“I told them you like Roquefort . . .” But she didn’t mean to say that, only, David, David, you came back, you said no.
“I was terrified,” he said.
She didn’t care why he’d said no. She wasn’t going to test him again. She started to say so, but he put his hand over her mouth.
“Shh. They said I have to go. I escaped, but they’re looking for me.”
“No,” she whispered. “You get to choose.”
“They said I already chose. And I did, at first. I said, yes, I’d go on board. And then all at once it came to me. That I was afraid. More afraid than I believed possible. I can’t go with them. I’d go mad.” He pulled her closer. “Forgive me.”
“Wait here,” she said. He protested, but she was more clear headed than he was at the moment. She pulled his arms away. “I know them better than you do. I’ll talk to them.”
Before he could dissuade her, she charged up the hill, looking for a man with a beard and glasses. Cresting the hill, she walked along the ridge. At length she sensed a presence nearby. She had searched for them so long she could find them even in the dark.
“We need to talk,” she said.
After a moment, a familiar voice said. “So talk.”
“You said he must be willing. Well, he’s not.”
“They all change their minds at some point or another. Often they change back and forth many times. Do you think we can just turn around after light years of travel? On a human whim?”
“But you haven’t left yet. There’s room for a change of mind.”
“We measure these things differently. We’ve created a human physio unit. It took extensive resources. I’m afraid we can’t change the rules just for you.”
She didn’t bother to hide her bitterness. “You tricked me.”
He shrugged. He still had it wrong. “You tricked your husband.”
“It wasn’t a trick. It was a test.”
“Where I come from, they’re the same thing.”
She took a deep breath, deeper than any she’d ever breathed. The woods were lightening to her super-charged sight: there was the bearded alien, the looming pine trees, the air itself, alive with her thoughts.
The decision, when it came, was easy.
Touching the alien’s arm she said, “The probes — do they hurt?”
He must have taken pity on her then, because his voice softened, and he folded his fingers around hers in a very convincing approximation of a helping hand.
“No. I promise.”
“Then take me,” she said. “In his place.”
A long pause. “The forms . . .”
“Can be filled out later. We’ll have a long time.”
Again he paused. Then he guided her to the place where the space craft waited. It was invisible, except that its shape distorted the woods in a giant, wobbly sphere. A door in the center was open and a reddish light gushed out.
“The light is wrong,” she told him.
“I know. We’re working on it.”
Inside, the tunnels were small, but not so very unsettling. There were lobes where she could stand tall. There was pistachio ice cream — melted in jars. It was wrong, of course, but the gesture calmed her.
“I’m ready,” she told the alien.
“You choose?”
She watched as the hatch began closing. The words stuck in her throat, but she nodded.
The bearded man seemed to know the gesture.
Beneath their feet, the deck rumbled.
“Buckle in,” he said.
My brother Paul Swenson did the cover image of a junkyard astronaut (complete with hubcap moon) for issue #33. This issue had stand-out fiction, including stories from three writers represented elsewhere in this anthology. But Stephen, a fairly new writer, caught me unawares with “The Dandelion Clock.” He cranked the emotion quotient up high (in a good way). It also featured one of my favorite Keith Boulger interior illustrations.
THE DANDELION CLOCK
STEPHEN COUCH
Roy came busting in from playing outside, from playing in the dirt — there was nothing but dirt to play with — and said, “King George is sick.”
“How do you mean, sick?” I asked, not looking up from my catalog. The boy saw permanent doom and disaster wherever he looked, and I’d grown to treat his claims as less than serious until he gave me enough proof.
“He’s got this stuff on him, like dust,” Roy started, but then bit off his words, realizing how silly they sounded. Everything had dust on it, had for months now. My wife, Martha, was never without a broom, beating back the tide of soil that crept under our doors without pause.
I glanced up from the world of Sears and Roebuck and cocked an eyebrow that said you’d better have more than that, son.
“And . . . and he’s acting funny. Shaking and shivering. He’s not walking right.”
“Probably got some dust in his ears,” I said, beginning to raise the catalog to block my view of Roy and end the conversation.
“And he growled at Dot.”
I dropped the catalog. “He did what?”
Roy glanced back at the door, then at me, eyes serious. “She went to pet him and he growled. She’s crying.”
I grabbed his shoulders. “And you left —” I started, but stood instead. “Did he bite her? Did he bite you?”
He looked at the door again. “I don’t think so.”
I went for the door, pausing to grab my rifle just in case, hoping the damn thing wasn’t plugged with grit. “Stay here,” I said to Roy, and let myself out. I didn’t know what was wrong with King George, but if he was growling at little Dot — the least threatening member of my family by far — something was wrong. It could be any number of things — rabies, distemper. Or it could have been the environment itself; even the best dogs went a little crazy in the unending storms of wind and dust here in the Panhandle.
Even the best people, too.
I walked around the corner of our house, calling Dot’s name, and froze at the sight that met me, misinterpreting it as worse than what it was — my daughter lying beside our dog, looking for the world like he’d mauled her.
I blinked, shook my head, and saw what was happening: King George was lying on his side, unmoving, and Dot was beside him, arm flung over him, hugging him. The dog dwarfed her.
“Poor puppy,” she was saying, over and over.
“Dotty,” I said, keeping my gun shouldered, “get away from him.”
She looked up at me, face crumpling, unable to understand how I could ask her to do such an awful thing. She hugged the dog tighter, and he let out a groan.
“He’s sick,” Dot said. King George reinforced her claim by breaking wind.
“I know that, sweetie. I need to take a look at him and see what’s wrong.”
“No you don’t,” she said, looking straight at the rifle. A rabid skunk had come on our land a few weeks ago and I did to it what had to be done. I don’t think Dot had quite forgiven me for killing the ‘zebra kitty’ yet.
“Dot,” I said, but she grabbed the dog tighter and wailed, muffling her voice with his fur.
I stepped closer and could see what Roy had been talking about: King George looked dusty, but not like he’d been rolling in the dirt. It looked finer, fuzzier, like cobwebs or cotton fluff . . .
“Dorothy,” I snapped, and that got her attention. She looked up at me, her grip on the dog loosening. “Get away from the dog. Now.”
Dot let go and scooted back a few feet, looking back and forth between me and King George, tears making little mud-tracks on her dirty face.
“Go inside,” I said, and she stood, tottering. Her face screwed up again and she ran full speed to the back door, bawling ‘puppy’ all the way.
I waited to hear the door slam. “Hey boy,” I said, stepping towards King George, keeping my voice soothing. His eyes had gotten a little wild when I’d shouted at Dot, but he seemed to be calming down again.
“What did
you get into?” I asked, kneeling down beside him. His fur was covered with the whatever-it-was. He was breathing heavily, but not panting.
I wondered if he’d rolled around in grasshopper poison. They’d laid it down pretty thick and heavy after everyone’s crops had been blighted, but most of it had blown away in the interim. Dot didn’t seem sick, though, and if she’d been hugging a poison-coated dog she wouldn’t have been so spry.
I reached down to ruffle the dog’s fur, to get a pinch of the stuff, and he bared his teeth.
I was up and clear of him in a heartbeat. He didn’t move, didn’t try to get up, but a steady growl was coming from his muzzle.
I raised my rifle but lowered it again. One more black mark on my report card from Dot, and Roy wouldn’t be too pleased with me either. What if this was just temporary? What if we could cure it, and return King George to his regular enthusiastic self?
I could barely feed my family bread and lard, and the nearest vet was hours away, and expensive to boot. I’d had a mule get sick, and had to sell half the crops from the fields he plowed to afford his care.
I raised the rifle again, and the dog’s growl got deeper.
To hell with it — even if I could afford to treat the dog, I didn’t want him hanging around my house, threatening me and mine, until he could get well. Dot would get loose, and try to hug the ‘puppy’ again, and she’d get bitten or worse.
Pets were replaceable — children weren’t. I shouldered the rifle and took aim.
King George started to get to his feet. His fur was quivering, the weird dust covering him standing on end.
“Daddy, don’t!” someone shouted, but I’d already pulled the trigger. King George went down in a splatter of blood, a cloud of the not-dust rising as he flopped to the ground.
“No!” came the voice again, and Roy barreled past me. I grabbed his shirtsleeve and yanked him back before he could reach the dead dog.
“He’s got a sickness, Roy!” I said, hauling him away, back to the house. “You told me so yourself.”
Roy stared at the dog, crying like his sister. “But, but —”
“Did you play with him today?” I asked. “Did you touch him?”
“I — I petted him before he fell down, but —”
I stopped and grabbed his wrists, turning his hands up to the baking sun.
A fine coating of the cottony substance was on his palms.
Even in this gritty, dirty, nasty weather, children still hated to take baths. My brood was no exception. They faced each other in the washtub, scowling with every rub of the scrubbing brush, splashing each other when they thought we weren’t looking.
Martha and I took turns going over them, rubbing the lye soap into every crack and crevice we could find, making them stand up for inspection every so often. Dot had the white dust on her face and hands, and in her hair. I hoped the bath would do the trick so we wouldn’t have to shave her head. Her brother picked on her enough as it was.
“Daddy, what —” said Dot, but broke off as Roy caught her right the face with a big splash. She coughed and spluttered, but seemed less interested in being mad at him as in plotting how to splash him back.
At last, scrubbed pink, we set them free from the tub to dry off in front of the fire. Dot was still sniffing and coughing, and Roy seemed a little put off that he’d choked her that badly. He gave her a pat on the back whenever she’d cough, and she didn’t seem to mind the contact.
Martha was going over the bank statements, the near-empty books for the farm, and other assorted paperwork, trying to see if we had any way out of this drought. Our neighbors — miles away though they were, we still thought of them as such — had been shutting down their farms and heading back East. Only the Garners a few miles up the road had stayed, as far as I knew.
And if I didn’t know I’d have to face my father back there, I would’ve joined the exodus.
I walked over and put a hand on my wife’s tensed shoulder. She looked up at me, trying to smile. I glanced at all the paperwork and back at her. She turned back to the table, the candlelight shadowing her face.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said, and I recited the rest of the joke along with her:
“The good news is: Hoover’s going to be out of office in a couple of years . . . .” We smiled like condemned prisoners, neither one of us finishing the joke. We knew what the bad news was; we were reminded every time we looked out a window.
We owed money on the house, money on the land, money on the truck. All three were falling apart before we’d even finished paying for them. We owed money to a farmers’ co-op so far away we’d never even visited it.
And when the wind came, it blew away every last scrap of our money just as sure as if we’d left it in a big pile outside.
“I don’t know, Michael,” Martha said, waving her hands over the piles of documents as if trying to make them vanish. “We have a grace period on these loans, but . . .” She turned back to me. “I wish we could ask your father for help. That would solve so many problems.” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “I wish he’d answered those letters you sent him.”
“We’ll make it without him,” I said. “If not, well, I guess you’ll just have to leave me.” She smiled without looking at me, not finishing that old private joke either.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze, and went to check on the children. They were playing with some blocks, trying to build a tower. Dot gave another cough, and the whole thing fell down.
I crouched down beside her. “You still working out that water, baby?”
She nodded, focused on rebuilding the tower. Roy supervised, pretending Dot was a construction worker.
Was that his latest dream, being some kind of architect? In the last few months, he’d gone from wanting to be a cowboy to a policeman, a soldier, a “jungle adventurer,” and a doctor. Once, when I was showing him the constellations, he’d even pointed at the Moon and said, “I want to be the first person to go there.”
He’d never once mentioned wanting to be a farmer, thank the Lord.
I tousled the kids’ hair and went back in the bedroom, glancing back to see if Martha was still engrossed in her finances. It would be story time for the kids soon, and I had my nightly ritual to perform first.
In the bedroom, I pulled up a loose floorboard and withdrew a twine-bound sheaf of letters, all addressed to me, all postmarked from New York.
I could recite their gist by memory. Dear son, they’d say, when are you going to give up this stupid hobby and come home?
I dropped the letters back in the hole and re-covered it. I hoped I’d seen the last of them. Neither the postman nor the Western Union fellow had wandered out this way in a couple of months, so my spirits were up.
I stood and looked at the floorboard. “To hell with you, old man,” I muttered. “You think I’m not going to succeed where you failed —”
And broke off at the sound of howling from outside.
Dot was already up, demolishing the tower with a careless foot. “Puppy?” she asked, as I hurried from the bedroom.
“Stay there,” I said to the kids, and lit the lantern. Coyotes had come for King George. I hadn’t buried him deeply enough.
The lantern held high, my pistol in my free hand, I creaked open the back door, casting a small pool of light that the wind and dirt did their best to obscure.
I saw a flash of fur and pointed my gun, but it was gone again.
I yelled and hooted, hoping to drive off the coyotes. They were bold as long as someone wasn’t watching them.
At my voice, one of them gave an answering bark. Not your usual coyote yip or snarl, but a full-throated, enthusiastic bark.
And from the haze, what was left of King George staggered up to the door, summoned by his master’s voice.
I recoiled, pulling the lantern away, but even in the diminished light I could see: the dusty growths had consumed him, covering him in downy white growths from head to toe. One ey
e was obscured, but the other blinked at me happily.
The white stuff sprouting from the hole in his head had taken on a pinkish cast.
King George panted, his tongue looking for the world like it had thrush, and gave another happy bark.
Dot matched his happiness, shouting “Puppy!” behind me.
“Dorothy, get back!” I shouted. I held the gun on the dog, even as a little voice in my head said, Good idea — it worked so well last time . . . .
King George shivered as the wind changed direction, and I could see a cloud of white seeds detach from his body, swirling away on the breeze, leaving a patch of seeping, pitted, gray skin in their place.
I slammed the door. The howling started up again shortly after.
Martha came up behind me. “Michael, what in the world . . . ?”
“Don’t open it,” I said. “Don’t let the children near the door.” I realized I was gripping the gun so hard it hurt. I relaxed my hand and felt pins and needles race to my fingertips.
“Is it King George?” she asked, and Roy came over, wanting to know the answer.
“I shot him in the head,” I said. “Point blank, I know it. But he’s out there, and he’s got that white garbage all over him now, and —” I stared at Roy, and at Dot, sulking by their bed.
“Heat up the tub again,” I told Martha. “We need to give them another bath.”
The kids protested, Dot shouting “No!” so loudly it triggered another fit of coughing. She clapped her hands over her mouth, muffling the noise. Martha went over to hold her as she bent double from the spasms. I stood there, looking back and forth at the door, my family, and the damned financial paperwork, with King George outside mourning himself at the top of his lungs.
Dot finished a long string of coughs with a gasp, pulling herself out of her hunch, grabbing at my wife’s dress.
Even from across the room I could see the small crimson smears her hands left behind.
I took the lantern from the table and walked towards Martha and Dot, my feet feeling like they weren’t making contact with the ground. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to see.
The Best of Talebones Page 17