The Orphan Read online

  That is what Little Robert intended, but as the adrenalin rushed into his veins, he could not hold his shape, and as he bit down the shift came suddenly.

  I find myself biting Rusty’s hip. My teeth grate across his pelvic bone as my claws spring into his groin and buttocks to hold him still. His screams are very shrill, and he jabs at me with the knife. I flip it out of his hand and try to disengage from him, but his fists are tight in my pelt. I hear noises at the back door over the heavy throbbing of the rain, and I bite the screaming man again quickly and knock him away with a back-handed blow as the table came crashing over, pinning my feet to the floor. The farm woman has tipped it over either in surprise or in an attempt to help. A woman is screaming. I am most concerned for the shotgun, and I kick at the table and spit out the man’s flesh as I crouch to avoid the blast.

  The crash of the shotgun going off is different from the thunder, but splits the ears in the close room. It is not directed at me. Martin had evidently seen the struggle going on and made his own move at the same time as Robert grabbed Rusty. Gus is facing the back door, the shotgun at waist level. In the doorway three men are down in a struggling pile. I smell more blood and see the shotgun swinging around. Gus’s eyes are points of light beneath his shaggy hair, his face white as pond ice. I note the old farm woman crawling around the table toward the young woman who is lying on the floor partly beneath the floundering and bloody Rusty whose inarticulate screams continue without stopping. The gun is swinging as I get out from under the bodies, the chair, the table edge. The linoleum on the floor of the kitchen is slippery as my claws spring out for a grip, not like wood, and the gun swings farther, almost on me as I see its twin black holes searching like eyes for me in the dim kitchen. I can almost look into those deadly sockets, but I make a long leap and swing my arm far out so that one extended claw hits the barrels.

  The shotgun blasts into the ceiling, bringing down a shower of plaster and wood. Gus is staggering as I come out of my roll and leap for his throat. I miss and bite high into his shoulder, feel the collarbone snap and a rush of hot blood as I rip away, digging my hind claws into the linoleum, twisting the shotgun away as his screaming begins. I break my hold and twist the stock off the shotgun and hurl it hard at a window. It smashes and goes on through out into the gray pounding rain. Gus is falling now, on his hands and knees in the dimness while the hot blood pumps out of his neck in long jets. I leap for the back door and find Tommy rising in front of me, wavering, holding his arms around his chest. I take a swipe at him and knock him like a bundle of sticks into the corner of the porch where he lies silent.

  In the back doorway where the rain blows in upon him in great wet sheets lies the old farmer, his chest punctured with purple holes, and blood washing from the wounds with the rain. The old sick Hackett sits against the wall of the porch, his eyes wide, his hands lying palms up. He seems to be looking at me and not believing what he sees, holding his breath.

  I turn for a last look into the dim farmhouse while the rain pounds down on my back. Gus is lying in his blood on the linoleum, moving vaguely as more blood spurts out of his neck very fast. He will die, I think. Back farther in the dining room I see the two women standing over Rusty who is convulsing on the floor like a spine-shot rabbit. The older woman has a long knife in her hand, and the young, blonde woman’s green and white clothes are smeared with blood. The two women are looking directly at me with frightened eyes. I sniff the old farmer again. His faded blue eyes with all the wrinkles around them are looking at me. There is no fear in them, but I see that they are glazing over. He is dying. His gray hair is plastered down in streaks around his face by the rain. The harmonica is sticking out of his shirt pocket. For no reason I can imagine, I grab it in my teeth and run out into the gray fall of the rain.

  (4)

  The Grand Rapids Examiner, Tuesday July 2, 1935

  TWO PERSONS DEAD

  IN ROBBERY ATTEMPT

  Local Farmer Shot to

  Death, Waif Missing

  Mr. and Mrs. Martin Nordmeyer, their daughter and a foster child were the victims of a robbery attempt at their farm south of here Monday. Dead are Martin Nordmeyer, 61, and his alleged assailant, Aldo (Gus) Hamner, vagrant. Robert Lee Burney, foster child of the Nordmeyers, is missing and is believed to have run away in terror during the fracas. He is described as five years old, brawn hair, brown eyes, slender build, and wearing only a white nightshirt.

  The three surviving robbery suspects are under police guard at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital with varying injuries received when they were attacked by a “wild dog or bear” that mysteriously came to the aid of the family. Hamner died at the scene from loss of blood, his jugular vein severed by a bite from the animal that Mrs. Nordmeyer described as a “cross between a bear and a gorilla.”

  Sheriff Leonard Kendall reported the farm family’s kitchen “looked like a slaughter house” when he arrived late in the morning to answer a call from Mrs. Victoria Woodson, daughter of the Nordmeyers. “There was blood everywhere, splattered on the ceiling even. Mr. Nordmeyer dead from a shotgun charge in his chest, one suspect bleeding to death, two others in bad shape with the worst claw and teeth marks I ever seen.” Suspect Roger Rustum was hospitalized with deep hip lacerations and internal injuries; Thomas Prokoff, the third suspect, is reported in fair condition with two broken ribs and a concussion. Sheriff Kendall reported the fourth suspect, Oliver Hackett, was not iniured in the battle but is suffering from advanced tuberculosis and is in poor condition.

  The search for the little boy, a waif the family had found in their barn about two months ago, is continuing today.

  The mystery animal that broke up the robbery attempt has not been positively identified or seen since it ran out of the Nordmeyers’ house after mortally wounding one suspect and severely iniuring another. Upon his being asked it he thought it was a large wild dog, suspect Rustum said, “It wasn’t no dog. It was a fiend out of hell.” Comments from the Nordmeyer family indicated they too were mystified at the appearance of the animal.

  Martin Nordmeyer is survived by his wife Catherine, two daughters, Victoria Woodson of Cassius and Renee Hegel of this city, and two granddaughters. Funeral arrangements are pending.

  ***

  I foolishly allow my mind to think about this terrible morning, so that I stop too soon at the little railway hut that is less than a mile from the Nordmeyer farm. I do not think about the hut or what it is used for, only that I must hide, since I cannot shift form at the moment. I dig under a shallow foundation and emerge into the stuffy little tool house where I will wait for darkness. The torn, wet rag that was Little Robert’s nightshirt hangs about me. I tear it away, knot up the harmonica in one strip of cloth and tie it around my waist. The hut contains shovels, rakes, pick axes, other tools leaning against the walls, and a platform with iron wheels and long levers on top. I am steaming wet and sticky with blood, and the smell of creosote in the hut is suffocating. I block it all out to sleep.

  I wake full of fear at the sound of crunching cinders. The hut is without cover of trees behind, the nearest ones down the track half a mile or more on the side. How have I been so stupid? The crunching cinders get louder. Men’s voices, many of them. I slip to the hole I have made under the back foundation, but there are already men outside settling against the shady side of the hut. Now they are all around the hut in the shade, talking, rattling metal pails. I smell bread, meat, stale fruit. They are eating their lunch. At the double doors in front of the hut the lock begins to rattle. They will come in. My head is foggy. I force my rage to form, clearing my mind, so that I can visualize the layout of the countryside. I have been here in the nights. Behind the hut it is open country at this point all the way to the river, but directly out front and across the track is first a small creek, then a thornapple hedge that extends a long way to the south. The end of the hedge is almost opposite the hut. I have to go out the front or be in sight for a long while to the men sitting in back of the hut. The loc
k springs open with a rusted sound and the doors are being lifted and pulled across the cinders. I wait behind the iron wheeled platform crouching low, wishing at that moment to shift, but unable to. I put it out of my mind.

  “Let’s wait till after we eat to get it out,” a short round man in overalls is saying. “It’s a heavy sucker.”

  As his companion who is partly behind the opened door is about to answer, I charge toward the half opened door, hitting it hard with my shoulder.

  “Crise-a-mighty!” The fat man is screaming as I hit him with my shoulder and he spins away and down. The other man is larger and is carrying a shovel. I slam past the door, but the other man is swinging his shovel at me. In mid-leap I kick with one hind leg, striking him in the chest so the shovel just grazes my back. Then I am down the embankment, sliding in the cinders into the weeds, leaping the creek awkwardly as I hear a great commotion and crying out behind me, and around the hedge for what should be a long straight run that will put me out of sight and reach. I have forgotten the fences. Barbed wire, the first two of four strands, then another one of five tight strands, and in the distance I can see at least two more. They slow me down, and I can hear the men on the railway embankment running and crying out. I wait to pant a moment, lying up under the thorn hedge. It is very hot, the sun’s heat wavering up from the dark soil of the cornfield where the stalks with their dark green leaves are standing about two feet high. The vivid green rows dwindle in perspective toward the far fences where I see clumps of trees, a barn roof, other buildings. That is behind the Nordmeyer’s east field, the one where the Guernseys graze. My mind snaps, clearing my perceptions at once. I smell the dried blood in my fur. I am being foolish again. I wonder for a second if I am ill, then I hear the noises of iron wheels along the track and excited men’s voices. They are catching up with me on some sort of car on the tracks. There is no cover beyond the end of the hedge, and now they will arrive there before me. I glance back along the hedge row, my eyes just above the weed tops. In the waves of heat rising from the dark soil I see the distorted figures of half a dozen men spread out in a line, carrying shovels, picks, iron bars. Their voices come to me now from two directions as the men on the handcar arrive at the far end of the hedge row. The hedge is too thick and thorny to get through. Not time to dig under it, so many roots in hedges. The cornfield with its endless ranks of low corn plants offers no cover at all. I am trapped, and it is because of my own foolishness. But there is no time now to wonder about the cause of such muddleheadedness. The men are at both ends of the hedge, advancing cautiously, sticking their shovels and bars into the weeds and into the hedge itself as they advance. I smell my own fear. I try to concentrate on Robert Lee Burney, but I cannot. There is some block there preventing him from emerging. In wonder I realize that he does not want to come out. To try another animal form would be worse. I am too inexperienced for that. I do not wish to hurt humans. The ones at the Nordmeyer farm threatened my own survival, but I do not wish to harm these men. Also, to show myself to so many witnesses is certain to bring on a hunt I would have great trouble escaping in my present state.

  “I’ll come out if you’ll go back,” says a high clear Voice.

  I jump, then flatten back in the weeds. The voice is Robert’s, and it comes from inside my own mind. He is making a deal with me. I have the urge to laugh. I think the words, “If you don’t come out now, we will both have great trouble, maybe be killed.”

  “Promise you’ll go back.”

  “I can’t. They have seen me. It would be a danger to you also.”

  “Promise!”

  The men at both ends of the hedge are closer, coming slowly, spread out into the cornfields. It is too late to run now without having to fight with some of them. As Robert’s voice screams inside me the one word again, I hear something, a metallic rumbling, then a far off whistle, slightly elevating in pitch. A train is coming, fast.

  Now the men at the south end of the hedge hear it too. They are hollering and running back around the hedge. I begin to slip through the weeds in their direction.

  “The Lakeshore. The Lakeshore!”

  “Get that handcar off the right of way!”

  “C’mon, get your ass in gear. That baby’s gon splatter us all over the county.”

  The south end of the hedge is free of men now, and I begin running faster. I arrive at the end of the hedge to see half a dozen men in work overalls struggling with the iron-wheeled platform, trying to get it off the tracks as the train appears to swell in size down the track, trailing a flat plume of smoke back along its length. Its black, blunt form approaches at unbelievable speed, the details of the iron engine face becoming clear so fast I have trouble seeing it all. The men on the track have the handcar derailed but sideways on the track. They will not make it. The train whistle begins a shattering scream, the pitch rising unbearable. Only two of them are still trying to get it off the track, the rest are running down the embankment as the train’s wheels begin to grind on the iron rails, a thousand metallic notes higher than the ear can hear, couplings crashing like hammers on anvils back down the length of the train. I stand up to watch the sight as the last two men dive away, one on each side of the track and the towering black engine seems to gobble up the little handcar and blow out its wreckage in a giant blast. A terrific smashing of wood and clanging of iron, and one heavy iron wheel comes sailing over the hedge, spinning and flailing its torn-out axle like the stem of an iron flower cut by the mower. A shower of wood splinters bounces back along the length of the black engine as it rushes on past in spite of its squealing brakes. As the engine flashes past above me, I see the white round faces of two men ducking away from the cab window.

  Behind me I hear again the men coming along the hedge. They are running now, shouting. I double back on the railroad side of the hedge in the shadow, and when I am half way back, I see the men gathered around the wreckage of their handcar. The train is on beyond me, just coming to a stop, its last car a hundred yards up the track. I slip down into the creek, up the embankment and across the tracks almost crawling on my belly. On the other side is a small stand of oaks and maples that leads into a woods. I have made it.

  Now that I have been clearly seen by two groups of people, there will be much more difficulty getting out of this country. I must have the ability to shift so that I can pass unnoticed. And Robert is now a part of me. I promise him that we will go back to the farm for just a little bit. After two nights in an abandoned pump house, I return to spend a whole day in the Nordmeyer’s hayloft in the dusty dry heat, peeking out of the cracks in the hay door as black automobiles drive in and out of the lane, people come in black clothes and go in and out the front door. I have never seen people use the front door of the farmhouse before. Many of them are weeping. I recognize Vaire, Anne, and Walter, and see another group that must be the other sister, her husband and child. At intervals in the long, hot day I sleep, trying to recuperate my senses that seem to have been deranged by the battle and flight. I wake to see the narrow sunbeams striking down from tiny cracks and holes in the roof, standing like wires and ribbons and slender pillars in the dusty air. It is quiet in the high, empty loft, like an aisle in the forest when the sun shines down through morning mist. I am thirsty, but cannot go down for a drink until dark. I push back the thirst and wonder at the numbness of my senses. The part of me that is Robert is clearly delineated by a sick sensation inside me. I push it all away and resolve to sleep until dark.

  I wake to feel the need for Robert to appear. I have never felt this before. I concentrate and shift, easily.

  Robert stepped carefully in the dark to avoid getting slivers from the old, rough plank floor. He carried a rag that had the harmonica tied up in it. The barn was quiet, the cows asleep, the dogs chained up outside the big sliding doors. Biff came over to Robert dragging his chain and wagging his heavy tail, his head down as if it was all his fault.

  Robert stood outside the back screen. No one was awake inside, but there
was a lamp burning in the living room. The screen was not hooked. Robert opened the door and walked carefully in across the scrubbed dark spots on the porch floor. The kitchen was very clean and empty looking, and the dining room table had been set up again and polished. In the living room, sitting across two sawhorses, was a gray, oblong box made of metal with rod-like handles along the sides. The top of the box was laid back so that it opened up like Aunt Cat’s jewel box on her dresser. Inside, the box gleamed with slick cloth that looked almost wet, it was so shiny. The lamp was sitting where the radio used to be, on the little side table with the spindly legs. It was turned low, the flame unmoving as if it were painted in a picture.

  Robert could not see into the coffin, so he had to pull a chair from the dining room. Standing on the chair; his hands on the edge of the long box, Robert looked in at Martin, who appeared to be sleeping with his hands folded on his chest. Robert had never seen Martin asleep, had never seen him so still. He had always been working, walking about the farm, telling Robert things about the animals and about planting and caring for crops. Now his eyes had disappeared behind the walnut burl wrinkles, his mouth closed hard on something, as if he were gritting his teeth, and the corners turned down in disapproval. He wore a black suit that Robert had never seen either, and a white shirt that was starchy clean, and a blue necktie. It looked like Martin, Robert thought, but it certainly was not the happy old farmer Robert had known. He gazed for a long time, leaning closer as if to catch a breathed word or see the beginnings of a smile, as if Martin were only teasing him as he used to do, pretending to be angry. Then it seemed the face began to change indeed, and the wrinkles to move outward into a smile, the eyes to flutter and perhaps would have opened if Robert had been able to watch one more moment.

  “Robert!”

  The voice was a loud whisper, as if from off stage, calling back an actor who had entered at the wrong cue. Vaire stood in the dining room door in a long quilted robe, her face a white oval in the half light. Her eyes seemed unnaturally large, owl eyes looking into the darkness. Then she walked quickly over to Robert and was hugging him in her arms, against her warmth, kissing the top of his head and crying, putting his skinny little body inside her robe and closing him in.