This Census-Taker

21

Weeks after my return as I sat on the low branches of a tree watching my house, I heard stone knocking on the wood and I looked up to glimpse a boy wave at me from behind a rock. He let go of a handful of pebbles.

“Drobe,” I whispered with a great rush of hope, but immediately knew I was wrong.

I recognized him from the bridge house but I’d never known his name, and I didn’t ask now. He was a slight boy between my age and Samma’s, and he watched me with a sharp and agitated face, staying behind a rise, out of sight of the house in case my father was at his window. I climbed the stone behind which the boy sat and spoke without looking at him, for the same reason.

He looked around, unendingly astonished at the landscape. It was the first time he’d been out of the town.

“We’ve got plans,” he said. “We’re going to get you away. Samma said to tell you. We’re working on plans.”

He gave me hard sweets they must have stolen.

“That’s from Samma,” he said.

“Will she come?”

He blinked at me in guarded surprise.

“She won’t come?” I said.

I had by then some sense of how we’re all curbed by scends directed at us and by our own compulsions, even something of Samma’s own, but you must remember I was very young. Perhaps I thought my want would obviate them.

“She give me a message for you,” he said. “Listen. ‘Some of them say they’ll never take your dad’s money.’ ” He concentrated and repeated it singsong, as she must have drilled him. Some of them say, they’ll never tay, kyore dad’s mon-ay.

“ ‘That your ma’s not forgot,’ ” he said. “ ‘That they think of you.’ ”

“What do they think of me?”

“Don’t, I lost my place. Wait. ‘That your ma’s not forgot. That they think of you. Help’s on the way, we know what to do.’ We heard there’s officers coming,” he said. I could hear when he went off-script.

“Officers have already come,” I said. “They wouldn’t help me.”

“Proper ones. Not the sash-danglers.”

“Don’t you remember?” I said. “They already came.”

He paused and looked worried at his memories. “Wait,” he said. “All right, it ain’t them, then. Someone’s coming, to help, I think. Samma knows. We can tell them about what your dad done and they can do something so you’ll be able to come down to our house.” He brightened.

“Who is it coming?” I said. “Do you mean…Drobe said someone was sent from way away, come to check on things—”

“Drobe…” The boy shook his head and looked away. “I mean maybe that’s it. I don’t know who it is he’s talking about. The thing is with Drobe…” A moment passed and he shrugged.

“I just heard there’s officials come to the town,” he said uncomprehendingly. “And I’m telling you we’ve got plans for your dad. Samma said. We ain’t going to let him keep you here. But Samma, she says we have to wait a bit, because if we just bring you back now they’ll find you again like before. They’ll be watching now, and then we’ll be in bad trouble and then we can’t help you, can we?”

He didn’t look at me.

I wandered uphill. He followed me by hidden ways.

We threw stones at a stump. His aim was much better than mine. He broke off a twig with his first attempt and made himself laugh because now, he said, it looked like a fat and angry bird.

“Where is Drobe?” I said.

The boy wouldn’t look at me.

“Where is he?” I said.

“Gone.”

“What?”

“He’s gone. He left. He’s gone.”

I stopped myself crying out. “Where?” I said. “Where’s he gone?” I had to say it through my teeth. I wondered if my father had found him.

“I don’t know. One day he just wasn’t there. He’d been spending time with someone, then one day his friend was gone, and that was it.” I thought for a second he meant me but he didn’t. I could hear suspicion when he said friend. “He said there was nothing he wanted here any more. And one night he went. So now he’s nowhere.”

“He’s somewhere,” I said. I wanted to say more but neither of us knew what so we shared a sad silence.

When he looked into the sky at last and I could see him prepare to leave, the boy told me, “Samma’s been saying. You hear people talking about your dad.” I didn’t move. “They’re all angry with what he done. What you said. Then after a bit you hear them talking about the keys he did for them. What they do. Like…” He cast about for an example. “Like it changes the weather, one woman says.” He inclined his head eagerly. “Samma said we might take it from her — the key I mean — and see if it does.

“I mean I wouldn’t buy it,” he said quickly, “I wouldn’t give him any money for anything now, but if we could get a key like that…Well, I mean, changing the weather. Or anything.” He looked at me cautiously and shrugged as if surely I must see. “I mean, that’s something?”

I’d never used any of my father’s keys.

The boy waited but I wouldn’t speak. I didn’t suggest he stay out of sight while I crept inside to see what I could find or that I’d leave the workroom window unlocked for him that night to climb in through. I wouldn’t look at him. I said nothing about the keys at all. Eventually he went.

Sometimes when my father walked on the hills I’d stand in the entrance to his workroom and smell metal dust and oil and see some half-finished shape in his vise.

I don’t know when his customers started to come back. At first I didn’t see them, only heard voices in his room. First a man, then later a woman, explaining what they needed the metal to do. Then I’d hear the rasp of my father working.