The Other

by Thomas Tryon

  “And the rat? How did it die?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” How could he tell her of Holland’s cruelty. “It was one of Russell’s pets. Maybe it was the heat.”

  “I see. Tch. Poor creature. I hope the rabbit won’t miss it too much. Fancy a rabbit mother to a rat.”

  “I think they were a happy family at least.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, our family—” He groped to express himself.

  “Is not happy?”

  “Not that. But families should be thick.”

  “Yes, of course. Like soup.”

  “But ours is broth,” he said with a droll look. “Why does Mother like clover so much? It’s just a weed, isn’t it?”

  “Clover is one of our most common wildflowers; it is not, however, a weed. And you know the story of the clover, surely. It was your mother’s wedding bouquet.”

  Yes, she knew he’d heard the story, a favorite of the family, especially with Torrie, the new bride; but to hear it now would avoid further talk of rats and funerals and death. So she told it again, how there was the World War and Father, stationed at Fort Dix, and Zan, his mother, had decided hastily to marry before he sailed. How Uncle George and Aunt Valeria were present and how at the last minute Aunt Vee had remembered there was no bouquet for the bride and had hopped a fence into a nearby field where she picked the clover.

  “And stepped in cowflops,” he was quick to remind her.

  “Yes. In the cowflops, if you must have them. And so,” she finished, “your dear mother is charmed her life long by clover. And you, you are planning some flower arrangements yourself?”

  “No’m.”

  “What should those be?” She pointed to a pile of still-dripping cattails lying close by on the riverbank.

  “Cattails,” he said; another innocent gaze.

  She was used to his little strategies. “Yes, I know they are cattails, young man. And what will you do with them, these cattails?”

  “Oh—nothing,” he said evasively, in the manner of thirteen-year-old boys. “They’re just for—nothing.”

  She took his chin in her hand to plumb him with eyes ancient and humorous and wise, her expression thoughtful, half smile, half frown.

  “Well?” she said, waiting with her sibyl look, and he looked away, feeling transparent, knowing she knew he lied.

  With certain evasions he explained about Doc Savage and the Winter Kingdom of the Akaluks. A fantastic imagination, she thought, brushing her fingers against his cheek.

  “What’s a hermaphrodite?” Niles asked.

  “A hermaphrodite is supposedly a creature half man, half woman, though I don’t expect one actually exists. It is more mythological, half Hermes, half Aphrodite, do you see. Why?”

  He explained about the Firemen’s Carnival and the Maltese freak. “How’re your hands?” he asked, watching her gingerly press her swollen fingers.

  She dismissed the subject with a wave. Never had he heard her complain about the pain that nagged her joints. For her amusement he reached into his shirt and extracted his pet on its silver chain, laying it between them in the sun.

  “That chameleon will perish inside there,” she told him, thinking how continually enchanting she found him.

  “He can breathe okay. I like the way he tickles. And he’s not a chameleon, he’s a basilisk. See—he has a diamond for an eye. Don’t dare look at it or you’ll turn to stone.”

  “Ah, a lizard Medusa, no less.” Such whimsy. What to do with the boy? But where had he learned of basilisks, if not from her? And unicorns and Rhine maidens, those water creatures hidden there in the depths, his secret that he had pledged her to keep. She shook her head and drew wet moss over the flowers in her basket: sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, devil’s paintbrush, spotted lilies, and buttercups.

  Taking one of the latter he held it under her chin. Yes, she liked butter. But her favorites were the sunflowers. He lifted one up and blew at it, dispersing a little cloud of powder into the air.

  “Yah, here all the sunflowers get dust.” But it was pleasant to see them all the same. They reminded her of St. Petersburg, where the wind sweeping across the Russian plain kept them fresh and dust-free.

  “Is it really true that sunflowers follow the sun all day?” he asked. She had read this to him from a book.

  “I think it is only superstition. But all Russians are superstitious, you know. See?” She took his cheeks between her hands and lifted his head upwards, turning his face to the sun.

  “Sunflower!” he shouted, grinning proudly and squinting against the light. She let her eyes rest upon his face for a moment; ah, the freshness of his features, the flower-soft skin with the golden fuzz below the hairline. This was her podsolnechnik, her sunflower now; gone were all the sunflowers of Russia, but in their place grew this one, this prize flower of her heart.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Ach,” she said, “I was remembering that day we played the game on the sunflowers, and you cry because of that damn crow. My douschka, such a crybaby you were.”

  “Was not,” he protested, pulling away.

  “It’s all right. Everyone should cry sometimes. It’s good for the digestive tract. Yah. When your uncle gets home, shall you come with me to take the flowers down?”

  He paled, looked at her blankly. Uncle George? Home? “The flowers down?” he echoed, voice shaky, a sick feeling in the stomach.

  “To the cemetery. When Uncle George comes with the car, Winnie shall drive us and we shall put decorations out. We go in secret and say nothing so your mother shall not be upset, yes?”

  He stole a look to the barn and Russell’s form in the hatch. Wait till my Dad gets home! “Yes, all right. I’ll come with you.” He took a deep breath, expelling it slowly, carefully, that she should not see his fear. Oh the secrets he must guard . . .

  “How is it you do not caddy for Uncle George today?”

  Reprieve! He’d forgotten Uncle George was golfing after work. If he played the second nine out he wouldn’t get home until seven, and he always stopped for a drink at the nineteenth hole. Niles’s look aroused her suspicions. She gave him another piercing stare. “Yes? Well?”

  Well, he explained to her, he couldn’t caddy for Uncle George any more. Why? Well, this morning he’d been barred from the golf club. Why? Well, he and Holland had gotten up early and had taken the trolley car (riding on the back of the cowcatcher no doubt, she surmised) out to the second nine fairway looking for yesterday’s lost golf balls and the greenskeeper had caught Niles and now he was barred. “And we had to give him all the golf balls we found. Almost two bucks worth. Cripes!”

  “Niles,” she chided.

  Grabbing up a handy stick, a diversionary tactic, he dropped to one knee and sprayed her with lead. “Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!” Machine-gunning her, sweeping the stick about in an arc. “You’re dead. You’re Dillinger and you’re dead! You’re Mad Dog Coll and you’re dead! Dead dead dead!”

  “Stop that this instant,” she ordered. “Throw that stick away.” She could be very stern; he obeyed promptly. “The idea. Where do you children learn about such things? Mad Dog Coll indeed!” Beware of mad dogs lurking, for lurking, they shall bite. “And biting—” She was half muttering to herself, but he knew what she meant.

  “Well, you’re supposed to fall down when you’re killed,” he informed her. Dejected, he shoved his hands in his pockets. Gosh, when the Feds got Dillinger last year in front of that theater, he sure fell down dead. Think of getting lead poisoning because you took in a movie, for cripes sakes. Clark Gable—Ick!

  “Don’t frown so, child.”

  He looked up at her. “Ada?”

  “Yah?”

  “How can you always tell?”

  “Tell what?”

  “About what’s true and what isn’t. How do you always know?”

  “I do not always.” She looked down at him. “But you do, child, don’t you?”

  He frown
ed. “Well,” he said gravely, “sometimes I do.” He stretched to her ear, asking conspiratorially behind his hand, “Can we do it now?”

  She smiled, showing the strong white teeth which were still hers. This was their game, of course, and accordingly she rose and, moving from the landing, drew him with her, holding him slightly to one side, his head a little lower than her shoulder, pointing out a dragonfly darting at the patch of goldenrod. He looked up at her with questioning eyes.

  “No, look there. Look at the darning needle. Look hard.”

  The insect hovered above a frond and he stared silently, intently, for a long time, his gaze transfixed. Sun waves shimmered and even from a distance he became gradually aware of the harsh weedy scent. Now the dragonfly darted once more, hovered, darted again, all at once soaring aloft, now diving, now hanging suspended. Still he observed, never for an instant taking his eyes from it. In time he felt her light touch.

  “What is it like?” she asked, a kind of expectation in her voice. “What does it feel like?”

  “Airplanes. It feels like airplanes.”

  Ah, she thought, airplanes—rather perceptive.

  It was something of that nature, though not a machine, a—what? Creature, he supposed. Carefully he examined the longness of it, the slenderness, the—airiness. Lighter than air, and as thin; segmented body, metallic wings veined with silver and gold, iridescent like fairy-tale wings, inaudibly humming, beating faster than eye can see. Head loosely jointed, turning every which way, exquisitely sighted eyes avid for prey. Delicate, ferocious little beast, swifter than a swallow, flushing insect game from the clover preserves, devouring, devouring, devouring . . .

  Now the dragonfly wafted high into the air and Niles felt his own being lifting away from the earth, felt his corporeal self go soaring up over the meadow in company with the creature, compound eyes taking in, grasping, everything; to the west along the pastures running to meet the Avalon ridge across the river, and dimly in the distance, the Shadow Hills blanketed in haze. Away to the east, beyond the house, over billowy green treetops, down to a cluster of roofs and spires: the Center. At his own backdoor he saw into the kitchen garden, saw Winnie the hired girl taking in the laundry, saw the trolley car running the Shadow Hills route, up from Talcotts Ferry, up past Knobb Street and past Packard Lane, out through the city on the north, and on to Babylon to the west; Babylon, End of the Line. It lay all before him, like a miniature playtown, the houses diminished, the barn a toy, the people on the sidewalk only make-believe. Saw, down there on the ground, Ada, standing alone, a speck.

  All this he described for her in precise detail. “That’s what it feels like,” he said, ardent and breathless from his flight.

  She agreed; it must be all of that, surely. And between them they savored like forbidden fruit the secret of the game.

  He smiled. “Did I do it good?”

  “Yes, child.”

  “Good as Holland?”

  Beneath the moon pin the delicate lace at her throat was trembling in the breeze, the smile elusive. “Ach,” she said at last, and her voice was pained, “as good as Holland. As good as me, as any.” Shading her face with the parasol, as though to obscure her feelings, she peered out across the river.

  “Another,” he begged, tugging eagerly at her arm, but she only smiled and said, “That is enough for today”—which is also the way with grandmothers.

  “Pajalsta, just one more?”

  She raised her basket. “I must gather some watercress to bring to Winnie for salad tonight.”

  “Just one more,” he pleaded, not to be put off. “Pajalsta, pajalsta?”

  He was irresistible. She tousled his hair and scanned the field, moving the parasol against the sun. “What shall it be?” Her eyes roved from object to object: a red-winged blackbird flitting on a twig, a dilapidated fence post, a rusting oil drum, a worn-out tire.

  “There,” she said at last, “look there. Tell me what you see.” He followed her eyes up the meadow to where Mr. Angelini continued his haying. “But,” he protested, “it’s too far. I can’t—”

  “Look,” she insisted. “Do as I have taught you. Concentrate. Tell me what it is like.”

  Compelled, he looked. Perceived bright plumes wafting through the sunlight, the hay sailing in yellow forkfuls against the sky. His eye fastened upon one, saw it scooped from the ground, watched it trace a pattern, a delicate, almost musical figure, swis-s-sh, sliding from the fork, swissssh, into the wagon. Now, distracted, his eye followed the path of the pitchfork through the air as it reversed itself, completing its movement, the curving tines, their tips like sharp fingers, beckoning the sun, waiting to catch it, glinting like cold fire—stabbing—a pain—ohh—

  “Niles, what is it?”

  He was clutching his chest, fingers stiffly arched, his face contorted. He hunched over, his breath coming in short gasps. “Ada—it hurts—”

  “What, child?” She bent in alarm, trying to examine him, enfolding him till the pain subsided. Racked, he shuddered, held himself very still. Then he looked up at her, gray eyes wide, wondering at the strangeness of the pain. “It’s gone,” he said in time, his breath coming irregularly. He managed a smile.

  She felt his forehead, his chest. “Niles, what was it? Are you all right?”

  He nodded, fingers retracing the mysterious path of the pain. Was it his heart? No—the span of his fingers told her the pain sprang across the width of his chest.

  “Tell me what it was like.”

  “I can’t. It was just—a pain—all sharp, pointy, here.” He touched his chest again. “But it’s gone. It’s all right, Ada, honest.” Butting his head against her, he nuzzled his face in one delicate hand while her fingers caressed the golden pelt growing along the nape of his neck. Unabashed, he said simply, “I love you.”

  Her heart leapt. “Ach, douschka, I love you too.”

  He picked up his rod. “I’m going down the river a ways and see if I can get some pickerel.”

  “Perhaps,” she suggested before he went, “Russell might like to go fishing too. Surely there must be more fishing poles somewhere.” She caught his look. “You don’t care for Russell very much, do you?”

  He shrugged noncommittally. “Oh, he’s okay, I guess.”

  “After all, he is your cousin. And a guest. You boys should play together more. The trouble is, you just have him in the wrong throat,” meaning Russell was apt to go down the wrong way. “It is important to make guests feel at home, do you see? And when Aunt Josie and Aunt Fanuschka come, Russell must move into your room—”

  His puckish laugh cut her off as he ran through the marsh grass into the field, where he quickly gathered a bunch of goldenrod, returning to lay it in her basket with the other flowers.

  “For you, Madame, to take to the cemetery.”

  “But what about the hay fever?”

  “Dead people don’t sneeze. And no mayonnaise jars, okay?” She was always putting her wildflower arrangements in any old kind of glass.

  “But did you hear me?”

  “What?”

  “Russell will have to move into your room.”

  He sighed. “I know. I don’t mind. There’s plenty of space. And he has to go somewhere, I suppose. But he is hopeless,” he said with engaging candor. She had opened her mouth to commend his artlessness until his next words made her start. “Holland won’t like it though,” he said darkly, and when she replied her voice was sharper than she intended.

  “Why, how’s that?”

  Cripes, he didn’t want to get Holland in dutch. He shook his head and obstinately said, “He’s just not going to, that’s all.”

  “Stop making faces, child, and tell me why.”

  “Because he isn’t. Because—because he doesn’t like Russell. That’s what it was, with the rat. That’s why there was a funeral.”

  Abruptly, as if she could no longer stand, she sat down again on the landing. By chance a cloud passed across the sun, gray, with a gold
edge, like a huge dolly, casting a mournful shadow. A sudden breeze scalloped the surface of the water. She shivered.

  “Are you cold?”

  She shook her head. “Nyet. A crow was walking on my grave, is all.”

  A crow. The crow’s name was Holland. He knew what she was thinking, how worried she was about him, how she tried never to show it, tried not to let on that she knew things . . . she’d have guessed, anyway, he bet, eventually, about the rat. And he was supposed to go on protecting Holland, covering for him, keeping his secrets, the ring, the packet, the blue packet which contained The Thing. He sighed. No—one of these days Holland was going to have to start fending for himself. Niles was going to forget he was a twin.

  The cloud passed. She waved him off. He ran to the riverbank, where he stalked along beside the sedge, waving back at her, still seated on the landing. She watched him go, tugging his khaki shorts rolled above tawny thighs, his shoulder blades protruding at the back of his gay shirt like incipient wings, the halo of tow hair which topped the slender neck flashing in the sun. Then he was lost behind the screen of willows, and, her eyes lingering on the spot where he had disappeared, it came to her mind that he was not a human at all, not her grandchild, Holland’s twin, but instead some wild woodland thing, a faun perhaps, carrying a fishing pole in place of pipes.

  How was it that she felt chilly? She lay back against the boards of the landing and let the sundrenched wood warm her bones. She hated the cold. Russian to the core, still she hated it, loved the hot summers. The sun was for her a blessing. In the old days, even after the cold winters, the great ladies, spending the summers in the country, stayed out of the sun to keep their skins fair, stayed behind shades or under big umbrellas in the afternoons. Not she. Ada would have followed the sun all day long if she could, skirts caught up above her knees, running barefoot through the sunflower paths.

  When the sun had dropped further, when she had gathered her watercress from a nearby spring, and squeezed out the hem of her dress, she slipped back into the canvas shoes. They were very comfortable, with the X’s cut into the tops to let her corns breathe. But it was not only the corns which gave her trouble. One leg, badly mangled by a dog when she was much younger, still gave her pain sometimes, causing her to limp slightly.