More Than Human

And she had learned that if you sit absolutely still for long enough it hurts too, and then stops. But then you mustn’t move, not the tiniest little bit, because if you do it will hurt worse than anything.

When a top spins it stands up straight and walks around. When it slows a little it stands in one place and wobbles. When it slows a lot it waggles around like Major Grenfell after a cocktail party. Then it almost stops and lies down and bumps and thumps and thrashes around. After that it won’t move any more.

When she had the happy time with the twins she had been spinning like that. When Mother came home the top inside didn’t walk any more, it stood still and waggled. When Mother called her out of her bed she was waving and weaving. When she hid here her spinner inside bumped and kicked. Well, it wasn’t doing it any more and it wouldn’t.

She started to see how long she could hold her breath. Not with a big deep lungful first, but just breathing quieter and quieter and missing an in and quieter and quieter still, and missing an out. She got to where the misses took longer than the breathings.

The wind stirred her skirt. All she could feel was the movement and that too was remote, as if she had a thin pillow between it and her legs.

Her spinner, with the lift gone out of it, went round and round with its rim on the floor and went slower and slower and at last

stopped

… and began to roll back the other way, but not very far, not fast and

stopped

and a little way back, it was too dark for anything to roll and even if it did you wouldn’t be able to see it, you couldn’t even hear it, it was so dark.

But anyway, she rolled. She rolled over on her stomach and on her back and pain squeezed her nostrils together and filled up her stomach like too much soda water. She gasped with the pain and gasping was breathing and when she breathed she remembered who she was. She rolled over again without wanting to, and something like little animals ran on her face. She fought them weakly. They weren’t pretend-things, she discovered; they were real as real. They whispered and cooed. She tried to sit up and the little animals ran behind her and helped. She dangled her head down and felt the warmth of her breath falling into the front of her dress. One of the little animals stroked her cheek and she put up a hand and caught it.

‘Ho-ho,’ it said.

On the other side, something soft and small and strong wriggled and snuggled tight up against her. She felt it, smooth and alive. It said ‘He-hee.’

She put one arm around Bonnie and one arm around Beanie and began to cry.

Lone came back to borrow an axe. You can do just so much with your bare hands.

When he broke out of the woods he saw the difference in the farm. It was as if every day it existed had been a grey day, and now the sun was on it. All the colours were brighter by an immensurable amount; the barn- smells, growth-smells, stove-smoke smells were clearer and purer. The corn stretched skyward with such intensity in its lines that it seemed to be threatening its roots.

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 grinned.’ But now I know. You were a hydraulic jack.’

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 Bonnie gone and Beanie in the cold fireplace, pretending there was a mouse hiding in the ashes. ‘Oh, you’re not listening,’ she said.

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. Bonnie disappeared from the fireplace and reappeared by the chair. Beanie stood on the other side; wherever she had been, she had been aware of what was happening. If anything, she liked this book even better than Bonnie.