by Philip Roy
“Good then.” Mr. Bell squeezed my shoulder with his hand, turned around, climbed up the rocks and disappeared into the woods. Under the shadows of the trees, he looked like a bear.
Chapter 7
Every night for a week, I went to bed with excited nervous energy. And it was hard to sleep. I was excited to be invited to the Bells’ house at Beinn Bhreagh but got nervous when I thought about actually going there. How should I behave? What would I say? What if I said something stupid, and everyone laughed at me? I promised myself that I would only speak when someone spoke to me. Every night I told myself that over and over until I felt sure that that’s what I would do. Still, it was hard to sleep. And I didn’t tell anyone I was going, not even my mother or father. I didn’t think anyone would believe me anyway, and maybe they’d even try to keep me from going.
When Saturday finally came, I hurried through my chores. I fed the cows, shovelled manure, fed the chickens and collected eggs. I fed the horses, let them out and swept the barn. When we sat down for lunch, I could hardly sit still I was so anxious. My mother noticed it. “Eddie. What’s with you today?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re all fidgety. Are you feeling okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not sick?”
“No, I feel fine.”
My father raised his eyes to look at me but didn’t say anything. I wondered what he was thinking.
“May I be excused now?”
My father spoke without raising his eyes from his tea. His lips were still touching the cup. “Did you finish all your chores?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Where ya goin’?” asked my brother.
“Nowhere.”
“Can I come?”
“No.”
“You must be going somewhere,” said my sister, “you didn’t wait for dessert.”
I forgot we were even having dessert. “I’m just not very hungry today.”
My mother put her hand on my head and felt for a fever. “You feel a little warm, Eddie. Maybe you should have a lie-down this afternoon.”
“No! No, I’m fine. Really, I am. I’m just going out for a walk.”
“I know where he’s going,” said my sister. “He’s hoping to run into Mr. Bell again.”
“Can I come?” said my brother again.
“No!”
I carried my dishes to the counter and put them down. I grabbed my jacket off the hook, put my boots on and went out the door. “Come back if you start to feel a fever, Eddie!”
“Okay, Mom!”
I went across the yard and into the field. In the field, I took off running as fast as I could until I was out of sight and could look back through the winter wheat and see my brother coming out of the house. I knew he was going to follow me. Now, he couldn’t see me. I turned down the hill toward the lake.
It took almost two hours to get to the Bell house. I was afraid I was going to be late. I had never been there before, but I knew where it was. Everyone did. But even though I knew it was the biggest house in Baddeck, nothing prepared me for the size of it. When I came up the lane and caught sight of it, my mouth dropped. It was bigger than our church and bigger than the biggest barn. It was tall and fat, with lots of roofs sticking up in different directions and too many windows to count. It sat on the lawn as if it had grown out of the ground like a gigantic mushroom. On one side, I saw a large porch filled with people. I heard laughter. Now I was really nervous.
I climbed the first step of the porch and was greeted by a very friendly young woman, who was probably one of Mr. Bell’s daughters. She reached down and offered me her hand. I wasn’t used to shaking a woman’s hand, so I just stuck my hand up and gently squeezed her fingers.
“You must be Eddie,” she said.
I nodded my head.
“Come up and meet everyone.”
She let go of my hand, and I followed her up the steps. There were so many people here I didn’t know which way to turn. I looked for Mr. Bell, but there seemed to be two of him. One was standing up, and the other one was lying in a chair with a blanket over his lap. Both were smoking pipes. Both had white hair and bushy beards, but the one who was standing turned to look at me, and I knew it was Mr. Bell. “Ah, young Eddie! Come over and meet everyone. This is my darling wife, Mrs. Bell.”
Mrs. Bell offered me her hand, and I took it the way I had taken her daughter’s hand. Mrs. Bell squinted and smiled so warmly she reminded me of Mr. Bell right away. She looked like a very special person, like a queen or something. “Hello, Eddie. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. I have heard that you are a most promising young man. My husband has a gift for surrounding himself with men of talent.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bell. Thank you for inviting me to your home.”
She tilted her head and smiled so sweetly her eyes twinkled like Mr. Bell’s, although they were smaller. “It is a pleasure.”
“And here is my father, the illustrious Mr. Bell,” boomed Mr. Bell. I could tell that Mr. Bell was speaking loudly so that his father could hear him. His father put his pipe in his mouth, reached up and shook my hand. “Welcome,” he said roughly. His hand was older and shakier and a little smaller than Mr. Bell’s hand.
Then Mr. Bell introduced me to his other daughters and to his granddaughters, who were very pretty, and then to Casey Baldwin and Douglas McCurdy, who were friendly, too, and looked very smart. There were a few more people but too many for me to remember their names. I was wondering where Helen Keller was. Maybe she was in the house. Maybe it was too confusing for her to be around so many people.
“Have you ever seen a finer afternoon, Eddie?” said Mr. Bell. I was starting to realize that Mr. Bell found every day better than the one before it.
“No, Sir.”
“Here. Have a glass of Nana’s famous lemonade.” He pointed to a tray that a maid was carrying around the porch. “Have you met everyone?”
“Um … I haven’t met Helen Keller yet, Sir.”
“Oh, but you did, my boy.”
“I did?”
“You did. She greeted you on the step. Here she is again.”
I turned around, and standing behind me was the first lady I had met on the steps. She was smiling. “Tell me something about yourself, Eddie,” she said, and her hand came up quickly and rested against my mouth.
Chapter 8
Helen Keller’s hand pressed lightly against my mouth. Her fingers read my words when I spoke, and then something very amazing happened. All of a sudden I understood what intelligence was. It was like jumping into the lake for the first time and feeling what water felt like when it swallowed you up. Intelligence was a kind of hunger. Helen Keller’s touch was soft and gentle, but her determination to know was really hungry and powerful. I felt it. And I knew now that that’s what intelligence was – the hunger that the mind has to know things. And this was why she could listen without ears and see without eyes, because her hunger to know was so strong. And I knew that she could do anything she wanted to, because she was so determined. This was the power of intelligence. And she had a lot of it. This was the most important lesson I ever learned. In a few seconds of Helen Keller’s touch, I learned more than I had learned in all my time at school.
I didn’t know what to say, so I told her my name and my age and where I lived. “What else?” she said. “Tell me more.” So I told her that I had a problem learning how to read and write. I didn’t mind saying it in front of all of these people, because talking with Helen Keller was so special, and I just kind of knew she would understand. She did. “I before e except after c. I like to use rhymes like that to help me remember how to spell. You can make up your own rhymes, too, to help you remember.”
“I before e?”
“Yes. The spelling of words with i and e in them. The i always comes first unless there is a c in front of it
. For example, the word chief has an i and an e, and the i comes first because that’s the rule. It’s the same for the word thief. But in the word receive, the e comes first because it has a c in front of it. Do you understand?”
I was trying really hard, but it was too much and too fast for me. “I think maybe I’ll have to practise it.”
“Of course! Practice makes perfect! Learning something the first time is like meeting somebody just once. Practising is like becoming good friends. It is a world of difference.”
She said world as if she were riding on a merry-go-round. “Tell me a word you are struggling to spell.”
“Eight.”
“Oh, yes. The g and the h, right?”
“Right.”
“Do you like challenges?”
“Challenges?”
“Yes. Do you like to beat your friends in a race?”
“Yes. When I can.”
“Well, I challenge you to come up with a rhyme for g and h. I’ll give you a hint: g always comes before h, just as it does in the alphabet.”
“G always comes before h?”
“Yes, it does. I can’t wait to hear your rhyme.”
When Helen Keller pulled her hand away from my mouth, the sight and sound of our talk disappeared. Without her touch, there was nothing there. It was as if she had gone into another world. She squeezed my shoulder, turned around and walked across the porch. Her hand reached out for the wall at just the right time. She walked close to the steps without falling and reached down and touched the shoulder of Mr. Bell’s father as she went inside. I found it hard to believe that she would really be interested in whatever rhyme I could make, but she sounded like she was.
A maid handed me a glass of lemonade. Another maid gave me a cookie from a plate. I sat on the top step and ate the cookie and sipped the lemonade and smiled at Mr. Bell who was smiling at me but listening to his father. Bees were buzzing close to the steps and small birds were flying in and out of the porch while people chatted and laughed in the warm afternoon sun. I never felt so special in all my life, just being here with these wonderful, friendly people.
While I watched a bee buzz close to my lemonade, I thought of how bee rhymed with g. If I could find a word to rhyme with h, maybe I could make a rhyme. Well I tried, but I couldn’t find a single word to rhyme with h. But I did think that honey started with h, because that’s how it sounded. Helen Keller said that g always came before h, as it does in the alphabet. Well bees came before honey because they made honey, so … “as bees come before honey, g comes before h.” I knew it didn’t rhyme, but I thought it was pretty good anyway. Now I couldn’t wait to share it with Helen Keller.
When she came out of the house, I stood up, put my glass on the railing and waited for her to come over. Watching her was really interesting. When she pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch, she did everything in the opposite order she had done it on the way in. But this time, when she reached down to touch the shoulder of Mr. Bell’s father, he was leaning to the other side, picking through some newspapers. Instead of squeezing his shoulder, her fingers squeezed at air, then touched the chair. She frowned for a second, then she smiled again. I looked to see if anyone noticed, but no one did. She crossed the porch to where I was, but when she reached for the railing, just as she had before, her hand bumped the glass I put down there and it fell into the grass without a sound. I wasn’t even sure she knew she had done it, and no one else saw it. In her other hand, she gripped a piece of paper. She seemed a little excited. “Eddie?” She reached out with her hand. I stepped closer. Her fingers touched my forehead, then quickly found my mouth. I answered. “Yes, Miss Keller?”
“I wrote down some words with g and h so you can practise spelling them.”
She passed me the sheet of paper. I took it and stared at it. The words were written with big letters that looked like they were made by someone learning to write letters for the first time. But they were neat and tidy and much better than I could make them.
“There is freight, weight, night, flight, plough, bough, right, fight, ought, fought, mighty, flighty, tight, sight. That’s fourteen. If you learn all of these, I am certain you will never forget the order of g and h.”
I looked up at her. Did she really expect me to learn all of these? She was smiling and looking back at me, but not exactly at me. Her eyes were blue and looked perfect. I didn’t know then that they were made of glass. “Thank you,” I said. “I promise to learn them.”
“Wait! I wanted them to rhyme, so you can say them in rhythm, like you’re marching. But I need one more.” She reached out for the paper, and I passed it to her. She bent down, pressed the paper against her thigh, took the pencil and slowly wrote one more word. It was messier than the others. But … I couldn’t believe it … she wrote it with her left hand! Then she started swinging her arms and raising her knees as if she were marching. “Freight, weight, night, flight, plough, bough, right, fight, ought, fought, mighty, flighty, tight, sight and tough!”
Everyone on the porch was clapping, but Helen Keller couldn’t see or hear it. “And do you have a rhyme for me yet, young man?”
“I have one, but….” I stopped. Unless her hand was on my mouth, she wouldn’t even know I was speaking. Instantly, it appeared. “I made one, but it doesn’t rhyme.”
“And?”
“As bees come before honey, g comes before h.”
She burst into a smile. “It’s perfect! Alec! Alec! Come listen to Eddie’s rhyme.”
Mr. and Mrs. Bell came over, stood beside Helen Keller and held her hands. “What is happening?” said Mrs. Bell.
Mr. Bell opened Mrs. Bell’s hand and tapped with his fingers as if he were tapping on a table. “Go ahead, my boy,” he said. “We are listening.”
I said my rhyme again.
“Splendid!” said Mr. Bell. “You have got a good teacher.” He smiled and tapped in Mrs. Bell’s hand again. I couldn’t help staring, I was so curious, and he must have seen it on my face. He winked at me. “Yes, dear Mrs. Bell does not hear either, but she can read your lips from across the porch.” Mrs. Bell looked sharply into my eyes and smiled at me. She really looked like a queen.
After a while, Mr. Bell announced that he, Casey Baldwin and Douglas McCurdy had pressing duties in the laboratory, but urged everyone else to continue enjoying themselves on the porch. I took that as a sign that I should leave. I went to Helen Keller and touched her hand. She raised it to my mouth, and I thanked her for teaching me, and I promised again to learn her rhyme. She held my face with both hands, reached down and gently kissed me on the forehead. If one photograph was worth a thousand words, then one touch from Helen Keller was worth a thousand photographs.
Chapter 9
Mr. Bell, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. McCurdy and I walked together down the lane toward the laboratory. Mr. Baldwin and Mr. McCurdy were a lot younger than Mr. Bell, and I could tell they wanted to go faster, but they walked at Mr. Bell’s pace. Mr. Bell smoked his pipe as we went, and he seemed to be in deep thought. For a few moments, nobody said anything. Then Mr. McCurdy spoke.
“I made a model of it,” he said.
“You did?” said Mr. Bell. He raised his eyebrows.
“I’ll fly it for you, Doug,” said Mr. Baldwin.
“Not likely,” said Mr. McCurdy. He was grinning. “I’ll be flying that aeroplane myself.”
“And the wings?” said Mr. Bell.
“Thin and flat. It’s the only way to get the lift we need.” He sounded like he was apologizing.
Mr. Bell shook his head. I had the feeling they had talked about this a lot before. “Too dangerous, boys. Sure, you might get into the air, but you’ve got to stay there. And don’t forget, you’ve got to come down.” Mr. Bell raised his eyebrows a little higher and smiled.
“Let me show you the model,” said Mr. McCurdy.
“Yes, yes, let’s have a look,” said Mr. Bell. Now he sounded almost as excited as them.
At the doorway to the laboratory, we stopped. Mr. Bell let the two younger men go in, then looked down at me and took the pipe from his mouth. I was waiting for him to say goodbye. It was time for me to go home, though I didn’t want to. But that’s not what he said.
“Come in, Eddie! Come in and see what these ambitious young men are up to.”
“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Bell.” I stepped into the laboratory. I was so glad. I was dying to see the model, too.
The laboratory was just a large shed with windows on one side and tables and benches in the middle. There were tools everywhere and wood and metal against the walls and in the corners. There were wheels, pipes, rolls of canvas, wire, glass bottles, rubber hoses and all kinds of objects and shapes that would be kind of hard to describe. On one end of a long table was the model flying machine. It was about two and a half feet long, made of wood and had rubber wheels. Its wings were even longer and were made of canvas. Mr. Casey and Mr. McCurdy were standing around it, talking excitedly. They had a lot of energy.
Mr. Bell cleaned his pipe before he came over to look closely at the model. Mr. McCurdy waited patiently for him, but I could tell he was anxious for him to see it. Mr. Bell bent down and tapped his pipe into a metal can. He took a small wire and cleaned the stem, then filled the pipe with fresh tobacco and lit it. No matter what he was doing, even cleaning his pipe, he was always thinking. You could see it on his face. Watching him light his pipe reminded me of Mr. McLeary trying to light his, just before he dropped it down the well.
Mr. Bell was taller and twice as wide as the young men. He couldn’t stand close to the table like they did because his belly was too big. They leaned over the table when they wanted to touch something on the model. He just stood back and listened carefully as Mr. McCurdy explained why the flying machine needed such thin wings. It was the only way it could turn easily in the air, and it was easier to build. And they could make a whole bunch of them, he said excitedly, just like Henry Ford’s automobiles or Thomas Edison’s phonograph. When he said Thomas Edison, Mr. Bell frowned. “Or the telephone,” Mr. McCurdy continued.
