The Orphan

by Robert Stallman

  “His mother!” she said in mock horror.

  “He was kidding,” Charles began, but he saw that he was not really in the conversation at all and sat back somewhat hurt as the banter went on.

  “Larry, you mean to say,” Claire began, grabbing up the bartender’s hand, wet with wash water. “And I was going to take him to Crown Point and marry him.”

  “Claire, you’re the same as ever,” the bartender said, slipping his wet hand back into the wash water.

  “Well you’re not, you old muskrat,” she said, finishing her drink. “You’re getting bald and experienced looking. And if you don’t chase that one with a new one,” she said, sliding the glass off the bar so that he caught it as it fell, “I’ll burn the hide from this lad’s innocence by telling him about your own youth.”

  The bartender was indeed bald and fat, and not at all handsome, Charles thought, but he glowed under Claire’s jokes and allusions to his lurid past. So there was that drink and another one, and Charles didn’t know if he’d had one glass of wine or three because he couldn’t keep track of his own thoughts, and he kept feeling the stone in his pocket because it was his one charm in an unsafe world, and he didn’t even notice when he could no longer feel the buzzing in the stone, or rather the buzzing seemed to have taken over his whole body while the stone fell still and cold. And then he was being pulled off the stool, and he cracked his eyes open to see a shape in a green hat with a feather like an Indian maiden, or was it Maid Marian with an arrow in her head, taking him by the sleeve and lunging toward the door while confused noises burst around him like multicolored thunder and lights swung double and back to single and then double again, and so did the bartender’s face, and then the cold hit him like a hard slap.

  “C’mon Charlie old fellow, got to get back to the old fireside,” Claire was stuffing him into the car. She left his right leg hanging out in the snow and staggered over to her own side. “H’ve to do the rest yourself, old feller. I can’t bloody well lift yer leg fer ye.”

  He stared down at his leg resting its shoe in the snow and thought of Douglas. How Doug would like to ride in this car, but it mattered so little to Charles, if it was Charles who was mattering at the moment. The car engine roared and something grabbed his neck and pulled on him.

  “Get it in here, now.”

  He pulled the leg up and put it in the car, reaching out over a precarious abyss to get the door handle and pull it shut. The car was lurching backwards and forwards strangely. Charles made a great effort to come awake and saw the red and green sign blinking “State Line Tavern” going to the right and left wildly. At his side, Claire was cursing steadily while she shifted back and forth, and then with a final lunge and spinning and fishtailing, the car shot out and away to the left, leaving the sign flashing red and green on the snow behind them. The motor roared for awhile, Claire shifted down with another curse, and they saw the straight highway stretching away in front of them again.

  It seemed a long time that he was asleep, no sight, no sound, just gone, and then he awoke to a lurch of the car that threw his shoulder against the door.

  “Would you believe what demon rum has made me do, old fellow,” Claire was saying thickly. “We’re heading wrong, going to New York, b’God.” She began singing a song about Broadway and muttering between verses that there was no goddam place to turn around without getting stuck, and then the engine roared as she downshifted and the back end of the car seemed to leave the road, and Charles’s breath went out of him as he saw the lights picking up trees, road, trees, bridge, trees, and realized they were spinning around and around in the road, and now not on the road at all but down, too steep a place, down too fast through drifts, the engine roaring and then suddenly stopping in a terrible silence as the lights seemed to be making the world turn over, and something hit his head so hard he lggan to see sparks and stars, and then saw nothing at all.

  ***

  “Charles! Charles!”

  Someone calling his name. What voice was that? It was too cold to wake up. Go back to sleep. I hurt my head, Mommy.

  “Charles!”

  “Shut up,” Charles said savagely. He tried to raise up and couldn’t move. His body was all folded up with knees by his head, neck bent over so he could hardly breathe, and only his right arm free. There was a great weight on his neck and head. How was that possible? He was upside down!

  “Charles!” The voice was not audible. It was in his mind. It was coming from inside of him. Was he dead?

  “You will be in a short time, Charles, unless you let me help. We will both be frozen to death.”

  “Where’s Claire?” Charles tried to feel around, but his left arm was pinned tightly under something, and his neck was beginning to hurt like hell along with the side of his head. He could not even move his feet or feel them. and he thought with sudden fear that they might be frozen.

  “Not yet, Charles, but they will soon be gone,” the voice said, softly, coolly, as if commenting on someone else’s death. “The woman is alive, I believe, but she is also helpless. She is wedged against your left side.”

  He tried to turn his head and could not. He struggled again, trying to move one leg, but he could only move his right knee slightly up and down, or down and up, since he was on his head and apparently the car was on top of them. He moved his right arm experimentally.

  “It’s in your pocket, Charles, and I believe you can reach it,” the voice said.

  Charles found the pocket with its burden still there, almost against his right cheek. He could touch the stone through the cloth, but he was having trouble finding the entrance to the pocket. If he could just get some room, he thought desperately. To give up the stone now meant he might not get it back. He would be without its protection, subject to the whims of … His body slumped downward slightly, putting its whole weight on his bent neck, and an excruciating agony lanced from his shoulder blade through his neck and up into his already throbbing head.

  “Don’t be a dead hero,” the voice said quietly.

  His eyes spurted tears in the cold silent darkness. “Can’t you help?” he said finally aloud, his whole body beginning to feel far away and numb except for the arrow of pain in his neck and head.

  “Not while you have the stone. You must simply remove it from your person. It need not be far, just out of your possession, I believe.”

  He touched the stone. That was the way in. He grappled with the pocket until it came inside out, and the stone fell into his face, bounced off his chin and was gone somewhere above, or rather below, his head.

  Now I rise and shift.

  It is the most difficult position I have ever been in to use strength. There is no leverage, but the difference in body configuration makes it possible for me to push up hard with my hind feet while I hold the weight on my shoulders instead of neck. The woman’s body is delicate, and I must try not to break any of her bones. I push hard, taking the whole weight on my hind legs and shoulders. The car begins to move with a creaking, tearing noise of metal and ice. I push harder, straining with all my strength, and the weight lifts slowly. I put one forepaw under the side nearest me and try moving the weight sideways as I push up. It is moving up more easily now, more tearing sounds, and I hope some of them are not part of the woman’s body, but we must get out of this, and the only way is to lift it straight off. At last I heave with hind legs and right arm as hard as I can, and the car slides away to the left as something rips apart across my shoulders. The car goes onto its side with a goan and crash of glass, and I hope the woman’s arm or perhaps her head is not beneath the left side. The cloth top of the car is ripped, and I finish the job with my claws, tearing wide strips until I can see the stars and feel the icy wind.

  The top torn away, I wriggle out and feel around for the woman’s arms and head. They are all right so far. I pull her out of the car carefully. It is like sliding some creature from its shell. She is long and soft like a creature taken from its shell. There is blood on her
face, but I sniff her and feel about with my senses, and she seems not seriously injured. Her shoes have come off, but strangely, her hat is still on, the feather sticking up defiantly. It is amusing, and in spite of the cold and my own throbbing head, I laugh, standing in the flat of a frozen pond, the car on its side, the woman in my arms, and that feather sticking up on her head. I laugh as I carry her through the deep snow. It is funny because of the wine. I am still drunk, and that is funny too, so that I am a strange sight on this Christmas night, as I trudge up the snowy bank to the road, a huge, laughing, furry creature carrying a woman with a feather on her head. In the cold wind that does not yet bother me much, I think about walking away with this woman, digging a burrow for her and myself, making her a mate for me. But it is all the wine in my head, and I hear somewhere far back the voice of the boy Charles crying, crying for something. The stone, Charles? I cannot bring it now, Charles. It is nothing to me, but you must see to that. I carry the woman to the road, looking about for a house, but can see none in the whirling snow that is more fierce on the highway than it was down in the ditch. I extend my senses through the bitter cold dark feeling for life, for a house, for warmth. Nothing. I must walk, and now I must keep the woman warm, for she is lightly clothed and already very cold. With nothing to cover her, I can only try to keep her warm with my own body as I trot up the road in the direction from which the car came. What if a car comes along and sees me? I care little enough for that now, having been broken out of my enforced sleep by the whims of this drunken woman. Let them see me. I trot on into the dark, my senses feeling out ahead of us for some house or sign of life, but it is as if the planet has been swept clean of humans. The few bits of life I sense are the wild creatures dying of the cold or curled so deep in sleep that they are almost inorganic. Then I feel a small building ahead and speed up my pace.

  But there is no life there. It is only an abandoned shed, empty but for some wooden flats for fruit and some old sacks in one corner. I lay the woman on the sacks inside and step back into the wind. Feeling to the limit of my senses, I can find no human life or other shelter. I wonder if I should run as far as I can, but no, the woman is very cold already, and she will surely freeze. I must warm her first. I go back into the shed where she is lying as I left her. I close the door and wedge it shut against the wind with some of the boxes. I lie down and take the woman in my arms, wrapping her body in my fur. I put her feet between my hind legs, her hands under my arms, willing more heat from my body. As I feel her icy feet and hands begin to warm, she stirs in my arms, moves her face against the fur of my shoulder. I feel that she is almost conscious, but her mind is not awake, and what she says makes no sense.

  “Roger, you mus’n now, sweetie. What will the hostess think?”

  I find myself rocking the woman in my arms as if she were a young one. Can I feel such emotions for a human being, a woman? I feel very gentle toward this aging woman. It is pleasant to hold her body with mine, and for a time I drift into sleep, erecting my fur to keep the cold away, pulling some of the sacks across our bodies as I drift into a light dream and the wind outside moans in the dark snow.

  When the light begins, I hear Charles crying again, far back where I have pushed him. The woman is warm and breathes easily but is not awake. I allow Charles to come closer.

  “That’s not fair, now,” he says. “You can’t step in like that. I am glad you saved us, I’m really grateful, but it’s my life.”

  “Our life, Charles.”

  “You can’t stay here. There’s going to be people out and find the car, and there’s your tracks coming here.”

  “The wind has blurred them.”

  “Get up now, and let me out!”

  “I am comfortable. I like the woman’s body. She is comfortable. You cannot keep her warm.”

  “If she wakes up and sees you, she’ll die of fright.”

  I enjoy talking with Charles, and while he talks I am holding the woman and feeling how pleasant is her warm body against me. “What of the story, Charles?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Beauty and the Beast.”

  “You’re crazy. That’s just a fairy tale. That never happened.”

  “Perhaps it did. But then the woman was the hero in that story.”

  “She’s not your friend. She’s mine. She doesn’t even know you exist.”

  “I could be her Beast, and she could learn to love me.” I gently slide one paw against the front of her dress below the waist, feeling her sleeping body respond.

  “Stop that,” Charles screams. “That’s awful. Stop it!”

  The woman grunts a tiny little sound of pleasure and puts one arm around my neck.

  “You see, she could like me.”

  “She’s asleep! You’re rotten, doing things to her when she’s asleep.”

  The boy is in a frothing rage. I stop stroking the woman and put my arm back around her. She snuggles closer against me, breathing more quickly.

  “Maybe we are not so different, Charles.”

  “We are,” he says. “You’re not …” Then he screams again, “You’re just keeping me talking while you lie there hugging her.”

  “Now, Charles, I saved your life - again.”

  Silence.

  “I like talking with you, Charles.”

  Silence.

  But unfortunately the boy is right. I am sensing movement outside. There is car noise now, and it stops down the road. Humans get out, three of them. I can almost hear them talking. Well, it has been nice, Mrs. Lanphier, I murmur in her ear. But now we must part. I give you Charles Cahill, boy hero.

  I concentrate and shift.

  Charles sat up, took Claire’s head in his lap and shook her, patting her cheeks and watching her eyelids. “Claire, Claire, wake up. There’s people out there. I’ve got to go out and holler to them.” She hunched her body up with the cold. He shook her again and then rushed to the door where he had some difticulty getting the boxes away and the door open. The cold wind hit his face, and he realized as it made his eyes feel stiff that they would indeed have frozen to death. It must be twenty degrees below zero. He stepped out into the knee-deep snow, noticing the tracks were blurred as the Beast had said. The Beast? He pushed the strange idea out of his mind. His feet and hands already prickled with cold as he took a few steps out into the snow, hearing it snap and creak under his shoes. Down the road a pickup truck had stopped where the Auburn had gone over the embankment. Men were moving up and down the ditch and around the pickup. One of them suddenly noticed the tracks and pointed to Charles. He waved wildly and motioned them to come to the shed. Behind him he heard Claire stirring, and then she appeared in the doorway of the shed, hugging herself with cold.

  “Oh, Charles, my head,” she said thickly. “What did you do with your fur coat?”

  (6)

  In the middle of January, Charles received a small cardboard package with a letter enclosed:

  My Dearest Young Hero,

  I’m sure I saw you carrying this stone amulet on the night I was so very foolish and endangered both our lives. The repairmen who worked on my poor car found it and kindly returned it. If it is not yours, then we have perhaps discovered an ancient archeological site of pre-Colombian relics, and I should make a career of running my car into ditches in hopes of finding more. A friend of mine here in Chicago says it is certainly a rare piece, and he offered me an interesting sum of money for it, so if you would like to sell it sometime in exchange for a year of college, let me know.

  You will be gratified, dearest Charles, to know that I have thought carefully over our last words together at the train station, and I have turned over a new leaf. I have not once visited the Caledonian Isle since leaving your side, and it is my intention to become a complete Blue Nose. Thanks to you, Charles, I have not only had my life saved, I have had it renovated. I do remember you with much affection, and please remember that my invitation to visit or stay with me in Chicago or wherever I might find
myself living is heartfelt and genuine. Keep well and stay as high minded and courageous as I remember you.

  Love,

  Claire Lanphier

  Charles felt that last admonition keenly, for he had been increasingly aware of the burgeoning of some power within him that obsessed his waking moments and took over his dreams with an endless movie of rape and seduction. In school he was for the first time having trouble concentrating on studies, his mind seeming no more than a skittering steam bubble on a burning hot surface. In attempting to memorize the exports of Great Britain’s colonies, he would find his eyes fixed on the pleasing lines of Betty Bailey’s calf, or the fascinating mystery of Flossie Portola’s bosom, or even the swing of Miss Wrigley’s skirt as she walked briskly up the aisle between the desks. His face would burn hotly, and he would curse what he felt was the Beast power inside him that turned his mind and his dreams into a bawdy house of lust. But it was still January, colder that year than many old residents could remember, and there was at least the distraction of cold outdoor sports and long tramps through the snow rabbit hunting with the Bent boys.

  After he received the amulet from Mrs. Lanphier, he seemed miraculously cured. There were still times of daydreaming in the overheated schoolroom as he would catch sight of Brenda Gustafson’s secret smile when she looked at him, or as he touched Betty Bailey’s hand when taking a paper from her and saw her flirtatious look at him, but possession of the stone interposed a barrier between Charles and the unbearable fires of lust he had begun to suffer. In dreams he still found himself doing the most hideously wonderful things, having sexual adventures that would have worn out a Casanova, but these were dreams. Reality had now, at least, taken on a sane appearance again, and he could once again concentrate on school work so that Miss Wrigley smiled more often now and encouraged him again after what she called his “slump” at the beginning of the semester. There was no longer the urge to get up and go out in the middle of the night so that power inside him could romp in the snow and kill things in people’s barns. Charles did not often think of what he might remember from those nights right after Christmas. It was another sort of dream, and if some of the boys at school mentioned wolves coming down from the north and terrible depredations on local livestock, Charles resolutely shut away any sort of memories he might have of those nocturnal massacres, resisting the impulse to say, “That’s a lie, Harry. It wasn’t four sheep. It was only two.”