Cottonwood

by R. Lee Smith

  He had no answer to that, but touched her again and chirred, then left her in privacy and went to find his son. His loud click brought an immediate rattle and he followed it to a small clearing where T’aki crouched, watching a mass of ants swarming over a small, dead animal.

  If this were Cottonwood, there would be a fight already over this carrion. There might be one over even the ants. Now, well-fed and on the road to the ship, it was a mere scientific curiosity. Sanford hunkered beside his son, watching T’aki rather than the grisly work of the ants, and listening to Sarah’s voice through the trees.

  “—you hear me? How about now? Okay, great. I’ve got, like, one bar of signal strength, so I have to make this…Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, I know it was cryptic, but that was on my house-phone and I…No, I threw that one away. I’m not a complete idiot after all…This is a junker, can I talk now?”

  “Who is Sarah talking to?” T’aki asked, poking at the miniature feast with a twig. The ants swarmed faster.

  “The sister, Kate.” He put hard snaps in the name, hissed to himself, and tried again, with the same result.

  “Kate,” echoed T’aki. He did not snap over the hard sounds.

  “—don’t feel comfortable getting into the whole thing on the phone, even this phone, but I’ve left IBI and…Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to sue me anymore, I think they may just shoot me…Only sort of kidding. It’s bad, Kate. Feel free to tell me you told me so.”

  T’aki looked away from his ants. “Is it bad, Father?”

  He rubbed the boy’s head. “It will be better soon.”

  “—I know it’s a lot to ask, but…No, I actually have plenty of money, what I need is your car…California…Believe it or not, you’ll probably guess why the instant you see me. It isn’t very subtle.”

  Sanford chuckled and then sighed. No. No, she wasn’t very subtle at all, was she? But she was earnest. And honest. And good.

  “You’re chirring, Father.” T’aki left his feasting ants and crawled up into Sanford’s arms. He fanned his tiny palps for breath, then snuggled in against his chitin. “Sarah sounds scared.”

  “She is doing a frightening thing.” Sanford stood up and carried his son away from the little pageant of death to a place where things only grew. There were birds in the high branches and iridescent insects fluttering through the air, bright berries on the low shrubs and leaves just beginning to turn. T’aki twisted around to look, but listlessly. “We are all doing a frightening thing,” Sanford said, rubbing his son’s shoulder-seams. “But it will soon be done. We’re going home.”

  “—I know, and I wish I could tell you more,” Sarah said distantly. “I’m so sorry…Yeah, I know, but I’m still sorry…I’m not sure. What’s today?…Okay, so maybe as early as Sunday night, but probably Monday, assuming the van holds together. It didn’t like making this trip the first time and that was on the good roads…No, I’m not trying to scare you, sorry.”

  “I’m not scared,” said T’aki, and perhaps it was true, but he was obviously nervous.

  Sanford rubbed his head. “Because you are very brave. No father before me ever had such a son.”

  “—no, I really can’t…I can’t, but I will when I see you, I promise…I love you too, Kate. So much. I’m sorry I’m doing this to you, but it has to be done. I know you’ll understand when I can explain…Yes,” she said, quietly but with great emotion. “I am. In fact, this is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Are there birds on our world?” T’aki asked, looking up.

  “Of a sort. There are animals who fly. Some are quite pretty. In my family’s house, where I hope to live, there is a garden where these animals come. One of my far-fathers built them shelters and feeding stations a long time ago. I used to chase them when I was younger.”

  “Why?”

  “My older brother had joined the boys’ ti’yan’ league and I was largely unsupervised during the summers when they played. I found shameful ways to entertain myself.”

  “Is it a game? Like baseball?”

  “It is a game. Not like baseball.” Sanford glanced around and saw the van through the branches. Sarah sat against the door again with her head in her hands, no longer speaking. “Shall we go back?”

  T’aki snapped his palps reluctantly. “This is a long drive.”

  “The ride to yang’Tak is much longer.”

  “Yes, but the ship is bigger and it won’t bounce around. I don’t like the bouncing.” T’aki brightened. “Can you teach me ti’yan’?”

  “I think so. It won’t be a true game with just the three of us, but it will pass the time.”

  “I want to be on Sarah’s team.”

  “All right,” said Sanford, puzzled. “Why?”

  “Well…you get to play with her all night. I want her during the days, okay?”

  This was perhaps the time to sternly set Sarah above those possessions which may be loaned out at will, but Sanford, amused, said instead, “I think that’s fair.” He set his son down and they walked together back to the van, this pleasant respite over and the heavy business of their flight once more upon them.

  Sarah wiped her eyes before she raised them to his with a smile. Her cheeks were wet.

  “Father’s going to teach us a game,” T’aki announced, jumping into the vehicle. “When we go home. I want to be on your team.”

  “Okay,” said Sarah, looking surprised. “But why?”

  “Where is your ship?” Sanford interrupted, and T’aki, immediately alarmed, leapt back out and raced into the bushes.

  “It—T’aki, honey, wait! It’s right here under the blanket,” she finished with a sigh, watching the boy tear through the trees. “Well…I guess he’ll be back.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh sure.” She looked at the phone, sighed again, and tossed it into the forest. “I’m scaring the hell out of her, that’s all. I know I’ll be there soon and it’ll all work out, but in the meantime, she’s frantic and I don’t think I calmed her down any.”

  She sat there, watching the path of T’aki’s destructive search while Sanford watched her. At last, she stirred and said, “She’s my only family. I’m hers. We’re all we’ve got. I must be a bad person because all I can think about is going to see her and I know it’s going to put her in danger, if she’s not already. I don’t think IBI knows I have a sister, but they might. I haven’t been very smart about making phone calls. If they check my paz records…” She sighed and rubbed at her face, muttering, “And they will, you know. They probably did that first.”

  He had nothing comforting to say.

  “I tried to tell her to leave, you know? That we could meet up somewhere. She wouldn’t do it. Said if they weren’t onto me yet, her disappearing would put them on us for sure. And she could be right. She’s a lot more visible than I am…has a job and all that. She says nothing will happen as long as she stays in public places.” She shook her head. “God help me, I think being stupidly idealistic must run in the family.”

  “So does courage.”

  “And so do crooked pinkie toes, which is about as use—T’aki! Jellybean, it’s right here!”

  She did not finish her remark, but only helped the boy up into the van and into his harness. Once he was settled with his ship, she cleared the door to let Sanford enter, but stopped him as he bent and put her arms tight around him. “Stupidly idealistic as it may be, I’m not scared when I’m close to you,” she whispered. “So I’m going to drive as fast and as far as I can tonight and not think about things until I can be close to you again. I…I needed you last night, Sanford. And thank God you realized it, because I didn’t, but I do now and I think I’m going to need you a lot before this trip is over.”

  He realized she was trembling. He couldn’t feel it, but he could see it in the slight shiver of her hair as she pressed herself against his chest-plate. He stroked her shoulders soothingly, chirring soft and low, and wished he knew what he could say to her. In
the face of this great silence, he could only cup her cheek, tip back her head and gently share his breath.

  She giggled, rolled her eyes, and finally breathed back at him. “Thanks,” she said, hugging him once more, but without desperation. Then she walked around and got in behind the console.

  Sanford let himself in and shut the side door, then sat sidelong on the cushioned bench in the back of the van and fastened his harness. It wasn’t quite the reaction he’d been hoping for, but he’d take it. At least until tonight.

  * * *

  She drove until midnight before she even started looking for a place to spend the night, partly to eat up the miles and partly to make sure it was good and dark when they did stop. Midnight brought her to one of the bigger little towns on an old logging highway—just a few streets’ worth of tin-roofed bars and antique stores that looked like junkyards, broken sidewalks crawling with stray cats and trash, and way too many kids slouching around the alleys for the late hour. It was the kind of place that would have scared her if she weren’t looking for someplace seedy and out of the way. The motel was, by that definition, perfect: a dirt lot, flashing neon sign, no street lamp, and two long banks of mostly empty rooms to either side of a run-down office. Perhaps the best testament came from T’aki, who, bumped awake on turning in, raised his head and fearfully inquired, “Did we go home?”

  The manager’s office stank of cigars and sweat. For amenities, it had a bank of vending machines opposite the front desk selling snacks, sodas, cigarettes and pornographic video cards for every major brand of paz. Decor was limited to a rusty saw mounted over a couple of moth-eaten deer heads on the wall. The manager himself was fifty-ish, shiny-bald, and stonily indifferent about being dressed in boxer shorts and a bathrobe as he sat in his recliner and watched TV. A sign over the desk informed Sarah that payments made by credit card or e-Bank required identification and paz verification. Beneath this, in slightly larger typeface: If you have lost your paz, customers must pay cash as well as $50 liability fee. A second sign advertised the rates by hour, night, or week. She signed the log book in a false name and wanted to wash her hands after touching just the pen.

  “How many?” grunted the manager, having apparently decided she wasn’t going to leave on her own.

  “Two adults, one child,” she answered. “Just the one night. Um…do you have any adjoining rooms?”

  “Got two, both doubles. One of ‘em comes with a kitchen. Looking to kick up some dickens, eh?” He glanced around, but his casual leer puckered in on itself once he saw her. She had a brief moment of panic (My picture’s been on the news! He recognizes me!), and then caught a glimpse of herself in the window glass: her hair, tousled up around the bald patch over her ear; her rumpled, slept-in clothes; her exhausted, bloodshot eyes. No, she couldn’t even make a sleazy motel-manager’s dickens-kicking fantasy.

  His eyes dropped to Sanford’s weathered envelope as she counted out the money, then lifted just far enough to ogle her breasts in a dispirited fashion, and finally came back to her face, not without a wince. He passed the key over—a real metal key, they really were in the boondocks—took her money, and grunted something that may have been goodnight.

  And so all was well with the world. The room was the last on the leftward stretch, in the darkest and most deserted part of the lot. She parked the van nose-out and at an angle, so as to give better cover to anyone darting from, say, the passenger side to the motel, and unlocked the door for them.

  T’aki was inside at once and bouncing on the bed. It sure didn’t take him long to snap out of the sleepies. Sarah dropped her maps on the fire-sale table (no chairs), and watched him jump ever more acrobatically back and forth between the two beds until he inevitably overshot one and went into the wall.

  She shouldn’t laugh, she knew she shouldn’t.

  “And what have you learned?” asked Sanford calmly on his way to the bathroom. He didn’t even look around.

  T’aki, sprawled on the floor with both legs in the air, giggled.

  “Come on, jellybean, time to pick a bed and start settling down. You want one of these or would you rather see the other room?”

  He would, and after marveling at the two doors that separated them (and the key which unlocked them, a process he seemed to view as almost magical, which was strange right up until she realized there were no locked doors in Cottonwood and no metal keys), he knuckled down to the serious business of selection by way of the spring-test. Sarah waited him out, admiring the easy energy of his young body after the gruelingly long ride in the car, until he dropped onto one mattress and lay spread-eagled and happy.

  “This one,” he said.

  Sarah could hear the shower in the other room, so she went ahead and helped T’aki pull up the bedding and wrap it around in a heap with him at the center, the way he seemed to like it. She got him a glass of water (well, a cheap paper cup of water), gave him the Freeship, and then sat down on the bed beside him and looked at him.

  “How are you feeling about, um, about the way things are between me and your dad?” she asked.

  “I like it,” was his immediate and unconcerned reply, all his attention on flying his ship over his pillow. “It’s like having two fathers.”

  She processed that, decided she could live with it and reached down to rest her hand on his chest. “You know I like you lots, jellybean.”

  “I am you and you are me,” he answered matter-of-factly, then tipped back his head and fanned his palps and waited.

  She got it after a moment and bent to breathe gently at his open throat. He breathed back at her, then snuggled down in the sheets, curled tight. A pat on the head, a tickle on his soft neck, and she left him lying quietly and closed the door between them.

  Sanford was out of the shower already, at the end of a neat row of wet footprints, studying the tired landscape hung between the two beds. He was naked, chitin dripping and shiny in patches, dulling where it had begun to dry. There was such a relaxed and easy expectation in that posture—waiting for her—and it would have raised her eyebrows except, of course, why else had she gotten two rooms? It was as good as announcing to both of them that she was in the mood, so take your toy, kid, and don’t mind any loud noises.

  He glanced around at her giggles, but seemed satisfied it wasn’t at his expense when she came smiling over and slid her fingers along his side-seam. “Are you tired?” she asked.

  “Exhausted,” he replied seriously. “I will sleep very well after we have copulated.”

  Gosh, she loved this guy.

  “You need to tell me what to do,” she said, undressing. “Because last night was mine and it was wonderful, but I want to make you happy tonight and I don’t know how. Tell me how to touch you.”

  “It does not matter how I am touched,” he told her, pulling her blouse over her head. He dropped it indifferently on the pile of shoes, socks and jeans, and then ran his hands over her breasts. “Only who I am with. And I am with you.”

  His claspers darted out, tickling at her belly and thighs as he cupped her elbows and brought her half a step towards him. Only that far, no closer. He held her lightly in his hands, very still, gazing at her. His palps were spread. Every breath they took was shared. Apart from his claspers tickling at her thighs and some small twitches of his antennae, he was motionless, serene. Enjoying her nearness, as foreplay.

  And it was enough, bizarrely. She wasn’t in the least impatient as she rested her arms on his and looked up into his eyes. Quite the contrary, her excitement seemed to be spinning up in a slow and lazy way, not a tension so much as a peaceful anticipation. She remembered with sudden and almost painful clarity the end of That Talk with her mom at the insufferable age of fourteen, when her mother had concluded the facts portion of the program by telling Sarah that sex was more than just mechanics and feeling good, it was an emotional and spiritual thing. “And that’s why you should wait until you are married,” she’d said, cementing firmly in young Sarah’s mind the idea that
her mother could not be any lamer if she’d been born without legs. “Because it’s all candles when it’s for thrills, but when it’s with the one you love for all time, it’s the sun.”

  Sex with this particular man was never going to be normal or comfortable or completely free of that awkward “you’re stabbing me with your shell” whisper, but it was still amazing, mind-expanding, world-defining sex. Not because of what he did, but because of who he was, and knowing that anything he did do was solely because he wanted to please her.

  “I am ready,” he said at last, emotion as a tight timbre under his words. “Please turn around.”

  “I’m not done admiring you,” she said, and he chirred raggedly. “Can you sit on the bed, there on the side?”

  He could, but not comfortably. His feet flexed on the cheap carpet as he shifted his legs back and forth and finally stabilized. He watched her step out of her panties and stand as naked as he was. His claspers brushed over her sex, feathery and very inappropriately ticklish. He didn’t seem to mind her laughter. His lower abdomen heaved a few times, as with heavy breathing, and then the plates slid apart and she saw what he’d used so well to love her the night before.

  Long and much thicker at the base, tapering almost to a point, it pushed smoothly out and upward in an obvious curve and glistened, expectant, in the air. She touched it, knowing he couldn’t feel her hand, but touching gently all the same. It was all chitin, as unfeeling as his arm or his chest, and had no give at all when she squeezed, but was very minutely flexible, due to the many thin plates of overlapping chitin (she remembered that, all right), right up to the tip, which was ridged with three pronounced rows, like the threading of a screw. It was hollow, and standing over it with the light above them, she could actually see the wet shine of his fluid inside it.

  “I wish you could feel me,” she said.