Зенна Гендерсон - Holding Wonder

"Whatsa matter with him?" Now the paint was dripping one leg of Gene's Levi's.
"Just slightly wampsy," I said. "Watch that paint. You're making a mess of your clothes"
"Gollee!" He smeared his hand down his pants from hip to knee. "Mom'll kill me!"
I lifted my voice. "It's put-away time. Kipper, will you monitor today?"
The children were swept into organized confusion. I turned back to Vincent. "Better?"
"I'm sorry." Color hadn't come back to his face yet, but it was plumping up from its stricken drawnness. "Sometimes it gets through too sharply-"
"Don't worry about it," I said, pushing his front hair up out of his eyes. "You could drive yourself crazy-"
"Mom says my imagination is a little too vivid-' His mouth corners lifted.
"So 'tis," I smiled at him, "if it must seize upon my imaginary astronaut. There's no point to your harrowing up your soul with what might happen. Problems we have always with us. No need to borrow any."
"I'm not exactly borrowing," he whispered, his shoulder hunching up towards his wincing head. "He never did want to, anyway, and now that they're orbiting, he's still scared. What if-" He straightened resolutely. "I'll help Gene." He slid away before I could stop him.
"Vincent," I called. "Who's orbiting-" And just then Justin dumped over the whole stack of jigsaw puzzles, upside down. That ended any further questions I might have had.
That evening I pushed the newspaper aside and thoughtfully lifted my coffee cup. I stared past its rim and out into the gathering darkness. This was the local newspaper which was still struggling to become a big metropolitan daily after half a century of being a four-page county weekly. Sometimes its reach exceeded its grasp, and it had to bolster short columns with little folksy-type squibs. I re-read the one that had caught my eye. Morris was usually good for an item or two. I watched for them since he had had a conversation with a friend of mine I'd lost track of.
Local ham operator, Morris Staviski, says the Russians have a new manned sputnik in orbit. He says he has monitored radio signals from the capsule. He can't tell what they're saying, but he says they're talking Russian. He knows what Russian sounds like because his grandmother was Russian.
"Hmm," I thought. "I wonder. Maybe Vincent knows Morris. Maybe that's where he
got this orbiting bit." So the next day I asked him.
"Staviski?" He frowned a little. "No, ma'am, I don't know anyone named Staviski. At least I don't remember the name. Should I?" "Not necessarily," I said, "I just wondered. He's a ham radio operator-"
"Oh!" His face flushed happily. "I'm working on the code now so I can take the test next time it's given in Winter Wells! Maybe I'll get to talk to him sometimes!"
"Me, too!" said Gene. "I'm learning the code, too!"
"He's a little handicapped, though," Vincent smiled. "He can't tell a dit from a dah yet!"
The next morning Vincent crept into school with all the sun gone out. He moved like someone in a dream and got farther and farther away. Before morning recess came, I took his temperature. It was normal. But he certainly wasn't. At recess the rapid outflow of children left him stranded in his seat, his pinched face turned to the window, his unfinished work in front of him, his idle pencil in the hand that curved up over the side of his head.
"Vincent!" I called, but there was no sign he even heard me. "Vincent!" He drew a sobbing breath and focused his eyes on me slowly. "Yes, ma'am?" He wet his dry lips.
"What is the matter?" I asked. "Where do you feel bad?"
"Bad?" His eyes unfocused again and his face slowly distorted into a crying mask. With an effort he smoothed it out again. "I'm not the one. It's-it's-" He leaned his shaking chin in the palm of his hand and steadied his elbow on the top of his desk. His knuckles whitened as he clenched his fingers against his mouth.
"Vincent!" I went to him and touched his head lightly.
With a little shudder and a sob, he turned and buried his face against me.
"Oh, Teacher! Teacher!" A quick look out the window showed me that all the students were down in the creek bed building sand forts. Eight-year-old pride is easily bruised. I led Vincent up to my desk and took him onto my lap. For a while we sat there, my cheek pressed to his head as I rocked silently. His hair was spiky against my face and smelled a little like a baby chick's feathers.
"He's afraid! He's afraid!" He finally whispered, his eyes tight shut. "The other one is dead. It's broken so it can't come back. He's afraid! And the dead one keeps looking at him with blood on his mouth! And he can't come down! His hands are bleeding! He hit the walls wanting to get out. But there's no air outside!"
"Vincent," I went on rocking, "have you been telling yourself stories until you believe them?"
"No!" He buried his face against my shoulder, his body tense. "I know! I know! I can hear him! He screamed at first, but now he's too scared. Now he-' Vincent stilled on my lap. He lifted his face-listening. The anguish slowly smoothed away. "It's gone again! He must go to sleep. Or unconscious. I don't hear him all the time." "What was he saying?" I asked, caught up in his-well, whatever it was.
"I don't know." Vincent slid from my lap, his face still wary: "I don't know his language."
"But you said-" I protested. "How do you know what he's feeling if you don't even know-"
He smiled his little lip-lift. "When you look at one of us kids without a word and your left eyebrow goes up-what do you mean?" "Well, that depends on what who's doing," I flushed.
"If it's for me, I know what you mean. And I stop it. So do the other kids about themselves. That's the way I know this." He started back to his desk. "I'd better get my spelling done."
"Is that the one that's orbiting?" I asked hopefully, wanting to tie something to something.
"Orbiting?" Vincent was busily writing. "That's the sixth word. I'm only on the fourth."
That afternoon I finally put aside the unit tests I'd been checking and looked at the clock. Five o'clock. And at my hands. Filthy. And assessed the ache across my shoulders, the hollow in my stomach, and decided to spend the night right where I was. I didn't even straighten my desk, but turned my weary back on it and unlocked the door to the teacherage.
I kicked off my shoes, flipped on the floor lamp and turned up the thermostat to take the dank chill out of the small apartment. The cupboards yielded enough supplies to make an entirely satisfying meal. Afterwards, I turned the lights low and sat curled up at one end of the couch listening to one of my Acker Bilke records while I drank my coffee. I flexed my toes in blissful comfort as I let the clear, concise, tidy notes of the clarinet clear away my cobwebs of fatigue. Instead of purring, I composed another strophe to my Praise Song:
Praise God for Fedness-and Warmness-and Sheltered ness-and Darkness-and Lightness-and Cleanness-and Quietness-and Unharriedness-
I dozed then for a while and woke to stillness. The stereo had turned itself off, and it was so still I could hear the wind in the oak trees and the far, unmusical blat of a diesel train. And I also could hear a repetition of the sound that had wakened me.
Someone was in the schoolroom.
I felt a throb of fright and wondered if I had locked the teacherage door. But I knew I had locked the school door just after four o'clock. Of course, a bent bobby pin and your tongue in the correct corner of your mouth and you could open the old lock. But what-who would want to? What was in there? The stealthy noises went on. I heard the creak of the loose board in the back of the room. I heard the yaaaawn of the double front door hinges and a thud! and clatter on the front porch.
Half paralyzed with fright, I crept to the little window that looked out onto the porch. Cautiously I separated two of the slats of the blind and peered out into the thin slice of moonlight. I gasped and let the slats fall.
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