More Than Human

by Theodore Sturgeon

  The little girls were gone.

  He put on the inner bar and slowly circled the room. Nothing.

  He opened the door cautiously, then flung it wide. They were not outside either.

  He shrugged. He pulled on his lower lip and wished he had more carrots. Then he set the pot aside to cool enough so that he could eat and finished honing the ax.

  At length he ate. He had reached the point of licking his fingers by way of having dessert, when a sharp knock on the door caused him to leap eighteen inches higher than upright, so utterly unexpected was it.

  In the doorway stood the little girl in the plaid dress. Her hair was combed, her face scrubbed. She carried with a superb air an object which seemed to be a handbag but which at second glance revealed itself as a teakwood cigarette box with a piece of binder-twine fastened to it with four-inch nails. “Good evening,” she said concisely. “I was passing by and thought I would come to call. You are at home?”

  This parroting of a penurious beldame who once was in the habit of cadging meals by this means was completely incomprehensible to Lone. He resumed licking his fingers but he kept his eyes on the child’s face. Behind the girl, suddenly, appeared the heads of his two previous visitors peeping around the doorpost.

  The child’s nostrils, then her eyes, found the stew pot. She wooed it with her gaze, yearned. She yawned, too, suddenly. “I beg your pardon,” she said demurely. She pried open the lid of the cigarette box, drew out a white object and folded it quickly but not quickly enough to conceal the fact that it was a large man’s sock, and patted her lips with it.

  Lone rose and got a piece of wood and placed it carefully on the fire and sat down again. The girl took another step. The other two scuttled in and stood, one on each side of the doorway like toy soldiers. Their faces were little knots of apprehension. And they were clothed this time. One wore a pair of lady’s linen bloomers, the like of which has not been seen since cars had tillers. It came up to her armpits, and was supported by two short lengths of the same hairy binder-twine, poked through holes torn in the waistband and acting as shoulder straps. The other one wore a heavy cotton slip, or at least the top third of it. It fell to her ankles where it showed a fringe of torn and unhemmed material.

  With the exact air of a lady crossing a drawing room toward the bonbons, the white child approached the stewpot, flashed Lone a small smile, lowered her eyelids and reached down with a thumb and forefinger, murmuring, “May I?”

  Lone stretched out one long leg and hooked the pot away from her and into his grasp. He set it on the floor on the side away from her and looked at her woodenly.

  “You’re a real cheap stingy son of a bitch,” the child quoted.

  This also missed Lone completely. Before he had learned to be aware of what men said, such remarks had been meaningless. Since, he had not been exposed to them. He stared at her blankly and pulled the pot protectively closer.

  The child’s eyes narrowed and her color rose. Suddenly she began to cry. “Please,” she said. “I’m hungry. We’re hungry. The stuff in the cans, it’s all gone.” Her voice failed her but she could still whisper. “Please,” she whispered, “please.”

  Lone regarded her stonily. At length she took a timid step toward him. He lifted the pot into his lap and hugged it defiantly. She said, “Well, I didn’t want any of your old …” but then her voice broke. She turned away and went to the door. The others watched her face as she came. They radiated silent disappointment; their eloquent expressions took the white girl to task far more than they did him. She had the status of provider and she had failed them, and they were merciless in their expression of it.

  He sat with the warm pot in his lap and looked out the open door into the thickening night. Unbidden, an image appeared to him—Mrs. Prodd, a steaming platter of baked ham flanked by the orange gaze of perfect eggs, saying, “Now you set right down and have some breakfast.” An emotion he was unequipped to define reached up from his solar plexus and tugged at his throat.

  He snorted, reached into the pot, scooped out half a potato and opened his mouth to receive it. His hand would not deliver. He bent his head slowly and looked at the potato as if he could not quite recognize it or its function.

  He snorted again, flung the potato back into the pot, thumped the pot back on the floor and leapt to his feet. He put one hand on each side of the door and sent his flat harsh voice hurtling out: “Wait!”

  The corn should have been husked long since. Most of it still stood but here and there the stalks lay broken and yellowing, and soldier-ants were prospecting them and scurrying off with rumors. Out in the fallow field the truck lay forlornly, bogged, with the seeder behind it, tipped forward over its hitch and the winter wheat spilling out. No smoke came from the chimney up at the house and the half-door into the barn, askew and perverted amid the misery, hollowly applauded.

  Lone approached the house, mounted the stoop. Prodd sat on the porch glider which now would not glide, for one set of end-chains was broken. His eyes were not closed but they were more closed than open.

  “Hi,” said Lone.

  Prodd stirred, looked full into Lone’s face. There was no sign of recognition. He dropped his gaze, pushed back to sit upright, felt aimlessly around his chest, found a suspender strap, pulled it forward and let it snap back. A troubled expression passed through his features and left it. He looked up again at Lone, who could sense self-awareness returning to the farmer like coffee soaking upward into a lump of sugar.

  “Well, Lone, boy!” said Prodd. The old words were there but the tone behind them behaved like his broken hay rake. He rose, beaming, came to Lone, raised his fist to thump Lone’s arm but then apparently forgot it. The fist hovered there for a moment and then gravitated downward.

  “Corn’s for husking,” said Lone.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Prodd half said, half sighed. “I’ll get to it. I can handle it all right. One way or ’tother, always get done by the first frost. Ain’t missed milkin’ once,” he added with wan pride.

  Lone glanced through the door pane and saw, for the very first time, crusted dishes, heavy flies in the kitchen. “The baby come,” he said, remembering.

  “Oh, yes. Fine little feller, just like we …” Again he seemed to forget. The words slowed and were left suspended as his fist had been. “Ma!” he shrieked suddenly, “fix a bite for the boy, here!” He turned to Lone, embarrassedly. “She’s yonder,” he said pointing. “Yell loud enough, I reckon she’d hear. Maybe.”

  Lone looked where Prodd pointed, but saw nothing. He caught Prodd’s gaze and for a split second started to probe. He recoiled violently at the very nature of what was there before he got close enough to identify it. He turned away quickly. “Brought your ax.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. You could’ve kept it.”

  “Got my own. Want to get that corn in?”

  Prodd gazed mistily at the corn patch. “Never missed a milking,” he said.

  Lone left him and went to the barn for a corn hook. He found one. He also discovered that the cow was dead. He went up to the corn patch and got to work. After a time he saw Prodd down the line, working too, working hard.

  Well past midday and just before they had the corn all cut, Prodd disappeared into the house. Twenty minutes later he emerged with a pitcher and a platter of sandwiches. The bread was dry and the sandwiches were corned beef from, as Lone recalled, Mrs. Prodd’s practically untouched “rainy day” shelf. The pitcher contained warm lemonade and dead flies. Lone asked no questions. They perched on the edge of the horse trough and ate.

  Afterward Lone went down to the fallow field and got the truck dug out. Prodd followed him down in time to drive it out. The rest of the day was devoted to the seeding with Lone loading the seeder and helping four different times to free the truck from the traps it insisted upon digging for itself. When that was finished, Lone waved Prodd up to the barn where he got a rope around the dead cow’s neck and hauled it as near as the truck would go
to the edge of the wood. When at last they ran the truck into the barn for the night, Prodd said, “Sure miss that horse.”

  “You said you didn’t miss it a-tall,” Lone recalled tactlessly.

  “Did I now.” Prodd turned inward and smiled, remembering. “Yeah, nothing bothered me none, because of, you know.” Still smiling, he turned to Lone and said, “Come back to the house.” He smiled all the way back.

  They went through the kitchen. It was even worse than it had looked from outside and the clock was stopped, too. Prodd, smiling, threw open the door of Jack’s room. Smiling, he said, “Have a look, boy. Go right on in, have a look.”

  Lone went in and looked into the bassinet. The cheesecloth was torn and the blue cotton was moist and reeking. The baby had eyes like upholstery tacks and skin the color of mustard. Short blue-black horsehair covered its skull, and it breathed noisily.

  Lone did not change expression. He turned away and stood in the kitchen looking at one of the dimity curtains, the one which lay on the floor.

  Smiling, Prodd came out of Jack’s room and closed the door. “See, he’s not Jack, that’s the one blessing,” he smiled. “Ma, she had to go off looking for Jack, I reckon, yes; that would be it. She wouldn’t be happy with anything less; well, you know that your own self.” He smiled twice. “What that in there is, that’s what the doctor calls a mongoloid. Just leave it be; it’ll grow up to maybe size three and stay so for thirty year. Get him to a big city specialist for treatments and he’ll grow up to maybe size ten.” He smiled as he talked. “That’s what the doctor said anyway. Can’t shovel him into the ground now, can you? That was all right for Ma, way she loved flowers and all.”

  Too many words, some hard to hear through the wide, tight smiling. Lone brought his eyes to bear on Prodd’s.

  He found out exactly what Prodd wanted—things that Prodd himself did not know. He did the things.

  When he was finished he and Prodd cleaned up the kitchen and took the bassinet and burned it, along with the carefully sewn diapers made out of old sheets and piled in the linen closet and the new oval enamel bath pan and the celluloid rattle and the blue felt booties with the white puffballs in their clear cellophane box.

  Prodd waved cheerfully to him from the porch. “Just you wait’ll Ma gets back; she’ll stuff you full of johnny-cake till we got to scrape you off the wall.”

  “Mind you fix that barn door,” Lone rasped. “I’ll come back.”

  With his burden he plodded up the hill and into the forest. He struggled numbly with thoughts that would not be words or pictures. About those kids, now; about the Prodds. The Prodds were one thing and when they took him in they became something else; he knew it now. And then when he was by himself he was one thing; but taking those kids in he was something else. He had no business going back to Prodd’s today. But now, the way he was, he had to do it. He’d go back again too.

  Alone. Lone Lone alone. Prodd was alone now and Janie was alone and the twins, well they had each other but they were like one split person who was alone. He himself, Lone, was still alone, it didn’t make any difference about the kids being there.

  Maybe Prodd and his wife had not been alone. He wouldn’t have any way of knowing about that. But there was nothing like Lone anywhere in the world except right here inside him. The whole world threw Lone away, you know that? Even the Prodds did, when they got around to it. Janie got thrown out, the twins too, so Janie said.

  Well, in a funny way it helps to know you’re alone, thought Lone.

  The night was sun-stained by the time he got home. He kneed the door open and came in. Janie was making pictures on an old china plate with spit and mud. The twins as usual were sitting on one of the high rock niches, whispering to one another.

  Janie jumped up. “What’s that? What’d you bring?”

  Lone put it down carefully on the floor. The twins appeared, one on each side of it. “It’s a baby,” said Janie. She looked up at Lone. “Is it a baby?”

  Lone nodded. Janie looked again. “Nastiest one I ever saw.”

  Lone said, “Well never mind that. Give him something to eat.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lone. “You’re a baby, almost. You should know.”

  “Where’d you get him?”

  “A farm yonder.”

  “You’re a kidnapper,” said Janie. “Know that?”

  “What’s a kidnapper?”

  “Man that steals babies, that’s what. When they find out about it the policeman will come and shoot you dead and put you in the electric chair.”

  “Well,” said Lone, relieved, “ain’t nobody going to find out. Only man knows about it, I fixed it so he’s forgotten. That’s the daddy. The ma, she’s dead, but he don’t know that either. He thinks she’s back East. He’ll hang on waiting for her. Anyway, feed him.”

  He pulled off his jacket. The kids kept it too hot in here. The baby lay still with its dull button eyes open, breathing too loudly. Janie stood before the fire, staring thoughtfully at the stewpot. Finally she dipped into it with a ladle and dribbled the juice into a tin can. “Milk,” she said while she worked. “You got to start swiping milk for him, Lone. Babies, they eat more milk’n a cat.”

  “All right,” said Lone.

  The twins watched, wall-eyed, as Janie slopped the broth on the baby’s disinterested mouth.

  “He’s getting some,” said Janie optimistically.

  Without humor and only from visible evidence, Lone said, “Maybe through his ears.”

  Janie pulled at the baby’s shirt and half sat him up. This favored the neck rather than the ears but still left the mouth intake in doubt.

  “Oh, maybe I can!” said Janie suddenly, as if answering a comment. The twins giggled and jumped up and down. Janie drew the tin can a few inches away from the baby’s face and narrowed her eyes. The baby immediately started to choke and spewed up what was unequivocally broth.

  “That’s not right yet but I’ll get it,” said Janie. She spent half an hour trying. At last the baby went to sleep.

  One afternoon Lone watched for a while and then prodded Janie with his toe. “What’s going on there?”

  She looked. “He’s talking to them.”

  Lone pondered. “I used to could do that. Hear babies.”

  “Bonnie says all babies can do it, and you were a baby, weren’t you? I forget if I ever did,” she added. “Except the twins.”

  “What I mean,” said Lone laboriously, “when I was growed I could hear babies.”

  “You must’ve been an idiot, then,” said Janie positively. “Idiots can’t understand people but can understand babies. Mr. Widdecombe, he’s the man the twins lived with, he had a girl friend once who was an idiot and Bonnie told me.”

  “Baby’s s’posed to be some kind of a idiot,” Lone said.

  “Yes, Beanie, she says he’s sort of different. He’s like a adding machine.”

  “What’s a adding machine?”

  Janie exaggerated the supreme patience that her nursery school teacher had affected. “It’s a thing you push buttons and it gives you the right answer.”

  Lone shook his head.

  Janie essayed, “Well, if you have three cents and four cents and five cents and seven cents and eight cents—how many you got altogether?”

  Lone shrugged hopelessly.

  “Well if you have a adding machine, you push a button for two and a button for three and a button for all the other ones and then you pull a handle, the machine tells you how many you got altogether. And it’s always right.”

  Lone sorted all this out slowly and finally nodded. Then he waved toward the orange crate that was now Baby’s bassinet, and the twins hanging spellbound over him. “He got no buttons you push.”

  “That was just a finger of speech,” Janie said loftily. “Look, you tell Baby something, and then you tell him something else. He will put the somethings together and tell you what they come out to, just like the adding ma
chine does with one and two and—”

  “All right, but what kind of somethings?”

  “Anything.” She eyed him. “You’re sort of stoopid, you know that, Lone. I got to tell you every little thing four times. Now listen, if you want to know something you tell me and I’ll tell Baby and he’ll get the answer and tell the twins and they’ll tell me and I’ll tell you, now what do you want to know?”

  Lone stared at the fire. “I don’t know anything I want to know.”

  “Well, you sure think up a lot of silly things to ask me.”

  Lone, not offended, sat and thought. Janie went to work on a scab on her knee, picking it gently round and round with fingernails the color and shape of parentheses.

  “Suppose I got a truck,” Lone said a half hour later, “it gets stuck in a field all the time, the ground’s too tore up. Suppose I want to fix it so it won’t stick no more. Baby tell me a thing like that?”

  “Anything, I told you,” said Janie sharply. She turned and looked at Baby. Baby lay as always, staring dully upward. In a moment she looked at the twins.

  “He don’t know what is a truck. If you’re going to ask him anything you have to explain all the pieces before he can put ’em together.”

  “Well you know what a truck is,” said Lone, “and soft ground and what stickin’ is. You tell him.”

  “Oh all right,” said Janie.

  She went through the routine again, sending to Baby, receiving from the twins. Then she laughed. “He says stop driving on the field and you won’t get stuck. You could of thought of that yourself, you dumbhead.”

  Lone said, “Well suppose you got to use it there, then what?”

  “You ’spect me to go on askin’ him silly questions all night?”

  “All right, he can’t answer like you said.”