Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  The moon was burning holes through the cottonwood tops by now and the yard was slipping into shadow. I heard notes riff rapidly up and cascade back down, gleefully, happily, and I saw the glint and chromium glitter of the harmonica, dancing from shadow to light and back again, singing untouched in the air. Then the moon reached an opening in the trees and spotlighted the Francher kid almost violently. He was sitting on the plank, looking up at the harmonica, a small smile on his usually sullen face. And the harmonica sang its quiet song to him as he watched it. His face shadowed suddenly as he looked down at the things laid out on the plank. He gathered them up abruptly and walked up the moonlight to the little window and slid through, head first. Behind him, alone, unattended, the harmonica danced and played, hovering and darting like a dragonfly. Then the kid reappeared, sliding head first out of the window. He sat crosslegged in the air beside the harmonica and watched and listened. The gay dance slowed and changed. The harmonica cried softly in the moonlight, an aching asking cry as it spiraled up and around until it slid through the open window and lost its voice in the darkness. The window clicked shut and the Francher kid thudded to the ground. He slouched off through the shadows, his elbows winging sharply backward as he jammed his fists in his pockets.

  I let go of the curtain where my clenched fingers had cut four nail-sized holes through the age-fragile lace, and released a breath I couldn’t remember holding. I stared at the empty plank and wet my lips. I took a deep breath of the mountain air that was supposed to do me so much good, and turned away from the window. For the thousandth time I muttered “I won’t,” and groped for the bed. For the thousandth time I finally reached for my crutches and swung myself over to the edge of the bed. I dragged the unresponsive half of me up onto the bed, arranging myself for sleep. I leaned against the pillow and put my hands in back of my head, my elbows fanning out on either side. I stared at the light square that was the window until it wavered and rippled before my sleepy eyes.

  Still my mind was only nibbling at what had happened and showed no inclination to set its teeth into any sort of explanation. I awakened with a start to find the moonlight gone, my arms asleep, and my prayers unsaid. Tucked in bed and ringed about with the familiar comfort of my prayers, I slid away from awareness into sleep, following the dance and gleam of a harmonica that cried in the moonlight.

  Morning sunlight slid across the boardinghouse breakfast table, casting alpine shadows behind the spilled corn flakes that lay beyond the sugar bowl. I squinted against the brightness and felt aggrieved that anything should be alive and active and so—so—hopeful so early in the morning. I leaned on my elbows over my coffee cup and contemplated a mood as black as the coffee.

  “... Francher kid.”

  I rotated my head upward on the axis of my two supporting hands, my interest caught. “Last night,” I half remembered, “last night—”

  “I give up.” Anna Semper put a third spoonful of sugar in her coffee and stirred morosely. “Every child has a something—I mean there’s some way to reach every child—all but the Francher kid. I can’t reach him at all. If he’d even be aggressive or actively mean or actively anything, maybe I could do something, but he just sits there being a vegetable. And then I get so spittin’ mad when he finally does do something, just enough to keep him from flunking, that I could bust a gusset. I can’t abide a child who can and won’t.” She frowned darkly and added two more spoonfuls of sugar to her coffee. “I’d rather have an eager moron than a won’t-do genius!” She tasted the coffee and grimaced. “Can’t even get a decent cup of coffee to arm me for my struggle with the little monster.”

  I laughed. “Five spoonfuls of sugar would spoil almost anything. And don’t give up hope. Have you tried music? Remember, ‘Music hath charms—’ ”

  Anna reddened to the tips of her ears. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment. “Music!” Her spoon dished against her saucer sharply. She groped for words. “This is ridiculous, but I have had to send that Francher kid out of the room during music appreciation.”

  “Out of the room? Why ever for? I thought he was a vegetable.”

  Anna reddened still further. “He is,” she said stubbornly, “but—” She fumbled with her spoon, then burst forth, “But sometimes the record player won’t work when he’s in the room.”

  I put my cup down slowly. “Oh, come now! This coffee is awfully strong, I’ll admit, but it’s not that strong.”

  “No, really!” Anna twisted her spoon between her two hands. “When he’s in the room that darned player goes too fast or too slow or even backwards. I swear it. And one time—” Anna looked around furtively and lowered her voice, “one time it played a whole record and it wasn’t even plugged in!”

  “You ought to patent that! That’d be a real money-maker.”

  “Go on, laugh!” Anna gulped coffee again and grimaced. “I’m beginning to believe in poltergeists—you know, the kind that are supposed to work through or because of adolescent kids. If you had that kid to deal with in class—”

  “Yes.” I fingered my cold toast. “If only I did.”

  And for a minute I hated Anna fiercely for the sympathy on her open face and for the studied not-looking at my leaning crutches. She opened her mouth, closed it, then leaned across the table.

  “Polio?” she blurted, reddening.

  “No,” I said. “Car wreck.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated. “Well, maybe someday—”

  “No,” I said. “No.” Denying the faint possibility that was just enough to keep me nagged out of resignation.

  “Oh,” she said. “How long ago?”

  “How long?” For a minute I was suspended in wonder at the distortion of time. How long? Recent enough to be a shock each time of immobility when I expected motion. Long enough ago that eternity was between me and the last time I moved unthinkingly.

  “Almost a year,” I said, my memory aching to this time last year I could...

  “You were a teacher?” Anna gave her watch a quick appraising look.

  “Yes.” I didn’t automatically verify the time. The immediacy of watches had died for me. Then I smiled. “That’s why I can sympathize with you about the Francher kid. I’ve had them before.”

  “There’s always one,” Anna sighed, getting up. “Well, it’s time for my pilgrimage up the hill. I’ll see you.” And the swinging door to the hall repeated her departure again and again with diminishing enthusiasm. I struggled to my feet and swung myself to the window.

  “Hey!” I shouted. She turned at the gate, peering back as she rested her load of workbooks on the gatepost.

  “Yes?”

  “If he gives you too much trouble send him over here with a note for me. It’ll take him off your hands for a while at least.”

  “Hey, that’s an idea. Thanks. That’s swell! Straighten your halo!” And she waved an elbow at me as she disappeared beyond the box elder outside the gate.

  I didn’t think she would, but she did.

  It was only a couple of days later that I looked up from my book at the creak of the old gate. The heavy old gear that served as a weight to pull it shut thudded dully behind the Francher kid. He walked up the porch steps under my close scrutiny with none of the hesitant embarrassment that most people would feel. He mounted the three steps and wordlessly handed me an envelope. I opened it. It said:

  “Dust off your halo! I’ve reached the !! stage. Wouldn’t you like to keep him permanent-like?”

  “Won’t you sit down?” I gestured to the porch swing, wondering how I was going to handle this deal.

  He looked at the swing and sank down on the top porch step.

  “What’s your name?”

  He looked at me incuriously. “Francher.” His voice was husky and unused-sounding.

  “Is that your first name?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “What’s your other name?” I asked patiently, falling into a first-grade dialogue in spite of his age.

&nbs
p; “They put down Clement.”

  “Clement Francher. A good-sounding name, but what do they call you?”

  His eyebrows slanted subtly upward, and a tiny bitter smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

  “With their eyes—juvenile delinquent, lazy trash, no-good off-scouring, potential criminal, burden—”

  I winced away from the icy malice of his voice.

  “But mostly they call me a whole sentence, like—‘Well, what can you expect from a background like that?’ ”

  His knuckles were white against his faded Levi’s. Then as I watched them the color crept back and, without visible relaxation, the tension was gone. But his eyes were the eyes of a boy too big to cry and too young for any other comfort.

  “What is your background?” I asked quietly, as though I had the right to ask. He answered as simply as though he owed me an answer.

  “We were with the carnival. We went to all the fairs around the country. Mother—” his words nearly died, “Mother had a mind-reading act. She was good. She was better than anyone knew—better than she wanted to be. It hurt and scared her sometimes to walk through people’s minds. Sometimes she would come back to the trailer and cry and cry and take a long long shower and wash herself until her hands were all water-soaked and her hair hung in dripping strings. They curled at the end. She couldn’t get all the fear and hate and—and tired dirt off even that way. Only if she could find a Good to read, or a dark church with tall candles.”

  “And where is she now?” I asked, holding a small warm picture in my mind of narrow fragile shoulders, thin and defenseless under a flimsy moist robe, with one wet strand of hair dampening one shoulder of it.

  “Gone.” His eyes were over my head but empty of the vision of the weatherworn siding of the house. “She died. Three years ago. This is a foster home. To try to make a decent citizen of me.”

  There was no inflection in his words. They lay as flat as paper between us in our silence.

  “You like music,” I said, curling Anna’s note around my forefinger, remembering what I had seen the other night.

  “Yes.” His eyes were on the note. “Miss Semper doesn’t think so, though. I hate that scratchy wrapped-up music.”

  “You sing?”

  “No. I make music.”

  “You mean you play an instrument?”

  He frowned a little impatiently. “No. I make music with instruments.”

  “Oh,” I said. “There’s a difference?”

  “Yes.” He turned his head away. I had disappointed him or failed him in some way.

  “Wait,” I said. “I want to show you something.” I struggled to my feet. Oh, deftly and quickly enough under the circumstances, I suppose, but it seemed an endless aching effort in front of the Francher kid’s eyes. But finally I was up and swinging in through the front door. When I got back with my key chain, the kid was still staring at my empty chair, and I had to struggle back into it under his unwavering eyes.

  “Can’t you stand alone?” he asked, as though he had a right to.

  “Very little, very briefly,” I answered, as though I owed him an answer.

  “You don’t walk without those braces.”

  “I can’t walk without those braces. Here.” I held out my key chain. There was a charm on it: a harmonica with four notes, so small that I had never managed to blow one by itself. The four together made a tiny breathy chord, like a small hesitant wind.

  He took the chain between his fingers and swung the charm back and forth, his head bent so that the sunlight flickered across its tousledness. The chain stilled. For a long moment there wasn’t a sound. Then clearly, sharply, came the musical notes, one after another. There was a slight pause and then four notes poured their separateness together to make a clear sweet chord.

  “You make music,” I said, barely audible.

  “Yes.” He gave me back my key chain and stood up. “I guess she’s cooled down now. I’ll go on back.”

  “To work?”

  “To work.” He smiled wryly. “For a while anyway.” He started down the walk.

  “What if I tell?” I called after him.

  “I told once,” he called back over his shoulder. “Try it if you want to.”

  I sat for a long time on the porch after he left. My fingers were closed over the harmonica as I watched the sun creep up my skirts and into my lap. Finally I turned Anna’s envelope over. The seal was still secure. The end was jagged where I had torn it. The paper was opaque. I blew a tiny breathy chord on the harmonica. Then I shivered as cold crept across my shoulders. The chill was chased away by a tiny hot wave of excitement. So his mother could walk through the minds of others. So he knew what was in a sealed letter—or had he got his knowledge from Anna before the letter? So he could make music with harmonicas. So the Francher kid was... My hurried thoughts caught and came to a full stop. What was the Francher kid?

  After school that day Anna toiled up the four front steps and rested against the railing, half sitting and half leaning. “I’m too tired to sit down,” she said. “I’m wound up like a clock and I’m going to strike something pretty darned quick.” She half laughed and grimaced a little. “Probably my laundry. I’m fresh out of clothes.” She caught a long ragged breath. “You must have built a fire under that Francher kid. He came back and piled into his math book and did the whole week’s assignments that he hadn’t bothered with before. Did them in less than an hour, too. Makes me mad, though—” She grimaced again and pressed her hand to her chest. “Darn that chalk dust anyway. Thanks a million for your assist. I wish I were optimistic enough to believe it would last.” She leaned and breathed, her eyes closing with the effort. “Awful shortage of air around here.” Her hands fretted with her collar. “Anyway the Francher kid said you’d substitute for me until my pneumonia is over.” She laughed, a little soundless laugh. “He doesn’t know that it’s just chalk dust and that I’m never sick.” She buried her face in her two hands and burst into tears. “I’m not sick, am I? It’s only that darn Francher kid!”

  She was still blaming him when Mrs. Somanson came out and led her into her bedroom and when the doctor arrived to shake his head over her chest.

  So that’s how it was that the first-floor first grade was hastily moved upstairs and the junior high was hastily moved downstairs and I once more found myself facing the challenge of a class, telling myself that the Francher kid needed no special knowledge to say that I’d substitute. After all, I like Anna, I was the only substitute available, and besides, any slight—substitute’s pay!—addition to the exchequer was most welcome. You can live on those monthly checks, but it’s pleasant to have a couple of extra coins to clink together.

  By midmorning I knew a little of what Anna was sweating over. The Francher kid’s absolutely dead-weight presence in the room was a drag on everything we did. Recitations paused, limped, and halted when they came to him. Activities swirled around his inactivity, creating distracting eddies. It wasn’t only a negative sort of nonparticipation on his part but an aggressively positive not-doingness. It wasn’t just a hindrance but an active opposition, without any overt action for any sort of proof of his attitude. This, along with my disappointment in not having the same comfortable rapport with him that I’d had before, and the bone-weariness of having to be vertical all day instead of collapsing horizontally at intervals, and the strain of getting back into harness, cold, with a roomful of teeners and subteeners, had me worn down to a nubbin by early afternoon.

  So I fell back on the perennial refuge of harried teachers and opened a discussion of “what I want to be when I grow up.” We had gone through the usual nurses and airplane hostesses and pilots and bridge builders and the usual unexpected ballet dancer and CPA (and he still can’t add six and nine!) until the discussion frothed like a breaking wave against the Francher kid and stilled there.

  He was lounging down in his seat, his weight supported by the back of his neck and the remote end of his spine. The class sighed col
lectively though inaudibly and waited for his contribution.

  “And you, Clement?” I prompted, shifting vainly, trying to ease the taut cry of aching muscles.

  “An outlaw,” he said huskily, not bothering to straighten up. “I’m going to keep a list and break every law there is—and get away with it, too.”

  “Whatever for?” I asked, trying to reassure the sick pang inside me. “An outlaw is no use at all to society.”

  “Who wants to be of use?” he asked. “I’ll use society—and I can do it.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, knowing full well it was so. “But that’s not the way to happiness.”

  “Who’s happy? The bad are unhappy because they are bad. The good are unhappy because they’re afraid to be bad—”

  “Clement,” I said gently, “I think you are—”

  “I think he’s crazy,” said Rigo, his black eyes flashing. “Don’t pay him no never mind, Miss Carolle. He’s a screwball. He’s all the time saying crazy things.”

  I saw the heavy world globe on the top shelf of the bookcase behind Rigo shift and slide toward the edge. I saw it lift clear of the shelf and I cried out, “Clement!” The whole class started at the loud urgency of my voice, the Francher kid included, and Rigo moved just far enough out of line that the falling globe missed him and cracked itself apart at his feet.

  Someone screamed and several gasped and a babble of voices broke out. I caught the Francher kid’s eyes, and he flushed hotly and ducked his head. Then he straightened up proudly and defiantly returned my look. He wet his forefinger in his mouth and drew an invisible tally mark in the air before him. I shook my head at him, slowly, regretfully. What could I do with a child like this?

  Well, I had to do something, so I told him to stay in after school, though the kids wondered why. He slouched against the door, defiance in every awkward angle of his body and in the hooking of his thumbs into his front pockets. I let the parting noises fade and die, the last hurried clang of lunch pail, the last flurry of feet, the last reverberant slam of the outside door. The Francher kid shifted several times, easing the tension of his shoulders as he waited. Finally I said, “Sit down.”