'Yes.' His eyes were on the note. ''Miss Semper doesn't think so, though. I hate that scratchy wrapped-up music.' 'You sing?' 'No. I make music.' 'You mean you play an instrument?' He frowned a little impatiently. 'No. I make music with instruments.' 'Oh,' I said. 'There's a difference?' 'Yes.' He turned his head away. I had disappointed him or failed him in some way. 'Wait,' I said. ''I want to show you something.' I struggled to my feet. Oh, deftly and quickly enough under the circumstances, I suppose, but it seemed an endless aching effort in front of the Francher kid's eyes. But finally I was up and swinging in through the front door. When I got back with my key chain the kid was still staring at my empty chair, and I had to struggle back into it under his unwavering eyes. 'Can't you stand alone?' he asked, as though he had a right to. 'Very little, very briefly,' I answered, as though I owed him an answer. 'You don't walk without those braces.' 'I can't walk without those braces. Here.' I held out my key chain. There was a charm on it: a harmonica with four notes, so small that I had never managed to blow one by itself. The four together made a tiny breathy chord, like a small hesitant wind. He took the chain between his fingers and swung the charm back and forth, his head bent so that the sunlight flickered across its tousledness. The chain stilled. For a long moment there wasn't a sound. Then clearly, sharply, came the musical notes, one after another. There was a slight pause and then four notes poured their separateness together to make a clear sweet chord. 'You make music,' I said, barely audible. 'Yes.' He gave me back my key chain and stood up. 'I guess she's cooled down now. I'll go on back.' 'To work?' 'To work.' He smiled wryly. 'For a while anyway.' He started down the walk. 'What if I tell?' I called after him. 'I told once,' he called back over his shoulder. 'Try it if you want to.' I sat for a long time on the porch after he left. My fingers were closed over the harmonica as I watched the sun creep up my skirts and into my lap. Finally I turned Anna's envelope over. The seal was still secure. The end was jagged where I had torn it. The paper was opaque. I blew a tiny breathy chord on the harmonica. Then I shivered as cold crept across my shoulders. The chill was chased away by a tiny hot wave of excitement. So his mother could walk through the minds of others. So he knew what was in a sealed letter-or had he got his knowledge from Anna before the letter? So he could make music with harmonicas. So the Francher kid was . . . My hurried thoughts caught and came to a full stop. What was the Francher kid? After school that day Anna toiled up the four front steps and rested against the railing, half sitting and half leaning. 'I'm too tired to sit down,' she said. 'I'm wound up like a clock and I'm going to strike something pretty darned quick.' She half laughed and grimaced a little. 'Probably my laundry. I'm fresh out of clothes.' She caught a long ragged breath. 'You must have built a fire under that Francher kid. He came back and piled into his math book and did the whole week's assignments that he hadn't bothered with before. Did them in less than an hour, too. Makes me mad, though-' She grimaced again and pressed her hand to her chest. 'Darn that chalk dust anyway. Thanks a million for your assist. I wish I were optimistic enough to believe it would last.' She leaned and breathed, her eyes closing with the effort. 'Awful shortage of air around here.' Her hands fretted with her collar. 'Anyway the Francher kid said you'd substitute for me until my pneumonia is over.' She laughed, a little soundless laugh. 'He doesn't know that it's just chalk dust and that I'm never sick.' She buried her face in her two hands and burst into tears. 'I'm not sick, am I? It's only that darn Francher kid!' She was still blaming him when Mrs. Somanson came out and led her into her bedroom and when the doctor arrived to shake his head over her chest. So that's how it was that the first-floor first grade was hastily moved upstairs and the junior high was hastily moved downstairs and I once more found myself facing the challenge of a class, telling myself that the Francher kid needed no special knowledge to say that I'd substitute. After all I like Anna, I was the only substitute available, and besides, any slight-substitute's pay!-addition to the exchequer was most welcome. 'You can live on those monthly checks, but it's pleasant to have a couple of extra coins to clink together. By midmorning I knew a little of what Anna was sweating over. The Francher kid's absolutely dead-weight presence in the room was a drag on everything we did. Recitations paused, limped and halted when they came to him. Activities swirled around his inactivity, creating distracting eddies. It wasn't only a negative sort of nonparticipation on his part but an aggressively positive not-doingness. It wasn't just a hindrance but an active opposition, without any overt action for any sort of proof of his attitude. This, along with my disappointment in not having the same comfortable rapport with him that I'd had before, and the bone-weariness of having to be vertical all day instead of collapsing horizontally at intervals, and the strain of getting back into harness, cold, with a roomful of teeners and subteeners, had me worn down to a nubbin by early afternoon. So I fell back on the perennial refuge of harried teachers and opened a discussion of 'what I want to be when I grow up.' We had gone through the usual nurses and airplane hostesses and pilots and bridge builders and the usual unexpected ballet dancer and CPA (and he still can't add six and nine!) until the discussion frothed like a breaking wave against the Francher kid and stilled there. He was lounging down in his seat, his weight supported by the back of his neck and the remote end of his spine. The class sighed collectively though inaudibly and waited for his contribution. 'And you, Clement?' I prompted, shifting vainly, trying to ease the taut cry of aching muscles. 'An outlaw,' he said huskily, not bothering to straighten up. 'I'm going to keep a list and break every law there is-and get away with it, too.' 'Whatever for?' I asked, trying to reassure the .sick pang inside me. 'An outlaw is no use at all to society.' 'Who wants to be of use?' he asked. 'I'11 use society-and I can do it.' 'Perhaps,' I said, knowing full well it was so. 'But that's not the way to happiness.' 'Who's happy? The bad are unhappy because they are bad. The good are unhappy because they're afraid to be bad-' 'Clement,' I said gently, 'I think you are-' 'I think he's crazy,' said Rigo, his black eyes flashing. 'Don't pay him no never mind, Miss Carolle. He's a screwball. He's all the time saying crazy things.' I saw the heavy world globe on the top shelf of the bookcase behind Rigo shift and slide toward the edge. I saw it lift clear of the shelf and I cried out, 'Clement!' The whole class started at the loud urgency of my voice, the Francher kid included, and Rigo moved just far enough out of line that the falling globe missed him and cracked itself apart at his feet. Someone screamed and several gasped and a babble of voices broke out. I caught the Francher kid's eyes, and he flushed hotly and ducked his head. Then he straightened up proudly and defiantly returned my look. He wet his forefinger in his mouth and drew an invisible tally mark in the air before him. I shook my head at him, slowly, regretfully. What could I do with a child like this? Well, I had to do something, so I told him to stay in after school, though the kids wondered why. He slouched against the door, defiance in every awkward angle of his body and in the hooking of his thumbs into his front pockets. I let the parting noises fade and die, the last hurried clang of lunch pail, the last flurry of feet, the last reverberant slam of the outside door. The Francher kid shifted several times, easing the tension of his shoulders as he waited. Finally I said, 'Sit down.' 'No.' His word was flat and uncompromising. I looked at him, the gaunt young planes of his face, the unhappy mouth thinned to stubbornness, the eyes that blinded themselves with dogged defiance. I leaned across the desk, my hands clasped, and wondered what I could say. Argument would do no good. A kid of that age has an answer for everything. 'We all have violences,' I said, tightening my hands, 'but we can't always let them out. Think what a mess things would be if we did.' I smiled wryly into his unresponsive face. 'if we gave in to every violent impulse I'd
