'What did you expect?' I laughed. 'Horns?' Then I sat back, astonished, as his fingertip probed my temple just where I had visualized a horn, curled twice and with a shiny black tip. 'Well!' I said. 'Mind reader!' Just then Mama and Father came back into the cabin. The boy lay down slowly on the cot. Oh, well, the explanations could wait until the need arose. We ate supper and I helped Mama clear up afterward. I was bringing the evening books to the pool of light on the table around the lamp when a movement from the cot drew my eyes. The boy was sitting on the edge, groping to come to his feet. I hurried to him, wondering what to do with Mama in the room, then as I reached for the boy's arm, I flicked a glance at Father. My mouth opened to wonder how I had known what the boy wanted and how he knew about the Little House outside. But a hand closed on my arm and I moved toward the door, with the boy. The door dosed behind us with a chuck. Through the starry darkness we moved down the path to the Little House. He went in. I waited by the door. He emerged and we went back up the path and into the house. He eased himself down on the cot, turned his face away from the light, and became quiet. I wet my astonished lips and looked at Father. His lips quirked. 'You're some mother cat!' he said. But Mama wasn't smiling as I slid into my place at the table. Her eyes were wide and dark. 'But he didn't touch the floor, James! And he didn't take one single step! He-he floated!' Not one single step! I swiftly reviewed our walk and I couldn't remember the rhythm of any steps at all- except my own. My eyes questioned Father, but he only said, 'If he's to mingle with us, he must have a name.' 'Timothy,' I said instantly. 'Why Timothy?' asked Father. 'Because that's his name,' I said blankly. 'Timothy.' So after awhile Timothy came to the table to eat, dressed in some of my clothes. He was wonderfully at ease with knife and fork and spoon though his eyes were still scabbed over and hidden behind bandages. Merry babbled to him happily, whacking at him with her spoon, her few words meaning as much to him as all our talking, which apparently was nothing. He labored at making his feet take steps again and Mama didn't have his steplessness to worry about any more. He sat with us during our evening readings with no more response than if we sat in silence. Except that after the first evening he joined us, his right hand always made some sort of sign in the air at the beginning and end of our prayer time. His left arm wasn't working yet because of the deep burns on his shoulder. Though Mama's worries over Timothy's steplessness were over, I had all kinds of worries to take my mind off the baking, dust-blown fields outside and even off the slow, heartbreaking curling of the leaves on our small orchard trees. I was beginning to hear things. I began to know when Timothy was thirsty or when he wanted to go to the Little House. I began to know what food he wanted more of and what he didn't care for. And it scared me. I didn't want to know-not without words. Then Mama's time came. When at last the pains were coming pretty close together, Father sent me with Timothy and Merry away from the house, away from the task the two had before them. I knew the worry they had plaguing them besides the ordinary worry of childbirth and I prayed soundlessly as I lifted Merry and herded Timothy before me out to our orchard. And when my prayers tripped over their own anxiety and dissolved into wordlessness, I talked. I told Timothy all about the ranch and the orchard and how Father had found me the other night pouring one of my cups of drinking water on the ground by my favorite smallest tree and how he'd told me it wouldn't help because the roots were too deep for so little water to reach. And I talked about all the little dead babies and how healthy Merry was but how worried we were for the new baby. And-and-well, I babbled until I ran out of words and sat under my dying favorite, shivering in the heat and hugging Merry. I pushed my face against her tumbled hair so no one could see my face puckering for tears. After I managed to snuff them back, I looked up and blinked. Timothy was gone. He was streaking for the house, with not even one step! His feet were skimming above the furrows in the orchard. His arms were out in front of him like a sleepwalker but he was threading between the trees as though he could see. I started after him, fumbling with Merry, who was sliding out of my arms, leaving her crumpled clothes behind, her bare legs threshing and her cries muffling in her skirts. I snatched her up more securely and, shucking her dress down around her as I ran, dropped her into her porch-pen. Timothy was fumbling at the door latch. I opened it and we went into the home. Father was working over a small bundle on the scrubbed kitchen table. Timothy crouched by Mama's bed, his hands holding one of hers tightly. Mama's breath was quieting down in shuddering gulps. She turned her face and pressed her eyes against her free wrist. 'It hasn't cried,' she whispered hopelessly. 'Why doesn't it cry? Father turned from the table, his whole body drooping. 'It never even breathed, Rachel. It's perfectly formed, but it never breathed at all.' Mama stared up at the roof of the cabin. 'The clothes are in the trunk,' she said quietly, 'and a pink blanket.' And Father sent me out to find a burying place. The light went out of our house. We went the weary round of things that had to be done to keep living and even Merry stood quietly, her hands on the top board of her porch-pen, her wide eyes barely overtopping it, and stared out at the hillside for long stretches of time. And Father, who had always been an unmoved mainstay no matter what happened, was broken, silent and uncommunicating. We seldom mentioned the baby. We had buried my hoped-for little brother up on the hill under a scrub oak. When Mama was well enough, we all went up there and read the service for the dead, but no one cried as we stood around the tiny, powdery-dry, naked little grave. Timothy held Mama's hand all the way up there and all the way back. And Mama half smiled at him when we got back to the house. Father said quietly, as he laid down the prayer book, 'Why must he hang onto you?' Mama and I were startled at his tone of voice. 'But, James,' Mama protested. 'He's blind!' 'How many things has he bumped into since he's been up and around?' asked Father. 'How often has he spilled food or groped for a chair?' He turned a bitter face toward Timothy. 'And hanging onto you, he doesn't have to see-' Father broke off and turned to the window. 'James,' Mama went to him quickly, 'don't make Timothy a whipping boy for your sorrow. God gave him into our keeping. 'The Lord giveth-' 'I'm sorry, Rachel.' Father gathered Mama closely with one arm. 'This 'taking away' period is bad. Not only the baby-' 'I know,' said Mama. 'But when Timothy touches me, the sorrow is lessened and I can feel the joy-' 'Joy!' Father spun Mama away from his shoulder. I shook for the seldom seen anger in his face. 'James!' said Mama. ''Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.' Let Timothy touch your hand-' Father left the house without a glance at any of us. He gathered up Merry from the porch-pen and trudged away through the dying orchard. That night, while Mama was reading, I got up to get Timothy a drink. 'You're interrupting your mother,' said Father quietly. 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'Timothy is thirsty.' 'Sit down,' said Father ominously. I sat. When our evening was finished, I asked, 'May I get him a drink now?' Father slowly sat down again at the table. 'How do you know he wants a drink?' he asked. 'I-I just know,' I stumbled, watching Timmy leave the table. 'It comes into my mind.' 'Comes into your mind.' Father seemed to lay the words out on the table in front of him and look at them. After a silence he said, 'How does it come into your mind? Does it say, Timothy is thirsty-he wants a drink?' 'No,' I said, unhappily, looking at Father's lamplight-flooded face, wondering if he was, for the first time in my life, ridiculing me. 'There aren't any words. Only a feeling-only a knowing that he's thirsty.' 'And you.' His face shadowed as he turned it to look at Mama. 'When he touches your hand, are there words-Joy, have joy?' 'No,' said Mama. 'Only the feeling that God is over all and that sorrow is a shadow and that-that the baby was called back into the Presence.'
