Зенна Гендерсон - Pilgrimage

"Yes." He turned his head away. I had disappointed him or failed him in some way.
"Wait," I said. "'I want to show you something." I struggled to my feet. Oh, deftly and quickly enough under the circumstances, I suppose, but it seemed an endless aching effort in front of the Francher kid's eyes. But finally I was up and swinging in through the front door. When I got back with my key chain the kid was still staring at my empty chair, and I had to struggle back into it under his unwavering eyes.
"Can't you stand alone?" he asked, as though he had a right to.
"Very little, very briefly," I answered, as though I owed him an answer.
"You don't walk without those braces."
"I can't walk without those braces. Here." I held out my key chain. There was a charm on it: a harmonica with four notes, so small that I had never managed to blow one by itself. The four together made a tiny breathy chord, like a small hesitant wind.
He took the chain between his fingers and swung the charm back and forth, his head bent so that the sunlight flickered across its tousledness. The chain stilled. For a long moment there wasn't a sound. Then clearly, sharply, came the musical notes, one after another. There was a slight pause and then four notes poured their separateness together to make a clear sweet chord.
"You make music," I said, barely audible.
"Yes." He gave me back my key chain and stood up. "I guess she's cooled down now. I'll go on back."
"To work?"
"To work." He smiled wryly. "For a while anyway." He started down the walk.
"What if I tell?" I called after him. "I told once," he called back over his shoulder. "Try it if you want to."
I sat for a long time on the porch after he left. My fingers were closed over the harmonica as I watched the sun creep up my skirts and into my lap. Finally I turned Anna's envelope over. The seal was still secure. The end was jagged where I had torn it. The paper was opaque. I blew a tiny breathy chord on the harmonica. Then I shivered as cold crept across my shoulders. The chill was chased away by a tiny hot wave of excitement. So his mother could walk through the minds of others. So he knew what was in a sealed letter-or had he got his knowledge from Anna before the letter? So he could make music with harmonicas. So the Francher kid was . . . My hurried thoughts caught and came to a full stop. What was the Francher kid?
After school that day Anna toiled up the four front steps and rested against the railing, half sitting and half leaning. "I'm too tired to sit down," she said. "I'm wound up like a clock and I'm going to strike something pretty darned quick." She half laughed and grimaced a little. "Probably my laundry. I'm fresh out of clothes." She caught a long ragged breath. "You must have built a fire under that Francher kid. He came back and piled into his math book and did the whole week's assignments that he hadn't bothered with before. Did them in less than an hour, too. Makes me mad, though-" She grimaced again and pressed her hand to her chest. "Darn that chalk dust anyway. Thanks a million for your assist. I wish I were optimistic enough to believe it would last." She leaned and breathed, her eyes closing with the effort. "Awful shortage of air around here." Her hands fretted with her collar. "Anyway the Francher kid said you'd substitute for me until my pneumonia is over." She laughed, a little soundless laugh. "He doesn't know that it's just chalk dust and that I'm never sick." She buried her face in her two hands and burst into tears. "I'm not sick, am I? It's only that darn Francher kid!"
She was still blaming him when Mrs. Somanson came out and led her into her bedroom and when the doctor arrived to shake his head over her chest.
So that's how it was that the first-floor first grade was hastily moved upstairs and the junior high was hastily moved downstairs and I once more found myself facing the challenge of a class, telling myself that the Francher kid needed no special knowledge to say that I'd substitute. After all I like Anna, I was the only substitute available, and besides, any slight-substitute's pay!-addition to the exchequer was most welcome.
"You can live on those monthly checks, but it's pleasant to have a couple of extra coins to clink together.
By midmorning I knew a little of what Anna was sweating over. The Francher kid's absolutely dead-weight presence in the room was a drag on everything we did. Recitations paused, limped and halted when they came to him. Activities swirled around his inactivity, creating distracting eddies. It wasn't only a negative sort of nonparticipation on his part but an aggressively positive not-doingness. It wasn't just a hindrance but an active opposition, without any overt action for any sort of proof of his attitude. This, along with my disappointment in not having the same comfortable rapport with him that I'd had before, and the bone-weariness of having to be vertical all day instead of collapsing horizontally at intervals, and the strain of getting back into harness, cold, with a roomful of teeners and subteeners, had me worn down to a nubbin by early afternoon.
So I fell back on the perennial refuge of harried teachers and opened a discussion of "what I want to be when I grow up." We had gone through the usual nurses and airplane hostesses and pilots and bridge builders and the usual unexpected ballet dancer and CPA (and he still can't add six and nine!) until the discussion frothed like a breaking wave against the Francher kid and stilled there.
He was lounging down in his seat, his weight supported by the back of his neck and the remote end of his spine. The class sighed collectively though inaudibly and waited for his contribution.
"And you, Clement?" I prompted, shifting vainly, trying to ease the taut cry of aching muscles.
"An outlaw," he said huskily, not bothering to straighten up.
"I'm going to keep a list and break every law there is-and get away with it, too."
"Whatever for?" I asked, trying to reassure the .sick pang inside me. "An outlaw is no use at all to society." "Who wants to be of use?" he asked. "I'11 use society-and I can do it."
"Perhaps," I said, knowing full well it was so. "But that's not the way to happiness."
"Who's happy? The bad are unhappy because they are bad. The good are unhappy because they're afraid to be bad-"
"Clement," I said gently, "I think you are-"
"I think he's crazy," said Rigo, his black eyes flashing. "Don't pay him no never mind, Miss Carolle. He's a screwball. He's all the time saying crazy things."
I saw the heavy world globe on the top shelf of the bookcase behind Rigo shift and slide toward the edge. I saw it lift clear of the shelf and I cried out, "Clement!" The whole class started at the loud urgency of my voice, the Francher kid included, and Rigo moved just far enough out of line that the falling globe missed him and cracked itself apart at his feet.
Someone screamed and several gasped and a babble of voices broke out. I caught the Francher kid's eyes, and he flushed hotly and ducked his head. Then he straightened up proudly and defiantly returned my look. He wet his forefinger in his mouth and drew an invisible tally mark in the air before him. I shook my head at him, slowly, regretfully. What could I do with a child like this?
Well, I had to do something, so I told him to stay in after school, though the kids wondered why. He slouched against the door, defiance in every awkward
angle of his body and in the hooking of his thumbs into his front pockets. I let the parting noises fade and die, the last hurried clang of lunch pail, the last flurry of feet, the last reverberant slam of the outside door. The Francher kid shifted several times, easing the tension of his shoulders as he waited. Finally I said, "Sit down."
"No." His word was flat and uncompromising. I looked at him, the gaunt young planes of his face, the unhappy mouth thinned to stubbornness, the eyes that blinded themselves with dogged defiance. I leaned across the desk, my hands clasped, and wondered what I could say. Argument would do no good. A kid of that age has an answer for everything.
"We all have violences," I said, tightening my hands, "but we can't always let them out. Think what a mess things would be if we did." I smiled wryly into his unresponsive face. "if we gave in to every violent impulse I'd probably have slapped you with an encyclopedia before now." His eyelids flicked, startled, and he looked straight at me for the first time.
"Sometimes we can just hold our breath until the violence swirls away from us. Other times it's too big and it swells inside us like a balloon until it chokes our lungs and aches our jaw hinges." His lids flickered down over his watching eyes. "But it can be put to use. Then's when we stir up a cake by hand or chop wood or kick cans across the back yard or-" I faltered, "or run until our knees bend both ways from tiredness."
There was a small silence while I held my breath until my violent rebellion against unresponsive knees swirled away from me.
"There are bigger violences, I guess," I went on. "From them come assault and murder, vandalism and war, but even those can be used. If you want to smash things there are worthless things that need to be smashed and things that ought to be destroyed, tipped apart and ruined. But you have no way of knowing what those things are, yet. You must keep your violences small until you learn how to tell the difference."
"I can smash." His voice was thick.
"Yes," I said. "But smash to build. "You have no right to hurt other people with your own hurt."
"People!" The word was profanity.
I drew a long breath. If he were younger… You can melt stiff rebellious arms and legs with warm hugs or a hand across a wind-ruffled head or a long look that flickers into a smile, but what can you do with a creature that's neither adult nor child but puzzlingly both? I leaned forward.
"Francher," I said softly, "if your mother could walk through your mind now-"
He reddened, then paled. His mouth opened. He swallowed tightly. Then he jerked himself upright in the doorway.
"Leave my mother alone." His voice was shaken and muffled. "You leave her alone. She's dead."
I listened to his footsteps and the crashing slam of the outside door. For some sudden reason I felt my heart follow him down the hill to town. I sighed, almost with exasperation. So this was to be a My Child. We teacher-types sometimes find them. They aren't our pets; often they aren't even in our classes. But they are the children who move unasked into our hearts and make claims upon them over and above the call of duty. And this My Child I had to reach. Somehow I had to keep him from sliding on over the borderline to lawlessness as he so surely was doing-this My Child who, even more than the usual My Child, was different.
I put my head down on the desk and let weariness ripple up over me. After a minute I began to straighten up my papers. I made the desk top tidy and took my purse out of the bottom drawer. I struggled to my feet and glared at my crutches. Then I grinned weakly.
"Come, friends," I said. "Leave us help one another depart."
Anna was out for a week. After she returned I was surprised at my reluctance to let go of the class. The sniff of chalk dust was in my nostrils and I ached to be busy again. So I started helping out with the school programs and
teen-age dances, which led naturally to the day my committee and I stood in the town recreation hall and looked about us despairingly.
"How long have those decorations been up?" I craned my neck to get a better view of the wilderness of sooty cobwebby crepe paper that clotted the whole of the high ceiling and the upper reaches of the walls of the ramshackle old hall that leaned wearily against the back of the saloon. Twyla stopped chewing the end of one of her heavy braids. "About four years, I guess. At least the newest. Pea-Green put it all up."
"Pea-Green?"
"Yeah. He was a screwball. He used up every piece of crepe paper in town and used nails to put the stuff up-big nails. He's gone now. He got silicosis and went down to Hot Springs."
"Well, nails or no nails we can't have a Hallowe'en dance with that stuff up."
"Going to miss the old junk. How we going to get it down?" Janniset asked.
"Pea-Green used an extension ladder he borrowed from a power crew that was stringing some wires up to the Bluebell Mine," Rigo said. "But we'll have to find some other way to get it down, now."
I felt a flick of something at my elbow. It might have been the Francher kid shifting from one foot to the other, or it might have been just a thought slipping by. I glanced sideways but caught only the lean line of his cheek and the shaggy back of his neck.
"I think I can get a ladder." Rigo snapped his thumbnail loudly with his white front teeth. "It won't reach clear up but it'll help."
"We could take rakes and just drag it down," Twyla suggested.
We all laughed until I sobered us all with, "It might come to that yet, bless the buttons of whoever thought up twenty-foot ceilings. Well, tomorrow's Saturday. Everybody be here about nine and we'll get with it."
"Can't." The Francher kid cast anchor unequivocally, snapping all our willingness up short.
"Oh?" I shifted my crutches, and, as usual, his eyes fastened on them, almost hypnotically. "That's too bad."
"How come?" Rigo was belligerent. "If the rest of us can you oughta be able to. Ever'body's s'posed to do this together. Ever'body does the dirty work and ever'body has the fun. You're nobody special. You're on this committee, aren't you?"
I restrained myself from a sudden impulse to clap my hand over Rigo's mouth midway in his protest. I didn't like the quietness of the Francher kid's hands, hut he only looked slantwise up at Rigo and said, "I got volunteered on this committee. I didn't ask to. And to fix this joint up today. I gotta work tomorrow."
"Work? Where?" Rigo frankly disbelieved.
"Sorting ore at the Absalom."
Rigo snapped his thumbnail again derisively. "That penny-picking stuff? They pay peanuts."
"Yes." And the Francher kid slouched off around the corner of the building without a glance or a good-by.
"Well, he's working!" Twyla thoughtfully spit out a stray hair and pointed the wet end of her braid with her fingers.
"The Francher kid's doing something. I wonder how come?"
"Trying to figure that dopey dilldock out?" Janniset asked.
"Don't waste your time. I bet he's just goofing off."
"You kids run on," I said. "We can't do anything tonight. I'll lock up. See you in the morning."
I waited inside the dusty echoing hall until the sound of their going died down the rocky alley that edged around the rim of the railroad cut and dissolved into the street of the town. I still couldn't reconcile myself to slowing their steps to match my uncertain feet. Maybe someday I would he able to accept my braces as others accept glasses; but not yet-oh, not yet!
I left the hall and snapped the dime-store padlock shut. I struggled
precariously along through the sliding shale and loose rocks until suddenly one piece of shale shattered under the pressure of one of my crutches and I stumbled off balance. I saw with shake-making clarity in the accelerated speed of the moment that the only place my groping crutch could reach was the smooth curving of a small boulder, and, in that same instant, I visualized myself sprawling helplessly, hopelessly, in the clutter of the alley, a useless nonfunctioning piece of humanity, a drag and a hindrance on everyone again. And then, at the last possible instant, the smooth boulder slid aside and my crutch caught and steadied on the solid damp hollow beneath it. I caught my breath with relief and unclenched my spasmed hands a little. Lucky!
Then all at once there was the Francher kid at my elbow again, quietly waiting.
"Oh!" I hoped he hadn't seen me floundering in my awkwardness. "Hi! I thought you'd gone."
"I really will be working." His voice had lost its flatness. "I'm not making much but I'm saving to buy me a musical instrument."
"Well, good!" I said, smiling into the unusualness of his straightforward look. "What kind of instrument?"
"I don't know. Something that will sing like this-"
And there on the rocky trail with the long light slanting through the trees for late afternoon, I heard soft tentative notes that stumbled at first and then began to sing: "Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling-" Each note of this, my favorite, was like a white flower opening inside me in ascending order like steps-steps that I could climb freely, lightly….
"What kind of instrument am I saving for?" The Francher kid's voice pulled me back down to earth. "You'll have to settle for less." My voice shook a little. "There isn't one like that."
"But I've heard it-" He was bewildered.
"Maybe you have. But was anyone playing it?"
"Why yes-no. I used to hear it from Mom. She thought it to me,"
"Where did your mom come from?" I asked impulsively.
"From terror and from panic places. From hunger and from hiding-to live midway between madness and the dream-" He looked at me, his mouth drooping a little. "She promised me I'd understand someday, but this is someday and she's gone."
"Yes," I sighed, remembering how once I had dreamed that someday I'd run again. "But there are other somedays ahead-for you."
"Yes," he said. "And time hasn't stopped for you either." .And he was gone.
I looked after him. "Doggone!" I thought. "There I go again, talking to him as though he made sense!" I poked the end of my crutch in the damp earth three times, making interlacing circles. Then with quickened interest I poked the boulder that had rolled up out of the slight hollow before the crutch tip had landed there.
"Son-a-gun!" I cried aloud. "Well, son-a-gun!"
Next morning at five of nine the kids were waiting for me at the door to the hall, huddled against the October chill that the milky sun hadn't yet had time to disperse. Rigo had a shaky old ladder with two broken rungs and splashes of old paint gumming it liberally.
"That looks awfully rickety," I said. "We don't want any blood spilled on our dance floor. It's bad for the wax."
Rigo grinned. "It'll hold me up," he said. "I used it last night to pick apples. You just have to be kinda careful."
"Well, be so then," I smiled, unlocking the door. "Better safe than-" My words faltered and died as I gaped in at the open door. The others pushed in around me, round-eyed and momentarily silenced. My first wild impression was that the ceiling had fallen in.
"My gorsh!" Janniset gasped. "what hit this place?" "Just look at it!" Twyla shrilled. "Hey! Just look at it!" We looked as we
scuffled forward. Every single piece of paper was gone from the ceiling and walls. Every scrap of paper was on the floor, in tiny twisted confetti-sized pieces like a tattered faded snowfall, all over the floor. There must have been an incredible amount of paper tangled in the decorations, because we waded wonderingly almost ankle-deep through it.
"Looky here!" Rigo was staring at the front of the bandstand. Lined up neatly across the front stood all the nails that had been pulled out of the decorations, each balanced precisely on its head.
Twyla frowned and bit her lip. "It scares me," she said.
"It doesn't feel right. It looks like somebody was mad or crazy-like they tore up the paper wishing they was killing something. And then to put all those nails so-so even and careful, like they had been put down gently-that looks madder than the paper." She reached over and swept her finger sideways, wincing as though she expected a shock. A section of the nails toppled with faint pings on the bare boards of the stand. In a sudden flurry Twyla swept all the nails over. "There!" she said, wiping her finger on her dress.
"Now it's all crazy."
"Well," I said, "crazy or not, somebody's saved us a lot of trouble. Rigo, we won't need your ladder. Get the brooms and let's get this mess swept out."
While they were gone for the brooms I picked up two nails and clicked them together in a metrical cadence: "Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling-"
By noon we had the place scrubbed out and fairly glistening through its shabby paint. By evening we had the crisp new orange-and-black decorations up, low down and with thumbtacks, and all sighed with tired satisfaction at how good the place looked. As we locked up Twyla suddenly said in a small voice, "What if it happens again before the dance Friday? All our work-"
"It won't," I promised. "It won't."
In spite of my hanging back and trying the lock a couple of times Twyla was still waiting when I turned away from the door. She was examining the end of her braid carefully as she said, "It was him, wasn't it?'"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"How did he do it?"
"You've known him longer than I have. How did he do it?"
"Nobody knows the Francher kid," she said. Then softly, "He looked at me once, really looked at me. He's funny-but not to laugh," she hastened. "When he looks at me it-" her hand tightened on her braid until her head tilted and she glanced up slantingly at me, "it makes music in me.
"You know," she said quickly into the echo of her unorthodox words, "you're kinda like him. He makes me think things and believe things I wouldn't ever by myself. You make me say things I wouldn't ever by myself no, that's not quite fight. You let me say things I wouldn't dare to say to anyone else."
"Thank you," I said. "Thank you, Twyla."
I had forgotten the trembling glamor of a teen-age dance. I had forgotten the cautious stilted gait of high heels on loafer-type feet. I had forgotten how the look of maturity could be put on with a tie and sport jacket and how-how peoplelike teen-agers could look when divorced for a while from Levi's and flannel shirts. Janniset could hardly contain himself for his own splendor and turned not a hair of his incredibly polished head when I smiled my "Good evening, Mr. Janniset." But in his pleased satisfaction at my formality he forgot himself as he turned away and hoisted up his sharply creased trousers as though they were his old Levi's.
Rigo was stunning in his Latin handsomeness, and he and Angie so drowned in each other's dark eyes that I could see why our Mexican youngsters usually marry so young. And Angie! Well, she didn't look like any eighth grader-her strapless gown, her dangly earrings, her laughing flirtatious eyes-but taken out of the context and custom and tradition she was breath-takingly lovely. Of course it was on her "unsuitable for her age" dress and jewelry and make-up that the long line of mothers and aunts and grandmothers fixed disapproving
eyes, but I'd be willing to bet that there were plenty who wished their own children could look as lovely.
In this small community the girls always dressed up to the hilt at the least provocation, and the Hallowe'en dance was usually the first event of the fall that could serve as an excuse. Crinolined skirts belled like blossoms across the floor above the glitter of high heels, but it was only a matter of a few minutes before the shoes were kicked off, to toe in together forlornly under a chair or dangle from some motherly forefinger while unprotected toes braved the brogans of the boys.
Twyla was bright-checked and laughing, dance after dance, until the first intermission. She and Janniset brought me punch where I sat among the other spectators; then Janniset skidded off across the floor, balancing his paper cup precariously as he went to take another look at Marty, who at school was only a girl but here, all dressed up, was dawn of woman-wonder for him. Twyla gulped her punch hastily and then licked the corners of her mouth.
"He isn't here," she said huskily.
"I'm sorry," I said. "l wanted him to have fun with the rest of you. Maybe he'll come yet."
"Maybe." She twisted her cup slowly, then hastily shoved it under the chair as it threatened to drip on her dress.
"That's a beautiful dress," I said. "I love the way your petticoat shows red against the blue when you whirl."
"Thank you." She smoothed the billowing of her skirt.
"I feel funny with sleeves. None of the others have them. That's why he didn't come, I bet. Not having any dress-up clothes like the others, I mean. Nothing but Levi's."
"Oh, that's a shame. If I had known-"
"No. Mrs. McVey is supposed to buy his clothes. She gets money for them. All she does is sit around and talk about how much she sacrifices to take care of the Francher kid and she doesn't take care of him at all. It's her fault-"
"Let's not be too critical of others. There may be circumstances we know nothing of-and besides-" I nodded my head, "he's here now."
I could almost see the leap of her heart under the close-fitting blue as she turned to look.
The Francher kid was lounging against the door, his face closed and impassive. I noted with a flame of anger at Mrs. McVey that he was dressed in his Levi's, faded almost white from many washings, and a flannel shirt, the plaid of which Was nearly indistinguishable except along the seams. It wasn't fair to keep him from being like the other kids even in this minor way-or maybe especially in this way, because clothes can't be hidden the way a mind or soul can.
I tried to catch his eye and beckon him in, but he looked only at the bandstand where the band members were preparing to resume playing. It was tragic that the Francher kid had only this handful of inexpertly played instruments to feed his hunger on. He winced back into the darkness at their first blare, and I felt Twyla's tenseness as she turned to me.
"He won't come in," she half shouted against the take-a-melody-tear-it-to-pieces-stick-it-back-together-bleeding type of music that was going on.
I shook my head regretfully. "I guess not," I mouthed and then was drawn into a half-audible, completely incomprehensible conversation with Mrs. Frisney. It wasn't until the next dance started and she was towed away by Grampa Griggs that I could turn back to Twyla. She was gone. I glanced around the room. Nowhere the swirl of blue echoing the heavy brown-gold swing of her ponytail.
There was no reason for me to feel apprehensive. There were any number of places she might have gone and quite legitimately, but I suddenly felt an overwhelming need for fresh air and swung myself past the romping dancers and out into the gasping chill of the night. I huddled closer inside my jacket, wishing it were on right instead of merely flung around my shoulders. But the
air tasted clean and fresh. I don't know what we'd been breathing in the dance hall, but it wasn't air. By the time I'd got the whatever-it-was out of my lungs and filled them with the freshness of the night I found myself halfway down the path over the edge of the railroad cut. There hadn't been a train over the single track since nineteen-aught-something, and just beyond it was a thicket of willows and cottonwoods and a few scraggly piсon trees. As I moved into the shadow of the trees I glanced up at the sky ablaze with a skrillion stars that dissolved into light near the lopsided moon and perforated the darker horizon with brilliance. I was startled out of my absorption by the sound of movement and music. I took an uncertain step into the dark. A few yards away I saw the flick of skirts and started to call out to Twyla. But instead I rounded the brush in front of me and saw what she was intent upon.
The Francher kid was dancing-dancing all alone in the quiet night. No, not alone, because a column of yellow leaves had swirled up from the ground around him and danced with him to a melody so exactly like their movement that I couldn't be sure there was music. Fascinated, I watched the drift and sway, the swirl and turn, the treetop-high rise and the hesitant drifting fall of the Francher kid and the autumn leaves. But somehow I couldn't see the kid as a separate Levied flannel-shirted entity. He and the leaves so blended together that the sudden sharp definition of a hand or a turning head was startling. The kid was just a larger leaf borne along with the smaller in the chilly winds of fall. On a final minor glissade of the music the Francher kid slid to the ground.
He stood for a moment, head bent, crumbling a crisp leaf in his fingers; then he turned swiftly defensive to the rustle of movement. Twyla stepped out into the clearing. For a moment they stood looking at each other without a word. Then Twyla's voice came So softly I could barely hear it.
"I would have danced with you."
"With me like this?" He gestured at his clothes.
"Sure. It doesn't matter."
"In front of everyone?"
"If you wanted to. I wouldn't mind."
"Not there," he said. "It's too tight and hard."
"Then here," she said, holding out her hands.
"The music-" But his hands were reaching for hers,
"Your music," she said.
"My mother's music," he corrected.
And the music began, a haunting lilting waltz-time melody. As lightly as the leaves that stirred at their feet the two circled the clearing.
I have the picture yet, but when I return to it my heart is emptied of adjectives because there are none for such enchantment. The music quickened and swelled, softly, richly full-the lost music that a mother bequeathed to her child.
Twyla was so completely engrossed in the magic of the moment that I'm sure she didn't even know when their feet no longer rustled in the fallen leaves. She couldn't have known when the treetops brushed their shoes-when the long turning of the tune brought them back, spiraling down into the clearing. Her scarlet petticoat caught on a branch as they passed, and left a bright shred to trail the wind, but even that did not distract her.
Before my heart completely broke with wonder the music faded softly away and left the two standing on the ragged grass. After a breathless pause Twyla's hand went softly, wonderingly, to Francher's cheek. The kid turned his face slowly and pressed his mouth to her palm. Then they turned and left each other, without a word.
Twyla passed so close to me that her skirts brushed mine. I let her cross the tracks back to the dance before I followed. I got there just in time to catch the whisper on apparently the second round, "… alone out there with the Francher kid!" and the gleefully malicious shock of ". . . and her petticoat is torn…"
It was like pigsty muck clotting an Easter dress.
Anna said, "Hi!" and flung herself into my one armchair. As the front leg collapsed she caught herself with the dexterity of long practice, tilted the chair, reinserted the leg and then eased herself back into its dusty depths.
"From the vagaries of the small town good Lord deliver me!" she moaned.
"What now?" I asked, shifting gears on my crochet hook as I finished another row of my rug.
"You mean you haven't heard the latest scandal?" Her eyes widened in mock horror and her voice sank conspiratorially. "They were out there in the dark-alone-doing nobody knows what. Imagine!" Her voice shook with avid outrage. "With the Francher kid!
"Honestly!" Her voice returned to normal. "You'd think the Francher kid was leprosy or something. What a to-do about a little nocturnal smooching. I'd give you odds that most of the other kids are being shocked to ease their own consciences of the same kind of carryings-on. But just because it's the Francher kid-"
"They weren't alone," I said casually, holding a tight rein on my indignation. "I was there."
"You were?" Anna's eyebrows bumped her crisp bangs. "Well, well. This complexions things different. What did happen? Not," she hastened "that I credit these wild tales about, my golly, Twyla, but what did happen?"
"They danced," I said. "The Francher kid was ashamed of his clothes and wouldn't come in the hall. So they danced down in the clearing."
"Without music ?"
"The Francher kid-hummed," I said, my eyes intent on my work.
There was a brief silence. "Well," Anna said, "that's interesting, especially that vacant spot I feel in there. But you were there?"
"Yes."
"And they just danced?"
"Yes." I apologized mentally for making so pedestrian the magic I had seen. "And Twyla caught her petticoat on a branch and it tore before she knew it."
"Hmmm." Anna was suddenly sober. "You ought to take your rug up to the Sew-Sew Club."
"But I-" I was bewildered.
"They're serving nice heaping portions of Twyla's reputation for refreshments, and Mrs. McVey is contributing the dessert-the unplumbed depravity of foster children."
I stuffed my rug back into its bag. "'Is my face on?" I asked.
Well, I got back to the Somansons' that evening considerably wider of eye than I had left it. Anna took my things from me at the door.
"How did it go?"
"My gorsh!" I said, easing myself into a chair. "If they ever got started on me what would I have left?'"
"Bare bones," Anna said promptly. "With plenty of tooth marks on them. Well, did you get them told?"
"Yes, but they didn't want to believe me. It was too tame. And of course Mrs. McVey didn't like being pushed out on a limb about the Francher kid's clothes. Her delicate hint about the high cost of clothes didn't impress Mrs. Holmes much, not with her six boys. I guess I've got me an enemy for life. She got a good-sized look at herself through my eyes and she didn't like it at all, but I'll bet the Francher kid won't turned up Levied for a dance again."
"Heaven send he'll never do anything worse," Anna intoned piously.
That's what I hoped fervently for a while, but lightning hit Willow Creek anyway, a subtle slow lightning-a calculated, coldly angry lightning. I held my breath as report after report came in. The Turbows' old shed exploded without a sound on the stroke of nine o'clock Tuesday night and scattered
itself like kindling wood over the whole barnyard. Of course the Turbows had talked for years of tearing the shaky old thing down but-I began to wonder how you went about bailing a juvenile out of the clink.
Then the last sound timber on the old railroad bridge below the Thurmans' house shuddered and dissolved loudly into sawdust at eleven o'clock Tuesday night. The rails, deprived of their support, trembled briefly, then curled tightly up into two absurd rosettes. The bridge being gone meant an hour's brisk walk to town for the Thurmans instead of a fifteen-minute stroll. It also meant safety for the toddlers too young to understand why the rotting timbers weren't a wonderful kind of jungle gym.
Wednesday evening at five all the water in the Holmeses' pond geysered up and crashed down again, pureeing what few catfish were still left in it and breaking a spillway over into the creek, thereby draining the stagnant old mosquito-bearing spot with a conclusive slurp. As the neighbors had nagged at the Holmeses to do for years-but . . .
I was awestruck at this simple literal translation of my words and searched my memory with wary apprehensiveness. I could almost have relaxed by now if I could have drawn a line through the last two names on my mental roll of the club.
But Thursday night there was a crash and a roar and I huddled in my bed praying a wordless prayer against I didn't know what, and Friday morning I listened to the shrill wide-eyed recitals at the breakfast table.
"… since the devil was an imp and now there it is . . ."
"… right in the middle, big as life and twice as natural…"
"What is?" I asked, braving the battery of eyes that pinned me like a moth in a covey of searchlights.
There was a stir around the table. Everyone was aching to speak, but there's always a certain rough protocol to be observed, even in a boardinghouse.
Ol' Hank cleared his throat, took a huge mouthful of coffee and sloshed it thoughtfully and noisily around his teeth before swallowing it.
"Balance Rock," he choked, spraying his vicinity finely, "came plumb unbalanced last night. Came a-crashing down, bouncing like a dang ping-pong ball an'nen it hopped over half a dozen fences an'nen whammo! it lit on a couple of the Scudders' pigs an'nen tore out a section of the Lelands' stone fence and now it's settin there in the middle of their alfalfa field as big as a house. He'll have a helk of a time mowing that field now." He slurped largely of his coffee.
"Strange things going on around here." Blue Nor's porchy eyebrows rose and felt portentously. "Never heard of a balance rock falling before. And all them other funny things. The devil's walking our land sure enough!"
I left on the wave of violent argument between proponents of the devil theory and the atom-bomb testing theory as the prime cause. Now I could draw another line through the list. But what of the last name? What of it?
That afternoon the Francher kid materialized on the bottom step at the boardinghouse, his eyes intent on my braces. We sat there in silence for a while, mostly I suppose because I could think of nothing rational to say. Finally I decided to be irrational.
"What about Mrs. McVey?"
He shrugged. "She feeds me."
"And what's with the Scudders' pigs?"
Color rose blotchily to his cheeks. "I goofed. I was aiming for the fence and let it go too soon."
"I told all those ladies the truth Monday. They knew they had been wrong about you and Twyla. There was no need-"
"No need!" His eyes flashed, and I blinked away from the impact of his straight indignant glare. "They're dern lucky I didn't smash them all flat."
"I know," I said hastily. "I know how you feel, but I can't congratulate you on your restraint because however little you did compared to what you might have done, it was still more than you had a right to do. Especially the pigs and the wall."
"I didn't mean the pigs," he muttered as he fingered a patch on his knee. "Old man Scudder's a pretty right guy."
"Yes," I said. "'So what are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know. I could swipe some pigs from somewhere else for him, but I suppose that wouldn't fix things."
"No, it wouldn't. You should buy-do you have any money?"
"Not for pigs!" he flared. "All I have is what I'm saving for my musical instrument and not one penny of that'll ever go for pigs!"
"All right, all right," I said. "You figure out something."
He ducked his head again, fingering the patch, and I watched the late sun run across the curve of his cheek, thinking what an odd conversation this was.
"Francher,'" I said, leaning forward impulsively, "do you ever wonder how come you can do the things you do?"
His eyes were quick on my face. "Do you ever wonder why you can't do what you can't do?"
I flushed and shifted my crutches. "I know why."
"No, you don't. You only know when your 'can't' began. You don't know the real why. Even your doctors don't know all of it. Well, I don't know the why of my 'cans.' I don't even know the beginning of them, only that sometimes I feel a wave of something inside me that hollers to get out of all the 'can'ts' that are around me like you-can't-do-this, you-can't-do-that, and then I remember that I can."
He flicked his fingers and my crutches stirred. They lifted and thudded softly down the steps and then up again to lean back in their accustomed place.
"Crutches can't walk," the Francher kid said. "But you-something besides your body musta got smashed in that wreck."
"Everything got smashed," I said bitterly, the cold horror of that night and all that followed choking my chest. "Everything ended-everything."
"There aren't any endings," the Francher kid said. "Only new beginnings. When you going to get started?" Then he slouched away, his hands in his pockets, his head bent as he kicked a rock along the path. Bleakly I watched him go, trying to keep alive my flame of anger at him.
Well, the Lelands' wall had to be rebuilt and it was the Francher kid who got the job. He toiled mightily, lifting the heavy stones and cracking his hands with the dehydrating effect of the mortar he used. Maybe the fence wasn't as straight as it had been but it was repaired, and perhaps, I hoped, a stone had been set strongly somewhere in the Francher kid by this act of atonement. That he received pay for it didn't detract too much from the act itself, especially considering the amount of pay and the fact that it all went in on the other reparation.
The appearance of two strange pigs in the Scudders' east field created quite a stir, but the wonder of it was dulled by all the odd events preceding it. Mr. Scudder made inquiries but nothing ever came of them so he kept the pigs, and I made no inquiries but relaxed for a while about the Francher kid.
It was along about this time that a Dr. Curtis came to town briefly. Well, "came to town" is a euphemism. His car broke down on his way up into the hills, and he had to accept our hospitality until Bill Thurman could get around to finding a necessary part. He stayed at Somansons' in a room opposite mine after Mrs. Somanson had frantically cleared it out, mostly by the simple expedient of shoving all the boxes and crates and odds and ends to the end of the hall and draping a tarp over them. Then she splashed water across the barely settled dust and mopped out the resultant mud, put a brick under one corner of the bed, made it up with two army-surplus mattresses, one sheet edged with crocheted lace and one of heavy unbleached muslin. She unearthed a pillow that fluffed beautifully but sighed itself to a wafer-thin odor of damp feathers at a touch, and topped the splendid whole with two hand-pieced
hand-quilted quilts and a chenille spread with a Technicolor peacock flamboyantly dominating it.
"There," she sighed, using her apron to dust the edge of the dresser where it showed along the edge of the dresser scarf, "I guess that'll hold him."
"I should hope so," I smiled. "It's probably the quickest room he's ever had."
"He's lucky to have this at such short notice," she said, turning the ragrug over so the burned place wouldn't show.
"If it wasn't that I had my eye on that new winter coat-"
Dr. Curtis was a very relaxing comfortable sort of fellow, and it seemed so good to have someone to talk to who cared to use words of more than two syllables. It wasn't that the people in Willow Creek were ignorant, they just didn't usually care to discuss three-syllable matters. I guess, besides the conversation, I was drawn to Dr. Curtis because he neither looked at my crutches nor not looked at them. It was pleasant except for the twinge of here's-someone-who. has-never-known-me-without-them.
After supper that night we all sat around the massive oil burner in the front room and talked against the monotone background of the radio turned low. Of course the late shake-making events in the area were brought up. Dr. Curtis was most interested, especially in the rails that curled up into rosettes. Because he was a doctor and a stranger the group expected an explanation of these goings-on from him, or at least an educated guess.
"What do I think?" He leaned forward in the old rocker and rested his arms on his knees. "I think a lot of things happen that can't be explained by our usual thought patterns, and once we get accustomed to certain patterns we find it very uncomfortable to break over into others. So maybe it's just as well not to want an explanation."
"Hmmm." Ol' Hank knocked the ashes out of his pipe into his hand and looked around for the wastebasket. "Neat way of saying you don't know either. Think I'll remember that. It might come in handy sometime. Well, g'night all." He glanced around hastily, dumped the ashes in the geranium pot and left, sucking on his empty pipe.
His departure was a signal for the others to drift off to bed at the wise hour of ten, but I was in no mood for wisdom, not of the early-to-bed type anyway.
"Then there is room in this life for inexplicables." I pleated my skirt between my fingers and straightened it out again.
"It would be a poor lackluster sort of world if there weren't," the doctor said. "I used to rule out anything that I couldn't explain but I got cured of that good one time." He smiled reminiscently. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't. As I said, it can be mighty uncomfortable."
"Yes," I said impulsively. "Like hearing impossible music and sliding down moonbeams-" I felt my heart sink at the sudden blankness of his face. Oh, gee! Goofed again. He could talk glibly of inexplicables but he didn't really believe in them. "And crutches that walk by themselves," I rushed on rashly, "and autumn leaves that dance in the windless clearing-" I grasped my crutches and started blindly for the door. "And maybe someday if I'm a good girl and disbelieve enough I'll walk again-"
" 'And disbelieve enough'?" His words followed me. "Don't you mean 'believe enough'?"
"Don't strain your pattern," I called back. "It's 'disbelieve.'"
Of course I felt silly the next morning at the breakfast table, but Dr. Curtis didn't refer to the conversation so I didn't either. He was discussing renting a jeep for his hunting trip and leaving his car to be fixed.
"Tell Bill you'll be back a week before you plan to," said O1' Hank. "Then your car will be ready when you do get back."
The Francher kid was in the group of people who gathered to watch Bill transfer Dr. Curtis' gear from the car to the jeep. As usual he was a little removed from the rest, lounging against a tree. Dr. Curtis finally came out,
his .30-06 under one arm and his heavy hunting jacket under the other. Anna and I leaned over our side fence watching the whole procedure. I saw the Francher kid straighten slowly, his hands leaving his pockets as he stared at Dr. Curtis. One hand went out tentatively and then faltered. Dr. Curtis inserted himself in the seat of the jeep and fumbled at the knobs on the dashboard. "Which one's the radio?" he asked Bill
"Radio? In this jeep?" Bill laughed.
"But the music-" Dr. Curtis paused for a split second, then turned on the ignition. "Have to make my own, I guess," he laughed.
The jeep roared into life, and the small group scattered as he wheeled it in reverse across the yard. In the pause as he shifted gears, he glanced sideways at me and our eyes met. It was a very brief encounter, but he asked questions and I answered with my unknowing and he exploded in a kind of wonderment-all in the moment between reverse and low.
We watched the dust boil up behind the jeep as it growled its way down to the highway.
"Well," Anna said, "a-hunting we do go indeed!"
"Who's he?" The Francher kid's hands were tight on the top of the fence, a blind sort of look on his face.
"I don't know," I said. "His name is Dr. Curtis."
"He's heard music before."
"I should hope so," Anna said.
"That music?" I asked the Francher kid.
"Yes," he nearly sobbed. "Yes!"
"He'll he back," I said. "He has to get his car."
"Well," Anna sighed. "The words are the words of English but the sense is the sense of confusion. Coffee, anybody?"
That afternoon the Francher kid joined me, wordlessly, as I struggled up the rise above the boardinghouse for a little wideness of horizon to counteract the day's shut-in-ness.
I would rather have walked alone, partly because of a need for silence and partly because he just couldn't ever keep his-accusing?-eyes off my crutches. But he didn't trespass upon my attention as so many people would have, so I didn't mind too much. I leaned, panting, against a gray granite boulder and let the fresh-from-distant-snow breeze lift my hair as I caught my breath. Then I huddled down into my coat, warming my ears. The Francher kid had a handful of pebbles and was lobbing them at the scattered rusty tin cans that dotted the hillside. After one pebble turned a square corner to hit a can he spoke.
"If he knows the name of the instrument, then-" He lost his words.
"What is the name?" I asked, rubbing my nose where my coat collar had tickled it.
"It really isn't a word. It's just two sounds it makes."
"Well, then, make me a word. 'Musical instrument' is mighty unmusical and unhandy."
The Francher kid listened, his head tilted, his lips moving.
"I suppose you could call it a 'rappoor,' " he said, softening the a. "But it isn't that."
" 'Rappoor,' " I said. "Of course you know by now we don't have any such instrument." I was intrigued at having been drawn into another Francher-type conversation. I was developing quite a taste for them. "It's probably just something your mother dreamed up for you."
"And for that doctor?"
"Ummm." My mental wheels spun, tractionless. "What do you think?"
"I almost know that there are some more like Mother. Some who know 'the madness and the dream,' too."
"'Dr. Curtis??' I asked.
"No," he said slowly, rubbing his hand along the boulder.
"No, I could feel a faraway, strange-to-me feeling with him. He's like you. He-he knows someone who knows, but he doesn't know."
"Well, thanks. He's a nice bird to be a feather of. Then it's all very simple. When he comes back you ask him who he knows."
"Yes-" The Francher kid drew a tremulous breath. '"Yes!"
We eased down the hillside, talking money and music. The Francher kid had enough saved up to buy a good instrument of some kind-but what kind? He was immersed in tones and timbres and ranges and keys and the possibility of sometime finding a something that would sound like a rappoor.
We paused at the foot of the hill. Impulsively I spoke.
"Francher, why do you talk with me?" I wished the words back before I finished them. Words have a ghastly way of shattering delicate situations and snapping tenuous bonds.
He lobbed a couple more stones against the bank and turned away, hands in his pockets. His words came back to me after I had given them up.
"You don't hate me-yet."
I was jarred. I suppose I had imagined all the people around the Francher kid were getting acquainted with him as I was, but his words made me realize differently. After that I caught at every conversation that included the Francher kid, and alerted at every mention of his name. It shook me to find that to practically everyone he was still juvenile delinquent, lazy trash, no-good off-scouring, potential criminal, burden. By some devious means it had been decided that he was responsible for all the odd happenings in town. I asked a number of people how the kid could possibly have done it. The only answer I got was, "The Francher kid can do anything-bad."
Even Anna still found him an unwelcome burden in her classroom despite the fact that he was finally functioning on a fairly acceptable level academically.
Here I'd been thinking-heaven knows why!-that he was establishing himself in the community. Instead he was doing well to hold his own. I reviewed to myself all that had happened since first I met him, and found hardly a thing that would be positive in the eyes of the general public.
"Why," I thought to myself, "I'm darned lucky he's kept out of the hands of the law!" And my stomach knotted coldly at what might happen if the Francher kid ever did step over into out-and-out lawlessness. There's something insidiously sweet to the adolescent in flouting authority, and I wanted no such appetite for any My Child of mine.
Well, the next few days after Dr. Curtis left were typical hunting-weather days. Minutes of sunshine and shouting autumn colors-hours of cloud and rain and near snow and raw aching winds. Reports came of heavy snow across Mingus Mountain, and Dogietown was snowed in for the winter, a trifle earlier than usual. We watched our own first flakes idle down, then whip themselves to tears against the huddled houses. It looked as though all excitement and activity were about to be squeezed out of Willow Springs by the drab grayness of winter.
Then the unexpected, which sometimes splashes our grayness with scarlet, happened. The big dude-ranch school, the Half Circle Star, that occupied the choicest of the range land in our area, invited all the school kids out to a musical splurge. They had imported an orchestra that played concerts as well as being a very good dance band, and they planned a gala weekend with a concert Friday evening followed by a dance for the teeners Saturday night. The ranch students were usually kept aloof from the town kids, poor little tikes. They were mostly unwanted or maladjusted children whose parents could afford to get rid of them with a flourish under the guise of giving them the advantage of growing up in healthful surroundings.
Of course the whole town was flung into a tizzy. There were the children of millionaires out there and famous people's kids, too, but about the only glimpse we ever got of them was as they swept grandly through the town in the ranch station wagons. On such occasions we collectively blinked our eyes at the chromium glitter, and sighed-though perhaps for different reasons. I sighed for thin unhappy faces pressed to windows and sad eyes yearning back
at houses where families lived who wanted their kids.
Anyway the consensus of opinion was that it would be worth suffering through a "music concert" to get to go to a dance with a real orchestra, because only those who attended the concert were eligible for the dance.
There was much discussion and much heartburning over what to wear to the two so divergent affairs. The boys were complacent after they found out that their one good outfit was right for both. The girls discussed endlessly, and embarked upon a wild lend-borrow spree when they found that fathers positively refused to spend largely even for this so special occasion.
I was very pleased for the Francher kid. Now he'd have a chance to hear live music-a considerable cut above what snarled in our staticky wave lengths from the available radio stations. Now maybe he'd hear a faint echo of his rappoor and in style, too, because Mrs. McVey had finally broken down and bought him a new suit, a really nice one by the local standards. I was as anxious as Twyla to see how the Francher kid would look in such splendor.
So it was with a distinct shock that I saw the kid at the concert, lounging, thumbs in pockets, against the door of the room where the crowd gathered. His face was shut and dark, and his patched faded Levi's made a blotch in the dimness of the room.
"Look!" Twyla whispered. "He's in Levi's!"
"How come?" I breathed. "Where's his new suit?"
"I don't know. And those Levi's aren't even clean!" She hunched down in her seat, feeling the accusing eyes of the whole world searing her through the Francher kid.
The concert was splendid. Even our rockin'est rollers were caught up in the wonderful web of music. Even I lost myself for long lovely moments in the bright melodic trails that led me out of the gray lanes of familiarity. But I also felt the bite of tears behind my eyes. Music is made to be moved to, and my unresponsive feet wouldn't even tap a tempo. I let the brasses and drums smash my rebellion into bearable-sized pieces again and joined joyfully in the enthusiastic applause.
"Hey!" Rigo said behind me as the departing stir of the crowd began. "I didn't know anything could sound like that. Man! Did you hear that horn! I'd like to get me one of them things and blow it!"
"You'd sound like a sick cow," Janniset said. "Them's hard to play."
Their discussion moved on down the aisle.
"He's gone." Twyla's voice was a breath in my ear.
"Yes," I said. "But we'll probably see him out at the bus."
But we didn't. He wasn't at the bus. He hadn't come out on the bus. No one knew hove he got out to the ranch or where he had gone.
Anna and Twyla and I piled into Anna's car and headed back for Willow Creek, my heart thudding with apprehension, my thoughts busy. When we pulled up at Somansons' there was a car parked in front.
"The McVey!" Anna sizzled in my ear. "Ah ha! Methinks I smell trouble."
I didn't even have time to take my coat off in the smothery warmth of the front room before I was confronted by the monumental violence of Mrs. McVey's wrath.
"Dress him!" she hissed, her chin thrust out as she lunged forward in the chair. "'Dress him so's he'll feel equal to the others!" Her hands flashed out, and I dodged instinctively and blinked as a bunch of white rags fluttered to my feet. "His new shirt!" she half screamed. Another shower of tatters, dark ones this time. "His new suit! Not a piece in it as big as your hand!" There was a spatter like muffled hail. "His shoes!" Her voice caught on the edge of her violence, and she repeated raggedly, "His shoes!" Fear was battling with anger now. "Look at those pieces-as big as stamps-shoes!" Her voice broke. "Anybody who can tear up shoes!"
She sank back in her chair, spent and breathless, fishing for a crumpled Kleenex to wipe the spittle from her chin. I eased into a chair after Anna helped me shrug out of my coat. Twyla huddled, frightened, near the door, her eyes big with fascinated terror.
"Let him be like the others," McVey half whispered. "That limb of Satan ever be like anyone decent?"
"But why?" My voice sounded thin and high in the calm after the hurricane.
"For no reason at all," she gasped, pressing her hand to her panting ribs. "I gave all them brand-new clothes to him to try on, thinking he'd be pleased. Thinking-" her voice slipped to a whining tremulo, "thinking he'd see bow I had his best interest at heart." She paused and sniffed lugubriously. No ready sympathy for her poured into the hiatus so she went on, angrily aggrieved. "And he took them and went into his room and came out with them like that!" Her finger jabbed at the pile of rags. "He-he threw them at me! You and your big ideas about him wanting to be like other kids!" Her lips curled away from the venomous spate of words. "He don't want to be like nobody 'cepting hisself. And he's a devil!" Her voice sank to a whisper and her breath drew in on the last word, her eyes wide.
"'But why did he do it?" I asked. "He must have said something."
Mrs. McVey folded her hands across her ample middle and pinched her lips together. "There are some things a lady don't repeat," she said prissily, tossing her head. "Oh, cut it out!" I was suddenly dreadfully weary of trying to be polite to the McVeys of this world. "Stop tying on that kind of an act. You could teach a stevedore-" I bit my lips and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry, Mrs. McVey, but this is no time to hold back. What did he say? What excuse did he give?"
"He didn't give any excuse," she snapped. "He just-just-" Her heavy cheeks mottled with color. "He called names."
"Oh." Anna and I exchanged glances.
"But what on earth got into him?" I asked. "There must be some reason-"
"Well," Anna squirmed a little. "After all what can you expect-?"
"From a background like that?" I snapped. "Well, Anna, I certainly expected something different from a background like yours!"
Anna's face hardened and she gathered up her things. "I've known him longer than you have," she said quietly.
"Longer," I admitted, "but not better. Anna," I pleaded, leaning toward her, "don't condemn him unheard."
"Condemn?" She looked up brightly. "I didn't know he was on trial."
"Oh, Anna." I sank back in my chair. "The poor kid's been on trial, presumed guilty of anything and everything, ever since he arrived in town, and you know it."
"I don't want to quarrel with you," Anna said. "I'd better say good night."
The door clicked behind her. Mrs. McVey and I measured each other with our eyes. I had opened my mouth to say something when I felt a whisper of a motion at my elbow. Twyla stood under the naked flood of the overhead light, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes shadowed by the droop of her lashes as she narrowed her glance against the glare.
"What did you buy his clothes with?" Her voice was very quiet.
"None of your business, young lady," Mrs. McVey snapped, reddening.
"This is almost the end of the month," Twyla said. "Your check doesn't come till the first. Where did you get the money?"
"Well!" Mrs. McVey began to hoist her bulk out of the chair.
"I don't have to stay here and have a sassy snip like this-" Twyla swept in closer-so close that Mrs. McVey shrank back, her hands gripping the dusty overstuffed arms of the chair.
"You never have any of the check left after the first week," Twyla said. "And you bought a purple nylon nightgown this month. It took a week's pay-"
Mrs. McVey lunged forward again, her mouth agape with horrified outrage.
"You took his money," Twyla said, her eyes steely in her tight young face. "You stole the money he was saving!" She whirled away from the chair, her skirts and hair flaring. "Someday-" she said with clenched teeth, "someday I'll probably be old and fat and ugly, but heaven save me from being old and fat and ugly and a thief!"
"Twyla!" I warned, truly afraid that Mrs. McVey would have a stroke then and
there.
"Well, she is a thief!" Twyla cried. "The Francher kid has been working and saving almost a year to buy-" she faltered, palpably feeling the thin ice of betraying a confidence, "to buy something. And he had almost enough! And she must have gone snooping around-"
"Twyla!" I had to stop her.
"It's true! It's true!" Her hands clenched rebelliously.
"Twyla." My voice was quiet but it silenced her.
"Good-by, Mrs. McVey," I said. "I'm sorry this happened."
"Sorry!" she snorted, rearing up out of her chair. "Sour old maids with never a chick or child of their own sticking their noses into decent people's affairs-" She waddled hastily to the door. She reached for the doorknob, her eyes narrow and venomous over her shoulder. "I got connections. I'll get even with you." The door shuddered as it emphasized her departure.
I let the McVey sweep out of my mind.
"Twyla," I took her cold hands in mine, "you'd better go on home. I've got to figure out how to find the Francher kid."
The swift movement of her hands protested. "But I want-"
"I'm sorry, Twyla. I think it'd be better."
"Okay." Her shoulders relaxed in acquiescence.
Just as she left, Mrs. Somanson bustled in. "Y' better come on out to the table and have a cup of coffee," she said. I straightened wearily. "That McVey! She'd drive the devil to drink," she said cheerfully. "Well, I guess people are like that. I've had more teachers over the years say that it wasn't the kids they minded but the parents." She shooed me through the door and went to the kitchen for the percolator. "Now I was always one to believe that the teacher was right-right or wrong-" Her voice faded out in a long familiar story that proved just the opposite of what she'd said, as I stared into my cup of coffee, wondering despairingly where in all this world I could find the Francher kid. After the episode of the gossip I had my fears. Still, oftentimes people who react violently to comparatively minor troubles were seemingly unshaken by really serious ones-a sort of being at a loss for a proportionate emotional reaction.
But what would he do? Music-music-he'd planned to buy the means for music and had lost the wherewithal. Now he had nothing to make music with. What would he do first? Revenge-or find his music elsewhere? Run away? To where? Steal the money? Steal the music? Steal!
I snapped to awareness, my abrupt movement slopping my cold coffee over into the saucer. Mrs. Somanson was gone. The house was quiet with the twilight pause, the indefinable transitional phase from day to night.
This time it wouldn't be only a harmonica! I groped for my crutches, my mind scrabbling for some means of transportation.
I was reaching for the doorknob when the door flew open and nearly bowled me over.
"Coffee! Coffee!" Dr. Curtis croaked, to my complete bewilderment. He staggered over, all bundled in his hunting outfit, his face ragged with whiskers, his clothes odorous of campfires and all out-of-doors, to the table and clutched the coffeepot. It was very obviously cold.
"Oh, well," he said in a conversational tone. "I guess I can survive without coffee."
"Survive what?" I asked.
He looked at me a moment, smiling, then he said, "Well, if I'm going to say anything about it to anyone it might as well be you, though I hope that I've got sense enough not to go around babbling indiscriminately. Of course it might be a slight visual hangover from this hunting trip-you should hunt with these friends of mine sometime-but it kinda shook me." "Shook you?" I repeated stupidly, my mind racing around the idea of asking him for help in finding the Francher kid.
"A somewhatly," he admitted. "After all there I was, riding along, minding my own business, singing, lustily if not musically, 'A Life on the Ocean Waves,'
when there they were, marching sedately across the road."
"They?" This story dragged in my impatient ears.
"The trombone and the big bass drum," he explained.
"The what!" I had the sensation of running unexpectedly into a mad tangle of briars.
"The trombone and the big bass drum," Dr. Curtis repeated.
"Keeping perfect time and no doubt in perfect step, though you couldn't thump your feet convincingly six feet off the ground. Supposing, of course, you were a trombone with feet, which this wasn't."
"Dr. Curtis," I grabbed a corner of his hunting coat. "Please, please? What happened? Tell me! I've got to know."
He looked at me and sobered. "You are taking this seriously, aren't you?" he said wonderingly.
I gulped and nodded.
"Well, it was about five miles above the Half Circle Star Ranch, where the heavy pine growth begins. And so help me, a trombone and a bass drum marched in the air across the road, the bass drum marking the time-though come to think of it, the drumsticks just lay on top. I stopped the jeep and ran over to where they had disappeared. I couldn't see anything in the heavy growth there, but I swear I heard a faint Bronx cheer from the trombone. I have no doubt that the two of them were hiding behind a tree, snickering at me." He rubbed his hand across his fuzzy chin. "Maybe I'd better drink that coffee, cold or not."
"'Dr. Curtis," I said urgently, "can you help me? Without waiting for questions? Can you take me out there? Right now?" I reached for my coat. Wordlessly he helped me on with it and opened the door for me. The day was gone and the sky was a clear aqua around the horizon, shading into rose where the sun had dropped behind the hills. It was only a matter of minutes before we were roaring up the hill to the junction. I shouted over the jolting rattle. "It's the Francher kid," I yelled. "I've got to find him and make him put them back before they find out."
"Put who back where?" Dr. Curtis shouted into the sudden diminution of noise as we topped the rise, much to the astonishment of Mrs. Frisney, who was pattering across the intersection with her black umbrella protecting her from the early starshine.
"It's too long to explain," I screamed as we accelerated down the highway. "But he must be stealing the whole orchestra because Mrs. McVey bought him a new suit, and I've got to make him take them back or they'll arrest him, then heaven help us all."
"You mean the Francher kid had that bass drum and trombone?" he yelled.
"Yes!" My chest was aching from the tension of speech. "And probably all the rest."
I caught myself with barked knuckles as Dr. Curtis braked to a sudden stop.
"Now look," he said, "let's get this straight. You're talking wilder than I am. Do you mean to say that that kid is swiping a whole orchestra?"
"Yes, don't ask me how. I don't know how, but he can do it-" I grabbed his sleeve. "But he said you knew! The day you left on your trip, I mean, be said you knew someone who would know. We were waiting for you!"
"Well, I'll be blowed!" he said in slow wonder. "Well, dang me!" He ran his hand over his face. "So now it's my turn!" He reached for the ignition key. "Gangway, Jemmy!" he shouted.
"'Here I come with another! Yours or mine, Jemmy? Yours or mine?"
It was as though his outlandish words had tripped a trigger. Suddenly all this strangeness, this out-of-stepness became a mad foolishness. Despairingly I wished I'd never seen Willow Creek or the Francher kid or a harmonica that danced alone or Twyla's tilted side glance, or Dr. Curtis or the white road dimming in the rapid coming of night. I huddled down in my coat, my eyes
stinging with weary hopeless tears, and the only comfort I could find was in visualizing myself twisting my hated braces into rigid confetti and spattering the road with it.
I roused as Dr. Curtis braked the jeep to a stop. "It was about there," he said, peering through the dusk.
"It's mighty deserted up here-the raw end of isolation. The kid's probably scared by now and plenty willing to come home."
"Not the Francher kid," I said. "He's not the run-of-the-mill type kid."
"Oh, so!" Dr. Curtis said. "I'd forgotten."
Then there it was. At first I thought it the evening wind in the pines, but it deepened and swelled and grew into a thunderous magnificent shaking chord-a whole orchestra giving tongue. Then, one by one, the instruments soloed, running their scales, displaying their intervals, parading their possibilities. Somewhere between the strings and woodwinds I eased out of the jeep.
"You stay here," I half whispered. "I'll go find him. You wait."
It was like walking through a rainstorm, the notes spattering all around me, the shrill lightning of the piccolos and the muttering thunder of the drums. There was no melody, only a child running gleefully through a candy store, snatching greedily at everything, gathering delight by the handful and throwing it away for the sheer pleasure of having enough to be able to throw it.
I struggled up the rise above the road, forgetting in my preoccupation to be wary of unfamiliar territory in the half-dark. There they were, in the sand hollow beyond the rise-all the instruments ranged in orderly precise rows as though at a recital, each one wrapped in a sudden shadowy silence, broken only by the shivery giggle of the cymbals which hastily stilled themselves against the sand.
"Who's there?" He was a rigid figure, poised atop a boulder, arms half lifted.
"Francher," I said.
"Oh." He slid through the air to me. "I'm not hiding any more," be said. "I'm going to be me all the time now."
"Francher," I said bluntly, "you're a thief."
He jerked in protest. "I'm not either-"
"If this is being you, you're a thief. You stole these instruments."
He groped for words, then burst out: "They stole my money! They stole all my music." " 'They'?" I asked. "'Francher, you can't lump people together and call them 'they.' Did I steal your money? Or Twyla-or Mrs. Frisney-or Rigo?"
"Maybe you didn't put your hands on it," the Francher kid said. "But you stood around and let McVey take it."
"That's a guilt humanity has shared since the beginning. Standing around and letting wrong things happen. But even Mrs. McVey felt she was helping you. She didn't sit down and decide to rob you. Some people have the idea that children don't have any exclusive possessions but what they have belongs to the adults who care for them. Mrs. McVey thinks that way. Which is quite a different thing from deliberately stealing from strangers. What about the owners of all these instruments? What have they done to deserve your ill will?"
"They're people," he said stubbornly. "And I'm not going to be people any more." Slowly he lifted himself into the air and turned himself upside down. "See," he said, hanging above the hillside. "People can't do things like this."
"No," I said. "But apparently whatever kind of creature you have decided to be can't keep his shirttails in either."
Hastily he scrabbled his shirt back over his hare midriff and righted himself. There was an awkward silence in the shadowy hollow, then I asked:
"What are you going to do about the instruments?"
"Oh, they can have them back when I'm through with them-if they can find them," he said contemptuously. "I'm going to play them to pieces tonight." The
trumpet jabbed brightly through the dusk and the violins shimmered a silver obbligato.
"And every downbeat will say 'thief,'" I said. "And every roll of the drums will growl 'stolen.'"
"I don't care, I don't care!" he almost yelled. " 'Thief' and 'stolen" are words for people and I'm not going to be people any more, I told you!"
"What are you going to be?" I asked, leaning wearily against a tree trunk. "An animal?"
"No sir." He was having trouble deciding what to do with his hands. "I'm going to be more than just a human."
"Well, for a more-than-human this kind of behavior doesn't show very many smarts. If you're going to be more than human you have to be thoroughly a human first. If you're going to be better than a human you have to be the best a human can be, first-then go on from there. Being entirely different is no way to make a big impression on people. You have to be able to outdo them at their own game first and then go beyond them. It won't matter to them that you can fly like a bird unless you can walk straight like a man, first. To most people different is wrong. Oh, they'd probably say, "My goodness! How-wonderful!' when you first pulled some fancy trick, but-" I hesitated, wondering if I were being wise, "but they'd forget you pretty quick, just as they would any cheap carnival attraction."
He jerked at my words, his fists clenched.
"You're as bad as the rest." His words were tight and bitter.
"You think I'm just a freak-"
"I think you're an unhappy person, because you're not sure who you are or what you are, but you'll have a much worse time trying to make an identity for yourself if you tangle with the law."
"The law doesn't apply to me," he said coldly. "Because I know who I am-"
"Do you, Francher?" I asked softly. "Where did your mother come from? Why could she walk through the minds of others? Who are you, Francher? Are you going to cut yourself off from people before you even try to find out just what wonders you are capable of? Not these little sideshow deals, but maybe miracles that really count." I swallowed hard as I looked at his averted face, shadowy in the dusk. My own face was congealing from the cold wind that had risen, but he didn't even shiver in its iciness, though he had no jacket on. My lips moved stiffly.
"Both of us know you could get away with this lawlessness, but you know as well as I do that if you take this first step you won't ever be able to untake it. And, how do we know, it might make it impossible for you to be accepted by your own kind-if you're right in saying there are others. Surely they're above common theft. And Dr. Curtis is due back from his hunting trip. So close to knowing-maybe-"I didn't know your mother, Francher, but I do know this is not the dream she had for you. This is not why she endured hunger and hiding, terror and panic places-"
I turned and stumbled away from him, making my way back to the road. It was dark, horribly dark, around me and in me as I wailed soundlessly for this My Child. Somewhere before I got back Dr. Curtis was helping me. He got me back into the jeep and pried my frozen fingers from my crutches and warmed my hands between his broad-gloved palms.
"He isn't of this world, you know," he said. "At least his parents or grandparents weren't. There are others like him. I've been hunting with some of them. He doesn't know, evidently, nor did his mother, but he can find his People. I wanted to tell you to help you persuade him-"
I started to reach for my crutches, peering through the dark, then I relaxed. "No," I said with tingling lips. "It wouldn't be any good if he only responded to bribes. He has to decide now, with the scales weighted against him. He's got to push into his new world. He can't just slide in limply. You kill a chick if you help it hatch."
I dabbled all the way home at tears for a My Child, lost in a wilderness I couldn't chart, bound in. a captivity from which I couldn't free him.
Dr. Curtis saw me to the door of my room. He lifted my averted face and wiped it.
"Don't worry," he said. "I promise you the Francher kid will be taken care of."
"Yes," I said, closing my eyes against the nearness of his. "By the sheriff if they catch him. They'll discover the loss of the orchestra any minute now, if they haven't already."
"You made him think," he said. "He wouldn't have stood still for all that if you hadn't."
"Too late," I said. "A thought too late."
Alone in my room I huddled on my bed, trying not to think of anything. I lay there until I was stiff with the cold, then I crept into my warm woolly robe up to my chin. I sat in the darkness there by the window, looking out at the lacy ghosts of the cottonwood trees, in the dim moonlight. How long would it be before some kindly soul would come blundering in to regale me with the latest about the Francher kid?
I put my elbows on the window sill and leaned my face on my hands, the heels of my palms pressing against my eyes. "Oh, Francher My Child, My lonely lost Child-"
"I'm not lost." I lifted a startled face. The voice was so soft. Maybe I had imagined…
"No, I'm here." The Francher kid stepped out into the milky glow of the moon, moving with a strange new strength and assurance, quite divorced from his usual teen-age gangling.
"Oh, Francher-" I couldn't let myself sob, but my voice caught on the last of his name.
"It's okay," he said. "I took them all back."
My shoulders ached as the tension ran out of them.
"I didn't have time to get them all back in the hall but I stacked them carefully on the front porch." A glimmer of a smile crossed his face. "I guess they'll wonder how they got out there."
"I'm so sorry about your money," I said awkwardly.
He looked at me soberly. "I can save again. I'll get it yet. Someday I'll have my music. It doesn't have to be now."
Suddenly a warm bubble seemed to be pressing up against my lungs. I felt excitement tingle clear out to my fingertips. I leaned across the sill. "Francher," I cried softly, "you have your music. Now. Remember the harmonica? Remember when you danced with Twyla? Oh, Francher. All sound is is vibration.
"You can vibrate the air without an instrument. Remember the chord you played with the orchestra? Play it again, Francher!"' He looked at me blankly, and then it was as if a candle had been lighted behind his face. "Yes!" he cried. "Yes!"
Softly-oh, softly-because miracles come that way, I heard the chord begin. It swelled richly, fully, softly, until the whole back yard vibrated to it-a whole orchestra crying out in a whisper in the pale moonlight.
"But the tunes!" he cried, taking this miracle at one stride and leaping beyond it. "I don't know any of the tunes for an orchestra!"
"There are books," I said. "Whole books of scores for symphonies and operas and-"
"And when I know the instruments better!" Here was the eager alive voice of the-Francher-kid-who-should-be. "Anything I hear-" The back yard ripped raucously to a couple of bars of the latest rock 'n' roll, then blossomed softly to an "Adoramus Te" and skipped to "The Farmer in the Dell." "Then someday I'll make my own-" Tremulously a rappoor threaded through a melodic phrase and stilled itself.
In the silence that followed the Francher kid looked at me, not at my face but deep inside me somewhere.
"Miss Carolle!" I felt my eyes tingle to tears at his voice.
"You've given me my music!" I could hear him swallow. "I want to give you
something." My hand moved in protest, but he went on quickly, "Please come
outside."
"Like this? I'm in my robe and slippers."
"They're warm enough. Here, I'll help you through the window."
And before I knew it I was over the low sill and clinging dizzily to it from the outside.
"My braces," I said, loathing the words with a horrible loathing. "My crutches."
"No," the Francher kid said. "You don't need them. Walk across the yard, Miss Carolle, all alone."
"I can't!" I cried through my shock. "Oh, Francher, don't tease me!"
"Yes, you can. That's what I'm giving you. I can't mend you but I can give you that much. Walk."
I clung frantically to the sill. Then I saw again Francher and Twyla spiraling down from the treetops, Francher upside down in the air with his midriff showing, Francher bouncing Balance Rock from field to field.
I let go of the till. I took a step. And another, and another. I held my hands far out from my tides. Glorious freedom from clenched hands and aching elbows! Across the yard I went, every step in the milky moonlight a paean of praise. I turned at the fence and looked back. The Francher kid was crouched by the window in a tight huddle of concentration. I lifted onto tiptoe and half skipped, half ran back to the window, feeling the wind of my going lift my hair back from my cheeks. Oh, it was like a drink after thirst! Like food after famine! Like gates swinging open!
I fell forward and caught at the window till. And cried out inarticulately as I felt the old bonds clamp down again, the old half-death seize hold of me. I crumpled to the ground beside the Francher kid. His tormented eyes looked into mine, his face pale and haggard. His forearm went up to wipe his sweat-drenched face. "I'm sorry," he panted. "That's all I can do now."
My hands reached for him. There was a sudden movement, so quick and so close that I drew my foot back out of the way.
I looked up, startled. Dr. Curtis and a shadowy someone else were standing over us. But the surprise of their being there was drowned in the sudden upsurge of wonderment.
"It moved!" I cried. "My foot moved. Look! Look! It moved!" And I concentrated on it again-hard, hard! After laborious seconds my left big toe wiggled.
My hysterical laugh was half a shout. "One toe is better than none!" I sobbed. "Isn't it, Dr, Curtis? Doesn't that mean that someday-that maybe-?"
He had dropped to his knees and he gathered my frantic hands into his two big quiet ones.
"It might well be," he said. "Jemmy will help us find out."
The other figure knelt beside Dr. Curtis. There was a curious waiting kind of silence, but it wasn't me he was looking at. It wasn't my hands he reached for. It wasn't my voice that cried out softly.
But it was the Francher kid who suddenly launched himself into the arms of the stranger and began to wail, the wild noisy crying of a child-a child who could be brave as long as he was completely lost but who had to dissolve into tears when rescue came.
The stranger looked over the Francher kid's head at Dr. Curtis. "He's mine," he said. "But she's almost one of yours."
It could all have been a dream, or a mad explosion of imagination of some sort; but they don't come any less imaginative than Mrs. McVey, and I know she will never forget the Francher kid. She has another foster child now, a placid plump little girl who loves to sit and listen to woman-talk-but the Francher kid is indelible in the McVey memory. Unborn generations will probably hear of him and his shoes.
And Twyla-she will carry his magic to her grave, unless (and I know she sometimes hopes prayerfully) Francher someday goes back for her.
Jemmy brought him to Cougar Canyon, and here they are helping him sort out all his many gifts and capabilities-some of which are unique to him-so that he will be able, finally, to fit into his most effective slot in their scheme of things. They tell me that there are those of this world who are developing even now in the footsteps of the People. That's what Jemmy meant when he told Dr. Curtis I was almost one of his.
And I am walking. Dr. Curtis brought Bethie. She only touched me softly with her hands and read me to Dr. Curtis. And I had to accept it then-that it was mostly myself that stood in my own way. That my doctor had been right: that time, patience and believing could make me whole again.
The more I think about it the more I think that those three words are the key to almost everything.
Time, patience and believing-and the greatest of these is believing.
LEA SAT in the dark of the bedroom and swung her feet over the edge of the bed. She groped for and shrugged into robe and huddled it around her. She went softly to the window and sat down on the broad sill. A lopsided moon rolled in the clouds above the hills, and all the Canyon lay ebony and ivory under its lights. Lea could see the haphazard dotting of houses that made up the community. All were dark except for one far window near the creek cliff.
Suddenly the whole scene seemed to take a sharp turn, completely out of focus. The hills and canyons became as strange as though she were looking at a moonscape or the hidden hills of Venus. Nothing looked familiar; even the moon suddenly became a leering frightening thing that could come closer and closer and closer. Lea hid her face in the bend of her elbow and drew her knees up sharply to support her shaking arms.
"What am I doing here?" she whispered. "What on earth am I doing here? I don't belong here. I've got to get away. What have I to do with all these-these-creatures? I don't believe them! I don't believe anything. It's madness. I've gone mad somewhere along the way. This must be an asylum. All these evenings-just pooling madnesses to see if a sanity will come out of it!"
She shuddered and lifted her head slowly, reluctantly opening her eyes. Determinedly she stared at the moon and the hills and the billowing clouds until they came back to familiarity. "A madness," she whispered. "But such a comforting madness. If only I could stay here forever-" Wistful tears blurred the moon. "If only, if only!
"Fool!" Lea buried her face fiercely on her knees again. "Make up your mind. Is this or isn't this insanity? You can't have it both ways-not at one time." Then the wistful one whispered, "If this is insanity-I'll take it anyway. Whatever it is it makes a wonderful kind of sense that I've never been able to find before. I'm so tired of suspecting everything. Miss Carolle said the greatest was believing. I've got to believe, whether I'm mistaken or not." She leaned her forehead against the cold glass of the window, her eyes intent on the far light. "I wonder what their wakefulness is," she sighed.
She shivered away from the chin of the glass and rested her cheek on her knees again.
"'But it is time," she thought. "Time for me to take a hand in my drifting. That's all it is, my staying here. Drifting in the warm waters of prebirth. Oh, it's lovely here. No worries about earning a living. No worries about what to do. No wondering which branch of the Y in the road to take. But it can't last." She turned her face and looked up at the moon. "Nothing is forever," she smiled wryly, "though unhappiness comes pretty close to it.
"How long can I expect Karen to take care of me? I'm no help to anyone. I have nothing to contribute. I'm a drag on her whatever she does. And I can't-how can I ever get cured of anything in such a protected environment? I've got to go out and learn to look the world full in the face." Her mouth
twisted.
"And even spit in its eye if necessary."
"Oh, I can't, I can't," one of her wailed. "Pull the ground up over me and let me be quit of everything."
"Shut up!" Lea answered sternly. "I'm running things now. Get dressed. We're leaving."
She dressed hastily in the darkness beyond the reach of the moonlight, tears flooding down her face. As she bent over to slip her shoes on she crumpled against the bed and sobbed deep wrenching sobs for a moment, then finished dressing. She put on her own freshly laundered clothes. She shrugged into her coat-"nearly new"-and gathered up her purse.
"Money-" she thought. I have no money­
She dumped the purse on the bed. The few articles clinked on the bedspread. "I threw everything else away before I left-" able at last to remember having without darkness descending upon her, "and spent my last dollar-" She opened her billfold and spread it wide. "Not a cent." She tugged out the miscellany of cards in the card compartment-little rectangles out of the past. "Why didn't I throw these out, too? Useless-" She started to cram them back blindly into the compartment, but her fingers hesitated on a projecting corner. She pulled out a thin navy-blue folder.
"Well! I did forget! My traveler's checks-if there's anything left." She unsnapped the folder and fingered the thin crisp sheaf. "Enough," she whispered. "Enough for running again-" She dumped everything back into her purse, then she opened the top dresser drawer. A faint blue light touched the outline of her face. She picked up the koomatka and turned it in her hand. She closed her fingers softly over it as she tore the margin from a magazine on the dresser top. She scrawled on it, "Thank you," and weighted the scrap of paper with the koomatka.
The shadows were so black, but she was afraid to walk in the light. She stumbled down from the house toward the road, not letting herself think of the miles and miles to be covered before reaching Kerry Canyon or anywhere. She had just reached the road when she started convulsively and muffled a cry against her clenched fists. Something was moving in the moonlight. She stood paralyzed in the shadow.
"Oh, hi!" came a cheerful voice, and the figure turned to her. "Just getting ready to leave. Didn't know anyone was going in, this trip. You just about got left. Climb in-"
Wordlessly Lea climbed into the battered old pickup.
"Some old jalopy, isn't it?" The fellow went on blithely, slamming the door and hooking it shut with a piece of baling wire. "I guess if you keep anything long enough it'll turn into an antique. This turned long ago! That's the only reason I can think of for their keeping it."
Lea made a vague noise and clutched the side of the car grimly as it took off and raced down the road a yard above the white gravelly surface.
"I haven't noticed you around," the driver said, "but then there's more people here than ever in the history of the Canyon with all this excitement going on. It's my first visit. It's comforting somehow, knowing there are so many of us, isn't it?" "Yes, it is." Lea's voice was a little rusty. "It's a wonderful feeling."
"Nuisance, though, having to make all our trips in and out by night. They say that they used to be able to lift at least across Jackass Flat even in the daytime and then wheel in the rest of the way. But it's getting mighty close to dude season and we have to be more careful than during the winter. Travel at night. Wheel in from Widow's Peak. Lousy road, too. Takes twice as long. Have you decided yet?"
"Decided?" Lea glanced at him in the moonlight.
"Oh, I know I have no business asking," he smiled, "but it's what everyone is wondering." He sobered, leaning his arms on the steering wheel. "I've decided. Six times. Thought I'd finally decided for sure. Then comes a moonlight night
like this-" He looked out over the vast panorama of hills and plains and far reaches-and sighed.
The rest of the trip was made in silence. Lea laughed shakily at her own clutching terror as the wheels touched down with a thud on the road near Widow's Peak. After that, conversation was impossible over the jolting bumping bouncing progress of the truck.
They arrived at Kerry Canyon just as the sunlight washed across the moon. The driver unhooked the door for her and let her out into the shivery dawn.
"We're in and out almost every morning and evening," he said. "You coming back tonight?"
"No." Lea shivered and huddled into her coat. "Not tonight."
"Don't be too long," the driver smiled. "It can't be much longer, you know. If you get back when no truck's in, just call Mmm. Karen's Receptor this week. Bethie next. Someone'll come in to get you."
"Thank you," Lea said. "Thanks a lot." And she turned blindly away from his good-by.
The diner next to the bus stop was small and stuffy, clumsy still with the weight of the night, not quite awake in the bare drafty dawn. The cup of coffee was hot but hurried, and a little weak. Lea sipped and set it down, staring into its dark shaken depths.
"Even if this is all," she thought, "if I'm never to have any more of order and peace and sense of direction-why, I've at least had a glimpse, and some people never get even that much.
I think I have the key now-the almost impossible key to my locked door. Time, patience and believing-and the greatest of these is believing."
After a while she sipped again, not looking up, and found that the coffee had cooled.
"Hot it up for you?" A new waitress was behind the counter, briskly tying her apron strings. "Bus'll be along in just a little while."
"Thank you." Lea held out her cup, firmly putting away the vision of a cup of coffee that had steamed gently far into the morning, waiting, patient.
Time is a word-a shadow of an idea; but always, always, out of the whirlwind of events, the multiplicity of human activities or the endless boredom of disinterest, there is the sky –the sky with all its unchanging changeableness showing the variations of Now and the stability of Forever. There are the stars, the square-set corners of our eternities that wheel and turn and always find their way back. There are the transient tumbled clouds, the windy wisps of mares' tails, the crackling mackerel skies and the romping delightful tumult of the thunderstorms. And the moon-the moon that dreams and sets to dreaming-that mends the world with its compassionate light and makes everything look as though newness is forever.
On such a night as this…
Lea leaned on the railing and sighed into the moonlight. "Was it two such moons ago or only one that she bad been on the bridge or fainting in the skies or receiving in the crisp mountain twilight love's gift of light from a child? She had shattered the rigidness of her old time-pattern and had not yet confined herself in a new one. Time had not yet paced itself into any sort of uniformity for her.
Tomorrow Grace would be hack from her appendectomy, back to her job at the Lodge, the job Lea had been fortunate enough to step right into. But now this lame little temporary refuge would be gone. It meant another step into uncertainty. Lea would be free again, free from the clatter of the kitchen and dining room, free to go into the bondage of aimlessness again.
"Except that I have come a little way out of my darkness into a twilight zone. And if I take this next step patiently and believingly-"
"It will lead you right back to the Canyon-" The laughing voice came softly.
Lea whirled with an inarticulate cry. Then she was clutching Karen and crying, "Oh, Karen! Karen!"
"Watch it! Watch it!" Karen laughed, her arms tender around Lea's shaken shoulders. "Don't bruise the body! Oh, Lea! It's good to see you again! This
is a better suicide-type place than that bridge." Her voice ran on, covering Lea's struggle for self-possession. "Want me to push you over here? Must be half a mile straight down. And into a river, yet-a river with water."
"Wet water," Lea quavered, releasing Karen and rubbing her arm across her wet cheeks. "And much too cold for comfortable dying. Oh, Karen! I was such a fool! Just because my eyes were shut I thought the sun had been turned off. Such a f-fool" She gulped.
"Always last year a fool," Karen said. "Which isn't too bad if this year we know it and aren't the same kind of fool. When can you come back with me?"
"Back with you?" Lea stared. "You mean back to the Canyon?"
"Where else?" Karen asked. "For one thing you didn't finish all the installments-"
"But surely by now-"
"Not quite yet," Karen said. "You haven't even missed one. The last one should be ready by the time we get back. You see, just after you left-Well, you'll hear it all later. But I'm so sorry you left when you did. I didn't get to take you over the hill-"
"But the hill's still there, isn't it?" Lea smiled. "The eternal hills-?"
"Yes," Karen sighed. "The hill's still there but I could take anyone there now. Well, it can't be helped. When can you leave?"
"Tomorrow Grace will be back," Lea said. "I was lucky to get this job when I did. It helped tide me over-"
"As tiding-over goes it's pretty good," Karen agreed. "But it isn't a belonging-type thing for you." Lea shivered, suddenly cold in the soul, fearing a change of pattern. "It'll do."
"Nothing will do," Karen said sharply, "if it's just a make-do, a time-filler, a drifting. If you won't fill the slot you were meant to you might as well just sit and count your fingers. Otherwise you just interfere with everything."
"Oh, I'm willing to try to fill my slot. It's just that I'm still in the uncomfortable process of trying to find out what rating I am in whose category, and, even if I don't like it much, I'm beginning to feel that I belong to something and that I'm heading somewhere."
"Well, your most immediate somewhere is the Canyon," Karen said. "I'll be by for you tomorrow evening. You're not so far from us as the People fly! Your luggage?"
Lea laughed. "I have a toothbrush now, and a nightgown."
"Materialist!" Karen put out her forefinger and touched Lea's cheek softly. "The light is coming back. The candle is alight again."
"Praised be the Power." The words came unlearned to Lea's lips.
"The Presence be with you." Karen lifted to the porch railing, her back to the moon, her face in shadow. Her hands were silvered with moonlight as she reached out to touch Lea's two shoulders in farewell.
Before moonrise the next night Lea stood on the dark porch hugging her small bundle to her, shivering from excitement and the wind that strained icily through the pinion trees on the canyon's rim. The featureless bank of gray clouds had spread and spread over the sky since sundown. Moonrise would be a private thing for the upper side of the growing grayness. She started as the shadows above her stirred and coagulated and became a figure.
"Oh, Karen," she cried softly, "I'm afraid. Can't I wait and go by bus? It's going to rain. Look-look!" She held her hand out and felt the sting of the first few random drops.
"Karen sent me." The deep amused voice shook Lea back against the railing. "She said she was afraid your toothbrush and nightgown might have compounded themselves. For some reason or other she seems to have suddenly developed a Charley horse in her lifting muscles. Will I do?"
"But-but-" Lea clutched her bundle tighter. "I can't liftЧитать дальше