Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  When they had gone, vanishing around a sharp bend in the lane, Clyde said, “Uh, Margy. Have you ever thought, I mean really thought, of having to grow up?”

  “. . . Yes,” she said, feeling a calmness come to her, an almost iciness, a resignation.

  “It’s awful puzzling: I mean, they know so much. It takes so long to become an adult. And you’re always doing silly things that they don’t do, and you don’t know why. You don’t understand. It’s hard, to understand. And sometimes you’re almost afraid you’ll never be able to grow up.”

  HE was a boy again, now, and she felt her heart swell in sympathy as she watched him and listened to his words, and for a single moment, many things seemed possible.

  “It’s awful hard,” he said. “And if a man has to do it alone . . .”

  The calm was gone. No, No! she shrieked mentally, No, please don’t ask me!

  “It makes it so much harder,” Clyde continued. “Have you ever . . . I mean . . . uh, Margy, it’s kinda nice, I mean . . . to make an early first marriage, don’t you think?”

  She felt herself trembling, and her lips moved soundlessly.

  “What I want to say, it’s so much nicer to have someone. I mean, it helps you grow up faster. Gives you responsibilities. Teaches you, I mean.”

  “I . . . I.”

  “What I’m trying to get around to saying . . . Look. Sometimes these first marriages just go right on lasting. I mean, if two people, they’re alike, they just stay on married.” She felt fire in her cheeks. “Margy, will you marry me?” Anticipation had not blunted the effect, and maturity shone in his eyes. Her face was white; blood fled from her lips.

  “Clyde . . .”

  “We’re a lot alike, Margy,” he said intently. “We could make it last. We’ve got a lot in common. For us it wouldn’t be just a first marriage. It would be the marriage, the one to last always. And we both need to get married. To help us grow up.”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “Listen, Margy. I always thought . . . I mean, well, I’ve always thought you like me. A lot, I mean. I’ve always thought that—well—that you were in love with me, sort of.”

  It felt like her chest was being crushed by emotions; and she could see him spinning farther away from her. And she could not let him go. She could not lose him like this, just let him walk away. It wasn’t fair. “I . . . I guess I am.”

  “Then we’ll go down tomorrow for licenses? We’ll have our check-ups, and . . .”

  “No,” she moaned, “no, no, no.” He drew her against him. She tried to turn her lips away, but she did not want to, and then it was too late, and there was nothing she could do.

  She forced him back. “Wait,” she said. “I love you,” she said. “Listen, you’ve got to do this. Listen. You’ve got to meet me tonight. At the library. At . . . at . . . nine o’clock.” She took a deep breath. “You’ve got to do that.”

  “What’s . . .”

  She turned.

  “Margy!”

  Without daring to look back, she said, “Don’t come any farther. Wait until tonight.” Inside, she was crying and hurt and desperate and ashamed. Most of all, ashamed. Her nails dug into her palms until she felt the sharp pain. What can I do? she thought. I won’t go. I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I won’t go. I’ll leave . . . There was a thin trickle of warmness across the inside of her hand.

  But she knew that she would go, deeply, she knew that. And she was in love with him, and life was unfair, so terribly unfair, so unfair beyond all imagining.

  WAITING for him, she was sick with a strange excitement that kept her bood alive and racing. She was afraid, too—mildly afraid, but fear could not stop her. Waiting, she remembered: their laughter, and a picnic lunch, once, when he had tried to hold her hand during the hour when they listened to the Music, again when he chose her twice in the social living game; and how unafraid and warm she had been then, until it began to break and crumble around her, and she could feel him drifting away, toward Them—toward the utterly terrifying and complex and baffling and painful life beyond her, where she was afraid to go.

  But she could not let him escape from her: for he owed her something more—he had to owe her something more; life owed her something more, and she would not be cheated. Then she would go away, and leave school, and go somewhere and try to start all over again, and most of all, really try to understand.

  She was waiting for him just beyond the light that cascaded down the steps from the open doors of the library, and finally, when she saw him coming, a tall, lanky form coming uncertainly from the darkness, she felt her temples pound, and her knees were trembling.

  He came to her side. Her hand, not shyly, now, went out for his, and he tried to draw back, startled by the strange intensity of her eyes. Then, without a word, she led him by the hand across the smooth grass toward the aspen trees around the tiny, moonlit lake.

  When they were safely hidden among the trees, she pressed him to the ground, and to her the moon seemed pale and ghostly, and the water lillies, coffin flowers, and the cat tails, dead, furry fingers. Life was no longer sweet and innocent, and the lake smell was like decay upon the air.

  “There,” she said huskily. “Sit there. I’ll sit by you.”

  Again she took his hand, and the wind rustled the trees.

  “I want you to be in love with me,” she said.

  “Uh . . . you love me, don’t you?” he said uncomfortably.

  “I want to be loved,” she echoed stubbornly, and the wind sighed.

  Lake water gurgled at the shore, and she thought it might be going down a drain, somewhere, the way time goes down a drain; although time goes silently.

  SHE closed her eyes, trying to think, but she found only the eternal confusion in her mind; and the wind carried back some of her own sweet perfume smell to her, half sickening her. She licked her lips nervously, and her cheeks were hot.

  “We’ll get married and have our own home, and you can . . .”

  She shrank away from him mentally; and looking at him, filtered by moonlight, she saw that he was old and although the aspen leaf that fell between them was still green, she knew that it was old and dead, too, and the grass under her left hand, though green, was dying. Terror filled her, and as a very small child, she had been in a dark room, somewhere, and there was rain and lightning; her father had come to hold her hand; she could remember his saying: “You won’t die for along time,” although how he had come to say it, she could not remember. Ever since, she had, in the back of her mind, the thought: I’m dying now. And late at night, very often, she would awake with icy sweat on her body to realize that some day there would actually come that last minute, as real as the present one, and how could she stand it?

  “. . . the house,” he finished; but she did not know what he had said.

  “We don’t have to get married,” she said.

  “Why not? I don’t see why not?”

  Her lips were trembling, and she wanted to cry. “Don’t you see: I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t understand you,” he said. “I don’t understand you at all.”

  The moonlight patterned the ground.

  “Look,” he said. “We want to hurry and grow up, don’t we? We want . . .”

  Scarcely understanding, herself, she repeated, “We don’t have to get married!” Her mouth was dry, and her hand, hot in his.

  Doggedly, Clyde said, “I don’t understand you, Margy.”

  SHE laughed tiredly, for he was gone, and it was almost too late, now. “Don’t be serious. Tonight, don’t be serious. Let’s not talk any more about that. I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “We’ve got to,” he insisted. “We’ve got to learn to be serious. We can’t go on like a couple of kids like this forever.”

  “There’s . . . there’s a lot of time, yet. We’ve got so much time . . . before we . . .” She wondered how the thought had almost crept into words, and she shuddered, while from across the lake, a tree frog b
egan to chirp eerily. “I’m afraid to think about dying,” she said, and it was the most important thing in the world to make him understand that. “Dying worries me. I don’t want to have to die.” Her voice went on evenly, monotonously, in chorus with the tree frog, and her hand clamped his wetly, but she hardly listened to the words herself, because she knew that he did not understand what she was saying. “But I don’t have to think about it. There’s so much time left. And I want to stay young like this. Don’t you understand, Clyde? I thought you said you understood me? I don’t want to be sick and hurt. I want things to be simple and . . . pretty. Pretty. Can’t you see that, Clyde? I don’t care about anything else.”

  “You don’t believe that,” he said.

  After a pause (while the wind quieted), she said, insistently, “I do. Yes, I do, Clyde . . . I really do.”

  He tried to release her hand.

  And he was trying to cheat her. They were trying to cheat her. She did not know, she did not care. There was something inside of her, and it was desperation.

  “Don’t leave me, too,” she sobbed. “I just want to be loved. I just want somebody to love me.” Her arms were suddenly around him, strong and hungry, and the contact with him was electric, but somewhere in the back of her mind, blunted, a small voice moaned. “Please,” she whimpered, her mind almost blank and spinning. “Please, Clyde. Like this. Just like this. When you touched me on the elbow this afternoon . . .

  He tried to draw away; but her arms held him tightly. Suddenly he put both hands against her breasts and pushed brutally. She fell back, stunned.

  Clyde jumped to his feet and started to run, terrified.

  “Clyde!” she moaned. “Clyde, don’t run away! Don’t cheat me, Clyde. Don’t leave me, Clyde.”

  The wind was in the trees again, and she put her head on her arm and began to cry softly. “Clyde,” she whispered. (Or was it only the wind in the trees?)

  SHE hardly knew why she came to school the next day; her body was leaden with fatigue, and in her mind there was a sense of impending doom. On the way down the soft, green path, she stared at the ground, and when an adult passed, she was afraid to look into his eyes, lest, somehow, he understand.

  She should go away; as she crossed the school ground she knew that, but she was too hurt to go away, and nothing seemed to matter greatly.

  And then she was in class and Clyde was not there. She wanted to run out into the sunshine, and run forever, mostly backward into yesterday, where everything was so very simple.

  Looking at Teach, she could not help hating her: so poised, so calm, so understanding, so sure; even with the tiny crows-feet—the first signs of wearing out—around her eyes, as if she had never seen herself as a white death’s head, and imagined the wind whispering over her grave and rustling the grass that had been her body, the green grass, dying. But Teach’s movements were still quick and lively, and her body did not look as if there was death inside of it, waiting.

  And as she watched Teach conduct the class and play upon it as a maestro might upon an orchestra, she remembered the last night, and the wind, and the boy, and she felt unclean.

  Time hung suspended; and every second the clock let fall was a heartbeat of increasing intensity. Suspense was in the air, and Margy knew that she was waiting, waiting with a wound up tenseness that would explode inside of her if something didn’t happen.

  And it was almost relief when the messenger came, and Teach said, “Margy, would you mind going into room C? Someone wants to see you there.”

  Trembling, Margy stood up. “Yes, Teach.”

  She left the room, her feet heavy, too heavy to turn toward the door and set running as she half wanted them to do.

  SHE opened the door at room C and stood silently. There were three people in the room: Mr. Hershey, the co-ordinator, and a man and a woman; she did not need to be told that the man and woman were Clyde’s parents.

  “Come in, Margy,” Mr. Hershey said kindly, but Margy couldn’t move.

  She looked around the room; and a corner, she thought, would be nice to hide in, if it was dark, and whoever was looking for her didn’t have a light. But it was all over, and she was sick, and it was too much trouble to try to hide again.

  Without raising his voice, the other man said, not unkindly, “Where’s your adult band, Margy?”

  Her eyes were listless and defeated. They did not glance toward her left upper arm. Automatically she said, “I can’t wear one, yet.”

  “How old are you, Margy?” the woman said.

  “I’m—I’m sixteen. Almost seventeen. Yes, I’m almost seventeen.”

  Mr. Hershey said softly, “I’m sorry, Margy. There will have to be tests.”

  She stiffened almost imperceptibly.

  Clyde’s mother bent forward. “Why don’t you admit you’re as old as I am?” she said.

  “No, no, no,” Margy moaned. “I’m not! I’m not! I’m not!”

  “Now, now . . .”

  “Let me alone!” Margy said. “Let me alone!” She felt life flow back into her empty body. “Why won’t you ever let me alone?”

  Mr. Hershey pushed a button.

  “I don’t hurt you,” Margy said. And her eyes were wild, now, and her mouth twisted in shame and anguish. “I don’t hurt anybody.” She began to sob. “Please,” she choked. “I just want to be young. That’s all right, isn’t it, to want to be young? That’s all I want. Honest, that’s all.” Mr. Hershey spoke softly into the phone. “Could you send over a couple of men? I’m afraid we’ve got another Revert for you.”

  “I don’t hurt anybody,” she said tonelessly. “It’s no crime to want to be young. Why don’t you let me alone . . . let me alone . . . alone . . . alone?”

  And then she fell silent, her body shaking with repressed sobs as she stood in the doorway and waited for the two men to come and take her away.

  THE END

  BETTYANN

  IT BEGAN TO SPIT SNOW, and the car skidded slightly on the wet pavement.

  “Please drive a little slower,” the woman said, and the baby began to fret.

  The man glanced at the luminous watch dial. “We’ve got to hurry,” .he said.

  “They’ll wait,” the woman said. “Hush,” she said softly to the baby.

  The man bent forward slightly, his eyes staring out into the darkness. Snow splattered against the windshield to be smeared away by the fast-ticking windshield wiper.

  “They’ll think something’s happened to us, and they’ll go on,” he said.

  “No, they won’t,” she said. She petted the baby.

  The man slowed the car for an upward curve that bent around a dripping cliff.

  “What does the mileage gauge say?” he asked.

  “Ten thousand, one hundred and . . . nine,” the woman said, reading slowly by the dim dashlight.

  “In about ten miles, then, we better start looking for the cutoff.”

  “We’ve got nearly half an hour, so please slow down,” she said.

  Reluctantly he eased no the footfeed.

  The baby cried restlessly.

  “She’s in the body nicely,” the woman said. “She wears it better than we do.”

  “We’ll have trouble getting her out,” he said. “It’s all she knows.”

  They were silent for a moment, and the tires sizzled. Then the woman said, “Did you enjoy it?”

  “It was interesting. Very pretty little world. Absorbing greens, I should say.”

  “There was one nice sunset.”

  “The planet near Elsini is better for sunsets: remember the one in which the cloud formations . . . ?”

  “Please drive slower, dear! It makes me nervous.”

  Annoyed, he looked again at his watch.

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” she said.

  “It’s quite a distance down the cutoff. It’s nearly a mile, remember, to that awful-looking white house; and they’re far enough beyond so the ship will be out of sight.”

 
; The woman fondled the baby. “It’s a nice planet, in its way; not all hard, not all soft . . . She’s actually growing in this body, have you noticed? She’s gained several pounds, T imagine. Just look how fat her arms are!”

  “After nil, it’s the only one she knows.”

  “Dear! This car is awkward on a road like this. So . . .”

  “We’re almost to the cutoff.”

  “Look out! Look out!” she screamed in terror.

  It was a truck. It was jack-knifed across the pavement. The car rushed up the steep grade to meet it. And the headlights of the car patterned briefly the outline of the truck driver, lying on his back on the wet concrete, tinkering with one of the multiple-tired rear wheels.

  The driver of the car slammed in the brake pedal. The woman gasped. And the car swayed sickeningly. It leaped to the shoulder of the road, flashed by the stalled truck, and continued up the grade. The man fought the steering wheel, struggling to wrench the car back onto the pavement. The front wheels locked in a rut. Grunting explosively, the man jerked the steering wheel savagely to the left; it slipped from his hands, and the still-hurtling car was free. The car leaped and bounced and teetered for an infinite second and crashed down sideways. It turned over and over until it half bent around a thick cedar tree nearly twenty yards down the slope. It lay quiet with one of its front wheels spinning leisurely.

  The man had fallen across the woman; neither body moved; and slowly, second by second, life bled away, and the two bodies crumbled inward and dissolved, and all that was left was fine grayish powder.

  Up on the road, the truck driver, white-faced, waved his flashlight beam in the direction of the wreck. For a long moment he heard nothing but the monotonous drip of water from a tree across the road.

  Then he heard, very distinctly, a baby crying.

  For a long time after the accident, for an eternity after the accident, Bettyann (although that was not yet her name) knew a puzzling progression of hands and faces and lights and shadows. At first, and for half her life and more than half, there had been a great, unlocalized pain. She cried whenever a nurse brushed her upper left side, but she could not associate the terrifying pain with the nurse’s act, or ever quite understand the fear that came with a certain footstep.