by Eugen Bacon
But back home, once we reached the doors of the manor or the Temple, T-Mo became uneasy or edgy and then Odysseus would appear. In quiet mourning, I would watch him disappear with Novic into the incense room, and I wondered how one so sacred, a Sayneth priest, could breed something so ugly.
Novic was the homeschooling kind, nobody but him worthy of coaching his son. What-am-a-think? Guess it was okay. The little I understood—carelessly revealed when a priest from the planet of 180C gave homily at our wedding—was that Novic was an itinerant scholar, one who traveled the galaxy, learnt new worlds. Mastered natural medicine at Stillwell, cosmo sciences at Abacus, political science at Panada, cosmology at Greenberg in the land of Vernis.
Apparently he had relatives. An uncle named Deimos: scorched almond eyes alert with observing folk, prisoners more than normal folk, prisoners who stood chained, compliant, sometimes standing in parade or crawling ass up on their knees (in neat rows) upon command. Deimos was commander at Shiva, same penal colony my father Runaway deserted. A cousin named Surrimon who cast herself to the ground in a sudden loss of mind, confined in a madhouse in the land of Sayneth. A nephew named Blizzard, a robber, whose palm was cold, the stare of his good eye appraising—one eye was steel, the other dead as stone. Blizzard had found a fortune, or robbed someone of it, and now reveled in a life of aristocracy on 180C.
Besides homeschooling in the incense room, I often heard their play, the child’s squeal of mirth so loud it could break your ears. But when he emerged after spending time with Novic, his eyes were like pinpoints. And then he was dominating, opinionated, deceitful, manipulating, prone to boredom, even cruelty. He was nothing like the infant that Nene, Corio, Anakie, Blanket, Norlane and Ma Space helped pop out of my belly.
Odysseus was cruel to Novic’s new wives—Yaris, Vara, Xinnia, Clarin—when they arrived in their separate timelines. But T-Mo, fastest being ever, raced around in play with the new wives’ offspring. He liked best of all little Cassius, nestled in his mother’s arms, gold coin eyes and a mutiny of amethyst hair. But Odysseus brought Yaris to tears with his unkindness to her child. Pinched it, snatched food or toys away from it. Always like that, mean. Odysseus did things that shook or dismayed everyone—but never Novic.
Odysseus, he would vanish for hours, lie about where he had been, show no remorse for my anxiety. He was secretive in his zippings in and out of the house, finding his true nature.
“Where have you been?” I asked when he came home.
“Nowhere.”
“Nowhere has no distance.”
I waited a moment to see if he would answer and was about to give up when he answered: “Has an end.”
“Seemed a long time coming,” foolishly I persisted. “You can’t just vanish like that.”
“Says who?”
“How about me.”
Odysseus cracked my smudge of hope with two words and a soft glow in his eyes: “From when?”
I looked at him and wept. Nene, Corio, Anakie, Blanket, Norlane and Ma Space would have wept as well had they been around. But Ma Space was long in the ground. Blanket had opened a restaurant and, when she cooked, you tasted history in her dishes. Corio had migrated with her husband to newfound lands on 180C—who wouldn’t if the family was going? There, picturesque islands encapsulated themselves and people initiated escapades and brand new ways of having fun. Norlane—don’t know what happened to her. Only Anakie and Nene were still birthing, but they were spending much time catching babies, too busy with midwifery to notice how my baby had turned out.
While I understood that Odysseus was right—from when did I start having a say about Odysseus?—still I questioned. What is a mother to do?
One day something triggered him in some way and he vanished in some other way. In palpable fashion, his absence that day filled me with a sense of dread, the reasons for the tingling in my fingers, the twist in my gut, the itch in my body . . . completely unclear. My body was still unsettled when he returned. His arrival home and my bewildered questioning were just moments apart when the story broke.
It was Weed the garden boy who told me: “Odysseus, he do something real bad.”
Odysseus had gone to Miss Lill’s and pulled out with bare hands a fistful of heart from howl howl howling Mate. He then flung himself on Warun, swinging over and over at his head a sock full of amethyst rock. Would have smashed Miss Lill’s head too when she dashed to help Warun had Jarvis—the blacksmith who was also a goldsmith and a tinsmith—not heard the screams. But it took four men—Jarvis, Moriac, Berchill and Autry—to pry Odysseus, foaming at the mouth, away. Four grown men to rip him from savagery, and he was just four years old.
A grenade went off in my heart that day. There was no more feeling but deep sorrow and, for the second time for him, I wept. I saw with great insight that my son was a herald of death, perhaps the very father of death, reincarnated across worlds, across centuries. And I remembered the curse of his naming.
That was the only time I saw Novic show rage at the child but it was not the striking rage that closes a slap to the cheek. This one moved inside like a pot of simmering soup. If you looked closely in his eyes you could see it. He took Odysseus to the incense room and this time there was no laughter. When Odysseus burst out it was with eyes turned inward. As for Novic’s gaze, it did not touch me. He stared straight ahead.
It took three whole nights for my T-Mo to emerge. But when he surfaced, his twinkle for me was back, his eyes full of poems. Smile lines filled his face but his voice was broken when he clasped my hand and said, “Walk with me, Mamma, let’s walk.”
I took his hand and together we walked and walked to the end of time.
Miss Lill, she sold up. There was too much randomness in a child she had once thought precious, it broke her belief.
• 9 •
I calmed Novic’s madness.
Other than the laughter in the incense room, I never knew what he and Odysseus held common, what they talked about. If I walked into them, Novic slunk off mid-sentence and I knew when night came he would hit me.
Even then, when he struck me, I did not cry out but lay in submission, the weight of his slap not losing its sting. Wasn’t long before he crouched beside me, his mane to my face and he would pull back my head to bite my neck in mating. I stayed loving him, even when bit by bit he turned my T-Mo into Odysseus.
I calmed Novic with mundane words, things spoken quietly after the mating. “The kitchen sink needs fixing.” That very night he would fix it: the sink, a table leg, a cabinet handle. Then he would slink alone outside and prowl the house. Round and round, the entire circumference of the mansion, pacing and pacing, sometimes leaping like something had agitated him. Often, the sight of Odysseus would calm the madness.
The next day Novic was like quince: acid when he woke up fresh in the morning, soft and tender in daylight. I would have stayed with Novic, cherishing the times when T-Mo emerged. Didn’t I stay after his attacks took on a new viciousness and he put magic to dinosaur my skin? Didn’t I stay when a red-hot poker rod, not magic, broke my eye? But a look made me pause and think and say: what-am-a-stay-here-for?
When Novic gave me that look, it was not an evil eye or something. It was not the rage that boiled from your big toe to finish at your palm behind a strike. This one came with curiosity hinged so steep, it was a measured look. It was like something small had shifted inside Novic, and it was swirling and swirling into something bigger inside him, forming a decision. The look that sent me packing was the kind you gave a gnat you were plotting to kill.
I walked through the spread of lawns and its rows and fencing of flowers, shrubs and trees. A little bird perched on the branch of a low-leafed tree stopped preening its blue feathers, silver-tipped, and crooked its head to look at me. It was a native bird, not a seasonal migrant like the long-legged, slim-bodied glow-bird, upright and elegant when it perched, often at dusk. We
ed was out in the garden and did not turn his head when I ruffled his all over hair as I walked past. But one of the dwarf plants crept all the way after me until I was level with the gate. Its soft stem wrapped gently around my ankle and it hugged me for a moment before uncurling and returning to the garden. What-am-a-know? Weed was a plant whisperer.
At the gateway, I looked back and saw through the liquid in my good eye my sister wives gazing at me from their bedroom windows in the oval face of the mansion, their hands waving quiet goodbyes. The sun was beginning to sink. It was T-Mo not Odysseus who stood hand pressed against his window in one of the three towers of the mansion. He refused to wave but surely he knew—how could I claim him while Odysseus lived?
I turned with a boulder in my heart and put one leg in front of the other, leg leg away away . . . Some of the little children ran behind me a long way before their feet could take no more running. Then I was alone with dusk. For the first time in my life I wanted to take that boulder in my heart, find Novic and bring it down smash on his head.
I left one soul behind to watch over T-Mo when he could step out of Odysseus, who was growing bolder and more domineering. I knew I had done the unthinkable: left my own behind in a place where a child belongs to his ma. I argued with myself over and over that this child understood. Years later it was T-Mo not Odysseus who took the same path I took, leg leg away away . . . leaving behind Novic and roaming the world. He was eleven then, same age as I was wedded.
Tssk. I like this sound.
I did not see fit to say goodbye to Ma Space where she lay, a headstone marking her spot near the northern gate of Creek Point cemetery with the words: Herein lies a distracted beauty, no will to riot. Why no goodbye? Perhaps I was fearful that—even in her grave—she might treat my departure with the caliber of levity capable in a person named Space, raised in a houseful of boys named Hook, True, Bone, Fever, Pretty, Cute, Lantern, Comet, Code and Rush.
SALEM
• 10 •
Yellow Trek was no gleaming metropolis, not even a countrified one.
T-Mo made house for them in Yellow Trek.
“A m-mining town?” said Salem.
“Once a mining town,” he said.
“An old m-mining town?”
“Why not.”
Yellow Trek had seen centuries of gold. Her contours cradled vacant mines, caves, tracks, even ruins of an underground church, now a tourist trap. But this town held no popularity, none of the kind that made people visit. Land was semi-arid, save for patches of farm that grew corn. It was a town safe from change. Everyone knew everybody: from the postman to the dustman to the butcher girl to the four spinsters in the craft shop next to the pick and shovel museum down Fisk Street.
Salem took her time knowing its people, the shop, the museum . . . because she was clutched close to T-Mo’s heart the night he swept them into Yellow Trek. Her stomach heaved as clouds chased away, as pinheads became trees then houses. She knew by now she should be used to the flights, but she wasn’t quite.
First time T-Mo took her higher than a kite goes, drifted her to a place above the earth’s surface, she found herself in a world that shuddered with his halt. It flashed at them something white, perhaps it was lightning, certainly something to salute or dissuade them. When a more vicious light came at them, Salem cried. T-Mo bombed them out of that world, flew them across a river of molten lava, dived and perched them on the edge of a cliff in another that could well have been earth but wasn’t. They walked over shale, bits and bits of loose rock. It was like walking along a quarry. Then they stood holding hands. A warm wind, spicy as it was tepid, blew into their faces. Creatures like whitetails headed to some hidden world flew in formation over the skeleton coast, singing a ballad as they soared.
In Yellow Trek there was no diving. T-Mo drifted them to a standstill above ears of corn, glided to approach the neighborhood. He firmed his hold on Salem to steady her as his own toes touched the ground and he coasted into a run along a golden meadow. It shouldered a corridor of bare-leafed trees. The tree line stretched all the way to a township, then there stood a villa overlooking a vista. T-Mo eased his grip on Salem and her toes also touched the ground.
“Holy moly,” she said.
“Welcome to our home,” he said.
She looked around. “All this.”
“All ours.” He came from behind, cloaked her with his arms.
While they never talked about money, Salem wondered how T-Mo afforded the house or the metal gleamer he drove, those times he drove—not flew like a giant bird.
“I thought as we landed you might be sick all over our house,” he said.
She saw that he understood her fear, how her gut pitched each time they climbed up or dropped from the horizon.
She pushed away from him, faced him. “Are you h-happy?”
“That you weren’t sick?” His smile was impish. “You bet.”
“To s-settle down,” she clarified.
Ancient skin on his face moved. He laughed something deep. “Settle? Why not. You are the one for all of me.”
He scooped her and they fell in a roll on the porch.
“It’s l-like that?” said Salem. She giggled.
Right there on the porch, T-Mo made her forget any more questions awhile. In the afterglow, their brows touched during a whisper of words that were nothing but full of weight, back and forth words like “I see you,” or “Touch my heart,” Later, she remembered to admonish him and patted her skirt back into place. “You’re a b-bad man.”
He shrugged. “I was bred in bad.”
“We have f-frightened the neighbors.”
“Mostly shocked them, I’d say.”
She closed the space and put herself back in his arms. Buried her face in his chest and cried. Fulfillment—this new word in her vocabulary—needed getting used to. She promised herself she would invest in this life, in this relationship.
Salem was a home maker. She set about making the house theirs, and T-Mo brushed away any frugality each visit to the carpenter. He was a chap named Zok with a shop down Hunt Place. He had a weathered look, wore army boots and a two-day stubble. He crossed his arms when he spoke, only to inform you of a pick of furnishings that might suit. His son hovered, a dimpled child with a hooded top. Striking eyes, almost silver, looked at T-Mo. The boy scratched a scar on his left cheek. Salem ruffled tight curls on his big head, but the child had eyes only for T-Mo.
“My daddy said not to talk to any human which I don’t know,” he said.
“Good,” said T-Mo. “You can talk to me then.”
“But I don’t know you.” His voice wanted to please.
“So maybe I’m not human.”
The boy fled.
Zok smiled. “What can I do for you?” His voice was full of grit.
“The finest,” said T-Mo.
“You’ve come to the right place. Where would you like to start?”
“That lot,” T-Mo pointed to a table of walnut timber, its majestic self surrounded by a set of upholstered chairs.
“B-but it costs—” said Salem.
“And that lot,” said T-Mo. He pointed at a heritage sofa suite cloaked with fabric.
“Handcrafted,” said Zok, also an analytical man who shared detail. He fingered the fabric, lingered his feel of texture. “Six hundred thread with a mulberry silk finish.”
T-Mo was almost impatient in his buying, never once quibbling cost. When Salem hesitated or questioned, his impatience was mixed with affection but he was firm on choice. In little time they had bought curtains of textured fabric, structures of aged metal, rustic fittings, finishings for the kitchen, the bathroom . . . Salem converted the villa to something soft yet manly, cozy yet rugged. The master bedroom was a sanctuary with earthy colors, woven fibers, lime and dust accents, all that reminded Salem of the outdoors.
• 11 •
She was not too busy with setting house to notice her neighbors. There was Pike and Moni Catch, who looked like the kind of people who would name their children Cracker, Soot or Piston. But there were no children. Moni was the sort you spoke to and felt her gentleness. Not only was she generous; she was a visual feast. If you painted her face, you felt you had painted her soul. But her husband was a cantankerous git, most likely a petrol head who needed work on his fuselage. He was also quite a unit, built like an orc, dumb as a cupboard.
On her way to the township one morning, Salem walked past the Catch household, saw Pike cursing and kicking a timeworn mower in the yard.
“Jus’ pull de head, Pikey . . .” said Moni.
“Pull de head, pull de motor, pull de gear. Done all dat, bitch won’t stir.”
“Maybe . . . she jus’ need more fuel.”
Petrolhead must have drunk it, Salem was sure.
“Bitch got fuel. Invest coin in dis shit and she don’ work.”
“Maybe . . . jus’ try-n take out—” Moni pointed at the engine.
“It be you I’m a take out if you don’ shut up real quick. Need thinkin’ in ma head, not womanly holler.”
Moni’s natural beauty peaked with calm, like when she visited Salem and they sat sipping tea on the heritage suite. In those times, Salem noticed the shape of Moni’s face, an even oval, the smile line from her nose to her lips, a perfect frame. Her eyes were completely green and big on that face, eyes that surely would turn to emeralds if you looked at them one moment more.
