The People

by Зенна Гендерсон

  "She's-she's afraid!" I gasped. "Maybe she thinks-we'll-kill her!"

  "Here!" Nils finally caught a last flailing arm and pinioned it. "Talk to her! Do something! I can't hold her much longer!"

  "Marnie, Marnie!" I smoothed the tangled curls back from her blank, tense face, trying to catch her attention.

  "Marnie, don't be afraid!" I tried a smile. "Relax, honey, don't be scared." I wiped her sweat-and tear-streaked face with the corner of my apron. "There, there, it doesn't matter-we won't hurt you-" I murmured on and on, wondering if she was taking in any of it, but finally the tightness began to go out of her body and at last she drooped, exhausted, in Nils's arms. I gathered her to me and comforted her against my shoulder.

  "Get her a cup of milk," I said to Nils, "and bring me one, too." My smile wavered. "This is hard work!"

  In the struggle I had almost forgotten what had started it, but it came back to me as I led Marnie to the spring and demonstrated that she should wash her face and hands. She did so, following my example, and dried herself on the flour-sack towel I handed her. Then, when I started to turn away, she sat down on a rock by the flowing water, lifted the sadly bedraggled gown, and slipped her feet into the stream. When she lifted each to dry it, I saw the reddened, bruised soles and said, "No wonder you didn't want to walk. Wait a minute." I went back to the wagon and got my old slippers, and, as an afterthought, several pins. Marnie was still sitting by the stream, leaning over the water, letting it flow between her fingers. She put on the slippers-woefully large for her, and stood watching with interest as I turned up the bottom of the gown and pinned it at intervals.

  "Now," I said, "now at least you can walk. But this gown will be ruined if we don't get you into some other clothes."

  We ate dinner and Marnie ate some of everything we did, after a cautious tasting and a waiting to see how we handled it. She helped me gather up and put away the leftovers and clear the tarp. She even helped with the dishes-all

  with an absorbed interest as if learning a whole new set of skills.

  As our wagon rolled on down the road, Nils and I talked quietly, not to disturb Marnie as she slept in the back of the wagon.

  "She's an odd child," I said. "Nils, do you think she really was floating? How could she have? It's impossible."

  "Well, it looked as if she was floating," he said. "And she acted as if she had done something wrong-something-" Nils's words stopped and he frowned intently as he flicked at a roadside branch with the whip "-something we would hurt her for. Gail, maybe that's why-I mean, we found that witch quotation. Maybe those other people were like Marnie. Maybe someone thought they were witches and burned them-"

  "But witches are evil!" I cried. "What's evil about floating-"

  "Anything is evil," said Nils. "It lies on the other side of the line you draw around what you will accept as good. Some people's lines are awfully narrow."

  "But that's murder!" I said, "to kill-"

  "Murder or execution-again, a matter of interpretation," said Nils. "We call it murder, but it could never be proved-"

  "Marnie," I suggested. "She saw-"

  "Can't talk-or won't," said Nils.

  I hated the shallow valley of Grafton's Vow at first glance. For me it was shadowed from one side to the other in spite of the down-flooding sun that made us so grateful for the shade of the overhanging branches. The road was running between rail fences now as we approached the town. Even the horses seemed jumpy and uneasy as we rattled along.

  "Look," I said, "there's a notice or something on that fence post."

  Nils pulled up alongside the post and I leaned over to read: "'Ex. 20:16' That's all it says!"

  "Another reference," said Nils. "'Thou shalt not bear false witness.' This must be a habit with them, putting up memorials on the spot where a law is broken."

  "I wonder what happened here." I shivered as we went on.

  We were met at a gate by a man with a shotgun in his hands who said, "God have mercy," and directed us to the campgrounds safely separated from town by a palisade kind of log wall. There we were questioned severely by an anxious-faced man, also clutching a shotgun, who peered up at the sky at intervals as though expecting the wrath of heaven at any moment.

  "Only one wagon?" he asked,

  "Yes," said Nils. "My wife and I and-"

  "You have your marriage lines?" came the sharp question.

  "Yes," said Nils patiently, "they're packed in the trunk."

  "And your Bible is probably packed away, too!" the man accused.

  "No," said Nils, "here it is." He took it from under the seat. The man sniffed and shifted.

  "Who's that?" He nodded at the back of Marnie's dark head where she lay silently, sleeping or not, I don't now.

  "My niece," Nils said steadily, and I clamped my mouth shut. "She's sick."

  "Sick!"' The man backed away from the wagon. "What sin did she commit?"

  "Nothing catching," said Nils shortly.

  "Which way you come?" asked the man.

  "Through Millman's Pass," Nils answered, his eyes unwavering on the anxious questioning face. The man paled and clutched his gun tighter, the skin of his face seeming to stretch down tight and then flush loose and sweaty again.

  "What-" he began, then he licked dry lips and tried again. "Did you-was there-"

  "Was there what?" asked Nils shortly. "Did we what?"

  "Nothing," stammered the man, backing away. "Nothing.

  "Gotta see her," he said, coming reluctantly back to the wagon. "Too easy to bear false witness-" Roughly he grabbed the quilt and pulled it back, rolling

  Marnie's head toward him I thought he was going to collapse. "That's-that's the one!" he whimpered hoarsely. "How did she get-Where did you-" Then his lips clamped shut. "If you say it's your niece, it's your niece.

  "You can stay the night," he said with an effort. "Spring just outside the wall. Otherwise keep to the compound. Remember your prayers. Comport yourself in the fear of God." Then he scuttled away.

  "Niece!" I breathed. "Oh, Nils! Shall I write out an Ex. 20:16 for you to nail on the wagon?"

  "She'll have to be someone," said Nils. "When we get to Margin, we'll have to explain her somehow. She's named for your sister, so she's our niece. Simple, isn't it?"

  "Sounds so," I said. "But, Nils who is she? How did that man know-? If those were her people that died back there, where are their wagons? Their belongings? People don't just drop out of the sky-"

  "Maybe these Graftonites took the people there to execute them," he suggested, "and confiscated their goods."

  "Be more characteristic if they burned the people in the town square," I said shivering. "And their wagons, too."

  We made camp. Marnie followed me to the spring. I glanced around, embarrassed for her in the nightgown, but no one else was around and darkness was failing. We went through the wall by a little gate and were able for the first time to see the houses of the village. They were very ordinary looking except for the pale flutter of papers posted profusely on everything a nail could hold to. How could they think of anything but sinning, with all these ghosty reminders?

  While we were dipping the water, a small girl, enveloped in gray calico from slender neck to thin wrists and down to clumsy shoes, came pattering down to the spring, eyeing us as though she expected us to leap upon her with a roar.

  "Hello," I said and smiled.

  "God have mercy," she answered in a breathless whisper.

  "Are you right with God?"

  "I trust so," I answered, not knowing if the question required an answer.

  "She's wearing white," said the child, nodding at Marnie.

  "Is she dying?"

  "No," I said, "but she's been ill. That is her nightgown."

  "Oh!" The child's eyes widened and her hand covered her mouth. "How wicked! To use such a bad word! To be in her-her-to be like that outside the house! In the daytime!" She plopped her heavy bucket into the spring and, dragging it out, staggered away from
us, slopping water as she went. She was met halfway up the slope by a grim-faced woman, who set the pail aside, switched the weeping child unmercifully with a heavy willow switch, took a paper from her pocket, impaled it on a nail on a tree, seized the child with one hand and the bucket with the other, and plodded back to town.

  I looked at the paper. Ex. 20:12. "Well!" I let out an astonished breath. "And she had it already written!" Then I went back to Marnie. Her eyes were big and empty again, the planes of her face sharply sunken.

  "Marnie," I said, touching her shoulder. There was no response, no consciousness of me as I led her back to the wagon.

  Nils retrieved the bucket of water and we ate a slender, unhappy supper by the glow of our campfire. Marnie ate nothing and sat in a motionless daze until we put her to bed.

  "Maybe she's subject to seizures," I suggested.

  "It was more likely watching the child being beaten," said Nils. "What had she done?"

  "Nothing except to talk to us and be shocked that Marnie should be in her nightgown in public."

  "What was the paper the mother posted?" asked Nils.

  "Exodus, 20:12," I said. "The child must have disobeyed her mother by carrying on a conversation with us."

  After a fitful, restless night the first thin light of dawn looked wonderful and we broke camp almost before we had shadows separate from the night. Just

  before we rode away, Nils wrote large and blackly on a piece of paper and fastened it to the wall near our wagon with loud accusing hammer blows. As we drove away, I asked, "What does it say?"

  "Exodus, Chapter 22, verses 21 through 24," he said. "If they want wrath, let it fall on them!"

  I was too unhappy and worn out to pursue the matter. I only knew it must be another Shalt Not and was thankful that I had been led by my parents through the Rejoice and Love passages instead of into the darkness.

  Half an hour later, we heard the clatter of hooves behind us and, looking back, saw someone riding toward us, waving an arm urgently. Nils pulled up and laid his hand on his rifle. We waited.

  It was the anxious man who had directed us to the campsite. He had Nils's paper clutched in his hand. At first he couldn't get his words out, then he said, "Drive on! Don't stop! They might be coming after me!" He gulped and wiped his nervous forehead, Nils slapped the reins and we moved off down the road. "Y-you left this-" He jerked the paper toward us. "'Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him-'" the words came in gasps. "’Ye shalt not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any wise, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath shall wax hot-'" He sagged in the saddle, struggling for breath. "This is exactly what I told them," he said finally. "I showed it to them-the very next verses-but they couldn't see past 22:18. They-they went anyway. That Archibold told them about the people. He said they did things only witches could do. I had to go along. Oh, God have mercy! And help them tie them and watch them set the shed afire!"

  "Who were they?" asked Nils.

  "I don't know." The man sucked air noisily. "Archibold said he saw them flying up in the trees and laughing. He said they floated rocks around and started to build a house with them. He said they-they walked on the water and didn't fall in. He said one of them held a piece of wood up in the air and it caught on fire and other wood came and made a pile on the ground and that piece went down and lighted the rest." The man wiped his face again. "They must have been witches! Or else how could they do such things! We caught them. They were sleeping. They fluttered up like birds. I caught that little girl you've got there, only her hair was long then. We tied them up. I didn't want to!" Tears jerked out of his eyes. "I didn't put any knots in my rope and after the roof caved in, the little girl flew out all on fire and hid in the dark! I didn't know the Graftonites were like that! I only came last year. They-they tell you exactly what to do to be saved. You don't have to think or worry or wonder-" He rubbed his coat sleeve across his face. "Now all my life I'll see the shed burning. What about the others?"

  "We buried them," I said shortly. "The charred remains of them."

  "God have mercy!" he whispered.

  "Where did the people come from?" asked Nils. "Where are their wagons?"

  "There weren't any," said the man. "Archibold says they came in a flash of lightning and a thunderclap out of a clear sky-not a cloud anywhere. He waited, and watched them three days before he came and told us. Wouldn't you think they were witches?" He wiped his face again and glanced hack down the road. "They might follow me. Don't tell them. Don't say I told." He gathered up the reins, his face drawn and anxious, and spurred his horse into a gallop, cutting away from the road, across the flat. But before the hurried hoofbeats were muffled by distance, he whirled around and galloped back.

  "But!" he gasped, back by our wagon side. "She must be a witch! She should be dead. You are compromising with evil-"

  "Shall I drag her out so you can finish burning her here and now?" snapped Nils. "So you can watch her sizzle in her sin!"

  "Don't!" The man doubled across the saddle horn in an agony of indecision. " 'No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom.' What they're right? What if the Devil is tempting me? Lead me not into temptation! Maybe it's not too late! Maybe if I confess!" And he tore back down the road toward Grafton's Vow faster than he had come.

  "Well!" I drew a deep breath. "What Scripture would you quote for that?"

  "I'm wondering," said Nils. "This Archibold. I wonder if he was in his right mind-"

  "'They fluttered up like birds,'" I reminded him, "and Marnie was floating."

  "But floating rocks and making fire and coming in a flash of lightning out of a clear sky!" Nils protested.

  "Maybe it was some kind of a balloon," I suggested.

  "Maybe it exploded. Maybe Marnie doesn't speak English. If the balloon sailed a long way-"

  "It couldn't sail too far," said Nils. "The gas cools and it would come down. But how else could they come through the air?"

  I felt a movement behind me and turned. Marnie was sitting up on the pallet. But what a different Marnie! It was as though her ears had been unstopped or a window had opened into her mind. There was an eager listening look on her tilted face. There was light in her eyes and the possibility of smiles around her mouth. She looked at me. "Through the air!" she said.

  "Nils!" I cried. "Did you hear that! How did you come through the air, Marnie?"

  She smiled apologetically and fingered the collar of the garment she wore and said, "Gown."

  "Yes, gown," I said, settling for a word when I wanted a volume. Then I thought, Can I reach the bread box? Marnie's bright eyes left my face and she rummaged among the boxes and bundles. With a pleased little sound, she came up with a piece of bread. "Bread," she said, "bread!" And it floated through the air into my astonished hands.

  "Well!" said Nils. "Communication has begun!" Then he sobered. "And we have a child, apparently. From what that man said, there is no one left to be responsible for her. She seems to be ours."

  When we stopped at noon for dinner, we were tired. More from endless speculation than from the journey. There had been no signs of pursuit and Marnie had subsided onto the pallet again, eyes closed.

  We camped by a small creek and I had Nils get my trunk out before he cared for the animals. I opened the trunk with Marnie close beside me, watching my every move. I had packed an old skirt and shirtwaist on the top till so they would be ready for house cleaning and settling-in when we arrived at Margin. I held the skirt up to Marnie. It was too big and too long, but it would do with the help of a few strategic pins and by fastening the skirt up almost under her arms. Immediately, to my surprise and discomfort, Marnie skinned the nightgown off over her head in one motion and stood arrow-slim and straight, dressed only in that undergarment of hers. I glanced around quickly to see where Nils was and urged the skirt and blouse on Marnie. She glanced around too, puzzled, and slipped the clothing on, holding the skirt up on both sides. I showed her t
he buttons and hooks and eyes and, between the two of us and four pins, we got her put together.

  When Nils came to the dinner tarp, he was confronted by Marnie, all dressed, even to my clumping slippers.

  "Well!" he said, "a fine young lady we have! It's too bad we had to cut her hair."

  "We can pretend she's just recovering from typhoid," I said, smiling. But the light had gone out of Marnie's face as if she knew what we were saying. She ran her fingers through her short-cropped curls, her eyes on my heavy braids I let swing free, Indian-fashion, traveling as we were, alone and unobserved.

  "Don't you mind," I said, hugging her in one arm. "It'll grow again."

  She lifted one of my braids and looked at me. "Hair," I said.

  "Hair," she said and stretched out a curl from her own head. "Curl."

  What a wonderful feeling it was to top out on the flat above Margin and to know we were almost home. Home! As I wound my braids around my head in a more seemly fashion, I looked back at the boxes and bundles in the wagon. With these and very little else we must make a home out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, with Nils, it would suffice.

  The sound of our wheels down the grade into town brought out eager, curious people from the scattering of houses and scanty town buildings that made up Margin. Margin clung to the side of a hill-that is, it was in the rounded embrace of the hill on three sides. On the other side, hundreds and hundreds of miles of territory lost themselves finally in the remote blueness of distance. It was a place where you could breathe free and unhampered and yet still feel the protectiveness of the everlasting hills. We were escorted happily to our house at the other end of town by a growing crowd of people. Marnie had fallen silent and withdrawn again, her eyes wide and wondering, her hand clutching the edge of the seat with white-knuckled intensity as she tried to lose herself between Nils and me.

  Well, the first few days in a new place are always uncomfortable and confused. All the settling-in and the worry about whether Marnie would go floating off like a balloon or send something floating through the air as she had the bread combined to wear me to a frazzle. Fortunately Marnie was very shy of anyone but us, so painfully so that as soon as the gown was washed and clean again and we borrowed a cot, I put Marnie into both of them, and she lay in a sort of doze all day long, gone to some far place I couldn't even guess at.