The Boy With Penny Eyes

by Al Sarrantonio

  "What happened to George?" Rebecca asked.

  Melinda looked down at her as if discovering that she was not talking to herself. "He died a long time ago, Rebecca. He was a reporter in Chicago. He was killed trying to save a family in a house fire. He had an insurance policy he used to laugh about, which some broker he had interviewed talked him into taking out, which ended up giving me all the money to run this place. Sometimes I miss him."

  Their bonfire had burned down to a glowing stack of embers and was in danger of going out. The moon had climbed up high, making their fire nearly insignificant. Melinda slapped her hands together, wincing slightly.

  "I'd say we best be going in. Anybody know what time it is?"

  Marsh tilted - his watch up toward the moon. "Two o'clock."

  "Two in the morning? Gracious!" Her eyes lingered on the fire. "It has been fun, though." She rose, grimacing with the returning pain in her joints. She held her arms out at her sides, a hen sheltering her chicks, signaling them to follow. "Into the house and be quick," she said. "I'll wager we can sleep a bit late tomorrow. We've got enough wood inside, so I can't see it makes any difference. I want you in bed in ten minutes, and lay an extra comforter on; it feels like the temperature's dropping again."

  She fell in behind them, looking back once more at the dying fire. A thick log crumbled in on itself, spitting up a futile shower of red sparks. "Well, well," she said quietly and, seeing them waiting for her on the porch, followed them in. She did not go to her room but to her office, shutting the door soundlessly behind her.

  6

  Spring came early to March, and Melinda took to her bed.

  The man who had argued with her in the winter came again. This time they knew he was a doctor because he brought a nurse with him. Only once did Melinda fight him. They heard the argument because the nurse had left the door open a crack and Melinda's voice rose above the others. "I'll stay here, and I'll die here if need be," she said obstinately. "You won't get me to a hospital, so don't try." There was more mumbled discussion, and then they heard Melinda's voice again, louder this time. "Don't you think I know? I'm no fool. Just tell me what has to be done. I'll die here if anywhere . . ." Then the nurse closed the door.

  Weeks passed. They helped her as best they could. There were infrequent visits from the doctor that always ended with him storming out. Melinda seemed to rally, appearing one morning in her robe to shoo them out of the kitchen while she lit the fire herself and made breakfast. She walked a little slower, and her face was thinner and more lined, but her eyes were still bright. She seemed the same old Melinda. Then late one morning, a week after that, she dropped a watering can while reaching up to sprinkle a plant on a windowsill, and had to be half carried to bed. This time she sank into the pillows until they almost swallowed her.

  The next day, while Rebecca and Billy were sharing a cigarette behind the barn, Marsh appeared. His face was white.

  "You're here to tell us she's dead," Rebecca started to say, but Marsh cut her off, shaking his head.

  "There's a man and woman here for us. For you and me," he said to Rebecca. "They're' having a big ruckus up at the house. They're taking us away to some desert town. Melinda didn't tell us about it, and there's nothing ready." He looked like he was in shock, his eyes meeting Billy's now as he spoke. "They're straightening it all out. They want Rebecca and me to leave in an hour."

  The cigarette in Rebecca's fingers burned her and she dropped it. For a moment there was only the sound of a high breeze in the treetops near the house. Then Marsh said, "It's for real, Rebecca."

  Rebecca turned and held Billy, putting her arms around him.

  "I'm not leaving you here," she said, "and Marsh won't either. There's no way they can take us without you."

  But they all knew it would happen.

  In an hour the two of them were gone. They left quietly with two tall people, who had the same look as all the others who came to take children away from Melinda. Rebecca and Marsh were handled like precious porcelain. The man and woman gave Rebecca a doll with big eyes, and Marsh a red metal truck, then they placed them carefully in the back seat of their station wagon and got in and drove off. Melinda stayed in her room. Marsh and Rebecca looked back at Billy, who stared at them silently from the porch.

  A week went by.

  Billy prepared Melinda's meals; she ate them herself, or with his help, but she would not look at him. She seemed very angry. Her eyes, slightly duller now but still filled with a fire, stared past or through him when he came into her room. Some days she could not lift a spoon to her lips. Beneath her covers there seemed nothing but a flat board, no human shape. Occasionally she cried out, in the night or in the afternoon, and Billy came to help her through it as best he could, mostly just standing there while her body was consumed with pain and covered with sweat until she settled down into an uneasy sleep once more. When she was awake at night, and not in pain, she prayed. Her prayers had a savage quality to them, as if she were demanding an answer to some question. One night, in the throes of hallucination, she cried out, "Leave him, then! He's lost to us both!" before sinking back into sleep.

  The dour doctor came a final time, and she shouted at him feebly. But when he left, he was not angry and his car drove off slowly.

  "Billy," Melinda called, in a hiss almost. He went to her. She was propped up in bed; she had diminished so much that the pillows behind her appeared enormous. Her hands rested on her lap before her, one over the other. They looked already dead, insubstantial as air. She looked at him now. With her eyes, she motioned for him to sit on the bed.

  "I'll be dead in an hour," she began. There was no time for him to say anything. "This hour as well as any is fine with me." Her voice was like fierce silk. The strength of it built with every word she spoke.

  "Rebecca and Marsh are gone. All the others are gone. That makes me happy. All I ever wanted was for someone to take all my children away from me." Her voice caught, and she had to wait for breath to return to her throat. "This may sound foolish, but death doesn't hurt me. Every time one of those couples came to take one of my boys or girls, I died. But in that death there was birth, because I knew they were all going on to a better, fuller life.

  "I apologize to you for the way I've acted toward you the past month or so," she said. "It was not kind of me. But there was a reason. I've been wrestling with myself"—she smiled faintly—"and that was quite a fight." The smile vanished. "I've been trying not to hate you, boy."

  Her eyes were nearly on fire, and she was somewhere between crying and screaming. When she next spoke, there was a catch in her voice and she shook her head weakly from side to side. "To think I could ever hate one of my boys or girls, even for a moment. For days I wrestled, Billy. At first I thought it was myself I was hating, my failure. No one likes to fail. I never failed before." Real anger crept into her voice. "I never failed, Billy. I had boys in here who were raped by their fathers, girls who were raped by their own mothers. There were girls who were turned into prostitutes before they were school age. I had boys here who had been beaten so bad that they flinched when you raised a hand to tousle their hair. I died for every one of them. All I did was give them time, and cold and hot weather, and wood chopping and other chores, and my own poor love. And all the evil eventually bled out of them. It all bled out." Her face was red, her fist clenched so tightly that the weak and dying veins in her arm stood out. "With some of them they were down so deep, the evil, ugly things, that it took years and years—but I knew that it would all come out in the end, like coughing up blood, and then the healing could begin. Always, Billy. Until I found you.

  She sank back into the pillows, some of the fire out of her.

  "You scare me, Billy. You scare me down to my bones because I know, and always knew, that no matter how many years I gave you, how many years of waiting and patience and time, that you would never let me die for you. Whatever's down deep in you is never going to come out, because it's what you are. Nobody put
it there, and it can't be bled out. It is you."

  Her face was gray as ash, and she sank deeper into the pillows, closing her eyes as more of the anger drained out of her, along with her strength. She shook her head feebly before reopening her eyes, and when she did, there was not anger but awe and a kind of terror in them.

  "You're looking for someone," she said, staring into his dark eyes. "I knew that from the moment I saw you on that bus."

  She took his hand in her own arthritic claw, and held it with surprising force. She rose up on one elbow, lifting herself by will alone. There was blind fury in her eyes. She hissed, "And when you find that someone, terrible things are going to happen." She grabbed him more tightly by the arm, her face close to his. "And there's nothing I can do about it." She held him by the arms, like a bird with something in its talons, something it wanted but wasn't sure it should take. "Tell me who you're looking for!"

  She was drained then. She gave a short gasp and fell back, her arms dropping to the blankets, lifeless. She looked into Billy's calm face. "I love you so much, Billy," she whispered, and then she closed her eyes, and saw his face no more, and released her last soft whisper of breath.

  7

  He spent the next hour packing. He went to the attic and found his backpack, by itself now, neatly placed on a shelf that had, in its time, held hundreds of suitcases and bags. He brought it down to the kitchen. He put a few cans of food and a can opener in it, along with a half loaf of bread and a nearly empty jar of peanut butter. In a flour tin next to the sink were some one-dollar bills and a couple of fives, used mainly to pay the paper boy. He put the bills in his jacket pocket.

  Outside, the day was bright and sunny. At the front gate he stopped to loosen the straps of his backpack, adjusting for his growth since the last time he had worn it.

  Past the cobbled path, in one of the oaks lining the dirt road, a bird trilled once, twice, three times.

  Billy passed beneath it, and kept walking. This time, he knew where he was going.

  8

  Careful.

  In James Monk's vision, he was standing in a field of low-cut grass, green as the leaves of fresh oak. It was spring, and the sun was just before noon, and there were May clouds, fat and not too high, surrounded by the bluest sky there could be. He could taste spring, coming out of the ground, melting away what winter was left, pushing up through the grass and the wet soil and into the blue sky because there was new life everywhere. There were trees around the edge of the field, far away, but he could smell and feel them from where he was. They were brown and wet, and their leaves were wet and so full that their green would come off on his fingers. The sun was warm on him. There was music somewhere: Mozart. And across the field, from the brown, wet green trees, from out of the earth and the spring itself, came the child.

  It walked as if it was one with the soil and the sky, pure and innocent, face new-born, eyes clear and wet as the leaves of the trees; there were no furrows in the brow, the lips were red and full, the eyes gold like the sun, the body naked like God's own body. And it came to James Monk, walked slowly to him, and put its arms up and held him. It held James Monk in its arms like a mother holds a baby, held his head against the softest of breasts, held his hair in pure hands, stroked his eyes and neck, ran thin warm fingers over his lips, his cheeks, the curve of his nose and chin . . .

  Careful.

  There came a noise, and James Monk quickly put his dream away. He filed it as succinctly as the paints and papers he sorted, the crayons, the pads of art paper, the smocks. He paused in his work, cocked his head away from the shelves in the supply closet and waited for a repeat of the mouse-sound that had taken his hands away from their work, his mind away from . . .

  Careful.

  There it came again: the sound of small feet walking, shoes on floorboards. Shoes on floorboards. He heard the light click of a door closing against its lock, and a sudden trail of fear crawled up his back. He looked to the door of the supply closet, a mere three feet away. Memory came to him of that other time, in that other school, when the same kind of door had swung closed on him, when the light had gone out and he had heard harsh muffled laughter outside, laughter that only increased with his panic and his cries for help, his poundings on the door, the frightful tearing of his fingernails against ungiving wood, the unmoving lock, the darkness, the shelves moving in around him, the darkness . . .

  The footstep sound again, and then the lights went out.

  They went on again. As abruptly as his breath abandoned him it returned, leaving a charge of electric fear running through him. Somewhere far off, he thought he heard a generator whining back to life. And then the memory of those footsteps outside came back to him, those steps, the click of a door.

  "Who's there?"

  The weakness of his voice disappointed him, so he repeated the question with more strength. There was no answer. He edged to the open door of the supply room, his hands out before him, fearing at any moment that it would swing shut toward him, the lights blink out for good, the clawing and the screaming start again . . .

  Careful.

  That foot sound again.

  He reached the door and pushed with both hands against it.

  He looked out.

  There was no one there.

  He stepped out of the supply closet, his heart pounding in his chest, his hands still tightly pressed against the door. The classroom was empty. There were ten rows of chairs, each seat turned up against its back, the blackboard clean and washed, the easels flat against the far wall, the windows along the other wall showing late Saturday sunlight beginning to darken into March night.

  He looked toward the front of the room and saw that the door to the classroom was closed.

  Fear took hold of him again. He knew he had left it open. Working Saturdays was by far easier than during the week, with all the distractions of unruly students, but it made him uneasy to be alone in such a large building. He knew the custodian was downstairs, probably drunk by now in front of Wide World of Sports. Maybe he had been responsible for the lights going out. But James Monk knew he had left that door open.

  He marched quickly across the room and reopened it, peering out into the hallway to see that it was empty, a long tunnel of tomblike marble floors and flat green student lockers.

  There came a sound behind him.

  Again his heart moved. He turned to see the desks empty, the blackboard clean, the easels still as toy soldiers, the supply closet door.. .

  Closed.

  "Who's in that closet? Come out immediately!"

  His words were shrill, hysterical. He immediately regretted using them, but they had come up from his stomach and chest in a spasm of fear.

  "Don't fool with me! Come out here now!"

  He wanted to run but knew he could not do that. He knew that if he ran that would be the end of him. It must be a student in there and the fact that he was soft, could be had, would spread like wildfire. James Monk wouldn't last another week in this school. Perhaps if he had stood up for himself that other time, in that other school, had stood before them all and denounced them instead of shrieking like a madwoman when they locked him in the closet—then, well, maybe he wouldn't have had to go through what he did, the stretch of almost a year before another job came, months of torture and self-doubt, his vision his only comfort.

  He could not afford to let it happen again.

  "Come out here!"

  His voice had gained stability. Moving to his desk, his eyes all the while on the door of the supply closet, he felt for and then found the right-hand drawer where he kept his rulers. He withdrew one, feeling the cool line of steel edging along one side. Somehow, it made him feel strong.

  "I'm going to open that door, and I promise you we'll be in Mr. Carstair's office eight o'clock Monday morning. You'll get a month's detention!" He lowered his voice, still hiding his panic. "Come out on your own and we'll talk about it."

  He heard movement in the closet and then some
thing was knocked over. But the door stayed closed.

  "That's it, my friend. You're in big trouble."

  His hand tightened on the ruler and he moved forward, overcoming his legs, which wanted to turn him around and run him away. This was where he had to fight back. He put his hand on the knob, his eyes not seeing how the hand trembled, and yanked the door open.

  The supply closet looked empty.

  It wasn't.

  In the corner, a box filled with rolls of poster paper rocked toward him, then back. There was, Monk knew, a space behind it.

  "Stand up this minute," James Monk hissed.

  One hand moved to the box, the other rose above his head with the ruler in it, and at that moment someone stood up.

  James Monk made a strange sound, something between a gasp of astonishment and fulfillment. What came out of his mouth was "Oh." The ruler lowered in his hand. He backed away as the figure stood all the way up.

  "It's me," it said.