Zenna Henderson - Holding Wonder

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HOLDING WONDER
Zenna Henderson
1971
To my rainbow of cherubs who are cherubs before they are rainbow components
THE INDELIBLE KIND
I'VE ALWAYS been a down-to-earth sort of person. On rereading that sentence,
my mouth corners lift. It reads differently now. Anyway, matter-of-fact and
just a trifle skeptical-that's a further description of me. I've
enjoyed-perhaps a little wistfully-other people's ghosts, and breathtaking
coincidences, and flying saucer sightings, and table tiltings and prophetic
dreams, but I've never had any of my own. I suppose it takes a very
determined, or very childlike not childish-person to keep illusion and wonder
alive in a lifetime of teaching. "Lifetime" sounds awfully elderly-making,
doesn't it? But more and more I feel that I fit the role of observer more than
that of participant. Perhaps that explains a little of my unexcitement when I
did participate. It was mostly in the role of spectator. But what a
participation! What a spectacular!
But, back to the schoolroom. Faces and names have a habit of repeating and
repeating in your classes over the years. Once in a while, though, along comes
one of the indelible kind-and they mark you, happily or unhappily beyond
erasing. But, true to my nature; I didn't even have a twinge or premonition.
The new boy came alone. He was small, slight, and had a smooth cap of dark
hair. He had the assurance of a child who had registered many times by
himself, not particularly comfortable or uncomfortable at being in a new
school. He had brought a say-nothing report card, which, I noted in passing,
gave him a low grade in Group Activity Participation and a high one in
Adjustment to Redirective Counseling-by which I gathered that he was a loner
but minded when spoken to, which didn't help much in placing him academically.
"What book were you reading?" I asked, fishing on the shelf behind me for
various readers in case he didn't know a specific name. Sometimes we get those
whose faces overspread with astonishment and they say, "Reading?"
"In which of those series?" he asked. "Look-and-say, ITA, or phonics?" He
frowned a little. "We've moved so much and it seems as though every place we
go is different. It does confuse me sometimes." He caught my surprised eye and
flushed. "I'm really not very good by any method, even if I do know their
names," he admitted. "I'm functioning only on about a second-grade level."
"Your vocabulary certainly isn't second grade," I said, pausing over the
enrollment form.
"No, but my reading is," he admitted. "I'm afraid-"
"According to your age, you should be third grade." I traced over his
birthdate. This carbon wasn't the best in the world.
"Yes, and I suppose that counting everything, I'd average out about third
grade, but my reading is poor."
"Why?" Maybe knowing as much as he did about his academic standing, he'd know
the answer to this question.
"I have a block," he said, "I'm afraid-"
"Do you know what your block is?" I pursued, automatically probing for the
point where communication would end.
"I-" his eyes dropped. "I'm not very good in reading," he said. I felt him
folding himself away from me. End of communication.
"Well, here at Rinconcillo, you'll be on a number of levels. We have only one
room and fifteen students, so we all begin our subjects at the level where we
function best-" I looked at him sharply. "And work like mad!"
"Yes, ma'am." We exchanged one understanding glance; then his eyes became
eight-year-old eyes and mine, I knew, teacher eyes. I dismissed him to the
playground and turned to the paper work.
Kroginold, Vincent Lorma, I penciled into my notebook. A lumpy sort of name, I
thought, to match a lumpy sort of student-scholastically speaking.
Let me explain Rinconcillo. Here in the mountainous West, small towns,
exploding into large cities, gulp down all sorts of odd terrain in expanding
their city limits. Here at Winter Wells, city growth has followed the three
intersecting highways for miles out, forming a spidery, six-legged sort of
city. The city limits have followed the growth in swatches about four blocks
wide, which leaves long ridges, and truly ridges-mountainous ones-of non-city
projecting into the city. Consequently, here is Rinconcillo, a one-roomed
school with only 15 students, and only about half a mile from a school system
with eight schools and 4800 students. The only reason this school exists is
the cluster of family units around the MEL (Mathematics Experimental
Laboratory) facilities, and a half dozen fiercely independent ranchers who
stubbornly refuse to be urbanized and cut up into real estate developments or
be city-limited and absorbed into the Winter Wells school system.
As for me-this was my fourth year at Rinconcillo, and I don't know whether
it's being fiercely independent or just stubborn, but I come back each year to
my "little inside corner" tucked quite literally under the curve of a towering
sandstone cliff at the end of a box canyon. The violently pursuing and pursued
traffic, on the two highways sandwiching us, never even suspects we exist.
When I look out into the silence of an early school morning, I still can't
believe that civilization could be anywhere within a hundred miles. Long
shadows under the twisted, ragged oak trees mark the orangy gold of the sand
in the wash that flows dryly mostly, wetly tumultuous seldomly-down the middle
of our canyon. Manzanitas tangle the hillside until the walls become too steep
and sterile to support them. And yet, a twenty-minute drive-ten minutes out of
here and ten minutes into there-parks you right in front of the MONSTER
MERCANTILE, EVERYTHING CHEAPER. I seldom drive that way.
Back to Kroginold, Vincent Lorma-I was used to unusual children at my school.
The lab attracted brilliant and erratic personnel. The majority of the men
there were good, solid citizens and no more eccentric than a like number of
any professionals, but we do get our share of kooks, and their sometimes
twisted children. Besides the size and situation being an ideal set up for
ungraded teaching, the uneven development for some of the children made it
almost mandatory. As, for instance, Vincent, almost nine, reading, so he said,
on second-grade level, averaging out to third grade, which implied above-age
excellence in something. Where to put him? Why, second grade (or maybe first)
and fourth (or maybe fifth) and third-of course! Perhaps a conference with his
mother would throw some light on his "block." Well, difficult. According to
the enrollment blank, both parents worked at MEL.
By any method we tried, Vincent was second grade-or less-in reading.
"I'm sorry." He stacked his hands on the middle page of Through Happy Hours,
through which he had stumbled most woefully. "And reading is so basic, isn't
it?"
"It is," I said, fingering his math paper-above age-level. And the vocabulary
check test "If it's just words, I'll define them," he had said. And he had.
Third year of high school worth. "I suppose your math ability comes from your
parents," I suggested.
"Oh, no!" he said, "I have nothing like their gift for math. It's-it's-I like
it. You can always get out. You're never caught-"
Caught?" I frowned.
"Yes-look!" Eagerly he seized a pencil. "See! One plus equals two. Of course
it does, but it doesn't stop there. if you want to, you can back right out.
'Two equals one plus one. And there you are-out! The doors swing both ways!"
"Well, yes," I said, teased by an almost grasping of what he meant. "But math
traps me. One plus one equals two whether I want it to or not. Sometimes I
want it to be one and a half or two and three-fourths and it won't-ever!"
"No, it won't." His face was troubled. "Does it bother you all the time?"
"Heavens, no child!" I laughed. "It hasn't warped my life!"
"No," he said, his eyes widely on mine. "But that's why -" His voice died as
he looked longingly out the window at the recess-roaring playground, and I
released him to go stand against the wall of the school, wistfully watching
our eight other boys manage to be sixteen or even twenty-four in their wild
gyrations.
So that's why? I doodled absently on the workbook cover. I didn't like a big
school system because its one-plus-one was my one and one-half-or two and
three-fourths? Could be-could be. Honestly! What kids don't come up with! I
turned to the work sheet I was preparing for consonant blends for my
this-year's beginners-all both of them-and one for Vincent.
My records on Vincent over the next month or so were an odd patch-work. I
found that he could read some of the articles in the encyclopedia, but
couldn't read Billy Goats Grim. That he could read What Is So Rare As A Day In
June, but couldn't read Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. It was beginning to look
as though he could read what he wanted to and that was all. I don't mean a
capricious wanting-to, but that he shied away from certain readings and
actually couldn't read them. As yet I could find no pattern to his unreadings;
so I let him choose the things he wanted and he read-oh, how he read! He
gulped down the material so avidly that it worried me. But he did his gulping
silently. Orally, he wore us both out with his stumbling struggles.
He seemed to like school, but seldom mingled. He was shyly pleasant when the
other children invited him to join them, and played quite competently-which
isn't the kind of play you expect from an eight-year-old.
And there matters stood until the day that Kipper-our eighth grade-dragged
Vincent in, bloody and battered.
"This guy's nearly killed Gene," Kipper said. "Ruth's out there trying to
bring him to. First aid says don't move him until we know."
"Wait here," I snapped at Vincent as I headed for the door. "Get tissues for
your face!" And I rushed out after Kipper.
We found Gene crumpled in the middle of a horrified group gathered at the base
of the canyon wall. Ruth was crying as she mopped his muddy forehead with a
soggy tissue. I checked him over quickly. No obvious bleeding. I breathed a
little easier as he moaned, moved and opened his eyes. He struggled to a
sitting position and tenderly explored the side of his head.
"Ow! That dang rock!" He blinked tears as I parted his hair to see if he had
any damage besides the egg-sized lump. He hadn't. "He hit me with that big
rock!"
"My!" I giggled, foolish with relief. "He must have addled your brains at the
same time. Look at the size of that rock!" The group separated to let Gene
look, and Pete scrambled down from where he had perched on the rock for a
better look at the excitement.
"Well," Gene rubbed his head tenderly. "Anyway, he did!"
"Come on inside," I said, helping him up. "Do you want Kipper to carry you?"
"Heck no!" Gene pulled away from my hands. "I ain't hurt. G'wan-noseys!" He
turned his back on the staring children.
"You children stay out here." I herded Gene ahead of me. "We have things to
settle inside:"
Vincent was waiting quietly in his seat. He had mopped himself fairly clean,
though he still dabbled with a tissue at a cut over his left eye. Two long
scratches oozed redly down his cheek. I spent the next few minutes rendering
first aid. Vincent was certainly the more damaged of the two, and I could feel
the thrumming leap of his still-racing heart against me as I turned his docile
body around, tucking in his shirt during the final tidying up.
"Now." I sat, sternly teacher, at my desk and surveyed the two before me.
"Gene, you first."
"Well," he ruffed his hair up and paused to finger, half proudly, the knot
under his hair. "He said let my ground squirrel go and I said no. What the
heck! It was mine. And he said let it go and I said no and he took the cage
and busted it and-" Indignation in his eyes faded into defensiveness. "-and I
busted him one and-and- Well, then he hit me with that rock! Gosh, I was
knocked out, wasn't I?"
"You were," I said, grimly. "Vincent?"
"He's right." His voice was husky, his eyes on the tape on the back of one
hand. Then he looked up with a tentative lift of his mouth corners. "Except
that I hit the rock with him:"
"Hit the rock with him?" I asked. "You mean like judo or something? You pushed
him against the rock hard enough to knock him out?"
If you like," he shrugged.
"It's not what I like," I said. "It's-what happened?"
"I hit the rock with him," Vincent repeated.
"And why?" I asked, ignoring his foolish insistence.
"We were having a fight. He told you."
"You busted my cage!" Gene gushed indignantly.
"Gene," I reminded. "You had your turn. Vincent?"
"I had to let it go," he said, his eyes hopefully on mine.
"He wouldn't, and it-it wanted to get out-the ground squirrel." His eyes lost
their hopefulness before mine.
"It wasn't yours," I reminded.
"It wasn't his either!" His eyes blazed. "It belonged to itself! He had no
right!"
"I caught it!" Gene blazed back.
"Gene! Be still or I'll send you outside!"
Gene subsided, muttering.
"You didn't object to Ruth's hamster being in a cage."
"Cage" and "math" seemed trying to equate in my mind.
"That's because it was a cage beast," he said, fingering the taped hand again.
"It didn't know any better. It didn't care." His voice tightened. "The ground
squirrel did. It would have killed itself to get out. I-I just had to-"
To my astonishment, I saw tears slide down his cheek as he turned his face
away from me. Wordlessly I handed him a tissue from the box on my desk. He
wiped his face, his fingers trembling.
"Gene?" I turned to him. "Anything more?"
"Well, gollee! It was mine! And I liked it! It-it was mine!"
"I'll trade you," said Vincent. "I'll trade you a white rat in a real neat
aluminum cage. A pregnant one, if you like. It'll have four or five babies in
about a week."
"Gollee! Honest?" Gene's eyes were shining.
"Vincent?" I questioned him.
"We have some at home," he said. "Mr. Wellerk at MEL gave me some when we
came. They were surplus. Mother says I may trade if his mother says okay."
"She won't care!" cried Gene. "Us kids have part of the barn for our pets, and
if we take care of them, she doesn't care what we have. She don't even ever
come out there! Dad checks once in a while to be sure we're doing a decent
job. They won't care:"
"Well, you have your mother write a note saying you may have the rat, and
Vincent, if you're sure you want to trade, bring the rat tomorrow and we'll
consider the affair ended." I reached for my hand bell. "Well, scoot, you two.
Drinks and rest room, if necessary. It's past bell time now."
Gene scooted and I could hear him yelling, "Hey! I getta white rat-"
Vincent was at the door when I stopped him with a question. "Vincent, did your
mother know before you came to school that you were going to let the ground
squirrel go?"
"No, ma'am. I didn't even know Gene had it."
"Then she didn't suggest you trade with Gene."
"Yes, ma'am, she did," he said reluctantly.
"When?" I asked, wondering if he was going to turn out to be a twisted child
after all.
"When you were out getting Gene. I called her and told her." He smiled his
tentative lip-smile. "She gave me fits for fighting and suggested Gene might
like the rat.. I like it, too, but I have to make up for the ground squirrel."
He hesitated. I said nothing. He left.
"Well!" I exploded my held breath out. "Ananias K. Munchausen! Called his
mother, did he? And no phone closer than MONSTER MERCANTILE! But still--!" I
was puzzled. "It didn't feel like a lie!"
Next afternoon after dismissal time I sighed silently. I was staring moodily
out the window where the lonely creaking of one swing signified that Vincent,
as well as I, was waiting for his mother to appear. Well, inevitable, I guess.
Send a taped-up child home, you're almost sure to an irate parent back. And
Vincent had been taped up! Still was, for that matter.
I hadn't heard the car. The creaking of the swing stopped abruptly, and I
heard Vincent's happy calling voice. I watched the two of them come up onto
the porch, Vincent happily clinging.
"My mother, Teacher," he said, "Mrs. Kroginold."
"Good afternoon, Miss Murcer." Mrs. Kroginold was small, dark haired and
bright eyed. "You wait outside, erring man-child!" She dismissed him with a
spat on his bottom. "This is adult talk." He left, his small smile slanting
back over his shoulder a little anxiously.
Mrs. Kroginold settled comfortably in the visitor's chair I had already pulled
up beside my desk.
"Prepared, I see," she sighed. "I suppose I should have come sooner and
explained Vincent."
"He is a little unusual," I offered cautiously. "But he didn't impress me as
the fighting kind."
"He isn't," said Mrs. Kroginold. "No, he's-um-unusual in plenty of other ways,
but he comes by it naturally. It runs in the family. We've moved around so
much since Vincent's been in school that this is the first time I've really
felt I should explain him. Of course, this is also the first time he ever
knocked anyone out. His father could hardly believe him. We'll, anyway, he's
so happy here and making such progress in school that I don't want anything to
tarnish it for him, so-" she sighed and smiled. "He says you asked him about
his trading the rat -"
"The pregnant rat," I nodded.
"He did ask me," she said. "Our family uses a sort of telepathy in
emergencies."
"A sort of telepathy-!" My jaw sagged, then tightened. Well, I could play the
game, too. "How interesting!"
Her eyes gleamed. "Interesting aberration, isn't it?" I flushed and she added
hastily. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -to put interpretations into your mouth.
But Vincent did hear-well, maybe `feel' is a better word-the ground squirrel
crying out against being caged. It caught him right where he lives. I think
the block he has in reading is against anything that implies unwilling
compulsion - you know, being held against your will - or prevented-"
Put her in a pumpkin shell, my memory chanted. The three Billy Goats Gruff
were afraid to cross the bridge because-
"The other schools," she went on, "have restricted him to the reading
materials provided for his grade level, and you'd be surprised how many of the
stories-"
"And he did hit the rock with Gene:" She smiled ruefully. "Lifted him bodily
and threw him. A rather liberal interpretation of our family rules. He's been
forbidden to lift any large objects in anger. He considered Gene the lesser of
the two objects.
"You see, Miss Murcer, we do have family characteristics that aren't
exactly-mmm-usual, but Vincent is still just a school child, and we're just
parents, and he likes you much and we do, too. Accept us?"
"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 ductless 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 sped 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
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 bead- 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 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.
摘要：

HOLDINGWONDERZennaHenderson1971TomyrainbowofcherubswhoarecherubsbeforetheyarerainbowcomponentsTHEINDELIBLEKINDI'VEALWAYSbeenadown-to-earthsortofperson.Onrereadingthatsentence,mymouthcornerslift.Itreadsdifferentlynow.Anyway,matter-of-factandjustatrifleskeptical-that'safurtherdescriptionofme.I'veenjoy...

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