Pilgrimage

'Yes, but they didn't want to believe me. It was too tame. And of course Mrs. McVey didn't like being pushed out on a limb about the Francher kid's clothes. Her delicate hint about the high cost of clothes didn't impress Mrs. Holmes much, not with her six boys. I guess I've got me an enemy for life. She got a good-sized look at herself through my eyes and she didn't like it at all, but I'll bet the Francher kid won't turned up Levied for a dance again.'
'Heaven send he'll never do anything worse,' Anna intoned piously.
That's what I hoped fervently for a while, but lightning hit Willow Creek anyway, a subtle slow lightning-a calculated, coldly angry lightning. I held my breath as report after report came in. The Turbows' old shed exploded without a sound on the stroke of nine o'clock Tuesday night and scattered
itself like kindling wood over the whole barnyard. Of course the Turbows had talked for years of tearing the shaky old thing down but-I began to wonder how you went about bailing a juvenile out of the clink.
Then the last sound timber on the old railroad bridge below the Thurmans' house shuddered and dissolved loudly into sawdust at eleven o'clock Tuesday night. The rails, deprived of their support, trembled briefly, then curled tightly up into two absurd rosettes. The bridge being gone meant an hour's brisk walk to town for the Thurmans instead of a fifteen-minute stroll. It also meant safety for the toddlers too young to understand why the rotting timbers weren't a wonderful kind of jungle gym.
Wednesday evening at five all the water in the Holmeses' pond geysered up and crashed down again, pureeing what few catfish were still left in it and breaking a spillway over into the creek, thereby draining the stagnant old mosquito-bearing spot with a conclusive slurp. As the neighbors had nagged at the Holmeses to do for years-but . . .
I was awestruck at this simple literal translation of my words and searched my memory with wary apprehensiveness. I could almost have relaxed by now if I could have drawn a line through the last two names on my mental roll of the club.
But Thursday night there was a crash and a roar and I huddled in my bed praying a wordless prayer against I didn't know what, and Friday morning I listened to the shrill wide-eyed recitals at the breakfast table.
'… since the devil was an imp and now there it is . . .'
'… right in the middle, big as life and twice as natural…'
'What is?' I asked, braving the battery of eyes that pinned me like a moth in a covey of searchlights.
There was a stir around the table. Everyone was aching to speak, but there's always a certain rough protocol to be observed, even in a boardinghouse.
Ol' Hank cleared his throat, took a huge mouthful of coffee and sloshed it thoughtfully and noisily around his teeth before swallowing it.
'Balance Rock,' he choked, spraying his vicinity finely, 'came plumb unbalanced last night. Came a-crashing down, bouncing like a dang ping-pong ball an'nen it hopped over half a dozen fences an'nen whammo! it lit on a couple of the Scudders' pigs an'nen tore out a section of the Lelands' stone fence and now it's settin there in the middle of their alfalfa field as big as a house. He'll have a helk of a time mowing that field now.' He slurped largely of his coffee.
'Strange things going on around here.' Blue Nor's porchy eyebrows rose and felt portentously. 'Never heard of a balance rock falling before. And all them other funny things. The devil's walking our land sure enough!'
I left on the wave of violent argument between proponents of the devil theory and the atom-bomb testing theory as the prime cause. Now I could draw another line through the list. But what of the last name? What of it?
That afternoon the Francher kid materialized on the bottom step at the boardinghouse, his eyes intent on my braces. We sat there in silence for a while, mostly I suppose because I could think of nothing rational to say. Finally I decided to be irrational.
'What about Mrs. McVey?'
He shrugged. 'She feeds me.'
'And what's with the Scudders' pigs?'
Color rose blotchily to his cheeks. 'I goofed. I was aiming for the fence and let it go too soon.'
'I told all those ladies the truth Monday. They knew they had been wrong about you and Twyla. There was no need-'
'No need!' His eyes flashed, and I blinked away from the impact of his straight indignant glare. 'They're dern lucky I didn't smash them all flat.'
'I know,' I said hastily. 'I know how you feel, but I can't congratulate you on your restraint because however little you did compared to what you might have done, it was still more than you had a right to do. Especially the pigs and the wall.'
'I didn't mean the pigs,' he muttered as he fingered a patch on his knee. 'Old man Scudder's a pretty right guy.'
'Yes,' I said. ''So what are you going to do about it?'
'I don't know. I could swipe some pigs from somewhere else for him, but I suppose that wouldn't fix things.'
'No, it wouldn't. You should buy-do you have any money?'
'Not for pigs!' he flared. 'All I have is what I'm saving for my musical instrument and not one penny of that'll ever go for pigs!'
'All right, all right,' I said. 'You figure out something.'
He ducked his head again, fingering the patch, and I watched the late sun run across the curve of his cheek, thinking what an odd conversation this was.
'Francher,'' I said, leaning forward impulsively, 'do you ever wonder how come you can do the things you do?'
His eyes were quick on my face. 'Do you ever wonder why you can't do what you can't do?'
I flushed and shifted my crutches. 'I know why.'
'No, you don't. You only know when your 'can't' began. You don't know the real why. Even your doctors don't know all of it. Well, I don't know the why of my 'cans.' I don't even know the beginning of them, only that sometimes I feel a wave of something inside me that hollers to get out of all the 'can'ts' that are around me like you-can't-do-this, you-can't-do-that, and then I remember that I can.'
He flicked his fingers and my crutches stirred. They lifted and thudded softly down the steps and then up again to lean back in their accustomed place.
'Crutches can't walk,' the Francher kid said. 'But you-something besides your body musta got smashed in that wreck.'
'Everything got smashed,' I said bitterly, the cold horror of that night and all that followed choking my chest. 'Everything ended-everything.'
'There aren't any endings,' the Francher kid said. 'Only new beginnings. When you going to get started?' Then he slouched away, his hands in his pockets, his head bent as he kicked a rock along the path. Bleakly I watched him go, trying to keep alive my flame of anger at him.
Well, the Lelands' wall had to be rebuilt and it was the Francher kid who got the job. He toiled mightily, lifting the heavy stones and cracking his hands with the dehydrating effect of the mortar he used. Maybe the fence wasn't as straight as it had been but it was repaired, and perhaps, I hoped, a stone had been set strongly somewhere in the Francher kid by this act of atonement. That he received pay for it didn't detract too much from the act itself, especially considering the amount of pay and the fact that it all went in on the other reparation.
The appearance of two strange pigs in the Scudders' east field created quite a stir, but the wonder of it was dulled by all the odd events preceding it. Mr. Scudder made inquiries but nothing ever came of them so he kept the pigs, and I made no inquiries but relaxed for a while about the Francher kid.
It was along about this time that a Dr. Curtis came to town briefly. Well, 'came to town' is a euphemism. His car broke down on his way up into the hills, and he had to accept our hospitality until Bill Thurman could get around to finding a necessary part. He stayed at Somansons' in a room opposite mine after Mrs. Somanson had frantically cleared it out, mostly by the simple expedient of shoving all the boxes and crates and odds and ends to the end of the hall and draping a tarp over them. Then she splashed water across the barely settled dust and mopped out the resultant mud, put a brick under one corner of the bed, made it up with two army-surplus mattresses, one sheet edged with crocheted lace and one of heavy unbleached muslin. She unearthed a pillow that