Harvest of Changelings (10 page)

“... Just to be on the safe side,” Jack had said, looking at me over his glasses. Tufts of his brown hair stuck up like little horns all over his head. “Fairies are known to be, well, mischievous.” I think the clerk at the hardware store had all his suspicions about loony bookworms confirmed when I asked for just five nails.

“Small project at the library, Mr. Tyson?” he asked as he handed me the nails in a little paper bag. I smiled weakly, knowing I would think of a snappy comeback at three o'clock in the morning. My next stop was Food Lion, to buy an Angel Food cake and a bottle of white wine. Emma would have been proud of me, I thought as I walked home, even if the wine was on sale half-price at $4.59. Buying the cake and the wine was what she would have done the day after Vale-ria
moved in. Then, with me grumbling, Emma would have gone over to Valeria's and knocked on her door. She wouldn't have waited three-and-a-half weeks, like I had. Emma would also have taken some of her kitchen herbs from the pots scattered all over the house: basil, savory, thyme, and rosemary, her favorite. She probably would have invited Valeria over for coffee. I would have stood behind her, grinning like some hopeless hebephrenic.

I grabbed the first Angel Food cake I saw. I didn't have any rosemary. Two nights after the funeral I had gotten good and drunk. Staggering drunk. Yelling-at-the-moon drunk. Pouring-wine-on-my-head drunk. Finally crying drunk and then I smashed every rosemary pot on the back stoop.

It was a three-minute walk from the Food Lion to Beichler Road and the little gateway into Sunset Hills, my development. From the Sunset Hills sign to 1411 was half-a-block, one more minute. I stood for what seemed like an hour in the street, rehearsing the lines Jack had suggested, trying to make them seem as casual as if they were really my own. Finally I walked up the blue flagstone path to the door. Feeling silly, I reached down in my pocket one more time and touched the nails. Then I knocked. I knew she had to be home; all the lights were on.

“Who is it?” a voice called from inside.

“Ben, from next door, 1413. Huh, I thought I'd drop by, say hello, be neighborly—if you aren't busy or anything.” Unfortunately these weren't Jack's smooth opening lines.

Valeria opened the door and bright light washed out from the house.

“Like my light?” Malachi said, his eyes barely open, his words soft, slow, close together.

“Yes, just like yours,” Ben said. Malachi was asleep, his breathing slow, regular. No light except from the lamp, which Ben turned off. He sat for a very long time in the dark, on the side of the bed, listening to Malachi breathe, watching him sleep.

Hazel put her ear to Alexander's side as she carried him up the stairs to her bedroom. His motor was definitely running. She knew if she could see his face that the cat's bright blue eyes would be half-closed in complete bliss. Every day he waited for her by the dinner table until Hazel was finished and her grandparents said she could go. Or, more often, she would just push away her chair and leave. Her
grandparents, engrossed in conversation, or both reading, wouldn't notice until they cleared the table, if then. Then Hazel would scoop up the grey-and-white part Siamese and the two of them went on their walk around the house, Alexander's purr getting deeper and more satisfied the longer the walk. The walk was another thing her grandparents rarely, if ever, noticed, even if Hazel went through the dining room and the kitchen two or three times.

The walk ended in Hazel's bedroom with Alexander curled up at the edge of Hazel's bed and Hazel sitting in front of her computer, cracking her knuckles and waiting for the date and time prompts to appear.

“08-01-91,” Hazel said to herself as she typed. Three more weeks of summer vacation, then fifth grade. Next she keyed in 19:45, and then Hazel\Worldmaker. After a few beeps and chirps, the Worldmaker logo appeared: a map of the world growing one section at a time, as if an invisible hand was putting down puzzle pieces. When the map was complete, the screen faded to grey and then, slowly, as if they were emerging out of mist and smoke, a picture of a group of medieval men and women in a forest of white-barked trees. The Alexzelians. Hazel-Guinevere was their leader, with Alexander the Lion by her side. Hazel, without looking, reached over to rub the cat's head. In response, Alexander stood, stretched, and then climbed into Hazel's lap. He snuggled into the crook of Hazel's arm and closed his eyes. Hazel stroked Alexander's back as she thought.

“Not bad,” she said to the cat. “What do you think? Should I add more trees? I think the forest needs to be thicker—”

Hazel stopped talking. The screen was growing, expanding. Hazel tried to press escape but she couldn't. The keyboard had disappeared. There was no chair or desk or bedroom or house. She was standing on the edge of the monitor, wavering, holding tight to Alexander, who was wide-awake and yowling in her arms. The Alexzelians were gone. The trees—Hazel could hear the wind murmuring in, no, to the trees. The trees murmured in return. She could feel the same wind on her face. Hazel took a step backward, reaching for where the edge of the monitor screen had been. Dry leaves crunched beneath her feet. Instead of the familiar metal of the monitor Hazel felt bark. She was touching one of her trees. The bark glowed. She set Alexander down and rubbed her hands over the smooth bark. Some of the bark's luminosity lingered on her palms, pale, ghostly streaks.

Hazel and Alexander stood at the edge of the forest. Facing Hazel was a meadow of tall grasses and in the center of the meadow
was a dark lake. She took a step forward and felt something heavy and warm pushing against her leg. Hazel looked down to see Alexander, who while not a lion, was three times his normal size. He looked back up at her and held her gaze.

“Can you talk now, Alex?”

Alexander didn't reply except to push against her again, nudging her out into the meadow.

“Hey, boy, want me to go out there?” she asked and knelt down to hug him and scratch his head. Alexander licked her and nudged her again toward the meadow. “Out there, huh?” She paused before following the cat and looked back over her shoulder. Just trees, no metal window looking into her bedroom. Alexander nudged her a third time and Hazel let the cat lead her out into the meadow, into the tall grasses and the wild flowers. The flowers nearest her were white, like paperwhite narcissus. To her surprise she was barefoot—her shoes had disappeared along with the monitor, computer, and everything else.

The meadow greeted her.

Hazel felt a pressure against her feet. It was as if the earth was an enormous cat gently bumping her feet. Hazel rubbed the ground with one foot and felt the pressure again, still gentle, but insistent. She kept rubbing the ground and it vibrated in return.

“Hello ground, hello meadow,” Hazel said. She wasn't surprised the vibrating grew louder in response. She had spoken to the meadow at the right moment ...

 

Hazel shook her head and yawned. The cursor was blinking at her beneath a zero in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. The word Print was in the upper left-hand corner, and below was a list of commands, the first being Full Document. The printer's document tray was full. Hazel gathered up the pages and started to read. It was her dream: falling through the monitor, the glowing trees, the purring ground, and Alexander getting bigger. Hazel quickly looked at her cat. He didn't look any different—did he?

... Hazel and Alexander found themselves at the edge of a meadow filled with white and yellow flowers. Tall, white-barked trees encircled the meadow, making the sky into a blue oval. The sun was high in the sky and bright, so bright, that the white of the trees and the flowers was almost too much to look at. The yellow flowers seemed to be on fire. There was a breeze blowing, a sweet breeze that seemed to be playing tag with the leaves.

Hazel and Alexander were all alone, or so Hazel thought.

There was a pool in the meadow. The water in the pool was dark and still. As she walked toward the pool, the flowers began to change their color. The white became tinged with a line of dull bronze-yellow at first. The dull yellow made Hazel think of the Mexican coins she kept in a glass jar on her desk. Her grandfather said her parents had brought them home from a trip before Hazel was born. The Mexican coin-yellow grew brighter and brighter the closer she came to the pool, until the flowers growing at the water's edge were fire-yellow.

Hazel had no idea how long she and Alexander stood by the pool before the dragon flew out of the sky and landed on the other side of the water. She wasn't even surprised. to see the creature in the air. A flying dragon was no stranger than the glowing colors or the breeze that seemed to be almost speaking with the trees. In fact, she was more surprised. that she wasn't surprised. For such a large creature the dragon was graceful and light in the air, as if it were a huge, light bird, riding the thermals. When the dragon landed, its huge wings beating down the flowers around it, its long green neck stretching, Hazel thought it was one of the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen.

“Next to you, of course,” she said to Alexander, who was butting her on the leg.

Then the dragon spoke to Hazel in a low, rumbling, gravelly voice, calling for her to come to it and not be afraid.

“Stay with me,” she whispered to Alexander, who answered by rubbing the length of his body against her legs. “I think it's a nice dragon, but just the same,” Hazel said, thinking of all the stories of dragons burning down cities and gobbling up princesses and knights. “Come on, let's go see what it wants.”

The dragon said nothing as Hazel made her way around the pool, pushing aside the grasses and flowers. It only watched her with its brilliantly colored iridescent eyes; like green agates, Hazel thought. When she was close enough, it lowered its head so that Hazel could touch it. The dragon's head felt warm and smooth.

Then the dragon began speaking. It told Hazel she was needed here, in the world of the meadow and the white trees and the flowers. She was needed and was called to come home. Hazel told the dragon her home was somewhere else, back there, where she had been born, where her grandparents were. The dragon told her yes, she had been born there, but here, this place, was also hers.

“I don't get it,” Hazel said. “Back home—” and she looked behind her to see the white trees and above her to see a sky whose blue she now could see was different, darker and deeper. “I live there, in a house, with my grandparents, and Alex, and I go to school. This is a dream. You're not real; dragons are fairy tales.”

“It was your machine,” the dragon said, “and your game. The machine knocked at the door and the game opened the door to this place; the machine answered a call from this place. It can talk to other machines, yes? Create invisible links of energy, of electricity? Such a link was made to here, which is beyond dreams (and you do not remember it, yet, but you have already been here in your dreams). We all travel when we sleep, although we forget quickly where we have been and what we have done. It is better so; there are some dream places that would haunt the waking too much.”

“Nightmares?” Hazel asked.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it is just the opposite. Dreams show us places in our minds that when we are awake are disguised or obscured. Dreams remove masks and let us see the faces beneath. But this dream-which-is-not-a-dream you will remember and I am wearing no mask and neither are you. Your cat is larger than he was; you just can't see it yet,” the dragon said. Smoke curled and twisted from the dragon's nostrils as it talked, surrounding its huge head in a small cloud. Its great tail twitched back and forth.

Then Hazel woke up. She was sitting in front of her computer. Her cat was asleep on her bed.

Hazel felt around the monitor and the hard drive and knocked on each one. Solid. She tested each connection. Nothing was loose. Every light in the room was on and the clock on her desk said it was past midnight, 12:51. If there had been a power failure, it would be blinking 12:00 over and over and over.

Had she been sleeping at her computer for over four hours? Dreaming? But—the story she had in her hand—had she written it in her sleep? Had her grandfather found her asleep and—that had to be it. Yes, her grandfather came in, found her asleep, wrote the story, and set things up so she would see the print screen and find the story in the printer.

Her grandfather had never written a story in his life. Somehow Hazel was sure of that

She did the only thing she knew to do: she went to bed. Alexander curled up beside her, his back pressed against her leg.

Russell woke suddenly in the middle of the hot August night. Someone had been calling his name, someone he knew.

“Mama?” he whispered into the darkness. Then, with some hesitation, “Daddy?” But even as Russell repeated both words he knew the voice was neither his mother nor his father. It couldn't be. His
mother was in Arizona, or at least she had been two years ago. His father was nearer—down the hall—but he wouldn't be calling for Russell in the middle of the night.

Russell.

Miss McNeil. How could it be his first grade teacher? She was six years and half-a-continent away, in Lawton County, Oklahoma. How would she know where to find him in Raleigh? This trailer in Neuse Woods, out on Poole Road, was the fourth place Russell had lived since Lawton County—how could she possibly find him? Why would she come now, when there had been so many times before when Russell had wished for her, prayed for her? And it was in the middle of the night—would his first grade teacher be outside his window calling his name?
Yeah, right.

Russell got up to look out the window anyway. Just maybe. Of course the Whites' backyard was empty: a broken swing set, a slide, a tire hanging from a tree. It was bright and clear and warm. The fan facing his bed rattled. The stars were tiny, white fires; the moon was a white crescent. The trailer next door shone as if it were silver.

“It sure sounded like Miz McNeil calling me,” Russell said. Just the way she would call his name when she called the roll, or asked him to read or clean the erasers.
Daddy? Jeanie? Miz McNeil is in the backyard and she wants to talk to me.
His father's answer would be a quick backhand. Jeanie would just start whining about how hard she tried to be a good mother or some other crap. The way she had at supper when her parents had been over.

Today had been Jeanie's birthday and her folks had stayed after they brought him back from yard work to help celebrate. He supposed they had to come; she was their daughter, after all, but after working a good chunk of the summer as their yard boy he didn't like them and they didn't like him. The yard work had been Jeanie's idea. Get the boy out of the house, give him something to do, he's too big to lie around all summer watching TV. And if he had been working for anybody else, it would have been okay. Russell found he liked working with plants, the digging, the cutting, moving, setting out, watering.

Jeanie's folks were another matter. The old lady never shut up. If Russell didn't mend his ways, he was going to wind up in jail, or worse. Look what had happened to his mama—where was she? Apples don't fall far from the tree; he'd better watch his step. Don't you go smart-mouthing me, I'll jerk a knot in you so fast it'll make your head swim. And she preached. Was Russell right with God? He'd better get right, not like his mama, she worshipped idols, did
he know that? Cathlicks prayed to statues and it says right here in the Bible that's a sin. She followed behind Russell, fussing about how he did one thing or another, didn't he have any sense? Russell wanted to kill her. The old man would have been all right if the old lady hadn't been around. Once or twice the old man had even said something halfway nice, but the old lady would snap at him not to get soft with the boy, and that would be the end of it.

The only way Russell had gotten through the summer without blowing up or telling the old lady to go to hell was when he remembered what he called his special dreams. They had started in May and he had them every two or three nights. Sometimes a week would pass, but that had been in the beginning. He would think about them while he worked and the old lady talked: the silvery-white trees, the sky with the two moons, the talking wind, and running, just running through the tall grasses and the glowing flowers. Standing in the meadow, watching and waiting as the flying horse flew down to talk to him, nuzzle his face with its warm breath.

The well-being, the secret happiness, of the dreams would linger most of the next day, enclosing Russell in a safe and close cloud that muffled the old lady's words and kept them from hurting quite so much. Today had been like that so that even when he knew the old lady and the old man were going to stay for dinner after they brought him it had been okay. The dream-feelings got him through what seemed like an interminable dinner; Russell was amazed at just how much mashed potatoes and fried chicken two old people could eat and still claim they had room for the big, white cake Jeanie brought out. Jeanie had picked it up that afternoon at the Food Lion where she worked. She had also set up a pink artificial Christmas tree.

“Mama and Daddy put up a tree on everybody's birthday, ever since I was a little girl,” she had explained to Russell the first time she hauled the tree out, for his father's birthday last year. Russell had stared dumbfounded at Jeanie when she started putting the artificial tree together on the kitchen table. “This way,” Jeanie had said, “we'll have Christmas three or four times a year—or at least a tree, anyway. Get me those little, white lights out of the Christmas box in the closet.”

Having a Christmas tree up in August or March or May was, in Russell's opinion, stupid. Having Jeanie's parents over made it worse. But at least this time the old folks were only going to be around for a few hours, not the entire day the way they had been on
the real Christmas. If he could just keep remembering his dreams, he'd could get through it and not get in trouble.

He had thought when he opened up the old folks' present for him at Christmas that maybe they had changed their mind about him. He had pulled bright, shiny fishing lures out of a box. The lures sparkled in the light from the tree lights and the sun coming through the picture window, as he held them up, turning them this way and that. Maybe Daddy will go with me this spring, Russell thought, if he asked the right way, at the right time, if his daddy wasn't on a job, if he hadn't had too many beers ... Then the old lady had noticed Russell's Nativity under the tree. Russell winced, remembering. Why did he have to remember the bad things, too? He had made sure for this August Christmas tree his Nativity scene was in his room, safe and sound. The Nativity was the only thing he had left from Mama, the only person he was sure would listen to his dreams. If he told her, Russell knew what she would say:
Silver-white trees, with golden leaves? I used to dream about them, too, honey. They reminded me a little of the church I went to when I was a little girl. Not the way the church looked so much as how it felt. You know, Russ-honey, quiet, peaceful, safe. There was a little corner of the church where candles burned all the time in little, blue glasses.
She told him her dreams as bedtime stories, her voice soft and low, the window open to the hot, still Oklahoma night. Her eyes, he remembered now, had glowed green in the darkness, just like a cat's. Just the way he had thought his own eyes had been glowing.

“Well, Jeanie, I'm glad you didn't let the boy put out that Cathlick thing under your tree, the way he done at Christmas. Thou shalt not make graven images, that thy days may be long in the land of the Lord. And everybody knows there weren't no fox at the manger,” Jeanie's mother had said, interrupting Russell's reverie. The white cake was cut and the presents were opened. Crumpled pieces of bright-colored wrapping paper lay on the floor like bits and pieces of a magpie's nest.

Russell looked hard at her and, for the first time, he could see colors all around the old lady: angry dark reds, oranges, purples flickering and flashing. There were lights around the old man, his daddy, and Jeanie—she had little silvery stars, sparkling and twinkling around her. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and the lights were gone. And the lady was still going on about Cathlicks being little better than idol-worshippers, it was right in the Bible—

“My Catholic thing isn't under the tree because I don't want you near it, you hear me, old lady? Don't you ever touch any of my stuff
and stop talking about Mama. You're just a mean, old lady. Mean, mean, mean. All summer long I've been working in your damn garden and your damn yard and you've not said one nice word to me, not a damn one. Making me eat on the back porch. I hate you, I hate you,
I hate you!”
Russell yelled in the old lady's face. He hadn't meant to yell; the words had just come out. He hadn't meant to say anything. Remember the dreams, smile, eat cake, nod at the right times. That had been his plan.

The plan hadn't worked.

“Jeanie! Do you hear the way this boy is talking to me? Cursing me, in my own daughter's house! You are one sorry good-for-nothing boy. Here we are trying to have a birthday party and you go and ruin it. I'm only trying to save you from that Cathlick idol worshipping. Your mama was a heathen, if not worse—to go off and leave her family like that. Of course I wouldn't have you in my house. I told Jeanie to make your daddy ship you off to your mama when they got married, I could tell the minute I laid eyes on you that you were trouble, but nobody knows where that worthless mama of yours is—”

“Now, Lillian, the boy has worked hard all summer long and he's not been any real trouble, you have to admit that now,” the old man interrupted.

“Shut up, you old fool, the boy is nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble.”

“You shut up, you old hag, just shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“Russell!”

“Boy, when you are going to learn to keep your fool mouth shut? Jeanie, goddamit, I thought you quit smoking—the damn trashcan is on fire,” his daddy yelled and backhanded Russell so hard he jerked back against his chair. Dark smoke rolled out of the kitchen trashcan. His daddy seemed to almost be on fire as well, with dark red, black-edged lights—and so did everybody else, for that matter. In the midst of the blood, the fire, the smoke, and the yelling, Russell ran to his room, cursing himself for letting the old lady get to him, jerk his mouth open, and drag out those stupid, stupid words. God, he
was
stupid, just like they all said. He scooped up the little Nativity scene from his dresser and quickly hid it in the back of his closet. He heard his daddy cursing about the fire and now the whole damn kitchen was going to smell of smoke and it was a good thing he saw it before the trailer went up. Jeanie was cursing back—it wasn't her fault, she had quit smoking, months ago. And the old lady yelling: they could have burned up, they could have just burned up.

When the Nativity was safe, Russell made himself sit on his bed.
He knew what was coming next. When all the excitement about the fire was over, somebody would remember Russell and then his daddy would slam the door open and backhand him again or make him drop his pants and wallop him with a belt. And then drag him out to say he was sorry.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

After the whipping and the apology, his daddy made Russell spend the rest of the evening in the living room with Jeanie and her parents.
Need to learn how to be civilized,
boy. No birthday cake. And listening to the old lady, with her lights now more a dark yellow than red, tell Jeanie she ought to call the law on him: “I don't know how you put up with this young 'un, Jeanie. I really don't. He's not even yours. When your babies come, you'll see the difference; it'll be like night and day. I know some folks at church called the law on one of theirs. Sheriff came and hauled him off. He wasn't the same after a night in Stony Lonesome, I'll tell you what. Couldn't hurt. Cut me another piece of cake, honey; it's pretty good for store-bought. I never bake cakes anymore myself. Why bother messing up all them bowls, you just have to wash when you can run down to the grocery store and pick up one. Larry, it sure is a good thing you saw that fire, I wonder how it started, since nobody smokes ...”

Russell had almost bit off his tongue then. He wanted to tell her he'd get all the cake he wanted after she left; he didn't care if Jeanie had thrown his piece out the back door. He took a deep breath and made himself think of his dreams.

 

All that had been just a few hours ago. He could only imagine what Jeanie's mama would say if he told her he was hearing voices in the middle of the night. Might as well go to the bathroom, he thought. Maybe somebody was in there, whispering his name. Of course the room was empty. Feeling foolish, he checked behind the shower curtain and inside the clothes hamper and the medicine cabinet. When he closed the cabinet door, he found himself staring into his own face: a thin, red-haired boy, with hazel eyes, tufts of hair sticking up like little red feathers. And Russell saw his own lights: a dark flickering red, edged with black, and was that a touch of green? He rubbed his eyes, flicked the overhead light on and off—and the colored lights were gone.

Russell went back to bed, shaking his head. Colored lights. Special dreams. Voices. What the hell was going on? Was he crazy—he didn't feel crazy. But could someone who was really crazy know they
were? Never mind, he thought, tomorrow would be better. No more gardening for Jeanie's folks.

“Need you at home, boy, packing and stuff,” his daddy said. The Whites were moving in a few weeks, before school started and before Jeanie's babies were due. His daddy had said they would still be living on Poole Road, but closer to town. Russell would be in a new school for the fifth grade.

Maybe the new school next fall would be different. Ha. Maybe if he went back to sleep again, he would hear Miz McNeil and he would be able to hear more than his name. Maybe he would hear the voice tell him what it wanted him to do.

 

The night before the Whites moved out of Neuse Woods, Russell had gone to bed early. He knew his father would have them up at dawn to load the truck and the car. Jim Beam, Old Crow, and Johnny Walker boxes were stacked around his bed. Russell's closet and his chest of drawers were empty. Only the clothes he was going to wear tomorrow were out.
He stood before a tall, white house in the country, surrounded by taller trees and a patchy rough yard. Behind the house were more and more trees, a forest, thick and dark and green. The house was calling to Russell, telling him to come in, to come home. He followed the voice up the front steps and eased open the front door and shouted hello. The word echoed and bounced, like a tossed ball, in and out of empty rooms, until the house's silence caught it and gobbled it up.