Holding Wonder

was asking something, and, so far, every question around these People seemed to have a positive answer! So it was that we delivered him, not to the FBI in Washington, but to his own doorstep at a launching base somewhere deep in his own country. We waited, hovering under our unlight and well flowed, until the door swung open and gulped him in, instrument packet, my blanket, and all.
Imagination boggles at the reception there must have been for him! They surely knew the capsule had been destroyed in orbit. And to have him walk in-!
And Mr. Kroginold struggled for a couple of days with "Virus X" without benefit of the company doctor, then went back to work.
A couple of weeks later they moved away to another lab, half across the country, where Mr. Kroginold could go on pursuing whatever it is he is pursuing.
And a couple of days before they left, I quite unexpectedly gave Vincent a going-away gift.
That morning Vincent firmed his lips, his cheeks coloring, and shook his head. "I can't read it," he said, and began to close the book.
"That I don't believe," I said firmly, my flare of exasperation igniting into sudden inspiration. Vincent looked at me, startled. He was so used to my acceptance of his reading block that he was shaken as I .
"But I can't," he said patiently.
"Why not?" I asked bluntly.
"I have a block," he said as flatly.
"What triggers it?" I probed.
"Why-why Mother says anything that suggests unhappy compulsion-"
"How do you know this story has any such thing in it?" asked. "All it says in the title is a name-Stickeen."
"But I know," he said miserably, his head bent as he flicked the pages of the story with his thumb.
"I'll tell you how you know," I said. "You know because you've read the story already."
"But I haven't!" Vincent's face puckered. "You only brought this book today!"
"That's true," I said. "And you turned the pages to see how long the story was. Only then did you decide yon wouldn't read it-again!"
"I don't understand-" Wonder was stirring in his eyes.
"Vincent," I said, "you read this whole story in the time it took you to turn the pages. You gulped it page by page and that's how you know there's unhappy compulsion in it. So, you refuse to read it-again."
"Do-do you really think so?" asked Vincent in a hopeful half whisper. "Oh, Teacher, can I really read after all? I've been so ashamed! One of the People, and not able to read!"
"Let's check," I said, excited, too. "Give me the book. I'll ask you questions-" And I did. And he answered every single one of them!
"I can read!" He snatched the book from me and hugged it to him with both arms. "Hey! Gene! I can read!"
"Big deal!" said Gene, glancing up from his labor on the butcher paper spread on the floor. He was executing a fanciful rendition, in tempera, of the Indians greeting Columbus in a chartreuse, magenta and shriek-pink jungle. "I learned to read in the first grade. Which way do a crocodile's knees bend?"
"All you have to remember," I said to a slightly dashed Vincent, "is to slow down a bit and be a little less empathetic." I was as pleased as he was. "And to think of the time I wasted for both of us, making you sound out your words-
"But I need it," he said. "I still can't spell for sour apples!"
Vincent gave me a going-away present the Friday night that the Kroginolds came to say goodbye. We were sitting in the twilight on the school porch. Vincent, shaken by having to leave Rinconcillo and Gene, and still thrilling to knowing he could read, gave me one of his treasures. It was a small rock, an odd crystalline formation that contrived at the same time to be betryoidal. In the curve of my palm it even had a strange feeling of resilience, though there was no yielding in it when I pressed my thumb to it.
"Daddy brought it to me from the moon," he told me, and deftly fielded it as my astonishment let it fall. "I'll probably get another one, someday," he said as he gave it back to me. "But even if I don't, I want you to have it."
Mr. and Mrs. Kroginold and I talked quietly for a while with no reference to parting. I shook them a little with, "Why do you suppose that stranger could send his thoughts to Vincent? I mean, he doesn't pick up distress from everyone, very apparently. Do you suppose that man might be from People like you? Are there People like you in that part of the world?"
They looked at each other, startled. "We really don't know!" said Mr. Kroginold. "Many of our People were unaccounted for when we arrived on Earth, but we just assumed that all of them were dead except for the group around here-"
"I wonder if it ever occurred to Jemmy," said Mrs. Kroginold thoughtfully.
After they left, disappearing into the shadows of the hillside toward MEL, I sat for a while longer, turning the moon-pebble in my hands. What an odd episode! In a month or so it would probably seem like a distant dream; melting into my teaching years along with all the other things past. But it still didn't seem quite finished to me" Meeting people like the Kroginolds and the others, makes an indelible impression on a person. Look what it did for that stranger-
What about that stranger? How was he explaining? Were they giving him a hard time? Then I gulped. I had just remembered. My name and address were on a tape on the corner of that blanket of mine he had been wrapped in. If he had discovered it-! And if things got too thick for him-
Oh, gollee! What if some day there comes a knock on my door and there
J-LINE TO NOWHERE
It was there. It was there all around me. To smell and to touch. To hear and to feel. Our way out-our answer-our escape. And now it's lost. I found it and let it get lost again. But we'll find it! Chis says he'll find it if it takes even until he is twelve years old! We're working on it already, but it's difficult when you daren't ask a direct question. When you daren't tell anyone for fear-well, for fear. Chis is really brighted about looking for it. And nothing ever brights Chis any more-except maybe hopping the forbidden hi-speed freight glides. And I, Twixt Garath, sister to Chis, daughter to Mother and Dad, I'd be brighted, too, if I weren't busy roaring myself endlessly for letting our miracle come and go again-unlocated, on the J-line.
I remember when it all started-even if I can't tell you why it all happened.
One day in our unit not so long ago, Mother turned to me suddenly and clutched my arm with both her hands. Her nails made dents in my skin, she held so tightly. For a second I was startled. Mother hadn't touched me for so long –so long-
"I can't see out!" she protested and I could feel her hands shaking. "I can't see any way out!"
"Out of what?" I asked, feeling sick inside and scared because she seemed to be crumpling. She even looked smaller. "Out of what?" I repeated. Whoever heard of seeing out of a unit?
"Out of anything!" she said. "Is there still a sky? Do ants still make bare paths through the grass? When will the shell empty? Our bones used to be inside!"
"Mother," my voice wobbled. "Mother, you're hurting ." And she was. Red was oozing up around her nails.
She let go, sucking her breath in surprise. I dabbled my arm with a tissue. "Shall I call Clinic? Are you hurting somewhere?"
"I'm hurting everywhere and all the time," Mother said, She turned away and leaned her forehead against the wall. She rolled her head back and forth a little as she talked. "I'm not quite so crazed across as I sound." Her voice was muffled. "I used to think those ant trails through the grass were the loveliest, most secret things in the whole world. I was charmed to think of a whole civilization that could function without a single idea that we even existed. And that's what I'm feeling now-a whole civilization functioning without even knowing I exist. And it's my civilization! And I'm not charmed about it any more! "Remember that undersea vacation we had two years ago? We saw those shells that were so lovely. And they told us that the shells were the external skeletons of the tiny, soft creatures inside. No one cared about the tiny, soft creatures inside-only the bright shell. They forgot that the soft creatures made the bright shell-not the bright shell the creatures. As though the bright shell were the only excuse for the creature!" She turned slowly, her head rolling as she turned, until she finally leaned her back against the wall, her hands behind her. "Most people think we exist for our lovely exterior skeletons. They think we're only the unimportant soft little creatures inside all these shells-these buildings and walls and towers and glides. That we couldn't exist without them. But I have my own bones! Inside me! I don't need all these skeletons!"