“Well, then you know what they say? They say ‘We have been taught a terrible lesson for our folly. This is God’s way of making us see.’ And you know what that is? That’s the minister who used to make sermons when Hoppy was a baby and got. carried on his Dad’s back to church. He’ll remember that, even though it was years and years ago. It was the most awful moment in his life; you know why? Because that minister, he was making everybody in the church look at Hoppy and that was wrong, and Hoppy’s father never went back after that. But that’s a lot of the reason why Hoppy is like he is today, because of that minister. So he’s really terrified of that minister, and when he hears his voice again—”
“Shut up,” Edie said desperately. They were now above Hoppy’s house; she saw the lights below. “Please, Bill, please.”
“But I have to explain to you,” Bill went on. “When I—”
He stopped. Inside her there was nothing. She was empty.
“Bill,” she said.
He had gone.
Before her eyes, in the dull moonlight, something she had never seen before bobbed. It rose, jiggled, its long pale hair streaming behind it like a tail; it rose until it hung directly before her face. It nad tiny, dead eyes and a gaping mouth, it was nothing but a little hard round head, like a baseball. From its mouth came a squeak, and then it fluttered upward once more, released. She watched it as it gained more and more height, rising above the trees in a swimming motion, ascending in the unfamiliar atmosphere which it had never known before.
“Bill,” she said, “he took you out of me. He put you outside.” And you are leaving, she realized; Hoppy is making you go. “Come back,” she said, but it didn’t matter because he could not live outside of her. She knew that. Doctor Stockstill had said that. He could not be born, and Hoppy had heard him and made him born, knowing that he would die.
You won’t get to do your imitation, she realized. I told you to be quiet and you wouldn’t. Straining, she saw—or thought she saw—the hard little object with the streamers of hair hair now above her… and then it disappeared, silently.
She was alone.
Why go on now? It was over. She turned, walked back up the hillside, hen head lowered, eyes shut, feeling her way. Back to her house, her bed. Inside she felt raw; she felt the tearing loose. If you only could have been quiet, she thought. He would not have heard you. I told you, I told you so.
She plodded on back.
Floating in the atmosphere, Bill Keller saw a little, heard a little, felt the trees and the animals alive and moving among them. He felt the pressure at work on him, lifting him, but he remembered his imitation and he said it. His voice came out tiny in the cold air; then his ears picked it up and he exclaimed.
“We have been taught a terrible lesson for our folly,” he squeaked, and his voice echoed in his ears, delighting him.
The pressure on him let go; he bobbed up, swimming happily, and then he dove. Down and down he went and just before he touched the ground he went sideways until, guided by the living presence within, he hung suspended above Hoppy Harrington’s antenna andhouse.
“This is God’s way!” he shouted in his thin, tiny voice. “We can see that it is time to call a halt to high-altitude nuclear testing. I want all of you to write letters to President Johnson!” He did not know who President Johnson was. A living person, perhaps. He looked around for him but he did not see him; he saw oak forests of animals, he saw a bird with noiseless wings that drifted, huge-beaked, eyes staring. Bill squeaked in fright as the noiseless, brownfeathered bird glided his way.
The bird made a dreadful sound, of greed and the desire to rend.
“All of you,” Bill cried, fleeing through the dark, chill air. “You must write letters in protest!”
The glittering eyes of the bird followed behind him as he and it glided above the trees, in the dim moonlight.
The owl reached him. And crunched him in a single instant.
XVI
Once more he was within. He could no longer see or hear; it had been for a short time and now it was over.
The owl, hooting, flew on.
Bill Keller said to the owl, “Can you hear me?”
Maybe it could, maybe not; it was only an owl, it did not have any sense, as Edie had had. It was not the same. Can I live inside you? he asked it, hidden away in here where no one knows… you have your flights that you make, your passes. With him, in the owl, were the bodies of mice and a thing that stirred and scratched, big enough to keep on trying to live.
Lower, he told the owl. He saw, by means of the owl, the oaks; he saw clearly, as if everything were full of light. Millions of individual objects lay immobile and then he spied one that crept—it was alive and the owl turned that way. The creeping thing, suspecting nothing, hearing no sound, wandered on, out into the open.
An instant later it had been swallowed. The owl flew on.
Good, he thought. And, is there more? This goes on all night, again and again, and then there is bathing when it rains, and the long, deep sleeps. Are they the best part? They are.
He said, “Fergesson don’t allow his employees to drink; it’s against his religion, isn’t it?” And then he said “Hoppy, what’s the light from? Is it God? You know, like in the Bible. I mean, is it truer
The owl hooted.
“Hoppy,” he said, from within the owl, “you said last time it was all dark. Is that right? No light at all?”
A thousand dead things within him yammered for attention. He listened, repeated, picked among them.
“You dirty little freak,” he said. “Now listen. Stay down here; we’re below street-level. You moronic jackass, stay where you are, you are, you are. I’ll go upstairs and get those. People. Down here .you clear. Space. Space for them.”
Frightened, the owl flapped; it rose higher, trying to evade him. But he continued, sorting and picking and listening on.
“Stay down here,” he repeated. Again the lights of Hoppy’s house came into view; the owl had circled, returned to it, unable to get away. He made it stay where he wanted it. He brought it closer and closer in its passes to Hoppy. “You moronic jackass,” he said. “Stay where you are.”
The owl flew lower, hooting in its desire to leave. It was caught and it knew it. The owl hated him.
“The president must listen to our pleas,” he said, “before it is too late.”
With a furious effort the owl performed its regular technique; it coughed him up and he sank in the direction of the ground, trying to – catch the currents of air. He crashed among humus and plant-growth; he rolled, giving little squeaks until finally he came to rest in a hollow.
Released, the owl soared off and disappeared.
“Let man’s compassion be witness to this,” he said as he lay in the hollow; he spoke in the minister’s voice from long ago. “it is ourselves who have done this; we see here the results of mankind’s own folly.”
Lacking the owl eyes he saw only vaguely; the illumination seemed to be gone and all that remained were several nearby shapes. They were trees.
He saw, too, the form of Hoppy’s house outlined against the dim night sky. It was not far off.
“Let me in,” Bill said, moving his mouth. He rolled about in the hollow; he thrashed until the leaves stirred. “I want to come in.”
An animal, hearing him, moved further off, warily.
“In, in, in,” Bill said. “I can’t stay out here long; I’ll die. Edie, where are you?” He did not feel her nearby; he felt only the presence of the phocomelus within the house.
As best he could, he rolled that way.
Early in the morning, Doctor Stockstill arrived at Hoppy Harrington’s tar-paper house to make his fourth attempt at treating Walt Dangerfield. The transmitter, he noticed, was on, and so were lights here and there; puzzled, he knocked on the door.
The door opened and there sat Hoppy Harrington in the center of his ‘mobile. Hoppy regarded him in an odd, cautious, defensive fashion.