He shrugged. “Think he’d let me collect it on myself?” he said in a teasing voice, though for a moment he looked uneasy.
I couldn’t think of anything more to say that didn’t sound old-womanish, as Bessie said. I took the little book from my bedside table drawer where I’d left it. “There are pictures,” I told him, and his eyes widened.
He slid eagerly forward but stayed on the floor. It had rained that morning, and he was damp and streaked all over with muck and red clay and leaf litter. His smell was strong, but I liked it: fresh-turned earth and wet leaves and pine sap all rolled into one.
I read the story from the beginning by the light of the full moon. I didn’t want to switch on the lamp for fear Henry might see Wil through the windows when he quit and walked up the back drive. Wil leaned in close and drank up every word. He lingered a long time over each of the color illustrations, running his fingers over the parts he especially liked.
I was about two-thirds through when Henry’s studio floodlights suddenly went dark. Wil and I turned to the sound of the sliding metal doors rolling closed and Henry’s footsteps on the gravel drive. When Henry paused for a few seconds, I thought maybe he’d seen us from below. But he started toward the house again and stopped to speak softly to Mr. C’mere on the porch before he came inside.
“It’s just Henry,” I whispered casually, hoping Wil wouldn’t mind and might show himself. For the first time, the prospect of holding out on Henry didn’t feel right or good. Not right or good at all.
Wil tried hard to hide it, but alarm shuddered through him. As Henry climbed the stairs, Wil looked anxiously from one side of the room to the other like a trapped animal looking for a place to dive. I pointed to the closet across from the bed, and Wil shouldered his bag and slipped silently inside. Not two seconds later, Henry stood in my door.
“I heard your voice,” he said.
“I was reading out loud,” I told him, holding up the book.
“In the dark?” he asked.
“Bright moon tonight.”
He glanced out the window and nodded. I saw him notice the shavings on the rug, but if they struck him as odd he didn’t say. There were advantages to living with a grimy man. He smiled at the book, and before I could speak he took it from my hands. He was still in his work clothes and covered with greasy dirt, he and Wil alike in their way. He switched on the lamp and sat on the floor exactly where Wil had been. I wondered if the rug was still warm. Part of me hoped Wil could keep still and quiet while Henry read, though another part wished he might give himself away.
“A long, long time ago,” Henry began in his deep voice, a good one for storytelling, “in a small country-village in Japan, there lived a poor farmer and his wife, who were very good people. They had a number of children. But the youngest child, a little boy, did not seem to be fit for hard work. He was very clever,—cleverer than all his brothers and sisters; but he was quite weak and small, and people said he could never grow very big. So his parents thought it would be better for him to become a priest than to become a farmer. They took him with them to the village-temple one day, and asked the good old priest who lived there, if he would have their little boy for his acolyte, and teach him all that a priest ought to know.
“The boy learned quickly what the old priest taught him, and was very obedient in most things. But he had one fault. He liked to draw cats during study-hours, and to draw cats even where cats ought not to have been drawn at all.
“Whenever he found himself alone, he drew cats. He drew them on the margins of the priest’s books, and on all the screens of the temple, and on the walls, and on the pillars. Several times the priest told him this was not right; but he did not stop drawing cats. He drew them because he could not really help it. He had what is called ‘the genius of an artist,’ and just for that reason he was not quite fit to be an acolyte.
“One day after he had drawn some very clever pictures of cats upon a paper screen, the old priest said to him severely—‘My boy, you must go away from this temple at once. You will never make a good priest, but perhaps you will become a great artist. Now let me give you a last piece of advice, and be sure you never forget it. Avoid large places at night;—keep to small!’”
I saw a flash of movement behind the closet keyhole and heard stirring that made my stomach lurch. The space under the closet door darkened. Wil was pressing himself up against the door. It seemed odd to me how a boy who could keep himself so silent in the woods had so little talent for it indoors.
I held my breath, waiting to see if Henry had heard, but he was focused on the story and kept right on reading, telling how the Japanese boy traveled to a second temple, one possessed by an evil goblin rat. He read how the boy went inside to find the priest and, finding none, found ink and empty screens and began to paint cats, a great many cats, cat after cat after cat for hours and hours, until, feeling sleepy, the boy remembered the old priest’s words and crawled inside a small cabinet to sleep.
I heard Wil grasp the handle of the closet door and saw it turn a little as Henry told how the boy woke to a screaming
