Cottonwood

by R. Lee Smith

  “Mr…Sir? I’m sorry to disturb you at home, but I have to ask you some questions as part of the new census—”

  “What’s that?”

  “The census? It’s where we document all the residents and their needs so we can help you better.”

  “Better than what?”

  Sarah glanced back at the reservoirs. “Better than this, I hope.”

  There was a short pause.

  The door opened again. He stuck his head out a little more, squinting at her with what seemed a little less hostility and a little more curiosity. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Sarah Fowler.” She put out her hand and he smacked it away with a vulgar-sounding blatt of sound. His hand was hard, plated; hers stung where he’d hit it. She tried on a smile anyway. “I’m your caseworker.”

  “What’s that?”

  “IBI hired me to work with you—”

  “Work with me?” He leaned back, antennae tapping at his ceiling. “Doing what?”

  “For a start, I find out some information about you—”

  “Fuck off.”

  Slam.

  Sarah stared at the door, bracing herself for a third go. She raised her knuckles.

  He opened it, rubbed his palps together in a series of slow, thoughtful-sounding scrapes, then straightened up and said, “What information?”

  “Okay.” She peeled back the checklist and came to her first census sheet. “Are you, um…Were you given the name John Byrnes when you were first processed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see your, um…head?”

  He faced right so that she could key the number scarring up the side of his head into her paz. John Byrnes, just like he said.

  “Is this your residence?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “May I come in?”

  “No.”

  Sarah blinked at him, nonplussed. “Um, I’m suh-suppoh-osed—” She stopped, cheeks flaring. ‘I do not stutter anymore,’ she told herself sternly as Mr. Byrnes loomed over her, his eyes narrow and mandibles snapping. “I’m supposed to make sure your housing needs are muh-met.”

  “It’s standing.”

  “But—”

  “You aren’t coming in without a fight, meat-sack,” he said flatly. He turned around.

  “Is your power working?” Sarah blurted.

  He paused in the doorway and looked back at her.

  “Maybe I can inspect it from here,” she offered. “ You don’t have to let me in if you don’t want to. Just…please…let’s try to work together.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” She looked around. No one was there to help her. She looked back at Mr. Byrnes. “Because that’s what this place is for. Integration.”

  He coughed out a shrill, buzzing sound—a laugh, maybe—and then looked at her again, harder. “Are you serious?” he demanded, and before she could answer, he stepped out on the porch again. “The power works,” he said. “Walls are good. All the holes are patched. What else?”

  “Do you live alone?”

  His eyes narrowed. He snapped his palps once or twice. “Yes.”

  “Okay, um…single-occupancy residences are allotted three food chits each day. Are you receiving them?”

  He uttered a perfectly-obvious snort despite the very real handicap of not having a nose or any other fleshy parts to snort through. “Yes.”

  “And one water tablet per day also?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your purifier functioning at this time?”

  He snapped his palps again. “Seems to be. Would I know if it wasn’t?”

  That was a good question. Sarah pulled out her paz and typed herself a note. “I’ll get back to you on that, I promise.”

  Mr. Byrnes turned his head to one side and spat a wad of shockingly thick, black stuff off the porch and onto the ground. She would not have thought it possible to smell it over the rest of the stink that was Cottonwood, but she could. “You promise,” he said, rubbing one hand over his mandibles to clean them. He looked at her paz, then at her shoes, and finally at her face again. “Go ahead.”

  “Okay.” She found her place on the census sheet. “Do you have any medical needs that should be addressed?”

  “By you?”

  “Well, by IBI. You know, by a doctor?”

  “Fuck your doctors.”

  Sarah consulted her papers and tried again. “Do you have any heart problems that you’re aware of?”

  “No.”

  “Respiratory trouble? Trouble breathing?”

  “No.”

  She glanced at him dubiously. His breathing seemed kind of wet and labored to her, but she had to believe he knew better. “How about trouble sleeping?”

  “No.”

  “Any urinary problems?”

  He snorted again and grabbed the clipboard out of her hands, turning it so that he could read it. “Why in the hell would you need to know that?”

  “It’s a legitimate medical symptom!”

  “No.” He flipped some papers, shoved them back at her. “Want to see?”

  “Do you have any open sores or untreated abrasions?”

  “What, now or ever?”

  “Now, I guess.”

  He looked down, running one hand over his chest. It made a wooden, raspy sound. “I don’t think so.”

  “So you’re not experiencing any pain or discomfort.”

  He stared at her again.

  “Physical discomfort,” she amended, very aware of her surroundings. “Of…Of a m-medical nature.”

  “No. How many more questions are there?”

  She checked. “About fifty.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” He opened his door again, but leaned on it for a while instead of retreating, clicking to himself. At last, he said, “What happens to my answers?”

  “I—I really don’t know.”

  “So how are you helping me?”

  “W-Well, we have to have everyone’s information so we can look at the p-problems and—”

  “Look at them? You’re going to look at them?” He flung his arms out suddenly, making Sarah think split-second thoughts of orientation videos and blood flying and arms coming off. “Can’t you see the fucking problem?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He stared at her, his arms slowly dropping.

  “Mr. Byrnes, I want to help you. I just need to figure out how. This is supposed to help me do that.” She looked at her papers, then up at him again. The futility, the cruelty of it overwhelmed her. “I have to start somewhere,” she said in a little voice.

  He clicked and buzzed a long time without speaking. When he did, it was, “Next question,” in a flat and angry voice.

  He kept his answers short from that point on, and signed the form at the end so she could compare his mark on the checklist and give it an eyeball match. She wrote John Byrnes next to his alien letters and his lot number, and then stupidly stuck out her hand again.

  He looked at it, and at her, coldly, then stepped back and slammed his door. “Now fuck off,” he called, and Sarah returned to the causeway, telling herself over and over that the first one was bound to be the hardest and it would all get easier from here.

  She was wrong.

  The worst first day of her young life. That was what her supervisor had predicted and that was just what she got. Most of her clients weren’t even home, but those that were made her work for her pay. There was Fletcher, who came staggering out from around the side of his trailer in answer to her knock, drinking something putrid from a Clorox bottle which he yarked all down the front of her leg. There was Hancock, who tacked the words, “You stinking human goat-fucker,” onto each and every one of his otherwise emotionless answers to the census, or indeed, to anything he said. There was Levin, who came flying out of his house at her knock with a nail-studded club in one hand and who kept it raised over her head when he wasn’t beating it against his door in a shouting rage. They swore at her
. They shoved her. They slammed doors in her face and knocked the briefcase out of her hands. The day dragged on hour by hour, and not only did it not get easier, it got worse. Five o’clock could not come fast enough, but before it did, there was Good Samaritan.

  It was his real name, or at least, it was really the name someone had assigned him. She guessed that with so many aliens to name, it was either get creative or start repeating them, but Good Samaritan? That wasn’t a name, it was a joke. Even before she knew just how meanly unapt it was, she knew it was a joke.

  He lived in a pretty nice double-wide trailer, one raised up on struts, with a somewhat crudely-constructed and sagging front porch that was nevertheless better than the one on the house where she’d lived with Kate. He answered her knock in a slouching stagger, one hand raised to shade his bloodshot eyes, so obviously hung-over that her first words on seeing him were not “Hello,” but a meek and rapid, “I can come back another day, Mr. Samaritan.”

  “Fuck that, you’re here now,” he’d answered, and then looked her up and down. “What the fuck for?”

  She’d explained about the census in some detail (his habit of just standing there, blearily staring at her, was a deeply unnerving one and she tended to babble when she got nervous, and to stutter, which only made the babbling last longer), and it had actually started out okay, with him grunting yes or no to her questions, but right in the middle of the medical history, he’d stepped down out of his house, moved her aside, walked out to the edge of his porch, and pissed an amazing spray of pungent urine all over the alley behind him. Not a stream, but a spray, as of a hose with a thumb over the nozzle. And as he’d tied his wraparound skirt back on, he’d interrupted her stammering efforts to continue the questionnaire with, “Are you asking everyone all these pointless questions or just me?”

  “Everyone. Well, I only have about two hundred clients, but—”

  “Clients?” He uttered the same shrill, buzzing sound as Byrnes had done. It looked less like laughter the more she saw it. “Clients,” he said again, and suddenly reached out and squeezed one of her breasts in his hard, plated hand. “A woman,” he muttered, ignoring her flinching cry. “Why would they send a woman in here?”

  She had to do something, say something, take control. Sarah took a steadying breath, tugged her blouse straight, and said, “Mr. Samaritan, I don’t think the fact that I’m a woman has anything to do with anything,” in her most no-nonsense tone.

  “Not anything, huh?” And he’d looked at her with disturbing intensity, the way no supposedly unisexual worker drone should look at a human female. “Well, if you’re so sure you’re a waste of fucking space, why don’t I help you out by popping that pink head off your scrawny little neck for you?”

  “I could c-come back anuh-uh-ther day, Mr. Samaritan.”

  “And I believe I told you to fuck that, you’re here now. I’m just confused.” He looked her up and down, slowly, clicking to himself. “So, if I’m your client, what does that make you?”

  “Your caseworker.”

  He did not attempt to repeat the words, but he did nod (the gesture startled her a little) and rub at the soft patch of his throat. “Everyone gets one?”

  “Yes. It’s part of Cottonwood’s social reform—”

  “Are you all women?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Just you?”

  “I’m…not really sure how many female caseworkers are in the program, Mr. Samaritan. There were at least a dozen at my orientation seminar, though.”

  “No shit.” He looked out over the causeway, the small appendages on his abdomen flexing outward so that the brushy tips could flick at the air. “Lucky me,” he mused and looked at her again. “Go on, next question.”

  After that, he found a post on his decrepit porch to lean on, and there he stood, occasionally rubbing at the delicate plates between his bloodshot eyes, or picking at the palms of his hands, but answering her questions without too much trouble. His little arms—his claspers—came out now and then, and once, one of them actually bumped up against her, but he didn’t seem to be doing it in a mean way, so she just inched back a bit and politely ignored it.

  When it was all over, as he finished making his mark on the last page, he suddenly said, “Want to join me for a can of bug food?”

  “For what?”

  “Call me a romantic, but you’re the first woman I’ve seen in years.” Samaritan pushed the papers back at her and disappeared into his house. The asthmatic screen door didn’t have time to wheeze shut before he was back with two cans with pull-tab tops. He gave her one as he stepped down off the porch, then went around to the road-side part of his house to lift the hood on the top half of a rusted, derelict car. The engine was long-gone. The inside was charred black, some kind of improvised barbeque pit. He fished around, breathing on coals until he had a bit of smoke, added some scraps of paper from the debris surrounding them, and laid in some nuggets of charcoal. When he was satisfied with that, he straightened up and casually jabbed his elbow down into the side of the can. The spikes growing out of his chitin popped through the metal with ridiculous ease. Samaritan nestled the can carefully among the coals, then wiped at his spikes and licked his fingers.

  Sarah just stood there.

  He jumped up onto the car’s roof and hunkered down, scratching at his eyes, then gave her a look. “You going to eat that shit cold?”

  She looked at the can, as though more intense study could possibly tell her something. The can was just a can, the standard twelve-ounce size, with a pull-tab top and no label. None at all, not even a stripe of dried glue to suggest there had ever been one. Had it not been for the reservoirs and the culvert and the stench of it all, she would be starving right now—her morning was gone, noon just a memory—but there was something so indescribably sinister about that labelless can that she had no appetite at all.

  Samaritan stared at her while she fidgeted. His hangover percolated obviously behind his eyes. “Woman,” he said finally, “that is my three food chits a day you’re holding. Now you pop that top and eat it.”

  “If it’s your daily food allotment,” she began hesitantly, “I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Good enough for the fucking bugs, but not for humans, huh?”

  “No! I mean…It’s just that—”

  “I know what the fuck it is. I also know that I’m making an extremely civil gesture here and you’re shitting on it. Open up that can and show me some fucking respect, caseworker.”

  Hardly aware of what her fingers did, Sarah pulled back the tab. The stink of it was like a slap to her sinuses in this muggy heat. Clots of grease clung to the top in a half-inch scum. The meat beneath was the greyish color of stagnant dishwater. She lifted it up, not knowing whether she could do it or not, only knowing that she was right on the verge of tears and hating this place and everyone in it, when a black-plated hand came out of nowhere and snatched it away, knocking her sprawling in the road.

  “You piss-brain fuck!” Samaritan bellowed, leaping up, but he didn’t give chase. The alien food-snatcher was over the next car and gone in two jumps.

  “I have to go,” Sarah said, fumbling for her case. “I still have clients to see. But I’ll be back.”

  “Oh yeah?” Samaritan clicked, resettling to watch his own can blacken. “I’ll be here, caseworker. You just knock on my door anytime.”

  She went on, past a number of empty lots to a burnt-out ruin of what should have been Jamil Konde’s house. There was an alien sleeping in the corner, under a charred piece of plywood, but he wasn’t one of her clients and when she woke him to ask if she could help in some way, he just staggered off down the street and took the plywood with him. The next few houses were standing, but empty, although she was fairly sure someone was home and just hiding in the last of them. She thought she could hear the thick, oatmeal-sucking breath of one of them on the other side of the door, but Mr. Che Baccus (and that name was as bad as Good Samaritan) refused to answer, a
nd after ten minutes of knocking and talking, she gave up.

  Her paz’s clock-app interrupted her with a chirp as she turned back to the causeway, a cheerful reminder that her day was almost done and she had half an hour before it was time to punch out. She had one house left on this road—still the first road! After eight hours, she’d seen less than a quarter of her clients—and Sarah, the stink of Cottonwood in her nostrils and vomit caked on one leg, hot, tired, and feeling ten years older than the woman who’d come humming her way through the checkpoint gate into a brave new world, seriously considered going home, not just for the day, but forever. Let them sue.

  But sitting in front of the house on the corner—God alone knew how long he’d been there, because she hadn’t noticed him before she’d walked up to Mr. Baccus’s house—was one of their children.

  And he was cute.

  He was little, that was the first thing. Standing up, he might only come to her knee, but otherwise he was a perfect little scale-model in miniature. His shell was a kind of bright bluish-green, cheerful in the sunlight, and his tiny antennae jittered like the wind-up arms on a tin toy. He was wearing a toddler’s tee, pulled up and secured with bands of electrician’s tape into something like a cotton harness. His pants were pajama bottoms, dark blue with rocket ships and stars on them, pulled up and fastened at the knee-joint with neon-colored hairties in pink and green. He was sitting in the dirt, in between the blade of a lawnmower and some massive soot-black engine, with half a milk jug and some tin cans before him, playing Trucks.

  This was so obvious—his tiny palps were going triple-time to make the fundamental mmbbbbt sound—and so unexpected that for a moment, Sarah just stood and watched. The rest of this horrible day did not exactly disappear, but she found that with the help of a cute kid, she could put it aside and find it in herself to take one more census report. She headed over.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He looked up, then sprang up, popping an easy three feet into the air and coming down on all fours in a squealing panic.

  “Jumping jellybeans!” Sarah blurted, almost as badly startled as the kid.

  The door banged open and one of the big ones came out fast. “Inside,” he said, and the little one scooped up his ‘toys’ and ran. The door shut with the big one on this side of it, holding it closed with one hand. He looked at her.