The A. R. Morlan Megapack, page 32
Timmy wondered if maybe the fish could sense what people were feeling, too. But that didn’t make sense. Timmy wasn’t feeling sad…but then, he thought maybe I should be feeling sad? Like when Aunt Millie who Timmy didn’t even know because she had been in an old people’s home since he was two years old had died, and Daddy ended up yelling at him for not acting “right” in the funeral home. Timmy hadn’t known that it wasn’t right” to comb his hair during what Daddy called the “visitation,” and besides, it didn’t seem fair that he should get yelled at when he didn’t remember to comb his hair, and also get yelled at when he did remember to comb his hair. Even though his stranger aunt was long buried, and his long hair long gone, he remembered that Daddy had expected him to act like he was sad during the funeral, saying “She is dead, Timmy, and people are supposed to feel very sad when someone dies.”
As he watched the fish listlessly hover in their watery home, Timmy wondered if the fish were sad because of something they knew which Timmy didn’t, like with his Aunt Millie. A rare mental connection made him go back to where Dr. Curwen lay on the lab floor. He looked and looked at the old man, and gradually, as he rubbed a hand over his closely shorn scalp (making a faint bristling noise) Timmy reached a conclusion: the old man was not breathing anymore. Yet another connection was formed in his usually carefree mind: huis Aunt Millie wasn’t breathing in that big brown wooden box in the funeral home either…and she was old, too!
Suddenly sad (and a little scared, too), this time for real, Timmy looked about the lab for something to put over the doctor (just in case he was sleeping real deep, and got cold), finally settling on an extra lab coat, which he spread out carefully over the old man, tucking in the sides the way Daddy did not too long ago for Timmy, but leaving his white-haired head uncovered, just in case.
When he turned back to the fish, they were all rippling and color-sneezing over by the sensors, forming these words across the monitor:
[CAN] YOU [UNDERSTAND] US [TIMMY] [DR CURWEN] [MAY] BE DEAD [THE] LAND [SPLITTING] [CRACK] [MUST] [HAVE] SCARED HIM [IS NOT] GOOD [THING] WILL [HAPPEN] [SOON] HURRY [TIMMY] LEAVE [THIS] PLACE [GO] FAR OFF NO LAND [CRACK] [SPLITTING] FAR OFF [FROM] YOU [IF] [DR CURWEN] [IS] DEAD [NOT] GOOD [FOR] YOU [FOR] PEOPLE HURRY [GO] [TIMMY]—
A pause while the fish bobbed changelessly, then, as an afterthought meant only for each other, a last expression of futility:
[TIMMY] [CAN] NOT [UNDERSTAND] US HE [CAN] NOT [READ]—
Timmy watched the changing video display in puzzlement. They were talking to him, that much he could tell (he could read and write his name, laboriously in an ascending printed scrawl—it was a one-hand word) but he didn’t know what the rest of the fishes’ words meant. If only Dr. Curwen would wake up! (If he can wake up, Timmy’s mind warned him, but he was too scared to actually try to shake the doctor awake.)
Then, in the midst of his fear, Timmy had a flash of inspiration, his third of the night, and a reason for pride in him. He remembered that whenever someone who hadn’t met the deaf kids in his special school class tried to talk to them, they’d point to their ears and shake their heads no, and do likewise after pointing to their mouths. Dr. Curwen said that the fish were very intelligent, that they were sensitive…they had eyes, could see, so maybe.…
Tapping on the tank to get their attention, Timmy pointed to the screen, then to his eyes, and shook his head quickly, the way he did when Daddy gave him his first electric shaver haircut in the kitchen. Daddy hadn’t paid any attention to him then, but the fish immediately seemed to notice his actions, and after looking at each other, color sneezing, they propelled themselves over to the sensors once again. Timmy stopped shaking his head, sighed, and thought, And the doc said they were smart. They’d paid attention to him all right, but didn’t understand. Slowly shaking his head in disgust, Timmy walked over to his wheeled bucket and mob, and began to gather up his belongings. Under his feet, the floor shook a little, and he wondered if something had gone ka-boom on one of the lower floors. Either that or a big truck must have gone by outside, shaking the ground. Sometimes, at home, the ground would shake a little, making the dishes rattle and dance on the shelves and when Timmy would get scared, Daddy would say, “Big truck went by, Timmy…just a real big truck. Lots of big trucks in California.” This time, nothing tipped over, so Timmy immediately forgot about the shaking floor. Looking back at the display screen, he saw the message the fish had left for him:
WE [LOVE] YOU [TIMMY]
Timmy understood his name, and decided that since he was getting ready to leave the office, the fish had to be saying goodbye to him. He decided to pretend that he was as smart as the doctor (it can’t hurt) and went over and tapped on the tank until all his funny-looking small friends were staring at him with their saucer-like eyes. He solemnly waved bye-bye to each fish in turn, and behind him the screen lit up with these words, as the cuttlefish broke away in turn and faced the sensors:
WE [ARE] [SORRY] YOU [DO NOT] [UNDERSTAND] YOU [COULD] HAVE [ESCAPED] [PERHAPS] WE WILL [MISS] YOU [AFTER] THE NOT GOOD LARGE LAND [CRACK] [COMES] [AT] [LEAST] YOU [NOT] SCARED [LIKE] [DR CURWEN] WE WILL [MISS] YOU [TIMMY]
unseen and unreadable by Timmy, yet…not totally lost or meaningless. A couple of fish came close to their side of the glass, and brushed their waving supple arms against the glass. Glad that Dr. Curwen was asleep (please just be sleeping doc, I like you) and not able to see him looking silly, Timmy bent down and kissed the cool glass of the tank, and the six fishes in turn came close to the glass behind his puckered lips (up close Timmy found them pretty and horrible all at once) in an imitation of his gesture, so maybe they weren’t so dumb after all—
And then, Timmy remembered something from special school, how the blind girl used to say, “Can I read your face?” and she’d reach out and touch your face so she could “see” it with her fingertips.… Timmy was good at feeling nameplates to read them, so maybe—
Maybe he could be as smart as Dr. Curwen…he could read too, in a special way. Pulling over the plastic and rubber round footstool Dr. Curwen used. Timmy stepped up close to the tank, and after pushing up his sleeve, put his hand and arm into the cool rippling water, seeing the oil residue of fishie food cling to his bare arm at the water line. His hand and arm looked all funny—wavery and sort of blue—when he looked at it through the glass, and all the cuttlefish jetted over to inspect his waving arms. He tried to pet them, to “read” them like the blind girl used to do, but they eluded his grasp, and the more he wiggled his fingers and tried to grab them, cooler his hand got.
And it began to look…different. Pruney, like when he sat in the bathtub too long, but also longer, and paler blue. And Timmy looked at his fingers through the glass, remembering what Daddy said about when Aunt Millie died, when Daddy was talking to their neighbor Mrs. Coffey when he didn’t think Timmy could hear, “The nurse said her lips went blue, her nails too…at that point there wasn’t much to do, since she specified no help and…” and Timmy kept wiggling his odd blue fingers, until he thought, Blue fingers…and Aunt Millie died and they put her in a box and then we had the visitation.
One of the cuttlefish pulsed over by his hand, and with the most gentle of motions, wrapped a tendril-like arm around his elongated and blue-pulsing finger, and his finger and the arm of the cuttlefish both changed—together. And as the earth shook under the tank, the cuttlefish and Timmy looked at each other, and all Timmy could see in his mind was Aunt Millie, dead in the box…and he understood for the first time that evening. Lips close to the tank, Timmy whispered, “I’m going to die…and you knew it, didn’t you guys?”
And the cuttlefish, who had been spending two years watching Dr. Curwen—his efforts at communication on the sensor board, as well as the bits of communicating he did without thinking, the nod of his head, or the smile on his face before he typed in a message of praise—slowly moved in the water without shifting color or shape, a simple motion, actually, but to Timmy it was a miracle. The fish had said something to him! No funny green letters and hooked thingies on a screen, just a nod of its body—meant just for him. Timmy’s Daddy had told Timmy at the funeral, “We all have to die, Timmy.… It’s sad Aunt Millie is gone, but she’s not hurting where she is. Remember that, okay, son?”
Timmy had remembered, and as the floor shook so much it made the little pills on Dr. Curwen’s counter shake and roll, he very carefully took one of the cuttlefish’s arms between his thumb and forefinger and shook it, then pulled his hand out of the tank and dried it on his big pink rag hung on the side of his mop stand. As it dried the pink color gradually returned, and the fingers grew short and blunt again…but Timmy didn’t forget what he’d seen. The fish said he’d die, but Daddy said it meant not hurting anymore. No more people making fun of him, making him hurt inside. Something to look forward to, not fear.
Then, afraid because he’d already spent too much time lingering here, Timmy waved a single goodbye to the tank of fishes, and leaving the light on the way the doctor left it, he quitted the room and carefully locked the door behind him.
On the way to Dr. Jones’s (one hand) lab, he felt the floor move again under his feet, enough to slosh some of the water from his bucket onto the sand-colored carpeting and Timmy hoped that one of the big sand-filled ash trays wouldn’t tip over. The time he’d spent lingering in Dr. Curwen’s office slipped from his mind.
He didn’t think that he had the time to clean up after the ash trays tonight, too.
“’RILLAS”
So-Baba, she say, Started with the cigarettes, it did. Took them away they did. Off the tee vee. Off the pages of the reading things. Out of the hands of the people in the big buildings we throw the rocks at and spray the words on, the big empty buildings.
Started with the cigarettes, she says, nodding her grease-face at me when I was real small, sitting on her lap playing with the cracked buttons on the old lilac sweater, and Ma, she say. So what Baba, so what? So they took away the cigarettes. Who can find them anyhow? Can’t eat cigarettes, Baba.
So old So-Baba, she say real soft, hard to hear because her teeth cracked when the yellow plastic dish fell off the table, so she talks with half a mouth, Didn’t stop with the cigarettes. Didn’t stop with the liquor. Didn’t stop with the books, or the tee vee or the ray-de-o. Didn’t stop with santa claus or the—
And Pa, he say, Baba! and makes the mad eyes at her and she don’t speak, but her grease-face nods. And nods at me. I didn’t have the ’rilla things then, so I couldn’t hold onto them when Baba say the mad-eyes from Pa things, couldn’t rub the ’rilla things in my fingers and say the ’rilla words soft in my head.
I do that now. But So-Baba don’t say anymore, only Du-duh-uh and paws at the grease-face with yellow curved nails in the bed under the pink blanket with no shiny strip along the top. Ma puts the grease on So-Baba’s face for her, to keep away the wrinkles, like So-Baba wants. But So-Baba is old anyway. No wrinkles, but no say anymore because she’s old and her mind kind of fell, like her teeth did in the yellow plastic dish, only we can’t see the crack. But it broke up there, under her limp hair gathered in the big-holed net, makes her say Du-duh-uh, only I know it means Didn’t, but the rest of it I don’t know. She already say about the cigarettes. And the tee vee and the ray-de-o.
The things Ma and Pa wouldn’t tell me what they were. Because they were banned. By the men in the big buildings that have the broke windows, and the big words on the sides. The men who took away the things I hear Ma and Pa whisper about when they think me and Bobby are asleep.
The cross and the good book, things like the tee vee and ray-de-o, the things Bobby and I tried to picture in our minds, only it is like trying to do the ’rilla sign without knowing the ’rilla sign. So we can’t make the pictures of the cross and tee vee, or the other Don’t say! things.
But we have the ’rillas. Them we’ve seen. And the ’rilla things we have in our pockets, that make the ’rilla thoughts and words come easy.
Maybe So-Baba’s mind cracked because she kept trying to say about what she couldn’t see anymore.
If I had had the ’rilla words and things to rub in my fingers when her mind cracked under the big hairnet, she could say more than Du-duh-uh.
Because ’rillas have big power.
Me and Bobby and Jerrie from down the hallway, we found the ’rillas. Because the hall wallpaper was coming down in the big curls, like it always does when outside is cold and inside is steamy wet near the heat places and shivery cold away from the heat places. Ma and Pa were in our place, taking care of So-Baba, and with the big door with the locks and bars closed, me and Bobby couldn’t hear So-Baba say her Du-duh-uh or hear Ma say So what? anymore. Jerrie was making little thin curls out of the big fat curls of paper, ripping them and putting them on her head, to cover the places where her hair was so thin it was gone. Me and Bobby don’t need curls, but girls like them. All our Mas, they wear big squares of cloth, tied under their chins. They don’t sit in the halls and make curls of paper for their heads. The hair in So-Baba’s net, it comes off when the net comes off, or most of it anyhow. So Ma keeps the face-grease away from the net, so it can stay on.
Me and Bobby, we sat down on the floor of the hall and ripped little curls for Jerrie too, taking turns putting them on her head. Some fell off, but most didn’t. Another big curl peeled down while we ripped, and Bobby pointed at the wall behind and say, Look! Hairy! And we all looked, and say, So big! Like our Pa but hair. Look at the hair. And Jerrie brushed off all her flaking yellow-backed curls, and say, I want hair like that, and pointed at the picture on the wall, the one the paper had been hiding.
The picture of the ’rilla, only we had not learned the ’rilla word then. Or found the ’rilla things. Or learned the ’rilla signs.
More heat come through the heat things set in the floor, and the picture curled off the wall, only we did not rip it into curls for Jerrie. We held it out flat on the dirty floor, and Jerrie tried to read the words next to the hairy thing there. Her Ma and Pa, they write the words on their kitchen wall, because they don’t say to each other anymore. They make mad-eyes and write on the greasy wall with hard words of black, and their say hangs in the air like memories. Sometimes they say to Jerrie, sometimes they say on the wall to her, so she can read. Or sometimes she might not eat if she can’t read her Ma’s say about where to get the food. When So-Baba was young like me and Bobby and Jerrie, she say Pas and Mas like Jerrie’s could stop being a Ma and Pa together, and live in different places like they had never been a Ma and Pa in one house. In one bed. But then, she say, that too was banned. Like the cigarettes, and the tee vee. All banned, she say, and nobody protested because they hadn’t when it started, with the cigarettes and the taking away of santa claus, so when di-vorce was banned, no one could protest. Because, she say, the people couldn’t. So-Baba she start to say, And when they said there was no G—but me and Bobby, we don’t hear the rest of her say because Pa say loud, So what? What is gone is gone, Baba, don’t do worrying about it! It won’t bring anything back. Bringing back your god won’t change things, Baba. And he made the mad-eyes at me and Bobby, and So-Baba sat and nodded her grease-face, and made sad-eyes for the things we couldn’t picture in our minds. And me and Bobby could say nothing, not even the ’rilla words, because we hadn’t seen.
When the picture from behind the curls of paper was flat, Jerrie bent down near the floor and almost touched her nose on the paper, and finally she start to say the Broo—ooklin Z—z—oo pr—oudly announces the a-a-rrival of the nuh-newest guh-guh-’rilla in the monkey hau-house. Then she couldn’t say anymore because the paper under the picture was eaten at the bottom, tiny crescents bitten away.
We all sat back among the ripped paper curls from Jerrie’s head, and watched the ’rilla paper curl up a little when we took our fingers off the edges. In the middle the ’rilla stood big, and hairy, and upright, like our Pa in the rooms inside, but not like Pa either.
There was a man, like our Pa only with hair and fat on his body, and he stood next to the ’rilla, only there were bars with space between them in front of the ’rilla and behind the man. And the ’rilla, he stood taller and heavier than the man, and had so much hair he needed no clothes. That was the first Sign, of the ’rilla’s power.
Me and Bobby and Jerrie and our Mas and Pas and So-Baba, we all had almost no hair, and very little fat on the bones. And we shivered in our clothes, even when the trees had the curled leaves on them in the courtyard, in the few weeks when the sun shone down almost warm, and in the weeks before the curled leaves turned funny gray and fell in crackling piles that we’d jump in after scooping them into a bigger pile. Even then we needed clothes. Lots of clothes, in layers like So-Baba wore her slip and her nightgown and her old dress and her lilac sweater with the yellowing buttons like horny fingernails and yet she still said she was cold. Even when the wet heat comes through the heat hole in her room.
But all the ’rilla wore was lots and lots of thick hair, and pads of fatness on the bones.
(So-Baba, she say before her mind cracked like old teeth, before the sickness came, we were all fat on the bones. We wore clothes to ac-cent-you-ate the fat, because the fat places were considered to be sexy—and Ma she say, Shuttup, Baba! For shame, saying the banned words! And to the kids! And later Ma wouldn’t let So-Baba have the last of the grease from the pan for her face, just to show her. And warn her, too.)
And me and Bobby and Jerrie, we began to say, The ’rilla was lucky, not to be cold in the outside. Because when we looked at the man, he had clothes on, only not so many as our Pa wore. But clothes anyway. Not thick hair and fat, not the freedom from smelly layers of clothes that itched in the places where the tiny dark things crawled, or stuck together, where the food had spilled on them.
