The Anything Box

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me, chanting and laughing until someone realized whom they had captured. Thenthey shrieked and ran, scattering like frightened quail, someone's wordsfloating back to me: "Somebody loves Her?"
I was unaccountably stung by the words, however fitting they might be, andturned and sloshed across the playground to the corner. I felt a surge of furyas I saw the three boys bent over their game. I stepped closer, wishingfuriously that I could topple them over with a well-placed shove of my foot.Why did they never sense my presence? I saw that they were concentrating onferrying their vehicles across a tiny raging torrent that cut the vestigialroad in two, the dirty threads they were using alternately slacking andtightening.
"If we coulda got past there yesterday," said Brown, "it woulda been goes.But that dang bell rang."
"Yes," said Red, his eyes hooded behind the plastic shield. "It musta beenthe coorze."
Blond nudged the miniature ferry, a rough bundle of twigs and bits of wood,with his finger. One tiny splinter broke away and swept down the torrent."Maybe it won't last," he said. "Maybe we oughta wait until the rain stops."
"Can't," said Red. "This is the third day. Only got two days torendezvous." He turned fiercely on Blond. "Unless you want to give up and leteveryone die!"
"We could tell ahead," whimpered Blond. "Our dads—"
"Wouldn't believe us," whispered Red, his eyes shuttering. "They've neverfaired-the-coorze. How many more to go?"
"Four," said Brown. "And two have been drownded already."
"Anybody get out?" asked Blond.
"Only Butch," whimpered Brown. "I pushed him in with the Scotts."
"We're not across yet." Blond's voice shook. "Will we make it?"
"Start across," said Red.
I slopped over to the school building and started a rousing argument in theoffice that resulted in the bell ringing five minutes late. There, I thought.There's your five minutes back.
That afternoon as we watched the children helling up to the helitransthrough the last of the downpour, Miss Robbin looked past me to Miss Leavenand said, "I can't imagine what happened to Leonard. He cried all day for hismother. Imagine, a boy his age crying for his mother."
"This putrid rain would make anyone cry," said Miss Leaven. "He's a cutekid, isn't he? All those blond curls."
Blond said my feet in the squishy orange mud. Blond, blond, blond.
The situation followed me home, a formless, baseless haunting. I caughtmyself pacing aimlessly and sat down with a book. I read four pages withoutretaining a word. I took an anti-vir and an aspirin and started cleaning outmy desk drawer. I finally went back to the troublesome cable I was knitting ina sweater and grimly set myself to counting knits and purls. The evening wentsomehow and I went to sleep in an aura of foreboding.
I was unduly upset when I was awakened by the alert signal some time in thevery early morning hours. As a civilian there was nothing for me to do duringa practice alert except to try to go back to sleep. Actually, if ever a realalert was called and we had to evacuate, there was a plan that was supposed tobe put into operation. I don't think any of us civilians and noncombatants hadmany illusions about what would actually happen under such circumstances. We'dbe pointed down a road and told to "git," and we'd be on our own after that.We were expendable.
I lay awake, trying to rid myself of the vision of what a person lookedlike after an unprotected attack by the enemy. They have a nasty type ofprojectile that merely pricks the skin. But then the pricked place almostexplodes into an orange-sized swelling that, when cut or punctured, which itmust be immediately to ease the unendurable agony, sprays out hundreds of tinycreatures that scatter wildly, digging for hiding holes. And their tiny claws
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prick the skin. And then the pricked places—
I turned over and drowsed fitfully until the all clear sounded and then,for the first time on Argave, I overslept and arrived at school unfed andfeeling that my clothes were flung on, which certainly didn't improve mydisposition. It was one of those days that reminded me that sometimes Iloathed myself as much as I loathed the children. During ground-duty time Iwalked briskly around the playground perimeter, feeling caged and trying towork it off. I saw the three boys bent over their interminable game in thecorner, but I avoided them, sick to the bone of school and kids and—andmyself. I was just holding on until the mood would pass.
But after school I began to wonder about the game, and contrary to my usualpractice, I stayed after school. I was all by myself on the empty playgroundas I squatted in the corner. I looked uncomprehendingly at the scratches, thetiny heaps of gravel, the signs and symbols scrawled on the ground. They meantnothing to me. There was no interpreter to read me the day's journey.
Day's journey? To where? I squatted there, no doubt a grotesque object,with my head between my hands, my arms resting on my knees, and rocked backand forth. Surely my sanity was going. No adult in her right mind would worryover a tiny row of toy vehicles sprawled in the sticky mud of the playground.But I looked again. I finally found the lead vehicle. The whole column hadde-toured around a large rock and seemed to be helplessly bogged down in themud. With a quick guilty glance around me, I carefully patted the mud smoothin front of the column, making a tiny safe highway to bring it back around therock. I started to pick up the first vehicle to clear its wheels of the mud.But I couldn't lift it. Incredulous, I tried again. With all my strength Ipulled at that tiny toy. It might have been part of the bones of the world. Itmoved not a fraction of an inch. I felt a fingernail snap and relinquished myhold. I felt fury bubble up inside me, and grabbing a double handful of mud, Islopped it down on the smooth road I had just made. My breath whistled betweenmy clenched teeth. I felt like hammering the whole thing flat, smashing allthe little vehicles out of sight in the muck—hammering, beating, tearing—!
I drew a quavering breath and stood up. Adults are not supposed to havetantrums. I held my two muddy hands away from me as I went indoors to wash. Ileft a muddy thumbprint on the door latch as I went in. I wiped it offthoroughly with tissue as I left the building, my mind carefully blank of thewhole situation. I couldn't understand or explain it. Hence it should beignored. On this premise I have built my life. Built it—or lost it?
Friday, I paced the playground, trying to forget the far corner. My mindwas seething with questions that kept frothing up like bubbles and poppingunanswered, even unstated. But this was the fifth day. That's all they hadtalked about: five days. After this day I could let my bemused mind go back toits usual thoughts. Then, a little bleakly, I tried to remember what I used tothink about. I couldn't remember.
A flame of resentment began burning inside me. These —these brats had upsetmy whole life. Logically or illogically I was caught in the web of theirnonsense. I was being pried out of my pattern and I didn't like it. Years oftraining and restraint and denial had gone into making that pattern and thosebrats were shattering it. They were making me an ununderstandable andinexplicable thing—a thing to be ignored. I pressed my lips tightly together,my jaw muscles knotting, my heels gouging the soft turf of the playground as Ipatrolled. If this foolishness persisted one moment beyond this day, I'dreport the three of them to the office for—for perversion. That would rockthem good! Them and their families. Let their patterns be shattered. Let theirnasty insides spill out like cracked, rotten eggs!