The Orphan

by Robert Stallman

  With one big ear in each hand, Charles sat on the man’s back thumping his forehead into the cinder road. Alfred was stunned. His crotch felt amputated, and cinders were being pounded into his forehead as if with a hammer. He was about to cry out when Charles felt a rock with his foot, picked it up and smacked Alfred with the softball sized thing a solid clonk on the top of hishead. Alfred’s body went limp, and he lay quite still.

  “Oh God, I must have killed him.” Charles said, panting and bleeding. He rolled the man over so that his cinder pocked face looked up at the dark, moonless sky.

  “He’s dead for sure,” Charles said, rubbing blood off his own face. His head hurt as if hammers were hitting it in several places, and he felt a loose tooth and blood in his mouth. At that moment, Alfred moaned and moved one hand feebly. Charles, feeling like a half drowned kitten, realized that if the man regained consciousness he would probably kill him.

  Charles got up, staggered down the road a few yards, realized he was going the wrong direction and had to come back past Alfred who had rolled over and was on his hands and knees mumbling. Charles staggered past him and tried to trot a little, but his head drummed with pain. Now he was afraid Alfred would catch him for sure, and his fear was keeping him from thinking straight.

  I rise, feel the situation and shift.

  The pain stays, and I feel the inured tissues swelling and throbbing, but it is possible to ignore because it is not mortal or crippling. I begin to run, thinking about whether I should go back and teach Alfred a lesson, but it is not a serious thought. Alfred is nothing to me. I see a car parked behind a tree ahead near the railroad crossing. There is one practical matter: I must have time to get to the highway so that Charles can cut across a field and be home. I should dislike having to hide while Alfred drives around looking for Charles. I lope over to the car, extend my senses for other things, thinking perhaps Alfred’s brother is about, but there are only the usual nighttime small animals. The little Ford coupe is hidden from the road by the line of trees along the fence. Alfred had driven in through a wire gate down the road and had waited in ambush for Charles. I sniff the car. It smells deadly, like most of these machines. I have never tried to lift one of these, but I grab one side near the bottom and raise up. It leaves the ground, but is very heavy. I put my front claws against the top of the window, brace my hind claws in the hard earth and rock it until it goes over on its side with a crunching and tinkling of metal and glass. Perhaps he would be able to set it right again, I think, so I push it on over until it rests on its top and a liquid with that deadly odor is running out of it. Now he will have some trouble chasing us this night. And I lope away in the darkness keeping low and pushing the pain out of my mind until we get to the Stumway grove of trees. Then I shift and let Charles stagger on to the house.

  (4)

  Charles was unaware what had transpired between Betty and Alfred or what the condition of Alfred’s car might be, but he did observe that during the rest of the school year up to Christmas vacation, Alfred was not seen even once picking up Betty on Friday afternoon. The other boys told him about threats by both Kearny brothers to put Charles in the hospital if they ever caught him, and this rattled about in the back of Charles’s mind for a couple of weeks until it began to seem only an idle threat. They also said that Alfred and Betty had broken up, and Flossie whispered to Brenda Gustafson who told Kick Jones who told Charles that Betty’s parents were just as happy about it all the way it turned out.

  Douglas Bent was morbidly interested, it seemed to Charles, in how he had “beaten up on” Alfred Kearny, which was the description given by Carl Bent after he had observed Alfred the following day in the grocery where he worked. “Geezus,” Carl had said, a grin on his broad face, “he looked like he’d been kicked in the face by a mule. He had a black eye big as a tomato and patches of tape all over his forehead.”

  “I was just lucky, Doug,” said Charles for the twentieth time. “And besides, I got hurt worse than he did, and if I hadn’t rocked him he’d have really put me in the hospital.”

  “Did you get some guys to wreck his car?” Douglas said, pressing in again.

  “I don’t know nothing about his car,” Charles said, and then with an inspiration, “he was probably drunk and wrecked it himself. He was drinking that night, you know.”

  After which, it became known through gossip that Alfred had really been “stewed to the gills” and that was the explanation both for his wrecked car and his defeat at the hands of an oversized twelve-year-old kid. The reputation Alfred was building from this one incident was not entirely on the minus side, so that in the ensuing weeks, he and his brother did indeed try to forget Charles. Alfred had been on shaky ground with the Baileys for some time anyway, as his interest in the nubile Betty had been more than passing dishonorable.

  Charles determined to apply himself to his studies and worked each night by lamp light in the old dark Stumway dining room until his eyes burned and he had to quit. Miss Wrigley said in a letter to Mrs. Stumway that Charles was “a brilliant boy who has never had the opportunity to show what he can do in school,” a commendation that meant little to the old lady, but which did not harm Charles’s position either.

  One reason Charles managed to advance so quickly was that Miss Wrigley allowed him to sit in on the lessons of grades higher than the one he was working in. While he was gaining proficiency in the Third Elson Reader, he could listen and comment on the reading lessons from Book IV that the next grade was working on. This meant, of course, that he spent much more time doing homework than the other children did, but he often had the lessons for both grades three and four better than those sitting in the grade rows. If he had not been so light hearted about it all, he might have seemed obnoxious and pushy. As it was, most of the children deferred to his good sense and his sometimes strange comments on their assignments.

  In mid-November, Miss Wrigley arranged for both grades three and four to read the myth and hero tale sections of their books, so that they could all join the same class discussion. Grade three read, among other tales, that of Beauty and the Beast, and grade four read a cleaned-up version of Beowulf. After they had got the stories straight, and little Joe Ricci had been assured several times that Beowulf was not a werewolf like the one he had seen in the movies, Miss Wrigley called on Charles who had his hand up and a puzzled look on his face.

  “It says in both stories that the monster was so unhappy it wanted to kill other people,” Charles said, flipping through the pages of the Beowulf story. He found the place and read, “‘This giant hated light, and could not bear to think that anyone was happy.’ And later, let’s see, yeah, here, ‘It made him angry to think that the men gathered there were happy.’ And so he goes and kills thirty of ’em.” Charles looked at Miss Wrigley genuinely puzzled. “You said they were both beast monsters, sort of, and that it took heroic deeds to get rid of them, like when Beauty gives up her home because she feels sorry for the Beast, and then Beowulf taking on the giant when everyone else is scared to death of it. But it doesn’t say why the monsters are so unhappy that they have to kill people and eat ’em and things like that.”

  Miss Wrigley waited for comments. Sally Marshall, who was the smartest fourth grader and always held up her hand even when she didn’t know the answer, held it up again. Miss Wrigley nodded.

  “They, I mean the Beast and the giant Grendel, are wicked, and that’s why they’re unhappy,” she said, very certain of her ground. “Mrs. Ottenbeck at church said that’s why people are unhappy because they’re wicked.”

  “Thank you, Sally,” Miss Wrigley said. “What do you think of that answer?” The question was to the classes in general.

  Kenny Grattan whispered, “It stinks,” but no one paid attention.

  “Well,” Charles said, thinking, “maybe so, but which came first? Were they unhappy and got wicked, or were they wicked and that made ’em unhappy? Either way, it looks funny that they would just sit around being unhappy and wicke
d all the time. Looks like they were just waiting for some hero to come along and knock ’em over.”

  “Did you all notice,” Miss Wrigley said, “that both the Beast and the giant Grendel were different from other people? And that they didn’t have any friends to talk to, not a single one? Maybe they were unhappy and wicked because they weren’t like other people and had no one to love them.”

  “That’s what made the Beast turn into a handslum prince,” Lula Bright said without holding up her hand. “Because Beauty started in to love him and he got handslum.” She trailed off in embarrassment as some of they children started to laugh.

  “Not handslum,” Harry Bennet shouted. “Handsome. Ha! A handslum prince. Oh! My Handslum Prince!” he screamed in falsetto while everyone laughed and the other grades looked up from their studies and listened.

  “Harry,” Miss Wrigley said calmly amid the laughter, “the next time you mispronounce a word, Lula should get a chance to laugh at you. Is that all right?”

  Harry subsided and whispered to Kenny while the rest were getting their breath back. Miss Wrigley waited and then turned to Charles again. “That’s an excellent question, Charles,” she said with her brow furrowed. “Even if we say that the monsters are unhappy because they are different and not loved by anyone, it is puzzling because they do seem to be waiting,” she paused in genuine thought and ended the sentence as if to herself, “for disaster.”

  Little Joe Ricci had been following the discussion but not the argument. “They’re just monsters,” he said, “and monsters do bad things because they’re monsters, and they’re monsters because they …” He stopped, perplexed by the circle he had created. Then his round little face broke into a grin again. “Anyway, if I was a monster I’d have lots of fun!” And everyone laughed.

  The question was not solved at the end of the class time, and since no one in grades three or four really cared whether it was answered or not, Charles remained somewhat skeptical of the truth of the tales in question. He could not imagine a being living in the way the books described. It seemed so pointless to exist in that way. It hardly helped when Miss Wrigley talked to him after school about the symbolism of good and evil. He did not grasp the idea at first, and when he did, it made the stories lose their interest to think they had been made up just to teach a lesson. The question became lost in the rush of other lessons, and he did not think of it again for some time.

  By Thanksgiving vacation time, Charles had finished the third-grade level problems in mathematics, read with competence both Elson Books III and IV, and he was trying books from the library shelves marked with five and six stars on the spine. He competed with Douglas in reading proficiency if the words weren’t too unfamiliar. Miss Wrigley and Charles were sitting in facing desks one afternoon after school talking about Charles’s latest exploit, reading and passing a test on a fifth-grade story that that grade had read at the beginning of the year.

  “I really think, Charles,” Miss Wrigley said, “that we can register you in the second half of the fifth grade for the term beginning in January.” She smiled and reached across to take Charles’s hand that he was wiggling about to get the writer’s cramp out of. “Wouldn’t that be absolutely wonderful, I mean to go so fast that in one semester you travel from first grade to fifth?”

  “I don’t know it I can handle that Civics yet, Miss Wrigley,” Charles said, frowning.

  “I have the greatest confidence in you,” Miss Wrigley said. And then she looked at the big octagonal clock that pointed to almost five o’clock. “I’ve got to be going now. I have a lot of papers to do, and I have my book club meeting in town tonight.” She rose, smoothed her skirt and looked back at Charles who remained sitting, lost in thought. “Charles?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “What are you going to be doing for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Oh, I guess having it with Mrs. Stumway,” Charles said, sensing a charitable offer coming. “She’s not a bad cook, you know.”

  “I’m sure she’s not, Charles, the way you are growing. But I was just thinking that there is a family in town who are great friends of mine. I’m having dinner with them this Thursday, and I think they’d love to have a local hero and rising young scholar at their table.”

  Charles wanted to leap up and say yes, but he held back for a moment as if he were thinking about the impact this might have on Mrs. Stumway, an impact he estimated at about the same as her wondering whether the emperor of Afghanistan had tea or coffee for breakfast.

  “Yes, Miss Wrigley, I think that would be really great, if the people wouldn’t mind.”

  ***

  The house of Victor and Lucille Boldhuis was small, neat, and filled with interesting souvenirs from their frequent trips. In their living room a small grand piano dominated the few pieces of furniture pushed against the walls as tokens that the room was really a living room and not a piano box. Charles had never seen a grand piano and looked at the half opened lid with interest while Miss Wrigley whispered that Victor was, among other things, a piano tuner and had rebuilt the piano from a truckload of parts he had bought at an auction, and that Lucille had almost become a concert pianist when she was younger. Victor Boldhuis was a short, round, black haired man in his late thirties with a bald patch like a monk’s tonsure and a face that seemed to have grown into a permanent smile. His remarks to Charles as he drove into town in the old, black Ford were mostly facetious ones that at first alarmed Charles and then made him smile and vow to remember some for future telling. Charles had decided on the ride into town that Mr. Boldhuis was harmless and a nice person, an effect that he did not realize was the man’s intended attempt to put a nervous boy at ease.

  Lucille Boldhuis seemed the opposite of her husband at first, a slender, narrow faced woman with gray streaks in her hair and a mouth that turned down in sadness. Charles took her hand at the door and was amazed to see her face transform from grief into happiness when she smiled, the smile changing her whole attitude with one gesture from mourning to rejoicing. As the smile faded, she seemed again to pull back into herself and be sad. It was hard to tell how she really felt about anything, Charles thought, watching her face at the table as they ate, because she seemed to react out of a vacuum of sadness, transforming into laughter, interest, concern, or facetiousness without warning and without afterimage. Watching the opposite state of her husband’s face, the permanent smile joining the round cheeks, Charles was reminded of the tragic and comic masks he had seen in the front of the eighth-grade literature book Miss Wrigley had shown him some time before.

  The dinner was the most sumptuous Charles had ever seen in his life, turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes with something green shredded in them, cranberry sauce, green beans with bacon, sweet potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows, and a plate of celery, carrots, and radishes for nibbling. There was a tall goblet of wine at each plate, red as rubies and beautiful when Mrs. Boldhuis lit the four candles in the elaborate silver candle holder that sat in the middle of the table. Charles thought it something of a shame to spoil it all by going ahead and eating, and he waited in the flickering candlelight for a signal from Miss Wrigley to make the first move. Instead, Mr. Boldhuis raised his smile to the rest of the table and sat down behind the great bulk of the uncarved turkey in front of him.

  “Let us ask a blessing of the Lord,” he said.

  They all bowed their heads, and Charles heard him say what sounded like a standard prayer that began, “Lord, for what we are about to receive.” But at the end of the prayer, as Charles started to raise his head, he heard the man go on in a different voice, “And we ask, O Lord, that you preserve for us our loved ones whom Thou hast seen it best to take unto you, that we may someday be united with them in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

  It took a minute or two for the mood of festive eating to get back into full swing after the prayer, even though Mr. Boldhuis was being his facetious self again as he carved off bits of turkey for each person.

&n
bsp; Charles ate, Miss Wrigley and the Boldhuises talked about books and music and poetry, about names like Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald and e. e. cummings and Stravinsky, names Charles had never heard or seen in books he had read, and he wondered at the elevation of the learning of these people who conversed with the learned Miss Wrigley as if such knowledge and familiarity with the arts and sciences were commonplace. Not once did Charles hear cows or crops or pigs or markets mentioned, not once did he hear about relatives newly dead or ailing, babies on the way or growing up, diseases suspected or hoped for in neighbors, or the state of the weather, which was gray and threatening snow any minute. Charles sipped the wine between bites as he observed the grownups did, and it began to seem to him an enchanted scene, taking on the underground air of a conspiracy by brilliant criminals somewhere in a secret cave while in the upper world everyone else was desultorily eating cornmeal mush for breakfast, sardine sandwiches for lunch, and pork chops for supper and talking about each other’s insides. He listened with the warm wine glowing inside him and the turkey so delicious it made his cheeks ache, and the welcome tart of the cranberry sauce, and the sweet of the sweet potatoes turning his body into a temple of delightful lust. I am enjoying it too, but with a difference, for the wine floats me to the surface of Charles’s senses as it penetrates and lifts me from somnolence. Charles and I are present in a comfortable duality as he eats and drinks the bright red wine in little glad sips that please me. We listen together, not worrying whether there is conflict in our both being present, and I feel that I might extend my senses just a bit to more fully savor the time, but at a warning from Charles, I realize that I have almost shifted, so comfortable and lazy has it all become.