The Boy on the Porch

  Dedication

  For Lyle

  With loverino

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Also by Sharon Creech

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  The young couple found the child asleep in an old cushioned chair on the front porch. He was curled against a worn pillow, his feet bare and dusty, his clothes fashioned from rough linen. They could not imagine where he had come from or how he had made his way to their small farmhouse on a dirt road far from town.

  “How old a boy is he, do you think?” the man asked.

  “Hard to say, isn’t it? Seven or eight?”

  “Small for his age then.”

  “Six?”

  “Big feet.”

  “Haven’t been around kids much.”

  “Me neither.”

  The man circled the house and then walked down the dirt drive, past their battered blue truck and the shed, scanning the bushes on both sides as he went. Their dog, a silent beagle, slipped into his place beside the man, sniffing the ground earnestly.

  When the man and the dog returned to the porch, the woman was kneeling beside the old cushioned chair, her hand resting gently on the boy’s back. There was something in the tilt of her head and the tenderness of her touch that moved him.

  2

  The young couple, Marta and John, were reluctant to go about their normal chores, fearing that the boy would wake and be afraid, and so they took turns watching over the sleeping boy. It did not seem right to wake him.

  For several hours, they moved about more quietly than usual, until at last John said, “It is time to wake that child, Marta. Maybe he is sick, sleeping so much like that.”

  “You think so?” She felt his forehead, but it was cool, not feverish.

  They made small noises: they coughed and tapped their feet upon the floor, and they let the screen door flap shut in its clumsy way, but still the child slept.

  “Tap him,” John said. “Tap him on the back.”

  She tapped him lightly at first, and then more firmly, as if she were patting a drum. Nothing.

  “Lift him up,” John said.

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t. You do it.”

  “No, no, it might scare him to see a big man like me. You do it. You’re more gentle.”

  Marta blushed at this and considered the child and what might be the best way to lift him.

  “Just scoop him up,” John said.

  She scooped up the boy in one swift move, but he was heavier than she had expected, and she swayed and turned and flopped into the chair with the boy now in her arms.

  Still the boy slept.

  Marta looked up at John and then down at the dusty-headed boy. “I suppose I’d better just sit here with him until he wakes,” she said.

  The sight of his wife with the child in her lap made John feel peculiar. He felt joy and surprise and worry and fear all at once, in such a rush, making him dizzy.

  “I’ll tend to the cows,” he said abruptly. “Call me if you need me.”

  Her chin rested on the child’s head; her hand pat-patted his back.

  “It’s okay,” Marta whispered to the sleeping child. “I will sit here all day, if need be.”

  Their dog normally shadowed John from dawn until dusk, but on this day, he chose to lie at Marta’s feet, eyes closed, waiting. Before John went to the barn, he scanned the drive again and circled their farmhouse. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he hurried on to his chores.

  Marta closed her eyes. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered.

  3

  She must have dozed off, for she was startled by something tapping her face.

  The child’s hand rested on her cheek, his eyes wide, a deep, dark brown, and his face so close to hers that she had to lean back to focus.

  “Oh!” Marta said. “Don’t be afraid. We found you here, on the porch, don’t be afraid.”

  He gazed back at her steadily and then turned to take in the porch, the trees beyond, and the beagle at his feet. He let his hand drop toward the beagle—not reaching for the dog, but as if offering his hand in case the dog should want to sniff it.

  The beagle sniffed the hand and then the boy’s arms and legs. He licked the dust from the boy’s feet.

  “I am Marta,” she said. “What are you called?”

  The boy made no motion to move from her lap and he did not answer.

  “You must be hungry,” Marta said. “Would you like something to eat? To drink?”

  The boy looked out at the bushes, the drive.

  4

  The boy followed Marta into the house and stood beside her as she cut a thick slice of bread, drizzled it with honey, and set it on a plate beside a ripe pear and a glass of milk. His appetite seemed good, for he ate what was on the plate and licked the honey off his finger. Again he offered his hand to the beagle, letting the dog lick the honey.

  “Now,” Marta said, “can you tell me your name?”

  The boy’s fingers tapped on the table.

  “Can you tell me how you came here? Did someone bring you?”

  The boy looked at her pleasantly enough and tapped his fingers lightly on the table, but he said nothing.

  When John returned from the barn, the boy regarded him casually. The boy looked all around the room, equally interested, it seemed, in the man and woman standing before him as in the table, the dog, the wooden cabinet, the washbasin, the cupboards.

  “Look, John, the boy woke up.” Her words sounded silly to her ears.

  “Yes, yes, I see,” John said, smiling. His voice had boomed out of his mouth, much too loud. “And what might your name be, boy?” Still too loud.

  The boy licked his lips, tapped his fingers on the table.

  “He won’t say, John. I’ve tried already.”

  “Is he deaf, do you think?”

  “No, he seems to hear all right. He just doesn’t speak.”

  “Probably too shy,” John said. “That’s okay, boy, take your time getting used to us.” He turned to his wife. “No one’s come for him yet?”

  “No, shh, no.”

  “Surely someone will come for him, Marta.”

  “Shh.”

  The boy reached into his pocket, withdrew a crumpled note, and handed it
to Marta.

  Plees taik kair of Jacob.

  He is a god good boy.

  Wil be bak wen we can.

  5

  When no one had come for the boy by nightfall, John and Marta fashioned a small bed beside their own. Marta offered the boy one of John’s softest shirts to sleep in and set out a basin of warm water and soap for him to wash with. She tucked him into the bed, patted his hand, and hummed a few bars of an old, half-forgotten lullaby, softly, for she was embarrassed that John might hear her and think her foolish. As she stood to go, the boy reached up and tapped her arm five or six times, in that funny way he did, always lightly tapping on surfaces, on his own arm, on the dog, on the floor. His touch startled her, and she nearly wept, so grateful was she for the gesture.

  After the child was asleep, John said, “This is too strange, Marta. Are you sure you have no idea who—”

  “No! No idea. Maybe someone you worked for? Maybe a distant relative?”

  “No, no. Maybe one of your relatives?”

  “You know they have no idea where we live. My family never kept track of anybody.”

  “But then, who?”

  “And why us?”

  “I thought they’d be back by evening, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Surely by tomorrow then.”

  “Surely.”

  6

  At noon the next day, John said, “Marta, I don’t know about all this. What are we supposed to do with the boy?”

  Marta stood on the back porch, watching the child trail a stick through the dirt. The beagle followed close behind, sniffing at the ground.

  “Marta? Should I take the boy with me when I go to town?”

  “No. The people might come back.”

  “What people?”

  “The people who left the note. The ones who said they’d be back.”

  “But they didn’t say when they’d be back, did they? They didn’t say that.”

  After John left for town, Marta took the boy to the barn to see the new kittens and the mother goat and her three-month-old babes. The boy petted the animals and mimicked the kittens skittering and the goats leaping. The beagle watched from the side, intervening only when the boy got too close to the mother goat. When the boy sat in the straw, the kittens crawled over him and the young goats butted their heads under his arms, making the child laugh.

  But it was a silent laugh, a laugh that you could see but not hear. It spread across his face and shook his body; it waggled his arms and legs. It was Marta who gave voice to the laugh, watching the boy. She laughed until her side ached; she laughed until the beagle crawled up into her lap and licked her face, as if to taste the laugh. And as she was laughing, Marta was hoping that the boy might stay a day or two.

  During the twelve-mile stretch into town, John’s mind took as many winding turns as the narrow road. He tried to ready himself for what he might hear in town and for what he should say. Maybe he should go straight to the sheriff’s office and let him know about the boy. He didn’t like the sheriff much. He was a bossy man, given to poking his finger in your face as if to warn you that he knew better about everything and you’d better not waste his time.

  John’s mind turned to Marta’s face when she held the child and when she’d tucked him into bed and when she’d risen in the night to check on him. Maybe, John thought, he should first go to the general store and pick up the tone of things. Gossip found its way quickly to the general store in these small towns.

  Out of nowhere, he thought of jelly beans and how he’d loved them as a child, how his father had taken him into town and let him buy a nickel’s worth of jelly beans from the glass jar on the counter at the general store.

  Maybe, John thought, he would bring home some jelly beans for the boy.

  7

  When John returned home, the farmhouse was empty. He dashed out into the yard and called for Marta. He raced to the barn, calling her name. “Marta! Marta!”

  He didn’t know what made him so anxious. Maybe the people had come for the boy. He should have stayed home with Marta. What if there was a problem—but what sort of problem? What was the matter with him? He wasn’t usually a worrier.

  The barn was empty, except for kittens bouncing over hay bales. The goats and cows were in the fenced enclosures outdoors. And then he saw them, Marta and the boy, at the far end of the enclosure, lining up bottles and cans on the fence.

  “John, there you are—what news? Oh, don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me. Listen to this—”

  The boy raised his hands as if he were a music conductor, and then he began tapping at the bottles and cans with slender sticks. It wasn’t random, reckless tapping: there was a distinct rhythm to it, slow and soft at first, rising to a crescendo, and then falling back to beautiful calm and then rising again. It sounded like waves at the ocean or the wind as it came across the fields and through the trees.

  “I taught him that!” Marta said. “I mean, I was pretending to be a conductor and he put the cans up there and then—oh, I don’t know—I was just tapping them—”

  “You were pretending to be a conductor? You were tapping the cans?”

  “Well, don’t sound so surprised, John.”

  “But how would you know how to be a—oh, never mind.”

  “The boy was imitating my every move and then he took off with it. Listen to him.”

  The boy continued, oblivious to everything but the sounds coming from the bottles and cans.

  “And wait,” Marta said. “Watch what he does with the ladder.”

  Farther down the fence was a ladder which she now dragged toward the boy. She handed the boy thicker sticks—ones John had used for stirring paint.

  “I taught him this!” she said.

  The boy rapped a rhythmic tune against the wooden ladder, on the sides and the rungs, a livelier, louder rhythm, full of life and joy, like a dozen dancers dancing on a wooden floor, or a dozen drummers drumming.

  “You taught him that?” John asked.

  “Only part—just the beginning—and he makes up the rest. He’s very quick to learn, John.”

  Next the boy’s attention moved on to a bucket half full of rainwater. He dipped a stick into the bucket and swirled the water round and round.

  “If it’s bad news from town, don’t tell me, John. Not yet.”

  He rested a hand on her shoulder. “There is bad news and there is good news.”

  “Don’t tell me the bad news, John.”

  “The bad news is—”

  Marta covered her ears. “I said don’t tell me—”

  John moved her hands. “—that you’ve got cat poo on your skirt—and the good news is that there’s no news in town.”

  “No news? No news at all?”

  “Well, now, I take that back. There was a little news. Vernie Gossem broke his leg, kicking his cow.”

  “Serves him right then. Kicking his cow!”

  “I brought something for the boy,” John said, removing a small brown bag from his jacket pocket and opening it for Marta to see its contents. He glanced away, embarrassed.

  “John, don’t you go filling this boy up with too many sweets.”

  “You’re one to talk. Didn’t I see a batch of newly made fudge on the counter?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go ahead now, see if he likes those jelly beans.”

  The boy—Jacob—seemed reluctant to take the jelly beans that John offered him, but at last he held a few in his hand and stared at them.

  “Doesn’t he know what they are?” Marta said.

  John reached into the bag, selected a red jelly bean, and popped it into his own mouth. “Mm,” he said. “Mmm, mm.”

  The boy chose a red jelly bean from his palm and placed it on his tongue. He tapped his lips twice and smiled.

  8

  That night, after the boy had fallen asleep, Marta said, “I just can’t imagine how anyone could drop off their child at a complete strang
er’s house—can you, John? What on earth could they have been thinking?”

  “Maybe they had an emergency.”

  “But why leave him here? It doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

  “He still hasn’t spoken?”

  “Not a word out of him. Do you think he’s simply not able to speak?”

  “Marta, I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know what to make of this boy.”

  They’d both been puzzled by the boy’s silence and equally puzzled by the boy’s inclination to rap and tap on nearly every surface with sticks and spoons and whatever object was nearest. He tapped cups on saucers and a comb on a basin; he tapped book against book and stone against stone; and if there was no object at hand, there were always his hands and his feet patting and flicking and rapping and drumming.

  “Maybe it is just what boys do,” Marta said. “Did you do that when you were young, John?”

  “I don’t think so, no. Maybe sometimes, maybe if I had a stick in my hand . . .” It was hard to remember himself as a boy. Sometimes it hardly seemed possible that he’d ever been a boy at all, but . . . at other times, he felt he was still a boy and he was surprised to be in this man’s body, married and all, with a wife and responsibilities. How had that happened exactly?

  “John, we should stop calling him ‘boy.’ It isn’t right. It makes him sound—I don’t know—unimportant.”

  At that, the beagle nudged John’s leg, as if to say, What about me? What about me?

  “We don’t have a name for our dog, do we, Marta? And he’s not unimportant.”

  “He does so have a name: Beagle.”

  “But he is a beagle, Marta.”

  “I know, and that’s why it’s a good name for him.”

  Then “Boy” should be a good enough thing to call a boy, John thought, but he didn’t say so because as soon as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true. “Boy” was not a good enough thing to call a boy.

  “His name is Jacob, and that’s what we should call him.”

  “When do you think the people will come back for him?”