“How did you know?” I asked. Her integument was dull now and there were patches of scales rubbed off. Her eyes were almost not visible.
“Mrs. Crowley called me,” she said. “In any case I would have been here. There is in Hi-nin also of poison. There remains for him only the Return Home. We must rejoice for him.”
The smile she brought forth was more than I could bear.
“Gail’s germs were poison to him?”
“Oh, no. He poisons himself. It is an ancient hormone, from the early days of our race when we had what your Mrs. Baden so wisely calls aggression. It is dormant in us since before the accounting of our history. An adult Hiserean, perhaps, could fight his emotions and cure himself. Hi-nin has no weapons—so your physicians have explained it to me, from our scientific books. How can I doubt that they are right?”
How could I doubt it, either? It would be, I thought, rather like a massive overdose of adrenalin. Psychogenic, of course, but what help was it to know that? Would there be some organ in Hi-nin a surgeon could remove? Like the adrenals in humans, perhaps?
Of course not. If they could have, they would have.
I HURRIED on to find the room where Gail was. She was not pale, as I had expected, but pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. They were probably putting in more blood than they were taking out. There were two of the other mamas from our car pool, waiting their turns.
Regina was sitting by the bed, her face ugly and swollen from crying.
“She looks just fine!” I exclaimed.
“Only in the last fifteen minutes,” she said. “When I called you, she was like ice. Her eyes didn’t move.”
“We’re lucky with Gail. Did you know about Hi-nin?”
“The little animal!” she said. “He’s the one that did it.”
“He didn’t do anything, Regina, and you know it.”
“He shouldn’t have been in the car pool. He shouldn’t be with human children at all.”
“He’s going to die,” I said quickly, before she had time to say things she’d have nightmares about later on.
“Sorry,” Regina said, because we were all looking at her and because her child was pink and beautiful and healthy while Hi-nin . . .
“Regina,”, I said, “what did you do after it happened?”
“Do! It scared the hell out of me—that creature shaking all over and Gail screaming. At first I didn’t know what had happened. Then I saw that thing flopping around on the front seat and I screamed and threw it out of the window. And then I noticed Hi-nin’s wrist, or whatever you call it. I said, ‘Oh, God, I knew you’d get us in trouble!’ But the creature didn’t say anything. He just sat there. And I let the other children off and brought Hi-nin to you because I didn’t want to get involved with that Mrs. Baden.”
“And Gail?”
“She seemed all right. She just climbed in the back with the other children and pretty soon they were all laughing.”
“And all that time little Hi-nin . . . Regina, didn’t you even pat him or hold him or kiss it for him or anything?”
“Kiss it!”
At that moment Mrs. His-tara came in, with Mrs. Baden and a doctor behind her. I should have known. Mrs. Baden didn’t leave people to fight battles alone.
Mrs. His-tara looked at Mrs. Baden, but Mrs. Baden only nodded and smiled encouragingly at her.
THE doctor was gently pulling the needle out of Gail’s vein. The room was silent. Even Gail sat large-eyed and solemn.
“Mrs. Crowley,” Mrs. His-tara began, obviously dragging each word up with great effort, “would it be accurate to tell my son that Gail has received no hurt from him? We must, you see, prepare him for the Return Home.” Regina looked around at us and at Gail. She hadn’t dared let herself look at Mrs. His-tara yet.
“Doctor!” Regina called suddenly. “Look at Gail’s mouth!”
Even from where I was, I could see it. A scaly growth along both lips.
“That’s a temporary effect of the serum,” the doctor said. “We tried an antitoxin before we decided to change the blood. It is nothing to worry about.”
“Oh.”
“Mrs. Crowley,” Mrs. His-tara began again, “it is much to ask, but at such a moment, much is required. If you could come yourself, and if Gail could endure to be carried . . .”
But Gail did, indeed, look queer, and she stretched out her arms not to her mother but to Mrs. His-tara.
“The tides,” Mrs. His-tara said, “have cast us up a miracle.”
She gathered Gail into the boneless cradle of her curved arms.
Regina took her sunglasses out of her purse and hid her eyes. “Mind your own damned business,” she told Mrs. Baden and me.
“It is our damned business,” I whispered to Mrs. Baden, and she held my arm as we followed Regina down the hall.
Mrs. His-tara threaded her way through a cordon of other Hisereans who must have been flown in for the occasion. I couldn’t see the children, but I could hear them.
“Him cold!” said Gail. “Him scared!”
“He’s scared of you,” Regina said. “We’re sorry, Gail.
Tell him we’re sorry. We didn’t understand.”
Gail laughed. A loud and healthy laugh.
“Gail sorry,” she said. “Me thought you was to eat.”
There was a small sound. I thought it was from Hi-nin and I held Mrs. Baden’s hand as though it were my only link to a sane world.
“Dat a joke,” Gail said. “Hi-nin ’posed to laugh!” Then there was a silence and Regina started to say something but Mrs. His-tara whispered, “Please! It is a thought between the children.”
Then there was a small, quiet laugh from Hi-nin. “In truth,” he said with that oh, so familiar lisp, “it is funny.”
“Me don’t do it again,” Gail said, solemn now.
WHEN I got home it was so late that the stars were sliding down the sky and I just knew Clay wouldn’t have thought to turn the parking lights on. But he had.
Furthermore, he was still up.
“Were you worried?” I asked delightedly.
“No. Regina called a couple of hours ago.”
“Regina?”
“She said she was concerned about the expression on your face.”
Clay handed me a present, all wrapped in gold stickum with an electronic butterfly bouncing airily around on it.
I peeled the paper off carefully, to save it for Billy, and set the butterfly on the sticky side.
Inside the box was a gorgeous blue fluffy affair of no apparent utility.
“Oh, Clay!” I gasped. “I can’t wear anything like this!” I slipped out of my paper clothes and the gown slithered around me.
Hastily, I pulled the pins out of my hair, brushed it back and smeared on some lipstick.
“I look silly,” I said. “I’m all the wrong type.” My little crayola note was still stuck in the mirror. Phooey to me. “You’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not. You don’t really look respectable at all, Verne.”
I ran into the dining area. “Regina told you about the boudoir slip!”
I heard Clay stumble over a chair in the dark.
“Obscenity!” he said. “All right, she did. So what? I think you look like a call girl.”
I ran into the living room and hid behind the sofa. “Do you really, truly think so?”
“Absolutely!” Another chair clattered and Clay toed the living room lights. “Ah!” he said. “I’ve got you cornered. You look like a chorus girl. You look like an easy pickup. You look like a dirty little—”
“Stop,” I cried, “while you’re still winning!” END
SAVE YOU CONFEDERATE MONEY, BOYS
IT WAS not, of course, the sort of thing that happens to the ordinary person.
But then Grandfather Mayberry was not the ordinary person, even to begin with. When Walter—I don’t think it’s respectful to refer to your grandfather as Walter, either, but we were never allowed to call him anything else. He was frequently re
ferred to in the family as Yankee Walter, but no one ever said it to his face. It happened that his mother, great-grandfather’s first wife, was from Massachusetts and because of this everyone always thought of Walter as being a little bit different. I think maybe this might account for a lot of Walter’s peculiarities. I mean when people expect you to be a little peculiar all the time—well, as Walter’s descendant I can understand how he felt. Whenever anyone mentions something like Protointegrationist somebody looks a little guiltily over at me as though I caused the second secession and whoever mentions it in front of me is being tactless.
I was only a child then.
And I remember thinking it was awful to secede and not have anybody care. I mean to have big industry just move away and to get poorer and poorer and have to pick the cotton yourself.
And wrap it in tissue paper and sell it to the tourists for ten cents a boll—Confederate money.
But look at it this way. Your Confederate money’s worth something now. And why?
Well, when Walter announced, back in 1990, that he had no intention of dying, I was immensely relieved. If Walter said he wasn’t going to die that winter, he wasn’t going to. So I had Mama spray on the tightest corset I could stand and took off for my year of Precollege with a light heart and a twenty-inch waist.
I didn’t really expect to be able to pass the college boards, even with Precollege. And if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to go to college. It was all the family could do to send the boys. But Mama didn’t want anyone to say her girls weren’t educated, so we all went to Precollege and gracefully flunked the college boards.
It was that summer—after my two semesters of Precollege—that I brought the Price boy back with me, Jerry Price. I ended up not marrying him, of course. He really wouldn’t have done at all, but boy, could he court!
Well, I was all watery-eyed and pink-skinned over Jerry then and I knew the family would just love him and I sort of hoped he’d stay more than just two or three days. I mean if he could find a summer job maybe he could stay until September 15, which was the date for the college boards. The thing was, would Jerry like the family?
“The one I really want you to meet,” I told him, feeling a little uneasy about it, “is my grandfather. Walter.”
“You call him Walter?”
“Yes. Er . . . he’s a real character. You know . . . The thing is, though, he’s almost bedridden.”
“Bedridden? You mean rocking chair ridden.”
“No. Bedridden. I know it sounds unusual, but my grandfather Mayberry refused to take his chloresterol pills. Or antichloresterol pills, or whatever it is. He said they weren’t Natural. And now it’s too late. He’s ruined his arteries.”
“It takes a real character to do something like that.”
I didn’t like Jerry’s tone of voice, but I couldn’t help but agree with it. Maybe Walter wasn’t a character. Maybe he was just stupid.
“The thing is,” I said, because the postbellum buggy was almost there, “that the extra cot is in his room and you’ll have to sleep there. I mean I’m sure you’ll find Walter an interesting character.”
“Sure,” Jerry said.
Surely, I thought, Jerry will not disapprove of the bottle under Walter’s pillow or his swearing or his insulting—but then even Walter wouldn’t be able to find anything insulting to say about Jerry.
The house looked silent and empty when we drove up. Cousin Dickie helped me out of the buggy and held out his hand. I didn’t put anything in it so he drove off in a huff and left a whirlwind of dust for us to track into the house.
I swang open the screen door and yelled, “Yoo-hoo!” But I could hear it echo way to the kitchen without striking anything soft.
“Must be out showing the end of the season tourists around,” I said. “The trains are all local here and they never run on time so nobody knew just when we’d be in. I mean, if they’d known, they’d certainly all be here to welcome you.”
“Sure,” Jerry said.
Really, I thought, they could have left somebody. It all seemed such an anticlimax.
“Well,” I said, “there’s still Walter. You’ll want to bring your bags up, anyway.”
Halfway up the stairs I stopped. I could hear water splashing and a quavery voice singing, “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
Oh, Lord, I thought. He’s gone and gotten drunk in the bath tub again and there’s no one to get him out.
Jerry looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“Grandfather Mayberry,” I explained, “remembers all the old World War songs. He likes to just splash in the bathtub and just sing and sing. Isn’t it wonderful!” I finished up as enthusiastically as I could.
“Sure,” Jerry said. “My grandfather,” he added, “makes a hobby of taking school kids out on hikes. You know.”
“Sure,” I said. I decided then and there I’d rather let Walter drown than send Jerry in there to get him out of the tub.
Just then the screen door slammed and Mama said, “Yoo-hoo! Annabelle! Is your young man with you?”
“Yes!” I called, hissing on the s. Mama’s phraseology is always so irritating. I wasn’t at all sure Jerry wanted to be referred to as “my young man.”
“Be right down!” I added. “Jerry,” I said, “you just put your things in there and come on down when you’re ready.”
What I wanted was a moment alone with Mama and I got it.
“Someone has got to do something about Walter,” I whispered. “He’s there in the bath tub again and singing and you know he’s dr . . .”
“Don’t you dare,” Mama cried, “say that. Your grandfather Mayberry is perfectly all right and he’ll get out of the tub when he’s ready.”
“Mama, at a time like this you cannot close your eyes to ugly reality. You know Walter can’t get out of the tub by himself and none of the men are here and pretty soon he’ll start yelling and then Jerry will have to go hoist him out. Call up cousin Jefferson. Please!”
“Now, dear,” Mama began sootheingly, “I haven’t written you about it, but Walter has had the most amazing . . .”
There was a hoarse screech and Jerry came barrelling down the steps with his cuff ruffles untaped and one boot off.
He grabbed Mama with one hand and me with the other. “Get out of the house!” he cried. “We’ll lock it in and get it when the test of the men get back.”
Mama removed his hand firmly.
“Your grandfather Mayberry,” she told me, “is out of the bath.”
“There is an alligator up there!” Jerry cried, still trying to herd us out.
“Is this your young man?” Mama asked in a tone which she never used with the tourist trade.
“Yes,” I answered. “Mama, if Jerry sees an alligator . . .”
“Please make yourself at home, Mr. Price,” Mama said with a severe look at his hanging cuffs. “Since we no longer have servants you’ll have to excuse me while I get supper started.”
We hadn’t had servants for as far back as I could remember.
“Look, Annabelle,” Jerry began, whispering nervously and looking like he’d gotten off on the wrong floor of a hospital. “L don’t want to insult your . . .”
It was at that moment that I found out what the word galumphing means, because Walter came galumphing down the stairs.
In all justice to my grandfather Mayberry, he didn’t really look like an alligator.
But in all justice to Jerry, I could see how a mistake might have been made.
“Hello, Annabelle,” Walter said, as though he’d just seen me last this morning. “Your boyfriend’s got no guts.”
“And you,” I said furiously, “have no manners. Walter, how can you come out in front of company looking like this?”
“Can’t look any other way, chick,” he said. “Hormones.”
“I’m going to be a freshman in pre-med next year,” Jerry said, “and I’ve never heard of a hormone with those kinds of side effects.”
“Cap,” Walter said, “you’ve got an awful lot of ignorance to lose.”
“Annabelle!” It was time for me to see to the biscuits and set the table.
“Make yourself at home, Jerry,” I said, feeling sure this was not the way things were at his home.
The kitchen was unnaturally cool. Furthermore, it didn’t smell like anything at all.
The air was clear.
“Mama!” I cried. “We’ve got an atomic stove!”
It was built into the side wall. The old wood stove was still there, of course, for the tourists. But the tin chimney was gone and the lids were clean and the cracked one had been replaced.
Mama smiled and pressed a button. The wall panel slid back and inside were eight dinners, neatly set on plates and plain raw.
“All I have to do,” Mama said, “is press a button and the food is cooked and the plates come out just warm.”
“You had a good crop of tourists?”
“No. Your grandfather Mayberry provided this for us.”
“You know Walter can’t even provide himself with cigars.”
Mama bit at her upper lip with her lower teeth, a sign that I will never learn to be tactful. “Walter has built up quite a little business. At first we thought of it as just a hobby but now it’s growing into—well, it looks as though we may find ourselves carrying on the tourist trade as a sort of hobby.”
“Whatever kind of business can Walter have got into?” A horrible thought struck me. “Not Yankee wines?”
“Dear! It’s a . . . um . . . mail order business.”
“There’s something you’re trying not to tell me. But if you don’t, Walter will. And he’ll make it sound even worse than it is.”
“Dear, your grandfather Mayberry is handling the distribution of Swamp Water Youth Restorative for the entire Confederacy.”
“Sw . . .!” I simply collapsed into hysterics. It was such an absurd thing and Mama said it so primly.
“Oh, Mama!” I finally managed, “That’s plain disgraceful. We didn’t need an atomic stove that bad. And oh, he’ll tell Jerry! I’d better go get him right now.”
“It is not disgraceful. Swamp Water Youth Restorative actually does restore youth.”
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 10