Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  “No.” His word was flat and uncompromising. I looked at him, the gaunt young planes of his face, the unhappy mouth thinned to stubbornness, the eyes that blinded themselves with dogged defiance. I leaned across the desk, my hands clasped, and wondered what I could say. Argument would do no good. A kid of that age has an answer for everything.

  “We all have violences,” I said, tightening my hands, “but we can’t always let them out. Think what a mess things would be if we did.” I smiled wryly into his unresponsive face. “If we gave in to every violent impulse, I’d probably have slapped you with an encyclopedia before now.” His eyelids flicked, startled, and he looked straight at me for the first time.

  “Sometimes we can just hold our breath until the violence swirls away from us. Other times it’s too big and it swells inside us like a balloon until it chokes our lungs and aches our jaw hinges.” His lids flickered down over his watching eyes. “But it can be put to use. Theo’s when we stir up a cake by hand or chop wood or kick cans across the back yard or—” I faltered, “or run until our knees bend both ways from tiredness.”

  There was a small silence while I held my breath until my violent rebellion against unresponsive knees swirled away from me.

  “There are bigger violences, I guess,” I went on. “From them come assault and murder, vandalism and war, but even those can be used. If you want to smash things there are worthless things that need to be smashed and things that ought to be destroyed, ripped apart and ruined. But you have no way of knowing what those things are, yet. You must keep your violences small until you learn how to tell the difference.”

  “I can smash.” His voice was thick.

  “Yes,” I said. “But smash to build. You have no right to hurt other people with your own hurt.”

  “People!” The word was profanity.

  I drew a long breath. If he were younger... You can melt stiff rebellious arms and legs with warm hugs or a hand across a wind-ruffled head or a long look that flickers into a smile, but what can you do with a creature that’s neither adult nor child but puzzlingly both? I leaned forward.

  “Francher,” I said softly, “if your mother could walk through your mind now—”

  He reddened, then paled. His mouth opened. He swallowed tightly. Then he jerked himself upright in the doorway.

  “Leave my mother alone.” His voice was shaken and muffled. “You leave her alone. She’s dead.”

  I listened to his footsteps and the crashing slam of the outside door. For some sudden reason I felt my heart follow him down the hill to town. I sighed, almost with exasperation. So this was to be a My Child. We teacher-types sometimes find them. They aren’t our pets; often they aren’t even in our classes. But they are the children who move unasked into our hearts and make claims upon them over and above the call of duty. And this My Child I had to reach. Somehow I had to keep him from sliding on over the borderline to lawlessness as he so surely was doing—this My Child who, even more than the usual My Child, was different.

  I put my head down on the desk and let weariness ripple up over me. After a minute I began to straighten up my papers. I made the desk top tidy and took my purse out of the bottom drawer. I struggled to my feet and glared at my crutches. Then I grinned weakly.

  “Come, friends,” I said. “Leave us help one another depart.”

  Anna was out for a week. After she returned I was surprised at my reluctance to let go of the class. The sniff of chalk dust was in my nostrils and I ached to be busy again. So I started helping out with the school programs and teen-age dances, which led naturally to the day my committee and I stood in the town recreation hall and looked about us despairingly.

  “How long have those decorations been up?” I craned my neck to get a better view of the wilderness of sooty cobwebby crepe paper that clotted the whole of the high ceiling and the upper reaches of the walls of the ramshackle old hall that leaned wearily against the back of the saloon. Twyla stopped chewing the end of one of her heavy braids. “About four years, I guess. At least the newest. Pea-Green put it all up.”

  “Pea-Green?”

  “Yeah. He was a screwball. He used up every piece of crepe paper in town and used nails to put the stuff up—big nails. He’s gone now. He got silicosis and went down to Hot Springs.”

  “Well, nails or no nails, we can’t have a Hallowe’en dance with that stuff up.”

  “Going to miss the old junk. How we going to get it down?” Janniser asked.

  “Pea-Green used an extension ladder he borrowed from a power crew that was stringing some wires up to the Bluebell Mine,” Rigo said. “But we’ll have to find some other way to get it down, now.”

  I felt a flick of something at my elbow. It might have been the Francher kid shifting from one foot to the other, or it might have been just a thought slipping by. I glanced sideways but caught only the lean line of his cheek and the shaggy back of his neck.

  “I think I can get a ladder.” Rigo snapped his thumbnail loudly with his white front teeth. “It won’t reach clear up but it’ll help.”

  “We could take rakes and just drag it down,” Twyla suggested.

  We all laughed until I sobered us all with, “It might come to that yet, bless the buttons of whoever thought up twenty-foot ceilings. Well, tomorrow’s Saturday. Everybody be here about nine and we’ll get with it.”

  “Can’t.” The Francher kid cast anchor unequivocally, snapping all our willingness up short.

  “Oh?” I shifted my crutches, and, as usual, his eyes fastened on them, almost hypnotically. “That’s too bad.”

  “How come?” Rigo was belligerent. “If the rest of us can, you oughta be able to. Ever’body’s s’posed to do this together. Ever’body does the dirty work and ever’body has the fun. You’re nobody special. You’re on this committee, aren’t you?”

  I restrained myself from a sudden impulse to clap my hand over Rigo’s mouth midway in his protest. I didn’t like the quietness of the Francher kid’s hands, but he only looked slantwise up at Rigo and said, “I got volunteered on this committee. I didn’t ask to. And to fix this joint up today. I gotta work tomorrow.”

  “Work? Where?” Rigo frankly disbelieved.

  “Sorting ore at the Absalom.”

  Rigo snapped his thumbnail again derisively. “That penny-picking stuff? They pay peanuts.”

  “Yes.” And the Francher kid slouched off around the corner of the building without a glance or a good-by.

  “Well, he’s working!” Twyla thoughtfully spit out a stray hair and pointed the wet end of her braid with her fingers. “The Francher kid’s doing something. I wonder how come?”

  “Trying to figure that dopey dilldock out?” Janniset asked. “Don’t waste your time. I bet he’s just goofing off.”

  “You kids run on,” I said. “We can’t do anything tonight. I’ll lock up. See you in the morning.”

  I waited inside the dusty echoing hall until the sound of their going died down the rocky alley that edged around the rim of the railroad cut and dissolved into the street of the town. I still couldn’t reconcile myself to slowing their steps to match my uncertain feet. Maybe someday I would be able to accept my braces as others accept glasses; but not yet—oh, not yet!

  I left the hall and snapped the dime-store padlock shut. I struggled precariously along through the sliding shale and loose rocks until suddenly one piece of shale shattered under the pressure of one of my crutches and I stumbled off balance. I saw with shake-making clarity in the accelerated speed of the moment that the only place my groping crutch could reach was the smooth curving of a small boulder, and, in that same instant, I visualized myself sprawling helplessly, hopelessly, in the clutter of the alley, a useless nonfunctioning piece of humanity, a drag and a hindrance on everyone again. And then, at the last possible instant, the smooth boulder slid aside and my crutch caught and steadied on the solid damp hollow beneath it. I caught my breath with relief and unclenched my spasmed hands a little. Lucky!


  Then all at once there was the Francher kid at my elbow again, quietly waiting.

  “Oh!” I hoped he hadn’t seen me floundering in my awkwardness. “Hi! I thought you’d gone.”

  “I really will be working.” His voice had lost its flatness. “I’m not making much but I’m saving to buy me a musical instrument.”

  “Well, good!” I said, smiling into the unusualness of his straightforward look. “What kind of instrument?”

  “I don’t know. Something that will sing like this—”

  And there on the rocky trail with the long light slanting through the trees for late afternoon, I heard soft tentative notes that stumbled at first and then began to sing: “Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling—” Each note of this, my favorite, was like a white flower opening inside me in ascending order like steps—steps that I could climb freely, lightly....

  “What kind of instrument am I saving for?” The Francher kid’s voice pulled me back down to earth.

  “You’ll have to settle for less.” My voice shook a little. “There isn’t one like that.”

  “But I’ve heard it—” He was bewildered.

  “Maybe you have. But was anyone playing it?”

  “Why yes—no. I used to hear it from Mom. She thought it to me.”

  “Where did your mom come from?” I asked impulsively.

  “From terror and from panic places. From hunger and from hiding—to live midway between madness and the dream—” He looked at me, his mouth drooping a little. “She promised me I’d understand someday, but this is someday and she’s gone.”

  “Yes,” I sighed, remembering how once I had dreamed that someday I’d run again. “But there are other somedays ahead—for you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And time hasn’t stopped for you either.” And he was gone.

  I looked after him. “Doggone!” I thought. “There I go again, talking to him as though he made sense!” I poked the end of my crutch in the damp earth three times, making interlacing circles. Then with quickened interest I poked the boulder that had rolled up out of the slight hollow before the crutch tip had landed there.

  “Son-a-gun!” I cried aloud. “Well, son-a-gun!”

  Next morning at five of nine the kids were waiting for me at the door to the hall, huddled against the October chill that the milky sun hadn’t yet had time to disperse. Rigo had a shaky old ladder with two broken rungs and splashes of old paint gumming it liberally.

  “That looks awfully rickety,” I said. “We don’t want any blood spilled on our dance floor. It’s bad for the wax.”

  Rigo grinned. “It’ll hold me up,” he said. “I used it last night to pick apples. You just have to be kinda careful.”

  “Well, be so then,” I smiled, unlocking the door. “Better safe than—” My words faltered and died as I gaped in at the open door. The others pushed in around me, round-eyed and momentarily silenced. My first wild impression was that the ceiling had fallen in.

  “My gorsh!” Janniset gasped. “What hit this place?”

  “Just look at it!” Twyla shrilled. “Hey! Just look at it!”

  We looked as we scuffled forward. Every single piece of paper was gone from the ceiling and walls. Every scrap of paper was on the floor, in tiny twisted confetti-sized pieces like a tattered faded snowfall, all over the floor. There must have been an incredible amount of paper tangled in the decorations, because we waded wonderingly almost ankle-deep through it.

  “Looky here!” Rigo was staring at the front of the bandstand. Lined up neatly across the front stood all the nails that had been pulled out of the decorations, each balanced precisely on its head.

  Twyla frowned and bit her lip. “It scares me,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right. It looks like somebody was mad or crazy-like they tore up the paper wishing they was killing something. And then to put all those nails so—so even and careful, like they had been put down gently—that looks madder than the paper.” She reached over and swept her finger sideways, wincing as though she expected a shock. A section of the nails toppled with faint pings on the bare boards of the stand. In a sudden flurry Twyla swept all the nails over. “There!” she said, wiping her finger on her dress. “Now it’s all crazy.”

  “Well,” I said, “crazy or not, somebody’s saved us a lot of trouble. Rigo, we won’t need your ladder. Get the brooms and let’s get this mess swept out.”

  While they were gone for the brooms I picked up two nails and clicked them together in a metrical cadence: “Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling—”

  By noon we had the place scrubbed out and fairly glistening through its shabby paint. By evening we had the crisp new orange-and-black decorations up, low down and with thumbtacks, and all sighed with tired satisfaction at how good the place looked. As we locked up, Twyla suddenly said in a small voice, “What if it happens again before the dance Friday? All our work—”

  “It won’t,” I promised. “It won’t.”

  In spite of my hanging back and trying the lock a couple of times, Twyla was still waiting when I turned away from the door. She was examining the end of her braid carefully as she said, “It was him, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “You’ve known him longer than I have. How did he do it?”

  “Nobody knows the Francher kid,” she said. Then softly, “He looked at me once, really looked at me. He’s funny—but not to laugh,” she hastened. “When he looks at me it—” her hand tightened on her braid until her head tilted and she glanced up slantingly at me, “it makes music in me.

  “You know,” she said quickly into the echo of her unorthodox words, “you’re kinda like him. He makes me think things and believe things I wouldn’t ever by myself. You make me say things I wouldn’t ever by myself—no, that’s not quite right. You let me say things I wouldn’t dare to say to anyone else.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, Twyla.”

  I had forgotten the trembling glamor of a teen-age dance. I had forgotten the cautious stilted gait of high heels on loafer-type feet. I had forgotten how the look of maturity could be put on with a tie and sport jacket and how—how peoplelike teen-agers could look when divorced for a while from Levi’s and flannel shirts. Janniset could hardly contain himself for his own splendor and turned not a hair of his incredibly polished head when I smiled my “Good evening, Mr. Janniset.” But in his pleased satisfaction at my formality he forgot himself as he turned away and hoisted up his sharply creased trousers as though they were his old Levi’s.

  Rigo was stunning in his Latin handsomeness, and he and Angie so drowned in each other’s dark eyes that I could see why our Mexican youngsters usually marry so young. And Angie! Well, she didn’t look like any eighth grader—her strapless gown, her dangly earrings, her laughing flirtatious eyes—but taken out of the context and custom and tradition she was breath-takingly lovely. Of course it was on her “unsuitable for her age” dress and jewelry and make-up that the long line of mothers and aunts and grandmothers fixed disapproving eyes, but I’d be willing to bet that there were plenty who wished their own children could look as lovely.

  In this small community the girls always dressed up to the hilt at the least provocation, and the Hallowe’en dance was usually the first event of the fall that could serve as an excuse. Crinolined skirts belled like blossoms across the floor above the glitter of high heels, but it was only a matter of a few minutes before the shoes were kicked off, to toe in together forlornly under a chair or dangle from some motherly forefinger while unprotected toes braved the brogans of the boys.

  Twyla was bright-cheeked and laughing, dance after dance, until the first intermission. She and Janniset brought me punch where I sat among the other spectators; then Janniset skidded off across the floor, balancing his paper cup precariously as he went to take another look at Marty, who at school was only a girl but here, all dressed up, was dawn of woman-wonder for him. Twyla gulpe
d her punch hastily and then licked the corners of her mouth.

  “He isn’t here,” she said huskily.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wanted him to have fun with the rest of you. Maybe he’ll come yet.”

  “Maybe.” She twisted her cup slowly, then hastily shoved it under the chair as it threatened to drip on her dress.

  “That’s a beautiful dress,” I said. “I love the way your petticoat shows red against the blue when you whirl.”

  “Thank you.” She smoothed the billowing of her skirt. “I feel funny with sleeves. None of the others have them. That’s why he didn’t come, I bet. Not having any dress-up clothes like the others, I mean. Nothing but Levi’s.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame. If I had known—”

  “No. Mrs. McVey is supposed to buy his clothes. She gets money for them. All she does is sit around and talk about how much she sacrifices to take care of the Francher kid, and she doesn’t take care of him at all. It’s her fault—”

  “Let’s not be too critical of others. There may be circumstances we know nothing of—and besides—” I nodded my head, “he’s here now.”

  I could almost see the leap of her heart under the close-fitting blue as she turned to look.

  The Francher kid was lounging against the door, his face closed and impassive. I noted with a flame of anger at Mrs. McVey that he was dressed in his Levi’s, faded almost white from many washings, and a flannel shirt, the plaid of which was nearly indistinguishable except along the seams. It wasn’t fair to keep him from being like the other kids even in this minor way—or maybe especially in this way, because clothes can’t be hidden the way a mind or soul can.

  I tried to catch his eye and beckon him in, but he looked only at the bandstand, where the band members were preparing to resume playing. It was tragic that the Francher kid had only this handful of inexpertly played instruments to feed his hunger on. He winced back into the darkness at their first blare, and I felt Twyla’s tenseness as she turned to me.