More Than Human

He snorted again, flung the potato back into the pot, thumped the pot back on the floor and leapt to his feet. He put one hand on each side of the door and sent his flat harsh voice hurtling out: ‘Wait!’

The corn should have been husked long since. Most of it still stood but here and there the stalks lay broken and yellowing, and soldier-ants were prospecting them and scurrying off with rumours. Out in the fallow field the truck lay forlornly, bogged, with the seeder behind it, tipped forward over its hitch and the winter wheat spilling out. No smoke came from the chimney up at the house and the half-door into the barn, askew and perverted amid the misery, hollowly applauded.

Lone approached the house, mounted the stoop. Prodd sat on the porch glider which now would not glide, for one set of end-chains was broken. His eyes were not closed but they were more closed than open.

‘Hi,’ said Lone.

Prodd stirred, looked full into Lone’s face. There was no sign of recognition. He dropped his gaze, pushed back to sit upright, felt aimlessly around his chest, found a suspender strap, pulled it forward and let it snap back. A troubled expression passed through his features and left it. He looked up again at Lone, who could sense self-awareness returning to the farmer like coffee soaking upward into a lump of sugar.

‘Well, Lone, boy!’ said Prodd. The old words were there but the tone behind them behaved like his broken hay rake. He rose, beaming, came to Lone, raised his fist to thump Lone’s arm but then apparently forgot it. The fist hovered there for a moment and then gravitated downward.

‘Corn’s for husking,’ said Lone.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ Prodd half said, half sighed. ‘I’ll get to it. I can handle it all right. One way or ‘tother, always get done by the first frost. Ain’t missed milkin’ once,’ he added with wan pride.

Lone glanced through the door pane and saw, for the very first time, crusted dishes, heavy flies in the kitchen, ‘The baby come,’ he said, remembering.

‘Oh, yes. Fine little feller, just like we…’ Again he seemed to forget. The words slowed and were left suspended as his fist had been. ‘ Ma!’ he shrieked suddenly, ‘fix a bite for the boy, here!’ He turned to Lone, embarrassedly.’ She’s yonder,’ he said pointing. ‘Yell loud enough, I reckon she’d hear. Maybe.’

Lone looked where Prodd pointed, but saw nothing. He caught Prodd’s gaze and for a split second started to probe. He recoiled violently at the very nature of what was there before he got close enough to identify it. He turned away quickly. ‘Brought your axe.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. You could’ve kept it.’

‘Got my own. Want to get that corn in?’

Prodd gazed mistily at the corn patch. ‘Never missed a milking,’ he said.

Lone left him and went to the barn for a corn hook. He found one. He also discovered that the cow was dead. He went up to the corn patch and got to work. After a time he saw Prodd down the line, working too, working hard.

‘Well past midday and just before they had the corn all cut, Prodd disappeared into the house. Twenty minutes later he emerged with a pitcher and a platter of sandwiches. The bread was dry and the sandwiches were corned beef from, as Lone recalled, Mrs Prodd’s practically untouched ‘rainy day’ shelf. The pitcher contained warm lemonade and dead flies. Lone asked no questions. They perched on the edge of the horse trough and ate.

Afterwards Lone went down to the fallow field and got the truck dug out. Prodd followed him down in time to drive it out. The rest of the day was devoted to the seeding with Lone loading the seeder and helping four different times to free the truck from the traps it insisted upon digging for itself. When that was finished, Lone waved Prodd up to the barn where he got a rope around the dead cow’s neck and hauled it as near as the truck would go to the edge of the wood. When at last they ran the truck into the barn for the night, Prodd said, ‘Sure miss that horse.’

‘You said you didn’t miss it a-tall,’ Lone recalled tactlessly.

‘Did I now.’ Prodd turned inward and smiled, remembering. ‘Yeah, nothing bothered me none, because of, you know.’ Still smiling, he turned to Lone and said, ‘Come back to the house.’ He smiled all the way back.

They went through the kitchen. It was even worse than it had looked from outside and the clock was stopped, too. Prodd, smiling, threw open the door of Jack’s room. Smiling, he said, ‘Have a look, boy, Go right on in, have a look.’

Lone went in and looked into the bassinet. The cheesecloth was torn and the blue cotton was moist and reeking. The baby had eyes like upholstery tacks and skin the colour of mustard. Short blue-black horsehair covered its skull and it breathed noisily.

Lone did not change expression. He turned away and stood in the kitchen looking at one of the dimity curtains, the one which lay on the floor.

Smiling, Prodd came out of Jack’s room and closed the door. ‘See, he’s not Jack, that’s the one blessing,’ he smiled. ‘Ma, she had to go off looking for Jack, I reckon, yes; that would be it. She wouldn’t be happy with anything less; well, you know that your own self.’ He smiled twice. ‘What that in there is, that’s what the doctor calls a mongoloid. Just leave it be, it’ll grow up to maybe size three and stay so for thirty year. Get him to a big city specialist for treatments and he’ll grow up to maybe size ten.’ He smiled as he talked. ‘That’s what the doctor said anyway. Can’t shovel him into the ground now, can you? That was all right for Ma, way she loved flowers and all.’

Too many words, some hard to hear through the wide, tight smiling. Lone brought his eyes to bear on Prodd’s.

He found out exactly what Prodd wanted – things that Prodd himself did not know. He did the things.

When he was finished he and Prodd cleaned up the kitchen and took the bassinet and burned it, along with the carefully sewn diapers made out of old sheets and piled in the linen closet and the new oval enamel bath pan and the celluloid rattle and the blue felt booties with the white puff-balls in their clear cellophane box.

Prodd waved cheerfully to him from the porch. ‘Just you wait’ll Ma gets back; she’ll stuff you full o’ joh

‘Mind you fix that barn door,’ Lone rasped. ‘I’ll come back.’

With his burden he plodded up the hill and into the forest. He struggled numbly with thoughts that would not be words or pictures. About those kids, now; about the Prodds. The Prodds were one thing and when they took him in they became something else; he knew it now. And then when he was by himself he was one thing; but taking those kids in he was something else. He had no business going back to Prodds today. But now, the way he was, he had to do it. He’d go back again too.

Alone. Lone Lone alone. Prodd was alone now and Janie was alone and the twins, well they had each other but they were like one split person who was alone. He himself, Lone, was still alone, it didn’t make any difference about the kids being there.

Maybe Prodd and his wife had not been alone. He wouldn’t have any way of knowing about that. But there was nothing like Lone anywhere in the world except right here inside him. The whole world threw Lone away, you know that? Even the Prodds did, when they got around to it. Janie got thrown out, the twins too, so Janie said.

Well, in a fu

The night was sun-stained by the time he got home. He kneed the door open and came in. Janie was making pictures on an old china plate with spit and mud. The twins as usual were sitting on one of the high rock niches, whispering to one another.

Janie jumped up. ‘What’s that? What’d you bring?’

Lone put it down carefully on the floor. The twins appeared, one on each side of it. ‘It’s a baby,’ said Janie. She looked up at Lone. ‘ It is a baby?’