More Than Human

Prodd’s venerable stake-bed pick-up truck was grunting and howling somewhere down the slope. Following the margins, Lone went downhill until he could see the truck. It was in the fallow field which, apparently, Prodd had decided to turn. The truck was hitched to a gang plough with all the shares but one removed. The right rear wheel had run too close to the furrow, dropped in, and buried, so that the truck rested on its rear axle and the wheel spun almost free. Prodd was pounding stones under it with the end of a pick-handle. When he saw Lone he dropped it and ran towards him, his face beaming like firelight. He took Lone’s upper arms in his hands and read his face like the page of a book, slowly, a line at a time, moving his lips. ‘Man, I thought I wouldn’t see you again, going off like you did.’

‘You want help,’ said Lone, meaning the truck.

Prodd misunderstood. ‘Now wouldn’t you know,’ he said happily.’ Come all the way back just to see if you could lend a hand. Oh, I been doing fine by myself, Lone, believe me. Not that I don’t appreciate it. But I feel like it these days. Working, I mean.’

Lone went and picked up the pick-handle. He prodded at the stones under the wheel. ‘Drive,’ he said.

‘Wait’ll Ma sees you,’ said Prodd. ‘Like old times.’ He got in and started the truck. Lone put the small of his back against the rear edge of the truck-bed, clamped his hands on it, and as the clutch engaged, he heaved. The body came up as high as the rear springs would let it, and still higher. He leaned back. The wheel found purchase and the truck jolted up and forward on to firm ground.

Prodd climbed out and came back to look into the hole, the irresistible and useless act of a man who picks up broken china and puts its edges together. ‘I used to say, I bet you were a farmer once,’ he gri

Lone did not smile. He never smiled. Prodd went to the plough and Lone helped him wrestle the hitch back to the truck. ‘Horse dropped dead,’ Prodd explained. ‘Truck’s all right but sometimes I wish there was some way to keep this from happening. Spend half my time diggin’ it out. I’d get another horse, but you know – hold everything till after Jack gets here. You’d think that would bother me, losing the horse.’ He looked up at the house and smiled. ‘Nothing bothers me now. Had breakfast?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well come have some more. You know Ma. Wouldn’t forgive either of us if she wasn’t to feed you.’

They went back to the house, and when Ma saw Lone she hugged him hard. Something stirred uncomfortably in Lone. He wanted an axe. He thought all these other things were settled.’ You sit right down there and I’ll get you some breakfast.’

‘Told you,’ said Prodd, watching her, smiling. Lone watched her too. She was heavier and happy as a kitten in a cowshed. ‘What are doing now, Lone?’

Lone looked into his eyes to find some sort of an answer. ‘Working,’ he said. He moved his hand. ‘Up there.’

‘In the woods?’

‘Yes.’

‘What you doing?’ When Lone waited, Prodd asked, ‘You hired out? No? Then what – trapping?’

‘Trapping,’ said Lone, knowing that this would be sufficient.

He ate. From where he sat he could see Jack’s room. The bed was gone. There was a new one in there, not much longer than his forearm, all draped with pale-blue cotton and cheesecloth with dozens of little tucks sewn into it.

When he was finished they all sat around the table and for a time nobody said anything. Lone looked into Prodd’s eyes and found He’s a good boy but not the kind to set around and visit. He couldn’t understand the visit image, a vague and happy blur of conversation-sounds and laughter. He recognized this as one of the many lacks he was aware of in himself – lacks, rather than inadequacies; things he could not do and would never be able to do. So he just asked Prodd for the axe and went out.

‘You don’t s’pose he’s mad at us?’ asked Mrs Prodd, looking anxiously after Lone.

‘Him?’ said Prodd. ‘He wouldn’t have come back here if he was. I was afraid of that myself until today.’ He went to the door. ‘Don’t you lift nothing heavy, hear?’

Janie read as slowly and carefully as she could. She didn’t have to read aloud, but only carefully enough so the twins could understand. She had reached the part where the woman tied the man to the pillar and then let the other man. the ‘ my rival, her laughing lover’ one, out of the closet where he had been hidden and gave him the whip. Janie looked up at that point and found Bo

Want the one with the pictures, the silent message came.

‘I’m getting so tired of that one,’ said Janie petulantly. But she closed Venus in Furs by von Sacher-Masoch and put it on the table. ‘This’s anyway got a story to it,’ she complained, going to the shelves. She found the wanted volume between My Gun Is Quick and The Illustrated Ivan Bloch, and hefted it back to the armchair. Bo

Janie opened the book at random. The twins leaned forward breathless, their eyes bulging.

Read it.

‘Oh, all right,’ said Janie. ‘„D34556. Tieback. Double shirred. 90 inches long. Maize, burgundy, hunter green and white. $24.68. D34557. Cottage style. Stuart or Argyll plaid, see illus. $4.92 pair. D34 – „‘

And they were happy again.

They had been happy ever since they got here and much of the hectic time before that. They had learned how to open the back of a trailer-truck and how to lie without moving under hay, and Janie could pull clothespins off a line and the twins could appear inside a room, like a store at night, and unlock the door from the inside when it was fastened with some kind of lock that Janie couldn’t move, the way she could a hook-and-eye or a tower bolt which was shot but not turned. The best thing they had learned, though, was the way the twins could attract attention when somebody was chasing Janie. They’d found out for sure that to have two little girls throwing rocks from second-floor windows and appearing under their feet to trip them and suddenly sitting on their shoulders and wetting into their collars, made it impossible to catch Janie, who was just ordinarily ru

And this house was just the happiest thing of all. It was miles and miles away from anything or anybody and no one ever came here. It was a big house on a hill, in forest so thick you hardly knew it was there. It had a big high wall around it on the road side, and a big high fence on the woods side and a brook ran through. Bo

There were zillions of books in the biggest room and plenty of old sheets they could wrap around themselves when it was cold. Down in the cold dark cellar rooms they had found a half-dozen cases of ca

It went much faster with the axe.

He never would have found the place at all if he had not hurt himself. In all the years he had wandered the forests, often blindly and uncaring, he had never fallen into such a trap. One moment he was stepping over the crest of an outcropping, and next he was twenty feet down, in a bramble-choked, humus-floored pitfall. He hurt one of his eyes and his left arm hurt unbearably at the elbow.