“You were,” I said, grimly. “Vincent?”
“He’s right.” His voice was husky, his eyes on the tape on the back of one hand. Then he looked up with a tentative lift of his mouth corners. “Except that I hit the rock with him.”
“Hit the rock with him?” I asked. “You mean like judo or something? You pushed him against the rock hard enough to knock him out?”
“If you like,” he shrugged.
“It’s not what I like,” I said. “It’s—what happened?”
“I hit the rock with him,” Vincent repeated.
“And why?” I asked, ignoring his foolish insistence.
“We were having a fight. He told you.”
“You busted my cage!” Gene flushed indignantly.
“Gene,” I reminded. “You had your turn. Vincent?”
“I had to let it go,” he said, his eyes hopefully on mine. “He wouldn’t, and it—it wanted to get out—the ground squirrel.” His eyes lost their hopefulness before mine.
“It wasn’t yours,” I reminded.
“It wasn’t his either!” His eyes blazed. “It belonged to itself! He had no right—!”
“I caught it!” Gene blazed back.
“Gene! Be still or I’ll send you outside!”
Gene subsided, muttering.
“You didn’t object to Ruth’s hamster being in a cage.” “Cage” and “math” seemed trying to equate in my mind.
“That’s because it was a cage beast!” he said, fingering the taped hand again. “It didn’t know any better. It didn’t care.” His voice tightened. “The ground squirrel did. It would have killed itself to get out. I—I just had to—”
To my astonishment, I saw tears slide down his cheek as he turned his face away from me. Wordlessly I handed him a tissue from the box on my desk. He wiped his face, his fingers trembling.
“Gene?” I turned to him. “Anything more?”
“Well, gollee! It was mine! And I liked it! It—it was mine!”
“I’ll trade you,” said Vincent. “I’ll trade you a white rat in a real neat aluminum cage. A pregnant one, if you like. It’ll have four or five babies in about a week.”
“Gollee! Honest?” Gene’s eyes were shining.
“Vincent?” I questioned him.
“We have some at home,” he said. “Mr. Wellerk at MEL gave me some when we came. They were surplus. Mother says I may trade if his mother says okay.”
“She won’t care!” cried Gene. “Us kids have part of the barn for our pets, and if we take care of them, she doesn’t care what we have. She don’t even ever come out there! Dad checks once in a while to be sure we’re doing a decent job. They won’t care.”
“Well, you have your mother write a note saying you may have the rat, and Vincent, if you’re sure you want to trade, bring the rat tomorrow and we’ll consider the affair ended.” I reached for my hand bell. “Well, scoot, you two. Drinks and rest room, if necessary. It’s past bell time now.”
Gene scooted and I could hear him yelling, “Hey! I getta white rat—”
Vincent was at the door when I stopped him with a question. “Vincent, did your mother know before you came to school that you were going to let the ground squirrel go?”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t even know Gene had it.”
“Then she didn’t suggest you trade with Gene.”
“Yes, ma’am, she did,” he said reluctantly.
“When?” I asked, wondering if he was going to turn out to be a twisted child after all.
“When you were out getting Gene. I called her and told her.” He smiled his tentative lip-smile. “She gave me fits for fighting and suggested Gene might like the rat. I like it, too, but I have to make up for the ground squirrel.” He hesitated. I said nothing. He left.
“Well!” I exploded my held breath out. “Ananias K. Munchausen! Called his mother, did he? And no phone closer than MONSTER MERCANTILE! But still—” I was puzzled. “It didn’t feel like a lie!”
~ * ~
Next afternoon after dismissal time I sighed silently. I was staring moodily out the window where the lonely creaking of one swing signified that Vincent, as well as I, was waiting for his mother to appear. Well, inevitable, I guess. Send a taped-up child home, you’re almost sure to get an irate parent back. And Vincent had been taped up! Still was, for that matter.
I hadn’t heard the car. The creaking of the swing stopped abruptly, and I heard Vincent’s happy calling voice. I watched the two of them come up onto the porch, Vincent happily clinging.
“My mother, Teacher,” he said. “Mrs. Kroginold.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Murcer.” Mrs. Kroginold was small, dark haired, and bright eyed. “You wait outside, erring man-child!” She dismissed him with a spat on his bottom. “This is adult talk.” He left, his small smile slanting back over his shoulder a little anxiously.
Mrs. Kroginold settled comfortably in the visitor’s chair I had already pulled up beside my desk.
“Prepared, I see,” she sighed. “I suppose I should have come sooner and explained Vincent.”
“He is a little unusual,” I offered cautiously. “But he didn’t impress me as the fighting kind.”
“He isn’t,” said Mrs. Kroginold. “No, he’s—um—unusual in plenty of other ways, but he comes by it naturally. It runs in the family. We’ve moved around so much since Vincent’s been in school that this is the first time I’ve really felt I should explain him. Of course, this is also the first time he ever knocked anyone out. His father could hardly believe him. Well, anyway, he’s so happy here and making such progress in school that I don’t want anything to tarnish it for him, so—” she sighed and smiled. “He says you asked him about his trading the rat—”
“The pregnant rat,” I nodded.
“He did ask me,” she said. “Our family uses a sort of telepathy in emergencies.”
“A sort of telepathy—!” My jaw sagged, then tightened. Well, I could play the game, too. “How interesting!”
Her eyes gleamed. “Interesting aberration, isn’t it?” I flushed and she added hastily, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—to put interpretations into your mouth. But Vincent did hear—well, maybe ‘feel’ is a better word—the ground squirrel crying out against being caged. It caught him right where he lives. I think the block he has in reading is against anything that implies unwilling compulsion—you know, being held against your will—or prevented—”
Put her in a pumpkin shell, my memory chanted. The three Billy Goats Gruff were afraid to cross the bridge because—
“The other schools,” she went on, “have restricted him to the reading materials provided for his grade level, and you’d be surprised how many of the stories—
“And he did hit the rock with Gene.” She smiled ruefully. “Lifted him bodily and threw him. A rather liberal interpretation of our family rules. He’s been forbidden to lift any large objects in anger. He considered Gene the lesser of the two objects.
“You see, Miss Murcer, we do have family characteristics that aren’t exactly—mmm—usual, but Vincent is still just a school child, and we’re just parents, and he likes you much and we do, too. Accept us?”
“I—” I said, trying to blink away my confusion. “I—I—”
“Ay! Ay!” Mrs. Kroginold sighed and, smiling, stood up. “Thank you for not being loudly insulted by what I’ve told you. Once a neighbor of ours that I talked a little too freely to, threatened to sue—so I appreciate. You are so good for Vincent. Thanks.”
She was gone before I could get my wits collected. It had been a little like being caught in a dustless dust-devil. I hadn’t heard the car leave, but when I looked out, there was one swing still stirring lazily between the motionless ones, and no one at all in sight on the school grounds.
I closed up the schoolroom and went into the tiny two-roomed teacherage extension on the back of the school to get my coat and purse. I had lived in those two tiny rooms for the first two years of my s
tay at Rinconcillo before I began to feel the need of more space and more freedom from school. Occasionally, even now, when I felt too tired to plunge out into the roar of Winter Wells, I would spend a night on my old narrow bed in the quiet of the canyon.
I wondered again about not hearing the car when I dipped down into the last sand wash before the highway. I steered carefully back across the packed narrowness of my morning tracks. Mine were the only ones, coming or going. I laid the odd discovery aside because I was immediately gulped up by the highway traffic. After I had been honked at and muttered at by two Coast drivers and had muttered at (I don’t like to honk) and swerved around two Midwest tourist types roaring along at twenty-five miles an hour in the center lane admiring the scenery, I suddenly laughed. After all, there was nothing mysterious about my lonely tire tracks. I was just slightly disoriented. MEL was less than a mile away from the school, up over the ridge, though it was a good half hour by road. Mrs. Kroginold had hiked over for the conference and the two of them had hiked back together. My imagination boggled a little at the memory of Mrs. Kroginold s strap’n’heel sandals and the hillsides, but then, not everyone insists on flats to walk in.
~ * ~
Well, the white rat achieved six offspring, which cemented the friendship between Gene and Vincent forever, and school rocked along more or less serenely.
Then suddenly, as though at a signal, the pace of space exploration was stepped up in every country that had ever tried launching anything; so the school started a space unit. We went through our regular systematic lessons at a dizzying pace, and each child, after he had finished his assignment, plunged into his own chosen activity—all unrealizing of the fact that he was immediately putting into practice what he had been studying so reluctantly.
My primary group was busy working out a moonscape in the sand table. It was to be complete with clay moon-people—”They don’t have to have any noses!” That was Ginny, tender to critical comment. “They’re different! They don’t breathe. No air!” And moon-dogs and cats and cars and flowers; and even a moon-bird. “It can’t fly in the sky ‘cause there ain’t—isn’t any air so it flies in the dirt!” That was Justin. “It likes bottoms of craters ‘cause there’s more dirt there!”
I caught Vincent’s amused eyes as he listened to the small ones. “Little kids are funny!” he murmured. “Animals on the moon! My dad, when he was there, all he saw—” His eyes widened and he became very busy choosing the right-sized nails from the rusty coffee can.
“Middle-sized kids are funny, too,” I said. “Moon, indeed! There aren’t any dads on the moon, either!”
“I guess not.” He picked up the hammer and, as he moved away, I heard him whisper, “Not now!”
My intermediates were in the midst of a huge argument. I umpired for a while. If you use a BB shot to represent the Earth, would there be room in the schoolroom to make a scale mobile of the planetary system? I extinguished some of the fire bred of ignorance, by suggesting an encyclopedia and some math, and moved on through the room.
Gene and Vincent, not caring for such intellectual pursuits, were working on our model space capsule, which was patterned after the very latest in U.S. spacecraft, modified to include different aspects of the latest in flying saucers. I was watching Vincent leaning through a window, fitting a tin can altitude gauge—or some such—into the control panel. Gene was painting purple a row of cans around the middle of the craft. Purple was currently popular for flying saucer lights.
“I wonder if astronauts ever develop claustrophobia?” I said idly. “I get a twinge sometimes in elevators or mines.”
“I suppose susceptible ones would be eliminated long before they ever got to be astronauts,” grunted Vincent as he pushed on the tin can. “They go through all sorts of tests.”
“I know,” I said. “But people change. Just supposing—”
“Gollee!” said Gene, his poised paint brush dribbling purple down his arm and off his elbow. “Imagine! Way up there! No way out! Can’t get down! And claustrophobia!” He brought out the five syllables proudly. The school had defined and discussed the word when we first started the unit.
The tin can slipped and Vincent staggered sideways, falling against me.
“Oh!” said Vincent, his shaking hands lifting, his right arm curling up over his head. “I—”
I took one look at his twisted face, the cold sweat beading his hairline, and, circling his shoulders, steered him over to the reading bench near my desk. “Sit,” I said.
“Whatsa matter with him?” Now the paint was dripping on one leg of Gene’s Levi’s.
“Just slightly wampsy,” I said. “Watch that paint. You’re making a mess of your clothes.”
“Gollee!” He smeared his hand down his pants from hip to knee. “Mom’ll kill me!”
I lifted my voice. “It’s put-away time. Kipper, will you monitor today?”
The children were swept into organized confusion. I turned back to Vincent. “Better?”
“I’m sorry.” Color hadn’t come back to his face yet, but it was plumping up from its stricken drawnness. “Sometimes it gets through too sharp!y—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, pushing his front hair up out of his eyes. “You could drive yourself crazy—”
“Mom says my imagination is a little too vivid—” His mouth corners lifted.
“So ‘tis,” I smiled at him, “if it must seize upon my imaginary astronaut. There’s no point to your harrowing up your soul with what might happen. Problems we have always with us. No need to borrow any.”
“I’m not exactly borrowing,” he whispered, his shoulder hunching up towards his wincing head. “He never did want to, anyway, and now that they’re orbiting, he’s still scared. What if—” He straightened resolutely. “I’ll help Gene.” He slid away before I could stop him.
“Vincent,” I called. “Who’s orbiting—” And just then Justin dumped over the whole stack of jigsaw puzzles, upside down. That ended any further questions I might have had.
~ * ~
That evening I pushed the newspaper aside and thoughtfully lifted my coffee cup. I stared past its rim and out into the gathering darkness. This was the local newspaper, which was still struggling to become a big metropolitan daily after half a century of being a four-page county weekly. Sometimes its reach exceeded its grasp, and it had to bolster short columns with little folksy-type squibs. I re-read the one that had caught my eye. Morris was usually good for an item or two. I watched for them since he had had a conversation with a friend of mine I’d lost track of.
Local ham operator, Morris Staviski, says the Russians have a new manned sputnik in orbit. He says he has monitored radio signals from the capsule. He can’t tell what they’re saying, but he says they’re talking Russian. He knows what Russian sounds like because his grandmother was Russian.
“Hmm,” I thought. “I wonder. Maybe Vincent knows Morris. Maybe that’s where he got this orbiting bit.”
So the next day I asked him.
“Staviski?” He frowned a little. “No, ma’am, I don’t know anyone named Staviski. At least I don’t remember the name. Should I?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I just wondered. He’s a ham radio operator—“
“Oh!” His face flushed happily. “I’m working on the code now so I can take the test next time it’s given in Winter Wells! Maybe I’ll get to talk to him sometimes!”
“Me, too!” said Gene. “I’m learning the code, too!”
“He’s a little handicapped, though,” Vincent smiled. “He can’t tell a dit from a dah yet!”
The next morning Vincent crept into school with all the sun gone out. He moved like someone in a dream and got farther and farther away. Before morning recess came, I took his temperature. It was normal. But he certainly wasn’t. At recess the rapid outflow of children left him stranded in his seat, his pinched face turned to the window, his unfinished work in front of him, his idle pencil in the hand that curved
up over the side of his head.
“Vincent!” I called, but there was no sign he even heard me. “Vincent!”
He drew a sobbing breath and focused his eyes on me slowly. “Yes, ma’am?” He wet his dry lips.
“What is the matter?” I asked. “Where do you feel bad?”
“Bad?” His eyes unfocused again and his face slowly distorted into a crying mask. With an effort he smoothed it out again. “I’m not the one. It’s—it’s—” He leaned his shaking chin in the palm of his hand and steadied his elbow on the top of his desk. His knuckles whitened as he clenched his fingers against his mouth.
“Vincent!” I went to him and touched his head lightly. With a little shudder and a sob, he turned and buried his face against me.
Ingathering - The Complete People Stories Page 77
