The Angels of Our Better Beasts

by Jerome Stueart

  “Hold still, Momma. Almost done,” Benji said.

  Almost done.

  >?

  Back in her apartment, Benji did the unthinkable—at least to Sharlet.

  He built the holographic Sharlet in front of her. She watched it come together: first, tiny grains of sand formed a picture of a woman, then the shape of an older woman, some woman from another time, but so obviously from Little Tokyo—an older woman whose family would eventually leave her completely alone. But this woman smiled. This woman who looked like her turned around, walked across the room, leaned down, and silently waved at Naia. Naia giggled.

  “She’s perfect, Benji!” Audra said. “Oh, that’s a riot! That looks just like you, Mama. What do you think? Isn’t she the perfect hologram of you?”

  Sharlet crossed her arms and walked into the kitchen. She pulled together tea for everyone—the cups, the hot water in the pot, the tea leaves in the floating metal infuser. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Audra’s hand on the counter. She turned—

  —but it wasn’t Audra. It was the Sharlet hologram, her mouth open and speaking though no sound came out, looking like someone who went through something horrible, who was trying to tell her something but was unable to speak. She looked lonely. She looked lost.

  “No,” Sharlet said, slicing the air between them. “No.” She left the kitchen and went down the hallway to her bedroom.

  Benji yelled after her, “I haven’t gotten the voice works, Momma, but there’s definitely a way to program certain phrases! Momma?”

  She shut her door.

  She would only get a year. One year, and then they would be up there on some other planet. They would have a Sharlet, a holographic one, to smile and play with. And she would have a holographic Naia.

  There was a knock at the door, Audra’s voice. “Mama, we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to frighten you. I know that must be, well, jarring, to be surprised by yourself.”

  “It’s not me,” she says.

  “I know it’s not you. I didn’t mean it that way. Can I come in?”

  She doesn’t answer at first. She looks out the window at the shadows getting longer outside, the darkness climbing the side of the buildings. “Yes.”

  Audra came in, walked to the window. “It is a beautiful city.”

  “He has to turn it off.”

  Audra nodded. “I’ll tell him that.”

  “I don’t want it walking through my house like a—a ghost of me.”

  Audra touched her arm. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  The hologram would go with them, would live with them; would get to watch Naia grow up, get to play with her, get to be part of this family.

  “You’re all I have left.”

  “You can still come with us,” Audra said.

  The cars below stuttered and started, streams of people all trying to get home. She could imagine what each of them was seeing from the windows of their cars. She could imagine what the people walking across the street were seeing, which shops, who would be standing in the doorways. She could envision them smiling at her while she walked to greet them at the market. It was her world.

  “I don’t think there are new worlds for old people.”

  “There are other older people going. We could work to get a visa for you. I know they’d say yes.”

  What would she rather have: a holographic family or a holographic city?

  “Everything here is so familiar to me. I know all the people I see.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know if I want a new world. I just don’t want you to leave mine.”

  Audra hugged her. “Oh, Mama Sharlet.”

  They stood there, holding each other as the room darkened. Sharlet felt her world dissolving around her: the deafening silence, the people she knew fading, the buildings growing fainter, an intense darkness surrounding her like space. All of Little Tokyo flickered, and she was frightened—frightened of it disappearing.

  New worlds are for the young. They can create their own traditions and history.

  She gripped Audra. She needed them here. To never see Naia till she was a woman. She needed Little Tokyo. She knew this place. It had stories around every doorway. There was too much to leave, too much leaving. He didn’t even have half of Little Tokyo in those little birds.

  She released Audra, searching her eyes.

  Sharlet said it out loud. “He doesn’t even have half of it.” She found herself surprised at what she was saying. A little excited. “He doesn’t have half of Little Tokyo yet,” she said to Audra. “And Naia won’t have any of it.”

  Audra waited, nodding slowly. “What do you mean, Mama?”

  She walked out of the room, down the hallway with inspiration, and stepped into the living room to see Benjirou looking up at the hologram of Sharlet, as if he were adjusting her to make her more perfect. Sharlet stopped at the door. This was what people must see when they were together—and it gave her an eerie out of body feeling, as if she were walking into her own memory.

  “Not even half of it,” she said, lifting her hand.

  Benji turned. “I’m so sorry, Momma.”

  On the wall behind him was a map of Little Tokyo as seen by the little birds.

  “You have the buildings and the streets, and people walking, but you don’t have the stories. That’s Little Tokyo.” She threw up her hands. “You don’t know what it all means, how it all connects. No one will up there—”she pointed to her ceiling “—on Mars.”

  “Maybe you can come with us and tell us those stories.”

  The hologram Sharlet looked at him so lovingly, Sharlet thought.

  I am not afraid of you.

  “I can tell you the stories, and we can take your birds—they can record, too, yes? I’ll take the birds to the grocers and the shops and temple, and I’ll take them to the Budokan to talk to the young basketball players, the athletes, and we’ll fly them into the homes of my friends, and I’ll collect all the stories for you to take.”

  She looked at Sharlet the Hollow. You are not even the half of me.

  “I don’t want to leave here. I have a life here,” she turned to Audra, “in this bubble, and this bubble is important to me. All of my stories are here.”

  “They’re not in a place, Momma,” Benji said. “They’re inside you.”

  “When you walk through this house, you can see yourself running here as a boy, can’t you? You can see your father chase you into the kitchen. I can. When you walk into your bedroom, you can smell the days you were in high school. I can.”

  Audra laughed.

  Sharlet said, “I don’t think the holograms will be enough for me. And if I had to make that choice to let you go to Mars or leave Little Tokyo forever—I have to let you go.”

  She started to cry because it wasn’t what she meant. It sounded so much worse saying it out loud. Why did they have to take something away from her?

  She trembled when she said, “But I get my one year. I get that year with you,” she glanced at Audra, “and my baby,” and she looked down at Naia, who was finger-painting the coffee table digitally. “I can teach her all about Little Tokyo, and we can make recordings of stories—and if you want to put them inside this doll of me.” She looked at Sharlet the Doll, the one who looked so alone. I’m not alone, she thought. You’re alone because you need stories. “Then you put them inside her.”

  That Sharlet faded away. Benji said, “I’ll work on her later.” He looked at his mother, the real one. “You don’t have to make your decision today, Momma. And there’s no pressure either way.”

  Sharlet knelt down beside Naia. “You and Mama Sharlet are going to make Little Tokyo more alive, aren’t we, Naia? More alive than it’s ever been before to you. You can hold a lot more in your head than some birds, can’t you?”

  She fe
lt stronger saying what she needed. She would concentrate on making the year educational for Naia, recording the stories of her friends and of the people of Little Tokyo. It would be okay. She could do this. She was too old to make a new life. Benjirou and Audra would be so busy in their new lives there—and Naia would make friends—and this would leave her alone on Mars; she would lose her independence, her familiarity, in the latter part of her life. This was the right decision. She would make the most of the fleeting year.

  Naia beamed up at her, “Look at what I made! I made the mandala come back,” she said. She pointed to the coffee table with its greens and blues and oranges, a rough rendition of the mandala with doves and a fawn.

  “Oh my,” Audra said.

  “It’s beautiful,” Sharlet said. “Don’t—don’t touch it. Can you—” she turned to Benji. “Can you freeze this image on the coffee table?”

  Benji thought for a moment, “She’s just projecting her Playboard. It’s virtual. There’s no real way to permanently attach it to the table.”

  Sharlet put her hands around it, trying to hold on to it.

  “Now it’s time to run our fingers through it!” Naia said.

  “No,” Sharlet said, “we’re going to try and save this one.”

  Benji explained, “You’d have to leave her Playboard on. You can save an image on it, which we can transfer to a 3D projector—which I can build for you. We may not be able—”

  “No, Naia!” Audra shouted.

  But Naia was already running her fingers over the board and the mandala smeared, just as it had before in the plaza under the hands of everyone else. She wasn’t mean. She was radiant.

  “Don’t mess it up!” Sharlet cried, holding her hands to her face.

  “I love mess it up!” Naia said, smearing it all together in bright swirls.

  For a moment, Sharlet thought she had conquered her fear of them going away—and with the erasure of the mandala, she saw again something beautiful she would lose and she began to cry.

  Naia looked at her. “Non’t cry. We can make another one.” She laughed. “And another one. A red one now. And then—” her face held such surprise “—one that looks like stars.”

  They sat around Naia that night, as she created. And, tentatively at first, because each mandala was something so beautiful, so unique, the four of them sat around the coffee table making, and destroying, mandalas all night.

  Brazos

  I came out to mend a wooden fence. I figured the cows had knocked the rail over. Maybe the wind jimmied it loose. Then again, seeing the man walk out of the caprock, without a car or anything, and no public road for a good ten miles, I could entertain the notion that some god wanted a conference with me.

  It was a hot morning in June, the temps already accelerating. I watched him pass head-high mesquite, his grey felt cowboy hat never touching a branch. He had on jeans and a denim work shirt, but his boots were Tony Lama, and his pants weren’t even dusted with dirt or mud. The shirt looked pressed. He must have thought this all charming, like he was playing a role. He leaned on my wooden fence. Smiled a lot. We yapped for fifteen minutes about dry West Texas weather, like we were neighbours, except he had a gleam in his eye. I knew I would lose something. With my wife having moved to Indiana, it was just me and Susan now, and a few hired hands. We’d already lost enough around here. So I tried to calculate just what that loss, this time, was going to be.

  While we talked, I watched butterflies fly out of his right palm—one after another, each different than the one before. Kinds I’d never seen. He produced them like a nervous tic. I was supposed to be impressed.

  He was so busy being creative, he hadn’t planned on any of these species actually surviving. There weren’t any pairs. Each butterfly, wings testing the wind, tossed itself over my fence.

  “This all your land?” he asked, as if he didn’t notice the butterflies at all.

  “I’m just borrowing,” I told him with a smile.

  “A hundred acres.”

  I nodded.

  I could tell he didn’t care by the way he changed the subject. “So, about your daughter . . .”

  “Susan’s a bright kid. She’s going to college,” I said.

  “My son’s got his eye on her,” he said. He looked across the fence, staring at my hundred acres.

  “Well aware of that,” I said. I still held a hammer in my hand, and I tapped it against the wood.

  He looked at me, “And what do you think about that?”

  “About your son?”

  He summed it all up for me. “About my son, a full-fledged river god, being interested in your bright, college-bound daughter.”

  I took a moment to think. I already knew what I felt about it. Nothing good ever came from the love affairs of gods. Every young girl got turned into something. I imagined a Susan Savane cactus—a new species—somewhere on my land in a few weeks. Or maybe by refusing, I would be turned into something. My family had been marked already.

  “Well, it don’t please me none.”

  He acted shocked. “Have you met my boy?”

  “Can’t say that I have. Heard he’s a little trapped by the Brazos.”

  “He is the Brazos,” his dad said proudly.

  “Yeah, but he can’t leave his river, can he?”

  “He’s eight hundred and forty miles, the longest river in Texas. His reach extends from New Mexico across the middle of the state, all the way down the Gulf Coast. I don’t really think that’s trapped, do you? Especially when he’s a bit more mobile in that area than you are.”

  I chuckled. I had him running. “But I can take a truck and drive to Oklahoma.”

  He looked over the fence as if he liked my land. He changed his strategy. “He can give her everything she wants. A hundred acres, a thousand acres. Waco.”

  “He can have Waco.” I smiled.

  “She could have a whole city, or more than half the state.”

  “Hmm,” I nodded. “And that would be impressive. It would. But what happens if it don’t work out?”

  “Don’t work out?”

  “Divorce is pretty common around here.” Unfortunately, I was the poster child—two, so far. They left me. You move on, survive. “You gods don’t have the best reputations for leaving your spouses—girlfriends—with much security.”

  I was hoping he wouldn’t strike me down there, figuring he wanted to win my daughter’s favour. That wouldn’t happen if he killed her dad.

  “Transmutations are unfortunate, but very, very rare. Even then, one gets great things by risking greatly.”

  “You know, you can jump off the canyon thinking you can fly, but that don’t mean it’s worth the risk. Some great things aren’t.”

  He’d never gone back to leaning on the fence; he pulled it toward him with one hand. “But it’s really not up to you.”

  “Then why are you talking to me?”

  He laughed, like, oh goodness, I had done something clever.

  “Your customs. Asking the hand of the daughter from the father.”

  “Usually that’s a job for the interested boy. Not his dad.”

  He looked at me hard. “If you’d come down, I’m sure my son would ask you himself.”

  “I’m sure he would.”

  He tried to find something cracking in my eyes, and I wasn’t gonna give him anything, especially not my daughter.

  >?

  I was pretty sure she didn’t love him. She came back from a Baylor weekend all flustered by this charming guy she’d met, told her what beautiful skin she had, how he could see that she had a beautiful soul—like an aura around her. He’d appeared beside the suspension bridge, rising on the top of a waterspout, his arms out wide. Asked her if she and her friends from Lamesa High wanted to go swimming. He’d heard them talking on the riverwalk, loved her voice,
her laugh. He’d touched her, too. In the water, she could feel something warm try to get under her swimsuit, like the water itself was curious. On a calm day, waterspouts danced on the surface of the river, and he picked her up in one and spun her about till she got dizzy. Nearly puked, she said. He was cute, except for that. Golden hair. Wide chin. Muscles. She’d heard stories about him. About a couple of the other gods he hung around with, Whit and Leon, how they partied with naiads.

  “Why would he want someone like me?” she asked me over breakfast.

  “’Cause you’re smart and beautiful, and he can have any naiad he wants, but he wants something he can’t get.” I stacked pancakes on a plate for her.

  “What if he gets me and it turns out . . .” she said, and I looked back at her. She bit her lip. She looked like she was seven all over again.

  “That he leaves you?” I said.

  She looked away, over into the living room, toward the fireplace where things are burned. “I’m not as strong as you.”

  “You survived.”

  “Is that what this is?” she said quietly. She didn’t mean it as a jab. “I want someone who will stay for sure. Gods are fickle.”

  I wanted to tell her that everyone was a bet for leaving, that you couldn’t tell it in their face, or their laugh, or any moment that you took them to the lake. They could lie there on a blanket and tell you that they couldn’t imagine another face next to them but yours. They could rub sunscreen on your shoulders and talk about how full of peculiar habits you both would be when you were old. They could stand in front of a preacher and say the words that they would use on you as a binding contract, but for them it would just be a day’s thoughts, as changeable as a sunset sky on a summer evening. To escape you, they could explain all their previous decisions perfectly.

  “Honey, I don’t want you to give up on regular people because of your mother. I do want you to think twice about being the girlfriend of a god. They don’t treat us equally. They can run us over. It’s not a good spot for anyone.” I put the pancakes in front of us and we prayed quickly to the other god, the one who let these lesser ones run amuck; who couldn’t control wives and mothers, either, and we doused the pancakes and prayers in syrup.