The Silent Boy Read Online Free Page B

seemed astonishing to me, to have what had seemed a terrible wound be gone entirely, turned to a faint pink line.
    The man named Sturges seemed surprised as well, and kept opening and closing his hand as if he had newly learned to do it.
    "Keep it clean, still," Father told him. "Wear a glove on it when you're working. And keep it limber. Sometimes a scar like that will tighten. You don't want that." He wrapped the tools he had used in a strip of cloth and replaced them in the bag. I knew why he wrapped them, because he had told me once. You could never use an instrument twice, because it might carry infection. So you wrap them and keep them set aside after they are used, until they could be properly cleaned. I tried to do it with my little toy bag of instruments, but it didn't seem to matter, really, and some of them couldn't hold together for being washed, anyway.
    They shook hands, and I saw the man open and close his injured one again, after shaking, as if he were still surprised that it worked. Then he nodded to me, and said "Miss" before he turned and left.
    Father snapped his bag closed, looked around, and sighed. "That boy," he said. "He slipped off while we were busy. He did it last time, too."
    I was frightened. The mill with its noisy parts seemed dangerous, now that Jacob had
disappeared into it. But Father told me not to worry. "I know where to find him," he said, and took my hand. "You hold on to me now, though, Katy. Here, Jackson, put this in my buggy, would you?" He handed his medical bag to the clerk who sat at a table outside the office door.
    With Father's hand tight around mine, I followed him into the huge open section of the mill, where flecks of grain spun against the daylight that came in from narrow windows. Off to one side I saw workers who were dusted with flour so that their faces looked ghostly. One man laughed, and his open mouth was dark against the powdered face. I knew he was only a man, but I held Father's hand tighter while we looked for Jacob.
    "He'll be by the grindstone," Father said, leaning down so that I could hear him against the noise of gears and workers. "He likes that big stone. You heard him in the buggy, making the sound."
    "Father?" I asked. "Is he an imbecile? Is that what it is, to be touched in the head?"
    "I wouldn't call Jacob that," Father said firmly, "because
imbecile
means having no brains. And Jacob, he's
different,
all right, but he knows how to go to what he loves, and how to stay safe near it. That takes brains, I'd say. Katy—there he is."
    I looked over and saw Jacob in the shadows, watching the great stone turn and grind. He was
rocking back and forth where he stood, and though I couldn't hear, I saw his hands moving at his sides and knew that he must be murmuring, "
Shoooda, shoooda, shoooda.
" Father was right that he knew to stay safe, out of the way, and I saw that the sound and rhythm of the turning grindstone made him happy.
    When Father told him it was time to go, he pretended he didn't hear. He had a funny way of doing it. He put his hands up to cover his ears, and he continued his rocking and humming. But Father touched him firmly again and mentioned the horses. "We'll give the horses a bit of grain before we leave," he told Jacob. And so he came.
    We left the mill to find that the back of the buggy was piled with sacks of flour as payment. Jacob fed each horse a handful of grain and then climbed up and sat atop the flour sacks, his cap pulled low over his forehead.
    We took the long way home, past the Stoltz farm, and left Peggy's brother there with a bag of flour for his family. Before he took it, he touched the necks of the horses and made a sound to them, though he said no human goodbye to us. A dog dashed to the buggy to greet him; and I saw, as he turned and walked to his own barn, carrying the flour, that two cats ran out from the shadows there, rubbed against him, matched their steps to his, and followed him in.

4. NOVEMBER