This, too, was authentic Jenkins.
The shimmer of the cherubim wavered uneasily.
“Meg,” Mr. Jenkins Two said, “I urge you to resolve this nonsense and tell the impostors that I am Mr. Jenkins. This whole farce is wasting a great deal of time. I am Mr. Jenkins, as you have cause to know.”
She felt Proginoskes probing wildly. “Meg, when have you been most you, the very most you?”
She closed her eyes. She remembered the first afternoon Calvin had come to the Murrys’. Calvin was an honor student, but he was far better with words than with numbers, and Meg had helped him with a trigonometry problem. Since trig was not taught in Meg’s grade, her easy competence was one of her first surprises for Calvin. But at the time she had not thought of surprising him. She had concentrated wholly on Calvin, on what he was doing, and she had felt wholly alive and herself.
“How is that going to help?” she asked the cherubim.
“Think. You didn’t know Calvin very well then, did you?”
“No.”
“But you loved him, didn’t you?”
“Then? I wasn’t thinking about love. I was just thinking about trig.”
“Well, then,” Proginoskes said, as though that explained the entire nature of love.
“But I can’t think about trig with Mr. Jenkins. And I can’t love him.”
“You love me.”
“But, Progo, you’re so awful you’re lovable.”
“So is he. And you have to Name him.”
A third Mr. Jenkins joined the other two. “Meg. Stop panicking and listen to me.”
The three men stood side by side, identical, grey, dour, unperceptive, overworked: unlovable.
“Meg,” Mr. Jenkins Two said, “if you will Name me, and quickly, I will see to it that Charles Wallace gets into competent medical hands immediately.”
“It’s hardly that easy,” Mr. Jenkins Three said. “After all, her parents—“
“—do not know how to handle the situation, nor do they understand how serious it is,” Mr. Jenkins Two snapped.
Mr. Jenkins Three waved this aside. “Meg, does it not seem extraordinary to you that you should be confronted with three of me?”
There seemed to be no answer to this question.
Mr. Jenkins One shrugged in annoyance.
Mr. Jenkins Two said, “It is imperative that we stick to essentials at this point. Our number is peripheral.” The real Mr. Jenkins was very fond of discarding peripherals and sticking to essentials.
Mr. Jenkins Three said, “That there is only one of me, and that I am he, is the main point.”
Mr. Jenkins Two snorted. “Except for the small but important fact that I am he. This trial that has been brought on us is an extraordinary one. None of us—that is, you and I, Margaret—will ever be the same again. Being confronted with these two mirror visions of myself has made me see myself differently. None of us likes to see himself as he must appear to others. I understand your point of view much better than I did before. You were quite right to come to me about your little brother. He is indeed special, and I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in not realizing this, and treating him accordingly.”
“Don’t trust him,” Mr. Jenkins Three said.
Mr. Jenkins Two swept on. “I believe that you and I had a—shall we call it a run-in?—over the imports and exports of Nicaragua, which you were supposed to learn for one of your social-studies classes. You were quite right when you insisted that it was unnecessary for you to learn the imports and exports of Nicaragua. I shall try not to make the same kind of mistake with Charles Wallace. If Charles Wallace’s interests are different from those of our usual first-grader, we will try to understand that he has been taught by an eminent physicist father. I am sorry for all the needless pain you have been caused. And I can assure you that if you Name me, Charles Wallace will find school a pleasanter place, and I have no doubt his health will improve.”
Meg looked warily at Mr. Jenkins Two. This was, indeed, a changed Mr. Jenkins, and she did not trust the change. On the other hand, she remembered vividly the battle they had had over the imports and exports of Nicaragua.
Mr. Jenkins Three murmured, “Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.”
Mr. Jenkins Two sputtered, “What’s that?” Mr. Jenkins One looked blank.
Mr. Jenkins Three cried triumphantly, “I could have told you he would not recognize Shakespeare. He is an impostor.”
Meg had her doubts whether or not the real Mr. Jenkins would recognize Shakespeare.
Mr. Jenkins Two said, “Shakespeare is peripheral. If I have often been irritable in the past it is because I have been worried. Despite your unkind opinion of me, I do not like seeing any of my children unhappy.” He sniffed.
Mr. Jenkins One looked down his nose. “If I had the cooperation of the School Board and the P.T.A. it might untie my hands so that I could accomplish something.”
Meg looked at the three men in their identical business suits. “It’s like a game on television.”
“It is not a game,” Mr. Jenkins Three said sharply. “The stakes are much too high.”
Meg asked, “What happens to you—all of you—if I Name the wrong one?”
For a moment all the atoms of air in the schoolyard seemed to shiver; it was as though a lightning bolt of nothingness had flashed across the schoolyard, ripping the fabric of the atmosphere, then closed together again. Although nothing had been visible, Meg thought of a dark and terrible vulture slashing across the sky.
Mr. Jenkins One said, “I do not believe in the supernatural. But this entire situation is abnormal.” His rabbity nose wriggled in pink distaste.
Then all three men swung around as the side door to the school opened, and Charles Wallace, Louise the Larger twined around his arm and shoulders, walked down the steps and across the schoolyard.
6 The Real Mr. Jenkins.
“Charles!” Meg cried.
All three Mr. Jenkinses held up warning hands, said simultaneously, “Charles Wallace Murry, what is it now?”
Charles Wallace looked with interest at the three men. “Hello, what’s this?”
Mr. Jenkins One said, “What are you doing with that— that—“
All three men were visibly fearful of Louise. There was no telling the ‘real’ Mr. Jenkins by a variation in response to the snake. Louise reared her head,, half closed her eyes, and made the strange, clacking, warning sound which Meg had heard the night before. Charles Wallace stroked her soothingly, and looked speculatively at the three men.
“We were supposed to bring a small pet to school today, to share with the class.”
Meg thought, —Good for you, Charles, to think of Louise the Larger. If you terrified Mr. Jenkins, that would send you up a notch in the other kids’ estimation. If there’s one thing everybody in school agrees on, it’s that Mr. Jenkins is a retarded rodent.
Mr. Jenkins Three said severely, “You know perfectly well that small pets were meant, Charles Wallace. Turtles or tropical fish of perhaps even a hamster.”
“Or a gerbil,” Mr. Jenkins Two added. “A gerbil would be acceptable.”
“Why have you multiplied?” Charles Wallace asked. “I found one of you quite enough.”
Louise clacked again; it was a flesh-chilling sound.
Mr. Jenkins Three demanded, “Why aren’t you in class, Charles?”
“Because the teacher told me to take Louise the Larger and go home. I really don’t understand why. Louise is , friendly and she wouldn’t hurt anybody. Only the girls were scared of her. She lives in our stone wall by the twins’ vegetable garden.”
Meg looked at Louise, at the hooded eyes, the wary position of the head, the warning twitching of the last few inches of her black tail. Blajeny had told them that Louise was a Teacher. Louise herself had certainly shown in the past twenty-four hours that she was more than an ordinary garden snake. Louise would know—did know, Meg was sure —the real Mr. Jenkins. Swallowing her own shyness of all snakes, she reached out towards Charles Wallace. “Let me have Louise for a little while, please, Charles.”
But Proginoskes spoke in her mind. “No, Meg. You have to do it yourself. You can’t let Louise do it for you.”
All right. She accepted that. But perhaps Louise could still help.
Charles Wallace regarded his sister thoughtfully. Then he held out the arm around which Louise’s lower half was coiled. The snake slithered sinuously to Meg. Her body felt cold, and tingled with electricity. Meg tried not to flinch.
“Mr. Jenkins,” Meg said. “Each of you. One at a time. What are you going to do about Charles Wallace and Louise? Charles Wallace can’t possibly walk home alone. It’s too far. What are you going to do about Charles Wallace and school in general?”
Nobody volunteered an answer. All three folded their arms impassively across their chests.