Then he broke the pencil in half and looked sullenly and defiantly at Rudy. But Rudy was smiling. Suddenly he reached across the table and held Nick's head steady between his hard, callused palms. His hands were warm, gentle. Nick could not remember the last time he had been touched with such love. His mother had touched him like that.

Rudy removed his hands from Nick's face. He picked up the half of the pencil with the point on it. He turned the paper over to the blank side. He tapped the empty white space with the tip of the pencil, and then tapped Nick. He did it again. And again. And again. And finally Nick understood.

You are this blank page.

Nick began to cry.

Rudy came for the next six years.

... where I learned to read and write. A man named Rudy Sparkman came to help me. I was very lucky to have him. In 1984 the orphanage went broke. They placed as many kids that they could, but I was not one of them. They said I would get in with a family after a while and the state would pay them for keeping me. I wanted to go with Rudy but Rudy was in Africa working for the Peace Corps.So I ran away. Being sixteen, I don't think they looked for me too hard. I figured if I could stay out of trouble I would be all right, and so far so good. I have been taking the high school correspondence courses one at a time, because Rudy always said education is the most important. When I settle down for a while I'm going to take that high-school equivalency test. I will be able to pass it soon. I like school. Maybe I will go to college someday. I know that sounds crazy, a deaf-mute bum like me, but I don't think it's impossible. Anyway, that's my story.

Yesterday morning Baker had come in around seven-thirty while Nick was emptying wastebaskets. The sheriff looked better.

"How you feeling?" Nick wrote.

"Pretty good. I was burnin up until midnight. Worst fever I've had since I was a kid. Aspirin didn't seem to help it. Janey wanted to call the doc, but around twelve-thirty the fever just broke. I slep like a log after that. How are you doing?"

Nick made a thumb-and-forefinger circle.

"How's our guests?"

Nick opened and closed his mouth several times in a mime jabbering. Looked furious. Made banging gestures on invisible bars.

Baker threw back his head and laughed, then sneezed several times.

"You ought to be on TV," he said. "Did you write your life story down like you said you was gonna try to do?"

Nick nodded and handed the two sheets of longhand over. The sheriff sat down and read them carefully. When he was done he looked at Nick so long and so piercingly that Nick stared down at his feet for a moment, embarrassed and confused.

When he looked up again Baker said: "You've been on your own since you were sixteen? For six years?"

Nick nodded.

"And you've really taken all these high school courses?"

Nick wrote for some time on one of the memo sheets. "I was way behind because I started to read & write so late. When the orphanage closed I was just starting to catch up. I got six h.s. credits from there and another six since then from La Salle in Chicago. I learned about them from a matchbook cover. I need four more credits."

"What courses do you still need?" Baker asked, then turned his head and shouted: "Shut up in there! You'll get your hotcakes and coffee when I'm damned good and ready and not before!"

Nick wrote: "Geometry. Advanced math. Two years of a language. Those are the college requirements."

"A language. You mean like French? German? Spanish?"

Nick nodded.

Baker laughed and shook his head. "Don't that beat all. A deaf-mute learning to talk a foreign language. Nothing against you, boy. You understand that."

Nick smiled and nodded.

"So why you been driftin around so much?"

"While I was still a minor I didn't dare stay in one place for too long," Nick wrote. "Afraid they'd try to stick me in another orphanage or something. When I got old enough to look for a steady job, times got worse. They said the stock-market crashed, or something, but since I'm deaf I didn't hear it (ha-ha)."

"Most places would have just let you ramble on," Baker said. "In hard times the milk of human kindness don't flow so free, Nick. As for a steady job, I might be able to put you onto something around here, unless those boys soured you on Shoyo and Arkansas for good. But... we ain't all like that."

Nick nodded to show he understood.

"How's your teeth? That was quite a shot in the mouth you took."

Nick shrugged.

"Take any of those pain pills?"

Nick held up two fingers.

"Well, look, I got some paperwork to do on those boys. You go on with what you were doing. We'll talk more later."

Dr. Soames, the man who had almost hit Nick with his car, came by around 9:30 A.M. A.M. the same morning. He was a man of about sixty with shaggy white hair, a scrawny chicken neck, and very sharp blue eyes. the same morning. He was a man of about sixty with shaggy white hair, a scrawny chicken neck, and very sharp blue eyes.

"Big John tells me you read lips," he said. "He also says he wants to see you gainfully employed, so I guess I better make sure you're not going to die on his hands. Take off your shirt."

Nick unbuttoned his blue workshirt and took it off.

"Holy Jesus, lookitim," Baker said.

"They did a job of work, all right." Soames looked at Nick and said dryly, "Boy, you almost lost your left tit." He pointed to a crescent-shaped scab just above the nipple. Nick's belly and ribcage looked like a Canadian sunrise. Soames poked and prodded him and looked carefully into the pupils of his eyes. At last he examined the shattered remains of Nick's front teeth, the only part of him that really hurt now, in spite of the spectacular bruises.

"That must hurt like a sonofabitch," he said, and Nick nodded ruefully. "You're gonna lose them," Soames went on. "You-" He sneezed three times in quick succession. "Excuse me."

He began to put his tools back into his black bag. "The prognosis is favorable, young man, barring strokes of lightning or further trips to Zack's ginmill. Is your speaking problem physical, or does it come from being deaf?"

Nick wrote: "Physical. Birth defect."

Soames nodded. "Damn shame. Got to think positive, though, and thank God that He didn't decide to give your brains a stir while He was at it. Put your shirt on."

Nick did. He liked Soames; in his way, he was very much like Rudy Sparkman, who had told him once that God had given all deaf-mute males an extra two inches below the waist to make up for the little bit He had subtracted from above the collarbones.

Soames said, "I'll tell em to give you a refill on that pain medication down at the drugstore. Tell moneybags here to pay for it."

"Ho-ho," John Baker said.

"He's got more dough stashed away in fruit jars than a hog has warts," Soames went on. He sneezed again, wiped his nose, rummaged around in his bag, and brought out a stethoscope.

"You want to look out, Gramps, I'll lock you up for drunk and disorderly," Baker said with a smile.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Soames said. "You'll open your mouth too wide one day and fall right in. Take off y'shirt, John, and let's see if your boobs are as big as they used to be."

"Take off my shirt? Why?"

"Because your wife wants me to look at you, that's why. She thinks you're a sick man and she doesn't want you to get any sicker, God knows why. Ain't I told her enough times that she and I wouldn't have to sneak around anymore if you were underground? Come on, Johnny. Show us some skin."

"It was just a cold," Baker said, reluctantly unbuttoning his shirt. "I feel fine this morning. Honest to God, Ambrose, you sound worse'n I do."

"You don't tell the doctor, the doctor tells you." As Baker pulled his shirt off, Soames turned to Nick and said, "But you know it's funny how a cold will just start making the rounds. Mrs. Lathrop is down sick, and the whole Richie family, and most of those no-accounts out on the Barker Road are coughing their brains out. Even Billy Warner in there's hacking away."

Baker had wormed out of his undershirt.

"There, what'd I tell you?" Soames asked. "Ain't he got a set of knockers on him? Even an old shit like me could get horny looking at that."

Baker gasped as the stethoscope touched his chest. "Jesus, that's cold! What do you do, keep it in a deep freeze?"

"Breathe in," Soames said, frowning. "Now let it out."

Baker's exhale turned into a weak cough.

Soames kept at the sheriff for a long time. Front and back both. At last he put away his stethoscope and used a tongue depressor to look down Baker's throat. Finished, he broke it in two and tossed it into the wastebasket.

"Well?" Baker said.

Soames pressed the fingers of his right hand into the flesh of Baker's neck under the jaw. Baker winced away from it.

"I don't have to ask if that hurt," Soames said. "John, you go home and go to bed and that isn't advice, that's an order."

The sheriff blinked. "Ambrose," he said quietly, "come on. You know I can't do that. I've got three prisoners who have to go up to Camden this afternoon. I left this kid with them last night, but I had no business doing it, and I won't do it again. He's mute. I wouldn't have agreed to it last night if I had been thinking right."

"You never mind them, John. You got problems of your own. It's some kind of respiratory infection, a damn good one by the sound, and a fever to go with it. Your pipes are sick, Johnny, and to be perfectly frank, that's no joke for a man who's carrying around the extra meat you are. Go to bed. If you still feel okay tomorrow morning, get rid of them then. Better still, call the State Patrol to come down and get them."

Baker looked apologetically at Nick. "You know," he said, "I do do feel kind of dragged out. Maybe some rest-" feel kind of dragged out. Maybe some rest-"

"Go home and lie down," Nick wrote. "I'll be careful. Besides, I have to earn enough to pay for those pills."

"Nobody works so hard for you as a junkie," Soames said, and cackled.

Baker picked up the two sheets of paper with Nick's background on them. "Could I take these home for Janey to read? She took a real shine to you, Nick."

Nick scrawled on the pad, "Sure can. She's very nice."

"One of a kind," Baker said, and sighed as he buttoned his shirt back up. "This fever's comin on strong again. Thought I had it licked."

"Take aspirin," Soames said, latching his bag. "It's that glandular infection I don't like."

"There's a cigar box in the bottom desk drawer," Baker said. "Petty cash fund. You can go out for lunch and get your medication on the way. Those boys are more dildoes than desperadoes. They'll be okay. Just leave a voucher for how much money you take. I'll get in touch with the State Police and you'll be shut of them by late this afternoon."

Nick made a thumb-and-forefinger circle.

"I've been trusting you a lot on short notice," Baker said soberly, "but Janey says it's all right. You have a care."

Nick nodded.

Jane Baker had come in around six yesterday evening with a covered dish supper and a carton of milk.

Nick wrote, "Thanks very much. How's your husband?"

She laughed, a small woman with chestnut brown hair, dressed prettily in a checked shirt and faded jeans. "He wanted to come down himself, but I talked him out of it. His fever was up so high this afternoon that it scared me, but it's almost normal tonight. I think it's because of the State Patrol. Johnny's never really happy unless he can be mad at the State Patrol."

Nick looked at her quizzically.

"They told him they couldn't send anybody down for his prisoners until nine tomorrow morning. They've had a bad sick-day, twenty or more troopers out. And a lot of the people who are on have been fetching people to the hospital up at Camden or even Pine Bluff. There's a lot of this sickness around. I think Am Soames is a lot more worried than he's letting on."

She looked worried herself. Then she took the two folded sheets of memo paper from her breast pocket.

"This is quite a story," she said quietly, handing the papers back to him. "You've had just about the worst luck of anyone I ever heard of. I think the way you've risen above your handicaps is admirable. And I have to apologize again for my brother."

Nick, embarrassed, could only shrug.

"I hope you'll stay on in Shoyo," she said, standing. "My husband likes you, and I do, too. Be careful of those men in there."

"I will," Nick wrote. "Tell the sheriff I hope he feels better."

"I'll take him your good wishes."

She left then, and Nick passed a night of broken rest, getting up occasionally to check on his three wards. Desperadoes they were not; by ten o'clock they were all sleeping. Two town fellows came in to check and make sure Nick was all right, and Nick noticed that both of them seemed to have colds.

He dreamed oddly, and all he could remember upon waking was that he seemed to have been walking through endless rows of green corn, looking for something and terribly afraid of something else that seemed to be behind him.

This morning he was up early, carefully sweeping out the back of the jail and ignoring Billy Warner and Mike Childress. As he went out, Billy called after him: "Ray's gonna be back, you know. And when he catches you, you're gonna wish you were blind blind as well as deaf and dumb!" as well as deaf and dumb!"

Nick, his back turned, missed most of this.

Back in the office, he picked up an old copy of Time Time magazine and began to read. He considered putting his feet up on the desk and decided that would be a very good way to get in trouble if the sheriff came by. magazine and began to read. He considered putting his feet up on the desk and decided that would be a very good way to get in trouble if the sheriff came by.

By eight o'clock he was wondering uneasily if Sheriff Baker might have had a relapse in the night. Nick had expected him by now, ready to turn the three prisoners in his jail over to the county when the State Patrol came for them. Also, Nick's stomach was rumbling uncomfortably. No one had showed up from the truck-stop down the road, and he looked at the telephone, more with disgust than with longing. He was quite fond of science fiction, picking up falling-apart paperbacks from time to time on the dusty back shelves of antique barns for a nickel or a dime, and he found himself thinking, not for the first time, that it was going to be a great day for the deaf-mutes of the world when the telephone viewscreens the science fiction novels were always predicting finally came into general use.

By quarter of nine he was acutely uneasy. He went to the door which gave on the cells and looked in.

Billy and Mike were both standing at their cell doors. Both of them had been banging on the bars with their shoes... which just went to show you that people who can't talk only made up a small percentage of the world's dummies. Vince Hogan was lying down. He only turned his head and stared at Nick when he came to the door. Hogan's face was pallid except for a hectic flush on his cheeks, and there were dark patches under his eyes. Beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead. Nick met his apathetic, fevered gaze and realized that the man was sick. His uneasiness deepened.

"Hey, dummy, how about some brefus?" Mike called down to him. "An ole Vince there seems like he could use a doctor. Tattle-talein don't agree with him, does it, Bill?"