Husk

by Dave Zeltserman

  THREE

  ‘Is anything wrong? You look so … preoccupied.’

  ‘What? No, nothing like that,’ I lied, because I was very much preoccupied, enough so that I’d been scowling without realizing it. The reason for my consternation was that I had gotten off the Massachusetts Turnpike over forty-five minutes ago, was now on Interstate 84, and I’d had plenty of opportunities where I could’ve taken care of her. I was also beginning to accept the reason why I hadn’t. I had stopped thinking of her as one of them, and was instead thinking of her as a very pretty girl with a sweet smile. Maybe I’d been thinking of her that way ever since she’d looked up at me and our eyes met outside that rest stop. That could’ve been why I’d been feeling this uneasy anxious fluttering in my chest almost from the moment I led her into the passenger seat of the van. I’d also pretty much decided she wasn’t going to be one of them I brought back to the clan. Instead, I would drive her to New York like I’d promised, and from there work my way home filling up the burlap sacks along the way. If the elders ever found out about this, the consequences would be severe. But I just didn’t see how I’d be able to do anything other than that. I said to her (and while it wasn’t the whole truth, there was still some truth to it), ‘It bothers me thinking of how that boy treated you.’

  ‘Please, don’t waste another second thinking about him. I’m not going to.’

  The tone of her voice caused me to glance in her direction. Because of what I’d said, she was now brooding as she stared straight ahead out the windshield, her body stiff, her jaw clenched. I wanted to ask her what their argument had been about, but instead I asked how long she had known that boy.

  ‘Long enough to have known better.’ There was a heavy breath from her. Then, ‘Let’s not talk about him anymore, OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  A silence fell between us, which was fine with me. I had a lot on my mind trying to come to terms regarding how I was thinking of her, because I’d never thought of any of them in that way before. We’re not supposed to ever think of them in that way. From a very early age we’re taught to think of them only as them, and that they have only a single purpose. The elders reinforce these teachings by bringing us to the slaughtering rituals once we turn nine years of age.

  Maybe part of why this had left me so shaken was that I’d always believed we’d feel the same about them even without the elders’ teachings. That our attitude toward them was simply something instinctive. The natural order of things. After all, we’re different than they are. Our eyes are darker than any of their eyes I’ve ever seen. There are other differences, too. It might be too subtle for them to notice, but the shape of their eyes and mouth marks them as a different breed. Also the scent they give off and the texture of their skin. But none of that matters. Even if we were blindfolded and had our nostrils plugged up with mud, we’d still know. There’s something unspoken that we pick up on right away. Maybe it’s akin to how bats instinctively use radar so they can know about objects they can’t see. It could be that way with us – that we pick up a frequency of some sort that tells us when we’re with our own kind. And when it’s one of them – when we’re not picking up that frequency, or we’re detecting that unusual scent they give off, or noticing the subtle physical differences – we find ourselves unable to think of them in any way other than that one way, which is how it needs to be because of our cravings. Except now. Because I wasn’t thinking of this girl next to me in that way. That was why I welcomed the silence. I needed to understand what had happened to me – at least that was what I told myself.

  I’m not stupid or thick. I knew what the truth was even though it was something too big for me to acknowledge, at least at that moment. So I instead went through the fruitless activity of trying to figure out something I already knew, and I told myself the half-truths and half-lies that I needed to so I could avoid the real answer. That maybe it was only because of how pretty she was, even though I must’ve picked up dozens of other girls in the past whom I also would’ve thought of as pretty if I’d let myself think of them in that way. Or, that her needing rescuing had triggered something inside me, which I knew made no sense since most of them that I pick up are in trouble and need help. I was in the midst of trying to fool myself with another of these half-lies (or half-truths, depending on how you look at it) when she interrupted me by asking whether I was married.

  That question drew my attention back to her. She must’ve worked past my asking about that boy who had abandoned her, because she was no longer brooding and instead was smiling in this impish way, sort of like the Cheshire Cat illustration from the badly battered copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that I used as a child to learn to read.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ she said, her smile inching up. ‘You know my relationship status. Recently broken up. It’s only fair that I ask about yours.’

  ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense. You’re too good-looking in that tough masculine sort of way.’ There were several beats as she waited, hoping I’d answer the unasked question about whether I liked girls, but before the silence between us could grow into something uncomfortable she asked whether I’d ever been married.

  ‘No,’ I lied, because I was married once. The elders had arranged for me to marry this small, furtive girl from the Webley clan, who make their home deep in the Appalachian mountains between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. All marriages between our kind are arranged with other clans, to bring in new blood. Or at least stir up the blood, since I suspect we all originated from a single people. Whether or not it kept us from inbreeding, that’s what we did, with custom having the bride always traveling to the groom’s clan. In my case, my wife was named Patience. I never much liked or trusted her, and was relieved when she died of complications from a tooth abscess eight months into our marriage.

  All at once I felt fidgety, my palms sweaty as I gripped the steering wheel. My voice echoed thinly in my head as the words leaked out of me, ‘Maybe things would be different if there were girls as pretty as you where I’m from.’

  Since I was still not ready to admit the truth about her, I was left confused about why I’d said that. But before I could puzzle over that too much, she laughed. It was a soft, gentle laugh, and I found myself liking the sound of it.

  ‘Come on! There must be plenty of girls in Manchester prettier than me.’

  ‘Not that I’ve ever seen.’

  I could sense her body relaxing. That’s something we’re able to do. Just by being in close proximity to them we can pick up on their tension and fear. At that moment she was completely empty of any fear or wariness. Without looking at her, I knew she was smiling a little brighter than before.

  ‘Charlie Husk,’ she said playfully. ‘That’s an odd name. Husk. Of course, I shouldn’t talk. Not with a name like Zemler. Is Husk a common name in New Hampshire?’

  ‘The only Husks I know are blood relations,’ I said. ‘But it’s an old name. We’ve been there for a long time.’

  She didn’t ask me how long we’d been there, which was just as well. From the stories the elders told, she wouldn’t have believed me. Of course, I wouldn’t have told her those same stories. I would’ve changed things.

  Another silence grew between us, but it was OK. It was a comfortable silence, one that didn’t need filling. A lot of them that I’ve picked up in the past plug in their ear thingies right away so they can listen to their music and act as if I wasn’t there. I always had mixed feelings when they did that. In a way I’d feel that was rude, but in another I’d be grateful for them doing that because it kept them distracted from what was going to happen to them. I would’ve been OK if she’d plugged herself into her music the same as those others did, but she didn’t, and that made me even more convinced I couldn’t make her one of them.

  I’d never needed to go past New Haven before in order to fill up the van, so once
I passed the city I was in new territory, which left me searching for signs that would lead me to New York. She noticed that and told me she’d give me directions.

  ‘Have you ever been to New York before?’ she asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Are you going to be there long?’

  ‘Maybe my whole life.’

  FOUR

  I thought it would be harmless to tell her that I was moving to New York. That if I told her that, then I wouldn’t have to come up with a clumsier reason for why I was driving there. What I did though was open myself up to more questions, the first one being what I planned to do once I moved there.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m what you call a jack-of-all-trades. Carpentry, masonry, automotive repairs, electrical, plumbing. I can do a passable job with all of that. I’ll see what I can find.’

  That was pretty much the truth. The winter months are different, but during the other seasons the women and children and the elders in the clan spend their days working the fields using crude farming instruments that aren’t much different from what must’ve been used two hundred years ago. We grow wheat, barley, oats, and vegetables, since our diet is grains and stews made from ground meat simmered with vegetables. Most of the able-bodied men perform the heavy labor that’s needed. My days are spent differently. I’ve brought electric generators, fuel, power tools, and other building materials to the clan, and when I’m not going on these pickups or doing other business in their world, including selling our excess vegetables, the elders have begrudgingly allowed me to build new homes that are a marked improvement over the primitive structures the clan has used for hundreds of years. So far I have seven of these new homes completed, all with indoor plumbing.

  After that, Jill (I had probably stopped thinking of Jill as simply her long before I was ready to admit it) peppered me with questions about my family and upbringing, while volunteering information about her own. I tried to stick as closely to the truth as I could – telling her that my ma and pa were still alive, that I had five brothers and three sisters, and that I had a very large extended family (Jill, on the other hand, was an only child with fewer living relatives than she could count on one hand) – and I only lied when I had to. When she asked whether I’d been to college, I didn’t mention that I’d never had any schooling – only that I hadn’t had the opportunity for college but read a lot.

  ‘A self-made man,’ she said without any hint of meanness or insult, only genuineness, like she firmly believed the statement. ‘What do you like reading?’

  ‘Anything I can get my hands on,’ I said, which was the truth. The elders have always believed that those of us with my duties need to be able to fit in among them as best we can, and because of that they have saved the ‘frivolous’ books gotten from wayward travelers. Since I’ve been doing these pickups, I’ve more than tripled our library, bringing it to almost four hundred books. While the others are discouraged from reading (although none of them that I know of have ever shown any interest), it’s still tolerated from me, and I’ve read every book we have, many of them several times over. (Though more recently I’ve been receiving disapproving looks from the elders, as if they feel I’ve read enough by now.) On past forays into their world, I’ve even bought books at used bookstores, although I’ve kept that secret – I have little doubt the elders would not be happy if they knew I’d done that.

  I rattled off to Jill the titles of my favorite novels, while not bothering to mention our more obscure books, such as the one on dentistry written in 1908 and or the one on bee farming published in 1887.

  ‘Twain, Dickens, Faulkner, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Hawthorne, Dumas …’ Jill said, nodding approvingly as she repeated the authors of the books I’d mentioned. ‘The classics. I read many of those when I was in high school and as an undergraduate. The last few years I’ve been on a kick where I’ve been sticking mostly with more modern literature and quite a lot of genre stuff.’

  Shortly after I’d picked her up Jill had mentioned that she was working on a graduate degree in psychology, and now she was telling me how she had almost majored in English literature and that books were one of her early loves. This led to a discussion of some of her favorite recent books. (Mostly a one-sided discussion, but I didn’t mind.) I’d only read one of them – an allegorical fable about a man who takes on an ancestral duty of weeding a field each day by hand, believing that if he doesn’t the world will end. I’d gotten the book from a man I’d picked up while driving through Boston. He’d been walking alone on a darkened street, and at the last second I took the opportunity to swerve the van up on to the sidewalk, crippling him. In less than a minute I had him in the back with the others that I had already picked up, and less than three minutes after that I had him secured in a burlap sack and was driving away without anyone being aware of what had happened. Much later, when I got around to reading the book, I discovered from the photograph on the book jacket that the man I’d taken was the author. Maybe he was walking around Boston with a copy of the book he’d written because he was planning to give it to an acquaintance, or maybe he had another reason. Whichever it was, I never had a chance to ask him, same with missing my opportunity to question him about several things in the book that had left me wondering about their true meaning. I was so absorbed listening to Jill’s insights that I only half paid attention to her as she directed me through the maze of streets once we entered Queens, and it took me by surprise when she pointed out the three-story brick building up ahead and on my right as where she lived.

  ‘This is home,’ she said. ‘My apartment’s on the top floor, in the back.’

  I pulled over so I could park in front of the building, and was further surprised at how disappointed I felt that my journey with Jill had come to an end. Up until then I was still telling myself it was only because I’d never had the opportunity before to talk about books with anyone, or really have a discussion about anything. My clan is not a talkative lot. Usually a few words is all we’ll say to one another. Even though I was married to Patience for eight months before she succumbed, most of our time together was spent in a cold uneasy silence where neither of us had much to say to the other. And I certainly never said much to any of them that I’d picked up in the past, nor gave them much time to say anything to me. This was the first time I’d ever had a chance to carry on any conversation at length, at least outside of my head, so it wasn’t hard to convince myself that that was the only reason I was disappointed.

  After I put the van in park and turned off the ignition, we both sat awkwardly for several moments as if we both had something we wanted to say to the other. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was I wanted to say. It was more of an uneasy feeling working its way into my stomach. But then I remembered the burlap sacks and rope in the back of the van, and I moved quickly so I could get her duffel bag out without her being able to look back there.

  I brought the duffel bag to Jill as she waited for me on the sidewalk. I was still trying to figure out what it was I wanted to say to her when she moved quickly to me. It wasn’t so she could take her duffel bag from me, but so that she could stand on tiptoes and kiss me. With her being so short, she didn’t make it to my cheek and instead kissed me on my jaw, which was free of any whiskers. If she’d had the opportunity to kiss me yesterday, that wouldn’t have been the case. I learned long ago that my kind blend in better in their world – and they trust you more – if you don’t have long whiskers or shaggy hair that falls past your shoulders. So any time I’m going to be entering their world, I first have my hair shorn short and my face shaved clean. My own people have never appreciated the reason I do this and always give me odd, even hostile, looks until my whiskers and hair grow to a more acceptable length, but it can’t be helped.

  She stepped back and smiled at me in this secretive, amused sort of way. ‘You really did rescue me today,’ she said.

  I was too flustered to do much more than grunt out something unintelligible to her, which made her smile a
ll that more secretively and got her blue eyes sparkling that much brighter. I wasn’t even sure myself what I said. Feeling flustered like that was a new experience for me, and it left me even more confused about what I wanted to say to her.

  ‘Let me buy you lunch,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do. After all, it’s not every day a gal gets rescued by a handsome stranger.’

  The idea of eating with one of them was crazy but, as I said earlier, I had stopped thinking of Jill that way. Without fully realizing I was doing it, I nodded OK to her. The look she gave me made me feel weak in my knees. Her smile became something mischievous as she turned so she could lead the way to her apartment, letting me carry her duffel bag.

  ‘You guys from New Hampshire look nice when you blush,’ she said as she walked in front of me.

  FIVE

  Jill thought my first meal in New York should be in Manhattan, so after leaving her duffel bag in her apartment we took the subway to the West Village. I’d been traveling in their world for the last six years, but I’d never experienced anything like I did on the subway with Jill and later as we walked through the overly crowded West Village sidewalks to the restaurant she had picked out. When I ventured into their world to sell vegetables or to buy fuel or building supplies I’d only have to move among a small number of them, and during my other trips I’d be alone in the van most of the time and the ones I picked up would be by themselves. Saying that being amongst so many of them was unsettling wouldn’t come near what I experienced. It was at times maddening, and it was a struggle to keep my composure. I’m not a savage. It wasn’t as if I had a compulsion to grab one of them and take a bite of his flesh. That’s not something any of my kind would ever have a desire to do. As strong as our cravings might be, there first have to be the slaughtering rituals, then the meat must be prepared according to custom before we can accept it. While the thought of doing something that outlandish and savage never occurred to me, I was still left on the verge of a panic. How could I not be with so many of them so close to me? Their scent so overwhelming? Or standing packed among them in that subway car? Somehow I kept my wits about me, and even though my legs were shaky we made it to the restaurant. It was better after that, with fewer of them around and our table far enough away from the others that I could barely smell them. At least I could start breathing more normally and unclench my fists.