by Baen Books
“Don’t call me a brat,” said Jackalyn in a dangerously low growl.
Judith swung her attention to Jackalyn again, and she pointed at the scraps of casserole that had not yet gone into the girl’s napkin. “You will eat that, young lady.”
“I won’t,” said Jackalyn.
“Judith,” said Biscuit hastily, “it was my fault, I told—”
Judith didn’t look away from Amelia’s daughter. “Do I have to pry your mouth open and shove it in, like I used to with your mother? Eat it!”
“I won’t!” repeated Jackalyn, and with a loud crack her plate sprang into several pieces that spun across the table, knocking over a couple of wine glasses.
Biscuit jumped, but it was because she had felt a sudden cold pressure slide up her ribs, under her shirt. Across from her, Amelia had squeaked at the same moment and now looked away from her embattled mother and daughter to glare down the table.
“Touch me again,” she yelled at Grandpa Coldharp’s fishbowl, “and I’ll pour you down the toilet!” The water in Uncle Scuttle’s bowl was jittering again, and Amelia picked up a roll and tossed it at him. “And when are you going to apologize for wrecking my Barbie town?”
Hanky, not having followed developments, was still repeating in his birdlike voice, “Hibiscus, what do you think you’re doing? Hibiscus, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Shut up,” Biscuit yelled at him, “you . . . you dead busybody!”
Jackalyn covered her face with both hands. “Everybody shut up!” she yelled.
And with a staccato series of cracks and thuds, all the plates on the table broke, the bowl of mashed potatoes split and spilled its contents, and the ragged turkey rose spinning from the platter and fell heavily onto the tablecloth, knocking over two more wineglasses and one of the bottles. Red wine began glugging out of the neck. With the pop of an exploding lightbulb the illumination in the room diminished by half.
Beside Biscuit, the surface of the water in her father’s fishbowl was high concentric rings. “Stop, stop!” piped her father’s voice, overriding Hanky’s broken-record droning. “Dad, Judy—ah—”
He seemed to sneeze, and Biscuit jumped again as all the silverware on the table leaped into the air in twisted shapes. Nana just sighed and flicked her husband’s fishbowl with her fingers. From down the hall came the noise of her stair-traversing wheelchair platform banging to the top of its track and down and back up again.
Hanky was still monotonously asking Biscuit what she was doing, and Jackalyn had pushed her chair back and fled from the room in tears, closely followed by her brother; but now she had returned and was standing in the living room doorway, holding a shoe box and glaring at Shortstack.
“You put my parakeet out of its misery now,” she said loudly.
Shortstack looked up and down the devastated half-lit table, then smiled at the girl. “Dinner does seem to be over.” He pushed his chair back, lifted his balled-up napkin from his lap and got to his feet. “I’ll meet you out back.”
“Oh God,” said Biscuit. She balled up her own napkin, but since Judith was glaring at her, she just dropped it on the floor under the table. “May I be excused?” she asked the room at large, and, getting no answer except a somewhat anxious wave from her mother and the repeating question from Hanky’s fishbowl, hurried down the hall to pull the plug on the stair-traversing wheelchair platform motor.
The platform had come entirely free of its track and was canted against the wall across the hall from the stairs, and several framed pictures lay on the floor with their glass broken. Biscuit stepped over the platform and unplugged the smoking motor.
Shortstack came up the hall behind her and pulled open his bedroom door. “My napkin’s on the roof,” he said, looking at her empty hands.
“Mine’s under the table.” Biscuit stepped into the doorway and said, “Jackalyn’s bird is dead already.”
Shortstack’s tiny room had one window facing out onto the backyard slope, but he had long ago boarded it up to make room for more bookshelves. The Murphy bed he had built for himself was folded into the wall, and he was just straightening up from a chest he kept beside his old white-painted desk.
“Oh,” he said. “Then I won’t need this.”
He was holding what looked like an oversized metal megaphone, but when she looked at it more closely she saw that it was a broad foot-and-a-half-long cone wrapped in aluminum foil, with the walnut grip of a pistol sticking out at the narrow end.
“What the hell,” she said.
“It’s my .44,” he told her, “but the big extension is a silencer. My own design. Usually you can’t silence revolvers, since there’s a gap where noise comes out between the cylinder and the barrel, but the foam rubber from the sofa covers everything.”
He bent to put it back, but Biscuit said, “No, you still need to shoot the bird. She let it starve, is what happened, so she’s pretending it’s still alive, but sick.”
Shortstack blinked, then nodded. “Right. Okay. I can participate in her delusion.”
“Wonderful.” Biscuit sank into a chair by the door. “Some Thanksgiving dinner, huh?”
“Shorter than usual, but memorable,” he agreed. “What did Scuttle do to Amelia’s Barbie town? In fact, what was her Barbie town?”
“Oh—do you remember that desert tortoise we used to have? Smudge?”
“Sure. Big as a truck tire.”
“Well, Amelia—this was in '93—Amelia was eight and I was two, and she had set up a little village with all her Barbie and Ken and Skipper dolls, with toy cars, and houses with little kitchens and closets full of doll clothes, you know, and one afternoon Uncle Scuttle was drunk, wandering around in the yard, and he saw Smudge and took it in his head that it would be nice for Smudge to visit Barbie town.” She leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “So he held Smudge upright and walked him over across the grass to the Barbie colony—but just as Smudge got there, maybe because Scuttle tilted him ninety degrees, Smudge started pissing. Like a firehose. It wiped out Barbie town, bodies flying everywhere, cars turning over . . . I had bad dreams about it. Amelia has never got over it. We had to wear latex gloves to bury all the Barbies and Kens and Skippers.”
“Really!” Shortstack stepped past her into the hall, carrying his gun. “I’d have been twenty-six—same age you are now, I believe. How did I miss all this?”
“I don’t know. Weren’t you and Judith all astronomical then?”
Shortstack preceded her down the hall toward the dining room, and he nodded and looked back. “Sleep all day, watch the stars all night. And then Judy decided they were alive or something.”
“Hard to tell what is and isn’t sometimes.”
She followed him out onto the back porch and down the steps to the yard, shivering in the early evening breeze and wishing she’d grabbed a sweater.
Jackalyn was crouched on the grass a few yards in front of her, and in the yellow glow from the back porch light her taut, tear-streaked face hung over the opened shoe box and, nearby, a pale lump with two twiglike feet.
“That your bird?” Shortstack asked her.
The girl looked up at him and nodded.
“You can fill a shot glass for him at dinner next year,” Shortstack said, not unsympathetically.
He set his feet widely and lowered the barrel, holding the grip firmly in both hands. With one thumb he pulled back the hammer, and there seemed to be a lot of solid clicks as it went back to full cock.
He pointed the wide cone down at the lifeless parakeet, though Biscuit didn’t see how he could aim, and for several seconds the wind in the mesquite trees was the only sound. Then he sighed, and Biscuit saw his trigger finger tighten.
But, no doubt due to some error in his acoustical calculations, instead of muting the explosion of the gunshot, his foam-and-foil apparatus monstrously magnified the sound. A wall of compressed air punched Biscuit off her feet and she sat down on the grass; she could hear nothing o
ver the ringing in her ears, but she saw Jackalyn spring away, and Shortstack had dropped the encumbered gun, which was now on fire. Bits of foil and foam rubber spun in the air, and where the dead parakeet had lain was a wide, raised hole in the lawn. Biscuit turned toward the house and saw that all the windows on this side were now missing their glass.
It’s a mercy, she thought, that the nearest neighbor is half a mile away.
She was still staring at the house when Amelia and Judith came running out onto the porch, their mouths working, and Biscuit waved to show them that no one was hurt; but the two women came hurrying down the steps, still visibly speaking and now gesturing back toward the house.
Biscuit got shakily to her feet, pointing a finger at her left ear and shaking her head; and she waved toward the house and raised her eyebrows.
Amelia grabbed her elbow and pulled her in that direction. Biscuit couldn’t hear her own footsteps on the boards as she was marched up the steps and across the porch. She looked back over her shoulder and, before she was hurried through the dining room, saw Jackalyn laughing at Shortstack, who was stamping on his flaming gun.
Amelia tugged her into the dim living room, where Biscuit saw that Jasper was again sitting cross-legged in front of the television. She glanced at the screen, where several of the same, or similar, sketchy figures moved their limbs mechanically. The cartoon mouths changed shape, but she couldn’t hear if they were producing words now or just giggling and grunting as before.
Amelia bent down and shook her son’s shoulder. The boy spared her a glance devoid of recognition and quickly looked back to the screen. Amelia turned to Biscuit, her mouth opening and closing with obvious urgency; then, seeing that Biscuit couldn’t hear her, she crouched and touched the screen, her trembling finger following one of the cartoon figures.
Biscuit peered bewilderedly at the figure, which was gesticulating more than the couple of others. Unlike the others, it seemed to be “looking at the camera”—addressing the viewers.
Amelia pointed at her distracted son and then again at the cartoon figure, nodding wide-eyed at Biscuit as if to ask if she understood; as if pleading that she understand.
The arms of the sketchy character on the screen were now bent so that its squiggle hands were at the sides of its oval head, and it was rocking back and forth—in distress, Biscuit thought.
Again Amelia pointed at her son and then at the cartoon character.
Suddenly the ringing in Biscuit’s ears seemed louder, and her chest felt hollow and terribly cold. She reared back away from the television, pressing her fist against her open mouth.
She nodded at Amelia to show that she understood at last, and then she pushed past Judith and rushed back through the dining room—catching a glimpse of her alarmed mother still at the table—and leaped clear over the back steps. The ringing in her ears had abated enough so that she heard her shoes hit the grass.
Jackalyn was crouched over the ripped-up hole in the dirt, flicking at it, apparently hoping to find some fragment of her parakeet that she might bury, and Shortstack had gingerly picked up his gun and was tossing it from hand to hand. It appeared to be just a smoking bundle of exploded foil and blackened foam rubber.
“Shortstack!” Biscuit yelled, but he didn’t look up. She stepped forward and waved her hand in front of his face, and when he turned to her she pointed across the yard and beckoned.
She had to wave in that direction again, with a frown and exaggerated nod, before he shrugged and followed her.
A cable hung from the roof-peak of the house to the dirt by the back fence, where Shortstack had buried the detached aerial television antenna, and Biscuit mimed shooting a gun at the spot where it entered the soil. This end of the yard was only dimly lit by the porch light, and Shortstack shook his head uncomprehendingly, so with both hands Biscuit pointed an imaginary gun at the cable and then jerked them up as if in recoil.
“Shoot the cable!” she shouted.
He raised his eyebrows and nodded, then tilted his head as if to ask if she were sure. She nodded, emphatically.
Shortstack held up a hand, then crouched and laid the gun on the grass so that he could firmly set one shoe on it. He dragged the gun out, scraping it against the sole of his shoe, and most of the mess of foam rubber and foil came off.
He straightened up, cocking the revolver and then pulling the trigger while his thumb let the hammer down gently; satisfied that the mechanism still worked, he gave Biscuit a puzzled half-smile and then cocked the gun again and aimed it at the point where the cable entered the dirt.
“Fingers in your ears!” he said loudly, and when Biscuit had hurriedly complied, he pulled the trigger. Biscuit heard the report as no more than a solid but muffled thump, but this time there was a blinding flare as flame leaped a yard out of the muzzle and burst from the gap between the cylinder and the barrel.
Unable to see past the smear of retinal glare in her vision, Biscuit took her fingers out of her ears and waved her arms out in front of herself until her hand brushed against the cable. It swung freely, no longer moored to the dirt.
She gave her brother a thumbs-up, then turned and hurried back into the house, her eyes raised so that she could see where she was going by peripheral vision. This time she heard her feet hit the boards of the steps and the porch, and she heard her mother call from her wheelchair, “Will someone tell me what’s going on?” as she ran past the table and into the living room.
“In a minute, Mom!” she called back.
Her vision had cleared enough to see that the television screen showed only snow now, and she didn’t hear any voices from the speaker. She blinked around the darkened room—Judith, she saw, was standing by the front door, her wide eyes glittering in the television screen’s glow; and Amelia was sitting on the floor cradling Jasper, who was sobbing.
Biscuit crouched beside them, and was able to hear Amelia saying, “You’re okay now. Never mind. You’re okay.”
Jasper hitchingly caught his breath and said, “They pulled me in! Mom! I—didn’t know how to get out!” He noticed Biscuit then, and said gruffly, “What’re you looking at?”
Amelia looked up at Biscuit and said, “You did something?”
“Shortstack shot the TV cable,” said Biscuit, still panting.
“And Jackalyn?”
“Trying to find pieces of her parakeet.”
Amelia nodded.
“I think it’s time we called it a night,” she said.
“Glad you could come,” said Biscuit emptily.
“Thanks for having us,” replied Amelia in the same tone.
Judith pushed away from the door and walked unsteadily toward the dining room. “I need to get my casserole dish.”
“I’m sorry about . . . that,” Biscuit called after her, but her sister just waved without looking back.
“Maybe we should all have just eaten the damn stuff,” said Amelia quietly as she got to her feet and helped her son stand up.
“I don’t think it would have helped much,” said Biscuit, straightening up, “to have us all vomiting, in addition to everything else.”
“I suppose not, on the whole. Come on, Jasper, let’s fetch your demented sister.” She took hold of his shoulder and led him out of the living room into the somewhat brighter dining room.
Biscuit sighed and twisted the television’s on-off knob till it clicked, and the screen’s glow shrank to a bright dot that slowly faded. She turned and peered at the shadowed objects on the mantel till she identified the glass box with Grandpa Coldharp’s oracular penny in it, and after a moment’s hesitation she took it down and carried it with her into the dining room, where Judith had picked up her dish and stepped wordlessly past her. A few seconds later the front door slammed.
Biscuit sat down at her place and set the glass box in front of her on the tablecloth. Some sounds like throat-clearing came from the fishbowls, but none of them ventured to comment.
Biscuit’s mother was looking at her wit
h raised eyebrows, and her father’s accommodation water stirred uneasily.
Biscuit saw that her wine glass was one of the few that had not been spilled, and she picked it up. “Shortstack shot Jackalyn’s dead bird,” she said, “and Jasper got possessed by the cartoons in the TV, but Shortstack shot out the cable and Jasper came back.” She tipped up the glass and drained it. From outside came the sound of Judith’s Honda starting and shifting into gear.
“I’m glad of that,” said her mother. “Don’t let him hook the TV up again.” She looked around at the broken windows and dishes and the spilled food and wine. “Another rout.”
Biscuit shrugged and nodded.
Amelia came in from the backyard, herding Jasper and Jackalyn in front of her. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Nana,” she said, and after a nod to Biscuit she pushed her children on through the living room.
After a few seconds of silence, Biscuit gave her mother a cautious glance and said, “I’m sure Shortstack can carry you up and down the stairs till we get the machine working again.”
“It’s wrecked?” her mother asked, and Biscuit nodded glumly. Between them, Papa Coldharp’s fishbowl stirred, and rings formed on the surface of the accommodation water. Biscuit saw that a crumb of stuffing from the abused turkey was floating in it.
The front door closed again, and shortly Biscuit heard the whir of the Volkswagen engine.
“Odd kids she’s got,” she observed.
Her mother shook her head. “God help us, every one.”
Shortstack shambled in from the back porch, picking bits of blackened rubber from the barrel of his .44. He sat down and nodded to his mother and sister and his father’s fishbowl.
“Good,” came her father’s frail voice from the water, “to have spent some—time with you all again.”
“Yes,” said Biscuit, and “Likewise,” said Shortstack, and their mother closed her eyes and nodded.
“I believe,” the water in the fishbowl went on, “it’s time now, to—go gentle!—into that good night. Not rage, rage.”