There had been one dust-up between us, though—this matter of shuffling everywhere they walked.
“Pick up your feet, for goodness’ sake,” I said irritably one morning when the shoosh, shoosh, shoosh of their coming and going finally got my skin off. “Surely they’re not so heavy you can’t lift them.”
Timmy, who happened to be the trigger this time, nibbled unhappily at one finger. “I can’t,” he whispered. “Not supposed to.”
“Not supposed to?” I forgot momentarily how warily I’d been going with these frightened mice of children. “Why not? Surely there’s no reason in the world why you can’t walk quietly.”
Matt looked unhappily over at Miriam, the sophomore who was our entire high school. She looked aside, biting her lower lip, troubled. Then she turned back and said, “It is customary in Bendo.”
“To shuffle along?” I was forgetting any manners I had. “Whatever for?”
“That’s the way we do in Bendo.” There was no anger in her defense, only resignation.
“Perhaps that’s the way you do at home. But here at school let’s pick our feet up. It makes too much disturbance otherwise.”
“But it’s bad—” Esther began.
Matt’s hand shushed her in a hurry.
“Mr. Diemus said what we did at school was my business,” I told them. “He said not to bother your parents with our problems. One of our problems is too much noise when others are trying to work. At least in our schoolroom let’s lift our feet and walk quietly.”
The children considered the suggestion solemnly and turned to Matt and Miriam for guidance. They both nodded and we went back to work. For the next few minutes, from the corner of my eyes, I saw with amazement all the unnecessary trips back and forth across the room, with high-lifted feet, with grins and side glances that marked such trips as high adventure—as a delightful daring thing to do! The whole deal had me bewildered. Thinking back I realized that not only the children of Bendo scuffled but all the adults did, too—as though they were afraid to lose contact with the earth, as though… I shook my head and went on with the lesson.
Before noon, though, the endless shoosh, shoosh, shoosh of feet began again. Habit was too much for the children. So I silenty filed the sound under “Uncurable, Endurable,” and let the matter drop.
I sighed as I watched the children leave at lunchtime. It seemed to me that with the unprecedented luxury of a whole hour for lunch they’d all go home. The bell tower was visible from nearly every house in town. But instead they all brought tight little paper sacks with dull crumbly sandwiches and unimaginative apples in them. And silently with their dull scuffly steps they disappeared into the thicket of trees around the spring.
“Everything is dulled around here,” I thought. “Even the sunlight is blunted as it floods the hills and canyons. There is no mirth, no laughter. No high jinks or cutting up. No preadolescent silliness. No adolescent foolishness. Just quiet children, enduring.”
I don’t usually snoop but I began wondering if perhaps the kids were different when they were away from me—and from their parents. So when I got back at twelve thirty from an adequate but uninspired lunch at the Diemuses’ house I kept on walking past the schoolhouse and quietly down into the grove, moving cautiously through the scanty undergrowth until I could lean over a lichened boulder and look down on the children.
Some were lying around on the short still grass, hands under their heads, blinking up at the brightness of the sky between the leaves. Esther and little Martha were hunting out fillaree seed pods and counting the tines of the pitchforks and rakes and harrows they resembled. I smiled, remembering how I used to do the same thing.
“I dreamed last night.” Dorcas thrust the statement defiantly into the drowsy silence. “I dreamed about the Home.”
My sudden astonished movement was covered by Martha’s horrified “Oh, Dorcas!”
“What’s wrong with the Home?” Dorcas cried, her cheeks scarlet. “There was a Home! There was! There was! Why shouldn’t we talk about it?”
I listened avidly. This couldn’t be just coincidence— a Group and now the Home. There must be some connection… I pressed closer against the rough rock.
“But it’s bad!” Esther cried. “You’ll be punished! We can’t talk about the Home!”
“Why not?” Joel asked as though it had just occurred to him, as things do just occur to you when you’re thirteen. He sat up slowly. “Why can’t we?”
There was a short tense silence.
“I’ve dreamed, too,” Matt said. “I’ve dreamed of the Home —and it’s good, it’s good!”
“Who hasn’t dreamed?” Miriam asked. “We all have, haven’t we? Even our parents. I can tell by Mother’s eyes when she has.”
“Did you ever ask how come we aren’t supposed to talk about it?” Joel asked. “I mean and ever get any answer except that it’s bad.”
“I think it had something to do with a long time ago,” Matt said. “Something about when the Group first came—”
“I don’t think it’s just dreams,” Miriam declared, “because I don’t have to be asleep. I think it’s remembering.”
“Remembering?” asked Dorcas. “How can we remember something we never knew?”
“I don’t know,” Miriam admitted, “but I’ll bet it is.”
“I remember,” volunteered Talitha, who never volunteered anything.
“Hush!” whispered Abie, the second-grade next-to-youngest who always whispered.
“I remember,” Talitha went on stubbornly. “I remember a dress that was too little so the mother just stretched the skirt till it was long enough and it stayed stretched. ‘Nen she pulled the waist out big enough and the little girl put it on and flew away.”
“Hoh!” Timmy scoffed. “I remember better than that” His face stilled and his eyes widened. “The ship was so tall it was like a mountain and the people went in the high high door and they didn’t have a ladder. ‘Nen there were stars, big burning ones—not squinchy little ones like ours.”
“It went too fast!” That was Abie! Talking eagerly! “When the air came it made the ship hot and the little baby died before all the little boats left the ship.” He scrunched down suddenly, leaning against Talitha and whimpering.
“You see!” Miriam lifted her chin triumphantly. “We’ve all dreamed—I mean remembered!”
“I guess so,” said Matt. “I remember. It’s lifting, Talitha, not flying. You go and go as high as you like, as far as you want to and don’t ever have to touch the ground—at all!” He pounded his fist into the gravelly red soil beside him.
“And you can dance in the air, too,” Miriam sighed. “Freer than a bird, lighter than—”
Esther scrambled to her feet, white-faced and panic-stricken. “Stop! Stop! It’s evil! It’s bad! I’ll tell Father! We can’t dream—or lift—or dance! It’s bad, it’s bad! You’ll die for it! You’ll die for it!”
Joel jumped to his feet and grabbed Esther’s arm.
“Can we die any deader?” he cried, shaking her brutally. “You call this being alive?” He hunched down apprehensively and shambled a few scuffling steps across the clearing.
I fled blindly back to school, trying to wink away my tears without admitting I was crying, crying for these poor kids who were groping so hopelessly for something they knew they should have. Why was it so rigorously denied them? Surely, if they were what I thought them… And they could be! They could be!
I grabbed the bell rope and pulled hard. Reluctantly the bell moved and rolled.