Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  “Greetings.” Dr. Curtis slid into his seat next to Lea. “You’ll like the story tonight,” he nodded at Lea. “You share a great deal with Miss Carolle. I find it very interesting—the story, that is—well, and your similarity, too. Well, anyway, I find the story interesting because my own fine Italian hand—” He subsided as Miss Carolle came down the aisle.

  “Why, she’s crippled!” Lea thought in amazement. “Or has been,” she amended. Then wondered what there was about Miss Carolle that made her think of handicaps.

  “Handicaps?” Lea flushed. “I share a great deal with her?” She twisted the corner of her Kleenex. “Of course,” she admitted humbly, ducking her head. “Handicapped—crippled—” She caught her breath as the darkness swelled—ripping to get in—or out—or just ripping. Before the tiny heads of cold sweat had time to finish forming on her upper lip and at her hairline, she felt Karen touch her with a healing strength. “Thank you, my soothing syrup,” she thought wryly. “Don’t be silly!” she heard Karen think sharply. “Laugh at your Band-Aids after the scabs are off!”

  Miss Carolle murmured into the sudden silence, “We are met together in Thy Name.”

  Lea let the world flow away from her.

  “I have a theme song instead of just a theme,” Miss Carolle said. “Ready?”

  Music strummed softly, coming from nowhere and from everywhere. Lea felt wrapped about by its soft fullness. Then a clear voice took up the melody, so softly, so untrespassingly, that it seemed to Lea that the music itself had modulated to words, voicing some cry of her own that had never found words before.

  “By the rivers of Babylon,

  There we sat down and wept,

  When we remembered Zion.

  We hanged our harps

  Upon the willows in the midst thereof.

  For there they that carried us away captive

  Required of us a song

  And they that wasted us

  Required of us mirth

  Saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’

  How shall we sing the Lord’s song

  In a strange land?”

  Lea closed her eyes and felt weak tears slip from under the lids. She put her head down on her arms on the desk top to hide her face. Her heart, torn by the anguish of the music, was sore for all the captives who had ever been, of whatever captivity, but most especially for those who drove themselves into exile, who locked themselves into themselves and lost the key.

  The crowd had become a listening person as Miss Carolle twisted her palms together, fingers spread and tense for a moment, and then began...

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Captivity

  I SUPPOSE many lonely souls have sat at their windows many nights looking out into the flood of moonlight, sad with a sadness that knows no comfort, a sadness underlined by a beauty that is in itself a pleasant kind of sorrow—but very few ever have seen what I saw that night.

  I leaned against the window frame, close enough to the inflooding light so that it washed across my bare feet and the hem of my gown and splashed whitely against the foot of my bed, but picked up none of my features to identify me as a person, separate from the night. I was enjoying hastily, briefly, the magic of the loveliness before the moon would lose itself behind the heavy grove of cottonwoods that lined the creek below the curve of the back-yard garden. The first cluster of leaves had patterned itself against the edge of the moon when I saw him—the Francher kid. I felt a momentary surge of disappointment and annoyance that this perfect beauty should be marred by any person at all, let alone the Francher kid, but my annoyance passed as my interest sharpened.

  What was he doing—half black and half white in the edge of the moonlight? In the higgledy-piggledy haphazardness of the town Groman’s Grocery sidled in at an angle to the back yard of the Somansons’ house, where I boarded—not farther than twenty feet away. The tiny high-up windows under the eaves of the store blinked in the full light. The Francher kid was standing, back to the moon, staring up at the windows. I leaned closer to watch. There was a waitingness about his shoulders, a prelude to movement, a beginning of something. Then there he was—up at the windows, pushing softly against the panes, opening a dark rectangle against the white side of the store. And then he was gone. I blinked and looked again. Store. Windows. One opened blankly. No Francher kid. Little windows. High up under the eaves. One opened blankly. No Francher kid.

  Then the blank opening had movement inside it, and the Francher kid emerged with both hands full of something and slid down the moonlight to the ground outside.

  “Now looky here!” I said to myself. “Hey! Lookit now!”

  The Francher kid sat down on one end of a twelve-by-twelve that lay half in our garden and half behind the store. Carefully and neatly he arranged his booty along the timber. Three Cokes, a box of candy bars, and a huge harmonica that had been in the store for years. He sat and studied the items, touching each one with a fingertip. Then he picked up a Coke and studied the cap on it. He opened the box of candy and closed it again. He ran a finger down the harmonica and then lifted it between the pointer fingers of his two hands. Holding it away from him in the moonlight he looked at it, his head swinging slowly down its length. And, as his head swung, faintly, faintly, I heard a musical scale run up, then down. Careful note by careful note singing softly but clearly in the quiet night.

  The moon was burning holes through the cottonwood tops by now and the yard was slipping into shadow. I heard notes riff rapidly up and cascade back down, gleefully, happily, and I saw the glint and chromium glitter of the harmonica, dancing from shadow to light and back again, singing untouched in the air. Then the moon reached an opening in the trees and spotlighted the Francher kid almost violently. He was sitting on the plank, looking up at the harmonica, a small smile on his usually sullen face. And the harmonica sang its quiet song to him as he watched it. His face shadowed suddenly as he looked down at the things laid out on the plank. He gathered them up abruptly and walked up the moonlight to the little window and slid through, head first. Behind him, alone, unattended, the harmonica danced and played, hovering and darting like a dragonfly. Then the kid reappeared, sliding head first out of the window. He sat crosslegged in the air beside the harmonica and watched and listened. The gay dance slowed and changed. The harmonica cried softly in the moonlight, an aching asking cry as it spiraled up and around until it slid through the open window and lost its voice in the darkness. The window clicked shut and the Francher kid thudded to the ground. He slouched off through the shadows, his elbows winging sharply backward as he jammed his fists in his pockets.

  I let go of the curtain where my clenched fingers had cut four nail-sized holes through the. age-fragile lace, and released a breath I couldn’t remember holding. I stared at the empty plank and wet my lips. I took a deep breath of the mountain air that was supposed to do me so much good, and turned away from the window. For the thousandth time I muttered “I won’t,” and groped for the bed. For the thousandth time I finally reached for my crutches and swung myself over to the edge of the bed. I dragged the unresponsive half of me up onto the bed, arranging myself for sleep. I leaned against the pillow and put my hands in back of my head, my elbows fanning out on either side. I stared at the light square that was the window until it wavered and rippled before my sleepy eyes. Still my mind was only nibbling at what had happened and showed no inclination to set its teeth into any sort of explanation. I awakened with a start to find the moonlight gone, my arms asleep and my prayers unsaid.

  Tucked in bed and ringed about with the familiar comfort of my prayers, I slid away from awareness into sleep, following the dance and gleam of a harmonica that cried in the moonlight.

  ~ * ~

  Morning sunlight slid across the boardinghouse breakfast table, casting alpine shadows behind the spilled corn flakes that lay beyond the sugar bowl. I squinted against the brightness and felt aggrieved that anything should be alive and active and so—so�
��hopeful so early in the morning. I leaned on my elbows over my coffee cup and contemplated a mood as black as the coffee.

  “... Francher kid.”

  I rotated my head upward on the axis of my two supporting hands, my interest caught. “Last night,” I half remembered, “last night—”

  “I give up.” Anna Semper put a third spoonful of sugar in her coffee and stirred morosely. “‘Every child has a something—I mean there’s some way to reach every child—all but the Francher kid. I can’t reach him at all. If he’d even be aggressive or actively mean or actively anything, maybe I could do something, but he just sits there being a vegetable. And then I get so spittin’ mad when he finally does do something, just enough to keep him from flunking, that I could bust a gusset. I can’t abide a child who can and won’t.” She frowned darkly and added two more spoonfuls of sugar to her coffee.

  “‘I’d rather have an eager moron than a won’t-do genius!” She tasted the coffee and grimaced. “Can’t even get a decent cup of coffee to arm me for my struggle with the little monster.”

  I laughed. “Five spoonfuls of sugar would spoil almost anything. And don’t give up hope. Have you tried music? Remember, ‘Music hath charms—’“

  Anna reddened to the tips of her ears. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment. “Music!” Her spoon clished against her saucer sharply. She groped for words. “This is ridiculous, but I have had to send that Francher kid out of the room during music appreciation.”

  “Out of the room? Why ever for? I thought he was a vegetable.”

  Anna reddened still further. “He is,” she said stubbornly, “but—” She fumbled with her spoon, then burst forth, “But sometimes the record player won’t work when he’s in the room.”

  I put my cup down slowly. “Oh, come now! This coffee is awfully strong, I’ll admit, but it’s not that strong.”

  “No, really!” Anna twisted her spoon between her two hands. “When he’s in the room that darned player goes too fast or too slow or even backwards. I swear it. And one time—” Anna looked around furtively and lowered her voice, “one time it played a whole record and it wasn’t even plugged in!”

  “You ought to patent that! That’d be a real money-maker.”

  “Go on, laugh!” Anna gulped coffee again and grimaced.

  “I’m beginning to believe in poltergeists—you know, the kind that are supposed to work through or because of adolescent kids. If you had that kid to deal with in class—”

  “Yes.” I fingered my cold toast. “If only I did.”

  And for a minute I hated Anna fiercely for the sympathy on her open face and for the studied not-looking at my leaning crutches. She opened her mouth, closed it, then leaned across the table.

  “Polio?” she blurted, reddening.

  “No,” I said. “Car wreck.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated. “Well, maybe someday—”

  “No,” I said. “No.” Denying the faint possibility that was just enough to keep me nagged out of resignation.

  “Oh,” she said. “How long ago?”

  “How long?” For a minute I was suspended in wonder at the distortion of time. How long? Recent enough to he a shock each time of immobility when I expected motion. Long enough ago that eternity was between me and the last time I moved unthinkingly.

  “Almost a year,” I said, my memory aching to this time last year I could...

  “You were a teacher?” Anna gave her watch a quick appraising look.

  “Yes.” I didn’t automatically verify the time. The immediacy of watches had died for me. Then I smiled. “‘That’s why I can sympathize with you about the Francher kid. I’ve had them before.”

  “There’s always one,” Anna sighed, getting up. “Well, it’s time for my pilgrimage up the hill. I’ll see you.” And the swinging door to the hall repeated her departure again and again with diminishing enthusiasm. I struggled to my feet and swung myself to the window.

  “Hey!” I shouted. She turned at the gate, peering back as she rested her load of workbooks on the gatepost.

  “Yes?”

  “If he gives you too much trouble send him over here with a note for me. It’ll take him off your hands for a while at least.”

  “Hey, that’s an idea. Thanks. That’s swell! Straighten your halo!” And she waved an elbow at me as she disappeared beyond the box elder outside the gate.

  ~ * ~

  I didn’t think she would, but she did.

  It was only a couple of days later that I looked up from my book at the creak of the old gate. The heavy old gear that served as a weight to pull it shut thudded dully behind the Francher kid. He walked up the porch steps under my close scrutiny with none of the hesitant embarrassment that most people would feel. He mounted the three steps and wordlessly handed me an envelope. I opened it. It said:

  “Dust off your halo! I’ve reached the !! stage. Wouldn’t you like to keep him permanent-like?”

  “Won’t you sit down?” I gestured to the porch swing, wondering how I was going to handle this deal.

  He looked at the swing and sank down on the top porch step.

  “What’s your name?”

  He looked at me incuriously. “Francher.” His voice was husky and unused-sounding.

  “Is that your first name?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “What’s your other name?” I asked patiently, falling into a first-grade dialogue in spite of his age.

  “They put down Clement.”

  “Clement Francher. A good-sounding name, but what do they call you?”

  His eyebrows slanted subtly upward, and a tiny bitter smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

  “With their eyes—juvenile delinquent, lazy trash, no-good off-scouring, potential criminal, burden—”

  I winced away from the icy malice of his voice.

  “But mostly they call me a whole sentence, like—’Well, what can you expect from a background like that?’ “

  His knuckles were white against his faded Levi’s. Then as I watched them the color crept back and, without visible relaxation, the tension was gone. But his eyes were the eyes of a boy too big to cry and too young for any other comfort.

  “What is your background?” I asked quietly, as though I had the right to ask. He answered as simply as though he owed me an answer.

  “We were with the carnival. We went to all the fairs around the country. Mother—” his words nearly died, “Mother had a mind-reading act. She was good. She was better than anyone knew—better than she wanted to be. It hurt and scared her sometimes to walk through people’s minds. Sometimes she would come back to the trailer and cry and cry and take a long long shower and wash herself until her hands were all water-soaked and her hair hung in dripping strings. They curled at the end. She couldn’t get all the fear and hate and—and tired dirt off even that way. Only if she could find a Good to read, or a dark church with tall candles.”

  “And where is she now?” I asked, holding a small warm picture in my mind of narrow fragile shoulders, thin and defenseless under a flimsy moist robe, with one wet strand of hair dampening one shoulder of it.

  “Gone.” His eyes were over my head but empty of the vision of the weatherworn siding of the house. “She died. Three years ago. This is a foster home. To try to make a decent citizen of me.”

  There was no inflection in his words. They lay as flat as paper between us in our silence.

  “You like music,” I said, curling Anna’s note around my forefinger, remembering what I had seen the other night.

  “Yes.” His eyes were on the note. “‘Miss Semper doesn’t think so, though. I hate that scratchy wrapped-up music.”

  “You sing?”

  “No. I make music.”

  “You mean you play an instrument?”

  He frowned a little impatiently. “No. I make music with instruments.”

  “Oh,” I said. “There’s a difference?”

  “Yes.” He turned his h
ead 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.