Susie and Jerry were waiting, clinging to each other’s hands as they always were. They were shy and withdrawn, but both were radiant because of starting school. Jerry, who did almost all the talking for the two of them, answered our greetings with a shy hello.
Then Susie surprised us all by exclaiming, “We’re going to school!”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” I replied, gathering her cold little hand into mine. “And you’re going to have the prettiest teacher we ever had.”
But Susie had retired into blushing confusion and didn’t say another word all the way to school.
I was worried about Jake and Derek. They were walking apart from us, whispering, looking over at us and laughing. They were cooking up some kind of mischief for Miss Carmody. And more than anything I wanted her to stay. I found right then that there would be years ahead of me before I became an Old One. I tried to go into Derek and Jake to find out what was cooking, but try as I might I couldn’t get past the sibilance of their snickers and the hard flat brightness of their eyes.
We were turning off the road into the school yard when Jemmy, who should have been up at the mine long since, suddenly stepped out of the bushes in front of us, his hands behind him. He glared at Jake and Derek and then at the rest of the children.
“You kids mind your manners when you get to school,” he snapped, scowling. “And you Kroginolds just try anything funny and I’ll lift you to Old Baldy and platt the twishers on you. This is one teacher we’re going to keep.”
Susie and Jerry clung together in speechless terror. The Kroginolds turned red and pushed out belligerent jaws. The rest of us just stared at Jemmy, who never raised his voice and never pushed his weight around.
“I mean it, Jake and Derek. You try getting out of line and the Old Ones will find a few answers they’ve been looking for—especially about the bell in Kerry Canyon.”
The Kroginolds exchanged looks of dismay and the girls sucked in breaths of astonishment. One of the most rigorously enforced rules of the Group concerns showing off outside the community. If Derek and Jake had been involved in ringing that bell all night last Fourth of July—well!
“Now you kids, scoot!” Jemmy jerked his head toward the school-house, and the terrified twins scudded down the leaf-strewn path like a pair of bright leaves themselves, followed by the rest of the children, with the Kroginolds looking sullenly back over their shoulders and muttering.
Jemmy ducked his head and scowled. “It’s time they got civilized anyway. There’s no sense to our losing teachers all the time.”
“No,” I said noncommittally.
“There’s no point in scaring her to death.” Jemmy was intent on the leaves he was kicking with one foot.
“No,” I agreed, suppressing my smile.
Then Jemmy smiled ruefully in amusement at himself. “I should waste words with you? Here.” He took his hands from behind him and thrust a bouquet of burning-bright autumn leaves into my arms. “They’re from you to her. Something pretty for the first day.”
“Oh, Jemmy!” I cried through the scarlet and crimson and gold. “They’re beautiful. You’ve been up on Baldy this morning.”
“That’s right. But she won’t know where they came from.” And he was gone.
I hurried to catch up with the children before they got to the door. Suddenly overcome with shyness, they were milling around the porch steps, each trying to hide behind the others.
“Oh, for goodness’ sakes!” I whispered to our kids. “You ate breakfast with her this morning. She won’t bite. Go on in.”
But I found myself shouldered to the front and leading the subdued group into the schoolroom. While I was giving the bouquet of leaves to Miss Carmody, the others with the ease of established habit slid into their usual seats, leaving only the twins, stricken and white, standing alone.
Miss Carmody, dropping the leaves on her desk, knelt quickly beside them, pried a hand of each gently free from their frenzied clutching and held them in hers.
“I’m so glad you came to school,” she said in her warm rich voice. “I need a first grade to make the school work out right and I have a seat that must have been built on purpose for twins.”
And she led them over to the side of the room, close enough to the old potbellied stove for Outside comfort later and near enough to the window to see out. There, in dusted glory, stood one of the old double desks that the Group must have inherited from some ghost town out in the hills. There were two wooden boxes for footstools for small dangling feet and, spouting like a flame from the old inkwell hole, a spray of vivid red leaves—matchmates to those Jemmy had given me.
The twins slid into the desk, never loosening hands, and stared up at Miss Carmody, wide-eyed. She smiled back at them and, leaning forward, poked her fingertip into the deep dimple in each round chin.
“Buried smiles,” she said, and the two scared faces lighted up briefly with wavery smiles. Then Miss Carmody turned to the rest of us.
I never did hear her introductory words. I was too busy mulling over the spray of leaves and how she came to know the identical routine, words and all, that the twins’ mother used to make them smile, and how on earth she knew about the old desks in the shed. But by the time we rose to salute the flag and sing our morning song I had it figured out. Father must have briefed her on the way home last night. The twins were an ever-present concern of the whole Group, and we were all especially anxious to have their first year a successful one. Also, Father knew the smile routine and where the old desks were stored. As for the spray of leaves, well, some did grow this low on the mountain and frost is tricky at leaf-turning time.
So school was launched and went along smoothly. Miss Carmody was a good teacher and even the Kroginolds found their studies interesting.
They hadn’t tried any tricks since Jemmy had threatened them. That is, except that silly deal with the chalk. Miss Carmody was explaining something on the board and was groping sideways for the chalk to add to the lesson. Jake deliberately lifted the chalk every time she almost had it. I was just ready to do something about it when Miss Carmody snapped her fingers with annoyance and grasped the chalk firmly. Jake caught my eye about then and shrank about six inches in girth and height. I didn’t tell Jemmy, but Jake’s fear that I might kept him straight for a long time.
The twins were really blossoming. They laughed and played with the rest of the kids, and Jerry even went off occasionally with the other boys at noontime, coming back as disheveled and wet as the others after a dam-building session in the creek.
Miss Carmody fitted so well into the community and was so well liked by us kids that it began to look like we’d finally keep a teacher all year. Already she had withstood some of the shocks that had sent our other teachers screaming. For instance...
The first time Susie got a robin-redbreast sticker on her bookmark for reading a whole page—six lines—perfectly, she lifted all the way back to her seat, literally walking about four inches in the air. I held my breath until she sat down and was caressing the glossy sticker with one finger, then I sneaked a cautious look at Miss Carmody. She was sitting very erect, her hands clutching both ends of her desk as though in the act of rising, a look of incredulous surprise on her face. Then she relaxed, shook her head and smiled, and busied herself with some papers.
I let my breath out cautiously. The last teacher but two went into hysterics when one of the girls absentmindedly lifted back to her seat because her sore foot hurt. I had hoped Miss Carmody was tougher, and apparently she was.
That same week, one noon hour, Jethro came pelting up to the schoolhouse where Valancy—that’s her first name and I call her by it when we are alone; after all, she’s only four years older than I—was helping me with that gruesome Tests and Measurements I was taking by extension from teachers’ college.
“Hey, Karen!” he yelled through the window. “Can you come out a minute?”
“Why?” I yelled back, annoyed at the interruption just when I was tr
ying to figure what was normal about a normal grade curve.
“There’s need,” Jethro yelled.
I put down my book. “I’m sorry, Valancy. I’ll go see what’s eating him.”
“Should I come, too?” she asked. “If something’s wrong—”
“It’s probably just some silly thing,” I said, edging out fast. When one of the People says, “There’s need,” that means Group business.
“Adonday Veeah!” I muttered at Jethro as we rattled down the steep rocky path to the creek. “What are you trying to do? Get us all in trouble? What’s the matter?”
“Look,” Jethro said, and there were the boys standing around an alarmed but proud Jerry, and above their heads, poised in the air over a half-built rock dam, was a huge boulder.
“Who lifted that?” I gasped.
“I did,” Jerry volunteered, blushing crimson.
I turned on Jethro. “Well, why didn’t you platt the twishers on it? You didn’t have to come running—”
“On that?” Jethro squeaked. “You know very well we’re not allowed to lift anything that big, let alone platt it. Besides,” shamefaced, “I can’t remember that dern girl stuff.”
“Oh, Jethro! You’re so stupid sometimes!” I turned to Jerry. “How on earth did you ever lift anything that big?”
He squirmed. “I watched Daddy at the mine once.”
“Does he let you lift at home?” I asked severely.
“I don’t know.” Jerry squashed mud with one shoe, hanging his head. “I never lifted anything before.”
“Well, you know better. You kids aren’t allowed to lift anything an Outsider your age can’t handle alone. And not even that if you can’t platt it afterward.”
“I know it.” Jerry was still torn between embarrassment and pride.
“Well, remember it.” And taking a handful of sun I platted the twishers and set the boulder back on the hillside where it belonged.
Platting does come easier to the girls—sunshine platting, that is. Of course only the Old Ones do the sun-and-rain one, and only the very Oldest of them all would dare the moonlight-and-dark, which can move mountains. But that was still no excuse for Jethro to forget and run the risk of having Valancy see what she mustn’t see.
It wasn’t until I was almost back to the schoolhouse that it dawned on me. Jerry had lifted! Kids his age usually lift play stuff almost from the time they walk. That doesn’t need platting because it’s just a matter of a few inches and a few seconds, so gravity manages the return. But Jerry and Susie never had. They were finally beginning to catch up. Maybe it was just the Crossing that slowed them down—and maybe only the Clarinades. In my delight I forgot and lifted to the school porch without benefit of the steps. But Valancy was putting up pictures on the high old-fashioned molding just below the ceiling, so no harm was done. She flushed from her efforts and asked me to bring the step stool so she could finish them. I brought it and steadied it for her—and then nearly let her fall as I stared. How had she hung those first four pictures before I got there?
~ * ~
The weather was unnaturally dry all fall. We didn’t mind it much because rain with an Outsider around is awfully messy. We have to let ourselves get wet. But when November came and went and Christmas was almost upon us and there was practically no rain and no snow at all, we all began to get worried. The creek dropped to a trickle and then to scattered puddles and then went dry. Finally the Old Ones had to spend an evening at the Group reservoir doing something about our dwindling water supply. They wanted to get rid of Valancy for the evening, just in case, so Jemmy volunteered to take her to Kerry to the show. I was still awake when they got home long after midnight. Since I began to develop the Gift I have had long periods of restlessness when it seems I have no apartness but am of every person in the Group. The training I should start soon will help me shut out the others except when I want them. The only thing is that we don’t know who is to train me. Since Grandmother died there has been no Sorter in our Group, and because of the Crossing we have no books or records to help.
Anyway, I was awake and leaning on my window sill in the darkness. They stopped on the porch—Jemmy is bunking at the mine during his stint there. I didn’t have to guess or use a Gift to read the pantomime before me. I closed my eyes and my mind as their shadows merged. Under their strong emotion I could have had free access to their minds, but I had been watching them all fall. I knew in a special way what passed between them, and I knew that Valancy often went to bed in tears and that Jemmy spent too many lonely hours on the crag that juts out over the canyon from high on Old Baldy, as though he were trying to make his heart as inaccessible to Outsiders as the crag is. I knew what he felt, but oddly enough I had never been able to sort Valancy since that first night. There was something very un-Outsiderish and also very un-Groupish about her mind and I couldn’t figure what.
I heard the front door open and close and Valancy’s light steps fading down the hall and then I felt Jemmy calling me outside. I put my coat on over my robe and shivered down the hall. He was waiting by the porch steps, his face still and unhappy in the faint moonlight.
“She won’t have me,” he said flatly.
“Oh, Jemmy! You asked her—”
“Yes. She said no.”
“I’m so sorry.” I huddled down on the top step to cover my cold ankles. “But, Jemmy—”
“Yes, I know!” he retorted savagely. “She’s an Outsider. I have no business even to want her. Well, if she’d have me I wouldn’t hesitate a minute. This purity-of-the-Group deal is—”
“Is fine and right,” I said softly, “as long as it doesn’t touch you personally? But think for a minute, Jemmy. Would you be able to live a life as an Outsider? Just think of the million and one restraints that you would have to impose on yourself—and for the rest of your life, too, or lose her after all. Maybe it’s better to accept ‘no’ now than to try to build something and ruin it completely later. And if there should be children—” I paused. “Could there be children, Jemmy?”
I heard him draw a sharp breath.
“We don’t know,” I went on. “We haven’t had the occasion to find out. Do you want Valancy to be part of the first experiment?”
Jemmy slapped his hat viciously down on his thigh, then he laughed.
“You have the Gift,” he said, though I had never told him. “Have you any idea, sister mine, how little you will be liked when you become an Old One?”
“Grandmother was well liked,” I answered placidly. Then I cried, “Don’t you set me apart, darn you, Jemmy. Isn’t it enough to know that among a different people I am different? Don’t you desert me now!” I was almost in tears.
Jemmy dropped to the step beside me and thumped my shoulder in his old way. “Pull up your socks, Karen. We have to do what we have to do. I was just taking my mad out on you. What a world!” He sighed heavily.
I huddled deeper in my coat, cold of soul.
“But the other one is gone,” I whispered. “The Home.”
And we sat there sharing the poignant sorrow that is a constant undercurrent among the People, even those of us who never actually saw the Home. Father says it’s because of a sort of racial memory.
“But she didn’t say no because she doesn’t love me,” Jemmy went on at last. “She does love me. She told me so.”
“Then why not?” As his sister I couldn’t imagine anyone turning Jemmy down.
Jemmy laughed—a short unhappy laugh. “Because she is different.”
“She’s different?”
“That’s what she said, as though it was pulled out of her. ‘I can’t marry,’ she said. ‘I’m different!’ That’s pretty good, isn’t it, coming from an Outsider!”
“She doesn’t know we’re the People. She must feel that she is different from everyone. I wonder why?”
“I don’t know. There’s something about her, though. A kind of shield or wall that keeps us apart. I’ve never met anything like it in an Outs
ider or in one of the People either. Sometimes it’s like meshing with one of us and then bang! I smash the daylights out of me against that stone wall.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve felt it, too.”
We listened to the silent past-midnight world and then Jemmy stood.
“Well, g’night, Karen. Be seeing you.”
I stood up, too. “Good night, Jemmy.” I watched him start off in the late moonlight. He turned at the gate, his face hidden in the shadows.
Ingathering - The Complete People Stories Page 4
