Brother Odd

CHAPTER 20

ROOM 14 LAY DIRECTLY ACROSS THE courtyard from Room 32, in the north corridor. A single plaque had been fixed to the door, bearing one name: JACOB.

A floor lamp beside an armchair, a squat nightstand lamp, and a fluorescent ceiling fixture compensated for daylight so drear that it could press itself inside no farther than the window sill.

Because Room 14 contained only a single bed, the space could accommodate a four-foot-square oak table, at which sat Jacob.

I had seen him a couple of times, but I did not know him. "May I come in?"

He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no, either. Deciding to take his silence as an invitation, I sat across from him at the table.

Jacob is one of the few adults housed at the school. He is in his middle twenties.

I didn't know the name of the condition with which he had been born, but evidently it involved a chromosomal abnormality.

About five feet tall, with a head slightly too small for his body, a sloped forehead, low-set ears, and soft heavy features, he exhibited some of the characteristics of Down's syndrome.

The bridge of his nose was not flat, however, which is an indicator of Down's, and his eyes did not have the inner epicanthic folds that give the eyes of Down's people an Asian cast.

More telling, he did not exhibit the quick smile or the sunny and gentle disposition virtually universal among those with Down's. He did not look at me, and his expression remained dour.

His head was misshapen as no Down's person's head would ever be. A greater weight of bone accumulated in the left side of his skull than in the right. His features were not symmetrical, but were subtly out of balance, one eye set slightly lower than the other, his left jaw more prominent than his right, his left temple convex and his right temple more than usually concave.

Stocky, with heavy shoulders and a thick neck, he hunched over the table, intent on the task before him. His tongue, which appeared to be thicker than a normal tongue but which didn't usually protrude, was at the moment pinched gently between his teeth.

On the table were two large tablets of drawing paper. One lay to the right of him, closed. The second was propped on a slant-board.

Jacob was drawing on the second tablet. Ordered in an open case, an array of pencils offered lead in many thicknesses and in different degrees of softness.

His current project was a portrait of a strikingly lovely woman, nearly finished. Presented in three-quarter profile, she stared past the artist's left shoulder.

Inevitably I thought of the hunchback of Notre Dame: Quasimodo, his tragic hope, his unrequited love.

"You're very talented," I said, which was true.

He did not reply.

Although his hands were short and broad, his stubby fingers wielded the pencil with dexterity and exquisite precision.

"My name is Odd Thomas."

He took his tongue into his mouth, tucked it into one cheek, and pressed his lips together.

"I'm staying in the guesthouse at the abbey."

Looking around at the room, I saw that the dozen framed pencil portraits decorating the walls were of this woman. Here she smiled; there she laughed; most often she appeared contemplative, serene.

In an especially compelling piece, she had been rendered full-face, eyes brimming bright, cheeks jeweled with tears. Her features had not been melodramatically distorted; instead, you could see that her anguish was great but also that she strove with some success to conceal the depth of it.

Such a complex emotional state, rendered so subtly, suggested that my praise of Jacob's talent had been inadequate. The woman's emotion was palpable.

The condition of the artist's heart, while he had labored on this portrait, was also evident, somehow infused into the work. Drawing, he had been in torment.

"Who is she?" I asked.

"Do you float away when the dark comes?" He had only a mild speech impediment. His thick tongue apparently wasn't fissured.

"I'm not sure I know what you mean, Jacob."

Too shy to look at me, he continued drawing, and after a silence said, "I seen the ocean some days, but not that day."

"What day, Jacob?"

"The day they went and the bell rung."

Although already I sensed a rhythm to his conversation and knew that rhythm was a sign of meaning, I couldn't find the beat.

He was willing to count cadence alone. "Jacob's scared he'll float wrong when the dark comes."

From the pencil case, he selected a new instrument.

"Jacob's gotta float where the bell rung."

As he paused in his work and studied the unfinished portrait, his tragic features were beautified by a look of intense affection.

"Never seen where the bell rung, and the ocean it moves, and it moves, so where the bell rung is gone somewhere new."

Sadness captured his face, but the look of affection did not entirely retreat.

For a while, he chewed worriedly on his lower lip.

When he set to work with the new pencil, he said, "And the dark is gonna come with the dark."

"What do you mean, Jacob-the dark is going to come with the dark?"

He glanced at the snow-scrubbed window. "When there's no light again, the dark is gonna come, too. Maybe. Maybe the dark is gonna come, too."

"When there's no light again-that means tonight?"

Jacob nodded. "Maybe tonight."

"And the other dark that's coming with the night… do you mean death, Jacob?"

He thrust his tongue between his teeth again. After rolling the pencil in his fingers to find the right grip, he set to work once more on the portrait.

I wondered if I had been too straightforward when I had used the word death. Perhaps he expressed himself obliquely not because that was the only way his mind worked, but because speaking about some subjects too directly disturbed him.

After a while, he said, "He wants me dead."