More Than Human

Lone couldn’t read the stuff and neither could I. The twins didn’t give a damn. Janie used to watch him all the time. He always knew what you meant if you wanted to ask him something, and he’d tell Janie and she’d say what it was. Part of it, anyway. Nobody could get it all, not even Janie.

All I know is Janie would sit there and paint her pictures and watch Baby, and sometimes she’d bu’st out laughing.

Baby never grew any. Janie did, and the twins, and so did I, but not Baby. He just lay there. Janie kept his stomach full and cleaned him up every two or three days. He didn’t cry and he didn’t make any trouble. No one ever went near him.

Janie showed every picture she painted to Baby, before she cleaned the boards and painted new ones. She had to clean them because she only had three of them. It was a good thing, too, because I’d hate to think what that place would of been like if she’d kept them all; she did four or five a day. Lone and the twins were kept hopping getting turpentine for her. She could shift the paints back into the little pots on her easel without any trouble, just by looking at the picture one colour at a time, but turps was something else again. She told me that Baby remembered all her pictures and that’s why she didn’t have to keep them. They were all pictures of machines and gear-trains and mechanical linkages and what looked like electric circuits and things like that. I never thought too much about them.

I went out with Lone to get some turpentine and a couple of picnic hams one time. We went through the woods to the railroad track and down a couple of miles to where we could see the glow of a town. Then the woods again, and some alleys, and a back street.

Lone was like always, walking along, thinking, thinking.

We came to a hardware store and he went up and looked at the lock and came back to where I was waiting, shaking his head. Then we found a general store. Lone grunted and we went and stood in the shadows by the door. I looked in.

All of a sudden Beanie was in there, naked like she always was when she travelled like that. She came and opened the door from the inside. We went in and Lone closed it and locked it.

‘Get along home, Beanie,’ he said,’ before you catch your death.’

She grinned at me and said, ‘Ho-ho,’ and disappeared.

We found a pair of fine hams and a two-gallon can of turpentine. I took a bright yellow ballpoint pen and Lone cuffed me and made me put it back.

‘We only take what we need,’ he told me.

After we left, Beanie came back and locked the door and went home again. I only went with Lone a few times, when he had more to get than he could carry easily.

I was there about three years. That’s all I can remember about it. Lone was there or he was out, and you could hardly tell the difference. The twins were with each other most of the time. I got to like Janie a lot, but we never talked much. Baby talked all the time, only I don’t know what about.

We were all busy and we bleshed.

I sat up on the couch suddenly.

Stern said, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter. This isn’t getting me any place.’

‘You said that when you’d barely started. Do you think you’ve accomplished anything since then?’

‘Oh, yeah, but- ‘

‘Then how can you be sure you’re right this time?’ When I didn’t say anything, he asked me, ‘Didn’t you like this last stretch?’

I said angrily, ‘I didn’t like or not like. It didn’t mean nothing. It was just – just talk.’

‘So what was the difference between this last session and what happened before?’

‘My gosh, plenty! The first one, I felt everything. It was all really happening to me. But this time – nothing.’

‘Why do you suppose that was?’

‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

‘Suppose,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that there was some episode so unpleasant to you that you wouldn’t dare relive it.’

‘Unpleasant? You think freezing to death isn’t unpleasant?’

‘There are all kinds of unpleasantness. Sometimes the very thing you’re looking for – the thing that’ll clear up your trouble – is so revolting to you that you won’t go near it. Or you try to hide it. Wait,’ he said suddenly, ‘maybe „revolting” and „unpleasant” are inaccurate words to use. It might be something very desirable to you. It’s just that you don’t want to get straightened out.’

‘I want to get straightened out.’

He waited as if he had to clear something up in his mind, and then said, ‘There’s something in that „Baby is three” phrase that bounces you away. Why is that?’

‘Damn if I know.’

‘Who said it?’

‘I dunno… uh…’

He grinned. ‘Uh?’

I grinned back at him. ‘I said it.’

‘Okay. When?’

I quit grinning. He leaned forward, then got up.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

He said, ‘I didn’t think anyone could be that mad.’ I didn’t say anything. He went over to his desk. ‘You don’t want to go on any more, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Suppose I told you you want to quit because you’re right on the very edge of finding out what you want to know?’

‘Why don’t you tell me and see what I do?’