The Boy With Penny Eyes

by Al Sarrantonio

  A half hour later they passed a small black mailbox with a rooster painted on it. "Turn down here," she said. She followed him onto a cobbled path, which led along a line of white birches. Through the half-denuded branches was visible a house or barn of some sort, with dark shingles and a dark roof. There was the sound of sawing wood somewhere near.

  As they passed under the trees, the sawing ceased. "Melinda!" a high voice called, and from the other side of the house three children appeared, the oldest, holding a wood saw and perspiring, looking to be twelve or so. The others were a year or so younger, about Billy's age.

  "We've been waiting for you," the oldest said, scowling at Billy.

  "I missed the early bus," Melinda said, putting down the bags. "The bank had a new girl who didn't believe I had a brother named George who left me all that money." She turned to Billy. "I met somebody on the bus. We might as well do the introductions now. It's kind of pretty in this moonlight anyway." She paused, seeing that the others were staring at Billy.

  The boy with the saw said, "Jesus," and the others said nothing, but their stares told what they were thinking.

  "I don't want to hear a thing," Melinda said. "You all know what has to be done, so let's do it." She held a hand out in a circle, pointing to each in turn. "This is John, with the saw, and next to him, Rebecca and Marsh. That's short for Marshall. Rebecca and Marsh are brother and sister." She put her hand on Billy's shoulder. "This is Billy Potter, and he's going to be with us for a while." The others were silent. "Take his bag in," Melinda said. "Unpack it in the room next to mine. Put the empty bag in the attic. Then get back to what you were doing."

  There was no discussion as they went off to do what Melinda told them.

  "Put some late supper on, Rebecca!" she called after them, and the girl, her pigtails whipping as she turned, nodded and ran off.

  "Well," Melinda said, "it's as bad as I thought. Maybe worse. If they noticed it, there's a lot that has to be done." She bent down to pull the shawl closer around Billy's shoulders, and led him to the front door.

  "We'll do what has to be done," she said in an odd voice, pulling Billy closer as they passed into the house.

  3

  Weeks passed. And with their passing, a routine developed. Each morning, Billy rose at six and went out to the barn. By then the chickens had laid their eggs, and he cleaned up after them, collecting whatever they produced. Then he swept the kitchen and the hallways and swept the stairs. By then it was time for breakfast.

  They ate together, in the huge stone-floored kitchen. At night it was the coldest room in the house, but in the morning, after the stove had been lit, there was no warmer place. The table was big, and they filled one end of it, Melinda sitting at the head and the others in the places to either side of her. Billy's place was next to Rebecca's, and it was with Rebecca that he had his first fight. It began when she asked him to pass the sugar one morning.

  Billy ignored her, looking down into his cereal.

  "I said, pass the sugar," Rebecca repeated.

  "You heard the girl," Melinda said, staring down sternly from the head of the table. "She asked you to do something."

  Billy sat stone-still.

  "You heard her," Melinda said, "now hear me. Pass the sugar like you were asked."

  Rebecca didn't wait for him, but pushed her chair back, standing and leaning heavily over Billy to bring the sugar bowl across. On the way she dropped half of the bowl's contents into his cereal.

  "Sorry," she said, smirking as she sat down again.

  There was utter silence for a moment, before John began to laugh scornfully. Then, carefully, Billy lifted his bowl of cereal and dumped it into Rebecca's lap.

  They rolled out of their chairs and wrestled to the floor. The others rooted encouragement to Rebecca. Melinda made sure she was slow in getting up to stop it. Billy held Rebecca about the waist, but she had him by the hair and was yanking at it. Billy finally let out a yelp, letting go of her and rolling over, pushing his arms up to make her loosen her grip on his hair. It didn't work, but he discovered that she winced when he dug into her ribs. She tried to stifle her groan of laughter, but it was obvious that she was ticklish, and before long the fight had turned decisively in Billy's favor.

  "That's enough," Melinda said, lording over them when Billy had his opponent pinned mercilessly beneath him, drawing great painful explosions of laughter from her as he dug his fingers into her sides.

  After that the ice had broken, and the tight family that was Melinda's opened to admit a new member. Though Billy still held his distance from them, a part of him seemed to have warmed. He began to smile, and whenever he passed Rebecca, in a hallway or outside during chores, he could not help holding his hands out before him and moving his fingers in a tickling motion—which produced a flinching smile from the girl.

  The seasons clocked leisurely by. Autumn became winter, winter rounded into spring. Papers were produced somewhere along the line, signed by Billy's mother, giving Melinda legal custody of the boy. When she told him about this, he seemed unmoved—though something in him, something tiny, seemed to stir. There was spring baseball, then summer baseball, and by the end of August, Billy and Marshall were friends, sharing adjoining rooms. Their world settled into a quiet turning, with day leading to night and night leading to month to year. And then suddenly it was autumn again, and Melinda was telling Billy that it was time for school.

  She called him to her study, a dark-paneled room with scant sunlight in the back of the house, filled with books and her half-working typewriter and her filing cabinet and more dusty afternoon sunlight.

  "They're a nice bunch at school, but they can get a little rough," she told him, "and if they see anything different in a boy, they're liable to get on you. I have a feeling they'll get on you, Billy." She looked futilely for something on her desk, then reached down into her huge bag, finally producing a cigarette. "I won't tell you to be careful, because I know you can take care of yourself. I'm sure you've been through this before. But I'll tell you to be patient. Don't fight back. Try to find your place"—she paused—"like you found it here. I don't know if you've noticed it, but John resents you. He thinks you've taken his place. I've tried to talk to him about it, but he's a stubborn boy."

  There seemed to be something else she wanted to add, a coda or elaboration, but she said nothing. She settled back into her chair, running her hands one over the other and stubbing out her cigarette.

  "Damned arthritis," she said. "It doesn't pay to be old, Billy. All the pieces wear down. Your body begins to laugh at you. Bodies don't laugh at young people. They laugh at the old, though. It's the price the old pay; they gain in years and knowledge, but the body says, 'Hold on there. Where do you think you're going with all that learning? Ain't much time left to use it.'" She waved an impatient hand at her own thoughts and drew another cigarette out of her bag, carrying with it a lemon drop, which she handed to Billy. She lit the cigarette and coughed, a light rasp. She let the smoke drift out of her mouth and nostrils. "And cigarettes don't make you any younger.

  "By the way, I know you've been sneaking cigarettes with Rebecca during chores, so don't tell me you haven't," she said. "It's nothing to me, except that I wish you wouldn't do it. It's not good for you. I started when I was a little older than you, and every time I smoke one of these damned things now, I can feel it sucking a little life out of me. I suck in the smoke, and when I blow it out, a little of me goes with it. I can forbid you, but I've always believed that when one man lords over another, he'd better only do it in things he's prepared to accomplish himself. I've lorded over you a lot of ways, but since I don't follow my own preaching in this case, I can't do anything but beg you not to do as I do. Can't command, only beg." Again her thoughts slipped into another stream, segueing into a planned tangent. She drew a long puff before going on.

  "Have you been happy here, Billy?" She was staring up at the ceiling, but there was nothing but attention in her manner.

&nb
sp; Billy answered, without hesitation, "Yes."

  "Happier than you've ever been?"

  "Yes.”

  "Good. You going to continue to be happy?" She was striving for just the right words.

  "Do you want me to leave?" Billy asked simply.

  Her chair creaked as she leaned her weight down forward, facing him squarely and putting her elbows down on her desk. "No, I don't want that." She gazed into his eyes, looking for what she wanted to see and not finding it.

  "I want you to stay here for a long time," she said. She put her hand across the desk, touching him for the first time since the day on the bus. "I want you to be as happy as you ever can be. There's nothing but love for you here. There always will be. I think if you went away today, I'd cry—even more than if Rebecca or Marsh or John were to leave. Sometimes one of my boys or girls does go, and it puts a little hole in my heart, just as if someone had dug it out with a spade. But the hole fills in real soon, because always when they leave, it's to something better, a new home with new folks to bring them up like real parents. My knowing that there's something better for them fills in the hole. But if you were to leave now, or anytime soon, I think the hole would be bigger and I don't think it would fill in." Again she chose her words carefully. "Because I don't think you could be happier anywhere else now, and I get a bad feeling in me that if you were to leave, it would only come to worse for you. I get feelings like that, and they've always been right so far." She took another long puff on her cigarette, then discovered that it was down to the filter and rubbed it into her ashtray. "And the fact that you wouldn't be happier anywhere else than this makes me sad, because—"

  Suddenly she drew herself up, letting her mouth close around her thoughts and leaning back in her chair. She was heading someplace she didn't want to go. At least not yet.

  "I only meant to tell you," she said softly, reaching out an aching, arthritic hand to put it on his shoulder, "that school can be a tough time. So don't hesitate to talk to me, or Marsh, or anybody about it." She waved a hand at the door and smiled. "Now go give Rebecca a hand out back with the rest of that lawn trimming." She squeezed his shoulder before letting him go. "And don't let me catch the two of you smoking—I can still tear into you when I catch you at it."

  As he left the room, she was staring at the ceiling and there was another cigarette in her palsied hand, its thin trail of smoke spiraling upward with her thoughts.

  4

  School began, in the kind of cool-hot, blue-sky weather it always does, and they were rough on him, just as she'd predicted. John paved the way for this. Maybe Melinda had known this would happen, because John was more jealous of Billy's special place than the others. John stoked the coals, but there were others who fanned the flames. They circled him warily at first, looking for the quiet opening in this quiet boy, and soon they found it when he refused to play ball with them in the yard at lunchtime.

  They singled him out the next day when he refused to join in a game of Johnny-ride-the-pony. There was a crowd, and this emboldened a freckle-faced kid a year older than Billy named Jim Crane.

  "You some kind of faggot?" Crane asked, and there were a few sniggers from the others: mostly boys, but a couple of girls had gathered, too.

  Billy said nothing. Hands at his sides, he began to turn away.

  Crane held out a tentative finger, poking at Billy's chest lightly; he was a few inches taller.

  Billy looked at him evenly. "I don't want to play."

  " 'Cause you're a faggot, right?" Again Crane pushed his finger into Billy's chest.

  "I just don't want to."

  There was an uneasy murmur from the crowd—a mixture of uneasiness at Billy's refusal to be rattled and an ebbing of confidence in Crane's handling of the situation. Jim Crane sensed this, with the radar that all children carry that measures what others think of them.

  Billy's eyes were unblinking, and Crane began to feel uneasy.

  The back part of the group had peeled away, leaving for other playground amusements. Jim Crane sensed he was losing his audience. He was seventh-grade class president and couldn't afford to look foolish.

  "I know," he said in a loud voice, so that it would carry to those who were leaving and possibly pull them back, "what you are." Again he pushed a finger into Billy's chest, harder and yet more tentative, as if he knew he was crossing some border and was unsure of himself. "You're the boy with penny eyes." There were a few titters of approval, so he continued, more confident. "You're a freak. And a faggot."

  Jim Crane felt Billy's copper eyes staring at him. Suddenly, he was filled with apprehension, even as he continued to speak. There was too much peer pressure, too much at stake, for him to stop. "You don't play because you're a freak. John told me that."

  Something stirred deep in Billy Potter's eyes. He hadn't moved an inch, hadn't brought his hands up from his sides, hadn't even balled his fingers into fists to show that he was hurt or upset. His eyes hadn't blinked, but now, though they hadn't even widened, they seemed to deepen to black.

  Jim Crane cried out and threw his hands in front of his face. He stumbled back a step, nearly falling, and saw that those around him were moving off to other parts of the playground.

  And then the blackness was gone from Billy's eyes. They were just the copper brown they had always been. Billy still had not moved. "I don't want to play," he said in the same even, flat tone he had used before.

  "Okay," Jim Crane muttered, and turned, making his way to the farthest part of the playground.

  5

  John avoided Billy after that. But soon John left. A couple with neatly pressed clothes, the mother in pink and the man in a conservative gray suit, along with a thin girl with big dark eyes who smiled smugly at them all, came to take him one Sunday afternoon. They spent some time in Melinda's office, and their occasional precise laughter was heard, muffled, through the door. Then John was summoned, his hair combed and his bag—the same one he had carried into the house after running away from his abusive father two years before, and which had been pulled down from the attic from the pile of bags and ragged suitcases—packed to bursting with his clothes and few possessions. The door to the office was open partway for him. He put his bag down outside and turned to see Marsh, Billy, and Rebecca standing there. There was a strange mixture of triumph and sadness on his face. He took a step toward them, but then he was called into the office.

  They parted outside a little while later, when Melinda and the fresh-smelling parents and the little girl with dark eyes and John emerged from the house. The little girl stared at Billy. They walked to a neat, new-looking black Chevrolet sedan parked out front. The man and woman put John's bag in the trunk and began to talk with Melinda, and the girl, still staring at Billy, got into the car, and once again John turned to see the three of them waiting for him on the porch. He walked awkwardly to Marsh and Rebecca and kissed them both.

  The man said, "Come along, son, we have a long trip," his voice showing that he looked forward to making it. John turned to Billy and said, "Sorry." He looked away quickly, then said, turning back for a moment before walking to the car and getting in, "You'll never find a home. This will never happen to you."

  Melinda closed the door to her office after the black car drove off: She stayed in there alone until suppertime. The three children set out the places slowly, only catching themselves after setting out John's dish and then putting it away. Rebecca turned to Billy, the dish still in her hand, the cabinet open behind her, and said, "Someone will take you, Billy. It'll happen for all of us."

  Billy looked at her steadily. Rebecca found herself afraid of him suddenly, for the first time since the day he had arrived, when a coldness had coursed through her on first seeing him. Now it happened again, only worse. He seemed to be made of ice. All the warmth that had built up in him since he had arrived seemed to have evaporated, leaving a thing frigid and black as space.

  Billy turned away from her, and in the silence of the cold, stony room,
they finished their work.

  Another man came to see Melinda that week. He stayed in her office a long time, arguing with her. The three of them could not hear what was said, only that she was shouting at him, madder than she had ever been, and his shouts were finally drowned out by hers. After he left, quickly, with his coat thrown over his bag and his face red, Melinda stayed in her room with the door shut for the rest of the day and night. For the first time they ate dinner without her in the cold kitchen.

  Things went on as usual. The winter was not a hard one, but it seemed harder without John there to help. Marsh caught a cold, which turned to pneumonia because he stayed out too long, chopping wood. He had to be taken to the hospital but was back in two weeks, stronger than ever. There were snowball fights, and sledding, and one night when it warmed to the freezing mark in January, they built a bonfire and danced around it, staying out most of the night. Melinda's eyes glistened. She was dressed in her thickest coat, with only her red face showing. She wore huge red mittens. The mittens, and the warmth of the fire, had driven the hurt from her hands. A great ball of a moon rose in the deep black sky over the trees, outlining the three children and the old woman like pale ghosts. She told them what it had been like when she was a girl.

  "Things were not too different than they are tonight," she said. "I remember doing this all the time. My brother George and I were always out at night, all year long. We had a cadre of friends that were always there and always had something to do. We spent a lot of time in graveyards on nights like this." She paused to blow warm air into her mittens. "We told spook stories, and played hide-and-seek behind the gravestones. Nobody was afraid of death then," she said. Her voice trailed off for the briefest moment and she looked at the moon. She laughed. "But we had great fun. George and I were always together. My father raised us alone and he was almost never there. George and I took care of each other." A memory illuminated her from within. "One time George dressed himself as a ghost, in a sheet, and carried a candle in front of him. He chased me all over the churchyard. He was always playing tricks like that. Another time he and his cronies dug a shallow hole and he got down into it with a straw in his mouth so he could breathe. They covered him with dirt and dragged a gravestone to the head of it and then told me they'd found a stone we'd been looking for for a long time. When I got over to it, they made sure I stood right up next to where my brother's arm was, and he reached up and grabbed me, right through the dirt. Then he sat up and pulled me down." There were tears of joy in the corners of her eyes, and they laughed with her. "Oh, how I screamed! I think I yelled for two days straight. I never went to the graveyard with George and his buddies again, I can tell you.''