By Timmy's sixth birthday, only his parents' adamant attitude had
saved him from becoming a side show. Once the initial household uproar
had died down and some degree of general sanity been restored, Helen
and Jerry had another bad fright. They had grudgingly allowed Clancey,
the family sawbones, to call in a psychologist friend, Philip Warwick.
The combined efforts of these two to find an explanation for Timmy
resulted in complete chaos, with Timmy suffering violent and erratic
lapses into complete idiocy for varying lengths of time. Standard tests
meant nothing, unless mutually exclusive results could be accepted as
meaningful in themselves. At length, Timmy suffered a relapse of such
duration that the parents became panic-stricken and quietly rebelled.
It was obvious that he needed an atmosphere of peace and quiet.
Confusion, excitement, or the concentrated attention of several adults
simply threw him into a relapse.
The break came when Clancey called at the house and found it empty,
deserted. He traced them to a new neighborhood where they had rented a
house with a peaceful, walled garden. They were not pleased to see him,
but Clancey was a psychologist of sorts himself and a working agreement
was arrived at whereby he and Warwick could drop in frequently as
friends and quietly observe Timmy, chatting with him when they could
win his confidence and submitting him to whatever tests they could
adequately disguise. But under pain of permanent excommunication from
the Douglas menage they were not to discuss him with outsiders in such
a way as to either identify him or draw attention to him. Timmy was to
be allowed to set his own pace under their obliquely-watching eyes.
He was not to become a subject for newspaper comment, for the speculation
of strangers, or for the heated discussion of learned gentlemen calling
each other liars in six syllables. For Timmy was something new under
the sun.
Two years of observation gave Clancey and Warwick an impressive file of
notes on him, and they were prone to sit after office hours with it on
the desk between them, giving it morose glances. They were not happy.
Sometimes, as now, they concluded an evening visit by sitting in
Clancey's or Warwick's car parked outside the Douglas fence, holding an
impromptu post-mortem on an intellectual corpse that had come to life
in complete defiance of all the rules. They didn't notice the stealthy
movement of one of the fence-boards, nor the small form that snaked
through the shadows of concealing shrubbery until it was near the open
window of the car.
"Take word-association, Clancey. I had a few minutes with him this
evening before you got here, so I started him on a 'game' where we took
turns in saying a word and trying to guess what the other would reply.
I believe he thought I was rather a simpleton and needed humoring.
Anyway, I tried him with 'home' and got a delayed response. It's
happened before. Apparently the concept of home is tied to some deeper
disturbance." There was a slight, uneasy movement from the listening
figure. "Well, linking home and family, on my next turn I shot 'mother'
at him. There was an immediate flash of confusion in his eyes and again
a delayed response before he blurted 'Mom.' Something else had been on
the tip of his tongue, but he choked it back and selected what seemed
to him a more suitable reply.
"Now, we both know from two years' systematic observation that Helen is
as well-balanced a mother as you're likely to find. I'm quite sure she
has no unsuspected bad habits or traits that are leaving sensitive spots
in Timmy's mind, making him flinch at the association, nor is there some
long-standing or unresolved conflict in their relations. Yet 'home' and
'mother' both invoke blocks that inhibit response until consciously
overcome, or invoke images that he wishes to conceal lest they betray a
secret. I doubt very much whether anything that happened in his first
four years could have left a deep impression on the completely imbecilic
mind he is _assumed_ to have had then. That leaves the past two years--"
* * * * *
_(Confirmation) Game/not game.... Should data have predicted
test? (Indecision) Possibly ... review later. So much to learn
... confusion inevitable. Next time respond "mother--three"
(laughter) Invalid frame of reference--impossible work
with/discard._
* * * * *
"Something else interests me there, Phil. You suggest he selected,
deliberately, what seemed an appropriate response to 'mother.' Did you
take the next logical step and try 'father?'"
"Yes."
"And did he anticipate it?"
"I'm sure he did. I see what you mean ... fairly sharp reasoning for a
six-year-old supposed to be mentally retarded. When I shot 'father' at
him he came back promptly with 'male-Douglas' almost like one word."
"Got the sex and identity right. What's wrong with that?"
"There's nothing 'wrong' or 'right' about it. I was hoping for some clue
as to how his mind works. Maybe I got it, but I don't know what to do
with it. I didn't expect a calmly objective cataloguing of the old man
as a 'male-Douglas.'"
* * * * *
_(Surprise) Where is error? Semantics? Sociology? Colloquial
nuance? (Decision) Reject further word-games._
* * * * *
"If that's a clue, Phil, you can have it." Clancey hauled a notebook
from his pocket and held it up. "Open this thing anywhere--anywhere at
all. It'll open at an unanswered question. At the age of roughly three
and one-half, a congenital idiot suddenly displays flashes of alert
intelligence. For forty-two months that child was content to sit on his
fanny and vegetate. Never crawled, never spoke, never played, seldom
even focused his eyes. Then one day his mother sees him study some
alphabet blocks with every appearance of curiosity. Awareness! For the
first time!
"Later, he suddenly reaches out his hand and piles the blocks in
a neat stack. Purposeful activity and perfect muscular control! No
trial-and-error, no baby hesitation with hand poised--just a sudden
assured, controlled action. Mama leaps for joy, junior relapses into
idiocy, and no one--including me--really believes mama when she says it
happened. This sort of thing goes on for several months--brief, erratic
flashes of extraordinary intelligence, considering the subject. Then, a
child who has never spoken a single word says clearly and politely,
'I want that one, Helen,' and a child who has never crawled puts his
feet under him and stands up steady as a rock. You tell me, Phil--how
did he do it?"
"Don't look to me for an answer. I'm only a lousy fifth-rate psychology
teacher, as of the day you brought Timmy into my life. And the curse of
Freud be on you for _that_ kindly act of professional assassination. The
answer is obvious, of course ... Timmy didn't and couldn't do what we've
seen him do with our own wide-open, innocent eyes. We are the victims of
a cunning hoax."
* * * * *
_(Amusement) Difficult to experiment unobserved. Action too
precipitate/no choice. (Affection/laughter) "The world is so
people." (Chill) Danger! Madness!_
* * * * *
"How does any child learn to speak?"
[Illustration]
"Mainly by hearing others. Maybe Timmy learned the same way. Maybe he
listened, absorbing the meaning and sound of words, trying them out
in the silence of his otherwise vacant little noggin. Maybe his mind
awakened gradually to the realization that it was a prisoner in a
paralyzed organ, strait-jacketed by blocks or short circuits. Maybe he
spent his forty-two months of vegetating driving against those blocks
until he partially broke them down and could speak. Maybe."
"And without ever having shaped his lips or tongue to intelligent
sounds, he speaks fluently at the first try?"
"Why not? Any kid that will start out by addressing its parents chummily
as 'Helen' and 'Jerry' and act naively surprised at the reaction,
obviously has rules of its own."
They ruminated in silence for a moment.
"It's too easy to talk vaguely about blocks and short circuits, Clancey.
How do you account for his completely erratic progress? Totally
unpredictable, with alternating periods of complete idiocy and high
intelligence?"
"Not totally unpredictable."
"Oh?"
"At least three things suggest a pattern. One is that his relapses,
though erratic, are becoming ever shorter in duration and more widely
separated."
"Yes, they are infrequent now and quickly ended."
"The second is that his grasp of the social pattern in which he
lives--his environment, in all its subtleties--is constantly improving."
"Right again. At the age of six he can in many ways match a bright lad
twice his age. Not in the subtleties, though--I disagree there. You can
give him a simple or even a not-so-simple explanation of something he
hears on the radio, dealing with it as a general theme in sociology,
and he seems to grasp the broad outline with little difficulty, but in
trivial matters of social behavior and human relations he's frequently
uncertain, as likely as not to pull a howling bloomer. Seems unusually
baffled and exasperated by some of the social mores he runs into, such
as the many tabu subjects for conversation, or taking your clothes off
whenever or wherever you feel inclined to. Poor Helen. She tries to
explain and he keeps doggedly after her with ruthless logic, obviously
trying hard to understand, and ... you know ... it's surprising how few
really sound, logical reasons there are for half the accepted
conventions that rule our lives.
"He's pinned me down several times to the conclusion that a certain
convention exists solely because people can't be trusted to behave
rationally without restraining rules. It's rather a dismaying conclusion
when it's dragged out in the open like that, and it seems to horrify
him. An ordinary kid learns by experience and accepts the rules with
sporadic rebellion, but our boy acts as if they were beyond
comprehension. And I think they are ... to him.
"The first crime drama he happened to see on TV turned him white as
a sheet, and when he stuck his nose out the gate a few days later and
watched some neighborhood kids playing cowboys and Indians with cap
pistols, he was sick on the grass. Explaining the 'glamour' of the early
west made it worse. He drew back from me as though I were contagious.
I had the feeling that he _pitied_ me. I wonder, sometimes, whether he
makes any real sense at all out of what is said to him. He's very slow
to interpret the shades of expression possible in voice and face. I feel
that potentially he has an exceptional mind, but the great difficulty is
communication."
"Like pulling his leg. It's too easy to be fun."
"Exactly, unless the little so-and-so is pulling ours, which I sometimes
suspect." Phil winced a little and rubbed his hand across his forehead.
"Getting a headache. Well, what's this third item you had in mind?"
* * * * *
"I can't pin it down, but I have a feeling there's a fairly obvious
physical factor linking the periods of relapse."
"Physical tiredness?"
"No ... the contrary, perhaps. At the start he got himself overtired
pretty often, as though he overestimated his endurance, but it didn't
seem to do him any harm. But if he awakens early or unexpectedly, there
may be an appreciable delay before he orients himself. Then he comes to
with a snap."
"Shock? Confusion of any sort?"
"Confusion, certainly. He didn't last five minutes when they tried
him in school, you remember. Howled for his dog, then sat on the floor
and dribbled. The confusion of being chucked into a group of noisy,
aggressive six-year-olds was too much for him. You remember he recovered
completely--almost instantly--when his mother packed him out of the
school."
"That reminds me of something else. I think that dog is some sort of a
symbol to him. Perhaps it has somehow become associated with security.
Try this for size: his mind is struggling to free itself from its strait
jacket; the dog captures his attention at a critical moment; the mother
screams when he speaks, frightening him, but the dog comes reassuringly
to his arms and subsequently--or did _he_ see it as a consequence?--his
parents make much of him. In other words, at the start of his rational
life the dog is a friendly element and the parents a frightening one.
The details of the association drop soon enough from his conscious
memory, but not from his subconscious. When the dog is with him, he
feels secure. When they are separated--it was not allowed into school
with him, of course--his symbol is gone and he panics, much as an
ordinary child panics if it loses its mother in a crowd."
"Slick, but not convincing. It touches on another peculiarity, however
... the way he wants that hound with him always, no matter where. Sleeps
with it on his bed, eats with it by his chair, even takes it to the
bathroom--by-the-by, he acquired the dog and bowel-control at the same
time, if you recall--but does he _like_ the dog? He never pets it to
speak of. Plays with it sometimes in a clumsy, disinterested sort of
way, but it's not the classic boy-dog relationship. If the dog is merely
a symbol, as you suggest--"
"I didn't say 'merely' a symbol. If I'm right, an association as strong
as this one could be devilish awkward and even dangerous, hooked to a
hair-trigger mind like his. What if something happens to the dog before
his dependence or whatever can be broken? Dogs get run over, you know,
and even their normal life span is short. Maybe we ought to try to break
it up ... damn this headache."
* * * * *
_(Regret/Despondency) Degraded to pain ... static/thick tongue.
(Resignation) Delay, delay, delay ... break conversation. Time
wrong._
* * * * *
"You been bothered with headaches lately?"
"Off and on--nasty sort of twinges. If I trusted myself with a
carpenter, I'd let you give me a check-up. Well, let's cut this short.
What I was going to say ... let's see ... oh, since Timmy seldom pays
any attention to the dog, why does the dog stick to him like a shadow?"
Clancey grunted.
"That dog's no fool, stupid as he is. Clumsy, homely, and half-witted
enough to sit on a tack for five minutes before he howled--I've seen
him do just about that--he knows when he needs a protector. If it
weren't for Timmy, the hound would have been destroyed long ago as
an act of mercy. Helen and Jerry are resigned to him, of course, for
Timmy's sake, but have you noticed that the dog reacts much the same
as Timmy if they get separated? Casts about at once for a way to
rejoin him, and the longer he's delayed the more he panics. Maybe it's
a two-way switch--maybe Timmy and his dog are indispensable symbols to
each other!"
"You dream up any more lulus like that, you keep them to yourself.
Psychopathic dogs I draw the line at. Clancey, there is only one
conclusion to be drawn from these here solemn deliberations. Throw out
the textbooks and roll with the punches."
"Amen."
V
"There should be no deaths!"
Phil turned that one over in his mind, cautiously. A good deal of his
attention was needed for the task of nursing his old car along the ruts
of the dirt road, but the murmured exclamation impelled him to steal a
glance at the boy sitting beside him. This was the spring of Timmy's
tenth year--the sixth year of his friendship with "Uncle" Phil--and
those years had taught Phil more than he realized, if less than he had
hoped. He knew, for example, that the peculiar vacancy of Timmy's
expression at the moment implied deep thought rather than the complete
absence of thought that it suggested. That was a curious characteristic
that always made the man a little uneasy. Timmy's face was sometimes
radiantly, spontaneously expressive, the most sensitive of mirrors, and
sometimes it was rather mechanically expressive, but it was only
expressive in a positive sense. In moments of abstraction or daydreaming
there was no faraway look, no frown of concentration. Only blankness.
"The world would get a trifle crowded, you know."
Timmy leaped the gap easily to connect the two remarks, as Phil had
thought he would. "Oh, I didn't mean there should be no _death_. I was
thinking of something else. That man they found dead in the bush
yesterday."
"A man with a heart condition should never go hunting alone."
"Was it his heart, Uncle Phil?"
"His heart and his head both, if you ask me. He had a bad heart, all
right--I saw him have an attack once. You'd think a man like that would
have sense enough to avoid overexertion, but he lost his way and started
churning through swamp and brush in a straight line instead of looking
for the trail again. Must have acted like a moron, running until he
dropped."
"Would panic make a man do that?"
"It will make a man do any crazy thing imaginable, if he lets it get
the upper hand. There's only a few square miles of marsh and brush here,
with the town already crowding up against it. In a few years it will be
drained and the land used for industrial development and so on, then the
fools will have to find some other way to kill themselves."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, every so often we have to turn out search parties and have a grand
shivaree looking for some idiot who usually turns up dead. Drowned
himself in two feet of water, or run himself ragged, or even put a
bullet through his head for no good reason. It's happened several times
in the past few years, so the place is getting a bad name it doesn't
deserve. Even the search parties often get themselves balled up and mill
around in circles, perfect examples of mass hysteria. Sometimes I get
fed up with the human race."
"I ... didn't know. I mean, about the ... deaths."
Phil laughed outright at the tragic tone.
"Oh, come now! Let's not be morbid about it! You wanted to drive out
here, remember."
"I still do, Uncle Phil. You and Dad were talking about how you used to
come out here every spring when you were kids, to collect specimens, and
it sounded like fun."
"So it was ... in those days. This old dirt road leads well in toward
the center. I used to spend a whole day hiking along here with my dog,
just rooting around and having a grand time. It's a pity we outgrow
the best things in life. Childhood scenes should be remembered, not
revisited. We can remember, but we can't recapture. A few years ago
I wanted some nature photographs so of course I came out here, sure
I'd get some beauties. I don't know. I started out in high spirits,
recognizing every rotted old stump along the way, but somehow it all
turned to ashes. I lost interest and turned back without taking a single
exposure--almost hating the place, in fact, as if it had let me down.
Strange that a place I loved as a kid should seem so empty and
uninviting now." He put on the brakes and looked around morosely.
"Don't you want to go any farther, Uncle Phil?"
"What for? You can see how overgrown the road is getting. I'll be lucky
if I can find a clearing to turn around. There's nothing of interest up
ahead, Timmy. The road dies out and then there's a couple of miles or so
of swamp and flies. It's getting dusk, too--"
"I'd like to get out for a minute."
"Oh. Well, O. K., but make it snappy."
He settled back listlessly as the boy climbed out, holding the door for
the dog to follow.
"Do you have to take that mutt ... never mind, go ahead."
* * * * *
The boy wandered off to the side of the road and Phil listened to the
rustle of bushes, wondering at his own irritation. He felt ill at ease,
anxious to be away. He started as Timmy came up beside him on the left
of the car.
"That was quick."
"Yeah." The boy was holding a spray of flowering shrub and his hand
passed casually over the flowers in a light caress. "Say, hasn't this
flower got a sweet smell, Uncle Phil? Here, smell it."
"It's a pretty flower, Timmy, but that stuff has no perfume." He
accepted the branch automatically, lifted it to his nostrils.
Time stopped.
He thought he felt a thump against the side of the car, but the
impression faded before it was fully born. In a remote corner of his
mind the ticking of his watch sounded as a cold, measured rhythm, a
metronome with delusions of syncopation. He sat motionless, his forearm
resting on the steering wheel, the spray of blossoms caressing his
cheek, his mind stunned by the anaesthetic he drew in with each breath.
He was as one lost in thought, his eyes open but unseeing, observing but
not interpreting.
There was no sense of duration, of the passage of seconds or minutes.
There was only a dream in which, suddenly, a gentle mind made its
presence known. Concepts tapped lightly at his own mind and an automatic
process of interpretation winnowed and equated until a gentle voice
seemed to speak. The words were few, merely computed associations
keyed to understanding, and with them were perfectly and intimately
synchronized fragments of emotion and vision, softly washing over the
surface of his mind.
* * * * *
_(Urgency) Attend--attend! Challonari! Attend!_
* * * * *
An impression of convolutions drifted through his mind--a shape,
perhaps, and a color. He felt no curiosity, and let the impression
drift. As a sunbather drowsing on a crowded beach, hearing the
background hum of the crowd and now and then a more clearly spoken
phrase, so he caught the edge of this communication. It was not for
him. A second mind entered ... _was_ it a mind? Yes, and yet very
different. It was strong, but limited--perhaps childlike, in some ways.
Alive after a fashion, it was receptive of emotion up to a point and
even capable of emotion--up to a point. It seemed an embryo mind, in
some ways well developed and in others with no potential whatever.
* * * * *
(RELIEF) IDENTITY BLURRED ... KNOW/NOT KNOW. (PERPLEXITY)
NO PRECEDENT ... REQUIRE INSTRUCTIONS. (CONFIDENCE/TRUST)
INSTRUCT PLEASE.
_Instructions (Decisive) Sleep ... sleep ... sleep._
(AGITATION) IDENTITY NOT MENTOR ... INSTRUCTIONS INVOLVE
BASIC DISOBEDIENCE (CONFUSION/DISTRESS) CANNOT OBEY/DISOBEY
... DILEMMA INSOLUBLE TO CHALLONARI (PLEADING) REVISE
INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE.
_(Sorrow) Cannot revise. Identity mentor/not mentor.
Challonari must obey identity._
(GREAT AGITATION) ACCEPT IDENTITY MENTOR/NOT MENTOR ...
CANNOT RECONCILE BASIC CONFLICTS ... CANNOT OBEY/DISOBEY
(SUDDEN HOPE) LOGICAL DIVERGENCE PERMISSIBLE ... SIMPLIFY
EXPLANATION PLEASE.
_(Reluctance/hesitation) Intelligent identities here ...
unable communicate ... Challonari. Result ... so. (Pain)
Communication ... so. (Wave pattern)._
(UNHESITATING) ILLOGICAL/REJECT ... COMMUNICATION DESCRIBED
IMPOSSIBLY LIMITED ... INCONSISTENT/HIGH-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE.
_Challonari limited ... must accept. (Command) Challonari
sleep ... sleep ... sleep._
(EXTREME AGITATION) CANNOT/MUST OBEY.
_(Command/pity) Challonari has destroyed intelligence! Must
sleep ... sleep ... sleep!_
(AGONY ... HORROR/CONFLICT ... INSANITY).
_Challonari! (No response. Grief) Ultimate withdrawal ...
Challonari! Challonari!_
* * * * *
Phil frowned, looking at his empty hand. It seemed to him that the spray
of flowers had inexplicably vanished. There was an elusive sense of
disorientation, a feeling of something overlooked. There was the tag-end
of a remembered grief. There was--
"You were right, Uncle Phil. They have no scent."
"What?" He looked around blankly, saw Timmy tossing the spray aside.
"Oh ... there it is. I thought I ... uh ... forget what I was going to
say." Two voices that were not voices--a dream, a despairing cry. An
elusive memory faded, faded. "There's mud on your cheek, Timmy. Did you
fall?"
"No ... that is, yes." Timmy scrubbed his cheek industriously.
"Make up your mind. Hurt yourself?"
"No, I'm all right."
"Well, whip around to the other side and hop in." Phil watched him in
the rear-view mirror and noted the hasty dab at moist eyes. It seemed
like a significant giveaway, but he couldn't imagine why. "Get your mutt
in and let's go."
"Come on, Homer." The boy settled himself with his dog between his feet,
and Phil laughed, his good spirits returned. He turned the car without
much trouble and they bumped back over the wagon ruts.
"Why do you call him Homer, Timmy?"
"Well, on account of the Odyssey, you know."
"I see. Some day when I have a clear mind and a couple of hours to
spare, you can explain the connection between Homer's Odyssey and a
flea-bitten semi-airdale."
They rode in silence for a while, until the dirt road changed to
pavement. Phil let his thoughts wander idly, thinking of nothing in
particular. Scraps of this and that seemed to float to the surface and
drift out of reach before he could capture them, had he been interested
in trying. One fragment somehow caught in an eddy and remained in sight
long enough to draw his attention.
"Challonari," he said, wonderingly, and almost ditched them as stabbing
pain shot through his temples. He held the wheel with one hand, the
other clapped for a moment to his brow. "Don't do that!" he snapped
angrily.
"W-what, Uncle Phil?"
"Sorry, Timmy, I didn't mean you. I don't know who I meant ... or,
rather, _what_ I meant, of course. I seem to be pretty confused tonight.
I even startled poor old Homer with that swerve. Get his muddy feet off
the cushions, Timmy." Homer sank back obediently to his usual place
between Timmy's feet, but his muzzle rested on the boy's muddied knees
and his brown eyes regarded both of them at the same time. Apparently he
was not convinced that the upheavals were over.
"What does 'challonari' mean, Uncle Phil?"
"Oh ... that. Just something that came to mind."
"But what does it mean?"
"I don't really know, Timmy ... something about convolutions or a
convoluted shape, I think, but that's only part of it. There are
connotations of ... of intelligence? No ... ridiculous. How can you have
a convoluted intelligence? But a brain is convoluted and to a greater or
lesser degree intelligent. The ... um ... the question of degree comes
into it, I think. A brain of limited intelligence, then, though damned
if I know why I think of it as limited. Challonari ... challonari. It's
not English and it doesn't sound like a technical word, but I must have
heard it in connection with something ... quite recently, too."
"Sort of rhymes with 'shivaree.'"
"Only sort-of, Timmy. You wouldn't make a good poet.
Shivaree--challonari. I mentioned shivaree when we were talking about
people getting lost in the bush, didn't I? Did it have some connection
with that? But how?"
"Maybe a sort of--mental trick?"
"Mental association rings a bell. Mental ... no, it's gone ... wait.
Teacher, trainer, instructor--a brain of limited intelligence would need
a teacher. Gentle teacher. Why gentle, for Pete's sake? But teacher and
pupil, that seems almost right. How much can one word mean? What am I
trying to recall, anyway? The meaning of a word? The _associations_
connected with a word? The association of ideas? Blast it, this is more
than tantalizing."
"Like when you wake up knowing you've had a dream, but you can't
remember any of it?"
"Uh ... yes, like a dream. A dream of--" The blood drained from his
face, leaving him gray and ashen. Timmy put out a hand in alarm, to
steady the wheel.
"Uncle Phil!"
"It's all right, Tim. It ... it's all right. I had a thought there that
kind of shook me." He relaxed with a shaky laugh, relief flooding his
face once more with color. "What a crazy thought! I could have sworn ...
well, never mind. But it shakes a man to learn what tricks his own mind
can play on him, all in an instant."
"What kind of tricks, Uncle Phil?"
"Oh, no you don't. If you hadn't egged me on with so many questions,
I'd have been spared a pretty nasty moment, you know that? Now let me
concentrate on driving for a change so I can get you home in time for
supper. O. K.?"
"But ... oh, O.K."
"Don't sound so disappointed, chum. It's been a pleasant drive, even if
nothing much happened."
"Yes, Uncle Phil. Even if ... nothing much happened."
* * * * *
Spring changed to summer, and summer rolled into its final days. Phil
was in a gloomy frame of mind when Timmy's eleventh birthday came
around.
He watched Timmy draw a deep breath and--without puffing out his cheeks
as a child would do--neatly blow out the eleven candles on his cake.
It was an efficient, sprayless, perfectly-controlled operation, an
operation carried out happily and in high spirits, and it depressed
Phil. The "party" itself depressed him--a child's birthday party with
no children present, unless you counted Timmy! Phil and Doc, Helen and
Jerry, and Homer, the latter gray muzzled and stiff in the joints. That
was the roster of the guests and it could almost be called the roster
of Timmy's total acquaintances. His parents, his two friends, and a dog
that at its best had never seemed bright and now was obviously half-dead
with age. The boy was not normal, had no normal life, and gave no
indication of ever being likely to take a normal role in life. He was
a "disordered personality" if one could take comfort in a tag, but the
true nature, cause and cure of his divergence from "normal" would remain
unknown so long as his parents were afraid of tampering--
"Did you make a wish, Timmy?"
"Sure, Mom."
"Helen, honey--Tim knows that wishing when you blow out the candles is
kid stuff."
"And what is he but an eleven-year-old kid?"
[Illustration]
"He's too smart to believe in wishing, honey. Smarter than his old man,
eh, Tim?"
"I'll _never_ be as smart as you, Dad."
"That's my boy! But you don't kid me." Jerry turned to Phil and Clancey,
feigning indignation. "You know what happened the other day? I brought
home an old design that I dug out of the files and wanted to look
over--a helical gravity conveyer--and when Tim saw it spread out on the
table he said, 'That's the curve I was just reading about.' Now how did
that little so-and-so know enough to call it a curve? I figured he was
bluffing and got him to show me where he read about it, and the brat
showed me all right--in one of my old college textbooks! Of course I
only had to ask a few questions to find out that the college texts are
far beyond him, but imagine him dipping into them on his own and getting
anything out of them at all! How about that, young man? Explain
yourself."
Timmy hesitated, his eyes dark with uncertainty.
"You said I could," he blurted defensively. "Remember? Remember I asked
you one day and you said--"
"Your father isn't angry, Timmy," Helen laughed, hugging him. "Honest,
you get worried about the darnedest things! He's _proud_ of you! Don't
you know paternal boasting when you hear it?"
"Oh!" The shadow lifted and he laughed sheepishly. "I get it. It was
nuance of idiom that threw me. Calling me a brat and a so-and-so was
affectionate misdirection to conceal--" he broke off at their
expressions. Helen darted a quick look around and came to his rescue
again.
"Timmy-chile, where you git these heah high-falutin' _ex_-pressions
I'll never know. Hit shore ain't from you' low-talkin' pappy."
"Or from yo' low-comedian mammy. It's all right, son--you just sound
a bit bookish sometimes, that's all. Want some help with the dishes,
Helen?"
"You know darn well you'd divorce me if I said yes. You and Clancey take
Timmy in the front room and let him teach you something. Phil's just
crazy to help with the dishes. Aren't you, Phil?"
"The obvious answer is yes. O. K., let's go."
* * * * *
They piled the dishes, joking and chattering until the sound of laughter
from the front of the house told them that the others were occupied,
then Helen put down the dish she was washing.
"Well, Phil?"
"Am I supposed to know what that means?"
"Phil, in plain language, is Timmy a ... a genius?"
"No, I don't think so. He's unaccountably bright in many ways and just
as unaccountably slow in others. I don't think genius comes into it at
all."
"That's what I think, too. Timmy's no genius ... yet he does things that
only a genius-type could do."
"Don't exaggerate, Helen. A sharp youngster living a secluded life and
studying more than he plays may be years ahead of other kids who go to
public schools."
"He's farther ahead than you think, Phil. I have Timmy in the house with
me all day, so maybe I know him better than Jerry does. He fooled Jerry
with that business of the college textbooks, but not me. I think that
for some reason Timmy doesn't want us to know how advanced he really is.
I think he slipped up when he commented on that helical what's-it, then
covered his slip by pretending he'd only leafed through the texts and
picked up a bit here and there. I know when that boy's fooling, and I
know he deliberately fluffed the questions Jerry put to him. Timmy's
just plain lousy when it comes to dissembling, you know, as if it was
completely foreign to him to lie. All right, all right, I know what
you're going to say--fond mama building mother's-intuition fantasy
around only child.
"Well, I kept an eye on him after that and about a week later Jerry
brought home some calculus dealing with a new design he's developing. He
ran into trouble with it and sweated and swore for an hour, while Timmy
sat and read and I kept peeking in the hall mirror that lets you see
into the front room from the kitchen. After a while Jerry left the room
to look for some tables he wanted and Timmy slipped over and looked at
his work, made a single notation, then dived back to his book as Jerry
returned. Jerry started to sweat over the thing again, then suddenly did
a double-take. He made some erasures and in five minutes had the whole
thing worked out, cursing himself for misreading a figure or something.
"Now don't tell me it was just a coincidence. Timmy hadn't seen that
problem before and it should have been miles over his head anyway, yet
he gave it a quick glance, spotted the error, changed the limits of an
integration and put Jerry on the right track. Just like that."
* * * * *
Phil carefully massaged a dry plate even drier.
"So I stagger back and gasp, 'I can't believe it!' or something insane
but appropriate. The disturbing thing to me is that I not only _can_
believe it, I do believe it. Completely. I may as well tell you now
what I haven't yet told anyone else, that I've been methodically
tricking Timmy for some months past--in fact, ever since I began to
suspect that his knowledge of the sciences was, to say the least,
unusual for a boy his age. I probably led him into making that slip with
Jerry, identifying the curve. By giving him the impression that any boy
his age would know far more chemistry, math and physics than is actually
the case, I tripped him into revealing that he himself knows a very
great deal about them. Perhaps more than I do.
"I begin to suspect now that I didn't set my sights nearly high enough
in leading him on, but God alone knows where he could have learned. On
anything that could be related to the humanities he's very slow, but in
the physical sciences he's out of this world. His secluded life--unable
to mix with other kids, go to shows, games, or do anything that gets
him into crowds--gives him a very limited background for understanding
his environment, leaves him unboyish. He doesn't understand people. I
constantly have the impression that he is anxious to do the right thing,
but is simply baffled by problems in human relations."
"I know. He looks at me sometimes as though he's just desperate to reach
me somehow--a lonely, unhappy little soul. He gets plenty of affection
from both of us, but it isn't the answer--it just isn't the answer."
"Tell me, Helen, do you love your son?"
"Do I--! Well, now, really Phil--what kind of a question is that?"
"A simple one. Do you love Timmy?"
"Of course I do. He's very dear to me."
"_Do you love your son?_"
"Now look here--! I told you.... Phil, what are you getting at?"
"I'm wondering why you have no doubt that you love Timmy, but the
question of whether you love your son confuses you and throws you on
the defensive. You react strongly, evade answering, take refuge in
exclamations and unfinished sentences. A species of stuttering. Can it
be that you find it difficult to think of Timmy as your son? _Do you
doubt that he is your son?_ Here, sit down! I didn't think it would hit
you so hard."
"Phil, the only other moment like this in my life was when I first
admitted to myself years ago that Timmy was ... what he used to be.
An imbecile. Phil, it _can't_ be true! He _is_ my son! There's been
no substitution, no--"
"Easy, Helen, easy. I agree with you. I've checked back as fully as I
can, and I'm sure there's been no trickery of any sort. Timmy was born
to you eleven years ago, beyond a shadow of a doubt."
"But you've felt it too, haven't you? He's sweet and lovable in his
funny, confused way, talking like a comic-strip kid one minute and an
encyclopedia the next--so empty and faraway sometimes, then loving and
affectionate, as though to make up to us for being ... away. I'm sure he
loves us, Jerry and I, as much as we love him, but I feel that we've
failed him, that he wants love but it can't reach him. I'll say it,
Phil. I feel that he's not mine, that he's apart from us. Ridiculous,
isn't it? I can't feel true kinship for my own child, much as he means
to me. I feel better now that I've said it."
"I wish I could say the same, but I don't know that I feel any better
for adding one more question mark to a long, long line of them. Like
you, I sense a loneliness, a reaching out from Timmy for something I
can't give him no matter what I do, no matter how I try to understand.
I watch him, and I think of that line '... a stranger and afraid ...'
What is there that frightens him? Can it ... possibly ... be us?"