More Than Human

I got up off the porch floor and went for her. She stepped back and whupped me one with the broom as I went past, but anyhow I was inside now. The woman was making little shrieking noises and coming for me. I took the broom away from her and then somebody said,’ Miriam!’ in a voice like a grown goose.

I froze and the woman went into hysterics. ‘Oh, Miss Alicia, look out! He’ll kill us all. Get the police. Get the – ’

‘Miriam!’ came the honk, and Miriam dried up.

There at the top of the stairs was this prune-faced woman with a dress on that had lace on it. She looked a lot older than she was, maybe because she held her mouth so tight. I guess she was about thirty-three – thirty-three. She had mean eyes and a small nose.

I asked, ‘Are you Miss Kew?’

‘I am. What is the meaning of this invasion?’

‘I got to talk to you, Miss Kew.’

‘Don’t say „got to”. Stand up straight and speak out.’

The maid said, ‘I’ll get the police.’

Miss Kew turned on her. ‘There’s time enough for that, Miriam. Now, you dirty little boy, what do you want?’

‘I got to speak to you by yourself,’ I told her.

‘Don’t you let him do it, Miss Alicia,’ cried the maid.

‘Be quiet, Miriam. Little boy, I told you not to say „got to”. You may say whatever you have to say in front of Miriam.’

‘Like hell.’ They both gasped. I said, ‘Lone told me not to.’

‘Miss Alicia, are you goin’ to let him – ‘

‘Be quiet, Miriam! Young man, you will keep a civil – ‘ Then her eyes popped up real round. ‘Who did you say…’

‘Lone said so.’

‘Lone.’ She stood there on the stairs looking at her hands. Then she said, ‘Miriam, that will be all.’ And you wouldn’t know it was the same woman, the way she said it.

The maid opened her mouth, but Miss Kew stuck out a finger that might as well of had a rifle-sight on the end of it. The maid beat it.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘here’s your broom.’ I was just going to throw it, but Miss Kew got to me and took it out of my hand.

‘In there,’ she said.

She made me go ahead of her into a room as big as our swimming hole. It had books all over and leather on top of the tables, with gold flowers drawn into the corners.

She pointed to a chair. ‘Sit there. No, wait a moment.’ She went to the fireplace and got a newspaper out of a box and brought it over and unfolded it on the seat of the chair. ‘Now sit down.’

I sat on the paper and she dragged up another chair, but didn’t put no paper on it.

‘What is it? Where is Lone?’

‘He died,’ I said.

She pulled in her breath and went white. She stared at me until her eyes started to water.

‘You sick?’ I asked her. ‘Go ahead, throw up. It’ll make you feel better.’

‘Dead? Lone is dead?’

‘Yeah. There was a flash flood last week and when he went out the next night in that big wind, he walked under a old oak tree that got gullied under by the flood. The tree come down on him.’

‘Came down on him,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, no… it’s not true.’

‘It’s true, all right. We planted him this morning. We couldn’t keep him around no more. He was begi

‘Stop!’ She covered her face with her hands.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’ll be all right in a moment,’ she said in a low voice. She went and stood in front of the fireplace with her back to me. I took off one of my shoes while I was waiting for her to come back. But instead she talked from where she was. ‘Are you Lone’s little boy?’

‘Yeah. He told me to come to you.’

‘Oh, my dear child!’ She came ru

‘Gerry,’ I told her.

‘Well, Gerry, how would you like to live with me in this nice big house and – and have new clean clothes – and everything?’

‘Well, that’s the whole idea. Lone told me to come to you. He said you got more dough than you know what to do with, and he said you owed him a favour.’

‘A favour?’ That seemed to bother her.

‘Well,’ I tried to tell her, ‘he said he done something for you once and you said some day you’d pay him back for it if you ever could. This is it.’

‘What did he tell you about that?’ She’d got her honk back by then.

‘Not a damn thing.’

‘Please don’t use that word,’ she said, with her eyes closed. Then she opened them and nodded her head. ‘I promised and I’ll do it. You can live here from now on. If-if you want to.’

‘That’s got nothin’ to do with it. Lone told me to.’

‘You’ll be happy here,’ she said. She gave me an up-and-down. ‘I’ll see to that.’

‘Okay. Shall I go get the other kids?’

‘Other kids – children?’

‘Yeah. This ain’t for just me. For all of us – the whole gang.’

‘Don’t say „ain’t”.’ She leaned back in her chair, took out a silly little handkerchief and dabbed her lips with it, looking at me the whole time. ‘Now tell me about these -these other children.’

‘Well, there’s Janie, she’s eleven like me. And Bo

I screamed. Stern was kneeling beside the couch in a flash, holding his palms against my cheeks to hold my head still; I’d been whipping it back and forth.

‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘You found it. You haven’t found out what it is, but now you know where it is.’

‘But for sure,” I said hoarsely. ‘Got water?’

He poured me some water out of a thermos flask. It was so cold it hurt. I lay back and rested, like I’d climbed a cliff. I said, ‘I can’t take anything like that again.’

‘You want to call it quits for today?’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll go on as long as you want me to.’

I thought about it.’ I’d like to go on, but I don’t want no thumping around. Not for a while yet.”

‘If you want another of those inaccurate analogies,’ Stern said, ‘psychiatry is like a road map. There are always a lot of different ways to get from one place to another place.’

I’ll go around by the long way,’ I told him. ‘The eight-lane highway. Not that track over the hill. My clutch is slipping. Where do I turn off?’

He chuckled. I liked the sound of it. ‘Just past that gravel driveway.’

‘I been there. There’s a bridge washed out.’

‘You’ve been on this whole road before,’ he told me. ‘Start at the other side of the bridge.’

‘I never thought of that. I figured I had to do the whole thing, every inch.’

‘Maybe you won’t have to, maybe you will, but the bridge will be easy to cross when you’ve covered everything else. Maybe there’s nothing of value on the bridge and maybe there is, but you can’t get near it till you’ve looked everywhere else.’

‘Let’s go.’ I was real eager, somehow.

‘Mind a suggestion?’

‘No.’

‘Just talk,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to get too far into what you’re saying. That first stretch, when you were eight – you really lived it. The second one, all about the kids, you just talked about. Then, the visit when you were eleven, you felt that. Now just talk again.’

‘All right.’

He waited, then said quietly, ‘In the library. You told her about the other kids.’

I told her about… and then she said… and something happened, and I screamed. She comforted me and I cussed at her.

But we’re not thinking about that now. We’re going on.

In the library. The leather, the table, and whether I’m able to do with Miss Kew what Lone said.

What Lone said was, ‘There’s a woman lives up on the top of the hill in the Heights section, name of Kew. She’ll have to take care of you. You got to get her to do that. Do everything she tells you, only stay together. Don’t you ever let any one of you get away from the others, hear? Aside from that, just you keep Miss Kew happy and she’ll keep you happy. Now you do what I say.’ That’s what Lone said. Between every word there was a link like steel cable, and the whole thing made something that couldn’t be broken. Not by me it couldn’t.