Beyond the Fence

by Marilyn Horn

  The AD gasped, and that’s when he saw it. She was not alone. The dog was not dead after all. It trotted alongside her, its tail wagging, its ears perked up. Behind the dog trailed a string of puppies, tripping and scampering over their fat little paws.

  She would not be returning to him anytime soon, he saw that now. “No need to cry,” the AD said, but it was too late. The reunited souls surrounding him did not even notice his sobs, but she stopped and looked up at the sudden downpour. She looked up and let the rain kiss her face.

  Monster on the Loose

  To be out of the attic for just a little while. It is all you think of, each long, lonely day. Midnight is the best time for it. By then, the doctor has finished his notes, smoked his second bowl of opium, and is asleep in the armchair near the fire.

  The kitchen door at the back of the house is your means of escape. It is barred with a deadbolt, but the doctor doesn’t know you have found the key and have learned to use it. Not easy to use, a key, with hands like yours, but you have practiced, and now it takes only seconds to get out.

  No one appears to be out at this time, except you. Not even the three-legged cat that lives across the way, amid the broken glass and crumbling brick. Perhaps it is nursing its newest batch of kittens. You have seen the kittens through your attic window. They look like the little powdered pastries the doctor dunks in his tea.

  The gas lights flicker. The street glows yellow. You move carefully, quietly, staying in the shadows, under branches of dying elms. The abandoned houses lining the street look even more forsaken than during the day. How you would love to walk in the sun! But it is unthinkable. Impossible. No one can know about you. The doctor is very clear about that.

  Far down the street, where the gas lights burn bright, someone is walking. A smallish person, but one who walks with confidence. One with a job to do.

  You stand against a tree and watch the person approach. A boy. A teenage boy. The worst kind of person, from what you know about the world.

  The boy reaches the corner but doesn’t turn. He is close enough now that you can see his chopped yellow hair, his mouth so full of teeth he cannot seem to keep it closed. You have seen this boy before. You have seen him throw rocks at the three-legged cat. You have seen the other batch of kittens, the one before this, disappear into his burlap bag. The three-legged cat meowed as the kittens struggled and squirmed to escape and, because you could not help yourself, you began to moan, soon so loud that the boy looked up at your window high up in the attic, and the doctor ran in and gave you the draught that makes you sleep.

  The boy continues toward you, burlap bag in hand. It is empty now, but not for long. You have melded yourself against the tree, lungs collapsed, until you are nearly invisible. The boy’s face glows in the light. His eyes are dark pits.

  He is near you now, only feet away. He shakes open the burlap bag. It gapes black and deep, and you can smell the inside. The smell of kitten, mixed with something else. Something rotten and moldy and stale. Like water trapped in a basement.

  You step away from the tree. You block the boy’s path. Your neck frill spreads wide and, before he can scream, you have sprayed him with the sticky muck that will burn him clean away. He turns and runs, wailing the wail of your mother the day she saw you. He drops the bag as the skin falls off. The charred bones blacken and collapse into a pile of dust.

  The street is quiet again as you turn toward home. You bow your head, like praying. The scales on your feet shimmer silver with moonlight.

  The Dolphin and the Healer King

  The city aquarium had only one dolphin left in its tank, a fat old female named Big Gal. She was lonely most of the time, with her only regular company being the seagulls (who yakked on and on about the deplorable lack of french fries), so Big Gal was always happy to see Henry arrive for his weekly visit. She clucked in an affectionate, motherly way whenever she saw Henry waddling toward the tank, a squat little man with hardly any hair, carrying a soiled paper bag. She liked his company and the stinky fish he tossed her way, and, maybe most of all, she liked the stories he told.

  Today as usual she swam to the edge of the tank to greet him, and he dropped an anchovy into her mouth. “It’s like this,” he said, which is what he always said first thing. But then: “My wife wants to replace the floors with hardwood.”

  Big Gal cackled sympathetically. Poor Henry — there was always some new project his wife wanted done. Today it was the floors that needed replacing. Last week it was the pipes, and before that the bathtubs (there were three) and the windows. Big Gal circled the tank and then, to cheer him, she flew up in the air and did a back flip. Henry doled out an extra portion of stinky fish for her effort.

  “All the floors,” Henry said, shaking his head. “But what can I do? She’s my sweetheart, Big Gal. I want her to be happy.” His smile was wistful and full of longing. “Still,” and here he sighed, “every darn room.”

  Big Gal nuzzled his hand. Henry caressed her snout and continued.

  “‘Are you sure, dear? The Pergo looks so nice —’ That’s what I said to her. ‘But, dear, Pergo doesn’t have the same energy as real wood’ — that’s what she said in return. Oh well, oh well. We must keep peace in our own little kingdoms, mustn’t we, no matter the cost. It will all work out in the end, I suppose. Yes, it will all work out in the end.”

  Big Gal propelled herself upright and planted a delicate little kiss on Henry’s clean-shaven cheek. She understood his predicament perfectly. She couldn’t understand all the words from his mouth, but she could feel his thoughts, and from there she could gather what his words meant, and she felt how much he loved his wife and how this love helped him accept all the changes (although the expense — that was another thing entirely), and deeper still she saw in Henry’s mind’s eye the transformation of his home as he met his wife’s demands.

  She saw the corroded and rusty pipes, spewing all manner of gunk, replaced with new coppery ones, as shiny and smooth as tropical eels; the small tanks he called bathtubs ripped out and the new ones installed and filled with steaming, gleaming water; and the cloudy, cracked window glass removed and replaced with shiny panes that sparkled like sunlight on water.

  Despite her sympathy for poor Henry, Big Gal liked seeing his house transform, and she was eager to see how it all turned out. But the hardwood project was the last one she would hear about.

  That very night, a crew of men with a net, a crane, and a tanker truck came to the aquarium to take Big Gal back to the ocean. She resisted at first. Life at the aquarium had been boring, true, and constricted, but at least she was safe and also free from the social conventions of the dolphin world. She evaded the men as best she could, swimming just out of their reach, and causing at least two of them to say “shit” and “goddamn” more than once. But men with nets usually don’t give up, and these men were no different, and it all ended with Big Gal deposited into the tanker truck. “Back to the wild,” one of the men said at the very end as she slid into the ocean, but she swished her tail at that. The wild, she thought. There’s nothing wild about it. The dolphin world is a highly structured one, you see, and Big Gal worried about finding her place in it.

  And indeed, once she found a pod to join, the other dolphins immediately asked her to choose a role. “No lollygaggers,” they all told her, with even the littlest pups chiming in on that score. And so, after careful consideration, and knowing she had no skill whatsoever in maneuvering, scouting, clowning, or negotiating (the only other jobs the pod had open at the time), she decided to become the pod storyteller, as the previous one had recently disappeared into a tuna net.

  But living all those years alone at the aquarium hadn’t left her with much material.

  “There was a man named Henry who brought me stinky fish once a week and spent all his money fixing up his house, just to please his wife. It all started one day when a baseball broke a window …”

  The story failed completely. The others in her pod didn’t care
about any of it. “Who is this Henry?” “Why should we care about him?” “Or his wife?” “Or his window?” After that, she heard more than one of them mutter “lollygagger” whenever she swam by.

  This was a truly worrisome position for her to be in — new to the pod, with a value-add edging quickly toward the negative. At any moment, she knew, she could be exiled. She’d seen it happen before. Long ago, before her stint at the aquarium, her Uncle Murray had been exiled. Why? For failing to spot a tricky stretch of kelp during a scouting venture. The pod exiled him, and off he went, his tail swishing back and forth in a despondent kind of way. And after that, no one was allowed to speak his name.

  And this was to be her fate? She, who had survived all that time alone in the aquarium tank, who had somehow kept her spirits up, who had not gone tank-crazy like so many others had, those poor wretches who scraped themselves against the sides until they bled; she, who had survived all that, would be exiled?

  Hell no.

  If the pod didn’t care about Henry, well then, she would find a way to make them care. She swam in circles until she had worked it out:

  Henry was not just a man, but a hero …

  A hero who sacrificed his own happiness to please his wife …

  Better yet, Henry was a king who repaired his castle to please his queen …

  Better yet still: Henry was a Healer King who … who repaired his castle … not only to please his queen, but … but to heal his kingdom.

  Dolphins appreciated that kind of thing, Big Gal knew, because their own kingdom needed healing. The kingdom of the sea had long been rife with strife and disharmony, what with the centuries-long war between the dolphins and the porpoises, a war that had disrupted even the deepest darkest part of the sea (because even there everyone knew your pro-dolphin or pro-porpoise stance).

  At the next story time, she started this way:

  “Once there was a king who lived in a kingdom torn apart by strife and disharmony.”

  That immediately caught the pod’s attention.

  “His queen cried and moaned, and she pleaded with the king and said the problem was the castle: if it could be repaired, the kingdom would be healed.”

  Big Gal saw the elder members of the pod glance at each other. “An allegory, that’s what this is,” a cow whispered to a bull.

  Their piqued interest encouraged Big Gal, and she continued. “The queen took the king’s hand and said, ‘The windows of the castle must be replaced …’”

  The whole pod groaned at that — they had heard enough about windows, and about the bipeds who lived on land.

  “I bet now she’ll bring up the baseball,” one of the pups complained, and the others laughed.

  But Big Gal had prepared herself for this and hurried on:

  “The windows are cloudy and cracked, my lord. Without clear sight into the kingdom, how can we ever hope to heal it?”

  A collective gasp and whispers of “allegory,” “allegory” spread among them, even among the pups, and Big Gal knew she had scored in a big way. She had been locked up in a tank for years, true, but she knew not only that all dolphins long for peace in the sea, but also that they all love allegory.

  Scholars have long pondered this love of allegory in the dolphin world, but consider this: Dolphins have the brightest minds of all Earth’s creatures (and here our porpoise friends will roll their eyes, no doubt), and bright minds are constantly in search of the deeper meaning in things. Such minds are drawn to allegorical puzzles, just as catfish are drawn to hooks baited with orange cheese. “What can it mean?” one dolphin will ask another, and before you know it, they have solved the puzzle and, of course, will let everyone know about it (with typical dolphin arrogance, as any porpoise is sure to tell you).

  Happily for our heroine, Big Gal had a knack for turning stories into allegories. Poor old Henry, who had fussed so over his hardwood dilemma, became a Healer King in the dolphin world — one who tore out the old foundation of his castle and replaced it with stronger material.

  “And thus, with firmer footing, he felt more confident, which in turn eased the minds of all his subjects, who thought, ‘Now here is a man who knows how to rule!’ But he didn’t stop there. With a wave of his trident, the Healer King dismantled all the rusty old pipes that poured foul, polluted water into the kingdom and replaced them with sparkling new pipes that flushed away all impurities. With the flow of fresh water now secured, he destroyed the cracked and rotting bathing tanks and replaced them with tubs that gleamed like abalone shells, where he soaked and pondered all the other good he would do.”

  On and on Big Gal went, making up new tales when she ran out of Henry material, and the pod seemed to like each story better than the last, and they always cheered whenever she got to the end and said, “And in this way, by healing his own home, the Healer King brought peace to the kingdom.”

  Her stories began to spread, and soon dolphins everywhere knew about Henry the Healer King. Many a dolphin thought, “I, too, can heal the kingdom,” and in this way the collective attitude began to change — become more positive, as it were. And soon, more quickly than you’d think, the ocean again became a place of peace. The war between the dolphins and the porpoises came quietly and thankfully to an end, and, more importantly to our own story, Big Gal’s place in the pod was secured.

  Henry never knew any of this, of course. Instead, he toiled on, day in, day out, doling out money like there was no tomorrow, forever worrying that the new pipes were not 100% copper. “And I think I paid too much for the granite countertops,” he told the seals, who barked sympathetically and clapped as he tossed them more fish.

  Beyond the Fence

  Mr. Wolfe didn’t tell Kate much about this particular job before sending her out. “Old guy at Woodside, just about dead,” he said, pouring himself a Scotch, even though it wasn’t yet noon. “Basic processing. BTF.” Kate hoped the man would die before she got there. That would make her sad job easier a little. But now, here at Woodside Nursing Home, Kate saw he was still alive. Hardly breathing, nothing but a lump under a thin gray blanket, but still alive. Which explained the photograph propped up on the nightstand.

  In these types of cases (BTF — when the dying would be planted beyond the fence), any personal effects were thrown out as soon as the person died. This made it less complicated for Forever Tree seed sellers like Kate. This helped the seed seller forget that this was a human being lying here, one with a history. Easier to plant someone beyond the fence that way. But get a glimpse of any kind of personal effect and, as Mr. Wolfe liked to say, “You could end up watering a person for the next 50 years.”

  Kate was about to grab the photo and stuff it into the briefcase strapped over her shoulder when the nurse marched in. She was an old woman, probably around 40, Kate guessed. Anyone over 35 seemed ancient these days. Kate had 10 more years before she fell into that group. Ten more years — the time stretched before her like a prison sentence.

  The nurse gave Kate a quick glance as she picked up the chart lying at the man’s feet. “Basic processing,” she said, making notes and checking boxes. “BTF.”

  The man on the bed opened his eyes. BTF — he knew what that meant. Everyone did. His soul would still be poured into a Forever Tree seed, but instead of being planted alongside anyone he knew in a Forever Forest, he’d go beyond the fence. Alone forever.

  The man didn’t look up at Kate, even though she stood right at his bedside. He stared at the floor and, after a moment, huddled into a fetal position. Her boss Mr. Wolfe called it “the hug of the dead.” An apt name for it, really, Kate thought, since so many of the dead ended up that way. During the summer when the plagues came around, most corpses scattered everywhere were coiled like that, in the hug of the dead. Kate had counted 15 in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot last summer, their faces covered in flu smear, while men in hazmat suits loaded them into white trucks.

  The last one they loaded in: Mr. Skeffington, her next-door neighbor. She h
adn’t even known he was sick, but that was how fast the plague bug could take you. So fast you didn’t even have time to have your soul gene extracted. “The gene expresses a few minutes after death, when it’s getting ready to depart,” Mr. Wolfe had said, her first day on the job. “You gotta extract the DNA then, Kate, and there’s no time to tarry. No wishing you were someplace else, doing something else.”

  The briefcase strap dug deep into Kate’s shoulder, heavy with seed catalogs. The man in bed before her still hadn’t looked up, but she could see now that his eyes were clear and bright, unclouded by cataracts. Early 60s, she thought; maybe even late 50s. His eyes were a deep brown, so brown that the whites around the irises looked almost blue. Eyes like her Uncle Jack’s. “Uncle Jack,” she’d say, sitting on his lap, long long ago, Sunday pot roast and mashed potatoes cooking in the kitchen. “Uncle Jack, your whites are all blue.”

  She slid the strap off her shoulder and set the briefcase on the floor. “Does he have a tree preference?”

  “Not that I know of,” the nurse said, still engrossed in her paperwork. “Hasn’t said a word since he got here.”

  Kate had met such people before. The people in the photo — the one she wouldn’t let herself look at — were probably his family, and they were probably all dead now, Kate thought, all except him. He was the only survivor, somehow untouched by the plague bug, and left to live the rest of his life alone. Such people often ended up like he did, wandering the streets, speechless and dazed, and picked up from the gutter and brought to a place like this to die and have their DNA extracted. Other lone survivors, like Kate, like Mr. Wolfe, hadn’t gone that route. They went to work every day instead. They drank their lunches alone and went home to quiet houses.