The Boy on the Porch (4 page)

Marta had been having the same worries, but now, watching the boy, the beagle, and the cow, she noticed a pattern in the way they interacted.

“John—look at that. They're having a conversation.”

John was skeptical. “The beagle and the cow?”

“The beagle, the cow, and the boy. That tapping and patting he's been doing—he has his own language there, I think, and the cow and the dog understand it. And Beagle, the way he lifts his head up and down, as if he means to bark, and the cow—she, too, moves her head up and down and murmurs in response.”

“Oh, Marta, I don't think that can possibly be. That's ridic—”

“Watch.”

And so they watched, and it was as Marta said. The boy tapped on the fence, the dog barked in silence, flapping his mouth open and closed, and the cow swung her head left and right, up and down, and murmured,
Mmmm, mmmoo, mmm
. The boy tapped the cow's nose and the beagle's nose, the dog flapped his jaws, and the cow murmured,
Mmmm, mmmoo, mmm
.

“We have been so stupid!” Marta said. “All the while the boy has been ‘talking' to us, and we never even knew it.”

A
s John and Marta paid closer attention to the boy's tapping and patting, they quickly noticed patterns they had overlooked. There was a distinct rhythm to the way he greeted each of them:

tap-TAP-TAP-tap

and the way he greeted the dog

              
tap-tap-TAP

     
and the cow

              
tap-tap-TAP-TAP

     
and the bedtime tapping

              
tap-TAP-TAP-tap-tap-tap

     
and the after-meals tapping

              
TAP-tap TAP-tap
.

“He's talking all day long, John!”

Gradually, they imitated his taps, so that they greeted him the way he greeted them, and they began and ended meals the way he did. The first few times, the boy reacted with his silent laugh, his shoulders bobbing up and down. But when he tapped more earnestly at other times, they did not know how to respond, and the boy seemed disappointed. They might guess what he was asking or saying, but they couldn't merely repeat the same taps in reply.

“If we teach the boy to read and write, Marta, that will solve everything, won't it? He can write down what he wants to say.”

Marta wasn't completely convinced that the boy was unable to talk. She still wondered if he just was not ready to talk to them, or if he needed to recover from some horrible experience. Maybe he simply needed time. Always, too, at the back of her mind was the worry that the closer they came to know the boy and the more they loved him, the harder it would be to let him go.

O
n John's weekly trips into town for supplies, he wondered if he would discover that someone had reported a missing boy or that people were inquiring about how to find John and Marta's place. John could not understand why Jacob's family had not returned yet.

John had mentioned the boy and asked around, but no one had heard of the boy, or seemed the least bit interested, or even remembered from one week to the next that John had asked about him.

How can that be
? he wondered.
How can there be a boy nobody knows about or cares about
?

One day on his visit to the general store, as John was buying more jelly beans, Shep said, “Your wife got a sudden sweet tooth?”

“What? Oh, the candy. Ha-ha.”

“Thought maybe you had a kid up there. Vernie says he thought he saw a kid riding a cow up at your place when he drove by t'other day.”

“A kid—oh, sure, the one I mentioned. We're watching a kid.”

“That right?” Shep said.

“Yep. Yep. Watching that kid for somebody, and that kid likes to ride cows. Imagine that.”

On the far side of the store were shelves that carried used items. You might find bowls or pots or twine or rulers or bent spoons on those shelves. As John turned to go, he saw an old guitar on the floor, propped up against the shelves.

“Are you playing that or selling it?” John asked.

“The gitt-ur? That old thing? Naw, somebody left it here in trade for a couple of pots. You interested? I'll trade it to you for that jacket you're wearin'.”

As John drove home, he could hardly contain himself.

Wait till the boy sees this guitar! I can hardly wait to see that face of his!

W
hen John presented the guitar to Jacob, the boy took a step backward, placing his hands against his chest. He looked from John to Marta to the guitar.

“For you,” John said.

The boy took another step backward.

“It's a present,” Marta said. “For you.”

“It's a guitar,” John added. “Have you never seen a guitar?”

“It makes music,” Marta said. “Listen. Show him, John.”

“Haven't played one in a while,” John said. He fingered a few chords, strumming a simple tune.

The boy reached out to touch the instrument.

“You hold it like this,” John said, placing the guitar in the boy's arms. “Here, try this chord. Your fingers like this, that's right, and this hand, that's right, and then you can switch to this . . .”

And that was the only instruction he gave the boy, for once it was in his arms, the boy's fingers moved along the strings, slowly and tentatively at first, and then with more eagerness, and then he sat with it for hours, exploring its possibilities, and by nightfall he was already making music. It sounded like nothing else Marta or John had heard. It was as if he were re-creating the sounds of the forest and the dawn and the mountains, all rolled together. The sounds moved John and Marta greatly. One minute they would be smiling and soon after they were close to tears. It was as if the boy had control of their minds and bodies.

T
wice a week John drove farther afield to towns small and large, sifting through gossip and local papers. What he was discovering was that boys were as likely to go missing as cows were.

“Georgia's boy run off, but came home with his tail between his legs.”

“My cow broke right through the new fence.”

“Carl's kid—that one with the hair—he was gone for four days and you know where they found him? In the hayloft over at Aggie's place.”

“My prize Blackie cow, you seen her, right? Gone for two days, comes home with a big smile on her face.”

    
MISSING: 12-YEAR-OLD BOY, MEAN AS A STICK. YOU CAN KEEP HIM.

    
MISSING: PRETTY BROWN COW, ANSWERS TO BETTY.

    
FOUND: 12-YEAR-OLD BOY, MEAN AS A STICK. COME GET HIM.

    
FOUND: BROWN COW, NOT SO PRETTY.

All the boys and cows that were lost seemed to turn up again, though, unlike the boy at John and Marta's, who had been found, but oddly, wasn't lost.

In all the time he had been at John and Marta's, the boy hadn't seemed afraid, didn't seem to miss anyone, slept soundly, and ate heartily.

“It's like he was dropped right out of the sky,” John told Marta.

A
lthough John was as impressed as Marta was with Jacob's talents, he was beginning to worry that the boy wasn't learning any “boy things,” and he said as much to Marta.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “What kind of boy things? He rides a
cow
, doesn't he?”

“True. That's good, I guess.”

“What else do you want him to do? Chop down a tree? Burn up the barn?”

“I don't know—get a little dirty, I guess.”

“For heaven's sake, John, he gets dirty. I ought to know. I'm the one trying to get the dirt out of his—and your—clothes.”

Still, John was bothered. So one day he took Jacob and the beagle and two fishing rods with him to the creek. His plan was to show the boy how to dig for bait and bait a hook and catch a fish.

Along the way, Jacob snatched a maple leaf and folded it into the shape of a bird. He picked up a stick and drummed it on tree trunks. He bobbed and jigged along the path with the beagle by his side. At a puddle, he stopped to trawl his fingers through the muck at the bottom and painted his arms with stripes of mud. At the edge of the creek he gathered a pile of stones and rocks and then threw them into the water with a rhythmic
plip-plop-plop-plip
.

When John dug up an earthworm and reached for his rod and hook, Jacob put his palm out, as if asking for the worm, and once he had it, he reburied it.

“But—that's our bait,” John said.

Jacob tapped lightly on John's arm,
tap-tap-tap-TAP
, and returned to gathering more stones. He dug a trench along the creek bank and lined it with stones and packed the sides with mud. John watched as the boy collected twigs and leaves and built a strange sort of elfin bridge over the trench. Then Jacob climbed up on a boulder and jumped into the creek with all his clothes on. He splashed and laughed his silent laugh and then climbed back up on the rock and jumped again and again into the water. He crawled back up the muddy bank and took John's hand and beckoned the beagle, inviting them to join him.