Going Home
By ronnie_isaacs
- 461 reads
"How high do you reckon the clock is?" Barry turned to his mates in
the playground at Dean's End Comprehensive School and gesticulated
towards the school clock tower.
"About two hundred feet." suggested Freddy, an untidy-looking
youngster. Barry poked the frail-looking kid on his other side.
"And you, clever-clogs, how about you?"
Jackie pondered for a moment. "No," he said, "Nowhere near that, but it
should be easy to measure roughly."
The others laughed. Barry poked him hard. "How can you possibly measure
the height of something? You'd have to climb up it with a long tape
measure!"
Jackie countered "It's much easier than that. You stand with your back
to the tower, bend over looking between your legs and walk away. When
you can see the top you know your distance from the tower is the same
as its height."
The other boys laughed uncontrollably, one or two of them falling to
the ground and rolling around. "Just how do you make that out,
brainbox?" asked Freddy. With a brain as big as his it's not surprising
that he's completely round the bend!"
Jackie explained. "When you look between your legs you are looking at
an angle of forty-five degrees, and the tangent of that is one. So your
distance from the tower is the same as its height."
"Go on then," taunted Barry, "Let's see you do it!"
Jackie turned and bent over. He walked away from the tower, stopped and
paced back towards it. "It's about fifty feet" he announced.
"Better straighten out his brains!" yelled Freddy, swiping Jackie
around the head. Jackie fell, striking his head on the asphalt.. He got
up shakily just as the bell went for the end of break, and walked
slowly back to class.
The boys sat in the science room. Mr. George was about to begin the
lesson when he noticed bleeding from a cut on Jackie's head. "Come out
here James!" he called. Jackie dutifully arose and walked to Mr.
George's desk. "How did you get that cut?" demanded the teacher. "As if
I didn't know!" Jackie stood silently. Mr. George led him to the First
Aid box and took out an adhesive dressing. Applying it to the cut, he
whispered "I'll give you a lift home, I want to talk to your
people."
Driving to Jackie's home Mr. George decided to confide in him. "Look
here, James," he said, "You must realise that the other boys really
resent your superior intelligence. It would be in your best interest
not to volunteer too much, as they take it as a pretext to knock you
around". He stopped the car at the traffic lights and looked across at
his charge. The boy was not only smarter than most but looked different
as well. Very pronounced elfin face with long, narrow ears, large eyes
of a strange iridescent gold colour and fingers which seemed out of
proportion to the size of his hands, he seemed out of this world.
"I'll try," responded Jackie, "but their ignorance really gets under my
skin. Why should they take it out of me when it is they who are not so
clever?"
As the car began to move Mr. George returned "That's the whole point,
clever people often did have a hard time at school, and the cleverer
they were the worse the time they had. In your case you are having it
because they are very jealous of you. Be a martyr to knowledge if you
like, but if you want to survive in one piece keep a low profile.
"Somehow," Mr. George told Jackie's parents, I think he is finding it
very difficult to cope with this continual taunting and
bullying."
Mrs. James fiddled with her tea-cup. "What can we do?" she asked.
"If I were you," suggested Mr. George, I would seek professional help.
They looked out of the window and saw Jackie contemplating the sky. He
was holding up his arms, moving them about as though measuring
distances.
"What's that, Jackie?" asked Mr. James.
"Nothing, dad." replied the boy.
"How can it be nothing if you are holding it in your hand?" asked his
father. Jackie reluctantly held out the small orange plastic rectangle.
Mr. James noticed that it was covered in strange pale hieroglyphic-like
characters. "It's a letter." whispered Jackie. "Very private."
As they lay in bed that night Mr. and Mrs. James considered the
situation. "He really is strange," sobbed Mrs. James, "and getting
stranger." Her husband thought for a moment, then said "I think there
is something in what that teacher said. We'll have to get help."
The couple sat in the child psychologist's office while their son sat
on the floor immersed in a book. The father was explaining to Dr.
Mackey, the psychologist: "He was not really our child, we adopted
him."
Dr. Mackey leaned forward. "From an agency?" he asked.
"Not actually," said the mother, "well, not at all. We were on holiday
in the country about four years ago and we found him wandering in a
field. He was unable to tell us where he came from or who his parents
were, so we took him to the police."
Mr. James continued the story. "We returned home, and later had a call
from our local social services people asking if we could foster him. We
liked him so we agreed, and later we formally adopted him. The
psychologist scratched his chin while he thought for a few
moments.
"Was he always as precocious as you say?" he asked.
"Oh yes," rejoined Mrs. James. "Embarrassingly so. He seemed to know
more about most things than we did, even after only a minimum of
schooling."
Jackie's father suddenly rapped the desk. "I've just remembered. That
funny plastic thing he said was a letter, he was clutching it when we
found him. We let him keep it and forgot all about it."
"Do you mind if I speak to the boy on his own?" asked Mackey. "He might
give me a couple of clues if he were not distracted by your presence."
The parents left the room.
"Right, Jackie, let's have your side of the story." coaxed the
psychologist.
Jackie thought for a while, then whispered "I don't remember much, but
I do remember being in that field with the letter in my hand."
Dr. Mackey smiled. "What does it say?" he asked, "Or would you rather
not say?"
"Oh no," smiled Jackie. "I don't mind at all. It's not really a letter,
rather a set of instructions on how to get back to where I came from.
At the time I was found I did not fully understand it, but as I picked
up more maths and science it became clearer. I think I can just about
make sense of it now."
When Mr. and Mrs. James returned to the room Mackey told them "He
certainly is very precocious, to be expected from super-intelligent
kids, and he really has a fertile imagination. I suggest you get him to
take up an interest to turn his mind away from his fantasies."
It so happened that a couple of weeks later was Jackie's birthday, or
rather the anniversary of the day he was found, and his parents spent a
lot of money on a construction set. The boy was very excited. "Just
what I need!" he enthused. He spent hours in the conservatory building
a most mysterious contraption. He incorporated some of the bits of
electronics he had made in his bedroom.
A couple of weeks later a announced "It's ready for launching!" His
parents looked at each other, smiling, and his father helped get the
apparatus out to the lawn. It looked rather like a child's high chair,
with a seat, but a control panel instead of the usual table-top. Around
it, arranged vertically, were rings of lights, and an old car battery
rested in the base.
Jackie climbed in, fiddled with the switches on the control panel, and
the lights lit up. They shone brighter and brighter, the circles joined
in a continuous column and a strange green glow surrounded Jackie as he
sat in the seat.
As the light from the column intensified it enveloped him and abruptly
shot up taller, reaching the sky. A hum emanating from the contrivance
rose to a scream,
Mr. James started forward to drag out his son, when suddenly there was
an explosion of flashes of coloureds light, and with a loud "Whoosh!" a
strong wind flattened the grass. The parents' jaws dropped as nothing
remained, save, for a few seconds, a bright pencil of light reaching
high into the clouds.
? R. J. Isaacs, 2001
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