I sighed at the recollection and went back to my disappointing letter. Suddenly I frowned and moved uneasily in my chair. What was wrong? I felt acutely uncomfortable. Quickly I checked me over physically. Then my eyes scanned the room. Petie was being jet planes while he drew pictures of them, and the soft skoosh! skoosh! skoosh! of the take-offs was about the only on-top sound in the room. I checked underneath and the placid droning hum was as usual. I had gone back on top when I suddenly dived back again. There was a sharp stinging buzz like an angry bee-a malicious angry buzz! Who was it? I met Lucine’s smoldering eyes and I knew.
I almost gasped under the sudden flood of hate-filled anger. And when I tried to reach her, down under, I was rebuffed-not knowingly but as though there had never been a contact between us. I wiped my trembling hands against my skirt, trying to clean them of what I had read.
The recess bell came so shatteringly that I jumped convulsively and shared the children’s laughter over it. As soon as I could I hurried to Mrs. Kanz’s room.
“Lucine’s going to have another spell,” I said without preface.
“What makes you think so?” Mrs. Kanz marked “46 1/2 %” on the top of a literature paper.
“I don’t think so, I know so. And this time she won’t be too slow. Someone will get hurt if we don’t do something.”
Mrs. Kanz laid down her pencil and folded her arms on the desk top, her lips tightening. “You’ve been brooding too much over Lucine,” she said, none too pleased. “If you’re getting to the point where you think you can predict her behavior, you’re pretty far gone. People are going to be talking about your being queer pretty soon. Why don’t you just forget about her and concentrate on-on-well, on Low? He’s more fun than she is anyway, I’ll bet.”
“He’d know,” I cried. “He’d tell you, too! He knows more about Lucine than anyone thinks.”
“So I’ve heard.” There was a nasty purr to her voice that I didn’t know it possessed. “They’ve been seen together out in the hills. Well, it’s only her mind that’s retarded. Remember, she’s over twelve now, and some men-“
I slapped the flat of my hand down on the desk top with a sharp crack. I could feel my eyes blazing, and she dodged back as though from a blow. She pressed the back of one hand defensively against her cheek.
“I-” she gasped, “I was only kidding!”
I breathed deeply to hold my rage down. “Are you going to do anything about Lucine?” My voice was very soft.
“What can I do? What is there to do?”
“Skip it,” I said bitterly. “Just skip it.”
I tried all afternoon to reach Lucine, but she sat lumpish and unheeding-on top. Underneath violence and hatred were seething like lava, and once, without apparent provocation, she leaned across the aisle and pinched Petie’s arm until he cried.
She was sitting in isolation with her face to the wall when the last bell rang.
“You may go now, Lucine,” I said to the sullen stranger who had replaced the child I knew. I put my hand on her shoulder. She slipped out of my touch with one fluid quick motion. I caught a glimpse of her profile as she left. The jaw muscles were knotted and the cords in her neck were tensed.
I hurried home and waited, almost wild from worry, for Low to get off shift. I paced the worn Oriental rug in the living room, circling the potbellied cast-iron heater. I peered ! a dozen times through the lace curtains, squinting through the dirty cracked window panes. I beat my fist softly into my palm as I paced, and I felt physical pain when the phone on the wall suddenly shrilled,
I snatched down the receiver,
“Yes!” I cried. “Hello!’”
“Marie. I want Marie.” The voice was far and crackling,
“You tell Marie I gotta talk to her.”
I called Marie and left her to her conversation and went out on the porch. Back and forth, back and forth I paced, Marie’s voice swelling and fading as I passed.
“… well, I expected it a long time ago. A crazy girl like that-“
“Lucine!” I shouted and rushed indoors. “What happened?”
“Lucine?” Marie frowned from the telephone. “‘What’s Lucine gotta do with it? Marson’s daughter ran off last night with the hoistman at the Golden Turkey. He’s fifty if he’s a day and she’s just turned sixteen.” She turned back to the phone. “Yah, yah, yah?” Her eyes gleamed avidly.
I just got back to the door in time to see the car stop at the gate. I grabbed my coat and was down the steps as the car door swung open.
“Lucine?” I gasped.
“Yes.” The sheriff opened the back door for me, his deputy goggle-eyed with the swiftness of events. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What happened?”
“She got mad on the way home.” The car spurted away from the hotel. “She picked Petie up by the heels and bashed him against a boulder. She chased the other kids away with rocks and went back and started to work on Petie. He’s still alive, but Doc lost count of the stitches and they’re transfusing like crazy. Mrs. Kanz says you likely know where she is.”
“No.” I shut my eyes and swallowed. “But we’ll find her. Get Low first.”
The shift bus was just pulling in at the service station. Low was out of it and into the sheriff’s car before a word could be spoken. I saw my anxiety mirrored on his face before we clasped hands.
For the next two hours we drove the roads around Kruper. We went to all the places we thought Lucine might
