Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  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 Ol’ 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.