Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  Father turned from the table, his whole body drooping. “It never even breathed, Rachel. It’s perfectly formed, but it never breathed at all.”

  Mama stared up at the roof of the cabin. “The clothes are in the trunk,” she said quietly, “and a pink blanket.”

  And Father sent me out to find a burying place.

  The light went out of our house. We went the weary round of things that had to be done to keep living and even Merry stood quietly, her hands on the top board of her porch-pen, her wide eyes barely overtopping it, and stared out at the hillside for long stretches of time. And Father, who had always been an unmoved mainstay no matter what happened, was broken, silent and uncommunicating.

  We seldom mentioned the baby. We had buried my hoped—for little brother up on the hill under a scrub oak. When Mama was well enough, we all went up there and read the service for the dead, but no one cried as we stood around the tiny, powdery-dry, naked little grave. Timothy held Mama’s hand all the way up there and all the way back. And Mama half smiled at him when we got back to the house.

  Father said quietly, as he laid down the prayer book, “Why must he hang onto you?” Mama and I were startled at his tone of voice.

  “But, James,” Mama protested. “He’s blind!”

  “How many things has he bumped into since he’s been up and around?” asked Father. “How often has he spilled food or groped for a chair?” He turned a bitter face toward Timothy. “And hanging onto you, he doesn’t have to see—” Father broke off and turned to the window.

  “James,” Mama went to him quickly, “don’t make Timothy a whipping boy for your sorrow. God gave him into our keeping. ‘The Lord giveth—’ ”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel.” Father gathered Mama closely with one arm. “This ‘taking away’ period is bad. Not only the baby—”

  “I know,” said Mama. “But when Timothy touches me, the sorrow is lessened and I can feel the joy—”

  “Joy!” Father spun Mama away from his shoulder. I shook for the seldom seen anger in his face.

  “James!” said Mama. “ ‘Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.’ Let Timothy touch your hand—”

  Father left the house without a glance at any of us. He gathered up Merry from the porch-pen and trudged away through the dying orchard.

  That night, while Mama was reading, I got up to get Timothy a drink.

  “You’re interrupting your mother,” said Father quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Timothy is thirsty.”

  “Sit down,” said Father ominously. I sat.

  When our evening was finished, I asked, “May I get him a drink now?”

  Father slowly sat down again at the table. “How do you know he wants a drink?” he asked.

  “I—I just know,” I stumbled, watching Timmy leave the table. “It comes into my mind.”

  “Comes into your mind.” Father seemed to lay the words out on the table in front of him and look at them. After a silence he said, “How does it come into your mind? Does it say, Timothy is thirsty—he wants a drink?”

  “No,” I said, unhappily, looking at Father’s lamplight-flooded face, wondering if he was, for the first time in my life, ridiculing me. “There aren’t any words. Only a feeling—only a knowing that he’s thirsty.”

  “And you.” His face shadowed as he turned it to look at Mama. “When he touches your hand, are there words—Joy, have joy?”

  “No,” said Mama. “Only the feeling that God is over all and that sorrow is a shadow and that—that the baby was called back into the Presence.”

  Father turned back to me. “If Timothy can make you know he is thirsty, he can tell you he is. You are not to give him a drink until he asks for it.”

  “But, Father! He can’t talk!” I protested.

  “He has a voice,” said Father. “He hasn’t talked since he became conscious after the fire, but he said some words before then. Not our words, but words. If he can be blind and still not stumble, if he can comfort a bereaved mother by the touch of the hand, if he can make you know he’s thirsty, he can talk.”

  I didn’t argue. You don’t with Father. They started getting ready for bed. I went to Timothy and sat beside him on the cot. He didn’t put out his hand for the cup of water he wanted. He knew I didn’t have it.

  “You have to ask for it,” I told him. “You have to say you’re thirsty.” His blind face turned to me and two of his fingers touched my wrist. I suddenly realized that this was something he often did lately. Maybe being blind he could hear better by touching me. I felt the thought was foolish before I finished it. But I said again, “You have to ask for it. You must tell me, ‘I’m thirsty. I want a drink, please.’ You must talk.”

  Timothy turned from me and lay down on the cot. Mama sighed sharply. Father blew out the lamp, leaving me in the dark to spread my pallet on the floor and go to bed.

  The next morning we were all up before sunrise. Father had all our good barrels loaded on the hayrack and was going to Tolliver’s Wells for water. He and Mama counted out our small supply of cash with tight lips and few words. In times like these water was gold. And what would we do when we had no more money?

  We prayed together before Father left, and the house felt shadowy and empty with him gone. We pushed our breakfasts around our plates and then put them away for lunch.

  What is there to do on a ranch that is almost dead? I took Pilgrim’s Progress to the corner of the front porch and sat with it on my lap and stared across the yard without seeing anything, sinking into my own Slough of Despond. I took a deep breath and roused a little as Timothy came out onto the porch. He had a cup in his hand.

  “I’m thirsty,” he said slowly but distinctly. “I want a drink, please.”

  I scrambled awkwardly to my feet and took the cup from him. Mama came to the door. “What did you say, Barney?”

  “I didn’t say anything,” I said, my grin almost splitting my face. “Timmy did!” We went into the house and I dipped a cup of water for Timmy.

  “Thank you,” he said and drank it all. Then he put the cup down by the bucket and went back to the porch.

  “He could have got the drink himself,” Mama said wonderingly. “He can find his way around. And yet he waited, thirsty, until he could ask you for it.”

  “I guess he knows he has to mind Father, too!” I laughed shakily.

  It was a two days’ round trip to Tolliver’s Wells and the first day stretched out endlessly. In the heat of noon, I slept, heavily and unrepfreshingly. I woke, drenched with sweat, my tongue swollen and dry from sleeping with my mouth open. I sat up, my head swimming and my heart thumping audibly in my ears. Merry and Mama were still sleeping on the big bed, a mosquito bar over them to keep the flies off. I wallowed my dry tongue and swallowed. Then I staggered up from my pallet. Where was Timothy?

  Maybe he had gone to the Little House by himself. I looked out the window. He wasn’t in sight and the door swung half open. I waited a minute but he didn’t come out. Where was Timothy?

  I stumbled out onto the front porch and looked around. No Timothy. I started for the barn, rounding the corner of the house, and there he was! He was sitting on the ground, half in the sun, half in the shade of the house. He had the cup in one hand and the fingers of the other hand were splashing in the water. His blind face was intent.

  “Timmy!” I cried, and he looked up with a start, water slopping. “Daggone! You had me scared stiff! What are you doing with that water?” I slid to a seat beside him. His two wet fingers touched my wrist without fumbling for it. “We don’t have enough water to play with it!”

  He turned his face down toward the cup, then, turning, he poured the water carefully at the bottom of the last geranium left alive of all Mama had taken such tender care of.

  Then, with my help, he got to his feet and because I could tell what he wanted and because he said, “Walk!” we walked. In all that sun and dust we walked. He led me. I only went along for th
e exercise and to steer him clear of cactus and holes in the way. Back and forth we went, back and forth. To the hill in front of the house, back to the house. To the hill again, a little farther along. Back to the yard, missing the house about ten feet. Finally, halfway through the weary monotony of the afternoon, I realized that Timmy was covering a wide area of land in ten-foot swaths, back and forth, farther and farther from the house.

  By evening we were both exhausted and only one of Timmy’s feet was even trying to touch the ground. The other one didn’t bother to try to step. Finally Timmy said, “I’m thirsty. I want a drink, please.” And we went back to the house.

  Next morning I woke to see Timmy paddling in another cup of water, and all morning we covered the area on the other side of the house, back and forth, back and forth.

  “What are you doing?” Mama had asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s Timmy’s idea.” And Timmy said nothing.

  When the shadows got short under the bushes, we went back to the porch and sat down on the steps, Merry gurgling at us from her porch-pen.

  “I’m thirsty. I want a drink, please,” said Timmy again, and I brought him his drink. “Thank you,” he said, touching my wrist. “It’s sure hot!”

  “It sure is!” I answered, startled by his new phrase. He drank slowly and poured the last drop into his palm. He put the tin cup down on the porch by him and worked the fingers and thumb of his other hand in the dampness of his palm, his face intent and listening—like under his bandaged eyes.

  Then his fingers were quiet and his face turned toward Merry. He got up and took the two steps to the porch-pen. He reached for Merry, his face turned to me. I moved closer and he touched my wrist. I lifted Merry out of the pen and put her on the porch. I lifted the pen, which was just a hollow square of wooden rails fastened together, and set it up on the porch, too.

  Timmy sat down slowly on the spot where the pen had been. He scraped the dirt into a heap, then set it to one side and scraped again. Seeing that he was absorbed for a while, I took Merry in to be cleaned up for dinner and came back later to see what Timmy was doing. He was still scraping and had quite a hole by now, but the dirt was stacked too close so that it kept sliding back into the hole. I scraped it all away from the edge, then took his right arm and said, “Time to eat, Timmy. Come on.”

  He ate and went back to the hole he had started. Seeing that he meant to go on digging, I gave him a big old spoon Merry sometimes played with and a knife with a broken blade, to save his hands.

  All afternoon he dug with the tools and scooped the dirt out. And dug again. By evening he had enlarged the hole until he was sitting in it, shoulder deep.

  Mama stood on the porch, sagging under the weight of Merry, who was astride her hip, and said, “He’s ruining the front lawn.” Then she laughed. “Front lawn! Ruining it!” And she laughed again, just this side of tears.

  Later that evening, when what cooling-off ever came was coming over the ranch, we heard the jingle of harness and then the creak of the hayrack and the plop of horses’ hooves in the dust.

  Father was home! We ran to meet him at our gate, suddenly conscious of how out-of-step everything had been without him. I opened the gate and dragged the four strands wide to let the wagon through.

  Father’s face was dust-coated and the dust did not crease into smiles for us. His hugs were almost desperate. I looked into the back of the wagon, as he and Mama murmured together. Only half the barrels were filled.

  “Didn’t we have enough money?” I asked, wondering how people could insist on hard metal in exchange for life.

  “They didn’t have water enough,” said Father. “Others were waiting, too. This is the last they can let us have.”

  We took care of the horses but left the water barrels on the wagon. That was as good a place as any and the shelter of the barn would keep it—well, not cool maybe, but below the boiling point.

  It wasn’t until we started back to the house that we thought of Timmy. We saw a head rising from the hole Timmy was digging, and Father drew back his foot to keep it from being covered with a handful of dirt.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, letting his tiredness and discouragement sharpen his voice.

  “Timmy’s digging,” I said, stating the obvious, which was all I could do.

  “Can’t he find a better place than that?” And Father stomped into the house. I called Timmy and helped him up out of the hole. He was dirt-covered from head to heels and Father was almost through with his supper before I got Timmy cleaned up enough to come inside.

  We sat around the table, not even reading, and talked. Timmy sat close to me, his fingers on my wrist.

  “Maybe the ponds will fill a little while we’re using up this water,” said Mama, hopelessly.

  Father was silent and I stared at the table, seeing the buckets of water Prince and Nig had sucked up so quickly that evening.

  “We’d better be deciding where to go,” said Father. “When the water’s all gone—” His face shut down, bleak and still, and he opened the Bible at random, missing our marker by half the book. He looked down and read, “ ‘For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.’ ” He clapped the book shut and sat, his elbows on each side of the book, his face buried in his two hands, this last rubbing of salt in the wound almost too much to bear.

  I touched Timmy and we crept to bed.

  I woke in the night, hearing a noise. My hand went up to the cot and I struggled upright. Timmy was gone. I scrambled to the door and looked out. Timmy was in the hole, digging. At least I guess he was. There was a scraping sound for a while, then a—a wad of dirt would sail slowly up out of the hole and fall far enough from the edge that it couldn’t run down in again. I watched the dirt sail up twice more, then there was a clatter and three big rocks sailed up. They hovered a little above the mound of dirt, then thumped down—one of them on my bare foot.

  I was hopping around, nursing my foot in my hands, when I looked up and saw Father standing stern and tall on the porch.

  “What’s going on?” He repeated his earlier question. The sound of digging below stopped. So did my breath for a moment.

  “Timmy’s digging,” I said, as I had before.

  “At night? What for?” Father asked.

  “He can’t see, night or light,” I said, “but I don’t know why he’s digging.”

  “Get him out of there,” said Father. “This is no time for nonsense.”

  I went to the edge of the hole. Timmy’s face was a pale blur below. “He’s too far down,” I said. “I’ll need a ladder.”

  “He got down there,” said Father unreasonably, “let him get out!”

  “Timmy!” I called down to him. “Father says come up!”

  There was a hesitating scuffle, then Timmy came up! Straight up! As though something were lifting him! He came straight up out of the hole and hovered as the rocks had, then he moved through the air and landed on the porch so close to Father that he stumbled back a couple of steps.

  “Father!” My voice shook with terror.

  Father turned and went into the house. He lighted the lamp, the up flare of the flame before he put the chimney on showing the deep furrows down his cheeks. I prodded Timmy and we sat on the bench across the table from Father.

  “Why is he digging?” Father asked again. “Since he responds to you, ask him.”

  I reached out, half afraid, and touched Timmy’s wrist. “Why are you digging?” I asked. “Father wants to know.”

  Timmy’s mouth moved and he seemed to be trying different words with his lips. Then he smiled, the first truly smile I’d ever seen on his face. “ ‘Shall waters break out and streams in the desert,’ ” he said happily.

  “That’s no answer!” Father exclaimed, stung by having those unfitting words flung back at him. “No more digging. Tell him so.”

  I felt Timmy’s wrist throb protestingly and his face turned to me, troubled.

  �
�Why no digging? What harm’s he doing?” My voice sounded strange in my own ears and the pit of my stomach was ice. For the first time in my life I was standing up to Father! That didn’t shake me as much as the fact that for the first time in my life I was seriously questioning his judgment.

  “No digging because I said no digging!” said Father, anger whitening his face, his fists clenching on the table.

  “Father,” I swallowed with difficulty, “I think Timmy’s looking for water. He—he touched water before he started digging. He felt it. We—we went all over the place before he settled on where he’s digging. Father, what if he’s a—a dowser? What if he knows where water is? He’s different—”

  I was afraid to look at Father. I kept my eyes on my own hand where Timmy’s fingers rested on my wrist.

  “Maybe if we helped him dig—” I faltered and stopped, seeing the stones come up and hover and fall. “He has only Merry’s spoon and an old knife.”

  “And he dug that deep!” thundered Father.

  “Yes,” I said. “All by himself.”

  “Nonsense!” Father’s voice was flat. “There’s no water anywhere around here. You saw me digging for water for the stock. We’re not in Las Lomitas. There will be no more digging.”

  “Why not!” I was standing now, my own fists on the table as I leaned forward. I could feel my eyes blaze as Father’s do sometimes. “What harm is he doing? What’s wrong with his keeping busy while we sit around waiting to dry up and blow away? What’s wrong with hoping?”

  Father and I glared at each other until his eyes dropped. Then mine filled with tears and I dropped back on the bench and buried my face in my arms. I cried as if I were no older than Merry. My chest was heavy with sorrow for this first real anger I had ever felt toward Father, with the shouting and the glaring, and especially for his eyes falling before mine.

  Then I felt his hand heavy on my shoulder. He had circled the table to me. “Go to bed now,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow is another day.”

  “Oh, Father!” I turned and clung to his waist, my face tight against him, his hand on my head. Then I got up and took Timmy back to the cot and we went to bed again.