Still my mind was only nibbling at what had happened and showed no inclination to set its teeth into any sort of explanation. I awakened with a start to find the moonlight gone, my arms asleep and my prayers unsaid. Tucked in bed and ringed about with the familiar comfort of my prayers, I slid away from awareness into sleep, following the dance and gleam of a harmonica that cried in the moonlight. Morning sunlight slid across the boardinghouse breakfast table, casting alpine shadows behind the spilled corn flakes that lay beyond the sugar bowl. I squinted against the brightness and felt aggrieved that anything should be alive and active and so-so-hopeful so early in the morning. I leaned on my elbows over my coffee cup and contemplated a mood as black as the coffee. '… Francher kid.' I rotated my head upward on the axis of my two supporting hands, my interest caught. 'Last night,' I half remembered, 'last night-' 'I give up.' Anna Semper put a third spoonful of sugar in her coffee and stirred morosely. ''Every child has a something-I mean there's some way to reach every child-all but the Francher kid. I can't reach him at all. If he'd even be aggressive or actively mean or actively anything, maybe I could do something, but he just sits there being a vegetable. And then I get so spittin' mad when he finally does do something, just enough to keep him from flunking, that I could bust a gusset. I can't abide a child who can and won't.' She frowned darkly and added two more spoonfuls of sugar to her coffee. ''I'd rather have an eager moron than a won't-do genius!' She tasted the coffee and grimaced. 'Can't even get a decent cup of coffee to arm me for my struggle with the little monster.' I laughed. 'Five spoonfuls of sugar would spoil almost anything. And don't give up hope. Have you tried music? Remember, 'Music hath charms-'' Anna reddened to the tips of her ears. I couldn't tell if it was anger or embarrassment. 'Music!' Her spoon clished against her saucer sharply. She groped for words. 'This is ridiculous, but I have had to send that Francher kid out of the room during music appreciation.' 'Out of the room? Why ever for? I thought he was a vegetable.' Anna reddened still further. 'He is,' she said stubbornly, 'but-' She fumbled with her spoon, then burst forth, 'But sometimes the record player won't work when he's in the room.' I put my cup down slowly. 'Oh, come now! This coffee is awfully strong, I'll admit, but it's not that strong.' 'No, really!' Anna twisted her spoon between her two hands. 'When he's in the room that darned player goes too fast or too slow or even backwards. I swear it. And one time-' Anna looked around furtively and lowered her voice, 'one time it played a whole record and it wasn't even plugged in!' 'You ought to patent that! That'd be a real money-maker.' 'Go on, laugh!' Anna gulped coffee again and grimaced. 'I'm beginning to believe in poltergeists-you know, the kind that are supposed to work through or because of adolescent kids. If you had that kid to deal with in class-' 'Yes.' I fingered my cold toast. 'If only I did.' And for a minute I hated Anna fiercely for the sympathy on her open face and for the studied not-looking at my leaning crutches. She opened her mouth, closed it, then leaned across the table. 'Polio?' she blurted, reddening. 'No,' I said. 'Car wreck.' 'Oh.' She hesitated. 'Well, maybe someday-' 'No,' I said. 'No.' Denying the faint possibility that was just enough to keep me nagged out of resignation. 'Oh,' she said. 'How long ago?' 'How long?' For a minute I was suspended in wonder at the distortion of time. How long? Recent enough to he a shock each time of immobility when I expected motion. Long enough ago that eternity was between me and the last time I moved unthinkingly. 'Almost a year,' I said, my memory aching to this time last year I could… 'You were a teacher?' Anna gave her watch a quick appraising look. 'Yes.' I didn't automatically verify the time. The immediacy of watches had died for me. Then I smiled. ''That's why I can sympathize with you about the Francher kid. I've had them before.' 'There's always one,' Anna sighed, getting up. 'Well, it's time for my pilgrimage up the hill. I'll see you.' And the swinging door to the hall repeated her departure again and again with diminishing enthusiasm. I struggled to my feet and swung myself to the window. 'Hey!' I shouted. She turned at the gate, peering back as she rested her load of workbooks on the gatepost. 'Yes?' 'If he gives you too much trouble send him over here with a note for me. It'll take him off your hands for a while at least.' 'Hey, that's an idea. Thanks. That's swell! Straighten your halo!' And she waved an elbow at me as she disappeared beyond the box elder outside the gate. I didn't think she would, but she did. It was only a couple of days later that I looked up from my book at the creak of the old gate. The heavy old gear that served as a weight to pull it shut thudded dully behind the Francher kid. He walked up the porch steps under my close scrutiny with none of the hesitant embarrassment that most people would feel. He mounted the three steps and wordlessly handed me an envelope. I opened it. It said: 'Dust off your halo! I've reached the !! stage. Wouldn't you like to keep him permanent-like?' 'Won't you sit down?' I gestured to the porch swing, wondering how I was going to handle this deal. He looked at the swing and sank down on the top porch step. 'What's your name?' He looked at me incuriously. 'Francher.' His voice was husky and unused-sounding. 'Is that your first name?' 'That's my name.' 'What's your other name?' I asked patiently, falling into a first-grade dialogue in spite of his age. 'They put down Clement.' 'Clement Francher. A good-sounding name, but what do they call you?' His eyebrows slanted subtly upward, and a tiny bitter smile lifted the corners of his mouth. 'With their eyes-juvenile delinquent, lazy trash, no-good off-scouring, potential criminal, burden-' I winced away from the icy malice of his voice. 'But mostly they call me a whole sentence, like-'Well, what can you expect from a background like that?' ' His knuckles were white against his faded Levi's. Then as I watched them the color crept back and, without visible relaxation, the tension was gone. But his eyes were the eyes of a boy too big to cry and too young for any other comfort. 'What is your background?' I asked quietly, as though I had the right to ask. He answered as simply as though he owed me an answer. 'We were with the carnival. We went to all the fairs around the country. Mother-' his words nearly died, 'Mother had a mind-reading act. She was good. She was better than anyone knew-better than she wanted to be. It hurt and scared her sometimes to walk through people's minds. Sometimes she would come back to the trailer and cry and cry and take a long long shower and wash herself until her hands were all water-soaked and her hair hung in dripping strings. They curled at the end. She couldn't get all the fear and hate and-and tired dirt off even that way. Only if she could find a Good to read, or a dark church with tall candles.' 'And where is she now?' I asked, holding a small warm picture in my mind of narrow fragile shoulders, thin and defenseless under a flimsy moist robe, with one wet strand of hair dampening one shoulder of it. 'Gone.' His eyes were over my head but empty of the vision of the weatherworn siding of the house. 'She died. Three years ago. This is a foster home. To try to make a decent citizen of me.' There was no inflection in his words. They lay as flat as paper between us in our silence. 'You like music,' I said, curling Anna's note around my forefinger, remembering what I had seen the other night.
