Fungi

by Orrin Grey

  “Que grosero. I’d rather be on hongo duty than handling tubes of hair. Wouldn’t you?”

  Art followed her gaze up the beach. Sweat-sheened volunteers toted straw rafts from the back of a truck in the parking lot all the way to the high tide line. There, other volunteers stripped off the biodegradable plastic and used it to stitch together the rafts, which — according to the pamphlets Art had been handing out — were packed with lab-enhanced Pleurotus corticatus spores. Myco-remediation, it was called. The mushrooms would feed on the oil, thus cleaning the water, and later be harvested and sent back to the greenhouses. There, they’d be churned to compost to produce another generation of fungal warriors.

  Some of the rafts already rippled with snowy crests of oyster mushrooms. They’d erupted en route, right through the plastic. Other rafts had actually burst apart from the proliferation of fungus, whiter than sea foam.

  “I don’t know,” Art said uneasily. “It’s not just mushrooms. Once the rafts are all connected and anchored from the high tide line, someone applies a souped-up bacterial compound to the straw.”

  “But it’s safe, right?” Claudia looked up at him. “They wouldn’t put it in the water if it wasn’t.”

  “Oh, of course. It’s just a turbo-boosted version of bacteria that are already present in the ocean. They help break down the oil.”

  “So …?” she prompted.

  Art shrugged. “Guess it just creeps me out, the idea of living things packaged that way.”

  Claudia’s scrutiny intensified. Art felt it like crazy Rasberry ants on his skin, worse than the wind tickling his phantom fur.

  “Doesn’t look like they suffered any,” she said. “I mean, look at those rafts already crawling with hongos. It’s like they can’t wait to slurp up the oil.”

  “Doing our bidding

  “It’s just like yeast,” Claudia continued. “From the baking aisle at H-E-B?”

  But yeast could be harvested from the air, Art thought. It didn’t need to be dried out and sealed in an envelope. Fortunately, the deep roar of an engine interrupted their conversation. An ATV equipped with a sand sled trundled along the beach. Heaped in the sled, orange biohazard waste bags rattled with the stiff Gulf wind.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Claudia hollered.

  Art glanced at her, suspected her face would’ve wrinkled in disgust if the grafts had been sufficiently elastic. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “If we don’t collect them the oil company will, and they’ll destroy them before U.S. Fish and Wildlife can get a good count.”

  “Fish?” Claudia said. “And birds, I suppose.”

  “And turtles, dolphins, jellies, sharks … lots of animals.”

  Luckily, the ATV motored on to the next dump site without stopping.

  “So sad,” Claudia murmured in its wake.

  Art flipped through the afternoon timeline on his clipboard, until Claudia tsked. “Look at you,” she said. “All worried about bacteria in jars a minute ago and then you rattle off dead animals like a shopping list.”

  “Well ….” Art lowered his clipboard, shrugged again. “Those animals are dead. I feel worse about the ones still trapped.”

  “In the oil,” Claudia said, nodding.

  Anywhere, Art thought.

  Art opened his car door and swiveled in the driver’s seat to put on socks and shoes. He’d driven barefoot, unwilling to squeeze his clawed feet into shoes until the last possible moment. After a lifetime of forcing himself into human clothes, he was mostly resigned to fabric squashing down his fur and seams constricting his movement — sweats helped with that — but shoes still tortured him. He usually wore sandals to avoid the sensation of his claws being jammed back into his toes, but he didn’t think sandals were appropriate to dinner at someone’s house.

  He wasn’t sure, of course, since he usually avoided human contact outside of errands and his work at the Laguna Madre Wildlife Center. On weekends, he might go more than forty-eight hours without saying a word. When Claudia extended her invite, however, she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Anyway, Art thought edging outside his comfort zone might be worth it. Claudia must know what it was like, seeing yourself one way while everyone else saw you differently.

  Cold air bumped his muzzle when Claudia greeted him at the door. That, and the aroma of chicken and onions simmering with rice in a peppery broth.

  “¿Arroz con pollo?” He stepped inside, careful not to trample her small feet. Only then did he remember it was customary for the guest to bring a gift: a bottle of wine, flowers for the table, dessert.

  “You said you were an omnivore,” she reminded him, a subtle tease at his word choice.

  “I am,” he assured her. “It smells great.”

  She introduced him to her six-year-old son, Moises, who only abandoned his colouring pages on the coffee table after much cajoling.

  “It might be your beard,” Claudia said apologetically. “He doesn’t know a lot of men with beards.”

  Art realised, abashed, that when Claudia had mentioned her son, he’d imagined a mix-skin. Which was ridiculous. Claudia’s skin grafts and scarring were the result of a bacterial infection, not a hereditary condition. Moises had the typically luminescent skin of a child fresh from the bath. His straight-brown hair had dried in some places, others not. He half-hid behind his mom to shake hands.

  Art tried not to mash the boy’s fingers in his big paw. “I probably look like a giant, huh?” he said. “Nice to meet you, Moises.”

  Moises peeked out from behind Claudia’s loose cotton dress. Not to look at Art’s face, but to study Art’s paw curiously, as if he saw the same thing Art did: the leathery pads, the sharply curving grey-brown claws, the dense brown underfur and coarser guard hairs. The bear superimposed over a human frame.

  Moises craned back to take in Art’s full height. He looked higher than Art’s human head, maybe at Art’s rounded bear ears, and his mouth fell open in awe, revealing a missing front tooth.

  “What do you think?” Claudia said, a hand across her boy’s shoulders. “Does he look like a giant?”

  “No,” Moises breathed. “A bear.”

  The only reason Art didn’t break into an itchy sweat was that Claudia’s whole house was as cold as H-E-B’s frozen food section. At the beach, she’d explained that her grafted skin couldn’t sweat, hence her assignment under the protective shade of the booth.

  Seemingly unaware of any awkwardness, Claudia laughed and pushed Moises back to his colouring. “Finish your homework.”

  She waved for Art to follow as she charged into the eat-in kitchen. A bowl of salad sat on the table already, with three bottles of dressing and a pitcher of — Art sniffed — hibiscus iced tea. Claudia stirred the chicken and rice, checking for doneness and chattering about a TV show Moises watched that featured a big bear. Meanwhile, Art tried to get ahold of himself. He stared at the damp circle the glass pitcher dripped on the tablecloth until his manners kicked in.

  “Can I help with something?” he said, feeling like a bear of very little brain.

  “What? No!” She whirled, flinging broth from her serving spoon in the process. “Sit, have a seat, do you know how long it’s been since I had an excuse to cook something off the kiddie menu?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, you know, this needs a few more minutes to simmer,” she said, turning to cover the pan. “Are you sure, because I have this light bulb that went out months ago, over the back door, and I can’t reach it even with a step ladder, but I bet you can. Would you mind?”

  “No, not at all.” Art was actually relieved to step outside for a moment. It gave him time to recover.

  But when he returned with the moth-flecked compact fluorescent light bulb in hand, the kitchen was empty. He heard urgent whispers in the living room and the whole idea of Claudia, of all people, feeling the need to lower her voice struck Art as weird enough that he froze near the swinging kitchen door.

  “Mijo, what’ve you don
e?” She sounded exasperated. “Didn’t we read the instructions together?”

  “Colour the shapes with the number,” Moises recited. “I did, Mama!”

  “But here, the key shows you. One is red, Two is blue and Three you leave white.”

  “That’s silly!” Moises said.

  “No, that’s the instructions.”

  An uncertain smile tugged at Art’s lips. Hard to imagine a colouring page was such a big deal. But, obviously, he wasn’t a parent. Before he could be caught eavesdropping, he walked to the counter. He tugged a paper towel from the roll, folded it on the counter and gently placed the lightbulb on top. He was washing his hands when Claudia returned.

  “That boy!” she said with forced cheer. “I swear he’s trying to sabotage dinner. Like it’ll kill him to eat anything but the unholy yellow trinity: mac-n’-cheese, chicken fingers and fries.”

  “Why take the chance?” Art joked.

  Over dinner, Claudia asked about Art’s work at the wildlife center, neatly sidestepping the spill’s depressing impact. She still managed to do enough of the talking that Art didn’t need to wrack his brain to keep up conversation. He reminded himself to glance up from his food once in a while and often caught Claudia tapping a finger near Moises’s plate. Art recognised the code for “Eat your food,” “Use your fork” and “Stop playing with your glass” from his own childhood, when he’d still acted more cub than boy.

  Art took pity on Moises. “Do you like going to the beach?” he asked.

  “No,” Moises said, taking him by surprise. “It’s like a big mouth, with backwash.”

  Claudia’s head slumped. “I’m going to kill cousin Hector for teaching you that word.”

  “Why do you work there?” Moises asked Art. “Bears don’t belong in the ocean. A lake would be better.”

  “He’s not really a bear,” Claudia chided. “You know that. Don’t you know that?”

  Despite Claudia’s embarrassment, Art wiped his napkin across his mouth and explained. “Some bears do go in the ocean. Remember polar bears? Their Latin name is Ursus maritimus, which means ‘sea bear’, and they’ve been known to swim for up to nine days. And grizzly bears, also known as brown bears, they live along the coast of Alaska. You’ve probably seen pictures of them catching salmon in their mouths, but they’ll also hang out in intertidal zones and eat clams.”

  “But not in Texas,” Moises said, his voice curling into a question.

  “Not at South Padre Island,” Claudia said.

  “But you’re right about one thing. This bear,” Art said, a thumb to his chest, “would definitely prefer a lake. In fact, I’m thinking about buying a house up in Wisconsin or Michigan, one day, something near a lake.”

  “But we just met you,” Claudia teased. “You can’t go now! Or is that why you’re going?”

  After dinner, as they cleared the table, Moises asked Art, “Do you know what colour the number One is?”

  Claudia turned from loading the dishwasher. “Don’t start that again,” she warned.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Art said, looking down at the boy.

  “He brought home a colouring page of the American flag. It was a colour-by-number assignment. One is red, Two is blue, etcetera,” Claudia said. She took Moises’s plate from him, trying to capture his attention, as well. “I told you we’d talk about that later, with your teacher.”

  Art felt Moises’s expectant gaze clinging to him. Knowing he shouldn’t intercede between mother and child, he still asked, “But you coloured it differently?”

  “I coloured it the way it really is,” Moises said, greasy lips glistening under the kitchen light. “The paper says One is red, but, really, it’s dark green and the number Two is pink and Three is yellow —”

  “Ayy … Moises!” Claudia yanked Art’s plate from his hands. “Enough! Go wash up in the bathroom. We’ll talk about this with Miss Farias at Open House.”

  “Sorry,” Art said, not entirely sure whom he was speaking to. Claudia and Moises both nodded, however, each apparently feeling entitled. Art tried to make himself useful by handing the rest of the dishes to Claudia. His phantom claws scraped the china and set his real and phantom teeth on edge; he resisted the urge to speak louder, over the scratching Claudia couldn’t hear — but maybe Moises could.

  “I didn’t know what to do with the lightbulb,” he said, gesturing at the counter when they were done.

  “Oh! No worries,” Claudia said. Art suspected she was glad to have something else to do with her hands. “It’ll just take me a minute. ¡Tantas gracias! It was driving me crazy; for months I’d flick the switch and be confused then annoyed, and I did try several times, pero.…”

  Still talking, she yanked open a junk drawer — Art spotted refrigerator magnets, rubber bands, chopsticks — and fished out a thick remediation envelope that also served as a return mailer to the CFL manufacturer. Art twitched. Claudia didn’t notice. She popped the bulb inside the envelope, thick as an old bubble-wrap insulated mailer, and sealed the top.

  “You probably think I’m crazy, already, arguing with Moises about colouring, for God’s sake,” she said.

  “I’m not really in a position to call anyone crazy,” Art said. He phrased it as a joke, but wondered if he’d soon have to come clean. Moises knew something was off, even if the child didn’t seem to consider Art’s bearhood “off” at all.

  Claudia held the remediation envelope between her palms and crushed it flat. Art winced as the bulb shards pierced the dense mycelial mats lining the inside.

  “The thing is, Moises is going to have a hard-enough time at school, in the world, with a mix-skin for a mom,” she said. “Sorry if that word offends you, but let’s not beat around the bush. There’s worse things to be called. Anyhow, the point is, mijo can’t be making things worse for himself by not following simple instructions and being so stubborn about his imagination …. ”

  As she spoke, Claudia crushed the bulb to pieces. Art flinched at every crackle. Such a brutal awakening for the fungus inside. Spores of the French summer cep, maybe, or gem-studded puffball. Whatever mushroom it might’ve been, Art sensed another living being — a wild thing — trapped in a too-tiny, human-approved container. Forced into hibernation, engineered to eat garbage, expected to spit back a form acceptable to humans ….

  “Are you okay?” Claudia said and Art only heard her because she stopped grinding the glass and toxins into the fungus. “Don’t tell me I made you sick! The one time in months I get to feed a friend and I’ve poisoned him? ¡Que cataclismo!”

  Feeling less sick and more stupid with every passing second, Art realized he could never tell Claudia. It didn’t matter that she, too, was trapped in a body that didn’t fit her. Furry or freak or crazy man she’d call him, as merciless with her insults as with her self-appointed label.

  “What’s wrong?” Moises said. He held open the kitchen door with bubble-gum-scented hands, still slightly damp. He frowned up at Art and Art felt a warm puddle of pity under his sternum. Moises’s brow was far too wrinkled for a child his age. He wished he could stay.

  But Claudia would crush them both into the appropriate containers, all in the name of making their lives easier. And Art knew, beaten down as he already was, he’d succumb long before Moises. He’d not be doing the boy any favours by sticking around.

  “It wasn’t dinner,” Art said. “Promise. Dinner was great. I just … feel a migraine coming on. I need to get home before it really sinks its teeth in.”

  Art narrowly escaped Claudia’s maternal ministrations: “You can lie down on the couch; we’ll turn out the lights for you; should you be driving; are you seeing the auras already?” Once safely in his car, Art kicked off his hated shoes and sagged in the driver’s seat.

  He’d been a fool to try to play at being human.

  Art stood on the shore, watching the lake emerge from the shadow of the bluffs as the sun rose higher in the sky. A breeze ruffled his fur, but elicited no
shiver. That morning, the tansy outside his cabin had sagged with cold dew, but, even shoe-less, he’d felt warmer and more peaceful walking to his bit of Lake Michigan than he ever had on South Padre Island. The shards of zebra mussel shells carpeting the sand didn’t bother him, calloused as his feet had grown from wandering the woods barefoot.

  He caught a sparkle in the marram grass and used his pole spear, a six-foot piece of white pine, to part the rolled leaves. The ladybug trundling over the sand sensed an audience and flitted off, barely audible. Art’s thoughts turned to whitefish or burbot for lunch. Then he’d spend the hottest part of the afternoon in the woods, collecting wild blueberries and blackberries. The staghorn sumac was probably ripe for tea. He might even luck upon some morels. Though he kept hearing about the all-you-can-eat fish fry at the local “supper club” — a term he’d never even heard until he moved to the Midwest — Art was content to forage.

  The only thing detracting from the Elysian scene was the power plant that operated atop the nearest bluff. Pewter clouds puffed from black-streaked smokestacks, casting shadows over the water and dunes. The beep-beep-beep of reversing dump trucks echoed down from the bluffs and put Art in mind of that rearview mirror warning: Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.

  Art had known about the power plant when he bought this shaggy piece of land, as well as the degree of fixing up his “fixer-upper” would need. But the price had been right and the woods were the exact shade of green that Art had imagined when Moises told him the true colour of One. (He suspected the morning light that spilled through the hole in his screen door was a perfect expression of Two. The tansy hadn’t bloomed yet, but, for all Art knew, it would produce buttons of Three.)

  After some research, Art had discovered that the power plant was on its last legs. Antiquated, it serviced only half the counties it once had. It couldn’t compete with the newer nuclear plants studding the Great Lakes — a mixed blessing, to say the least. Rumour had it the plant was slated for closure in the coming year.