Strange Seed (13 page)

“I’m here,” he answered from the kitchen.

*****

What, Rachel wondered, was it that she had read, for an instant, on his face?
 
Disappointment?

“Good morning,” she said, smiling.

He was seated at the table, cup of coffee in hand.
 
“Morning,” he grunted.

Rachel looked past him.
 
A freshly brewed pot of coffee, steam rising from its spout, was on the stove, a pain of rapidly boiling water on the burner beside it, a box of oatmeal on the counter.

“Oh,” Rachel began, trying to sound pleasantly surprised, “you started breakfast.
 
Thank you.
 
I still hate to build a fire in that damned stove.
 
I always burn myself.”
 
She went over to the counter and opened the box of oatmeal.
 
“I’ve been thinking, Paul; about the boy.
 
I think we should give him a name.
 
Just temporarily.
 
You know, until he’s”—she tried to think of the right phrase—“well enough that he can tell us his name.”

Paul said nothing.

“You don’t like that idea?” Rachel said, got a measuring cup from the cupboard and poured some oatmeal into it.
 
“If you don’t, I’ll understand.
 
It was just an idea.
 
I mean, it’s not like he’s our own child, is it?
 
It’s not like we’ve adopted him or something.”
 
She went to the stove and slowly poured the cup of oatmeal into the pan of boiling water.
 
“It’s just that it seems kind of immoral to give names to, you know, the cat, and the car”—they called it “Bessie”—“and even to your tractor”—he called it “Brutus”—“and go on referring to that child as ‘the boy.’”
 
She glanced at Paul.
 
“Are you listening to me?”

His back was turned.
 
She saw him lower his head a little.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“I’m listening.
 
It’s a good idea, I suppose.”

“But you’re not enthusiastic about it—is that what you’re saying?”

He shrugged, mumbled, “I don’t know,” turned his head and looked blankly at her.
 
“Rachel, did you leave that door open?”
 
He nodded at the back door.
 
It was closed.

“Last night?” Rachel began.
 
“No, not
 
that I remember.”
 
She thought a moment.
 
“Wait a minute,” she continued, “maybe I did.
 
Just after you went upstairs to check on the boy.
 
I was in here cleaning things up and I heard something like someone was on the back steps, so I opened the door and looked out.
 
I didn’t see anyone.”
 
She paused.
 
“It was probably a raccoon,” she continued.
 
“I remember once that one came right up to the back door.
 
I imagine you could tame a raccoon if you tried hard enough.”
 
A quick self-conscious smile flashed across her face.
 
Paul’s race remained expressionless.
 
“Well, anyway, I probably didn’t close the door tight enough and the wind blew it open.”
 
She paused briefly.
 
“I don’t understand.
 
What’s so important about it?”

He stood abruptly.
 
“I’ll show you,” he said.
 
He strode briskly to the back door and opened it.
 
“When I got up,” he explained, “it was wide open.”
 
He pointed at the screen door.
 
“And this is what I found.”

Rachel looked to where he was pointing.
 
“I don’t see anything, Paul.”

“Well, come closer, for God’s sake.”

She hesitated, surprised by his tone, then set the pan of oatmeal to one side and did as he’d asked.
 
“Okay,” she said, trying too hard, and knowing it, to sound annoyed.
 
“What did you find?”

“These,” Paul told her.
 
He ran his finger along a small area about four feet up the right-hand side of the screen door’s frame.
 
“These marks.
 
Look at them.”

Rachel leaned over a little and, feigning disinterest, studied the marks.
 
She straightened.
 
“Well, I’m sorry, Paul.
 
He does that all over; you should see the sides of the couch.
 
I’ve scolded him for it, but you can’t scold a cat, can you?
 
It doesn’t—“

“Hold it,” Paul cut in.
 
“You think the
cat
did this?”

“Of course.
 
He scratches everything.”

Paul gestured at the marks.
 
“Take a better look, Rachel.”

She studied the marks more closely, then straightened.

“Well?” Paul coaxed.
 
“Do you understand now?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.
 
She fell quiet for a long moment.
 
She looked, Paul thought, near the point of tears.
 
Then she said, “There’s probably some kind of explanation.
 
There has to be.”

“Yes,” Paul said softly, “there is.”
 
He paused meaningfully.
 
“The boy wanted to get out, couldn’t reach the latch, or couldn’t work it—which, I’m afraid, seems more likely—and so he tried to chew through the door.
 
That’s the explanation, and I’m sorry.”

“No reason to be sorry, Paul,” Rachel said, straining to sound flippant, her voice trembling.
 
“I don’t know about you, but I…”
 
She bit her lower lip as if to steady her voice.
 
“I never kidded myself about his…progress.
 
He’s got a long way to go…”
 
She moved quickly back to the stove, repositioned the pan on the burner and stirred the oatmeal slowly, methodically.
 
“He’s got a long way to go…”
 
She hesitated, her back to Paul.
 
“This has got lumps in it.
 
Shit.
 
I’ll have to start over again.
 
You know how you hate—“

Paul, still at the screen door, heard the muted crack of the wooden spoon being driven viciously into the bottom of the pan—once, then again, and again.

For a moment, there was
 
silence.

“Rachel,” he pleaded, “don’t…”
 
He stopped, confused; though Rachel’s back was turned, he sensed that she was smiling.
 
“Rachel?”

She turned her head; a grimly satisfied smile, as if some dark suspicion had suddenly been confirmed, a long and bitterly fought battle finally won.
 
“Hank will know what to do,” she said, voice steady.

“Hank’s dead, Rachel.
 
You know that.”

Her smile faded.

“Rachel?” Paul coaxed.

“He told you,” she said, her voice a hoarse, desperate whisper.
 
“He told you and you wouldn’t listen.”

“Told me what, Rachel?”
 
He took a few steps tower her, stopped and nodded at the severely pointed, broken handle of the spoon she held menacingly in front of her.
 
“Rachel”—his tone solicitous—“what are you going to do with that?”

“What Hank started to do—what you stopped him from doing, Paul!”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

She turned toward the living room.
 
Paul reached out and grabbed her wrist.
 
“Rachel!”

More because of the abruptness of her movements than her strength, she wrenched free of his grasp.
 
Seconds later, she had crossed through the kitchen and the living room and had thrown open the door leading to the stairway.

Paul, confused, reacted slowly.
 
Running through the living room, he could hear her; she was near the top of the stairs, he guessed.
 
He pulled the door open—Rachel had slammed it shut behind her.
 
He caught a fleeting glimpse of her nightgown as she rounded the top of the stairs and started for the back of the second-floor hallway—toward the boy’s room.

“Rachel, stop!”

He took the stairs three at a time and, on the landing, paused a moment, his wide-eyed and out-of-focus gaze on the bare wood floor, his hand clasped hard to his ribs.
 
He took a deep breath and looked down the hallway.
 
The boy’s door, he saw, was open.
 
He tried to disregard the agonizing pain in his ribs and stumbled down the hallway.
 
“Rachel!” he gasped, the word barely audible, even to himself.
 
“Don’t!”

It was a grotesque and unbelievable scene that greeted him when he reached the boy’s room.
 
But, he knew, as grotesque and unbelievable as it was, he was powerless to affect it.

“Rachel, darling…”
 
A plea.
 
And before he fell to the floor, unconscious, the boy—prone on the cot at the far end of the room—looked over, and Rachel—her arm upraised over him, the broken spoon tight in her hand—looked over.
 
And the boy’s face, as usual, but impossibly, was blank, and Rachel’s face bore the same grim smile that had first appeared on it less than a minute before.

*****

The world from which Paul struggled—first reluctantly, then with desperation—back to consciousness was a world of memory that, once released, became uncontrollable because it had been denied for so long.
 
A world inhabited by himself, and his father and all the forms two such people can take:

Samuel Griffin, new father—his pride and happiness muted by the death of his wife in childbirth.

Paul Griffin, infant, waiting long hours alone at the farmhouse for his father to finish a day’s work.

Samuel Griffin shutting the house up tight against a fierce winter storm.

Paul Griffin miraculously averting death from pneumonia, cradled tightly in his father’s arms.

Paul Griffin listening, barely comprehending, as his father speaks, in tones of deep respect, of “Lumas, my old friend.”

Samuel Griffin remembering his wife and weeping openly, unashamedly, but somehow no longer with sadness.

Father and son wandering the darkened forest, and the father’s words: “Some will tell you, Paul, that the oceans are the source of all life.”
 
Then, with a slow, sweeping motion of his arm, a motion designed to encompass the forest, “But now, this is!”

The whole thing both kaleidoscopic and a process of maturation.
 
And Paul, an integral part of it—as observer and participant—more convinced of its reality than of the reality of Rachel wielding the broken spoon, of fields to be planted, of vandalized and restored farmhouses and the marks of human teeth on screen doors.

Reality so stark, so inescapable, that to finite understanding it became illusory.

And Paul fought to escape from it, its grip on him suffocatingly strong—each scene, as it swept past, a mere fraction of a second long, was timeless, as if painting on a revolving wheel of immense size.

The last day, the day of his father’s death, shimmered by.

Then the following day, a day of torturous silence, at first, as if the land beyond the farmhouse and the farmhouse itself had become separated from the flow and events and noise of existence.
 
And then, with the approach of evening, a merciful silence.
 
To Paul Griffin’s young mind (trying to grope its way out of confusion and grief), existence had hushed temporarily as a show of respect to the man lying dead.

Then the silence was broken by the sound of someone walking very slowly up the stairs to the bedroom where Paul tried to sleep.

“Father,” Paul said, “is that you?”

The footfalls grew heavier.

“Father?”

The noises stopped.
 
Paul Griffin slept.

And was awakened by the knowledge that something was touching him very lightly, as a spider would, on the forehead, the cheeks, the arms.

And barely discernible in the darkness, the face of a child—expressionless, but, somehow, bearing curiosity, not question, and empathy, not sympathy, but bearing it as if in judgment of Paul’s bewilderment and grief, as if finding out if the emotions gave pleasure or pain.

And the wheel had completed its revolution, had once again come to the beginning, the death of Elizabeth Griffin, the birth of Paul Griffin, the long hours alone at the farmhouse, shutting the house up tight against the winter storm, Samuel Griffin weeping openly, unashamedly, but not with sadness.

Paul Griffin fought to make himself more an observer than a participant, fought to question—as he hadn’t, then—his father’s words:
 
“Some will tell you, Paul, that the oceans are the source of all life.
 
But now, this is!”
 
Words so very difficult to comprehend, then, words so damnedly difficulty to accept now.