Theory of Bastards
Page 30
The act, Frankie realized, had to be covert so if there were more than one dad, none of them was forced to face the true scope of their role.
Her eyes had come to rest on her own hand, cupping a single warm potato, the skin smooth and tight. The last time she’d engaged in that slow physical act and been healthy enough to enjoy it, she’d been with JayJay—the knee-wall closet, the heat of the summer, the pigeons on the roof cooing. Four years ago or five? She looked over at Stotts and then away.
Deliberately she crushed the potato in her hands, breaking it into pieces and handing them out.
This was part of the process of getting healthy, she thought, these feelings. As soon as they were rescued, she’d get away from this married man. She’d head back to Manhattan for a break. There must be 100,000 single men in the city.
Once each piece was cool enough, the bonobos gobbled it down, making little huffy noises at the warmth in their mouths. All of them got some of the potatoes. Frankie scooped out the softest bits on her finger for Id, who now seemed to have more energy. Id gummed the food eagerly until it was all gone, then fell asleep inside Frankie’s sweater, exhaling through her mouth like a tiny machine.
The rain outside had stopped, but they weren’t yet ready to move on. The bonobos spread out, exploring. Frankie tested her pants for dryness, then pulled them back on underneath the rain jacket. Stotts took his pants back into the office to get dressed. When he returned, they checked their shoes, but found them still damp so left them by the fire for another few minutes. Both of them pulled on several of the ConAgra sweatshirts for warmth.
And this was when it happened. Perhaps the fire had been a mistake. The smoke, the smell of food. Or maybe it was just bad luck.
Picture it. Stotts and Frankie standing in the doorway, Stotts shoveling dirt onto the fire to put it out. They turned at Mama’s happy squealing.
Mama, near the far end of the barn, was waving a lone corn cob she’d found, walking on two feet toward them, Tooch on her shoulder jumping up and down.
Behind Mama, summoned by her squeals, her familiar voice, a group of foreign bonobos appeared, galloping around the corner into the barn. They were strangely muscled, hair unkempt and wet.
Time slowed down.
Frankie kept trying to understand, to recognize the intruders. Whoever was in the front, he must know Mama, be an old friend to be running at her like that, reaching out to hug her.
Stotts yelled. Having lost language in the speed of the moment, he was reduced to just a sound, mostly a vowel, Aaa!
The chimp wasn’t distracted at all, but Mama was, looking at Stotts, wondering what was wrong. On her shoulder, Tooch had started to turn, gaping at the chimp.
The chimp grabbed her from behind—not her arms or shoulder, but the sides of her head—and twisted, hard. Her shoulders jerked, following her head, a dance partner that wasn’t keeping up.
A wet crack.
Her body fell, a thing, a puppet with the strings cut. Her neck at a very wrong angle. Dead before the back of her skull bounced on the ground.
Tooch, knocked off by the fall, bolted for the bonobos, squealing. A small ball of fur galloping with all his might.
The chimps chased, howling with victory. A giant mob of them, sharp canines gleaming.
The approaching horror.
And Stotts threw his shovel. It arced, a wobbling spear. The blade of it clanged into the lead chimp’s temple, knocking him back and to the left. The chimps behind twisted in midair, trying to avoid a collision, tumbling and landing, howling and confused. The forward charge stopped.
Tooch reached safety, disappearing into the crowd of waa-barking bonobos.
Fifteen feet away, the chimps shrieked, crabbing forward and back, sharp rushes of muscle and fur, working themselves up, preparing to charge again.
The lead chimp got to his feet, dazed, blood on his cheek, and knuckled a wobbling step forward. Stotts hurled a jar full of screws, a driving missile. It slammed into a different chimp, an explosion of glass and metal bits. All of them screamed and flinched and stepped back.
From the wall of tools beside them, Frankie grabbed wrenches and pliers and whipped them. Stotts threw hammers. They hit with fleshy thumps. The chimps shrieked and retreated further.
Adele charged in from the side, karate-kicking a chimp in the head. Her hair erect, barking, she was three times bigger than before. She bolted back to safety, Marge defending her retreat, whirling a broken chair over her head.
Then Stotts threw a sledgehammer, his whole body swinging as a counterweight, his shoulders engaged, his wrists flicking. It sideswiped two chimps and knocked them back several feet.
The two shrieked and fled, leading the way, one of them moving now with a sickening lurch in its stride. The rest of the chimps galloped after them.
Frankie and Stotts followed them to the far door, panting and holding hammers. They watched the chimps flee into the trees and disappear, their cries trailing away.
Nowhere was there any sign of Martin, the human who was supposed to lead them.
Forty Two
When Frankie and Stotts turned around, looking back through the barn, the bonobos were tiny and in the distance, galloping away across the field. On all fours they could move inhumanly fast. Marge trailed the rest, dragging Mama’s body, the limbs bouncing along as though she were waving, gesturing to them to hurry.
Hey, yelled Stotts and chased after them, barefoot.
He grabbed the rope for the sled as he ran by, but it was partly unpacked, the blankets and bungee cords on the ground beside it. Dragged along, items flipped out with every bump: the antibiotic cream, the bleach, the lighter fluid and matches. Within 20 feet, the whole sled flipped over and he let got of the rope and simply sprinted, chasing the bonobos who by now had disappeared from sight.
Come, he yelled back to Frankie, Hurry.
Frankie’s giant boots galumphed with every stride, slowing her, so she kicked them off. Holding a hammer, she ran, terror making her faster than she’d ever been.
He grabbed her hand to pull her along, kept looking back to check the chimps weren’t in sight. She was too scared to look, huffing, arms working.
They followed the bonobo tracks through the mud: the feet and knuckle prints, Mama’s drag marks. Within half a mile, the humans had slowed to a trot, both of them barefoot and limping, holding nothing but the two hammers. The tracks didn’t head in a straight path, the way people would travel. Instead they curved according to the landscape, always heading for the nearest cover—trees, gullies, hedges. Soon, Frankie wasn’t sure at all what overall direction they were heading in, except that it wasn’t the one the keeper had pointed them in.
Within a mile, they spotted the bonobos in the distance, plodding along now. The humans struggled to catch up.
When the bonobos finally stopped it was on a flat rocky ridge with a good view. They clustered around Mama’s body, keening and picking her hands up to press her palms flat against their faces. At all times, at least two bonobos were standing up and looking back the way they had come, keeping watch.
Stotts and Frankie approached cautiously. The bonobos barked, skittish. Their hair bristled, a feral glint to their eyes. The wind had blown the ridge clean of dust sometime before it started raining, so at least there was no mud here. Frankie and Stotts crouched down on the wet ground 30 feet back and waited, watching.
Bit by bit, they eased their way forward, getting closer to the group.
Mama’s body was battered, the head twisted. Tooch clung to her chest, his face a half inch from hers, motionless, as though waiting for her to speak, to whisper anything at all. He stared at her, listening, then leaned back and howled at the sky.
He shoved Mama’s cheek with the back of his knuckles. The head rolled loosely.
Frankie began to cry. Stotts put his arm around her. She rest
ed against him, pressing her face into his chest, her breath shuddering. He laid his cheek on her hair.
Then, even in this moment, they became aware of the heat and weight of the other. They pulled away and looked off into the distance, blinking.
Stotts stood up and moved away from her, busying himself picking rocks up and putting them in his pockets—things to throw in case the chimps turned up again.
She turned her focus back to Mama’s body and inched her way up to it. The bonobos moved out of her way, watching. She sat next to the body for a while, simply looking, then gently touched the motionless ribs and cooling hand. She’d never seen death up close. Mama’s mouth open and eyes dry. She looked smaller and harder. The transformation complete.
She sat there beside the body and rocked back and forth on her heels, staring. Adele moved over and wrapped her arms around Frankie. Frankie held her back. Tooch crawled into her lap.
Stotts continued to stay away from them all, searching for rocks.
After a few minutes though they began to get uneasy, looking around, searching the landscape for chimps.
Stotts said, Time to move, alright? Stay on the ridge. Out of the mud.
Frankie asked, Why?
He jerked his chin to their prints and said, I don’t want to leave tracks.
She looked at the tracks and then at him, You think they can follow tracks?
She didn’t use the word, chimps, because the bonobos were listening.
He looked at the group of them and answered, An abundance of caution, alright?
She didn’t like making noise now, not since Mama’s call had summoned the chimps. So she simply started walking, beckoning to them and signing please, watching to make sure they headed in her direction. If they got too close to the edge of the ridge, where the mud started, she made a clicking noise with her tongue to get their attention, then gestured for them to come closer.
At one point, Marge headed off to the side, toward the mud, ignoring Frankie’s clicks and waves, so Frankie uttered her best imitation of a waa-bark and stamped toward Marge, glaring.
Marge looked uncertain, moving her eyes from Frankie to the others and back. Then she sidled back into line, following the rest.
Frankie led on. Confused and leaderless, they complied.
A few minutes later, Petey got close to the mud, so Stotts tried waa-barking, but Petey barked back, teeth showing—all of them edgy. Stotts stepped away.
Frankie yelled, Petey!
She glared and stamped toward him. Remembering how Mama, when angry, would drag the milk crate after her to make an intimidating clatter, Frankie whacked the hammer down onto the rock in front of her, the sound as loud as a shot. Petey flinched and moved back into line, used to obeying a female.
After that Stotts said nothing, except occasionally making a pssst noise at Frankie to get her to notice a straying bonobo. He paced along behind them, keeping watch.
Adele carried Mama, tucked under her arm, parts of the body dragging. Sometimes the head hit a boulder with a meaty thud. After Adele tired, Stella carried the body, then Mr. Mister.
After twenty minutes of walking along the bare rocks, the ridge came to an end, and they stepped out across the mud. Frankie looked back at Stotts for his suggestion of a direction and he looked up at the sun then jerked his head to the left. She headed them that way, eastward. The bonobos followed her. All of them glanced occasionally over their shoulders, watching behind them.
By this point, Frankie didn’t think she could find her way back to the Foundation if she wanted to.
*
After an hour they paused at a stream. There was no more bleach, so all of them, even Stotts, drank the water straight from the stream. They were travelling pretty slowly by this point, tired.
Before Marge drank any water herself, she dropped the whole front of Mama’s torso in. Perhaps she was trying to give her a drink. On Mama’s scalp, there were long gashes and scrapes that didn’t bleed at all.
After drinking, Marge dragged the body back out and cradled it in her lap, grooming what little hair existed on the body’s back and arms. Tooch knuckled over to sit on the chest and rock back and forth, sucking his thumb. Frankie dribbled water into Id’s mouth. Id coughed a lot but did drink the water down. She was awake more often now and looking around. At least Houdina was getting more liquids. She’d be able to produce more milk for both Tooch and Id.
They moved on.
*
Partway through the afternoon, Lucy glanced back over her shoulder and stopped dead, staring at something. They all jerked around, bristling. There was only one small creature, way back there. Frankie saw that whatever the creature was, it didn’t lope forward using its shoulders, head high, like a chimp. Instead it trotted, low and tireless, close to the ground. A dog, perhaps the beagle.
The bonobos waa-barked at it and the distant dog ducked behind a bush. When it didn’t come out after a while, they knuckled on, looking back. Half an hour later, they spotted it again, following. They barked again. It hid. And so through the afternoon, the beagle padded after them, 300 feet back, trotting in and out of bushes, stopping occasionally to investigate something, disappearing entirely at times, but always popping back up.
Late afternoon, the stink of rotting meat drifted by on the wind. Looking in the direction of the stench, they spotted a barn through some trees. They skirted it, uneasy. Inside, Frankie knew there’d be empty automatic watering troughs, the pens full of bodies.
Maybe half a mile further on, they stepped over a guardrail onto some muddy pavement. Down the road a bit, on the far side was a 7-Eleven and a lonely parking lot.
Stotts said, Keep them back. I want to make sure no one’s in there.
She sat down on the guardrail, used sign language and clicked, holding out her arms. Exhausted and muddy, the bonobos pressed in against her, snuffling.
There was no cover to hide behind, but Stotts still ran in low and fast, a soldier. The front door was locked so he trotted around the back. Soon they heard the sound of wood breaking. A few minutes later, they spotted him through the glass inside the store, moving down the aisles, carrying bags. When he left, he came out the front door and the banner inside fluttered in the wind declaring a sale on Big Gulps. He carried six bags full of dried fruit and Hostess Twinkies, a gallon of Coke under his arm. For once the bonobos were too tired to have sex. They clustered around Mama’s body, eating intently. Lucy pressed a Twinkie to Mama’s mouth, cream smeared across her lips.
Frankie fed Id the cream filling from several Twinkies, scooping it out on her finger. Id ate every bit of it, then the spongy cake part too, gumming her way through it all, determined.
They moved on. That whole day, they saw no humans anywhere.
*
As dusk started, they stepped around a hedge and came upon a house. The bonobos hurried forward, peeping with happiness, wanting to be inside.
The humans trailed behind, clicking and hissing, Hey come back. Heyyyy!
This tired and cold, the bonobos ignored even Frankie, some of them disappearing around the corner of the house, whining, searching for a way in.
Stotts peeked in the windows, warily. Seeing some motion through the glass, he jerked back flat against the wall.
Not having been trained to react quickly, Frankie just froze there, gaping into the window, to see Goliath’s face appear, grinning down at her. Behind him somewhere was an unlocked back door.
Inside, the bonobos slurped water straight out of the toilets. The humans searched the building, confirming it was empty, then returned to the kitchen to pop open jars of applesauce and strawberry jam and spoon the contents into pans on the floor, along with whatever else looked edible. Then Frankie and Stotts gulped soda from the bottles and ripped open bags of Wonder Bread to stuff the food in their mouths, the slices appearing perfectly fresh.
Frankie wrapped a blanket around herself and sat down with them. The pleasure of being off her feet brought back a long-ago memory, perhaps 10 years old, trying downhill skiing for the first time. All day in the snow, falling again and again, wrists raw, clothing wet, the slow exhaustion. Only once it began to get dark did her parents allow her back into the ski lodge, where they handed her a cup of hot chocolate. She remembered that pleasure of sitting in the warm building and raising the drink to her lips—the sweet steam, that first sip.
She lay down, pressing in against Goliath. He wrapped his arm around her and she rocked her head into a good spot on his chest. He patted her face. She pulled the blanket tighter, grateful. On the floor nearby lay the dark lump of Mama—her limbs stiff, her head canted.
A foot away, on the other side of Goliath, she heard Stotts shifting about, getting comfortable. She eased her hand forward until her knuckles touched his ribs. She heard him exhale, letting air go, as though her touch helped.
One by one, they fell asleep there, in the dark.
*
Throughout the night, the beagle whined outside. At one point, it scratched at the door and Adele charged out of the bed, waa-barking. The dog ran away outside, its yips receding into the distance. Later, they heard it baying in the night, high pitched and alone.