Oddballs (5 page)

Jack had threaded a piece of string through a foil-wrapped chocolate coin. He sat Tycho comfortably down on a chair, meticulously pulled the window shades down, one by one, turned off the light, and told Danny to focus a flashlight beam on the coin.

“Keep your eyes on the coin,” Jack instructed Tycho in his level, emotionless voice, swinging the coin slowly back and forth. “Focus all your attention on the coin.… There is nothing else … nothing but the coin.… You are so comfortable, so relaxed, so sleepy.… Your eyelids are growing heavy.… You can't keep them open now.… All you want is sleep … deep and restful sleep …”

There was enough light for Danny and Jack to see Tycho's eyelids flutter and then slowly close. “You are deeply asleep now … but you can still hear my voice,” Jack said. “Are you asleep now?”

“Yes,” Tycho uttered, in a voice nearly as flat and expressionless as Jack's.

“Okay. Turn on the light, Danny,” Jack said, so cool and matter-of-fact that he might have successfully achieved this scientific result dozens of times before.

Danny flipped on the light and then hurried over to Tycho, eagerly bending down to study his face. Tycho's eyes remained closed, his arms hanging at his sides in the straight-backed chair. Danny turned quickly back to Jack. “You think he's really hypnotized?” he asked him in an excited whisper, rubbing his hands together. “He's not faking it or anything?”

“We'll find out,” Jack said blandly. He took one careful, measured step toward Tycho and stood staring down at him for a long moment, thinking.

“Well? Is he?” Danny said, hopping with impatience.

Jack ignored him, watching Tycho. Finally he said, “Tycho, your arms are tied to your sides by a very strong rope. The rope is very tight, wrapped around you many times, and you can't reach back to untie it. Can you feel the rope?”

“Uh-huh,” Tycho said, nodding slightly, pressing his arms against his body.

“You can't move your arms, no matter how hard you try. Can you move your arms?”

Tycho's arms quivered. His body tensed. “No, I … I can't,” he replied, with a slight frown.

“But … your nose itches. It itches something terrible. You can't stand it for another second,” Jack mildly informed him.

Tycho's nose twitched. His hands clenched; his shoulders tightened. Gradually, veins stood out on his arms as he strained, trembling, to move them. They wouldn't move. His forehead creased; his cheeks flushed with effort. He grunted.

Danny's eyes lit up. He looked at Jack, then Tycho, then at Jack again—who was watching Tycho dispassionately.

Suddenly Danny's face fell. “He's faking it; he's
got
to be!” he exclaimed. “You're faking it, Tycho, you jerk!” he accused him, lifting his fist threateningly.

Tycho didn't notice. He went on struggling miserably to move his arms, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“Tycho, the rope is gone,” Jack said quietly.

Tycho's hands shot to his nose, furiously scratching. His shoulders sagged in relief.

“He's faking it,” Danny said. “I know what he's like. This is boring.” He sighed and scowled at Tycho.

Tycho continued scratching ferociously. Jack wandered over to Danny's desk, picked up the hypnotism pamphlet, and paged through it in a leisurely manner.

Tycho's fingernails tore more wildly at the skin of his nose.

“Hey, I think his nose is starting to bleed,” Danny said, no longer so skeptical.

“Umm,” Jack murmured, slowly turning a page. “Oh, yeah … that one.” He studied the pamphlet a moment longer, then finally closed it and carefully positioned it on the desk beside Danny's beloved plane, staring thoughtfully down at the booklet for a while.

“His nose
is
bleeding,” Danny said, sounding worried. “Maybe you better do something before he hurts himself.”

Jack turned vaguely toward Tycho. “Huh? Oh. Okay, the itch is gone, Tycho.”

Tycho let his hands fall limply to his sides, seemingly unaware of the drop of blood that dangled from the tip of his inflamed nose and then dropped down onto his chin.

“But now … you are thirsty.” Jack plodded back toward Tycho. “You haven't had any water in days … days and days. You've never been so thirsty in your life. Your mouth feels like it's stuffed with cotton. Oh, yeah … Your arms are tied to your sides again. And you can open your eyes now.”

Tycho's arms stiffened. His eyelids lifted; he stared blankly at nothing. His lips parted slightly, bits of them sticking together. The tip of his tongue emerged, moving slowly back and forth.

“You are dying for a drink of water; the thirst is killing you,” Jack recited in a monotone, as though reading from a book.

Tycho's throat contracted with a sick, rasping choke.

“You will do anything for a drink. But,” Jack mentioned, “your hands are still tied. You can't turn on a faucet or pick up a glass. And you are dying of thirst. You are so thirsty that—”

Even Jack was startled when Tycho bounded from the chair and dashed out of the room. Danny raced after him, and Jack actually managed to sort of lope along behind.

They found Tycho in the bathroom, kneeling beside the toilet, his head thrust deep into the bowl, his arms at his sides. His mouth was immersed in the water, making gurgling and splashing sounds as he desperately lapped and gulped it down. He kept it up until Jack granted Tycho the information that his thirst was quenched. Tycho immediately pulled his head out of the toilet bowl.

“I guess he's not faking it,” Danny had to admit when they were all back in his room, Tycho docilely seated in the chair again.

“There's a final proof,” Jack said, after taking his time to consult the pamphlet once more. “Okay, Tycho, listen carefully,” he instructed him. “After I wake you up, you will forget everything that happened while you were asleep—except one thing. Whenever anybody says the word
window
, you will pick up the nearest object you can find and throw it to the floor. Do you understand?”

Tycho nodded.

“You will forget everything that happened except for that one instruction. Okay?”

“Okay,” Tycho repeated.

“Now I'm going to count to three,” Jack said. “And when I say ‘three,' you will be fully awake. Here we go. One … two … three.”

Tycho blinked. His eyes focused on Jack, then on Danny. “Why did you turn the light back on?” he asked. “Aren't you going to hypnotize me?”

Tycho was confused when Danny burst into laughter. “What's so funny?” he wanted to know. “I don't get it. Why didn't you hypnotize me?”

“We just decided not to,” Danny said. “Jack, I think you should open the
window
shades.”

Tycho stood up, walked over to Danny's desk, picked up the beautiful model plane, and hurled it to the floor, smashing it to pieces.

Danny did not share Jack's mild amusement. “Tycho!” he howled. “How could … Why did …” He smacked Tycho hard across the face, then sank mournfully to the floor, gathering up the ruined plane.

Tycho put his hand to his cheek. But he seemed more upset about the plane than the slap. “I'm sorry, Danny,” he cried, on the verge of tears because of the terrible thing he had done. “I don't know what happened!
Really
. All of a sudden I just
had
to do it.”

“You're faking it!” Danny screamed at him. “You're just pretending it was because …” He bit his lip, looking down at the plane again, wondering.

“Danny, something
made
me do it,” Tycho piteously and hopelessly persisted. “I don't understand it. I'm so sorry. Please believe me. I know it sounds crazy. But … but …”

“Forget it, Tycho,” Danny snarled at him in frustration. He glared up at Jack. “If he's
not
faking it, then it's your fault,” he said. “Maybe you better—”

“Come on now, kids! Time for Jack to go home,” Mom called from downstairs. She had just come back from a long, hot day at work, and her tone of voice indicated that she was not to be argued with. “And would you try to hurry, for a change? I've got a lot of things to do.”

Danny and Tycho went along for the ride, Tycho in the front seat. Danny fuming and Jack smiling remotely to himself in the back. As Mom irritably waited while Jack made his way up the front walk, she said, “It's hot, Tycho; roll down the window.”

Tycho grabbed Mom's handbag, sitting open beside her on the seat, and threw it to the floor of the car, scattering most of its contents.

“Tycho, you monster!” Mom screamed. “Are you
nuts
? Pick it all up this instant!”

Tycho obeyed immediately, not holding back his tears now. Danny wasn't amused this time either.

They were both abnormally quiet during supper. The rest of the family chatted away as usual.

Mom talked about her job. She was a pediatrician for the public health department, working in free clinics for poor people in the inner city. “A woman came in today who lives in that terrible Pruitt–Igo project,” she was saying. “She has five kids and lives in a two-room apartment on the eleventh floor. She has to keep her kids inside all day long because of the toughs in the playground. Even if she could watch them from the window, she wouldn't be able to—”

Tycho picked up his plate of spaghetti with meat sauce and smashed it on the floor. Mom shrieked; Tycho wailed in apparent bewilderment.

It was Dad, who could usually be counted on to remain calm in moments of stress, who noticed how uncomfortably Danny was cringing in his chair. It was Dad who patiently got the whole story out of Danny. Mom had wiped the spaghetti sauce off the floor and served dessert by the time Danny finished.

“Well, can't we just hypnotize him again and tell him not to do it anymore?” Dad asked him.

“I think it will only work if Jack does it,” Danny said. “He's the one who hypnotized him and gave him the suggestion. And … he didn't say anything about how to make Tycho stop doing it. Maybe … he
can't
stop,” Danny added in a hushed voice.

“But Jack
didn't
hypnotize me,” Tycho insisted. “Nothing happened. I didn't drink water out of the toilet. I'd never do
that!
”

“If that's the case, then you must be making these messes on purpose,” Mom accused him.

“But why would I get in trouble on purpose?” Tycho asked her, sounding completely innocent.

“Tycho just doesn't remember being hypnotized because Jack told him not to,” Danny explained.

“Well, even if I was hypnotized, why would Jack tell me to break things just because somebody said a certain word?” Tycho wondered.

“Like …
window
?” Vicky suggested experimentally.

While Vicky cleaned up Tycho's bowl of ice cream and chocolate sauce, Mom got on the phone. Jack's mother drove him over right away.

“But this is fantastic!” she said.

“It's not fantastic at all. It's called post-hypnotic suggestion,” Dad told her.

“Well, I'm sorry,” she said. “I hope Jack can undo it. It would be kind of inconvenient never to be able to say
win—
”

“Stop!” Danny shouted.

But it was too late. “—
dow
,” she had already finished.

This time it was the beautiful ceramic ashtray my college roommate had given Mom that was closest to Tycho's reach. Jack's mother swept up the pieces while the three boys made their way up to Danny's room.

But now Tycho chose to be obstinate. “I don't
want
to be hypnotized anymore,” he grumbled, pouting. “What if you make me drink toilet water again?”

“Shut up, Tycho! You're going to be hypnotized, period!” Danny ordered, lunging at him with raised fists.

Jack took one step, planting himself stolidly between Danny and Tycho, fixing Danny with his calm gaze. Danny growled, but he backed off.

Jack remained rooted in place, thinking for a long moment. “Uh … wait outside, Danny,” he finally said, in his usual measured tones.

“You don't need me to hold the flashlight?” Danny objected.

“I can manage,” Jack said. “We'll both be in trouble if Tycho doesn't stop. It won't take long. And then … then I'll tell you a secret.”

“But I don't want to be hynotized,” Tycho protested again. It was strange; you'd think he would have been
eager
to stop helplessly breaking things.

“It'll be worth it, Tycho, I promise,” Jack assured him. “You'll see. We'll be out soon, Danny.”

Danny was too impatient to stand there doing nothing while he waited out in the hall—and even at that age, he loved to invent experiments. He thought for a minute, then quickly placed a chair just outside the closed door of his room. He put Tycho's prized Mickey Mouse alarm clock on the chair, making sure it was the only object that would be within Tycho's immediate reach when he came out of the room.

A few minutes later, Tycho and Jack emerged into the upstairs hall. “Window!” Danny instantly shouted.

“What are you talking about?” Tycho asked him. “And what's my clock doing here?” He picked it up carefully and took it back to his own room.

“You want to hear that secret, Danny?” Jack asked him, beckoning him back into the hypnosis chamber. They were in there for about ten minutes.

It was just around this time that Danny began to stop picking on Tycho. We all assumed that Danny's abuse of Tycho came to an end simply because Tycho was getting to be Danny's size.

But I thought I noticed, on a couple of occasions, Tycho uttering the word
door
just when Danny was about to attack him. And, oddly enough, as soon as Danny heard the word, he would stiffly turn away and leave Tycho alone.

The Séance

The houses in our middle-class neighborhood were all set well back from the street. Most of the other people on the block, concerned with appearances, concentrated their gardening energies on the front lawns, to impress the neighbors. But Dad didn't care much about the front yard, where we never spent any time. He worked harder on the backyard lawn, which our family could enjoy in privacy. And so when we wanted to run around under the sprinkler, which created mudholes in the grass, we did it in front, where it didn't matter because only the neighbors could see it.