Rogue Touch

by Woodward, Christine

  “Touch,” I said. My voice came out in this husky little whimper. “I gotta tell you about that. How I survived, I mean. It’s time you knew the whole truth.”

  He held up his hand. “Let me tell you what I think it is,” he said. “There’s some kind of power in your skin. If it touches somebody else’s, you absorb everything about them—their memories, their abilities, their very essence. Their life force. Losing all that, they collapse, sometimes never to get up again.”

  For one full minute the pain went away. Hell, I think I might have gone away. Disappeared right on the spot. How could a person just come up with that explanation? And describe it way better than I could’ve myself?

  “I knew a man once, who had that same ability,” Touch explained.

  “Ability,” I said, a hard edge of anger sculpting the word. “Affliction is more like it.”

  “Of course,” he said. He had a funny kind of look on his face, like he was troubled but not by what we were talking about. Like there was something in the world even more worrisome than my skin meaning instant lifelessness. “Of course it feels like an affliction. But it’s a power, too, there’s no denying it. Did you feel like you gained anything? Special powers? From the wildebears, I mean.”

  I told him about how fast I’d been able to run from the ranch to the truck. Touch nodded.

  “That makes sense,” he said. “They’re known for their speed. It’s one of the things that makes them so dangerous. And useful. I bet you’ll find you’re a lot stronger, too. Probably it’s one of the reasons you were able to endure all this.” He motioned with his hand at the wreckage left behind, the needle and bloodied bandages and various wrappers.

  A man like you. What a strange thought. An amazing thought. “What became of him?” I asked Touch. “The man like me.”

  “Well,” Touch said, like he was choosing his words very carefully, “where I come from, most people are like me. Plain old humans, with varying abilities and talents. But there are other people. They’re larger than life. They have powers. Special powers. Like yours.”

  “All of them?” I said. Between the whiskey and this news I could barely form a full sentence.

  “All of them are special in some way,” Touch said. “Sometimes minor, sometimes major—like being able to fly, or shift shape. Sometimes dangerous, like being able to create fire. Or rain.”

  “How? I mean, how do they get that way?”

  “The same way anybody gets attributes. How do I have blue eyes? How are you tall? It’s genetics, Rogue. Most are the result of inheritance. But some are the result of changes. Mutations.”

  That didn’t seem like much of an answer but I decided to let it go for now. “And what do you do?” I asked. “With the dangerous ones. The ones like me.”

  “There are centers,” he said. “Like schools. To help them get their abilities under control. Like this man I knew. Gordium is what you’d call him here. He learned how to control the effect of his skin.”

  This information made me do the impossible. I sat up straight. The throb in my shoulder became still more distant. “What do you mean, control it?”

  “I mean, he learned how to keep his skin from having that effect, unless he wanted it to.”

  “So he could touch people?”

  “Yes. He could touch people. If he wanted. He could touch them and have no effect at all. Or he could touch them and take just a little bit of something he needed. He could control it.”

  “Do you think,” I said, afraid to even put the sentence together. “Do you think you could take me back there with you, once all this is all worked out? And I could go to that center, that school, and learn how to… touch people?”

  Touch’s face contorted. “No,” he said, and he sounded real firm. Like he’d made up his mind before I even asked. “I can never take you back there.”

  “But…”

  He held up his hand. “They’re close,” he said. “I’ve already said too much. You need to rest, and recover. We don’t want to risk another showdown.”

  I nodded. But still that old word—“hope”—it had risen in my heart. Nothing Touch said could squelch the fantasy, of going back to his planet with him and learning how to control my affliction—no, my ability!—and coming out able to join the world. Able to hold hands and pick eyelashes off people’s cheeks and wear summer dresses without worrying about brushing against someone else’s elbow. And best of all, be able to touch him, Touch, wherever and whenever and however I wanted.

  I didn’t hear what he said next. The pain and exhaustion and liquor overtook me. I slept twelve straight hours, what might’ve been my longest uninterrupted sleep since we started this whole journey. When I woke up, Touch had wrapped me up in a sheet, like a little mummy, and his arms were tight around me, so that I hardly minded the dull, throbbing pain in my shoulder.

  We gathered our things together, got into the blue truck, and headed out for Utah.

  To me Utah looked like another planet, with hoodoos and red clay, and towering rock formations everywhere. Even more than in Colorado, I felt like finally I was not just driving but traveling. Seeing the world. I’d never even imagined anything like this place in my whole life.

  Touch had got very quiet. He just sat staring out the passenger window, his chin in his palm. I kept pointing out different rocks and colors and mountains in the distance, saying how pretty everything was. But he would just say, “Hmm,” or nod, like he wasn’t impressed at all. Or else like he had too much on his mind to appreciate even this scenery.

  As for myself, I felt strangely cheerful. My shoulder didn’t hurt near as much as I expected it to, and it had stopped bleeding. That morning, Touch and I had both dug into Joe Wheeler’s clothing, so we looked a damn sight more normal than usual. Touch wore blue jeans and a plaid shirt under a thick wool sweater, plus a down vest. I had to stick to my leather jeans, but I wore one of Joe’s T-shirts and the jean jacket I’d taken, along with my white tea gloves, and a wool cap over a ponytail, making my hair a whole lot less conspicuous. As I drove and Touch stayed quiet, I thought on two different plans that fell into two different categories: Immediate and Planet Earth was one category; Future and Planet Touch was the other.

  As for Immediate and Planet Earth, there were two big concerns: get me away from the law and get Touch to a place where he wouldn’t freeze to death come winter. So I was thinking Mexico. We were pretty much headed in that direction anyhow. I figured we didn’t need particular identification, because as far as I was concerned, we wouldn’t be coming back. Not ever. Of course this meant leaving behind everything in the world I’d ever known. Come to find out, this did not trouble me in the slightest.

  When I thought about Future and Planet Touch, I found myself getting downright giddy. Because what news he’d given me last night! Not only was there a person just like me where he came from, there was a whole host of freakazoids that weren’t treated like freakazoids at all! They got to be part of the general population and work for Arcadia. They even had a special school! I loved that there was a world where such a thing existed—peace and simplicity and enough of everything for everyone—and that I could maybe be a part of it, not wicked and evil, like Aunt Carrie always said I’d turn out.

  Touch hadn’t said it outright, what he planned on doing. Sometimes, when he talked about his son for instance, I’d get the impression that Touch planned on going home eventually. Other times it seemed like he wouldn’t go back, not ever. But now that I knew about what I’d be on his planet, “larger than life,” all I wanted to do was go. There at that school they’d teach me how to control my affliction—no, my power!—and Touch and I would become like a regular couple, able to do all the regular couple things in the world. So what if he had to fight off his ex-wife, and those ponytailed men? Maybe it was just dumb beast courage, but I felt like I could take on anyone, anywhere. And even if he didn’t want to go back home for me, eventually he’d want to go home for his son. I had a feeling that was w
hy he’d got so quiet today. He was thinking on his son, Cotton, and worrying about him all alone with that crazy wife and her wildebears.

  Of course I couldn’t push him just yet, about my Planet Touch plan. That one would take some finessing and some time. So when we stopped for lunch in a place called Escalante, after I slathered peanut butter onto bread with my fingers, I opened up the atlas and showed Touch what all I was thinking of. To my surprise, before I could say a word, he pointed at the exact route I was going to suggest.

  “This way,” he said, like it wasn’t a point for argument.

  I looked down at the map, and at the roads winding through Utah and Arizona to Mexico. I pictured Touch and me together in a tropical paradise, nobody chasing us at all.

  Touch held on to his sandwich, examining the map. We sat overlooking this wide lake in the middle of a place that was kind of how I pictured the Grand Canyon—towering rocks, and more of those crazy, spirally pillars—but with the water all huge and placid running through it. Touch had already collected some pamphlets from the visitors center, and we’d read all about how this lake, Lake Powell, had been formed by the Glen Canyon Dam. Touch handed me one of his pamphlets, this one about the Anasazi ruins. “What can you tell me about this?” he said.

  I pushed it away, gentle as I could. “Nothing,” I said. “Never heard of them.”

  Touch said, “Let’s get a boat and go out on the water.”

  I stared at him like he was crazy. “A boat?” I said. “Aren’t you listening? We got to make some ground, head on down to Mexico. Then at least we’ll only have your people chasing us.”

  Touch looked out at the water. He drummed his fingers on the picnic table. I’d already devoured my sandwich and he hadn’t yet taken a bite. Something knotted in my stomach, seeing the look on his face.

  “Touch,” I said. “What’s got you in such a faraway mood today? It’s not on account of her is it?”

  He looked at me a minute, like he wasn’t sure what I was talking about. Then he said, “Oh. Alabaster. Well, in a way it is. I mean, she’s part of it. But not the way you mean.”

  “What do you mean, the way I mean?” I could hear my voice get defensive, and that made me even more defensive. You see, I’d never even had a real boyfriend before. And here I was with a grown man who had a wife, and the only experience in my head belonged to Wendy Lee, who was more inclined to throw a vase or get her shotgun. In fact at this very moment, remembering Alabaster’s very beautiful if clearly evil face, and seeing the conflicted and preoccupied look on Touch’s very beautiful and clearly not-evil face, I could hear Wendy Lee’s voice inside my head: Sugar, she said. Nine times out of ten when you think a man might be lying you’re right. And I don’t care how it might look to you right now. But I’m here to tell you that a man don’t leave his wife. Not for the likes of you, anyway.

  He already left his wife, I thought. Even before I showed up. That must count for something, right?

  “I mean,” Touch said, “that I’m not thinking about her in a romantic way. I haven’t thought about her like that in a while…” His voice trailed off. After a bit, he said, “I just hope my son is safe. I wish I’d gotten him away from her before I came here. I wish… I wish a lot of things.”

  This may have been very bad of me. But I could tell he was having second thoughts. Regrets. Which could mean that he’d head back to Planet Touch, and take me with him, all of his own accord!

  Still I did feel bad, him looking so worried and guilty, like he had more thoughts than a person could bear rolling through his head. So I said, “Sure, Touch. Let’s get a boat.”

  He smiled a little, and then he finally took a bite of his sandwich. This look came over his face like he’d just been poisoned. He put his hand to his throat as he swallowed.

  “What the hell is that?” he said, his tongue sticking out, the first gesture I’d seen from him that I would not describe as elegant.

  “Why it’s peanut butter,” I said. “You don’t have that where you come from?”

  “No.” He picked up a bottle of water and took a deep swig. “We don’t.”

  And even though I never in my life met a person who didn’t like peanut butter, I figured every little thing he didn’t like about Planet Earth couldn’t help but work out in my favor.

  There were a lot of very cool things around Escalante. On the way to rent a boat, Touch and I stood in a dinosaur footprint. I tried to explain to Touch about the dinosaurs and evolution.

  “Someday I’ll show you a picture in a book,” I said. “They were like lizards only bigger. Much, much bigger. And some of them could fly.”

  He looked at me like I was maybe a little bit crazy, then knelt and touched the hard rock that formed the footprint. “Pretty fascinating,” he said. The way he said it made me remember how, back where he came from, he’d been a scientist. “Remember when you asked me, how the people with powers—the people like you—came to be that way? It’s just what you’re talking about. Evolution. Gradual changes, mostly, but sometimes sudden ones that set a single member of a species apart from the others.”

  “You mean one day everyone will be like me?”

  He looked at me and smiled. Then he said, “One can only hope.” I didn’t point out that this would mean pretty much the whole world in a coma.

  At the little marina we found a Navajo man who was selling handmade jewelry and renting boats. We hired what Cody would’ve called a jon boat—just a simple little fishing boat with an outboard motor attached. Even though Touch was the one who came from a place that was mostly water, I drove. Cody’d had one just like it that he used to travel through the bayous, and on the Mississippi when it was calm enough. Touch finally started talking, prattling on about how transportation was different on his planet, none of this messy gasoline to spill and wreck the water. He was pretty horrified by the slick our little boat was leaving behind us.

  “It makes sense you wouldn’t have gas if you didn’t have dinosaurs,” I said. And I explained what little I knew about fossil fuel. “They say it’s wrecking the planet,” I said. “Making it hotter. On account of… the ozone layer and such.” I expected Touch to be a whole lot more interested in this, but he just clammed up again. I wished I knew more about it, to impress him with my knowledge. I’d been pretty good in school, but our science class hadn’t spent a whole lot of time on climate change since the Mississippi legislature didn’t put much stock in the theory. Probably it was becoming clearer and clearer to Touch that I was no kind of scientist. I wondered if Alabaster had been one.

  “What does Alabaster do, anyway?” I said. “For a living I mean.”

  “A living?” That look again, and then he turned away, looking back out at the landscape. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to explain. It all works so differently here, some things just don’t translate.”

  “Well,” I said, “is she an inventor, a scientist, like you?”

  “No,” he said. But he didn’t get into it further than that.

  I puttered the little boat along in the water, the great canyon walls rising all around us. It was stupid to feel jealous of an evil woman from another planet. But I couldn’t help it. I wondered what would happen if next time I saw her, I took off my gloves and just grabbed her. Maybe I’d absorb some of her beauty, plus I’d know everything she knew about Touch. But then of course she’d be comatose or dead, and no matter how Touch felt about her now, he likely wouldn’t take kindly to that, her being the mother of his child and all.

  My mind went to thinking on everything Touch had told me about his home. “Utopia,” I found myself saying.

  Touch turned his head toward me. “What did you say?”

  “Just this word we learned in social studies, a word for an ideal society. Utopia. Sounds like Utopia, where you’re from. I guess it’s just another word for Arcadia. A perfect world.”

  Touch thought on the word. I could see him turning it over in his head, thinking on it, comparing it
to whatever bells and whistles his language would use to say it. Then he nodded, agreeing with me, but he looked powerfully sad. “Yes,” he said. “I guess it is. Or at least, it used to be.”

  We puttered on through the Canyon. As a Mississippi girl I’d spent a good bit of time in church. But I want to say that never did I feel such a sense of spirits—of God—as I did floating down that waterway, with the towering walls of rocks—some of them meeting in arches, some of them rising up in crazy shapes. You could watch those rocks the way you watched clouds, thinking on all the things they looked like. A bull’s head there, a sneaker over yonder. A lady with long, flowing hair. But unlike clouds, they didn’t wisp up and fly away. They stood firm, looking back at you. It was like the soul of whatever shape you saw lived on inside them.

  We pulled the boat over on a little island, dragged it up on the sand, and went for a walk. Touch had figured out maps by now, and he followed the directions in his little Anasazi booklet. He read aloud to me as we walked, and I learned how the Anasazi were these ancient people who lived in huts and cave dwellings all through New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. You could find remains of their villages all over the Four Corners region, and before I knew it Touch and I were standing in the middle of one—this little village, with paths carved out and caves built into the rocks, big enough for us to crawl into and hunker down.

  More than ever I felt the spirits all around me. When I closed my eyes I saw the whole place full of life, little kids scampering about, women carrying baskets and jugs full of water. There was so much to admire about the way this tiny village was built, into the rocks, like a crazy high-rise apartment that blended in perfectly with the landscape. You could see which parts of the structure belonged to the natural wall of rock, and which parts they had made with mud and rock from the riverbank.

  Touch didn’t seem to want to go inside. He stood on the perimeter, walking up and down, examining it so close, like this was what he’d come here to see in the first place. “Hey,” I said. “Don’t you want to come look close up?”