One and Wonder (40 page)

It was not without a certain logic. Neurotic children had played a large part in the history of witchcraft. In one of the English trials, children had reportedly fallen into fits and vomited crooked pins. They could not pronounce such holy names as “Lord,” “Jesus,” or “Christ,” but they could readily speak the names “Satan” or “Devil.” Between the middle of the fifteenth century and the middle of the sixteenth, 100,000 persons had been put to death for witchcraft. How many had come to the rack, the stake, or the drowning pool, through the accusations of children? A child saw a hag at her door. The next moment she saw a hare run by and the woman had disappeared. On no more convincing evidence than that, the woman was accused of turning herself into a hare by witchcraft.

Why had the children done it? Suggestibility? A desire for attention?

Whatever the reason, it was tainted with abnormality.

In the field of psychic phenomena as well, the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research were full of instances in which neurotic children or neurotic young women played a distinct if inexplicable role.

Did Abbie have to be unhappy?
Matt's lips twisted.
If it was true, it was hard on Abbie.

“Get your things together,” Matt said harshly. “You're going home to your father.”

Abbie stiffened and looked up, her face tear-streaked but her eyes blazing. “I ain’t.”

“You are not,” Matt corrected sharply.

“I are not,” Abbie said fiercely. “I are not. I are not.”

Suddenly the cup was sailing toward Matt's head. Instinctively, he put out his hand. The cup hit it and stuck. Matt looked at it dazedly and back at Abbie. Her hands were still in her lap.

“You did it!” Matt shouted. “It’s true.”

Abbie looked pleased. “Do I have to go back to Paw?”

Matt thought a moment. “No,” he said. “Not if you'll help me.”

Abbie's lips tightened. “Ain't—isn't once enough, Mr. Wright? You know I can do it. Won't you leave it alone now? It's unlucky. Something awful will happen. I got a feeling.” She looked up at his implacable face. “But I'll do it, if you want.”

“It’s important,” Matt said gently. “Now. What did you feel just before the cup moved toward me?”

“Mad.”

“No, no. I mean what did you feel physically or mentally, not emotionally.”

Abbie's eyebrows were thick. When she knit them, they made a straight line across the top of her nose. “Gosh, Mr. Wright, I cain't—” She looked at him quickly. “I can't find the words to tell about it. It's like I wanted to pick up the nearest thing and throw it at you, and then it was like I had thrown it. Kind of a push from all of me, instead of just my hand.”

Matt frowned while he put the cup back on the table. “Try to feel exactly like that again.”

Obediently, Abbie concentrated. Her face worked. Finally she sagged back in her chair. “I cai—I can't. I just don't feel like it.”

“You're going back to your father!” Matt snapped.

The cup rocked.

“There!” Matt said quickly. “Try it again before you forget!”

The cup spun around.

“Again!”

The cup rose an inch from the table and settled down.

Abbie sighed. “It
was
just a trick, wasn't it, Mr. Wright? You aren't really going to send me back?”

“No, but maybe you'll wish I had before we're through. You'll have to work and practice until you have full conscious control of whatever it is.”

“All right,” Abbie said submissively. “But it's terrible tiring work when you don't feel like it.”

“Terribly,” Matt corrected.

“Terribly,” Abbie repeated.

“Now,” Matt said. “Try it again.”

Abbie practiced until noon. Her maximum effort was to raise the cup a foot from the table, but that she could do very well.

“Where does the energy come from?” Matt asked.

“I don't know,” Abbie sighed, “but I'm powerful hungry.”

“Very,” Matt said.

“Very hungry,” Abbie repeated. She got up and walked to the cupboard. “How many ham sandwiches do you want—two?”

Matt nodded absently. When the sandwiches came, he ate in thoughtful silence.

It was true, then. Abbie could do it, but she had to be unhappy to have full power and control.

“Try it on the mustard,” he said.

“I'm so full,” Abbie explained contentedly. She had eaten three sandwiches.

Matt stared at the yellow jar, unseeing. It was quite a problem. There was no sure way of determining just what Abbie's powers were, without getting
some equipment. He had to find out just what it was she did, and what effect it had on her, before he could expect to fully evaluate any data.

But that wasn't the hardest part of it. He should be able to pick up the things he needed in Springfield. It was what he was going to have to do to Abbie that troubled him.

All he had been able to find out about Abbie's phenomena was that they seemed to occur with the greatest frequency and strength when the girl was unhappy.

Matt stared out through the cabin window.

Gradually, he was forming a plan to make Abbie un-happier than she had ever been.

All afternoon Matt was very kind to Abbie. He helped her dry the dishes, although she protested vigorously. He talked to her about his life and about his studies at the University of Kansas. He told her about the thesis and how he had to write it to get his master's degree in psychology and what he wanted to do when he was graduated.

“Psychology,” he said, “is only an infant science. It isn't really a science at all but a metaphysics. It's a lot of theorizing from insufficient data. The only way you can get data is by experimentation, and you can't experiment because psychology is people, living people. Science is a ruthless business of observation and setting up theories and then knocking them down in laboratories. Physicists can destroy everything from atoms to whole islands; biologists can destroy animals; anatomists can dissect cadavers. But psychologists have no true laboratories; they can't be ruthless because public opinion won't stand for it, and cadavers aren't much good. Psychology will never be a true science until it has its laboratories where it can be just as ruthless as the physical sciences. It has to come.”

Matt stopped. Abbie was a good listener; he had forgotten he was talking to a hill girl.

“Tell me more about K.U.,” she sighed.

He tried to answer her questions about what the coeds wore when they went to classes and when they had dates and when they went to dances. Her eyes grew large and round.

“Guess it would be romantic,” Abbie sighed. “How far do they let a fellow go if they ain't—aren't serious?”

Matt thought Abbie's attempt to improve her English was touching—almost pathetic. He puzzled about her question for a moment. “I guess it depends on the girl.”

Abbie nodded understandingly. “Why do they go to college?”

“To get married,” Matt said. “Most of them.”

Abbie shook her head. “All those pretty clothes. All those men. They must be awful—very slow not to get married quick. Can't they get married
at home without waiting so long?”

Matt frowned perplexedly. Abbie had a talent for asking questions which reached down to basic social relationships. “The men they meet at college will make more money for them.”

“Oh,” Abbie said. She shrugged. “That's all right, I guess, if that's what you want.”

So it went. Matt paid Abbie little compliments on her appearance, and she blushed and looked pleased. He told her he couldn't understand why she wasn't besieged by suitors and why she hadn't been married long ago. She blushed deeper. He dwelt expansively on the supper she cooked and swore that he had never tasted better.

Abbie couldn't have been happier. She hummed through her tasks. Everything worked well for her. The dishes were done almost as soon as they were started.

Matt walked out on the porch. He sat down on the edge. Abbie settled herself beside him, quietly, not touching him, her hands in her lap.

The cabin was built on the top of a ridge. It was night, but the moon had come up big and yellow, and they could look far out over the valley. Silvery, in a dark green setting of trees, the lake glimmered far below.

“Ain't—isn't it purty?” Abbie sighed, folding her hands.

“Pretty,” Matt said absently.

“Pretty,” Abbie sighed.

They sat in silence. Matt sensed her nearness in a way that was almost physical. It stirred him. There was something intensely feminine about Abbie that was very appealing at times, in spite of her plain face and shapeless clothes and bare feet and lack of education. Even her single-minded ambition was a striving to fulfill her true, her basic function. In a way it was more vital and understandable than all the confused sublimations of the girls he had known.

Abbie, at least, knew what she wanted and what she would pay to get it. She would make someone a good wife. Her one goal would be to make her husband happy. She would cook and clean for him and bear his strong, healthy children with a great and thrilling joy. She would be silent when he was silent, unobtrusive when he was working, merry when he was gay, infinitely responsive when he was passionate. And the transcendent wonder of it was that she would be fulfilling her finest function in doing it; she would be serenely happy, blissfully content.

Matt lit a cigarette in an attempt to break the mood. He glanced at her face by the light of the match. “What is courting like here in the hills?” he asked.

“Sometimes we walk,” Abbie said dreamily, “and look at things together, and talk a little. Sometimes there's a dance at the school house. If a
fellow has a boat, you can go out on the lake. There's huskin’ bees an’ church socials an’ picnics. But mostly when the moon is a-shinin’ an’ the night is warm, we just sit on a porch an’ hold hands and do whatever the girl's willin’ to allow.”

Matt reached out and took one of her hands and held it in his. It was cool and dry and strong. It clung to his hand.

She turned her face to him, her eyes searching for his face in the darkness. “Do you like me a little bit, Mr. Wright?” she asked softly. “Not marryin'-like, but friendly-like?”

“I think that you're the most feminine girl I've ever met,” he said, and realized it was true.

Almost without volition on either part, they seemed to lean together, blending in the night. Mart's lips sought her pale little-girl lips and found them, and they weren't pale or little-girlish at all, but warm and soft and passionate. He broke away, breathing quickly.

Abbie half turned to nestle against his shoulder, his arm held tightly around her. She sighed contentedly. “I reckon I wouldn't be unwillin’,” she said tremulously, “whatever you wanted to do.”

“I can't understand why you didn't get married long ago,” he said.

“I guess it was me,” Abbie said reflectively. “I wasn't rightly satisfied with any of my fellows. I'd get mad at them for no reason at all, and then something bad would happen to them and pretty soon no one would come courtin’. Maybe I expected them to be what they weren't. I guess I wasn't really in love with any of them. Anyways, I'm glad I didn't get married up.” She sighed.

Matt felt the stirrings of something that felt oddly like compunction.
What a louse you are, Matthew Wright!

“What happened to them—your fellows?” he asked. “Was it something you did?”

“Folks said it was,” Abbie said. There was a trace of bitterness in her voice. “They said I had the evil eye. I don't see how. There isn't anything wrong with my eyes, is there?” She looked up at him; her eyes were large and dark blue, with little flecks of silvery moonlight in them.

“Not a thing,” Matt said. “They're very beautiful.”

“I don't see how it could have been any of my fault,” Abbie said. “Of course, when Hank was late that evening, I told him he was so slow he might as well have a broken leg. Right after that he was nailing shingles on a roof, and he fell off and broke his leg. But I reckon he'd have broke it anyways. He was always right careless.

“And then Gene, he was so cold I told him he should fall in the lake and warm up. But a person who does a lot of fishin’, I guess he falls in a lot anyways.”

“I guess so,” Matt said. He began to shiver.

“You're shivering, Mr. Wright,” Abbie said solicitously. “Let me go get your jacket.”

“Never mind,” Matt said. “Its about time for bed anyway. You go in and get ready. Tomorrow—tomorrow we're going to drive to Springfield for some shopping.”

“Really, Mr. Wright? I haven't never been to Springfield,” Abbie said incredulously. She got up, her eyes shining. “Really?”

“Really,” Matt said. “Go on in, now.”

She went in. She was almost dancing.

Matt sat on the porch for a few minutes longer, thinking. It was funny what happened to the fellows that disappointed Abbie. When he lit a cigarette, his hand was shaking.

Abbie had a way of being many different persons. Already Matt had known four of them: the moody little girl with braids down her back shuffling along a dusty road or bouncing gleefully on a car seat; the happy, placid housewife with cheeks rosy from the stove; the unhappy vessel of strange powers, tearful and reluctant; the girl with the passionate lips in the moon-streaked darkness. Which one was Abbie, the true Abbie?

The next morning Matt had a fifth Abbie to consider. Her face was scrubbed and shining until it almost rivaled her eyes. Her braided hair was wound in a coronet around her head. She was wearing a different dress made of a shiny blue quilted material with a red lining. Matt scanned his small knowledge of dress materials. Taffeta? The color did terrible things to her hair. The dress had a V-shape neck and back and fitted better than anything she had worn yet. On one hip was a large artificial rose. Her stocking-less feet were enclosed in a pair of black, patent-leather sandals.

My God!
Matt thought.
Her Sunday best! I'll have to walk with that down the streets of Springfield.
He shuddered, and resisted the impulse to tear off that horrible rose.

“Well,” he said, “all ready?”

Abbie blushed excitedly. “Are we really going to Springfield, Mr. Wright?”