Judge Whymore’s car rushed past us and his tail-lights flared as he slowed and showed us the turn off.
A half mile later, we drew to a stop outside the farmhouse. Our farmhouse.
Lights were burning and the front door was open, spilling molten gold into the night. Figures appeared and loomed closer as I shut off the engine and Trisha and Pete tumbled in excitement from the car.
I stepped out and hands clapped themselves into mine and I saw smiles and happy faces in the sheen of light.
“Our last family,” Judge Whymore was saying. “Isn’t it wonderful ?”
“And two children,” a woman’s gentle voice said. “Two sweet children. Isn’t that wonderful too?”
We all trooped inside and the owners of the faces became neighbours. Five in all. I remembered no names, but their pleasure at having us here was real and soon I felt that I’d known these people all my life.
Everyone carried something from the car. Judge Whymore insisted on carrying Yellow Bird’s covered cage inside, planting it in the centre of the big cherrywood kitchen table and then taking off the cover so that everyone could see Yellow Bird blinking himself awake.
“What is it?” someone said, coming closer.
“Canary bird,” Judge Whymore said, and suddenly there was sadness in his voice. “A beauty too. Whistler, I’ll be bound.”
“Oh, dear,” someone said softly.
They all looked at us with unhappy faces.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing. No, nothing at all,” Judge Whymore said, covering Yellow Bird’s cage. Then his eyes twinkled again and darted around the room. “Where are those children of yours? Now where are they?”
Pete’s face appeared in the doorway. “I just looked but a window and saw someone,” he announced.
Judge Whymore stepped forward, one eyebrow arching upward.
“Saw someone?”
“Yes, saw someone watching me. From the edge of the woods. A lady.”
Judge Whymore laughed. “A lady would come right on in and introduce herself.” He looked at the open front door and everyone else looked too. “She isn’t going to come,” he said in a few moments.
“Pete,” I said. “It’s dark outside. How could you see anyone?”
“Moon’s up,” he said. “Big as a silver dollar. And she had a dog with her.”
“Dog?” Judge Whymore’s voice was sharp. “There are no dogs in the valley, boy. You imagined it.”
“Didn’t,” Pete said. “That dog was the biggest I ever saw.”
“That’s enough, Pete,” I said. “Go and find Trisha and bring her down here.”
“Trisha’s outside, looking at the moon,” Pete said, and smiled.
We all walked to the door. The moon lay big and cold on the tops of the trees of our woods. Trisha’s silhouette was pressed against its face. A breeze came and lifted her hair like slow dark wings.
“Trisha!” I called, and she turned and came towards us.
“Beautiful child,” someone murmured.
“Obedient too,” Judge Whymore said.
* * * *
We soon settled in to life in the valley. Found out our neighbours’ names and then discovered that we had two hundred families as neighbours and it would take six months to learn them all. There wasn’t a day when someone didn’t drop in to make us feel at home.
Sheldon Ward was our immediate neighbour to the south. He had been a banker in Baltimore until he saw the Rich Valley Development ad. He had been one of the first to move into the valley with his family. His farm was prospering.
“They all prosper,” he confided to me one night. “Every last one. No blight, no green fly, no black fly, no aphis, no apple sucker, no Big Bud, no red spider. Before I came to the valley, Adam, I studied farming chemistry. Potash, phosphates, nitrates to enrich the soil. Know what we put in the soil here? Crops.”
Sheldon was right. On the slope facing east I planted and staked apple trees in the rich deep loam. As a windbreak I close-planted damsons and I filled the sunlit sheltered folds of countryside with Louise Bonne and Conference pears and peach bushes that came to fruit with astonishing speed.
The days were sunlit and long, the nights cool and long. School in the valley began at eight and ended at four and it was after five by the time Pete and Trisha appeared plodding through sweet smelling dust on the road below our house.
Trisha didn’t mind the long school hours. But Pete grew more rebellious as the days moved on.
“I’m tired of being in a class on my own,” he said.
“A class on your own?” I tousled his hair. “Now come on, young man. You’re neither so bright or so stupid that you need that kind of attention.”
“Well, almost on my own,” Pete insisted. “Just the three of us.”
“Three? Are you serious?”
He nodded a vigorous ten-year-old head.
“Just three of us.”
I walked over to the pump and began drawing cool green water up from the earth. “Pete, there were thirty or more in your class when you started at the school. I took you there on your first day. I saw them.”
He stayed in the house shade, watching me.
“What happened to the others, Pete?” I said. “Did they just vanish one day?”
“We took tests,” Pete said. “I guess I kept failing. Everyone else passed and they went up a class.”
“Except three of you?”
“Yes.”
The bucket was brimming full. I scooped a dipper full and drank the dark sweet water. “Pete,” I said gently, “you were always up there with the others in your last school, before we came to the valley. What happened?”
He hung his head and then shrugged. “Guess I’m good enough at reading and writing and arithmetic. But not the other things.”
“What other things, Pete?”
He lifted his eyes. “Just things.”
Eve appeared in the doorway behind Pete, her pregnancy great and still surprising in front of her. There hadn’t been any signs, but it must have begun before we came to the valley, because suddenly she was bursting full and happy at the prospect of some fresh-born crying around the house.
“Adam! “she called.
My eyes held Pete’s a moment more and I said, “We’ll see about those tests. I’ll come to the school with you tomorrow.”
“Adam!” Eve called more urgently.
I went over to her. “It’s Yellow Bird,” she said.
She led me inside. Yellow Bird’s cage hung by the open window. In the dusk I could see the cage rocking and swaying, hear the panicky flutter of wings.
“What’s wrong with him, Adam?”
“I don’t know. He acts like he’s scared to death.”
We watched the bird. He seemed to be trying to get out of his cage. He beat his wings against the bars until a yellow downy carpet covered the window-sill and drifted to the floor. His tiny eyes were bright as flames as he dashed himself again and again against the bars.
“Let him out!” It was Trisha who spoke behind us and we turned, startled. Her own grey eyes were huge and wounded with pity.
“Let him out,” she whispered.
I opened the cage door. Yellow Bird launched himself like an arrow across the dark room.
His small beak slashed at Trisha’s face and then he swerved and banged into the white stone wall and fell to the floor.
Trisha bent to the small warm bundle.
“Poor Yellow Bird,” she said. And blood shone on her cheek.
* * * *
Eve turned on her side and the bed creaked softly. “Aren’t you being foolish, Adam? Really, aren’t you?”
“Eve, I went to that school today. I saw it with my own eyes. Three children in a classroom meant for ten times that.”
“Room, Adam. They need room. For the new children.”
“That’s another thing. All these babies due. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
�
��Babies? Strange?”
She sighed and sat up. I saw the glint of her hair in the moonlight that was sliding through our bedroom window.
“Tell me what’s worrying you?”
“Eve, they act like Pete is some kind of savage.”
“You called him a savage yourself once,” Eve said gently.
“He’s a cub, Eve, just a sharp-toothed eager cub. But these tests the kids are given. They say he fails them all. These people act as though he’s actually evil------”
“These people? We’re part of ‘these people’, Adam.”
“Do we belong here, Eve?”
“Yes.” She lay down and buried her cheek into the white pillow. “Yes.”
“I wonder.”
“Don’t wonder, Adam. If this valley is a strange place then it’s wonderful too. I have the feeling that if we doubt it, it can all disappear. And never have been. I’m afraid of that happening. So afraid.”
Her hand moved to mine and pressed. “Don’t ask questions, Adam. For my sake don’t ask them.”
“Honey, I have to------”
“You have to belong, Adam. We all have to belong. Trisha already does. Can’t you see that in her face? I’ve never seen her look more beautiful or be more quietly attentive to whatever she’s doing. Composure and peace. I feel them too. And I’m happy that our new child will be born here. You and Pete must learn------”
“Pete says he won’t go back to school.”
“He’ll go back. We’ll make him go back. It’s important to all of us that he goes back.”
“He can have a couple of days at home, give him time to think it over.”
“No,” Eve said gently. “He’s behind already. He can’t afford to miss his lessons.”
Eve closed her eyes and soon I heard the rhythm of her breathing change. Moonlight shone on her face and on the full white mound where the summer sheet curved over her stomach.
I lay awake. I listened to the creaking and settling of the house around us. I thought of the laden apple trees and peach trees and the rich valley soil. I remembered how Judge Whymore had taken the cover from Yellow Bird’s cage and shaken his head sadly. I thought of the glint of blood on Trisha’s white cheek.
Something flapped wildly outside the bedroom window. For an instant, sitting bolt upright, I saw the gleam of yellow eyes and the cruel curve of beak. Then the vast night bird was gone, whatever it had been, planing away over yellow acres of meadows and woods with a screech.
I stood at the window and looked down towards the edge of the woods. In the glow of moonlight I tried to separate light from shadow, real from unreal. And then I was sure. I could see her poised there, bent forward as she watched the house. By her side was the dog Pete had described to us once.
The dog lifted its snout to the silver sky and howled. The note rose until it trembled from the mountains and filled the night with its call. I heard Eve start awake.
“Adam, what is it?”
Suddenly I pressed my face to the cool glass. I stared unbelieving at the small figure darting from the house below me and making swiftly across the grass towards the woods.
Once, he looked back. He might have seen my white face at the black window.
But he turned and ran on. The girl and the dog came to meet him.
“Pete!” My lips broke against the pale glass. “Pete!”
I went up into the woods after him. As I climbed through the sword-shadows, roots and earth underfoot, the moon began to set.
A single shaft of red light gleamed between the trees and I heard the low growl of an animal ahead. The sound brought my arm hairs prickling erect.
She stood beside the softly snarling animal, one hand fondling its ears. She looked about eighteen years old, her hair long and blonde, face an oval of shadow. She wore blue jeans and a thin black sweater and her feet were bare.
The growling of the animal went on as I faced them. I could see its fiery eyes and the glint of white teeth. Its ears were erect, its coat harsh and black in the last light of the moon.
“A wolf?” I said wonderingly.
“The Wolf, mister.” Her voice was low and lilting with the sound of the woods and countryside. “They kilt ‘em all, all but General. He was a cub an’ I nursed him. Now he’ll eat out your throat if I say.”
“Where’s Pete?” I said softly.
“Your boy? Pete’s a fine boy. He’s safe.”
“Where is he?”
The wolf growled. “I cain’t tell you,” the girl said.
I clenched my fists and unclenched them. The moon had gone. The woods were black, the figures indistinct and unreal.
“Who are you?”
“M’name’s Ruth. Ruth Kitel.”
“Ruth, listen to me. Do you know what is happening here in the valley?”
“Dumb Brother knows. But he cain’t tell. Cain’t tell me ‘cause I cain’t talk with my mind. General knows. Dumb Brother told General...”
“Who is Dumb Brother?”
“What I told you. My dumb brother. I guess his name is Josh.”
“Where can I find Josh?”
“You find Dumb Brother and y’find your boy.”
“Where?”
“Cain’t tell.”
I stepped angrily forward. The wolf growled a low warning and the girl put her hand on its ruff.
“Take it real easy, mister.”
“Ruth,” I said softly, “what are you doing up here? You—and Josh—and General. What are you hiding out here in the woods for?”
“Not just three of us,” she said. “There’s more. Lot more. And now Pete.”
“Pete can’t stay.”
“That’s f’r Pete to say.”
“He’s just a boy!”
The wolf growled. She said softly, “I got to go, mister. Done try t’follow me, or General will feed off you.”
“Ruth, why do you want Pete?”
“Pete is the one who wants us, mister.”
“You said there were others, others besides you and Dumb Brother. Who are the others? Where are they?”
“Who?” she said. ‘Where?” She laughed softly. “Why, they all aroun’ you now. They bin watchin’ you all this time. Didn’t you see?”
Something clattered in the brush behind me and I whirled. Small eyes stared out at me, then blinked to darkness. There was a woosh and a roar of wings overhead and two flights of birds banked like bombers over the tree tops, black crosses against the starglow.
Ruth was moving away, fading too.
“Ruth!” I called. “You wanted me to see you tonight! You sent that bird to draw me to the window. You knew I’d follow Pete into the woods.”
She turned and said softly, “I didn’t send the bird, mister. I cain’t do that. Only Dumb Brother can speak to the wild creatures.”
“You wanted to see me. Why?”
“I tole Dumb Brother you might be one of us. I said of all the people in the valley, you and Pete might belong here in the woods.”
“Perhaps I do. Take me to Dumb Brother, let me talk to him.”
“Can you talk with y’mind?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then you cain’t.”
“I’m coming back, Ruth. I’ll be armed. Or I’ll have the police with me. I’ll be coming for Pete.”
“No gun in the valley, mister. No police neither.”
“I’ll go outside the valley.”
“You cain’t,” she said. “They won’t let you.”
“Won’t let me?”
“Try it. You’ll see. Ain’t no way any of us can leave this valley.”
* * * *
The lights were blazing in our house. Eve and Trisha sat in straight-backed chairs in the kitchen. When I entered the room Trisha went to the hot plate and poured steaming coffee.
Trisha’s eyes were big and soft. “He’s run off,” she said.
I nodded, then glanced at Eve.
“He’s gone. I couldn’t find him. He m
ust be hiding out in the woods.”
Trisha brought me coffee. “That’s where he belongs. In the woods.”
New Writings in SF 8 - [Anthology] Page 10