The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Pru stalked out to the truck. She looked for Uncle Fry. “You all goin’ to leave my Cush alone,” she said, mostly to herself. “I have to get me a 12-gauge and sit out on the road, you goin’ to let my child be.”

  Uncle John Ezekiel Fry appeared, standing in the corn.

  “Uncle Fry,” Pru said, “you seen little Cush anywhere?”

  “Goat shit,” Uncle Fry said. “Rat’s ass-Atlanta, strawberry-pee …”

  “Thanks,” said Pru, “you’re sure a lot of help.”

  * * *

  Pru knew where to find Cush. She left the pickup on the bridge, got her oatmeal, and started down the bank. You could leave that child in the house or on the porch. You could leave him on the steps out back. Whatever you did, Cush found his way to the bridge. The bridge was where he wanted most to be.

  Pru squatted down and tried to see up in the dark, up past the last gray timbers of the bridge, up where the shadows met the web of ancient iron.

  “You in there, Cush?” Pru said. “You tell me if you in there, child.”

  “Mmmm-mupper-mud,” said Cush.

  “That’s good,” said Pru. She couldn’t see Cush, but she knew that he was there. Up in the cavern of the bank, up where the pale and twisted roots hid out from the hot and muggy day.

  “I’m leavin’ your oatmeal, hon,” Pru said. “I’d like you to eat it if you can.”

  Cush wouldn’t, she knew, he never did. The bowls were always where she left them, full of happy ants and flies.

  * * *

  Pru drove up to where the highway met the road to make sure the gate was shut. The man in the Honda was gone. No one else was snooping ’round, which didn’t mean they wouldn’t be back. I might ought to hire someone, Pru thought. I might send up Uncle Fry. Uncle Fry just standing there would likely keep ’em out.

  Driving back across the creek to the house, Pru could see the farm sprawled out in lush array. She could feel the green power there, wild and unrestrained. The air was thick with the ripe and heady smell of summer growth. Every leaf and every blade, every seed and every pod seemed to quiver in the damp and steamy earth. Every fat green shoot pressed and tugged to reach the light, every blossom, every bud, fought to rip itself apart, fought to reach chromatic bliss.

  Pru felt light-headed, slightly out of synch, like the time in Georgia when she’d found some good pot. The land seemed bathed in hazy mist. The corn and the house and the chinaberry trees were sharply etched in silver light. Everything was lemon, lavender, and pink, everything was fuzzy and obscure.

  “Huh-unh,” Pru said, “no way, I ain’t havin’ none of that.”

  She slammed on the brakes and ran quickly to the house. She moved through every single room and pulled all the curtains tight. She took a cold shower and changed her clothes twice. Then she went to the kitchen and made herself a drink.

  Pru knew exactly where all the funny colors came from. They were leftover colors from her dream, and she didn’t care for that. She didn’t need pastel, she needed bright. She didn’t need fuzzy, she needed flat solid and absolutely right. Primary colors are the key. Real is where it’s at. Special effects don’t improve your mental health.

  Pru had watched a TV show that said you ought to learn to understand your dreams. Lord help us, she thought, who’d want to go and do that?

  Pru fixed herself another drink. “I don’t want to see funny colors,” she said, “I don’t want to know about a dream. I don’t want to know ’bout anything, God, I don’t already know now.…”

  * * *

  It surprised Cush to find out who he was. Sometimes, knowing made him glad. Sometimes, it frightened him a lot. One thing it did, though, was answer the questions he’d always had burning in his head. He knew what he was for. He knew for certain now what he had to do.

  Cush didn’t know how he knew, he just did. Mother didn’t tell him and he didn’t think it up by himself. Maybe he overheard the minnows in the creek. Minnows whisper secrets after dark. Maybe he heard it from the trees. Trees rumble on all the time. If you listen, you can learn a whole lot. If you listen real close, if you can stand to wait them out. A tree starts a word about April twenty-six, and drags it out till June.

  Now I know, Cush thought. I know what it is I have to do. He felt he ought to be satisfied with that, he felt it ought to be enough. But Cush was only five. He hadn’t had time to learn the end of one question is only the beginning of the next. He knew what he was for. He knew what it was he had to do. Now maybe someone would come and tell him why …

  * * *

  Cush heard the car stop on the bridge. The doors opened up and the people got out. Cush could see daylight through the planks. All the people wore white. The man and the woman and the boy, everybody spruced up, clean and shining white.

  “Y’all stay here,” the man said, “I’ll drive up to the house.”

  “I’ll read a verse and say a prayer,” the woman said.

  “Amen,” said the little boy.

  The man drove off. The woman sat down on a log. The little boy leaned on the railing and spat into the creek.

  “Don’t wander off,” the woman said, “don’t wander off real far.”

  The woman sat and read. The boy watched minnows in the creek. He heard a bird squawk somewhere in the trees. He saw a toad hop off behind a bush. Mother said toads were Satan’s pets, but the boy thought toads were pretty neat. He walked off the bridge into the woods. He followed the toad down to the creek.

  Stay away, Cush cried out in his head. Stay away, little boy, don’t be coming down here!

  The little boy couldn’t hear Cush. The woman was heavy into John 13, and didn’t know the little boy was gone. The boy saw the toad a foot away. Cush heard the cottonmouth sleeping in the brush. He heard it wake up and find the toad, heard it sense breakfast on the way.

  Cush sat up with a start. Nerve ends nibbled by gnats began to quiver with alarm. Blood began to flow through contaminated pipes. He knew what was coming, what had to happen next.

  Don’t do it, snake, Cush shouted in his head. Don’t you bite that little boy!

  Snake didn’t seem to hear, snake didn’t seem to care.

  Can’t you see that boy’s dressed up clean and white? Can’t you see that’s someone you shouldn’t oughta bite?

  Cush tried hard to push the words out of his head, tried hard to toss them out, tried to hurl them at the snake. Snake didn’t answer. Snake was trying hard to figure where toad ended and little boy began.

  Cush could scarcely breathe. He felt the ragged oscillation of his heart. You want to bite something, bite me, he thought as hard as he could. Leave that little boy alone and bite me!

  Snake hesitated, snake came to a halt. It listened and it waited, it forgot about toad and little boy. It turned its viper will to something down below the bridge.

  * * *

  Something white as dead feet slid down a pale vine, something black and wet moved inside a tree. Green snakes, mean snakes, snakes with yellow stripes, king snakes, ring snakes, snakes of every sort began to ripple whip and slither through the bush, began to find their way to Cush. They coiled around his leg and bit his thigh. They wound around his neck and kissed his eye. Rat snakes, fat snakes, canebrake rattlers, and rusty copperheads. Coral snakes, hog snakes, snakes from out of state. Snakes with cool and plastic eyes smelling dry and stale and sweet. White-bellied cottonmouths old as Uncle Fry, some big as sewer pipes, some near as fat as tractor tires.

  Snakes hissed and snapped and curled about until Cush was out of sight. Snakes cut and slashed and tried to find a place to bite. And when the fun was all done, when the snakes had managed all the harm they could, they crawled away to find a nap.

  * * *

  Cush lay swollen and distended like a giant Thanksgiving Day balloon, like a lacerated blimp, like a great enormous bloat. Eight brands of venom chilled his blood and couldn’t even make a dent. Seventeen diseases, peculiar to the snake, battled the corruption that coursed through Cus
h every day, tried and gave it up and did their best to get away.

  “Mom, guess what,” little boy said on the bridge, “I found me a big green toad.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” mother said, “don’t touch your private parts until you wash. You do your thing’ll fall right off!”

  Mother turned to Psalms 91:3. A few minutes later, the car came back down the road. The man picked his family up fast. He’d faced Pru once and didn’t care to try again.

  * * *

  Cush thought he heard the car drive away. He thought about the clean little boy. He thought about the nice white clothes. He wondered if his brand-new bites would bring the beetles and the gnats and the horseflies out in force.

  * * *

  It was nearly ten at night when Alma got the call from Preacher Will. Alma’s heart nearly stopped. Oh Lord, she thought, it’s Cush. Nothing short of death would get Will to use the phone. It’s Pru, Will said, and you ought to come at once. What’s wrong with Pru? Alma said, and Will rambled on about bad hygiene and mental fits.

  Alma hung up. She was on the road at dawn, and at the gate at ten. There were cars parked up and down the highway, RVs and campers and several dozen tents. People stood about in the red dirt road. They sat and ate lunch beneath the trees. Uncle Fry stood guard and he wouldn’t let them in.

  “Uncle Fry,” Alma said, “What exactly’s going on? What are these people doing here, and what on earth is wrong with Pru?”

  “Oyster pie,” said Uncle Fry. “Commanche-cock-Tallahassee-stew…”

  “Well, you’re looking real fine,” Alma said.

  Uncle Fry unlocked the gate and let her in. Alma drove down the narrow dusty road toward the bridge. It hadn’t been a year since she’d been to see Pru, but she was struck by the way the place had changed. It had flat been a wonder before, springing up new from a worn-out tangle of decay to a rich and fertile farm. She had marveled at the transformation then, but the land was even more resplendent now, more radiant and alive. The very air seemed to shine. Every leaf shimmered, every blade of grass was brilliant green. There were flowers that had certainly never grown here before. Birds that had never come near the place flashed among the trees.

  Alma wondered how she’d write it down. That the worst farm in Alabama state was getting prettier every day? That scarcely said a thing. She wished she’d never started taking notes. All she had accomplished was to make herself more apprehensive, more uneasy than before. Putting things down made them seem like they were real. When you saw it on paper, it seemed as if the farm and little Cush and Uncle Fry, and Prudence Jean the millionaire, were just everyday events. And that simply wasn’t so. Nothing was going on that made a lick of sense. Nothing that a reasonable person who was over sixty-five liked to think about at all.

  * * *

  “All right, I’m here,” Alma said. “I want to know what’s happening with Pru. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why those people are camping at the gate.”

  Preacher Will and Dr. Ben Shank were in the kitchen eating Velveeta Cheese and ginger snaps. Oatmeal cookies and deviled ham. There were Fritos and Cheetos, Milky Ways and Mounds, dips and chips of every sort. Every soft drink known to man. Junk food stock was very likely trading high.

  “Folks say they want to see the child,” said Preacher Will, popping up a Nehi Orange. “More of ’em coming ever’ day.”

  Alma stared at Will. “They want to see Cush? What for?”

  “There’s blueberry pie on the stove,” said Will.

  “You make sure those people stay out,” Alma said. “Lord God, no wonder poor Pru’s in a snit! What’s wrong with her, Ben, besides that?”

  “Hard to say,” said Dr. Shank, digging in a can of cold pears. “Pixilation of the brain. Disorders of the head. Severe aberrations of the mind. The girl’s unsettled somewhat. Neurons slightly out of whack.”

  Alma had never much cared for Ben Shank. What could you say about a man who’d spent his whole adult life working on the tonsil transplant?

  “Fine,” Alma said, “you want to kind of sum it up? What’s the matter with her, Ben?”

  “Pru’s daffy as a duck.”

  “I wouldn’t leave Satan out of this,” said Will.

  “Maybe you wouldn’t, I would,” Alma said. “Where’s Pru now?”

  “Up in her room. Been there for three whole days, and she won’t come out.”

  “That girl needs care,” said Dr. Shank. “You ought to keep that in mind. I know a real good place.”

  “The arch fiend’s always on the prowl,” said Will, “don’t you think he’s not.”

  “What I think I better do is see Pru,” Alma said.

  * * *

  Alma made her way through the parlor to the hall. Through cartons from K-Mart, Target, and Sears. Through tapes and cassettes, through a stack of CDs, past a tacky new lamp. Coming into money hadn’t changed Pru’s taste a whole lot.

  Pru’s room was nearly dark. The windows were covered up with blankets and sheets. The sparse bit of light that seeped in gave the room an odd undersea effect.

  “Pru,” Alma said, “you might want to talk me in. I don’t care to fall and break a leg.”

  “I’m not crazy anymore,” Pru said. “An’ I don’t care what that fool preacher says, I haven’t got a demon in my foot.”

  “I know that,” Alma said. She groped about and found a chair. “What you think’s the matter with you, Pru? Why you sitting up here in the dark?”

  Pru sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed. Alma couldn’t see her face or read her eyes.

  “If I’m sittin’ in the dark, I can’t see,” Pru said. “I don’t want to see a thing, Alma, seeing’s what messes up my head.”

  “Pru, what is it you don’t want to see,” Alma said, almost afraid to ask. “You want to tell me that?”

  “I ain’t going to a looney house, Alma, that’s a fact.”

  “Now, nobody’s going to do that.”

  “I sit right here, I’ll be fine. Long as I keep out the light.”

  “You don’t like the light?”

  “I flat can’t take it no more,” Pru said. “I can’t stand anything pink. Everything’s lavender or a wimpy shade of green. Everything’s got a fuzzy glow. I’m sick to death of tangerine. I feel like I fell into a sack of them after-dinner mints. Lord, I’d give a dollar for a little piece of brown. I’d double that for something red.”

  Pru leaned forward on the bed. Alma reached out and found her hands. Her eyes were big and round and her hands were like ice.

  “I’m scared, Aunt Alma,” Pru said. “Corn don’t come in baby blue. I never seen a apricot lettuce in my life. I know what’s going on, I know that. Them Easter egg colors is leakin’ through out of my dreams. They’re comin’ right in and I can’t hold ’em back!”

  Alma felt a chill, as if someone had pressed a cold Sprite against her back. She held onto Pru real tight.

  “I haven’t seen any blue corn,” Alma said, “but I know what you’re telling me, Pru. I want you to think on that, you understand? Hon, it isn’t just you, it’s not just something in your head. I could feel it driving in, like everything’s humming in the ground. Like every growing thing on the place is just swelling up to bust.”

  Alma gripped Pru’s shoulder and looked right in her eyes. “You’ve got about the prettiest farm there is, but you and I know it isn’t how it ought to be. It doesn’t look right, Pru, and it isn’t any wonder that you’re having color problems in your head. Shoot, this place’d send Van Gogh around the bend.”

  “Oh God, Aunt Alma, I’m scared,” said Pru, “I’m scared as I can be!”

  Tears trailed down Pru’s cheeks and Alma took her in her arms.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Alma said. “Don’t you worry, it’ll be just fine.”

  “You ain’t goin’ to leave me here, are you?”

  “Child, I am staying right here,” Alma said, “I’m not going anywhere at all.”

  Alma hel
d her tight. She could feel Pru’s tears, she could feel her body shake. I’m sure glad you’re hugging real good, Alma thought, so you won’t know that I’m scared, too.

  * * *

  Alma shooed Will and Dr. Shank out the door and started cleaning up the house. The kitchen took an hour and a half. She worked through geologic zones, through empty pizza cartons and turkey pot pies. Through Ritz Cracker boxes and frozen french fries. It might be that malnutrition was affecting Pru’s head, Alma thought. A brain won’t run in third gear on potato chips and Mounds.

  She had the house in shape by late afternoon. Pru seemed better, but she wouldn’t leave her room. Alma was alarmed to learn that Cush stayed at the creek all the time, that he wouldn’t come back to the house at all.

  “It isn’t right,” Alma said. “A little boy shouldn’t live beneath a bridge.”

  “Might be he shouldn’t,” Pru said, “but I reckon that he is.”

  * * *

  Alma fixed Pru supper, and took a plate up to the gate for Uncle Fry. If Uncle Fry had moved an inch since she’d left him there at ten, she couldn’t tell. The cars were still there. People stood outside the gate and looked in. They didn’t talk or move about. Some of the men had awful wigs. Some of the men were bald. Some of the men wore bib overalls. More than a few wore funny robes. They all gave Alma the creeps. What did they want with Cush? What did they think they’d see? As far as that goes, how did they even know that Cush was there?

  “I don’t want to think about that,” Alma said, as she drove back toward the creek. “I’ve got enough on my mind with just Pru.”

  * * *

  Alma left the car on the road and took some oatmeal down to Cush. She walked through tall sweet grass down a path beside the bridge, down through a canopy of iridescent green. The moment she saw the creek, she stopped still. The sight overwhelmed her, it took her breath away. Thick strands of fern lined the stream on either side. Wild red roses climbed the trunk of every tree. Fish darted quicksilver-bright through water clear as air. Farther toward the bend, red flag and coralroot set the banks afire.

  There was more, though, a great deal more than the eye could truly see. Standing on the bank in dusky shade, standing by the creek in citron light, Alma felt totally at peace, suspended in the quiet, inconceivably serene. The rest of the farm seemed far away, stirring in the steamy afternoon, caught up in purpose and intent, caught in a fever, in a frenzy of intoxicated growth.