Zenna Henderson - People 1 - Pilgrimage

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Pilgrimage
The First Book of
the People
Zenna Henderson
1961
I
THE Window of the bus was a dark square against the featureless night. Lea let her eyes focus slowly
from their unthinking blur until her face materialized, faint and fragmentary, highlighted by the dim light of
the bus interior. "Look,' the thought, "I still have a face." She tilted her head and watched the wan light
slide along the clean soft line of her cheek. There was no color except darkness for the wide eyes, the
crisp turn of short cuffs above her ears and the curve of her brows-all were an out-of-focus print against
the outside darkness. "That's what I look like to people," she thought impersonally. "My outside is
intact-an eggshell sucked of life."
The figure in the seat next to her stirred.
"Awake, deary?" The plump face beamed in the dusk. "Must have had a good nap, "You've been so
quiet ever since I got on. Here, let me turn on the reading light." She fumbled above her. "I think these
lights are cunning. How'd they get them to point just in the right place?" The light came on and Lea
winced away from it. "Bright, isn't it?" The elderly face creased into mirth. "Reminds me of when I was a
youngster and we came in out of the dark and lighted a coal-oil lamp. It always made me squint like that.
By the time I was your age, though, we had electricity. But I got my first two before we got electricity. I
married at seventeen and the two of them came along about as quick as they could. You can't be much
more than twenty-two or three. Lordee! I had four by then and buried another. Here, I've got pictures of
my grandbabies. I'm just coming back from seeing the newest one. That's Jennie's latest. A little girl after
three boys. You remind me of her a little, your eyes being dark and the color your hair is. She wears hers
longer but it has that same kinda red tinge to it." She fumbled in her bag. Lea felt as though words were
washing over her like a warm frothy flood. She automatically took the bulging billfold the woman
tendered her and watched unseeingly as the glassine windows flipped. "... and this is Arthur and Jane.
Ah, there's Jennie. Here, take a good look and see if she doesn't look like you."
Lea took a deep breath and came back from a long painful distance. She stared down at the billfold.
"Well?" The face beamed at her expectantly.
"She's-" Lea's voice didn't work. She swallowed dryly
"She's pretty."
"Yes, she is," the woman smiled. "Don't you think she looks a little like you, though?"
"A little-" Her repetition of the sentence died, but the woman took it for an answer.
"Go on, look through the others and see which one of her kids you think's the cutest."
Lea mechanically flipped the other windows, then sat staring down into her lap.
"Well, which one did you pick?" The woman leaned over.
"Well!" She drew an indignant breath. "That's my driver's license! I didn't say snoop!" The billfold was
snatched away! and the reading light snapped off. There was a good deal of flouncing and muttering from
the adjoining seat before quiet descended.
The hum of the bus was hypnotic and Lea sank back into her apathy, except for a tiny point of
discomfort that kept jabbing her consciousness. The next stop she'd have to do something. Her ticket
went no farther. Then what? Another decision to make. And all she wanted was nothing-nothing. And all
she had was nothing-nothing. Why did she have to do anything? Why couldn't she just not-? She leaned
her forehead against the glass, dissolving the nebulous reflection of herself, and stared into the darkness.
Helpless against habit, she began to fit her aching thoughts hack into the old ruts, the old footprints
leading to complete futility-leading into the dark nothingness. She caught her breath and fought against the
horrifying-threatening . . .
All the lights in the bus flicked on and there was a sleepy stirring murmur. The scattered lights of the
outskirts of town slid past the slowing bus.
It was a small town. Lea couldn't even remember the name of it. She didn't even know which way she
turned when she went out the station door. She walked away from the bus depot, her feet swift and silent
on the cracked sidewalk, her body appreciating the swinging rhythm of the walk after the long hours of
inactivity. Her mind was still circling blindly, unnoticing, uncaring, unconcerned.
The business district died out thinly and Lea was walking up an incline. The walk leveled and after a
while she wavered into a railing. She clutched at it, waiting for a faintness to go away. She looked out
and down into darkness. "'It's a bridge!" she thought. "Over a river." Gladness flared up in her. "It's the
answer," she exulted. "This is it. After this-nothing!" She leaned her elbows on the railing, framing her chin
and cheeks with her hands, her eyes on the darkness below, a darkness so complete that not even a
ripple caught a glow from the bridge lights.
The familiar, so reasonable voice was speaking again. Pain like this should be let go of. Just a
momentary discomfort and it ends. No more breathing, no more thinking, no aching, no blind longing for
anything. Lea moved along the walk, her hand brushing the railing. "I can stand it now," she thought,
"Now that I know there is an end. I can stand to live a minute or so longer-to say good-by." Her
shoulders shook and she felt the choke of laughter in her throat. Good-by? To whom? Who'd even
notice she was gone? One ripple stilled in all a stormy sea. Let the quiet water take her breathing. Let its
impersonal kindness hide her-dissolve her-so no one would ever be able to sigh and say, That was Lea.
Oh, blessed water!
There was no reason not to. She found herself defending her action as though someone had questioned
it. "Look," she thought. "I've told you so many times. There's no reason to go on. I could stand it when
futility wrapped around me occasionally, but don't you remember? Remember the morning I sat there
dressing, one shoe off and one shoe on, and couldn't think of one good valid reason why I should put the
other shoe on? Not one reason! To finish dressing? Why? Because I had to work? Why? To earn a
living? Why? To get something to eat? Why? To keep from starving to death? Why? because you have
to live! Why? Why? Why!
"And there were no answers. And I sat there until the grayness dissolved from around me as it did on
lesser occasions. But then-" Lea's hands clutched each other and twisted painfully.
"Remember what came then? The distorted sky wrenched open and gushed forth all the horror of a
meaningless mindless universe-a reasonless existence that insisted on running on like a ! faceless clock-a
menacing nothingness that snagged the little thread of reason I was hanging onto and unraveled it and
unraveled it." Lea shuddered and her lips tightened with the effort to regain her composure. "That was
only the beginning.
"So after that the depths of futility became a refuge instead of something to run from, its negativeness
almost comfortable in contrast to the positive horror of what living has become. But I can't take either
one any more." She sagged against the railing. "And I don't have to." She pushed herself upright and
swallowed a sudden dry nausea. "The middle will be deeper," she thought. "Deep, swift, quiet, carrying
me out of this intolerable-"
And as she walked she heard a small cry somewhere in the lostness inside her. "But I could have loved
living so much! Why have I come to this pass?"
Shhh! the darkness said to the little voice. Shhh! Don't bother to think. It hurts. Haven't you found it
hurts? You need never think again or speak again or breathe again past this next inhalation ....
Lea's lungs filled slowly. The last breath! She started to slide across the concrete bridge railing into the
darkness-into finishedness-into The End.
"You don't really want to." The laughing voice caught her like a splash of water across her face.
"Besides, even if you did, you couldn't here. Maybe break a leg, but that's all.
"Break a leg?" Lea's voice was dazed and, inside, something broke and cried in disappointment, "I've
spoken again!"
"Sure." Strong hands pulled her away from the railing and nudged her to a seat in a little concrete kiosk
sort of thing.
"You must be very new here, like on the nine-thirty bus tonight."
"Nine-thirty bus tonight," Lea echoed flatly.
" 'Cause if you'd been here by daylight you'd know this bridge is a snare and a delusion as far as water
goes. You couldn't drown a gnat in the river here. It's dammed up above. Sand and tamarisks here, that's
all. Besides you don't want to die, especially with a lovely coat like that-almost new!"
"'Want to die," Lea echoed distantly. Then suddenly she jerked away from the gentle hands and twisted
away from the encircling arm.
"I do want to die! Go away!" Her voice sharpened as she spoke and she almost spat the last word.
"But I told you!" The dim glow from the nearest light of the necklace of lights that pearled the bridge
shone on a smiling girl-face, not much older than Lea's own. "You'd goof it up good if you tried to
commit suicide here. Probably lie down there in the sand all night, maybe with a sharp stub of a tamarisk
stuck through your shoulder and your broken leg hurting like mad. And tomorrow the ants would find
you, and the flies-the big blowfly kind. Blood attracts them, you know. Your blood, spilling onto the
sand."
Lea hid her face, her fingernails cutting into her hairline with the violence of the gesture. This-this creature
had no business peeling the oozing bleeding scab off, she thought. It's so easy to think of lumping into
darkness-into nothingness, but not to think of blowflies and blood-your own blood.
"Besides-" the arm was around her again, gently leading her back to the bench, "you can't want to die
and miss out on everything."
"Everything is nothing," Lea gasped, grabbing for the comfort of a well-worn groove. "It's nothing but
gray chalk writing gray words on a gray sky in a high wind. There's nothing! There's nothing !"
"You must have used that carefully rounded sentence often and often to have driven yourself such a long
way into darkness," the voice said, unsmiling now. "But you must come back, " you know, back to
wanting to live."
"No, no!" Lea moaned, twisting. "Let me go!'"
"I can't." The voice was soft, the hands firm. "The Power sent me by on purpose. You can't return to the
Presence with your life all unspent. But you're not hearing me, are you? Let me tell you.
"Your name is Lea Holmes. Mine, by the way, is Karen. You left your home in Clivedale two days ago.
You bought a ticket for as far as your money would reach. You haven't eaten in two days. You're not
even quite sure what state you're in, except the state of utter despair and exhaustion-right?"
"How-how did you know?" Lea felt a long-dead something stir inside her, but it died again under the flat
monotone of her voice. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. You don't know anything about it!" A sick
anger fluttered in her empty stomach. "'You don't know what it's like to have your nose pressed to a
blank wall and still have to walk and walk, day after day, with no way to get off the treadmill-no way to
break through the wall-nothing, nothing, nothing! Not even an echo! Nothing!"
She snatched herself away from Karen's hands and, in a mad flurry of motion, scraped her way across
the concrete railing and flung herself over into the darkness.
Endlessly tumbling-endlessly turning-slowly, slowly. Did it take so long to die? Softly the sand received
her.
"You see," Karen said, shifting in the sand to cradle Lea's head on her lap. "I can't let you do it."
"But-I-I-jumped!" Lea's hands spatted sideways into the sand, and she looked up to where the lights of
the passing cars ran like sticks along a picket fence.
"Yes, you did." Karen laughed a warm little laugh. "See, Lea, there is some wonder left in the world.
Not everything is bogged down in hopelessness. What's that other quote you've been using for an
anesthesia?"
Lea turned her head fretfully and sat up. "Leave me alone."
"What was that other quote?" Karen's voice was demanding now.
" 'There is for me no wonder more,' " Lea whispered into her hands, " 'Except to wonder where my
wonder went, And why my wonder all is spent-' " Hot tears stung her eyes but could not fall. " '-no
wonder more-' " The big emptiness that was always waiting, stretched and stretched, distorting-"No
wonder?" Karen broke the bubble with her tender laughter. "Oh, Lea, if only I had the time! No wonder,
indeed! But I've got to go. The most incredibly wonderful-" There was a brief silence and the cars shh-ed
by overhead, busily, busily. "Look!" Karen took Lea's hands. "You don't care what happens to you any
more, do you?"
"No!" Lea said dully, but a faint voice murmured protest somewhere behind the dullness.
"You feel that life is unlivable, don't you?" Karen persisted.
"That nothing could be worse?"
"Nothing," Lea said dully, squelching the murmur.
"Then listen." Karen hunched closer to her in the dark. "I'll take you with me. I really shouldn't, especially
right now, but they'll understand. I'll take you along and then-then-if when it's all over you still feel there's
no wonder left in the world, I'll take you to a much more efficient suicide-type place and push you over!"
"But where-" Lea's hands tugged to release themselves.
"Ah, ah!" Karen laughed, "Remember, you don't care! You don't care! Now I'l1 have to blindfold you
for a minute. Stand up. Here, let me tie this scarf around your eyes. There, I guess that isn't too tight, but
tight enough-" Her chatter poured on and Lea grabbed suddenly, feeling as though the world were
dissolving around her. She clung to Karen's shoulder and stumbled from sand to solidness. "Oh, does
being blindfolded make you dizzy?" Karen asked. "Well, okay. I'll take it off then." She whisked the scarf
off. "Hurry, we have to catch the bus. It's almost due." She dragged Lea along the walk on the bridge,
headed for the far bank, away from the town.
"But-" Lea staggered with weariness and hunger, "how did we get up on the bridge again? This is crazy!
We were down-"
"Wondering, Lea?" Karen teased back over her shoulder.
"If we hurry we'll have time for a hamburger for you before the bus gets here. My treat."
A hamburger and a glass of milk later, the InterUrban roared up to the curb, gulped Lea and Karen in
and roared away. Twenty minutes later the driver, expostulating, opened the door into blackness.
"But, lady, there's nothing out there! Not even a house for a mile!"
"I know," Karen smiled. "But this is the place. Someone's waiting for us." She tugged Lea down the
steps. "Thanks!" she called. "Thanks a lot!"
"Thanks!" the driver muttered, slamming the doors. "This isn't even a corner! Screwballs!'" And roared
off down the road.
The two girls watched the glowworm retreat of the bus until it disappeared around a curve.
"Now!" Karen sighed happily. "Miriam is waiting for us somewhere around here. Then we'll go-"
"I won't." Lea's voice was flatly stubborn in the almost tangible darkness. "I won't go another inch. Who
do you think you are, anyway? I'm going to stay here until a car comes along-"
"And jump in front of it?" Karen's voice was cold and hard.
"You have no right to draft someone to be your executioner. Who do you think you are that you can
splash your blood all over someone else?"
"Stop talking about blood!" Lea yelled, stung to have had her thoughts caught from her. "Let me die! Let
me die!"
"It'd serve you right if I did," Karen said unsympathetically.
"I'm not so sure you're worth saving. But as long as I've got you on my hands, shut up and come on. Cry
babies bore me."
"But-you-don't-know!" Lea sobbed tearlessly, stumbling miserably along, towed at arm's length behind
Karen, dodging cactus and greasewood, mourning the all-enfolding comfort of nothingness that could
have been hers if Karen had only let her go.
"You might be surprised," Karen snapped. "But anyway God knows, and you haven't thought even once
of Him this whole evening. If you're so all-fired eager to go busting into His house uninvited you'd better
stop bawling and start thinking up a convincing excuse."
"You're mean!" Lea wailed, like a child.
"So I'm mean.'" Karen stopped so suddenly that Lea stumbled into her. "Maybe I should leave you
alone. I don't want this most wonderful thing that's happening to be spoiled by such stupid goings on.
Good-by!"
And she was gone before Lea could draw a breath. Gone completely. Not a sound of a footstep. Not a
rustle of brush. Lea cowered in the darkness, panic swelling in her chest, fear catching her breath. The
high arch of the sky glared at her starrily and the suddenly hostile night crept closer and closer. There was
nowhere to go-nowhere to hide-no corner to back into. Nothing-nothing!
"Karen!" she shrieked, starting to run blindly. "Karen!"
"Watch it." Karen reached out of the dark and caught her. "There's cactus around here." Her voice went
on in exasperated patience. "Scared to death of being alone in the dark for two minutes and fourteen
seconds-and yet you think an eternity of it would be better than living-
"Well, I've checked with Miriam. She says she can help me manage you, so come along.
"Miriam, here she is. Think she's worth saving?" Lea recoiled, startled, as Miriam materialized vaguely
out of the darkness.
"Karen, stop sounding so mean," the shadow said. "You know wild horses couldn't pull you away from
Lea now. She needs healing-not hollering at."
"She doesn't even want to be healed," Karen said.
"As though I'm not even here," Lea thought resentfully. "'Not here. Not here." The looming wave of
despair broke and swept over her. "Oh, let me go! Let me die!" She turned away from Karen, but the
shadow of Miriam put warm arms around her.
"She didn't want to live either, but you wouldn't accept that-no more than you'll accept her not wanting to
be healed."
"It's late," Karen said. "Chair-carry?"
"I suppose so," Miriam said. "It'll be shock enough, anyway. The more contact the better."
So the two made a chair, hand clasping wrist, wrist clasped by hand. They stooped down.
"Here, Lea," Karen said, "sit down. Arms around our necks."
"I can walk," Lea said coldly. "I'm not all that tired. Don't be silly."
"You can't walk where we're going. Don't argue. We're behind schedule now. Sit."
Lea folded her lips but awkwardly seated herself, clinging tightly as they stood up, lifting her from the
ground.
"Okay?" Miriam asked.
"Okay," Karen and Lea said together.
"Well?" Lea said, waiting for steps to begin.
"Well," Karen laughed, "don't say I didn't warn you, but look down."
Lea looked down. And down! And down! Down to the scurrying sparks along a faded ribbon of a
road. Down to the dew-jeweled cobweb of street lights stretching out flatly below. Down to the
panoramic perfection of the whole valley, glowing magically in the night. Lea stared, unbelieving, at her
two feet swinging free in the air-nothing beneath them but air-the same air that brushed her hair back and
tangled her eyelashes as they picked up speed. Terror caught her by the throat. Her arms convulsed
around the two girls' necks.
"Hey!" Karen strangled. "You're choking us! You're all right. Not so tight! Not so tight!"
"You'd better Still her," Miriam gasped. "She can't hear you,"
"Relax," Karen said quietly. "Lea, relax."
Lea felt fear leave her like a tide going out. Her arms relaxed. Her uncomprehending eyes went up to the
stars and down to the lights again. She gave a little sigh and her head drooped on Karen's shoulder.
"It did kill me," she said. "Jumping off the bridge. Only it's taken me a long time to die. This is just
delirium before death. No wonder, with a stub of a tamarisk through my shoulder." And her eyes closed
and she went limp.
Lea lay in the silvery darkness behind her closed eyes and savored the anonymous unfeeling between
sleep and waking. Quietness sang through her, a humming stillness. She felt as anonymous as a
transparent seaweed floating motionless between two layers of clear water. She breathed slowly, not
wanting to disturb the mirror-stillness, the transparent peace. If you breathe quickly you think, and if you
think-She stirred, her eyelids fluttering, trying to stay closed, but awareness and the growing light pried
them opera She lay thin and flat on the bed, trying to be another white sheet between two muslin ones.
But white sheets don't hear morning birds or smell breakfasts. She turned on her side and waited for the
aching burden of life to fill her, to weigh her down, to beset her with its burning futility.
"Good morning." Karen was perched on the window sill, reaching out with one cupped hand. "Do you
know how to get a bird to notice you, short of being a crumb? I wonder if they do notice anything except
food and eggs. Do they ever take a deep breath for the sheer joy of breathing?" She dusted the crumbs
from her hands out the window.
"I don't know much about birds." Lea's voice was thick and rusty. "Nor about joy either, I guess." She
tensed, waiting for the heavy horror to descend.
"Relax," Karen said, turning from the window. "I've Stilled you."
"You mean I'm-I'm healed?" Lea asked, trying to sort out last night's memories.
"Oh, my, no! I've just switched you off onto a temporary siding. Healing is a slow thing. You have to do
it yourself, you know. I can hold the spoon to your lips but you'll have to do the swallowing."
"What's in the spoon?" Lea asked idly, swimming still in the unbeset peace.
"What have you to be cured of?"
"Of life." Lea turned her face away. "Just cure me of living."
"That line again. We could bat words back and forth all day and arrive at nowhere-besides I haven't the
time. I must leave now." Karen's face lighted and she spun around lightly.
"Oh, Lea! Oh, Lea!" Than, hastily: "There's breakfast in the other room. I'm shutting you in. I'll be back
later and then-well, by than I'll have figured out something. God bliss!" She whisked through the door but
Lea heard no lock click.
Lea wandered into the other room, a restlessness replacing the usual sick inertia. She crumbled a piece
of bacon between her fingers and poured a cup of coffee. She left them both untasted and wandered
back into the bedroom. She fingered the strange nightgown she was wearing and then, in a sudden
breathless skirl of action, stripped it off and scrambled into her own clothes.
She yanked the doorknob. It wouldn't turn. She hammered softly with her fists on the unyielding door.
She hurried to the open window and sitting on the sill started to swing her legs across it. Her feet
thumped into an invisible something. Startled she thrust out a hand and stubbed her fingers. She pressed
both hands slowly outward and stared at them as they splayed against a something that stopped them.
She went back to the bed and stared at it. She made it up, quickly, meticulously, mitering the corners of
the sheets precisely and plumping the pillow. She melted down to the edge of the bed and stared at her
tightly clasped hands. Then she slid slowly down, turning and catching herself on her knees. She buried
her face in her hands and whispered into the arid grief that burned her eyes, "Oh, God! Oh, God! Are
You really there?"
For a long time she knelt there, feeling pressed against the barrier that confined her, the barrier that,
probably because of Karen, was now an inert impersonal thing instead of the malicious agony-laden
frustrating, deliberately evil creature it had been for so long.
Then suddenly, incongruously, she heard Karen's voice. "You haven't eaten." Her startled head lifted.
No one was in the room with her. "You haven't eaten," she heard the voice again, Karen's matter-of-fact
tone. "You haven't eaten."
She pulled herself up slowly from her knees, feeling the smart of returning circulation. Stiffly she limped
to the other room. The coffee steamed gently at her although she had poured it out a lifetime ago. The
bacon and eggs were still warm and uncongealed. She broke the warm crisp toast and began to eat.
"I'll figure it all out sometime soon," she murmured to her plate. "And then I'll probably scream for a
while."
Karen came back early in the afternoon, bursting through the door that swung open before she reached
it.
"Oh, Lea!" she cried, seizing her and whirling her in a mad dance. "You'd never guess-not in a million
years! Oh, Lea! Oh, Lea!" She dumped the two of them onto the bed and laughed delightedly. Lea
pulled away from her.
"Guess what?" Her voice sounded as dry and strained as her tearless eyes.
Karen sat up quickly. "Oh, Lea! I'm so sorry. In all the mad excitement I forgot.
"Listen, Jemmy says you're to come to the Gathering tonight. I can't tell you-I mean, you wouldn't be
able to understand without a lengthy explanation, and even then-" She looked into Lea's haunted eyes.
"It's bad, isn't it?" she asked softly. "'Even Stilled, it comes through like a blunt knife hacking, doesn't it?
Can't you cry, Lea? Not even a tear?"
"Tears-" Lea's hands were restless. " 'Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.' " She pressed her hands
to the tight constriction in her chest. Her throat ached intolerably. "How can I bear it?" she whispered.
"When you let it come back again how can I even bear it?"
"You don't have to bear it alone. You need never have borne it alone. And I won't release you until you
have enough strength.
"Anyway-" Karen stood up briskly, "food again-then a nap. I'll give sleep to you. Then the Gathering.
There will be your new beginning."
Lea shrank back into her corner, watching with dread as the Gathering grew. Laughter and cries and
overtones and undercurrents swirled around the room.
"They won't bite!" Karen whispered. "They won't even notice you, if you don't want them to. Yes," she
answered Lea's unasked question. "You must stay-like it or not, whether you can see any use in it or not.
I'm not quite sure myself why Jemmy called this Gathering, but how appropriate can you get-having us
meet in the schoolhouse? Believe it or not, this is the where that I got my education-and this is
where-Well, teachers have been our undoing-or doing according to your viewpoint. You know, adults
can fairly well keep themselves to themselves and not let anyone else in on their closely guarded
secrets-but the kids-" She laughed. "Poor cherubs-or maybe they're wiser. They pour out the most
personal things quite unsolicited to almost any adult who will listen-and who's more apt to listen than a
teacher? Ask one sometime how much she learns of a child's background and everyday family activities
from just what is let drop quite unconsciously. Kids are the key to any community-which fact has never
been more true than among us. That's why teachers have been so involved in the affairs of the People.
Remind me sometime when we have a minute to tell you about-well, Melodye, for instance. But now-"
The room suddenly arranged itself decorously and stilled itself expectantly and waited attentively.
Jemmy half sat on one corner of the teacher's desk in front of the Group, a piece of paper clutched in
one hand. All heads bowed. "We are met together in Thy Name," Jemmy said. A settling rustle filled the
room and subsided. "Out of consideration for some of us the proceedings here will be vocal. I know
some of the Group have wondered that we included all of you in the summons. The reasons are twofold.
One, to share this joy with us-" A soft musical trill of delight curled around the room, followed by faint
laughter. "Francher!" Jemmy said.
"The other is because of the project we want to begin tonight. "In the last few days it has become
increasingly evident that we all have a most important decision to make. Whatever we decide there will
be good-bys to say. There will be partings to endure. There will be changes."
Sorrow was tangible in the room, and a soft minor scale mourned over each note as it moved up and
down, just short of tears. "The Old Ones have decided it would be wise to record our history to this
point. That's why all of you are here. Each one of you holds an important part of our story within you.
Each of you has influenced indelibly the course of events for our Groups. We want your stories. Not
reinterpretations in the light of what you now know, but the original premise, the original groping, the
original reaching-" There was a murmur through the room. "Yes," Jemmy answered. "Live it over, exactly
the same-aching and all.
"Now," he smoothed out his piece of paper, "chronologically
-Oh, first, where's Davey's recording gadget?"
"Gadget?" someone called. "What's wrong with our own memories?"
"Nothing," Jemmy said, "but we want this record independent of any of us, to go with whoever goes and
stay with whoever stays. We share the general memories, of course, but all the little details-well, anyway.
Davey's gadget." It had arrived on the table unobtrusively, small and undistinguished. "Now
chronologically-Karen, you're first-"
"Who, me?" Karen straightened up, surprised. "Well, yes," she answered herself, settling back, "I guess I
am."
"Come to the desk," Jemmy said. "Be comfortable."
Karen squeezed Lea's hand and whispered, "Make way for wonder!" and, after threading her way
through the rows of desks, sat behind the table.
"I think I'll theme this beginning," she said. "We've remarked on the resemblance before, you know.
" 'And the Ark rested . . . upon the mountains of Ararat.' Ararat's more poetical than Baldy, anyway!
"And now," she smiled, "to establish Then again. Your help, please?"
Lea watched Karen, fascinated against her will. She saw her face alter and become younger. She saw
her hair change its part and lengthen. She felt years peel back from Karen like thin tissue and she leaned
forward, listening as Karen's voice, higher and younger, began ....
ARARAT
WE'VE HAD trouble with teachers in Cougar Canyon. It's just an accommodation school anyway,
isolated and so unhandy to anything. There's really nothing to hold a teacher. But the way the People
bring forth their young, in quantities and with regularity, even our small Group can usually muster the nine
necessary for the county superintendent to arrange for the schooling for the year.
Of course I'm past school age, Canyon school age, and have been for years, but if the tally came up one
short in the fall I'd go back for a postgraduate course again. But now I'm working on a college level
because Father finished me off for my high-school diploma two summers ago. He's promised me that if I
do well this year I'll get to go Outside next year and get my training and degree so I can be the teacher
and we won't have to go Outside for one any more. Most of the kids would just as soon skip school as
not, but the Old Ones don't hold with ignorance and the Old Ones have the last say around here.
Father is the head of the school board. That's how I get in on lots of school things the other kids don't.
This summer when he wrote to the county seat that we'd have more than our nine again this fall and
would they find a teacher for us, he got back a letter saying they had exhausted their supply of teachers
who hadn't heard of Cougar Canyon and we'd have to dig up our own teacher this year. That "'dig up"
sounded like a dirty crack to me since we have the graves of four past teachers in the far corner of our
cemetery. They sent us such old teachers, the homeless, the tottering, who were trying to piece out the
end of their lives with a year here and a year there in jobs no one else wanted because there's no
adequate pension system in the state and most teachers seem to die in harness. And their oldness and
their tottering were not sufficient in the Canyon where there are apt to be shocks for
Outsiders-unintentional as most of them are.
We haven't done so badly the last few years, though. The Old Ones say we're getting adjusted, though
some of the nonconformists say that the Crossing thinned our blood. It might be either or both or the
teachers are just getting tougher. The last two managed to last until just before the year ended. Father
took them in as far as Kerry Canyon and ambulances took them on in. But they were all right after a
while in the sanatorium and they're doing okay now. Before them, though, we usually had four teachers a
year.
Anyway Father wrote to a teachers' agency on the coast, and after several letters each way he finally
found a teacher.
He told us about it at the supper table.
"'She's rather young," he said, reaching for a toothpick and tipping his chair back on its hind legs.
Mother gave Jethro another helping of pie and picked up her own fork again. "Youth is no crime," she
said, "and it'll be a pleasant change for the children."
"Yes, though it seems a shame." Father prodded at a back tooth and Mother frowned at him. I wasn't
sure if it was for picking his teeth or for what he said. I knew he meant it seemed a shame to get a place
like Cougar Canyon so early in a career. It isn't that we're mean or cruel, you understand. It's only that
they're Outsiders and we sometimes forget-especially the kids.
"She doesn't have to come," Mother said. "She could say no."
"Well, now-" Father tipped his chair forward. "Jethro, no more pie. You go on out and help Kiah bring
in the wood. Karen, you and Lizbeth get started on the dishes. Hop to it, kids."
And we hopped, too. Kids do to fathers in the Canyon, though I understand they don't always Outside.
It annoyed me because I knew Father wanted us out of the way so he could talk adult talk to Mother, so
I told Lizbeth I'd clear the table and then worked as slowly as I could, and as quietly, listening hard.
"She couldn't get any other job," Father said. "The agency told me they had placed her twice in the last
two years and she didn't finish the year either place."
"Well," Mother said, pinching in her mouth and frowning.
"If she's that bad why on earth did you hire her for the Canyon?"
"We have a choice?" Father laughed. Then he sobered. "No, it wasn't for incompetency. She was a
good teacher. The way she tells it they just fired her out of a clear sky. She asked for recommendations
and one place wrote, 'Miss Carmody is a very competent teacher but we dare not recommend her for a
teaching position.' "
" 'Dare not'?" Mother asked.
" 'Dare not,' " Father said; "The agency assured me that they had investigated thoroughly and couldn't
find any valid reasons for the dismissals, but she can't seem to find another job anywhere on the coast.
She wrote me that she wanted to try another state."
"Do you suppose she's disfigured or deformed?" Mother suggested.
"Not from the neck up!" Father laughed. He took an envelope from his pocket. "Here's her application
picture."
By this time I'd got the table cleared and I leaned over Father's shoulder.
"Gee!" I said. Father looked back at me, raising one eyebrow. I knew then that he had known all along
that I was listening.
I flushed but stood my ground, knowing I was being granted admission to adult affairs, if only by the
back door.
The girl in the picture was lovely. She couldn't have been many years older than I and she was twice
as pretty.
She had short dark hair curled all over her head and apparently that poreless creamy skin which seems to
have an inner light of its own. She had a tentative look about her as though her dark eyebrows were
horizontal question marks. There was a droop to the corners of her mouth-not much, just enough to
make you wonder why, and want to comfort her.
"She'll stir the Canyon for sure," Father said.
"I don't know" Mother frowned thoughtfully. "What will the Old Ones say to a marriageable
Outsider in the Canyon?"
"Adonday Veeah!" Father muttered. "That never occurred to me. None of our other teachers was ever
of an age to worry about."
"'What would happen?" I asked. "I mean if one of the Group married an Outsider?"
"Impossible," Father said, so like the Old Ones that I could see why his name was approved in Meeting
last spring.
"Why, there's even our Jemmy," Mother worried. "Already he's saying he'll have to start trying to find
another Group. None of the girls here pleases him. Supposing this Outsider-how old is she?"
Father unfolded the application. "Twenty-three. Just three years out of college."
"Jemmy's twenty-four." Mother pinched her mouth together. "Father, I'm afraid you'll have to cancel the
contract. If anything happened-well, you waited overlong to become an Old One to my way of thinking
and it'd be a shame to have something go wrong your first year."
"I can't cancel the contract. She's on her way here. School starts next Monday." Father ruffled his hair
forward as he does when he's disturbed. "We're probably making a something of a nothing," he said
hopefully.
"Well, I only hope we don't have any trouble with this Outsider."
"Or she with us," Father grinned. "Where are my cigarettes?"
"On the bookcase," Mother said, getting up and folding the tablecloth together to hold the crumbs.
Father snapped his fingers and the cigarettes drifted in from the front room.
Mother went on out to the kitchen. The tablecloth shook itself over the wastebasket and then followed
her.
Father drove to Kerry Canyon Sunday night to pick up our new teacher. She was supposed to have
arrived Saturday afternoon but she didn't make bus connections at the county seat. The road ends at
Kerry Canyon. I mean for Outsiders. There's not much of the look of a well-traveled road very far out
our way from Kerry Canyon, which is just as well. Tourists leave us alone. Of course we don't have
much trouble getting our cars to and fro, but that's why everything dead-ends at Kerry Canyon and we
have to do all our own fetching and carrying-I mean the road being in the condition it is.
All the kids at our house wanted to stay up to see the new teacher, so Mother let them, but by seven
thirty the youngest ones began to drop off and by nine there was only Jethro and Kiah, Lizbeth and
Jemmy and me. Father should have been home long before and Mother was restless and uneasy. But at
nine fifteen we heard the car coughing and sneezing up the draw. Mother's wide relieved smile was
reflected on all our faces.
"Of course!" she cried. "I forgot. He has an Outsider in the car. He had to use the road and it's terrible
across Jackass Flat."
I felt Miss Carmody before she came in the door. Already I was tingling all over from anticipation, but
suddenly I felt her, so plainly that I knew with a feeling of fear and pride that I was of my grandmother,
that soon I would be bearing the burden and blessing of her Gift-the Gift that develops into free access to
any mind, one of the People or an Outsider, willing or not. And besides the access, the ability to counsel
and help, to straighten tangled minds and snarled emotions.
And then Miss Carmody stood in the doorway, blinking a little against the light, muffled to the chin
against the brisk fall air. A bright scarf hid her hair, but her skin was that luminous matte-cream it had
looked. She was smiling a little but scared, too. I shut my eyes and-I went in, just like that. It was the first
time I had ever sorted anybody She was all fluttery with tiredness and strangeness, and there was a
question deep inside her that had the wornness of repetition, but I couldn't catch what it was. And under
the uncertainty there was a sweetness and dearness and such a bewildered sorrow that I felt my eyes
dampen. Then I looked at her again (sorting takes such a little time) as Father introduced her. I heard a
gasp beside me and suddenly I went into Jemmy's mind with a stunning rush.
Jemmy and I have been close all our lives and we don't always need words to talk with each other, but
this was the first time I had ever gone in like this and I knew he didn't know what had happened. I felt
embarrassed and ashamed to know his emotion so starkly. I closed him out as quickly as possible, but
not before I knew that now Jemmy would never hunt for another Group; Old Ones or no Old Ones, he
had found his love.
All this took less time than it takes to say how-do-you-do and shake hands. Mother descended with
cries and drew Miss Carmody and Father out to the kitchen for coffee, and Jemmy swatted Jethro and
made him carry the luggage instead of snapping it to Miss Carmody's room. After all we didn't want to
lose our teacher before she even saw the schoolhouse.
I waited until everyone was bedded down. Miss Carmody in her cold cold bed, the rest of us of course
with our sheets set for warmth-how I pity Outsiders! Then I went to Mother.
She met me in the dark hall and we clung together as she comforted me.
"Oh, Mother," I whispered, "I sorted Miss Carmody tonight. I'm afraid."
Mother held me tight again. "I wondered. It's a great responsibility. You have to be so wise and
clear-thinking. Your grandmother carried the Gift with graciousness and honor. "You are of her. You
can do it."
"But, Mother! To be an Old One!"
Mother laughed. "You have years of training ahead of you before you'll be an Old One. Councilor to the
soul is a weighty job."
"Do I have to tell?" I pleaded. "I don't want anyone to know yet. I don't want to be set apart."
"I'll tell the Oldest. No one else need know." She hugged me again and I went back, comforted, to bed.
摘要：

PilgrimageTheFirstBookofthePeopleZennaHenderson1961ITHEWindowofthebuswasadarksquareagainstthefeaturelessnight.Lealethereyesfocusslowlyfromtheirunthinkingbluruntilherfacematerialized,faintandfragmentary,highlightedbythedimlightofthebusinterior."Look,'thethought,"Istillhaveaface."Shetiltedherheadandwa...

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