Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  That night we sat around the table as usual and read to each other. I read first. I was reading Robinson Crusoe for the second time since we came to the ranch, and I had just got to where he was counting his wheat seeds and figuring out the best way to plant them. I like this part better than the long, close pages where he talks philosophy about being alone and uses big, hard-to-pronounce words. But sometimes, looking out across the plains and knowing there is only Father and Mama and Merry and me as far as my eye can reach, I knew how he felt. Well, maybe the new baby would be a boy.

  I read pretty well. Father didn’t have to correct my pronunciation very often. Then Mama read from Sense and Sensibility and I listened even if it was dull and sleepy to me. You never know when Father is going to ask you what a word means and you’d better have some idea!

  Then Father read from Plutarch’s Lives, which is fun sometimes, and we ended the evening with our Bible verses and prayers.

  I was half asleep before the lamp was blown out, but I came wide awake when I heard Mama’s low carrying voice.

  “Maybe mining would have been better. This is good mining country.”

  “Mining isn’t for me,” said Father. “I want to take living things from the earth. I can feel that I’m part of growing things, and nothing speaks to me of God more than seeing a field ripening ready for harvest. To have food where only a few months before was only a handful of seed—and faith.”

  “But if we finally have to give the ranch up anyway—” Mama began faintly.

  “We won’t give it up.” Father’s voice was firm.

  ~ * ~

  Father and I rode in the supply wagon from Raster Creek Mine over the plank bridge across the dwindling thread of the river to our last gate. I opened the gate, wrestling with the wire loop holding the top of the post, while Father thanked Mr. Tanker again for the newspapers he had brought us. “I’m sorry there is so little for you this time,” he said, glancing back at the limp gunny sacks and half-empty boxes. “And it’s the last of it all.”

  Mr. Tanker gathered up the reins. “Reckon now you’re finding out why this is called Fool’s Acres Ranch. You’re the third one that’s tried farming here. This is mining country. Never be nothing else. No steady water. Shame you didn’t try in Las Lomitas Valley across the Coronas. Artesian wells there. Every ranch got two-three wells and ponds with trees and fish. Devil of a long way to drive for fresh garden truck, though. Maybe if we ever get to be a state instead of a Territory—”

  Father and I watched him drive away, the wagon hidden in dust before it fairly started. We walked back to the planks across the stream and stopped to look at the few pools tied together with a thread of water brought down by Sometime Creek that was still flowing thinly. Father finally said, “What does Las Lomitas mean in English?” And I wrestled with what little Spanish I had learned until that evening at the table. I grinned to myself as I said, “It means ‘The Little Hills,’ “ and watched Father, for a change, sort through past conversations to understand what I was talking about.

  Mama’s time was nearing and we were all worried. Though as I said, politeness had it that I wasn’t supposed to know what was going on. But I knew about the long gap between Merry and me—almost fourteen years. Mama had borne and buried five children in that time. I had been as healthy as a horse, but after me none of the babies seemed able to live. Oh, maybe a week or so, at first, but finally only a faint gasp or two and the perfectly formed babies died. And all this back East where there were doctors and midwives and comfort. I guess Mama gave up after the fifth baby died, because none came along until after we moved to Fool’s Acres. When we knew Merry was on the way, I could feel the suspense building up. I couldn’t really remember all those other babies because I had been so young. They had come each year regularly after me. But it had been ten years between the last one and Merry. So when Merry was born out in the wilderness with Father for midwife, none of us dared breathe heavily for fear she’d die. But she was like me—big lungs, big appetite, and no idea of the difference between day and night.

  Mama couldn’t believe it for a long time and used to turn suddenly from her work and go touch Merry, just to be sure.

  And now another baby was almost due and dust and desolation had settled down on the ranch and the whole area except for our orchard. Father explained the upside-down running of the rivers in a desert area that was, so far, keeping our young trees alive.

  Anyway, there came a day that I took the water bucket and went to find a new dipping place, because our usual one where the creek flowed into the river was so shallow even a tin dipper scooped up half sand at each attempt.

  I had started up Sometime Creek hoping to find a deeper pool and had just stopped to lean in the thin hot shade of a boulder when it came.

  Roaring! Blazing! A locomotive across the sky! A swept-back fountain of fire! A huge blazing something that flaked off flames as it roared away across Desolation Valley!

  Scared half to death, I crouched against my boulder, my eyes blinking against the violence and thundering speed, my front hair fairly frizzling into beads from the impression of heat. Some of the flames that flaked off the main blaze blackened as they zigzagged down out of the sky like bits of charred paper from a bonfire. But some flakes darted away like angry hornets and one—one flame that kept its shape as it blackened and plunged like an arrow down through the roaring skies—headed straight for me! I threw my arms up to shield my face and felt something hit below me with a swishing thud that shook the hill and me.

  And stillness came back to the ranch.

  Only a brief stillness. I heard the crackle of flames and saw the smoke plume up! I scrambled downhill to the flat, seeing, like lightning, the flames racing across our cinder-dry fields, over our house, through our young orchard, across the crisped grass of Desolation Valley, leaving nothing but a smudge on the sky and hundreds of miles of scorched earth. It had happened other places in dry years.

  I skidded to a stop in the edge of the flames, and, for lack of anything else I could do, I started stamping the small licking tongues of flame and kicking dirt over them.

  “Barney!” I heard Father’s shout. “Here’s a shovel!”

  I knuckled the smoke tears out of my eyes and stumbled to meet him as he ran toward me. “Keep it from going up the hill!” And he sped for the weed-grown edge of the alfalfa field.

  Minutes later I plopped sand over the last smoking clump of grass and whacked it down with the back of my shovel. We were lucky. The fire area was pretty well contained between the rise of the hill and the foot of the field. I felt soot smudge across my face as I backhanded the sweat from my forehead. Father was out of my sight around the hill. Hefting the shovel, I started around to see if he needed my help. There was another plume of smoke! Alerted, I dropped the point of my shovel. Then I let it clatter to the ground as I fell to my knees.

  A blackened hand reached up out of a charred bundle! Fingers spread convulsively, then clenched! And the bundle rolled jerkily.

  “Father!” I yelled. “Father!” And grabbed for the smoldering blackness. I stripped away handsful of the scorching stuff and, by the time Father got there, my hands were scorching too.

  “Careful! Careful!” Father cautioned. “Here, let me.” I moved back, nursing my blistered fingers. Father fumbled with the bundle, and suddenly it ripped from one end to the other and he pulled out, like an ear of corn from its shuck, the twisting body of a person!

  “He’s badly burned,” said Father. “Face and hands. Help me lift him.” I helped Father get the body into his arms. He staggered and straightened. “Go tell your mother to brew up all the tea we have in the house— strong!”

  I raced for the house, calling to Mama as soon as I saw her anxious face. “Father’s all right! I’m all right! But we found someone burned! Father says to brew up all our tea—strong!”

  Mama disappeared into the cabin and I heard the clatter of stove lids. I hurried back to Father and hovered anxiously as h
e laid his burden down on the little front porch. Carefully we peeled off the burned clothes until finally we had the body stripped down and put into an old nightshirt of Father’s. The fire hadn’t got to his legs nor to his body, but his left shoulder was charred—and his face! And arms! A tight cap thing that crumbled to flakes in our hands had saved most of his hair.

  Father’s mouth tightened. “His eyes,” he said. “His eyes.”

  “Is he dead?” I whispered. Then I had my answer as one blackened hand lifted and wavered. I took it carefully in mine, my blisters drawing as I closed my fingers. The blackened head rolled and the mouth opened soundlessly and closed again, the face twisting with pain.

  We worked over the boy—maybe some older than I—all afternoon. I brought silty half bucket after half bucket of water from the dipping place and strained it through muslin to get the silt out. We washed the boy until we located all his burns and flooded the places with strong cold tea and put tea packs across the worst ones. Mama worked along with us until the burden of the baby made her breathless and she had to stop.

  She had given Merry a piece of bread and put her out in the little porch-side pen when we brought the boy in. Merry was crying now, her face dabbled with dirt, her bread rubbed in the sand. Mama gathered her up with an effort and smiled wearily at me over her head. “I’d better let her cry a little more, then her face will be wet enough for me to wash it clean!”

  ~ * ~

  I guess I got enough tea on my hands working with the boy that my own burns weren’t too bad. Blisters had formed and broken, but I only needed my right thumb and forefinger bandaged with strips from an old petticoat of Mama’s. We left Mama with the boy, now clean and quiet on my cot, his face hidden under the wet packs, and went slowly down the path I had run so many times through the afternoon. We took our buckets on past the dipping place where a palm-sized puddle was all that was left of the water and retraced our steps to where the fire had been.

  “A meteor?” I asked, looking across the ashy ground. “I always thought they came only at night.”

  “You haven’t thought the matter over or you’d realize that night and day had nothing to do with meteors,” said Father. “Is ‘meteor’ the correct term?

  “How funny that that fellow happened to be at the exact place at the exact time the piece of the meteor hit here,” I said, putting Father’s question away for future reference.

  “ ‘Odd’ is a better word,” Father corrected. “Where did the boy come from?”

  I let my eyes sweep the whole wide horizon before us. No one on foot and alone could ever have made it from any where! Where had he come from? Up out of the ground? Down out of the sky?

  “I guess he rode in on the meteor,” I said, and grinned at the idea. Father blinked at me, but didn’t return my smile.

  “There’s what set the fire,” he said. We plopped through feathery ashes toward a black lump of something.

  “Maybe we could send it to a museum,” I suggested as we neared it. “Most meteors burn up before they hit the ground.”

  Father pushed the chunk with his foot. Flame flared briefly from under it as it rocked, and a clump of grass charred, the tips of the blades twisting and curling as they shriveled.

  “Still hot,” said Father, hunkering down on his heels beside it. He thumped it with a piece of rock. It clanged. “Metal!” His eyebrows raised. “Hollow!”

  Carefully we probed with sticks from the hillside and thumped with rocks to keep our hands from the heat. We sat back and looked at each other. I felt a stir of something like fear inside me.

  “It’s—it’s been made!” I said. “It’s a long metal pipe or something! And I’ll bet he was inside it! But how could he have been? How could he get so high in the sky as to come down like that? And if this little thing has been made, what was the big thing it came from?”

  “I’ll go get water,” said Father, getting up and lifting the buckets. “Don’t burn yourself any more.”

  I prodded the blackened metal. “Out of the sky,” I said aloud. “As high and as fast as a meteor to get that hot. What was he doing up there?” My stick rocked the metal hulk and it rolled again. The split ends spread as it turned and a small square metal thing fell out into the ashes. I scraped it to one side and cautiously lifted it. The soot on it blackened my bandages and my palms. It looked like a box and was of a size that my two hands could hold. I looked at it, then, suddenly overwhelmed and scared by the thought of roaring meteors and empty space and billowing grass fires, I scratched a hasty hole against a rock, shoved the box in, and stamped the earth over it. Then I went to meet Father and take one of the dripping buckets from him. We didn’t look back at the crumpled metal thing behind us.

  Father could hardly believe his eyes when he checked the boy’s burns next morning. “They’re healing already!” he said to Mama. “Look!”

  I crowded closer to see, too, almost spilling the olive oil we were using on him. I looked at the boy’s left wrist where I remembered a big, raw oozing place just where the cuff of his clothes had ended. The wrist was dry now and covered with the faint pink of new skin.

  “But his face,” said Mama. “His poor face and his eyes!” She turned away, blinking tears, and reached for a cup of water. “He must have lots of liquids,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  “But if he’s unconscious—” I clutched at my few lessons in home care of the sick.

  Father lifted the boy’s head and shoulders carefully, but even his care wasn’t gentle enough. The boy moaned and murmured something. Father held the cup to his blistered mouth and tipped the water to the dry lips. There was a moment’s pause, then the water was gulped eagerly and the boy murmured something again.

  “More?” asked Father clearly. “More?”

  The face rolled to him, then away, and there was no answer.

  “He’ll need much care for a while,” Father said to Mama as they anointed his burns and put on fresh bandages. “Do you think you can manage under the circumstances?”

  Mama nodded. “With Barney to help with the lifting.”

  “Sure I’ll help,” I said. Then to Father, “Should I have said ‘meteorite’?”

  He nodded gravely. Then he said, “There are other planets.” And left me to digest that one!

  ~ * ~

  Father was spending his days digging for water in the river bottom. He had located one fair-sized pool that so far was keeping our livestock watered. We could still find drinking water for us up Sometime Creek. But the blue shimmer of the sky got more and more like heated metal. Heat was like a hand, pressing everything under the sky down into the powdery dead ground.

  The boy was soon sitting up and eating a little of the little we had. But still no word from him, not a sound, even when we changed the dressings on his deeply charred left shoulder, or when the scabs across his left cheek cracked across and bled.

  Then, one day, when all of us had been out of the cabin, straining our eyes prayerfully at the faint shadow of a cloud I thought I had seen over the distant Coronas, we came back, disheartened, to find the boy sitting in Mama’s rocker by the window. But we had to carry him back to the cot. His feet seemed to have forgotten how to make steps.

  Father looked down at him lying quietly on the cot. “If he can make it to the window, he can begin to take care of his own needs. Mother is overburdened as it is.”

  So I was supposed to explain to him that there would be no more basin for his use, but that the chamberpot under the cot was for him! How do you explain to someone who can’t see and doesn’t talk and that you’re not at all sure even hears you? I told Father I felt like a mother cat training a kitten.

  “Come on, fellow,” I said to him, glad we had the cabin to ourselves. I tugged at his unscarred right arm and urged him until, his breath catching between clenched teeth, he sat up and swung his feet over the cot edge. His hand went out to me and touched my cheek. His bandaged face turned to me and his hand faltered. Then quickly he traced my featu
res—my eyes, my nose, my ears, across my head, and down to my shoulders. Then he sighed a relieved sigh and both his hands went out to rest briefly on my two shoulders. His mouth distorted in a ghost of a smile, and he touched my wrist.

  “What did you expect?” I laughed. “Horns?”

  Then I sat back, astonished as his fingertip probed my temple just where I had visualized a horn, curled twice and with a shiny black tip.

  “Well!” I said. “Mind reader!”

  Just then Mama and Father came back into the cabin. The boy lay down slowly on the cot. Oh, well, the explanation could wait until the need arose.

  We ate supper and I helped Mama clear up afterward. I was bringing the evening books to the pool of light on the table around the lamp when a movement from the cot drew my eyes. The boy was sitting on the edge, groping to come to his feet. I hurried to him, wondering what to do with Mama in the room, then as I reached for the boy’s arm, I flicked a glance at Father. My mouth opened to wonder how I had known what the boy wanted, and how he knew about the Little House outside. But a hand closed on my arm and I moved toward the door, with the boy. The door closed behind us with a chuck. Through the starry darkness we moved down the path to the Little House. He went in. I waited by the door. He emerged and we went back up the path and into the house. He eased himself down on the cot, turned his face away from the light, and became quiet.