Candy;

by White, Robb, 1909-1990

  Tlie car came out of the woods and stopped in front of the house. A man Candy had never seen before got out. And he was by himself.

  "It's somebody else," she whispered to Tony. "You just sit still so he won't know you're blind. I'll get rid of him."

  The man came up on the porch. "Hi," he said.

  "Hello," Candy said. "Have you seen Mr. Tartiere?"

  "Yes," the man said.

  "When's he coming back?"

  The man looked surprised. "Coming back?" he asked.

  Candy pointed at the piece of paper on the door. The m.an went over, read it, then pulled it down. "He isn't coming back," he said slowly. "He's dead."

  "Dead?" Candy whispered.

  "Last Tuesday. He was buried yesterday."

  "I'm sorry," Candy said.

  "Yeah. He was a fine old man. Well, I've got to lock things up now."

  Candy got up and, standing half in front of Tony, she reached behind her and guided him.

  "Did you want to see him about anything?" the man asked. "I'm his lawyer."

  "No, thanks," Candy said. "We just came to talk to him."

  Staying between the man and Tony, she guided him down off the porch. "Good-by."

  "So long," the man said, turning his back on them.

  As Tony sat down in the boat again, he said quietly, "That's that."

  CHAPTER

  14

  Candy didn't raise sail as she let the Faraway drift slowly down the river. Tony sat in the cockpit slumped down, looking with his blind eyes at the bottom of the boat.

  Tliey had almost reached the open mouth of the river when Tony suddenly sat up straight and raised his head as though hstening. ''I hear a motor/' he said.

  Candy listened, too, and in a little while she heard it. It was a boat and coming down from the north. Candy grabbed the paddle and swung the Faraway's bow toward the bank of the river.

  ''What're you doing?" Tony asked, a little tremble in his voice.

  ''Nothing. But it may be someone looking for us, although I don't think it is. We'll hide anyway until it goes past."

  She paddled the Faraway in close until the tree limbs hung over her and only the mast stuck up in the clear. By bending down she could see across the mouth of the river to the open sea.

  Soon a white motorboat with green superstructure slid into view. It was going slowly and there were four or five men in the after cockpit. She saw the sun glint on a pair of field glasses one of the men was holding.

  Candy held her breath as the boat came slowly on. Then she let it out as the boat went by the mouth of the river. ''Just a motorboat/' she said. ''But we'll wait until it gets around the Point."

  "Then where'll we go?'' Tony asked.

  Candy pulled one of the leaves off a branch above her head. Without thinking about it, she began to strip the leaf with her fingers. When she had nothing but the stem, she began to nip off little pieces of that until it was all gone.

  "I don't know, Tony," she said quietly.

  "Candy," he said, his voice low, "I think I'd better start hitchhiking again. You could take me to some place where no one knows me and I could get a ride."

  "No," she said.

  He nodded his head. "We might as well give up," he said slowly. "As long as I'm anywhere around Beachton, they can find me after a while."

  "No. Wait. I'm thinking," Candy said, frowning.

  They sat in silence. Out in the river some mullet jumped, flashing silver in the sunlight and falling back awkwardly.

  "Tony," Candy said, "listen. I took a man to a place once and I promised him that I wouldn't ever tell anyone where he was. I promised him, too, that I wouldn't ever bring anybody to that place. Would I be breaking my promise if I took you to where he is?"

  Tony thought for a while. "I guess you would. Candy."

  "Maybe so. But since you can't see anything you wouldn't even know where you were, would you?"

  "No, I wouldn't."

  "And you wouldn't know who he was either."

  "No."

  "Then maybe it wouldn't count if I took you there. What do you think?"

  "Well, I'm somebody, and you told him you wouldn't bring

  anybody. So you'd still be breaking your promise, even if I didn't know where I was."

  Candy thought for a while. *'But I don't think he meant it exaetly that way, Tony. He wasn't thinking about somebody who was blind. He was thinking about grownups, not about a boy."

  "Maybe not."

  Candy reached for the paddle. 'Tm going to take you anyway, Tony," she said, her chin stuck out. 'If he gets mad at me—well, he'll just have to get mad, that's all."

  ''Maybe he won't let me stay."

  ''I think he will, Tony. He seemed to be a nice man."

  At the mouth of the river Candy raised sail and got under way toward the islands.

  ''Is the place far from Beachton, Candy?" Tony asked.

  "Sort of. But it's a place no one would ever think of looking for you. It's an awfully lonely place. I should think that man would be glad to have you to talk to."

  "Is he all by himself?"

  "Yes."

  "Is he running away from somebody, too?"

  Candy frowned. "I don't know, Tony. He's kind of mysterious. He said he wanted to go to this place and stay all by himself and not ever see anybody. But I don't think anyone's chasing him the way they are you. He's just got some kind of trouble he wants to get rid of."

  "Sounds goofy to me," Tony decided.

  "Maybe so. But when you talk to him it doesn't. The things he says sound all right when you're with him. Only they change and sound goofy after you go away."

  They sailed on in silence for a long time as the coast dropped away astern, the white beaches merging with the green of the trees until there was only a long, dark green line across the paler green of the sea.

  ''Are there any crabs where we're going?" Tony asked after a while. ''I really like to eat those rascals."

  Candy laughed. ''Millions of 'em."

  "If that man will let me stay maybe I could help him by catching crabs. Because Fve got an idea about that, Candy. I could tie that thing you used to scoop 'cm up with right where Yd know where it was. Then I could lift the crabs up into it. Don't you think that would work?"

  "You'd have to tie it so you could lift it up and dump 'em out though."

  "That's easy. Or maybe just pull them up on the land and grab 'em."

  "Unh unh. They'd bite you, Tony. Anyway, they run away as soon as you get them close to being out of the water. You'll have to scoop 'em."

  "Well, I could help him by catching fish, too. Has he got hooks and things?"

  "He must have," Candy decided.

  "I used to fish in Texas City. One time I was fishing with my dad's rod and reel off the jetty. The same one where the ship exploded. I hooked something that was so big he pulled me right off the jetty, rod and all, because I wouldn't let go."

  Tony laughed suddenly. "There was a man fishing right beside me, and when he saw the line running off that reel, he said, 'Tony, you better make up your mind right now whether you want that rod more'n that fish does.' Then that fish jerked me off into the water. But I held on and, after a while, the line broke. I never did find out what kind of fish it was, either. It cost my dad four dollars for a new line, but he didn't mind. He was just sorry I didn't catch the fish."

  "What did your father do, Tony?"

  "He was a chemist, and he was born in Canada. My mother was, too, but they were Americans."

  "Were you an only child?"

  Tony nodded.

  130

  i

  ''What grade were you in in school?''

  'Tourth, but I wouldVe been in the fifth if it hadn't happened. It was in April, and I would have passed all right. I used to make a few A's but mostly B's. Except conduct. Fd get C in that a lot." He chuckled.

  "Were you bad?''

  ''I wasn't good/' Tony said. "Nobody ever called me teacher's pet, anywa
y."

  "Me, neither," Candy declared.

  "What grade are you in?"

  "I will be in the ninth when school starts."

  Tony said almost wistfully, "You're almost through, aren't you?" '

  "Oh no. I've got high school and then college."

  "Where're you going to college?"

  "I don't know. Somewhere close to some water so I can sail a little bit every now and then."

  "I was going to go to M.I.T. and be a chemist like my dad, but I don't guess I will. I've even forgotten how to read Braille."

  "What's that?" Candy asked.

  "That's the way blind people read things. Little dots on paper."

  "How does it work?"

  "It has little squares vdth six places for dots. Depending on how many dots there are makes the letters."

  "But how do you read them?"

  "With our fingers. We feel how many dots in each space and they make words. The dots stick up, see, so we can feel them. Like all six dots makes a whole word—'for.' A is one dot in the top left-hand corner."

  "But how do you know where to go? How do you keep reading along?"

  "That's sort of hard at first. But you feel the lines with your left hand and read across with your right hand. When you

  come to the end of a line, you move your left hand down one and bring your right hand to there and go on reading. I never did get past number-one Braille, but a lot of the children there could read faster than people who can see. And they can write in Braille, too. Tliere's a metal thing the paper goes into and you punch the dots with a thing like a little icepick. But I never learned how/'

  "Tony, can you see anything at all?" Candy asked. ''Can you tell whether it's night or day?''

  He nodded. '1 don't know how, but I can tell when there's a lot of light. I can't see it, but I can tell somehow."

  ''Do you remember the w^ay things looked before you were blind? I mean the sky and flowers and things?"

  He turned his head slowly toward her and his eyes seemed to be looking straight into hers. Softly he said, "I remember, Candy." Then he closed his eyes and turned away. "Sometimes I have dreams," he said slowly. "I dream that I can see. That I'm walking in a field, maybe, with a lot of little flowers and the sky is blue with long white clouds. Or sometimes I just dream about colors—lots and lots of them whirling slowly around and changing color all the time. And I dream sometimes that I'm bhnd. That's no good."

  Candy looked up at the sky, which was a pale, misty blue with no clouds. Then she looked out at the islands, which were close now and very beautiful. She looked at the sun coming through the white sails of the Faraway. At last she looked at her own brown, strong hand on the tiller. And she thought how terrible it would be if she could not see any of those things.

  She stopped thinking about that, though, as she saw the white water marking the sunken reefs. Sailing carefully, she worked the Faraway into the lagoon of Dr. Daniels's island and dropped the anchor.

  "We're here, Tony," she said. "I'll go ask the man if you can stay."

  *'ril wait here," Tony decided. ''Then I won't have to get back in again when he says I can't stay with him."

  ''He isn't going to say that. But maybe I'd better talk to him by myself first."

  As she waded toward shore she kept looking for Dr. Daniels, but there was no sign of him. And when she reached the narrow beach there wasn't even any sign of his having been there. She expected to see a tent back among the palm trees, or at least some sign of all the gear he had brought out in the boat, but there wasn't a single trace.

  For a moment Candy thought that perhaps she had come to the wTong island, but when she looked to the westward she saw Pebble Island, and there was no mistaking that one.

  She began to get a strange feeling as she walked slowly ahead into the shade of the palm trees. The ground under them was almost bare and was pocked with holes the land crabs lived in. As she walked she could hear them rattling down under the ground, and they sounded like someone shaking skeletons.

  Although she couldn't see a single sign that a man was living on this island, she had a feeling that it was not deserted. She didn't know exactly how, but she could feel that someone else was there.

  And then she saw his house. Candy stopped and stared at it, not believing what she saw.

  Ever)^thing was camouflaged so well that she had to look hard to see it, but when she did she was amazed.

  He had used the trunks of six palm trees for the frame of his house. The slanting roof was made out of stacked-up palm leaves, all of them overlapping so that it was very thick and practically rainproof. The walls of the house were made of more palm leaves, but these were woven together. The windows had flaps made of more woven leaves that he could let down when it rained.

  There was even a little porch on the house with a table which

  was half of a driftwood log, and a bench to sit on made out of the other half.

  Near the porch there was a fireplace built of rock and coral and beside it, on a rack made of mangrove sticks, were his pots and pans. They were all spotlessly clean and polished.

  Candy walked slowly around the house. Behind it there was a wide sort of platform hanging from the trees by wires. On this were a lot of fish, sliced in half, covered with salt and drying in the sun. Farther on, hanging between two trees, was a dull green hammock made of what looked like nylon.

  Candy went back to the front of the house and looked all around for Dr. Daniels, but still there was no sign of him. Tiptoeing, she went up on the porch and across it to the wide door of the room.

  Everything in there was neat and clean, too. His bed with the air mattress was raised up off the floor on a platform. His guns and fishing rods hung on pegs on the wall. He had a mirror and a washbasin, and all his shaving things were lined up neatly.

  At the other end of the room there was a table made of driftwood planks. A thin white cloth covered what was on it, and Candy tiptoed over and lifted a corner of the cloth.

  There were a lot of medicine bottles and glass things like those in the chemistry lab at school. She wondered why he had so many kinds of medicine, and suddenly she wondered if maybe he was sick.

  Candy was still peeking under the cloth when a shadow moved toward her across the floor. When she saw it, she dropped the cloth and spun around.

  Dr. Daniels was standing in the doorway. With the light behind him he looked very tall and somehow threatening. He was carrying a long, arrow-tipped fish spear and an underwater face mask of glass and thick rubber. All he had on was a pair of khaki swim trunks and tennis shoes and he was still wet from being in the sea.

  Candy could not see his face clearly, but she knew that he was very angry.

  "Candy/' he said.

  "Yes, sir," Candy said, her voice almost gone as she stood still with her hands behind her back.

  Quietly, his voice cold, he said, "YouVe broken your promise."

  Candy could only whisper. "Yes," she said.

  "You've even brought someone out here. Candy."

  She felt the way she did when she had done something wrong and her father just looked at her without saying anything.

  "It's Tonv," she said. "He's blind, so he doesn't know where he is."

  He acted as though he hadn't even heard her. "Why did you do it. Candy?"

  "They're after him. He's in trouble."

  "Who?"

  "Everybody. They want to make him go to the institute for the blind."

  "That's where he should be."

  Candy almost cried. "No. No! He doesn't want to go. He was in one once and he hates it. Dr. Daniels. Please let him stay here where they can't find him. Only for a little while."

  He shook his head slowly. "I can't do that. Candy."

  "Oh, please. Yes, you can," Candy begged him. "Only until Mr. Jenkins comes back. If you want me to, I can bring things to eat or anything you want."

  He kept shaking his head, and Candy looked at him, trying to understand why he would
n't let Tony stay.

  "He won't bother you," she said, pleading. "He can help you fish and catch crabs and, even if he is blind, he won't be in the way at all. Please let him stay."

  Dr. Daniels walked slowly over to the end of the room. Slowly he wiped the spear with an oily rag and hung it on

  two pegs. Then he washed the face mask off and hung it up, too. Finally he turned to face her again. Now sunHght coming through the window fell on his face, and she saw how seriously troubled he was, with his eyes looking as though he were in pain.

  ''Candy, I want you to understand what I'm going to say."

  She nodded.

  'Tony can't stay here. I would help him if I could. Believe that. But I cannot help him, Candy. I cannot even help myself."

  "Are you sick?" Candy asked.

  "You looked at the medicines. Well, say that I'm sick—that's as good a word for it as any other."

  "Maybe Tony could help you," Candy reasoned.

  He shook his head. "I'm far beyond the help of any man."

  "Then Tony can't stay?" Candy asked softly.

  "No, Candy."

  "All right," she said.

  "Thanks, Candy. And will you keep your promise from now on?"

  She looked at him and nodded as she walked slowly out of the house, across the little porch, and back through the trees to the beach.

  CHAPTER

  15

  The tall mast of the Faraway swayed gently as the backwash from the moving sea circled through the lagoon of the island. As Candy waded slowly out to the boat she saw Tony sitting there waiting, and she knew how much he was hoping. It was going to hurt him when she told him what had happened.

  Candy pulled herself into the cockpit and began taking off her sneakers. ''Sand in my shoes," she said.

  ''What did he say?" Tony asked.

  Candy scooped water up in her shoe and dumped it out, a thin trickle of sand going with it.

  "He said no, Tony."

  Tony pressed his forehead with the palms of both hands. "I knew it," he said quietly, taking his hands down.

  Candy slammed her flopping sneaker against the rub rail of the Faraway. "He's got a reason, I guess. But I don't understand what it is. He says he's sick and he's got a lot of bottles full of medicine and chemistry stuff. But he looks fine, and he can go spearing fish and everything."