“Stand still!” Blind said sternly and continued the examination. “Something hard, made of stone,” he said finally, letting go of the pouch. “Also something dried out, like grass. The suede is too thick, I can’t make out the details.”
Grasshopper was hopping impatiently. He wished very much to blurt out what it was that he now had hidden under his shirt, but did not allow himself to. Unverifiable things like that are better kept silent. But the Great-Power-on-a-String was egging him on. He had to rush somewhere and do something to slake the itch in his legs, the urge to jump and fly.
“Can we go climb the big garage?” he suggested. “Or the roof, that place we found, under the moon! Tonight is the greatest night! We can’t just go and sleep!”
Blind shrugged. As far as he was concerned it was a perfectly ordinary night, and he’d much rather sleep than scramble up to the roof, but he understood that Grasshopper’s excitement wouldn’t permit them sleep. Ancient’s words had to be digested before the two of them could go back to the Pack. Ancient was great. Blind sincerely admired what he’d heard of their conversation from behind the door. There was no other senior in the House who could have pulled it off.
“All right,” he said. “Roof it is, then.”
Grasshopper gave out a shrill whistle and bounded down the hallway.
The Great Power throbbed under his shirt like a second heart, lifting him off the ground. The floorboards caught him and then tossed him back up, like a rubber mat. Grasshopper’s happiness screamed and hollered. He was dancing as he ran. In his wake the dorm doors opened, letting out the indignant shushes.
Blind caught up with him only at the end of the corridor and then they were walking side by side, two boys in tattered green shirts, so very different from each other.
The Sixth was cursing them, yawning and fighting off sleep.
“I can-n-n’t do it anymore,” squeaked Crybaby, peeling off his socks. “And I don’t wanna m-m-miss thi-i-is!”
A sock traversed the room and landed on the desk lamp.
“It’s night already! How much longer?”
“Suck it in,” came the curt reply from Sportsman’s bed. “You waited this long, wait a bit more.”
Rex the Siamese was holding his eyelids apart with his fingers. His brother was blissfully asleep, hugging his pillow.
Sportsman surveyed his enfeebled Pack.
“Wimps,” he whispered. “A sorry bunch of wimps.”
Muffin yawned, snapped shut the journal with sports-car stickers, and pushed it under the mattress.
“Whatever. I’m going to sleep,” he announced and turned over facing the wall. “This thing is gonna fall on them anyway, even if I don’t see it.”
“Traitor,” growled Rex the Siamese.
“Yourself,” Muffin countered over his shoulder.
Sportsman sighed and inspected the remaining troops.
Just four limp, green-shirted figures, swinging their legs, each on his own bed. Plump Elephant, who was sucking his thumb, felt Sportsman’s gaze on him and extracted the thumb and smiled tentatively.
“Now can I go pee-pee?” he asked.
“Damn it!” Sportsman exploded. “Can’t you manage one hour without the bathroom? One needs to pee, another needs to wash his feet, and then there’s watering the plant! What kind of Pack is this? You’re just a load of sad sacks! All you think about is eat, sleep, and pee on schedule!”
Elephant slowly reddened; his sighs turned to sniffles and then to tears. Max the Siamese woke up immediately. Elephant was already at full bawl. Max looked at his brother. Rex hopped off his bed, limped to Elephant’s side, and hugged his pudgy shoulders.
“There, there, baby . . . Don’t cry. It’ll be all right.”
“I want pee-pee,” Elephant sobbed. “He doesn’t let me.”
“He’s going to right now,” promised Siamese, his yellow eyes shooting daggers at Sportsman. “He’s going to let you like he’s never let anybody anything ever.”
Humpback, who until then was lying quietly on the top bunk, shot up.
“Enough!” he howled and chucked his shoe at the pan on top of the door.
The pan crashed to the floor amid deafening clatter and torrents of water. Elephant startled and went silent. Crybaby whimpered and pulled up his feet. The floor was turning into a lake.
THE BACKYARD
INTERLUDE
Humpback played his flute, and the backyard listened. He was playing very softly, for himself only. The wind whirled the leaves in circles. Then they were caught in the puddles and stopped. Their dance ended. They ended. Now they would turn to mush and dirt. Just like people.
Softer. Softer still. The slender fingers flitting across the holes, the wind throwing the leaves right in the face, the coins in the back pocket cutting into the skin, the bare ankles freezing, covered in goose bumps. Comfort is a piece of sibilant wood. Calming, lulling, if you allow it to be.
A leaf fetched against his foot and was stuck. Then another one. If you sat without moving for hours, Nature would include you in its cycle just like another tree. Leaves would cling to your roots, birds would alight on your branches and crap down your shirt, rain would wash down your furrows, and wind would bury you in sand. He imagined himself such a treeman and laughed. He laughed with only half of his face. His red sweater, patched on the elbows, let in the wind through the threadbare wool, and it prickled. He didn’t have a shirt under it. This was a punishment he set for himself. For all transgressions, both real and imagined, he always punished himself. And almost never commuted his own sentences. He was unforgiving toward his skin, his arms and legs, his fears and fantasies. The itchy sweater was penance for his fears in the night. Those that made him wrap his head in the blanket, making sure that there was no gap left for He Who Comes In The Dark to creep in. Those that forbade him from drinking water before bed, to save himself from the torment of needing to go to the bathroom. The fears that no one knew about, because their owner occupied the top bunk and no one from below could see what was going on up there.
Still, he was ashamed of them. He fought them every night, lost every time, and punished himself for the loss. This had been his way for as long as he remembered. It was the game he always played with himself, gaining the next level of maturity through mortifications imposed on his body. All of his victories smelled of defeat. By winning he only conquered a part of himself, while remaining unchanged at the core.
He fought his shyness with vulgar jokes, his aversion to fights by being the first to jump in, his dread of death with thoughts about it. But all of that, repressed and suppressed, still lived inside and breathed the same air he did. He was both shy and rude, quiet and loud; he bottled up his virtues and exposed his vices, pulled the blanket over his head, praying “O God, don’t let me die,” and attacked those much stronger than himself.
He had his poems, written in code on the wallpaper next to his pillow, and he scraped off those he got tired of. He had his flute, a kind gift, and he hid it in the space between the wall and his mattress. He had his crow, and he stole morsels of food for her from the kitchen. He had his skeins of wool, and he knitted beautiful sweaters.
He was born hunchbacked and six-fingered, ugly, apelike. At ten he had been moody, his lips always bruised, his awkward paws destroying everything they touched. At seventeen he became more delicate, taciturn and quiet. His face was the face of an adult, his eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose, his wild unkempt hair the color of raven feathers spread out like a gorse bush. He ate indifferently and dressed slovenly, wore black under his fingernails and rarely changed his socks. He was ashamed of his hump and the pimples on his nose. He was ashamed that he didn’t need to shave yet, and smoked a pipe to look older. His secret vice was soppy romance novels, and the heroes of his poems died slow, horrible deaths. He kept books by Dickens under his pillow.