Eric whimpered again, and his hands clenched into fists and came up to
protect his face.
Instinctively Gwin reached out to him, and then she drew back. She
couldn't reach his emotions. There was no perception. There was no way
she could enter his dreams and rearrange them and comfort him.
"Poor devil," his father said again. "He's got his whole life to be
lonely in."
* * * * *
The summer passed, and another winter and another summer. Eric spent
more and more time by himself. He liked to sit on the glassed-in
sunporch, bouncing his ball up and down and talking to it, aloud,
pretending that it answered him back. He liked to lie on his stomach
close to the wall and look out at the garden with its riotous mass of
flowers and the insects that flew among them. Some flew quickly, their
wings moving so fast that they were just blurs. Others flew slowly,
swooping on outspread bright-colored wings from petal to petal. He liked
these slow-flying ones the best. He could wiggle his shoulder blades in
time with their wings and pretend that he was flying too.
Sometimes other children came by on the outside of the wall. He could
look out at them without worrying, because they couldn't see him. The
wall wasn't transparent from the outside. He liked it when three or four
of them came by together, laughing and chasing each other through the
garden. Usually, though, they didn't stay long. After they had played a
few minutes his father or his mother went out and looked at them, and
then they went away.
Eric was playing by himself when the old man came out to the sunporch
doorway and stood there, saying nothing, making no effort to interrupt
or to speak. He was so quiet that after a while Eric almost didn't mind
his being there.
The old man turned back to Myron and Gwin.
"Of course the boy can learn. He's not stupid."
Eric bounced the ball, flung it against the transparent glass, caught
it, bounced it again.
"But how, Walden?" Gwin shook her head. "You offer to teach him, but--"