When he had a nickel and had spent it, he could always reach into another world where it was still in his pocket. If he wanted more, he could multiply the nickel as he had done with the beetle. From the time he found this out, he always had money for candy or anything else he wanted, and he sometimes treated other children to a bottle of pop or a package of gum. Once or twice they asked him for money, saying, "Come on, you're rich," and he foolishly gave it to them.
One day his mother said to him, "Gene, Mrs. Everett says Petie told her you bought him a model airplane. Did you?"
He saw that he was in trouble, although he didn't understand why, and he said, "Petie's a liar. He lies all the time."
"But she says Zelda Owens saw you. And I talked to her mother, and Zelda says you gave her some money, too."
"Only a quarter."
She put her hand on his jaw to make him look at her. "Gene, tell me the truth. Did you give Petie the money to buy that airplane?"
"Aw -- yeah."
"But where did you get the money?"
He knew that if he told the truth his father would beat him for lying. He told his mother that he had found a five-dollar bill on the street. She let him go, but he knew she thought he had stolen the money.
That night while his mother was washing the dishes, his father made him sit down in the living room and gave him a lecture about stealing. Gene insisted on his story about finding money on the street; the guiltier he felt, the more vehement he became. At last he said, "You believe everybody else, but you won't believe me," and ran into his room.
After that he never gave other children money, and whenever he got anything for himself that he could not have bought with his allowance, he smuggled it into the house and hid it.
Gene Anderson never had any of the usual childhood illnesses; once in a while he had a fever, but it passed away overnight. When he was seven his mother took him to the dentist for the first time, and he disliked this so much that from then on he examined his teeth every night, using a little piece of mirror that he had found behind the garage, and when he discovered a cavity, he made it go away. After a while he must have learned how to recognize them without looking; he stopped thinking about cavities, but he never had another.
One Saturday when he was eight, his father took him downtown to Dr. Rodeman's office where he was to have his tonsils out. He was apprehensive about this, but his father told him that it would not hurt, and that he could have an ice cream cone afterward.
Dr. Rodeman made him lie down on his table and put a little gauze mask over his face. Something sweetish and stinging dripped onto the mask; his lungs were full of tiny bright needles. In terror of his life, he reached out and did something without knowing what it was. He heard the doctor say, "That's funny, this can seems to be empty. Just a minute."
Then he understood what he had done, and when the doctor brought another can, he made that one empty, too. Dr. Rodeman took the mask away' and stood looking at him with an odd expression. He told Gene's father that they would have to come back next week, but they never did, and he never had his tonsils out.
Gene knew that his parents suspected there was something strange about him, other than his tallness, but they never talked to him about it. He knew that they were worried about his future. Once a visitor stupidly asked him, "And what do you want to be when you grow up?" Gene was almost as tall as he was. "I mean, when you get older."
"I want to be a giant," Gene said, and left the room. His mother lectured him about politeness afterward, but her eyes were moist.
Because Gene was so tall and strong, his father began to make use of him again, in the afternoons after school and on weekends. He learned to plane a board smooth, to use a miter box, to make and read working drawings. Under supervision, he was allowed to use the bench saw, and his father promised that in a year or two he would teach him to work on the lathe.
Once or twice, during school vacations, Gene's father took him to a house he was building with another carpenter, and it was here that Gene first glimpsed the satisfaction of having imagined something new and then made it real. The things he could make were only copies of other things. He tried imagining things and then looking for them in the shadows, but they were not always there. Occasionally, when he had been given a present he didn't like, he found that he could reach through into another world where his parents had decided on something else. In this way he got a book that was his favorite for a long time: an illustrated copy of "The Little Lame Prince," by Miss Mulock.
All through school he was too big to sit with his knees under the desk. It did not occur to anybody, and certainly not to him, that they might have brought in a bigger desk from another grade. He sat sideways, cramped into the narrow space between the seat and the desk, with his feet in the aisle. He wore men's shoes with pointed toes until the fourth grade, when the teacher gave him permission to come to school in tennis shoes. "Feet" was still his nickname. Several times the teacher called him that without thinking, and there was a roar of laughter.
In school he wrote at first in large, awkward loops, but when the teacher criticized him for this, he began to write smaller, then smaller still. The teacher complained about that, too, but he kept on until he could get hundreds of words on a page. He began to make carvings out of soft pine, little figures that he kept in walnut shells hinged with adhesive tape.
In the fourth grade there was another boy who was almost as tall as Gene, a lumpish, red-faced creature whose lower lip was always shiny with spit. His name was Paul Cooley; he was twelve years old and had been kept hack three times. He was the son of the police chief, a red-faced man who dressed like a sheriff and carried a revolver on his hip. Whenever Paul saw Gene he called out, "Hey, Feet, you stink," and then laughed, looking around as if he had said something clever. They fought at recess, and Gene beat him; afterward Paul wanted to make friends, but Gene disliked his dullness and his slobbering lip.
One Sunday afternoon Gene was playing alone in the upper story of a half-finished house of his father's, as he often did. The floor was strewn with sawdust and with nails dropped by the carpenters; through the window openings he could see the tops of maple trees; He was pretending that it was his house, and that he was grown and could do anything he liked.
He heard footsteps below, and in a moment a shaggy head appeared over the top of the stairwelclass="underline" it was Paul's. He hesitated when he saw Gene, then came up. "Hey, Feet, what you doing here?"
"Nothing."
"You want a Cigarette?" He pulled a pack of Luckies out of his pocket and offered it.
"No."
"Well, okay." Paul lit a cigarette and tossed the match away, still burning.
"Don't do that," said Gene, and stamped it out. Paul struck another match and dropped it.
"This is my dad's house. You better quit." Gene stepped on the second match, but Paul was already lighting a third. Because Gene did not want to fight him again, he reached with his mind and made the match disappear, then the rest of the pack.
Paul looked stupidly at his empty hand. "What'd you do with my matches?"
"Nothing."
There was a whistle outside, then a low voice: "Hey, Paul?"
He turned his head. "Up here!" Two boys came up the stairs; they were twelve-year-olds, friends of Paul's. One of them, a tall boy wearing a baseball cap, was already smoking. "Who's this?" he said.