“Who’s there?” He was a rigid figure, poised atop a boulder, arms half lifted.
“Francher,” I said.
“Oh.” He slid through the air to me. “I’m not hiding any more,” be said. “I’m going to be me all the time now.”
“Francher,” I said bluntly, “you’re a thief.”
He jerked in protest. “I’m not either-“
“If this is being you, you’re a thief. You stole these instruments.”
He groped for words, then burst out: “They stole my money! They stole all my music.”
” ‘They’?” I asked. “‘Francher, you can’t lump people together and call them ‘they.’ Did I steal your money? Or Twyla-or Mrs. Frisney-or Rigo?”
“Maybe you didn’t put your hands on it,” the Francher kid said. “But you stood around and let McVey take it.”
“That’s a guilt humanity has shared since the beginning. Standing around and letting wrong things happen. But even Mrs. McVey felt she was helping you. She didn’t sit down and decide to rob you. Some people have the idea that children don’t have any exclusive possessions but what they have belongs to the adults who care for them. Mrs. McVey thinks that way. Which is quite a different thing from deliberately stealing from strangers. What about the owners of all these instruments? What have they done to deserve your ill will?”
“They’re people,” he said stubbornly. “And I’m not going to be people any more.” Slowly he lifted himself into the air and turned himself upside down. “See,” he said, hanging above the hillside. “People can’t do things like this.”
“No,” I said. “But apparently whatever kind of creature you have decided to be can’t keep his shirttails in either.”
Hastily he scrabbled his shirt back over his hare midriff and righted himself. There was an awkward silence in the shadowy hollow, then I asked:
“What are you going to do about the instruments?”
“Oh, they can have them back when I’m through with them-if they can find them,” he said contemptuously. “I’m going to play them to pieces tonight.” The trumpet jabbed brightly through the dusk and the violins shimmered a silver obbligato.
“And every downbeat will say ‘thief,’” I said. “And every roll of the drums will growl ‘stolen.’”
“I don’t care, I don’t care!” he almost yelled. ” ‘Thief’ and ‘stolen” are words for people and I’m not going to be people any more, I told you!”
“What are you going to be?” I asked, leaning wearily against a tree trunk. “An animal?”
“No sir.” He was having trouble deciding what to do with his hands. “I’m going to be more than just a human.”
“Well, for a more-than-human this kind of behavior doesn’t show very many smarts. If you’re going to be more than human you have to be thoroughly a human first. If you’re going to be better than a human you have to be the best a human can be, first-then go on from there. Being entirely different is no way to make a big impression on people. You have to be able to outdo them at their own game first and then go beyond them. It won’t matter to them that you can fly like a bird unless you can walk straight like a man, first. To most people different is wrong. Oh, they’d probably say, “My goodness! How-wonderful!’ when you first pulled some fancy trick, but-” I hesitated, wondering if I were being wise, “but they’d forget you pretty quick, just as they would any cheap carnival attraction.”
He jerked at my words, his fists clenched.
“You’re as bad as the rest.” His words were tight and bitter.
“You think I’m just a freak-“
“I think you’re an unhappy person, because you’re not sure who you are or what you are, but you’ll have a much worse time trying to make an identity for yourself if you tangle with the law.”
“The law doesn’t apply to me,” he said coldly. “Because I know who I am-“
“Do you, Francher?” I asked softly. “Where did your mother come from? Why could she walk through the minds of others? Who are you, Francher? Are you going to cut yourself off from people before you even try to find out just what wonders you are capable of? Not these little sideshow deals, but maybe miracles that really count.” I swallowed hard as I looked at his averted face, shadowy in the dusk. My own face was congealing from the cold wind that had risen, but he didn’t even shiver in its iciness, though he had no jacket on. My lips moved stiffly.
“Both of us know you could get away with this lawlessness, but you know as well as I do that if you take this first step you won’t ever be able to untake it. And, how do we know, it might make it impossible for you to be accepted by your own kind-if you’re right in saying there are others. Surely they’re above common theft. And Dr. Curtis is due back from his hunting trip. So close to knowing-maybe-“I didn’t know your mother, Francher, but I do know this is not the dream she had for you. This is not why she endured hunger and hiding, terror and panic places-“
I turned and stumbled away from him, making my way back to the road. It was dark, horribly dark, around me and in me as I wailed soundlessly for this My Child. Somewhere before I got back Dr. Curtis was helping me. He got me back into the jeep and pried my frozen fingers from my crutches and warmed my hands between his broad-gloved palms.
“He isn’t of this world, you know,” he said. “At least his parents or grandparents weren’t. There are others like him. I’ve been hunting with some of them. He doesn’t know, evidently, nor did his mother, but he can find his People. I wanted to tell you to help you persuade him-“
I started to reach for my crutches, peering through the dark, then I relaxed. “No,” I said with tingling lips. “It wouldn’t be any good if he only responded to bribes. He has to decide now, with the scales weighted against him. He’s got to push into his new world. He can’t just slide in limply. You kill a chick if you help it hatch.”
I dabbled all the way home at tears for a My Child, lost in a wilderness I couldn’t chart, bound in. a captivity from which I couldn’t free him.
Dr. Curtis saw me to the door of my room. He lifted my averted face and wiped it.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I promise you the Francher kid will be taken care of.”
“Yes,” I said, closing my eyes against the nearness of his. “By the sheriff if they catch him. They’ll discover the loss of the orchestra any minute now, if they haven’t already.”
“You made him think,” he said. “He wouldn’t have stood still for all that if you hadn’t.”
“Too late,” I said. “A thought too late.”
Alone in my room I huddled on my bed, trying not to think of anything. I lay there until I was stiff with the cold, then I crept into my warm woolly robe up to my chin. I sat in the darkness there by the window, looking out at the lacy ghosts of the cottonwood trees, in the dim moonlight. How long would it be before some kindly soul would come blundering in to regale me with the latest about the Francher kid?
I put my elbows on the window sill and leaned my face on my hands, the heels of my palms pressing against my eyes. “Oh, Francher My Child, My lonely lost Child-“
“I’m not lost.”
I lifted a startled face. The voice was so soft. Maybe I had imagined…
“No, I’m here.” The Francher kid stepped out into the milky glow of the moon, moving with a strange new strength and assurance, quite divorced from his usual teen-age gangling.
“Oh, Francher-” I couldn’t let myself sob, but my voice caught on the last of his name.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I took them all back.”
My shoulders ached as the tension ran out of them.
“I didn’t have time to get them all back in the hall but I stacked them carefully on the front porch.” A glimmer of a smile crossed his face. “I guess they’ll wonder how they got out there.”