LITMIR.BIZ

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I’m going home to bed… Will you take charge of this child…” His voice dropped to a mumble like an old man’s. Omri just caught the words, “… back to their lessons…” Then Mr Johnson let go of Patrick’s arm, turned, walked most unsteadily to the door, and then put his hand on it and swayed as if he might fall over.

      “Mr Johnson!” said Mrs Hunt in a shocked tone. “Shall I call a taxi?”

      “No… No… I’ll be all right,” And the headmaster, without looking back, tottered out into the corridor.

      “Well!” exclaimed Mrs Hunt. “Whatever have you been doing to the poor man?”

      Neither of them answered. Omri was staring at Patrick, or rather, at his pocket. Patrick’s shoulders were heaving and he was not looking at anybody. Mrs Hunt was obviously flummoxed.

      “Well. You’d better go to the wash-room and wash your faces, both of you, and then go back to your classroom as fast as you can toddle,” she said in her funny old-fashioned way. “Run along!”

      They needed no second telling. Neither of them said a word until they were in the boys’ wash-room. Patrick went straight to a basin and began running the cold water. He splashed some on to his face, getting his collar soaked. Omri stood watching him. Obviously he was as upset as Omri, if not more so. Once again Omri felt their friendship trembling on the edge of destruction. He drew a deep breath.

      “You showed him,” he said at last in a trembling voice.

      Patrick said nothing. He dried his face on the roller-towel. He was still gasping the way one does when one has been crying.

      “Give them back to me. Both of them.”

      Patrick reached slowly into his pocket. He put his closed hand backwards. Omri looked as his fingers slowly opened. Little Bull and Boone were sitting there, absolutely terrified. They were actually clinging to each other. Even Little Bull was hiding his face and they were both trembling.

      With infinite slowness and care, so as not to frighten them more, Omri took them into his own hand. “It’s all right,” he whispered, bringing them near to his face. “Please. It’s all right.” Then he put them carefully in his pocket and said to Patrick in a low voice, “You bloody, stupid fool.”

      Patrick turned. His face gave Omri more of a jolt than Mr Johnson’s had. It was white-mottled-red, with swollen eyes.

      “I had to!” he said. “I had to! He’d have phoned my dad! They’d have made me tell in the end. Anyhow, he didn’t believe in them. He thought he was seeing things. He just stood there, gaping at them. He didn’t even touch them. When they moved he gave a yell and then I thought he was going to fall over. He went white as a ghost. You saw. He didn’t believe his eyes, Omri, honest! He’ll think he dreamt it!” Omri went on looking at him stonily. “Can’t I – can’t I have Boone?” asked Patrick in a small voice.

      “No.”

      “Please! I’m sorry I told – I had to!”

      “They’re not safe with you. You use them. They’re people. You can’t use people.”

      Patrick didn’t ask again. He gave one more hiccupping sob and went out.

      Omri took the little men out of his pocket again and lifted them to his face. Boone was lying flat on his front, holding his big hat down over his ears as if trying to shut out the world. But Little Bull stood up.

      “Big man shout. Give fear!” he said angrily. “Small ears – big noise – no good!”

      “I know. I’m sorry,” said Omri. “But it’s okay now. I’m going to take you home.”

      “What about wife?”

      His promise! Omri had forgotten all about that.

      Another Indian! Another live little person to worry about… Omri had heard about people going grey-haired almost overnight if they had too much worry. He felt it might easily happen to him. He thought back to the time, only a few days ago, when this had all started and he had fondly imagined it was going to be the greatest fun anybody had ever had. Now he realized that it was more like a nightmare.

      But Little Bull was looking at him challengingly. He had promised.

      “Right after school,” he said, “we’ll go to the shop.”

      There was still another hour of lessons to be got through. Fortunately it was two periods of art. In the art-room you could go away into a corner and even sit with your back turned to the teacher if you liked. Omri went to the furthest and darkest corner.

      “Omri, don’t try to draw there,” said the art teacher. “You’re in your own light – it’s bad for your eyes.”

      “I’m going to draw something huge anyway,” said Omri.

      All the others sat near the long windows. He was quite alone, and if the teacher approached him he would hear her feet on the bare floor. He suddenly felt he must – he simply must get a little fun out of this somehow. He cautiously fished Little Bull and Boone out of his pocket.

      They stood on the sheet of white drawing paper as if on a stretch of snow, and looked about them.

      “This school place?” asked Little Bull.

      “Yes. Sshhh!”

      “Sure don’t look much like the school Ah went to!” exclaimed Boone. “Whar’s the rows o’ desks? Whar’s the slate ’n’ bit o’ chalk? Why ain’t the teacher talkin’?”

      “We’re doing art. We can sit where we like. She doesn’t talk much, she just lets us get on with it,” replied Omri in the softest whisper he could possibly manage.

      “Art, eh?” asked Boone, brightening up. “Say, that wuz mah best subject! Ah wuz allus top in art, on’y thing Ah wuz any good at! Still draw a mite when Ah gits a chance, if’n ain’t nobody around t’laugh at me.” He reached into the pocket of his own tiny jeans and fished out a stub of pencil almost too small to see. “Kin Ah draw a mite on yor paper?” he asked.

      Omri nodded. Boone strode to the very centre of the paper, looked all round at the white expanse stretching away from him in every direction, and gave a deep sigh of satisfaction. Then he knelt down and began to draw.

      Little Bull and Omri watched. From the microscopic point of Boone’s pencil there developed a most amazing scene. It was a prairie landscape, with hills and cacti and a few tufts of sage-brush. Boone sketched in, with sure strokes, some wooden buildings such as Omri had often seen on cowboy films – a saloon with a swinging sign reading ‘Golden Dollar Saloon’ in twirly writing; a post office and general store, a livery stable, and a stone house with a barred window and a sign saying ‘Jail’. Then, moving swiftly on his knees, as it were from one end of his ‘street’ to another, Boone drew in the foreground – figures of men and women, wagons, horses, dogs, and all the trappings of a little town.

      From Boone’s point of view, he was drawing something quite large, making the best use of his vast piece of paper; but from Omri’s, the drawing was minute, perfect in its detailing but smaller than any human hand could possibly have made it. He and Little Bull watched, fascinated.

      “Boone, you’re an artist!” Omri breathed at last, when Boone had even made the mud on the unpaved street look real. Little Bull grunted.

      “But not like real place,” he said.

      Boone didn’t trouble to answer, in fact he was so absorbed he probably didn’t hear. But Omri frowned. Then he understood. Of course! Boone’s town was part of an America which was not thought of during Little Bull’s time.

      “Boone,” he whispered, bending his head down. “What year is it – your town – your time?”

      “Last time Ah saw a newspaper it was 1889,”

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