PURPLE

by Robert Reed

Of his latest tale, Robert Reed says, “My daughter and I know a barn owl. It lives in the nature center at a local park, and the bird is lucky to be alive. He is blind and one wing is missing, but he handles the visiting children with heroic indifference. So that’s part of ‘Purple.’ A good friend volunteers at a raptor recovery operation outside Lincoln. Through him, my family and I got the full tour. We saw hawks and owls and rats waiting to die. There was a fifty-year-old golden eagle who looked exactly like a very old eagle—no wild bird loses feathers and acts that feeble. There was a bald eagle that had ingested lead pellets and gone crazy as a result. It was a great place, and I’m thankful it exists. But the whole operation depends on one woman who has made it the focus of her life, and while she is in absolute control of her world, I began thinking about those people who collect tigers or horses—big fancy beasts that eventually overwhelm even the most competent soul. The rest of ‘Purple’ comes from there.”         A word of warning: There are scenes in this story that may be disturbing to some readers.

* * * *

Without sound and without motion, the master arrives. The only sensation feels like moving air, like someone close breathing softly into his face. But real breath should be warm or perhaps cool. Real breath requires a mouth, and the master has no mouth. What Tito feels is a surge of electricity teasing the gullible neurons in his scarred cheeks and around his blind eyes. He smiles and stands, his surviving arm pushing at the floor until his legs can take charge. Then he tucks his hand into the belt, knuckles against his back as he dips his face in a reverent fashion. The master won’t ask him to take this pose. But it feels expected, and he never considers doing otherwise.

            He waits.

            “Hello, Tito.”

            “Good morning, Master.”

            “How did you sleep?”

            “Very well, thank you.”

            The master’s voice has no gender, but that’s the only quality it lacks. Each word is clear and strong, and despite being quicker than human speech, it is easily understood. This is how stone would sound, given the capacity for conversation. This is a great mountain speaking to a little man, and it is a blessing to be noticed by a life as special and vast as the master’s.

            Tito should feel honored.

            “You’re hungry,” the master observes.

            “I am, yes.”

            “What do you want for your breakfast?”

            “Frosted flakes,” he decides. “With cold milk and hot toast and plenty of butter. And soda pop, please.”

            The meal appears instantly.

            Tito’s quarters are small and familiar. He knows where the chair and table wait, and after sitting, he picks up a spoon with the smooth handle designed to fit no hand better than his. He has used the same plate and bowl for the last five thousand mornings. The master has an aptitude for judging portions. He eats his fill, nothing left. Then Tito rises and walks three steps to a toilet that exists only when needed. Life is composed of rhythms, and his body’s rhythms are obvious to the master. Once finished, the toilet cleans his privates and vanishes, and his morning filth is examined for signs of disease or unusual decay. The master cares deeply for him, and evidence of that feeling comes with the endless attention to details.

            “You didn’t sleep well, Tito.”

            Found out, the human dips his head.

            “What’s wrong, my friend?”

            Tito is “my friend” only on special occasions. The master is concerned, and those words are a signal.

            “I had a bad dream, Master.”

            “Tell me.”

            “I was a little boy again. I was standing on the street corner, waiting for the bus. The bus on the purple line was going to take me to my school.”

            “You’ve had this dream before,” the master says.

            Tito sighs.

            “But there’s more,” the voice guesses.

            “I waited and waited, and a bus finally came around the corner. It looked like mine. It was yellow and loud, and there was a big white card in a side window. I saw the word, ‘PURPLE’ written out. But after the bus stopped . . . stopped in front of me, and the door opened . . . I realized that this wasn’t my ride.”

            “What did you see?”

            “The bus driver. Nothing else.”

            “Who was the driver?”

            Tito takes a deep breath and lets it out again.

            “Did you recognize the person?” asks the master.

            “She wasn’t human,” he says.

            “What was she?”

            “I can’t describe her,” he explains. “Other than to call her alien, I suppose.”

            “This is different than usual,” the master agrees.

            Tito waits a moment. “Where will you put me today?”

            “I haven’t decided.”

            He says nothing.

            “This driver,” says that voice of stone. “Can you guess who she might have been?”

            “No,” he lies.

            The master can’t read thoughts, regardless what some people think. But it sees anxiety and can make shrewd guesses about what is true.

            Tito bows again. “Who today, Master?”

            “Brenda has been asking for you.”

            “Very good,” he says, as if he means it.

            What isn’t a hand picks him up, and what isn’t muscle and bone carries him away. Hundreds of citizens live inside the compound. Only a few dozen are human. Brenda has lived in the compound since she was nine. Like every resident, she is crippled, but her wounds are deep and invisible, tied to a childhood that she never mentions. A big loud woman who can talk for hours about any subject, Brenda always sounds confident and self-assured. Yet her noise and bluster are balanced upon a horrific past. What happened to her was not her fault. She wouldn’t be here otherwise. But her soul holds the capacity for sudden, savage violence—cruelties delivered without warning, each incident followed in turn by loud, enthusiastic apologies.

            Tito knows what those meaty arms and legs can do. After the last incident, she was warned that another mistake, no matter how minor, would mean she would never see Tito again. The master was explicit, and she has behaved ever since. As much as she can love anybody, Brenda loves Tito. Nothing helps a person feel good about her own miserable prospects than sharing the day with a small and blind one-armed man.

            Every visit to Brenda begins with a description of the master. “Like a great shadow, only bright,” she says. “More brilliant than fire, and gigantic too. He has a thousand arms and a million fingers but his touch is too light to feel, and he is gorgeous. No, better than gorgeous. If only you could see him, darling. If only you had your sight back, for just one moment. I swear to you, there’s nothing more beautiful than the master.”

            Tito stands where he was set and nods, listening to very little, thinking about another beauty.

            When he was brought to the compound, Tito didn’t know anybody and understood nothing. He was scared and hurting, even when the master assured him that he was safe and would always be safe. Days and nights full of medicine and kind touches did their best. His ruined body recovered as far as possible, and when he was strong enough to ask questions, the master carried him to another home, introducing him to one of the resident children.

            Adola wasn’t much older than Tito, but she was already familiar with the compound. Her patient pretty voice tried to explain what could never be explained. Humans weren’t smart enough to understand more than a sliver of their surroundings, but she promised this was a special place and every one of its citizens was fortunate. Everybody brought here was mangled and too weak to live with their own kind, but being broken wasn’t all they had in common. Each of them was defined by what was good that was left behind. There was quite a lot left behind for Tito. His new friend touched him softly, praising him for everything he did well. Adola said that he had an excellent memory. Better than the other blind people, Tito could navigate his way across any home, even if he had visited just once. She also liked his humor and his fun sweet honest smile, and she loved what she would always call his “good heart.” So of course he loved that girl in turn, and he loved her as a woman, and this will never change.

            Besides the master, only Adola knows what happened to Tito as a boy. That was another reason he loved her. It has been four hundred and seventeen days since their last conversation, yet Tito still hears her voice and feels her face and her breasts and how she had held him close, his good heart pounding inside his aching, very sorry chest.

* * * *

            Brenda interrupts his thoughts. “What did you do for breakfast?”

            He describes his meal.

            “I had eggs,” she tells him. “Scrambled, and with one big pancake.”

            “You like that breakfast,” he observes.

            “Tomorrow might be cereal. Or it might be French toast. I haven’t decided.”

            He listens as much as he needs to track the conversation. When she pauses, he says, “Yes.” And if the pause continues, he tells her, “Please, go on.”

            “I was just thinking,” she says.

            He knows where this is moving but pretends innocence. “What were you thinking?”

            “About you and me,” she says.

            He remains silent.

            She stands behind him. Damp hands touch him, working to remain on his shoulders. He listens intently, feeling at the air. She moves even closer, mouth near his ear, and he thinks he can feel her soft ample body tensing up. Then with a quiet and patient and understanding voice, he says, “Later.”

            “Later?”

            “Not yet.”

            “All right.” One hand drops, brushing the side of his little body. She never touches the stump where an arm should be, though she’s quick to claim nothing about him disgusts her. What she wants to grab is off-limits until he says, “Yes.” That’s one of the master’s central rules. Sex is forbidden so long as one person says, “No.”

            “Not yet,” Tito repeats.

            And Brenda pulls her hands away, lying to herself when she says, “That’s for the best. Build up the anticipation, and all that shit.”

* * * *

            Memory is never perfect. Even in a life wrapped inside ritual and small circumstances, each day’s experiences erode what remains of the days that came before. The best memory is sloppy. To hold what it can, the mind invents stories that are practiced and told to others and told to the teller, polished by hard use until it all feels smooth and familiar. Yet in subtle ways, the wrong creeps into the right. Tito cannot count the times that he has visited Brenda or most of the other companions, and there is no way to recall what they talked about when, much less their actual words. Yet he knows each of them as a friend and sometimes as lovers, and even the most difficult people give him moments of pleasure.

            With Adola, he remembers everything.

            After his first visit to her house, he started to count. The master carried him to her three fingers more than three hundred times, and she came into his house two dozen times. Her quarters were roomier and full of furniture, and there was much more to do. That was because she still had her eyes and could enjoy the space. Or it was because luck smiled on her, and she arrived when a large space was available. Or maybe it was because she was being rehabilitated to live on the Earth again, and her special machines needed long floors. Different days brought different explanations. But other people had one simple, reasonable explanation: Adola was the master’s favorite, and didn’t the prettiest sweetest human deserve the best?

            Adola was younger than Tito when she arrived. The master had visited the Earth at the right moment, and the master happened to find her broken body lying in a ditch with other dead and dying people. She was brought here and died twice that first day. But the master revived her heart and put bandages into the bullet wounds, and her pain fell away, and she could see her surroundings and the machines that kept her alive and the master that she couldn’t describe, even to herself. From the beginning, Adola said, “Don’t think in normal ways. Don’t think about bodies and faces, no matter how strange you imagine them to be. Nothing about the master is that simple.”

            Some claimed the master was a god. Not a big god, perhaps, but an entity endowed with magic and wisdom.

            And when Adola was a little girl, that’s how she referred to the master. “The Master,” she said with a loud, reverent voice. But later, seeing more and listening to others, she came to a rather different opinion.

            “The master isn’t alive,” she told Tito. “Not even as a god-creature. What it is, I think . . . I think it’s a set of emotions made bigger than anything we can imagine. It is the urge to do good for those who suffer. It is empathy and kindness. Somewhere, maybe millions of years ago, those emotions could have lived inside a real organism. But they grew huge and immortal, and that’s what rescued us and what keeps us safe here.”

            Tito used to find that answer appealing, though he wasn’t sure why.

            Humans are rare here. What are common are winged aliens—three unrelated species—and a thoughtful beast that looks something like a cat. Each has its own collection of languages and its own special, carefully maintained homes. The species rarely interact with one another, but Adola asked questions and more questions, and since she was a favorite, the master eventually introduced her to the aliens, letting them answer what they could. That’s where her strangest ideas came from. “And the master only seems big,” she told Tito. “To go where it goes and do everything it does, size would be a liability. Mass would slow it down. So the master might really be too tiny to feel in your hand, if you ever should hold it.”

            Tito liked that image too.

            When they were old enough and lovers, Adola warned him that there wouldn’t be any babies. He hadn’t thought about babies, but their absence bothered him and he asked why not.

            Adola explained human reproduction, in detail, without a trace of shame.

            He listened carefully, thinking about mothers and fathers.

            “Neither of us is fertile,” she said. “The master snips and cuts everyone who comes here.”

            In those days, the master was always reasonable and right.

            “The master can’t take care of babies,” she said.

            Babies did sound like troublesome creatures. But something in her words bothered him.

            She touched Tito. In those places where permission was necessary, she held him, and her musical voice said, “A real and true god can do anything. But if you pay attention, you’ll notice the master has many, many limitations.”

            Tito’s stomach ached, and he said nothing.

            “We have only so many habitats,” she pointed out. “Even the most common residents—the crested hawk-beasts—number no more than two hundred at a time. And they come from a world full of millions and millions.”

            “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “What are you telling me?”

            “I was dying in a ditch,” Adola said. “Shot twice and bleeding, and my leg and arm were broken. And do you know who was under me? My mother. My big brother was beside me. The men shot my brother just once, and he was breathing harder than I was. He still had a voice. We laid there for a long time, listening to each other, and the bad men were lined up nearby, shooting more people. People that we knew. And my mother moaned so sadly and said she was sorry this had to happen. She was moving under me, and she was very weak, and then she said, ‘Keep still, and when night comes, crawl away. Crawl for the bush and try to live.’

            “Then she died, and we laid there waiting.

            “Then after a long time, my brother said, ‘Oh, what is that thing?’ He coughed and then said, ‘Do you see it, Adola?’

            “It was a patch of light, I thought. A second sun was hanging in the sky straight above us. Hundreds of people were dead and dying beside the road, and evil men were laughing when they shot more of us, and I wanted to talk to my brother and tried but I didn’t have a voice, and then something touched me, touched my face and then reached through my skull, and the last words my brother said were, ‘It is the devil, Adola. Fight the devil.’”

            Then she stopped talking, crying for many reasons.

            After a while, Tito said, “The master took you but not your brother.”

            “Which saddens me,” she said. “And sometimes, makes me angry.”

            He held the girl and thought about his own past and how he came here, and eventually she stopped crying.

            “The master is small,” she repeated.

            “I wouldn’t feel it if it was in my hand,” he said.

            “And small in other ways,” she said. “There are only so many quarters here, and the master can make room only when someone dies or goes home again. Which means whenever one person is saved, a million more of us are left behind.”

            He took a breath and held it.

            “The master is empathy,” she said. “But it is toughness too. Can you imagine? You have the power to save the wounded, the crippled. But you must select. You must somehow ignore those who suffer, and what kind of mind can do that for eons?”

            “A great mind,” he said.

            And she waited for a moment. Then she said, “Great,” while pushing her mouth against his neck. “We’ll stop using that word when we talk about the master. All right, Tito?”

* * * *

            Any lunch is possible, but he has to put his desires into words. In effect, he can order only what he remembers from his life before and what other people have shared with him. Tito pretends to think before telling the master, “Jollof rice, please.”

            Brenda makes a sound. “What’s wrong with ham and cheese?”

            “Jollof rice,” he repeats.

            “But it smells so bad, and it’s spicy,” she says.

            He nods as if agreeing with every complaint, but in another moment the aroma of pepper and rice fills the room. Smiling, he stands and walks confidently to the remembered table.

            This was Adola’s favorite meal.

            Brenda sits on the opposite side of the tiny table, bumping his leg as she sits. “Ham and cheese,” she says. “Yum.”

            Tito picks up his big spoon and fills it and eats happily.

            “I’d offer to share taste,” she says. “But I don’t eat crap.”

            He eats until thirsty and sets the spoon on his plate. Cool water waits in a tall glass. He drinks and listens. When Brenda reaches across the table, she grunts, just a little. Then she doesn’t say anything else, waiting.

            The spoon is missing. Tito knows it, but he reaches to where it was set before, letting his hand close on the air.

            She watches and waits.

            He puts his hand in his lap and says nothing.

            “Why aren’t you eating?” she teases.

            “I’m full,” he says.

            She laughs at him.

            After a moment, he asks, “What are your neighbors doing?”

            “I don’t know. Which neighbor?”

            “The deep-cat.”

            They are called deep-cats because they are considered highly intelligent, second only to the master. “Oh, he’s just sitting there, in his dump. Reading.”

            “You always call it a dump.”

            “Because they don’t pick up after themselves. They’re filthy creatures.”

            “Clutter makes them happy,” he says.

            “Who told you that?”

            Tito says nothing.

            “You’ve never talked to a deep-cat.”

            “Adola did,” he says.

            “She just pretended she did.” Brenda sighs, frustrated that her game hasn’t gone better. Leaning across the table, she sets the spoon back on his plate, not even trying to hide her motions.

            He leaves the spoon there. He was hungry when he said he was full, but now his stomach is tiny and tight.

            “Let’s not talk about that woman,” Brenda says.

            “Adola?”

            “Not even her name, please.” She shifts her weight and sighs again. “You don’t know this. How could you? But your little girlfriend was ugly. Not just plain, but homely.”

            “You’ve said that before,” he says.

            “Except you won’t believe me.”

            Tito says nothing, waiting.

            “And black,” Brenda says. “In my life, I’ve never seen a blacker, uglier creature.”

            He feels sick now, keeping his mouth closed.

            “Why do you keep bringing her up, Tito? She’s gone.”

            “I know she’s gone.”

            “You’re in my house,” Brenda says. “You should be polite to your hostess, whenever you get the chance.”

            “I should be,” he agrees.

            Brenda moves. She says, “He’s looking at us now.”

            “The deep-cat?”

            “A slob, but he is beautiful.”

            They were tall creatures with high, meat-fueled metabolisms. But despite being intelligent, their species had done considerable damage to their native world. The deep-cats brought here would die here. Even when the master nursed them back to perfect health, there was no place for them in their original home.

            Brenda laughs. “I just flashed my tits at him,” she says.

            Tito picks up the spoon, as if ready to eat again.

            “I don’t think he likes that, seeing all this good flesh and no way to get over here and chew. You know?”

            “Probably not,” he says.

            “Are you crying?” she asks.

            “A little,” he says. “It’s the pepper, I think.”

* * * *

            Tito remembers when he had eyes, and the eyes knew a house and yard and trees growing beneath a sky that changed from black to blue and then turned black again. With little prompting, he can see the woman standing beside him—a towering lady with black hair and a strange painful smile. She held his hand, the hand that was going to be lost. When she spoke, she used a firm voice that commanded attention. She wasn’t his mother, but she insisted that he called her “Mama.” His mother and father had gone somewhere. Where they went was an important secret, and if he asked about them he would be paddled, or maybe some worse punishment would be delivered.

            The two of them were standing on the busy corner outside their rundown little house. “You are such a good boy,” the woman told him. She always said that, even when she was in a bad mood. It was important to be a good boy. That was the message that began every day. Then her strange smile widened, and she let go of the hand and patted him on the head. “No, I won’t leave you. I can’t ever leave you. This is a promise, and I never break my promises.”

            Why was she saying this? The little boy must have said something before, some question that prompted her reaction. But the grown, maimed man cannot remember those words.

            The woman kneeled, despite a bad knee that made her wince. “Trust me. You must trust me.”

            “I do,” said a tiny high voice.

            “How old are you?”

            The voice said, “Six.”

            “A perfect age,” she said.

            Six was six, and nothing about any age was perfect.

            “Why are you crying?” she asked.

            He can’t recall crying now. But she touched his cheek and pulled back dampened fingertips.

            “I do love you,” she said.

            He nodded.

            “More than anything,” she said.

            He kept nodding.

            Looking out into the street, she said, “When I was young.” Then a car went past, and she took a long breath before talking again. “I wasn’t much older than you. And my father, who was always a good man . . . a wonderful man . . . my father got involved with some awful things. Drugs. Powerful, wicked drugs that made him crazy. He was so angry and crazy, and I won’t tell you, not ever, what he did. Or what my mother did to protect me. But living through those days . . . surviving the nights . . . that’s why I’m strong today.” Her hands were shaking, and she was crying. “Stronger than anybody else.”

            He followed her eyes, gazing out into the street. Then came the rough sound of a motor, and he turned and looked. A yellow box on wheels was rolling toward them.

            The woman stood, wincing because of her knee. “That’s not our bus. We want the city bus.”

            The city bus was bigger and nicer looking.

            “Hold my hand,” she said.

            The yellow bus slowed and stopped, and a big door opened. Sitting in front was a gray-haired woman, fat and smiling. “I wasn’t told,” she called out. “First day of school, is it?”

            When she wanted, the black-haired woman had a big smile. “No, the boy’s being home schooled. We’re waiting for the downtown line.”

            “Oh,” said the driver, surprised.

            “We’re on a field trip. To the museum.”

            The boy wondered what a museum was, but he knew better than to ask.

            Pressed at the bus windows were faces. Everybody but the driver was little, like him. Most of them were smiling, watching the strange boy and this tall odd woman standing at the corner. Taped to one window was a sign, one word written in capital letters.

            “Well, he’s a fine looking boy,” the driver said. Then she winked at him and closed the door, and with a lurch and rattle the yellow bus drove away.

            “What’s that word?” he asked.

            “In the window?”

            “Yes.”

            “Purple.”

            “But it’s a yellow bus.”

            She laughed and said, “It’s probably the purple line.” Then she held his hand tighter, just short of where it would hurt.

            “Mama?” he said.

            “Yes, honey?”

            “I love you.”

            “I love you too. So much.”

            He leaned into the tall woman, and she stopped squeezing his hand.

            “I am strong,” she said.

            “I know.”

            “Strong,” she repeated. Then once again, just to be certain, “Strong.”

* * * *

            Adola never kept secrets from Tito. Day by day, she was growing stronger and learning a little more of what she needed to know to live on the Earth again. She described her exercises, and she tried to explain what she was reading and writing. Smart adult humans were expected to read all day long, and they had to watch important television programs, and everyone was expected to absorb facts about famous people and pretty faces and big events that happened before anybody here was born. “Culture,” Adola said. “For people, culture is more important than clothes. Clothes are just a little part of your culture. Though you can’t blend in without knowing what to wear and when and why.”

            Tito had no idea what to wear. And he could never be strong.

            Maybe half of the humans here would leave eventually. But they had to want to leave and work hard enough to learn how to blend in. The Earth would always be cruel, and odd people were most at risk. The master had sent home people that should have stayed here. The master mentioned this whenever telling Tito that he was lucky. “You will be cared for and happy until you die without pain. I will protect you. With every power at my disposal, I will keep you safe.”

            Being safe was good.

            Thanking the master was polite and reasonable, and he was glad for every good thing that he enjoyed.

            And Adola never lied. But then again, quite a lot went unmentioned.

            In their earliest days, she liked to boast about her appetite, proving that her wounded stomach had healed. She was working hard with the weights and her dancing, and she was learning so much through books. There was no reliable school where she lived as a little girl, but once she had the chance, she was an excellent student. Tito brought his books with their bumpy words, and he brought books that spoke to him, strange voices reciting stories about invented people. But what he loved best was to hear this girl reading from her textbooks, even when the subjects made little sense. A train went at this speed and this much time passed and how far did it go, and the Queen of England was who, and who won the World Cup in 1999, and what did it mean when the temperature reached zero?

            He didn’t need to know any of this. He was never returning to the Earth. And maybe Adola wouldn’t leave either. That was one fine hope that he kept secret from everyone, including himself.

            They grew older, and one day she stopped boasting about her brain and the latest lessons. The only thing she said was that every lesson was harder now, and she didn’t know if she was smart enough and determined enough to succeed.

            Believing her was easy, and Tito tried not to lie. But he wanted to tell her how much he wanted her to stay. Their days together meant everything. People weren’t supposed to have favorites, but they were important to each other. He always imagined Adola when he was with other lovers. It didn’t matter if they were apart. In his mind, he could talk to Adola, and she talked to the Tito in her mind. Sometimes he woke when he should be sleeping, like when he was a child. He would make no sound, listening to the silence in the compound, thinking about a life he didn’t want, which meant that there was no Adola.

            One day, she was quiet. She was happy to see him, but the endless talk vanished into nervous silence. He asked why. Five times, he pushed for some reason. At last she admitted that the master was making final preparations for her trip back to the Earth. It sounded as if this was the master’s fault, and she was powerless. She explained how the Earth was full of people, and almost everybody there had friends and family. It was difficult to set one lost person into that chaos and have her blend in. Nothing about the master’s tasks was easy, but this was especially hard.

            “I am going to live in a big city,” Adola said. “Big cities are better. A strange person can hide in plain view.”

            “You aren’t strange,” he said.

            “But we all are,” she said.

            He sat still, listening to his own racing thoughts.

            “I’m going to be an accountant,” she said. “I’ll have my own name and a life story that everyone will believe, and there will be an apartment where the mail will come to me. Where I’ll sit and watch television and read books that I have never read, and I don’t know what else I’ll do.”

            “What is an accountant?” he asked.

            “People who work with numbers. With other people’s money.” She made a soft, frustrated sound—unusual for her. “I told you this before. My job is very important.”

            “You didn’t,” he said.

            “But I did.” She paused, thinking back. Then she said, “I thought I did. Are you sure you were listening?”

            “I always pay attention to you, Adola.”

            She didn’t speak for a time.

            “When will you leave?” he asked.

            “Very soon.”

            He imagined that she was going tomorrow and they wouldn’t touch again. Reaching for her voice, she caught his hand with both of hers and held it and bent close to say, “Twenty days from now.”

            He swallowed. Then he said, “And I’ll follow you.”

            She didn’t talk, surprised to hear that.

            And he was startled too. But he had said the words, and he felt as if he had never believed anything more surely than this. “I’ll learn what I have to learn, and the master will build a life for me too.”

            “Tito,” she said, interrupting him.

            But he couldn’t stop talking about his sudden, impossible plans.

            Then she set a warm hand on his mouth and kissed the back of her hand, and she kissed his scarred nose and the holes where eyes should be. She never told him that any of this was impossible, and she didn’t encourage him. “Quiet please,” she said once and then again. “Quiet please.” Then Adola told him, “This is too hard to bear as it is, Tito.”

            Her hand dropped away, and he said, “Or you could.”

            “Could what?”

            “Tell the master, ‘No thank you,’ and stay here. With your friends and the deep-cats. And with me.”

            Nothing happened. Adola sighed and sighed again, holding her breath, and then she sat back, putting air between them before saying, “No.” With a slow, hard voice, she told him, “That isn’t going to happen. No, no, no.”

* * * *

            Brenda asks by not asking.

            With a smiling voice, she says, “You look nice today.”

            “Thank you.”

            She waits and then asks, “How do you feel?”

            “I feel fine,” he says.

            “Wonderful.”

            Tito sits at one end of Brenda’s enclosure, listening to the deep-cat discussing some issue with nobody. Deep-cats are solitary creatures. They can entertain themselves all day with puzzles and mathematical conundrums. Adola claimed that they stalked problems like earthly cats attack mice. It is very rare for cats to visit one another, which must make them easier to care for than social, endlessly insecure humans.

            Brenda drags her chair close to Tito’s chair and sits.

            He says nothing.

            Her breathing is shallow and quick. She doesn’t touch him, but he feels the heat of a hand near his face, and then the hand is gone.

            “Your whiskers need a trim,” she says.

            “They do?”

            “I’d be happy to.”

            He waits a moment before saying, “No thank you.”

            A slow exasperated sound ends in silence. She waits a very long while before asking, “Why not?”

            “Why not what?”

            “Why can’t I trim your little beard?”

            “You said I looked nice,” he says. “I thought you did.”

            “It’ll make you even nicer,” she says.

            The deep-cat has stopped talking. Maybe he is watching them.

            Brenda shifts her weight. Then with each word flat and simple, she says, “Our day is almost done.”

            Tito nods. He says, “It feels late.”

            “And have I asked?” She leans closer. “Have I pestered you at all?”

            “You’ve been very good,” he admits.

            “Good enough?”

            Tito smiles in the direction of the deep-cat.

            “You’re just teasing me, aren’t you?” Brenda touches herself. He knows the sound she makes when she touches her own body, and he waits for her voice to change, growing slower and distracted. “I hate being teased. I do.”

            “I’m not teasing.”

            “You are.”

            He smiles at her voice and says, “She likes my beard.”

            “Who does?”

            He doesn’t answer.

            Brenda stops rubbing herself. A sour, angry sound comes out of her, but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t trust herself to talk.

            “I think about the master,” he says.

            “What’s that?”

            “Day by day,” he says. “Isn’t it amazing what the master can do?”

            “The master is incredible,” she says.

            Tito nods and scratches his scalp, his face, and then his ragged beard. “Why do you think it does all of this?”

            “Does what?”

            “Everything.” He makes a sweeping motion with his arm. “It must be a lot of work, one creature caring for all of us.”

            “Yet the master does it.”

            “But only us. At least there aren’t any others that we can see.”

            “You can’t see anything,” she teases.

            Tito ignores her. Imagining the deep-cat, he says, “Obviously the master likes this work, this burden. But no matter how fantastic its powers, our keeper has only so many hands and so much patience.”

            “The master is great,” Brenda says.

            “And it loves this work,” he says.

            She says, “Well, good then. Thank you, Master.”

            “It loves having us here,” he says.

            Brenda refastens her trousers. She isn’t sure what to make of this conversation, much less how to react.

            “But,” he says. “But I don’t think it really loves us.”

            She sighs.

            “No, I don’t think it can love.” Tito nods and puts on a big sad smile, telling Brenda, “We’re possessions, and of course we’re thankful for being saved, and the master loves being the powerful ruler of this place and all of these complicated prizes.”

            “Prizes?”

            “Us,” he says. “The master is a collector. I think. Being nice to us is just part of the game it plays.”

            “The master loves me,” says Brenda. “Every morning and every evening, that’s what it tells me.”

            “‘Love’ is a sound. It’s a word keeping us happy in our cages.”

            “That’s just crazy.”

            He doesn’t respond.

            “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Brenda tells him.

            He shrugs as if admitting that she might be right. Then he faces her voice and smiles in a different way, saying, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.”

            Brenda moans.

            “Ever again,” he says.

            “Why not?”

            “Because you’re disgusting and mean, and I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you, and I never want to touch you again.”

            She hits him.

            “That didn’t hurt,” he says.

            Then with the scissors that she would have used on his beard, she does quite a bit more than hit him.

* * * *

            The boy woke up in the middle of the night. He was alone in bed. The tall woman liked to sleep beside him. That would keep him safe, she said. But she was gone and someone was making noise in the bathroom, and he climbed down and crossed the hallway to see her kneeling, throwing up into the toilet. Some kind of bug had gotten inside her. That’s what she told him. Her belly kept trying to empty itself even when nothing was left inside, and he watched her agony and felt sorry and felt other ways too.

            He was still six, but an older six. He noticed more now. The woman finished throwing up but the sweat kept coming out of her face and from under her long arms, and she sobbed and said she was better when she wasn’t, and she tried to stand but couldn’t. Her legs went out from under her, and he backed away, and she looked at him in that way that meant quite a lot. She said, “Stay.” Pointing a wet finger, she said, “Don’t. You. Move.”

            He sat in the hallway, waiting.

            He was six and watched television when she let him, usually after he was good all day, and he had noticed that most people wore special clothes to bed. They were clothes meant for sleeping in. But the tall woman insisted that they had to keep their normal clothes on all of the time. There might be an emergency. Bad people might come and try to steal him. He was that important, that valuable. She wouldn’t let anyone take what was hers, and she didn’t like him watching television because it was full of the wrong ideas, and he wasn’t as good as he used to be. She said this more and more. She shook a finger at his sorry face, and she made him wear normal clothes to bed, and she didn’t want him out of her sight, even when her insides began aching again.

            She sat on the toilet the next time, and the next. It was almost morning when there wasn’t anything left of the bug inside her, and she went to bed slowly and called him, “Such a good boy,” and he stretched out beside her. She smelled wrong. Her skin was sour and her breath stank, and she said that she would take a little nap and then they would get up together and get busy with their day.

            The tall woman never slept long or deeply.

            Except that day was different. Her eyes closed and he lay still beside her, watching her eyes moving under the dark exhausted lids, and sometimes she muttered words and sometimes she only breathed. He watched her breathing and listened, and his mind ran in dangerous ways.

            The sun came up, and he watched her.

            Birds were singing outside, and they sang in his head. That’s what happened when you heard anything. It happened in the world and it happened in your head. Then from past the bird songs came the purposeful rumbling of a school bus coming up the street, and before he could think, the boy was out of bed and running, counting the mighty steps toward the front door of a little house.

* * * *

            The master cured his aches and bandaged the wounds, managing to say nothing through the long process. Then Tito was placed on a bed inside the infirmary, suspended between sterile sheets, and maybe the master had left him. Or maybe it was close. He lay still and listened to the soft moaning of a hawk-beast freshly arrived from its horrible home world. Then to the silence, he said, “Blame me, Master. Please don’t punish Brenda.”

            “She struck you,” said the voice of rock. “If I hadn’t intervened, you would have died.”

            Tito nodded, fingers lightly touching the closed gouge on his neck. “But you saved me. As always.”

            “Such a sorrowful day,” the master said.

            Tito closed his scabbed mouth.

            “It will be a very long time before your friend can be trusted with anyone. And forever, I will have to take precautions.”

            “What about me, Master?”

            “What about you?”

            “You should punish me. I knew what I was doing. Nothing but words, but I made the woman furious.”

            “All right, Tito. What kind of punishment would be appropriate?”

            “Don’t let me visit other people.”

            “For how long?”

            “Forever.”

            It is a remarkable thing, saying words to the master and not hearing an immediate, perfectly reasoned response. The voice isn’t flustered when it returns, but there is a stiffness that Tito has never noticed before. “You are guilty of much, yes. But both of us realize that nobody else poses the same danger as Brenda.”

            “Are you certain? Did you hear me speaking to her?”

            “I know what you said, Tito.”

            “I might have said worse.”

            Silence.

            “What if I tell the next person that the master doesn’t pick up the injured and maimed? I could claim that you visit the Earth and these other worlds just to watch the misery. Tragedies unfold beneath you, and what you like best you snatch up to bring here.”

            “Who would believe such a tale?”

            “I do.”

            “You shouldn’t.”

            “I have never asked, Master. When did you first see me?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Was it when the house exploded into fire, or before that? Did you see the tall woman catch me? Or did you watch me run out to catch the purple bus? Or maybe you watched me for days and days, using your wisdom, knowing that something awful would happen soon.”

            “Tito. I do love you.”

            “Don’t trust me with the others,” he said. “I will tell them whatever it takes, and they won’t look at you in the same way again.”

            “Then you won’t visit anybody again.”

            “And I’ll die of boredom and loneliness.”

            A second pause ends with the sensation of breath against the face. Then the weary voice asks, “What do you want from me, Tito?”

            “You know,” he says

            Then after a moment, he adds, “Or you know nothing at all about me.”

* * * *

            The bus nearly drove past. The little boy stood at the curb and waved, and it was the children in back who noticed him and screamed with one great happy voice, a dozen curious faces staring down through dirty glass. The fat woman stomped on the brakes and opened the door as he ran alongside, and then he leaped up onto the bottom step, too happy and too breathless to speak.

            “Now are you going to school?” she asked.

            He nodded, believing that was best.

            The driver had a nice smile, and then she wasn’t smiling. Her gaze lifted, and she squirmed uneasily in the chair. To somebody else, she said, “Hello there.”

            A smelly hand grabbed the boy by the elbow, and the tall woman yanked hard enough to pull him off his feet.

            The driver said a bad word.

            “Why are you out here?” the tall woman asked. Then she shook him hard and pulled him down onto the curb, and she grabbed both shoulders, trying to shove him down into the weedy, uncut lawn.

            “What are you doing?” the driver asked. “Lady. What are you doing?”

            “Come with me,” said the tall woman.

            The boy was picked up and carried. But the woman was exhausted from being sick, and she couldn’t hold tight. He managed to slip free and jump back onto the steps, and with a voice louder than anything that had ever come out of him, he screamed, “She’s not my mother. She stole me from my parents.”

            Again, he was carried away.

            Horrified, the driver watched boy and woman wrestle their way across the yard. Then she finally pulled a little phone out of her pocket and punched buttons and started to yell.

            The tall woman dragged the boy inside.

            He hit her and wished he could hit her again, but even sick, she was so much larger and stronger. And all of the anger that she had shown in her life was nothing like the rage that took hold of her now.

            She didn’t stop hitting him until the police pulled up.

            Cursing, she lifted the blind and dropped it and looked hard at this boy that had been so very bad. She explained just how awful he was as she dragged him into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife and a little pack of matches before hurrying into the basement. Her knee hurt, and the steps were steep, and those were new reasons to be angry. But her thinking was clear. She knew precisely what she was doing. Weeks and weeks ago, she dreamed up this plan for when the worst happened, and the worst always happened. A length of decrepit black hose brought natural gas into the house, and the long knife let her cut through the hose, the gas flowing like an endless stinking breath.

            Bleeding, the boy sat on the floor, too weak to stand.

            The air turned foul and close, and both of them coughed. “This is where you put us,” she said. “You stupid bastard.”

            A knock sounded at the front door.

            The doorbell rang.

            The boy called out, and she struck him.

            He coughed and she coughed harder, and he tried to stand, and she threw him onto his back and said, “Look at me.”

            His eyes were closed. He didn’t want to look.

            “I said look at me.”

            At last the front door was forced open, and big men with powerful, important feet were walking above their heads.

            The boy shook his head and bit her empty hand.

            She never spoke another word. The pack of matches was in her mouth. Using the tip of the knife, she carved away at those hard-closed eyes, at the stubborn lids, even while the face struggled and screamed in her bleeding hand. Somewhere the matches fell away and were lost. It didn’t matter. The front door had been left open, cool morning air slipping inside, and that’s when the ancient furnace decided to turn on—a wet snap and a blue spark becoming a fierce blue explosion that was everywhere at once, and the blast threw a chunk of steel into his flailing arm, and he remained awake and in agony, aware of everything including his endless misery, and he screamed until that strange second light decided to engulf both of them, taking only one.

* * * *

            “I wish to purchase a ticket.”

            “Destination?”

            “Lagos.”

            The dispatcher looks at him and says nothing. There are several reasons for silence, all good.

            “Lagos, Nigeria,” says the mutilated man.

            “Now, sir.” He starts to laugh and then stops, knowing how that looks. Laughing at a blind man and all. He settles for a meaningful sigh, saying, “There is this problem, sir. We don’t drive there.”

            “I know.”

            “This is a bus station.”

            “Of course it is.” The blind man has one arm and a hidden stump, and he has a little beard, and he’s dressed in a fine suit and wonderful fat tie. A small leather suitcase is set on the floor beneath his hand. There’s money in his appearance, and he doesn’t belong here. Everybody stares. He looks prosperous and helpless, and those who don’t want to rob him are terrified for him.

            “Where did you come from?” the dispatcher asks.

            The blind man smiles. “That is an interesting story.”

            Then he says nothing.

            Pieces of his face have been burned, and a fresh cut marks his scrawny neck. The dispatcher is thankful for the sunglasses. Blind eyes really creep him out.

            “I haven’t been here very long,” says the customer. “Really, I don’t know much about much. I am sorry. There was something of a rush to get me to this place. But I insisted, and this is where I’ll begin.”

            “All right, sir.”

            “Lagos,” he repeats.

            “That is on another continent, and this is a bus station.”

            “But you know where it is?”

            “In a general way, sure.”

            “Are you a good man?”

            The dispatcher nearly says, “Yes.” But the question is so serious and the customer so unexpected that he stands silent for a moment, considering his response. Then with cautious surety, he says, “Generally good, yes.”

            “I’m thinking of hiring you.”

            “Sir?”

            “Are you black?”

            He takes a breath. He says, “Yes.”

            “Lagos is a black city, as I understand it.”

            The dispatcher looks at the people waiting in line and the other travelers and then at his dumbfounded co-workers. “What are you telling me?”

            “I have money.”

            “Great.”

            From the pocket of his trousers comes a roll of bills. The blind man tries to set them on the counter, and the roll misses and drops, and the college kid behind him scoops up the money, turning in his fingers, and he’s shaking from excitement when he sets the roll in front of the dispatcher.

            “Shit,” says the dispatcher.

            “And do you have a passport?” asks the blind man. “I have been told that we need passports.”

            “I got one. So what?”

            “Of course I have mine.” The little book comes out of another pocket. “And I’m supposed to ask you: Are you on any watch lists?”

            “Not that I know of.”

            “What else?” The blind man closes his mouth, thinking.

            “You really want to hire me?”

            “Yes, sir. I’ll need help to get where I’m going.”

            “Lagos.”

            “Yes.”

            “Except you don’t know me.”

            “But as you said, you are a good man.”

            The dispatcher leans against the counter, staring at the roll of hundred-dollar bills. He doesn’t want to touch them. He barely has the breath to ask, “What would you pay me? If I helped, I mean.”

            “All of it.”

            “Shit.”

            “Minus our expenses, of course.”

            “Shit,” he says again.

            “There is someone I want to find in Lagos. It is important.”

            Finally, with a warm careful voice, the dispatcher says, “You’re crazy. You know that.”

            “I am not.” The little fellow straightens his back. “But if you want to know my story, google me. That’s the term, right? Google me, and it’s all there, a believable life story. You can read about my accident and the settlement. But if you think you can’t take me to Lagos, I’ll understand. I’ll turn around now and find someone else willing to help me.”

            “Not here, no,” says the dispatcher. Then he closes his window and comes around, telling the blind man, “Maybe you’re sane. But this is nuts.”

            The little man nods and says nothing.

            He has a nice smile. Sweet almost. And something about all of this is too perfect and incredible to refuse.

            The worst thing that the dispatcher could think of saying is, “You know, people are going to stare and cause trouble, and I don’t think I’m the best man to keep you safe on your little adventure.”

            The one hand rises, brushing aside the fears.

            “The worst has already happened,” says the blind man. “Trust me. We are going to have the times of our lives.”

            Copyright © 2011 Robert Reed