He picked his way down the hall and suddenly cried out in terror and lurched ahead, slamming himself against the wall.
“Geez, it’s only a brush, Hap,” Faith said. “You don’t have to panic.”
“It felt like a snake. I thought it was a snake on my back,” he said, his voice a tremulous quaver.
“Faith, think before you do something,” Jean snapped.
“I just touched his back. How was I to know he’d jump like a grasshopper?” She brushed her teeth, spit with a vehemence into the sink, flung the toothpaste across the tile and left.
“Faith!”
Nothing happened. Jean closed the door, undressed and climbed into the tub. She started Hap on his lessons. A few moments later, there was a knock at the door.
“Yes?”
“It’s me.” Faith’s voice carried the slight grumpiness common when she felt remorse. She moved something at the sink. “Hap, the toothpaste is right behind the cold water knob. I’ll try to remember to put it there all the time.”
The door closed. Jean felt her eyes puddle up, and she soaked her face with the hot washcloth.
In the morning, Forrie burst through the door into the kitchen. “Mom, Chickie’s still alive.”
“That’s good.” She sighed. Actually she was glad, but it seemed inconsequential. Bigger things demanded attention.
In the next few weeks, the chick became Forrie’s constant companion. It rode on his shoulder as he walked about the ranch, and sat there content while he practiced guitar.
One afternoon Jean heard Forrie’s horrified voice outside. “Mom, help!” He kicked open the screen door. “Mom, I ran over Chickie with my bicycle,” he blurted out when the door slammed.
“Oh, no.” Jean took a deep breath and held out her cupped hands. Again he gave her the sad little bundle. She explored the fluff delicately and put a finger on his neck under his beak.
“Is he still—?”
“No, Forrie. I don’t think so.” She steeled herself for his sobs, but they didn’t come. “I’m sorry,” she said and handed it back. Her own grief was still swollen and she could think of nothing more comforting to say.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Franny brought over some mending she had done for Jean. Every September there were knees to be patched and torn seams to be rejoined. Their midafternoon cup of tea in the kitchen booth stretched to two. They heard the piano in the living room.
“‘The Old Gray Mare,’” Franny said. “Faith’s at it again.”
“That’s not Faith. She went up to Heddy’s for some cookies.”
“Who is it then?”
“Wouldn’t be Forrie. He won’t touch the piano now that he has his guitar. Could be Billy.”
They walked out into the living room.
“It’s Hap,” whispered Franny in amazement.
“Ssh.” They stood there listening while he went through the entire song twice.
“Let him be,” Jean whispered and walked back to the kitchen. Franny followed.
“Has he ever done that before?”
“Not that I know of.”
“He looked so cute. He was sitting on two pillows. His hand was in a fist and he was punching out the song with his knuckles. He only used the black keys.”
“I could tell.”
Then Hap went on to other melodies, familiar children’s tunes and songs Faith had been practicing. Jean and Franny listened for a long time.
“You didn’t know he could do that?” Franny asked.
“No, not at all. When he was three, Mother Holly gave him a toy xylophone for Christmas. You know, one with only an octave of metal plates and a wooden hammer. As soon as he unwrapped it, he started to play ‘Silent Night,’ just as if he’d been doing it forever, but he needed another note and hit the floor with the hammer. ‘I can’t do it. Not enough notes,’ he said, and put it aside and went on to another present.”
“You may have something here you didn’t realize, Jean.”
“Just at the right time.”
“He had his eyes closed.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. The kids say he does it all the time. We’ve got to break him of it because it doesn’t look normal. Just like not smiling or not facing you. He’s got to learn to do that too. Otherwise, anybody who’s talking to him feels cut off.”
“Eddie doesn’t seem to feel that way. Only curious. The other day I found him walking through the house with a blindfold on, just to see what it was like.”
“What a pun’kin. How do they play together?”
“Hap hangs onto his belt loop. I don’t know how they started that. Sometimes they walk with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. I’ve even seen them both climbing the tree in our backyard.”
“He probably remembers that well enough.”
“Sometimes he grabs the long hair on the back of Rusty’s neck and follows where Rusty goes.”
“Yes, Faith told me that. It seems to work, except that Rusty smacks him with his tail like a whip and sometimes goes off and leaves him. It’s not like he was a trained guide dog.”
“Listen,” Franny said. The sounds from the piano changed to ‘Silent Night.’
Jean began working with him on the piano every day, in addition to teaching him Braille. Time was short. She got up an hour earlier to get her things done so she’d have more time with him each afternoon. Her first task was to get him to unfold his hands and use the tips of his fingers on the keys. But he had ability. There was no question about that. He picked up simple melodies she played for him only once or twice. She was elated and wished she could pour into him all that she knew, all the ways she had learned how to live.
The Ramona schools were not equipped to handle unsighted children, and his special teacher wasn’t particularly effectual.
“Mrs. Holly,” she said one day in a puffed up voice. “You made a serious mistake by starting Hap reading Braille with his right hand. It’s caused me a lot of extra work. That child’s left handed.”
“So?”
“We must allow him to follow his natural inclination.”
Jean thought she sounded as if she were reading out of a manual. “He may be left handed, but Braille books aren’t. If he traces the line with his left hand, he’ll loose the next line and have to search for it. Anyone can figure that out. He’s going to read with his right and keep place with his left, regardless of what you say.”
“But it’s not his natural inclination.”
“But it works. Faster and better. I know.” She could feel the woman fuming, but she didn’t care. What did that woman know?
Hap was caught in the middle. It slowed his progress. His afternoons in the regular second grade classroom were a muddle of confusion. He got further and further behind and was labeled “slow learner” on his report card. It incensed Jean.
She started making phone calls. The larger town across the mountains, Escondido, had ample programs for the unsighted, but it was nearly an hour away on the narrow highway the children called Throw-uppy Road. Still, they enrolled him, and after Christmas vacation they hired a driver.
When Hap arrived home after his first day in the Escondido school, his words tumbled out in excitement. “Mommy, my teacher lets me read however I want to.”
“Good.”
“And I started to learn to type today. There are four rows and we learned the second from the bottom.”
“That’s called the home row. What are the letters?”
“ASDFJKL and something else I don’t know. Tomorrow we learn some others. And we already started to write Braille. They’ve got machines like yours to punch it out. And we’re going to learn arithmetic on a thing with beads on sticks.”
“That’s an abacus.”
“Yeah, and they’ve got a big round thing of the world where I can feel the edges of the countries. It’s ’chin.”
“What?”
“’Chin.”
“What’s that mean?”
&
nbsp; “Oh, you know, good or something.”
Every day he had new reports of the ’chin things he was learning or doing. Through his bubbly stories, Jean saw that he loved his teacher, and that apparently other children in the class were friendly. But the ride was long. Sometimes after a rain, huge boulders which had fallen on the road closed it for several days. Often there were mudslides. On those days, he had to be driven the long way around the mountains. It made him two hours late. Sometimes the driver couldn’t make it through at all.
“He can’t afford to miss school so often,” Jean said to Forrest late one night after it had rained all day. “Besides, what kind of school life is he going to have in the years ahead if he can’t play with his school friends? He’ll always have to leave immediately to come back here.”
“You’re right. But he can’t go to school here. I know every schoolteacher in Ramona. I can just hear them saying the same things they said to me.” His voice went up an octave in mimicry. “‘It’s a shame about the youngest Holly boy. I can’t see how he’ll ever learn.’ That’s only because they don’t have any notion of how to teach him.”
“Then I think we’ll have to move.” Her voice was even. She spoke with as much assurance as if she were saying, “We’re having spaghetti for dinner tonight.”
“Huh?”
She knew it would catch him by surprise. “I think we’ll have to follow him to Escondido.” She waited a few moments for it to sink in.
“You’re way ahead of me, Jeanie.”
“The schools provide free transportation in that district. It’ll be better for all of us. Then none of the children have to deal with people who knew Hap before. You know we’re a curiosity here. Ramona is too much of a fishbowl. You’ve said so yourself.”
“I know. I know.”
“The children will be better off if they see they have to make it on their own, developing their own identities where the Holly name doesn’t mean anything in the community. Everybody knows everything about us here, so the kids are expected to be certain things.”
“Well, I’ll be a bull moose’s uncle. You surprise me.”
She pressed her advantage. “This is too small a pond for you too, Forrest. Ramona’s not growing. Escondido is. You could run your business there, and probably expand it, couldn’t you?”
That took longer to settle. Rain drummed dully on the roof. “Yes, I guess I could,” he said finally. “After I got established it might grow more there than here. Ed says the city’s taking off.”
“We can learn a new city. I want some new streets and shops and businesses. And there are cleaners and delivery services and theaters in Escondido that we don’t have here. And we could find a good music teacher for Hap. And taxis. We wouldn’t have to depend on your mother or Earl or anybody. We could go where we wanted, whenever we wanted. It would be new for all of us.”
“You remind me of a female goose leading her gaggle off to new territory.”
“Instead of just enduring, we’ve got to challenge life back. All of us. What you do think?”
“I think, I think you’re getting pretty adventuresome.”
“No. Not getting. You forget. I have been all along. Only you haven’t noticed. If I weren’t, I’d still be back in Connecticut.”
He let out an astonished, sheepish laugh. “I love you, Jeanie.”
He came closer, and she felt his arms enfold her. “What do you think the kids will think about it?” she asked.
“Faith’d like it. It would give her a new bunch of friends to boss around.”
She kissed him first on the jaw, then moved to his lips, until a thought interrupted her. “Remember from the Bible where it says ‘and a little child shall lead them?’” His arms pressed her tight to him. “It’d be ’chin.” She snickered.
“What?”
“’Chin. Hap told me that word. It means good or great or something like that. You haven’t heard it?”
“No, but I’ll make a wager we’re not hearing the whole thing.”
In bed, Forrest tossed restlessly. “It’s not going to be easy,” he said.
“That’s not the point. It’s necessary.”
This private time swelled with the bigness of an idea only they knew. She loved all their private times, their world apart from children, apart from work or houses or bricks or families, apart from his public, guarded self, the moments when their souls were naked and when she knew, though she’d never say, that he was greater by reason of her being there, that she, too, was greater than if she were alone.
Water dribbled from the rain gutter outside their bedroom window. She stretched between the sheets made warm by their bodies, settled in, and, full of love, she fell asleep.
Three months later, moving day came. It was crisp and the morning air felt pure and clean. They ate their last breakfast in Ramona at Franny and Ed’s.
“Mom, Hap’s got his eyes closed again.” Faith’s voice wavered between tattling and helping.
“Peeps, Hap,” Jean said, her abbreviated reminder to keep his eyes open. Hap grunted.
“Boy, you’d better be glad your water pistol’s packed,” Forrest said, “or I’d pop you one, right between the eyes.”
“And you know he can do it, too,” Faith chimed in. “Pop does it all the time, Franny, whenever we tell him.”
“I’m going to throw it away,” Hap grumbled.
The Mayflower moving van arrived and the family trooped back across the dirt road between the two houses for the last time. Jean wrapped her sweater tighter.
Faith held Jean’s hand as they walked. “I’m going to miss Judy, Mom.”
“Oh, she can visit weekends any time. And we’ll learn places in Escondido you two can ride.”
“But I won’t have any friends.”
“That won’t last two days, I bet. We’ve all got to keep growing. Old friends are sometimes too comfortable. Sometimes old places, too.”
“I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“When you say goodbye to one thing, you usually say hello to something else.”
“Can we have a kumquat tree at our new house?”
“Sure.”
One by one, the pieces of their Ramona life were carried off and disappeared into the depths of the moving van. The older boys stood staring.
“Mom, one of the Mayflower men has lots of muscles,” Billy whispered.
“I’m sure he does.”
“How’s he going to move the piano?”
“How do you think it got here? Grew? They have a way.”
The two men guided it on rollers and hoisted it neatly on pulleys into the van.
“Wow. Look at that,” said Forrie, his voice breathy and full of admiration.
“That’s ’chin,” Billy said.
“What’s ’chin?” Jean asked. “Suddenly I hear it all the time.”
“Aw, Mom, it’s only a word,” said Billy, wandering off.
“Is it short for something else, Forrie?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“Just a word.”
“What word?”
“Bitchin’.”
“Forrie. That’s a barn word. I won’t allow that in the house.”
“I won’t say it in the house. Anyways, we’re between houses. We don’t have a house today. Besides, we don’t say the whole word.”
His logic amused her. Maybe she’d just have to grow up with the kids. She went back in the house to find what was left.
Midmorning, Mother Holly brought a pot of coffee for the moving men, and they took a break in the patio. Jean could hear her outside.
“Do you know these people well?” one of the Mayflower men asked Mother Holly.
“Pretty well.”
He spoke more softly. “Neither one of them can see?”
“No.”
“And the littlest kid, too?”
She heard Mother Holly clear her throat. “Do you remember that old saying about the Lord putting bu
rdens on backs that can bear them? More coffee?”
The six-note melody of a meadowlark trilled through the air and Jean came outside again. “Doesn’t that just chill you it’s so beautiful?”
“What, ma’m?”
“You mean you didn’t hear that, the meadowlark?”
“No, I guess I didn’t.”
“We hear a couple every day,” said Mother Holly.
“I sure hope there are meadowlarks in Escondido. Do you live there?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t suppose you know?”
“No, ma’m, I guess I don’t listen much to birds.”
“What a shame. Just think what you’re missing. Well, are we nearly loaded?” Jean asked.
“Just about.”
Jean asked Mother Holly to write out the check. Then she felt for the lower right corner of the checkbook, edged her hand up a half inch and three inches to the left, signed it slowly and held it out. After a momentary hesitation, the man took it. “Where’s your husband, ma’m?”
“Probably out loading his horses. A friend’s going to move them.”
“He rides horses?”
“All his life he has.”
He cleared his throat. “Do you have family where you’re going?”
“No. The only family we have is here, and back east. We don’t know anyone in Escondido.” She sensed what was coming next, but she didn’t harden herself against it. She just stood naturally, without the old tense, stay-alert, forward leaning posture. She faced him directly and let a slight smile play over her mouth.
“Excuse me for this, but lady, I don’t see how you’re going to get by, seeing as how three of you—”
“Your job is to move us. Ours is to keep on moving once we get there.” She smiled at him with what she meant as kindness, turned back into the house, and paused in the dining room when her heels tapped against the Mexican tile floor. Right about here was where Forrest lit the matches for candelight that day. Slowly, she walked through every room and trailed her fingers along the adobe bricks. In Faith’s room, she bent down low and felt along the first row of adobes until she found the tooth fairy hole. She smiled. It would be a curiosity to the family that bought the house.
After a while she walked outside again toward the Chinese elm. Her feet felt the scooped-out dips of packed earth where the swings had hung. A warm breeze brought the rumble of Heddy and Karl’s chickens. The mint smelled fresh and sweet and green. Her arm went around the trunk of the Chinese elm.