Boy on the Edge (9 page)

“Are you deaf?”

Henry shook his head.

“You live in the cowshed, right?”

Henry nodded. He almost smiled. But he knew how his smile could be misunderstood as a mocking scowl, so he held back and bit on his lip.

“Then you’re lost,” John said. “These are the sheep sheds.”

He continued to shovel the shit and chuck the large chunks into the wheelbarrow.

Henry felt that this was a beginning of a conversation, of a kind. If he could only come up with some reply, something easy, then John might perhaps continue talking, and he would have time to think of something else. The most important thing was to say something, anything, and not let the silence draw on for too long.

Then suddenly he had an amusing thought. But how to put it into words, so John would understand the joke, was another matter.

“I fed them,” he said.

John looked up. “You fed who?”

Henry pointed with his chin at the empty sheep shed. “Them,” he said.

John looked at him pensively for a moment with his green eyes, perhaps wondering if he was retarded. Then he smirked and threw back his long black hair with a quick jerk.

“Feed them less next time,” he said, and kept on working.

Henry stood still in the doorway and couldn’t help but smile. John had actually understood the joke. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just stood there for a while, with his hands deep in his pockets, a broad grin on his face.

Somehow the sheep shit didn’t stink nearly as bad as before.

He couldn’t fall asleep that night, wondering how his life would have turned out if he’d been like John. How easily he would have laughed off every opponent, how lightly he would have taken every insult, like it was nothing at all; how he would have enjoyed being the cool guy, shooting out short, sharp sentences that would make everyone gasp with admiration or shut up for good. How sweet to have been admired by the pretty boys, loved by the girls. How different everything would have been.

He lay still for a long time, staring into the darkness around him, stroking his thick short fingers lightly across his ugly face.

He was no John, and he never would be. But perhaps John might become a friend. If only he could find a way to make that happen. How happy he would be, having a friend like John. Just thinking about it made him feel good, made him feel strong, worthy.

Right before he fell asleep he wondered why John had been sent to this place. Was he a criminal of some sort, a thief perhaps? He could imagine John as a Prince of Thieves. And he was relieved that the week in the Boiler Room had not broken John’s spirit: he had obviously just decided to play along, feign obedience to avoid further punishment.

Henry smiled in the darkness, firmly resolved to try again to make contact with John as soon as possible. After all, today had not been that bad; he had made a joke, and John had understood it.

In his whole life, that had never happened before.

It was a sunny day with a warm breeze coming in from the south, and the time had come to put the cows out to pasture. They had been growing more irritable with each day and wouldn’t lie down in their stalls. Their moos had acquired a different tone, agitated, impatient, demanding. They sniffed the air, breathed heavily, and frowned.

Noah, on the other hand, had become sadder with each day, resting his head on the stall fence, rolling his eyes, whimpering like a puppy.

After breakfast Emily had told the little ones with an excited smile that today would be great fun, but the boys froze with terror. Their love of the little lambs was directly proportionate to their terror of the big cows. They couldn’t understand why they had to be set free. Some ran straight to their rooms and locked the doors. Others stood tight together on a cart, trembling with fear and excitement.

Henry limped from stall to stall and untied the cows’ collars one by one and watched as they stumbled to the door, toward the bright sunlight outside.

Old Red, usually so calm, composed, and gentle, was the first to go. Her legs trembled as she staggered impatiently toward the door. She hesitated for a moment, expanding her nostrils and shuddering. Then she mooed and jumped over the threshold. One foot touched the soil, and the wet mud pressed up through her cloven hoof. It was as if the heavy burden of the long winter had rested on that one leg. She pulled it free from the mud with a long-drawn sucking sound — and summer had arrived.

Old Red rushed out of the door, heaving heavily, with gawking eyes, her ears pricked up, saliva dripping from her mouth. She mooed again, galloped forward, raised her tail high in the air, and a fountain of shit streamed out, dotting her course.

The others followed: Little Gray, Spotty with her large horns, Brandy and Belle, Jenny, Maggy, and Nelly. They all ran in surprised excitement, bumping into everything in their path, thrusting their backsides into the air, mooing and shitting. It was like watching a silly cartoon.

Then, finally, the little ones laughed.

But inside the dark cowshed, Noah kicked the fence and grumbled.

Henry was scraping the shit off the stalls when John entered and looked around him. Outside, the cows were running wild and the boys screamed.

“Why does he have to stay in?” John asked.

Henry didn’t reply straightaway, because he didn’t want to stutter. He became a little shy, but also happy that John had entered his little world, the cowshed, to have a talk. And he didn’t seem to be in any hurry, but waited patiently while Henry gathered his thoughts.

“He would kill,” he finally replied.

John nodded and glanced at the bull. “Where do the cows go to pasture?” he asked.

“East,” Henry said.

“East? Where’s east?”

“That way,” Henry said, pointing with the shovel.

“And north?” John asked. “Which way is that?”

“That way,” Henry replied after a while, pointing at the wall.

Then John asked no more questions, but simply nodded and walked out.

Henry fetched a whip that hung on a nail above the door, made from the broken wooden handle of a rake with a black nylon string attached to it. Wiping off dust and grime, he swung it in the air and cracked it at the floor a few times, just for fun. He had spoken with John, and it hadn’t been that difficult; no, not at all.

When Henry left the cowshed, Noah growled and banged his head against the fence in protest. Emily had given him directions where to herd the cows but told him not to worry; they’d know the way, she’d said.

The cows had finished their happy running around and stood panting at the gate. Old Red had calmed herself and rolled her tongue around the fresh green straws by the roadside. She led the group through the gate, and the others pushed behind her, rolling their eyes and butting one another in the belly from sheer happiness.

Little by little, the group found its easy pace, following the old path beside the road, breathing in the scent of summer. They nodded their heavy heads in a steady rhythm, pricking up their ears when a bird chirped close by and sniffing the fresh streams that trickled down the low hills.

Henry limped behind, thinking about John, who had spoken to him like he was a normal person. He felt good to have answered back correctly. It also felt good to know something that John didn’t know; he had asked Henry the question as if it was a secret they shared between them, Henry and John.

He led the cows by the path that lay between the road and the mountainside, all the way until he was past the slopes with the red pumice gravel, where a small valley opened up inside the fence-enclosed pasture, just as Emily had described that morning.

Limping back to the farm, Henry listened to the grass move in a green whisper. He breathed in the soft fragrance of the tiny flowers nodding their heads in the warm breeze, watched a bee moving lazily from one to the next, while the birds sang and chirped all over the lava field.

It was a beautiful day indeed, and a happy one too.

Reverend Oswald stood in the middle of the yard, with John and the boys all around him. When Henry came closer he heard the reverend say that this would be a summer they would never forget, for this summer they would build a church together, dedicated to Jesus Christ our Savior.

“And all you boys will lend a hand,” he said, smiling down at the eager faces of the young boys. “And when you’re all grown up, you will take your children for a Sunday ride, show them the church, and say: I built this church with my brothers at the Home of Lesser Brethren; together we laid the foundations for Jesus Christ’s new church.”

The boys chuckled and sniggered, but the reverend was in a good mood and just clapped his hands and shouted, “Follow me!”

Then he marched ahead of the boys toward a grassy knoll in the lava, a little west of the farmhouses, and Henry followed.

When they’d all gathered around him he said: “Our good neighbor will be arriving in a little while with lots of shovels, and you’ll start digging right here.” He pointed at four markers, nailed in the ground, that marked out the foundations.

“For like the good Lord said, ‘A wise man doesn’t build his house upon the sand.’ We must shovel the sand away until we reach the bedrock underneath; the bedrock, which is Jesus Christ himself.

“Out there,” he continued, and pointed farther west, “is a big fine slab of smooth lava. We’ll break that slab into stones for the foundation. Then we’ll pile the stones on the bedrock, for the stones are like those who stand together with Jesus Christ. And from that foundation, his temple of victory will rise, the house of God himself.”

The boys stood silent in the breeze, not sure if they had understood him completely. But one thing was certain; there was going to be lots of hard work. The good news was that there wouldn’t be any classes for weeks to come.

“Thank God,” a few whispered.

But John frowned and shook his head. Reverend Oswald looked at him sternly.

“Would you like to say something, John?”

“Yeah,” John replied, and threw his hair back. “Is this a slave camp or what? I’m not sure it’s legal for you to use us like workers here.”

Oswald’s eyes became cold, and his sincere joy vanished into thin air.

“Not legal? What would you know about the law?”

“I’m just saying,” John said, “that it doesn’t feel right.”

“If I read your report correctly,” Oswald began with a sly grin playing on his lips, “I recall that the reason you are here is because you broke the law. And so whatever you ‘feel’ might be right or wrong is unlikely to stand up in any court.”

“That doesn’t make me your slave,” John shot back at him.

The boys stood absolutely still, not daring to move a muscle. Only their frightened eyes moved, glancing at one another.

“What you call slavery, my boy, is what normal people consider healthy work. But of course you wouldn’t know much about that, now, would you?” Oswald said with a wicked smile.

The little boys chuckled shyly, but John looked around him, annoyed that he didn’t have the support of the others.

“Are you going to let these little boys slave away with a shovel and a crowbar?” John said.

But now Reverend Oswald had regained his bearings and broke him off with full force. “This is the devil speaking!” he shouted, and pointed an accusing finger at John. “The devil is speaking through his obedient servant, to mock and belittle the great work that awaits us here: to build a church in the name of Jesus Christ!”

He turned to the boys and gathered them around him, like a mother goose herding her chicks to safety under her wings.

“Look at him, all of you; look at the devil before you — there you see him. This is what he looks like. This is what he sounds like when he’s bent on destroying the good work of the Lord. Aye! Planting seeds of doubt and suspicion, calling the healthy work of love and humility for the Lord ‘slavery’! How cunningly he turns everything upside down. Look at him! This is the beast that we’re fighting!”

The boys were stunned. But John’s face was empty of all emotion, as if he didn’t believe his own ears.

“Are you joking?” he said. “I’m only saying that this is no job for little boys.”

“So, now you’re the liberating angel of innocent children, are you?” Oswald said, laughing. “That’s the devil’s way all right: constantly changing his shape, trying everything to make you trust his sincerity.”

Then he raised his fist in the air, shouting, “Be gone, Satan! Be gone, you father of lies, for our souls belong to Jesus Christ, the son of the living God!”

Henry turned as he heard the Brute’s pickup approach. The shovels rattled back and forth in the back of the truck with a clashing noise, sounding like a thousand church bells ringing at once as it toiled across the rugged lava toward the knoll.

The Brute distributed the shovels among the boys, but Reverend Oswald had a quiet word with him and pointed at John. Then the reverend turned to Henry.

“You don’t have to be here, Henry, you have enough to do already, although you’re welcome to join in, whenever you can.”

Henry just nodded and turned away, but the reverend hadn’t finished.

“Wait a bit,” he said. “I want you to do me a favor; go to the smithy and find a crowbar and a sledgehammer. They’re supposed to be there; they’re for John.” He glanced at John, who stood there, listening.