“You’re Daphne, aren’t you? Remember us? I’m Billy. Ralph introduced us the other day. I think you met Rimmer too, didn’t you?”
Daphne sat silently, looking at their feet. Then Billy sat next to her, the others closing in around them.
“Ralph was right about you, Daphne. He said you were cute.”
The storm in Daphne’s mind intensified, pushing on the barrier.
“What are you doing, Billy? She’s retarded, man!”
“Shut up, Grant. Don’t pay any attention to him, Daphne. I think you look great.”
Then he scooted next to her, his hip pressed against hers. Her mind storm howled, the barrier bulging. She filled her head with music—if the barrier broke, she wanted no room for the black hole to empty into.
“I bet guys are after you all the time, aren’t they, Daphne? Ralph is, I know. What about that Mexican kid that lives with you? Luis? Didn’t you two ever do anything? Play a little doctor?”
He leaned against her and then put his hand on her knee. Involuntarily her hands came up, and she began to play in the air.
“You’re making her crazy, Billy.”
“I make every woman crazy, Grant. She wants me—see, she wants to give me a massage.”
His hand slid slowly up her leg, and she pounded harder.
“Hey, that Foxworth woman’s coming back. Let’s get out of here before she sees us.”
“No massage right now, Daphne. Maybe later.”
As he stood he ran his hand along the inside of her thigh. The barrier in her mind nearly broke, but when she felt them leave the pressure lessened, the barrier holding. Slowly control returned and her hands came down. When Ralph arrived with the ice cream she was able to hold it, but it was half melted before she could eat.
16
DISCOVERY
Wes was prepared for the arrival of his next savant—he had spent the night reading Elizabeth’s file on Yu. Yu had a history of acting out and could be violent. If his abilities weren’t particularly special, Wes would not have included him in the project. As it was, he would be the most difficult of the group, and Wes had gone out of the way to prepare for him.
Elizabeth’s report detailed every aspect of Yu’s behavior and needs. His daily habits and rituals were described, as were the foods he liked and what he watched on TV. His daily routine was specified, including bedtimes, when rest periods were scheduled, the kinds of physical activity he required. There was even a report, graph, and chart dealing with bowel and urination frequency and regularity. Like Daphne, he needed his room ordered a certain way, but unlike Daphne, Yu’s belongings were not to be unpacked—he would do it himself.
Gil, Wes, and of course Ralph were waiting to meet Yu on the front porch. Daphne was playing the piano and the others were waiting just inside so Yu wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Even down the block Wes could see Yu was stressed. He was shifting violently in the front passenger seat, rocking forward and back. Elizabeth popped out of the car as soon as she stopped and unlocked the trunk. As soon as the trunk was open, Len and Karon appeared to help Gil carry Yu’s things to his room. Before Elizabeth could get around to the passenger side Yu opened the door and stood on the sidewalk, his head bent back and his eyes on the sky. Wes could hear his rapid breathing from the porch and wondered if picking him had been a mistake.
“Ralph will show you to your room, won’t you, Ralph?” Elizabeth said.
“Sure I will. What’s his name again. Yu? That’s a funny name. I never met someone named that before. Well okeydokey, come on, you Yu you.” Ralph’s smile widened to its full expanse. “Get it? It’s a joke. You Yu you.”
No one smiled but Ralph was unaffected and turned and walked into the house. Yu followed, swinging his head from side to side. Ralph chattered like a tour guide, pointing out who was in each room. When they disappeared into Yu’s room Wes turned to Elizabeth asking for her evaluation.
“I don’t know yet. Yu has a well-defined set of adjustment behaviors. We’ll have to see if they work for him.”
“You mean like ordering his room?”
Elizabeth smiled at Wes when she answered. “You read my report. Yes, he will spend a couple of hours putting his room in order; that will be the first major test of whether he will be able to adjust or not.”
“Couldn’t we help put his things away? The sooner things are put away the better, right?”
“We wouldn’t know where to put his belongings. Even Yu changes his mind periodically. He keeps his room one way for weeks at a time and then suddenly will rearrange. Sometimes it’s something little that is changed, like reordering his Dr. Seuss books, and sometimes everything comes off of every shelf and out of every drawer and is placed back differently. He has a unique way of arranging too. He keeps his underwear and his shoes in the same drawer and his socks are kept in his closet on hangers. Don’t ask me why.”
Wes was impatient, but knew not to push Yu in any way. Instead, he went to work with his program, trying to understand the anomalies he had found in the last run. An hour later Ralph came in and bummed five dollars for Slurpees.
“Why five bucks?”
“Yu wants one too and we decided to get mediums ‘cause it’s his first day.”
Ralph came back a half hour later and handed one to Daphne at the piano and two to Archie and Luis, who sat in front of the TV, then carried the other two upstairs. Two hours later Elizabeth came looking for Wes.
“He’s almost done. Everything is out of the boxes and the suitcases. He looks like he’s settling down. For some reason he seems to like Ralph.”
“Am I the only one that has a problem with him?”
“Virtually,” Elizabeth replied. “Ralph kept taking his things out of boxes and looking at them but it didn’t seem to bother Yu. He just took them one by one from Ralph and put them away. He even seemed happy when Ralph offered to buy him a Slurpee.”
“I bought the Slurpee. I buy all the Slurpees.”
“Don’t be a grouch, it’s cheap therapy. Anyway, he’s almost done. Then we’ll know better whether he’s going to adapt.”
It was another hour before Yu came out of his room and began pacing off the house. When he came into the experiment room it looked like a parade. Yu led the way with Ralph trailing along behind. Elizabeth came next and then Gil, who looked perplexed. Wes watched the little parade circle the converted dining room and disappear into the kitchen. When it came back he got up and followed along. Surprisingly, Daphne stopped playing and turned to watch Yu and Ralph lead the parade. Yu went around the main floor again before he discovered the basement door. Wes and Elizabeth waited in the kitchen while Yu worked his way through the junk in the basement to walk the perimeter. Soon he was back and disappeared out the back door. Wes and Elizabeth followed, standing in the backyard watching the parade disappear around the corner of the house.
“He’s almost done,” Elizabeth announced.
A minute later the parade came back around the corner, with Yu in the front and Gil in the rear. Elizabeth smiled and Gil shrugged his shoulders, following Yu back inside.
“That should do it,” Elizabeth said.
Wes expected to find Yu relaxed inside but instead they found him pacing the rooms again, but this time faster. Yu walked the main floor, then the upstairs, and then went back into the basement. When he came back up he went directly outside and paced the perimeter of the house again. When he finished he seemed more agitated than ever and his walking speed increased to a near run. Gil dropped out of the parade and came to stand by Elizabeth.
“He’s a machine. I can’t keep up.”
“I don’t understand,” Elizabeth said. “He’s paced the house—that should relax him. It’s a well-established behavior.”
Wes didn’t like what he was hearing—Elizabeth’s worry was evident in her voice. This time when Yu led Ralph outside Wes shouted at him.
“Ralph! Ralph! What’s he doing?”
“I think he lost something,” Ralph sa
id without losing a step. “He lost something.”
“Lost something?” he repeated. Then, turning to Elizabeth, “I don’t suppose you took inventory of his things before you brought them?”
“Actually, I did,” Elizabeth said. “It was all there. Besides, this isn’t his behavior for losing something.”
The parade came around the house again and disappeared inside. This time Elizabeth followed it in and up the stairs, Wes trailing behind. When Yu turned into his room Elizabeth stepped in the doorway, blocking his exit. Yu stopped walking, but began rocking back and forth, clearly agitated.
“What’s wrong, Yu? Ralph says you lost something. Is that right?”
Ralph took his serious pose, leaning back and folding his arms. “Ya lost something, right?”
“No,” Yu replied.
“Then what’s wrong, Yu?”
“It’s not all there.”
“What’s not all there?”
“Yeah,” Ralph mimicked. “What’s not all there?”
“Please, Ralph. Let me handle this.”
“Okeydokey, Elizabeth. I was just trying to help.”
“What’s not all there, Yu?”
“It’s supposed to be four thousand eight hundred twenty-two square feet, but it’s not. The outside and the inside don’t match.”
Elizabeth turned and looked at Wes, clearly puzzled. Wes didn’t have any idea of what the square footage was supposed to be, but the house seemed all there to him. Still, if it was important to his savant, it was too important to be trivialized.
“Maybe he forgot to account for the thickness of the walls,” he suggested.
“Two-by-four studs, plaster and lathe finish inside, two-by-six exterior walls with one-by-six cedar siding,” Yu blurted out.
Yu’s detailed answer surprised and pleased Wes, making him even more determined to have that ability a part of Frankie.
“Well, maybe there’s a room he didn’t get into,” Wes said. “How much is missing?”
“One hundred and twenty square feet.”
Wes and Elizabeth turned and looked at each other, each surprised by the answer. Wes spoke first.
“That’s a lot of space. How could we miss all that? The attic . . .” Wes suggested, again knowing it was the wrong answer.
“He didn’t get up there, remember,” Elizabeth said, looking thoughtful. “Besides, it would be a lot more space than that.”
“How could I be so stupid,” Ralph said at the top of his voice and thumped himself on the head. “We forgot the garage.”
“That’s not it,” Elizabeth said. “He only paced the house.”
“Maybe we should ask Yu,” Ralph suggested. “Hey, Yu, do you know where you lost it at?”
“The basement,” Yu said.
They followed Yu to the basement and watched him pick his way through the accumulated junk trying to pace the perimeter. The old mattresses, beds, lawn furniture, beer kegs, and miscellaneous debris made it difficult. When he came to the storage bins he opened each of the three doors and peeked inside.
“You know, Elizabeth, he might be miscalculating,” Wes said. “He can’t actually walk along the wall, and he can’t even get in those bins. He could easily be off that much.”
“Maybe, but didn’t you bring him here because he was a genius at this?”
Wes realized she was right. Yu wouldn’t be here without an uncanny ability, and his ability told him space was missing from the basement. Wes looked around, but there was really only one place the extra space could be. One end of the basement was filled with storage bins and shelves and Wes had never really looked into them. “Maybe those shelves and bins back there are throwing off his estimates. Let’s get him a better look.”
Yu waited impatiently while Wes, Elizabeth, and Gil cleared a path through the junk to get to the shelves. Len, Karon, and Shamita came down and watched from the stairs. Ralph kept getting in the way trying to help until Len offered him a pack of Juicy Fruit to keep him busy. To everyone’s surprise Daphne appeared at the top of the stairs, sitting still, eyes on the floor.
When they had some space along the shelves Wes and Elizabeth began removing the old jars and garden tools stored there. Wes found a tire behind a set of jars and pulled it out, turning to hand it to Gil—Gil wasn’t there, he was backing up, staring at the shelves. Wes didn’t mind if he took a break, but the look on his face wasn’t fatigue—he looked scared. Len took Gil’s place and Wes and Elizabeth took turns handing things to Len.
“Look at this, Wes,” Elizabeth said. “This shelf isn’t deep at all.”
Wes felt back along the shelf and found it only went back about six inches. The other shelves were much deeper. Wes walked along the shallow shelves and found they went clear to the corner.
“They’re shallow clear to the wall and there’s brick behind the shelves. I thought those bins were behind here too.”
Elizabeth walked over to the bins and leaned in each door, looking back toward Wes. “They aren’t anywhere near that big. Let’s take these shelves down.”
It took an hour for them to clear off the shelves and begin knocking them apart. Len found a hammer and a crowbar, but it was slow work since the shelves were well made with mitered corners and lips on the shelving to keep things from sliding off. As the shelving came apart it became clear that the missing square feet had been found—there was a brick wall blocking off one corner of the basement, accounting for Yu’s missing space.
Everyone was hungry and thirsty before they were half done, so Karon and Shamita disappeared upstairs, reappearing later with tuna sandwiches, chips, and lemonade. Everyone took a break, and for a while the basement atmosphere was that of a picnic. Only Gil and Yu were unable to join in the frivolity, sitting apart, Yu rocking and Gil staring morosely. Wes knew what was bothering Yu, but Gil was a mystery. When they were done Karon left to take care of the other savants, who were again watching TV.
They resumed work with new energy and cleared the rest of the shelving, leaving a brick wall that ran from the exterior wall of the basement to where the storage bins began.
“Here it is, Yu,” Wes said. “It’s all here, it’s just inside this space.”
Yu didn’t respond; he just stood, staring and rocking. Wes turned to Elizabeth, already knowing what she was going to say.
“Sorry, Wes, we’re going to have to open it up.”
Len handed Wes one of the hammers, but it was a pitiful tool to use on a brick wall.
“See if you can find something bigger, Len. It looks like we’ve got some work ahead of us.”
Len looked at Wes blankly and didn’t move. Wes waited for the story he knew was coming.
“One day the Lone Ranger and Tonto were out riding on the range—they did a lot of that. Suddenly twenty Indian braves rode up on their right. Then another twenty rode up on their left. Then twenty more rode up in front and behind them. The Lone Ranger looked all around him and turned to Tonto and said, ‘It looks like we’re surrounded, Tonto.’ Tonto looked at the Lone Ranger and said, ‘What do you mean ‘we,’ Paleface?’ ” Then Len looked at Wes and said, “What do you mean we have some work ahead of us? These hands were made for caressing a keyboard, not shattering brick.”
“All right, if you find a sledgehammer I’ll do the hard work.”
“Oh, so finding a sledgehammer is easy. Right, I’ll look in the kitchen cabinets.”
“Don’t look in there, Len,” Ralph advised. “I was looking for the Cocopuffs this morning, and there’s no sledge in there.”
Len thanked Ralph and then groused under his breath all the way up the stairs. Wes took a break and sat down on a lawn chair next to Elizabeth. After a few minutes Elizabeth pointed at the brick.
“There’s a different pattern there. That looks like a door, and look at the bottom, that’s not the same brick as that on the top.”
Wes followed Elizabeth’s point and could clearly see the different-colored bricks. Wes got up and squatted down
, looking at the bricks.
“What do you think this is? Maybe there’s heating ducts behind this wall.”
Elizabeth walked along the wall, looking at the ceiling.
“No, the ducts run there and there. Besides, why brick it in?”
Len came stomping back down the stairs carrying a sledgehammer. Wes was impressed; he had been gone only a few minutes. Len held the hammer above his head in triumph with both hands and said, “Mrs. Clayton’s husband was in construction. She’s got a garage full of great tools.”
Wes took the sledge and looked the wall over for a good place to start. The different-colored brick at the bottom made a good target. Wes took the sledge and swung it against the wall. There was a loud smack, but the brick didn’t crack or crumble. Wes hit it again with the same result.
“Maybe you should hit it harder, Wes,” Ralph suggested. “You’d never win a Kewpie doll like that.”
“Maybe you’d like to give it a try, Ralph?”
“He’s pulling the Tom Sawyer trick on you, Ralph,” Len warned.
“Can I try it? Can I?” Ralph asked, turning to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth nodded and Ralph strode forward and took the sledge.
“It’s heavy. I didn’t know it was so heavy.”
Ralph held the sledge up close to the top with both hands and took a couple of tentative swings. Next he moved his hands back, finding a comfortable position at the end that gave him more leverage. Then Ralph pulled the sledge back and then forward using his well-muscled shoulders. When the sledge hit the wall it wasn’t with a smack, it was an earsplitting crunch as the sledge shattered one of the bricks. Ralph smiled a huge grin.
“I bet I would have won a Kewpie doll with that one.”
Ralph put the sledge down and spit on his hands, rubbing the spit into his palms. Then he picked up the sledge and buried it into another brick. Settling into a rhythm, he hammered the bricks with one shattering blow after another. Wes, impressed with his progress, didn’t notice the smell until Elizabeth shouted to stop.
Fragments Page 16