The Face on the Wall(14)

Eddy said nothing. He stared up at the wall, gazing at the big figure of Aesop and the little ship on the horizon, and in the foreground the hare and the tortoise. He was suddenly excited. “Whassat?” he said, pointing at the wall.

Annie explained. She told him about the race between the hare and the tortoise, and about the ship full of men who were trying to get home after winning a war. It was not enough. He wanted to know about the boy with the sword. “Whassat? Whassat?”

Annie was pleased. Here at last was someone who appreciated her wall. She sat down beside Eddy on the sofa and told him about the sword that was stuck in a rock until the future king of England came along and pulled it out. He wanted more. She showed him her own picture book of Jack and the Beanstalk, and he was charmed. “Whassat?” he said, putting his finger on the speaking harp. “Whassat?” He stared wide-eyed at the giant, towering over jack, and Annie growled, “Fee, fi, fo, fum!”

“Fee, fi, fo, fum!” echoed Flimnap, grinning at Eddy.

“Fee, fi, fo, fum!” shouted Eddy.

Flimnap was finished with Annie’s cabinets, and he went away. But Annie went on and on. She couldn’t stop. There was so much to tell Eddy, so much to show him—all of Hans Christian Andersen and Edward Lear and Beatrix Potter and Babar and Dr. Seuss. The boy was hungry for stories. But then Annie looked at her watch and called a halt. No more today. She had to get back to work.

She tried a diversion. “Here, Eddy, why don’t you draw too?” She made a place for him at her table with sheets of drawing paper and a collection of colored pens. “Look, aren’t they pretty? Red and blue, and, see here, silver and gold.”

At once he grasped the pens and, without hesitation, began to draw. Annie watched him bend his small bullet head over the paper and pick up the silver pen. He seemed content.

For the next two hours she sketched the story of Scheherazade, and forgot about Eddy. When she finally came down the ladder, stiff and sore, he was still working on the same piece of paper.

She looked at it in surprise. “Why, Eddy, that’s really good. Where did you learn to draw like that?” It was a portrait of yesterday’s storm, with silvery spears of rain and golden shafts of lightning.

“For you,” said Eddy, thrusting it at her.

“Oh, thank you,” said Annie, really meaning it. After Eddy went home she tacked it up on the kitchen wall, where it shimmered and glowed.

When Flimnap came in, he admired it too. “My God,” he said, “did you do that?”

“I wish I had. It’s Eddy’s. Isn’t it wonderful?”

After that Eddy came every day. No one came with him. No one came to get him. There was no sign of his parents, or of his sister Charlene.

“Whassat?” he wanted to know. “Whassat, Annie, whassat?” One day he was the first to notice a blotch on the far right end of the wall. “Hey,” he said, “lookit, whassat?”

Annie looked. On the blank white plaster beneath the fifth arched opening of her painted gallery there was another orange stain, with two greenish blobs like cartoon eyes, surrounded by a smear of sulphur yellow.

“It’s a stain,” said Annie doubtfully. “It’s just a stain.” But she was alarmed. Would her whole wall be spoiled by damp and mildew? Where was Flimnap? Once again he would know what to do.

By this time Flimnap was a fixture at Annie’s house. He slept in the gypsy caravan mounted on the back of his truck, and he took his meals there too, using whatever cooking apparatus was connected to the stovepipe that stuck out of the roof.

Annie was grateful for his readiness to turn his hand to anything. Do this, she said, do that, and he did it. What if she were to say, Kiss me, Flimnap! Would he obey like a good servant? Sometimes Annie imagined it, but she wasn’t about to try. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help noticing the nimble grace of Flimnap’s lanky body and the deftness of his narrow hands. What, she wondered, did he think of Annie Swann? Most of the time he was respectful and amusing, but a little remote. Perhaps he liked pretty cuties who sat with their legs crossed coyly, not big busty women who laughed loudly and sat with their legs wide apart and their feet planted firmly on the floor.



So it was probably just kindness, the way he took such care of her safety. Her ladder, he said, was shaky. He would make a scaffolding with a platform on top and wheels underneath, so she could roll the whole thing easily from left to right.

“But won’t it be unsteady?” said Annie. “Won’t it roll out from under me?”

“No, no. There’ll be locks on the wheels.” On the next sunny morning, he set up a rented table saw and drill press on the lawn, along with a pile of four-by-fours from the lumberyard and a set of wheels. The saw screamed, the drill press buzzed and whined. Then Flimnap took the pieces indoors and bolted them together, attaching the wheels and fastening the ladder to a rail so she could move it from side to side.