The Best of Margaret St. Clair

THE LISTENING CHILD

It was not until after his first bad heart attack that Edwin Hoppier really noticed the child. He had long ago decided on the basis of his contacts with his married sister’s strident brood that he didn’t like children. But the doctor, after telling him roundly that he was lucky to be alive, had ordered at least a month’s rest in bed. Somebody had to bring the trays up from the boarding house dining room. Timmy was usually the one.

Timmy’s grandmother dressed him in smocks and little breeches she cut out of discarded housedresses, and this costume, together with his long black cotton stockings and home-trimmed hair, gave him an odd resemblance to the kindergarten pupils of thirty years ago. After he had successfully negotiated the hazards of knocking, opening the door, and putting the tray down, he would linger, smiling shyly, until Hoppler began to eat. Hoppler always spoke to him, but Timmy never answered. One day Hoppler mentioned it to Mrs. Dean when she was straightening up his room.

“Oh, didn’t you know?” she said, putting down her dust cloth and turning. “I thought I’d told you. Why, the poor little fellow had scarlet fever when he was a year old, just after his mother died. He’s deaf. He can’t hear a thing.

“He goes to the deaf school, but he hasn’t learned to lip-read yet. The teacher says it’s hard to teach them, when they can’t hear at all. And of course he can’t talk.”

“That’s too bad,” Hoppler said with an effort. He had the invalid’s dislike for hearing about other people’s troubles. “Are you sure he’s entirely deaf, though? I thought I’d noticed him listening to things.”

Mrs. Dean shook her head. “You mean that way he has of putting his head on one side and listening to something you can’t hear yourself? That doesn’t mean anything. I asked the doctor at the clinic about it, and he said Timmy couldn’t possibly be hearing anything. It gives you the creeps to watch him, though, doesn’t it? I used to get the shivers every time, until I got used to it. But he’s just like his ears were filled with concrete, he’s that deaf. Poor little thing.”

The next time Timmy brought up a tray, Hoppler motioned him over to the bed and folded a paper boat for him. Timmy hung back, smiling shyly. At last he almost snatched the paper and ran out of the room with it. And after that he stayed longer when he brought the tray, and his smiles grew less shy.

Once in a while Edwin caught him “listening.” He would cock his head to one side and hearken, while his eyes grew bright. Edwin did not find it as disconcerting as Mrs. Dean had pictured it. It was not until the day before Timmy’s birthday that it actually bothered him.

The day was sunny and fairly warm. Children were playing outside in the street, and Edwin’s open window let in plenty of noise. When Timmy first began to “listen,” tippng his head farther than usual, attentive and concentrated, the pantomime was so vivid that Hoppler was sure some of the sound from outside must have got through to the boy’s dulled nerves. A dog was barking, children called to each other, somebody was trying to start a car. Timmy must have heard some of it.

The boy relaxed. His attention came back to the picture Edwin was drawing for him. Seconds later there came a burst of shrill, agonized yelping that ended abruptly on a high note. There was a babble of children’s excited voices, fright growing in them. Windows went up. And then, cutting across the confusion, a little girl’s shriek, “He’s dead! Oooh, oooh, that car ran over him. Blackie’s dead!”

Hoppler put down his pencil and looked at Timmy’s face. The boy’s gray eyes were fixed intently—there was always something bird-like and intense about him—on the drawing. Now he looked up at Edwin and smiled rather uncertainly.

It was a normal response. Timmy plainly hadn’t heard the commotion in the street and couldn’t imagine what his friend was stopping for. But Edwin pleated his lower lip with his fingers and frowned. Timmy hadn’t heard the dog’s yelps, the cries, when they occurred. Had he, somehow, heard them ahead of time? It was beyond belief. But it had looked like that.

Hoppler finished the picture—two children wading in a scratchy brook—and gave it to Timmy. Timmy folded it up carefully, making the chuckling sound that with him indicated pleasure. He started toward the door and then came back to run one finger tightly over the back of Edwin’s hand. It was one of the mannerisms, half engaging, half pathetic, which made Hoppler fond of him. This time he found himself wincing a little from the touch. When Timmy had gone out, Hoppler pressed his hands nervously to his chest.

It was nearly a month later that Timmy “listened” again. Hoppler was sitting up in an armchair and Timmy, lying on the floor, was drawing a panoramic street scene on a large piece of butcher paper he had brought up from the kitchen. He was drawing with great verve, making out-sized pedestrians and dogs and small, very bustle-backed automobiles. Now and then he frowned as his pencil went through the paper to the soft carpet beneath. The boarding house was quiet except for a distant clatter from the kitchen where the pans and dishes from supper were being washed up.

Timmy got to his feet. He looked sharply at Hoppler for a moment and then fixed his eyes on a spot four or five feet above his head. His lips parted. His head tipped. His eyes grew wide.

Hoppler watched him uneasily. He had almost forgotten his speculations when the dog had been killed—it was the kind of idea a sensible person will try to dismiss—but now it recurred to him. Was something going to happen? What foolishness! But was Timmy, somehow, listening to the elsewise inaudible footsteps of disaster drawing near?

Gradually the tension ebbed away from Timmy’s face. He drew a deep breath. He tossed the pale brown hair back out of his eyes. He squatted down on the floor again and picked up his pencil. On a still-empty portion of the paper he began to draw some birds. He had just started the wings of the third one when the familiar a gonizing pressure began in Hoppler’s chest.

The attack was going to be a bad one, Edwin saw. He felt the familiar fright at the way breath was being remorselessly crushed out of him.

He groped wildly after the bottle of amyl nitrate pearls that sat on the little stand beside his chair, and overset it. Pain flooded through his chest and ran out terrifyingly along his left arm. He couldn’t stand it. His chest was turning to a brittle box which they—the forces that tormented his elderly body so wantonly—were splintering inward with the reverberating turns of a fiery vise. With his last strength he tried to cry out, to get help. He was going to die.

When Hoppler came to himself again, he was lying flat in bed with a hot water bottle over his heart. The doctor, looking very serious, was folding up his stethoscope. Mrs. Dean, pale and distracted, hovered in the background.

“That was a near thing, young fellow,” Dr Simms said severely when he saw Edwin’s eyes fixed on him. “If I’d got Mrs. Dean’s call five minutes later—well! Have you been putting any strain on yourself?”

Hoppler searched his memory. From the knowledge he had painfully acquired of his disease, he didn’t honestly think his momentary uneasiness at Timmy’s “listening” could be classed as strain. And he had been getting up a good deal lately. Today he’d been sitting up almost the whole day.

“You’ll have to learn to take this seriously.” Dr. Simms said when he had finished his confession. “Angina’s no picnic. I should think your first attack would have taught you that. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk. I want you to go back to bed for at least a week, and then I’m going to try a new treatment on you. The clinical report on it is encouraging. You mustn’t worry. Keep in a pleasant frame of mind.”

He went out. There was an inaudible colloquy in the hall between him and Mrs. Dean. The landlady came back and began tidying up the disordered room. Hoppler watched her quick movements with a touch of jealousy. She was older than he, and she was on the go all day. Heart trouble? She didn’t know she had a heart. Simms had told him once that angina preferred its victims male.

She felt the water bottle for warmth and drew the cover up more snugly about his neck. “You know, Mr. Hoppler,” she said impressively, “Timmy saved your life. He really did. He came running down the stairs while I was putting the silver away, and began pulling at my arm. I tried to shake him off—you know how children are—but he held on and jabbered away at me until I realized something was wrong. You were all slumped over in your chair, fainted, when I found you. Of course I called the doctor then. But you heard what he said about five minutes more.”

Edwin Hoppler nodded. “Timmy’s a good boy, a very good boy,” he said faintly. He wished Mrs. Dean would finish and go. He wanted to rest.

Timmy poked his head around the door jamb. He was pale and subdued. His eyes were so large they seemed to have eaten up his face. As he caught sight of his friend he smiled uncertainly, but his expression slipped back quickly into anxiousness.

Hoppler looked away from him and then up at the ceiling. He was grateful to Timmy, he was fond of him, but he didn’t want to see him now. In a sense, he didn’t want ever to see him again. The child—why make any bones about it?—frightened him. Timmy himself was quiet, touching, innocent. The dark faculty for which he appeared to be the vehicle, which he embodied, was otherwise. It was impossible to think of Timmy’s “listening” without a flutter of uneasiness. And the doctor had told him to keep in a pleasant frame of mind. Perhaps he ought to ask Mrs. Dean to keep the boy out of his room, at least for a while. Hoppler licked his bluish lips.

But was that sensible? Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Timmy actually was able, in some super-normal way, to hear the approach of… of death (Edwin thought grimly). Wouldn’t the sensible thing be to keep Timmy with him as much as possible? If he had realized that Timmy’s uncanny listening this evening portended a heart attack, he could have had the amyl nitrate pearls in readiness for the first pangs. The attack need not have been serious. And he was fond of the boy.

Hoppler looked toward the door where Timmy was still patiently standing. He raised one hand and beckoned to him. When the child was within reach he gave the grimy little hand a squeeze.

Dr. Simms’ new treatment did Hoppler a great deal of good. He put on weight, rapidly at first and then more slowly, until he had gained eighteen pounds. Mrs. Dean told him he looked ten years younger.

Dr. Simms explained carefully that, though he was more than pleased with the progress his patient was making, the treatment itself was rather in the nature of a palliative. Physicians weren’t sure yet how much of its effect was permanent. Hoppler listened without being much impressed. He was able to be up all day now and even, as the weather improved, to get outside.

There was no question, of course, of his going back to his work as an accountant. The firm had pensioned him off, not too illiberally, after his first attack. As Mrs. Dean said, he had nothing to do now but enjoy himself.

Enjoying oneself at sixty-three is apt to prove a quiet business. Hoppler began to spend most of the daylight hours in the pocket-sized neighborhood park, reading the paper, watching the graceful evolutions of the sea gulls or listening to their raucous, undignified squawking.

Timmy, meantime— he was almost constantly with Hoppler after school hours—bounced a rubber ball, drew pictures, or rather half-heartedly climbed on the rails or swung from the rungs of the playground equipment. He had grown so much in the last few months that even Mrs. Dean had been forced to see the unsuitability of dressing him any longer in home-made clothes. She had bought him jeans and little checked flannel cotton shirts. In this costume he looked quite modish and contemporary. He lost, at least obviously, most of the wispiness, the pathos, which Hoppler had found in him at first. But it gave Hoppler a strange numbed feeling to see how formidable a barrier his deafness was between him and the other children who played in the park. Timmy was a sociable child, but the others greeted him with stares and then uneasily drew away from him. The boy was always glad to return from his excursions among the swings and trapezes to his grown-up friend.

When noon came Hoppler would write a note and send Timmy with it and money to a restaurant in the neighborhood to buy sandwiches and milk. Watching the boy’s quick intelligence, his constant unselfconscious attempts to make bricks without straw, Hoppler began to feel that he was failing in his moral obligation to him.

Mrs. Dean was certainly fond of her grandson, but she was too occupied with the constant petty demands of the boarding house, too harrassed, to pay much attention to him. Perhaps Timmy ought to have a private teacher. He hadn’t learned to lip-read yet with any facility. Private instruction might help him to faster progress. Hoppler must talk to Timmy’s teacher at the deaf school and find out what was possible for him.

The boy’s disturbing “listening”, except for one notable exception, had ceased. The exception had occurred when Timmy had “listened” vividly and disconcertingly, just before one of the older boys had fallen headlong from the slippery top piece of one of the swings to which he had illegitimately climbed. The fall itself would not have been serious. But the boy had hit his head as he fell on the wooden seat of one of the swings. He had been knocked unconscious, there had been a great deal of blood, an ambulance had been called.

But the unpleasant incident fixed even more firmly in Hoppler the conviction that Timmy was a reliable barometer. He was rather ashamed of the relief he found in his confidence in the boy’s uncanny ability. During these quiet months—the happiest, after all, of Hoppler’s life—Dr. Simms examined him at two-week intervals. He expressed himself as gratified with Hoppler’s progress, but he always warned him to go slow, to take things easily, to be careful. Hoppler listened to these counsels seriously, but with a certain inner complacency. He had channels of information which weren’t open to Simms.

One fine warm day late in summer he decided to take Timmy to the beach. He contemplated getting Simms’ permission—the expedition would involve streetcars, transferring, a good deal of exertion in one way or another—and than decided against it. Simms might after all tell him not to go, and Hoppler had been feeling unusually well. Timmy had never seen the ocean, never been to the beach. It was a part of his education which ought to be attended to.

They reached the amusement park, at the end of the car line, just at noon. Edwin bought hot dogs for Timmy and a hamburger for himself from one of the stands. Timmy bit into his bun a little doubt fully; Hoppler thought it must be the first time he had eaten one. His hesitation soon vanished. He ate three hot dogs and finished off with an Eskimo pie. Hoppler, meantime, indulged himself in a glass of beer.

After lunch they rode on the merry-go-round. Edwin wondered rather sadly what blurred effect the amusement park was making on Timmy, locked within the confines of his perpetually silent world. A merry-go-round without the music! But Timmy plainly found his spotted wooden mount enchanting and loved the motion it had. When he had at last tired of riding, Edwin took him to a penny arcade. After that they explored novelty and curio shops, and Edwin bought Timmy a ring with a blistered pinkish abalone pearl. Late in the afternoon they went down to the beach itself.

Though the day itself was warm the water, as usual, was cold. There were few bathers in. In any case, Timmy hadn’t brought a bathing suit. He had none to bring. But he sat down on the sand and took off his shoes and stockings. He rolled his trouser legs up as far as they would go and then waded bravely into the surf. The cold water made him gasp and wince and laugh.

After his first awkwardness disappeared, he was like a dog let off the leash. He found a brown length of seaweed far down the beach and dragged it back to show Edwin how the fleshy bladders could be made to pop. He collected a handful of seashells and bestowed them on Edwin too. He raced along the sand like a high-spirited pony. Now and then he would squat down on the very edge of the surf and heap up a mound of wet sand for the waves to level again. It was clear that though Timmy had enjoyed everything, he liked the beach itself most of all. He loved the beach.

Hoppler watched him smilingly. He was conscious of an uncommon felicity. This was what people meant when they spoke of the pleasure of giving. Like so many of the great platitudes of humanity, it was quite true. Watching Timmy playing, running along the sand, Edwin was more than happy, he was himself young again.

But it was time to be going home. A wind was coming up, the sun had gone under a cloud. The air had turned cold. The beach was deserted. Soon it would be dark. It was time to go home.

He motioned to Timmy, far down the beach, to come back to him. The boy turned and started to obey. Suddenly he halted. He was “listening.”

Even at that distance Edwin could catch his unusual intensity. Never had the boy hearkened as he was doing now. He seemed to be pierced through, transfixed, by his perception. And Hoppler caught vividly, too, a strange new expression on the boy’s face. Usually Timmy’s face, when he “listened,” showed nothing except interest. Now interest had been replaced by an indrawn recognition. And Timmy was afraid. His recognition was mixed with fear.

The exertion, Edwin thought, the walking, the long afternoon. The glass of beer might have been the decisive thing.

Simms had certainly warned him. He thrust his hand into his pocket for his amyl nitrate pearls.

They weren’t there. With desperate incredulity Hoppler remembered that he had meant to move the bottle and hadn’t. It was in his other coat, at home, in the closet. In his other coat.

He felt angry and defeated and horribly afraid. What use was it for Timmy to have warned him if he didn’t have the pearls? Already the pain was beginning. And this time there would be no escape. Timmy had heard disaster coming. This time Hoppler was going to die.

From far down the beach Timmy waved at him. The fluttering cadence of his hand against the darkening sky was like the motion of a bird. Edwin, amid the distraction of his pain, thought that he smiled. He waved once more. Then he turned. He began running out into the cold, lead-colored water as fast as he could, splashing through the white froth of little waves and then of bigger ones.

Hoppler watched blankly, uncomprehendingly. What was Timmy doing? Timmy shouldn’t desert him now, when he needed him. “Timmy!” he called weakly, as if the boy could hear him. “Timmy!” And then, comprehension growing in him, wildly, “Timmy! Timmy! Come back!”

The water was up to the child’s waist, to the middle of his narrow chest. Still he moved out. He rocked under the impetus of a wave. The small body was dwindling, turning to a spot against the darkly-glistening surface of the sea. And steadily it grew more remote. “Timmy!” Edwin Hoppler shrieked. “Timmy! Oh, God…”

The child’s hand went up for the last time, in salutation and farewell. For a moment his head seemed to bob about in the water. And then a wave like dark glass washed smoothly over it.

Hoppler’s voice died away into silence. He looked about him dazedly, as if he were waking from heavy sleep.

The pain had left his chest. He was well, he would have no attack. Perhaps he would never have an attack again. He stood alone in the dusk, a cold wind blowing around him. He would have no attack. Timmy, offering himself as a surrogate to death, had arranged it so. There was nothing to do now but wait until the waves washed the boy’s body up on the beach.