"Feedback" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

He grew more interested. “Why? Why would they lock him up?”

“Because it would be crazy—” Her breath caught in her throat but she kept the sound of her voice level, and busied herself at the stove, her head down so that he wouldn’t notice anything wrong.

“Why? Why would it be crazy?” The clear voice seemed too clear, as if someone could hear it outside the room, outside the walls, as if the whole town could hear. “Why can’t I wear my cap backward—”

“It’s crazy!” she snapped. The pan clattered loudly on the stove under the violence of her stirring. Always answer a child’s questions with a smile. She swallowed with a dry mouth, and tried.

“I mean it would be queer. It’s odd. You don’t want to be odd, do you?” He didn’t answer, and she plunged on, trying desperately to make him see it. “Only crazy people want to be odd. Crazy people and seditioners.” She swallowed again. “Everyone likes to be like everyone else.” Breathless, she waited, turning her head covertly to see if he understood. He had to understand! He couldn’t talk like this in front of her friends, they might not understand, they might think that she—

She remembered the seditioner who had moved into town three years ago, a plane and tractor mechanic. He had seemed such a nice man on the outside, but he had turned out to be a seditioner, wanting to change something. People from the town had gone to show him what they thought of it, and someone had hit him too hard, and he had died. Johnny mustn’t—

He looked sulky and unconvinced. “Mr. Dunner said everybody could be as different as they liked,” he said. “He said it doesn’t matter what you wear.” He kicked the edge of the sink defiantly, something like desperation welling up in his voice. “He said being like other people is stupid, like caterpillars.”

She thought, Mr. Dunner now, the history teacher, another seditioner. That tall shy man. And he had been teaching the children for five years! Other people’s children too. She turned off the stove and went numbly to the telephone.

While she was telephoning the fourth house, Johnny came out of the kitchen with his cap on and his jacket zipped, ready to go out and play. She lowered her voice. While she talked on the phone he went to the hall mirror, looked into it and carefully took his cap off, rotated it and replaced it backward, with the visor to the back and the ear tabs on his forehead. His eyes met hers speculatively in the mirror.

For a moment she did not absorb what he had done. She had never seen anyone wearing a hat wrong way before. It gave a horrible impression of a whole head turned backward, us if the back of his head were a featureless brown face watching her under the visor. The pale oval of his real face in the mirror seemed changed and alien.

Somehow a steel strength came to her. She remembered that the viewing screen was off. No one had seen. She said into the phone, as if starting a sentence, “Well, I think—” and put her finger on the lever, cutting the connection, and hung up.

Johnny was watching her. Rising, she slapped his face. Seeing the white hand marks, she realized that she had slapped harder than she had intended, but she was not sorry. It was for his sake.

The phone began ringing.

“Go upstairs—” she whispered, breathing hard. “Go to your room—” He went. She picked up the phone. “Yes, Mrs. Jessups, I’m sorry… I guess we were cut off.”

Three calls, four calls, five calls.

When Bruce Wilson arrived home he heard the story. He listened, his hand clutching the bannister rail, the knuckles whitening.

When Pam finished he asked tightly, “Do you think a spanking would do any good?”

“No, he’s all right now, he’s frightened.”

“Are you sure he’s safe?”

“Yes.” But she looked tired and worried. Johnny had been exposed to sedition. It remained to be seen if it would have any effect. Seditioners were always tarred and feathered, fired, driven out of their home, beaten, hanged, burned.

The telephone rang, Pam reached for it, then paused, glancing away from him. Her voice changed. “That will be the vigilantes, Bruce.”

“I have to finish that report tonight. I’m tired, Pam.”

“You didn’t go last time. It wouldn’t look right if you—”

“I guess I’d better go. It’s my duty anyhow.”

They didn’t look at each other. He answered the phone.