The Anything Box Part 12

"Well, be seeing you!" And the car surged up the sharp drop from the road,the little trailer swishing along in back. Crae and Ellena watched themdisappear over the railroad.

"Well," Crae turned and laid his fist against Ellena's cheek and pushedlightly. "How about chow, Frau? Might as well get supper over with. Looks likewe're in for some weather."

"Okay, boss," Ellena's eyes were shining. "Right away, sir!" And shescurried away, calling back, "But you'd better get the innards out of thosedenizens of the deep so I can get them in the pan."

"Okay." Crae moved slowly and carefully as though something might break ifhe moved fast. He squatted by the edge of the stream and clumsily began toclean the fish. When he had finished, his hands were numb from the icy snowwater and the persistent wind out of the west, but not nearly as numb as hefelt inside. He carried the fish over to the cook bench where Ellena shivered over the two-burner stove.

"Here you are," he said slowly and Ellena's eyes flew to his face.

He smiled carefully. "Make them plenty crisp and step it up!"

Ellena's smile was relieved. "Crisp it is!"

"Where's a rag to wipe my shoes off with? Shoulda worn my waders. There'smud and water everywhere this year."

"My old petticoat's hanging over there on the tree-if you don't mind anembroidered shoe rag."

Crae took down the cotton half-slip with eyelet embroidery around thebottom.

"This is a rag?" he asked.

She laughed. "It's ripped almost full length and the elastic's worn out. Goahead and use it."

Crae worked out of his wet shoes and socks and changed into dry. Then helifted one shoe and the rag and sat hunched over himself on the log. With ahorrible despair, he felt all the old words bubbling and the scab peeling offthe hot sickness inside him. His fist tightened on the white rag until hisknuckles cracked. Desperately, he tried to change his thoughts, but thebubbling putrescence crept through his mind and poured its bitterness into hismouth and he heard himself say bitterly, "How long were they here before I showed up?"

Ellena turned slowly from the stove, her shoulders drooping, her facedespairing.

"About a half hour." Then she straightened and looked desperately over athim. "No, Crae, please. Not here. Not now."

Crae looked blindly down at the shoe he still held in one hand. He clenchedhis teeth until his jaws ached, but the words pushed through anyway-biting and venomous.

"Thirty miles from anywhere. Just have to turn my back and they comeflocking! You can't tell me you don't welcome them! You can't tell me youdon't encourage them and entice them and-" He slammed his shoe down anddropped the rag beside it. In two strides he caught her by both shoulders andshook her viciously. "h.e.l.lamighty! You even built a fire in the tent for them!What's the matter, woman, are you slipping? You've got any number of ways totake their minds off the cold without building a fire!"

"Crae! Crae!" She whispered pleadingly.

"Don't 'Crae, Crae' me!" he backhanded her viciously across the face. Shecried out and fell sideways against the tree. Her hair caught on the roughstub of a branch as she started to slide down against the trunk. Crae grabbedone of her arms and yanked her up. Her caught hair strained her head backwardsas he lifted. And suddenly her smooth sun-tinted throat fitted Crae's twospasmed hands. For an eternity his thumbs felt the sick pounding of her pulse.Then a tear slid slowly down from one closed eye, trickling towards her ear.

Crae s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand away before the tear could touch it. Ellena slid toher knees, leaving a dark strand of hair on the bark of the tree. She gotslowly to her feet. She turned without a word or look and went into the tent.

Crae slumped down on the log, his hands limp between his knees, his headhanging. He lifted his hands and looked at them incredulously, then he flungthem from him wildly, turned and shoved his face hard up against the roughtree trunk.

"Oh, G.o.d!" he thought wildly. "I must be going crazy! I never hit herbefore. I never tried to-" He beat his doubled fists against the tree untilthe knuckles crimsoned, then he crouched again above his all-enveloping miseryuntil the sharp smell of burning food penetrated his daze. He walked blindlyover to the camp stove and yanked the smoking skillet off. He turned off thefire and dumped the curled charred fish into the garbage can and dropped theskillet on the ground.

He stood uncertain, noticing for the first time the scattered sprinkling ofrain patterning the top of the split-log table near the stove. He startedautomatically for the car to roll the windows up.

And then he saw Ellena standing just outside the tent Afraid to move orspeak, he stood watching her. She came slowly over to him. In the half-dusk hecould see the red imprint of his hand across her cheek. She looked up at himwith empty, drained eyes.

"We will go home tomorrow." Her voice was expressionless and almost steady."I'm leaving as soon as we get there."

"Ellena, don't!" Crae's voice shook with pleading and despair.

Ellena's mouth quivered and tears overflowed. She dropped her sodden,crumpled Kleenex and took a fresh one from her shirt pocket. She carefullywiped her eyes.

"'It's better to snuff a candle . . .'" Her voice choked off and Crae felt his heart contract. They had read the book together and picked out theirfavorite quote and now she was using it to- Crae held out his hands, "Please, Ellena, I promise-"

"Promise!" Her eyes blazed so violently that Crae stumbled back a step."You've been trying to mend this sick thing between us with promises for toolong!" Her voice was taut with anger. "Neither you nor I believe your promisesany more. There's not one valid reason why I should try to keep our marriagegoing by myself. You don't believe in it any more. You don't believe in me any more-if you ever did. You don't even believe in yourself! Nothing will work ifyou don't believe-" Her voice wavered and broke. She mopped her eyes carefullyagain and her voice was measured and cold as she said, "Well leave for hometomorrow-and G.o.d have mercy on us both."

She turned away blindly, burying her face in her two hands and stumbledinto the tent.

Crae sat down slowly on the log beside his muddy shoes. He picked up oneand fumbled for the cleaning rag. He huddled over himself, feeling as thoughlife were draining from his arms and legs, leaving them limp.

"It's all finished," he thought hopelessly. "It's finished and I'm finishedand this whole crazy d.a.m.n life is finished. I've done everything I know.Nothing on this earth can ever make it right between us again."

You don't believe, you don't believe. And then a wheezy old voice whistledin his ear. Nothing works, less'n you believe it. Crae straightened up,following the faint thread of voice. Happen some day you'll want to gofishing- you won't forget.

"It's crazy and screwy and a lot of hogwash," thought Crae. "Things likethat can't possibly exist."

You don't believe. Nothing works, lessen- A strange compound feeling ofhope and wonder began to well up in Crae. "Maybe, maybe," he thoughtbreathlessly. Then- "It will work. It's got to work!"

Eagerly intent, he went back over the incident at the store. All he couldremember at first was the rocking chair and the thick discolored lips of theold man, then a rhythm began in his mind, curling to a rhyme word at the endof each line. He heard the raspy old voice again- Happen some day you'll want to go fishing, you won't forget. And the linesslowly took form.

"Make your line from her linen fair.

Take your hook from her silken hair.

A broken heart must be your share For the Grunder."

"Why that's impossible on the face of it," thought Crae with a pang ofdespair. "The broken heart I've got-but the rest? Hook from her hair?" Hair?Hairpin-bobby pin. He fumbled in his shirt pocket. Where were they? Yesterday,upcreek when Ellena decided to put her hair in pigtails because the wind wa.s.so strong, she had given him the pins she took out. He held the slender pieceof metal in his hand for a moment then straightened it carefully between hisfingers. He slowly bent one end of it up in an approximation of a hook. Hestared at it ruefully. What a fragile thing to hang hope on.

Now for a line-her linen fair. Linen? Ellena brought nothing linen to campwith her. He fumbled with the makeshift hook, peering intently into the dusk,tossing the line of verse back and forth in his mind. Linen's not just cloth.Linen can be clothes. Body linen. He lifted the shoe rag. An old slip-ripped.

In a sudden frenzy of haste, he ripped the white cloth into inch widestrips and knotted them together, carefully rolling the k.n.o.bby, ravellyresults into a ball. The material was so old and thin that one strip parted ashe tested a knot and he had to tie it again. When the last strip was knotted,he struggled to fasten his improvised hook onto it. Finally, bending anotherhook at the opposite end, sticking it through the material, splitting the end,he knotted it as securely as he could. He peered at the results and laughedbitterly at the precarious makeshift. "But it'll work," he told himselffiercely. "It'll work. I'll catch that d.a.m.n Grunder and get rid once and forall of whatever it is that's eating me!"

And for bait? Take the tears that fall from her eyes ...

Crae searched the ground under the tree beside him. There it was, thesodden, grayed blob of Kleenex Ellena had dropped. He picked it up gingerlyand felt it tatter, tear-soaked and rain-soaked, in his fingers. Remembering her tears, his hand closed convulsively over the soaked tissue. When he loosedhis fingers from it, he could see their impress in the pulp, almost as he hadseen his hand print on her cheek. He baited the hook and nearly laughed againas he struggled to keep the wad of paper in place. Closing one hand tightlyabout the hook, the other around the ball of cotton, he went to the tent door.For a long, rain-emphasized moment he listened. There was no sound frominside, so with only his heart saying it, he shaped, "I love you," with hismouth and turned away, upstream.

The rain was slanting icy wires now that stabbed his face and cut throughhis wet jacket. He stood on the rough foot bridge across the creek and leanedover the handrail, feeling the ragged bark pressing against his stomach. Heheld his clenched fists up before his face and stared at them.

"This is it," he thought. "Our last chance-My last chance." Then he benthis head down over his hands, feeling the bite of his thumb joints into hisforehead. "O G.o.d, make it true-make it true!"

The he loosed the hand that held the hook, tapped the soggy wad of Kleenexto make sure it was still there and lowered it cautiously toward the roaring,brawling creek, still swollen from the afternoon sun on hillside snow. Herotated the ball slowly, letting the line out. He gasped as the hook touchedthe water and he felt the current catch it and sweep it downstream. He yelledto the roaring, rain-drenched darkness, "I believe! I believe!" And the limp,tattered line in his hand snapped taut, pulling until it cut into the flesh ofhis palm. It strained downstream, and as he looked, it took on a weirdfluorescent glow, and skipping on the black edge of the next downstream curve,the hook and bait were vivid with the same glowing.

Crae played out more of the line to ease the pressure on his palm. The linewas as tight and strong as piano wire between his fingers.

Time stopped for Crae as he leaned against the rail watching the bobbinglight on the end of the line- waiting and waiting wondering if the Grunder wascoming, if it could taste Ellena's tears across the world. Rain dripped fromthe end of his nose and whispered down past his ears.

Then out of the darkness and waiting, lightning licked across the sky andthunder thudded in giant, bone-jarring steps down from the top of Baldy. Craewinced as sudden vivid light played around him again, perilously close. But nothunder followed and he opened his eyes to a blade of light slicing cleanlythrough the foot bridge from side to side. Crae bit his lower lip as the lightresolved itself into a dazzling fin that split the waters, slit the willowsand sliced through the boulders at the bend of the creek and disappeared.

"The Grunder!" he called out hoa.r.s.ely and unreeled the last of his line,stumbling to the end of the bridge to follow in blind pursuit through thedarkness. As his feet splashed in the icy waters, the Grunder lifted in a higharching leap beyond the far willows. Crae slid rattling down the creek bankonto one knee. The swift current swung him off balance and twisted him so thathis back was to the stream, and he felt the line slip through his fingers.Desperately, he jerked around and lunged for the escaping line, the surge ofthe waters pushing him face down into the shallow stream. With a gurgling sob,he surfaced and s.n.a.t.c.hed the last turn of the winding strip from where it hadsnagged on the stub of a water-soaked log.

He pulled himself up onto the soggy bank, strangling, spewing water,blinking to clear his eyes. Soaked through, numbed by the cold water and theicy wind, with shaking hands he fashioned a loop in the end of the line andsecured it around his left wrist, his eyes flicking from loop to line, makingsure the hook and bait were still there. He started cautiously downstream,slipping and sliding through the muck, jarring into holes, tripping on rises,intent on keeping his bait in sight. A willow branch lashed across his eyesand blinded him. While he blinked away involuntary tears, trying to clear thedazzle that blurred his sight, the Grunder swept back upstream, pa.s.sing soclose that Crae could see the stainless steel gleam of overlapping scales, serrated and jagged, that swept cleanly down its wide sides to a gossamer tailand up to a blind-looking head with its wide band of brilliant blue,glittering like gla.s.s beads, masking its face from side to side where eyesshould have been. Below the glitters was its open maw, ringed about withflickering points of scarlet.

Crae squatted down in the mud, staring after the Grunder, lost, bewilderedand scared. He clasped his hands to steady the bobbing steel-like ribbon ofline that gouged into his wrist and jerked his whole arm. Was the Grundergone? Had he lost his last chance? He ducked his head to shelter his face fromthe drenching downpour that seethed on the water loud enough to be heard abovethe roar of a dozen small falls.

Then suddenly, without warning, he was jerked downstream by his left arm,sc.r.a.ping full length along the soggy bank until his shoulder snagged on astunted willow stump. He felt the muscles in his shoulder crack from thesudden stop. He wormed his way up until he could get hold of the line with hisright hand, then, twisting forward, he braced both feet against the stump andheaved. The line gave slightly. And then he was cowering beneath lifted armsas the Grunder jumped silently, its tail flailing the water to mist, its headshaking against the frail hook that was imbedded in its lower jaw.

"Got it!" gasped Crae, "Got it!" That was the last rational thought Craehad for the next crashing eternity. Yanked by the leaping, twisting, fightingGrunder, upstream and downstream, sometimes on his feet, sometimes draggedfull length through the tangled under-brush, sometimes with the Grundercharging him head on, all fire and gleam and terror, other times with only thethread of light tenuously pointing the way the creature had gone, Crae had noworld but a whirling, breathless, pain-filled chaos that had no meaning orpoint beyond Hold on hold on hold on.

Crae saw the bridge coming, but he could no more stop or dodge than arailway tunnel can dodge a train. With a crack that splintered into a flare oflight that shamed the Grunder in brilliance, Crae hit the bridge support.

Crae peeled his cheek from the bed of ooze where it was cradled and lookedaround him blindly. His line was a limp curve over the edge of the bank. Heavywith despair, he lifted his hand and let it drop. The line tightened andtugged and went limp again. Crae scrambled to his feet. Was the Grunder gone?Or was it tired out, quiescent, waiting for him? He wound the line clumsilyaround his hand as he staggered to the creek and fell forward on the shelvingbank.

Beneath him, rising and falling on the beat of the water, lay the Grunder,its white fire dimming and brightening as it sank and shallowed, the wide blueheadband as glittering, its mouth fringe as crimson and alive as the firsttime he saw it. Crae leaned over the bank and put a finger to the silveryscales of the creature. It didn't move beyond its up and down surge.

"I have to stroke it," he thought. "Three times, three times the wrongway." He clamped his eyes tight against the sharply jagged gleam of everyseparate scale.

Rip h.e.l.l outa your hand first stroke, but three it's gotta be.

"I could do it," he thought, "if it were still struggling. If I had tofight, I could do it. But in cold blood-!"

He lay in the mud, feeling the hot burning of the sick thing inside him,feeling the upsurge of anger, the sudden sting of his hand against Ellena'sface, her soft throat under his thumbs again. An overwhelming wave ofrevulsion swept over him and he nearly gagged.

"Go ahead and rip h.e.l.l out!" he thought, leaning down over the bank. "Ripout the h.e.l.l that was in it when I hit her!"

With a full-armed sweep of his hand, he stroked the Grunder. He ground histeeth together tight enough to hold his scream down to an agonized gurgle asthe blinding, burning pain swept up his arm and hazed his whole body. He couldfeel the fire and agony lancing and cauterizing the purulence that had beenpoisoning him so long. Twice again his hand retraced the torture- and all the acc.u.mulation of doubt and fear and uncertainty became one with the physicalpain and shrieked out into the night.

When he lifted his hand for the third time, the Grunder leaped. High abovehim, flailing brilliance against the invisible sky, a dark stain marking itfrom tail to head, the Grunder lifted and lifted as though taking to the air.And then, straightening the bowed brightness of its body, it plunged straightdown into the creek, churning the water to incandescence as it plunged,drenching Crae with sand-shot spray, raising a huge, impossible wave in theshallow creek. The wave poised and fell, flattening Crae, half senseless, intothe mud, his crimson hand dangling over the bank, the slow, red drops fallinginto the quieting water, a big, empty cleanness aching inside him.

Dawn light was just beginning to dissolve the night when he staggered intocamp, tripping over the water buckets as he neared the tent. He stood swayingas the tent flap was flung open hastily. Ellena, haggard, red-eyed and wornplunged out into the early morning cold. She stood and looked at him standingawkwardly, his stiffening, lacerated hands held out, muddy water dripping fromhis every angle. Then she cried out and ran to him, hands outstretched, loveand compa.s.sion shining in her eyes.

"Crae! Honey! Where have you been? What happened to you?"

And Crae stained both her shoulders as his hands closed painfully over themas he half whispered, "I caught him. I caught the Grunder-everything's allright-everything-"

She stroked his tired and swollen face, anxiety in her eyes. "Oh, Crae-Inearly went crazy with fear. I thought-" she shook her head and tears ofgladness formed in her eyes "-but you're safe. That's all that matters. Crae-"

He buried his face in the softness of her hair. He felt sure. For the first time he felt really sure. "Yes, dear?"

"Crae-about what I said-I'm sorry-I didn't mean it, oh, I couldn't livewithout you-"

Gladness swelled within him. He pushed her gently from him and looked intoher tear-streaked face. "Ellena -let's go home-"

She nodded, smiling. "All right, Crae, we'll go home- But first we'll havea good breakfast."

He laughed, a healthy, hearty laugh. "We'll do even better than that! We'llstop by at the camp of our four visitors. They owe us both a good meal for thedrinks!"

Her eyes glowed at his words. "Oh, Crae-you really mean it? You're not-"

He shook his head. "Never again, honey. Never."

The porch of the Murmuring Pines Store and Station was empty as Craestopped the car there at noon. Crae turned to Ellena with a grin. "Be back ina minute, honey, gotta see a man about a fish."

Crae left the car, walked up the steps and pushed open the screen door. Askinny, teen-age girl in faded Levis put down her comic book and got off ahigh stool behind a counter. "Help you, mister?"

"I'm looking for Eli," he said. "The old feller that was out on the porchabout two weeks ago when I stopped by here. Old Eli, he called himself."

"Oh, Eli," said the girl. "He's off again."

"Off? He's gone away?" asked Crae.

"Well, yes, but that isn't what I meant exactly," said the girl. "You see,Eli is kinda touched. Ever once in a while he goes clear off his rocker. Youmusta talked to him when this last spell was starting to work on him. Theytook him back to State Hospital a coupla days later. Something you wanted?"

"He told me about a fish," said Crae tentatively.

"Hoh!" the girl laughed shortly, "The Grunder. Yeah. That's one way we cantell he's getting bad again. He starts on that Grunder stuff."

Crae felt as though he'd taken a step that wasn't there. "Where'd he getthe story?"

"Well, I don't know what story he told you," said the girl. "No tellingwhere he got the Grunder idea, though. He's had it ever since I can remember.

It's only when he gets to believing it that we know it's time to start.w.a.tching him. If he didn't believe-"

If he didn't believe. Crae turned to the door. "Well, thanks," he said, "Ihope he gets well soon." The screen door slammed shut behind him. He didn'thear it. He was hearing the sound of water smashing over rocks, surgingagainst the creek banks. Then the sound faded, and the sun was bright aroundhim.

"Crae! Is everything all right?"

It was Ellena calling to him from the car. He took a deep breath of theclean, crisp air. Then he waved to her. "Everything's fine!" he called, and intwo steps, cleared the porch and was on his way to the car.

Things

Viat came back from the camp of the Strangers, his crest shorn, the deviripped from his jacket, his mouth slack and drooling and his eyes empty. Hesat for a day in the sun of the coveti center, not even noticing when theeager children gathered and asked questions in their piping little voices.When the evening shadow touched him, Viat staggered to his feet and took twosteps and was dead.

The mother came then, since the body was from her and could never be alien,and since the emptiness that was not Viat had flown from his eyes. She signedhim dead by pinning on his torn jacket the kiom-the kiom she had fashioned theday he was born, since to be born is to begin to die. He had not yet given hisheart, so the kiom was still hers to bestow. She left the pelu softly alightin the middle of the kiom because Viat had died beloved. He who dies beloved walks straight and strong on the path to the Hidden Ones by the light of thepelu. Be the pelu removed, he must wander forever, groping in the darkness ofthe unlighted kiom.

So she pinned the kiom and wailed him dead.

There was a gathering together after Viat was given back to the earth.Backs were bent against the sun, and the coveti thought together for amorning. When the sun pointed itself into their eyes, they shaded them withtheir open palms and spoke together.

"The Strangers have wrought an evil thing with us." Dobi patted the dustbefore him. "Because of them, Viat is not. He came not back from the camp.Only his body came, breathing until it knew he would not return to it."

"And yet, it may be that the Strangers are not evil. They came to us inpeace. Even, they brought their craft down on barrenness instead of scorchingour fields." Deci's eyes were eager on the sky. His blood was hot with thewonder of a craft dropping out of the clouds, bearing strangers. "Perhapsthere was no need for us to move the coveti."

"True, true," nodded Dobi. "They may not be of themselves evil, but it maybe that the breath of them is death to us, or perhaps the falling of theirshadows or the silent things that walk invisible from their friendly hands. Itis best that we go not to the camp again. Neither should we permit them tofind the coveti."