Everyone stared at Abie and he squirmed. “The little ships,” he defended. “That’s the way they moved them out of the big ship. Just like that.”
Joel and Matt turned their eyes to some inner concentration and then exchanged exasperated looks.
“Why, sure,” Matt said. “Why, sure.” And the dictionary swung back to the shelf.
“Hey!” Timmy protested. “It’s my turn!”
“That poor dictionary,” I said. “It’s too old for all this bouncing around. Just put the loose pages back on the shelf.”
And he did.
Everyone sighed and looked at me expectantly. “You come to me,” I said, feeling a chill creep across my stiff shoulders. “Lift to me, Miriam.”
Without taking her eyes from me she slipped out of her seat and stood in the aisle. Her skirts swayed a little as her feet lifted from the floor. Slowly at first and then more quickly she came to me, soundlessly, through the air, until in a little flurried rush her arms went around me and she gasped into my shoulder. I put her aside trembling. I groped for my handkerchief. I said shakily, “Miriam, help the rest. I’ll be back in a minute.”
And I stumbled into the room next door. Huddled down in the dust and debris of the catchall storeroom it had become, I screamed soundlessly into my muffling hands. And screamed and screamed! Because after all—after all!
And then suddenly, with a surge of pure panic, I heard a sound—the sound of footsteps, many footsteps, approaching the schoolhouse. I jumped for the door and wrenched it open just in time to see the outside door open. There was Mr. Diemus and Esther and Esther’s father, Mr. Jonso.
In one of those flashes of clarity that engrave your mind in a split second I saw my whole classroom.
Joel and Matt were chinning themselves on nonexistent bars, their heads brushing the high ceiling as they grunted upward. Abie was swinging in a swing that wasn’t there, arcing across the corner of the room just missing the stovepipe from the old stove, as he chanted, “Up in a swing, up in a swing!” This wasn’t the first time they had tried their wings! Miriam was kneeling in a circle with the other girls and they were all coaxing their books up to hover unsupported above the floor, while Timmy vroomm-vroomed two paper jet planes through intricate maneuvers in and out the rows, of desks.
My soul curdled in me as I met Mr. Diemus’ eyes. Esther gave a choked cry as she saw what the children were doing, and the girls’ stricken faces turned to the intruders. Matt and Joel crumpled to the floor and scrambled to their feet. But Abie, absorbed in his wonderful new accomplishment, swung on, all unconscious of what was happening until Talitha frantically screamed, “Abie!”
Startled, he jerked around and saw the forbidding group at the door. With a disappointed cry, as though a loved toy had been snatched from him, he stopped there in midair, his fists clenched. And then, realizing, he screamed, a terrified panic-stricken cry, and slanted sharply upward, trying to escape, and ran full tilt into the corner of the high old map case, sideswiping it with his head, and, reeling backward, fell!
I tried to catch him. I did! I did! But I caught only one small hand as he plunged down onto the old woodburning heater beneath him. And the crack of his skull against the ornate edge of the cast iron lid was loud in the silence.
I straightened the crumpled little body carefully, not daring to touch the quiet little head. Mr. Diemus and I looked at each other as we knelt on opposite sides of the child. His lips opened, but I plunged before he could get started.
“If he dies,” I bit my words off viciously, “you killed him!”
His mouth opened again, mainly from astonishment. “I—” he began.
“Barging in on my classroom!” I raged. “Interrupting classwork! Frightening my children! It’s all your fault, your fault!” I couldn’t bear the burden of guilt alone. I just had to have someone share it with me. But the fire died and I smoothed Abie’s hand, trembling.
“Please call a doctor. He might be dying.”
“Nearest one is in Tortura Pass,” Mr. Diemus said. “Sixty miles by road.”
“Cross country?” I asked.
“Two mountain ranges and an alkali plateau.”
“Then—then—” Abie’s hand was so still in mine.
“There’s a doctor at the Tumble A Ranch,” Joel said faintly. “He’s taking a vacation.”
“Go get him.” I held Joel with my eyes. “Go as fast as you know how!”
Joel gulped miserably. “Okay.”
“They’ll probably have horses to come back on,” I said. “Don’t be too obvious.”
“Okay,” and he ran out the door. We heard the thud of his running feet until he was halfway across the schoolyard, then silence. Faintly, seconds later, creek gravel crunched below the hill. I could only guess at what he was doing—that he couldn’t lift all the way and was going in jumps whose length was beyond all reasonable measuring.
The children had gone home, quietly, anxiously. And after the doctor arrived we had improvised a stretcher and carried Abie to the Peterses’ home. I walked along close beside him watching his pinched little face, my hand touching his chest occasionally just to be sure he was still breathing.
And now—the waiting…
I looked at my watch again. A minute past the last time I looked. Sixty seconds by the hands, but hours and hours by anxiety.
“He’ll be all right,” I whispered, mostly to comfort myself. “The doctor will know what to do.”
Mr. Diemus turned his dark empty eyes to me. “Why did you do it?” he asked. “We almost had it stamped out. We were almost free.”
“Free of what?” I took a deep breath. “Why did you do it? Why did you deny your children their inheritance?”
“It isn’t your concern—”
“Anything that hampers my children is my concern. Anything that turns children into creeping frightened mice is wrong. Maybe I went at the whole deal the wrong way, but you told me to teach them what I had to—and I did.”
“Disobedience, rebellion, flouting authority—”
“They obeyed me,” I retorted. “They accepted my authority!” Then I softened. “I can’t blame them,” I confessed. “They were troubled. They told me it was wrong— that they had been taught it was wrong. I argued them into it. But, oh, Mr. Diemus! It took so little argument, such a tiny breach in the dam to loose the flood. They never even questioned my knowledge—any more than you have, Mr. Diemus! All this—this wonder was beating against their minds, fighting to be set free. The rebellion was there long before I came. I didn’t incite them to something new. I’ll bet there’s not a one, except maybe Esther, who hasn’t practiced and practiced, furtively and ashamed, the things I permitted—demanded that they do for me.
“It wasn’t fair—not fair at all—to hold them back.”
“You don’t understand.” Mr. Diemus’ face was stony. “You haven’t all the facts—”
“I have enough,” I replied. “So you have a frightened memory of an unfortunate period in your history. But what people doesn’t have such a memory in larger or lesser degree? That you and your children have it more vividly should have helped, not hindered. You should have been able to figure out ways of adjusting. But leave that for the moment. Take the other side of the picture. What possible thing could all this suppression and denial yield you more precious than what you gave up?”
“It’s the only way,” Mr. Diemus said. “We are unacceptable to Earth but we have to stay. We have to conform—”
“Of course you had to conform,” I cried. “Anyone has to when they change societies. At least enough to get them by until others can adjust to them. But to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you! Why, the other Group—”