Holding Wonder Part 21

"No," he said. "Only, this morning we had bread for breakfast. Mine was dry.

Bobby's daddy said that was lucky 'relse it would have rotted away a long time ago." Bread. My mouth watered. There must not have been enough to pa.s.s around to our table-only for the children.

"Mine was dry, too," said Ken. "And it had blue on the edge of it."

"Radioactive," nodded Victor wisely.

"Huh-uh!" contradicted Bobby quickly. "Nothing's radioactive around here! My daddy says-"

"You' daddy! You' daddy!" retorted Victor. "Once I gots daddy, too!"

"Everybody had a daddy," said Maria calmly. " 'Relsn you couldn't get born.

But some daddies die."

"All daddies die," said Bobby, "Only mine isn't dead yet. I'm glad he isn't dead!"

"We all are," I said, "Bobby's daddy helps us all-"

"Yeah," said Willsey, "he found the bread for us."

"Anyway, the blue was mould," Bobby broke in. "And it's good for you. It grows peni-pencil-" "Penicillin?" I suggested. He nodded and subsided, satisfied.

"Okay, Willsey, what shall we name our story?" He looked at me blankly.

"What's it about?" I asked.

"Eating," he said.

"Fine. That'll do for a t.i.tle," I said. "Who can spell it for me? It's an ing ending." I wrote it carefully with a black marking pencil on the chart paper as Gloryanne spelled it for me, swishing her long black hair back triumphantly as she did so. Our chalk board was a green cascade of water under the rain pouring down through the ragged, sagging ceiling. The bottom half of the board was sloughing slowly away from its diagonal fracture.

"Now, Willsey-" I waited, marker poised.

"We had bread for breakfast," he composed. "It was hard, but it was good."

"Mine wasn't," objected Ken. "It was awful."

"Bread isn't awful," said Maria. "Bread's good."

"Mine wasn't!" Ken was stubborn.

"Even if we don't ever get any more?" asked Maria.

"Aw! Who ever heard of not no more bread?" scoffed Ken.

"What is bread made of?" I asked.

"Flour," volunteered Bobby.

"Cornbread's with cornmeal," said Victor quickly.

"Yes, and flour's made from-" I prompted.

"From wheat," said Ken.

"And wheat-"

"Grows in fields," said Ken.

"Thee, Thmarty!" said Gloryanne. "And whereth any more fieldth?"

"Use your teeth, Gloryanne," I reminded. "Teeth and no tongue. Say, 'see."'

Gloryanne clenched her teeth and curled her lips back. "S-s-s-thee!" she said, confidently.

Bobby and I exchanged aware looks and our eyes smiled above our sober lips.

"Let's go on with the story," I suggested.

Eating We had bread for breakfast.

It was hard but it was good.

Bobby's daddy found it under some boards.

We had some good milk to put it in.

It was goat's milk. It made the bread soft.

Once we had a cow.

She was a nice cow but a man killed her because he wanted to eat her.

We all got mad at him.

We chased him away.

No one got to eat our cow because it rained red mud all over her and spoiled the meat.

We had to push her into a big hole.

I looked over the tight huddle of studious heads before me as they all bent to the task of writing the story. The rain was sweeping past the windows like long curtains billowing in the wind. The raindrops were so fine but so numerous hat it seemed I could reach out and stroke the swelling folds. I moved closer to the window, trying several places before I found one where no rain dripped on me from above and none sprayed me from outside. But it was an uncomfortable spot. I could see the nothing across the patio where the rest of the school used to be. Our room was the only cla.s.sroom in the office wing. The office wing was the only one not gulped down in its entirety, lock, stock and student body. Half of the office wing was gone. We had the restrooms-non-operational-the supply room-half roofed-and our room. We were the school. We were the whole of the sub-teen generation and the total faculty.

The total faculty wondered-was it possible that someone-some one-had caused all this to happen? Some one who said, "Now!" Or said, "Fire!" Or said, "If I can't have my way, then-" Or maybe some stress inside the world casually adjusted itself, all unknowing of the skim of life clinging to its outsides.

Or maybe some One said, "I repent Me-"

"Teacher, Teacher!" Maria's voice called me back to the cla.s.sroom. "The roof !

The roof!" Her blind face was urgent. I glanced up, my arm lifting protectively.

"Down!" I shouted. "Get down flat!" and flung myself across the room, mowing my open-mouthed children down as I plunged. We made it to the floor below the level of my desk before what was left of the ceiling peeled off and slammed soggily over us, humped up just enough by the desk and chairs to save our quivering selves.

Someone under me was sobbing, "My paper's all tore! My paper's all tore!" And I heard Bobby say with tight, controlled anguish, "Everything breaks! Any more, everything breaks!"

We wrote another story later. Quite a bit later. The sun, halo-ed broadly about by its perpetual haze, shone milkily down into our cla.s.sroom. The remnants of the roof and ceiling had been removed and a canvas tarp draped diagonally over the highest corner of the remaining walls to give us shade in the afternoon. On the other side of the new, smaller playground our new school was shaping from adobe and reclaimed brick. Above the humming stillness of the cla.s.sroom, I could hear the sound of blackbirds calling as they waded in the water that seeped from the foot of the knee-deep stand of wheat that covered the old playground.

Maybe by Fall there would be bread again. Maybe. Every thing was still maybe.

But 'maybe' is a step-a big one-be yond 'never.'

Our chalk board was put back together and, except for a few spots that refused to accept any kind of impression, it functioned well with our smudgy charcoal sticks from the Art Supplies shelf."Has anyone the answer yet?" I asked.

"I gots it," said Victor, tentatively. "It's two more days."

"Huh-uh!" said Celia. "Four more days!"

"Well, we seem to have a difference of opinion," I said. "Let's work it out together."

"Now, first, how many people, Victor?"

"Firs' they's ten people," he said, checking the chalk board.

"That's right," I said, "And how many cans of beans? Malina?"

"Five," she said. "And each can is for two people for one day."

"Right," I said. "And so that'll be lunch for how many days for ten people?"

"For one day," said Malina.

"That's right. Then what happened?"

"All but two people fell in the West Crack," said Bobby.

Right-straight-down-farther than you can hear a rock fall."

He spoke with authority. He had composed that part of our math problem.

"So?" I said.

There were five cans of beans and that's ten meals and two people," said Willsey.

"So?" I prompted.

"So two people can have five meals each."

"So?"

"So they gots dinners for five days and that's four days than one day! So there!" cried Victor.

"Hey!" Celia was outraged. "That's what I said! You said two more days!"

"Aw!" said Victor. "Dumb problem! n.o.body's gunna fa' down West Crack eenyway!"

"A lot of people fell in there," said Gloryanne soberly. "My gramma did and my Aunt Glory-"

In the remembering silence, the sweet creaking calls of the blackbirds could be heard again. A flash of brilliance from the sky aroused us. A pie-shaped wedge had suddenly cleared in the sun's halo, and there was bright blue and glitter, briefly, before the milky came back.

"A whole bright day," said Maria dreamily. "And the water in Briney Lake so shiny I can't look at it."

"You can't look anyway," said Ken. "How come you always talk about seeing when you can't even?" " 'Cause I can. Ever since the Torn Time," said Maria. "I got blind almost as soon as I got born. All blind. No anything to see. But now I can watch and I can see-inside me, somewhere. But I don't see now. I see sometime-after while.

But what I see comes! It isn't, when I see it, but it bees pretty quick!" Her chin tilted a 'so there!'

The children all looked at her silently and I wondered. We had lost so much-so much! And Maria had lost, too -her blindness. Maybe more of our losses were gains- Then Bobby cried out, "What happened, teacher? What happened? And why do we stay here? I can remember on the other side of West Crack. There was a town that wasn't busted.

And bubble gum and hamburgers and a-a escalator thing to go upstairs to buy color TV. Why don't we go there? Why do we stay here where everything's busted?"

"Broken," I murmured automatically.

The children were waiting for an answer. These child faces were turned to me, waiting for me to fill a gap they suddenly felt now, in spite of the endless discussions that were forever going on around them.

"What do you think?" I asked. "What do you think happened? Why do we stay here? Think about it for a while, then let's write another story." I watched the wind flow across the wheat field and thought, too. Why do we stay? The West Crack is one reason. It's still unbridged, partly because to live has been more important than to go, partly because no one wants to leave anyone yet. The fear of separation is still too strong. We know people are here. The unknown is still too lonely to face.

South are the Rocks-jagged slivers of basalt or something older than that-that rocketed up out of the valley floor during the Torn Time and splintered into points and pinnacles. As far as we can see, they rise, rigidly vertical, above the solid base that runs out of sight east and west. And the base is higher than our tallest tree.

And north. My memory quivered away from north- East. Town used to be east. The edge of it is Salvage now. Someday when the stench is gone, the whole of it will be salvage. Most of the stench is only a lingering of memory now, but we still stay away except when need drives us.

North. North. Now it is Briney Lake. During the Torn Time, it came from out of nowhere, all that wetness, filling a dusty, desert cup to br.i.m.m.i.n.g and more.

It boiled and fumed and swallowed the land and 'spat out parts of it again.

Rafe and I had gone up to watch the magical influx of water. In this part of the country, any water, free of irrigation or conservation restrictions, was a wonder to be watched with fascinated delight. We stood, hand in hand, on the Point where we used to go at nights to watch the moonlight on the unusually heavy stand of cholla cactus on the hillsides-moonlight turning all those murderous, puncturing thorns to silvery fur and snowy velvet. The earth around us had firmed again from its shakenness and the half of the Point that was left was again a solid Gibraltar.

We watched the water rise and rise until our delight turned to apprehension. I had started to back away when Rafe pulled me to him to see a sudden silvery slick that was welling up from under the bubbling swells of water. As he leaned to point, the ground under our feet gave a huge hiccough, jerked himoff balance and s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand from my wrist. He hit the water just as the silvery slick arrived.

And the slick swallowed Rafe before my eyes. Only briefly did it let go of one of his arms-a hopelessly reaching arm that hadn't yet realized that its flesh was already melted off and only bones were reaching.

I crouched on the Point and watched half my boulder dissolve into the silver and follow Rafe down into the dark, convulsed depths. The slick was gone and Rafe was gone. I knelt, nursing my wrist with my other hand. My wrist still burned where Rafe's fingernails had scratched as he fell. My wrist carries the scars still, but Rafe is gone.

My breath shuddered as I turned back to the children.

"Well," I said, "what did happen? Shall we write our story now?"

What Happened?

Bobby's daddy thinks maybe the magnetic poles changed and north is west now or maybe east.