She made haste. “Teach you to make yourself shot-proof. So if anyone bangs at you with a gun, nothing happens.”

When Charlie stayed silent, she gave him the secret in a high fluttering whisper. “Dig and stitch mouse-ear roots on Friday during full moon, and wear ‘em around your neck in a white silk.”

“You’re crazy,” Charlie said.

“Teach you how to stop blood or make animals stand frozen or make blind horses see, all them things I’ll teach you! Teach you to cure a swelled-up cow and unbewitch a goat. Show you how to make yourself invisible!”

“Oh,” said Charlie.

Old Lady’s heart beat like a Salvation tambourine.

The knob turned from the other side.

“You,” said Charlie, “are funning me.”

“No, I’m not,” exclaimed Old Lady. “Oh, Charlie, why, I’ll make you like a window, see right through you. Why, child, you’ll be surprised!”

“Real invisible?”

“Real invisible!”

“You won’t fetch onto me if I walk out?”

“Won’t touch a bristle of you, son.”

“Well,” he drawled reluctantly, “all right.”

The door opened. Charlie stood in his bare feet, head down, chin against chest. “Make me invisible,” he said.

“First we got to catch us a bat,” said Old Lady. “Start lookin’!”

She gave him some jerky beef for his hunger and watched him climb a tree. He went high up and high up and it was nice seeing him there and it was nice having him here and all about after so many years alone with nothing to say good morning to but bird-droppings and silvery snail tracks.

Pretty soon a bat with a broken wing fluttered down out of the tree. Old Lady snatched it up, beating warm and shrieking between its porcelain white teeth, and Charlie dropped down after it, hand upon clenched hand, yelling.

That night, with the moon nibbling at the spiced pine cones. Old Lady extracted a long silver needle from under her wide blue dress. Gumming her excitement and secret anticipation, she sighted up the dead bat and held the cold needle steady-steady.

She had long ago realized that her miracles, despite all perspirations and salts and sulphurs, failed. But she had always dreamt that one day the miracles might start functioning, might spring up in crimson flowers and silver stars to prove that God had forgiven her for her pink body and her pink thoughts and her warm body and her warm thoughts as a young miss. But so far God had made no sign and said no word, but nobody knew this except Old Lady.

“Ready?” she asked Charlie, who crouched cross-kneed, wrapping his pretty legs in long goose-pimpled arms, his mouth open, making teeth. “Ready,” he whispered, shivering.

“There!” She plunged the needle deep in the bat’s right eye. “So!”

“Oh!” screamed Charlie, wadding up his face.

“Now I wrap it in gingham, and here, put it in your pocket, keep it there, bat and all. Go on!”

He pocketed the charm.

“Charlie!” she shrieked fearfully. “Charlie, where are you? I can’t see you, child!”

“Here!” He jumped so the light ran in red streaks up his body. “I’m here. Old Lady!” He stared wildly at his arms, legs, chest, and toes. “I’m here!”

Her eyes looked as if they were watching a thousand fireflies crisscrossing each other in the wild night air.

“Charlie, oh, you went fast! Quick as a hummingbird! Oh, Charlie, come back to me!”

“But I’m Acre!” he wailed.

“Where?”

“By the fire, the fire! And — and I can see myself. I’m not invisible at all!”

Old Lady rocked on her lean flanks. “Course you can see you! Every invisible person knows himself. Otherwise, how could you eat, walk, or get around places? Charlie, touch me. Touch me so I know you.”

Uneasily he put out a hand.

She pretended to jerk, startled, at his touch. “Ah!”

“You mean to say you can’t find me?” he asked. “Truly?”

“Not the least half rump of you!”

She found a tree to stare at, and stared at it with shining eyes, careful not to glance at him. “Why, I sure did a trick that time!” She sighed with wonder. “Whooeee. Quickest invisible I ever made! Charlie. Charlie, how you feel?”

“Like creek water — all stirred.”

“You’ll settle.”

Then after a pause she added, “Well, what you going to do now, Charlie, since you’re invisible?”

All sorts of things shot through his brain, she could tell. Adventures stood up and danced like hell-fire in his eyes, and his mouth, just hanging, told what it meant to be a boy who imagined himself like the mountain winds. In a cold dream he said, “I’ll run across wheat fields, climb snow mountains, steal white chickens off’n farms. I’ll kick pink pigs when they ain’t looking. I’ll pinch pretty girls’ legs when they sleep, snap their garters in schoolrooms.” Charlie looked at Old Lady, and from the shiny tips of her eyes she saw something wicked shape his face. “And other things I’ll do, I’ll do, I will,” he said.

“Don’t try nothing on me,” warned Old Lady. “I’m brittle as spring ice and I don’t take handling.” Then: “What about your folks?”

“My folks?”

“You can’t fetch yourself home looking like that. Scare the inside ribbons out of them. Your mother’d faint straight back like timber falling. Think they want you about the house to stumble over and your ma have to call you every three minutes, even though you’re in the room next her elbow?”

Charlie had not considered it. He sort of simmered down and whispered out a little “Gosh” and felt of his long bones carefully.

“You’ll be mighty lonesome. People looking through you like a water glass, people knocking you aside because they didn’t reckon you to be underfoot. And women, Charlie, women — “

He swallowed. “What about women?”

“No woman will be giving you a second stare. And no woman wants to be kissed by a boy’s mouth they can’t even find!”

Charlie dug his bare toe in the soil contemplatively. He pouted. “Well, I’ll stay invisible, anyway, for a spell. I’ll have me some fun. I’ll just be pretty careful, is all. I’ll stay out from in front of wagons and horses and Pa. Pa shoots at the nariest sound.” Charlie blinked. “Why, with me invisible, someday Pa might just up and fill me with buckshot, thinkin’ I was a hill squirrel in the dooryard. Oh…”

Old Lady nodded at a tree. “That’s likely.”

“Well,” he decided slowly, “I’ll stay invisible for tonight, and tomorrow you can fix me back all whole again, Old Lady.”

“Now if that ain’t just like a critter, always wanting to be what he can’t be,” remarked Old Lady to a beetle on a log.

“What you mean?” said Charlie.

“Why,” she explained, “it was real hard work, fixing you up. It’ll take a little time for it to wear off. Like a coat of paint wears off, boy.”

“You!” he cried. “You did this to me! Now you make me back, you make me seeable!”

“Hush,” she said. “It’ll wear off, a hand or a foot at a time.”

“How’ll it look, me around the hills with just one hand showing!”

“Like a five-winged bird hopping on the stones and bramble.”

Вы читаете Golden Aples of the Sun
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