Let the Fire Fall

Chapter Seven

BLAKE watched the kids playing ball for ten or fifteen minutes, then walked casually to the stand of bicycles and worked one out of the middle. A nondescript red standard bike. That’s what he had decided on. He eased the bike out and pushed it a few feet, then got on and rode away slowly, not drawing any attention to himself. The ball game went on.

No one his age walked. All the kids under fourteen had bikes, and a boy walking drew glances. Lesson one. The other boys wore sneakers and jeans, and he was still dressed in the white shirt that Obie insisted on for the meetings. He stole proper clothes from a swimming pool locker room. Money was going to be one of the biggest problems, however. He scanned a newspaper left on a bench at a bus stop. At least Obie hadn’t put his picture in the papers yet. Blake tossed the paper down and got back on the stolen bike. He had to go somewhere. He was tired, more tired than he’d ever been before. He had walked four days and most of four nights, sleeping only when he knew he couldn’t take another step. What he wanted most was a bed with clean sheets and a blanket and something hot to eat and a bath with soap and hot water. He blinked hard and started to pedal.

“Hey, kid!” A whistle and another shout. Blake turned and saw a man beckoning to him. “You! Com’ere.”

A man by a delivery truck with a fiat tire. A job. Blake went back, the tears forgotten now. “Yes?”

“Look, can you carry a sack on that bike? Want to make a buck?”

So Blake was hired. The house he sought was an old Southern three-floored mansion long since turned into apartments. The first floor was leased by the Misses Laidley. Miss Annabelle Laidley, fifteen years in a wheelchair following a throw from a horse; Miss Lucy Jo Laidley, nineteen years a fourth-grade teacher, now retired; Miss Jessica Sue Laidley, seventy, fierce, lean, a former designer of ladies’ apparel; and last, the eldest of the Laidley girls, Miss Margaret Elizabeth Laidley, seventy-five, soft and yielding, but controller of the purse.

The Laidley girls took turns entertaining, each of them with different interests and a different circle of friends, overlapping here and there. Tonight it was Miss Lucy Jo’s turn to have the living room for her group. Card tables were set up and a sideboard was already laid out with glasses, a decanter of gin, a bowl of ice, lemonade, sausages, thin slices of pumpernickel, cheeses. She was waiting impatiently for the delivery of chips and collins mix when Blake turned up at the back door, his nose hard against the screen, his eyes large and fascinated. There was an aviary on the back porch. Miss Margaret Elizabeth’s birds lived there in a nylon net cage with miniature palm trees and orange trees, and forty-three potted geraniums and African violets. The birds were all screeching at the delivery boy. Conkling-by-the-Sea, Margaret’s ancient parrot watched the boy malevolently.

Miss Lucy Joe admitted him and checked the order against her list, added-up the figures, nodded, and then held out the promised dollar. Only then did she really look at the child. And she gasped.

“Boy, how long since you had a bath? And a meal?”

Blake was still staring at the birds, however, and he didn’t even see the proffered dollar bill. Miss Lucy poked him with a long slender finger and he started. “Yes, ma’am?” he said.

Miss Lucy Jo handed him the dollar. “You like the birds, don’t you? You can go look, if you’ve a mind to. But don’t put a hand in. They peck.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Blake said.

Miss Lucy Jo watched him with a pucker on her smooth forehead. Miss Margaret Elizabeth entered the kitchen, rustling in brown moire skirts from another era, and Miss Lucy Jo put a finger to her lips and pointed. The boy was standing close to the nylon. cage, and the birds and the boy were regarding each other. He whistled softly, a pale green and blue parakeet trilled in answer. The boy replied and a lemon yellow canary ruffled its feathers and sang a solo. Blake laughed aloud, then trilled back to the canary. Presently there were songs and chirping and warblings and it was impossible to tell which came from inside the cage and which from outside. Miss Margaret Elizabeth sat down staring at the scene. “I’ll be damned,” she said. The parrot said, “I’ll be damned, I’ll be damned.”

Miss Lucy Jo looked reprovingly at her and Margaret Elizabeth said, “I will though.”

Conkling-by-the-Sea said, “Shut up, you foulmouthed moth lure.”

They kept Blake with them for the next few days, at first trying to worm from him who he was and where he had come from, and getting only very polite refusals in return. When the end of the three days came about, the time they had agreed among themselves to permit him to stay and have some decent food and rest, they knew they couldn’t turn him out. He turned so white at the suggestion that they should notify the authorities, that they abandoned the idea without any discussion. Miss Jessica Sue insisted on questioning him severely before they came to a decision about his future. Jessica Sue was tall and very straight and dressed in black with white at her throat. She had white hair, as did all the sisters, and she had gold-framed glasses, on a black silk string that she wore around her neck most of the time. She seated Blake in a straight chair and stood before him, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Blake, you say that you have no people? Is that right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And you have never been to school? Nowhere?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yet you can read very well, and you can do sums, and you play the piano. Can you explain these things?”

“I watched my… a girl learning how to play the piano. I guess I picked it up from her. And I don’t remember when I learned to read. Seems like I always could.”

Miss Jessica Sue stared at him hard. “Have you been to church?”

Blake felt himself blushing furiously and he stood up. “I guess I’ll be on my way, Miss Jessica,” he said slowly. “I’d like to tell Miss Lucy Jo, and Miss Margaret Elizabeth, and Miss Annabelle good-by, if that’s all right.”

“Blake, you sit right back down in that chair. So you came from a religious family? Is that it? You know we aren’t very religious here. You think we’ll hold that against you?’ Is that it?”

He stared at the floor. Miss Jessica pulled a chair close to his and sat down in it, reached for his chin and lifted his face. “Look at me, Blake. Tell me this, have you done anything you are ashamed of?”

He nodded. “But I didn’t want to,” he said. “Ob….the man I was with made me go on a stage and I was ashamed of that.”

Miss Jessica studied him intently, then nodded. “All right, Blake. Now tell me this. Where are you going if you leave us?”

“I don’t know. I’m strong. I can work.”

“Yes. Well, you have a job here in this house, if you want it. We need a strong boy here to carry groceries for us, and to take Annabelle for. walks. Would you like the job?”

Blake grinned, then sobered again. “I can’t stay with anybody,” he said. “Someone would say why isn’t that boy in school and you’d be in trouble.”

“We have a teacher here in the house. Wouldn’t be the first time she tutored private pupils either.”

Blake stayed, and people did indeed say, why isn’t that boy in school?, but Miss Lucy Jo swore that she tutored him, and that he was the son of a traveling businessman who preferred his child to be in a private home rather than in a boarding school. During the year, Miss Annabelle regained the use of her legs. and where at first he had wheeled her in the chair on daily walks, by the end of the year they could be seen each day strolling together, talking very seriously of poetry and music and art.

It was a calm year. Toward the end of it one night Miss Jessica Sue found Blake watching the television newscast and turned it off in order to talk to him. The other sisters were all busy, or out, and they had an uninterrupted half hour together.

“Blake, I have a feeling that you might not want to stay with us very much longer. No, don’t shake your head. Things change. Boys change. I remember how you came to us, hungry, dirty, no clothes…. If you ever feel that you have to leave here, Blake, I want you to know that you have our blessings. Here is some money, all in small bills so no one will question you about it. Three hundred dollars, enough for you to live on for a while. Eventually you will have to have identification papers, register “With the data bank, get a social security card, credit card. I don’t know how you’ll manage it all, but I’m certain you will. The brown suitcase I brought home last week, that’s yours. Pack it with things that you might need. And a coat. Don’t forget a coat, Don’t worry about needing the things. We’ll replace them now, but I want you to have a bag packed and ready so if you have to leave in a hurry you won’t feel that you’re wasting time by packing. You understand?”

Blake was staring at her, not speaking. He nodded. Miss Jessica Sue stood up and ruffled his hair. Very softly she said, “Stay with us if you can, dear. But if you must leave, God bless you.”

Long into the night Blake lay awake trying to understand. He could hear the sisters’ voices in the living room and finally he went to his door and listened. Miss Annabelle was talking.

“I’m sure he was following us again. I really don’t think we should let Blake out at all for the next week. This is the third time.

Blake crept back to bed and stared at the ceiling until the lights in the house were out and the sisters were quiet. Then he wrote a very brief good-by letter, and he took his suitcase and left the house. It was July, and he was nine years old…

Blake pedaled north, keeping to back roads again, and by the time the sun was up, he was miles from the Laidley sisters’ house. Two days later the sisters had a visitor, a gray-haired man with a briefcase and an official air about him. He demanded the boy they were harboring and was met with blank stares and an offer of tea. He returned with a search warrant, found no trace of a child in the house. He called the report in to Billy Warren Smith.

Billy hung up frowning. That damn kid, he thought. Everything was okay until the brat showed up. He stared at his secretary, a misshapen woman of indeterminate age who wore a brace on one leg and walked with a sideways slant, dragging the useless leg slightly, making a scruff-scruff sound everywhere she went. He motioned for her to leave and watched her slow progress across the spacious office; she left a trail of scuffed carpet behind her. Sometimes she left a trail that went to the picture of Obie and Blake and stopped there, then led back to the outer office. Billy was certain she prayed before the picture on the wall. He pushed the call button for Dee Dee’s office and waited until her face showed on the interoffice comset. “It’s another bitch,” he said then. “If it was the kid, he’s slipped out again.”

Dee Dee shrugged. “You know the orders. Keep looking.”

“Yeah, I know. Dee-Dee, have lunch with me. I want to talk to you.”

Dee Dee looked at him more intently then, paused, smiled slightly and said no. “Sorry, Billy. Obie doesn’t like it when you bad mouth the kid. Besides I have a date for lunch already.”

“Stay there. I have to talk to you. I’ll be right in,” Billy said.

He passed through the busy outer office where a staff of twelve was kept occupied all day. No one in the outer office was whole, healthy, and normally shaped. Mac-Kee, the treasurer was a hunchback; Miss Llewelyn, his secretary, had suffered from a birth defect that had left her partially shriveled; Betty Odets, the bookkeeper, had a club foot, and so on. Billy walked among them feeling well and content with himself. They loved him, loved Dee Dee, loved Obie with a blind loyalty, loved each other. They were all convinced that when the time came Obie, or his miracle-working child, would heal them, and so they could smile and be happy waiting.

Dee Dee’s office was no larger than his, but she had had a decorator fix it up for her, and it was like a page out of a travelogue extolling the beauty of a Polynesian paradise. There were plants with blooms and plants without, a jade fountain, and a pool with cool ivory steps leading to it. There was bamboo and wicker furniture. Dee Dee had learned about clothes during the past few years also, and she wore expensive, deceptively simple Asian-type silk dresses, high at the throat, sleeveless now in the summer, beltless, forever stylish, and eminently suitable for her slender figure. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a velvet band, and swung loosely down her back. Obie preached that women should not cut their hair,’ and Dee Dee advertised this point beautifully.

“Dee Dee, do you know where he is? They let the kid slip through. Who’s going to tell him?”

“He’s at Mount Laurel.”

“No, he isn’t. I tried there. What’s he up to, Dee Dee?” Billy paced for a moment as Dee Dee studied her nails minutely. “Okay, you don’t know either, do you?”

“Billy, calm down, okay? Obie needs a rest, that’s all. He isn’t ‘up to’ anything. He’s resting and praying and trying to decide what to do about Merton’s suggestions. That’s all there is to it.”

“Merton!” Billy said the name bitterly. “Why’s that crook suddenly holing up with Obie and issuing statements?”

“He’s not a crook. He’s converted, born again,” Dee Dee murmured. Billy laughed. He sat down abruptly. “I don’t like ten-year plans,” he said sullenly. “And even less twenty-year plans. It’s crazy. Merton is crazy and Obie listens to him. Why?”

Dee Dee looked up then and there was a look of pity and dislike on her face. “You don’t learn anything, do you, Billy? None of this is for Obie, you fool. It’s all for the kid, for Blake. When he comes back there will be an organization that’ll make the Catholic Church look like a practice exercise. Blake will step into it a general, pope, king, commander, leader, what have you. It’ll be his, complete with churches in every city and town, with lieutenants in every church, all of them just waiting for his return to finish the job that Christ couldn’t do, make a heaven on earth.” Dee Dee’s voice was dispassionate, coolly distant, and she returned to her nails, twisting her hands to catch the light on the pale ivory gleam. “And, Billy, a little piece of advice, for old time’s sake. Layoff Merton. He’s what Obie wants now. He’s in. You try slipping it to him, and that’s all, friend.”

“Yeah, Obie’s gone nuts.” Billy stared at the girl. She would stick, he knew. Hate-love would hold her, ready to jump in the sack with Obie, and equally ready to stick a knife between his ribs. Too, Dee Dee had somehow learned about financial advisers, and she relied on them to manage her private income and gifts, so that, although he didn’t know, he felt certain that if Dee Dee should walk out that day, she would be a wealthy woman for the rest of her life. Not so with him. Wanda’s fault, not his. Wanda was a glutton, for food, for clothes, for houses, cars, jewels, furnishings. They had a bank account of less than five figures, and it didn’t matter how he tried to manipulate their accounts so he could stash some of it away in stocks and bonds, she found out and bang they were in debt and he had to dip into the extra and bail them out.

“He’s gone nuts,” Billy repeated and heaved himself up from the chair. He started for the door, paused to say, “If you hear from him before I do, will you tell him I have to talk with him. Not Merton, but Obie.” She nodded and he left her. Dee Dee waited a moment, then called Obie on the view phone; He was in the city that week talking with foreign emissaries.

She reported Billy’s talk verbatim practically and Obie smiled gently and nodded. “Billy can’t stand any confusion,” he said simply. He closed his eyes when she told about the agent’s report on the elusive boy, and when he opened them again, there was the sad smile on his face. “God’s will,” he murmured. “Come to lunch at noon. You’ll want to meet some of these people.”

Merton met her at the door of the apartment where Obie was living. It was a large, very plain apartment, rich, but simple. Merton briefed her on the guests: holy men from India, Taiwan, Hiroshima, Hanoi…. The conference was to discuss the affiliated Voice of God Church in their areas.