Mr. Wicker's Window Part 29

"More than that," Mr. Wicker said, putting the pouch in his pocket, "I shall have to take everything from you that you have gained here, Christopher." He paused. "All but one thing which you may choose and keep--one ability." He waited. "Choose well."

Chris looked up at the man he admired and respected and had grown to love, and pondered deeply.

To make a boat or eagle or dolphin out of rope? Very tempting! How the kids would envy him!

Or change himself in other shapes? So useful. He hesitated.

"I'd like to be able to come back, sir," he said, and his growing grief at those he must leave prevented him from saying anything else.

Mr. Wicker's face broke into a radiant smile and he held out his firm hand.

"So you shall, Christopher, so you shall! And you shall remember it all, I promise you. That too, you can have."

He stepped forward and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. His eyes were deeply sad although his lips still smiled.

"And now," said Mr. Wicker, "good soldier that you are for General Was.h.i.+ngton and for your country, all that you learned must leave you and remain with me."

Mr. Wicker put his hand briefly on Chris's head, let it slip to cover his eyes--so lightly it was scarcely felt--and then to cover his mouth. Chris waited, but he felt no different.

"Be a fly!" commanded the magician.

Chris searched his mind. There were words to say, and you thought hard. He tried once more, and a third time, and then wordlessly shook his head.

"Make a rope boat!" said Mr. Wicker.

Chris took the rope and as it hung from his hands he wondered how one set about it--he _had_ known how, once upon a time. He let the inert rope fall to the floor. Mr. Wicker put a hand on his shoulder and turned him toward the door.

"Come, my boy," he said.

CHAPTER 36

The shop was dark but headlights flashed by out on Wisconsin Avenue, glaring over the meager display of objects in Mr. Wicker's window.

There seemed even fewer objects than before, Chris thought, for the carved figure of the Nubian boy was gone, and so was the coil of dusty rope. The s.h.i.+p in the gla.s.s bottle was still there, however.

Mr. Wicker went forward in the darkness and leaning over, took up the bottle with care from where it had lain for so many years, dusted and polished only by the loving eyes of a boy who had often pressed his nose against the Georgian panes.

"You are to have this," Mr. Wicker said, putting the bottle with its delicate contents in both Chris's hands. "Both Ned and I would like to know that it is yours."

He turned to put his hand on the doork.n.o.b. Chris found his voice.

"What about the job, sir?" he broke out. "Can Jakey Harris apply for it?"

Mr. Wicker smiled, and it was strange, in that dim room inconsistently lit by the lights of pa.s.sing cars, Mr. Wicker looked exactly like a venerable, wizened old man, when Chris knew perfectly well he was not.

It's peculiar, he thought, the tricks your eyes play on you. Guess I'm tired.

"Jakey Harris for the job?" Mr. Wicker remarked, "Why no--there is no job to fill. You filled it, Christopher!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

And all at once, without any good-bye, Chris found himself outside on the top step. The din of cars and honking horns rushed at him like a gape-mouthed monster; the drumming whine and roar from the freeway shook the ground, and up ahead the lights of the People's Drugstore looked garish but friendly. Across the way as he turned to go home, Chris glanced at the two tumbledown storehouses opposite, the winch and tackle broken, and panes of gla.s.s missing from the windows.

As he reached the corner of Wisconsin and M Street, Mike rushed breathlessly up.

"Hey! Here I am! Not much later than I said I'd be, either! What you got?" he asked, falling into step beside Chris and looking down at the bottle.

"Mr. Wicker gave it to me," Chris replied in a colorless voice.

"What for?"

"I dunno. Guess he didn't need it."

A silence fell, and then Mike said as they pa.s.sed the strong light of a shop window, returning down bustling M Street toward 28th: "Say--you been running--or sitting by a fire? You look almost sunburnt. And look--"

They stopped dead while Mike put a grubby forefinger on a mark on Chris's jaw. "I never noticed that before. It shows up white an'

plain. Must have been a pretty deep cut ya had there!"

For the first time in what felt like hours, Chris smiled, and the smile became a grin.

"It sure was!" he said reminiscently.

"Oh--an' by the way," Mike said much farther along as he left Chris to go on to his own house, "your Aunt Rachel called my ma and told her your mother was so much better she could come home soon. Seems that your father's on his way back too." He walked off and then turned to call from a quarter-block away, "Bet you'll be glad to have your own folks at home?"

Chris's grin deepened but he did not reply, nor even wave, for fear of dropping the bottle.

N Street, then Dumbarton Avenue, dropped behind him, and he came to Happy's Grocery with the bookshop on the opposite corner. He stood looking at his lighted windows, the lighted windows of his house, remembering a time when he and Amos had seen only a wooded ridge and a burnt-out campfire.

Something stirred in his mind, and after finding the front door unlatched, he eased himself in and up the stairs as quietly as he could. He did not want to face his Aunt Rachel for a few minutes longer.

In his own room he shut the door and carefully lifted the _Mirabelle_ in its bottle to the place of honor on top of his chest of drawers.

Then he stood looking at his reflection in the small mirror hung askew near the window.

He looked the same--well, not quite. The tiny scar was there, to prove it was not a dream, and he quickly undid his s.h.i.+rt, and pulling it off, got up on a chair to peer over his shoulder to see how his back looked in the square of gla.s.s.

A whiplash like a long clean briar tear lay across his shoulders, and as he looked, he almost felt again the searing cut.

Chris grinned, b.u.t.toning up his s.h.i.+rt. Then it had been no dream, no childish imagining.

A voice soared up the stairs. "Chris! Chris darling? Are you home?"

Aunt Rachel had news for him of his mother's imminent return.

Chris opened his bedroom door, pulling out from his pocket the first thing his fingers. .h.i.t on, and as he went downstairs whistling, "Farewell and Adieu, to you Spanish Ladies," he tossed and caught, and tossed and caught again, an old silver b.u.t.ton burnt black in a fire.