Kesh (3 page)

The rag man sighed and said, “You're such a small boy. I did not expect such a small boy.”

Kesh shrugged. “You don't even know me, old man. And you're not so big yourself, so don't you start.” He huffed with indignation. “I don't need this. I'm going home.” He turned and stepped out of the shack. Thunder and lightning exploded simultaneously, and the rain blasted his body. Once more, he ducked back into the shelter. He was suddenly terribly tired. His head felt heavy, he was wet, and he had an overwhelming desire to lie down.

“Okay, okay. Don't do anything rash. We'll talk later about what did and did not happen. For the moment, I can see you're cold and tired, and more than a little scared. Come on, Kesh Jones. You need to get out of this blasted weather. You have nothing to fear from me.” He sighed. “I will say one thing, my boy. It is not accident, your being here on this night.”

“What do you mean?”

The rag man stood, his small form bent over, and put a dark hand out to lead the boy farther into the toasty little shelter. Kesh considered stepping back, but his body let itself be drawn in. Something told him he could trust this weird little man. “Now sit down here, young man. Once you're warm and dry, we'll talk. Everything will be clear soon enough.”

The heat from the fire melted the shivers and the misgivings right out of Kesh. He'd heard about kids being picked up by strangers and never being seen again or found murdered in a ditch or shallow grave deep in the woods. He was as careful as any kid he knew…usually.

I should be scared to death
, he thought,
but I'm not
. The rag man looked like some kind of wild creature. He looked like some hairy thing that had crawled out of a hole, his eyes were dark and wild like the eyes of a forest animal, and something in the shack smelled like damp fur and rotting leaves after a rain. Still, Kesh wasn't afraid. He couldn't explain it, but the rag man felt safe to him.

“Drink some of this. It'll warm you up.” The rag man offered him a faded yellow plastic cup, and Kesh smelled warm chocolate. The sweet liquid went deep into him and thawed him from the inside out.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You're welcome. Now that you're thawed out, maybe we should have a chat.” He let out a long breath, as if he were gathering his thoughts. “Do you have any idea of what compelled you to run out into this nasty night, when you should be warm and safe at home with your mother and father?”

“I can't say. It's crazy. It couldn't have happened.” Kesh wondered if the whole thing had been a dream. Besides, how do you tell someone that you running away from the wild animals that had appeared in your living room? Who would believe him anyway when he didn't quite believe it himself?

“Can't say, huh? That's all right, but even if you don't know where you've been or where you belong, it sometimes helps to know how you got there.” The rag man's voice was raspy, but it had a strange music in it. “Can I tell you a story?”

“A story? A story about what? I don't understand.”

The rag man laughed. “Please bear with me, Kesh Jones. My story might help you understand.”

Kesh nodded. The man's reassurance settled his nerves. He should have been sobbing. He was in terrible trouble and he didn't even know if his parents were alive or dead. Instead, he was feeling contented, pleasantly drowsy and warm. He was also utterly confused by the rag man's riddles. Maybe a story would make it clear after all. “Please.” His hand felt the familiar shape of his notebook in his robe pocket, and he smiled as he sank into the warmth of the moment.

“All right, then. Just relax and listen.” He pulled a thick green blanket over the boy, and began to speak in a low, hypnotic voice.

 

Kesh kept his distance. He stood just inside the hut, sideways to the rag man and ready to run.

“When I was a young boy, like you, I lived in a small, pretty town a long, long way from here. Did I say ‘pretty?' It was more than pretty. It was a beautiful little village, tucked in between a great sea to the south and the woods that ran up to the foothills of towering mountains to the east. It was a good place to live, especially for the boys and girls of the town.”

Kesh shifted closer to the man, not wanting to miss a single detail. “What made it so special?”

“Ah, ah, I'm getting to that. You see, it was a cold place in winter and summers brought soft, pine nights and warm days. For us, the weather was always fine. In the warm times, we'd swim in the great lake and run through the woods playing tag and catch-me-if-you-can. In the rainy times, we played splash games in the streets or lay indoors playing games, making skits, reading about great adventures, and talking endlessly about our dreams. In the coldest time of the year, we would hike through the deep snows like heroes and adventurers, coming in late in the day, our faces red, and our tired bodies ready to be warmed by a blazing fire. It didn't matter to us. We were happy children, and all weather was good weather to us.”

Kesh smiled and inched closer.

“One day a man came into town to talk to the grown-ups about building a factory. In his honor, the mayor and all of the old big shots dressed up in their finest clothes. The city leaders held a great parade with horses hauling bright, painted carriages, and the city band playing well…as well as they could. They never were very good anyway, but that day they were less bad than at any time I could recall.”

Kesh snickered a little as he thought about the band at his school.

“The man presented grand plans to the city for a giant factory that would make all kinds of wonderful things come to the town. He assured the mayor and the other grown-ups that people all over the country, even all over the world, would flock to our little village to buy all the wonderful things we could make in his factory. And so the mayor signed an agreement with the factory man.”

The rag man sighed noisily, shifted his body and blew his nose into his sleeve. Kesh said, “Are you okay, mister?”

“Yes, yes. I'm fine.” He wiped his nose once more, and then continued. “Before long, big digging machines were cutting into the ground on the outskirts of town. At first, they cleared a huge swath of forestland, shipping the great trees away to other, distant towns to make things. Then they began digging into the side of the mountain, slicing away the soil, gouging out the rocks and the bones of the cliffs. We were told the land was rich with silver, nickel and copper. As soon as the forests were cleared, they began cutting through the hills, until even the mountain had been split wide open like a watermelon. They dug and tore into her and pulled out her heart. Then more men came with steel and wood and brick and mortar, and they built their stone, mountain factory on the edge of town just under the scarred mountain. The factory rose from the ground like a huge box, a terrible dark coffin at the bottom of the mountain.”

Kesh had moved even closer to the man. “Why would the townspeople let them that to such a beautiful place?”

“That, my boy, is a good question. I suppose it was partly because the factory man seemed to be a good enough man, and the grown-ups thought it would all be worth it when the town became rich. But then there came the most terrible thing of all. The factory man had told the mayor and the other grown-ups that if they wanted his wonderful factory in their town, they would have to find more workers, and that the best workers for a factory like this would be children.”

“Holy crap!”

“Holy crap, indeed. You see, he told them children worked very hard and did very good work, and he told them that children loved working in his factories. His voice cracked as he said this. He convinced the grownups that working in his factory would get the kids off of the streets and into a safe place. He said they would learn new skills and become productive members of the community.

The rag man turned away for a moment and wiped his face with his dry sleeve. Kesh said, “The parents didn't let him take the kids, did they?”

The man sighed again and sniffled. “I'm ashamed to tell you that they did. Let me say that the streets of my town were safe and we were very productive. We produced scads and scads of happiness. Some of the parents protested that children were meant to be children, not productive factory workers, but most of the grown-ups were anxious to get the brand new factory. It would bring new jobs new things, new ideas, and a new prosperity to the town. Before long, almost everyone in the town used the word like a magical incantation: Prosperity.”

He shook his head slowly, took a deep breath, and continued.

And so, when I was nine years old, my friends and I, all of the children old enough to work with our hands, were marched through the town in a festive parade to the place where the trees used to be, and into the great coffin. At first, it didn't seem so bad. We were together, all friends, and we loved the big machines and the noise. We had never seen such wonders and, for a while, it was exciting.”

He paused. “Then we learned what it meant to be a worker in a factory. We would spend our days inside the great buildings, screwing screws, bolting bolts, bending, hammering metal, twisting wires, wiring circuits, soldering connections, polishing finishes. We were making things for the factory man. Most of the time, we didn't even know what we were making. We just had little bits of this and pieces of that…you know, a little board covered in copper wire, a metal bar, some kind of handle.”

The rag man turned his palms up and studied them for a moment. Then he put them down and went on. “So day after day, we went to the factory from first sun to after dark. It happened quickly—the town that had been so wonderful, so perfect, the child's place, became a place of drudgery and sadness. And the grown-ups, the mothers and fathers who loved us, could not see what had happened to their village, to their children.”

“Every day I would walk to and from the box with my best friend, Louis. It wasn't long before we were getting home well after dark, and my mother and father were beginning to become concerned. I overhead my mother telling my father, ‘The children are not happy. They work too much.' She said in airy whispers. ‘I'm afraid about the changes, afraid for all of us.' Dad didn't answer that night, but I knew he had understood.”

“I was miserable. Most of the kids were. We had abandoned our gentle world for a dark world of work and more work, and I was beginning to feel hopeless.”

He raised his head and smiled. Kesh thought it was a sad smile.

“But Louis was different. He had started talking about how wonderful the factory was. And, he began staying long into the night, well past our curfew. I missed him. Yelling over the hum of the machines, I said, ‘Why don't you walk with me anymore?'

He said, ‘I don't go home anymore.'

I did not understand. ‘What do you mean, Louis? What do your parents say? How can this be possible?'

“My father doesn't notice, and my mom….” he paused and sniffled, then gathered himself up and spoke confidently, ‘Well, she never said anything about anything. She just isn't important.'”

Kesh grimaced, and the rag man said, “Does that ring a bell?”

Kesh said, “No, it doesn't,” but he wondered if he had ever sounded like Louis.

“You see, my mother was the most fearless person I had ever known, much more than my dad, so Louis's statement was hard for me to understand. Still, that night when she told my father how afraid she was, her voice was small and shaking, too quiet, and it made me afraid. But Louis was different. In our perfect little town, his life had never been so perfect. His father was a hard, mean man, and his mother was nearly invisible.

“He said the work made him feel good, and the factory man was paying attention. He'd often come down to the floor and inspect our work. More and more, he'd return to Louis' station. You see, Louis worked harder than anyone else, and when the factory man came by, he'd light up. The man noticed, and started asking Louis to walk the line with him. He'd explain each part with pride, and Louis ate it up. ‘I think I'd like to be a factory man when I grow up,' he told me.

“‘It sounds pretty awful to me.'

“‘That's only if you work the line forever. I'm going to be the boss someday. You just wait and see.' To be honest, I was happy for Louis. He hadn't had much of a life, and I was glad to see him feeling good about things.

“The factory man told everyone that this was progress, and each day, it seemed, the factory added more and bigger machines, and it needed more children to make more things more quickly. These things, we were told, were very important. They were sent off to other towns, in other faraway places where, it was said, we had become very famous, and we would soon be the most famous factory town in the region.”

The rag man paused and took a noisy sip of his drink. Kesh shifted his weight to get more comfortable and said, “What happened next?”

“We went on like that for a very long time. Then one Sunday, the only day we could leave the factory for family supper, we began to hear talk of a new stranger in town. I asked if he was another factory man, but my mother said, ‘No, he's definitely not a factory man. In fact, Kesh, the stranger is not a man at all. The stranger is a woman.'

“My father looked up from his dinner and said, ‘From the stories I've heard, she sounds like a lunatic, and people say she is the oddest thing to look at.'

“I'd heard things too on the factory floor, strange, exciting things about the woman. I'm still unsure, but the rumors said she spoke to the younger children through dreams, and she had told them they would be free from the factory man, I couldn't say anything to the grown-ups, not even my parents, because I thought they wanted the factory and all the new things it brought.