Lightspeed: Year One

“My people,” said Jim Humphreys, very quietly, “believe in welcoming all strangers as Christ.” I squinted at him, because I couldn’t believe how calm he was, and he said, “Even strangers who aren’t human. I don’t think I need to tell you anything about that, Welly. I think you’ve been welcoming strangers as Christ for—what did you say? Ten years? And if you’re doing a better job with them than you’re doing with me, well, that’s because you think I’m not a stranger. You think you know who I am. But you’re wrong, Welly. I’m a stranger, too.”

I was ashamed, then, of how good I’d felt when I was yelling at him. And then I got angry again because he’d made me ashamed, which was what Nancy Ann and Jebediah had always tried to do. “High and mighty, aren’t you? I bet you think I’m the scum of the earth—”

“I think you’re scared,” he said. “I think that if I were in your place, I’d be scared too. And I think it must be awfully hard, having to watch things die like that for ten years, without being able to talk to anybody about it.”

I got a lump in my throat when he said that. It shocked me, because I hadn’t cried since Nancy Ann left, and I was damned if I was going to start in front of this preacher. “It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s not like I know them. They all look the same and they all die the same way, and I don’t know how to talk to them. This is where they come and I do the best for them I can, but I don’t get attached, Reverend. So don’t get all sentimental.”

He smiled, sitting there on the floor in his own puke. “All right. I won’t. But would you mind if I cleaned up the floor here?”

Kicking him out hadn’t worked. I might as well let him clean up his own mess. “Go on,” I said, and used the gun to wave him into the kitchen. “Bucket and rags are under the sink.” I watched while he filled the bucket with soapy water and carried it back into the living room and knelt down and cleaned up the mess. He did a good job; he was careful about it. When he was done he took everything back into the kitchen and rinsed it all out, and then he put a little clean water in the bucket and turned around and looked at me.

“Welly, I’d like to—may I visit your guests? May I see them?”

What the hell. He knew too much already; I wasn’t going to get anywhere by trying to keep it from him. And I was starting to be curious about what he’d think of them, frankly. And I guess I wanted him to see that I wasn’t just killing them. He’d struck a nerve there I didn’t even know I had.

I looked at my watch. We had twenty-five minutes before the others went gravy, max, if they hadn’t already. I didn’t know what had gotten into the one who ran into the living room. Maybe it was crazy or extra sick, or maybe the cucumbers were about to start pulling new tricks on me, in which case I couldn’t count on anything. “I don’t know if the others are still alive,” I said. “They may have gone gr—they may have died while we were out here. When they sing like that, it means they’re going to die pretty soon. So they may look like that other one, now. I’m just warning you.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I think I’ll be fine now.” So I took him into the den. It was way too hot in there, with the space heaters, but that’s how the cucumbers like it. I still had the gun with me, just in case Humphreys tried to pull something. The other two cucumbers were still solid. I’d never taken a gun into the den before and I was a little worried about how they’d respond, if they’d start shaking again, but they didn’t even seem to notice.

Jim Humphreys had a plan, you could tell. He didn’t pay attention to anything in that room except those two solid cucumbers. He got down on his knees right away and started muttering and waving his hands over the water in the bucket. Then he dipped his hand in the water and used it to make a sign of the cross on each cucumber—which was awfully brave, really, since it had taken me months to be comfortable touching them, but I guess he’d seen that I was okay after picking that other one up—and mumbled some more. “Look at you,” I said. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted. “You talk about welcoming all strangers as Christ and here you are trying to do an exorcism—”

He looked up at me, looking shocked. “Oh, no!” Then he looked a little sheepish. “Emergency baptisms. Although it’s somewhat the same thing.” He rocked back on his heels and stood up and said, “Now what?”

I shrugged. “Now nothing. Now they have”—I checked my watch—”maybe fifteen minutes left.”

He looked at his watch, too. “May I wait here with them? Would that be all right?”

“I don’t see why not,” I said. He nodded and sat down on the floor, and I sat on the polka-dot beanbag chair. “All right, Reverend. You tell me this. If all strangers are Christ already, why do they have to be baptized?”

Humphreys smiled. “You should be a theologian. That’s a good question. Mainly because it’s what I know how to do, and it makes me feel better.”

“Huh! You think it’ll do them any good?”