The Boy With Penny Eyes (9 page)

"I'm all right," he said.

"Do you know you've been in this bed since yesterday morning? It's Monday night now. I was about to make my wife call the doctor. Then I told her to wait until I saw if I could wake you myself." He smiled.

Billy pulled his legs up out of the covers and started to put his clothes on.

The man put his hand on Billy's arm. "Hold on there, partner," he said. His voice assumed an air of quiet authority. Again he put the back of his hand to Billy's forehead, then felt his neck under the chin and around the back. "Are you sure you're okay? You don't feel sick?"

Billy reached down for his shoes next to the bed. "No."

"How long has it been since you had a good night's sleep?"

"A while," he answered simply.

"I saw you in the organ loft yesterday. When I came back here and found you asleep, I thought for a moment there must be two of you. You must have really been tired to go back to bed."

Billy said nothing.

"Well . . ." The man was looking down as if weighing options. "Okay. We'll let it go at that. You hungry?"

"Yes."

"You're just in time for supper. The bathroom's down the hall; wash up and get dressed, and come downstairs to the dining room in five minutes."

Billy nodded.

Beck stood up, hesitated at the end of the bed, then almost stopped and turned at the doorway. Instead he walked down the hallway and descended the stairs to the floor below.

Billy dressed and went down.

There was the smell of cooking vegetables. There was the odor of peas and carrots, and potatoes, and the meaty smell of gravy along with the sharply pleasant burned odor of roasted chicken. He heard the clatter of silverware in the kitchen, the murmur of voices. Someone laughed in a young girlish voice, and he heard Reverend Beck laughing immediately and then the girlish voice turned to a protesting squeal. He walked into the bright light of the kitchen to see Beck sitting at the table with a girl of thirteen or so. For a moment the scene froze like a still photograph: the reverend with his hands entwined in the air in the shape of bird's wings, swooping at his daughter's head; the girl just beginning to duck away, her mouth open, trying to suppress a laugh and at the same time form the words, "Stop, Daddy!" even though she didn't want him to stop; Mrs. Beck nearby, just setting a plate down, frowning at the two of them. The photograph became a moving picture and the scene changed dramatically: Mary looked up with the dish in her hand, her frown turning to a look of sullen wariness; Jacob Beck turning his attention away from his daughter, saying, “Ah,”as his eyes met Billy's; and his daughter, her laughter instantly replaced by self-consciousness, staring down at the table in front of her.

"I see you really are awake," Jacob Beck said. He smiled and stood, regarding the boy closely. "We've certainly got enough to eat." He took his daughter by the arm gently, still looking at Billy. "This is Christine. You've been staying in her room the last couple of nights."

Christine and Billy studied each other silently.

Beck turned to introduce his wife, but she had suddenly disappeared into the kitchen.

They ate in near silence. What normally would have been a talkative dinner table became awkwardly quiet, with Jacob Beck's occasional attempts at conversation quickly failing. But the uneasiness of the table was eventually replaced by amazement as they watched Billy eat. It was as if the boy had not touched food in months. Though it was obvious that someone had trained him in table manners, he ate his food—three helpings of everything—with an almost frightening zeal. It was like watching a highly trained animal eat with a knife and fork. When he had finished .a second piece of apple pie and was holding his plate out for more, Jacob Beck could contain his amazement no longer.

"Good Lord," he said with a laugh, "you're a bottomless pit!"

"I'm hungry," Billy replied.

From the other side of the table, Mary Beck stared silently at the boy.

"When was the last time you had a sit-down meal like this?" Jacob asked.

Billy paused before answering. "Four months."

"Heavens!" He reached out for the boy, but the look on his wife's face made his hand fall to the table before it settled on Billy's. "And just what have you been eating for the past four months?"

"Bread, mostly. Sometimes I found dead things."

"Dead things?" Christine said, her voice filled with revulsion.

"Raccoons. Once, a dead snake."

It was the way he said it, the cool even voice, more than what he said, that sent a small chill through Jacob Beck.

"Yech," Christine said, covering her mouth with her napkin.

"I think we've had enough of this conversation," Mary said coolly. "Jacob, talk to the boy in your study." She got up and left the table, Christine still making faces and pushing away the remainder of her uneaten dessert.

The boy sat still as a statue. To keep their talk from looking like an interrogation, Beck had moved the lamp away from the edge of the desk, where it didn't cut across the boy's face so sharply. He also turned on the lamp on the side table near the door, to soften up the room. He'd always thought of this room as a friendly place, with warm light and himself ready to listen to any problem with an open ear, but somehow, with this boy sitting perfectly straight in the chair in front of him, he couldn't dim the feeling that the room was in the cellar of some police station and he was the tough cop with the rubber hose in his back pocket.

"Did you have enough to eat?" he said to the boy, putting as much wry warmth into his voice as he could. Long ago he had mastered the art of voice, as many professionals who counsel for a living do, and no matter how he thought or felt, he could always automatically make his tone soothing or cajoling, whatever was needed.

"No," Billy said simply.

Jacob put surprise on his face. "You nearly ate us out of house and home!"

"I'm hungry."

"Before we go to bed later, I'll see if I can sneak a little snack out of the refrigerator." Billy gazed silently at him.

Beck leaned back in his swivel chair, putting his hands behind his head. He looked down at Billy from under partly closed eyes. "You know," he said, letting his manner change from conspiratorial to serious, "you present quite a little problem for me."

Billy sat motionless.

Beck angled forward, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. "Would you like to stay here with us for a while?"

"Yes," Billy said.

"All right," Beck replied, smiling. "I think we can arrange that. My wife and I would be very pleased if you would stay until we can find out where you belong."

"Here."

"Excuse me?"

"I belong here."

Beck tried not to register the surprise he felt. He let a moment go by, then said, "What I'm really leading to, Billy, is that I have to find out where you came from, who your parents are, where you belong. You know what I mean, don't you?"

"The woman I lived with died."

"I see. Was she your mother?"

"No."

"Do you have a mother?"

Billy was silent. Then he said, "I lived with a woman named Melinda, who ran a home, but she died. So I left."

"You mean a foster home? Wasn't anyone there when she died?"

"No"

Jacob Beck picked up a pencil and began to tap the eraser end on the blotter of his desk. "Wasn't there anyone from a state agency to take care of you when Melinda died?"

"I didn't wait."

"So you left? How?"

"Hitchhiked. Slept in places I found."

"What kind of places?"

"In the desert. Side roads."

Despite his uneasiness with this solemn boy, Beck felt a rush of feeling. He had an image of the boy alone in the dark, rolled in a blanket by the side of a highway or out in the desert somewhere with night noises all around, noises that would scare anyone, the sound of prowling animals, and this young boy with just a backpack and a rolled-up blanket and a golf jacket, strange, metallic-brown eyes open, staring soberly at the dark night. For a brief moment tears welled behind his eyes, but he blinked them back.

"Billy," he said slowly, "is there anything else you can tell me about Melinda? Where she lived, what town or state her home was in?"

The boy said nothing.

"I see," Beck said. "We'll talk about this again." Impulsively, he leaned forward. "I want you to know that I only want to help you. We all do. I'll fix up one of the guest rooms, and that will be yours while you're here. I should tell you that while you're here, you'll have to play by the rules, though." He leaned back. "You'll have to keep your room clean, help around the house, with the dishes, things like that; I might even need you to help me with some things around the church." He paused. "And I should tell you that I can't allow smoking. I committed a little sin by going through your things after you fell asleep. I took the cigarettes and matches. You're too young and I just can't allow it. Do you understand?"

Billy said nothing, and then he nodded. Jacob Beck studied the boy. "Can I ask you a question?"

Billy's, eyes were unblinking.

"Billy," Beck went on, "you said that this is where you belong. When you left your last home, did you travel all that way, all those months, heading for this specific place?"

The boy was silent.

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Billy stared at him, a serious little boy in old clothes, sitting on a chair in front of a man he probably thought foolish. For a moment Beck felt the same emptiness he had felt in the church on Saturday night. Here was an enigma of a boy, and he felt inadequate in front of him
. I don't care.
But then it dawned on him that that wasn't it at all. For the first time in a long while, Beck realized that he was genuinely interested in something. He
did
care. The boy intrigued him. Here was a soul shrouded in some sort of mystery, and he wanted to help him and discover the answer to what that mystery was. A tiny thrill went through him. He realized that he felt alive again, for the first time in a long while.

Maybe this is how it happens.

He thought of his friend Father Marchini. What Marchini had said would happen was happening. It was as if a light switch that had been inadvertently turned off had been turned on again. At least, there was a flicker of hope, of faith in both himself and in God, that hadn't been there for a long time.

All because of this strange boy.

It's not all bullshit after all,
he thought. He looked at the boy.
I do care.

"Can I go?" Billy asked matter-of-factly.

"Yes, of course," Beck answered. "I'll bring you that snack from the refrigerator, like I promised."

He sat with his hands on the desk before him as the boy got up and walked out of the room. There was a warm feeling in him as the boy closed the door behind him. Perhaps this was what he had been waiting for. But as the door clicked shut, an irrational, tiny thought came into his mind, one that didn't quite dampen the new confidence he had attained but one that nevertheless sent a chilly tendril up his back.

Maybe he suddenly had his faith back because he was going to need it.