Harvest of Changelings (17 page)

“What do you have to say for yourself? Well?” Miss Bigelow asked. “Don't you at least have something to say to Miss Findlay? Russell?”

“I'm sorry, Miss Findlay,” Russell said and then looked directly at Mrs. Collins. She looked back at him as if she were looking at crap on the floor. What the hell. He was already in trouble up to his neck. “But Miz Collins, she hates me. She never listens to me and—uuuhh—” Russell stepped on his bad ankle.

“That's enough. I'm going to suspend you for the rest of the week. I've already called your father; he's on his way—what's the matter?”

“My ankle. I fell in the woods.”

“Come on, Russell. Let's go into the health room. Why didn't you say something?” Miss Bigelow stood up, looking exasperated.

I hate you I hate all of you the first time I do a good job and ...

Russell hobbled behind Miss Bigelow. He didn't look back at either Mrs. Collins or Miss Findlay.

 

Russell sat in the lobby again, his sprained ankle propped on a chair, with a bag of crushed ice on it. There was a little pool of water on the floor beneath his foot. His schoolbooks for the rest of the week were stacked at his side, along with a detailed list of assignments
tucked in the top book. Miss Findlay had left explicit instructions how Russell was to rewrite his story. He watched out the front, waiting for his daddy to come, wanting him to hurry up and get it over with.

There was the pickup pulling up. He couldn't see his daddy's face until he was halfway up the sidewalk. Miss Bigelow must have called him at work, at the construction site. Larry White was wearing a sweat-stained, holey T-shirt and mortar-spattered jeans. There was more mortar in his daddy's hair, little white pieces, like snow. Mr. White barely looked at Russell when he came in, just a quick flick of his eyes as he went into the office.

That was enough. Russell knew what his daddy was going to do when they got home: another whipping, a long and hard one this time. No supper. Grounded. Restricted to his room. No TV. Same old thing.

 

Russell went slowly up the stairs after his daddy left to go back to work.
At least I don't have to go back to school for the rest of the week. Nobody'll see the bruises and cuts.
He was careful not to let the bag of ice, newly filled, drip on the floor. It was a relief to close his bedroom door and lie down gingerly on the bed. The ice felt pretty good on his ankle and the bed felt soft to his rear and his back. Russell closed his eyes. He didn't want to read, to think, to watch TV, to do anything. He just wanted to be quiet on his bed and let the silence hold him and keep him safe.

I wonder what ol' Miss Findlay said to Jeff Did she call his folks? I've never even talked to him. He's in the very front, right next to Miss Findlay's desk. Needs a haircut, all that hair in his face. How'd he write the same story as me? We'd have to have had the same dream.

We'd have to have had the same dream.

Russell sat up, no longer tired or wishing for stillness. He knew what stop Jeff got off the bus and he was pretty sure which house was his. It wasn't far; Russell could walk if he had to. He looked down at his ankle: still swollen, still throbbing some. Crutches. From once before, when he had broken his leg. They were in the downstairs closet. Russell got up slowly and half-hopped, half-hobbled to the door. He stopped by his dresser and first touched the red fox, then the Baby for good luck. His mother used to do that.

From the front steps of Russell's house to the front door of Jeff's house, was, Russell thought, between a quarter and a half-mile. It might as well have been ten. He only fell two or three times on the crutches before he got used to them, but each fall made his ankle
hurt worse. By the time he got to the road, Russell's T-shirt was again glued to his body. The welts on his back and rear stung from the sweat. The ones on his legs started bleeding again, streaking red through the dirt.

“The Red Fox wouldn't let a little sprained ankle stop him,” Russell told himself, panting, when he got to the end of his driveway. He could see the entrance to Greenwood Estates—at least it was downhill. “Jeff had the same dream. There's gotta be a reason.”

The Red Fox set off.

Jeff woke up Monday morning while it was still dark, and for too long a moment, he had not known where he was. He had tried to scream, but a hand covered his mouth, shoving his scream back through his teeth, down his throat. Only when he tried to pull the hand away did he realize it was his own hand and he was in the Clarks' house, the same house he had woken up in since May. He was safe.

Jeff looked at the clock on the dresser. 5:14. As he watched, the last red digit slowly changed from a four to a five. The Clarks got up most mornings around 6:30 or so. They took turns showering and using the bathroom and then came and got him up. Getting him up, Mrs. Clark had told him yesterday, eyeing him over her coffee, lately had been like waking the dead.

Not this morning, Jeff thought. After that dream, he didn't want to go back to sleep. It had been some weeks since he had had such a dream. Before, he had had them almost every night—alone in the dark and knowing he wasn't alone, that someone was just beyond his reach, waiting, and was going to put a hand over Jeffs mouth and ... He had dreaded sleep. Now, there were the other dreams: the centaur, the swimmers, the sea beneath two moons. But going back to sleep now was too risky, there was no guarantee which dream would be waiting for him.

After checking to be sure the dinosaurs he had brought from his father's house were still on his dresser, Jeff went out in the hall, into its silence. No light made a line beneath the Clarks' bedroom door and the bathroom door was open. Jeff tiptoed into the bathroom and closed and locked the door behind him. He flicked on the light and blinked at the sudden brightness and the colors' sudden shift from shades of grey to sand-colored tiles, beige walls, and a white curtain over the window. The transparent shower curtain was covered with
big red and blue fish. Taking a shower was sort of like being inside an aquarium.

Jeff loved showers, the longer the better, with torrents of hot water pouring over his head and swirling around his feet. He kept the plug in so he could pretend to be swimming in the rain. The water could get just deep enough so he could lay on the bottom of the tub and be underwater, the multicolored fish over his head.

Jeff peeled off his pajamas and got in the tub and carefully pulled the curtain so there was as little space between the plastic and the wall as possible. He turned on the water, twisted the shower knob, and grabbed the shampoo. Rivers of shampoo, Pert Plus, lather, hung all over his body like sea foam, like snow, like cotton candy. Water beat on his head. Lather frothed at his feet. He lay down and stretched as the water rained all over and around him. And nobody came to stop him, to pound on the door, find a key to the lock, come in. Nobody.

Now he was safe in the shower; for too long a time, he hadn't been.

Finally, reluctantly, Jeff turned off the water and got out of the shower, shivering at the sudden touch of cooler air. He wrapped himself in a huge towel, as if he were an Arab in a desert robe. As he enjoyed the feel of the soft towel on his skin, he noticed his ears. He straightened up to dry his hair and looked into the mirror.

“My ears,” Jeff said and with a corner of his towel, wiped the fog off the medicine cabinet mirror, and looked again. His ears were pointed, like the swimmers and the centaur. He tapped the mirror: solid real glass. He pinched himself—definitely awake—and touched his ears, running a finger on the outer edges. He turned his head to the left and the right: both ears were pointed. Unmistakably pointed. Could he cover them with his hair? Jeff heard, as he fumbled through a drawer looking for a comb, the seemingly faraway tinny ringing of the Clarks' alarm clock.

Uh-oh.

Mr. Clark would call a doctor, or the social worker, and Mrs. dark—what would she do? Jeff had no idea, but he didn't want to find out. He grabbed his pajamas and darted back to his room, closing the door just in time, as he heard the Clarks' door open. Jeff pulled his covers over his head and lay very still. Deep breath, take a deep breath, he told himself, think. He had half-an-hour before one of the Clarks would come and shake him awake. And see his ears. He felt them again to be sure: still pointed. There was no way he was going to school like this. Sick—he would just have to be sick
today. Jeff would tell the Clarks his stomach hurt and he felt too sick to go and . . .

Mr. Clark came to wake Jeff up. Jeff could tell by the heavy sound of the footsteps in the room. “Jeff? Time to get up.”

Jeff groaned. “I don't feel good. My stomach hurts. And my head. They both hurt,” Jeff said, his voice muffled by the bedspread and the sheet. He groaned again and pulled himself into a ball in the middle of the bed. “Can I stay here today?”

“Ellen? Jeff says he's sick. His stomach and his head. I don't know if he has a temperature; I haven't touched him.”

Mrs. Clark was there in a minute.

“Jeff, let me see if you have a fever. Let me feel your forehead.”

“No, don' touch me, please. I told you I don't feel good. My stomach hurts and my head hurts.” Jeff could feel the two of them hesitating. He was sure they were looking at each other the way grownups did, with raised eyebrows and crossed arms. He groaned again, just to be on the safe side. Then the Clarks walked out of the room to talk; Jeff could hear them whispering in the hall. Then one of them, Mrs. Clark, walked away, and Mr. Clark came back in Jeffs room.

“Okay, Jeff, maybe you'd better not go to school today. Ellen's going to stay with you—”

“I can stay by myself.”

“No, you can't. You may be almost eleven, but you are not staying here by yourself. Ellen will stay here this morning and I'll bring some work home this afternoon, work in the study. Now, go back to sleep.”

The door to his room closed and Jeff listened to Mr. Clark's footsteps down the hall and into the kitchen. Then the hall door closed, cutting off almost all sound from the kitchen—he could just hear their voices, the radio, the clatter of dishes . . .

 

That afternoon, when the doorbell rang, Jeff was so deep in a saurian struggle he didn't hear it the first or the second time. When the chimes echoed for a third time, Jeff jumped. The clock on his dresser said 3:31. Mrs. Clark wouldn't be home until five-thirty and Mr. Clark wouldn't come out of his study until then, either.

“Jeff, is someone at the door? If it is a salesman, tell him we don't want whatever it is,” Mr. Clark yelled, his voice muffled.

“I'll go see,” Jeff yelled back, giving up the last pretense of being sick. He knew they were on to him and couldn't quite figure out why they had let him get away with it. At least he had managed to keep
his ears hidden when Mrs. Clark had taken his temperature in the morning. She had stared hard at the thermometer, gave him a small smile, and had left the room. Adults were just plain crazy sometimes. Now, who was there? A salesman, or maybe JWs, Jehovah's Witnesses, like those who came by his parents' all the time. Or two Mormons, with their bicycles behind them, in their skinny, black ties and starched, white shirts, their faces shining as if they had scrubbed them clean before each house. Or Baha‘is, with their broken record on peace and oneness. Magazine salesmen, maybe. Baha'i, Mormon, JW, or whatever, Jeff wanted them to go away. If he stayed quiet and made no dinosaur noises, maybe they would decide nobody was at home, stuff their tracts in the door, and leave.

The door bell chimed a fourth time and then whoever it was started knocking. Jehovah's Witnesses, Baha'is, and Mormons didn't pound on the door. Neither did salesmen. Jeff put down the allosaurus and the plesiosaur and ran to the front door.

“I'm coming, I'm coming,” he called, but the knocking got louder and louder. The door bell rang again as Jeff finally jerked the door open.

“Russell White? What are you doing here?”

Jeff knew who Russell was from Resource, but he had never spoken to the older and bigger boy; he had never even said the boy's name. Russell was a head taller than Jeff, and Russell was twelve, almost thirteen, and Jeff wasn't quite eleven. Russell's red hair looked ragged, with little spikes jutting up in odd places on his head. Jeff was surprised to see Russell's eyes were as green as his own. Russell leaned on the porch railing, crutches under his arm. His face was flushed and sweat dripped from his forehead. One foot was wrapped in an Ace bandage.

“You don't look sick. Yer not even wearing your pajamas,” Russell finally said. Jeff grinned in spite of himself. He had on a tyrannosaurus T-shirt, bright orange with a brilliant cherry red rex, another gift from the Clarks. Trying not to look obvious, Jeff smoothed his own shaggy hair just to be sure his ears were still covered.

“Jeff, who's there?”

Russell froze and Jeff jerked around. Mr. Clark stood in the living room doorway, his glasses in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other.

“Russell White, from school.”

“I brought him his homework,” Russell said quickly. “I, uh, live close by. I sprained my ankle.”

Mr. Clark looked first at Jeff, then at Russell, then back at Jeff again, and shrugged.

“That was awfully nice of you to do that on a sprained ankle. Let me know when you want to go home. I'll drive you. Just come and get me in the study, Jeff.”

“Okay, Mr. Clark.”

Russell waited until Mr. Clark had gone down the hall and they both had heard the door closed.

“Yer not sick. And he knows it, too.”

“Well, I feel a whole lot better. I'll probably be back at school—soon,” Jeff said hastily. “What happened to your foot? And what are you doing here? Why aren't you at school? You didn't bring me my homework—we aren't even in the same class, except for Resource.”

“I fell this morning at school. In the woods behind the playground. I was running away.”

“Running away? From school? Are you running away now?”

“No, I came to see you. Gotta question I need to ask. It's important,” Russell said. “Uh, could I sit down? Just for a minute. My ankle really hurts and it's kinda hot out here. My daddy would really be fussing if I were standing around with the front door open, letting all the cool air out. If we had air conditioning, that is. Gotta lotta fans.”

“Yeah, okay, I guess so.”

“Why do you call your folks Mr. and Mrs. Clark? Isn't your name Gates?”

Jeff made no reply except to open the front door as wide as possible and to step back and let Russell limp into the living room. Russell sat down gingerly and then lifted his foot up on the couch.

“My daddy whipped me pretty hard 'cause I got in trouble in school and they had to call him to come get me. The reason I got in trouble is why I came to see you.”

“I don't know if Mrs. Clark would want you to put your feet up on the couch like that,” Jeff said slowly, as he looked around the room. He wasn't sure if Mrs. Clark would care or not about feet on the furniture. His mother couldn't stand it. Her living room had been kept like a church: quiet, still, and unsullied. This living room was different. Where his mother had five magazines, no more, no less, fanned out on the coffee table, Mrs. Clark had six or seven, dog-eared and coffee-stained, lying every which-away. His mother had wall-to-wall carpets, Mrs. Clark had throw rugs on wood floors. Where his mother had—

“Why do you call your mama and daddy Mr. and Mrs. Clark? Aren't they yer real folks?”

“No, they're my foster parents. How'd you get in trouble? What do you want to ask me?” Jeff said quickly as he sat down in a chair across the room. For a long moment Russell didn't answer. He wrinkled up his face as if he were thinking really hard and picking out each word separately.

“Okay,” Russell finally said. “Remember that story we hafta write for Miss Findlay? The book we're supposed to make?”

“What about it?”

“Well, I got into big trouble over mine today,” Russell said, giving Jeff a curious look. “Miz Findlay said I copied mine out of a fairy tale book and that it was just like yours. She said you musta copied yers from the same place since they were about almost exactly the same thing.”

“I didn't copy my story,” Jeff said, wishing he hadn't let Russell in the house.

“I didn't copy mine, either. I got it in a dream. Didya have the same dream? Ya gotta tell me, because if you did—”

“What kind of dream?” Jeff said quickly and got up from his seat and went to the picture window, and started pulling the curtain drawstrings. The room grew light, then dark, then light. He could see Russell's face reflected in the glass, then it would disappear, reappear. Maybe if he stood there long enough, Russell would give up and hobble home. “The dreams you got yer stories from. About the flying horse, the dragon, the centaur, Roth.”

“His name wasn't Roth, it was Thorfin—”

“But you met him in that meadow, right? It was night-time and there were all those stars, tons more than here at night, and two moons, right? You did, you did, I can tell by the way yer looking away. I knew it!” Russell crowed, shaking both fists over his head like a boxer. “I just knew it. Did you see the monsters, too—the red-eyed monsters?”

“Red-eyed monsters?”

“Yeah, right before waking up sometimes, real quick, with fire-whips,” Russell said impatiently.

“I've dreamed about the centaur, the dragon, the flying horse, and the swimmers, mostly the swimmers. No red-eyed monsters.”

“None? Oh well, maybe, I just see 'em and nobody else. Swimmers I haven't seen yet. Anyway, I think all of it, all of them, are real, just like here is real.”

“Real?”

“Yeah, real. I woke up with a glowing white flower once, that left glowing dust on my hand—it was real,” Russell said and Jeff nodded. He, too, had awakened in the middle of the night with a luminous bloom on his pillow.

“There's something else,” Jeff said, feeling both enormous relief and surprise. He would have never guessed in a million years Russell to be the one he would tell his dreams to, but it didn't matter. It felt good to finally be telling someone. Maybe he was glad Russell had come over after all. “This is why I pretended to be sick today.” Jeff walked over to the couch and sat down by Russell. “Look,” he said, and pushed back the hair covering his pointed ears.