“Tell Bill you’ll be back a week before you plan to,” said O1’ Hank. “Then your car will be ready when you do get back.”
The Francher kid was in the group of people who gathered to watch Bill transfer Dr. Curtis’ gear from the car to the jeep. As usual he was a little removed from the rest, lounging against a tree. Dr. Curtis finally came out, his .30-06 under one arm and his heavy hunting jacket under the other. Anna and I leaned over our side fence watching the whole procedure.
I saw the Francher kid straighten slowly, his hands leaving his pockets as he stared at Dr. Curtis. One hand went out tentatively and then faltered. Dr. Curtis inserted himself in the seat of the jeep and fumbled at the knobs on the dashboard. “Which one’s the radio?” he asked Bill
“Radio? In this jeep?” Bill laughed.
“But the music-” Dr. Curtis paused for a split second, then turned on the ignition. “Have to make my own, I guess,” he laughed.
The jeep roared into life, and the small group scattered as he wheeled it in reverse across the yard. In the pause as he shifted gears, he glanced sideways at me and our eyes met. It was a very brief encounter, but he asked questions and I answered with my unknowing and he exploded in a kind of wonderment-all in the moment between reverse and low.
We watched the dust boil up behind the jeep as it growled its way down to the highway.
“Well,” Anna said, “a-hunting we do go indeed!”
“Who’s he?” The Francher kid’s hands were tight on the top of the fence, a blind sort of look on his face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “His name is Dr. Curtis.”
“He’s heard music before.”
“I should hope so,” Anna said.
“That music?” I asked the Francher kid.
“Yes,” he nearly sobbed. “Yes!”
“He’ll he back,” I said. “He has to get his car.”
“Well,” Anna sighed. “The words are the words of English but the sense is the sense of confusion. Coffee, anybody?”
That afternoon the Francher kid joined me, wordlessly, as I struggled up the rise above the boardinghouse for a little wideness of horizon to counteract the day’s shut-in-ness.
I would rather have walked alone, partly because of a need for silence and partly because he just couldn’t ever keep his-accusing?-eyes off my crutches. But he didn’t trespass upon my attention as so many people would have, so I didn’t mind too much. I leaned, panting, against a gray granite boulder and let the fresh-from-distant-snow breeze lift my hair as I caught my breath. Then I huddled down into my coat, warming my ears. The Francher kid had a handful of pebbles and was lobbing them at the scattered rusty tin
cans that dotted the hillside. After one pebble turned a square corner to hit a can he spoke.
“If he knows the name of the instrument, then-” He lost his words.
“What is the name?” I asked, rubbing my nose where my coat collar had tickled it.
“It really isn’t a word. It’s just two sounds it makes.”
“Well, then, make me a word. ‘Musical instrument’ is mighty unmusical and unhandy.”
The Francher kid listened, his head tilted, his lips moving.
“I suppose you could call it a ‘rappoor,’ ” he said, softening the a. “But it isn’t that.”
” ‘Rappoor,’ ” I said. “Of course you know by now we don’t have any such instrument.” I was intrigued at having been drawn into another Francher-type conversation. I was developing quite a taste for them. “It’s probably just something your mother dreamed up for you.”
“And for that doctor?”
“Ummm.” My mental wheels spun, tractionless. “What do you think?”
“I almost know that there are some more like Mother. Some who know ‘the madness and the dream,’ too.”
“‘Dr. Curtis??’ I asked.
“No,” he said slowly, rubbing his hand along the boulder.
“No, I could feel a faraway, strange-to-me feeling with him. He’s like you. He-he knows someone who knows, but he doesn’t know.”
“Well, thanks. He’s a nice bird to be a feather of. Then it’s all very simple. When he comes back you ask him who he knows.”
“Yes-” The Francher kid drew a tremulous breath. ‘“Yes!”
We eased down the hillside, talking money and music. The Francher kid had enough saved up to buy a good instrument of some kind-but what kind? He was immersed in tones and timbres and ranges and keys and the possibility of sometime finding a something that would sound like a rappoor.
We paused at the foot of the hill. Impulsively I spoke.
“Francher, why do you talk with me?” I wished the words back before I finished them. Words have a ghastly way of shattering delicate situations and snapping tenuous bonds.
