More Than Human

Janie walked down the hall to the elevators. She looked at Bo

She walked slowly back to the apartment and went in and closed the door. Her mother got up from the man’s lap and clattered across the room. Her teeth shone and her chin was wet. She raised claws – not a hand, not a fist, but red, pointed claws.

Something happened inside Janie like the grinding of teeth, but deeper inside her than that. She was walking and she did not stop. She put her hands behind her and tilted her chin up so she could meet her mother’s eyes.

Wima’s voice ceased, snatched away. She loomed over the five-year-old, her claws out and forward, hanging, curving over, a blood-tipped wave about to break.

Janie walked past her and into her room, and quietly closed the door.

Wima’s arms drew back, strangely, as if they must follow the exact trajectory of their going. She repossessed them and the dissolving balance of her body and finally her voice. Behind her the man’s teeth clattered swiftly against a glass.

Wima turned and crossed the room to him, using the furniture like a series of canes and crutches. ‘Oh God,’ she murmured, ‘but she gives me the creeps…’

He said, ‘You got lots going on around here.’

Janie lay in bed as stiff and smooth and contained as a round toothpick. Nothing would get in, nothing could get out; somewhere she had found this surface that went all the way through, and as long as she had it, nothing was going to happen.

But if anything happens, came a whisper, you’ll break.

But if I don’t break, nothing will happen, she answered.

But if anything…

The dark hours came and grew black and the black hours laboured by.

Her door crashed open and the light blazed. ‘He’s gone and baby, I’ve got business with you. Get out here!’ Wima’s bathrobe swirled against the doorpost as she turned and went away.

Janie pushed back the covers and thumped her feet down. Without understanding quite why, she began to get dressed. She got her good plaid dress and the shoes with two buckles, and the knit pants and the slip with the lace rabbits. There were little rabbits on her socks too, and on the sweater, the buttons were rabbits’ fuzzy nubbin tails.

Wima was on the couch, pounding and pounding with her fist. ‘You wrecked my cel,’ she said, and drank from a square-stemmed glass, ‘ebration, so you ought to know what I’m celebrating. You don’t know it but I’ve had a big trouble and I didn’t know how to ha

She turned to be answered but there was no answer. Janie was gone.

Wima knew before she started that there wasn’t any use looking, but something made her run to the hall closet and look in the top shelf. There wasn’t anything up there but Christmas tree ornaments and they hadn’t been touched in three years.

She stood in the middle of the living room, not knowing which way to go. She whispered, ‘Janie?’

She put her hands on the sides of her face and lifted her hair away from it. She turned around and around, and asked, ‘What’s the matter with me?’

Prodd used to say, ‘There’s this about a farm: when the market’s good there’s money, and when it’s bad there’s food.’ Actually the principle hardly operated here, for his contact with markets was slight. It was a long haul to town and what if there’s a tooth off the hay rake? ‘We’ve still got a workin’ majority.’ Two off, eight, twelve? ‘Then make another pass. No road will go by here, not ever. Place will never get too big, get out of hand.’ Even the war passed them by, Prodd being over age and Lone – well, the sheriff was by once and had a look at the half-wit working on Prodd’s, and one look was enough.

When Prodd was young the little farmhouse was there, and when he married they built on to it – a little, not a lot, just a room. If the room had ever been used the land wouldn’t have been enough. Lone slept in the room of course but that wasn’t quite the same thing. That’s not what the room was for.

Lone sensed the change before anyone else, even before Mrs Prodd. It was a difference in the nature of one of her silences. It was a treasure-proud silence, and Lone felt it change as a man’s kind of pride might change when he turned from a jewel he treasured to a green shoot he treasured. He said nothing and concluded nothing; he just knew.

He went on with his work as before. He worked well; Prodd used to say that whatever anyone might think, that boy was a farmer before his accident. He said it not knowing that his own style of farming was as available to Lone as water from his pump. So was anything else Lone wanted to take.

So the day Prodd came down to the south meadow, where Lone was stepping and turning tirelessly, a very part of his whispering scythe, Lone knew what it was that he wanted to say. He caught Prodd’s gaze for half a breath in those disturbing eyes and knew as well that saying it would pain Prodd more than a little.

Understanding was hardly one of his troubles any more, but niceties of expression were. He stopped mowing and went to the forest margin near by and let the scythe-point drop into a rotten stump. It gave him time to rehearse his tongue, still thick and unwieldy after eight years here.

Prodd followed slowly. He was rehearsing too.

Suddenly, Lone found it. ‘Been thinking,’ he said.

Prodd waited, glad to wait. Lone said,’ I should go.’ That wasn’t quite it. ‘Move along,’ he said, watching. That was better.

‘Ah, Lone. Why?’

Lone looked at him. Because you want me to go.

‘Don’t you like it here?’ said Prodd, not wanting to say that at all.

‘Sure.’ From Prodd’s mind, he caught, Does he know? and his own answered, Of course I know! But Prodd couldn’t hear that. Lone said slowly, ‘Just time to be moving along.’

‘Well.’ Prodd kicked a stone. He turned to look at the house and that turned him away from Lone, and that made it easier. ‘When we came here, we built Jack’s, your room, the room you’re using. We call it Jack’s room. You know why, you know who Jack is?’

Yes, Lone thought. He said nothing.

‘Long as you’re… long as you want to leave anyway, it won’t make no difference to you. Jack’s our son.’ He squeezed his hands together. ‘I guess it sounds fu

He looked up at the house, at its stub of a built-on wing, and around at the rock-toothed forest rim. ‘- never got born,’ he finished.

‘Ah,’ said Lone. He’d picked that up from Prodd. It was useful.

‘He’s coming now, though,’ said Prodd in a rush. His face was alight. ‘We’re a bit old for it, but there’s a daddy or two quite a bit older, and mothers too.’ Again he looked up at the barn, the house. ‘Makes sense in a sort of way, you know, Lone. Now, if he’d been along when we pla