I prodded the blackened metal. “Out of the sky,” I said aloud. “As high and as fast as a meteor to get that hot. What was he doing up there?” My stick rocked the metal hulk and it rolled again. The split ends spread as it turned and a small square metal thing fell out into the ashes. I scraped it to one side and cautiously lifted it. The soot on it blackened my bandages and my palms. It looked like a box and was of a size that my two hands could hold. I looked at it, then suddenly overwhelmed and seared by the thought of roaring meteors and empty space and billowing grass fires, I scratched a hasty hole against a rock, shoved the box in, and stamped the earth over it. Then I went to meet Father and take one of the dripping buckets from him. We didn’t look back at the crumpled metal thing behind us.
Father could hardly believe his eyes when he checked the boy’s burns next morning. “They’re healing already! he said to Mama. “Look!”
I crowded closer to see, too, almost spilling the olive oil we were using on him. I looked at the boy’s left wrist where I remembered a big, raw oozing place just where the cuff of his clothes had ended. The wrist was dry now and covered with the faint pink of new skin.
“But his face,” said Mama. “His poor face and his eyes!” She turned away, blinking tears, and reached for a cup of water. “He must have lots of liquids,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“But if he’s unconscious-” I clutched at my few lessons in home care of the sick.
Father lifted the boy’s head and shoulders carefully, but even his care wasn’t gentle enough. The boy moaned and murmured something. Father held the cup to his blistered mouth and tipped the water to the dry lips. There was a moment’s pause, then the water was gulped eagerly and the boy murmured something again.
“More?” asked Father clearly. “More?”
The face rolled to him, then away, and there was no answer.
“He’ll need much care for a while,” Father said to Mama as they anointed his burns and put on fresh bandages. “Do you think you can manage under the circumstances?”
Mama nodded. “With Barney to help with the lifting.”
“Sure I’ll help,” I said. Then to Father, “Should I have said meteorite?”
He nodded gravely. Then he said, “There are other planets.” And left me to digest that one!
Father was spending his days digging for water in the river bottom. He had located one fair-sized pool that so far was keeping our livestock watered. We could still find drinking water for us up Sometime Creek. But the blue shimmer Of the sky got more and more like heated metal. Heat was like a hand, pressing everything under the sky down into the powdery dead ground.
The boy was soon sitting up and eating a little of the little we had. But still no word from him, not a sound, even when we changed the dressings on his deeply charred left shoulder, or when the scabs across his left cheek cracked across and bled.
Then, one day, when all of us had been out of the cabin, straining our eyes prayerfully at the faint shadow of a cloud I thought I had seen over the distant Coronas, we came back, disheartened, to find the boy sitting in Mama’s rocker by the window. But we had to carry him hack to the cot. His feet seemed to have forgotten how to make steps.
Father looked down at him lying quietly on the cot. “If he can make it to the window, he can begin to take care of his own needs. Mother is overburdened as it is.”
So I was supposed to explain to him that there would be no more basin for his use, hut that the chamberpot under the cot was for him! How do you explain to someone who can’t see and doesn’t talk and that you’re not at all sure even hears you? I told Father I felt like a mother cat training a kitten.
“Come on, fellow,” I said to him, glad we had the cabin to ourselves. I tugged at his unscarred right arm and urged him until, his breath catching between clenched teeth, he sat up and swung his feet over the cot edge. His hand went out to me and touched my cheek. His bandaged face turned to me and his hand faltered. Then quickly he traced my features-my eyes, my nose, my ears, across my head, and down to my shoulders. Then he sighed a relieved sigh and both his hands went out to rest briefly on my two shoulders. His mouth distorted in a ghost of a smile, and he touched my wrist.
“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
