Pilgrimage

"I think I can get a ladder." Rigo snapped his thumbnail loudly with his white front teeth. "It won't reach clear up but it'll help."
"We could take rakes and just drag it down," Twyla suggested.
We all laughed until I sobered us all with, "It might come to that yet, bless the buttons of whoever thought up twenty-foot ceilings. Well, tomorrow's Saturday. Everybody be here about nine and we'll get with it."
"Can't." The Francher kid cast anchor unequivocally, snapping all our willingness up short.
"Oh?" I shifted my crutches, and, as usual, his eyes fastened on them, almost hypnotically. "That's too bad."
"How come?" Rigo was belligerent. "If the rest of us can you oughta be able to. Ever'body's s'posed to do this together. Ever'body does the dirty work and ever'body has the fun. You're nobody special. You're on this committee, aren't you?"
I restrained myself from a sudden impulse to clap my hand over Rigo's mouth midway in his protest. I didn't like the quietness of the Francher kid's hands, hut he only looked slantwise up at Rigo and said, "I got volunteered on this committee. I didn't ask to. And to fix this joint up today. I gotta work
tomorrow."
"Work? Where?" Rigo frankly disbelieved.
"Sorting ore at the Absalom."
Rigo snapped his thumbnail again derisively. "That penny-picking stuff? They pay peanuts."
"Yes." And the Francher kid slouched off around the corner of the building without a glance or a good-by.
"Well, he's working!" Twyla thoughtfully spit out a stray hair and pointed the wet end of her braid with her fingers.
"The Francher kid's doing something. I wonder how come?"
"Trying to figure that dopey dilldock out?" Janniset asked.
"Don't waste your time. I bet he's just goofing off."
"You kids run on," I said. "We can't do anything tonight. I'll lock up. See you in the morning."
I waited inside the dusty echoing hall until the sound of their going died down the rocky alley that edged around the rim of the railroad cut and dissolved into the street of the town. I still couldn't reconcile myself to slowing their steps to match my uncertain feet. Maybe someday I would he able to accept my braces as others accept glasses; but not yet-oh, not yet!
I left the hall and snapped the dime-store padlock shut. I struggled precariously along through the sliding shale and loose rocks until suddenly one piece of shale shattered under the pressure of one of my crutches and I stumbled off balance. I saw with shake-making clarity in the accelerated speed of the moment that the only place my groping crutch could reach was the smooth curving of a small boulder, and, in that same instant, I visualized myself sprawling helplessly, hopelessly, in the clutter of the alley, a useless nonfunctioning piece of humanity, a drag and a hindrance on everyone again. And then, at the last possible instant, the smooth boulder slid aside and my crutch caught and steadied on the solid damp hollow beneath it. I caught my breath with relief and unclenched my spasmed hands a little. Lucky!
Then all at once there was the Francher kid at my elbow again, quietly waiting. "Oh!" I hoped he hadn't seen me floundering in my awkwardness. "Hi! I thought you'd gone." "I really will be working." His voice had lost its flatness. "I'm not making much but I'm saving to buy me
a musical instrument."
"Well, good!" I said, smiling into the unusualness of his straightforward look. "What kind of instrument?"
"I don't know. Something that will sing like this-"
And there on the rocky trail with the long light slanting through the trees for late afternoon, I heard soft tentative notes that stumbled at first and then began to sing: "Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling-" Each note of this, my favorite, was like a white flower opening inside me in ascending order like steps-steps that I could climb freely, lightly….
"What kind of instrument am I saving for?" The Francher kid's voice pulled me back down to earth. "You'll have to settle for less." My voice shook a little. "There isn't one like that."
"But I've heard it-" He was bewildered.
"Maybe you have. But was anyone playing it?"
"Why yes-no. I used to hear it from Mom. She thought it to me,"
"Where did your mom come from?" I asked impulsively.
"From terror and from panic places. From hunger and from hiding-to live midway between madness and the dream-" He looked at me, his mouth drooping a little. "She promised me I'd understand someday, but this is someday and she's gone."
"Yes," I sighed, remembering how once I had dreamed that someday I'd run again. "But there are other somedays ahead-for you."
"Yes," he said. "And time hasn't stopped for you either." .And he was gone.
I looked after him. "Doggone!" I thought. "There I go again, talking to him as though he made sense!" I poked the end of my crutch in the damp earth three times, making interlacing circles. Then with quickened interest I poked the boulder that had rolled up out of the slight hollow before the crutch tip had landed there.
"Son-a-gun!" I cried aloud. "Well, son-a-gun!"
Next morning at five of nine the kids were waiting for me at the door to the hall, huddled against the October chill that the milky sun hadn't yet had time to disperse. Rigo had a shaky old ladder with two broken rungs and splashes of old paint gumming it liberally.
"That looks awfully rickety," I said. "We don't want any blood spilled on our dance floor. It's bad for the wax."
Rigo grinned. "It'll hold me up," he said. "I used it last night to pick apples. You just have to be kinda careful."
"Well, be so then," I smiled, unlocking the door. "Better safe than-" My words faltered and died as I gaped in at the open door. The others pushed in around me, round-eyed and momentarily silenced. My first wild impression was that the ceiling had fallen in.
"My gorsh!" Janniset gasped. "what hit this place?" "Just look at it!" Twyla shrilled. "Hey! Just look at it!" We looked as we scuffled forward. Every single piece of paper was gone from the ceiling and walls. Every scrap of paper was on the floor, in tiny twisted confetti-sized pieces like a tattered faded snowfall, all over the floor. There must have been an incredible amount of paper tangled in the decorations, because we waded wonderingly almost ankle-deep through it.
"Looky here!" Rigo was staring at the front of the bandstand. Lined up neatly across the front stood all the nails that had been pulled out of the decorations, each balanced precisely on its head.
Twyla frowned and bit her lip. "It scares me," she said.
"It doesn't feel right. It looks like somebody was mad or crazy-like they tore up the paper wishing they was killing something. And then to put all those nails so-so even and careful, like they had been put down gently-that looks madder than the paper." She reached over and swept her finger sideways, wincing as though she expected a shock. A section of the nails toppled with faint pings on the bare boards of the stand. In a sudden flurry Twyla swept all the nails over. "There!" she said, wiping her finger on her dress.
"Now it's all crazy."
"Well," I said, "crazy or not, somebody's saved us a lot of trouble. Rigo, we won't need your ladder. Get the brooms and let's get this mess swept out."
While they were gone for the brooms I picked up two nails and clicked them together in a metrical cadence: "Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling-"
By noon we had the place scrubbed out and fairly glistening through its shabby paint. By evening we had the crisp new orange-and-black decorations up, low down and with thumbtacks, and all sighed with tired satisfaction at how good the place looked. As we locked up Twyla suddenly said in a small voice, "What if it happens again before the dance Friday? All our work-"