where I was until I froze to death. Anyway, what did he want to ask me for, one way or the other? I couldn’t of done anything.
I stopped thinking about it and dozed off.
I woke up once when he turned off the right of way. He dove into the woods. There was no path, but he seemed to know where he was going. The next time I woke from a crickling noise. He was carrying me over a frozen pond and the ice was giving under his feet. He didn’t hurry. I looked down and saw the white cracks raying out under his feet, and it didn’t seem to matter a bit. I bleared off again.
He put me down at last. We were there. ‘There’ was inside a room. It was very warm. He put me on my feet and I snapped out of it in a hurry. The first thing I looked for was the door. I saw it and jumped over there and put my back against the wall beside it, in case I wanted to leave. Then I looked around.
It was a big room. One wall was rough rock and the rest was logs with stuff shoved between them. There was a big fire going in the rock wall, not in a fireplace, exactly; it was a sort of hollow place. There was an old auto battery on a shelf opposite, with two yellowing electric light bulbs dangling by wires from it. There was a table, some boxes, and a couple of three-legged stools. The air had a haze of smoke and such a wonderful, heartbreaking, candy-and-crackling smell of food that a little hose squirted inside my mouth.
The man said, ‘What have I got here, Baby?’
And the room was full of kids. Well, three of them, but somehow they seemed to be more than three kids. There was a girl about my age – eight, I mean – with blue paint on the side of her face. She had an easel and a palette with lots of paints and a fistful of brushes, but she wasn’t using the brushes. She was smearing the paint on with her hands. Then there was a little Negro girl about five with great big eyes who stood gaping at me. And in a wooden crate, set up on two sawhorses to make a kind of bassinet, was a baby. I guess about.three or four months old. It did what babies do, drooling some, making small bubbles, waving its hands around very aimless, and kicking.
When the man spoke, the girl at the easel looked at me and then at the baby. The baby just kicked and drooled.
The girl said, ‘His name’s Gerry. He’s mad.’
‘What’s he mad at?’ the man asked. He was looking at the baby.
‘Everything,’ said the girl. ‘Everything and everybody.’
‘Where’d he come from?’
I said, ‘Hey, what is this?’ but nobody paid any attention. The man kept asking questions at the baby and the girl kept answering. Craziest thing I ever saw.
‘He ran away from a state school,’ the girl said.’ They fed him enough, but no one bleshed with him.’
That’s what she said – ‘bleshed’.
I opened the door then and cold air hooted in. ‘You louse,’ I said to the man, ‘you’re from the school.’
‘Close the door, Janie,’ said the man. The girl at the easel didn’t move, but the door banged shut behind me. I tried to open it and it wouldn’t move. I let out a howl, yanking at it.
‘I think you ought to stand in the corner,’ said the man. ‘Stand him in the corner, Janie.’
Janie looked at me. One of the three-legged stools sailed across to me. It hung in mid-air and turned on its side. It nudged me with its flat seat. I jumped back and it came after me. I dodged to the side, and that was the corner. The stool came on. I tried to bat it down and just hurt my hand. I ducked and it went lower than I did. I put one hand on it and tried to vault over it, but it just fell and so did I. I got up again and stood in the corner, trembling. The stool turned right side up and sank to the floor in front of me.
The man said, ‘Thank you, Janie.’ He turned to me. ‘Stand there and be quiet, you. I’ll get to you later. You shouldn’ta kicked up all that fuss.’ And then, to the baby, he said, ‘He got anything we need?’
And again it was the little girl who answered. She said, ‘Sure. He’s the one.’
‘Well,’ said the man. ‘What do you know!’ He came over. ‘Gerry, you can live here. I don’t come from no school. I’ll never turn you in.’
‘Yeah, huh?’
‘He hates you,’ said Janie.
‘What am I supposed to do about that?’ he wanted to know.
Janie turned her head to look into the bassinet. ‘Feed him.’ The man nodded and began fiddling around the fire.
Meanwhile, the little Negro girl had been standing in the one spot with her big eyes right out on her cheekbones, looking at me. Janie went back to her painting and the baby just lay there same as always, so I stared right back at the little Negro girl. I snapped, ‘What the hell are you gawking at?’
She grinned at me. ‘Gerry ho-ho,’ she said, and disappeared. I mean she really disappeared, went out like a light, leaving her clothes where she had been. Her little dress billowed in the air and fell in a heap where she had been, and that was that. She was gone.
‘Gerry hee-hee,’ I heard. I looked up, and there she was, stark naked, wedged in a space where a little outcropping on the rock wall stuck out just below the ceiling. The second I saw her she disappeared again.
‘Gerry ho-ho,’ she said. Now she was on top of the row of boxes they used as storage shelves, over on the other side of the room.
‘Gerry hee-hee!’ Now she was under the table. ‘Gerry ho-ho!’ This time she was right in the corner with me, crowding me.
I yelped and tried to get out of the way and bumped the stool. I was afraid of it, so I shrank back again and the little girl was gone.
The man glanced over his shoulder from where he was working at the fire. ‘Cut it out, you kids,’ he said.
There was a silence, and then the girl came slowly out from the bottom row of shelves. She walked across to her dress and put it on.
‘How did you do that?’ I wanted to know.
‘Ho-ho,’ she said.
Janie said, ‘It’s easy. She’s really twins.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Then another girl, exactly the same, came from somewhere in the shadows and stood beside the first. They were identical. They stood side by side and stared at me. This time I let them stare.
‘That’s Bonnie and Beanie,’ said the painter. ‘This is Baby and that – ‘she indicated the man – ‘that’s Lone. And I’m Janie.’
I couldn’t think of what to say, so I said, ‘Yeah.’
Lone said,’ Water, Janie.’ He held up a pot. I heard water trickling, but didn’t see anything. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, and hung the pot on a crane. He picked up a cracked china plate and brought it over to me. It was full of stew with great big lumps of meat in it and thick gravy and dumplings and carrots. ‘Here, Gerry. Sit down.’
I looked at the stool. ‘On that?’
‘Sure.’
‘Not me,’ I said. I took the plate and hunkered down against the wall.
‘Hey,’ he said after a time. ‘Take it easy. We’ve all had chow. No one’s going to snatch it away from you. Slow down!’
I ate even faster than before. I was almost finished when I threw it all up. Then for some reason my head hit the edge of the stool. I dropped the plate and spoon and slumped there. I felt real bad.
Lone came over and looked at me. ‘Sorry, kid,’ he said. ‘Glean up, will you, Janie?’
Right in front of my eyes, the mess on the floor disappeared. I didn’t care about that or anything else just then. I felt the man’s hand on the side of my neck. Then he tousled my hair.
‘Beanie, get him a blanket. Let’s all go to sleep. He ought to rest a while.’
I felt the blanket go around me, and I think I was asleep before he put me down.
I don’t know how much later it was when I woke up. I didn’t know where I was and that scared me. I raised my head and saw the dull glow of the embers in the fireplace. Lone was stretched out on it in his clothes. Janie’s easel stood in the reddish blackness like some great preying insect. I saw the baby’s head pop up out of the bassinet, but I couldn’t tell whether he was looking straight at me or away. Janie was lying on the floor near the door and the twins were on the old table. Nothing moved except the baby’s head, bobbing a little.
I got to my feet and looked around the room. Just a room, only the one door. I tiptoed towards it. When I passed Janie, she opened her eyes.
