Collected short stories, p.158
Collected Short Stories, page 158
Jacob nods weakly, imagining all that terrible ice.
"Come here."
Grandfather means Lady. The dog has been sitting to one side, patiently waiting for those words. With a seamless devotion, she walks up and sets her muzzle on his lap, a thin streak of drool leaving a spot on his trousers.
Scratching the dog behind her golden eyes, he tells Jacob, "Look around the farm. Take a little tour."
"I don't think he should," I begin.
"Quiet," Grandfather says, not even bothering with a corrective glance. "Don't touch any machinery, Jacob, and shut every gate you open. Understood? And if you find some little relative -- we've got a few kids underfoot these days -- be friendly. But explain to them. You don't know anything about a real farm, and if they do anything mean to you, I will be angry."
"Yes, sir."
"Tell them. That I will be very angry."
"I will, sir."
"Now go. Go!"
"Helmet and vest!" I shout after him. "Find yours and wear them -- !"
"Yes, Mother," he replies, using his most dismissive tone.
Then it is just the two of us. The three of us. Lady continues to enjoy the scratching of her ears, and the old man continues to study me with his dangerous gray eye, and I stand my ground despite nervous feet. Glancing at my surroundings, I observe, "This is new." And when neither companion responds, I add, "Every machine has just the one setting. Doesn't it?"
"So I won't grow weaker," Grandfather responds. "When I lift, I have to endure the same load that I lifted two days ago. And two years ago."
I nod, as if paying close attention.
"You look thin," he says.
I wander over to a distant machine, touching a dangling bar covered with thick foam rubber. A fat steel cable attaches to a mass of black iron that waits inside a cage that helps keep out careless toes and hands.
"What's your gravity up in that can-world?"
"At our apartment?" I shrug. "Eighty percent Earth's."
"That's not enough," he growls. "The boy won't grow up properly. In the bones, the muscles."
"He's growing fine. His school and the parks are near the hull, which is.95 gees."
"And the radiation levels -- "
"We have shielding."
"What about the lost bolts and fuel tanks? There's a lot of garbage flying around up there, from what I hear."
I stare back at him. "Honestly, the engineers and the rest of us ... we take every reasonable precaution...."
He smiles, enjoying my anger.
Then with a quiet, gruff voice, he asks, "Why?"
I pretend not to hear him. But when the furnace cuts on, I flinch.
"Why, Hannah?"
He wears trousers but no shoes. I look at his feet for a moment. Thousands of years of gravity have made them broad and quite ugly.
"Why what?"
"You came here for a purpose. Is it to show off your son?"
I stare at the dark broad chest. "Partly."
"What else?"
Finally, I look at the face. Mustering an expression of nervous courage, I tell him, "I want to sell my share of the farm."
The news is heard, and vanishes.
"How much is it worth?"
He seems to expect my question. Using his most quiet voice, he offers a concrete sum that no force in nature can change.
After a prolonged silence on my part, he adds, "Our farm wears a lot of debt. We've been modernizing again. And we're expanding past the old highway. I loaned money to the Kirks, and they haven't met their payments, so we're using lawyers and the courts to take away a fat chunk of their land." He pauses long enough to smile at his own progress. "Not that we won't pay everything off in another five years, of course. You should see our projected profits. Your profits, too. But right now ... this couldn't be a worse time to sell out, darling." Then with an accusing, almost raging voice, he asks, "Can you possibly wait?"
"No."
"Why not?"
I sit on the adjacent machine, pressing my feet against matching pedals. I have always had strong legs, and my knees are perfectly fine. I lift the iron partway, and then feigning weakness, I let it fall again. The crash is still echoing off the rafters when I confess, "I'm buying passage on the Centauri ship. For Jacob and myself."
"But I can't give you nearly enough money." He has to grin, betraying the depth of his knowledge. "With your existing assets, plus your share of the farm, you'll still fall way short of that goal."
I stare at him.
"Hannah," he laughs. "What did you tell yourself? Just because you don't live on this world anymore, do you really believe you can escape my reach?"
* * *
I used to grieve for the corn.
When I was little, younger even than Jacob, I invested an entire summer watching that tropical grass grow tall and green, sprouting those long ears covered with a rich golden silk. When the ears ripened and the stalks browned, I assumed that the plants had fallen asleep. Like trees and ground squirrels, our crops were simply hibernating, and come next spring, they would burst from the ground again.
Mother was first with the hard news. A little perplexed, perhaps even disappointed, she said, "No, honey. They're dead. They always die when the frost comes."
"But why?" I asked.
"Just because," she replied. Never a person to concern herself with the deep workings of the world, she shook her head and shrugged, saying, "Because that's the way it is, honey. And will you stop crying now, please?"
Grandfather was more informative, and more horrible.
"Plants have that trait in their blood. I mean, in their sap." He laughed at the image of bloody corn. "At least some of the species have it. Annuals, they're called. They know they'll live for one good year, so they throw all their energy into making sugary seeds that can grow like mad next spring, making new plants. Those seeds can feed us, if they happen to be our crops. Which is a good thing. If we had nothing to cultivate but perennial grasses and berry bushes and fruit trees ... well, there couldn't be nearly so many people in the world...."
That was too much for a little girl to comprehend, and looking back, I probably don't remember it correctly. Every school lecture and everything that I have read since has been grafted into my shadowy memories of that uncomfortable instant.
Regardless of the truth, what I remember is the old man telling me, "Animals aren't the same as corn. Fish and turtles, and people, and mice, too. We just live and live. Because there's no real reason to do otherwise."
"Why's that?"
He laughed at me, his good eye narrowing. "I've read a few things." Grandfather read exhaustively on many subjects. "The idea is that we could have been otherwise. This is just the way we happened to evolve. Early on, the first animals stumbled into metabolic pathways that avoid oxidation poisoning and the planned collapse that comes to the corn. You see? Then if a turtle or a man is very successful, he gets to live for a long time, leaving behind many turtles, and many children, too. When and if he ever happens to die."
"But if things were different?" I asked. Not then, but some years later. I remember a different conversation where I was a studious schoolgirl, asking that simple question, "What if we were like the corn?"
"Planned insolvency? Well, that would change a few things. But not as much as you'd guess. Not over the long course of evolution, at least." He gave the matter some thought before adding, "For most of my life, it seemed like everybody was dying. Wars killed thousands. Every epidemic killed millions. And there was bad food or no food, and you can't imagine all the ways you could die just in the normal course of your day."
"My uncles survived, too," I pointed out.
"Some have, yes. The ones you know, and a few others." A vague smile softened his features. "We are a family, Hannah. We care for each other. Which helps us survive, of course. And I don't think it hurts that when these new continents were being settled ... with all this empty land free for the having ... that I decided to move our family here, escaping the crowded guts of Europe...."
We emigrated barely two centuries ago. Practically yesterday, in my grandfather's mind. "So much has changed in these last years," he told me. Then with an easy menace, he explained, "The old killing diseases have been conquered. And our food is clean and unspoiled. We have sewers and hospitals. And what nation can raise a willing army when its citizens can seriously entertain the prospect of a ten thousand year life?" He sighed and shook his head, saying, "This is a new world. A dangerous, foolhardy world, some would think."
"Why?" I asked.
"You love that word. Don't you, Hannah? 'Why?'"
"But what's wrong?" I persisted. "Isn't it good that people don't get sick anymore?"
Grandfather gestured at the cornfield. It was another summer, and both the crops and I were half-grown. "All right," he grumbled. "Imagine this. The corn doesn't live a little while and die. But it still makes seeds by the hundreds and spreads them under its feet. How can that be a good thing? You are a prosperous plant. But suddenly all these children are springing up between your toes." Disgusted, he pushed the image aside. "If that happens, you have two choices, Hannah. Two courses you can take. And believe me, neither choice is even a little bit pretty."
* * *
Mother sits in a wide, thickly padded rocking chair. Her weaknesses are many, but her face remains handsome, almost girlish. With a voice almost too soft to be heard, she asks about the journey back to Earth. Was I ever scared? Then she reminds me about the shuttles that have malfunctioned in the past, and the people dead after taking what seemed to be the most inconsequential of risks.
"Those were the old shuttles," I reply. "The new models are as reliable as a heart."
"He died, you know."
"Who do you mean?"
She rocks the chair and moves her stronger arm, a faded quilt falling away from her badly shriveled shoulder. "Mr. Bergen. He would bring us our newspaper in the airplane. One morning, he flew down low and dropped the paper ... and then one of his wings fell off, and he crashed...."
"It's a sad story," I agree.
"Flying," she says. Just the one word, and it causes her to shiver.
Like a dutiful daughter, I lift the quilt over the shoulder, and not for the first time, I wonder if death might be kinder than a tiny, endless existence full of mismatched memories and the occasional meal.
"Be careful," she advises.
"I will be."
"In the sky ... be careful...."
Since my last visit, her hair has thinned noticeably and turned a little white. New teeth are sluggishly filling the holes in pale pink gums. Her breath smells of stale milk and blood cake. Because she can't sit comfortably at the family table, she has already been fed for the night. Because she sleeps so poorly nowadays, a strong pair of my cousins will put her to bed in a little while. This is our chance to talk, or at least to make the attempt.
"Tell me," I whisper.
The words aren't noticed. But then, after a long pause, the girlish face brightens. "Tell you what?"
"About my father."
She appears perfectly lucid, and then she speaks. "He was an English count. A gorgeous man. Tall and wealthy, and wonderful on horseback -- "
"That's a different husband," I warn. "An earlier husband."
"Was he?" She seems to doubt me before she doubts herself. But then with a gentle resignation, she admits, "That daughter died. I remember. While she was a baby. Something attacked her lungs."
"I know the story, Mother."
"You want to hear about your father?"
"Your last husband," I prod.
With a chiding smile, she says, "Hannah. I do remember him. Better than you ever can, I should think."
* * *
Father had a young man's talent for machines. He was gregarious and quick-witted, stronger than most, and perhaps better than anyone my mother had ever known, he could remember faces and the names that belonged to each one. But as older, grumpier souls would point out, young men simply haven't seen that many faces in their little lives. Perhaps if he had survived until today, my father's talents would have begun to fade. Every face would resemble every other, and he would fumble over names, and our modern machinery would have seemed as sophisticated and impenetrable as the fatty insides of a human mind.
The farm needed a good, cheap mechanic. As the story goes, Uncle Ethan paid the newspaper to run an advertisement for a full week, and after Mr. Bergen flew in low and dropped the paper, and after Lady had carried the paper up to the front porch, Ethan took a break from his morning chores, sitting out on the mesh-enclosed porch, drinking cold coffee and reading the headlines with his usual indifference to most of the world. What did it matter, the elections in Asia? Who cared about the drought in Africa, or the borders shifting in Old Europe? Not even sports scores or lurid murders captured his minimal imagination. He read only for the most basic reason: Habit. He read because his own father might bring up one of these many subjects in conversation, and he didn't want to appear stupid. And then after a few minutes of studious apathy, Ethan thought to look into the back pages, scanning down the narrow columns to find a single entry -- WANTED, MECHANIC FOR NEW TRACTORS, TRUCKS, GENERATORS, WELL-PUMPS -- that he read with care, twice, before hearing a big throat clearing itself.
As the story goes, my father was the one who cleared his throat. Uncle Ethan dropped the want ads to find himself staring at a young fellow not yet thirty years old.
"What do you want?" the old grouch barked.
"Wealth and fame," the stranger replied. Then with a big laugh, he added, "But for now, I'll take the mechanic's job. If it's still open."
Ethan was astonished -- a very rare condition for him. Jabbing at the paper, he said, "This ad just got in here. Today. This is the first day." To be sure, he looked again, twice, before repeating his reasons for being astonished. "How can you be here already? I just got the damned paper!"
"There's different editions," the stranger remarked with a shrug. "In the city, there's a midnight edition. When I read the ad, I jumped on the last train, and I got off at Little Bend, and I've walking ever since."
Ethan chewed on that explanation. "Is that so?"
"I want this job," the man-child continued. "It's tough times. I need work. I didn't want to come all this way and find the job filled. You see my point?"
A habitually neat man, Ethan folded the paper and set it on the table beside his empty coffee mug, and he rose, saying, "You'll need a helmet and jacket, if you want to work here. For our protection. Whatever happens, we don't need some stupid lawsuit chewing us in the ass."
"I wouldn't sue," the young man promised. "But yeah, I've got a work helmet and a good second-hand jacket. There's a hole in it, but the guy who was wearing it is still alive. So it must work, huh?"
Ethan didn't hear the humor, and even if he had, he wouldn't have laughed.
"I've got my resume. You want to see it?"
"Yes." With a slow, studious eye, Ethan examined the brief list of past employers. Most of the businesses were defunct, casualties of the long economic downturn.
Silence seemed to bother the stranger. With a grin, he offered, "This is a beautiful farm. And a beautiful house, too."
Ethan heard the compliments and chose to ignore them. With a crisp, "Stay here," he took the resume inside. His father was sitting in the front room, in his favorite chair. The burly bald man read the single sheet in a glance, and then he looked out the window, investing more time assessing the boyish face and the quick bright eyes. Finally, with a low rumble, he said, "It's your decision. What do you think?"
"I don't like him," Ethan replied.
With a hard little smile, Grandfather reminded his son, "You've never been a good judge of people."
True enough.
"You want to hire him?"
"On a trial basis," Ethan allowed.
"What isn't?" Grandfather replied, laughing at him. "What the hell isn't?"
Ethan walked back outside. In crisp, distinctly unfriendly terms, he described the job while giving the new man a brief tour of the farmstead. To a farmer who had spent centuries working with beasts of burden, the new tractors seemed like abominations, insults and dangerous beyond measure. The two of them ended up outside the old blood barn, watching a herd of draft horses stand in the cool sunshine. Two of the horses were better than two centuries old -- a famous team brought with the Cross family from the old country. On its worst day, a balky tractor could do ten times the work of that pair of animals, and that was why in another year or two, decisions would be made. The oldest horses would remain. But Grandfather didn't have a fondness for creatures without a clear purpose, which meant that their children would be killed and used for that rare commodity: Meat. Perhaps Ethan was thinking about their fate as he stared at them. It is possible that he was sad, or angry, or maybe he was distracted for entirely different reasons. Whatever was happening inside his mind, he barely noticed when the new man nudged him, asking, "So now who's she?"
"Who?" Ethan sputtered, gazing across the big pen. "Which she do you mean?"
"I'm not talking about horses. I mean her." He pointed toward a woman walking from the main house to one of the nearby cottages. "Who's that girl over there?"
"Girl?" Finally, Ethan laughed aloud. "That's my half-sister, and she isn't. A girl, I mean. Shit, she's almost as old as me!"
"Well," the new man ventured, "she looks young enough."
"Young enough for what?" A menace intruded into the constant laugh. "Hey, she's been a widow eight times. No, make that nine times."
"Is she a widow now?"
It took Ethan a few seconds to completely decipher the question. Then with a shrug and a disdainful sneer, he admitted, "Yeah, she's alone. But you don't want to have any ideas about that. Are you listening?"
The new man nodded and smiled, watching the widow walk.
"And we were married within the year," my mother boasts.
I nod, and smile.
"He made me so happy, your father did." Her smile has a practiced quality, bright but wrapped snug around nothing but habit. "That's why I got pregnant with you. Happiness always makes a girl fertile."
