THE LAST BOY (48 page)

“He's getting ready to take off again.”

“Who?”

“Daniel.
Daniel!
”

Ed raised himself up on an elbow. Yawned and scratched his chest.

“That's why he insisted that we walk over to the railroad beds.”

“What time is it?” Ed squinted at the illuminated numerals on the clock.“Shit, four! Rosie, I’ve got to get up in another hour.”

“Will you just listen to me!” Rosie turned on the light by the bed.

“Do I have any choice?” He blinked in the pain of the bright light. Hearing Rosie's heated voice, the babies started mewling for milk.

“If she puts him into school, he's gone.” Rosie stumbled out of bed. Her feet and hands were swollen again. When she went to pick up the twins, she noticed that there was a new, large bruise on her arm. She found another on her leg, but couldn’t remember injuring herself.“I’ve been spending some time alone with Daniel,” she said as she brought the babies back into the bed. “Here, hang onto Freddy a second.” She popped open one side of her nursing bra. “The things that little boy knows. The things he says…” She took Freddy back and brought the infant's hungry mouth to her nipple. In a moment she could feel the heaviness in her breasts being eagerly drained on both sides.“…the wisdom he has…”

Ed was already fast asleep, his breath wheezing through his lips.

“You’ve tricked me!” cried Daniel, as a cluster of parents and children swept past the school entrance, turning to stare at him. Daniel dug his heels into the ground. “Please let me go!” He struggled to break loose from Molly's grip, but she hung on.

“We’re just going to go in to look and meet some of teachers.”

“No, I can’t.” He was starting to cry. “
Please.
”

“Oh, Honey,” she said, crouching down to bring him close.“But I told you we were going to go here.”

“I don’t care what you told me, I’m not going in.”

Earlier, hoping to create the air of a festive occasion, Molly had taken Daniel to the Moosewood Restaurant for dinner. When she had first hinted at visiting the school, he hadn’t really reacted and she guessed things might go smoothly. Daniel had seemed perfectly happy in the restaurant; he liked the Russian cabbage pie and the waiters who doted on him.

“We didn’t order that,” said Molly when Siddhartha, the cook, brought out double desserts—a heaping serving of fresh mango ice cream and a big slice of carrot cake, thick with nuts.

“This is on the house!” Siddhartha's white teeth glinted through his dark beard as he ceremoniously served the boy. “For our own Daniel.”

“Mmmm, it's good,” said Daniel looking up with a full mouth of the homemade ice cream. “Can I have some of that cake, too?”
He pointed with his spoon at the cake.

That evening, the Ithaca School District was scheduled to hold its annual system-wide registration and Molly, after much deliberation, had decided to enroll Daniel in the South Hill School on Hudson Street. It seemed the perfect elementary school. It was right in town, within walking distance of her office, yet sufficiently removed from most of the city traffic; a small school in a quiet residential neighborhood of older, well-kept homes, a solid brick structure that felt safe and secure. And they had a guard and an electronically controlled door. No strangers got in. No little children wandered out.

“We’re just going to go and take a good look at the school,” she had said as they left Moosewood, trying to prepare him.“And maybe talk to one of the teachers.”

“They’re going to try and keep me there and never let me out.” He had started to balk on the street. “For years!”

“Oh, don’t be silly. It isn’t a jail,” she urged him along.“All children go to school. And you’ll be out and free, every afternoon. And the weekends will be all—”

“They’re going to teach me things I don’t want to learn.”

“How can you say that if you’ve never been there?”

“I know,” he had said, looking her deep in the eye. “I just know!”

Molly glanced around as more people brushed past them at the school doors. “You’re going to make lots of new friends here and have plenty of fun.”

He turned his head away.

“Now stop acting foolish.” Some of the parents with their little kids in tow stopped to gape at Daniel and Molly. “Come on, Sweetie,” she whispered in his ear,“Everybody's looking at us. Don’t make a scene.”

“I don’t care!” he whispered back.

“We’re not going to the dentist. Just look at all the other children. How excited they are.”

“I’m not a child!” he objected.

“You’ve still got lots of things you have to learn.”

“But not here.”

Rising to her full height, Molly took both of his hands and scooted him forward.“One way or another you’re going in,” she said finally. He started to resist again, but she was adamant and finally he relented, following her into the building with head bowed, his lips set in a miserable pout.

The brightly lit gym was already crowded with dozens of parents and children milling about, their eager voices echoing off the polished wood floors. There were tables set up for the various classes, and the school's teachers had turned out for the occasion.

Dianne Lifsey spotted them and, waving, pushed her way through the crowd.“Well, hello, Molly!” she piped.

“Hello, Mrs. Driscoll,” said little Stevie when Mrs. Lifsey poked him. He seemed to Molly a little overdressed for the occasion in his white shirt and bright red bow tie. “Hey Danny,” he grinned. “’Member me?”

Daniel was in too much of a funk to notice him or anyone else.

“And how is our famous Daniel doing?” inquired Mrs. Lifsey, leaning over to get a closer look. She was almost breathing in his face.“I’ll bet Daniel will be in Stevie's class.”

Daniel, who was studying his shoes, flushed a deep crimson.

“Come on,” Molly nudged,“at least say hello.”

“Hello,” he muttered, grinding the toe of his shoe into the floor.

Molly could feel his hand shaking in hers. Painful as it was, there was no way around it, she knew. He was going to have to go to school and negotiate social situations with other kids if he wasn’t going to grow up to be a freak. And she needed to hold down a job. It was as simple as that.

Another set of parents with a child joined them. Then another. Before Molly realized it, they were encircled by a small but smiling crowd. The people all muttering, Daniel, Daniel.

“You have to excuse us,” she said, and took Daniel over to the school nurse, who was the first stop.

“Oh, this is the Daniel I’ve heard about,” she said with a big, toothy smile.“Can he really predict weather?”

“Please,” said Molly, pointing to the papers on the table.

“Oh, yes, of course,” said the nurse becoming all business. She put on her glasses and reviewed Daniel's vaccination records. “Let's see…he’ll need a polio and…and a triple vaccine booster this year.”

On another line, the school secretary checked Daniel's birth certificate, recorded Molly's address and phone number, both at home and work. “We need an alternate emergency number.” She kept looking at Daniel very curiously.

Molly gave Rosie's address and number.

Standing tight at Molly's side, Daniel seemed to shrivel as the woman took down the pertinent data of his life.

“Oh, come on now,” Molly tickled him under his arm, trying to get Daniel to lighten up. “Can’t you see how everyone is so happy to see you here?” But he just pulled away, looking pained and worried.

“I think…” said the school secretary, searching through her files. “Yes, you’ll need to go to room 112. Just down the corridor and to the left. Mrs. Scocroft will be doing the interview and evaluation.”

“I gotta take a pee, bad!” said Daniel as they walked down the corridor.

There was a men's room and a women's, and Molly didn’t know which to choose. She didn’t dare let him go unescorted—not the strange way he was acting just now.

“In here,” she said, holding the door for him.

“But it says ‘Women.’ I can’t!”

“It's okay.” One of the mothers passed around her and went into the rest room.“Come on. It's fine.”

She took him into a stall and stood behind him as he unzipped his fly and fished out his little thing. In the next stall the woman was letting out a torrential gush, but Daniel, poised over the bowl, was so tense he couldn’t let go.

“Can’t we go home,” he pleaded, turning around.

“Pee already,” she said as the neighboring toilet flushed with a loud whoosh.

When they got to the classroom, Mrs. Scocroft was waiting for them. Her face lit up when she recognized the new pupil.

“Oh, you’re
that
Danny!” she exclaimed. She was much younger than Molly, had her hair tied in a pony tail, and appeared so kind and warm that Molly fervently hoped she would be Daniel's teacher.

A father with a cute little girl in a frilly dress came into the room and stood waiting behind them. When Daniel turned, the man winked and waved. He bent down, whispered something to his daughter, and the little girl kept straining to see Daniel, who kept shielding himself in front of Molly.

“We need to get a sense of his development for placement purposes,” explained Mrs. Scocroft. Then she turned to Daniel and smiled at him kindly.“Well now, Danny…”

“Daniel,” he corrected, his head still down.

“Oh, excuse me. ‘Daniel.’ Yes, that's much nicer. It's more grownup, isn’t it?”

Daniel finally looked up at her, and Molly breathed a sigh of relief.

“Now, Daniel, do you know your birth date?”

“December fourteenth.”

“Excellent! And do you know where you live?”

Of course Daniel knew. He lived in a trailer.

“Yes, but where is the trailer?”

“On the planet Earth.”

The teacher broke out in laughter.“That's very funny,” she said. “Do you know any other funny jokes?”

Daniel didn’t know what she meant.

“Do you like playing with other children?” asked the woman hopefully.

“Playing? You mean like
games?
”

“Well, yes…”

“No,” responded Daniel flatly. “Not really.”

Two other prospective kindergartners accompanied by their parents entered the room and got in line to wait their turn, and Molly could feel Daniel tightening. The cute little girl who stood behind Daniel kept waving to him, trying to catch his eye, but he would have none of it. Molly worried that if he kept this up, they would end by placing him in a group of developmentally stunted kids.

“Danny's very smart, really,” Molly turned back to the teacher. “He's just a little shy. But he's
very
interested in books. All kinds of books,” she went on hastily.

“I hear Daniel knows a lot about weather.”

“Yes. But he's especially interested in animals. And plants. Anything to do with nature. Right, Danny?” She tugged his hand, and he nodded obediently.

“Well,” responded the teacher, still trying to draw Daniel in. “Would you like to learn how to really read those books? You know, by the time Christmas comes you’ll know
all
the letters, and maybe even how to read and write some words. Now how does that sound?”

The books became all-consuming. It was hard going, but Tripoli sat at his kitchen table working his way from one volume to the next, trying to garner some sense of it in language he was comfortable with. Though Tripoli was able to decipher the sections that were in
relatively modern English, he could at best guess at the contents of those that looked to be in Middle or Old English.

Some of the volumes, he found, dealt primarily with observations and calculation of natural phenomena: how weather patterns coalesced and swirled over the globe, predictions for the chaotic behavior of frontal systems, of wind speed and cloud cover and rain fall. There were diagrams of what looked like the jet stream with arrows indicating its seasonal movements. Tripoli had no idea what the equations and diagrams implied, but it was clear that some kind of calculus was being employed to solve sophisticated problems that modern scientists with their computer models had only begun to touch.

In one section, Tripoli found detailed accounts of how various creatures migrated, how their senses were keyed into the angle of the sun, how pigeons utilized the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate their way home, how bees performed dances to inform the other workers in their colonies about the location of a new source of nectar. And all this, he realized enthralled, had already been discovered long before the establishment of modern science. Most intriguing to Tripoli were the careful tabulations marking the onset and end of the growing seasons. They were keyed to the blossoming of specific flowers and these entries were closely correlated with migration patterns of birds.

For countless centuries, at least two thousand years, the authors had been tracking fluctuations in the climate. There were variations in temperature, up and down, periods of cooling and warming observed around the globe. Though scientists could no doubt observe the end result today, what they lacked was the baseline. And the prehistory was all here in the books, the data that science could at best only infer from tree rings or signs buried in the rocks and soil.

But it was the relatively recent entries that riveted Tripoli's attention. Apparently made in the early twentieth century, the
authors had noted that global temperatures were steadily rising. What astounded Tripoli was that at this early date the authors had the foresight to note that, as a result of continuing human activity, temperatures in the future were going to rise at an accelerating rate. And that the regularity in the patterns of rainfall would begin to oscillate with ever-increasing amplitude. They were calling for droughts where there had been an abundance of water. Floods in what had formerly been deserts. If things were allowed to continue, not only would the quality of life suffer, but there would be severe dislocations: crop failures and famines with, inevitably, political instability and war, vast migrations of desperate people in search of habitat and food.

And not only would the planet become progressively less capable of sustaining any significant human population, but countless life forms would be rapidly extinguished as weed species crowded them out of their ecological niches. Catastrophe could be averted, noted the authors, only if humans drastically changed the patterns of their lives. From what Tripoli could discern, it all appeared to revolve around energy, its generation and storage and use. And buried in these arcane books lay the very prescriptions for survival—if one could decipher them.