Let the Fire Fall Page 6

  “My reward in heaven,” Winifred murmured. Wakeman looked confused for a second, then cleared his throat and continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “After many long hours of consultation, however, the decision has been reached that the transference that has been effected by your devoted care of the child is not to his best interests. We believe his growing dependence on you has added to the immaturity that is detrimental to his progress.”

  Winifred smiled and drummed her fingers on the polished surface of the table. Again Wakeman was discomfited for a second. Winifred turned to take in Lenny with her gaze. He was seated slightly to the rear and side of her so that she couldn’t see both men at the same time. She addressed herself to Lenny.

  “Have you read my latest report? The summary of three months ago?” Lenny nodded, smiling. “Okay, then tell him to knock off this pep talk and get down to basics. I say the kid is, to put it as bluntly as I know how, going crazy in this environment. He has shown signs of autistic behavior from infancy, and they are growing more pronounced. He is developing into a paranoid schizophrenic, and if you remove the one stable element in his environment, this development will hasten.”

  “Dr. Harvey, your report was given all consideration,” Wakeman said frostily. “We feel that you have exaggerated the situation.”

  Winifred stood up, gathering her notebook and purse, keeping her gaze on Lenny. “Balls,” she said. She started to leave the room, but Lenny’s voice stopped her.

  Very quietly he said, “Winifred, there is an alternative.”

  She swung around to stare at him.

  “You are to be relieved of all official duties in regard to the boy. That’s irrevocable. But you can stay and continue as his confidant.”

  She stiffened. Now they were making the offer. She waited ..

  “He needs someone he can talk to, and you are that someone. We all know that. You would work directly under my orders, however, not under the medical board’s auspices.” He held up his hand before she could speak. “Not now. Think about it. I’ll talk to you again.”

  Winifred walked back down the hall slowly. Wakeman and Lenny. Her side. The U.S.A. side. They didn’t want her reports to go to the international board any longer. They wanted the inside information for themselves. Everyone believed something would come out eventually that would give one side or the other an edge. She entered her room still deep in thought, and jumped when Johnny said, “Are you leaving too?”

  “How did you get in here? What are you doing out of your section?”

  “Did you get fired? Are you going away too? If you do I’ll kill myself!”

  Looking at the frail boy who had learned to sneak from his room almost as soon as he had learned to walk, who had learned to lie with the facility of a veteran diplomat, who had learned to trust no one at all, probably including her, who had learned, God only knew how, that he was the world’s most lavishly housed and protected-guarded prisoner, and had yet to learn why, she knew that she couldn’t leave him. She told him so. She asked him how he had managed to get to the upper floor without being stopped, and he, wiser than she, put a finger to his lips and smiled.

  “Johnny, I do want to talk to you sometime soon. Not now, not here. Outside, under the tree where we saw the squirrel fight. Remember?” He nodded and she added, “The first sunny day.”

  When they had their talk Winifred told the boy that she had been fired as his doctor, but that she would remain so that he would have a friend there, someone he could talk to when he wanted to talk. And she told him, after taking a deep breath and hoping the trees weren’t bugged, that she wouldn’t tell anyone what he had to say to her, if he didn’t want her to. She told him that no one else was likely to keep his secrets, and he nodded in agreement. Winifred stood up then to return to the house. Johnny stopped her.

  “They don’t like me, do they? They don’t like you either. Everyone’s afraid all the time. They wish I’d get sick and die. But I won’t. And when I know they’re afraid, when they see me looking at them, I make them more afraid. I’m a mirror. Nobody can see me, they just see themselves when they look.”

  Winifred sat down again and pulled him down at her side. “What do you mean? Why do you say they’re afraid?”

  “Look at them. Always sneaking around listening to me, watching what I do, even when I go to the bathroom. And when I eat. And when I had a cold last month I heard Dr. Clephorn say maybe this time. And I knew what he meant. They could all go away and do something else…. They don’t like it here. It’s too quiet and dull.”

  Oh, Lordy, Winifred thought, Lordy, Lordy.

  Johnny jumped up. “He’s coming,” he said. He stared at Winifred hard. “Some day will you tell me who I am and why I have to stay here?”

  Wakeman came into sight around the trees and Winifred also stood, up, brushing her skirt, waving to him. “Yes,” she said under her breath to Johnny, who wasn’t even looking at her now, but was throwing stones at birds in a meadow off to their left. “I’ll tell you everything,” she said, promising, knowing her promise to be reckless, but knowing that he needed it.

  She was told later that day not to take the boy away from the house to talk to him, and she realized what Johnny seemed already to know: the entire house was bugged. Meekly she agreed, and reported what conversation had taken place between them out in the open. It was a truncated report of their talk.

  During the summer when she had her three weeks’ vacation she told most of it to Matt, who did record it. Matt and Lisa were the only two people she felt at all certain about any more, just as she was the only person Johnny felt certain about. And Matt and Lisa had each other. So it worked out.

  Matt and Lisa had a shadow over them now, where there had been none. They seldom mentioned Blake, and, his dog had vanished so there wasn’t even that reminder. They had moved again, this time to a subdivision that had escaped urban renewal by incorporating itself into a village and passing a law against the renewal act. They had a large, slightly dilapidated frame house with a big yard that was fragrant with lilacs and peonies.

  Winifred spent a week with them and they talked openly, the only place where she permitted herself this luxury.

  Obie had clamped down on Blake’s public appearances, she learned. The boy had not been exploited for the past six weeks or longer. Maybe Obie had him in a school somewhere; no one knew, and Obie turned away all questions, saying only that Blake would return to take his proper place among men.

  Matt exclaimed over the Star Child’s precocious grasp of the conditions at the estate, and Winifred shrugged it away. “He was bound to realize what was going on sooner or later. He’s not stupid, and he has something that isn’t bound by intelligence. He can sense much more than he can logically understand. And he trusts his intuition more than his logic. Most of the time he’s right, incidentally. He has no reason to trust or believe anyone around him. When I called him paranoid, it was a description of fact, but if the paranoiac is being watched and hounded, isn’t his paranoia reasonable?”

  “But why?” Lisa asked. “Why can’t they simply let him grow up like other children? Why are they so afraid of him?”

  “Are you kidding?” Winifred said. “So the aliens return and find that their kid has been allowed to run the streets and get himself hit by a truck and has had his neck broken? They turn on the big guns and that’s it. Or what if he is taken by the Chinese. They’re still screaming over him from time to time, you know. What if he is indoctrinated in some kookie philosophy that the aliens detest? What if he learns that the little bit of paradise he has come to expect doesn’t represent the rest of the world and reports slum conditions, poverty, pandemic malnutrition on three-fourths of Earth, wars in Africa, and Asia, and South America, near slave conditions that exist in most areas of the world so that the U.N. space programs can proceed in all due haste? You see? If and when they come back, they will see that we treat him like a prince.”

  Matt was watching her closely and W
inifred stopped.

  “You think they’ll ease you out anyway?” Matt asked a bit later.

  “Sure. They’ll find that they aren’t getting enough from me to pay for my keep. And the kid will be growing up, you know. A young teenager soon, he’ll turn from a woman confidant, and they’ll supply an understanding male who will worm his way into the kid’s life. They’ve been trying, just haven’t found the right one, but in time they will. And then I’ll go.”

  Winifred couldn’t sleep that night, but sat on the Daniel’s porch and listened to the crickets and the night birds, and when Matt joined her and offered a drink, she accepted it with a sigh. “I have to tell him, Matt. When they give me my papers, there won’t be any good-byes. That isn’t how they operate, and God only knows when that time will come. I’ll have to pick my own time and tell him everything.”

  Matt nodded, a blurry white shadow that moved slightly on the darkened porch.

  Winifred continued, as if to herself, “He has to have an identity he can hang onto. He’s got nothing.

  Chapter Seven

  BLAKE watched the kids playing ball for ten or fifteen minutes, then walked casually to the stand of bicycles and worked one out of the middle. A nondescript red standard bike. That’s what he had decided on. He eased the bike out and pushed it a few feet, then got on and rode away slowly, not drawing any attention to himself. The ball game went on.

  No one his age walked. All the kids under fourteen had bikes, and a boy walking drew glances. Lesson one. The other boys wore sneakers and jeans, and he was still dressed in the white shirt that Obie insisted on for the meetings. He stole proper clothes from a swimming pool locker room. Money was going to be one of the biggest problems, however. He scanned a newspaper left on a bench at a bus stop. At least Obie hadn’t put his picture in the papers yet. Blake tossed the paper down and got back on the stolen bike. He had to go somewhere. He was tired, more tired than he’d ever been before. He had walked four days and most of four nights, sleeping only when he knew he couldn’t take another step. What he wanted most was a bed with clean sheets and a blanket and something hot to eat and a bath with soap and hot water. He blinked hard and started to pedal.

  “Hey, kid!” A whistle and another shout. Blake turned and saw a man beckoning to him. “You! Com’ere.”

  A man by a delivery truck with a fiat tire. A job. Blake went back, the tears forgotten now. “Yes?”

  “Look, can you carry a sack on that bike? Want to make a buck?”

  So Blake was hired. The house he sought was an old Southern three-floored mansion long since turned into apartments. The first floor was leased by the Misses Laidley. Miss Annabelle Laidley, fifteen years in a wheelchair following a throw from a horse; Miss Lucy Jo Laidley, nineteen years a fourth-grade teacher, now retired; Miss Jessica Sue Laidley, seventy, fierce, lean, a former designer of ladies’ apparel; and last, the eldest of the Laidley girls, Miss Margaret Elizabeth Laidley, seventy-five, soft and yielding, but controller of the purse.

  The Laidley girls took turns entertaining, each of them with different interests and a different circle of friends, overlapping here and there. Tonight it was Miss Lucy Jo’s turn to have the living room for her group. Card tables were set up and a sideboard was already laid out with glasses, a decanter of gin, a bowl of ice, lemonade, sausages, thin slices of pumpernickel, cheeses. She was waiting impatiently for the delivery of chips and collins mix when Blake turned up at the back door, his nose hard against the screen, his eyes large and fascinated. There was an aviary on the back porch. Miss Margaret Elizabeth’s birds lived there in a nylon net cage with miniature palm trees and orange trees, and forty-three potted geraniums and African violets. The birds were all screeching at the delivery boy. Conkling-by-the-Sea, Margaret’s ancient parrot watched the boy malevolently.

  Miss Lucy Joe admitted him and checked the order against her list, added-up the figures, nodded, and then held out the promised dollar. Only then did she really look at the child. And she gasped.

  “Boy, how long since you had a bath? And a meal?”

  Blake was still staring at the birds, however, and he didn’t even see the proffered dollar bill. Miss Lucy poked him with a long slender finger and he started. “Yes, ma’am?” he said.

  Miss Lucy Jo handed him the dollar. “You like the birds, don’t you? You can go look, if you’ve a mind to. But don’t put a hand in. They peck.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Blake said.

  Miss Lucy Jo watched him with a pucker on her smooth forehead. Miss Margaret Elizabeth entered the kitchen, rustling in brown moire skirts from another era, and Miss Lucy Jo put a finger to her lips and pointed. The boy was standing close to the nylon. cage, and the birds and the boy were regarding each other. He whistled softly, a pale green and blue parakeet trilled in answer. The boy replied and a lemon yellow canary ruffled its feathers and sang a solo. Blake laughed aloud, then trilled back to the canary. Presently there were songs and chirping and warblings and it was impossible to tell which came from inside the cage and which from outside. Miss Margaret Elizabeth sat down staring at the scene. “I’ll be damned,” she said. The parrot said, “I’ll be damned, I’ll be damned.”

  Miss Lucy Jo looked reprovingly at her and Margaret Elizabeth said, “I will though.”

  Conkling-by-the-Sea said, “Shut up, you foulmouthed moth lure.”

  They kept Blake with them for the next few days, at first trying to worm from him who he was and where he had come from, and getting only very polite refusals in return. When the end of the three days came about, the time they had agreed among themselves to permit him to stay and have some decent food and rest, they knew they couldn’t turn him out. He turned so white at the suggestion that they should notify the authorities, that they abandoned the idea without any discussion. Miss Jessica Sue insisted on questioning him severely before they came to a decision about his future. Jessica Sue was tall and very straight and dressed in black with white at her throat. She had white hair, as did all the sisters, and she had gold-framed glasses, on a black silk string that she wore around her neck most of the time. She seated Blake in a straight chair and stood before him, her hands clasped in front of her.

  “Blake, you say that you have no people? Is that right?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “And you have never been to school? Nowhere?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Yet you can read very well, and you can do sums, and you play the piano. Can you explain these things?”

  “I watched my… a girl learning how to play the piano. I guess I picked it up from her. And I don’t remember when I learned to read. Seems like I always could.”

  Miss Jessica Sue stared at him hard. “Have you been to church?”

  Blake felt himself blushing furiously and he stood up. “I guess I’ll be on my way, Miss Jessica,” he said slowly. “I’d like to tell Miss Lucy Jo, and Miss Margaret Elizabeth, and Miss Annabelle good-by, if that’s all right.”

  “Blake, you sit right back down in that chair. So you came from a religious family? Is that it? You know we aren’t very religious here. You think we’ll hold that against you?’ Is that it?”

  He stared at the floor. Miss Jessica pulled a chair close to his and sat down in it, reached for his chin and lifted his face. “Look at me, Blake. Tell me this, have you done anything you are ashamed of?”

  He nodded. “But I didn’t want to,” he said. “Ob….the man I was with made me go on a stage and I was ashamed of that.”

  Miss Jessica studied him intently, then nodded. “All right, Blake. Now tell me this. Where are you going if you leave us?”

  “I don’t know. I’m strong. I can work.”

  “Yes. Well, you have a job here in this house, if you want it. We need a strong boy here to carry groceries for us, and to take Annabelle for. walks. Would you like the job?”

  Blake grinned, then sobered again. “I can’t stay with anybody,” he said. “Someone would say why isn’t that boy
in school and you’d be in trouble.”

  “We have a teacher here in the house. Wouldn’t be the first time she tutored private pupils either.”

  Blake stayed, and people did indeed say, why isn’t that boy in school?, but Miss Lucy Jo swore that she tutored him, and that he was the son of a traveling businessman who preferred his child to be in a private home rather than in a boarding school. During the year, Miss Annabelle regained the use of her legs. and where at first he had wheeled her in the chair on daily walks, by the end of the year they could be seen each day strolling together, talking very seriously of poetry and music and art.

  It was a calm year. Toward the end of it one night Miss Jessica Sue found Blake watching the television newscast and turned it off in order to talk to him. The other sisters were all busy, or out, and they had an uninterrupted half hour together.

  “Blake, I have a feeling that you might not want to stay with us very much longer. No, don’t shake your head. Things change. Boys change. I remember how you came to us, hungry, dirty, no clothes…. If you ever feel that you have to leave here, Blake, I want you to know that you have our blessings. Here is some money, all in small bills so no one will question you about it. Three hundred dollars, enough for you to live on for a while. Eventually you will have to have identification papers, register “With the data bank, get a social security card, credit card. I don’t know how you’ll manage it all, but I’m certain you will. The brown suitcase I brought home last week, that’s yours. Pack it with things that you might need. And a coat. Don’t forget a coat, Don’t worry about needing the things. We’ll replace them now, but I want you to have a bag packed and ready so if you have to leave in a hurry you won’t feel that you’re wasting time by packing. You understand?”

  Blake was staring at her, not speaking. He nodded. Miss Jessica Sue stood up and ruffled his hair. Very softly she said, “Stay with us if you can, dear. But if you must leave, God bless you.”

  Long into the night Blake lay awake trying to understand. He could hear the sisters’ voices in the living room and finally he went to his door and listened. Miss Annabelle was talking.