‘You said you didn’t miss it a-tall,’ Lone recalled tactlessly.
‘Did I now.’ Prodd turned inward and smiled, remembering. ‘Yeah, nothing bothered me none, because of, you know.’ Still smiling, he turned to Lone and said, ‘Come back to the house.’ He smiled all the way back.
They went through the kitchen. It was even worse than it had looked from outside and the clock was stopped, too. Prodd, smiling, threw open the door of Jack’s room. Smiling, he said, ‘Have a look, boy, Go right on in, have a look.’
Lone went in and looked into the bassinet. The cheesecloth was torn and the blue cotton was moist and reeking. The baby had eyes like upholstery tacks and skin the colour of mustard. Short blue-black horsehair covered its skull and it breathed noisily.
Lone did not change expression. He turned away and stood in the kitchen looking at one of the dimity curtains, the one which lay on the floor.
Smiling, Prodd came out of Jack’s room and closed the door. ‘See, he’s not Jack, that’s the one blessing,’ he smiled. ‘Ma, she had to go off looking for Jack, I reckon, yes; that would be it. She wouldn’t be happy with anything less; well, you know that your own self.’ He smiled twice. ‘What that in there is, that’s what the doctor calls a mongoloid. Just leave it be, it’ll grow up to maybe size three and stay so for thirty year. Get him to a big city specialist for treatments and he’ll grow up to maybe size ten.’ He smiled as he talked. ‘That’s what the doctor said anyway. Can’t shovel him into the ground now, can you? That was all right for Ma, way she loved flowers and all.’
Too many words, some hard to hear through the wide, tight smiling. Lone brought his eyes to bear on Prodd’s.
He found out exactly what Prodd wanted—things that Prodd himself did not know. He did the things.
When he was finished he and Prodd cleaned up the kitchen and took the bassinet and burned it, along with the carefully sewn diapers made out of old sheets and piled in the linen closet and the new oval enamel bath pan and the celluloid rattle and the blue felt booties with the white puff-balls in their clear cellophane box.
Prodd waved cheerfully to him from the porch. ‘Just you wait’ll Ma gets back; she’ll stuff you full o’ johnny-cake till we got to scrape you off the wall.’
‘Mind you fix that barn door,’ Lone rasped. ‘I’ll come back.’
With his burden he plodded up the hill and into the forest. He struggled numbly with thoughts that would not be words or pictures. About those kids, now; about the Prodds. The Prodds were one thing and when they took him in they became something else; he knew it now. And then when he was by himself he was one thing; but taking those kids in he was something else. He had no business going back to Prodds today. But now, the way he was, he had to do it. He’d go back again too.
Alone. Lone Lone alone. Prodd was alone now and Janie was alone and the twins, well they had each other but they were like one split person who was alone. He himself, Lone, was still alone, it didn’t make any difference about the kids being there.
Maybe Prodd and his wife had not been alone. He wouldn’t have any way of knowing about that. But there was nothing like Lone anywhere in the world except right here inside him. The whole world threw Lone away, you know that? Even the Prodds did, when they got around to it. Janie got thrown out, the twins too, so Janie said.
Well, in a funny way it helps to know you’re alone, thought Lone.
The night was sun-stained by the time he got home. He kneed the door open and came in. Janie was making pictures on an old china plate with spit and mud. The twins as usual were sitting on one of the high rock niches, whispering to one another.
Janie jumped up. ‘What’s that? What’d you bring?’
Lone put it down carefully on the floor. The twins appeared, one on each side of it. ‘It’s a baby,’ said Janie. She looked up at Lone. ‘ It is a baby?’
Lone nodded. Janie looked again. ‘Nastiest one I ever saw.’
Lone said, ‘Well never mind that. Give him something to eat.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lone. ‘You’re a baby, almost. You should know.’
‘Where’d you get him?’
‘A farm yonder.’
‘You’re a kidnapper,’ said Janie. ‘Know that?’
‘What’s a kidnapper?’
‘Man that steals babies, that’s what. When they find out about it the policeman will come and shoot you dead and put you in the electric chair.’
‘Well,’ said Lone, relieved, ‘ain’t nobody going to find out. Only man knows about it, I fixed it so he’s forgotten. That’s the daddy. The ma, she’s dead, but he don’t know that either. He thinks she’s back East. He’ll hang on waiting for her. Anyway, feed him.’
He pulled off his jacket. The kids kept it too hot in here. The baby lay still with its dull button eyes open, breathing too loudly. Janie stood before the fire, staring thoughtfully at the stewpot. Finally she dipped into it with a ladle and dribbled the juice into a tin can. ‘Milk,’ she said while she worked. ‘You got to start swiping milk for him, Lone. Babies, they eat more milk’n a cat.’
‘All right,’ said Lone.
The twins watched, wall-eyed, as Janie slopped the broth on the baby’s disinterested mouth.
‘He’s getting some,’ said Janie optimistically.
Without humour and only from visible evidence, Lone said, ‘Maybe through his ears.’
Janie pulled at the baby’s shirt and half sat him up. This favoured the neck rather than the ears but still left the mouth intake in doubt.
‘Oh, maybe I can!’ said Janie suddenly, as if answering a comment. The twins giggled and jumped up and down. Janie drew the tin can a few inches away from the baby’s face and narrowed her eyes. The baby immediately started to choke and spewed up what was unequivocally broth.
‘That’s not right yet but I’ll get it,’ said Janie. She spent half an hour trying. At last the baby went to sleep.
One afternoon Lone watched for a while and then prodded Janie with his toe. ‘What’s going on there?’
She looked. ‘He’s talking to them.’
Lone pondered. ‘I used to could do that. Hear babies.’
‘Bonnie says all babies can do it, and you were a baby, weren’t you? I forget if I ever did,’ she added. ‘Except the twins.’
‘What I mean,’ said Lone laboriously, ‘When I was growed I could hear babies.’
‘You must’ve been an idiot, then,’ said Janie positively. ‘Idiots can’t understand people but can understand babies. Mr Widdecombe, he’s the man the twins lived with, he had a girl friend once who was an idiot and Bonnie told me.’
‘Baby’s s’posed to be some kind of a idiot,’ Lone said.
‘Yes, Beanie, she says he’s sort of different. He’s like a adding machine.’
‘What’s a adding machine?’
Janie exaggerated the supreme patience that her nursery school teacher had affected. ‘It’s a thing you push buttons and it gives you the right answer.’
Lone shook his head.
Janie essayed, ‘Well, if you have three cents and four cents and five cents and seven cents and eight cents—how many you got altogether?’
Lone shrugged hopelessly.
‘Well if you have a adding machine, you push a button for two and a button for three and a button for all the other ones and then you pull a handle, the machine tells you how many you got altogether. And it’s always right.’
Lone sorted all this out slowly and finally nodded. Then he waved towards the orange crate that was now Baby’s bassinet, and the twins hanging spellbound over him. ‘He got no buttons you push.’