“That’s my name.”
“What’s your other name?” I asked patiently, falling into a first-grade dialogue in spite of his age.
“They put down Clement.”
“Clement Francher. A good-sounding name, but what do they call you?”
His eyebrows slanted subtly upward, and a tiny bitter smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
“With their eyes-juvenile delinquent, lazy trash, no-good off-scouring, potential criminal, burden-“
I winced away from the icy malice of his voice.
“But mostly they call me a whole sentence, like-‘Well, what can you expect from a background like that?’ “
His knuckles were white against his faded Levi’s. Then as I watched them the color crept back and, without visible relaxation, the tension was gone. But his eyes were the eyes of a boy too big to cry and too young for any other comfort.
“What is your background?” I asked quietly, as though I had the right to ask. He answered as simply as though he owed me an answer.
“We were with the carnival. We went to all the fairs around the country. Mother-” his words nearly died, “Mother had a mind-reading act. She was good. She was better than anyone knew-better than she wanted to be. It hurt and scared her sometimes to walk through people’s minds. Sometimes she would come back to the trailer and cry and cry and take a long long shower and wash herself until her hands were all water-soaked and her hair hung in dripping strings. They curled at the end. She couldn’t get all the fear and hate and-and tired dirt off even that way. Only if she could find a Good to read, or a dark church with tall candles.”
“And where is she now?” I asked, holding a small warm picture in my mind of narrow fragile shoulders, thin and defenseless under a flimsy moist robe, with one wet strand of hair dampening one shoulder of it.
“Gone.” His eyes were over my head but empty of the vision of the weatherworn siding of the house. “She died. Three years ago. This is a foster home. To try to make a decent citizen of me.”
There was no inflection in his words. They lay as flat as paper between us in our silence.
“You like music,” I said, curling Anna’s note around my forefinger, remembering what I had seen the other night.
“Yes.” His eyes were on the note. “‘Miss Semper doesn’t think so, though. I hate that scratchy wrapped-up music.”
“You sing?”
“No. I make music.”
“You mean you play an instrument?”
He frowned a little impatiently. “No. I make music with instruments.”
“Oh,” I said. “There’s a difference?”
“Yes.” He turned his head away. I had disappointed him or failed him in some way.
“Wait,” I said. “‘I want to show you something.” I struggled to my feet. Oh, deftly and quickly enough under the circumstances, I suppose, but it seemed an endless aching effort in front of the Francher kid’s eyes. But finally I was up and swinging in through the front door. When I got back with my key chain the kid was still staring at my empty chair, and I had to struggle back into it under his unwavering eyes.
“Can’t you stand alone?” he asked, as though he had a right to.
“Very little, very briefly,” I answered, as though I owed him an answer.
“You don’t walk without those braces.”
“I can’t walk without those braces. Here.” I held out my key chain. There was a charm on it: a harmonica with four notes, so small that I had never managed to blow one by itself. The four together made a tiny breathy chord, like a small hesitant wind.
He took the chain between his fingers and swung the charm back and forth, his head bent so that the sunlight flickered across its tousledness. The chain stilled. For a long moment there wasn’t a sound. Then clearly, sharply, came the musical notes, one after another. There was a slight pause and then four notes poured their separateness together to make a clear sweet chord.
“You make music,” I said, barely audible.
“Yes.” He gave me back my key chain and stood up. “I guess she’s cooled down now. I’ll go on back.”
“To work?”
“To work.” He smiled wryly. “For a while anyway.” He started down the walk.
“What if I tell?” I called after him.
“I told once,” he called back over his shoulder. “Try it if you want to.”
I sat for a long time on the porch after he left. My fingers were closed over the harmonica as I watched the sun creep up my skirts and into my lap. Finally I turned Anna’s envelope over. The seal was still secure. The end was jagged where I had torn it. The paper was opaque. I blew a tiny breathy chord on the harmonica. Then I shivered as cold crept across my shoulders. The chill was chased away by a tiny hot wave of excitement. So his mother could walk through the minds of others. So he knew what was in a sealed letter-or had he got his knowledge from Anna before the letter? So he could make music with harmonicas. So the Francher kid was … My hurried thoughts caught and came to a full stop. What was the Francher kid?
After school that day Anna toiled up the four front steps and rested against the railing, half sitting and half leaning. “I’m too tired to sit down,” she said. “I’m wound up like a clock and I’m going to strike something pretty darned quick.” She half laughed and grimaced a little. “Probably my laundry. I’m fresh out of clothes.” She caught a
