The baseball whizzed from the blue sky, stung his hand like a great pale insect. Nursing it, he heard his memory say:
‘I worked with what I had. After my folks died, after I found I couldn’t get man’s work anywhere, I tried carnivals, but they only laughed. “Son,” they said, “you’re not a midget, and even if you are, you look like a boy! We want midgets with midgets’ faces! Sorry, son, sorry.” So I left home, started out, thinking: What was I? A boy. I looked like a boy, sounded like a boy, so I might as well go on being a boy. No use fighting it. No use screaming. So what could I do? What job was handy? And then one day I saw this man in a restaurant looking at another man’s pictures of his children. “Sure wish I had kids,” he said. “Sure wish I had kids.” He kept shaking his head. And me sitting a few seats away from him, a hamburger in my hands. I sat there, frozen! At that very instant I knew what my job would be for all of the rest of my life. There was work for me, after all. Making lonely people happy. Keeping myself busy. Playing forever. I knew I had to play forever. Deliver a few papers, run a few errands, mow a few lawns, maybe. But hard work? No. All I had to do was be a mother’s son and a father’s pride. I turned to the man down the counter from me. “I beg your pardon,” I said. I smiled at him…’
‘But, Willie,’ said Mrs Emily long ago, ‘didn’t you ever get lonely? Didn’t you ever want—things—that grownups wanted?’
‘I fought that out alone,’ said Willie. ‘I’m a boy, I told myself, I’ll have to live in a boy’s world, read boys’ books, play boys’ games, cut myself off from everything else. I can’t be both. I got to be only one thing—young. And so I played that way. Oh, it wasn’t easy. There were times—’ He lapsed into silence.
‘And the family you lived with, they never knew?’
‘No. Telling them would have spoiled everything. I told them I was a runaway; I let them check through official channels, police. Then, when there was no record, let them put in to adopt me. That was best of all; as long as they never guessed. But then, after three years, or five years, they guessed, or a traveling man came through, or a carnival man saw me, and it was over. It always had to end.’
‘And you’re very happy and it’s nice being a child for over forty years?’
‘It’s a living, as they say. And when you make other people happy, then you’re almost happy too. I got my job to do and I do it. And anyway, in a few years now I’ll be in my second childhood. All the fevers will be out of me and all the unfulfilled things and most of the dreams. Then I can relax, maybe, and play the role all the way.’
He threw the baseball one last time and broke the reverie. Then he was running to seize his luggage. Tom, Bill, Jamie, Bob, Sam—their names moved on his lips. They were embarrassed at his shaking hands.
‘After all, Willie, it ain’t as if you’re going to China or Timbuktu.’
‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ Willie did not move.
‘So long, Willie. See you next week!’
‘So long, so long!’
And he was walking off with his suitcase again, looking at the trees, going away from the boys and the street where he had lived, and as he turned the corner a train whistle screamed, and he began to run.
The last thing he saw and heard was a white ball tossed at a high roof, back and forth, back and forth, and two voices crying out as the ball pitched now up, down, and back through the sky, ‘Annie, annie, over! Annie, annie, over!’ like the crying of birds flying off to the far south.
In the early morning, with the smell of the mist and the cold metal, with the iron smell of the train around him and a full night of traveling shaking his bones and his body, and a smell of the sun beyond the horizon, he awoke and looked out upon a small town just arising from sleep. Lights were coming on, soft voices muttered, a red signal bobbed back and forth, back and forth in the cold air. There was that sleeping hush in which echoes are dignified by clarity, in which echoes stand nakedly alone and sharp. A porter moved by, a shadow in shadows.
‘Sir,’ said Willie.
The porter stopped.
‘What town’s this?’ whispered the boy in the dark.
‘Valleyville.’
‘How many people?’
‘Ten thousand. Why? This your stop?’
‘It looks green.’ Willie gazed out at the cold morning town for a long time. ‘It looks nice and quiet,’ said Willie.
‘Son,’ said the porter, ‘you know where you going?’
‘Here,’ said Willie, and got up quietly in the still, cool, iron-smelling morning, in the train dark, with a rustling and stir.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, boy,’ said the porter.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Willie. ‘I know what I’m doing.’ And he was down the dark aisle, luggage lifted after him by the porter, and out in the smoking, steaming-cold, beginning-to-lighten morning. He stood looking up at the porter and the black metal train against the few remaining stars. The train gave a great wailing blast of whistle, the porters cried out all along the line, the cars jolted, and his special porter waved and smiled down at the boy there, the small boy there with the big luggage who shouted up to him, even as the whistle screamed again.
‘What?’ shouted the porter, hand cupped to ear.
‘Wish me luck!’ cried Willie.
‘Best of luck, son,’ called the porter, waving, smiling. ‘Best of luck, boy!’
‘Thanks!’ said Willie, in the great sound of the train, in the steam and roar.
He watched the black train until it was completely gone away and out of sight. He did not move all the time it was going. He stood quietly, a small boy twelve years old, on the worn wooden platform, and only after three entire minutes did he turn at last to face the empty streets below.
Then, as the sun was rising, he began to walk very fast, so as to keep warm, down into the new town.
The Great Wide World over There
It was a day to be out of bed, to pull curtains and fling open windows. It
was a day to make your heart bigger with warm mountain air.
Cora, feeling like a young girl in a wrinkled old dress, sat up in bed.
It was early, the sun barely on the horizon, but already the birds were stirring from the pines and ten billion red ants milled free from their bronze hills by the cabin door. Cora’s husband Tom slept like a bear in a snowy hibernation of bedclothes beside her. Will my heart wake him up? she wondered.
And then she knew why this seemed a special day.
‘Benjy’s coming!’
She imagined him far off, leaping green meadows, fording streams where spring was pushing itself in cool colors of moss and clear water toward the sea. She saw his great shoes dusting and flicking the stony roads and paths. She saw his freckled face high in the sun looking giddily down his long body at his distant hands flying out and back behind him.
Benjy, come on! she thought, opening a window swiftly. Wind blew her hair like a gray spider web about her cold ears. Now Benjy’s at Iron Bridge, now at Meadow Pike, now up Creek Path, over Chesley’s Field…
Somewhere in those Missouri mountains was Benjy. Cora blinked. Those strange high hills beyond which twice a year she and Tom drove their horse and wagon to town, and through which, thirty years ago, she had wanted to run forever, saying, ‘Oh, Tom, let’s just drive and drive until we reach the sea.’ But Tom had looked at her as if she had slapped his face, and he had turned the wagon around and driven on home, talking to the mare. And if people lived by shores where the sea came like a storm, now louder, now softer, every day, she did not know it. And if there were cities where neons were like pink ice and green mint and red fireworks each evening, she didn’t know that either. Her horizon, north, south, east, west, was this valley, and had never been anything else.
But now, today, she thought, Benjy’s coming from that world out there: he’s seen it, heard it, smelt it; he’ll tell me about it. And he can write. She looked at her hands. He’ll be here a whole month and teach me. Then I
can write out into that world and bring it here to the mailbox I’ll make Tom build today. ‘Get up, Tom! You hear?’
She put her hand out to push the bank of sleeping snow.
By nine o’clock the valley was full of grasshoppers flinging themselves through the blue, piney air, while smoke curled into the sky.
Cora, singing into her pots and pans as she polished them, saw her wrinkled face bronzed and freshened in the copper bottoms. Tom was grumbling the sounds of a sleepy bear at his mush breakfast, while her singing moved all about him, like a bird in a cage.
‘Someone’s mighty happy,’ said a voice.
Cora made herself into a statue. From the corners of her eyes she saw a shadow cross the room.
‘Mrs Brabbam?’ asked Cora of her scouring cloth.
‘That’s who it is!’ And there stood the Widow Lady, her gingham dress dragging the warm dust, her letters in her chickeny hand. ‘Morning! I just been to my mailbox. Got me a real beauty of a letter from my uncle George in Springfield.’ Mrs Brabbam fixed Cora with a gaze like a silver needle. ‘How long since you got a letter from your uncle, missus?’
‘My uncles are all dead.’ It was not Cora herself, but her tongue, that lied. When the time came, she knew, it would be her tongue alone that must take communion and confess earthly sinning.
‘It’s certainly nice, getting mail.’ Mrs Brabbam waved her letters in a straight flush on the morning air.
Always twisting the knife in the flesh. How many years, thought Cora, had this run on, Mrs Brabbam and her smily eyes, talking loud of how she got mail; implying that nobody else for miles around could read? Cora bit her lip and almost threw the pot, but set it down, laughing. ‘I forgot to tell you. My nephew Benjy’s coming; his folks are poorly, and he’s here for the summer today. He’ll teach me to write. And Tom’s building us a postal box, aren’t you, Tom?’
Mrs Brabbam clutched her letters. ‘Well, isn’t that fine! You lucky lady.’ And suddenly the door was empty, Mrs Brabbam was gone.
But Cora was after her. For in that instant she had seen something like a scarecrow, something like a flicker of pure sunlight, something like a brook trout jumping upstream, leap a fence in the yard below. She saw a huge hand wave and birds flush in terror from a crab-apple tree.
Cora was rushing, the world rushing back of her, down the path, ‘Benjy!’
They ran at each other like partners in a Saturday dance, linked arms, collided, and waltzed, jabbering. ‘Benjy!’
She glanced swiftly behind his ear.
Yes, there was the yellow pencil.
‘Benjy, welcome!’
‘Why, ma’am!’ He held her off at arm’s length. ‘Why, ma’am, you’re crying.’
‘Here’s my nephew,’ said Cora.
Tom scowled up from spooning his corn-meal mush.
‘Mighty glad,’ smiled Benjy.
Cora held his arm tight so he couldn’t vanish. She felt faint, wanting to sit, stand, run, but she only beat her heart fast and laughed at strange times. Now, in an instant, the far countries were brought near; here was this tall boy, lighting up the room like a pine torch, this boy who had seen cities and seas and been places when things had been better for his parents.
‘Benjy, I got peas, corn, bacon, mush, soup, and beans for breakfast.’
‘Hold on!’ said Tom.
‘Hush, Tom, the boy’s down to the bone with walking.’ She turned to the boy. ‘Benjy, tell me all about yourself. You did go to school?’
Benjy kicked off his shoes. With one bare foot he traced a word in the hearth ashes.
Tom scowled. ‘What’s it say?’
‘It says,’ said Benjy, ‘c and o and r and a, Cora.’
‘My name, Tom, see it! Oh, Benjy, it’s good you really write, child. We had one cousin here, long ago, claimed he could spell upside down and backwards. So we fattened him up and he wrote letters and we never got answers. Come to find out he knew just enough spelling to mail letters to the dead-letter office. Lord, Tom knocked two months’ worth of vittles out of that boy, batting him up the road with a piece of fence.’
They laughed anxiously.
‘I write fine,’ said the serious boy.
‘That’s all we want to know.’ She shoved a cut of berry pie at him. ‘Eat.’
By ten-thirty, with the sun riding higher, after watching Benjy devour heaped platters of food, Tom thundered from the cabin, jamming his cap on. ‘I’m going out, by God, and cut down half the forest!’ he said angrily.
But no one heard. Cora was seated in a breathless spell. She was watching the pencil behind Benjy’s peach-fuzz ear. She saw him finger it casually, lazily, indifferently. Oh, not so casual, Benjy, she thought. Handle it like a spring robin’s egg. She wanted to touch the pencil, but hadn’t touched one in years because it made her feel foolish and then angry and then sad. Her hand twitched in her lap.
‘You got some paper?’ asked Benjy.
‘Oh, land, I never thought,’ she wailed, and the room walls darkened. ‘What’ll we do?’
‘Just happens I brought some.’ He fetched a tablet from his little bag. ‘You want to write a letter somewhere?’
She smiled outrageously. ‘I want to write a letter to…to…’ Her face fell apart. She looked around for someone in the distance. She looked at the mountains in the morning sunshine. She heard the sea rolling off on yellow shores a thousand miles away. The birds were coming north over the valley, on their way to multitudes of cities indifferent to her need at this instant.
‘Benjy, why, I never thought until this moment. I don’t know anybody in all that world out there. Nobody but my aunt. And if I wrote her it’d make her feel bad, a hundred miles from here, to have to find someone else to read the letter to her. She’s got a whale-boned-corset sort of pride. Make her nervous the next ten years, that letter setting in her house on the mantel. No, no letter to her.’ Cora’s eyes moved from the hills and the unseen ocean. ‘Who then? Where? Someone. I just’ve got to get me some letters.’
‘Hold on.’ Benjy fished a dime magazine from his coat. It had a red cover of an undressed lady screaming away from a green monster. ‘All sorts of addresses in here.’
They leafed the pages together. ‘What’s this?’ Cora tapped an ad.
‘“Here’s your Power Plus Free Muscle Chart. Send name, address,”’ read Benjy, ‘“to Department M-3 for Free Health Map!”’
‘And what about this one?’
‘“Detectives make secret investigations. Particulars free. Write: G.D.M. Detective School—”’
‘Everything’s free. Well, Benjy.’ She looked at the pencil in his hand. He drew up his chair. She watched him turn the pencil in his fingers, making minor adjustments. She saw him bite his tongue softly. She saw him squint his eyes. She held her breath. She bent forward. She squinted her own eyes and clamped her tongue.
Now, now Benjy raised his pencil, licked it, and set it down to the paper.
There it is, thought Cora.
The first words. They formed themselves slowly on the incredible paper.
Dear Power Plus Muscle Company
Sirs, [he wrote].
The morning blew away on a wind, the morning flowed down the creek, the morning flew off with some ravens, and the sun burned on the cabin roof. Cora didn’t turn when she heard a shuffle at the blazing, sun-filled door. Tom was there, but not there; nothing was before her but a series of filled pages, a whispering pencil, and Benjy’s careful Palmer Penmanship hand. Cora moved her head around, around, with each o, each l, with each small hill of an m; each tiny dot made her head peck like a chicken: each crossed t made her tongue lick across her upper lip.
‘It’s noon and I’m hungry!’ said Tom almost behind her.
But Cora was a statue now, watching the pencil as one watches a snail leaving an exceptional trail across a flat stone in the early morning.
‘It’s noon!’ cried Tom again.
Cora glanced up, stunned.
‘Why,
it seems only a moment ago we wrote to that Philadelphia Coin Collecting Company, ain’t that right, Benjy?’ Cora smiled a smile much too dazzling for a woman fifty-five years old. ‘While you wait for your vittles, Tom, just can’t you build that mailbox? Bigger than Mrs Brabbam’s, please?’
‘I’ll nail up a shoe box.’
‘Tom Gibbs.’ She rose pleasantly. Her smile said, Better run, better work, better do! ‘I want a big, pretty mailbox. All white, for Benjy to paint our name on in black spelling. I won’t have any shoe box for my very first real letter.’
And it was done.
Benjy lettered the finished mailbox: MRS CORA GIBBS, while Tom stood grumbling behind him.
‘What’s it say?’
‘“Mr Tom Gibbs,”’ said Benjy quietly, painting.
Tom blinked at it for a minute, quietly, and then said, ‘I’m still hungry. Someone light the fire.’
There were no stamps. Cora turned white. Tom was made to hitch up the horse and drive to Green Fork to buy some red ones, a green, and ten pink stamps with dignified gentlemen printed on them. But Cora rode along to be certain Tom didn’t hurl these first letters in the creek. When they rode home, the first thing Cora did, face glowing, was poke in the new mailbox.
‘You crazy?’ said Tom.
‘No harm looking.’
That afternoon she visited the mailbox six times. On the seventh, a woodchuck jumped out. Tom stood laughing in the door, pounding his knees. Cora chased him out of the house, still laughing.
Then she stood in the window looking down at her mailbox right across from Mrs Brabbam’s. Ten years ago the Widow Lady had plunked her letter box right under Cora’s nose, almost, when she could as easily have built it up nearer her own cabin. But it gave Mrs Brabbam an excuse to float like a flower on a river down the hill path, flip the box wide with a great coughing and rustling, from time to time spying up to see if Cora was watching. Cora always was. When caught, she pretended to sprinkle flowers with an empty watering can, or pick mushrooms in the wrong season.