Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  “I—” I said, trying to blink away my confusion. “I—I—”

  “Ay! Ay!” Mrs. Kroginold sighed and, smiling, stood up. “Thank you for not being loudly insulted by what I’ve told you. Once a neighbor of ours that I talked a little too freely to, threatened to sue—so I appreciate. You are so good for Vincent. Thanks.”

  She was gone before I could get my wits collected. It had been a little like being caught in a dustless dust-devil. I hadn’t heard the car leave, but when I looked out, there was one swing still stirring lazily between the motionless ones, and no one at all in sight on the school grounds.

  I closed up the schoolroom and went into the tiny two-roomed teacherage extension on the back of the school to get my coat and purse. I had lived in those two tiny rooms for the first two years of my stay at Rinconcillo before I began to feel the need of more space and more freedom from school. Occasionally, even now, when I felt too tired to plunge out into the roar of Winter Wells, I would spend a night on my old narrow bed in the quiet of the canyon.

  I wondered again about not hearing the car when I dipped down into the last sand wash before the highway. I steered carefully back across the packed narrowness of my morning tracks. Mine were the only ones, coming or going. I laid the odd discovery aside because I was immediately gulped up by the highway traffic. After I had been honked at and muttered at by two Coast drivers and had muttered at (I don’t like to honk) and swerved around two Midwest tourist types roaring along at twenty-five miles an hour in the center lane admiring the scenery, I suddenly laughed. After all, there was nothing mysterious about my lonely tire tracks. I was just slightly disoriented. MEL was less than a mile away from the school, up over the ridge, though it was a good half hour by road. Mrs. Kroginold had hiked over for the conference and the two of them had hiked back together. My imagination boggled a little at the memory of Mrs. Kroginold’s strap’n’heel sandals and the hillsides, but then, not everyone insists on flats to walk in.

  Well, the white rat achieved six offspring, which cemented the friendship between Gene and Vincent forever, and school rocked along more or less serenely.

  Then suddenly, as though at a signal, the pace of space exploration was stepped up in every country that had ever tried launching anything; so the school started a space unit. We went through our regular systematic lessons at a dizzying pace, and each child, after he had finished his assignment, plunged into his own chosen activity—all unrealizing of the fact that he was immediately putting into practice what he had been studying so reluctantly.

  My primary group was busy working out a moonscape in the sand table. It was to be complete with clay moon-people—“They don’t have to have any noses!” That was Ginny, tender to critical comment. “They’re different! They don’t breathe. No air!” And moon-dogs and cats and cars and flowers; and even a moon-bird. “It can’t fly in the sky ’Cause there ain’t—isn’t any air so it flies in the dirt!” That was Justin. “It likes bottoms of craters ’Cause there’s more dirt there!”

  I caught Vincent’s amused eyes as he listened to the small ones. “Little kids are funny!” he murmured. “Animals on the moon! My dad, when he was there, all he saw—” His eyes widened and he became very busy choosing the right-sized nails from the rusty coffee can.

  “Middle-sized kids are funny, too,” I said. “Moon, indeed! There aren’t any dads on the moon, either!”

  “I guess not.” He picked up the hammer and, as he moved away, I heard him whisper, “Not now!”

  My intermediates were in the midst of a huge argument. I umpired for a while. If you use a BB shot to represent the Earth, would there be room in the schoolroom to make a scale mobile of the planetary system? I extinguished some of the fire bred of ignorance, by suggesting an encyclopedia and some math, and moved on through the room.

  Gene and Vincent, not caring for such intellectual pursuits, were working on our model space capsule, which was patterned after the very latest in U.S. spacecraft, modified to include different aspects of the latest in flying saucers. I was watching Vincent leaning through a window, fitting a tin can altitude gauge—or some such—into the control panel. Gene was painting purple a row of cans around the middle of the craft. Purple was currently popular for flying saucer lights.

  “I wonder if astronauts ever develop claustrophobia?” I said idly. “I get a twinge sometimes in elevators or mines.”

  “I suppose susceptible ones would be eliminated long before they ever got to be astronauts,” grunted Vincent as he pushed on the tin can. “They go through all sorts of tests.”

  “I know,” I said. “But people change. Just supposing—”

  “Gollee!” said Gene, his poised paint brush dribbling purple down his arm and off his elbow. “Imagine! Way up there! No way out! Can’t get down! And claustrophobia!” He brought out the five syllables proudly. The school had defined and discussed the word when we first started the unit.

  The tin can slipped and Vincent staggered sideways, falling against me.

  “Oh!” said Vincent, his shaking hands lifting, his right arm curling up over his head. “I—”

  I took one look at his twisted face, the cold sweat beading his hairline, and, circling his shoulders, steered him over to the reading bench near my desk. “Sit,” I said.

  “Whatsa matter with him?” Now the paint was dripping on one leg of Gene’s Levi’s.

  “Just slightly wampsy,” I said. “Watch that paint. You’re making a mess of your clothes.”

  “Gollee!” He smeared his hand down his pants from hip to knee. “Mom’ll kill me!”

  I lifted my voice. “It’s put-away time. Kipper, will you monitor today?”

  The children were swept into organized confusion. I turned back to Vincent. “Better?”

  “I’m sorry.” Color hadn’t come back to his face yet, but it was plumping up from its stricken drawnness. “Sometimes it gets through too sharply—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, pushing his front hair up out of his eyes. “You could drive yourself crazy—”

  “Mom says my imagination is a little too vivid—” His mouth corners lifted.

  “So ‘tis,” I smiled at him, “if it must seize upon my imaginary astronaut. There’s no point to your harrowing up your soul with what might happen. Problems we have always with us. No need to borrow any.”

  “I’m not exactly borrowing,” he whispered, his shoulder hunching up towards his wincing head. “He never did want to, anyway, and now that they’re orbiting, he’s still scared. What if—” He straightened resolutely. “I’ll help Gene.” He slid away before I could stop him.

  “Vincent,” I called. “Who’s orbiting—” And just then Justin dumped over the whole stack of jigsaw puzzles, upside down. That ended any further questions I might have had.

  That evening I pushed the newspaper aside and thoughtfully lifted my coffee cup. I stared past its rim and out into the gathering darkness. This was the local newspaper, which was still struggling to become a big metropolitan daily after half a century of being a four-page county weekly. Sometimes its reach exceeded its grasp, and it had to bolster short columns with little folksy-type squibs. I re-read the one that had caught my eye. Morris was usually good for an item or two. I watched for them since he had had a conversation with a friend of mine I’d lost track of.

  Local ham operator, Morris Staviski, says the Russians have a new manned sputnik in orbit. He says he has monitored radio signals from the capsule. He can’t tell what they’re saying, but he says they’re talking Russian. He knows what Russian sounds like because his grandmother was Russian.

  “Hmm,” I thought. “I wonder. Maybe Vincent knows Morris. Maybe that’s where he got this orbiting bit.”

  So the next day I asked him.

  “Staviski?” He frowned a little. “No, ma’am, I don’t know anyone named Staviski. At least I don’t remember the name. Should I?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “I just wondered. He’s a ham
radio operator—

  “Oh!” His face flushed happily. “I’m working on the code now so I can take the test next time it’s given in Winter Wells! Maybe I’ll get to talk to him sometimes!”

  “Me, too!” said Gene. “I’m learning the code, too!”

  “He’s a little handicapped, though,” Vincent smiled. “He can’t tell a dit from a dah yet!”

  The next morning Vincent crept into school with all the sun gone out. He moved like someone in a dream and got farther and farther away. Before morning recess came, I took his temperature. It was normal. But he certainly wasn’t. At recess the rapid outflow of children left him stranded in his seat, his pinched face turned to the window, his unfinished work in front of him, his idle pencil in the hand that curved up over the side of his head.

  “Vincent!” I called, but there was no sign he even heard me. “Vincent!”

  He drew a sobbing breath and focused his eyes on me slowly. “Yes, ma’am?” He wet his dry lips.

  “What is the matter?” I asked. “Where do you feel bad?”

  “Bad?” His eyes unfocused again and his face slowly distorted into a crying mask. With an effort he smoothed it out again. “I’m not the one. It’s—it’s—” He leaned his shaking chin in the palm of his hand and steadied his elbow on the top of his desk. His knuckles whitened as he clenched his fingers against his mouth.

  “Vincent!” I went to him and touched his head lightly. With a little shudder and a sob, he turned and buried his face against me.

  “Oh, Teacher! Teacher!”

  A quick look out the window showed me that all the students were down in the creek bed building sand forts. Eight-year-old pride is easily bruised. I led Vincent up to my desk and took him onto my lap. For a while we sat there, my cheek pressed to his head as I rocked silently. His hair was spiky against my face and smelled a little like a baby chick’s feathers.

  “He’s afraid! He’s afraid!” he finally whispered, his eyes tight shut. “The other one is dead. It’s broken so it can’t come back. He’s afraid! And the dead one keeps looking at him with blood on his mouth! And he can’t come down! His hands are bleeding! He hit the walls wanting to get out. But there’s no air outside!”

  “Vincent,” I went on rocking, “have you been telling yourself stories until you believe them?”

  “No!” He buried his face against my shoulder, his body tense. “I know! I know! I can hear him! He screamed at first, but now he’s too scared. Now he—” Vincent stilled on my lap. He lifted his face—listening. The anguish slowly smoothed away. “It’s gone again! He must go to sleep. Or unconscious. I don’t hear him all the time.”

  “What was he saying?” I asked, caught up in his—well, whatever it was.

  “I don’t know.” Vincent slid from my lap, his face still wary. “I don’t know his language.”

  “But you said—” I protested. “How do you know what he’s feeling if you don’t even know—”

  He smiled his little lip-lift. “When you look at one of us kids without a word and your left eyebrow goes up—what do you mean?”

  “Well, that depends on what who’s doing,” I flushed.

  “If it’s for me, I know what you mean. And I stop it. So do the other kids about themselves. That’s the way I know this.” He started back to his desk. “I’d better get my spelling done.”

  “Is that the one that’s orbiting?” I asked hopefully, wanting to tie something to something.

  “Orbiting?” Vincent was busily writing. “That’s the sixth word. I’m only on the fourth.”

  That afternoon I finally put aside the unit tests I’d been checking and looked at the clock. Five o’clock. And at my hands. Filthy. And assessed the ache across my shoulders, the hollow in my stomach, and decided to spend the night right where I was. I didn’t even straighten my desk, but turned my weary back on it and unlocked the door to the teacher-age.

  I kicked off my shoes, flipped on the floor lamp, and turned up the thermostat to take the dank chill out of the small apartment. The cupboards yielded enough supplies to make an entirely satisfying meal. Afterwards, I turned the lights low and sat curled up at one end of the couch listening to one of my Acker Bilke records while I drank my coffee. I flexed my toes in blissful comfort as I let the clear, concise, tidy notes of the clarinet clear away my cobwebs of fatigue. Instead of purring, I composed another strophe to my Praise Song:

  Praise God for Fedness—and Warmness—and Shelteredness—and Darkness—and Lightness—and Cleanness—and Quietness—and Unharriedness—

  I dozed then for a while and woke to stillness. The stereo had turned itself off, and it was so still I could hear the wind in the oak trees and the far, unmusical blat of a diesel train. And I also could hear a repetition of the sound that had wakened me.

  Someone was in the schoolroom.

  I felt a throb of fright and wondered if I had locked the teacherage door. But I knew I had locked the school door just after four o’clock. Of course, a bent bobby pin and your tongue in the correct corner of your mouth and you could open the old lock. But what—who would want to? What was in there? The stealthy noises went on. I heard the creak of the loose board in the back of the room. I heard the yaaaawn of the double front door hinges and a thud and clatter on the front porch.

  Half paralyzed with fright, I crept to the little window that looked out onto the porch. Cautiously I separated two of the slats of the blind and peered out into the thin slice of moonlight. I gasped and let the slats fall.

  A flying saucer! With purple lights! On the porch!

  Then I gave a half grunt of laughter. Flying saucers, indeed! There was something familiar about that row of purple lights—unglowing—around its middle. I knew they were purple—even by the dim light—because that was our space capsule! Who was trying to steal our cardboard-tincan-poster-painted capsule?

  Then I hastily shoved the blind aside and pressed my nose to the dusty screen. The blind retaliated by swinging back and whacking me heavily on the ear, but that wasn’t what was dizzying me.

  Our capsule was taking off!

  “It can’t!” I gasped as it slid up past the edge of the porch roof. “Not that storage barrel and all those tin cans! It can’t!” And, sure enough, it couldn’t. It crash-landed just beyond the flagpole. But it staggered up again, spilling several cans noisily, and skimmed over the swings, only to smash against the boulder at the base of the wall.

  I was out of the teacherage, through the dark schoolroom, and down the porch steps before the echo of the smash stopped bouncing from surface to surface around the canyon. I was halfway to the capsule before my toes curled and made me conscious of the fact that I was barefooted. Rather delicately I walked the rest of the way to the crumpled wreckage. What on earth had possessed it—?

  In the shadows I found what had possessed it. It was Vincent, his arms wrapped tightly over his ears and across his head. He was writhing silently, his face distorted and gasping.

  “Good Lord!” I gasped and fell to my knees beside him. “Vincent! What on earth!” I gathered him up as best I could with his body twisting and his legs flailing, and moved him out into the moonlight.

  “I have to! I have to! I have to!” he moaned, struggling away from me. “I hear him! I hear him!”

  “Hear whom?” I asked. “Vincent!” I shook him. “Make sense! What are you doing here?”

  Vincent stilled in my arms for a frozen second. Then his eyes opened and he blinked in astonishment. “Teacher! What are you doing here?”

  “I asked first,” I said. “What are you doing here, and what is this capsule bit?”

  “The capsule?” He peered at the pile of wreckage and tears flooded down his cheeks. “Now I can’t go and I have to! I have to!”

  “Come on inside,” I said. “Let’s get this thing straightened out once and for all.” He dragged behind me, his feet scuffling, his sobs and sniffles jerking to the jolting movement of his steps. But he dug in at the porch and pulled me
to a halt.

  “Not inside!” he said. “Oh, not inside!”

  “Well, okay,” I said. “We’ll sit here for now.”

  He sat on the step below me and looked up, his face wet and shining in the moonlight. I fished in the pocket of my robe for a tissue and swabbed his eyes. Then I gave him another. “Blow,” I said. He did. “Now, from the beginning.”

  “I—” He had recourse to the tissue again. “I came to get the capsule. It was the only way I could think of to get the man.”

  Silence crept around his flat statement until I said, “That’s the beginning?”

  Tears started again. I handed him another tissue. “Now look, Vincent, something’s been bothering you for several days. Have you talked it over with your parents?”

  “No,” he hiccoughed. “I’m not sup-upposed to listen in on people. It isn’t fair. But I didn’t really. He came in first and I can’t shut him out now because I know he’s in trouble, and you can’t not help if you know about someone’s need—”

  Maybe, I thought hopefully, maybe this is still my nap that I’ll soon wake from—but I sighed. “Who is this man? The one that’s orbiting?”

  “Yes,” he said, and cut the last hope for good solid sense from under my feet. “He’s up in a capsule and its retro-rockets won’t fire. Even if he could live until the orbital decay dropped him back into the atmosphere, the re-entry would burn him up. And he’s so afraid! He’s trapped! He can’t get out!”

  I took hold of both of his shaking shoulders. “Calm down,” I said. “You can’t help him like this.” He buried his face against the skirt of my robe. I slid one of my hands over to his neck and patted him for a moment.

  “How did you make the capsule move?” I asked. “It did move, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I lifted it. We can, you know—lift things. My People can. But I’m not big enough. I’m not supposed to anyway, and I can’t sustain the lift. And if I can’t even get it out of this canyon, how can I lift clear out of the atmosphere? And he’ll die—scared!”