The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories (46 page)

As she tells him these things, she won’t look at Rick and he doesn’t know why. Her eyes shift away as if she doesn’t want him looking at them. He hears something in her voice, too, that makes him think she might be lying. But about what? Her life is obviously what she says it is, and she seems honest. What would she lie about? 

As he works beside her in her home office, Rick learns what the new millennium is really about—not the stopping of alien blobs with fire extinguishers or giant locusts with food pheromones, but
politics
. He learns that the Mayor, going on his fifth term of office and always reelection-conscious—wants the little red suckers with pinchers stopped because the more powerful among his doddering constituents are
annoyed
by them. They’re not a physical threat to the citizens or an economic burden on the county. They’re a natural phenomenon and after each yearly migration their little red exoskeletons lie fading in the sun, crushed by car tires, toyed with by curious pets, even turned into godawful tourist souvenirs by local craftsmen. But they’re an embarrassment to the businessmen of the town, the ones who live in the big colonial homes; and because they are, the Mayor wants them stopped. And, Susan explains, Mayor Delameter is not going to listen to a Northerner—some female Yankee doctor of “bah-ah-logee” from Massachusetts, widow of a “leftist reformer”—about how to do that. The situation is hopeless, she says. 

Rick turns moody, homesick for something he can’t even articulate, and Susan takes him to a ’50s sci-fi horror film series at the local Corkscrew theater—a theater straight from
The Blob
. She makes fun of the movies: Their portrayal of women. The buffer-than-life heroism. The black-and-white values. The cardboard people. He begins to see these things in a new light. These aren’t movies about real people. They’re about cartoon characters who never lived and never could live in a real world. 

She teases him about his tattoo, too, but behind the teasing there’s that affection, and so he listens. 

Jacob gets sick a lot—the “flu,” she tells him, and Rick doesn’t think much about it. The boy doesn’t get much exercise, is chubby, so it isn’t surprising. He’s just not in shape. He likes the kid, sure, but there are limits—and when the boy has the flu it gives Rick a legitimate excuse to bow out, to have time to himself. After all, when he isn’t sick, the boy follows him everywhere, pumping him for information. One day he gifts Rick his one and only plastic replica of the “McCulloughville Mutants.” “I didn’t even know they made them,” Rick confesses. “Sure,” Jacob says. “They had a computer game, too.
McCulloughville!
Every time you killed a mutant you got to street-race this old car. I had a copy but I loaned it to a guy at school and he moved. It wasn’t very good. The locusts looked like chickens.” 

Rick watches the Mayor’s commandos attempt to address The Crab Problem—flamethrowers, traps, poison. The burning crabs stink to high heaven and the live ones simply carry the traps off in a tidal wave of red bodies. It’s pathetic, Rick sees. Like a parody of those ’50s creature-features, in fact. 

When Susan’s cat, DNA, crawls into the shower stall to die and Susan cries—saying, “They’re using the poison again.”—it loses all humor. 

One night Rick stands in the darkness of the porch and watches the crabs marching through the creek near the house. They’re marching
because they must,
he realizes. They’re full of courage and sheer will, he sees. Does he have this kind of courage and will? he wonders. 

He takes Jacob—just the boy this time—to a ’50s flick at last and finds himself poking fun at the Hero and The Girlfriend and The Professor and the State Police and how easy it all is. “If life weren’t worth living, it wouldn’t be so hard,” he hears himself saying, amazed. As he sits there in the theater with Jacob Covington, we know he’s discovering what it means to care about someone—someone who needs you and doesn’t have the power you do. It feels good. It even makes him feel—in a calm, quiet way—like a hero. The boy loves him. The boy falls asleep—that big goofy moon face with glasses—on his arm during their third movie in a row and Rick doesn’t wake him, even when Rick’s arm falls asleep. 

When the lights come on, Rick sees a rash on Jacob’s arms, one he hasn’t seen before. He’ll mention it to Susan when they get home. But as they leave the theater and he looks at Jacob’s arms again, the rash is gone. Was it just the lighting in the theater? 

As they walk down Main Street, checking out the shops, they stop to buy T-shirts. Rick buys the boy one with a bug on it—a big bright beetle. It feels good to do it. Jacob buys him a T-shirt with a bug on it, too—a giant millipede—and Rick must wear it. They wear their shirts together as they walk down the street. Though it’s embarrassing at first, it grows on him. At least it’s not McCulloughville Mutants. 

One night he finds a photograph of Joshua Covington and studies it, looks in at Jacob sleeping in his bed, and sighs. Fathers. Sons. 

Rick could have moved out of Jacob’s room by now—onto the porch that Susan has recently had enclosed—but he doesn’t. 

The next day he sees the rash on Jacob’s arms again and mentions it to Susan. 

“It’s all right,” she says. “It comes and goes. It’s not contagious.” And we cut to: 

Rick destroying his news footage tapes—the tapes of his old glory. He’s got a smile on his face. Acceptance at last. Some peace. 

And then it happens: 

They’re all watching television in the living room—fireplace, everything—in Susan’s house. It’s been a busy day on the water-bottle route and another two hours—Susan and Rick together—at the office of the “Save the Swamp” club, which Susan helped found. A news bulletin interrupts the regular broadcast: “They’re coming out of the sea at Galveston!” the announcer shouts. 

What are? 

The aliens, of course. Looking like aquatic triceratops with rubber horns, they’re swarming from the Gulf of Mexico and bringing the wrecks of old boats and airplanes, the detritus of the Bermuda Triangle, with them. And they’re mad as hell. Global warming and the gulf currents have cracked their stealthy underwater domes and they’re pissed, ready to tangle. Shots of fleeing Galvestonites. Shots of dripping creatures the size and color of M1 tanks. And it’s all real. 

Rick listens—and to his horror feels elation. It’s happening again, a voice says. A chance for that old glory. He resists. Hasn’t he learned anything at all from the past few months—from Susan, Jacob, and her world? He’s
one
man, one human being—a mortal one at that—and there’s a world for him here in Corkscrew. A home. A family. 

Vanity rears its head like a cobra, but he resists. 

“Great,” he says at last, grinning. “The aliens are ruining the beaches in Texas. So what?” Susan and Jacob laugh, but it’s a nervous laugh and Rick doesn’t know why. 

He notices Susan’s elbow. The light’s dim but he could swear the elbow has the same red rash. Is he imagining things? Is this some mental trick—some odd residue of his PTSD? 

“You don’t have that rash, too, do you?” he says to her before they turn the lights out. 

“No,” she says quickly, and she’s right. When he looks at her elbow, the rash is gone. 

The next day the first fax arrives on Susan’s home machine:
Mr. Rowe, we need you. Signed: The Mayor of Galveston.
 

And another the next day—from the Office of Emergency Services in Texas:
You’re needed!
And cell messages, real ones: One from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. One from the
Miami Herald:
“Word is that you’ve been approached about the Galveston crisis. What are your plans, Mr. Rowe?” 

Cell in hand, Rick folds. 

He stands before Susan. “They need me,” he says. “They really do. I’ve got to go.” His heart is beating like a railroad track. It’s McCulloughville all over again and he’s got to live his story. He’s got to. Certainly she’ll understand. “A man’s got to do what he’s got to do,” he says. Someone once said that. Someone in a movie, he’s sure. 

“It’s not real,” she says. 

“Of course it’s real, Susan. It wouldn’t be on the news if it wasn’t real—” 

“I don’t mean it like that.” 

“Then how do you mean it?” 

When she doesn’t answer, he says: “I was hoping you’d understand.” He’s angry. If she really cared for him, she’d understand, wouldn’t she? 

“Maybe
we
need you,” she says quietly. 

“Come with me—both of you,” he says—brightening. 

“We can’t, Rick. It’s not our story.” She turns away. Jacob has the flu again and she’s got to take his temperature every hour on the hour. Doctor’s orders. 

Finally, he says: “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t worry.” She’s looking away, as always, but making it easy for him. “I’ll explain to Jacob what’s happened. He’ll understand. You’ll still be his hero.” 

Rick takes the old Ford pickup that’s been languishing in Susan’s garage for years and speeds toward Galveston. You’d think he’d be on a freeway at least, but he’s not—it’s a highway like Route 66 and the billboards have the old brand names and slogans again—
SEE THE USA IN YOUR CHEVROLET
and
NO CLOSER CALL . . . THAN BURMA SHAVE
—and the few cars that pass him in the night are just as old as his. The broken line down the center of the road mesmerizes him and his life flashes before his eyes. We see what he sees: McCulloughville, his parents, Buddy Blaylock and his car, Susan, Jacob, Chi Chi Escalante. We see all of the versions of Rick Rowe we’ve seen over the past few months. Something’s happening to Rick as he drives. We’re not sure what, but it’s important. 

Finally he sees
himself
as a locust—alien, wide-eyed, exoskeleton shimmering blue and green . . . and somehow it’s all right. 

He stops the car, pulls a U, and drives back. When he arrives at the house, the doctor is there. Rick looks at the boy, the doctor, Susan, and knows suddenly that it hasn’t been the “flu” all these months. 

“How long has he had this?” he asks her. 

“Since we arrived.” 

He doesn’t know what she means. Arrived? 

“What is it—what does he have?” Ricks asks. 

“A muscle weakness. A problem with the muscle sheaths. . . . I don’t know the scientific name. I’m not sure there even is one, Rick. Dr. Patterson has never seen anything like it.” 

“Shouldn’t he be at a hospital—with specialists?” 

“That’s not possible.” 

“You mean money?” 

She ignores him, looking at Jacob and the doctor instead, and all Rick can think to say is, “Will it get worse?” 

She smiles a little, looking at him for a moment, and he realizes he loves that smile. It’s a little off, a little higher on one side, and her teeth are awfully small, but he loves it. “Maybe . . . maybe not.” She says it with resignation and he remembers that she always says that:
Maybe, maybe not.
No assurances. No billboard-large promises. 

“He idolizes you,” she says quietly. 

“He doesn’t really know me.” 

“He knows what he needs to know,” she says. 

There’s an awkward silence between them as the doctor finishes his checkup on the sleeping boy. Rick notices the doctor’s hands. They’ve got the same red streaky rash on them that Jacob’s arms had in the theater, that Susan’s elbow had. He stares. The rash remains.
It’s real,
he sees. Very real. He starts to say something about it, but the doctor looks up at him and there’s something odd about his eyes—the doctor won’t look at him either—so Rick says instead: 

“There’ll be other aliens, other monsters, right?” 

“Of course,” she answers. “There always are. . . .” 

She’s seen Rick’s look and knows it’s time. It’s time to tell him. She holds out her hands, and there it is, the rash—but as he looks the red turns blue and green, shining like a rain-forest butterfly wing, and it’s her skin, he realizes, not a rash. And when he looks up at her face, her eyes aren’t what he remembered at all. They’re an incredible blue—like space between the stars—and they don’t have pupils, and her teeth look a little more pointed than he remembered them. It’s real, he knows. 

Sometimes what you want,
she’s saying, though her mouth isn’t moving,
isn’t very far away.
 

He touches her hands and they’re thinner than he remembers, and maybe there’s an extra finger. 

It’s the atmosphere of your planet,
she says,
that’s making him sick. But he wants to be here. I’m all he’s got. We’re all we’ve got.
 

We need you, Rick,
she’s saying.
We knew you were the one when we saw you on television that day. So brave. We knew you wouldn’t be afraid—that you of all people would be willing to help
. . . . 

He’s staring at her, unable to speak. Even if he could, what would he say?