The Ugly Little Boy

She listened with painful attentiveness, and this time she heard the sound.

The boy was crying.

Not shrieking in fear or anger; not yelling or screaming. It was crying softly, and the cry was the heartbroken sobbing of a lonely, lonely child.

For the first time, Miss Fellowes thought with a pang: Poor thing!

Of course, it was a child; what did the shape of its head matter? It was a child that had been orphaned as no child had ever been orphaned before. Not only its mother and father were gone, but all its species. Snatched callously out of time, it was now the only creature of its kind in the world. The last. The only.

She felt pity for it strengthen, and with it shame at her own callousness. Tucking her own nightgown carefully about her calves (incongruously, she thought: Tomorrow I’ll have to bring in a bathrobe) she got out of bed and went into the boy’s room.

“Little boy,” she called in a whisper. “Little boy.”

She was about to reach under the bed, but she thought of a possible bite and did not. Instead, she turned on the night light and moved the bed.

The poor thing was huddled in the corner, knees up against his chin, looking up at her with blurred and apprehensive eyes.

In the dim light, she was not aware of his repulsiveness.

“Poor boy,” she said, “poor boy.” She felt him stiffen as she stroked his hair, then relax. “Poor boy. May I hold you?”

She sat down on the floor next to him and slowly and rhythmically stroked his hair, his cheek, his arm. Softly, she began to sing a slow and gentle song.

He lifted his head at that, staring at her mouth in the dimness, as though wondering at the sound.

She maneuvered him closer while he listened to her. Slowly, she pressed gently against the side of his head, until it rested on her shoulder. She put her arm under his thighs and with a smooth and unhurried motion lifted him into her lap.

She continued singing, the same simple verse over and over, while she rocked back and forth, back and forth.

He stopped crying, and after a while the smooth burr of his breathing showed he was asleep.

With infinite care, she pushed his bed back against the wall and laid him down. She covered him and stared down. His face looked so peaceful and little-boy as he slept. It didn’t matter so much that it was so ugly. Really.

She began to tiptoe out, then thought: If he wakes up?

She came back, battled irresolutely with herself, then sighed and slowly got into bed with the child.

It was too small for her. She was cramped and uneasy at the lack of canopy, but the child’s hand crept into hers and, somehow, she fell asleep in that position.

She awoke with a start and a wild impulse to scream. The latter she just managed to suppress into a gurgle. The boy was looking at her, wide-eyed. It took her a long moment to remember getting into bed with him, and now, slowly, without unfixing her eyes from his, she stretched one leg carefully and let it touch the floor, then the other one.

She cast a quick and apprehensive glance toward the open ceiling, then tensed her muscles for quick disengagement.

But at that moment, the boy’s stubby fingers reached out and touched her lips. He said something.

She shrank at the touch. He was terribly ugly in the light of day.

The boy spoke again. He opened his own mouth and gestured with his hand as though something were coming out.

Miss Fellowes guessed at the meaning and said tremulously, “Do you want me to sing?”

The boy said nothing but stared at her mouth.

In a voice slightly off key with tension, Miss Fellowes began the little song she had sung the night before and the ugly little boy smiled. He swayed clumsily in rough time to the music and made a little gurgly sound that might have been the beginnings of a laugh.

Miss Fellowes sighed inwardly. Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. It might help—

She said, “You wait. Let me get myself fixed up. It will just take a minute. Then I’ll make breakfast for you.”

She worked rapidly, conscious of the lack of ceiling at all times. The boy remained in bed, watching her when she was in view. She smiled at him at those times and waved. At the end, he waved back, and she found herself being charmed by that.

Finally, she said, “Would you like oatmeal with milk?” It took a moment to prepare, and then she beckoned to him.

Whether he understood the gesture or followed the aroma, Miss Fellowes did not know, but he got out of bed.

She tried to show him how to use a spoon but he shrank away from it in fright. (Time enough, she thought.) She compromised on insisting that he lift the bowl in his hands. He did it clumsily enough and it was incredibly messy but most of it did get into him.

She tried the drinking milk in a glass this time, and the little boy whined when he found the opening too small for him to get his face into conveniently. She held his hand, forcing it around the glass, making him tip it, forcing his mouth to the rim.

Again a mess but again most went into him, and she was used to messes.

The washroom, to her surprise and relief, was a less frustrating matter. He understood what it was she expected him to do.

She found herself patting his head, saying, “Good boy. Smart boy.”

And to Miss Fellowes’ exceeding pleasure, the boy smiled at that.

She thought: when he smiles, he’s quite bearable. Really.

Later in the day, the gentlemen of the press arrived.

She held the boy in her arms and he clung to her wildly while across the open door they set cameras to work. The commotion frightened the boy and he began to cry, but it was ten minutes before Miss Fellowes was allowed to retreat and put the boy in the next room.

She emerged again, flushed with indignation, walked out of the apartment (for the first time in eighteen hours) and closed the door behind her. “I think you’ve had enough. It will take me a while to quiet him. Go away.”

“Sure, sure,” said the gentleman from the Times-Herald. “But is that really a Neanderthal or is this some kind of gag?”

“I assure you,” said Hoskins’ voice, suddenly, from the background, “that this is no gag. The child is authentic Homo neanderthalensis.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Boy,” said Miss Fellowes briefly.

“Ape-boy,” said the gentleman from the News. “That’s what we’ve got here. Ape- boy. How does he act, Nurse?”

“He acts exactly like a little boy,” snapped Miss Fellowes, annoyed into the defensive, “and he is not an ape- boy. His name is—is Timothy, Timmie—and he is perfectly normal in his behavior.”

She had chosen the name Timothy at a venture. It was the first that had occurred to her.

’Timmie the Ape-boy,” said the gentleman from the News and, as it turned out, Timmie the Ape-boy was the name under which the child became known to the world.

The gentleman from the Globe turned to Hoskins and said, “Doc, what do you expect to do with the ape-boy?”

Hoskins shrugged. “My original plan was completed when I proved it possible to bring him here. However, the anthropologists will be very interested, I imagine, and the physiologists. We have Here, after all, a creature which is at the edge of being human. We should learn a great deal about ourselves and our ancestry from him.”

“How long will you keep him?”

“Until such a time as we need the space more than we need him. Quite a while, perhaps.”