More Than Human

‘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 axe.’

‘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.

Afterwards 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 colour 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 puff-balls 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 o’ 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 Prodds today. But now, the way he was, he had to do it. He’d go back again too.