Читать книгу Echoes - Roger Arthur Smith - Страница 11

Two

All the next day, Will Dubykky had the fey boy, “Matthew Gans, Jr.,” on his mind. He suspected what the boy really was. Not a boy. Not a human, but a related, though darkly distinct, creature. He intended to find out for sure. Duty required it, in fact.

After work he returned home and got into his ‘51 Ford pickup, venerably battered and covered with lumpy pea-green enamel by its previous owner. Perched on his shoulder, clutching so hard that the claws dug into Dubykky, was a new friend, a young crow. Together they drove out of town looking for obscure back roads where they might come across abandoned shacks. In some such place, Dubykky expected, they would find the boylike creature.

The crow and Dubykky had met only hours earlier. He was walking home from his office, as he liked to do on a fine spring day, and on a whim diverted to the Mineral County Courthouse park to enjoy the sunlight filtering through its cottonwood trees. He felt an affinity for trees, difficult to satisfy in Hawthorne. It was a lucky whim.

He had cocked back his fedora and was just settling himself onto a bench to have a careful, undisturbed think about the creature when a plaintive, anxious squawk rang out nearby. He searched among the middle branches of a cottonwood until he spotted the squawker, a crow.

Dubykky liked crows and was immediately entranced. It looked like a fledgling. Even when they reached more or less full size, the juveniles were distinct from their elders. Their feathers were finer, fluffier around the neck, and had a subtle gray overtone; their bills showed faint red streaks at the back. In the nest, when an adult arrived the chicks crooned a low, harsh, breathy sound, like wax paper being crumpled slowly, and the adults crooned back in kind. These were identification sounds, Dubykky supposed. There was something so intimate and comfortable and trusting about crows when they were together that Dubykky was almost envious. They belonged to each other. Belonging—it was a mysterious concept to him, but recently, an appealing one.

The crow was looking downward intently and shifting its weight from claw to claw. Dubykky followed its gaze, and as he did so, he heard a disorderly flapping of wings in the lower limbs of a nearby tree. There he spotted a second fledgling, this one hanging upside down, thoroughly flummoxed. It flapped its wings to right itself but failed. The limbs were too close together. It tried and tried. Finally, it let go and dropped to the next limb. But it missed its grasp and ended hanging again, this time by one claw.

Dubykky’s first impulse was to go to its aid. The bird was easily within reach. He didn’t dare, though. Crows were rightly shy of humans, and the first crow might call in others to mob him and drive him away. Then he would not get to watch how things turned out for the youngster. Instead, he called out for it to drop to the ground and get its bearings there.

Dubykky was half in earnest, too, yet he did not expect the crow to take the advice. Whether by chance or choice, though, it did. It let go again, landing in a heap on the grass, and for a moment lay there stunned. Finally, it struggled up on its claws and looked around, then waddled seemingly at random over the lawn in a side-to-side roll, tail wagging to balance, shoulders hunched, the head jutting forward with each step. This fledgling had not yet mastered the crow walk. It stumbled once and had to flare its wings. Dubykky chuckled in an appreciative way. The kid had gumption!

Maintaining a respectful distance, Dubykky got up and followed the bird as it ambled along. Its sibling was cawing aggressively now. Still, he considered catching the bird. Crows were smart, great mimics of human words if cared for and educated properly. And they were companionable. While Dubykky was mulling the idea, the fledgling came to its own decision. It hunched down, jumped up with wings outstretched and, flapping like a feather-duster in a whirlwind, made it atop the park’s lone picnic table. For a long time it perched there, looking by turns confused and bored, yawning wide its beak, then probing among its wing feathers. When Dubykky paced a few more steps forward, it canted its head to keep an eye trained on him, the whitish membrane blinking rhythmically over the black bulge, but it did not flee.

And so there the two stood, eying each other, only a dozen feet apart. Suddenly aware that the cawing had stopped, Dubykky glanced upward. The sibling was gone.

Then something happened that Dubykky had never before experienced, not ever in his long observation of crows and their cousins. The youngster crooned to him. Not only that, but it gathered itself and leapt into the air once more, windmilling its wings for all it was worth until it came to rest on Dubykky’s shoulder, knocking off his hat.

Terrifically pleased, Dubykky left the hat on the ground and made his way slowly homeward, assuring the young crow of his respect and goodwill in a polite, careful voice. There was no one about to goggle at the outlandish sight, a prominent local attorney with a crow on his shoulder. Dinnertime, the town’s central daily ritual, kept people indoors.

It was all a very good omen and irresistibly flattering. Befriending him, the fledgling clearly perceived that Dubykky was fundamentally different. That Dubykky could be a friend.

Dubykky decided to call him Jurgen, for he was male. He caressed feathers under the crow’s beak and spoke the name aloud each time. Jurgen remained rooted to Dubykky’s shoulder all the way home. The bird sometimes gurgled gently in response but seemed on the whole content to listen to whatever Dubykky said, and he had a lot to say, because he had a specific purpose in mind for Jurgen. It required, first, that Dubykky teach the vocabulary of his own existence: of destiny, crime and retribution, evil and duty, pursuit and punishment, vengeance and death. Dubykky took care to repeat important words in as many contexts as possible.

His house lay at the end of English Street at the town’s edge, a half mile from the park, single-story, flat-roofed, pale ochre, and tidy as a new deck of cards. Inside, he set Jurgen on the back of a dining table chair. A quick survey of his refrigerator, and he laid out a plate of raw hamburger. For himself, Dubykky grilled a pork chop and heated up canned spinach. He didn’t really care what he ate.

They sat companionably together, Jurgen mostly quiet after the excited outburst of screeching that came with his first taste of hamburger. In the slanting light through the tiny kitchen window above the sink, his black eyes glinted like ebony. When he finished, he hopped back onto Dubykky’s shoulder and pecked affectionately at his earlobe. At that point, Dubykky’s fondness for him was cemented. Yet it would not be his to enjoy for long, and Dubykky felt a pang of regret.

He squelched it. The boylike creature would benefit far more from a boon companion like Jurgen. The creature was far needier.

NOW IN THE PICKUP, Jurgen might have been having second thoughts about his new acquaintance. When Dubykky had turned the key in the ignition and the engine ground and fired, Jurgen flared his wings, uttering a censorious hiccoughing sound. Dubykky murmured soothing words as they backed out. “Grawp,” Jurgen objected after Dubykky shifted into first gear and the truck lurched forward down English Street. It seemed wrong to him that while he was standing still the world moved past, and at a steadily increasing pace.

Matthew Gans, Jr.—if that was indeed the correct name, which Dubykky had no reason yet to believe—might be lurking anywhere. Miles upon miles of sand and scrub, mountains, gullies, and lake shore all lay within the walking range of a sturdy boy. And, if Dubykky’s suspicions proved correct, the creature was more than merely sturdy. This could mean days of searching. Yet Dubykky’s experience told him that the creature would seek to conceal himself until he was ready to strike. That gave Dubykky the idea where to look.

“I’ll call you Junior,” he said aloud, just to get the feel of the name, “whether you’re Matthew Gans or not.” Jurgen took a small step sideways and peeped around at him, curious.

Hawthorne was one of those high desert towns that had always seen better days. It was surrounded by a halo of neglect. From its outskirts, dirt roads cut through the sand flats and into and out of ravines and around little knolls of rock and greasewood, where invariably stood trailers or tarpaper shacks at irregular intervals, most empty, at least temporarily, companions to scavenged automobiles and jumbled appliances. If Nevada’s highways linked its far-flung towns into a state, it was the dirt roads that lashed a town to the landscape. Where the sandy ruts ultimately led revealed what the community cared about, past and present—a mine, a ranch, a reservoir, a fossil bed, a hunting range, a campground, a field cabin, a hot spring, a graveyard, a lake, an inexplicable pasture, or, as was sometimes the endpoint, a petering out, an idea abandoned.

Dubykky started down three of the roads until each time he came upon a shack leaking light from behind a sheet-curtained window, then turned back. A deserted road was what he sought. The fourth he explored proved to be just that. He followed its ruts until they dwindled away and put the Ford into reverse. It was too risky to turn around in the soft sand, so he stayed in reverse until he returned to the last of the shacks he had passed.

He stopped nearby, letting the truck idle while he emptied his mind of every thought and sense impression. It was an old familiar practice of his, and the nighttime desert produced nothing to distract him. The last thing he noted before he achieved complete blankness was the faint susurrus of Jurgen’s even breathing. The crow had fallen asleep.

Nothing from the first shack intruded on his inner void, not the least whisper. He was wearing a wool sweater and heavy corduroy trousers against the intensifying night chill. Even so, cold soon penetrated, and he realized it, a mentation that ended the trance. He tried to re-enter it but shivered. Strange, that. So slight a chill had never distracted him. It was one more instance, if a small one, of change creeping into his long, errant life, a life in which change, if it came at all, came for a reason, foreseeably.

That had not been the case recently. That very morning Dubykky had experienced something nearly unprecedented: a gush of warmth for a human. This unaccustomed emotion arose while he was standing behind his desk at Dubykky & Cledge, Esq., Attorneys at Law. It was evoked, in fact, by his brand-new partner.

Dubykky and Milton Cledge could not have been more dissimilar, even discounting that Cledge was a twenty-six-year-old human and Dubykky had lived more than half a millennium as something that only looked human. It was their here-and-now temperamental differences that mattered, and they did not put Dubykky off. He got along with humans just fine when he needed to. But Milt was proving to be almost superhuman in a modest, inadvertent way. The exceptional thing about him was his face. Not its appearance, which was somewhat adolescent and doughy. Its expressions. Milt could not control them—did not even realize he couldn’t. That ought to have simply been ridiculous, yet the first time they met, Dubykky perceived at once that there was much more to Milt’s expressions than mannerism. They were the emotional eruptions of a decent person. The perfect antithesis of Dubykky.

He had been interviewing applicants to become his partner in the Hawthorne law practice, until then a solo concern. Cledge was among them. He walked into the interview looking determined but wary. It took place in Reno because that was Nevada’s largest city and conveniently near the California border. Nevada had no law school of its own, so most fledgling lawyers came from those in California, McGeorge above all. Dubykky rented a Mapes Hotel conference room for the purpose, the tinny jingle-jangle of slot machines just audible in the distance, the air scented by tobacco smoke, nervous sweat, greasy food, and hair oil. How better to make a Nevada newcomer antsy?

Yet Cledge surprised Dubykky. He did not fidget or perspire. He sat still and straight in his chair, hands on his lap. He met Dubykky’s eyes expectantly. His smile, if tentative, was pleasant, unassuming. Dubykky was charmed despite himself. For that reason, he skipped the usual opening pleasantries. He asked straight off, “What would you do if you discovered I was cheating our clients out of their money?”

The bluntness was rewarded. Cledge’s grimace of revulsion was pure reflex. “Tell them,” he answered tightly.

“Tell them? Really? Not ask me about it first?” Dubykky pretended to be affronted.

Bewilderment wrinkled Cledge’s brow. “No. If I knew it to be true, you’d be untrustworthy. It would be best to warn off clients.”

“So you’d favor clients over our partnership.”

A moue of offense, then a squint of craftiness, and Cledge replied, “There would be no law practice without clients.” His eyes widened. He evidently realized the answer was evasive.

It amused Dubykky, both the evasion and the telltale expression. If principled, Cledge was yet eager for the job.

Dubykky pressed, “I suppose you’d report me to the Bar. Or would it be the police?”=

Cledge’s eyebrows leapt in astonishment, then came rushing back down from indignation. “Not right off! Of course not. I’d confront you first.” He shifted in his chair while his eyes wandered uncertainly. When he continued, he tried to sound reasonable, and it was wonderfully stilted. “Sometimes there are mitigating circumstances. Defrauding, that is to say mulcting, may be redressed privately.”

Honest, unsubtle, labored, naïve. Dubykky was content.

“Do you gamble, philander, or patronize brothels?”

Cledge reddened. His chin lifted, and he put his hands on the chair arms to hoist himself to his feet. Dubykky waved for him to remain seated.

“I take it that means no to all three.”

Incredulous outrage distorted Cledge’s whole face. “I’m a Catholic, and a devout one.”

Earnest, sensitive, upright. At that point Dubykky ceased evaluating Cledge simply as a prospective partner. He began considering him as a husband for Mildred. As the interview progressed, Cledge proved himself to be sensible and intelligent as well, if only reasonably so. He was also reasonably slow to recognize humor, reasonably strong in physique, and reasonably homely in appearance. As such he was the sort of man who would feel lucky winning the hand of a lovely, educated young woman like Mildred and temperamentally mild enough to put up with her waywardness. Best of all, he was completely unable to dissemble. Even someone as self-absorbed as Mildred could read his heart. Nothing would be so conducive to a solid, functional marriage for her than actually recognizing what her husband was thinking at any given time, rather than imputing to him what she wanted him to be thinking. Dubykky hired Cledge on the spot.

Seated in the pickup pondering his unexpected affection for Cledge and the uneasy sense that his own nature was somehow changing, Dubykky thought back to when his partner had walked into his office earlier that day.

“Were you talking to yourself?” Cledge inquired.

Dubykky had been venting to himself about Mildred’s inattention during a phone call he had just ended. Cledge’s expression was jocular, yet perplexity also lurked there. He must have already come to the conclusion that Dubykky was eccentric, perhaps even downright odd, and was trying to define its extent. Cledge had the lawyer’s propensity to gather information. That Dubykky talked to himself interested him, and it wasn’t an idle, finicky interest. Only sensible. Cledge needed to understand his partner if they were to work together effectively.

“That’s right,” Dubykky lied straight-faced. “I was exclaiming to myself how much violence, turmoil, and misery there is in the world.” He gestured open-handed at the Nevada State Journal, the Reno morning paper, lying open on his desk. Cledge knit his brow. The headline only involved celebrities: “Lucille Ball Divorced from Desi Arnaz.” But he took the point. The day before, the headline had announced the electrocution of the author Caryl Chessman, which was controversial worldwide, and there was a nearly constant drumbeat of impending war with the Soviet Union, or the Warsaw Pact, or China, or North Korea, or any combination of them. News was bad news, and it was frequently bad for the very reasons that Dubykky mentioned.

Yet too, news was just news. To Cledge, it was born old and quickly faded. What truly occupied his mind was more immediate and durable: working during the work week and during free time pursuing his true passion. That passion had come as a second surprise to Dubykky during the job interview. After satisfying himself that Cledge was well trained in family and property law, he asked about hobbies, as if an afterthought. It was most definitely not that. A man’s hobby expressed how he attached himself to the world around him. A useful thing for Dubykky to know.

“I’m a rockhound,” Cledge replied, showing pleasure, pride, wistfulness.

Dubykky was delighted. A collector’s mentality was acceptable because it was simple to manipulate. More than that, Cledge’s hobby revealed his brand of good sense. For a rockhound, the west-central Great Basin was like Hollywood to a film buff. Everything that glittered, or could glitter with a bit of polish, was here, from amethysts to zeolites. Though not a native Nevadan, that rare breed, Cledge was in his natural habitat, for Mineral County was well named. It could not have a more appreciative, knowledgeable immigrant.

Any collector of rare beauty like Cledge yearned to show off his discoveries. If Mildred were to display interest—Dubykky tucked the thought away for now and laid out the contract that Cledge had come to ask about. It involved water rights. A ticklish issue in Nevada, water. There was so little of it.

“Oh, Milt?” he said as, their discussion concluded, Cledge was turning for the door. “Do you remember Mildred Warden? We had dinner with her at the El Capitan.”

The question was disingenuous. Dubykky knew that Mildred would be remembered. Cledge’s face told him that was so: remembered and with keen interest. Mildred had that effect on men.

He continued, “She and her mother, Gladys, would like you to join them for dinner tomorrow night. I’ll be there too—I’m practically a member of the family—and I took the liberty of accepting on your behalf. Does that suit you?”

It did. Cledge’s expression of gratitude was far more restrained than the eager anticipation his face broadcast.

ALTHOUGH THESE RECOLLECTIONS sped through Dubykky’s mind as he sat in the dark, he was by now thoroughly chilled, and deeply put out with himself for drifting from his trance. He gently transferred Jurgen to the seat and put on a jacket he had brought.

Backing the truck onto the yard’s hardpan, he turned around and moved on to the next hovel, a gray travel trailer propped on railroad ties, a quarter-mile farther downslope. There, stopped and in his trance, he sensed a faint vibration, like a velvet puff of air in his mind. This was not the right place either, though. The source of the sensation remained distant. He moved on.

At the next shack Dubykky had hardly stilled himself when evil irritated him like a mote in his inner eye. Turning off the engine, he removed a flashlight from the glove compartment and slid out of the cab. He did not switch it on, not wanting to startle Jurgen, who was now awake. Jurgen delicately sidestepped up his arm and onto his shoulder, and Dubykky picked his way by starlight through the junk-strewn yard.

The shack’s door, made out of mortar-shell crates, hung on rubber strap hinges. The shack proper, under the tarpaper, comprised walls of pallets on end, buttressed by vertical and horizontal two-by-fours, the whole structure about ten feet square. Dubykky wondered that the wind had not already leveled it, yet when he grasped the door frame and gave it a shake, the structure barely shuddered, flimsy as it looked. He nudged in the door with his foot. It swung open easily, silent except for a clack when it struck a milk crate behind it. On his shoulder, Jurgen started, then moaned a low, dry, drowsy nhrr in complaint.

Dubykky ducked through the doorway, clicking on the flashlight but keeping it trained straight at his feet. The roof was on a slant, the highest end over the entrance, only inches above his head. There was just one small window, curtained with a yellow terrycloth rag, to his left. Seated in that corner, legs splayed out on the rough plank floor, was the boy. He turned his head slowly at Dubykky. His features were pools of black.

Dubykky shifted the light cone so that the faint edge illuminated the boy’s whole figure. A lumpish body, a chunky head, heavy eyebrows, wild brown hair, and a blank expression. Or almost blank. A little twitch of the eyebrows hinted interest. Even a measure of recognition. Perhaps the boy sensed something about Dubykky. In any case, it was not the way a human boy would react if an adult found him alone in a dark shack.

Lying in the boy’s lap was the book that Mildred had checked out to him, Every Child’s Omnibus of Wisdom.

“Speak the name,” Dubykky commanded. If the boy was indeed the type of creature that Dubykky suspected, the command compelled a reply.

And so it was. As Mildred had described, a series of sounds like m, t, g, n, and s came in response, a slow, harsh garble. They formed no recognizable word or name.

“Matthew Gans?” asked Dubykky.

“Matthew Gans,” the boy pronounced precisely.

Dubykky regretted that Mildred had spoken names to the boy, although he could not fault her for trying to do her job. It was only that the creature would absorb and repeat everything indiscriminately.

“Mitchell Garrison?” he asked again.

“Mitchell Garrison.”

“Matilda Gosse?”

“Matilda Gosse.”

“Manuel Gonzales?”

“Manuel Gonzales.”

The boy enunciated each name, reacting to none more than the others. How would Dubykky find out which, if any, was the right name? It was best, he decided, not to worry about it for now.

He shook his head in an exaggerated manner. “No. You are not Matthew Gans or Mitchell Garrison or Matilda Gosse or Manuel Gonzales,” he said. “You are Junior. Say ‘Junior.’”

“Junior,” echoed the boy.

Following a long pause, during which neither the man nor the boy made a sound, Dubykky went to his side and crouched. He set the flashlight on the narrow ledge under the window so that the light shone against the back wall and revealed him to the boy as much as the boy to him. Dubykky looked long into his eyes, which did not waver. The few times Junior blinked, he did so with unnatural slowness. Dubykky picked up and studied the hand that had so disturbed Mildred. It indeed had only three fingers and a thumb. There was no indication that it had been mangled, though. Where the pinkie should have been there was no hint of a stump. Not even a metacarpal to support a finger. The sensible, human conclusion would be that Junior had a birth defect.

Dubykky knew better. It was a sign. A crucial sign. The mark of four. Its presence provided final confirmation of what Dubykky had surmised. The creature seated before him was an echo of evil like all the other echoes he had encountered. Every one had the mark of four somewhere on the body. Reflexively, his hand went to his own mark, the perfect diamond of moles at the base of the neck.

The sight of Junior seated there moved Dubykky. Another echo, another monster on the loose, another confrontation, more death. He had seen so many of them. He was suddenly weary, wishing Junior could be a … departure. Somehow.

He shook his head to clear it. What was going on with him? It was not his place to feel such things, only to watch and support evil’s procedures. He forced a smile, expecting, and getting, no response from Junior.

“Do you know why you are here?” he asked gently, circumspectly, spreading his arms to indicate the world.

Junior slid his hands over the cover of Every Child’s Omnibus of Wisdom and lifted it straight up. Then he repeated the movement with one leaf after another until five stood vertical, and page six was exposed. He rested his hand by the illustration there. It showed three boys. One was dark-haired, his face rugged, his eyes slitted, and his mouth set in a wicked grin. He was shoving a second boy, who had yellow hair, rosy cheeks, and an expression halfway between a smile and astonishment. He was falling backwards over a third boy, pinched, meager, mouse-haired, and scared, who was on hands and knees. Below was a nursery rhyme:

This little boy is the good little boy.

He smiles on all he sees.

This little boy is the bad little boy.

He does but as he please.

This little boy is the fool of a boy.

He gets down on his knees

That the bad little boy

The good little boy

Shall sorely trick and tease.

Junior put his finger on the bad boy’s head.

“Yes.” Dubykky spoke slowly, kneeling. “But you’re not here about little boys.” He rested his forefinger under the T of the rhyme’s third line and drew it across as he read, “‘This little boy is the bad little boy.’ And so are some adults.”

“And so are some adults,” repeated Junior. He pronounced the words exactly but in a dead, flat tone.

Dubykky settled into a cross-legged position, a movement that made Jurgen spread his wings to keep balance. Junior’s eyes shifted to the bird and remained there until Dubykky reached over and turned the pages back to the very beginning of the book. He put his finger under the text’s first word, which began a short rhyme centered in a page-filling illustration: a broad meadow bordered by forest and split by a brook, rounded mountains in the background, in the sky a smiling sun shooting out thick golden rays.

“‘For every evil,’” he prompted, pointing. After a hesitation, Junior looked at the words and repeated them. Dubykky slid his finger to the second half of the line, “under the sun.” Junior repeated again. And so on:

There is a remedy or there is none.

If there is one, seek to find it;

If there is none, never mind it.

In this way, Dubykky led the boy through the entire book. On occasion, Jurgen perked up at one or another of the words, even a phrase, and croaked out an imitation. Then Junior would shift his attention to the crow until Dubykky softly encouraged him to return to the lesson. After they read all fifty-four pages, Dubykky closed the cover and told Junior to recite. He did so, flawlessly, every rhyme and fable, in an uninflected, leisurely, whispery voice, ending,

Come when you’re called,

Do what you’re bid,

Shut the door after you,

And never be chid.

“Why are you here?” Dubykky asked once more.

“This little boy is the bad little boy. And so are some adults,” Junior told him.

“Where is the bad one?”

It was the all-important question. How much did the echo already know? Only a little, it seemed. Junior held out his palm in the direction of Hawthorne.

“Who is the bad one?”

Junior did not reply. Jurgen shifted uneasily on Dubykky’s shoulder as the silence lengthened.

Who had caused the boy to appear in a desert town, a wind-blown valley, four thousand feet above sea level? Because someone had. After a human exploited and then murdered four others, purely for self-satisfaction, the lingering malevolence created a disturbance in that small portion of nature that was exclusively human, and rebounded. An echo. The echo of evil assumed a human form. Dubykky could not tell Junior who his target was. It was for the boy, not him, to follow the spoor; the mission was to tempt, lure, and trap the human monster. The echo killed that human and, if all went in accordance with evil’s intent, died in the process. The rules of evil, which bound Dubykky as much as Junior, recognized no other outcome, lamentable as that might be.

Dubykky’s role? That was more delicate. He would watch, certainly. He might teach, he might guard against error and inhibiting injury, but above all it was for him to ensure a clear, neat, final vengeance.

For the rest of the night—Dubykky could get by on almost no sleep—he taught Junior words and how to put them together and the rudiments of ideas and reasoning.

Before leaving, he mulled what his parting words ought to be. He might not get the chance to speak to Junior again. He could not predict how the events would play out. Except at the very end.

“When the time comes for you to kill,” he said carefully, touching Junior’s chest, “you will feel it here, and it will feel right.”

The boy blinked at him but gave no sign of comprehending. Dubykky did not expect it. But he did hope that when Junior fulfilled his destiny, his own role would be simply as a witness, not as an executioner. For Dubykky’s duty was just that. If either survived the echo-human encounter, he would complete the killing.

An echo’s existence was lonely and brief, sprung from violent death and ending in violent death. Whatever happened to Junior in between, Dubykky did not wish the boy to be companionless. And this did not have to be so. While Junior had taken in the dismal tutelage placidly, his eyes never wavering, he did show a flicker of interest whenever Jurgen repeated something. The young crow sparked emotion in the young echo. It pleased Dubykky, for that was exactly as he had hoped.

“Now I have someone I want you to get acquainted with.”

It was early on in the morning but before the eastern mountains developed a pale border of light, the little shack still dark beyond the yellow glow of the flashlight. Dubykky roused Jurgen, who was beginning to doze again, and guided him onto his wrist. Smiling at the crow, he pointed to his mouth and then said to Junior, “Smile.” The boy repeated the word dutifully. Dubykky pointed to Jurgen and spoke his name.

“Jurgen,” Junior repeated.

“Smile at Jurgen,” Dubykky told him, and Jurgen, grouchy from being awakened before dawn, also enunciated, “Smile,” if in a discontented scrape.

Junior made an attempt to imitate Dubykky’s broad smile, faltering at first so that his unexercised lips looked wormy, but then managing it. Slowly, crooning to the young crow all the while, Dubykky extended his arm until his wrist was right by Junior’s shoulder. He shook his hand lightly. The bird stepped across, then daintily lifting his claws turned himself around until he faced Dubykky again. As he did, his tail feathers brushed Junior’s cheek. The boy smiled once more, and it was unforced, natural. With the neck flexibility equivalent to a newborn infant’s, he swiveled his head ninety degrees and directed the smile at the bird. He crooned to it, emulating Dubykky meticulously.

He left boy, bird, and book in that sad cobbled-together shack feeling at odds with himself. Homely as he was, Junior had a winning smile, attractive because it was unworldly. Already, Dubykky was growing fond of him. Such a nice smile was typical for creatures like Junior, though, and made no difference in the long run. Only the fated dark, cruel end awaited him. It had been a lucky chance, then, that Dubykky had found Jurgen so that Junior could share what life was allotted him.

Yet something was awry this time. Always before, an echo came into being knowing the name of its target human. Junior had only a jumble of sounds to guide him.

That was one reason Dubykky was moved to teach Junior. It was not strictly out of necessity. Junior would follow his destiny one way or another, eventually. Dubykky taught nonetheless. To smooth the boy’s path in part and in part to discover why there was a muddle with the human name. That was not the entire truth of it either, though. Dubykky also taught for his own sake. Junior’s haziness about his destined human made Dubykky wonder about his own blighted, obscure origin in medieval Hungary. That was the real heart of it. At some point before memory, Dubykky must have been like Junior. He felt fellowship.