he talk?” she asked me in a stage whisper after all her attempts at conversation had been ignored.
I shook my head. “Not too well. That’s one of the things that Boo came here to learn.”
“Ohhh, poor Boo.” She stood up and reached out to pat his arm. “Don’t worry, you’ll learn. I don’t learn so good myself so I know how you feel. But don’t worry. You’re probably a nice boy anyways.”
Boo’s fingers fluttered and the vacant eyes showed just the smallest signs of life. A quick flicker to Lori’s face, then he turned and faced the wall.
I decided to work with Lori and leave Boo to stand. There was no need to hurry. “I’ll be right here, Boo,” I said. He stood motionless, staring at the wall. I turned my chair around to the table.
Lori flipped open her workbook. “It’s dumb old spelling again today. I don’t know.” She scratched her head thoughtfully. “Me and that teacher, we just aren’t doing so good on this. She thinks you oughta teach me better.”
I grinned and pulled the book over to view it. “Did she tell you that?”
“No. But I can tell she thinks it.”
Boo began to move. Hesitantly at first. A step. Two steps. Mincingly, like a geisha girl. Another step. I watched him out of the corner of one eye as I leaned over Lori’s spelling. Boo walked as if someone had starched his underwear. His head never turned; his arms remained tight against his sides. The muscles in his neck stood out. Every once in a while his hands would flap. Was all this tension just to keep control? What was he trying so desperately to hold in?
“Look at him,” Lori whispered. She smiled up at me. “He’s getting himself to home.”
I nodded.
“He’s a little weird, Torey, but that’s okay, isn’t it?” she said. “I act a little weird myself sometimes. People do, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Now concentrate on your spelling, please.”
Boo explored the environs of the classroom. It was a large room, square and sunny from a west wall of windows. The teacher’s desk was shoved into one corner, a repository for all kinds of things I did not know what to do with. The worktable stretched along below the windows where I could have the most light on my work. The few student desks in the room were back against one wall. Another wall housed my coat closet, the sink, the cupboards and two huge storage cabinets. Low bookshelves came out into the room to partition off a reading corner and the animals: Sam, the hermit crab; two green finches in a huge home-made cage; and Benny the boa constrictor, who had taught school as long as I had.
Boo inched his way around the room until he came upon the animals. He stopped before the birds. At first he did nothing. Then very slowly he raised one hand to the cage. Flutter, flutter, flutter went his fingers. He began to rock back and forth on his heels. “Hrooop!” he said in a small, high-pitched voice. He said it so quietly the first time that I thought it was the finches. “Hrooooop! Hrrrroo-ooop!” Both hands were now at ear level and flapping at the birds.
“Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah,” he began, still softly. “Ee-ee-ee-ee. Ah-ee. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee.” He sounded like a resident of the ape house at the zoo.
Lori looked up from her work, first at Boo and then at me. She had a very expressive glance. Then with a shake of her head she went back to work.
Boo was smiling in an inward translucent sort of way. He turned around. The stiffness in his body melted away. “Heeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!” he said gaily. His eyes focused right on my face.
“Those are our birds, Boo.”
“Heeheeheeheeheeheehee! Haahaahaahaahaahaa! Ah-ah-ah-ah!” Great excitement. Boo was jumping up and down in front of the cage. His hands waved gleefully. Every few moments he would turn to look at Lori and me. I smiled back.
Abruptly Boo took off at a run around the classroom. High-pitched squeally laughter lanced the schoolroom quiet. His arms flopped widely like a small child playing at being an airplane, but there was a graceful consistency to the motion that made it unlike any game.
“Torey!” Lori leaped up from her chair. “Look at him! He’s taking off all his clothes!”
Sure enough Boo was. A shoe. A sock. A shirt. They all fell behind him as he ran. He was a clothes Houdini. His green corduroy pants came down and off with hardly a break in his rhythm. Boo darted back and forth, laughing deliriously, clothing dropping in his wake. Lori watched with horrified fascination. At one point she put her hands over her eyes but I saw her peeking through her fingers. A goofy grin was glued to her face. Boo made quite a sight.
I did not want to chase him. Whatever little bit of lunacy this was, I did not want to be a party to it. My greatest concern was the door. Within minutes Boo had completely stripped and now capered around in naked glee. I had not enjoyed chasing him the first time when he had been fully clothed. I could just imagine doing it now. This was a nice, middle-class, sedate and slightly boring elementary school without any classes of crazy kids in it. Dan Marshall, the principal, swell guy that he was, would have an apoplectic fit if some kid streaked down one of his corridors. I would hate to be the cause of that.
Boo laughed. He laughed and danced from one side of the room to the other while I guarded the door. I longed for a latch on that door. That had been one of the small things my classrooms had always had. Locks, like all other things, are neither good nor bad in themselves. There are times for them. And this was one. It would have been better if I could simply have latched the door and gone back to my work. As it was now. Boo had me playing warden, trapped into participating in his game. It gave him no end of pleasure.
For almost fifteen minutes the delirium went on. He would stop occasionally, usually not far from me, and face me, his little bare body defiant. I tried to assess what I could see in those sea-green eyes. I could see something but I did not know what it was.
Then during one of his pauses he lifted a hand up before his face and began to twiddle his fingers in front of his eyes. A shade went down; something closed. Like the transparent membrane over a reptile’s eye, something pulled across him and he went shut again. The small body stiffened, the arms came close to his sides, protectively. No life flickered in his eyes.
Boo stood a moment, once more a cardboard figure. Then a wild flap of his arms and he minced off across the room and dived under a piece of carpet in the reading center. Wiggling, he slipped nearly entirely under until all that was visible was a lumpy carpet and two bare feet.
Lori gave me a defeated look as I returned to the worktable. “It’s gonna take a lot of work to fix him. Tor. He’s pretty weird. Boy, and I mean not just a little weird either.”
“He has his problems.”
“Yeah. He don’t got no clothes on for one thing.”
“Well, that’s okay for now. We’ll take care of that later on.”
“It’s not okay, Torey. I don’t think you’re supposed to be naked in school. My daddy, I think he told me that once.”
“Some things are different from others. Lor.”
“It isn’t right. I know. You can see his thing. Girls aren’t supposed to look at those. It means you’re nasty. But I could hardly help
