Hush!

HUSH!
by

Zenna Henderson
June sighed and brushed her hair back from her eyes automatically as she marked her place in her geometry book with one finger and looked through the dining-room door at Dubby lying on the front-room couch.
“Dubby, please ,” she pleaded. “You promised your mother that you’d be quiet tonight. How can you get over your cold if you bounce around making so much noise?”
Dubby’s fever-bright eyes peered from behind his tented knees where he was holding a tin-truck which he hammered with a toy guitar.
“I am quiet, June. It’s the truck that made the noise. See?” And he banged on it again. The guitar splintered explosively and Dubby blinked in surprise. He was wavering between tears at the destruction and pleased laughter for the awful noise it made. Before he could decide, he began to cough, a deep-chested pounding cough that shook his small body unmercifully.
“That’s just about enough out of you, Dubby,” said June firmly, clearing the couch of toys and twitching the covers straight with a practiced hand. “You have to go to your room in just fifteen minutes anyway – or right now if you don’t settle down. Your mother will be calling at seven to see if you’re okay. I don’t want to have to tell her you’re worse because you wouldn’t be good. Now read your book and keep quiet. I’ve got work to do.”
There was a brief silence broken by Dubby’s sniffling and June’s scurrying pencil. Then Dubby began to chant:
‘Shrimp boatses running a dancer tonight
Shrimp boatses running a dancer tonight
Shrimpboatses running a dancer tonight
SHRIMP BOATses RUNning a DANcer tonight –’
“Dub-by!” called June, frowning over her paper at him.
“That’s not noise,” protested Dubby. “It’s singing. Shrimp boatses –” The cough caught him in mid-phrase and June busied herself providing Kleenexes and comfort until the spasm spent itself.
“See?” she said. “Your cough thinks it’s a noise.”
“Well, what can I do then?” fretted Dubby, bored by four days in bed and worn out by the racking cough that still shook him. “I can’t sing and I can’t play. I want something to do.”
“Well,” June searched the fertile pigeonholes of her babysitter’s repertoire and came up with an idea that Dubby had once originated himself and dearly loved.
“Why not play-like? Play-like a zoo. I think a green giraffe with a mop of a tail and roller skates for feet would be nice, don’t you?”
Dubby considered the suggestion solemnly. “If he had egg beaters for ears,” he said, overly conscious as always of ears, because of the trouble he so often had with his own.
“Of course he does,” said June. “Now you play-like one.”
“Mine’s a lion,” said Dubby, after mock consideration. “Only he has a flag for a tail – a pirate flag – and he wears yellow pyjamas and airplane wings sticking out of his back and his ears turn like propellers.”
“That’s a good one,” applauded June. “Now mine is an eagle with rainbow wings and roses growing around his neck. And the only thing he ever eats is the song of birds, but the birds are scared of him and so he’s hungry nearly all the time – pore ol’ iggle!”
Dubby giggled. “Play-like some more,” he said, settling back against the pillows.
“No, it’s your turn. Why don’t you play-like by yourself now? I’ve just got to get my geometry done.”
Dubby’s face shadowed and then he grinned. “Okay.”
June went back to the table, thankful that Dubby was a nice kid and not like some of the brats she had met in her time. She twined both legs around the legs of her chair, running both hands up through her hair. She paused before tackling the next problem to glance in at Dubby. A worry nudged at her heart as she saw how pale and fine- drawn his features were. It seemed, every time she came over, he was more nearly transparent.
She shivered a little as she remembered her mother saying, “Poor child. He’ll never have to worry about old age. Have you noticed his eyes, June? He has wisdom in them now that no child should have. He has looked too often into the Valley.”
June sighed and turned to her work.
The heating system hummed softly and the out-of-joint day settled into a comfortable accustomed evening.
Mrs. Warren rarely ever left Dubby because he was ill so much of the time, and she practically never left him until he was settled for the night. But today when June got home from school, her mother had told her to call Mrs. Warren.
“Oh, June,” Mrs. Warren had appealed over the phone, “could you possibly come over right now?”
“Now?” asked June, dismayed, thinking of her hair and nails she’d planned to do, and the tentative date with Larry-anne to hear her new album.
“I hate to ask it,” said Mrs. Warren. “I have no patience with people who make last minute arrangements, but Mr. Warren’s mother is very ill again and we just have to go over to her house. We wouldn’t trust Dubby with anyone but you. He’s got that nasty bronchitis again, so we can’t take him with us. I’ll get home as soon as I can, even if Orin has to stay. He’s home from work right now, waiting for me. So please come, June!”
“Well,” June melted to the tears in Mrs. Warren’s voice. She could let her hair and nails and album go and she could get her geometry done at the Warren’s place. “Well, okay. I’ll be right over.”
“Oh, bless you, child,” cried Mrs. Warren. Her voice faded away from the phone. “Orin, she’s coming –” and the receiver clicked.
“June!” He must have called several times before June began to swim back up through the gloomy haze of the new theorem.
“Joo-un!” Dubby’s plaintive voice reached down to her and she sighed in exasperation. She had nearly figured out how to work the problem.
“Yes, Dubby.” The exaggerated patience in her voice signalled her displeasure to him.
“Well,” he faltered, “I don’t want to play-like something anymore. I’ve used up all my thinkings. Can I make something now? Something for true?”
“Without getting off the couch?” asked June cautiously, wise from past experience.
“Yes,” grinned Dubby.
“Without my to-ing and fro-ing to bring you stuff?” she questioned, still wary.
“Uh-huh,” giggled Dubby.
“What can you make for true without anything to make it with?” June asked sceptically.
Dubby laughed. “I just thought it up.” Then all in one breath, unable to restrain his delight: “It’s-really- kinda-like-play-like, but-I’m-going-to-make-something-that-isn’t-like-anything-real-so it’ll-be-for-true, cause-it- won’t-be-play-like-anything-that’s-real!”
“Huh? Say that again,” June challenged. “I bet you can’t do it.”
Dubby was squirming with excitement. He coughed tentatively, found it wasn’t a prelude to a full production and said: “I can’t say it again, but I can do it, I betcha. Last time I was sick, I made up some new magic words. They’re real good. I betcha they’ll work real good like anything.”
“Okay, go ahead and make something,” said June. “Just so it’s quiet.”
“Oh, it’s real quiet,” said Dubby in a hushed voice. “Exter quiet. I’m going to make a Noise-eater.”
“A Noise-eater?”