More Than Human

‘Told you,’ said Prodd, watching her, smiling. Lone watched her too. She was heavier and happy as a kitten in a cowshed. ‘What are doing now, Lone?’

Lone looked into his eyes to find some sort of an answer. ‘Working,’ he said. He moved his hand. ‘Up there.’

‘In the woods?’

‘Yes.’

‘What you doing?’ When Lone waited, Prodd asked, ‘You hired out? No? Then what – trapping?’

‘Trapping,’ said Lone, knowing that this would be sufficient.

He ate. From where he sat he could see Jack’s room. The bed was gone. There was a new one in there, not much longer than his forearm, all draped with pale-blue cotton and cheesecloth with dozens of little tucks sewn into it.

When he was finished they all sat around the table and for a time nobody said anything. Lone looked into Prodd’s eyes and found He’s a good boy but not the kind to set around and visit. He couldn’t understand the visit image, a vague and happy blur of conversation-sounds and laughter. He recognized this as one of the many lacks he was aware of in himself – lacks, rather than inadequacies; things he could not do and would never be able to do. So he just asked Prodd for the axe and went out.

‘You don’t s’pose he’s mad at us?’ asked Mrs Prodd, looking anxiously after Lone.

‘Him?’ said Prodd. ‘He wouldn’t have come back here if he was. I was afraid of that myself until today.’ He went to the door. ‘Don’t you lift nothing heavy, hear?’

Janie read as slowly and carefully as she could. She didn’t have to read aloud, but only carefully enough so the twins could understand. She had reached the part where the woman tied the man to the pillar and then let the other man. the ‘ my rival, her laughing lover’ one, out of the closet where he had been hidden and gave him the whip. Janie looked up at that point and found Bonnie gone and Beanie in the cold fireplace, pretending there was a mouse hiding in the ashes. ‘Oh, you’re not listening,’ she said.

Want the one with the pictures, the silent message came.

‘I’m getting so tired of that one,’ said Janie petulantly. But she closed Venus in Furs by von Sacher-Masoch and put it on the table. ‘This’s anyway got a story to it,’ she complained, going to the shelves. She found the wanted volume between My Gun Is Quick and The Illustrated Ivan Bloch, and hefted it back to the armchair. Bonnie disappeared from the fireplace and reappeared by the chair. Beanie stood on the other side; wherever she had been, she had been aware of what was happening. If anything, she liked this book even better than Bonnie.

Janie opened the book at random. The twins leaned forward breathless, their eyes bulging.

Read it.

‘Oh, all right,’ said Janie. ‘„D₃₄₅₅6. Tieback. Double shirred. 90 inches long. Maize, burgundy, hunter green and white. $24.68. D₃₄₅₅₇. Cottage style. Stuart or Argyll plaid, see illus. $4.92 pair. D₃₄ – „‘

And they were happy again.

They had been happy ever since they got here and much of the hectic time before that. They had learned how to open the back of a trailer-truck and how to lie without moving under hay, and Janie could pull clothespins off a line and the twins could appear inside a room, like a store at night, and unlock the door from the inside when it was fastened with some kind of lock that Janie couldn’t move, the way she could a hook-and-eye or a tower bolt which was shot but not turned. The best thing they had learned, though, was the way the twins could attract attention when somebody was chasing Janie. They’d found out for sure that to have two little girls throwing rocks from second-floor windows and appearing under their feet to trip them and suddenly sitting on their shoulders and wetting into their collars, made it impossible to catch Janie, who was just ordinarily running. Ho-ho.

And this house was just the happiest thing of all. It was miles and miles away from anything or anybody and no one ever came here. It was a big house on a hill, in forest so thick you hardly knew it was there. It had a big high wall around it on the road side, and a big high fence on the woods side and a brook ran through. Bonnie had found it one day when they had gotten tired and gone to sleep by the road. Bonnie woke up and went exploring by herself and found the fence and went along it until she saw the house. They’d had a terrible time finding some way to get Janie in, though, until Beanie fell into the brook where it went through the fence, and came up on the inside.