The Boy on the Porch (11 page)

They described Jacob more fully; they explained about the constant tapping.

“Lots of kids tap, don't they? I got a kid who pounds on everything in sight.”

John and Marta went to the nearest post office, the hospital, the school.

Nothing.

They returned home. When the sheriff said he'd had no luck investigating the trailer, John and Marta visited the property again. They spoke to the owners of the land, who said that a man and woman had rented the trailer for a few months only. Yes, they had a young boy. The owners did not know where they had come from or where they went when they left.

“Skipped out on the rent. Left in the middle of the night.”

W
hen the first snow fell, Marta and John boxed up the boy's things—the paints and brushes and drums that the father would not let the boy take with him—and moved them to the barn. The room they had cleared out for the boy's bed gradually returned to its former use as storage for odds and ends. The only visible daily reminders of the boy were the paintings on the barn walls.

“Maybe,” Marta said one day, “Jacob is painting a picture of our house and our barn and our animals and pasture.”

“Maybe,” John agreed, and it cheered him a little to think that the boy might be remembering them.

“And maybe he is making up a little tune right this minute—you know that way he did. Do you think so, John?”

“Maybe.”

Another day, Marta said, “Beagle hasn't been the same since Jacob left. Look at him. All he does is lie there. He's sad.”

“He's a dog. He's not sad.”

“Sure he is, John. Dogs can be sad. Just like people. Just like—”

“Maybe. Maybe so.”

Marta lay awake at night, trying to imagine what Jacob was doing. She made up scenes for him.
There he is with his dog. I
hope
he has a dog. They're running around the yard. I
hope
they have a yard. There he is sitting on his bed. I
hope
he has a bed. He's playing his guitar. I
hope
he still has the guitar
.

John worried while he was driving.
Some people shouldn't have kids. That father shouldn't have dropped Jacob off here without knowing us—what if we were bad people? What if he drops Jacob off somewhere else, where people aren't good to him
? That last thought made John so agitated he had to pull over to the side of the road. He bent his head against the wheel.

O
ne Saturday, they returned to the park where Jacob and Lucy had played together, and there was Lucy, swinging, and there was her mother, sitting on the bench, her face tilted toward the sun.

“Oh!” she said, when she saw Marta and John. “What a great surprise! We wondered what had happened to you. We were worried.”

Marta explained as best she could.

“Oh, dear. Oh, my. Oh, how very difficult. Oh, how could you bear it? There, there.”

The three adults sat for some time, watching Lucy swing. At last, Lucy's mother said, “I know exactly what you should do next!”

O
n the way home, John said, “I don't know the first thing about foster children.”

“Me either, but Lucy's mom said those kids need good homes. I can't bear the thought that there are kids out there who don't have homes. Maybe we should talk to that Mrs. Floyd—that friend of Lucy's mother.”

“She's in charge of placement?”

“Yes. We'd have to be interviewed and approved.”

John scowled. “What if we don't pass? I'm not good at being interviewed.”

“Me either. And what if we get a child who isn't happy with us?”

“Or what if we don't like the kid?”

“Of course we'll like the child, John. How could we not like a child?”

“You never met my cousin's kids.”

“Won't it be hard if we just have the child for a few months and then he's gone again? Won't that be like losing Jacob?”

“That's the part I'm worried about,” John admitted.

“Maybe they won't have any children available anyway. We shouldn't get our hopes up.”

When they met with Mrs. Floyd, however, they learned that there were twenty-seven children who needed temporary homes. John and Marta were interviewed and were visited at their home.

“How many can you take?” asked Mrs. Floyd.

“How many? Maybe we should start with just one—”

“How about two? I have a brother and sister who need a home like yours. It's temporary, of course. Be sure you're okay with that. Probably about six months.”

T
he brother and the sister who came to John and Marta's were eight and ten years old. Tyler and Zizi were thin as rails and sullen, refusing to speak.

“Jacob wasn't ever gloomy like that, was he?” John asked Marta the first night, after the children were in bed.

“No, never.”

“Are we ever going to look after a child who speaks?”

“Shh, they can speak—”

“To each other, maybe, but not to us. They won't even look us in the eye, Marta.”

“They're just scared.”

“When do you think they'll stop being scared? Why are they scared? What should we be doing?”

“'Night, John.”

By the second week, John and Marta had learned that a pile of old lumber, a hammer, and some nails were a good outlet for the children's aggression.

“What are they making, John?”

“I think it's a fort.”

“They sure like to hammer things.”

“Jacob didn't hammer. He made music out of everything.”

By the third week, Tyler and Zizi were speaking to John and Marta.

“Their language!” John said. “Did you hear what she called her teacher? Where did they learn words like that?”

“Now you want them to
stop
talking?”

“I was just used to Jacob, that's all. I mean he was so . . . so
different
. . . from Tyler and Zizi.”

“I guess every kid is different.”

It was the goats that finally softened the children. The goats nuzzled Tyler and Zizi and chased them and butted into them. Round and round the pasture the children ran, shrieking with laughter. Early each morning before the school bus stopped at the end of the drive, Tyler and Zizi ran to the barn and fed the goats. Each afternoon, when they returned from school, they raced up to see the goats.

One night at dinner, Tyler said, “It's okay here.”

“Yeah,” Zizi agreed. “It's okay.”

John looked at Marta. “Is that a compliment, do you think?”

At the general store, Shep said, “I see you're buying jelly beans again. That kid come back?”

John felt stabbing heartache. He'd thought maybe he would think about Jacob less with other kids around, but he was thinking about Jacob
more
. He remembered every little gesture, every touch, every look on Jacob's face. When they took Tyler and Zizi to get new shoes and clothes, he remembered taking Jacob to the same stores and how proud the boy had seemed with his new shoes.

“No,” he replied to Shep. “These jelly beans are for different kids. We're fostering them.”

“Is that right?”

John spotted a roll of tar paper.
That would be perfect for the kids' fort
, he thought. “I'll trade you this here belt for that roll of tar paper,” he said.

“You're going to run out of belts pretty soon, ain't ya?”

John and Marta stood at the fence watching Zizi wrap her arms around a goat's neck.

“You cutie,” Zizi sang to the goat. “You cutie dootie.”

“You hear that?” John said to Marta. “I think Zizi is turning soft.”

“Maybe,” Marta said. “Of course this morning, she stomped a caterpillar to bits and called it a
creepy turd
.”

“Oh.”

“She's a funny kid, that Zizi is.”

They could hear Tyler hammering on the fort on the far side of the barn.

“Did you hear what Tyler called you last night, John? He called you Good Pa.”

“Is that what he said? I thought he called me Goo-bah. I thought it was an insult.”

“Who'd ever guess kids could make you laugh so much?”

“Jacob made us laugh.”

“Sure, he did, but I didn't think
all
kids could make you laugh.”

“Marta, we haven't seen
all
kids yet.”

Tyler and Zizi left one day in the late spring. They'd all known this day would come, but that didn't make it any easier.

“You can visit us any time you want,” Marta reassured them.

“You can write to us, too. We'd like that,” John said. “And come visit the goats. They'll miss you.”

“So will we,” Marta said.

That night, Marta said, “I guess I'm always going to cry when a child leaves.”

“Do you think we shouldn't have any more kids here? Do you think we should think about this some more? Are we always going to feel so awful when they leave?”

“'Night, John.”

The next morning, Marta called John into the room where Tyler and Zizi had slept.

“Look there,” she said, indicating the wall next to Zizi's bed. Zizi had drawn a heart beside this note:
It was okay here
.

“That's a compliment, right, Marta?”

Beneath each bed was a pair of shoes.

“Look at that, John. They left their old shoes behind.”

“Makes me want to bust out crying. I found an old pair of Jacob's the other day, too.”

That evening, when Marta came in from planting her vegetable garden, she saw that John had built a shelf on one wall of their bedroom. On it were three pairs of shoes.