by Eugen Bacon
“Could have fooled me,” said Tonk. Poured himself another drink, gulped it in a swallow. “What grades?”
“Sir?”
“Last semester. What grades did you get?”
“I . . . uh . . .”
“Speak up, boy.”
“I’m eighteen, sir,” said Vida.
“I asked a simple question—did you pass or fail?”
“Mostly A, sir.”
“Sure fooled me.”
Myra’s face was a death mask.
“B-be nice to the young man . . .” begged Salem.
“Why?” snapped Tonk.
“He . . . just . . . because . . .”
“I’ll settle for because. Myra brought him to my home for a reason, namely for vetting. I shall do exactly that. Vet him.”
“M-maybe you should . . .” Salem tried again.
“I should do nothing of the sort.” Unseasonable eyes slid back to Vida. “Give me six reasons”—icy as he was appraising—“why I should let you betroth my gal.”
Vida could manage only two: “She . . . um . . .”
“That’s reason enough,” barked Tonk.
“I sorta like her.”
“Hrrumph.”
Later, Vida could not remember a single food or drink item that was served. Celery or chicken? Baked or souffléd? Water or wine? Pikelets or quiche? All he remembered was how burning his cheeks, how taut his tie, when Myra unmasked her eyes to address her stepfather. “The one time I think to bring a boy home for your—”
“Exactly! A boy. Bring him back when he’s a man.”
A blazer not tails.
At first Vida blamed his outfit. Then he realized Tonk would have picked him apart no matter what. The man would have found reason. He would have pecked pecked pecked until Vida crumbled.
Blazer or tails: it didn’t matter. Not for Tonk, it didn’t.
• 30 •
Silhouette . . .
First, they had secrets. Deep, dark secrets buried in the depths of a river. One secret was named Dale, the other was Al.
Now Myra and Vida had a lifetime.
A trail of light chased them beyond the Earth’s atmosphere into a new world. Wrapped in Myra’s strength, Vida savored a moment both sacred and historic. Night sped behind and stars fell like meteors. There, right there, south of the constellation Leo, in a place beyond time and space, his skin glowed. His consciousness expanded into a higher state that was clear of singularity or polarity, as he and Myra sank into a web. There, he surrendered to an ecstasy that combined awakening, exploration, initiation, abandonment.
Amalgamation!
• 31 •
Before the honeymoon there was a late afternoon gala in the little town of Middle Creek. The normality of Ken and Margo Stuart grew apparent at the wedding feast. For the first time since Vida’s betrothal to Myra, his parents shared a table with Myra’s folk. There, at the peak of a misted hill, inside a manor that held several views to the waterfront, Ken—Vida’s father—rubbed his chin in thought at one end of the table, building amusement. His coffee eyes were full of smiles, his face eternally tickled. Ken, uninhibited and a picture of good form, was a whole head shorter than his wife Margo opposite.
Vida’s mother Margo had indigo eyes that sometimes shifted to blue-gray on a face that told nothing. She carried well her cool head and handsome face. Looking at Margo, it was clear to anyone without searching closely where Vida obtained his wiry frame and striking eyes.
Salem’s hair over the years had turned fine and curly as a poodle’s. This day she drew it in a tier dazzled with glitter. Vida thought how fragile her beauty, how visible the flutter of her heart on her temple. She was more nervous today than she was the first time Myra invited him home to dinner, when Vida was all knees and elbows, more in charge of his broken voice, but still a wreck under Tonk’s piercing eye. Now Salem sat fidgety.
As for Tonk . . . this man whose public arrogance and ill manners were familiar as jeans, he gazoozled (Myra’s word) the rum. He waved at a servant, who came running, almost tripped. Freshly watered, Tonk glanced at his diamond-crusted watch. It was a statement; Vida was not fooled. Tonk sought less to indicate there were matters of greater concern than Myra’s big day and more to flaunt that half a bank had been thrown at the wedding without denting Tonk’s purse.
A prudent waiter thought Tonk had imbibed enough and took it upon himself to switch the neat alcohol with lemoned soda. Tonk hooked his hand into the waiter’s elbow before the man could whisk the cocktail glass away, and said, “Darling, I’d like my drink back. Now fuck off.”
A young woman with boozy eyes giggled. The ruddiness of her lipstick matched the color of her hair. All around, the chitter chatter of Middle Creek folk:
“My husband wanted to give the maid a roasting but I said to her, three strikes you’re out . . . We got to five strikes . . .”
“I said to the mechanic, hello pops—how much is that two hundred dollar job for the car? He said five hundred . . . These tradies make the bucks . . .”
“We scoured the streets, even down the river bank, the kitten was nowhere and the kids were going crazy . . .”
Mysterious and distant, exquisite in an ivory dress with Grecian pleat, Myra appeared oblivious to gossip. Vida thought how far different his wife looked from the woman earlier who, straight after the officiating, was keen for the honeymoon. “You, husband,” she had murmured, fondling his lapels. “How edible.” He had grinned, clasped her hand before it undid a button. An usher swept them along a hallway into an open dining area of Myra’s childhood, a spacious hall held aloft by four marble columns. Each pillar was sculpted with the cameo of a stallion whose emerald bit shimmered with light. Teardrop chandeliers hung precariously overhead from a gilded ceiling stretching several rooms long. Lavender and cream swathed walls and tables, accentuating and radiating luxury.
Guests who had come to observe history shared canned laughter. They toasted each other, good crops, wealth, health. Men calmed their stomachs and nibbled, not gobbled, enriched canapés and sweetmeats that fitted snugly to their palates before melting like snowflakes. Bread carried the taste and texture of barbecued chicken. An assortment of sweet, sour and spicy dishes, so moist they redefined the meaning of tender, stood in silvered bowls alongside magnums of vintage wine. Women moved past curiosity at the unlikely interspecies alliance to quietly assess each other’s outfit: silk, chiffon or a synthetic mockery? And jewelry: diamond, rhinestone or glass?
Mauve and gold azaleas, bird of paradise petals, and tall white lilies spread heady scents that did not distract from these appraisals; Tonk’s affluent display, achieved with ease, merely exacerbated it. Now he turned to Vida who was leaned over a plate fingering food, gobbling.
“Who would have thought it possible?” he said. A harmless enough statement, if one did not know Tonk. Today he was off his head on something; Vida didn’t think it was the rum.
Vida’s smile was bland. At nineteen and married to Myra, he felt ease. He leaned, offered Tonk a platter of wafers.
“Grief, no,” said Tonk.
Vida passed on the snacks, wondered whose idea had placed him at his father-in-law’s elbow.
“You have made an honest woman,” Tonk said.
“And she is lovely as paradise,” agreed Vida.
Opposite, hand on chin, Vida’s father Ken watched them. He was poised on the edge of laughter.
Tonk accepted yet another refill of Sir Edmund rum from a uniformed maid. “Make it a double.” To Salem’s consternation, he rose. Conversation hushed. “My gal,” he slurred, tipped his glass in the direction of Myra, “is today a woman.”
“Couldn’t fault that!” an excitable male piped from the crowd.
Myra’s face did not stir.
Vida sought something else to pass around. Ah, blueb
erry puffs.
Tonk downed the glass, stretched for more rum. Guests half-listened to the speech, all the while discerning the freshness of ingredients in their food, most of it new and original, the rest of it complex. Waitresses brought round silver platters of olive wraps, forest mushroom, yogurt nibblets . . . Baby sips of wine, luxurious and delicate, introduced people to something as mysterious as the bride.
Vida could taste fresh dill, a hint of mint, pepper and lemon in a small bundle of meat and rice wrapped in grape leaves. He understood that much time and labor had gone into the deceptive simplicity of the snack. He also knew that Salem had a hand in it. The harmony and versatility of flavor cultivated an indulgence that bordered on rarity. Raw, lightly cooked, sautéed or grilled, delicate, slippery, textured or meaty—everything carried a range of delectable possibility to the investigative palate.
“. . . when I rescued Salem from that Martian,” Tonk was saying, poison-laced words calmly imparted.
Ken Stuart roared, as did three dozen people in the room who knew about Myra’s Grovean past. All three dozen also knew that only Tonk would be haughty enough to refer to T-Mo with such contempt. The crowd teetered in anticipation.
Vida obliged. He rose to meet his father-in-law’s height. “Martian?”—looking straight in Tonk’s eye.
“Not that tone with me, young man.”
“This tone when you are drunk or stupid.”
“Everybody”—deliberately—“knows about that Grovean fool. What Salem ever saw in the freak—”
A shatter of glass, a blink of light and Myra stood beside Tonk. A lifetime of aversion condensed to a moment. She dangled Tonk, tuxedo and all, with a single hand. Vida, only Vida, could halt her from hurling a sobering Tonk through the ceiling.
• • •
Before the wedding gala, there was an argument.
“I will not have Tonk take charge of our ceremony,” said Myra. “I’d rather marry you in Grovea.”
“Tonk is your father,” said Vida.
“Stepfather.”
“He is still family.”
“As is Novic.”
Vida couldn’t fault that. Novic, the Sayneth priest who had fathered T-Mo, was true blood.
“My folks would never travel to Grovea for a wedding,” he reasoned.
“Neither would Salem or Tonk. Makes us even.”
“I didn’t think you cared much for Grovea. Now you want to embrace that past. Now, Myra?”
“Now’s as good a time as any.”
Things escalated. She yelled. He yelled back. He removed himself from the conflict, but she followed him to the bedroom.
“What would you rather me do? What?” she yelled.
“What Myra always does! Isn’t it always about you?”
At the heart of disagreement, she snapped. Her roar sent shudders through the house. Vida’s galaxy map, a rare gift from Myra’s interspace flights, collapsed from the top of a chiffonier. A snap of doors, and Vida left his house.
He had no answers, just a terrible need to walk. A street cat gave him a soft meow and pushed out its tail to brush his leg as he went past. But a bird on a fence further out screamed at him for no reason. After the cat and the bird, he walked blindly, the need for pace, for space . . . pressing him forward. His cheeks were wet. Somehow he found the river.
Chin on knees, he sat at their crag. Wind tugged his hair, river spray whipped his face. He thought of Myra and the twenty-one ways she tossed her head; the thirty ways she lifted her face to the sky and spread her arms in surrender to nature, her wilderness hair afloat; the fifty ways she mapped her forest scent every place she touched, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, out the front yard; the hundred ways she swelled other women’s admiration to envy, and then hatred. Men’s eyes reflected wonderment, desire and respect. They appreciated her radiance, but who knew what went on inside her head? What she was capable of? There were rumors . . . They understood that hybrid Myra was bigger than they were, that she held powers exceeding human strength, and that her eyes sparkled brightest for Vida.
The river’s whisper announced Myra’s arrival. She sat, knees pulled, beside Vida.
“Hey skipper.” Her gaze was an apology. She took his hand. “Our way is this.”
“Not the fighting. That’s the closest we’ve been to hell,” said Vida.
“Only the foyer.”
“And that swirly windy roary thing—” he indicated with a finger.
“Never again.”
“Let’s do it. Do you really want to get married in Grovea?”
“No.”
• • •
Should have been Grovea. Though the chandeliers survived, the flower patch outside the dining room window didn’t. For all Vida’s intervention, perhaps Tonk’s curl of lip had something to do with the outcome. His sling and neck brace made Middle Creek gossip three weeks straight, only interrupted by the crash.
• • •
A flaming shuttle spiraled from the sky to smash into the river. Survivors swam north, east, south. Didn’t matter where really; all they cared was to swim. And when they found land, they stayed. Took Middle Creek by surprise, opened it up to otherworldlies. They were prisoners from the land of Xhaust on the way to Shiva, the penal settlement. Guards, murderers, whores and their offspring, all spilled into a forgiving river. They all survived.
Mayor Jenkins liaised with government. He was a puppet mayor, despite the metal in his eyes. His photo-on-the-cabaret-ad sort of face, something suave, almost contemptuous, and his ten carat smile told his true mettle. As did those soft, clammy hands, damp as a toddler’s.
What to do with the off-worlders? Camp Zero, government determined. The encampment was built at the sleeve of the forest, not far from the river that had brought them. Free tents or hastily raised log houses. If the new migrants glanced wistfully at the sky, that was all there was to it: a wistful glance. They never thought or mentioned aloud Xhaust or Shiva. How could they? Why would they? Xhaust had cast them out like garbage; Shiva only promised rationed food, water, air . . . labor in plenty.
So, not part of one thing or another, exiles became unruly and bordered on dangerous. Males and children were prone to ferocious bursts of fighting that left some crippled or dead. Women pilfered. Middle Creek law rangers were hazy on how best to handle the growing breed, for government had stressed diplomacy. The exiles carried leanness and muscles, thicket brows, savage eyes and prominent cheekbones; it was completely impossible to forget they were technically Xhaust.
And war with Xhaust was out of the question.
Headed from Middle Creek to outer space for an intimate family moment one new moon, Myra stopped mid-flight. “Look, Vida.”
He followed the direction of her gaze. “Birds?”
“Not birds.”
They drew closer for a better view and hid behind an Oort cloud.
“Space jets,” Vida said first.
“Soaring around Earth’s orbit.”
“Perhaps seeking a landing zone?”
“Or awaiting confirmation to land.”
“Perhaps it’s been denied or the pilots have changed their minds,” said Vida.
Sure enough, each of the four jets, one by one, catapulted, arched and speared high and away from the solar nebula. Myra and Vida watched in silence.
• 32 •
With a degree in interplanetary law, a hybrid herself, Myra became a perfect candidate for the newly formed Migrant Council. She bustled between worlds in nanosecond beams, mediating for refugees, seeking better homes for them. Occasionally she was lucky, placed one or three, even ten. Croft, 180C, Sapphire or Selenium, all beyond Earth’s orbit, stayed viable options. But it was not an easy task, she found, for Xhaust or Shiva or government did not concede funding. When repatriation shuttles ran dry of fuel, Myra enfolded entire families (sometimes ex
tended) to explode them to destinations beyond stars. She would return home exhausted, falling to comatose sleep.
Under that circumstance, it was a wonder she even fell pregnant. But she did. And Vida couldn’t deny it—the moments of intimacy they snatched between Myra’s interorbital flights and his research fellowship at Techno Institute left his toes pulsing. If he had thought Myra was wild at the honeymoon, she was wilder at new moon. She guided him to the river’s belly and swirled him in uninhibited moments whose power and wholeness left him gasping.
Pregnant Myra did little different. She ran barelegged and swift in nocturnal flights, vaguely aware of her condition. She swam naked in the river, ported to the stars in diplomatic missions, exported exiles to new homes, brought food or medicine back to Camp Zero.
Her skin glowed with the life she carried, so much so the skin became a life form in itself. The blue waterfall in her hair grew wild, her eyes wider. Her lips swelled to a softer fullness that enhanced pending motherhood.
One evening Myra was reading the paper in bed. Vida was on the floor doing sit ups, badly. He was never athletic. Strain showed on his face, incoordination in his hands and legs.
“It says here,” her finger on the page, “naked chin-ups are the way to do it.”
“Sure,” he puffed.
Myra smiled.
“I feel like a new woman,” she said.
“So do I,” he teased. “You’ve just never allowed it.”
She knuckled him on the head but their rough play turned to something else. Her coupling appetite had tripled. In one wilderness jaunt, they flew backward in time into a cosmic weave whose energy guided them through the universe. Vida, at the verge of evolution, heard Myra cry out.
The baby!
