A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories (28 page)

Charlie wiped his mouth clean on his wrists.

She trotted about the clearing, making like she was trying to locate him. Finally, with a clever thought, acting blind, she headed straight for him, groping. “Charlie, where
are
you?”

A lightning streak, he evaded her, bobbing, ducking.

It took all her will power not to give chase; but you can't chase invisible boys, so she sat down, scowling, sputtering, and tried to fry more bacon. But every fresh strip she cut he would steal bubbling off the fire and run away far. Finally, cheeks burning, she cried, “I know where you are! Right
there!
I hear you run!” She pointed to one side of him, not too accurate. He ran again. “Now you're there!” she shouted. “There, and there!” pointing to all the places he was in the next five minutes. “I hear you press a grass blade, knock a flower, snap a twig. I got fine shell ears, delicate as roses. They can hear the stars moving!”

Silently he galloped off among the pines, his voice trailing back, “Can't hear me when I'm set on a rock. I'll just
set!
”

All day he sat on an observatory rock in the clear wind, motionless and sucking his tongue.

Old Lady gathered wood in the deep forest, feeling his eyes weaseling on her spine. She wanted to babble: “Oh, I see you, I see you! I was only fooling about invisible boys! You're right there!” But she swallowed her gall and gummed it tight.

The following morning he did the spiteful things. He began leaping from behind trees. He made toad-faces, frog-faces, spider-faces at her, clenching down his lips with his fingers, popping his raw eyes, pushing up his nostrils so you could peer in and see his brain thinking.

Once she dropped her kindling. She pretended it was a blue jay startled her.

He made a motion as if to strangle her.

She trembled a little.

He made another move as if to bang her shins and spit on her cheek.

These motions she bore without a lid-flicker or a mouth-twitch.

He stuck out his tongue, making strange bad noises. He wiggled his loose ears so she wanted to laugh, and finally she did laugh and explained it away quickly by saying, “Sat on a salamander! Whew, how it poked!”

By high noon the whole madness boiled to a terrible peak.

For it was at that exact hour that Charlie came racing down the valley stark boy-naked!

Old Lady nearly fell flat with shock!

“Charlie!” she almost cried.

Charlie raced naked up one side of a hill and naked down the other—naked as day, naked as the moon, raw as the sun and a newborn chick, his feet shimmering and rushing like the wings of a low-skimming hummingbird.

Old Lady's tongue locked in her mouth. What could she say? Charlie, go dress? For
shame? Stop
that?
Could
she? Oh, Charlie, Charlie, God! Could she say that now?
Well?

Upon the big rock, she witnessed him dancing up and down, naked as the day of his birth, stomping bare feet, smacking his hands on his knees and sucking in and out his white stomach like blowing and deflating a circus balloon.

She shut her eyes tight and prayed.

After three hours of this she pleaded, “Charlie, Charlie, come here! I got something to
tell
you!”

Like a fallen leaf he came, dressed again, praise the Lord.

“Charlie,” she said, looking at the pine trees, “I see your right toe.
There
it is.”

“You do?” he said.

“Yes,” she said very sadly. “There it is like a horny toad on the grass. And there, up there's your left ear hanging on the air like a pink butterfly.”

Charlie danced. “I'm forming in, I'm forming in!”

Old Lady nodded. “Here comes your ankle!”

“Gimme
both
my feet!” ordered Charlie.

“You got 'em.”

“How about my hands?”

“I see one crawling on your knee like a daddy long-legs.”

“How about the other one?”

“It's crawling too.”

“I got a body?”

“Shaping up fine.”

“I'll need my head to go home, Old Lady.”

To go home, she thought wearily. “No!” she said, stubborn and angry. “No, you ain't got no head. No head at all,” she cried. She'd leave that to the very last. “No head, no head,” she insisted.

“No head?” he wailed.

“Yes, oh my God, yes, yes, you got your blamed head!” she snapped, giving up. “Now, fetch me back my bat with the needle in his eye!”

He flung it at her. “Haaaa-yoooo!” His yelling went all up the valley, and long after he had run toward home she heard his echoes, racing.

Then she plucked up her kindling with a great dry weariness and started back toward her shack, sighing, talking. And Charlie followed her all the way,
really
invisible now, so she couldn't see him, just hear him, like a pine cone dropping or a deep underground stream trickling, or a squirrel clambering a bough; and over the fire at twilight she and Charlie sat, him so invisible, and her feeding him bacon he wouldn't take, so she ate it herself, and then she fixed some magic and fell asleep with Charlie, made out of sticks and rags and pebbles, but still warm and her very own son, slumbering and nice in her shaking mother arms … and they talked about golden things in drowsy voices until dawn made the fire slowly, slowly wither out....

H
ugh Fortnum woke to Saturday's commotions, and lay, eyes shut, savoring each in its turn.

Below, bacon in a skillet; Cynthia waking him with fine cookings instead of cries.

Across the hall, Tom
actually
taking a shower.

Far off in the bumble-bee dragon-fly light, whose voice was already cursing the weather, the time, and the tides? Mrs. Goodbody? Yes. That Christian giantess, six feet tall with her shoes off, the gardener extraordinary, the octogenarian-dietitian and town philosopher.

He rose, unhooked the screen, and leaned out to hear her cry:

“There! Take
that! This'll
fix you! Hah!”

“Happy Saturday, Mrs. Goodbody!”

The old woman froze in clouds of bug spray pumped from an immense gun.

“Nonsense!” she shouted. “With these fiends and pests to watch for?”

“What kind
this
time?” called Fortnum.

“I don't want to shout it to the jaybirds, but—” she glanced suspiciously around—“what would you say if I told you I was the first line of defense concerning Flying Saucers?”

“Fine,” replied Fortnum. “There'll be rockets between the worlds any year now.”

“There already
are!
” She pumped, aiming the spray under the hedge. “There! Take that!”

He pulled his head back in from the fresh day, somehow not as high-spirited as his first response had indicated. Poor soul, Mrs.
Goodbody. Always the very essence of reason. And now what? Old age?

The doorbell rang.

 

He grabbed his robe and was half down the stairs when he heard a voice say, “Special Delivery. Fortnum?” and saw Cynthia turn from the front door, a small packet in her hand.

He put his hand out, but she shook her head.

“Special Delivery Air Mail for your son.”

Tom was downstairs like a centipede.

“Wow! That must be from the Great Bayou Novelty Greenhouse!”

“I wish I were as excited about ordinary mail,” observed Fortnum.

“Ordinary?!” Tom ripped the cord and paper wildly. “Don't you read the back pages of
Popular Mechanics?
Well, here
they
are!”

Everyone peered into the small open box.

“Here,” said Fortnum, “
what
are?”

“The Sylvan Glade Jumbo-Giant Guaranteed Growth Raise-Them-in-Your-Cellar-for-Big-Profit Mushrooms!”

“Oh, of course,” said Fortnum. “How silly of me.”

Cynthia squinted. “Those little teeny bits—?”

“‘Fabulous growth in twenty-four hours,'” Tom quoted from memory. “‘Plant them in your own cellar—'”

Fortnum and wife exchanged glances.

“Well,” she admitted, “it's better than frogs and green snakes.”

“Sure is!” Tom ran.

“Oh, Tom,” said Fortnum, lightly.

Tom paused at the cellar door.

“Tom,” said his father. “Next time, fourth-class mail would do fine.”

“Heck,” said Tom. “They must've made a mistake, thought I was some rich company. Air mail special, who can afford
that?
”

The cellar door slammed.

Fortnum, bemused, scanned the wrapper a moment, then dropped it into the wastebasket. On his way to the kitchen, he opened the cellar door.

Tom was already on his knees, digging with a handrake in the dirt of the back part of the cellar.

Fortnum felt his wife beside him, breathing softly, looking down into the cool dimness.

“Those
are
mushrooms, I hope. Not … toadstools?”

Fortnum laughed. “Happy harvest, farmer!”

Tom glanced up and waved.

Fortnum shut the door, took his wife's arm, and walked her out to the kitchen, feeling fine.

 

Toward noon, Fortnum was driving toward the nearest market when he saw Roger Willis, a fellow Rotarian, and teacher of biology at the town high school, waving urgently from the sidewalk.

Fortnum pulled his car up and opened the door.

“Hi, Roger, give you a lift?”

Willis responded all too eagerly, jumping in and slamming the door.

“Just the man I want to see. I've put off calling for days. Could you play psychiatrist for five minutes, God help you?”

Fortnum examined his friend for a moment as he drove quietly on.

“God help you, yes. Shoot.”

Willis sat back and studied his fingernails. “Let's just drive a moment. There. Okay. Here's what I want to say: something's wrong with the world.”

Fortnum laughed easily. “Hasn't there always been?”

“No, no, I mean … something strange—something unseen—is happening.”

“Mrs. Goodbody,” said Fortnum, half to himself, and stopped.

“Mrs. Goodbody?”

“This morning. Gave me a talk on flying saucers.”

“No.” Willis bit the knuckle of his forefinger nervously. “Nothing like saucers. At least I don't think. Tell me, what is intuition?”

“The conscious recognition of something that's been subconscious for a long time. But don't quote this amateur psychologist!” He laughed again.

“Good, good!” Willis turned, his face lighting. He readjusted himself in the seat. “That's it! Over a long period, things gather, right? All of a sudden, you have to spit, but you don't remember
saliva collecting. Your hands are dirty, but you don't know how they got that way. Dust falls on you every day and you don't feel it. But when you get enough dust collected up, there it is, you see and name it. That's intuition, as far as I'm concerned. Well, what kind of dust has been falling on
me?
A few meteors in the sky at night? Funny weather just before dawn? I don't know. Certain colors, smells, the way the house creaks at three in the morning? Hair prickling on my arms? All I know is, the dust
has
collected. Quite suddenly I
know
.”

“Yes,” said Fortnum, disquieted. “But what
is
it you know?”

Willis looked at his hands in his lap.

“I'm afraid. I'm not afraid. Then I'm afraid again, in the middle of the day. Doctor's checked me. I'm A-1. No family problems. Joe's a fine boy, a good son. Dorothy? She's remarkable. With her, I'm not afraid of growing old or dying.”

“Lucky man.”

“But beyond my luck now. Scared stiff, really, for myself, my family; even, right now, for
you
.”

“Me?” said Fortnum.

They had stopped now by an empty lot near the market. There was a moment of great stillness, in which Fortnum turned to survey his friend. Willis's voice had suddenly made him cold.

“I'm afraid for everybody,” said Willis. “Your friends, mine, and their friends, on out of sight. Pretty silly, eh?”

Willis opened the door, got out, and peered in at Fortnum. Fortnum felt he had to speak.

“Well—what do we
do
about it?”

Willis looked up at the sun burning blind in the great, remote sky.

“Be aware,” he said, slowly. “Watch everything for a few days.”

“Everything?”

“We don't use half what God gave us, ten percent of the time. We ought to hear more, feel more, smell more, taste more. Maybe there's something wrong with the way the wind blows these weeds there in the lot. Maybe it's the sun up on those telephone wires or the cicadas singing in the elm trees. If only we could stop, look, listen, a few days, a few nights, and compare notes. Tell me to shut up then, and I will.”

“Good enough,” said Fortnum, playing it lighter than he felt.
“I'll look around. But how do I know the thing I'm looking for when I
see
it?”

Willis peered in at him sincerely. “You'll know. You've got to know. Or we're done for, all of us,” he said quietly.

Fortnum shut the door, and didn't know what to say. He felt a flush of embarrassment creeping up his face. Willis sensed this.

“Hugh, do you think I'm—off my rocker?”

“Nonsense!” said Fortnum, too quickly. “You're just nervous, is all. You should take a couple of weeks off.”

Willis nodded. “See you Monday night?”

“Any time. Drop around.”

“I hope I will, Hugh. I really hope I will.”

Then Willis was gone, hurrying across the dry weed-grown lot, toward the side entrance of the market.

Watching him go, Fortnum suddenly did not want to move. He discovered that very slowly he was taking deep breaths, weighing the silence. He licked his lips, tasting the salt. He looked at his arm on the doorsill, the sunlight burning the golden hairs. In the empty lot the wind moved all alone to itself. He leaned out to look at the sun, which stared back with one massive stunning blow of intense power that made him jerk his head in.

He exhaled. Then he laughed out loud. Then he drove away.

 

The lemonade glass was cool and deliciously sweaty. The ice made music inside the glass, and the lemonade was just sour enough, just sweet enough on his tongue. He sipped, he savored, he tilted back in the wicker rocking chair on the twilight front porch, his eyes closed. The crickets were chirping out on the lawn. Cynthia, knitting across from him on the porch, eyed him curiously. He could feel the pressure of her attention.

“What are you up to?” she said at last.

“Cynthia,” he said, “is your intuition in running order? Is this earthquake weather? Is the land going to sink? Will war be declared? Or is it only that our delphinium will die of the blight?”

“Hold on. Let me feel my bones.”

He opened his eyes and watched Cynthia in turn closing hers and sitting absolutely statue-still, her hands on her knees. Finally she shook her head and smiled.

“No. No war declared. No land sinking. Not even a blight. Why?”

“I've met a lot of Doom Talkers today. Well, two, anyway, and—”

The screen door burst wide. Fortnum's body jerked as if he had been struck. “What!”

Tom, a gardener's wooden flat in his arms, stepped out on the porch.

“Sorry,” he said. “What's wrong, Dad?”

“Nothing,” Fortnum stood up, glad to be moving. “Is that the crop?”

Tom moved forward, eagerly. “Part of it. Boy, they're doing great. In just seven hours, with lots of water, look how big the darn things are!” He set the flat on the table between his parents.

The crop was indeed plentiful. Hundreds of small grayish brown mushrooms were sprouting up in the damp soil.

“I'll bek....” said Fortnum, impressed.

Cynthia put out her hand to touch the flat, then took it away uneasily.

“I hate to be a spoilsport, but … there's no way for these to be anything else but mushrooms, is there?”

Tom looked as if he had been insulted. “What do you think I'm going to feed you? Poison fungoids?”

“That's just it,” said Cynthia quickly. “How do you tell them apart?”

“Eat 'em,” said Tom. “If you live, they're mushrooms. If you drop dead—
well!
”

He gave a great guffaw, which amused Fortnum, but only made his mother wince. She sat back in her chair.

“I—I don't like them,” she said.

“Boy, oh, boy.” Tom seized the flat angrily. “When are we going to have the next Wet Blanket Sale in
this
house!?”

He shuffled morosely away.

“Tom—” said Fortnum.

“Never mind,” said Tom. “Everyone figures they'll be ruined by the boy entrepreneur. To heck with it!”

Fortnum got inside just as Tom heaved the mushrooms, flat and all, down the cellar stairs. He slammed the cellar door and ran angrily out the back door.

Fortnum turned back to his wife, who, stricken, glanced away.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't know why, I just
had
to say that to Tom.”

The phone rang. Fortnum brought the phone outside on its extension cord.

“Hugh?” It was Dorothy Willis's voice. She sounded suddenly very old and very frightened. “Hugh … Roger isn't there, is he?”

“Dorothy? No.”

“He's gone!” said Dorothy. “All his clothes were taken from the closet.” She began to cry softly.

“Dorothy, hold on, I'll be there in a minute.”

“You must help, oh, you must. Something's happened to him, I know it,” she wailed. “Unless you do something, we'll never see him alive again.”

Very slowly, he put the receiver back on its hook, her voice weeping inside it. The night crickets, quite suddenly, were very loud. He felt the hairs, one by one, go up on the back of his neck.

Hair can't do that, he thought. Silly, silly. It can't do that, not in
real
life, it can't!

But, one by slow pricking one, his hair did.

 

The wire hangers were indeed empty. With a clatter, Fortnum shoved them aside and down along the rod, then turned and looked out of the closet at Dorothy Willis and her son, Joe.

“I was just walking by,” said Joe, “and saw the closet empty, all Dad's clothes gone!”

“Everything was fine,” said Dorothy. “We've had a wonderful life. I don't understand it, I don't, I don't!” She began to cry again, putting her hands to her face.

Fortnum stepped out of the closet.

“You didn't hear him leave the house?”

“We were playing catch out front,” said Joe. “Dad said he had to go in for a minute. I went around back. Then—he was gone!”

“He must have packed quickly and walked wherever he was going, so we wouldn't hear a cab pull up front of the house.”

They were moving out through the hall now.

“I'll check the train depot and the airport.” Fortnum hesitated. “Dorothy, is there anything in Roger's background—”

“It wasn't insanity took him.” She hesitated. “I feel—somehow—he was kidnapped.”