by Gene Wolfe
“Used to have money you just handed around,” Nitty said.
“The emperors of China used lumps of silver stamped with an imperial seal,” Mr. Parker told him. “But by restricting money solely—in the final analysis—to entries kept by the Federal Reserve Bank, the entire cost of printing and coining is eliminated, and of course control for tax purposes is complete. While for identification retinal patterns are unsurpassed in every—”
Little Tib stopped listening. A train was coming. He could hear it far away, hear it go over a bridge somewhere, hear it coming closer. He felt around for his stick and got a good hold on it.
Then the train was louder, but the noise did not come as fast. He heard the whistle blow. Then Nitty was picking him up with one strong arm. There was a swoop and a jump and a swing, swing, swing, and they were on the train and Nitty set him down. “If you want to,” Nitty said, “you can sit here at the edge and hang your feet over. But you be careful.”
Little Tib was careful. “Where’s Mr. Parker?”
“Lying down in the back. He’s going to sleep—he sleeps a lot.”
“Can he hear us?”
“You like sitting like this? This is one of my most favorite of all things to do. I know you can’t see everything go by like I can, but I could tell you about it. You take right now. We are going up a long grade, with nothing but pinewoods on this side of the train. I bet you there is all kinds of animals in there. You like animals, George? Bears and big old cats.”
“Can he hear us?” Little Tib asked again.
“I don’t think so, because he usually goes to sleep right away. But it might be better to wait a little while, if you’ve got something you don’t want him to hear.”
“All right.”
“Now there’s one thing we’ve got to worry about. Sometimes there are railroad policemen on these trains. If someone is riding on them, they throw him off. I don’t think they’d throw a little boy like you off, but they would throw Mr. Parker and me off. You they would probably take back with them and give over to the real police in the next town.”
“They wouldn’t want me,” Little Tib said.
“How’s that?”
“Sometimes they take me, but they don’t know who I am. They always let me go again.”
“I guess maybe you’ve been gone from home longer than what I thought. How long since you left your mom and dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Must be some way of telling blind people. There’s lots of blind people.”
“The machine usually knows who blind people are. That’s what they say. But it doesn’t know me.”
“They take pictures of your retinas—you know about that?”
Little Tib said nothing.
“That’s the part inside your eye that sees the picture. If you think about your eye like it was a camera, you got a lens in the front, and then the film. Well, your retinas is the film. That’s what they take a picture of. I guess yours is gone. You know what it is you got wrong with your eyes?”
“I’m blind.”
“Yes, but you don’t know what it is, do you, baby. Wish you could look out there now—we’re going over a deep place, lots of trees and rocks and water way down below.”
“Can Mr. Parker hear us?” Little Tib asked again.
“Guess not. Looks like he’s asleep by now.”
“Who is he?”
“Like he told you. He’s the superintendent; only they don’t want him anymore.”
“Is he really crazy?”
“Sure. He’s a dangerous man too, when the fit comes on him. He got this little thing put into his head when he was superintendent to make him a better one—extra remembering and arithmetic, and things that would make him want to work more and do a good job. The school district paid for most of it; I don’t know what you call them, but there’s a lot of teenie little circuits in them.”
“Didn’t they take it out when he wasn’t superintendent anymore?”
“Sure, but his head was used to it by then, I guess. Child, do you feel well?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look so good. Kind of pale. I suppose it might just be that you washed off a lot of the dirt when I told you to wash that face. You think it could be that?”
“I feel all right.”
“Here, let me see if you’re hot.” Little Tib felt Nitty’s big, rough hand against his forehead. “You feel a bit hot to me.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Look there! You see that? There was a bear out there. A big old bear, black as could be.”
“Probably it was a dog.”
“You think I don’t know a bear? It stood up and waved at us.”
“Really, Nitty?”
“Well, not like a person would. It didn’t say bye-bye, or hi there. But it held up one big old arm.” Nitty’s hands lifted Little Tib’s right arm.
A strange voice, a lady’s voice, Little Tib thought, said, “Hello there yourself.” He heard the thump as somebody’s feet hit the floor of the boxcar, then another thump as somebody else’s did.
“Now wait a minute,” Nitty said. “Now you look here.”
“Don’t get excited,” another lady’s voice told him.
“Don’t you try to throw us off of this train. I got a little boy here, a little blind boy. He can’t jump off no train.”
Mr. Parker said, “What’s going on here, Nitty?”
“Railroad police, Mr. Parker. They’re going to make us jump off of this train.”
Little Tib could hear the scraping sounds Mr. Parker made when he stood up, and wondered whether Mr. Parker was a big man or a little man, and how old he was. He had a pretty good idea about Nitty, but Little Tib was not sure of Mr. Parker, though he thought Mr. Parker was pretty young. He decided he was also medium sized.
“Let me introduce myself,” Mr. Parker said. “As superintendent, I am in charge of the three schools in the Martinsburg area.”
“Hi,” one of the ladies said.
“You will begin with the lower grades, as all of our new teachers do. As you gain seniority, you may move up if you wish. What are your specialties?”
“Are you playing a game?”
Nitty said, “He didn’t quite understand—he just woke up. You woke him up.”
“Sure.”
“You going to throw us off the train?”
“How far are you going?”
“Just to Howard. Only that far. Now you listen, this little boy is blind, and sick too. We want to take him to the doctor at Howard—he ran away from home.”
Mr. Parker said, “I will not leave this school until I am ready. I am in charge of the entire district.”
“Mr. Parker isn’t exactly altogether well either,” Nitty told the women.
“What has he been using?”
“He’s just like that sometimes.”
“He sounds like he’s been shooting up on chalk.”
Little Tib asked, “What’s your name?”
“Say,” Nitty said, “that’s right. You know, I never did ask that. This little boy here is telling me I’m not polite.”
“I’m Alice,” one of the ladies said.
“Mickie,” said the other.
“And we don’t want to know your names,” Alice continued. “See, suppose someway they heard you were on the train—we’d have to say who you were.”
“And where you were going,” Mickie put in.
“Nice people like you—why do you want to be railroad police?”
Alice laughed. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? I’ve heard that one before.”
“Watch yourself, Alice,” Mickey said. “He’s trying to make out.”
Alice said, “What’d you three want to be ’boes for?”
“We didn’t. ’Cept maybe for this little boy here. He run away from home because the part of his eyes that they take pictures of is gone and his momma and daddy couldn’t get benefits. At l
east, that’s what I think. Is that right, George?”
Mr. Parker said, “I’ll introduce you to your classes in a moment.”
“Him and me used to be in the school,” Nitty continued. “Had good jobs there, or so we believed. Then one day that big computer downtown says, ‘Don’t need you no more,’ and out we goes.”
“You don’t have to talk funny for us,” Mickie said.
“Well, that’s a relief. I always do it a little, though, for Mr. Parker. It makes him feel better.”
“What was your job?”
“Buildings maintenance. I took care of the heating plant, and serviced the teaching and cleaning machines, and did the electrical repair work generally.”
“Nitty!” Little Tib called.
“I’m here, li’l boy. I won’t go ’way.”
“Well, we have to go,” Mickie said. “They’ll miss us pretty soon if we don’t get back to patrolling this train. You fellows remember you promised you’d get off at Howard. And try not to let anyone see you.”
Mr. Parker said, “You may rely on our cooperation.”
Little Tib could hear the sound of the women’s boots on the boxcar floor, and the little grunt Alice gave as she took hold of the ladder outside the door and swung herself out. Then there was a popping noise, as though someone had opened a bottle of soda, and a bang and clatter when something struck the back of the car.
His lungs and nose and mouth all burned. He felt a rush of saliva too great to contain. It spilled out of his lips and down his shirt; he wanted to run, and he thought of the old place, where the creek cut (cold as ice) under banks of milkweed and goldenrod. Nitty was yelling, “Throw it out! Throw it out!” And somebody, Little Tib thought it was Mr. Parker, ran full tilt into the side of the car. Little Tib was on the hill above the creek again, looking down across the blue-bonnets toward the surging, glass-dark water, and a kite-flying west wind was blowing.
He sat down again on the floor of the boxcar. Mr. Parker must not have been hurt too badly, because Little Tib could hear him moving around, as well as Nitty.
“You kick it out, Mr. Parker?” Nitty said. “That was good.”
“Must have been the boy. Nitty—”
“Yes, Mr. Parker.”
“We’re on a train. . . . The railroad police threw a gas bomb to get us off. Is that correct?”
“That’s true sure enough, Mr. Parker.”
“I had the strangest dream. I was standing in the center corridor of the Grovehurst school, with my back leaning against the lockers. I could feel them.”
“Yeah.”
“I was speaking to two new teachers—”
“I know.” Little Tib could feel Nitty’s fingers on his face, and Nitty’s voice whispered, “You all right?”
“—giving them the usual orientation talk. I heard something make a loud noise, like a rocket. I looked up then, and saw that one of the children had thrown a stink bomb—it was flying over my head, laying a trail of smoke. I went after it like I used to go after a ball when I was an outfielder in college, and I ran right into the wall.”
“You sure did. Your face looks pretty bad, Mr. Parker.”
“Hurts too. Look, there it is.”
“Sure enough. Nobody kick it out after all.”
“No. Here, feel it; it’s still warm. I suppose a chemical burns to generate the gas.”
“You want to feel, George? Here, you can hold it.”
Little Tib felt the warm metal cylinder pressed into his hands. There was a seam down the side, like a Coca-Cola can, and a funny-shaped thing on top.
Nitty said, “I wonder what happened to all the gas.”
“It blew out,” Mr. Parker told him.
“It shouldn’t of done that. They threw it good—got it right back in the back of the car. It shouldn’t blow out that fast, and those things go on making gas for a long time.”
“It must have been defective,” Mr. Parker said.
“Must have been.” There was no expression in Nitty’s voice.
Little Tib asked, “Did those ladies throw it?”
“Sure did. Came down here and talked to us real nice first, then to get up on top of the car and do something like that.”
“Nitty, I’m thirsty.”
“Sure you are. Feel of him, Mr. Parker. He’s hot.”
Mr. Parker’s hand was softer and smaller than Nitty’s. “Perhaps it was the gas.”
“He was hot before.”
“There’s no nurse’s office on this train, I’m afraid.”
“There’s a doctor in Howard. I thought to get him to Howard. . . .”
“We haven’t anything in our accounts now.”
Little Tib was tired. He lay down on the floor of the car, and heard the empty gas canister roll away, too tired to care.
“. . . a sick child . . . ,” Nitty said.
The boxcar rocked under Little Tib, and the wheels made a rhythmic roar like the rushing of blood in the heart of a giantess.
He was walking down a narrow dirt path. All the trees, on both sides of the path, had red leaves, and red grass grew around their roots. They had faces too, in their trunks, and talked to one another as he passed. Apples and cherries hung from their boughs.
The path twisted around little hills, all covered with the red trees. Cardinals hopped in the branches, and one fluttered to his shoulder. Little Tib was very happy; he told the cardinal, “I don’t want to go away—ever. I want to stay here, forever. Walking down this path.”
“You will, my son,” the cardinal said. It made the sign of the cross with one wing.
They went around a bend, and there was a tiny little house ahead, no bigger than the box a refrigerator comes in. It was painted with red and white stripes, and had a pointed roof. Little Tib did not like the look of it, but he took a step nearer.
A full-sized man came out of the little house. He was made all of copper, so he was coppery-red all over, like a new pipe for the bathroom. His body was round, and his head was round too, and they were joined by a real piece of bathroom pipe. He had a big mustache stamped right into the copper, and he was polishing himself with a rag. “Who are you?” he said.
Little Tib told him.
“I don’t know you,” the copper man said. “Come closer so I can recognize you.”
Little Tib came closer. Something was hammering, bam, bam, bam, in the hills behind the red and white house. He tried to see what it was, but there was a mist over them, as though it were early morning. “What is that noise?” he asked the copper man.
“That is the giant,” the copper man said. “Can’t . . . you . . . see . . . her?”
Little Tib said that he could not.
“Then . . . wind . . . my . . . talking key. . . . I’ll . . . tell . . . you . . .”
The copper man turned around, and Little Tib saw that there were three keyholes in his back. The middle one had a neat copper label beside it printed with the words TALKING ACTION.
“. . . about . . . her.”
There was a key with a beautiful handle hanging on a hook beside the hole. He took it and began to wind the copper man.
“That’s better,” the copper man said. “My words—thanks to your fine winding—will blow away the mists, and you’ll be able to see her. I can stop her, but if I don’t you’llbekilledthatsenough.”
As the copper man had said, the mists were lifting. Some, however, did not seem to blow away—they were not mists at all, but a mountain. The mountain moved, and was not a mountain at all, but a big woman wreathed in mist, twice as high as the hills around her. She was holding a broom, and while Little Tib watched, a rat as big as a railroad train ran out of a cave in one of the hills. Bam, the woman struck at it with her broom, but it ran into another cave. In a moment it ran out again. Bam! The woman was Little Tib’s mother, but he sensed that she would not know him—that she was cut off from him in some way by the mists, and the need to strike at the rat.
“That’s my mother,”
he told the copper man. “And that rat was in our kitchen in the new place. But she didn’t keep hitting at it and hitting at it like that.”
“She is only hitting at it once,” the copper man said, “but that once is over and over again. That’s why she always misses it. But if you try to go any farther down this path, her broom will kill you and sweep you away. Unless I stop it.”
“I could run between the swings,” Little Tib said. He could have too.
“The broom is bigger than you think,” the copper man told him. “And you can’t see it as well as you think you can.”
“I want you to stop her,” Little Tib said. He was sure he could run between the blows of the broom, but he was sorry for his mother, who had to hit at the rat all the time, and never rest.
“Then you must let me look at you.”
“Go ahead,” Little Tib said.
“You have to wind my motion key.”
The lowest keyhole was labeled MOVING ACTION. It was the largest of all. There was a big key hanging beside it, and Little Tib used it to wind the moving action, hearing a heavy pawl clack inside the copper man each time he turned the key. “That’s enough,” the copper man said. Little Tib replaced the key, and the copper man turned around.
“Now I must look into your eyes,” he said. His own eyes were stampings in the copper, but Little Tib knew that he could see out of them. He put his hands on Little Tib’s face, one on each side. They were harder even than Nitty’s, but smaller too, and very cold. Little Tib saw his eyes coming closer and closer.
Little Tib saw his own eyes reflected in the copper man’s face as if they were in a mirror, and they had little flames in them like the flames of two candles in church, and the flames were going out. The copper man moved his face closer and closer to his own. It got darker and darker. Little Tib said, “Don’t you know me?”
“You have to wind my thinking key,” the copper man said.
Little Tib reached behind him, stretching his arms as far as they would go around the copper body. His fingers found the smallest hole of all, and a little hook beside it; but there was no key.
A baby was crying. There were medicine smells, and a strange woman’s voice said, “There, there.” Her hands touched his cheeks, the hard, cold hands of the copper man. Little Tib remembered that he could not really see at all, not anymore.