Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  Mr. Jensus’ face saddened. “I’ll have to speak to Theo again about talking unwisely outside the Group,” he said. “That is strictly Group business.”

  “You keep the creek flowing?” Then I frowned a little. “Bur why? None of you live down there—”

  “But you do,” he smiled. “You need water. We can provide it; so of course, we do.”

  “Oh, of course,” I repeated. It sounded too simple. Why should—Then another thought caught me. “Then this is the other end of the water!”

  “Well, yes,” said Mr. Jensus after the usual pause. “You could say that.”

  “Theo told Jareb,” I said. “He said that’s where you lived.”

  “Theo enjoys flowing with the water on warm days. He’s forbidden to go farther than the pool.”

  “But if he hadn’t—” I said.

  “If he hadn’t,” nodded Mr. Jensus. “But he disobeyed.”

  From the tone of his voice I decided maybe Theo wasn’t getting away with very much with his dad.

  “Then the broken pump is why the creek has been drying up lately?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Jensus. “We try to have someone here to keep the water flowing, but sometimes—”

  “Keep the water flowing without the pump?” I asked. Mr. Jensus nodded.

  “Look here,” I said, a kind of dizziness roaring in my ears. “I’m going to ask you something flat-out. I want a flat-out answer. Who are you people, anyway?”

  “We?” Mr. Jensus’ eyebrows rose. “We’re The People.” His hand went out at my sudden scowl. “No, please. I’m not trying to—to mock you. We have no name for ourselves except The People. We, like you, seek a new home. We can never go back—”

  “Back where?” I asked flatly.

  “Back Home.” His lips lifted in a half smile. “We had no other name for it either.”

  “Then you’re from across the sea—”

  “The sea?” His voice was a sigh.

  “The sea,” I said, remembering it as last I had seen it so long ago.

  “Oh, the sea!” His face brightened. “Then you do have wide waters in this world too—”

  “This world?” I felt a clenching in my chest.

  “Yes.” It was more a sigh than a word. “We had a crossing—but not of the sea—”

  And for the second time I was snatched into that bright stream. The hills and flats were gone for me. The pump and the glittering water faded into dark. I watched a world die in the sky, flame licking like tongues as far as across a whole hemisphere. I saw vehicles rise before the flames and lose themselves in the darkness of space. I felt madness crisp the edges of my mind as I tried to find a solid something in a dissolving nothing. Then the pump coughed and caught and again spewed the steady stream into the hillside.

  Mr. Jensus’ eyes were warily on mine.

  “Another world,” I said. “Wagons without wheels—”

  Mr. Jensus nodded. “And some burned up in the atmosphere when we came to this world. And some of us died here because of un-understanding—” His voice wavered and, for a minute, I looked at Everly through his eyes—the eyes of a refugee who knew the gates of Eden were forever slammed behind him and that the turning sword of flame of burning craft forever stood guard. I blinked myself back to myself.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Not only what you have told me, but why you go on helping—”

  He frowned a little. “Surely none of the facts cancel any others. It wasn’t Hellesgate that—that killed. Hellesgate needs water, so—”

  “Of course,” I said. “I guess—” Then all at once I wanted to hold my hand out to him and as quickly knew I didn’t have to. I knew we were touching for a small moment somewhere where it mattered most. I cleared my throat and kicked at the base of the hill. The dust sifted across my toe—

  “Say!” I said, turning with relief to the dust again. “The good—where do you get it?”

  “From this hill,” said Mr. Jensus. “There is more of it here than elsewhere. It takes many buckets of the hill to yield a very small amount of good. But it takes a very, very small amount of good to—to set right the un-goodness.”

  “I wonder what happened that Hellesgate doesn’t have it,” I said.

  “I do not know your world well,” said Mr. Jensus. “But I think good must be almost everywhere. There must be very few places where good is not. Otherwise you would know of it and how to put good where it is not.”

  “Put good—” I stared at the water. I swallowed. “If good could get into the soil—”

  “Then it would feed into the water and into the plants, and there would be no need to add—” His words died. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Of course!” he cried. “As you think! As you think!”

  And before nightfall the pump was repositioned so that the gush of water cut through the edge of the hill before plunging out of sight. The creek ran good and muddy down to Hellesgate! And good soaked into the soil along every irrigation ditch and in every field and swirled roily in every cup of drinking water—and I hope it gritted between Dab’s teeth every time he drank! I could hear him cuss! But try throwing that good out!

  Well, that was all long ago and far away. We left Everly, as we knew we had to. We never saw Hellesgate again. But we heard of it—of the demons that possessed it at first and of the brave, holy war waged against them until they were banished. And how the evil spells were lifted then, and the Gates of Hell did not prevail against the Second Conclave. That’s why the town is called Hellesgate. Brother Jonadab says so and he should know! Only one as strong and holy as the leader of the Second Conclave could have cast out the demons and removed the evil from the land, and he, Brother Jonadab, was the only one who dared pursue the demons as they finally fled!

  And the other people—The People. I know they are sometimes around. I know it when, in a rare, wonderful moment, I have a feeling that I am touching someone somewhere where it matters, and I know what that boy meant when he said words aren’t always necessary, and for a blessed moment, my heart just—lifts up and goes along.

  Michal Without

  As I accomplished the last tortured inch of the turning of my body, I saw the child. My first reaction was annoyance. My face had been showing more of the agony I felt than I customarily let be evident. I had thought myself alone except for the other—sleeping—patient.

  “Hello,” I said, deciding absently that the blue-jeaned child was a girl.

  “Hello.” Her voice was quiet and unusually rich. With a quick, fluid movement, she was by my bedside. “It hurts you.”

  I was startled by the nearness of the deep eyes, with a blue light running the length of the dark lashes and splintering on the tips of them.

  “Yes, it does.” My own voice was breathless. Pain is a burden that takes the breath. “It hurts a lot right now, but it comes and goes. I’ll be better—tomorrow.”

  “I’m Michal,” she said. “Without an e.”

  “Where’s David?” I asked with a feeble grin at my feeble pleasantry.

  There was a moment of searching silence, then a quick smile. “Most people don’t know,” she said. “I get tired of explaining.” She put out a finger and touched my knotted, swollen hand. “Arthritis,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Aunt Lydie had some other arthritics here before. Mostly, though, she takes only senile, bedridden men. You aren’t senile.”

  “Not quite yet.” I did better with the smile. “But I am incontestably bed-ridden. Isn’t your vocabulary a little above your age level?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “I get words from other people.”

  “Like stamps for a collection,” I suggested.

  She had left the door ajar and I heard the warm depth of her voice as she talked to someone across the hall.

  “Hey!” the hail came from the other bed. “When’d you get here?”

  “Last night,” I said to, I presumed, Mr. Apfel. “You’ve had a good long sleep.”

 
“Yeah.” His face was troubled. “I been doing that since they pilled me when Jake died. You know,” Mr. Apfel hunched up in bed, “he just died. He said, ‘Mr. Apfel,’ and he died. It scared me. I tried to go home but they caught me on the back stairs and made me come back.” He settled back on his pillows and chuckled. “In my hospital gown. Kinda drafty. Those stairs go right down to the back yard with nothing around them. I mean, they’re outside.” He nodded at the door near his bed.

  “Aren’t they afraid you’ll leave sometime?” I asked. “The door isn’t locked, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said. “It’d be against the law. But I’m bedfast. They don’t take the other kind. Not since Old Mr. Ames got away from the house. It took them seven hours to track him down. He was behind the biggest tomb-stone in the cemetery—two miles away. He was playing games of naughts-and-crosses on the back of the stone—and winning all of them. He cheated.”

  “Well, if you’re bedfast,” I objected, “how could you have started to go home?”

  “Scared,” he grinned. “Scared stiff. Mostly I’m so limp-legged I can’t walk a step,”

  “That child,” I said. “Michal.”

  “Without an e,” he nodded.

  “Odd child,” I said. “Who is she?”

  “She gives me rememberies,” he said with a soft smile. “Bless the child.”

  “Rememberies?” I asked, talking to keep at bay the blazing ache that was munching down my shin bones to meet the scorching pain munching up my shin bones from my ankles.

  “And you can’t have any!” Mr. Apfel’s eyes blazed. The pitch of his voice raised about three tones. “She hasn’t got any time for you! You have no business coming here anyway! Jake might be back and want his bed. He didn’t want any rememberies. Go away!” He flounced over in bed with his back turned to me. “Buttinski!”

  “Oh, Lord!” I thought, half exasperation, half prayer. “What has this miserable carcass of mine got me into now?” I shut my eyes as tightly as I could, thinking ruefully, “At least my eyelids aren’t involved—yet!”

  “Good morning!” Mrs. Norwich, Michal’s “Aunt Lydie,” came in, pushing her nurse’s cart before her, her steps as firm and purposeful as her skinned-back hairdo. “Sleep well?” Her eyes were kindly and interested behind her glitteringly clean bifocals.

  “Fine, thanks,” I said through set teeth.

  “You lie well,” she said, rattling various objects on the cart. “I’ll take Mr. Apfel first so’s we won’t have to hurry you.”

  “Thanks,” I said again, feeling the pain beginning to subside a little. If I lucked out, I should have a fairly comfortable day.

  “Good morning, Mr. Apfel,” she said cheerfully.

  “Go away!” He dragged the covers up over his head, leaving his bony old feet uncovered.

  “Oh, come on,” said Mrs. Norwich. “Breakfast pretty soon. Coffee cake with pecans.”

  One eye appeared between the clutch of sheet and flare of white hair. “With frosting?”

  “Slathers of gooey white frosting and pecans,” she said.

  Mr. Apfel emerged smiling and rosy, eager as a child.

  Michal came back about 10:30, bearing juice and cookies. Afterwards, she wiped Mr. Apfel’s chin skillfully and de-crumbed his spread and murmured and tucked him into a quick nap. Then she came to my bed and eyed the foot of it. “It would flex too much,” she said, “and start the munching again.”

  Startled at her choice of words, I almost slopped orange juice from my tumbler.

  She sat on a straight chair by my bed, her legs folded Turk style. Her eyes glinted at me mirthfully. “I get words from people.”

  “Oh?” I remarked, a little less than gleefully.

  “Would you prefer to talk or to listen?” she asked.

  “I have nothing to say,” I said shortly. “Children should be seen, not heard.”

  “About Deega,” she said. “You haven’t come for me, so I’d better explain about Deega. You might find it interesting. Aunt Lydie doesn’t like to hear it. It makes her uncomfortable.”

  “Do you customarily go around telling your life history to strangers?” I jerked.

  “Being rude is a dry way of crying,” she said, lacing her fingers together around her shins as she rearranged her legs. “It’s too bad men do not customarily cry.

  “No, I don’t tell everyone my life history,” she went on. “But I need to—to communicate.” She nodded a small nod and said the word I had been thinking. “Aunt Lydie gets uncomfortable. Mr. Apfel laughs. I’m—I’m troubled.”

  “A twelve-year-old,” I scoffed, interested without wanting to be.

  “Your equating age with trouble makes my trouble seem even odder,” she said. “You see, I’m troubled because I—I have no past—none that I can remember. I—started—when I was five.”

  “You customarily should have memories dating previous to that,” I said.

  “I know.” She frowned a little and laid her cheek on her doubled-up knees.

  “And I do have them. I can feel them pushing and tugging at me inside, but they can’t get through to me. They’d answer a lot of questions I’d like to ask, but—something is keeping them back.”

  “Maybe if you tell me—” After all, my swollen hands couldn’t hold even a magazine for long, and children can be amusing, especially such a precocious one as Michal.

  “It’ll have to be piecemeal,” she said. “Aunt Lydie likes me to keep busy.—

  “I don’t know who Deega is—or was. I slept on her kitchen floor. If I kept under the table, hardly anyone ever stepped on me, not until breakfast time, anyway. She had wall-to-wall kids, and no one ever bothered trying to sort out whose kids they all were. Some were hers. She hit them the most, but fed them the most. I went hungry a lot.

  “We lived in the city, I’m not sure which one, but it was big and noisy and tall and dirty. I remember once I was awfully cold. I was sitting on my feet on the steep front step of our building, wondering why the light from the street lamp wasn’t hot like the sun used to be. I got up off the step, so stiff with cold that I stumbled and nearly fell. I staggered out under the lamp and gathered the light up by the handsful, but I couldn’t hold very much—it flows so—so I clutched the hem of my skirt and made a lap. I filled it with the cool yellow light and went up to show Deega. I asked her why it wasn’t hot. I can still see her eyes and mouth getting wider and wider with the yellow light flickering on them, then she screamed and slapped my hands down and gave me a licking for showing my underpants. A girl six years old is supposed to know not to show her underpants. I remember that my tears were hot, rolling down my cheeks, and I caught one on my tongue. It tasted of dirt and salt and I was so interested in the salty taste that I forgot to cry.”

  “Michal!” Mrs. Norwich was calling from across the hall. “Don’t you go wearing Mr. Evans out with your chattering nonsense. Come help me.”

  Michal slipped from the chair, her eyes large upon my face. “I’ll tell you some more when I get a chance,” she said. “I think you have considerable food for thought from this much.”

  “Where did you read this story?” I asked.

  “I didn’t.” Her voice floated back from the closing door. “I lived it.”

  “Well!” I reached for my magazine and saw that Mr. Apfel was awake again. “What an imagination that child has,” I said, tentatively, wondering if it was Mr. Apfel or Child Apfel this time.

  “Yes.” It was Mr. Apfel. “And helpful, too. She even talked with Jake.”

  “That’s special?” I asked.

  “Well, sort of,” Mr. Apfel grinned cheerfully. “Up to the night he died, he hadn’t said a single word to anyone in two-three years. Having him call me by name scared me more than his dying, I guess. His voice was all rusty—”

  “But she talked to him—”

  Mr. Apfel’s look was tolerant of a new-comer. “She doesn’t need words to talk—you’ll see. She was the only one who knew what Jake th
ought or how he felt. It was funny, listening to their conversations. You could usually hear everything Michal said, but there’d be long pauses while Jake had his say. And half the time he’d even have his back turned.”

  “It could have been a play-act of Michal’s,” I suggested.

  “No.” Mr. Apfel considered for a moment. “She said he really wanted to talk, but his body had ganged up on him and wouldn’t let him say a word. The tyranny of the flesh—” He leaned back against the pillows, his eyes desolately on his relaxed, vein-ropy hands.

  “This,” I gritted to myself as I shifted over enough to put my magazine down on the bedside table, “is without doubt the most stupid—” The magazine slithered to the floor. My involuntary snatch for it was a major mistake. I prefer to forget the rest of the day.

  Night came and brought little relief except from the hard light that had raked across me all day from the window. I could tell I was in for a waking night again—the kind of night that wrings you and squeezes out everything from the world except pain, discomfort, and rebellion. Even prayer gets tissue-thin and crumply. Then, along about two hours before waking time, sleep comes and irons out a little of the fatigue so that when you wake you’re left wide open to the “Have a nice sleep?” gambit.

  But this time, somewhere in the unmetered endlessness of the night, Michal was there. I didn’t hear her coming, but I wasn’t startled to find her there. She seeped into my consciousness so gently that there was no one moment of realization. She hunched on the chair again, her feet drawn up under the voluminous flow of her nightgown that defined nothing of her except her shoulders. Her hair was unwound and shifted as shadows around the blur of her face.

  “If you would try to lengthen out your breaths,” she suggested softly, “it might ease you.”

  “I’m having trouble enough,” I gasped, “breathing. Please omit,” I gulped, “helpful suggestions.”

  “Try,” she said.

  Anything—anything. I snatched the extra little gulp of air that was necessary before I could empty my lungs. After two or three deliberately slow, long expirations and inspirations, I actually felt a little eased, a little less tense, and the pain ebbed a little.