The Harvest

by Scott Nicholson

  ###

  Junior stumbled through the laurels along the riverbank, ignoring the sharp branches that gouged his skin, not caring that the flesh peeled from his bones like shucks from an ear of yellow corn. Because it wasn't his skin, it was the parent’s, and shu-shaaa had no awareness of pain or decay. There was no death, only change. Only a joining into the life that must become shu-shaaa so the journey could continue.

  Junior heard the life in the trees and under the thickets and behind the shrubs and in the meadow and he stepped into the sunlight and saw the life that was like his own used to be.

  A memory of being human, of a time before shu-shaaa Mull, swam in the swampy mist inside his head. He was about to cross the green earth skin to reach the writhing human lives so that he could touch their hearts with the hand of the parent. Because they sang with light and stole the sun that fed the life and their animal cries filled shu-shaaa's air.

  But another force pulled him away, tugged at him like vines and creepers and kudzu, and compelled him to cross the river and ascend the mountain that rose from the earth to return him to a bed of memories. A place from his human past, a place of roots. An old human who deserved to share the glory, a human whose name was Mull, only its own name had once been Mull, but that didn't matter since they would soon all be one.

  Fording the river, something fell from his pocket and rode downstream on the current, glistening in the sunlight. Another memory waded into his altered consciousness, a recollection of pleasure and smoke followed by a sharp prick of sorrow at things long gone. But the human thoughts were fleeting and quickly suffocated by the verdant rhapsody that was shu-shaaa.

  He flowed toward the Mull farm, biting trees along the way.

  ###

  Tamara pulled her car onto the shoulder of the road, trembling. She was lucky that no cars had been approaching, because she had veered into the other lane and back again, tires squealing in complaint. The creature that had dashed in front of the Toyota had the fuzzy, arched tail of a squirrel, but its eyes were bright wet specks and its head was as slick as that of an otter.

  The animal’s sudden appearance hadn’t startled her. It was the way those radiant eyes had peered through the windshield and flashed with the same secret light that Tamara had seen on the mountaintop. The oozing gash of mouth had opened, and the word shu-shaaa filled her brain and numbed her fingers, and if she hadn’t half believed that such a creature could speak, she might have lost it completely and run the Toyota into the ditch.

  She sat with the engine idling, her forehead against the steering wheel. When her breathing steadied, she looked in the rearview mirror. No creature there, though a thin trail of liquid marked its crossing of the road. Tamara got out of the car and went to the trail. Two black curves of thin rubber showed where the car’s tires had skidded.

  “I’m not listening to you,” she said. She looked in the weeds on the far side of the road. A stretch of barbed wire bounded a hay field. Though the growth was low, the creature could easily get lost in the grass. Maybe it had been infected with rabies.

  She’d heard of the “thousand-yard stare” that rabid animals had, the way they’d look at you as if you were a hated thing. At the same time, they were gazing at a point miles away. But Tamara had never heard of a disease that made a creature leak mucus the way a car with a busted pan leaked oil. And she’d definitely never heard of a disease that caused an animal to bombard you with a telepathic message.

  She knelt and studied the glistening trail, which had already dried on the sun-warmed asphalt. She was about to touch the flaking material, then decided against it. If the animal had been infected, then its saliva or droppings were best left alone. As she watched, the flakes grew smaller and more transparent, then lifted on the breeze in a cluster of pale motes.

  A truck approached and the driver slowed. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out, his face red from an early seasonal sunburn. The back of the truck was piled with worn furniture, a boxy television, rugs, and stuffed garbage bags.

  “You broke down, lady?”

  “No, I’m fine. I just thought I saw something.”

  The man looked at her with narrowed, sick-looking eyes. “Was it something that was there or something that wasn’t there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gazed at the sky. “Been seeing birds, myself. Except they can’t keep up with their own shadows. And green rain. Seen some green rain that wasn’t there.”

  Tamara eased closer to the Toyota, wondering if she should make a run for it.

  “It’s up on Bear Claw,” he said. He turned on his windshield wipers, though the sky was nearly clear.

  “I have to go,” Tamara said.

  “What’s your name?”

  Tamara regained her composure. Maybe the man was mildly schizophrenic and his medicine wasn’t working today. She, of all people, should know that brain chemistry could go out of balance through no fault of the brain’s host. Suffering a mental illness was no cause to treat the man like an ax murderer.

  “Tamara,” she said, peering into the cab just in case the man happened to be carrying an ax.

  “Tamara,” he echoed. “That’s what I figured.”

  “Why is that?” Seven miles from nowhere in every direction and she had no way to protect herself. She eased two steps away from the truck.

  “Didn’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “You ought to listen better.”

  She looked around. No vehicles were approaching. She was about to ask if the man had seen any other strange animals when he waved toward the forest that climbed the slope of the mountain.

  “The trees,” he said. “They’re saying things that ain’t right.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They’re liars.”

  He rolled up his window and headed down the road, the truck’s exhaust lingering in her nostrils. Tamara looked up the face of Bear Claw, wondering what sort of “it” the man had imagined there.

  ###

  The alien aspirated, drawing air through the plants it had converted, and absorbing the energy of the animals that had become part of its own flesh. As it expanded and its roots probed deeper, more symbols collected in the heart-brain center. The symbols brought pain, but pain was necessary, because pain was survival. If the creature was going to become part of this planet, the planet must join in return, a symbiosis that was thicker than blood and sap.

  The symbol pierced its fungal walls and lodged in its center, where the other symbols were stirred in the confused soup of sleep.

  Tah-mah-raa.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jimmy had rounded up Peggy’s first official customer.

  Howard Pennifield entered the trailer behind Jimmy, his shoulders sloped like a gorilla's. He blinked stupidly and looked around at the clutter, trying not to stare at Peggy sitting splay legged on the couch with a drink in her hand. She eyed him, trying to size him up. She knew him from Little League, because his kid was on Little Mack's baseball team. She wondered if Howard could wield a bat better than his slow-witted kid could.

  Peggy had spent almost an hour deciding how to dress. She wasn't sure if she should go for the sophisticated look, with fake fur and that kind of stuff, or just act naturally. She didn’t think men wanted to pay for "natural," they could get "natural" from their wives, bruised-looking eyes and hair in curlers and wrinkles backfilled with foundation.

  She didn't have a whole lot of accessories. Maybe she would make Jimmy invest in some of those see-through garments and thin-strapped lingerie they sold in that Frederick's of Hollywood catalog that kept showing up in the mail.

  In the end, she had chosen her Kmart negligee that was a shimmering pink with ruffles along the bustline. She had skipped the panties. May as well give them an eyeful. It wasn't like she was going to be standing on a street corner or anything. She gave the two men the provocative look she had been practicing in the mirror. She noted with amusement t
hat Jimmy licked his lips like a weasel.

  "We parked behind the woods, Peg, and walked in around the back way," Jimmy said. "May as well keep a low profile, at least here at first."

  Howard nodded as if his head were a sack of feed.

  "Then what are you doing here, Jimmy?” Peggy said. “You going to hold it for him?"

  A shadow crossed Jimmy's face, then he said, "This here's Howard. Don't know if you know him or not."

  "We've met. Hello, Howard." She gave him a painted smile. He nodded again. She hoped the bulge in his wallet was as big as the bulge at the front of his pants.

  "Well, let's get this show on the road," she said, dragging at her cigarette and taking a painful pull of cheap whiskey. Jimmy, looking a little uncomfortable, leaned down to whisper to her.

  "I was wondering if, you know, you and me first? Just for old time's sake. Plus—" he leaned right to her ear—"He wants to watch."

  "What's half of fifty? That’ll be twenty-five bucks, Jimmy."

  "Damn you, girl, it's supposed to be like before. Us being in love and shit."

  She let the negligee ride up a little more, until the soft down of her love nest showed. Jimmy licked his lips again.

  “Twenty-five bucks,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

  Peggy enjoyed this new feeling of power. Maybe this little enterprise had more advantages than just bringing in some cash. She stood and walked to the bedroom, curling her feet a little so that her rear wiggled under the hem of the negligee.

  Howard spoke for the first time. "You said seventy-five, and she said fifty. What's the deal, Jimmy?"

  "Hush up, you peckerhead. You ask for extras, you got to pay for extras."

  The men followed her into the room where she lay in the sagging curve of the bare mattress. Jimmy dropped a pile of green bills on the bedside table and began shucking off his boots and shirt. Howard nodded at her. She winked and stared at the ceiling, imagining a prince swooping from the clouds on a winged white horse.

  ###

  Reggie Speerhorn parked his Camaro behind the GasNGo. He walked through the kudzu-draped jack pines where he and Jimmy had smoked bushels of dope together, then hopped over the oily little stream that bordered the trailer park. He had found that afternoons were a perfect time to get a piece off Junior's mom, before the bus dropped off Junior's dipshit brother. And Junior was probably drooling and puking right now, his guts ripped by moonshine. Reggie hoped Peggy's boot-brained redneck lover hadn't beaten him to the punch again.

  He walked past the silent huddled trailers that were crowded together like sardine cans on a grocery shelf. He didn't understand how people could live like this. Car engines and baby-doll parts were strewn through the bare red yards. Clotheslines sagged from the weight of ragged blankets and underwear with big holes in the crotch. Even the scavenger birds avoided this place, as if instinctively knowing that not a crust of bread would escape these sorry tables.

  The Ford pickup wasn't parked in front of the Mull trailer. Neither was Junior's dad's truck. Reggie crept around a rusty oil barrel toward the trailer, feeling a shiver of excitement ripple up his spine. He tried to picture Peggy at the window, her hand on her pale cheek, waiting for him to drop by, a maiden longing for her prince.

  As he passed the end of the trailer, he heard voices coming from inside. He stooped and ducked under the trailer through a ragged gap in the white aluminum underpinning. He put his ear to the floor. Peggy was saying something, and the mattress was squeaking. Reggie could hear the bed's bare iron legs lifting and settling, lifting and settling, on the groaning floor.

  He looked at the tar-papered tool shed twenty feet away. He could get up on top of it and see through the window. That old apple tree would hide him, that tree with the split trunk and gnarled nest of elbows. A few snowballs of white blossoms protruded from its upper branches as if the tree hadn't yet realized it was dying.

  He glanced around the trailer park. Somewhere a kid was squalling like she had a razor blade under her fingernail, and a dog barked weakly from the end of its chain. Traffic flared past on the distant highway, but the rest of the park was hushed, as if smothered by poverty.

  Reggie slipped behind the shed and scrabbled up its boarded side, pushing his feet against the knots in the apple tree. He wriggled onto the roof, hoping the shed wouldn't collapse. The tips of the tree branches skittered on the tin sheeting around him like wet chalk on a blackboard. He held his breath and looked through the trailer window, still slightly buzzed from his lunchtime smoke break.

  A man was standing in the room, someone Reggie didn't know. He was nodding his big head and scratching at his gun blue stubble. His shirt was off, and his plump red shoulders hunched into a pale, hairy chest. Then Reggie craned his neck and saw the rest of the room. Peggy was in bed with a man who had a Rebel flag tattooed on one side of his back.

  How many other guys do I have to compete with?

  Then he saw her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her nice yellow hair spilling on the pillow, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She was smiling, but it was a frozen smile, the kind you got when you were in church and the preacher told you somebody had died for your sins. Sort of like "Isn't that nice?" but you wouldn't mind being somewhere else.

  Peggy never wore that expression when Reggie was making love to her. She would giggle and nip at his earlobe, her breath fresh on his neck like a morning wind. And she always caressed his back and wrapped around him like one of those eight-armed Buddha babes. But right now her arms were spread out at her sides, palms turned up and fingers slightly curled, as if surrendering to something.

  Whatever that redneck was doing to her, she wasn't fighting it. But she also wasn't enjoying it. Maybe she really did love Reggie, the way she said. And he hoped that she was saving her special stuff for him. Reggie couldn't complain about other guys getting their turn. After all, she was married. But he knew she would stay true to him in her heart.

  And now her redneck lover was getting up and pulling away from her. The other man got into bed with her. He was still nodding, but Peggy didn't even blink, just winced a little as he entered her. Her head rocked back and forth as he went to work, but her eyes never left the ceiling.

  Reggie felt a hot firmness in his pants where the fabric pressed against the sun-baked tin. Maybe he could wait until they left, then he could have Princess Peggy to himself, to tell her that he was in love with her and would she mind letting him show how much?

  But he was afraid Little Mack would come home any minute, and then word might get back to Junior. Damn the world, always getting in the way like that. Love ought not be so fucking complicated.

  He slid backward off the roof and hooked his sneakers on a fat branch. Then he looped down to the ground and peered around the corner of the shed, ready to sneak back through the woods. But somebody was coming.

  A wrinkled, leather-faced old man with an eye patch stepped out of the silver trailer next door. He staggered slightly, as if his knee bones were realigning themselves with every step. The man walked to Peggy's door and knocked lightly, then put his bat-winged ear to the door. He was grinning like a mud turtle as he pulled the latch and went into the trailer.

  That old bastard looks eighty, if he is a day. If he can get it up, then sweet Peggy is a miracle worker. But I don't want to stay around to see if that particular wonder comes to pass.

  Reggie shuddered at the image of the one-eyed old-timer’s stained khakis dropping down around those varicose legs and knobby knees. He was sick now, disgusted at himself for sharing his soul with something that opened up for anything that moved. He was about to jog off, blind with tears, when a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned and found himself in the arms of a new kind of lover, one that made him forget all about Peggy Mull’s lies.

  ###

  Sylvester had traveled many miles. But distance no longer mattered to him. Or to the parent.

  Distance was only time, and shu-shaaa had forever. Forever to return to the b
right hot center of everything where the universe began. Forever to cross space and rejoin its kind in a white collection of energy.

  Forever to gather its seeds together, the seeds that had been scattered by that cataclysmic explosion at the dawn of chaos. Forever to retrace the explosion that had spread the stars and matter and atoms and galaxies across the black mist of nothingness.

  Sylvester dripped with the glory of the parent, stewed in cleansing juices of perfection, and wallowed in the brilliant healing rays of the sun. Its warmth washed his flesh and the sweet breath of the far trees sang in his ears as his budding fingers found memory of the door latch. His mind screamed words, but words had no place upon those flowery lips. He dimly recognized the trailer park and the white metal box that had once had meaning, that drew him forward on some buried instinct.

  He was still much too human, human enough to know the parent was beyond names. Human enough to remember Sylvester Mull and the existence of pain. Human enough to know that hunger came in many forms. And the parent’s hunger drove Sylvester to harvest.

  He grabbed the boy by the shoulder, watched the human eyes widen as Sylvester bestowed the parent’s flawless blessings. They communed, mouth to mouth, and Sylvester tasted speerhorn stooge stoner prince, all crazy images, as their juices swapped genetic mutations. Then he let the boy fall, left him to answer his own calling, and continued toward the white metal box that had once been home.

  He wished he could say words. He wished that the parent would lift its green veil so that he might speak his human heart. But wishes were fruitless. His tongue had gone to seed.