bring me some grub. If teacher wants to climb up that da-dang stack leave her be. Maybe she likes it!'"
"Crazy way to waste time," Marie muttered, teetering out to the kitchen, balancing her gross body on impossibly spindly legs.
"Don't mind her," Old Charlie bellowed. "Only thing she thinks is fun is beer. Why, lots of people like to go look at worthless stuff like that. Take-well-take Lowmanigh here. He was up there only yesterday-"
"Yesterday?" My lifted brows underlined my question as I looked across the table. It was one of the fellows I hadn't noticed before. His name had probably been thrown at me with the rest of them by Old Charlie on my first night there, but I had lost all the names except Old Charlie and Severeid Swanson, which was the name attached to a wavery fragile-looking Mexicano, with no English at all, who seemed to subsist mostly on garlic and vino and who always blinked four times when I smiled at him.
"Yes." Lowmanigh looked across the table at me, no smile softening his single word. My heart caught as I saw across his cheek the familiar pale quietness of chill-of-soul. I knew the look well. It had been on my own face that morning before I had made my truce with the day.
He must have read something in my eyes, because his face shuttered itself quickly into a noncommittal expression and, with a visible effort, he added, "I watched the sunset from there."
"Oh?" My hand went thoughtfully to my nose.
"Sunsets!" Marie was back with the semiliquid she called coffee. "More crazy stuff. Why waste good time?"
"What do you spend your time on?" Lowmanigh's voice was very soft.
Marie's mind leaped like a startled bird. "Waiting to die!" it cried.
"Beer," she said aloud, half of her face smiling. "Four beers equal one sunset." She dropped the coffeepot on the table and went back to the kitchen, leaving a clean sharp, almost visible pain behind her as she went.
"You two oughta get together," Old Charlie boomed. "Liking the same things like you do. Low here knows more junk heaps and rubbish dumps than anybody else in the county. He collects ghost towns."
"I like ghost towns," I said to Charlie, trying to fill a vast conversational vacancy. "I have quite a collection of them myself."
"See, Low!" he boomed. "Here's your chance to squire a pretty schoolmarm around. Together you two oughta he able to collect up a storm!" He choked on his pleasantry and his last gulp of coffee and left the room, whooping loudly into a blue bandanna.
We were all alone in the big dining room. The early-morning sun skidded across the polished hardwood floor, stumbled against the battered kitchen chairs, careened into the huge ornate mirror above the buffet and sprayed brightly from it over the cracked oilcloth table covering on the enormous oak table.
The silence grew and grew until I put my fork down, afraid to click it against my plate any more. I sat for half a minute, suspended in astonishment, feeling the deep throbbing of a pulse that slowly welled up into almost audibility, questioning, "Together? Together? Together?" The beat broke on the sharp edge of a wave of desolation, and I stumbled blindly out of the room.
"No!" I breathed as I leaned against the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. "Not involuntarily! Not so early in the day!"
With an effort I pulled myself together. "Cut out this cotton-pickin' nonsense!" I told myself. "You're enough to drive anybody crazy!"
Resolutely I started up the steps, only to pause, foot suspended, halfway up. "That wasn't my desolation," I cried silently. "It was his!"
"How odd," I thought when I wakened at two o'clock in the morning, remembering the desolation.
"How odd!" I thought when I wakened at three, remembering the pulsing "Together?"
"How very odd," I thought when I wakened at seven and did heavy-eyed out of bed-having forgotten completely what Lowmanigh looked like, but holding wonderingly in my consciousness a better-than-three-dimensional memory of him.
School kept me busy all the next week, busy enough that the old familiar ache was buried almost deep enough to be forgotten. The smoothness of the week was unruffled until Friday, when the week's restlessness erupted on the playground twice. The first time I had to go out and peel Esperanza off Joseph and pry her fingers out of his hair so he could get his snub nose up out of the gravel. Esperanza had none of her Uncle Severeid's fragility and waveriness as she defiantly slapped the dust from her heavy dark braid.
"'He calls me Mexican!" she cried. "So what? I'm Mexican. I'm proud to be Mexican. I hit him some more if he calls me Mexican like a bad word again. I'm proud to be-"
"Of course you're proud," I said, helping her dust herself off.
"God made us all. What do different names matter?"
"Joseph!" I startled him by swinging around to him suddenly. "Are you a girl?"
"Huh?" He blinked blankly with dusty lashes, then, indignantly: "Course not! I'm a boy!"
"Joseph's a boy! Joseph's a boy!" I taunted. Then I laughed.
"See how silly that sounds? We are what we are. How silly to tease about something like that. Both of you go wash the dirt off." I spatted both of them off toward the schoolhouse and sighed as I watched them go.
The second time the calm was interrupted when the ancient malicious chanting sound of teasing pulled me out on the playground again.
"Lu-cine is crazy! Lu-cine is crazy! Lu-cine is crazy!"
The dancing taunting group circled twelve-year-old Lucine where she stood backed against the one drooping tree that still survived on our playground.
Her eyes were flat and shallow above her gaping mouth, but smoky flames were
beginning to flicker in the shallowness and her muscles were tightening.
"Lucine!" I cried, fear winging my feet. "Lucine!"
I sent me ahead of myself and caught at the ponderous murderous massiveness of her mind. Barely I slowed her until I could get to her.
"Stop it!" I shrieked at the children. "Get away, quick!" My voice pierced through the mob-mind, and the group dissolved into frightened individuals. I caught both of Lucine's hands and for a tense moment had them secure. Then she bellowed, a peculiarly animallike bellow, and with one flip of her arm sent me flying.
In a wild flurry I was swept up almost bodily, it seemed, into the irrational delirium of her anger and bewilderment. I was lost in the mazes of unreasoning thoughts and frightening dead ends, and to this day I can't remember what happened physically.
When the red tide ebbed and the bleak gray click-off period came I was hunched against the old tree with Lucine's head on my lap, her mouth lax and wet against my hand, her flooding quiet tears staining my skirt, the length of her body very young and very tired.
Her lips moved.
"Ain't crazy."
"No," I said, smoothing her ruffled hair, wondering at the angry oozing scratch on the hack of my hand. "No, Lucine. I know."
"He does, too," Lucine muttered. "He makes it almost straight but it bends again."
"Oh?" I said soothingly, hunching my shoulder to cover its bareness with my torn blouse sleeve. "'Who does?"
Her head tensed under my hand, and her withdrawal was as tangible as the throb of a rabbit trying to escape restricting hands. "He said don't tell."
I let the pressure of my hand soothe her and I looked down at her ravaged face. "Me," I thought. "Me with the outside peeled off. I'm crippled inside in my way as surely as she is in hers, only my crippling passes for normal. I wish I could click off sometimes and not dream of living without a limp-sweet impossible dream."
There was a long moist intake of breath, and Lucine sat up. She looked at me with her flat incurious eyes.
"Your face is dirty," she said. "'Teachers don't got dirty faces."
"That's right." I got up stiffly, shifting the zipper of my skirt: around to the side where it belonged. "I'd better go wash. Here comes Mrs. Kanz." Across the play field the classes were lined up to go back inside. The usual scuffling horseplay was going on, but no one even bothered to glance our way. If they only knew, I thought, how close some of them had been to death . . .
"I been bad," Lucine whimpered. "I got in a fight again."
"Lucine, you bad girl!" Mrs. Kanz cried as soon as she got within earshot. "You've been fighting again. You go right in the office and sit there the rest of the day. Shame on you!"
And Lucine blubbered off toward the school building.
Mrs. Kanz looked me over. "Well," she laughed apologetically, "I should have warned you about her. Just leave her alone when she gets in a rage. Don't try to stop her."
"But she was going to kill someone!" I cried, tasting again the blood lust, feeling the grate of broken bones.
"She's too slow. The kids always keep out of her way."
"But someday-"
Mrs. Kanz shrugged. "If she gets dangerous she'll have to be put away."
"But why do you let the children tease her?" I protested, feeling a spasmodic gush of anger.
She looked at me sharply. "'I don't 'let.' Kids are always cruel to anyone who's different. Haven't you discovered that yet?"
"Yes, I have," I whispered. "Oh, yes, yes!" And huddled into myself against the creeping cold of memory.
"It isn't good but it happens," she said. "You can't make everything right. You have to get calluses sometimes."
I brushed some of the dust off my clothes. "Yes," I sighed.
"Calluses come in handy. But I still think something should be done for her."
"Don't say so out loud," Mrs. Kanz warned. "Her mother has almost beat her own brains out trying to find some way to help her. These things happen in the best of families. There's no help for them."
"Then who is-?" I choked on my suppressed words, belatedly remembering Lucine's withdrawal.
"Who is who?" asked Mrs. Kanz over her shoulder as we went back to the schoolhouse.
"Who is going to take care of her all her life?" I asked lamely. "Well! Talk about borrowing trouble!" Mrs. Kanz laughed.
"Just forget about the whole thing. It's all in a day's work. It's a shame your pretty blouse had to get ruined, though."
I was thinking of Lucine while I was taking off my torn blouse at home after school. I squinted tightly sideways, trying to glimpse the point of my shoulder to see if it looked as bruised as it felt, when my door was flung open and slammed shut and Lowmanigh was leaning against it, breathing heavily.
"Well!" I slid quickly into my clean shirt and buttoned it up briskly. "I didn't hear you knock. Would you like to go out and try it over again?"
"Did Lucine get hurt?" He pushed his hair back from his damp forehead. "Was it a bad spell? I thought I had it controlled-"
"If you want to talk about Lucine," I said out of my surprise, "I'll be out on the porch in a minute. Do you mind waiting out there? My ears are still burning from Marie's lecture to me on 'proper decorum for a female in this here hotel.' "
"Oh." He looked around blankly. "Oh, sure-sure."
My door was easing shut before I knew he was gone. I tucked my shirttail in and ran my comb through my hair.
"Lowmanigh and Lucine?" I thought blankly. "What gives? Mr. Kanz must be slipping. This she hasn't mentioned." I put the comb down slowly. "Oh. 'He makes it almost straight but it bends again.' But how can that be?"
Low was perched on the railing of the sagging balcony porch that ran around two sides of the second story of the hotel He didn't turn around as I creaked across the floor toward the dusty dilapidated wicker settle and chair that constituted the porch furniture.
"Who are you?" His voice was choked. "What are you doing here?"
Foreboding ran a thin cold finger across the back of my neck. "We were introduced," I said thinly. "I'm Perdita Verist, the new teacher, remember?"
He swung around abruptly. "Stop talking on top," he said. "I'm listening underneath. "You know as well as I do that you can't run away-But how do you know? Who are you?" "You stop it!" I cried. "You have no business listening underneath. Who are you?"
We stood there stiffly glaring at each other until with a simultaneous sigh we relaxed and sat down on the shaky wickerware. I clasped my hands loosely on my lap and felt the tight hard knot inside me begin to melt and untie until finally I was turning to Low and holding out my hand only to meet his as he reached for mine. Some one of me cried, "'My kind? My kind?" But another of me pushed the panic button.
"No," I cried, taking my hand back abruptly and standing up. "No!"
"No." Low's voice was soft and gentle. "It's no betrayal."
I swallowed hard and concentrated on watching Severeid Swanson tacking from one side of the road to the other on his way home to the hotel for his garlic, his two vino bottles doing very little to maintain his balance.
"Lucine," I said. "Lucine and you."
"Was it bad?" His voice was all on top now, and my bones stopped throbbing to that other wave length.
"About par for the course according to Mrs. Kanz," I said shallowly. "I just tried to stop a buzz saw."
"Was it bad!" his voice spread clear across the band.
"Stay out!" I cried. "Stay out!"
But he was in there with me and I was Lucine and he was I and we held the red-and-black horror in our naked hands and stared it down. Together we ebbed back through the empty grayness until he was Lucine and I was I and I saw me inside Lucine and blushed for her passionately grateful love of me. Embarrassed, I suddenly found a way to shut him out and blinked at the drafty loneliness.
"… and stay out!" I cried.
"That's right!" I jumped at Marie's indignant wheeze. "I seen him go in your room without knocking and Shut the Door!" Her voice was capitalized horror. "You done right chasing him out and giving him What For!"
My inner laughter slid the barrier open a crack to meet his amusement.
"Yes, Marie," I said soberly. "'You warned me and I remembered."
"Well, now, good!" Half of Marie's face smirked, gratified. "I knew you was a good girl. And, Low, I'm plumb ashamed of you. I thought you was a cut above these gaw-danged muckers around here and here you go wolfing around in broad daylight!" She tripped off down the creaky hall, her voice floating back up the lovely curved stairway. "In broad daylight! Supper'll be ready in two jerks of a dead lamb's tail Git washed."
Low and I laughed together and went to "git washed."
I paused over a double handful of cold water I had scooped up from my huge china washbowl, and watched it all trickle back as I glowed warmly with the realization that this was the first time in uncountable ages that I had laughed underneath. I looked long on my wavery reflection in the water. "And not alone," one of me cried, erupting into astonishment, "not alone!"
The next morning I fled twenty-five miles into town and stayed at a hotel that had running water, right in the house, and even a private bath! And reveled in the unaccustomed luxury, soaking Kruper out of me-at least all of it except the glitter bits of loveliness or funniness or niceness that remained on the riffles of my soul after the dust, dirt, inconvenience and ugliness sluiced away.
I was lying there drowsing Sunday afternoon, postponing until the last possible moment the gathering of myself together for the bus trip back to Kruper. Then sudden, subtly, between one breath and the next, I was back into full wary armor, my attention twanged taut like a tightened wire and I sat up stiffly. Someone was here in the hotel. Had Low come into town? Was he here? I got up and finished dressing hastily.
I sat quietly on the edge of the bed, conscious of the deep ebb and flow of something. Finally I went down to the lobby. I stopped on the last step. Whatever it had been, it was gone. The lobby was just an ordinary lobby. Low was nowhere among the self-consciously ranch-style furnishings. But as I started toward the window to see again the lovely drop of the wooded canyon beyond the patio he walked in.
"Were you here a minute ago?" I asked him without preliminaries.
"No. Why?" "I thought-" I broke off. Then gears shifted subtly back to the commonplace and I said, "Well! What are you doing here?"
"Old Charlie said you were in town and that I might as well pick you up and save you the bus trip hack." He smiled faintly.
"Marie wasn't quite sure I could be trusted after showing my true colors Friday, but she finally told me you were here at this hotel."
"But I didn't know myself where I was going to stay when I left Kruper!"
Low grinned engagingly. "My! You are new around here, aren't you? Are you ready to go?"
"I hope you're not in a hurry to get back to Kruper." Low shifted gears
deftly as we nosed down to Lynx Hill bridge and then abruptly headed on up
Lynx Hill at a perilous angle. "I have a stop to make."
I could feel his wary attention on me in spite of his absorption in the road.
"No," I said, sighing inwardly, visualizing long hours waiting while he leaned, over the top fence rail exchanging long silences and succinct remarks with some mining acquaintance.
"I'm in no hurry, just so I'm at school by nine in the morning."
"Fine." His voice was amused, and, embarrassed, I tested again the barrier in my mind. It was still intact. "'Matter of fact," he went on, "this will be one for your collection, too."
"My collection?" I echoed blankly.
"Your ghost-town collection. I'm driving over to Machron, or where it used to be. It's up in a little box canyon above Bear Flat. It might be that it-" An intricate spot in the road-one small stone and a tiny pine branch-broke his sentence.
"Might be what?" I asked, deliberately holding onto the words he was trying to drop.
"Might be interesting to explore." Aware amusement curved his mouth slightly.
"I'd like to find an unbroken piece of sun glass," I said. "I have one old beautiful purple tumbler. It's in pretty good condition except that it has a piece out of the rim."
"I'll show you my collection sometime," Low said. "You'll drool for sure." "How come you like ghost towns? What draws you to them? History? Treasure? Morbid curiosity?"
"Treasure-history-morbid curiosity-" He tasted the words slowly and approved each with a nod of his head. "I guess all three. I'm questing."
"Questing?'"
"Questing." The tone of his voice ended the conversation. With an effort I detached myself from my completely illogical up-gush of anger at being shut out, and lost myself in the wooded wonder of the hillsides that finally narrowed the road until it was barely wide enough for the car to scrape through.
Finally Low spun the wheel and, fanning sand out from our tires, came to a stop under a huge black-walnut tree.
"Got your walking shoes on? This far and no farther for wheels."
Half an hour later we topped out on a small plateau above the rocky pass where our feet had slid and slithered on boulders grooved by high-wheeled ore wagons of half a century ago. The town had spread itself in its busiest days, up the slopes of the hills and along the dry creeks that spread fingerlike up from the small plateau. Concrete steps led abortively up to crumbled foundations, and sagging gates stood fenceless before shrub-shattered concrete walks.
There were a few buildings that were nearly intact, just stubbornly resisting dissolution. I had wandered up one faint street and down another before I realized that Low wasn't wandering with me. Knowing the solitary ways of ghost-town devotees, I made no effort to locate him, but only wondered idly what he was questing for-carefully refraining from wondering again who he was and why he and I spoke together underneath as we did. But even unspoken the wonder was burning deep under my superficial scratching among the junk heaps of this vanished town.
I found a white button with only three holes in it and the top of a doll's head with one eye still meltingly blue, and scrabbled, bare-handed, with delight when I thought I'd found a whole sun-purpled sugar bowl-only to find it was just a handle and half a curve held in the silt.
I was muttering over a broken fingernail when a sudden soundless cry crushed into me and left me gasping with the unexpected force. I stumbled down the bank and ran clattering down the rock-strewn road. I found Low down by the old town dump, cradling something preciously in the bend of his arm.
He lifted his eyes blindly to me.
"Maybe-!" he cried. "This might be some of it. It was never a part of this
town's life. Look! Look at the shaping of it! Look at the flow of lines!" His hands drank in the smooth beauty of the metal fragment. "And if this is part of it, it might not be far from here that-" He broke off abruptly, his thumb stilling on the underside of the object. He turned it over and looked closely.. Something died tragically as he looked. " 'General Electric,' " he said tonelessly. " 'Made in the USA.' " The piece of metal dropped from his stricken hands as be sagged to the ground. His fist pounded on the gravelly silt. "Dead end! Dead end! Dead-"
I caught his hands in mine and brushed the gravel off, pressing Kleenex to the ooze of blood below his little finger.
"What have you lost?" I asked softly.
"Myself," he whispered. "I'm lost and I can't find my way back."
He took no notice of our getting up and my leading him to the fragment of a wall that kept a stunted elderberry from falling into the canyon. We sat down and for a while tossed on the ocean of his desolation as I thought dimly, "Too. Lost, too. Both of us." Then I helped him channel into speech, though I don't know whether it was vocal or not.
"I was so little then," he said. "I was only three, I guess. How long can you live on a three-year-old's memories? Mom told me all they knew but I could remember more. There was a wreck-a head-on collision the other side of Chuckawalla. My people were killed. The car tried to fly just before they hit. I remember Father lifted it up, trying to clear the other car, and Mother grabbed a handful of sun and platted me out of danger, but the crash came and I could only hear Mother's cry 'Don't forget! Go back to the Canyon,' and Father's 'Remember! Remember the Home!' and they were gone, even their bodies, in the fire that followed. Their bodies and every identification. Mom and Dad took me in and raised me like their own, but I've got to go back. I've got to go back to the Canyon. I belong there." "What Canyon?" I asked.
"What Canyon?" he asked dully. "The Canyon where the People live now-my People. The Canyon where they located after the starship crashed. The starship I've been questing for, praying I might find some little piece of it to point me the way to the Canyon. At least to the part of the state it's in. The Canyon I went to sleep in before I woke at the crash. The Canyon I can't find because I have no memory of the road there.
"But you know!" he went on. "You surely must know! You aren't like the others. You're one of us. You must be!"
I shrank down into myself.
"I'm nobody," I said. "I'm not one of anybody. My Mom and dad can tell me my grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, and they used to all the time, trying to figure out why they were burdened with such a child, until I got smart enough to get 'normal' "You think you're lost! At least you know what you're lost from. You could get un-lost. But I can't. I haven't ever been un-lost!"
"But you can talk underneath." He blinked before my violence. "You showed me Lucine-"
"Yes," I said recklessly. "And look at this!"
A rock up on the hillside suddenly spurted to life. It plowed down the slope, sending gravel flying, and smashed itself to powder against a boulder at the base.
"And I never tried this before, but look!"
I stepped up onto the crumbling wall and walked away from Low, straight on out over the canyon, feeling Earth fall away beneath my feet, feeling the soft cradling sweep of the wind, the upness and outness and unrestrainedness I cried out, lifting my arms, reaching ecstatically for the hem of my dream of freedom. One minute, one minute more and I could slide out of myself and never, never, never…
And then…
Low caught me just before I speared myself on the gaunt stubby pines below us in the canyon. He lifted me, struggling and protesting, back up through the
fragile emptiness of air, back to the stunted elderberry tree.
"But I did! I did!" I sobbed against him. "I didn't just fall. For a while I really did!"
"For a while you really did, Dita," he murmured as to a child. "As good as I could do myself. So you do have some of the Persuasions. Where did you get them if you aren't one of us?"
My sobs cut off without an after-echo, though my tears continued. I looked deep into Low's eyes, fighting against the anger that burned at this persistent returning to the wary hurting place inside me. He looked steadily back until my tears stopped and I finally managed a ghost of a smile. "I don't know what a Persuasion is, but I probably got it the same place you got that tilt to your eyebrows."
He reddened and stepped back from me.
"We'd better start back. It's not smart to get night-caught on these back roads."
We started back along the trail
"Of course you'll fill in the vacancies for me as we go back," I said, barely catching myself as my feet slithered on a slick hump of granite. I felt his immediate protest. "You've got to," I said, pausing to shake the gravel out of one shoe. "You can't expect me to ignore today, especially since I've found someone as crazy as I am."
"You won't believe-" He dodged a huge buckbrush that crowded the narrow road.
"I've had to believe things about myself all these years that I couldn't believe," I said, "and it's easier to believe things about other people."
So we drove through the magic of an early twilight that deepened into a star-brilliant night, and I watched the flick of the stars through the overarching trees along the road and listened to Low's story. He stripped it down to its bare bones, but underneath, the bones burned like fire in the telling.
"We came from some other world," he said, wistful pride at belonging showing in his "we." "The Home was destroyed. We looked for a refuge and found this earth. Our ships crashed or burned before they could land. But some of us escaped in life slips. My grandparents were with the original Group that gathered at the Canyon. But we were all there, too, because our memories are joined continuously back into the Bright Beginning. That's why I know about my People. Only I can't remember where the Canyon is, because I was asleep the one time we left it, and Mother and Father couldn't tell me in that split second before the crash.
"I've got to find the Canyon again. I can't go on living forever limping." He didn't notice my start at his echoing of that thought of mine when I was with Lucine. "'I can't achieve any stature at all until I am with my People.
"I don't even know the name of the Canyon, but I do remember that our ship crashed in the hills and I'm always hoping that someday I'll find some evidence of it in one of these old ghost towns. It was before the turn of the century that we came, and somewhere, somewhere, there must be some evidence of the ship still in existence."
His was a well-grooved story, too, worn into commonplace by repetition as mine had been-lonely aching repetition to himself. I wondered for a moment, in the face of his unhappiness, why I should feel a stirring of pleased comfort, but then I realized that it was because between us there was no need for murmurs of sympathy or trite little social sayings or even explanations. The surface words were the least of our communication.
"You aren't surprised?" He sounded almost disappointed.
"That you are an out-worlder?" I asked. I smiled. "Well, I've never met one before and I find it interesting. I only wish I could have dreamed up a fantasy like that to explain me to me. It's quite a switch on the old "I must be adopted because I'm so different.' But-"
I stiffened as Low's surge of rage caught me offguard.
"Fantasy! I am adopted. I remember! I thought you'd know. I thought since you surely must be one of us that you'd be-"
"I'm not one of you!" I flared. "Whatever 'you' are. I'm of Earth-so much so that it's a wonder the dust doesn't puff out of my mouth when I speak-but at least I don't try to kid myself that I'm normal by any standard, Earth-type or otherwise."
For a hostile minute we were braced stonily against each other. My teeth ached as the muscles on my jaws knotted. Then Low sighed and reaching out a finger he traced the line of my face from brow to chin to brow again. "Think your way," he said. "You've probably been through enough bad times to make anyone want to forget. Maybe someday you'll remember that you are one of us and then-"
"Maybe, maybe, maybe!" I said through my weary shaken breath. "But I can't any more. It's too much for one day." I slammed all the doors I could reach and shoved my everyday self up to the front. As we started off I reopened one door far enough to ask, "What's this between you and Lucine? Are you a friend of the family or something that you're working with her?"
"I know the family casually," Low said. "They don't know about Lucine and me. She caught my imagination once last year when I was passing the school. The kids were pestering her. I never felt such heartbroken bewilderment in all my life. Poor little Earth kid. She's a three-year-old in a twelve-year-old body-"
"Four-year-old," I murmured. "Or almost five. She's learning a little."
"Four or five," Low said. "It must be awful to be trapped in a body-"
"Yes," I sighed. "To be shut in the prison of yourself."
Tangibly I felt again the warm running of his finger around my face, softly, comfortingly, though he made no move toward me. I turned away from him in the dusk to hide the sudden tears that came.
It was late when we got home. There were still lights in the bars and a house or two when we pulled into Kruper, but the hotel was dark, and in the pause after the car stopped I could hear the faint creaking of the sagging front gate as it swung in the wind. We got out of the car quietly, whispering under the spell of the silence, and tiptoed up to the gate. As usual the scraggly rosebush that drooped from the fence snagged my hair as I went through, and as Low helped free me we got started giggling. I suppose neither of us had felt young and foolish for so long, and we had both unburdened ourselves of bitter tensions, and found tacit approval of us as the world refused to accept us and as we most wanted to be; and, each having at least glimpsed a kindred soul, well, we suddenly bubbled over. We stood beneath the upstairs porch and tried to muffle our giggles. "People will think we're crazy if they hear us carrying on like this," I choked.
"I've got news for you," said Low, close to my ear. "We are crazy. And I dare you to prove it."
"Hoh! As though it needed any proof!"
"I dare you." His laughter tickled my cheek.
"How?" I breathed defiantly.
"Let's not go up the stairs," he hissed. "Let's lift through the air. Why waste the energy when we can-?"
He held out his hand to me. Suddenly sober I took it and we stepped back to the gate and stood hand in hand, looking up.
"Ready?" he whispered, and I felt him tug me upward.
I lifted into the air after him, holding all my possible fear clenched in my other hand.
And the rosebush reached up and snagged my hair.
"Wait!" I whispered, laughter trembling again. "I'm caught."
"'Earth-bound!" he chuckled as he tugged at the clinging strands.
"Smile when you say that, podner," I returned, feeling my heart melt with pleasure that I had arrived at a point where I could joke about such a bitterness-and trying to ignore the fact that my feet were treading nothing
but air. My hair freed, he lifted me up to him. I think our lips only brushed, but we overshot the porch and had to come back down to land on it. Low steadied me as we stepped across the railing.
"We did it," he whispered.
"Yes," I breathed. "We did."
Then we both froze. Someone was coming into the yard. Someone who stumbled and wavered and smashed glassily against the gatepost.
"'Ay! Ay! Madre mia!" Severeid Swanson fell to his knees beside the smashed bottle, "Ay, virgen purisima!"
"Did he see us?" I whispered on an indrawn breath.
"I doubt it." His words were warm along my cheek. "He hasn't seen anything outside himself for years."
"Watch out for the chair." We groped through the darkness into the upper hall. A feeble fifteen-watt bulb glimmered on the steady drip of water splashing down into the sagging sink from the worn faucets that blinked yellow through the worn chrome. By virtue of these two leaky outlets we had bathing facilities on the second floor.
Our good nights were subvocal and quick.
I was in my nightgown and robe, sitting on the edge of my bed, brushing my hair, when I heard a shuffle and a mutter outside my door. I checked the latch to be sure it was fastened and brushed on. There was a thud and a muffled rapping and my doorknob turned.
"Teesher!" It was a cautious voice. "Teesher!"
"Who on earth!" I thought and went to the door. "Yes?" I leaned against the peeling panel.
"Lat-me-een." The words were labored and spaced.
"What do you want?"
"To talk weeth you, teesher."
Filled with astonished wonder I opened the door. There was Severeid Swanson swaying in the hall! But they had told me he had no English …. He leaned precariously forward, his face glowing in the light, years younger than I'd ever seen him.
"My bottle is broken. You have done eet. It is not good to fly without the wings. Los angeles santos, si, pero not the lovers to fly to kiss. It makes me drop my bottle. On the ground is spilled all the dreams."
He swayed backward and wiped the earnest sweat from his forehead. "It is not good. I tell you this because you have light in the face You are good to my Esperanza. You have dreams that are not iЧитать дальше