Skid

by Keith Fenwick

  “Funny, though, don’t you think? I mean, for him to take off like that without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  “Yeah, they’re an odd bunch all right.” Bruce flicked the cigarette butt over the rail. “And you know what? I couldn’t give a stuff about them, given the attitude of the likes of Cyprus, even if they are getting hungry.” He dropped his feet from the rail and stood with Sue in his arms.

  “It’s about time I carried you across the threshold, isn’t it, dear?” Bruce placed a tender and lingering kiss on her lips.

  “Oh, you’re so cute sometimes, Bruce!” she giggled, as he carried her past an open-mouthed Leaf in search of a bedroom.

  Twenty-two

  Next morning, leaving Sue to sort out the house, Bruce wandered down to the eerily familiar barn by the river. Inside he found a treasure trove of farm equipment, which reminded him of an old farmer’s shed containing odds and ends accumulated during a lifetime of collecting stuff. Stuff that might be useful one day. Just like his old man and his father before him. Though not necessarily right at the moment, if ever.

  Bruce picked through the piles of gear spread across the floor, stacked in racks, on shelves. He delved through bins, pulling open drawers and cupboards. Climbed up and sat on the tractor parked inside the main door.

  “How the hell does this thing go?” he wondered aloud, fiddling with a series of knobs to see if he could start it. Failing, he searched for a set of operating instructions and found a booklet stuffed into the toolbox hanging off the inside of the mudguard as if an afterthought. As if the Skidians had known he would try to start the tractor before reading the operating instructions. They were quite simple: a series of schematic diagrams and an easy-to-read guide for operation supplied by some kind of Skidian technician who obviously doubted Bruce’s level of intelligence. Booklet in one hand, he followed the starting procedure and almost immediately a distinctive hum and a light on the dash indicated the motor was indeed running.

  Tentatively he engaged what should have been a forward gear, released the clutch and the tractor lurched forward. Satisfied, he switched the engine off; there would be plenty of time to play with it later on.

  On one side of the barn there was an implement bay containing a mower, a rotary hoe and a plough. There was also some kind of harvester, a baler and a front-end loader, just as there was back in his father’s shed, along with several large bins filled with bags of seeds, some as large as a sugar bag, others just small, marked packets. Bruce tossed them aside. Gardening wasn’t his thing. That was Sue’s department, whether or not she knew it yet. Hand tools adorned a workbench that ran the full length of the barn’s rear wall: hammers, saws, spanners and pliers.

  In a lean-to outside the building he found wire and posts made of some kind of plastic and many other things besides, some useful, some not. Bruce was really amused by the discovery of three motorcycles parked in a partitioned bay with saddles slung over them. He tried to imagine the Skidians trying to work out how to fit a saddle on the bikes.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Bruce swung round to find that Sue had sneaked up on him again. Come to find out what he was up to.

  “Look here, we’ve got stabling for horses, even saddles for them and motorbikes parked where the horses should be!”

  “It’s like that up at the house, too. There’s all kinds of cutlery in the drawers but nothing as simple as a potato peeler. An electric jug but no cord to plug it in with.”

  “You get that on the big jobs. No doubt we’ll make out,” he said, not sure he really felt so confident. He looked speculatively at the seed bins. “I wonder? Potatoes,” he muttered, walking over to the bins and salivating at the idea of a few home comforts.

  He began to fossick through the bins, his earlier distaste at the thought of gardening cast temporarily aside.

  “Even though it seems crazy to me, I’m beginning to see some things from the Skidian angle. We’ve obviously thought about or directly ordered or asked for all these things.” Bruce paused and emphasized his point by waving his hands round the barn. “You have to admit they’ve done pretty well in a roundabout fashion to supply what we need. Because they do not understand what we are asking for, they miss what is obvious to us. You know how they can’t put two and two together.”

  “So we can’t expect perfection?”

  “That’s right, but in their own way they are trying. Here we are!” He lifted a large sack out of the bottom of the bin. “Spuds.”

  “Spuds?”

  “Potatoes.”

  “What else is in there?” The remaining contents of the bin were spread over the floor. Sorting through the strewn packages Bruce discovered a range of earth-like vegetable staples: peas, carrots and onions, lettuce, radish and cabbage seed.

  “Can you bake bread?” he asked, starting to rummage through another bin. Celery. Cauliflower. Bugger that! he thought.

  “Lovely,” Sue replied. “No, I can’t. Why?”

  “Well, in this one there seems to be a lot of cereal seeds. “Wheat, corn and a few I can’t identify. Quite a range, eh? I wonder if any of this stuff will grow?” Bruce tipped some seeds into his hand. “They must have been in these packets since before Christ was a cowboy.”

  “What do you know about gardening, Bruce?”

  “Enough to know I don’t want any part of it. What about you?”

  “I’ve always wanted a garden, even just a few boxes full of plants. Gardening is supposed to be therapeutic, you know? But I’ve never had time to do any,” she added as if she had always meant to give gardening a go.

  “Well now’s your chance.” He patted her shoulder patronizingly. “I now pronounce you Skid’s chief horticulturist. At least you’ve got a start on the Skidians.”

  “Do you think there’s any point going back to town tonight?” he asked a few moments later.

  “I thought we were going to stay here?”

  “I just wish that bloody Leaf woman wasn’t here,” Bruce muttered darkly, wondering how he might be able to get her on her own without Sue finding out. Ever since she’d wiggled her butt at him he couldn’t shake the image of her long, slim legs and the promise of perfect breasts from his mind. “Bruce, you do surprise me. I thought you’d welcome a slave at your beck and call.” Sue hid her relief in the mistaken belief Bruce had no interest in Leaf.

  “Look, I’ve never had any problems looking after myself in the past!” Bruce retorted. He picked up a bag of seeds and threw it as hard as he could at the wall of the barn and stomped off.

  Sue found herself trembling in shock at Bruce’s sudden violent outburst and wondered whether he might just as easily have taken his anger out on her rather than the bag of seeds. Moody bastard, she thought, wondering what raw nerve she had touched this time. Now what would she do? She suddenly realized how little she knew Bruce. Normally pleasant enough, if a little sarcastic at times, he had proven to be as unpredictable as a cornered wild animal in the past few minutes.

  “Hey, Sue!” His sudden call from the doorway startled her. She looked up to see him standing there with a nervous grin. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m just …” he shrugged his shoulders, “well, you know, pissed off with this whole bloody place and it’s getting to me. You know?”

  “Yes, I know,” she replied evenly, wondering if he were telling the truth. But what did I do wrong?

  “Where do you think we should plant the garden?” Sue changed the subject, walking over to where he stood in the doorway.

  “Over there, on the flat. The vegetables and stuff anyway.” Bruce gestured vaguely towards the river.

  “What if it floods here?”

  “That’s the least of our worries, I reckon. I don’t think even the Skidians would have plonked a building here if it was in danger of being washed away the first time it rained.” Then he decided that you could never be too sure about the way Skidians thought things out.

  “People at home do that sort of thing all the ti
me when they should know better. Los Angeles is built on a fault line, or is it San Francisco?”

  “Yeah, but that’s in America. They do things different here.”

  “Are you trying to be funny or what? Because if you are, it’s not working!” Sue snapped. Then, in the hope that he was, she relaxed. “You’re just winding me up, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Bruce grinned and grabbed her hand. “The soil will be better down here because of all the silt deposits from old floods. I reckon that’s probably a good enough reason. Don’t you?” Bruce sighed. He hadn’t intended to hurt her, but the opportunity was just too good to miss. “C’mon, it’ll be getting dark soon. And I’m hungry again,” he said taking her by the hand and leading her towards the house.

  Later, while waiting for Leaf to provide what passed for an evening meal on Skid, they whiled the time away with a beer or two. Bruce stared vacantly out over the darkened plain, smoking, enjoying the solitude. Sue looked up at the multitude of stars spread across the heavens like so many twinkling lights.

  “So different from home,” she murmured. “The stars, I mean.”

  “What? Oh, yeah. Less pollution and less light from cities, I expect,” Bruce grunted.

  “No, they’re different. Different stars from the ones we see at home.”

  “Well, we’re a long way from earth, you know,” he reminded her unnecessarily. “They’re not likely to be familiar, are they?”

  “Where do you think earth might be?”

  “I dunno,” Bruce replied wearily, turning to the tablet that lay on the table and putting the question.

  “The solar system in which your home planet is located is not visible from this region of Skid at this time.” There was a slight pause in the discourse, as though the tablet needed time to search deeper into its memory for more information. “The planet is presently located at forty-two degrees below the horizon.”

  “See anything there, Bruce?” she asked stupidly.

  “Get a grip, woman. We might be able to see it later.”

  “The planet is not visible from Skid without high-definition telescopic assistance.”

  “I often used to fantasize about space, you know, Sue,” Bruce said, starting to feel particularly philosophical after his second beer. “It’s just so big. Goes on forever. Which, if you stop to think about it, is quite incredible. You realize just how insignificant we are, eh?” He took a swallow from his glass while Sue waited expectantly for his next pearl of wisdom. “When you think about it, it’s no wonder man invented religion to explain it, eh.”

  “Do you think the Skidians have any religion?” Sue asked. Religion had always been a part of her life, as much as eating and sleeping. Now she was beginning to question what faith she had ever had, for it seemed to have failed her. Not that she had given her religion much of a thought in recent days.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe they’ve grown out of it or something, if that’s the right way to look at it.” Not wanting a dissertation from the tablet to contradict him, Bruce reached over and switched it off. “You know what they’re like. They just are, and they don’t have a need to explain ‘it’ any more. I reckon if the head honcho here said get religion, everybody would, even if only to appear to be doing the right thing.” Bruce fell silent, lost the thread of his thought and returned to his original theme. “I always thought there must be some sort of life out here.”

  “You?” Sue declared in mock astonishment. “I thought you were more down-to-earth than that.” She studied Bruce, who not for the first time had surprised her by revealing a new facet of his character.

  “Look around you, Sue, and tell me I was wrong.”

  “So tell me are you a happy man at having your wildest dreams realized.”

  “Shit, yeah. I’ve always wanted to meet people from space. Though not under these circumstances, that’s for sure,” Bruce replied sullenly.

  “Look on the bright side, Bruce.” Sue thought she could jolly Bruce out of the sullen melancholy mood that seemed to be settling on him, imagining she was coming to terms with her enforced stay on Skid. She was wrong on both counts. Sue only felt pumped up because Bruce appeared so deflated.

  “Huh? Jeez, woman, where would you rather be? Here in this shit hole or at home doing whatever it is you do? Hey, Leaf! Another beer, eh!” Bruce suddenly felt like lashing out again. He restrained himself, but it disturbed him that he felt such an intense desire to wreck something.

  “I bet in your wildest dreams you never imagined you’d have a space woman to be your slave.”

  “No, but I have thought about doing other things to a spacewoman,” he said without thinking. Realizing he might have said the wrong thing, Bruce leaned across and grasped Sue’s wrist. “It was a silly thing to say. I’m sorry.”

  Sue sensed he was not being totally sincere, but she grasped at the lifeline he offered as Leaf arrived with their meal.

  “Pretty horrible, eh?” Bruce probed the gooey mess on his plate, trying to ease the tension. “Especially after today’s dose of decent tucker. I reckon you should try and teach Leaf how to cook meat.”

  “You find her attractive, don’t you? Or is she just a curiosity, like me?” Bruce almost choked on a spoonful of synthofood and tried to pretend it had just gone down the wrong way, averting his eyes so Sue could not detect the guilt he was sure his face betrayed.

  Sue was not so much jealous that Bruce might go ahead and fulfill his fantasy, as fearful that he might prefer Leaf to herself and leave her out in the cold. Sue decided she was prepared to sacrifice almost anything, even her dignity, as long as she could stay close to him.

  Leaf was attractive in a pale sort of way. However, Bruce was more drawn to her by the fact she was now almost a forbidden fruit for him. He snuck a furtive look at Sue between chews. “She’s not really my cup of tea at all,” Bruce lied lamely, “and I’m horribly disappointed.”

  Sue would have to be well out of the way before he tried anything on with Leaf or she’d probably shoot him, he decided.

  Sue woke next morning and panicked when she discovered the other half of the bed was empty. As she sat up she could hear someone banging things about in the kitchen. What on earth would he be doing at this time of the morning? It was still dark! The sudden ugly prick of betrayal and despair that had swamped her disappeared almost as quickly as it had begun.

  Sue had gone to bed early the previous evening, expecting Bruce to follow quickly, believing that once they had made love everything would be all right. But Bruce had stumbled in much later smelling of beer and cursing in the dark, then lay stiffly on the bed as if he was afraid to touch her. When Sue at last decided to breach the gap between them, she found he had fallen asleep and was snoring gently.

  In the kitchen Bruce hummed, blissfully unaware of the noise he was making and ignorant of Sue’s fears that he would trade her in for a new model.

  “There’s a da de da de da, da, oh yeah. Oh yeah,” he hummed, wondering how to make himself a hot drink while a few hunks of meat sizzled in the pan. After polishing off the hunks of meat and enjoying a smoke and a cup of hot water Bruce stepped out into the dawn, pausing to let the dogs off, and wandered down the hill to the barn.

  The sliding doors of the shed screamed excruciatingly as he tugged them open. Enough to waken the dead, he imagined, as he fumbled for a light switch so he could see what he was doing. As the sun peeped over the hill and the few Skidian birds began their morning chorus, Bruce drove the tractor out of the shed and dropped the rotary hoe he had attached into the ground.

  By the time Sue put in an appearance to see what was going on he had worked up almost a hectare of ground and decided it was time for smoko. “What do you reckon? Pretty good, eh?” he asked from the tractor.

  “It’s pretty big, isn’t it?” Sue had visualized a small garden filled with neat rows of plants. The very size of the plot made her feel inadequate and threatened to overwhelm her.

  Bruce regarded the plot of dirt p
roudly. “Nah. In a few months’ time we’ll have heaps of ground worked over and about ten Skidians caring for it.” He wasn’t yet so cynical about the Skidians that he doubted this would happen. He jumped down, knelt to check the depth of the cultivated soil with his fingers.

  Feeling particularly energetic and eager to get results as quickly as possible, he bounded off to the shed. Sue toddled along in his wake, wondering what had got into him this time and what he thought she should be doing. “Hurry up, woman!” he called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the shed. “We’ve got heaps to do.”

  This sudden change in Bruce left Sue bewildered. He normally seemed, well, so unexcitable. Now he was charging around like a small boy with a new toy. What had got to him now? She found him pouring half a sack of dried-up potatoes into a large plastic bucket, which he topped up with various packets of seeds.

  “Take these, will you?”

  Where? Sue wondered as he began to chop some skinny poles into short lengths with an axe. “What are those for?”

  “I’ll show you in a minute,” he replied impatiently, and grabbing some tools led her struggling with the heavy bucket back to the plot of cultivated soil.

  “Slow down, Bruce,” Sue pleaded, “and tell me what’s going on. Surely we’re not going to plant all this today?”

  “Eh? Of course not, silly.”

  “Bruce,” she insisted, “please explain what you’re doing. Otherwise you’ll just get horribly upset when I make a mistake. I’ve already told you I don’t know anything about gardening.”

  “Okay, well it’s like this.” He pulled out his pouch of agar and rolled himself a smoke. “I plan …” he paused to light the cigarette and put into simple terms the grand design he’d conceived the night before, “… to plant a few of these vegetables to get us started. That’s if they’ll grow, of course. With me so far?”