“Something like that,” acknowledged Tim.
“That’s why your stories are so human,” said Welles. “That one about the awful little girl—”
They both chuckled.
“Yes, that was my first story,” said Tim. “I was almost eight, and there was a boy in my class who had a brother, and the boy next door was the other one, the one who was picked on.”
“How much of the story was true?”
“The first part. I used to see, when I went over there, how that girl picked on Bill’s brother’s friend, Steve. She wanted to play with Steve all the time herself and whenever he had boys over, she’d do something awful. And Steve’s folks were like I said—they wouldn’t let Steve do anything to a girl. When she threw all the watermelon rinds over the fence into his yard, he just had to pick them all up and say nothing back; and she’d laugh at him over the fence. She got him blamed for things he never did, and when he had work to do in the yard she’d hang out of her window and scream at him and make fun. I thought first, what made her act like that, and then I made up a way for him to get even with her, and wrote it out the way it might have happened.”
“Didn’t you pass the idea on to Steve and let him try it?”
“Gosh, no! I was only a little boy. Kids seven don’t give ideas to kids ten. That’s the first thing I had to learn—to be always the one that kept quiet, especially if there was any older boy or girl around, even only a year or two older. I had to learn to look blank and let my mouth hang open and say, ‘I don’t get it,’ to almost everything.”
“And Miss Page thought it was odd that you had no close friends of your own age,” said Welles. “You must be the loneliest boy that ever walked this earth, Tim. You’ve lived in hiding like a criminal. But tell me, what are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of being found out, of course. The only way I can live in this world is in disguise—until I’m grown up, at any rate. At first it was just my grandparents’ scolding me and telling me not to show off, and the way people laughed if I tried to talk to them. Then I saw how people hate anyone who is better or brighter or luckier. Some people sort of trade off; if you’re bad at one thing you’re good at another, but they’ll forgive you for being good at some things, if you’re not good at others so they can balance it off. They can beat you at something. You have to strike a balance. A child has no chance at all. No grownup can stand it to have a child know anything he doesn’t. Oh, a little thing if it amuses them. But not much of anything. There’s an old story about a man who found himself in a country where everyone else was blind. I’m like that—but they shan’t put out my eyes. I’ll never let them know I can see anything.”
“Do you see things that no grown person can see?”
Tim waved his hand towards the magazines.
“Only like that, I meant. I hear people talking in street cars and stores, and while they work, and around. I read about the way they act—in the news. I’m like them, just like them, only I seem about a hundred years older —more matured.”
“Do you mean that none of them have much sense?”
“I don’t mean that exactly. I mean that so few of them have any, or show it if they do have. They don’t even seem to want to. They’re good people in their way, but what could they make of me? Even when I was seven, I could understand their motives, but they couldn’t understand their own motives. And they’re so lazy—they don’t seem to want to know or to understand. When I first went to the library for books, the books I learned from were seldom touched by any of the grown people. But they were meant for ordinary grown people. But the grown people didn’t want to know things—they only wanted to fool around. I feel about most people the way my grandmother feels about babies and puppies. Only she doesn’t have to pretend to be a puppy all the time,” Tim added, with a little bitterness.
“You have a friend now, in me.”
“Yes, Peter,” said Tim, brightening up. “And I have pen friends, too. People like what I write, because they can’t see I’m only a little boy. When I grow up—”
Tim did not finish that sentence. Welles understood, now, some of the fears that Tim had not dared to put into words at all. When he grew up, would he be as far beyond all other grownups as he had, all his life, been above his contemporaries? The adult friends whom he now met on fairly equal terms—would they then, too, seem like babies or puppies?
Peter did not dare to voice the thought, either. Still less did he venture to hint at another thought. Tim, so far, had no great interest in girls; they existed for him as part of the human race, but there would come a time when Tim would be a grown man and would wish to marry. And where among the puppies could he find a mate?
“When you’re grown up, we’ll still be friends,” said Peter. “And who are the others?”
It turned out that Tim had pen friends all over the world. He played chess by correspondence—a game he never dared to play in person, except when he forced himself to move the pieces about idly and let his opponent win at least half the time. He had, also, many friends who had read something he had written, and had written to him about it, thus starting a correspondence-friendship. After the first two or three of these, he had started some on his own account, always with people who lived at a great distance. To most of these he gave a name which, although not false, looked it. That was Paul T. Lawrence. Lawrence was his middle name; and with a comma after the Paul, it was actually his own name. He had a post office box under that name, for which T. Paul of the large bank account was his reference.
“Pen friends abroad? Do you know languages?”
Yes, Tim did. He had studied by correspondence, also; many universities gave extension courses in that manner, and lent the student records to play so that he could learn the correct pronunciation. Tim had taken several such courses, and learned other languages from books. He kept all these languages in practice by means of the letters to other lands and the replies which came to him.
“I’d buy a dictionary, and then I’d write to the mayor of some town, or to a foreign newspaper, and ask them to advertise for some pen friends to help me learn the language. We’d exchange souvenirs and things.”
Nor was Welles in the least surprised to find that Timothy had also taken other courses by correspondence. He had completed, within three years, more than half the subjects offered by four separate universities, and several other courses, the most recent being Architecture. The boy, not yet fourteen, had completed a full course in that subject, and had he been able to disguise himself as a full-grown man, could have gone out at once and built almost anything you’d like to name, for he also knew much of the trades involved.
“It always said how long an average student took, and I’d take that long,” said Tim, “so, of course, I had to be working several schools at the same time.”
“And carpentry at the playground summer school?”
“Oh, yes. But there I couldn’t do too much, because people could see me. But I learned how, and it made a good cover-up, so I could make cages for the cats, and all that sort of thing. And many boys are good with their hands. I like to work with my hands. I built my own radio, too—it gets all the foreign stations, and that helps me with my languages.”
“How did you figure it out about the cats?” said Welles.
“Oh, there had to be recessives, that’s all. The Siamese coloring was a recessive, and it had to be mated with another recessive. Black was one possibility, and white was another, but I started with black because I liked it better. I might try white too, but I have so much else on my mind—”
He broke off suddenly and would say no more.
Their next meeting was by prearrangement at Tim’s workshop. Welles met the boy after school and they walked to Tim’s home together; there the boy unlocked his door and snapped on the lights.
Welles looked around with interest. There was a bench, a tool chest. Cabinets, padlocked. A radio, clearly not store-purchased. A file cabinet, locked. Something on a table, covered with a cloth. A box in the corner—no, two boxes in two corners. In each of them was a mother cat with kittens. Both mothers were black Persians.
“This one must be all black Persian,” Tim explained. “Her third litter and never a Siamese marking. But this one carries both recessives in her. Last time she had a Siamese shorthaired kitten. This morning—I had to go to school. Let’s see.”
They bent over the box where the new-born kittens lay. One kitten was like the mother. The other two were Siamese-Persian; a male and a female.
“You’ve done it again, Tim!” shouted Welles. “Congratulations!”
They shook hands in jubilation.
