Sometimes, thinking of the catastrophe ahead of him, his failure and his flight, he thought about taking her with him. That was her clinging to his neck as he scrambled up the boxcar (but she couldn’t cling!), she was with him in the hotel room when he woke up, sitting in her chair (how had he got her there?), looking into his eyes with her icy blue ones, her face miraculously still. Then she would open her mouth and words would come out, she would stand up, he would somehow have cured her… Sometimes, very quickly (and he would repress it immediately) he would see both of them hurtling from the top of a building. An accident, an accident, he would tell himself. I don’t mean that.

Rob crooned. He was heading for a bench, there was one up ahead, where he could sit and they could have their game of chequers.

“Hey, look at this.” It was Bert’s glass case. “Shelf fungus, “ he read from the typed card. “There are several species of shelf fungus. The shelf fungus is a saprophyte which feeds on decaying vegetable matter and can often be found growing on dead trees. You can write your name on the bottom with a stick,” he said. He used to do that at the cottage, without removing the fungus from the tree, and it gave him pleasure to think of his name growing in secret, getting a little bigger every year. It was hard to tell whether or not she was interested.

He found the bench, turned Jordan to face it and unfolded the board. “I was red last time,” he said, “so you get it this time, okay?” There was one chequer missing, on her side. “We’ll use something else,” he said. He looked around for a flat stone, but there wasn’t one. Finally he pulled a button off his shirtsleeves. “That okay?” he said.

Jordan’s hand moved yes. He began the laborious trial-and-error process of determining how she wanted to move. He would point at each chequer in turn until she signalled. Then he would point to each possible square. They could get through a game a lot faster now that he was used to playing this way. Her face would fold and unfold, screw itself up, twitch, movements he found distressing in other CP children still, but not in her. Concentrating made her worse.

They had hardly gone through the opening moves when the bell sounded from the main building. That meant the Play Period was over and it was time for the afternoon group activities. Jordan, he knew, had swimming with the rest of her cabin. She couldn’t swim, but someone held her in the water, where her movements, they said, were more controlled than on land. He himself was supposed to help with Occupational Therapy. “Mud pies,” the boys in his cabin called it. They liked making obscene statues out of clay in order to shock Wilda, the OT instructor, who wanted so much to be able to tell them they were being creative.

Rob put his shirt button into his pocket. He took out the notebook they used and marked down their respective positions. “We’ll finish it tomorrow,” he told Jordan. He wheeled her along the path in the same direction they’d been going, which would get them back sooner, since they were three-quarters of the way around the oval already.

To the north side of the cement path there was a clearing, a stretch of grass and across it the silver of water: the stream that was always there, usually a sluggish trickle but swollen now by last night’s rain. Rob thought, She’s probably never felt grass before, she’s probably never had her hand in a real stream. He suddenly wanted to give her something that no one else ever had, that no one else would ever think of.

“I’m going to take you out,” he told her. “I’m going to put you down on the grass, so you can feel it. Okay?”

There was a hesitation before she signalled yes. She was looking into his face; perhaps she didn’t understand. “It’s fun,” he told her, “it feels nice,” thinking of the many times he had sprawled on the lawn of the back garden, eight or ten years ago, chewing on the white soft ends of grass blades and reading the almost-forbidden Captain Marvel comic books.

He unbuckled the straps that held her in and lifted her thin body. She was so light, lighter even than she looked, a creature of balsa wood and paper. But tough, he told himself. She could take it, you could see it in her eyes. He put her down on the grass, on her side, where she could see the flowing stream.

“There,” he said. He knelt beside her, took her left hand and put it into the cold stream. “That’s real water, not like a swimming pool.” He smiled, feeling magnanimous, a giver, a healer; but she had closed her eyes, and from somewhere a curious sound, a whine, a growl… her body was limp, her arm jerking; suddenly her leg shot out and her foot in its steel-crusted boot kicked him in the shin.

“Jordan,” he said. “Are you all right?” More growling: was it joy or terror? He couldn’t tell, and he was frightened. Maybe this was too much for her, too exciting. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her up to put her back into the chair. The grass had been damper than he’d thought, and the right side of her face was streaked with mud.

“What the hell are you doing with that child?” Pam’s voice behind him. Rob turned, still holding Jordan, who was thrashing her arms like a propeller gone crazy. Pam was standing on the cement walk, hands on her hips, the posture of an accusing mother coming upon the children playing Doctor in the bushes. Her face was red, her hair mussed, as if she’d been running. There was a twig dangling above her ear.

“Nothing,” Rob said, “I was just…” She thinks I’m some kind of a pervert, he saw, and felt himself blushing. “I thought she would like to see what the grass felt like,” he said.

“You know that’s dangerous,” Pam said. “You know she isn’t supposed to be taken out. She could hit her head, injure herself…”

“I was watching her the whole time,” Rob said. Who was she to be bossing him around like this?

“I think you spend far too much time with that child,” Pam said, less angry now but definitely not convinced by his explanation. “You should spend more time with some of the others. It’s not good for them, you know, forming… attachments… that can’t possibly be kept up after camp.” Jordan’s eyes were open now; she was looking at Rob.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rob said, almost shouted. “How do you know, you don’t know…” She was accusing him, in advance, of betraying Jordan, abandoning her.

“Don’t get your girdle in a knot about it,” Pam said.

“But I think you should have a word with Bert, after Staff Lounge tonight. I’ve discussed this problem with him already.”

She turned away from him and walked quickly off towards the main house. On the back of her Bermuda shorts there was a small patch of wet mud.

Rob buckled Jordan back into the chair. This problem, Why was it a problem? There wasn’t much time, he would be assigned to other children, discouraged from seeing her, and she would think… What could he say to her, how to convince her? He knelt in front of her, resting his arms on the chair tray, and took hold of her left hand.

“I’m sorry if it frightened you, being on the ground,” he said. “Did it?” Her hand did not move. “Don’t pay any attention to what Pam just said. I’m going to write you letters after camp, lots of letters.” Would he? “And someone at your house can read them to you.” But of course they might forget, or lose the letters. In Pre-Meds, dissecting corpses, would he have time to remember her? Her eyes watched his face. She could see through him.

“I’m going to give you something special,” he told her, casting around desperately for something to give. He searched his pocket with his free hand. “This is my button, and it’s magic. I wore it on my shirt cuff like that just to keep it disguised.” He placed it in her hand, folded the fingers around it. “I’m giving it to you, and whenever you see it…” No, that wouldn’t do; someone was bound to find it in her pocket and throw it out, and she would have no way of explaining. “You don’t even have to see it, because it’s invisible sometimes. All you have to do is think about it. And every time you think about it, you’ll know I’m thinking specially about you. Okay?” He’d tried to make it as convincing as possible, but she was probably too old and too bright, she probably knew he was just trying to reassure her. In any case, she moved her hand yes. Whether it was real belief or embarrassed kindness he could never know.