* * * *
We find her on the Internet and pool our resources to pay her airfare and lodging at the B & B downtown. We wish we had something more appropriate, fewer stuffed bears and fake flowers, more hunting lodge, but we don't.
When she arrives we are surprised at how petite she is, smaller than our boys, with an amazingly chipmunky voice and an odd xylophone laugh. She comes into the high school auditorium bearing the strong scent of the B & B roses soap, and we think we've been duped somehow, but, once we adjust our positions, craning our necks to see between shoulders, scooting over to the edges of the cold hard chairs, adjusting to her unexpected size, she commands our attention.
"Now, wait a minute,” she says, laughing (and we resist the temptation to cover our ears). “Why are you all making this so complicated?"
We explain to her again how a werewolf roams amongst us, a monster! We shout and interrupt each other. We try to tell her how the werewolf was once one of our own. “We don't really want to hurt him,” someone says. “We just want him gone."
At this she looks at us in such a way that we are all victims of her gaze. “Now wait a minute, why did you send for me? What am I doing here? Are you hunting, or starting a zoo?"
There is a moment's silence. After all, a zoo might be nice, a perfect addition to our town, but from the back of the room, a voice cries out, “Hunting!” The cry is taken up by all of us. Our boys have been through enough. We will protect them at any cost.
The small pink tip of her tongue protrudes between her pretty lips and she nods slowly, smiling. “He's not necessarily a werewolf. Not all men who turn into wolves are, uh, wait a minute. I'd like to get my fee now."
Duped! We've been duped after all. Suddenly it seems we have found ourselves in the middle of a bad joke, we'll pay her and she'll say something pithy and, all right, perhaps a little funny. Here's how you do it, she'll say and tell us something completely useless. We begin to argue this plan, what does she think we are, country hicks? Until finally she shrugs and nods at Hymral, who has volunteered to be her chauffeur and local guide. He has reported that she asked him if there are any good vegetarian restaurants in the area, which we consider further evidence against her. A vegetarian hunter, who ever heard of such a thing? But when we confront her with all the evidence, her small frame, her flowered suitcases, her lack of weapons, she just shrugs. “What's going on here, folks,” she chirrups. “I've got ten jobs waiting for me right now and I ain't gonna stay another night, lovely as it is. If you want my expert guidance, you are going to have to pay me up front, ‘cause the fact is, catching a wolf just ain't that hard, but I have to earn my living somehow."
"You gonna use your feminine wiles?"
She fixes such a look in the general direction of that question that we all shiver and step back as if separating ourselves from the inquisitor.
"I ain't no prostitute,” she says, disgusted.
Well, what were we going to do? Consult more therapists with their various opinions and modalities? Call the Sheriff who did everything he could to help us find our sons though none of it was enough and they came home only after a freak series of events? Pray, as we did for all those nights and all those days and all those hours upon minutes upon seconds when our sons were being torn apart? Or pay this little Goldilocks person to rid us of the danger that resided amongst us?
We pay her, of course.
* * * *
He lives in a shack at the edge of town and he does not expect our arrival, though certainly he sees all our cars coming up the long deserted road, headlights illuminating the taloned branches of trees and the swollen breasts of snow. Certainly he hears the car doors open and shut. We stand there whispering in the dark, observe the light go on in the small upstairs window and observe it go out again. We suspect he is watching us through the web of old lace curtain there. We feel horrible, just terrible about what we have come to do but we don't even consider not doing it. At last he opens his front door. He is wearing plaid flannel pajamas, boots, and that old jean jacket again, which, later, some of us recall, was the coat his parents bought him when he first came back, all those years ago. “What's up?” he says.
We don't look at each other, embarrassed, and then at last someone says, “Sorry, Jamie, but you've got to come."
He nods, slowly. He turns to look back into his house, as though fondly, though later, when we went in there, we all agreed it was nothing to feel sentimental about, a beat-up couch, an ancient TV, a three-legged kitchen table, and, both disturbing and proof of our right course, enormous stacks of children's books, fairy tales, and comics. To think he wanted us to send our boys here!
He shuts the door gently, thrusts his hands into his pockets, sniffs loudly. He works his mouth in an odd manner, the way boys do when they are trying not to cry.
He walked right to us, as though he had no say in the matter, as though he could not run, or shout, or lock himself in the house, he came to us like a friendly dog to kibble, like a child to sugar, he came to us as though there was no other possible destination. He didn't ask why or protest in any way. It was so strange. So inhuman.
She was giggling when she told us how to do it, as though it were all just a joke, but she was also counting a big stack of money at the time. “How you catch a wolf is you catch the man. This is something the French knew. You don't have to wait until he turns and his teeth are sharp and he has claws."
We live tidy lives; ice-free sidewalks, square green lawns, even our garages, so clean you could eat in them (and some of us do, using them as summer porches). We are not eager to do something so sloppy, but for our sons we make the sacrifice.
We cut and cut looking for the pelt.
"The wolf rests within,” she said before she wiggled her red nail-polished fingers at us and nodded for Hymral to take her to the airport.
We have grown sensitive now to the sound of screams. Our boys run through the town, playing the way boys do, shouting and whatnot, but every once in a while they make a different sort of sound, blood-curdling, we always thought that was an expression, but when a man screams while being cut, his blood is dotted with bubbles as though it is going sour.
Once it was begun, it was impossible to stop.
"Wolf! Hair!” someone shouted holding up a thatch, which caused a tremendous amount of excitement until we realized it was scalp.
All we needed was the hair of the wolf trapped within the famous lost boy to redeem ourselves. There was no redemption.
Our boys slam the doors and kick the cats. We scold them. We love them. They look at us as though they suspect the very worst. They ask us about the famous lost boy and we say, “Don't ask,” but they do, they ask again and again and again, they ask so much and so often that each of us, separately, reach a breaking point and turn on them, spitting the words out, the dangerous words, “What happened to you, while you were lost?"
They tell us. They tell us everything about the years upon months upon days upon hours upon minutes upon seconds. We sweat and cry. They gnash their teeth, pull their hair, scratch themselves incessantly. We try to hold them but they pull away. The sun sets and rises. We sleep to the drone of this terrible story and wake to another horrible chapter. We apologize for our need for sleep, but the recitation continues, uninterrupted, as if we are not the reason for it. We become disoriented, we have waking dreams, and in sleep we have death. Our boys change before us, from the lost sons we kissed on freckled noses to sharp-toothed beasts. We shake our heads. We readjust.
And we know now that what we said for all those years was not just a promise, but a curse; we will always be searching for the boys that were taken from us. We will never find them, for they are lost, no grave to mark their passing and passage by which they can return, like dreams or the memory of sunshine in the dark. We fill their bowls with water, and they come in slobbering, tongues hanging out, collapsing on the floor or couch, shedding hair and skin and we would do anything for them, but still, some days, when the s
un is bright or clear, you can find us staring out at the distant horizon. We have discovered that if we look long enough and hard enough we can see them again, our lost boys, their haircuts ragged with youth, their smiles crooked. They are riding bicycles, jumping over rocks, playing with their friends, shoving hamburgers into their mouths, gulping soda, eating cake, running out the door, running down the sidewalk; the sun shining on them as if they were not just our sons, but sons of the gods and then, suddenly, we are brought back to the present, by that feeling at the back of our necks, and we turn to find them watching us with that look, that frightened, wary look of an animal caged by an unkind human. At moments like these, we smile, and sometimes, on good days, they smile back at us, revealing sharp white teeth in the tender red wounds of their mouths.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Who Brought Tulips to the Moon? by S. L. Gilbow
S. L. Gilbow's first published work of fiction was “Red Card” in our Feb. 2007 issue. In this second story of his, he displays again a deft hand at the sort of social extrapolation that has been one of this magazine's mainstays for fifty-odd years. (And long may that trend continue.)
Mr. Hudson is on the Moon, and he knows why he is there—he has lived too long. He is ninety-four. His heart is strong; his lungs are clean; his kidneys work just fine. There are no lumps on his skin or tumors in his bowels. His hair is full; his sight is keen; his teeth are straight. He is, according to four befuddled geriatricians he has left behind on Earth, in perfect health, and there is little he can do about it.
So now he is on the Moon, threading his way through a cluster of tourists down Corridor Fourteen. A bead of sweat crawls down his nose and slips into his mustache. The androsteward on the shuttle from Dallas assured them maintenance was working overtime to fix the heating problem, but the crowd still grumbles, with an occasional comment on what real service used to be like. Mr. Hudson stops, throws back his head, and reads a banner beaming proudly above him: Lunacy Park—Where Good Things Happen.
"Come along, Daddy,” snaps Laura. She stretches her thin neck forward, plows her way through a mass of stalled travelers and covers thirty more feet of the Moon.
"I'm trying,” calls Mr. Hudson, but Laura doesn't hear him. A large man, six-foot-four in his prime, he struggles with the unsettling change in gravity. The compensating boots and belt are useless, but he still manages to gain control of his footing and slip around a meandering couple holding hands—honeymooners he guesses. As he starts to pick up speed, as he begins to think he is getting used to the gravity and the boots and the belt, he loses his balance, lunges forward and plows over a tiny woman wearing a pink dress. An old woman, almost as old as Mr. Hudson, she flies backward and hits the ground like a dropped fork.
"I'm—I'm so....” Hot blood flows to Mr. Hudson's ears. His breath is short, his face numb. He stands there, gazing at the old woman—her arms outstretched, her legs spread at forty-five degrees, posed as if to make snow angels.
Weary tourists have stopped to watch, stopped to glare judgmentally. One jumps back while another, hovering over the old woman, scolds Mr. Hudson: “Look what you've done."
Laura, now far ahead, has no idea of what has happened. “Daddy, come on!"
"Are you all right?” asks Mr. Hudson, looking down on the old woman like some ancient giant.
The woman in pink wiggles, raises her head, and pushes herself to a sitting position. “What are you doing?"
"Maybe we should call a doctor,” says Mr. Hudson.
"I am a doctor,” says the old woman, touching the back of her head with two thin fingers. “I'm fine."
"Are you sure?"
"There's nothing wrong with me,” she says adamantly.
Mr. Hudson offers a large, dark hand, which the old woman reluctantly accepts. He pulls her to her feet, slowly, carefully. He smiles an awkward, self-conscious smile into stern, brown eyes. She is small, but not frail. Her skin is olive and her hair the color of ice.
"I'm sorry,” says Mr. Hudson.
"You should be,” says the old woman simply.
"Daddy, I'm not waiting.” Laura, an echo in the distance, has lost all patience.
Mr. Hudson nods an ambiguous nod that not even he understands and takes off down the corridor to catch up with Laura. As he dashes away, he hears the old woman, her words faded and incoherent except for one clear phrase: “What a jackass!"
Should he have stayed longer? Should he have been more help? Should he have asked her name? By the time he catches up with Laura, his head is spinning with questions.
"We wouldn't be so far behind if we had gotten better seats on the shuttle,” says Laura, stopping at an intersection. A sign points right toward Lunacy Park while another points left to Smooth Passing Incorporated. Mr. Hudson looks to the right. He would love to go to Lunacy Park. He hasn't been to a park in thirty years, and now here one is, one simple right turn away. An excited little girl sporting blue curls, her sliver of a hand grasping the cuff of her mother's coat, hurls herself down the corridor toward Lunacy Park.
"Hurry,” she squeals. The mother stumbles after her.
"This is where we turn,” says Laura.
"Left, I assume,” says Mr. Hudson.
"You're so silly, Daddy."
"Aren't we going to wait for Danny?"
Danny, Laura's husband, is far behind them now, almost out of sight, a gray smudge in the distance. Perched on his toes, he looks out at the lunar landscape through one of the small, high, thick windows that dot the corridor. Mr. Hudson glances at a portal nearby and, for the first time, realizes he is almost completely underground.
"Danny will catch up,” says Laura. “He always does."
* * * *
Lunacy Park has siphoned off most of the visitors; only a thin ribbon of wandering souls remains. The fast movers are gone now, all except for Laura and Mr. Hudson who spin around a kink in the corridor and come to a sudden stop in front of an enormous holographic sign: Smooth Passing—We Make the Next Step Easy. Laura, not to be slowed, dashes through the “Easy.” Mr. Hudson, less comfortable with walking through solid-looking objects, slips sideways through the “Make” and steps out of the heat into an enormous dome and the cool, artificial breeze of Smooth Passing Incorporated.
Mr. Hudson pulls a tri-fold brochure out of his hip pocket and taps a picture in the center panel. “Welcome to Smooth Passing,” says the brochure as the picture—the very view in front of him—jumps to life: the Smooth Passing Visitors Center in all its splendor; the reception desk of polished stone; the modest garden; The Moonwalk Café. Golden beams shoot up the dome to support a circular viewing platform near the very top. The platform is crowned by massive dark windows looking out onto the surface of a black Moon. Mr. Hudson finally realizes what the brochure has been trying to tell him, what he has refused to believe: this is one fine place.
To the left, a small company of guests lounge around a circle of fountains as two toddlers chase a squirrel up a tree. The squirrel is mechanical and the tree metal, he guesses. It is hard to be sure. Bushes, probably real, emit a requiem interrupted only by the occasional chirping of birds. Mr. Hudson doubts that there are any real birds here, but he looks around to be sure. He doesn't see a single one, but he does see the Smooth Passing hallmark display, familiar to anyone who has ever seen a Smooth Passing advertisement. It is an animated poster of a family—a father, mother, and three children—gently hugging a white-haired matriarch. They hug her over and over and over again—about four seconds per hug—and will do so for eternity. Scribed under the poster are the words “We will miss you.” Mr. Hudson wonders if he will get the hugs.
"Daddy!” Laura is ahead of him again.
"Go,” he says. “I'll catch up.” He wishes he had said that sooner.
As he takes in the view, a few stragglers filter in, filling up vacant space. To his right, he catches a flash of pink. It is the old woman again. He wants to go to her. He wants to tell her how sorry he is, to explain that he
really isn't a jackass—at least not much of one—at least not the one she thinks he is. But he doesn't say anything. He just mouths “I'm really sorry,” then turns, makes his way past the guests who have moved ahead of him, and joins Laura, already giving the receptionist fits.
"I'm sure it's there,” barks Laura. “I made the reservations myself."
"Let her look,” says Mr. Hudson, but Laura has never listened to him.
"I hate wasting time,” she says.
The receptionist, her jaw tight, her face tense with patience, slides her hands over the counter, searching one data-file after another. She is dressed in a red jumpsuit like the ones worn by the early colonists and wears a button on her collar that says, “Making the Next Step Easy.” She flips a strand of limp hair away from her eyes and searches some more.
"Here it is,” she finally says. “Severs, right?"
"Three rooms,” says Laura.
"You're here for one passing?"
"Are you having a sale?” asks Mr. Hudson.
Laura jabs him in the side. It is not a playful jab. “That's right,” she says.
"Do you have the passing form?” Smooth Passing is very clear about filling out the paperwork before you arrive.
"Yes,” says Laura, in a bit of a panic. “My husband has it.” Mr. Hudson scans the crowd and sees Danny stepping through the Smooth Passing sign. “Hurry up!” shouts Laura. Danny doesn't hurry; he never has, not as long as Mr. Hudson has known him. “They need the form!” calls Laura.
Danny ambles to the counter. “You're always in such a rush,” he says, reaching into the inside pocket of his green jacket. He pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper and hands it to the receptionist.
"We need to review the form,” says the receptionist, her face expressionless.
"It's good,” says Laura.
"It's recommended that I read it aloud."
"We all signed it on Earth,” says Danny.
FSF, December 2007 Page 11
