A Place so Foreign Page 4

for him -- and me! -- I was too angry to aim properly, and the stone hithim in the shoulder, knocking him backwards. He shouted at me -- it was like aroar of a wild animal -- and the four brothers charged.

  Oly appeared at my side. "Run!" he shouted.

  I was too angry. I balled my fists and stood my ground. The first one shot outof the water towards me, and punched me so hard in the guts, I saw stars. I fellto the ground, gasping. I looked up at a forest of strong, bare legs, and knewthey'd surrounded me.

  "It's the Sheriff!" Oly shouted. The legs disappeared. I struggled to my knees.

  Oly collapsed to the ground beside me, laughing. "Did you see the way they ran?The Sheriff never comes down to the river!"

  "Thanks," I said, around gasps, and started to get dressed.

  "Any time," he said. "Now, let's do some swimming."

  "No, I gotta go home and help Mama," I lied. I didn't feel like going skinnydipping anymore -- maybe never again.

  Oly gave me a queer look. "OK. See you."

  #

  I went straight home, pelting down the road as fast as I could, not even lookingwhere I was going. I let the door slam behind me and took the stairs two at atime up to the attic ladder, then bolted the trap-door shut behind me and sat inthe dark, with my knees in my chest.

  Down below, Mama let out a half-hearted, "James? Is that you?" like she alwaysdid since I came back home. I ignored her, like always, and she stopped worryingabout it, like always.

  Pa's last trip had been to the Dalai Lama's court in 1975. The man from theembassy said that he was going to talk with the monks about a "white-paper thatthe two embassies were jointly presenting on the effect of mimeticambassadorships on the reincarnated soul." It was all nonsense to me. He'd neverarrived. The teleporter said that it had put him down gentle as you like on thefloor of the Lama's floating castle over the Caspian Sea, but the monks neversaw him.

  And that was that.

  It had been a month since our return. I'd ventured out into town and looked upmy chums, and found them so full of gossip that didn't mean anything to me; soabsorbed with games that seemed childish to me; so strange, that I'd retreatedhome. I'd prowled around our house like a burglar at first, and when I came backto the attic, all the numbness that had enveloped me since the man from theState Department had teleported into our apt melted away and I started bawling.

  The attic had always been Pa's domain. He'd come up here with whatever crackpotinvention he'd ordered this month out of a catalog or one of the expensive,foreign journals he subscribed to, and tinker and swear and hit his thumbnailand tear his pants on a stray dingus and smoke his cheroots and have a heck of atime.

  The muffled tread of his feet and the distant cursing while I sat in the parlourdownstairs had been the homiest sound I knew. Mama and I would lock eyes everytime a particularly forceful round of hollers shook down, and Mama would get alittle smile and her eyes would crinkle, and I felt like we were sharing asecret.

  Now, the attic was my private domain: there was the elixir shelf, full of patentmedicines, hair-tonics, and soothing syrups. There was the bookcase full of wildtheories and fantastic adventure stories. There were the crates full ofdangerous, coal-fired machines -- an automatic clothes-washing-machine, acherry-pitter, and other devices whose nature I couldn't even guess at. None ofthem had ever worked, but I liked to run my hands over them, feel the smoothsteel of their parts, disassemble and reassemble them. Back in 75, I'd oncetried to take the robutler apart, just to get a look at how it was all puttogether, but it was a lost cause -- I couldn't even figure out how to get thecover off.

  I walked through the cool dark, the only light coming from the grimy atticwindow, and fondled each piece. I picked up an oilcan and started oiling thejoints and bearings and axles of each machine in turn. Pa would have wanted toknow that everything was in good working order.

  #

  "I think you should be going to school, James," Mama said, at breakfast. I'dalready done my morning chores, bringing in the coal, chopping kindling, takingcare of the milch-cows and making my bed.

  I took another forkful of sausage, and a spoonful of mush, chewed, and looked atmy plate.

  "It's time, it's time. You can't spend the rest of your life sulking aroundhere. Your father would have wanted us to get on with our lives."

  Even though I wasn't looking at her when she said this, I knew that her eyeswere bright with tears, the way they always got when she mentioned Pa. His chairsat, empty, at the head of the table. I had another bite of sausage.

  "James Arthur Nicholson! Look at me when I speak to you!"

  I looked up, reflexively, as I always did when she used my full name. My eyesslid over her face, then focused on a point over her left shoulder.

  "Yes'm."

  "You're going to school. Today. And I expect to get a good report from MrAdelson."

  "Yes'm."

  #

  We have two schools in New Jerusalem: the elementary school that was builttwenty years before, when they put in the wooden sidewalks and the town hall;and the non-denominational Academy that was built just before I left for 1975.

  Miss Tannenbaum, a spinster lady with a moustache and a bristling German accentterrorised the little kids in the elementary school -- I'd been stuck in herclass for five long years. Mr Adelson, who was raised in San Francisco and whohad worked as a roustabout, a telegraph operator and a merchant seaman taughtthe Academy, and his wild stories were all Oly could talk about.

  He raised one eyebrow quizzically when I came through the door at 8:00 thatmorning. He was tall, like my Pa, but Pa had been as big as an ox, and MrAdelson was thin and wiry. He wore rumpled pants and a shirt with a wiltedcelluloid collar. He had a skinny little beard that made him look like agentleman pirate, and used some shiny pomade to grease his hair straight backfrom his high forehead. I caught him reading, thumbing the hand-written pages ofa leatherbound volume.

  "Mr Adelson?"

  "Why, James Nicholson! What can I do for you, sonny?" New Jerusalem only had but2,000 citizens, and only a hundred or so in town proper, so of course he knewwho I was, but it surprised me to hear him pronounce my name in his creaky,weatherbeaten voice.

  "My mother says I have to go to the Academy."

  "She does, hey? How do you feel about that?"

  I snuck a look at his face to see if he was putting me on, but I couldn't tell-- he'd raised up his other eyebrow now, and was looking hard at me. There mighthave been the beginning of a smile on his face, but it was hard to tell with thebeard. "I guess it don't matter how I feel."

  "Oh, I don't know about that. This is a school, not a prison, after all. How oldare you?"

  "Fourteen. Sir."

  "That would put you in with the seniors. Do you think you can handle theircourse of study? It's half-way through the semester now, and I don't know howmuch they taught you when you were over in," he swallowed, "France."

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I just stared at my hard, uncomfortableshoes.

  "How are your maths? Have you studied geometry? Basic algebra?"

  "Yes, sir. They taught us all that." And lots more besides. I had the feeling oficebergs of knowledge floating in my brain, ready to crest the waves and crashagainst the walls of my skull.

  "Very good. We will be studying maths today in the seniors' class. We'll see howyou do. Is that all right?"

  Again, I didn't know if he was really asking, so I just said, "Yes, sir."

  "Marvelous. We'll see you at the 8:30 bell, then. And James --" he paused,waited until I met his gaze. His eyebrows were at rest. "I'm sorry about yourfather. I'd met him several times. He was a good man."

  "Thank you, sir," I said, unable to look away from his stare.

  #

  The first half of the day passed with incredible sloth, as I copied downproblems to my slate and pretended to puzzle over them before writing down theanswer I'd known the minute I saw the question.

  At lunch I found a seat at the base of the big willow out f
ront of the schooland unwrapped the waxed paper from the thick ham sandwich Mama had fixed me. Imunched it and conjugated Latin verbs in my head, trying to make the day pass.Oly and the fellows were roughhousing in the yard, playing follow-the-leaderwith Amos Gundersen out front, showing off by walking on his hands and thenspringing upright. Amos' mother came from circus people in Russia, and all thekids in his family wanted to be acrobats when they grew up.

  I tried not to watch them.

  I was engrossed in a caterpillar that was crawling up my pants-leg when MrAdelson cleared his throat behind me. I started, and the caterpillar tumbled tothe ground, and then Mr Adelson was squatting on his long haunches at my side.

  "How