fluffed beautifully but sighed itself to a wafer-thin odor of damp feathers at a touch, and topped the splendid whole with two hand-pieced hand-quilted quilts and a chenille spread with a Technicolor peacock flamboyantly dominating it. 'There,' she sighed, using her apron to dust the edge of the dresser where it showed along the edge of the dresser scarf, 'I guess that'll hold him.' 'I should hope so,' I smiled. 'It's probably the quickest room he's ever had.' 'He's lucky to have this at such short notice,' she said, turning the ragrug over so the burned place wouldn't show. 'If it wasn't that I had my eye on that new winter coat-' Dr. Curtis was a very relaxing comfortable sort of fellow, and it seemed so good to have someone to talk to who cared to use words of more than two syllables. It wasn't that the people in Willow Creek were ignorant, they just didn't usually care to discuss three-syllable matters. I guess, besides the conversation, I was drawn to Dr. Curtis because he neither looked at my crutches nor not looked at them. It was pleasant except for the twinge of here's-someone-who. has-never-known-me-without-them. After supper that night we all sat around the massive oil burner in the front room and talked against the monotone background of the radio turned low. Of course the late shake-making events in the area were brought up. Dr. Curtis was most interested, especially in the rails that curled up into rosettes. Because he was a doctor and a stranger the group expected an explanation of these goings-on from him, or at least an educated guess. 'What do I think?' He leaned forward in the old rocker and rested his arms on his knees. 'I think a lot of things happen that can't be explained by our usual thought patterns, and once we get accustomed to certain patterns we find it very uncomfortable to break over into others. So maybe it's just as well not to want an explanation.' 'Hmmm.' Ol' Hank knocked the ashes out of his pipe into his hand and looked around for the wastebasket. 'Neat way of saying you don't know either. Think I'll remember that. It might come in handy sometime. Well, g'night all.' He glanced around hastily, dumped the ashes in the geranium pot and left, sucking on his empty pipe. His departure was a signal for the others to drift off to bed at the wise hour of ten, but I was in no mood for wisdom, not of the early-to-bed type anyway. 'Then there is room in this life for inexplicables.' I pleated my skirt between my fingers and straightened it out again. 'It would be a poor lackluster sort of world if there weren't,' the doctor said. 'I used to rule out anything that I couldn't explain but I got cured of that good one time.' He smiled reminiscently. 'Sometimes I wish I hadn't. As I said, it can be mighty uncomfortable.' 'Yes,' I said impulsively. 'Like hearing impossible music and sliding down moonbeams-' I felt my heart sink at the sudden blankness of his face. Oh, gee! Goofed again. He could talk glibly of inexplicables but he didn't really believe in them. 'And crutches that walk by themselves,' I rushed on rashly, 'and autumn leaves that dance in the windless clearing-' I grasped my crutches and started blindly for the door. 'And maybe someday if I'm a good girl and disbelieve enough I'll walk again-' ' 'And disbelieve enough'?' His words followed me. 'Don't you mean 'believe enough'?' 'Don't strain your pattern,' I called back. 'It's 'disbelieve.'' Of course I felt silly the next morning at the breakfast table, but Dr. Curtis didn't refer to the conversation so I didn't either. He was discussing renting a jeep for his hunting trip and leaving his car to be fixed. 'Tell Bill you'll be back a week before you plan to,' said O1' Hank. 'Then your car will be ready when you do get back.' The Francher kid was in the group of people who gathered to watch Bill transfer Dr. Curtis' gear from the car to the jeep. As usual he was a little removed from the rest, lounging against a tree. Dr. Curtis finally came out, his .30-06 under one arm and his heavy hunting jacket under the other. Anna and I leaned over our side fence watching the whole procedure. I saw the Francher kid straighten slowly, his hands leaving his pockets as he stared at Dr. Curtis. One hand went out tentatively and then faltered. Dr. Curtis inserted himself in the seat of the jeep and fumbled at the knobs on the dashboard. 'Which one's the radio?' he asked Bill 'Radio? In this jeep?' Bill laughed. 'But the music-' Dr. Curtis paused for a split second, then turned on the ignition. 'Have to make my own, I guess,' he laughed. The jeep roared into life, and the small group scattered as he wheeled it in reverse across the yard. In the pause as he shifted gears, he glanced sideways at me and our eyes met. It was a very brief encounter, but he asked questions and I answered with my unknowing and he exploded in a kind of wonderment-all in the moment between reverse and low. We watched the dust boil up behind the jeep as it growled its way down to the highway. 'Well,' Anna said, 'a-hunting we do go indeed!' 'Who's he?' The Francher kid's hands were tight on the top of the fence, a blind sort of look on his face. 'I don't know,' I said. 'His name is Dr. Curtis.' 'He's heard music before.' 'I should hope so,' Anna said. 'That music?' I asked the Francher kid. 'Yes,' he nearly sobbed. 'Yes!' 'He'll he back,' I said. 'He has to get his car.' 'Well,' Anna sighed. 'The words are the words of English but the sense is the sense of confusion. Coffee, anybody?' That afternoon the Francher kid joined me, wordlessly, as I struggled up the rise above the boardinghouse for a little wideness of horizon to counteract the day's shut-in-ness. I would rather have walked alone, partly because of a need for silence and partly because he just couldn't ever keep his-accusing?-eyes off my crutches. But he didn't trespass upon my attention as so many people would have, so I didn't mind too much. I leaned, panting, against a gray granite boulder and let the fresh-from-distant- snow breeze lift my hair as I caught my breath. Then I huddled down into my coat, warming my ears. The Francher kid had a handful of pebbles and was lobbing them at the scattered rusty tin cans that dotted the hillside. After one pebble turned a square corner to hit a can he spoke. 'If he knows the name of the instrument, then-' He lost his words. 'What is the name?' I asked, rubbing my nose where my coat collar had tickled it. 'It really isn't a word. It's just two sounds it makes.' 'Well, then, make me a word. 'Musical instrument' is mighty unmusical and unhandy.' The Francher kid listened, his head tilted, his lips moving. 'I suppose you could call it a 'rappoor,' ' he said, softening the a. 'But it isn't that.' ' 'Rappoor,' ' I said. 'Of course you know by now we don't have any such instrument.' I was intrigued at having been drawn into another Francher-type conversation. I was developing quite a taste for them. 'It's probably just something your mother dreamed up for you.' 'And for that doctor?' 'Ummm.' My mental wheels spun, tractionless. 'What do you think?' 'I almost know that there are some more like Mother. Some who know 'the madness and the dream,' too.' ''Dr. Curtis??' I asked. 'No,' he said slowly, rubbing his hand along the boulder. 'No, I could feel a faraway, strange-to-me feeling with him. He's like you. He-he knows someone who knows, but he doesn't know.' 'Well, thanks. He's a nice bird to be a feather of. Then it's all very simple. When he comes back you ask him who he knows.' 'Yes-' The Francher kid drew a tremulous breath. ''Yes!' We eased down the hillside, talking money and music. The Francher kid had enough saved up to buy a good instrument of some kind-but what kind? He was immersed in tones and timbres and ranges and keys and the possibility of sometime finding a something that would sound like a rappoor.
