Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

  They had not thought that the period would be a lengthy one because everyone had expected him to die.

  "But you didn't die," she went on, "although many times we thought you would. Especially when the nice, ordinary food we tried to give you brought out a rash on your entire body, or raised your temperature or made you throw up or dirty your bed.

  You kept growing bigger but not much smarter and you couldn't talk right and you broke things all the time. We didn't know what was wrong with you, and when your father tried to find out, you cried and I made him stop it. The stuff we give you now doesn't taste nice, but it is specially prepared so as not to make you sick. We hadn't the proper facilities for treating you here and our authorities, who would know better what to do, have been very slow to respond so that we became the only family you had.

  "We tried to treat you and love you as one of the family," she went on, placing her other thin, boney arm tightly around him, "we really did.

  Your lather and I, I mean your foster-father and I, came to like you a lot, and we will miss you. But now we have to pass you on to people who will know how to treat you properly. You have never been happy here and -"

  "But I'm happy now-" he began, when the voice of his father on the communicator made him break off "We're ready for the handover," he said over the sound of many other voices talking loudly in the back ground. "Quickly, dear, bring him to the rec room. Bring everyone to the rec room."

  That was a room big enough to hold everyone on the station, his mother had once told him, which was fitted with machines and games that exercised the body as well as the mind. She had laughed and added that only grown-ups were allowed to go there because the adults drank things that were not suitable for children.

  Now he would be able to see it but he didn't want to go.

  "No!" his mother replied in a voice even louder than his father's. "It's been hard enough trying to say good bye to him here. Having to do it all again in public wouldn't be fair to him or the other children, or me. Give us a few more minutes together, then I'll bring him to you."

  "You don't understand, dear," said his father. "Bring everybody. You'll all want to see this. They sent another doctor to look after him. But it wasn't our child care authorities who sent her, it was theirs!"

  He was afraid, and on the way he hung back for as long as possible until his mother pushed him through the recreation room door. But when he saw the figure standing in a clear area of floor beside a table that barely came up to her knees, something so strange and wonderful happened in his mind that he could hardly breathe.

  She was big and thick and so tall that her head almost touched the room's high ceiling. Her legs and arms and body bulged out so much that they made her white coveralls look tight, and there were two big, soft bulges on the front of her chest. She had a big head, too, and hair like his except that it was black with gray streaks in it. Without knowing why, he let go of his mother's hand and ran to her. She knelt down quickly so that he ran straight into her open arms.

  They squeezed him so tightly that he could hardly breathe. But they were big, soft arms, not like his mother's thin, hard ones, so they didn't hurt him. Her eyes were like his, too, be cause they were beginning to get wet.

  She pushed the soft, pink edges of her mouth against his forehead for a moment, which was the first time anyone had done that to him, then gently moved his arms from around her neck and stood up. Looking at the people crowding the room, she began to speak nonsense words. But there was a box on the table beside her, which repeated them so that he knew what she was saying even though he didn't understand all the words.

  "Based on the elapsed time since the accident to their survey vessel," she said, "plus the genetic information available to us on his parents' medical files, which dictates the hair and eye coloring and other inherited physical characteristics, I have no doubt that this is their son. Because of the vast distances involved between the accident site and our respective home worlds, the bureaucratic delays, the general disbelief on both sides that it was possible for him to survive for so long, a very long time passed before we learned about the survivor or your people would allow us to do anything about him. Regrettably, the greater share of the blame is ours because, instinctively, and we now realize mistakenly, our two cultures disliked and distrusted each other and I deliberately avoided making the contact in depth that would have reduced our growing hostility. But this incident, the way you have cared for this child as one of your own, will end what could have become a very dangerous situation.

  "The major responsibility for that," she went on, looking only at his father, "lies with you, Doctor, and your family. With minimum physiological information and a subject who was too young to be able to speak or help himself, not only did you devise the food regimen that enabled him to survive in good health, your family adopted him, cared for and brought him up as one of your own. Fostering such a child must have posed extreme difficulties for everyone concerned, and if the positions had been reversed I do not believe that I could have coped with them, but I am sure that my later physical examination will only confirm the fact that you have raised a strong and healthy seven-year-old Earth-human boy. My sincere professional and personal compliments to all of you.

  "Now that we are beginning to learn more about your culture," she continued, "including the deep significance you place on a person's birth-date and correct personal identification, I can tell you that his name is Thomas Carmichael although, be cause of his youth, we would call him Tommy..."

  "Tomee," said Wana, leaning back onto her tail to look up at her, "is a nice name."

  Cawn said, "And now he has a birthday, too."

  "Now," said Danal, "he has two birthdays."

  She smiled down at them and went on, "Now that they know you have kept him alive, he has many relatives who are anxious to have him home as soon as possible..."

  He heard but did not listen to the other things everyone was saying be cause he was hugging and saying good-bye to the only family he had ever known. He was careful not to squeeze their thin, shiny bodies too hard, and he was especially gentle with little Wana who had always been his best friend. Without knowing why he did what the giant, gray-haired woman had done to him, he pushed his mouth against the top of her tiny, round head just between the eyes.

  Her eyes were not like his because they opened and closed from the sides and they didn't get wet, but he had the feeling that she wished they could.

  BELUTHAHATCHIE

  Andy Duncan

  Everybody else got off the train at Hell, but I figured, it's a free country. So I commenced to make myself a mite more comfortable. I put my feet up and leaned back against the window, laid my guitar across my chest and settled in with my hat tipped down over my eyes, almost. I didn't know what the next stop was but I knew I'd like it better than Hell.

  Whoo! I never saw such a mess. All that crowd of people jammed together on the Hell platform so tight you could faint standing up. One old battle-hammed woman hollering for Jesus, most everybody else just mumbling and crying and hugging their bags and leaning into each other and waiting to be told where to go. And hot? Man, I ain't just beating my gums there. Not as hot as the Delta, but hot enough to keep old John on the train. No, sir, I told myself, no room out there for me.

  Fat old conductor man pushed on down the aisle kinda slow, waiting on me to move. I decided I'd wait on that, too.

  "Hey, nigger boy." He slapped my foot with a rolled-up newspaper. Felt like the Atlanta paper. "This ain't no sleeping car."

  "Git up off me, man. I ain't done nothing."

  "Listen at you. Who you think you are, boy? Think you run the railroad? You don't look nothing like Mr. George Pullman." The conductor tried to put his foot up on the seat and lean on his knee, but he gave up with a grunt.

  I ran one finger along my guitar strings, not hard enough to make a sound but just hard enough to feel them. "I ain't got a ticket, neither," I bit off, "but it was your railroad's pleasure t
o bring me this far, and it's my pleasure to ride on a little further, and I don't see what cause you got to be so astorperious about it, Mr. Fat Ass."

  He started puffing and blowing. "What? What?" He was teakettle hot. You'd think I'd done something. "What did you call me, boy?" He whipped out a strap, and I saw how it was, and I was ready.

  "Let him alone."

  Another conductor was standing outside the window across the aisle, stooping over to look in. He must have been right tall and right big too, filling up the window like that. Cut off most of the light. I couldn't make out his face, but I got the notion that pieces of it was sliding around, like there wan't quite a face ready to look at yet. "The Boss will pick him up at the next stop. Let him be."

  "The Boss?" Fat Ass was getting whiter all the time.

  "The Boss said it would please him to greet this nigger personally."

  Fat Ass wan't studying about me anymore. He slunk off, looking back big-eyed at the man outside the window. I let go my razor and let my hand creep up out of my sock, slow and easy, making like I was just shifting cause my leg was asleep.

  The man outside hollered: "Board! All aboard! Next stop, Beluthahatchie!"

  That old mama still a-going. "Jesus! Save us, Jesus!"

  "All aboard for Beluthahatchie!"

  "Jesus!"

  We started rolling out.

  "All aboard!"

  "Sweet Je—" And her voice cut off just like that, like the squawk of a hen Meemaw would snatch for Sunday dinner. Wan't my business. I looked out the window as the scenery picked up speed. Wan't nothing to see, just fields and ditches and swaybacked mules and people stooping and picking, stooping and picking, and by and by a porch with old folks sitting on shuck-bottomed chairs looking out at all the years that ever was, and I thought I'd seen enough of all that to last me a while. Wan't any of my business at all.

  When I woke up I was lying on a porch bench at another station, and hanging on one chain was a blown-down sign that said Beluthahatchie. The sign wan't swinging cause there wan't no breath of air. Not a soul else in sight neither. The tracks ran off into the fields on both ends as far as I could see, but they was all weeded up like no train been through since the Surrender. The windows over my head was boarded up like the bank back home. The planks along the porch han't been swept in years by nothing but the wind, and the dust was in whirly patterns all around. Still lying down, I reached slowly beneath the bench, groping the air, till I heard, more than felt, my fingers pluck a note or two from the strings of my guitar. I grabbed it by the neck and sat up, pulling the guitar into my lap and hugging it, and I felt some better.

  Pigeons in the eaves was a-fluttering and a-hooting all mournful-like, but I couldn't see 'em. I reckon they was pigeons. Meemaw used to say that pigeons sometimes was the souls of dead folks let out of Hell. I didn't think those folks back in Hell was flying noplace, but I did feel something was wrong, bad wrong, powerful wrong. I had the same crawly feeling as before I took that fatal swig— when Jar Head Sam, that harp-playing bastard, passed me a poisoned bottle at a Mississippi jook joint and I woke up on that one-way train.

  Then a big old hound dog ambled around the corner of the station on my left, and another big old hound dog ambled around the corner of the station on my right. Each one was nearbouts as big as a calf and so fat it could hardly go, swanking along with its belly on the planks and its nose down. When the dogs snuffled up to the bench where I was sitting, their legs give out and they flopped down, yawned, grunted, and went fast to sleep like they'd been poleaxed. I could see the fleas hopping across their big butts. I started laughing.

  "Lord, the hellhounds done caught up to me now! I surely must have led them a chase, I surely must. Look how wore out they are!" I hollered and cried, I was laughing so hard. One of them broke wind real long, and that set me off again. "Here come the brimstone! Here come the sulfur! Whoo! Done took my breath. Oh, Lordy." I wiped my eyes.

  Then I heard two way-off sounds, one maybe a youngun dragging a stick along a fence, and the other maybe a car motor.

  "Well, shit," I said.

  Away off down the tracks, I saw a little spot of glare vibrating along in the sun. The flappity racket got louder and louder. Some fool was driving his car along on the tracks, a bumpety-bump, a bumpety-bump. It was a Hudson Terraplane, right sporty, exactly like what Peola June used to percolate around town in, and the chrome on the fender and hood was shining like a conk buster's hair.

  The hound dogs was sitting up now, watching the car. They was stiff and still on each side of my bench, like deacons sitting up with the dead.

  When the car got nigh the platform it lurched up out of the cut, gravel spitting, gears grinding, and shut off in the yard at the end of the porch where I was sitting. Sheets of dust sailed away. The hot engine ticked. Then the driver's door opened, and out slid the devil. I knew him well. Time I saw him slip down off the seat and hitch up his pants, I knew.

  He was a sunburnt, bandy-legged, pussel-gutted li'l peckerwood. He wore braces and khaki pants and a dirty white undershirt and a big derby hat that had white hair flying out all around it like it was attached to the brim, like if he'd tip his hat to the ladies his hair would come off too. He had a bright-red possum face, with beady, dumb black eyes and a long sharp nose, and no chin at all hardly and a big goozlum in his neck that jumped up and down like he couldn't swallow his spit fast enough. He slammed the car door and scratched himself a little, up one arm and then the other, then up one leg till he got to where he liked it. He hunkered down and spit in the dust and looked all unconcerned like maybe he was waiting on a tornado to come along and blow some victuals his way, and he didn't take any more notice of me than the hound dogs had.

  I wan't used to being treated such. "You keep driving on the tracks thataway, boss," I called, "and that Terraplane gone be butt-sprung for sure."

  He didn't even look my way. After a long while, he stood up and leaned on a fender and lifted one leg and looked at the bottom of his muddy clod-hopper, then put it down and lifted the other and looked at it too. Then he hitched his pants again and headed across the yard toward me. He favored his right leg a little and hardly picked up his feet at all when he walked. He left ruts in the yard like a plow. When he reached the steps, he didn't so much climb 'em as stand his bantyweight self on each one and look proud, like each step was all his'n now, and then go on to claim the next one too. Once on the porch, he sat down with his shoulders against a post, took off his hat and fanned himself. His hair had a better hold on his head than I thought, what there was of it. Then he pulled out a stick and a pocketknife and commenced to whittle. But he did all these things so deliberate and thoughtful that it was almost the same as him talking, so I kept quiet and waited for the words to catch up.

  "It will be a strange and disgraceful day unto this world," he finally said, "when I ask a gut-bucket nigger guitar player for advice on auto-MO-bile mechanics, or for anything else except a tune now and again." He had eyes like he'd been shot twice in the face. "And furthermore, I am the Lord of Darkness and the Father of Lies, and if I want to drive my 1936 Hudson Terraplane, with its six-cylinder seventy-horsepower engine, out into the middle of some loblolly and shoot out its tires and rip up its seats and piss down its radiator hole, why, I will do it and do it again seven more times afore breakfast, and the voice that will stop me will not be yourn. You hearing me, John?"

  "Ain't my business," I said. Like always, I was waiting to see how it was.

  "That's right, John, it ain't your business," the devil said. "Nothing I do is any of your business, John, but everything you do is mine. I was there the night you took that fatal drink, John. I saw you fold when your gut bent double on you, and I saw the shine of your blood coming up. I saw that whore you and Jar Head was squabbling over doing business at your funeral. It was a sorry-ass death of a sorry-ass man, John, and I had a big old time with it."

  The hound dogs had laid back down, so I stretched out and rested my feet on one o
f them. It rolled its eyes up at me like its feelings was hurt.

  "I'd like to see old Jar Head one more time," I said. "If he'll be along directly, I'll wait here and meet his train."

  "Jar Head's plumb out of your reach now, John," the devil said, still whittling. "I'd like to show you around your new home this afternoon. Come take a tour with me."

  "I had to drive fifteen miles to get to that jook joint in the first place," I said, "and then come I don't know how far on the train to Hell and past it. I've done enough traveling for one day."

  "Come with me, John."

  "I thank you, but I'll just stay here."

  "It would please me no end if you made my rounds with me, John." The stick he was whittling started moving in his hand. He had to grip it a little to hang on, but he just kept smiling. The stick started to bleed along the cuts, welling up black red as the blade skinned it. "I want to show off your new home place. You'd like that, wouldn't you, John?" The blood curled down his arm like a snake.

  I stood up and shook my head real slow and disgusted, like I was bored by his conjuring, but I made sure to hold my guitar between us as I walked past him. I walked to the porch steps with my back to the devil, and I was headed down them two at a time when he hollered out behind, "John! Where do you think you're going?"

  I said real loud, not looking back: "I done enough nothing for one day. I'm taking me a tour. If your ass has slipped between the planks and got stuck, I'll fetch a couple of mules to pull you free."

  I heard him cuss and come scrambling after me with that leg a-dragging, sounding just like a scarecrow out on a stroll. I was holding my guitar closer to me all the time.

  I wan't real surprised that he let those two hound dogs ride up on the front seat of the Terraplane like they was Mrs. Roosevelt, while I had to walk in the road alongside, practically in the ditch. The devil drove real slow, talking to me out the window the whole time.