by Joy Dettman
When the pain eases, I gather my blanket and walk with it to the cave mouth where I look down to where the house should be. Only a white mist wanders there. I have slept too long.
‘Lenny will come for me with his battery light – or I will wait until morning.’
I am eating my cornbread and fruitjell when I am felled again by the invisible hand. The pain is such that I have not known before. I crouch at the cave mouth, a cowering thing, afraid of the swirling mist, afraid of the day disappearing too suddenly into night, afraid of the ghosts, but more afraid of the pain.
‘Lenny!’ I call. My voice sounds hollow in the empty cave. ‘Lenny!’ I disturb a night creature, wishing to shepherd her young to the spring pool. She spits her disapproval. ‘Lenny!’
I wait long for him, but only the pain comes. It can not be the time. It will not be the time – not here. Not in this place and alone.
Granny’s book said that in the latter months there is often false labour. It also said that there should be no mating in the latter weeks, but I did not know these last weeks might be the latter weeks.
The pain returns, again and again; it is a cruel thing, and each time it leaves, it leaves me weakened. I wait long at the cave mouth. Full dark comes and there is much scuttling of many strange feet. I hear too a muffled thunder, and at first do not recognise it – until I see its light floating on the mist, creating swirling ghosts in twisting gowns of white. Then I recognise it and my heart beats fast and my eyes, unblinking, follow the light to where the house would be.
It is the grey men. They have come for the finished infant.
I hug it to me, hold its pain within me, and call no more, and I think no more to leave this place and find my way down in the dark. Instead I spread my blanket close to the pool, in the deeper dark of the cave, and I fall down onto the blanket and cry. Pain eats me, coming in waves that wash my strength away. I cry as a child, hopelessly. I cry too for Lenny and for Pa. The grey men will not be pleased that I am not waiting for them. They will not be pleased.
Perhaps Lenny will come soon. He will run from them.
And Pa. Pa can not run. And I can not rest long in one place, and I can not walk, nor sit. I think I can not live through this. On hands and knees I crawl to the cave mouth where I listen.
Perhaps Lenny will bring the grey men and the one with the gun.
No. He will not bring them here.
I wait.
For a time I listen for the leaving of the copter. Certainly Lenny will come for me when they leave.
If he lives.
For a time I believe he lives and will come.
I do not hear the copter’s leaving but I see the glow of bright light. And I wait. Then I stop believing and waiting and I remember Pa’s pills in the pocket of my half-dress. In the next lull, I swallow two with warm water from the pool. Pa swallows two and grows sleepy. I remove a third and drink it down, then crouch low, on hands and knees, my hair in the sand.
The pills dull the pain but do not take it away. I rest on my side, my face turned to the mouth of the cave until I can not see it. Only black. All around me is black, so I close my eyes, hide from the black.
Unsure of where my consciousness ends and nightmare commences, I see Lenny running from the fire. The house is burning. I watch the smoke coil and I see Lenny melt like a lump of lard Granny rendered down in the cooking pot so she could make the blocks of washing soap.
So hot. Too hot. Spitting bubbling hot.
The dream alters, for I am in the house and Granny is there and her hand grasps mine, and together we plunge our hands into the pot of boiling lard. ‘Swear the oath of the sisterhood,’ the circular wound of her mouth says, and she laughs at me.
My own scream wakes me and I know why I dream of fire. My belly is on fire and I have dragged myself around to face the pool; my hand is in the water.
I drink now, placing my face in the water, slaking my thirst as the wild things do. The effort exhausts me and I fall onto my back. Lord, I am so awkward. If this thing wishes to come out, then only let it come fast as Mrs Logan’s infant had come fast in the night.
Twice I drink from the pool and swallow more of Pa’s pills, then wait for the cushioning fog of relief that the pills bring. It is a race slow pills can not win; pain has settled into a screaming monotony with little space between. I wait for it, cower from it before it comes, howl with it when it comes, certain now that I must die of it, alone, in this cave.
Like a red beast, it rides me. I feel my spine snapping with the weight of it, feel each muscle dissolving, to be flushed away by newer pain. Is the head of this foetus too large? Does it have two heads? Is one jammed inside of me? Must I die here with an abomination rotting me from within?
I hate it. How I hate the pain of this thing.
Daylight comes slowly and Lenny does not.
Agony grows stale.
Four pills then I swallow, and for a time my stomach wishes to eject them. I will not allow it. I will not allow it. I drink more water, I eat the fruitjell so it may hold the pills down. And it does, and they settle, and the mind fog returns, and it is heavy.
How long I sleep the strange dance of pill dreams that lift me above the monotony of pain, I do not know. The cave grows grey and is day.
Lenny doesn’t come.
The cave again becomes the solid black of night.
He doesn’t come.
I am the storm. I am the screaming wind and the pouring rain. I am the cut of lightning and the beat of thunder’s drum. I am the haze of grey twilight and the red light of pain. I am the shadows sleeping and shadows waking. I am the pain, and the pool, and old Pa’s pills, the pills, the pool and the pain, and I know not dream from reality nor day from night.
I see the water on the cave roof and on the cave floor. I see the sowman dancing in the sparkling pool where I try to drown the red heat within me, but my heat boils the tiny pool, and do I dream I am in the pool, or am I there?
I will die here, Granny. I welcomed Lenny to my bed and knew the pleasure of him and I craved more. I am a thing of the city’s making, Granny, an abomination. They planted me on the purity of Morgan land where I might grow strong, Granny. You made me strong for them, and I have defiled the purity of your land.
Let the grey men come for me and suck this abomination from me. Let them take this thing away. Only let them take this pain away from me.
Why is the rabbit at play with the kangaroo, girl?
‘Curse your frekin rabbit, Granny. Let the hounds of hell take him, rip his hide to shreds and suck on his frekin bones!’
Why is the rabbit at play with the kangaroo, girl?
‘Leave me alone, you hard old bitch!’
Pa has found a kitten with two heads. It is a tabby thing, meowing in duet. Pa has it on the verandah and its four tiny legs try to run in different directions.
Kill it, Lenny says, and he walks away, but I want to know what it is that they have found. For the second time I am swollen with the grey men’s foetus and full up with their cordial, but I creep to the verandah.
Pa sees me. He does not speak, but beckons me to his side.
I stand at the door, half in, half out, afraid of the outside, afraid of that which swells me from inside. Always afraid.
He walks to me, offers the kitten. I reach out and pat its twin heads.
That’s the future, girl. They make them two, three at a time now in their frekin city. In the future they’ll make ’em with two or three heads.
The kitten has captured my interest, now his words capture me, hold me captive.
The old girl used to say they played with nature, but nature hits back. Nature always hits back, girl.
Kill it, Pa, Lenny says, then he snatches the kitten, wrings its twin necks and throws it to the dogs to rip apart. I weep, but silently, afraid. Yet something compels my eyes to open, to watch the dogs make a bloody mess of the dear abomination.
Lord, let me see worse so I do not see my own hell. L
ord, let me know that death is worse than the three grey men who have filled my belly again with their foetus.
Blood is on the sand.
A mother’s blood.
My mother’s hand grew cold. Her hair was yellow against the dust. She could not hold me.
Mother.
Nate.
Were they one? Were they two?
One or two, they are surely dead, and I will die soon and be with them, the one or the two. My hand will grow stiff and cold as that hand grew stiff and cold, and the infant will be too small to walk down the hill to Granny’s light.
Only let it be soon.
But I do not want to die and grow cold and stiff and talk no more. I do not want to die.
The Lord helps them who help themselves. These are Pa’s words and I help myself to Pa’s pills. I empty the last of them into my hand, and when I deem them not enough, my fingers search for more to fall free into my palm.
No more.
‘Lenny!’
Only six pills to help me.
Only six.
‘Lenny!’
Six foetus they sucked from me that last time. Tiny things with round heads and twig limbs. And they sealed them into plasti-cases and flew them away. Do they grow large in the city, fed by the blood of hairless old men who sit in chairs with wheels, and ropes of blood to hold them there? Did the Merith female child grow from me and an old man in a chair?
‘Bastards! Frekin city bastards!’
Six pills.
I do not like the number six, but I accept them, eat all six, chew them to a bitter paste, then wait while the pain screams through me.
Once I poured six bottles of cordial from the window and it was like blood on the earth and then there was no more cordial.
Why am I thinking of the city bastards and their cordial?
I am thinking of it because the tablets do not kill my pain, but they make me sly with the knowledge of something that will.
It is in my basket and will kill more than the pain.
I have known about it since coming here, since seeing the basket on the shelf. I am crawling to it when the screaming pain engulfs me, but I crawl through the pain towards sweet memory.
On this hill Jonjan refused to drink my cordial. The bottle is here, in my basket. And it is near full of diluted cordial.
With real purpose I have kept my distance from that basket, but the pills and the pain and the blood and the fear have made a mockery of purpose. On my knees, and with new purpose, I reach for the ledge, howling like a feral thing. I reach higher, and knock the basket to the floor.
A plasti-can rolls free. Pa’s cheese I toss aside as my hands snatch at that brown bottle.
Surely the noise within the cave is not of my making! A banshee, screaming at a bottle top that refuses to turn. The noise is not of my making; it comes from the grey men’s animal, from the abomination they have made. It has clumsy paws, and the clumsy paws slip, and the bottle springs from my hand, bounces on my belly as I sit, legs extended, overriding pain while bellowing my frustration to the old gods of this cave. I am ready to smash the bottle, pour its contents with broken glass into my belly, cut the thing within me to shreds.
But the cap loosens.
It comes free.
Thank you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, my grey men. Thank you, Granny. Thank you. Thank you.
And forgive me, Jonjan.
Sweet it is, and not so thick. Diluted by water in the time of Jonjan. Sweet and numbing this comforting grey mist of my pillow.
Drink.
Drink.
Drink.
Oh Lord, yes. Yes. Drink and dream of tomorrow. Drink and die before tomorrow comes. I care not.
I walk in the grey mist where a ray of light cuts its slim pathway between the towering green and I see her ahead of me.
Mummy. I call to her, hold out my arms to her, but she walks away from me to a pool, blue as a late summer sky.
And I hear her laughter, sweet and melodic, and I stand, watch her laugh with the Merith child of the newsprint as she shows her the reflection in the pool. Then we laugh together.
We laugh together?
We laugh?
It is I! I am the child reflected in the pool, my hair a halo of fire. I see . . . and I see the garden and the flowers of another world. Fleetingly. I sit, wanting to see more.
Then the dream is gone. She is gone. But the thing within me is pushing its way out. I see the bloody head of it and my hands reach down to gouge this abomination from me, to crush its head, drag it free and toss it like a rock at the wall. Pain grates against my bones, and I scream for Honey and her city garden of flowers.
‘Mummy. Mummy. Mummy.’ On and on, that one word continues until I am forced to suck in air to scream that word again. ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.’
And pain rushes away in a gush of warm relief and I remember the touch of flesh-warmth and that is all.
(Excerpt from the New World Bible)
To the most distant of the searcher havens the Chosen sent their engineers to improve on the craft of the searcher, and to make a loading space beneath them, for the distance to the settlement was too great for the copter carriers to traverse.
The Arms Masters came to instruct the searchers in weaponry. The strategists came to the shelters to consult with the consultants on strategies. And there were others who came to lend their skills. And many plans were drawn and many reports made and information gathered, for the settlement was large.
It was known that the males were many and of a great size, and that they carried arms that could fell a running beast. It was known that they had great dogs who could fell a beast. And the dogs made much noise and might give warning of attack.
It was seen that the buildings were of the old style, of brick and timber which would burn. Thus, from the viewing tape the strategists came to know each building of the settlement and each mountain and valley, and each place where a searcher might safely put his craft down.
And in time they came to know that in the season of the Planting, the females worked in the open fields, a babe upon their back, while the half-grown infants ran free in field and woodland.
And the Chosen desired to possess all which had grown freely on that land. And the strategists promised their strategies would deliver it. And in the great cathedral the High Priest made prayers for the searchers’ success.
And it came to pass that the searchers were armed with new weapons. And they were given, in advance, great rewards so that they would not fail to deliver.
THE INFANT
Daylight works its slow way into the spring cave; full consciousness comes with it. Time has lost its meaning for I have slipped into a new compartment between the now and the later.
A hand, disassociated from me, waves before my eyes. I see it clearly. I see the black dried blood on the hand, watch it fall exhausted to the sandy floor seeking, searching for the place where dreaming ended and conscious thought began.
I am awake. Life must begin again. My pain has gone onto the blanket – poor ugly thing that it is – it has one head. Still my doubting hand feels for a second. It has two legs, two tiny arms and perfect hands. A female. I had wished it to be a male when it was in me. I had cared for it – when it was in me.
So small it is for such a great, great pain. And so angry. Certainly it is I who should be angry – and I am.
I turn away from it to my foot. It stings. What new pain is this that beats its path through older pain? I rub it against the other, dislodging ants investigating the sweetness of spilled cordial. I see my garments, dragged high, are wet with blood. I see all of these things but do not move. Only my foot, and my eyes.
They focus on a long winding line of red trickling across uneven terrain. Up and down. Up and down the red trail goes, up and down – until I think to identify the line as ants on their way to the infant, or the stuff which is joined to it.
I roll onto my side and my hand breaks up the line of workers. One, mor
e tenacious, clings to my thumb, biting into that which has disrupted its labour. Reflexes jerk the hand to my mouth. I suck on my stinging thumb. For minutes I lay on my back sucking.
I have no thought to rise, and for a time I am able to ignore the new noise. I look at the cave roof, and at the reflections of the water, but eventually look at the wailing thing which lies there, one leg kicking feebly at the air.
I turn my face away, close my eyes, leaning towards the sweet oblivion of sleep. It will not accept me, but pushes me aside, until my hand reaches out, grasps at a long stick-thin leg, and by it, draws the wailing to my side.
Something I should do. I know this, but sleep claims me before I can think how to do it. My sleep is heavy and perhaps long, for I awaken to the hollow beat of rain, and such a lonely haunting sound it is.
Head to one side, I listen. Unlike my own storm of birth, the world’s is not yet over. I prop on an elbow and wait, listening for Lenny or the dogs. They will find me. Did they not always find me, and where else but at my cave would Lenny think to look for me?
‘Lenny!’
Only the heavy thud of rain replies. No dogs bark. Even the crows are silent.
I rest again, the infant sleeping on me. It lives. I can see the flickering of its blue eyelids. Lord, but it is an ugly thing with strangely misshapen head and squashed face.
Too weakened, and wearied, I look at this burden I have carried these many months, then I place it on the blanket and on my hands and knees crawl away from it, painfully covering the distance to a can of cornbeans, which I pull open by its fastener. I eat with my fingers, and when I can reach no more, I upend the can and drink the cornbeans. They are too soon gone, but Pa’s cloth-wrapped cheese is here. I peel away the cloth and gnaw at the hard, dry edge, then deeper into it. It is sharp and salty, and I am pleased by my choice of food, packed many months ago.