The Secret City (12 page)

Corwin asks, would we stay a few more days and help bring the cows down from the hills. Emily would have to miss school if we can’t do it—fifty dollars a day and all our food—which will be beans.

I tell him if I can bring Jack along and if there’s an old nag that’s big enough for him, then yes, we’d like to. At least I’ll have a few days without straps pulling on my sore shoulders.

Jack is going to think all sorts of odd things about this world. He’s seen planes passing overhead and their jet streams and he ought to experience a city, except I can just see us in some one-room hovel with bathroom down the hall, paper-thin walls and noisy neighbors. That would be all we could afford. Makes me think of my growing up years. No wonder Mother wanted to go home.

I’m worried, though, because now we’ll be heading back to those same mountains, and who knows where Youpas has got himself to. But we do need money or we can’t get anywhere. Can’t even eat.

I wonder if Youpas is in town now and if he’s been asking for a big ugly lug that looks like him. Wonder what he’ll think when he hears there’s two of us.

Maybe, if we’re out cavorting in the woods yelling to the cows, there’ll be time for Youpas to simmer down some. Though from what Allush said about him, he never simmers down. She said they used to call him Chicago because they think big city people are always violent. Like lots of country folk, they distrust anybody from a city.

Jack is definitely in love. Emily likes him, too. She thinks he’s funny. She likes to make him laugh. Next morning she brings out her little plastic horse. Jack’s whole face lights up. He says, “Outta sight.” I guess I don’t have to worry quite yet that he doesn’t seem feebleminded enough.

Emily gives the plastic horse a big sloppy kiss.

Jack points at her and says, “You…. You, yay.”

She ducks her head, suddenly shy, but pleased.

I can’t think why she likes him. Maybe she knows her father wouldn’t want her to. Maybe she likes how inappropriate he is for her to like. Or maybe she knows he’s safe since nothing can ever happen between them because it’s so wrong that she wouldn’t even really want it herself.

She turns to Corwin, takes the cigar out of his mouth, says, “You know you shouldn’t.” And then, “Dad, I want to go with you. You were going to let me before these men came. Besides I already told everybody I was going to miss school for a few days. I even did my homework ahead of time. Can’t I come? Why should you have all the fun?”

But Corwin says, “Absolutely not. Why do you think I asked them? It’s for you … so you don’t have to miss school.”

“Daddy
!
”

But it’s, “No,” no matter what she says—and she says a lot. Could be, too, Corwin doesn’t want Emily and Jack to be together any more than necessary.

So she goes off to school, grumpy, (her black cowboy-hat low over her eyes, and jeans low, too, so her belly button shows. I wonder what Jack thinks of that. Well, everything is new.)

We load the pickup with food and tack, catch the horses and, finally, take off. Jack and I are in the back of the truck again and the trailer is full of horses. This time six so we each have two, and this time with the dog. It’s not only Emily that’s fascinated by Jack, but the dog, Elizabeth Alice, too. She hovers around Jack more than around me. There must be an even odder smell to someone who grew up on the homeworld, ate the homeworld food…. But she’s so happy to be about to do the work she was born for that she’s even happy to be with Jack. Mother was wrong, dogs can get along with us just fine.

I keep on teaching Jack. “Truck, saddle, airplane … in the sky. Sky.” I even work a little on writing. Mostly signs we see on our way out of town. Bar, Restaurant, but also … in case he needs it, Men, Ladies, Women (though around here it’s frequently Heifer and Bulls or some such). And then, “Soon enough there’ll be beans. I hope you don’t mind eating them because that’s all there’s going tobe.”

He repeats things he knows already, showing off what he remembers. “Tree, treesiz; house, housiz; grass, grassiz; sand, sandiz; one two three four five six….” All the esses sounding more sh than ss.

Talk about feebleminded.

I say, “Pretty good.”

Being with Emily even that little bit, has made his language learning much faster.

Jack looks proud of himself, says, “Yup, awesome.”

Soon the road is little more than bumpy ruts in the sand. We raise a great cloud of dust. “Dust.”

“Dust. Dustes.”

“Just plain dust.”

Corwin parks at a dead end, where there’s a little oasis of trees and we bring out the horses, hobble them and let them go where they can hop. There’s a corral there big enough for a pretty good-sized herd. We cook our beans and bacon, then bed down, all three of us, in the back of the truck.

I know we’re near where Jack and I came down from the mountains. Easy to tell by the white-topped peak that was in view then at the same angle as it is now. I hope Youpas has already passed by. Surely he won’t think Jack is me and shoot him right off.

N
EXT MORNING HERE’S
E
MILY, SQUATTING BY THE
camphre, coffee and oatmeal already made. She rode all night. Her pony is exhausted. She’ll have to take one of our extra horses to go help get cows.

Corwin looks both disgusted and resigned. He gets a lot quieter. Thanks her for the coffee with more politeness than necessary. Practically bows as she hands it to him. He squats down, sipping it, and stares into the fire.

I
T’S NOT AS HARD GETTING
J
ACK UP ON A HORSE AS
I thought it would be. That’s because Emily does it. He’s eager to do whatever she wants him to.

I’m so used to never seeing my own kind. I didn’t realize how young he probably is. He might not be much more than twenty himself. Of course I can never ask him. Years on our world are different. I’ve been here all my life and I don’t remember how they figured on our world, so even when Jack gets his numbers straight I can’t ask him in any way that I’d understand. And I can’t tell him how young Emily is either.

We adjust his stirrups. Emily tells him, “Don’t pull. It hurts the horse.”

“Horsh.”

“Hang on to this knob if you need to. Steer like this.” All this mostly with gestures.

But I’m afraid he’s going to be more trouble than he’s worth. I try to tell him to stick with me, but who he sticks with—of course—is Emily.

He watches, bounces along (I pity the poor horse) and pretty soon he
is
a little help. Thank goodness the horse knows what to do. And Emily is a good teacher. Jack does everything she says as soon as he understands it.

They’re both yelling, “Ayy
yaa,”
at just about everything that happens, or at nothing. I can just see Emily’s whole high school class saying it by next week. Though Ayy yaa is pretty much what we’ve always yelled at the cows.

Later Emily trots up to me and says, “I don’t think he’s dumb at all.”

I was afraid of that. I say, “I’m glad I took him out with me. It’s good for him to be with normal people. And, Emily, you’re the best teacher so far.”

At lunch, Jack falls down when he dismounts and he can hardly walk. I forgot that always happens. He’ll have to sit the afternoon out. I put him in the one and only shady spot, under a wild peach bush on a knoll, so he can watch us.

I wish I could tell him about Youpas. We’ve been a noisy bunch—actually a
happy
noisy bunch—all along. That worries me because, if Youpas is on the trail above us, he might come to take a look—though why would he think I’d be working cows? Except I’m still wearing Ruth’s husband’s soft hat. I should have stolen a new one when I had the chance.

But Corwin hasn’t been so happy. He’s been quiet ever since Emily appeared. He’s been ultra-gracious to her… not that he wasn’t before. I noticed from the first that he treated her with a kind of concern, as if she was precious and fragile. Now there’s this mock gentility added to it. His way of being angry.

Emily avoids his eyes. She looks properly remorseful (even as she’s enjoying herself), as if this ultra graciousness is punishment enough.

Next morning we have thirty-four cows rounded up and we start down. Ten are lost up there but Corwin wants to get down in a hurry. He says he wants to get Emily back to school but maybe what he really wants is to get her away from Jack.

Now, sore as he is, Jack has to get back on a horse. There’s no other way. He’s not afraid of much of anything anymore. I’m still thinking about how to find a way to keep him scared, and then it happens by itself. The horse steps into a ground-hornet’s nest and bucks Jack off. Both the horse and Jack get stung.

I guess I should have taught him, “Run,” and, “Jump in the river,” a long time ago.

I lope up beside him while Emily gallops after the horse. I jump off, grab him, and run him to the river. It’s a little river, about twelve feet wide and a foot deep, but if we lie down we can get covered. The cold will help to take away the pain. Besides these hornets aren’t that vicious. By the time we’re wet they’re gone.

We sit on the bank and I examine his welts. Jack looks petrified again. Good! I suppose he wonders if they’ve killed him—poisoned him some way. Good! He looks at me, again, as if I’m his only hope and as if I have all the answers … which I do.

I say, “You’re fine. I know it hurts but you’ll be OK.”

I think. I’ve heard some of the old ones died from such things. I take his pulse. That scares him, too. I say, “You’re OK. OK, OK.” But I’ll watch him closely for a while. I say, “Hornets. There’s bees and spiders and rattlesnakes and poison ivy. I’m glad you’re scared.”

Emily trots over with our horses.

Jack is limping and his ankle is starting to swell up. I’ll call it a sprain because Mother said, “Never let any doctors see you.” She said, “Who knows what the natives of this world would do when they find out about our world and how to get there. They’d try to take over when they see how much better our world is than theirs. After all,” she said, “We have oil and minerals, gold, diamonds. Everybody knows what these people did in South America and Africa. North America, too. Wherever they go they’re an infestation.”

Corwin has a first-aid kit. He tapes up Jack’s ankle like a man who’s used to doctoring. He even has some stuff for the bites. He puts it on the horse’s bites, too.

We get back to work, push all the cows into the corral and sit down to beans and bacon. Cold beans and bacon.

Emily will drive the truck to our next camp site. She’ll keep driving it as long as we’re on back roads, then Corwin will take over. We should have the cows down in Corwin’s pastures on the outskirts of town in one more day.

I’m feeling pretty good, we’re earning money—even Jack is a help—and we’re staying away from people while he learns more about how to behave. He’s properly terrified again, and we’re staying away from Youpas. Maybe. There’s no way somebody on the trail wouldn’t have seen us below them and heard us but we look like anybody else would look, out gathering cows.

ALLUSH

T
HE WIND ALMOST BLOWS ME OVER THE EDGE
. I
SIT
down and try to orient myself. How can it be so much colder here already? How many days has it been? I’ve lost track.

The weather’s often bad this high. Now there’s a light pricking snow or, rather, tiny hail splinters, coming sideways, but the air smells
so, so
good. I never realized how good this air was. I never noticed it. I catch some of the little bits of hail in the palm of my hand and lick them up. I feel as if I’ve been thirsty for days. I haven’t really eaten for a long time either. All I did was nibble on that fruit. I hope it was a fruit. Even when Olowpas took me out for a fancy dinner and music, I didn’t like anything, especially not smelly fermented…. They called it “fermented water” but how can that be? Except maybe with that odd taste and rusty color, it does ferment. But I didn’t even like to see Olowpas drinking it. He laughed at me. I think I was his entertainment for the evening. I began to wonder about the real reason he brought me there. It began to be pretty obvious I wasn’t the “right kind,” or at least, as he said, my status hadn’t been determined yet. Olowpas, clearly, thought he was doing me a
big
favor, bringing me to this fancy place, and getting me the right clothes for it. He even gave me a lesson in how to walk and told me not to smile at anybody but him, not to nod my head, and not to blow my nose or wipe my eyes even if I cried, and to keep my hands away from my face. He should have given me a lesson in the food probes. I tried to hold them as he did. We both laughed at that.