Tag Archives: Gail A. Webber

Rules

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Dead of Winter ~ Second Place
Gail A. Webber

Photo Credit: Adam Buzzo/Flickr (CC-by)

I looked down at my boots, trying not to shuffle while a cold wind blew between us.

My grandfather seemed like a giant standing over me, a giant who was shaking his finger at me. In his other hand, he held the rabbit that two minutes ago I was so proud to have shot. “We only hunt rabbits in winter, Narina.” He leaned closer, and though I couldn’t see him, I felt him get closer and imagined him drawing his grizzled eyebrows together. I’d seen it enough times before. “They carry a sickness in the warm months. It makes people real sick.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, registering the new rule: Wait until winter to kill rabbits. Rules had always made me feel safe, even if breaking them meant I’d get punished. But since punishments hadn’t lasted too long or hurt too much in the past, they just reminded me to be more careful. To think before I decided to do something. What scared me lately about rules was that the older I got, the worse punishments seemed to be getting for the same violations.

…like standing in the corner facing the wall for twenty-four whole hours with one of them always watching to make sure I didn’t move.

Rules. I’d learned some early: Don’t talk back. Never lie. Do your chores. Take your punishment. Others came later: Tell me if you see a strange person. Never go outside without your knife. Gut your kill in the field. Stay out the meat shed. I was eleven years old and had quite a long list to remember.

The first time Granddad gave me the rule about seeing a strange person, I was confused. From when I was really little, Gramma had read me stories about the long-ago-people in the Bible, but I’d never seen another human besides us. I thought we were the only people left, but the rule about strange people meant we weren’t. That was when I first started to wonder about other things I’d been told, whether they were true or not, but I trusted my grandparents then, and knew better than to ask for more information than they offered.

Even with my head down, I could tell Granddad was still looking at me funny. “Did you hear me, Narina?”

“Yes, sir.” I tried to be obedient—I liked how they treated me when I obeyed. But how could he expect me to obey the rule about killing rabbits when I didn’t know about it? It wasn’t fair. The whole concept of fair and not fair consequences was something I’d only recently thought up, but I knew it was right.

As for that day, I didn’t think I had done one thing wrong.

I had awakened before Gramma called me. That was unusual because I’d been having more trouble getting awake lately and Gramma said it was because I was growing up. That made no sense because Gramma and Granddad were already grown and they always got up really early.

Anyway, I’d been having a dream about running, racing a deer faster and farther than I’d ever been. When the deer jumped into a river, I followed it in, still chasing. The dizzy excited feeling the dream gave me didn’t fade like most dreams did when I sat up, and my excitement mounted as I thought about the river. I had been warned about the river.

I could go as far as I chose in three directions from our cabin. Only one direction was forbidden to me, and I was never to go that way. Not hunting, not hiking, and not for any other reason. Granddad said the river was in that direction, beyond our fields and beyond our forest, and that it was dangerous for me to even look at. He told me if I ever got lost and found myself near it, I was to close my eyes until I’d put my back to it and then hurry home as fast as I could.

I couldn’t help wondering if “beyond the river” might be where Granddad’s strange people lived, if they existed at all. I fantasized about what they might look like, made up reasons why we never tried to see them, and why I should be afraid.

But nobody said I couldn’t dream about them—a person can’t control her dreams—and maybe the dream would come back.

My insides felt all jumpy that morning. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t go slow. I needed to do something, so I got my knife from the table beside my bed, crept downstairs real quiet, and grabbed the .22 rifle by the back door. Then I ran to the place where our fields meet the woods.

After I shot a fat rabbit, I gutted it right away, just like I was supposed to, and ran back home fast. The proof was that blood was still dripping from the carcass Granddad had taken from me. I wanted to look at his face, but was afraid what I would see.

It’s not fair. I didn’t know.

I swallowed down a sigh and waited to find out what my punishment would be this time.

“So, this is the right thing done the right way.” I looked up to see him standing straight with a little smile curving his mouth. “Last week, we had our first hard frost, and this morning the ground is hard and there’s snow. Truth be told, it’s not much snow, but enough to call this winter. Well done, Narina.” Granddad always used my whole name instead of calling me Narry like Gramma did.

While I was still adjusting to the idea that everything was okay, he patted me once on my shoulder, the only way he had ever touched me. Gramma was another story. “And it’s a good shot too,” he said. “Right behind the front leg. I’ll hang it while you go help your grandmother.”

“Always hang your game for a few days” was another of his rules. He said it made the meat taste better and get tender, and we had a special outbuilding for that—the meat shed. Granddad did the butchering in there too. It seemed like it would have enough space inside to hang four gutted deer carcasses, but I didn’t know for sure. I wasn’t allowed to even look in there. “Don’t ask me why,” was another of Granddad’s rules.

He flicked his hand, the one holding the dead rabbit, and blood spattered in the snow. “Now git. You’re standing there like you been bewitched. Don’t let your grandmother do all the breakfast chores by herself.”

I ran to the cabin.

In the kitchen, I found Gramma bent over the woodstove, as tiny and neat a person as my Granddad was a huge one. She was lifting fresh cornbread from a covered pan onto a plate and didn’t look at me. “Where was you?” she asked.

“Hunting!” I leaned against the log wall and pulled off my boots. “I got a rabbit. With one shot!”

She looked at me with an odd expression and I wondered if she hadn’t quite heard me. As I was about to repeat myself, she said, “I am grateful for the food, Narry, and know your confidence comes from being well-taught and from practice. But avoid pride. No good comes of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gramma had rules too.

I never knew my mother. Granddad said she died, “going someplace she had no business going,” whatever that meant. It never sounded quite right to me, but the one time I’d pressed him for details, I got locked in the feed room for two days with a jar of water but no food. All I knew was my mom died and her parents—Granddad and Gramma—had raised me on their farm where they mostly followed the old ways. I learned to live that way too.

We cooked and heated with a woodstove, kept food cool in the summer in our spring house, and did without whatever we couldn’t grow, make for ourselves, or kill. Planting started in early spring with cool weather crops like kale, broccoli, and beets. The rest went in as the weather warmed, mainly from saved seed. Once some colorful little envelopes of new seed appeared along with old clothes Gramma would remake into things for the three of us. I never knew where either the seed or the clothes came from, and all Gramma would say was, “God provides.”

For seven months, there was always something growing or needing harvest, and weeds that needed pulling grew everywhere our food crops did. Whatever we didn’t eat fresh had to be “put up” for winter eating, a big job after harvest.

We kept chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and a few hogs for cleaning up scraps. Sometimes Granddad would kill a hog or a chicken if hunting was bad or if he wanted something different to eat. But most of the meat for our table was whatever he—and more recently he and I—could shoot. We ate rabbit and squirrel, venison, groundhog, and some other meat I couldn’t identify. Some creatures are hard to tell by just skinned pieces. It wasn’t an easy life. But whatever else we lacked, we always had plenty to eat.

Gramma looked me up and down. “Go change and wash up before you lay the table, Narry.” She shook her head at me and I took one step back. “You need to learn not to hug fresh kills, but that can’t be helped this time. Put your bloody clothes in the vinegar pail. We’ll launder them later.” She meant the pail on the back porch where Granddad always put his clothes after butchering.

I changed and did as I was told with the soiled clothes. When I came back to get out plates and utensils, I remembered my great shot that morning and couldn’t help smiling. Then my mind went to what Granddad was doing with my rabbit right then and a question came out all by itself.

“Why won’t Granddad let me in the meat shed?” I had never dared to ask that before. “He should know I’m not scared of dead things, and if he let me watch him butchering, I could learn. And help.”

Most of my questions didn’t make Gramma angry like they did Granddad. This time, she shrugged her shoulders while she put slices of fatback into the iron skillet and slid them around so they wouldn’t stick. “It’s his special place,” she said. “One of them, anyways. People got to have their own places.”

That made me wonder where my special place was… if I even had one. It felt like something in me moved sideways and I held my breath for a second. Finally, I asked the rest. “But why can’t he share his place with me?”

I wasn’t paying enough attention and had to skitter away at the last second before Gramma got to me. Usually, she only pinched me when I did something bad, but sometimes it felt like she did it for no reason. Either way, she pinched so hard it really hurt, and the black and purple bruises lasted for weeks. She hardly ever did it when I was little, but as I got older, I had two or three of those bruises all the time, no matter how hard I tried to follow the rules. As old as she was, she could move like a snake and she was brutal.

I kept the table between us until she went back to the bacon as if nothing had happened.

After a few minutes, she said, “Narry, sing us a song.”

We didn’t have electricity or a telephone then—I didn’t even know about those things—and we never went anywhere except hunting. The only music I had ever heard were the songs Granddad played on his mandolin, and one of my favorites was “On Springfield Mountain.” I liked the story, about a boy who got bit by a poisonous snake. A girl who tried to save him died because she had a rotten tooth and when she sucked out the poison, it got in her too.

So, I started singing that, but Gramma stopped me. “Heavens, girl! That’s a frightful song. Sing something more suited to the child you are.”

I wanted to tell her I was no child anymore, but decided that was a bad idea. So, I held my tongue and tried think of another song. “The Green Grass Grows All Around” was a silly piece Granddad taught me when I was about five, but it seemed exactly what she wanted to hear because once I got going, she bobbed her head in time.

The salty-fatty smell of bacon filled the kitchen, and the sizzling sound made it smell even better. As I was thinking about cornbread, bacon, and the eggs I knew Gramma would scramble to go with them, I heard footsteps on the front porch.

My grandmother’s head snapped up. “That ain’t your Granddad’s walk. I need to… No, you’re faster. Run out the back door and fetch him from the meat shed!”

If Gramma was right and it wasn’t Granddad, then who? While I was still wondering, a knock sounded on the door.

“Stop staring, girl! Be quick!”

“But I can’t go in…”

“Git!”

I ran out, sliding in the snow as I rounded the side of the cabin. Over my shoulder, I shot a look toward the front porch. A strange man stood there holding a little case. He wore clothes like I’d never seen, a kind of jacket that didn’t look at all warm. It matched his trousers, both blue, but not like blue jeans. Shocked to see an actual stranger, I tripped and stumbled the rest of the way to the meat shed, arriving in a rush. I hesitated only a second before I banged on the door.

“What in holy hell…” Granddad bellowed from inside and the door flew open. I got only a glance at the long stainless-steel tables inside before he gave me a hard look and slammed the door behind him.

“A man is here,” I choked out. “Gramma said come get you.”

I swear he growled and took off at a limping lope, getting up onto the porch faster than I thought he could. The strange man turned as if to say something, but Granddad didn’t give him a chance. He grabbed the man up by the shirtfront, punched him once in the face, and dragged him backwards down the porch steps toward me.

I had a million questions I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to ask.

Granddad seemed surprised to see me still standing in front of the shed and yelled for my grandmother. “Pearl! Get Narina back in the cabin and keep her there. I need to deal with this.”

I didn’t wait for Gramma to come get me, but ran inside on my own. What I found there puzzled me. Never in my life had I ever seen my grandmother shaken—not when a bear was tearing the chicken house apart, not when she shot a copperhead that had me cornered in the barn, and not when she thought a fever would take both me and Granddad. But this man… it seemed like seeing this man had made all her bones like jelly.

A couple of times while we waited, I tried to sneak a look out a window, but each time Gramma grabbed me away. I heard noise a little later—like a shout or a wail—but I figured it was one of the animals. Even back then, my mind sometimes turned one thing into another and I had learned to let strange thoughts be. Usually, they went away.

It was a long time before I heard a door slam outside. I peeked out before Gramma could tell me not to and saw Granddad padlocking the shed. There was no sign of the strange man.

Boot steps on the porch. Front door creaking open. My grandfather framed in the doorway. “I sent him on his way,” was all he said.

Gramma went to him. “A car?” I think her voice was louder than she thought it was, because I hear her clear as day. He shook his head.

“What’s a car?” I’d never heard that word before.

Both of them looked at me, but neither responded. “Then how?” Gramma asked him in a whisper, but I still heard her. “Walking the road?”

He shrugged and said, “Still so overgrown you can’t hardly find it.” Then he sat down at the table and waited for Gramma to fill his plate.

I knew what overgrown meant, like fallow fields and gardens gone to weeds, but “car” and “road” were two new words. Apparently, they had to do with the man. “What’s a car?” I asked again. “And what does ‘road’ mean?”

Nobody answered me that time either, and it was all I could do to keep from getting loud. But I knew that wouldn’t get me anything but punished and I still wouldn’t have an answer. There had to be a way to find out all the things I wanted to know. There had to be.

I buttered my cornbread and stole looks at them between bites. They both kept their eyes down, fastened on their plates until their food was gone.

I was still looking at Granddad when he cleared his throat and locked eyes with me. I jumped.

“We will speak no more of this incident. You are to forget it, Narina.”

My mind spun as all the things I thought I knew fought to rearrange themselves. I had every intention of keeping silent despite the questions tumbling over each other in my mind. But I couldn’t. “Forget it? How can I? This changes everything!”

Granddad scowled and his mouth twisted into an ugly frown. “Not one thing has changed for you.”

“But that man!” I felt like something had hold of my insides, and I didn’t care what they did to me. “They’re beyond the river, right? Those people. A lot or just a few?”

Gramma’s eyes were as big as two full moons and Granddad gripped the edge of the table. He pushed himself slowly back, his knuckles white.

I knew I had crossed some kind of line and was afraid again, not afraid enough to keep silent, but my voice came out squeaky. “What else haven’t you told me? What else have you lied about?”

Granddad lowered his chin and glared at me from under heavy eyebrows. When he finally spoke, it sounded like thunder. “Narina, stop. I mean it. Stop. We’ve kept you safe from them. From yourself. Like we tried to do for your mother. She wouldn’t listen, and look what happened to her.”

I felt my head tilt sideways like a dog hearing a strange noise. “What do you mean? You said…” Realization dawned. “You lied about that, too.”

“Bite your tongue, Narry!” Gramma snapped. “What do we have to do to make you behave? Maybe you’d listen if we put you in with the pigs. You don’t need all your toes, and you’d remember that lesson for the rest of your life!” She reached across the table for my arm, but I dodged her and jumped up, knocking my chair over backwards.

Granddad stood up too, his face red and his hands bunched into fists at his sides. I held my breath. Not once in my life had he ever struck me, but right then I thought he would. I wondered if his fists would kill me. Instead of striking out, he took a few steps back, seeming to shrink. He cracked his neck sideways and said in a low tone, “All you need to know is that the creature is gone.”

“Creature,” my grandmother repeated.

Granddad’s eyes bored into mine, now more with sadness than anger. “It’s gone. You won’t see it again.”

I opened my mouth to ask them why they called it a creature instead of what it was, a man. Then I closed my lips tight together, locking my words inside. I felt years older than when I’d shot that rabbit only hours earlier, and wondered if my questioning was a serious mistake. I was confronting the ones who had always had more power than I did, and wasn’t considering what might happen to me. I wasn’t careful…

Wait. Be silent now. Just wait.

A few days later, I woke to the smell of breakfast cooking—bacon, but not quite bacon—and Gramma calling my name. My bedroom window was foggy and wet with tiny drops on the inside. Granddad called it condensation and said it was from my warmth on the cold glass. Odd.

After dressing, I went downstairs and began to set the table without being asked. I could see that Gramma must have been up for a while because a pile of sewing lay on the side table beside her favorite chair. I didn’t understand how she could see well enough to sew by just the morning light coming in the windows, and wondered if she somehow did it by feel.

“Making something for Granddad?” I asked her.

She nodded without taking her attention from the skillet. “I was. A hunting vest, I thought. But that fabric isn’t sturdy enough for that and I may make something pretty for you instead. The fabric’s got a nice feel to it. Might be nice against your skin. God provides. Go over there and see if you like it.”

I couldn’t help smiling. It had been a while since she’d made anything for me, and I liked the idea of getting something new. But as I got close to her chair, I stopped, first puzzled and then suddenly understanding.

The fabric was blue, but not like denim, and there was enough for matching jacket and trousers, both now completely disassembled.

I went to the window and saw it had started to snow again, large flakes drifting down in the still air. My grandfather was just coming out of the meat shed, limping against the weight of the slop bucket he carried, presumably for the pigs. A couple of long bones stuck out the top. We hadn’t gotten a deer in a long while, and the bones were too long for anything else I could think of. Granddad closed the shed door, but didn’t lock it.

Even from a distance, I could see his hands and clothes were bloody, the way he always got from butchering. Head down, he headed for the hand pump where I knew he would wash himself. He did, and when he finished, he hoisted up the bucket again and disappeared behind the barn.

We had a rule about lying, but I knew they’d lied to me, and I had unanswered questions. Like how old clothes appeared again and again out of nowhere, what “creatures” Granddad hunted that had meat I couldn’t identify, and why my grandparents kept us so isolated.

I needed to know what had happened to the man whose blue clothes had become a pile of Gramma’s sewing, what bones Granddad was feeding to the hogs, and what the bacon/not bacon was that Gramma was cooking that morning. I thought all those answers, but wasn’t willing to admit to myself what I feared might be true. Not yet.

The answers were in the shed, and if I went out now, I’d have at least a few minutes before Granddad came back or Gramma came looking for me.

A few days ago, I’d felt like I didn’t care what they did to me, what the consequences for violating rules might be. Now it was time for me to act.

Without giving myself time to reconsider, I ran to the back door and pulled on my boots. Then I grabbed my coat and the .22 rifle—I might need both. I heard Gramma calling me back, but ignored her and ran all the way to the shed, my breath coming in white puffs that sent snowflakes whirling. It wouldn’t be long before Gramma came after me. Called Granddad. And I was sure that whatever happened after that wouldn’t be good, given the pile of rules I was in the process of breaking.

I yanked the open the meat shed door and looked inside.

The carcass was headless and gutted, hanging over a hole in the wood floor. It was minus one leg and a strip of belly muscle, the same place where pork bacon comes from. I recognized what—or rather who—this had been. Not a deer. On the stainless-steel table beside the carcass lay a boneless chunk of meat, rolled and tied as a roast. My throat clenched when it struck me that I might have eaten a fair amount of this kind of meat in my life.

In a rush, answers to all my questions tumbled over one another. It all made sense now. I heard Gramma’s shout to me and another to Granddad and turned to see her trying to hurry herself toward me. She wasn’t fast. Neither was Granddad. They would never catch me.

I didn’t have a chance to think about what was I going to do now that I knew the truth about life on this farm. The decision came fast and easy, and almost before I knew I had decided, I was running as fast as I could in the one direction I was never supposed to go.

I didn’t know exactly where the river was, but it had to be there or else why would Granddad make a rule about not going past it. I believed it was there. It had to be. And just like in my dream, I would jump in and cross it.

Running faster than I’d ever run, I scared up a young doe from the underbrush and we raced together, just like in my dream. When we got to the river, I knew she would jump in and I knew I would follow her. I felt dizzy with the wonder of it, and my insides vibrated with something more exciting than fear. Maybe the unknown. Maybe freedom.

On the other side of the river, I would find those other people wherever they were. After that, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to let my grandparents take me back to the farm.

I felt doubt crowding past the excited feeling. That water would be cold, winter cold, and if I made it to the other side, I’d be soaked. Maybe get sick. Maybe die from it.

“I’ll find another way over,” I told myself out loud.

Then I heard Gramma’s voice in my head. “God provides.”

pencil

Gail A. Webber is a retired science teacher who lives and writes on a small farm in Maryland. Her stories have appeared in Fiftiness, The Tower Journal, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Persimmon Tree, and others), and in anthologies including 2016 Write Well Award, The Way You Walk Through Madness, and Writings to Stem Your Existential Dread. She has published three novels and a volume of short stories. Facebook. Email: gail_webber[at]hotmail.com

Not If We Lie

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Gold
Gail A. Webber

Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr (CC-by)

“There you are. Rise and shine, malyshka.”

Gwen heard the deep male voice close to her. Little girl in Russian? My Kyril. The sudden nausea separated her from the dream and forced reality on her. She tried to focus. This wasn’t as bad as recovering from hypersleep, but in hypersleep you didn’t dream so it was easier to let go of it. The kind of metabolism-damping Mission Control was using on the crew for this run—metabosleep, they called it—was supposed to be easier on the body, but it was hell on the psyche. When you slept for a month, the dream world became your alternate life, and often it seemed better than your real one. How many times have I done this? Is this my fiftieth turn to be awake? No, more than that I think. It was hard to keep track. Once she got to her cubicle, she’d look up how many times she’d been awake so far this trip and record one more.

She forced her eyes open and saw Kyril’s handsome face. His dark eyes held genuine affection for her, but she understood he wasn’t “my Kyril” from the dream. Gwen tried to speak: “Everything…” Her voice squeaked and broke as it often did after not using it for so long, so she swallowed and tried again. “Everything’s okay? On board? No trouble?”

Kyril extended his hand to help her out of the sleeping pod. “We’re all fine. Getting some interesting dark matter data, and collected unusual micrometeoroids yesterday. Of course, we’re closer to the target than when you went into your pod—closer by the minute—but the Commander estimates we’re still months away. Other than that, just the usual drama.”

There were twelve crew members aboard the spaceship, though it only took four to maintain the ship in flight. For a number of reasons, Mission Control didn’t want to keep the same four people awake for too long, so they scheduled a rotation: eight rested in metabosleep and four were awake at any given time, new combinations rotating in four-to-six-week intervals.

Gwen removed her hand from Kyril’s and blushed. In her dreams two sleep cycles ago, she and Kyril had become lovers. But since metabosleep dreams were more real than any normal one, the experience felt like reality even now that she was awake. The smell of their lovemaking and perfume of the star magnolia in their backyard, the taste of the mint tea he made her every morning, the texture of his beard in all stages of growth, all were part of her memory and didn’t fade as normal dream memory did. Even the pains of childbirth and subsequent exhaustion of caring for a newborn on very little sleep—experiences she’d never known outside of dreams—would be as authentic for her as real-life memories. Just now when she’d awakened, her arms felt the weight of their baby daughter she held, their second child after returning home from this mission—or so it was in the dream. In real life, life on this spaceship life, they weren’t lovers. But they’d been good friends since the mission began.

He winked. “Any good dreams to share, daragaya?”

It was as if he was reading her mind, and Gwen suddenly wondered if he’d had similar dreams of her. No, of course not. She remembered his touch and blushed again. “I think I’ll keep them to myself. Hey, wouldn’t Joe be jealous if he knew you called me your dear one?”

“Don’t you worry, precious girl. Joe will sleep for another two weeks, and even if you tattle on me when he wakes up, by that time I’ll be in a sleep cycle. Then it’ll be two rotations before we’re up at the same time again, and he’ll either have forgotten, or it won’t matter.” Kyril wrinkled his nose and sighed. “I hate this staggered waking schedule.”

“Me too. And I don’t have a relationship to maintain.” She thought about the one she had for a while with Charlie McGeehan. He was one of the mission pilots, as blond and light-skinned as Kyril was swarthy, with hazel eyes that saw into a person’s soul. She was sorry it didn’t work out between them, but accepted it as the way things sometimes went. Maybe someday.

“Four of us mobile at any given time, but on staggered schedules so the fours are constantly shuffled. I guess the shrinks at Mission Control wanted us interacting with eleven other people instead of only three,” she said. “As if contact with eleven people is enough for what could be the rest of our lives.” That was what they’d all been told. The mission involved too many variables to guarantee a safe return, but each of them believed finding this new life form that was sending signals to Earth from somewhere in the Kuiper Belt was a goal worth the risk. Whatever the life form was, everyone wanted to believe it was macroscopic, intelligent, and benevolent.

“I understand the reasons for the schedule, but it’s a shame we can’t arrange for some people to sleep the whole trip. And I don’t mean Joe.”

“Stephen?” It was a question for which she already had the answer. Gwen couldn’t understand how that man had managed to hide his true feelings and opinions during the extensive screening all the candidates endured. And there was no way he could have misunderstood mission goals, but once they were on their way, he’d taken every opportunity to rail against the idea of contacting new life. He condemned humans for exterminating so many Earth species, and insisted that was what would happen to the new life forms. Humans would kill them all, intentionally or otherwise. At one point, she heard him say they had an obligation to sabotage the ship, if necessary, rather than risk exterminating extraterrestrial creatures. He claimed their extermination was inevitable.

“Yeah, Stephen. He’s been talking this shit since we started, but every rotation I see him, he seems worse.”

“We should medicate him,” she said, stretching her arms overhead. “Maybe a dose of really good drugs is all he needs. So, who else is up now? You, me, Stephen and who else?”

“Charlie,” said Kyril.

As their pilot for this rotation, Charlie held the rank of Commander.

Charlie, she thought. Wonder if we could have made it as a couple under other circumstances? But all she said was, “Good, Stephen likes him.” Charlie’s cool logic and sense of calm hadn’t yet been enough to quiet Stephen’s ranting, but there was always hope.

“He likes you too, you know—Stephen, I mean. Anyhow, I’m not sure Charlie’s calm influence is enough of a solution. But we can try.” He offered his arm as if they were about to dance. “Come, lisichka. We can talk more about all this in a bit. Right now, let’s get you to the med bay for a post-sleep assessment.”

“I’m fine, but why did you call me a little fox?”

“That red hair, of course. Even in a crew cut, you’re adorable! As for your exam, I’m sure you’re fine but, you know, regulations. Once I give you your gold star, we’ll get you some coffee. After that, you and I get to spend some quality time together in the lab.” He waggled his eyebrows and leered playfully.

She laughed. “I’ll pass on the star, but yes, coffee. Please!”

The lab work they began that morning, examination of the micrometeoroids Kyril had removed from the ramjet hydrogen collectors, would take a few days. Already, they’d found elements so far unknown on Earth, and hoped to find microorganisms of some sort, though that was a longshot. Kyril’s knowledge of geology and Gwen’s of microbiology were both useful. Those weren’t the only fields in which they were qualified, but then everyone who landed a seat on this mission had diverse training, as well as multiple talents and specialties.

Since it was hard to predict what knowledge and skills would be necessary on an extended voyage like this, each individual had to wear many hats. Of course there were computer resources on board, and contact with Earth was possible, but the delay of communication in both directions complicated the latter option. The team aboard this spacecraft had to be both independent and interdependent.

With the lab shipshape and work for the next day staged, Gwen and Kyril headed for the mess hall. Contact among crew members was not only encouraged, but required. Three times a day, the four astronauts on duty met in the mess hall to eat together, SOP unless circumstances dictated otherwise. Occasionally, the conversations amounted to little more than briefings, but more frequently they were filled with joking and teasing as well as the sharing of thoughts, fears, and comments on the food.

When Kyril and Gwen arrived, Charlie was already seated but hadn’t gotten his meal. Gwen hugged him, Kyril kissed him on both cheeks.

“No Stephen yet?” Kyril asked.

Charlie moved his head around until his neck cracked. “Haven’t seen him all day. You?”

“Da. When I settled Lena in her sleep pod, right before I woke Gwen, he waved to me in B Corridor. Looked like he was headed for the computer bay.”

“He’s good at everything he does,” Charlie said, “and he hasn’t shirked a single duty, but I’m not sure what to think about his diatribes. I mean, he has a point about all the species we’ve lost on Earth, but he takes it too far. And he knows he’s supposed to meet with everybody for dinner. So where is he?”

“Did you call him?”

“Shouldn’t have to.”

“I will,” said Gwen, and keyed her wrist communicator. “Hey, Stephen, it’s Gwen. Join us in the mess hall?” Silence. “Stephen, you there?” She shrugged and sat down. “You don’t think he could be in trouble? Hurt or something?”

Kyril shifted in his chair and looked into the galley. He was hungry.

“In his rack, I bet. Seems like he’s sleeping more than usual.”

“Hmm. Think that’s significant?” Charlie asked. “Depression, maybe? I reviewed Ron’s log from last rotation.” Ron had been the pilot before Charlie’s present duty.

“And?” Gwen asked.

“People were talking about Stephen then, saying they thought he was getting worse even though he was in metabosleep at the time. A few seemed to be taking Stephen’s side, but not to the point of suggesting we turn back, or scrub the mission, or any of Stephen’s other crazy ideas.”

“So it’s not just us.”

“Apparently not.”

Kyril stood up. “Nu, let’s start without him. I’ve been looking forward to that chicken cacciatore all afternoon.”

“Afraid it’s nothing like Mama used to make,” laughed Gwen.

While everyone ate, Charlie had questions, and questioning was one of his talents. He could be asking about your deepest secret yet sound as if he wanted to know what color apples you preferred or who your favorite baseball player was. “So, any idea what might have caused the pressure drop in Airlock #2? It looked significant.”

Recognizing the official nature of the question despite Charlie’s congenial tone, Kyril answered, “No idea, Commander. The pressure read normal by the time I got there, so I turned off the alarm. When I checked the sensors, they registered perfect.”

Charlie pursed his lips and stared straight ahead as if reading something no one else could see. Then he grunted and waved his hands as he spoke. He always did that. “That makes no sense. Either the pressure was too low or the sensors registered it wrong—it couldn’t be anything else. Could someone have used the airlock? Opened it and then closed it? Wait, was #2 the one you used to retrieve the micrometeoroids from the collectors?”

“Nyet. Went out #1, and came back in the same way.”

Gwen swallowed of piece of brownie, savoring the chocolate and thanking God that Mission Control had found a way to successfully freeze chocolate. It was one of the few things as good in shipboard life as it was in dreams. “Who ran your tether?”

“Stephen.” Kyril laughed and touched his front teeth. “Uh, you’ve got chocolate in your teeth. Quite a fetching look. Seriously, he did everything right. We both suited up, and he waited for me in the airlock in case anything went wrong.”

“Good to hear, I have to admit,” Charlie said.

Gwen finished working her tongue around her mouth and showed Kyril her teeth. When he nodded, she said, “Commander, could we—or should we—wake one of the people with more psychiatric credentials than the three of us have?”

Kyril threw the biscuit he was eating onto his plate. “Screw that. If we’re worried about what he’s up to, we should put him down early.”

“Don’t say it that way.” Gwen punched his shoulder. “Putting down is what you do for an old dog so it doesn’t suffer.”

“Well, if the shoe fits…” Kyril said.

“Stop it, you two. We’re charged with maintaining the planned crew rotation except for serious illness or injury.”

Kyril shook his head. “That’s a rule for normal situations, Commander. A crew member threatening to murder everybody if they don’t do what he says isn’t normal. You heard him at dinner last night, he said that somebody could use a pulsed laser diode through a fiber-optic cable to detonate the solid fuel in the rockets.”

“And you thought he was serious?” Gwen asked. “Sometimes he makes strange jokes, and you know he’s got an odd sense of humor. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“To my mind, he gave way too much detail for a joke. It doesn’t matter if you laugh when you suggest we either scrub the mission or ‘somebody’ could blow up the ship. That’s not funny.”

“I agree with you that he’s acting strange, but I also agree with Gwen that we shouldn’t assume he’s serious. He definitely has strong beliefs about the effect that contact with us might have on a new species. Anyway, even if he meant it, it would be hard for one man to hurt the ship,” said Charlie. “With all the redundant systems built into this baby, that’s almost impossible.”

“Willing to risk our lives on an ‘almost’? I mean, we all understand we could die out here for a million reasons, but I am not willing to just let this go. Remember he’s a systems engineer, among other things, and I think he’s nuts. That solid fuel thing wasn’t his first threat! Remember last week he joked about how opening a door would solve our whole stale air problem? Joking about opening a door in a spaceship?”

This was all news to Gwen. “Okay, so he’s made actual threats? We might have to do something. Should it be just us who decides?”

“Who else is there? We don’t have options.”

Gwen shifted in her chair and cleared her throat. “Yes, we do, Kyril. We could contact Mission Control. We could ask them.”

“Or we could wake everybody up together, just this once, and get their thoughts,” Charlie suggested and then everyone sat not looking at each other, not speaking.

Finally Gwen spoke into the silence. Quietly she said, “There’s something we haven’t considered.”

Both men looked at her.

“You two are due for metabosleep in less than a week. When I wake your replacements, they’ll be a sleep cycle behind in background and things could happen fast. Whatever we’re going to do, we should do it now.”

“Agreed. Let’s go find Stephen.”

The ship had always felt small to Gwen, but the need to search every room and every passageway made it seem huge. All three of them stayed together so that whoever first encountered Stephen wouldn’t be alone; there was no way of knowing what his frame of mind might be. They didn’t find Stephen, but he found them and he had a weapon. The ship carried plasma cutters because geologists on board used them to slice samples from metallic meteors, ship engineers used them to make repairs, and there were countless other uses. Stephen had modified one to use as a handheld weapon, and since everyone understood what a weapon like that could do to human flesh, they listened.

“Commander, if you’d be so kind as to put these two in their sleep pods? Then I’ll do the same for you. It will be easier for all three of you if you’re asleep like the others.”

Charlie consciously kept his hands at his sides though he wasn’t used to talking without them. He didn’t want Stephen to misinterpret motion and hurt someone. Charlie’s voice sounded like velvet feels. “I don’t think so, Stephen. Let’s talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to say. I believe you’re good people, and that’s why I’ll allow you to be asleep when I do this. But you believed the lies Mission Control told you about having peaceful intentions. That makes you infantile. Whether because of intent or eventual effect, humans kill.”

“But you’re suggesting you’ll kill everyone on board,” said Kyril.

“Sometimes violence is the best option, especially when a limited act of violence prevents more larger-scale violence, even an existential one. The scale does matter. I tried to convince you to scrub the mission, remember? I tried to make you see the obvious.”

While Charlie frantically sorted arguments in his head, looking for the perfect one, it was Gwen who found it. She took a half-step toward Stephen and lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “Why did you sign on for this mission, Stephen? Before you had doubts, what compelled you to leave your life on Earth behind, to sacrifice years of relative certainty and comfort to risk everything out here?”

As he considered her question, Stephen’s face changed from hard and matter-of-fact to almost wistful. “Since I was a boy, I was fascinated with the idea of other beings, other intelligences and points of view that would be different from our human ones. I read every bit of science fiction and fantasy that included first contact. I decided that if there was anything alive in this universe besides human beings, I wanted to see it. If there were beings, I wanted to meet them. When I was approached about this mission, I knew this was my chance.”

“Me too. And I bet if we asked every person on this ship the same question, most would give the same reason. We’re curious. We want to see what’s out there, see who is out there. Each of us wants to be among the first humans they meet, and the first to interact with them. We want to be the first ones changed by the knowledge of who they are. Don’t you still want that?”

Stephen shook his head and kept shaking it, the plasma cutter wavering in his hands.

None of the others moved.

“Nononononono.”

“Stephen. Stephen, listen to me. I’m not trying to trick you,” Gwen continued. “I want you to understand that I believe the desire to see is what we all share and that it’s still the most important thing. Don’t you want to meet these creatures, figure out what they value and what they fear, learn from them? Don’t you still want to know who might be out there?”

Stephen stared at her. “I do, but it’s impossible. Even if we all agree about how we’ll handle this, that’s not enough. The politics and powers at home will take over and ruin the good we intend.”

Kyril stepped forward to stand next to Gwen and he took her hand. Charlie moved up beside her on her other side and added softly, “Can I tell you what I’m thinking, Stephen? The idea Gwen gave me just now?”

“Go ahead. Talk.”

“What if we go the rest of the way, follow the signal, and find these life forms. And when we do, we’ll wake everyone and together learn all we can, all these new life forms will allow for as long as they’ll allow it. I have the feeling we’ll learn more about ourselves in the process, but that’s another subject.”

“You haven’t said anything different than before, because when Mission Control finds out, all hell breaks loose on those poor creatures and we’ll be the reason for more death.”

“Not if we lie,” Charlie said.

“What?”

Louder, he said, “Not. If. We. Lie. Maybe we tell Mission Control all we found was an automated signal, or a ship that blew up as we approached. Whatever we tell them, it won’t be the truth, and we won’t give them any information to lead them to the aliens.”

“Recorded data gets relayed automatically—our course, our heading, our camera feed, everything,” said Stephen.

“It is,” agreed Kyril. “We’d have to account for that. Maybe after we met them and learned what we could, we might head out into deep space? Or maybe we could send the ship out there while we stay with them, if that were possible. I know every person in this crew, and I’m certain they would all agree. We all signed on willing to sacrifice everything to see what no one else ever had, Stephen. I still want to see what’s out there.”

“That speaks for me as well,” Gwen said. “What do you say?”

“First of all, I think you might be lying. As soon as I give up this cutter, you could tackle me, put me in a pod, and leave me there forever.”

Gwen heard his voice quaver.

“But second of all, I think I believe you. I’m not sure why, but I do. And yes, I still want to see.” He gave the cutter to Charlie and flinched when their hands touched.

“Good God! You’re one crazy motherfucker, Stephen,” Kyril said a bit louder than he intended, “and you about scared the piss out of me. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re totally wrong about the powers that be.”

The breath Gwen took when she smiled felt full of relief. She imagined a baby’s first breath must feel like that. “Okay, we have a plan, personal conscience over policy. We’ll lie through our teeth, and we have to do it perfectly. But first we need to do something else. We have to wake the other eight and convince them.”

pencil

Gail A. Webber taught science, middle school through college, for thirty-two years, and then worked with children and teenagers considered at-risk. Since retiring, she has returned to her old love, fiction writing. She lives and works on a tiny farm in western Maryland. Relatively new to the publishing arena, Gail’s work has appeared in The Tower Journal, Persimmon Tree, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Fiftiness, and Pink Chameleon, as well as two recent anthologies. She has also published two novels. Email: gail_webber[at]hotmail.com

The Net

Posted on by

A Midsummer Tale ~ Third Place
Gail Webber

Photo Credit: Austin Kirk/Flickr (CC-by)

Photo Credit: Austin Kirk/Flickr (CC-by)

We didn’t get to Franklinton very often, and a new pet store was a pleasant surprise, but the three dead guppies in the first aquarium I checked were a bad sign. There was no one to tell except a man at the cash register who was on the phone. He was old, maybe thirty-five, and so thin he was almost skinny, but he had great eyebrows. When he saw me he smiled and held up one finger, universal sign language for, “Be with you in a minute.”

My mother was up the street looking for clothes to fit my surprise baby sister. In the little lake town where we lived in the early 1960s, there was a post office and a great ice cream store, but the only clothing available was fancy stuff for the summer people. To get reasonably priced things you had to drive to Franklinton where there was a department store. I went along that day because I knew that store had a pet department in the basement and I had fourteenth birthday money from my grandmother. When the department store fish proved uninteresting, I left to explore town and that was how I accidentally found the pet store.

I had just over an hour before I was supposed to meet Mom at the car, so while I waited for the man, I peered into the tanks one by one. There were some fish I could identify and even distinguish males from females, but there were others I’d only seen in books. I took my time. As soon as the man was done talking, he came over and said, “Hi,” but nothing more. I learned later that “hi” was how he wanted his employees to greet customers, considering the usual “Can I help you?” unfriendly and pushy.

“You’ve got a couple dead guppies,” I said and pointed. His smile faded and he turned toward the guppy tank, but then the phone rang again.

“There’s a net in that methylene blue wash,” he said on his way back to the counter. “Over there in the corner, see it? Go ahead and scoop them out and bring them here.” He indicated the glass counter where the register was, and then picked up the receiver. “Franklinton Pet.”

Really? I was perfectly capable of that little task, but it seemed a strange thing to ask a customer to do. Why not, I thought, and picked up one of the nets. I shook it a little to get the excess off, and then fished out the dead guppies. The man nodded to me and mouthed “thank you” when I put the whole thing, wet net and dead fish, on the counter.

It wasn’t until I was inspecting the baby Jack Dempseys that I noticed the nickel-sized blue stain on the yellow T-shirt I’d just gotten for my birthday. I groaned, knowing how methylene blue stains—I’d used it before to cure itch. But my new shirt! I didn’t get many new clothes, not with the way things were at home. The baby clothes Mom was buying that day were going to be the big splurge for the month.

Behind me, I heard the phone being replaced in the cradle, and then a ripping sound. When I turned, I saw the guy put a long strip of masking tape across the front of the tank where the dead fish had been and write NOT FOR SALE on the tape. “Mouth rot,” he said to me. From his pocket he pulled a blister pack of capsules and emptied two of them into the tank. They turned the water orange. Then he reached in and pulled out the box filter, leaving the air hose to bubble, and dried his hands on his pants. When he saw me watching he explained, “Charcoal deactivates tetracycline so you have to take the filter out.”

I nodded, though that was new information. Apparently this guy wouldn’t sell fish from an infected tank. That impressed me, and I thought maybe I’d get fish from him after all if I could find some I liked that would get along with what I already had. I figured I’d have to go back and look at prices, though.

He surprised me by saying, “Oh, no,” while he was looking at my chest. I didn’t know what to think and felt myself blush. I was used to guys at school looking there, but not most grown men. As far as I was concerned, my new shape was mostly a good thing, but sometimes my cup size was an embarrassment. Everything I ate or drank seemed to land on that shelf.

“I feel responsible,” he said. “Vinegar and vitamin C.”

I had no idea what he was talking about but was grateful he was looking at my eyes. “What?”

“It gets methylene blue out of clothes.” He nodded at the stain on my chest and then found my eyes again. “I know because I’ve done that a hundred times. Crush up a vitamin C tablet in one part vinegar and five parts water and soak the spot as soon as you get home.”

I don’t even remember exactly how it happened, but by the time I left with a trio of killifish, I had a summer job working for Richard at Franklinton Pet. I didn’t even have to spend any birthday money because the killies were my pay for an hour of cleaning water spots off the aquarium fronts. This would be my first job that didn’t involve mowing or painting. I knew the hour bus ride each way would be a pain, but I was looking forward to all the money I could save for college. Plus I’d be learning new things.

It was June, so I figured I’d have the rest of the month and then all of July and most of August to work as many hours as Richard would let me. His wife had just had their third child, all girls he said, and the baby made it harder for her to come in to help like she used to.

I guess her having the three kids made other things problematic, too, because by the middle of August, Richard was showing more than a casual interest in what I was wearing and how I did my hair. In those days, you dressed up for a job, even if it was one that involved catching snakes and chameleons, and cleaning hamster runs and bird cages. I even learned how to put my hair up in a twist because he said he liked it and I thought it made me look older. I was a good worker, and he always complimented me, but not just for doing a good job. Honestly, I liked the attention, and I don’t know, maybe I needed it. My only boyfriend so far—albeit a rather platonic one—had dumped me for a senior girl, and nobody else was asking me out. I had come to believe I must not be girlfriend material—that my first boyfriend had been a fluke, and I was destined to be alone for the rest of my life. Maybe that was why Richard’s approval was important, why I wanted to believe it meant something.

My job was supposed to be just for the summer, so my parents were surprised in September when I asked if I could keep working during the school year. My grades were excellent, and I was involved in everything from student government and debate club to all the sports they would let girls play in those days, and Mom and Dad said they thought working would be too much. I argued that my friends managed that same kind of busy schedule as well as boyfriends, and that since I didn’t have one, I had extra time especially on weekends and vacations. I told them how much I’d saved for college that summer and they were surprised. After they finally agreed and I had time to think, I considered looking for a different job. The truth was that despite Richard’s interest in me being exciting and affirming, it confused me. But I stayed.

It was the month before Christmas that year when we started keeping the store open on Sundays, and Richard’s wife offered to let me stay over at their house on Saturday nights because as she said, it made better sense. Being open that extra day made a big difference in the weekly take, something I knew because a few basic accounting duties were added to my responsibilities. But as the month wore on, it seemed there was more and more to do after Richard and I closed the store on Saturday nights. At least I assume that was what he told his wife. I knew it was wrong, and I blamed myself, believing that I must be a truly bad person to get involved with him at all, and worse for not calling a halt to what was going on. It was my first experience with guilt that ran so deep, and it changed how I saw myself. I was two people, the honor roll student during the week and something else the rest of the time. All the time.

“Tawdry” was a word I came to understand that first year, and over the next two I found myself thinking of men quite differently than I had before Richard. I lost myself for a while, who I was and who I wanted to be. Still, I kept working there and I kept up those relationships—the one with Richard and the one with his wife and children—until right before I graduated and left for college.

Even after I was far away I felt guilty enough to wonder if I’d ever feel good again. The longer I was gone, the less I understood how I could have let myself be used like that, and I hated myself for being so stupid. After the self-loathing came fear that I’d ruined my chances of ever having an authentic relationship with a man. It was the 1960s, and though attitudes about how women should behave were supposedly changing in the cities, most of the same old expectations held for women where I lived and where I went to college. How could anyone love a woman who’d done what I did? I couldn’t expect that anyone else would respect me when I didn’t respect myself.

But someone did, and that changed everything again, this time for the better.

By the end of my freshman year when I went home for the summer, I wasn’t much older, but I was a more savvy girl than the one who’d left ten months earlier. I was more confident and outspoken, and in some ways harder. I was also angry. There had been no contact between us after I left, but I intended to see Richard, not for the reason I knew he’d expect, but to confront him. What he’d done was wrong and I wanted to tell him so. I wasn’t without blame; I wasn’t exactly a child when it started and I let it go on. But I’d also been clueless… and he was the adult.

I went in the propped-open front door of his store and stopped with my back to it, about ten feet from where he stood at the counter. No one else was in the store.

“Look at you!” Richard grinned. He didn’t approach me as I expected, and instead leaned back against the wall behind the register.

He looked older than I remembered, with dark circles under his eyes, and his hair looked oily. Even from a distance I could see the dirt under his too-long fingernails and realized there had always been that black line where the white of his nails stopped.

“With that long hair and your clothes, you’re a cute little hippy girl, aren’t you.” He said it like it was a fact and not a question.

All that I planned to say to him, every stinging and freeing thing I wanted to say to him, flew out of my head and I just stood there mute.

“We hoped we’d hear from you, but then I guess you had lots going on.” He cocked one knee forward and put his hands in his pockets.

We? Really? I thought. And what is “going on” supposed to mean? All in my head, but then I knew where to start. “You had no right,” I blurted. “Back then, you had no right.” If he’d looked ashamed or angry, I would have known how to continue, but the quizzical expression on his face and the crooked half-smile shut me up.

“No right about what?” he asked me. “I can see you’re pissed about something, kiddo, but I have no idea what you mean. What’s up?”

Anyone watching would have thought he was innocent. My throat closed up and made that choking sound it always does when I’m caught off guard and try to talk, so I stopped. I’m not sure how long I stood there before I heard someone’s footsteps behind me. When I turned, I saw her, a young girl in a purple pleated skirt and sweater. Her blonde hair was piled up on top of her head making her look like she was playing dress-up, and she carried a bag with a familiar logo. Tony’s Place was where we used to get meatball subs.

“Hi,” she said to me as she passed by on her way to the counter, and then to Richard she said, “Ready for some lunch, Ricky?”

pencilGail Webber taught science, middle school through college, for thirty-two years, and then worked with children and teenagers considered at-risk. Since retiring, she has returned to her old love, writing fiction. She lives and works on a tiny farm in western Maryland. Gail is new to the publishing arena, with one middle grade novel published three years ago, and short stories appearing in The Tower Journal and Persimmon Tree. A second novel is out for consideration, and she says that a third is keeping her up nights. Email: gail_webber[at]hotmail.com