Cat in Glass

by Nancy Etchemendy

  All I could think of was that thing crawling around out there, and I says, “Get her back inside! Get her out of the rain!” My voice cracked, just like it always does when I most wish it wouldn’t.

  And Lemmy gave me one of those cockeyed half smiles of his and said, “For Pete’s sake. You’d think she’s made of sugar or something. The rain ain’t gonna melt her, you know.”

  Then I hit Lemmy in the stomach, and he hit me in the nose. And the next thing I knew, Momma was standing over me with an ice pack, yelling a blue streak, and dripping rainwater all over the kitchen floor. I didn’t care. I just closed my eyes and let her yell. As long as she was back inside, that’s all that mattered to me.

  This morning, I remember lying in bed thinking the tuckahoe thing must have been nothing but a bad dream. I heard birds chirping outside the window and I watched a little finger of sunlight move across a spider web in the corner. The rain had stopped, and the clouds were no more than a few raggedy strings way up high. I felt so good that I whistled while I put my pants on and said good morning to Lemmy even though my nose was still pretty sore.

  Momma was getting ready to go out and fetch the eggs from the chickens, like she does every morning. She had to pull on a pair of high rubber boots, because the front acre was ankle-deep in mud from the storm. I stood in the sunshine on the porch and watched her wade out towards the chicken coop. She had a basket hanging from one arm for the eggs. She got about ten or fifteen steps away, then stopped dead still with the basket swinging from her elbow. She turned around, and the look on her face made me swallow without meaning to.

  “There’s something kind of funny out here, Ruben,” she said. “Better ask Pa to come and take a look.”

  I hollered for Pa, and he grumbled, for he hates to get up from his chair. But he lumbered out into the mud, and me and Lemmy rolled up our pants and followed him.

  Momma had come across a patch of slimy stuff. It could have been egg whites maybe, except it was sort of milky, and where would egg whites come from anyway, there being no yolks or shells lying around? Pa frowned at it, and Lemmy and him stuck their fingers in it. Then Pa said it wasn’t anything to worry about, probably some new kind of bug left it, or it might be some kind of mildew, he didn’t know.

  All that time, I was standing on one foot and then the other, and my heart was ticking as fast as a two-dollar watch. I had a pretty fair idea what had left that slime, and it didn’t have anything to do with bugs. “Pa,” I said, “I think you should know I saw some kind of strange critter crawling around out here last night, looked like one of those tuckahoe clumps, only almost as big as you are.”

  Lemmy rolled his eyes and spit in the mud right by my foot. Pa just looked mad and said, “Ruben, everybody knows you can’t tell the difference between a tall tale and the truth. If you think I’m gonna swallow a story like that, you got a brain about the size of a pea.” Then him and Lemmy sloshed back to the house, talking and laughing. I stayed outside with Momma, because I felt like I was either going to throw things or cry, and I didn’t want to give Pa the satisfaction of seeing it.

  By and by, me and Momma went and took a look at the chicken coop. It turned out there were hardly any eggs in the boxes. That was spooky enough. But what we found just inside the chicken wire scared me a lot worse. I thought I saw two rags lying there on the ground, but when I looked closer, I saw it wasn’t rags at all. It was two dead hens, just their feathers and skin, with nothing inside. I squinted and poked, but I couldn’t find any rips or bites. It was like all the blood and meat and bones had been sucked right out of them, leaving them empty, without a single mark.

  Momma turned all white when she saw those hens, and she told Pa about them as soon we got back inside. But he treats her the same way as he treats me, like she hasn’t got the sense she was born with. He said to her, “What do you expect after a storm like that? If you was a chicken would you lay good with all that racket goin’ on?” Then he said a coon must have gotten in and killed them.

  I came pretty close to telling him right then and there that if he expected me to swallow a story like that, he must have a brain about the size of a pea. I know what a coon does to a chicken, and it doesn’t look anything like that. But I never really said it. I just thought it. And now I’m glad, because all I want is just to see Pa alive, even if he’s wrong sometimes.

  Momma took her boots off and went into the kitchen and lit the fire in the gas range. She had only got four eggs, and that was just two apiece for Pa and Lemmy even if me and Momma went without. Pa was yelling about how he was half starved to death, and she couldn’t very well expect him to haul an oak limb down off the roof with a half-empty stomach. He told her she’d better fry a whole lot of spuds to make up the difference, and he snapped his suspenders, which Momma hates because it makes them wear out quicker.

  Momma was busy with the griddle and slicing some bacon and all, and she said to me without looking, “Ruben, honey, will you go down to the root cellar and bring up some spuds?”

  I just stood there. All of a sudden, it didn’t matter how bright the sun was shining or how loud the birds were twittering. It might as well have been pitch dark and rain pouring down in buckets again as far as I was concerned. I was thinking about that slime on the front acre and those two empty chicken skins. And I could see the tuckahoe in my head, all smeary through that window in the glare of the lightning, headed straight for the root cellar.

  Momma turned and frowned at me when I made no move for the door. Then the frown melted off into worry lines, and she said, “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Momma, please don’t make me go. There’s something down there,” I said. My throat was so dry I could hardly get the words out.

  Then Pa jumped up out of his chair and grabbed me by the shirt and shook me. I saw the veins popping up on his big, thick neck, and his face was the color of a ripe tomato. I’d have shut my eyes, but I knew that would just make him madder and I was scared that he’d backhand me or kick me as he sometimes does. Instead, he opened up his mouth so those ragged, yellow teeth of his showed like an animal’s against the furry dark of his beard. I could feel his breath tickling my cheeks, hot and sharp from the hard cider he had already drunk that morning. I wished he liked me better. Oh, how I wished it.

  “You’re a good-for-nothin’ little momma’s boy,” he said, soft, almost a whisper. “There ain’t nothin’ down in that cellar but a few daddy-longlegs and your own damn boogeymen. Now go get them spuds.”

  He let go of my shirt and shoved me backwards with his fist, and I stumbled like I always do, my feet being so big and my legs so stringy. I landed flat on the floor and I hurt all over, inside and out. I was crying by then, which added even more to my shame. And I started thinking he was probably right. If I was any kind of a real man, I’d get up on my own two feet and go down there after those spuds, whether I was scared or not.

  Lemmy stood up and started laughing and prancing around like a girl. “If it’s gonna make you cry and all, honey,” he said in a high, fake little voice, “I’ll go get the dad-blamed spuds.”

  Then I really got mad, because there aren’t very many worse things in the world than to have somebody like Lemmy poking fun at you. I don’t think I would have done it if I wasn’t so mad and if I hadn’t wanted so much to prove that I was no sissy. Anyway, I got up and grabbed the basket and started wading through the mud to the root cellar.

  There I was, out in the sun again, blue sky above and trees aglitter with dew, just like any other spring morning. Made me feel like I could face most anything. For a minute or two the world seemed so familiar that I started whistling and enjoying the feel of the cool mud between my toes. Then, about a stone’s throw from the cellar door, I came across another patch of slime, the same as we had found by the chicken coop.

  I squatted down beside it, nearly deaf from the noise of my heart. This slime seemed fresher than the other, and a smell came up from it like from the mouth of a cave that’s too da
rk to see inside of. I stood up slowly, trying not to breathe too fast. My spine felt like ants were marching up it in a long, thick line. Still, I had it in my mind that a man wouldn’t run. A man would stay and face whatever came his way.

  That’s when I heard the sound. It made me think of bees when they swarm in a tree, a thousand little voices raised together to make a single huge and angry one. I looked at the cellar door and I saw it sort of moving, like there was something big leaning on it, trying to get out all at once. There’s a crack between the door and the ground, a couple of inches maybe. And through that crack came a mess of gray, wet-looking tuckahoe, moving fast.

  Part of me was still trying to act brave, and it said to me, “Ruben, my boy, you must have eaten something that didn’t agree with you, for you are seeing things.”

  But the rest of me, which was the bigger part, said, “If a fellow can’t trust his own eyes, just what can he trust?” That bigger part of me didn’t give a hoot about whether I was brave or a man or not. It just believed what I was seeing and hearing. That’s when I dropped the basket and hightailed it for the house.

  By the time I came through the front door, I couldn’t even talk. I just stood there shaking and sweating, with my mouth going open and shut. I was peeing my pants. I could feel it washing the mud off my feet onto Momma’s clean floor, and I didn’t even care. She let out a little cry. Pa got up and stared at me. I don’t know what he saw in my face, but it must have convinced him of something, because I have never seen him look like that before. He was scared, and I know it isn’t right, but for just one second I was glad.

  Pa grabbed his shotgun from the corner, and he said, “All right, Lemmy. We’re gonna go find out what the hell is down there.” Then him and Lemmy took off for the root cellar.

  Momma got her quilt, and she wrapped me up in it and made me sit down on the bench by the fire. She sat beside me, and rocked me and sang to me like she used to do before I got so big. That’s all I wanted, just to bury my face in the good clean smells of Momma and forget there was ever anything else.

  We sat like that for a long time, waiting for Pa and Lemmy to come back, watching the sun creep past noon into afternoon and the clouds begin to sweep across the sky again. But Pa and Lemmy never came. And we never heard anything for sure, no roar of the shotgun going off, no terrible screams nor cries for help. Once I fancied I heard a kind of long moan, way off across the straw grass. It could have been the wind, or an owl. But somehow, it made me wonder what we’d do if we had to get away. The only gun in the house besides Pa’s 10-gauge was Grampa’s Colt pistol, which Pa always kept locked in his trunk. I was pretty sure I could break that lock with a hammer. I was pretty sure I could do a lot of things if it came to saving Momma.

  After a time, Momma fell asleep, and I did, too, still thinking about that lock. I was just too bone weary to hold my eyes open anymore. I had a dream, a fine warm dream about fishing down by the river on a summer’s day, and when I woke up it took me a minute to remember where I was.

  The first thing I noticed was that Momma had left the bench. She was standing beside the front door with a butcher knife in her hands, whispering over and over again, “The Lord helps them that helps themselves. The Lord helps them that helps themselves.” All at once, it came to me that there was a funny noise outside, like bees swarming in a tree.

  I jumped up, tipping over the bench, and yelled, “Momma! Don’t, Momma!”

  She turned around, and there was a crazy look in her eyes, like I saw once in the eyes of a neighbor woman who stood in the road and watched her house burn down. Momma’s face was all shiny with sweat, and that lock of hair had come loose. Oh, how I wanted to tuck it back and make everything all right. “I won’t let it in here, Ruben,” she said. “I swear I won’t.” Before I could get to her, she held up the knife and opened the door.

  I stood at the window and screamed. I screamed for a long, long time, even after there was nothing left of Momma but skin and clothes and the butcher knife. No matter how she struck and slashed, the tuckahoe got her anyway. And when it was done, it disappeared under the porch, leaving patches of slime on the wood.

  Twilight fell before I came to myself enough to get up and light the lamps. I went in and broke Pa’s trunk to pieces with Momma’s kitchen hatchet and got out the Colt and figured out how to load it.

  I have been waiting for Pa and Lemmy to come and tell me it was just a mean trick. But now the rain has started in again.

  SHORE LEAVE BLACKS

  I stand in the hatchway, watching the quartermaster hunt through boxes of shore leave blacks. There’s a tingle in my spine, the irritating buzz that means the most recent hit of bliss is about to wear off. I remember that tomorrow is the last Sunday of August—the traditional day of the family reunion—and anxiety begins to nibble at my stomach again. In another minute or two, the aching exhaustion of a week’s insomnia will return. All I can do is try to ignore it. How I wish I hadn’t left my blissbox in my cabin.

  “Take it easy, Moffat,” the quartermaster says as he gives me the blacks. “Your kid’ll be fine.

  You’ll see.”

  My hands shake as I hold up the strange uniform. It’s a matte black coverall with silver piping on the sleeves and collar. The idea is to set us apart in a crowd so people will recognize us as lightbuckers and not just ordinary crazies. It looks like plastic, but it feels too soft and slippery for that. It’s all one piece. No zippers, no Velcro. I can’t even find any meldseams, the sleekest new style when we left. So this is what they’re wearing in San Francisco now.

  “Maybe I ought to just forget this, Lucky,” I say. “Maybe I should just …” In the middle of the sentence, I have to clamp my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering.

  The quartermaster’s smile fades till there’s only a little of it left. “Maybe you should just do what? Back out and spend your leave on the orbital station?” He shakes his head, but his voice softens. “I hear you signed on for the next Vega run. That’s another fifty years, Annie. Think about it. You’re never gonna get a second chance to see him.”

  Lucky’s been a lightbucker for two and a half years—six months or a lifetime longer than me, depending on how you look at it. He knows what he’s talking about. If I’m ever going to make peace with myself, I must do it now, before my son dies of old age. I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them again, purple stars float across the shiny alloy of the ship’s bulkheads.

  Lucky touches my shoulder with a cool, firm hand. “Don’t worry so much. You’ll be O.K.,” he says.

  I can’t reply. I’m too tired, too afraid that if I speak I’ll lose my last shreds of composure. The urge for another hit of bliss has become a maddening itch in my brain.

  I nod and try to smile. After a moment, I wad up the blacks, tuck them under my arm, and start down the passageway toward my cabin.

  Behind me Lucky calls, “Attagirl.”

  Lightbuckers always stick together.

  Alone in the crew cubicle, I scrabble in my footlocker till I find my blissbox—a lovely thing, intricately inlaid with Eridani gems. I remember the first moment I saw it, in the hands of a bucker named Forrest, in a desert town called Pactolus, a time and place at once beloved and lost. Beside the box lies a snapshot, cracked and dog-eared with handling: the blue sky, the sagebrush plain, the adobe ranch house at the base of the mountains where I grew up.

  In the foreground stands a middle-aged woman, smiling, her tan face just beginning to show the effects of a life in the desert sun. Ah, Eugenia Miller, it’s easy to imagine you as my mother, perhaps because I knew you better than my real one, who died when I was a child. It’s hard to think of you as what you were—the lower-grade teacher in the two-room school where I learned to read.

  In the picture, Eugenia holds my baby, Adam, swaddled in a faded patchwork quilt. The infant’s face is hidden. All that shows is the top of his silky head. I cannot look at this picture without thinking of my father and my brother, Tim, who haunt
it like sullen ghosts. They refused to be in it. Angry because I joined the Light Corps, angry because I came home from my first mission pregnant, angry because I chose to go again and leave them to rear my child. Angrier still at Eugenia Miller because they believed she started it all.

  Part of me insists it’s only been a year since she posed for this snapshot; Adam must be taking his first few tottery steps by now. But another part of me knows that’s a lie. For every minute of my life, almost an hour of theirs has gone by. My father is long since dead; Eugenia and Tim are old, or dead themselves. And Adam? For the barest instant I wonder if, when he reached the age of thirty, he looked anything like Forrest.

  I take a blissrock from the box, break it open, and inhale till it hurts.

  I emerge from the gleaming orbital shuttle into a world so foreign that I have no idea whether it is better or worse than the one I left. The San Francisco Superterm is a squat, mazelike growth of gray cinder block. Like all such terminals, it stinks of stale food and human sweat. There the familiarity ends. Greenish lights flicker in the darker corners. There are rows of small windows. Through them I glimpse a surreal landscape of hills crowded with windmills, dilapidated shacks, needle-clean office towers, and everything in between.

  The windmills have come a long way since I left. They bear little resemblance to the battered steel one that groaned in the dry breeze above my father’s ranch. These are gigantic—ten or fifteen meters tall, with long parabolic blades and what must be supercool bearings. They turn though there seems to be no wind at all. I wipe sweat from my forehead. Clearly they don’t produce enough electricity for luxuries like air conditioning. I think of the cargo of nuclear fuels we have just brought back from Fomalhaut. The Light Corps was to have been the lifeline for this energy-hungry world. But looking at these bleak surroundings, I wonder how much difference we have really made.

  In the briefing course, they told us all about ground-slicks, the frictionless magnetic trains that are now the most common form of transportation on Earth. But after fifteen minutes of trying to find a ground-slick schedule, I wonder if they made it all up. Outlandishly accoutered people buzz around me like bees, some hurrying past on clear-cut if mysterious errands, others milling in general confusion. Nobody pays the slightest attention to my inquiries. Maybe I’m being too polite.