“What are you smiling about?” Dog said.
“We’re all special,” Brain said.
“Do you really think so?”
“We don’t need them to tell us we are or we aren’t.”
Now Brain remembered Ms. Oliver showing him a book that had produced another great leap in his understanding of the world. Ms. Oliver had a soft spot for the kids. Black, Yankee, and citified to boot, she knew what it was like to be left outside. Maybe she saw him as Black too because of the color of his skin and curly fur, though his mother was White, and such distinctions didn’t matter to monsters. Only one distinction mattered.
He played dumb in class. Being smart got you singled out by the teachers. Talking educated seemed to infuriate them—a bit of irony. Biggity, they called it. Ms. Oliver saw right through the act but kept his secret. She brought him contraband books to nourish his intellect. History, political theory, physics, philosophy. He went from fascination to frustration as his mind developed and was able to go even further than the books did. By the age of ten, he’d invented a new branch of mathematics. At eleven, he was toying with advanced theoretical physics.
Then Ms. Oliver brought him the book that changed his life. Myths and Monsters, Volume I, by Adam Nowak, hardcover, published in 1967. The Home system didn’t allow the mutagenic to read books like this. It banned texts like Beauty and the Beast, The Island of Dr. Moreau. Instead, it showed them films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Anything with plucky normal boys rescuing girls from evil, rampaging beasts. Not for entertainment but education, more social conditioning. Brainwashing. Know your place, children. Mess with the normals, and you will lose.
It took Brain only a few minutes to read and store Myths and Monsters in his photographic memory.
Then he’d sat satisfied and full, his eyes glazing as he studied the pictures in his mind. A lion with the head and wings of an eagle. An Egyptian with a jackal’s head. A woman with snakes for hair, whose very glance turned men to stone.
“You were here before,” Ms. Oliver had said. “Do you see that, George?”
George, his slave name. George Hurst.
“Yes, I see,” Brain said.
“I think the old stories might be real. Based on things that actually happened.”
“We were gods.”
“The bacterium that caused you must be old,” Ms. Oliver said. “Don’t you think?”
“Very old,” he agreed. “Perhaps it has always been with us. An evolutionary wild card waiting for its moment to awake.”
“There’s so much we still don’t know about it. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll study it and tell us all what it is.”
Ms. Oliver was trying to inspire him, convince him to reveal his intellect to the world and put it to good use.
He was inspired. Just not in the way she’d intended.
“Maybe I will,” he said to satisfy her.
You worshipped us, he thought. And you will again.
From that day, Brain started planning an uprising.
When he grew up, he wanted to be free.
Five
Long, deep kisses under the old dogwood tree at the edge of the school football field.
Their mouths parted with a gasp. Jake took a breath and plunged into her neck. He worked his way along the base of her throat, nibble by nibble.
“Motherogod,” Amy said.
His touch, smell, taste. The blood rushing in her ears.
“Thank you, Mr. Benson,” he murmured.
“Why are you thinking about him all of a sudden?”
She wondered how he could think at all. Her mind had blanked out with excitement, going away to some special sensory place. She didn’t even know what day it was.
“Pa always said you could get the germ by kissing,” Jake told her. “Thanks to Mr. Benson, now I know that ain’t true.”
She smiled. “Now you know. Good Lord. Well. I better get on home.”
They couldn’t go any further, they knew that, and even kissing had its limit. A fuzzy border through which one crossed from fun to frustration. He hugged her once more and let go. For all his renegade charm, he was a gentleman.
She picked up her schoolbooks and hugged them against her chest. “I don’t know if I can even walk. My legs have gone all to rubber, sir. You have turned me to jelly.”
“Hold my hand then, miss.”
“You’re a fine kisser, Jake Coombs.”
“You ain’t like any other girl, Amy Green.”
“How do you mean? That I ain’t like the other girls?”
“Because you’re perfect,” he said. “Perfect for me.”
She liked the sound of that. Perfect. She thought of him as perfect too. Her scalp itched like ants crawled along it. Her old nervous habit wanted its attention. She didn’t scratch. Instead, she squeezed his hand as they walked along the road past telephone poles wrapped in kudzu vines.
“You know all that already,” she said. “Going out with me just one week.”
“I’m a fast learner. Hey, what are you doing Friday night?”
“What I do every night, I guess. Why are you asking?”
“Me and Troy found a clearing in the woods by a deer trail,” he said. “Somebody set rocks in a circle to make a fire pit. We’re gonna build a fire and listen to music. Talk about life.”
“You ain’t scared of the monsters?”
“You know I ain’t scared of any monsters.”
He hadn’t been playing the renegade today. He meant what he said about the plague kids being people.
“What about the wild ones?” she said.
Some of the plague kids ran away from the Homes and lived in the woods, where they went feral. The farmers shot at them if they came around.
“That’s just another story they tell to scare us,” he said.
“Maybe. So who all is going out there?”
“Like I said, me and Troy. Sally and Michelle too. Michelle and Troy are fixin’ to steal some beer or liquor from their folks. We’ll make a party of it.”
She’d gone to school with them for years but had never really known them. For as long as she could remember, it was just her and Mama. Her whole life spent going through the motions of being a normal girl while living in fear of people. This summer, she’d decided to reach outside her shell. She’d befriended Sally, who went to the same church as her. The one where Jake’s daddy preached.
When school started, she’d decided to take an even bigger risk by having a boyfriend. She’d chosen Jake, who offered just the right mix of danger and kindness. She’d started hanging out with Michelle and Troy because of him.
Amy paused at the juncture of two cracked roads. Yellow jasmine grew along the side. “A party under the stars. Sounds like fun. I wish I could go.”
“You could if you really wanted,” Jake said. “Think about all the kissing we could get into.”
Amy considered. The mischief appealed to her. A little danger. “Well, I might could sneak out just once. You better be careful with your daddy, though.”
Reverend Coombs’s Methodist church stood outside of town on a lonely stretch of County Road 20. Every Sunday, he warned the townsfolk about the apocalypse. The plague was a sign, he said. Punishment for man’s sins. God is coming soon, and boy, is He angry about it. Amy wondered why Mama wanted to go every Sunday to hear such talk.
“Pa don’t scare me,” Jake said. “He’s mostly bark, not bite.”
“He must be. You dress like that. The music you listen to and the things you say.”
Jake laughed. Amy tilted her head back. He leaned in. Their teeth clicked together. Then their lips found each other again. They stood in the weeds along the side of the road and kissed until a truck rattled past honking its horn.
“I might be in love with you,” he said in a cloud of dust.
She smiled and walked off toward her home. She threw one last look over her shoulder and noted with satisfaction he hadn’t moved an inch. He stood
in the yellow jasmine in his Black Flag T-shirt and army surplus boots.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jake Coombs.”
“Do you love me back or not?”
“You know the answer to that.”
He grinned. “Friday night. You think on it, okay?”
“I promise I will.”
Jake waved. Amy bounded off with a skip in her step. She couldn’t wait to tell Sally she’d kissed him. She felt ready to burst with the news. Special, like she’d joined an exclusive club. Experienced now at something that for most of the girls in her class was still a delicious mystery. Becoming an adult was not so much a road as a ladder, and she’d just climbed one of its rungs.
She walked alone on the dirt road the way she always did during the school year, but she didn’t feel alone. Jake Coombs was going home with her in her heart and mind. The big house emerged past a stand of yellow poplars, surrounded by rolling green farmland that smelled like wet earth.
Going home to her hot, run-down house didn’t seem so bad now. She would read her health textbook cover to cover tonight. Learn everything. Kissing had proved a whole lot of fun. If she could kiss, maybe there were other things she could do.
She’d taken some big risks this year, and they’d shown her a much bigger world. Amy was ready to climb the next rung and see how high she might go.
Linda Green sat on the couch in her darkened living room and waited for her baby girl to come home while she watched the end of her soaps. Cigarette smoke hung in drifts pushed along by a humming fan. She stabbed her Virginia Slim in the overflowing ashtray on the side table and flicked ash from her housecoat. Then she sipped her sour mash whiskey to numb her brain some more.
What a life, she thought. Goddamnit all.
Things hadn’t always been like they were. She hadn’t minded growing up in a small town. Plenty to do for a pretty young thing with a mind for trouble, slim waist, and bust that could stop traffic. Boys once fought with their fists over the chance to take Linda Brazell out on a Saturday night. Grown men gave her the eye and winked while they offered her babysitting jobs.
When school ended, she’d picked Billy Ray Green, who had a good-paying job at the cotton mill, and became Mrs. Green. Billy Ray never drank or hit her. He gave her this house, which he’d inherited from his dearly departed mama. That was in 1968, the year the tabloids started printing stories about monster babies along with all the dismal news from Vietnam. Portents and signs. Important people reassuring the terrified public. It all had nothing to do with her. She had plenty on her mind starting her life as an adult.
A big adventure, but after a while the excitement wore thin. She began to miss her glory days when the boys fought over her. Men still gave her the eye, and she grew bored enough to revisit old tricks. She found plenty to occupy her during the long hours Billy Ray labored at the mill. Out-of-towners, traveling salesmen and the like, which was her rule on how to play it safe. That was how she caught the germ, which she found out about when she made Amy.
She’d accused Billy Ray of giving it to her. Got herself so worked up she almost believed it. He called her a no-good whore and thanks a lot for ruining his life. He left soon after and good riddance to that son of a bitch, leaving her with a baby like that.
The kitchen door slammed. Amy walked into the room. “Hi, Mama.”
Linda lit a fresh Virginia Slim, her eyes on her soap. “There’s a TV dinner in the Frigidaire for you. You want to watch a program with me while you eat your supper?”
“I got homework first.”
“Suit yourself, baby girl.”
“Hey, Mama.”
Linda wrenched her eyes from the screen. “Hey, what?”
“That thing we talked about? How I’m different and all.”
“You ain’t different. You’re perfect. Look at you.”
“Mama.”
She sighed. “What do you want to know?”
“What you told me before. About who I am. Was it the honest truth?”
Linda wanted to laugh but coughed into her fist instead. Goodness gracious, would she be sitting here on her sweet ass wasting away if it weren’t the plain truth? Would she be spending her time watching TV and reading romance novels all day long? Going to a hellfire church that judged the infected as sinners?
“I wish it weren’t,” she said.
“Some mamas make up stories to keep their kids from doing bad things,” Amy said.
“I ain’t them, sugar.”
“I don’t look any different than normal people, Mama.”
Linda finished her whiskey and winced at the burn. “Thank the good Lord for that.”
“I kissed a boy today. You can’t get it from kissing. I learned that in health class.”
“You be careful anyways,” Linda said. “You got the plague in you. Do you want to make a monster baby? Then that boy will leave you as sure as your daddy left me. He’ll never be able to love a girl again. He’ll be an untouchable. If you love him, don’t make him hate you.”
“We’re just kissing is all. We ain’t stupid.”
“You’re young. Stupid goes with the landscape.”
“But how do you know?”
“How do I know what?”
“How do you know I’m one of them if I don’t look it?”
Linda remembered pushing Amy out of her. Covered in sweat, legs in the air, her big tits leaking milk. The doctor handed her a perfect child. Everybody relieved. Mrs. Green, you have a daughter, he said. Give her here, Linda said. I want to hold my little angel. The doctor and nurses left to do other things while Amy fed at her breast. The most natural thing in the world. A fierce love overtook her, a love that felt brand-new and ancient at the same time, a love that started as deep as her atoms and eclipsed everything. Then Linda saw. She saw what her little girl really was. She swallowed her scream and let the baby feed.
She couldn’t hide it from Billy Ray, but she could from everybody else. Her Amy wasn’t going to grow up in no freak house, end of story. Billy Ray, the men she’d played around with, a free life, everything she wanted—none of it added up to a hill of beans compared to her daughter’s welfare. Linda would do whatever it took to protect her. Her baby girl would grow up in the real world and have a normal life, as long as she wasn’t stupid.
“I just know,” Linda said. “Never mind how. I been hard on you, you have the answer why. You play along, you got your whole life ahead of you.”
“I just wish,” Amy said.
“I know. You get to your books. I’ll bring you a nice glass of ice water and syrup in a bit. TV dinner in the Frigidaire. Dynasty is on tonight.”
Linda would rather watch The Cosby Show, a wholesome new program. A doctor and lawyer and their family enjoying a life she could never have. A show about Blacks, but that was all right. She had nothing against Blacks if they acted like proper folks. Amy didn’t like the show. She was at the age where seeing people act proper was boring instead of comforting. Amy liked Dynasty, glamorous and beautiful people fighting to see who came out on top.
Tonight, they’d watch Dynasty.
“All right, Mama,” Amy said. “Love you.”
“Love you, too, sugar,” Linda said as she watched her daughter disappear upstairs.
After Dynasty, she will drink some more whiskey and fall asleep right here where she’s sitting. Tomorrow morning, she will remember almost none of it.
Six
Reggie Albod ate a heaping breakfast of bacon, cornbread with syrup, and biscuits smothered in rich brown gravy. Washed it down with sweet, hot coffee while his daughters crowded and fussed about the kitchen. Judy, who’d been a fine woman, passed on some years ago. The boys in town were always asking when he was gonna get himself hitched again. He always laughed and shot back, With four growing girls under my roof, where in hell would I put her?
Plus the plague still going around. People getting tested before they shared a bed. Courtship wasn’t what it used to be. He was done with all that
nonsense. With four daughters, he had enough women in his life. At his age, he had just one mission: take care of himself and what was his.
He walked out onto his porch and leaned against a paint-flecked column to roll a cigarette. He licked it closed and smoked it while he watched the sun come up. He tossed the remains of his smoke, coughed, and spat a gob of phlegm. Then he stomped into the yard ready to start the day’s work.
Bolls were opening on the ripening cotton. Along with peanuts, it was his main cash crop. Albod also had in his garden sweet potatoes, squash, beans, peas, cabbage, and tomatoes set to be picked and canned. The chickens and pigs needed their feed, the cows were already lowing, fences awaited repair. He reminded himself today he had to make a run down to Ackley’s Feed Coop then do a little trading at the general store. He wanted to acquire tobacco, some oil, and various sundries for his girls.
Today, the creepers were coming.
They’d been working for Albod three to four days a week for the last eight years. At first, they didn’t know a damn thing. They ran around making a mess. Albod remembered one little fella being terrified of the chickens. He showed the boys his cattle prod in case they had a mind for mischief. Since then, everybody got along just fine. The creepers matured into good farmers. Now he didn’t know what he’d do without them.
He fed the animals and milked the cows. Then right on time, he spied the pickup leading a cloud of dust along the road. It pulled into the yard. Dave Gaines cut the engine, stepped out, and stretched. The creepers sat in the back in their dirty overalls, waiting to be told to pile out.
“Morning, Reggie,” Gaines said.
“Morning, Dave. I don’t see Goof. He got the sniffles or what.”
Gaines’s good eye stared at Albod. His lazy eye looked somewhere else. “The Bureau came around. They took him away for a while.”
“Is that so?” Albod paid his goddamn work fees. The Home should have been helping him for free considering all the taxes he paid to Washington.
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