V 14 - The Oregon Invasion

by Jayne Tannehill (UC) (epub)

  He moved toward her without question, and knelt beside her, searching her face for tears, for anger, finding none. She was wearing a leather garment that fell around her like a tent, only places for head and arms piercing it. As he watched she reached for the bottom edge of the leather and pulled it up over her head. And when the garment cleared her hair and was laid aside, she sat fully unclothed, unguarded, her eyes still on his, still unguarded. She unfolded her legs and stretched out on the pallet, trembling just slightly, never taking her eyes from his, still pulling him toward her with the look. He stretched over her and leaned down to kiss her, calming her with his touch, warming with the contact of her skin, embracing her at last.

  With ease he pushed himself up from her and looked at her body. She was smooth and gaunt, small breasts almost flattened to her rib cage as she lay on her back, her stomach mounded slightly between heavy-boned hips, and light-brown hair lay in small curls in the triangle above her long thin legs. He pulled his weight back from his arms and took off the shirt and pants that bound him now. He longed to touch her without the plastic human disguise between their bodies. He looked back to her face and again her eyes drew him down to her. Carefully he kissed her, keeping his tongue concealed behind his lips, excitement concealed behind his contact lenses. He knew she could not see the natural color of his eyes shift as he moved his body to her. But he could not conceal his desire and she did not conceal hers. Now there were no differences that mattered. And the earth, hard beneath them, did not care.

  The forest cooled gradually as the ground gave up the daywarmth. Bats and swallows took to the air to feast on insects, an owl waked and crossed the clearing. Squirrels chattered from the branches above. The sun abandoned the sky, and the moon, no longer in competition, lighted the forest for the night creatures.

  Hadad pulled a layer of blanket from beneath them to wrap Ruth, concerned that her body heat might dissipate in the night air. His own temperature had dropped to match the air around him. He hesitated to touch her face now that his hands were cold, and

  settled for stroking her hair.

  In a few moments Ruth opened her eyes and looked up at him. Now there was no pull, no hunger. He leaned down to kiss her.

  Again his body pressed to hers beneath the light blanket.

  “You’re cold.”

  “Yes, do you mind?”

  “What a silly question. Here, get more of the blanket.”

  “That will not warm me. The blanket warms you with the heat of your own body. But I do not feel cold.”

  “Oh.”

  “There are differences. . . . You came back.”

  “I’m still not certain I believe you.” She looked up into his eyes, frightened, almost crying.

  “Ruth, you must believe me. I cannot lie to you.” “That I do believe. You don’t. . . feel different.” “Except the cold.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. Our anatomy is very parallel to yours. That is why The Leader styled the invasion of Earth as he did. It was easy for us to look as you do. The differences are internal. And some are subtle.”

  “You say ‘The Leader’ the same way that—”

  “He is The Leader.”

  “But he’s done such horrible things to Earth, to all of us.”

  “Because he has considered you less than lizard. You are sentient beings, but you have such primitive belief and scientific systems that he could not pretend that your life form was important in the grander scale. I have read your history books in the library where I learned American. You have done the same things.” “But we didn’t eat human beings.”

  “No, not all of you eat human beings. But some of you do eat lizards.”

  Hadad laughed and Ruth hesitantly laughed with him.

  He quieted and looked at her eyes, looking for the question that could be answered that would take the fear from her body. She was tense beside him, withdrawn though very present.

  “Are you certain you want to be here on the mountain with me?”

  She nodded.

  “It will not be easy. I do not live as you live. You will have to teach me how to make it comfortable for you to be with me. I have always lived alone, even with my family.”

  “Me too.”

  Hadad reached beyond her and took the leather garment she had been wearing and placed it over the blanket that covered her. He stretched out on his back and looked up at the sky through the tall trees. There were clouds. He had dug the shelter deep enough to keep him from the rain as he slept alone. If it rained tonight, he would get wet. He would have to reconsider all of this in the morning. Now he wondered how to sleep. Always he faced out onto the mountain, aware even in sleep of all the movement around him in the night. To sleep that way tonight he must turn his back to Ruth, and he wanted now to hold her to him, feel her warmth against his chest. He turned toward her, pulling her toward him, toward sleep. And for a few hours he was content and she was still. But with the late coyote call he waked, uncomfortable, sensing the world behind him.

  He wanted to move, but he did not want to waken her. He looked at her hair, curled on her arm tucked under her head. As he watched her, she turned and moved a bit away from him. And then, content that she was comfortable, he turned to face out into the night.

  It rained at dawn. Light drops touched his face, then began to dampen the blanket that covered him. He got up carefully and tucked the blanket around Ruth, folding it back away from the edge so that it did not catch the moisture and draw it back to her sleeping body. He found his clothes where he had discarded them the night before and dressed quietly. He was hungry and there would be early stirrings in the rodent world that would make a nice breakfast.

  Ruth was awake when he returned. She wore the leather garment and had straightened the blankets into the pallet as she had found it the day before. The rain had stopped and now she sat cross-legged as she had been when he had come upon her before. But this time her eyes were closed and her arms outstretched on her knees. There was an acrid smell from the trees below the cave.

  Hadad approached quietly and then crouched on the ground beside her, looking out through the cut in the trees, down to the river below. The sun danced on the rapidly moving water.

  “Good morning. You sure get up early.”

  “Often. But not always.”

  “This morning, I . . .”

  He looked over at her and saw her head bowed, her hair hanging forward over her face. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

  “You have been sick.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t asking. I know.”

  “It happens. In the morning.”

  “That is because of the life you are carrying. Your body is discarding all that it does not need for that life and your own.”

  Ruth’s head snapped up at him and her eyes glared. She searched his face, and then sharply looked away, back to her hands as they fiddled with the blanket folds in front of her.

  “I felt the life in you last night. It is not a forbidden thing for my people. Earth ones are different. But I did not sense that you . . . The father, he is in Prineville?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “Dead?”

  “As good as.”

  “I’m sorry, Ruth. I wish I could bring him back for you, but the process of revitalization is complex and would require the help of my people and they would not do that for me. I will guard his child and you. That is all I can do for him now.”

  Ruth sighed. “No, Hadad, he’s not on the ship. It’s not that.”

  “What then?”

  “It just didn’t work. He doesn’t know I’m pregnant. I’d rather he didn’t.”

  “He does not be with you?”

  “That’s about it, he does not be with me.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I used to think I was. I’m not anymore. I’d rather be with you.”

  “Maybe someday you will say that is not anymore.” “H
adad, please don’t.”

  He looked at her and saw the sadness in her eyes that would not go away. He wanted to see her smile, and so he smiled, and as the first ray of sun broke through the trees to light her face, she smiled back and reached toward him to kiss him.

  The cave was too small to give them both comfort. But Ruth had camping equipment in the car. There was no room for her tent in the small clearing on the side of the mountain, but there was room in the copse where they had talked. The older trees would give them more cover from passersby on the highway below. They could not watch Vida so closely, but that was foresaken for other pleasures. They carried the bundles up from the car and began to raise the tent.

  The northeast comer was staked just beside the log where Ruth had been sitting the day before. She glanced at the log and saw there a small chunk of wood with her own likeness carved carefully into the grain.

  “Hadad, what is this?”

  There was one last tap on the other stake and he came around from the other side of the tent to see what she was looking at. He found her turning the sculpture over and over in her hands.

  “I did not know what I was seeing in the wood when I started.”

  “It’s good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “May I have it?”

  “Yes.”

  She put it inside the tent and went back to drawing the fabric taut with the stake.

  When they had brought all of Ruth’s things from the car, Hadad left for town. It was time for him to sweep at the pizza parlor. He left without explanation.

  The restaurant was empty when he arrived. Only the kitchen door was open. It would be another hour before the ovens were heated for the day. He took the broom and started among the tables, sweeping first, readying the floor to mop it later. A chair or two were still on the floor; he turned them up on the tables like the others. He thought of Ruth as he swept. And when his broom hit the table leg, he realized that he had finished half the floor without the attention he usually gave it. He shook his head and put aside his thoughts and focused on the floor. He swept. He mopped. He set chairs. And he thought of nothing else.

  Ruth was angry when he returned. He did not understand why. She could not find the words to explain. He watched her angry. And then the anger was gone. It was late and she was tired and so they slept, wrapped together under the heavier blankets in the tent. He slept happily with her in his arms for a while, and then, as she had the night before, she turned, and he turned away from her, but there was only the side of the nylon tent. He could not see out into the night. He listened for a while to the night creatures moving in the area around the tent. And then he closed his awareness and fell into a restless sleep.

  He awoke with the first stirrings of the jay in the tree above, and went out to find food.

  He went back to his cave, having eaten, and expected to find his fresh clothes behind the rocks where he had left them. They were not there. For a moment he was disoriented, and then he realized that Ruth must have taken them. And then he was upset. He went back to the upper clearing and hunted through the draped materials strung on the line beside the tent. He found his clothes and changed into them. When Ruth came out from the tent, he looked at her, still angry, and then he dropped his head, aware that she would not understand that she had offended him.

  He looked up again and smiled and when she smiled at him he felt her calling him with her eyes, pulling him back into the tent and back to her arms. He did not resist.

  It was never easy. He felt the closeness of the old trees, the confinement of the tent, the preoccupation with “things” annoying. She complained of his long absences, his sudden disappearances, his preoccupation with the sounds of the forest around them.

  They went to town. The people accepted Ruth, first as Jerry’s friend, familiar from previous visits, now as Hadad’s companion. For a while it was easier to be together with other people around to filter the differences. But the tension from the desert was pressing too close.

  There had been hover craft sighted upriver, and the hostility of the people of Vida for the Visitors became more evident. Their blame was categorical and everyone was expected to share the opinion. Hadad was used to the accusations that he knew did not include him as long as his identity was hidden; would include him if ever it were not.

  But Ruth became upset with each generalized attack and more frustrated that she could not defend the honor of the people who were now her people. She could not think of them as lizards and yet she knew the townspeople were right. These Visitors were destroying the Earth.

  At night she would argue. She spoke to Hadad. But her argument was with herself. He listened. There was nothing to say.

  Occasionally she would go down during the day to talk to Madge. At first she did not identify her whereabouts. Madge knew, as Jerry did, that she was camped in the forest above the house with Hadad, with Dave, as they called him. But the older ones had not known and she did not say anything that would include them in her secret.

  Tony was not so cautious. He had come in from school as she had sat at the kitchen table drinking tea.

  “Why are you living in the woods with that lizard?” he asked turning up his nose, as had become the local custom when the lizards were mentioned.

  “Why do you call him that, Tony?”

  “That’s what Mrs. Hardesty calls him.” He had answered with the taunt of his nine-year-old assumed authority.

  Madge had apologized, sent the boy out to play, and tried to change the subject. But Mrs. Hardesty had caught the message and had begun to badger Ruth.

  “No decent folks would have to do with the likes of him.”

  “But you don’t know him, Mrs. Hardesty.” Ruth had tried to defend him.

  “I know everything I need to know.”

  Ruth had told him of the encounter when he came back that night. She had cried, frustrated that she could not defend him, could not defend herself. She was trapped by the truth.

  Hadad had held her while she cried herself to sleep and then he had gone to sit in the old cave, to watch the night descend on Vida.

  He had been wrong to let her stay. He had been wrong to let her know who he was. He had been wrong to let her eyes draw him to her, draw him off his guard, draw him into the world of Earth ones with their fears and angers. He did not return to the tent that night, but curled into the spot he had hollowed to fit him exactly and faced out into the night, sleeping peacefully as he had before Ruth had come back to change his life, his thoughts, his patterns.

  The hover craft came closer and closer to Vida, according to each day’s report. As he had promised, Jerry began to make preparations to move his entire family. He found a car for sale that could keep up with his truck and bought it with what little money he had stashed away. Daily he provisioned the truck, repacked and reoutfitted it. He checked the engine for every possible problem, and when he had finished with the truck, he started working over the car, packing and repacking the trunk, checking and rechecking the engine. Hadad watched him from the hillside.

  Hadad did not return to the upper clearing. He bought other things in town to replace the provisions that he had left with Ruth. He needed clean clothes and so he bought them, new blankets and so he replaced the ones he had had. At first she had begged him to come back to the tent. He had explained as carefully as he could that it was wrong.

  She had argued, suggesting his responsibility for her, for the child. She had cried.

  He could not bring himself to return because he saw only her unhappiness and frustration. He stayed away, hoping she would go away and forget the pain she was experiencing with him. He stayed away, and he longed to go back.

  He returned late from his search for food. Twilight had already filled the gorge. In a few moments it would be night, suddenly, without the gradual fade of day. He circled his cave as usual and was again surprised to find Ruth sitting on the blankets. There was a wooden bowl before her full of sprouts and seeds. She took a
few to nibble, lost in thought, not hearing him as he came into the clearing. She looked up as he approached.

  “I needed to talk.”

  He sat beside her. She wandered from thought to thought, more breaking the silence than conveying ideas. As she talked she reached for handfuls of the food before her and munched them nonchalantly. Automatically, without conscious thought, Hadad imitated her actions and put the food into his mouth. The conversation was pleasant to him, needed to ease the longing.

  But he did not speak, and after the casual conversation was exhausted, Ruth looked at him with sadness in her eyes. Tears rose behind her eyes. And then he did not know what to say.

  “Why won’t you come back?”

  “I cannot be with you.”

  “You were with me.”

  “No, Ruth. It cannot be.”

  The tears came, and behind them the frustrations. All her unspoken disappointments, all her unfulfilled desires—all came pouring from her with accusations that he had not tried to make it work. Hadad sat in confusion, listening to all the things about him that had annoyed her, things that were a part of him that he could not change, that were the rhythm of his life, that defined him as a lizard, gave him integrity as a being not of this planet. And every argument she poured out confirmed his knowing that he could not be with her. And with each new awareness of differences even he had not seen before, new pain wrenched at his inner feelings, taking her further and further from him, leaving him more and more alone.

  “You look at me with that cold stare,” she sobbed. “You never let me see any of your feelings at all. I can’t stand it, Hadad.” The sobs choked her words. “You’re so far away.”

  He wanted to reach to her from the distance he now felt. But he could approach only with truth. And he knew the truth would make it worse.

  “Please say something.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want to see what you feel.”

  “For that you must see my own eyes.”

  “Then let me see them.”

  “Ruth, I am not a human. My eyes are not like yours.”

  She cried harder.