Pilgrimage

So I fell back on the perennial refuge of harried teachers and opened a discussion of "what I want to be when I grow up." We had gone through the usual nurses and airplane hostesses and pilots and bridge builders and the usual unexpected ballet dancer and CPA (and he still can't add six and nine!) until the discussion frothed like a breaking wave against the Francher kid and stilled there.
He was lounging down in his seat, his weight supported by the back of his neck and the remote end of his spine. The class sighed collectively though inaudibly and waited for his contribution.
"And you, Clement?" I prompted, shifting vainly, trying to ease the taut cry of aching muscles.
"An outlaw," he said huskily, not bothering to straighten up.
"I'm going to keep a list and break every law there is-and get away with it, too."
"Whatever for?" I asked, trying to reassure the .sick pang inside me. "An outlaw is no use at all to society." "Who wants to be of use?" he asked. "I'11 use society-and I can do it."
"Perhaps," I said, knowing full well it was so. "But that's not the way to happiness."
"Who's happy? The bad are unhappy because they are bad. The good are unhappy because they're afraid to be bad-"
"Clement," I said gently, "I think you are-"
"I think he's crazy," said Rigo, his black eyes flashing. "Don't pay him no never mind, Miss Carolle. He's a screwball. He's all the time saying crazy things."
I saw the heavy world globe on the top shelf of the bookcase behind Rigo shift and slide toward the edge. I saw it lift clear of the shelf and I cried out, "Clement!" The whole class started at the loud urgency of my voice, the Francher kid included, and Rigo moved just far enough out of line that the falling globe missed him and cracked itself apart at his feet.
Someone screamed and several gasped and a babble of voices broke out. I caught the Francher kid's eyes, and he flushed hotly and ducked his head. Then he straightened up proudly and defiantly returned my look. He wet his forefinger in his mouth and drew an invisible tally mark in the air before him. I shook my head at him, slowly, regretfully. What could I do with a child like this?
Well, I had to do something, so I told him to stay in after school, though the kids wondered why. He slouched against the door, defiance in every awkward angle of his body and in the hooking of his thumbs into his front pockets. I let the parting noises fade and die, the last hurried clang of lunch pail, the last flurry of feet, the last reverberant slam of the outside door. The Francher kid shifted several times, easing the tension of his shoulders as he waited. Finally I said, "Sit down."
"No." His word was flat and uncompromising. I looked at him, the gaunt young planes of his face, the unhappy mouth thinned to stubbornness, the eyes that blinded themselves with dogged defiance. I leaned across the desk, my hands clasped, and wondered what I could say. Argument would do no good. A kid of that age has an answer for everything.
"We all have violences," I said, tightening my hands, "but we can't always let them out. Think what a mess things would be if we did." I smiled wryly into his unresponsive face. "if we gave in to every violent impulse I'd probably have slapped you with an encyclopedia before now." His eyelids flicked, startled, and he looked straight at me for the first time.
"Sometimes we can just hold our breath until the violence swirls away from us. Other times it's too big and it swells inside us like a balloon until it chokes our lungs and aches our jaw hinges." His lids flickered down over his watching eyes. "But it can be put to use. Then's when we stir up a cake by hand or chop wood or kick cans across the back yard or-" I faltered, "or run until our knees bend both ways from tiredness."
There was a small silence while I held my breath until my violent rebellion against unresponsive knees swirled away from me.
"There are bigger violences, I guess," I went on. "From them come assault and murder, vandalism and war, but even those can be used. If you want to smash things there are worthless things that need to be smashed and things that ought to be destroyed, tipped apart and ruined. But you have no way of knowing what those things are, yet. You must keep your violences small until you learn how to tell the difference."
"I can smash." His voice was thick.
"Yes," I said. "But smash to build. "You have no right to hurt other people with your own hurt."
"People!" The word was profanity.
I drew a long breath. If he were younger… You can melt stiff rebellious arms and legs with warm hugs or a hand across a wind-ruffled head or a long look that flickers into a smile, but what can you do with a creature that's neither adult nor child but puzzlingly both? I leaned forward.
"Francher," I said softly, "if your mother could walk through your mind now-"
He reddened, then paled. His mouth opened. He swallowed tightly. Then he jerked himself upright in the doorway.
"Leave my mother alone." His voice was shaken and muffled. "You leave her alone. She's dead."
I listened to his footsteps and the crashing slam of the outside door. For some sudden reason I felt my heart follow him down the hill to town. I sighed, almost with exasperation. So this was to be a My Child. We teacher-types sometimes find them. They aren't our pets; often they aren't even in our classes. But they are the children who move unasked into our hearts and make claims upon them over and above the call of duty. And this My Child I had to reach. Somehow I had to keep him from sliding on over the borderline to lawlessness as he so surely was doing-this My Child who, even more than the usual My Child, was different.
I put my head down on the desk and let weariness ripple up over me. After a minute I began to straighten up my papers. I made the desk top tidy and took my purse out of the bottom drawer. I struggled to my feet and glared at my crutches. Then I grinned weakly.
"Come, friends," I said. "Leave us help one another depart."
Anna was out for a week. After she returned I was surprised at my reluctance to let go of the class. The sniff of chalk dust was in my nostrils and I ached to be busy again. So I started helping out with the school programs and teen-age dances, which led naturally to the day my committee and I stood in the town recreation hall and looked about us despairingly.
"How long have those decorations been up?" I craned my neck to get a better view of the wilderness of sooty cobwebby crepe paper that clotted the whole of the high ceiling and the upper reaches of the walls of the ramshackle old hall that leaned wearily against the back of the saloon. Twyla stopped chewing the end of one of her heavy braids. "About four years, I guess. At least the newest. Pea-Green put it all up."
"Pea-Green?"
"Yeah. He was a screwball. He used up every piece of crepe paper in town and used nails to put the stuff up-big nails. He's gone now. He got silicosis and went down to Hot Springs."
"Well, nails or no nails we can't have a Hallowe'en dance with that stuff up."
"Going to miss the old junk. How we going to get it down?" Janniset asked.
"Pea-Green used an extension ladder he borrowed from a power crew that was stringing some wires up to the Bluebell Mine," Rigo said. "But we'll have to find some other way to get it down, now."
I felt a flick of something at my elbow. It might have been the Francher kid shifting from one foot to the other, or it might have been just a thought slipping by. I glanced sideways but caught only the lean line of his cheek and the shaggy back of his neck.