Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  Now that that particular need was filled and that ache soothed, it was hard to remember how vital and how urgent the whole thing had been. It was like the memory of pain—a purely intellectual thing. But once it had been acute—so acute that Thann had come to his death for it.

  I looked down at myself and for the first time I noticed I was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt—Glory’s, indubitably. The jeans were precariously held together, bulging under the plaid shirt, by a huge blanket pin. I smiled a little. Outsider makeshift—well, let it stay. They don’t know any better.

  Soon I aroused and went on down-creek until I found the shack Seth had mentioned. It had two good windows left. I stood in front of the first one, reaching into my memory for my informal training. Then I settled to the job at hand.

  Slowly, steadily, nails began to withdraw from around the windows. With toil and sweat and a few frustrated tears, I got the two windows out intact, though the walls around them would never be the same again. I had had no idea how windows were put into a house. After the windows, it was fairly simple to detach the few good lengths of siding left. I stacked them neatly, one by one, drifting them into place. I jumped convulsively at a sudden crunching crash, then laughed shakily to see that the poor old shack had disintegrated completely, having been deprived of its few solid members. Lifting the whole stack of my salvage to carrying height, I started back up-creek, panting and sweating, stumbling and pushing the load ahead of me until I got smart and, lifting, perched on the pile of planks, I directed my airborne caravan up-creek.

  Glory and Seth were up at the mine. I set the things down by the house and then, suddenly conscious of weariness, made my way to Thann’s grave. I patted the gravelly soil softly and whispered, “They’ll like it, won’t they, Thann? They’re so like children. Now Glory will forget about the mirror. Poor little Outsider!”

  Glory and Seth were stupefied when they saw my loot leaning against the corner of the shack. I told them where I’d got the stuff and how I had brought it back.

  Seth spat reflectively and looked sideways at Glory. “Who’s nuts now?” he asked.

  “Okay, okay,” said Glory. “You go tell that Jick Bennett how this stuff got here. Maybe he’ll believe you.”

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked. “Did this belong to Mr. Bennett?”

  “No, no,” said Glory. “Not to him nor nobody. He’s just a friend of ours. Him and Seth’re always shooting the breeze together. No, it’s just— just—” She gestured hopelessly, then turned on Seth. “Well? Get the hammer. You want her to do the hammering too?”

  We three labored until the sun was gone and a lopsided moon had pushed itself up over the shoulder of Baldy. The light glittered on the smug wholeness of the two windows of the shack and Glory sighed with tired satisfaction. Balling up the rag she had taken from the other broken window, she got it ready to throw away. “First time my windows’ve been wind-tight since we got here. Come winter that’s nothing to sneeze at!”

  “Sneeze at!” Seth shook with silent gargantuan laughter. “Nothing to sneeze at!”

  “Glory!” I cried. “What have you there? Don’t throw it away!”

  “What?” Glory retrieved the wad from the woodpile. “It’s only the rags we peeled off’n both of yens before we put you in bed. And another hunk we picked up to beat out the fire. Ripped to tatters. Heavy old canvassy stuff, anyway.”

  “Give it to me, Glory,” I said. And took the bundle from her wondering hands. “It’s tekla,” I said. “It’s never useless. Look.” I spread out several of the rags on a flat stone near the creek. In the unreal blend of sunset and moonrise, I smoothed a fingernail along two overlapping edges. They merged perfectly into a complete whole. Quickly I sealed the other rips and snags and, lifting the sheet of tekla, shook off the dirt and wrinkles. “See, it’s as good as new. Bring the rest in the house. We can have some decent clothes again.” I smiled at Glory’s pained withdrawal. “After all, Glory, you must admit this pin isn’t going to hold Child Within much longer!”

  Seth lighted the oil lamp above the table and I spread tekla all over it, mending a few rips I’d missed.

  “Here’s some more,” said Glory. “I stuck it in that other stovepipe hole. It’s the hunk we used to beat the fire out with. It’s pretty holey.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, pinching out the charred spots. “What’s left is still good.” And she and Seth hung fascinated around the table, watching me. I couldn’t let myself think of Thann, flushed with excitement, trying to be so casual as he tried on his travel suit to show me, so long—-so long ago—so yesterday, really.

  “Here’s a little bitty piece you dropped,” said Seth, retrieving it.

  “It’s too little for any good use,” said Glory.

  “Oh, no!” I said, a little intoxicated by their wonder and by a sudden upsurge of consciousness that I was able to work so many—to them— miracles. “Nothing’s too small. See. That’s one reason we had it made so thick. To spread it thin when we used it.” I took the tiny swatch of tekla and began to stretch and shape it, smoother and farther. Farther and farther until it flowed over the edges of the table and the worn design on the oilcloth began to be visible through it.

  “What color do you like, Glory?” I asked.

  “Blue,” breathed Glory, wonderingly. “Blue.”

  I stroked blue into the tekla, quickly evened the edges, and, lifting the fragile, floating chiffony material, draped it over Glory’s head. For a half moment I saw my own mother looking with shining eyes at me through the lovely melt of color. Then I was hugging Glory and saying, “That’s for the borrow of your jeans and shirt!” And she was fingering unbelievingly the delicate fabric. There, I thought, I even hugged her. It really doesn’t matter to me that she’s just an Outsider.

  “Magic!” said Glory. “Don’t touch it!” she cried, as Seth reached a curious hand toward it.

  “He can’t hurt it,” I laughed. “It’s strong enough to use for a parachute—or a trampoline!”

  “How did you do it?” asked Seth, lifting another small patch of tekla, his fingers tugging at it.

  “Well, first you have to—” I groped for an explanation. “You see, first— Well, then, after that— Oh, I don’t know!” I cried. “I just know you do it.” I took the piece from him and snatched it into scarf length, stroking it red and woolly, and wound it around his neck and bewildered face.

  I slept that night in a gown of tekla, but Glory stuck to her high-necked crinkle-crepe gown and Seth scorned nightclothes. But after Glory blew out the light and before she disappeared behind the denim curtain that gave me part of the front room for a bedroom of my own, she leaned over, laughing in the moonlight, to whisper, “He’s got that red thing under his pillow. I seen it sticking out from under!”

  Next morning I busied myself with the precious tekla, thinning it, brushing up a soft nap, fashioning the tiny things Child Within would be needing some day. Glory stayed home from the mine and tried to help. After the first gown was finished, I sat looking at it, dreaming child-dreams any mother does with a first gown. I was roused by the sound of a drawer softly closing and saw Glory disappear into the kitchen. I went over and opened the drawer. The awkward little sugar-sack gown was gone. I smiled pityingly. She realized, I said to myself. She realized how inappropriate a gown like that would be for a child of The People.

  ~ * ~

  That night Seth dropped the lamp chimney and it smashed to smithereens.

  “Well, early to bed,” sighed Glory. “But I did want to get on with this shirt for Seth.” She smoothed the soft, woolly tekla across her lap. We had figured it down pretty close, but it came out a dress for each of us and a shirt for Seth as well as a few necessities for Child Within. I blessed again the generousness of our travel clothes and the one small part of a blanket that had survived.

  “If you’ve got a dime,” I said, returning to the problem of light, “I haven’t a cent—but if you’ve got a dime, I can mak
e a light—”

  Seth chuckled. “If we’ve got a dime, I’d like to see it. We’re ‘bout due for a trip into town to sell our ore. Got any change, Glory?”

  Glory dumped her battered purse out on the bed and stirred the contents vigorously. “One dollar bill,” she said. “Coffee and sugar for next week. A nickel and three pennies. No dime—”

  “Maybe a nickel will work,” I said dubiously. “We always used dimes or disks of argen. I never tried a nickel.” I picked up the coin and fingered it. Boy! Would this ever widen their eyes! If I could remember Dita’s instructions. I spun the coin and concentrated. I spun the coin and frowningly concentrated. I spun the coin. I blushed. I sweated. “It’ll work,” I reassured the skeptical side glances of Seth and Glory. I closed my eyes and whispered silently, “We need it. Bless me. Bless me.”

  I spun the coin.

  I saw the flare behind my eyelids and opened them to the soft, slightly blue handful of light the nickel had become. Seth and Glory said nothing, but their eyes blinked and were big and wondering enough to please anyone, as they looked into my cupped hand.

  “A dime is brighter,” I said, “but this is enough for here, I guess. Only thing is, you can’t blow it out.”

  The two exchanged glances and Seth smiled weakly. “Nutty as a fruitcake,” he said. “But don’t it shine pretty!”

  The whole room was flooded with the gentle light. I put it down in the middle of the table, but it was too direct for our eyes, so Seth balanced it on the top of a windowsill and Glory picked up the half-finished shirt from the floor where it had fallen and asked in a voice that only slightly trembled, “Could you do this seam right here, Debbie? That’ll finish this sleeve.”

  That night we had to put the light in a baking powder can with the lid on tight when we went to bed. The cupboard had leaked too much light and so had the dresser. I was afraid to damp the glow for fear I might not be able to do it again the next night. A Lady Bountiful has to be careful of her reputation.

  ~ * ~

  I sat on the bank above the imperceptibly growing lake and watched another chunk of the base of Baldy slide down into the water. Around me was the scorched hillside and the little flat where I had started the fire. Somewhere under all that placid brown water was our craft and everything we had of The Home. I felt my face harden and tighten with sorrow. I got up awkwardly and made my way down the steep slant of the bank. I leaned against a boulder and stirred the muddy water with one sneaker-clad toe. That block of tekla, the seed box, the pictures, the letters. I let the tears wash downward unchecked. All the dreams and plans. The pain caught me so that I nearly doubled up. My lips stretched thinly. How physical mental pain can be! If only it could be amputated like— Pain caught me again. I gasped and clutched the boulder behind me. This is pain, I cried to myself. Not Child Within! Not out here in the wilds all alone! I made my way back to the shack in irregular, staggering stages and put myself to bed. When Glory and Seth got back, I propped up wearily on one elbow and looked at them groggily, the pain having perversely quitted me just before they arrived.

  “Do you suppose it is almost time? I have no way of knowing. Time is—-is different here. I can’t put the two times together and come out with anything. I’m afraid, Glory! I’m afraid!”

  “We shoulda taken you into Kerry to the doctor a long time ago. He’d be able to tell you, less’n—” she hesitated “—less’n you are different, so’st he’d notice—”

  I smiled weakly. “Don’t tiptoe so, Glory. I won’t be insulted. No, he’d notice nothing different except when birth begins. We can bypass the awfullest of the hurting time—” I gulped and pressed my hands to the sudden emptiness that almost caved me in. “That’s what I was supposed to learn from our People here!” I wailed. “I only know about it. Our first child is our learning child. You can’t learn it ahead.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Glory dryly. “Child Within will manage to get outside whether you hurt or not. If you’re a woman, you can bear the burden women have since Eve.”

  So we planned to go into town the next day and just tell the doctor I hadn’t been to a doctor yet—lots of people don’t, even today. But it started to rain in the night. I roused first to the soft sound of rain on the old tin roof of the kitchen—the soft sound that increased and increased until it became a drumming roar. Even that sound was music. And the vision of rain falling everywhere, everywhere, patting the dusty ground, dimpling the lake, flipping the edges of curled leaves, soothed me into sleep. I was wakened later by the sound of Seth’s coughing. That wasn’t a soothing sound. And it got worse and worse. It began to sound as though he actually were coughing up his lungs as Glory had said. He could hardly draw a breath between coughing spasms. I lay there awake in the dark, hearing Glory’s murmurs and the shuff-shuff of her feet as she padded out to the kitchen and back to the bedroom. But the coughing went on and on and I began to get a little impatient. I tossed in bed, suddenly angrily restless.

  I had Child Within to think of. They knew I needed my rest. They weren’t making any effort to be quiet— Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. I padded in my turn to their bedroom and peered in. Seth was leaning back against the head of the iron bedstead, gasping for breath. Glory was sitting beside him, tearing up an old pillowcase to make handkerchiefs for him. She looked up at me in the half light of the uncovered baking powder can, her face drawn and worn.

  “It’s bad, this time,” she said. “Makin’ up for lost time, I guess.”

  “Can’t you do something to stop his coughing?” I asked. I really hadn’t meant it to sound so abrupt and flat. But it did, and Glory let her hands fall slowly to her lap as her eyes fixed on me.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Then her eyes fairly blazed and she said, “Can’t you?”

  “I’m not a Healer,” I said, feeling almost on the defensive. “If I were, I could give—”

  “You wouldn’t give anybody anything,” said Glory, her face closed and cold. “Less’n you wanted to show off or make yourself comfortable. Go back to bed.”

  I went, my cheeks burning in the dark. How dare she talk to me like this! An Outsider to one of The People! She had no right— My anger broke into tears and I cried and cried on my narrow Outsider bed in that falling-down Outsider house, but under all my anger and outrage, so closely hidden that I’d hardly admit it to myself even, was a kernel of sorrow. I’d thought Glory liked me.

  Morning was gray and clammy. The rain fell steadily and the bluish light from the baking powder can was cold and uncheerful. The day dragged itself to a watery end, nothing except a slight waning and waxing of the light outdoors to distinguish one hour from the next. Seth’s coughing eased a little and by the second rain-loud morning it had finally stopped.

  Seth prowled around the cramped rooms, his shoulders hunched forward, his chest caved in as though he had truly coughed out his lungs. His coughing had left him, but his breath still caught in ragged chunks.

  “Seth,” said Glory, tugging at his sleeve. “You’ll wear yourself and me out too, to-ing and fro-ing like that.”

  “Don’t ease me none to set,” said Seth hoarsely. “Leave me be. Let me move while I can. Got a hunch there won’t be much moving for me after the next spell.”

  “Now, Seth.” Glory’s voice was calm and a little reprimanding, but I caught her terror and grief. With a jolt I realized how exactly her feelings were mine when I had crouched beside Thann, watching him die. But they’re old and ugly and through with life! I protested. But they love, came the answer, and love can never be old nor ugly nor through with life.

  “ ‘Sides, I’m worried,” said Seth, wiping the haze of his breath off the newly installed window. “Rain like this’ll fill every creek around here. Then watch the dam fill up. They told us we’d be living on an island before spring. When the lake’s full, we’ll be six foot under. All this rain—” He swiped at the window again, and turning away, resumed his restless pacing. “That slope between here and the hi
ghway’s getting mighty touchy. Wash it out a little at the bottom and it’ll all come down like a ton of bricks. Dam it up there, we’d get the full flow right across us and I ain’t feeling much like a swim!” He grinned weakly and leaned against the table.

  “Glory.” His breathing was heavy and ragged. “Glory, I’m tired.”

  Glory put him to bed. I could hear the murmur of her voice punctuated at intervals by a heavy monosyllable from him.

  I shivered and went to the little bandy-legged cast-iron stove. Lifting one of its four lids, I peered at the smoldering pine knot inside. The heaviness outside pushed a thin acrid cloud of smoke out at me and I clattered the lid back, feeling an up-gush of exasperation at the inefficiency of Outsiders. I heated the stove up until the top glowed dull red, and reveled in the warmth.

  Glory came back into the kitchen and hunched near the stove, rubbing her hands together.