CHAPTER 5
I stare at her.
Her hands fidget, worrying each other hard. “My husband and I—” Her breath saws out of her for a moment, her mouth working and her chest hitching hard before she can finish. “We just bought this house.” She gestures behind herself, to the shanty, hand trembling. “And I don’t know what you know about this place, but here on Traxia, everything a widow owns transfers to the next man she marries. And no woman is a widow for long, if you know what I mean.” She looks up at me, her eyes glossy and wet and round with fear. Her mouth twists. “The first man who sees me out here alone will…”
I’m struck with fascination as her brain suddenly washes with fear chemicals, so powerful that it momentarily eclipses the pathways around her head.
She stops wringing her hands. They form into fists that she tucks to her stomach. “Legally, if a man f-forces a woman, he has to pay a fine and marry her—or he hangs. The law was put in place to deter attacks on women. But it’s a bad law and it's screwing us over instead. The men here will rape a woman in order to force her to marry him. Because like I said, if he marries her, all her assets become his. Any man can show up here and do that to me, and then I’ll be stuck with him and he’ll own everything I’ve got.”
There’s a lag in conversation, and I search her eyes, waiting for her to speak .
When she doesn’t, I blink again, realizing her silence is a cue for me to make a conversational contribution. “Ah. That sounds very unfortunate,” I comment.
She frowns at me, and her lips tighten even more as she stares up at me. “Yeah. It is.” Her gaze makes a sweep of my frame. She shudders as she hauls in a breath. “Will you marry me? Because I think you may be my best bet out here. And I’ve got a whole lot more than just me to think about.”
Her hands spread over her belly, and the tadpole inside her finally seems to find a sense of calm, resting quietly on her front stomach wall nearest to her touching hands.
I consider what she’s proposed for a long time.
Apparently long enough that she must believe I require convincing, because she adds in a rush, “I’ll cook for you. I’ll clean. I’ll wash your clothes. I’ll, uh—you know.”
I cock my head, my eyes locked to hers.
Fascinatingly, her embarrassment center engages, more fear chemicals are released, and she rushes to speak even faster. “And with you here, hopefully nobody rides up thinking he can shoot you in the back to take me and claim everything you’ve got. You just keep looking scary.”
I give her a sharp look that oddly makes her flinch. “My appearance is frightening?” I ask. I thought humans were nervous of me simply because I’m a different species.
Eyes wide, she stays silent as she nods up at me.
I consider her, weighing the benefits of her proposal. “If I marry you, I’ll own land?”
“Everything here,” she says with a tired air.
“And I’ll get that shanty,” I say, and gesture behind her.
She presses her lips together and nods.
“And you’ll take care of all the menial tasks?”
The skin around her eyes squinches, but she nods confirmation .
“And… then I would own the buttermilk horse?” I ask.
Her lips part and she stares at me for a moment, but then she blows out a breath and agrees. “Everything would be yours, yes. Even Joel’s—” Pain lances her features, I think. Inside her head, the pain area has certainly flared, a wounded garnet color. “Joel’s horse,” she says, her voice quaking, weaker than before.
Speaking what must be her husband’s name evidently is causing her stress.
“I can appreciate the benefits you offer,” I tell her evenly. “I agree to your proposal. I suppose I should probably bury both bodies before dark. Do you have a place in mind, and do you have a shovel?”
She covers her eyes with her hands.
“Ma’am?”
She doesn’t lower her hands, but she answers, “Becky. My name is Becky. And you can burn that bastard’s body for all I care. But Joel… please—” Her whole body shakes and her brain cascades with devastation. “Please bury him on the hill behind the house. There’s a—there’s a shovel in the barn.”
***
When I drop the first dead man’s body at the edge of the property where she directs me, Becky shocks me by storming forward and pouring a reeking fluid on the man’s face and along his front, centering with aggression on his pants.
Then she draws out a box of what I soon learn are matches and she lights the corpse ablaze.
I’ve read about cremation as a method to dispose of human remains. Interestingly, the funeral process is much different when we dispose of Joel’s body. Becky cries, for one thing, although her tears are quiet things now. She directs me to dig the burial pit deeper than I initially do, explaining that wild animals will smell him and be able to get to him if I don’t make the hole at least as tall as I am .
Sweating profusely, I deepen the hole, and when it comes time to lower Joel into it, Becky sags to her knees, hugging herself and taking a moment to stare down at him and… grieve, I realize. This is grieving.
In the vids I’ve watched, the hero of the story almost always encounters loss, and always people die. Loads of humans are killed in vids, but most of the time their bodies drop and no one pays them any mind. Oftentimes there are shootouts at noon when the sun is high, where women and children line up along the shade of the buildings on either side of the street. These onlookers might scream when bodies drop, but no one... mourns. Not like this.
However, I viewed an educational vid about alien animals called elephants, and those creatures grieve like this human seems to be grieving. It was very emotion-provoking when the vid explained the behavior the animals were exhibiting, and when I recognize Becky’s actions for what they are, I grow sad for her too.
I give her several lengths of time to finish her sobbing, and then I give her a few more. I glance up at the sky, noticing the color and the saturation that’s causing the difficulty in viewing the landscape. “Dusk is here,” I tell her. “Soon it will be too dark to see Joel’s grave. Are you hungry?”
She shakes her head to indicate that she is not, but to my confusion, she forces herself to her feet and announces brokenly, “Supper will be ready soon.”
I cover Joel with dirt, and find that while I was amid the initial digging process, Becky collected all the rocks my shovel struck, and she made a stack of them.
How helpful.
I ponder that, as I work. That a mate can be helpful.
Rock by rock, I move the stack atop his grave to deter predators, and perhaps the stones will also act as a marker later for her to find where her dead mate is buried, if she’s compelled to visit him as elephants do for their lost loved ones .
Supper is beans, steak, bread, and packaged fruit for dessert. None of it is familiar to me, although I’ve heard the items mentioned plenty on vids.
None of it tastes like the food I’m used to from home, and I feel a pang that I identify as homesickness. I’ve never felt it before leaving the ocean, because until now, that was always my home.
Now this homestead is.
I thank Becky for the preparation of the strange meal, and she nods morosely over her own plate. We’re seated at the table where Paco found his colorful meal of weeds to eat earlier in the day. The fluted glassware that held them is gone, and so is any trace of the weeds themselves and the spilled water.
Before we ate, I hung my hat on a nail by the door and we joined hands at the table over our plates and thanked the Creator for the provision of our meal. I rather liked this starting ritual—it is just like the vids—and I wonder what the evening rituals will be. When the meal ends, Becky murmurs that the horses still need to be put up for the night. Because I’ve never untacked an equine before, she takes charge and I assist, watching her actions and listening to her orders avidly, memorizing everything, every sequence.
All the gear is stored in a tack room in the barn, and the horses are turned out in a pasture.
Becky locks Paco in a stall, explaining that he’s a “jack”—a male who hasn’t been castrated—and therefore he can’t be allowed to run with the other equines on account of two of the horses being mares. Her voice is lackluster and her eyes are leaking.
The expression of grief, I extrapolate. I wonder how long human grieving periods last.
“Although they didn’t seem to be speaking on his wavelength,” Becky muses, wiping at her face with a weary hand.
“Equines speak on wavelengths?” I ask in interest .
“Not literally, but did you see how he seemed sweet on them? The rolling and the lip thing? Stallions court really differently. So when a donkey jack tries to woo a mare, she’s not likely to recognize it for what it is. It’s like they’re speaking two totally different languages.”
Paco honks to us plaintively—an obnoxious but lonely sound that Becky identifies as braying—the entire time it takes us to walk to the house to wash up.
“That’s it for chores until tomorrow,” Becky announces hollowly as I follow her example and dry my hands on a towel that’s been pulled through a round wooden loop next to the kitchen’s sink.
“Then it’s time for bed?” I ask.
With strangely lit eyes and an even more strangely lit brain, she meets my gaze, swallowing hard and hugging herself before she nods an affirmative.
“Is there a tub where I can soak a spell?” I ask her. Earlier, I retrieved my belongings from the chestnut’s saddlebags, and I laid them on top of the quilt-covered bed in Becky’s room.
She gives me a puzzled look as she shifts, a hand going to a spot on her lower back. Then she fiddles with a pan on the stove that she seasoned with oil earlier, nudging it as if she can’t decide if it’s slightly out of place. “Soak for a spell, I think you mean, and there’s actually a shower here. I’ll show you.”
She does, and she demonstrates how to operate it when she finds out I’ve never used one. “What’s wrong?” she asks when she glances back at me while she turns the water handles to the off positions.
I meet her gaze. “Hmm?”
“You’re frowning.”
“Oh. I was simply hoping there would be a tub. I would have preferred to soak in something filled with water. I miss the feel of the ocean, you see. But this will do,” I say, indicating the standing shower stall. “Thank you, Becky.” I begin to unbutton my shirt .
She lurches for the door, hurrying in an awkward fashion, her body oddly stiff. She’s out of the door and swinging it closed behind her, but before it shuts all the way, her voice floats back into the room. “What’s your name?” she asks me.
I give her one of the smiles I practiced, but it’s a waste of my effort; she isn’t in the room anymore to see it and I know she can’t see me since it’s only her hand on the knob, not even her head craned around the door. “William Frederick Cody,” I tell her. “I selected the name after a famous human in Earthen Western history. His show name was Buffalo Bill, and I might like being called that as well.”
She doesn’t react to my name or my possible show name except for the briefest hesitation in closing the door.
When I exit the shower, dressed in fresh jeans, my chaps, and my spare shirt and in clean socks but not wearing my boots, I find her scrubbing down the counters in the kitchen.
The floor, where her mate died, looks and smells as if it too has been washed.
Not having anything else to do, I go back into the siphon room, retrieve the rag I scrubbed with, rinse it out, and take it to her bucket of soapy water on the kitchen floor, and dunk it.
I crouch beside her and begin washing spots off the cupboard next to hers that my nose identifies as blood spatter.
“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice thick.
I glance over at her. “Cleaning?”
She looks me up and down. “This is a ‘menial task.’ You graciously outlined those as my jobs.”
I feel my brows rise briefly before squinching together in thought. “Do you wish not to share tasks?”
“I won’t stop you if you want to help. Especially…” She dries off one of her hands on her stained apron and presses it to her back, her already pained-looking face twisting with more pain. “Not tonight. ”
Technically, she did just stop me, but I don’t point this out. I go back to scrubbing.
“Um,” she starts, and I glance over at her askance. Her eyes are very red. I wonder how much water and salt she needs to consume to replenish after wasting it in tear production. “Why are you wearing your day clothes?”
I look down at myself, then back to her. “What dress is usually utilized in these parts? The vids I watched depicted cowboys sleeping right on their horses, never changing clothes at all.”
She blinks at me several times before she turns only her chin to the side, widening her eyes even as she peers at me. It’s an expression I’ve never seen before and I don’t know what it means. “Well, if the vids depicted that, it must be true.”
I shrug. “That was my assumption.” I go back to scrubbing.
So does she. “I was being sarcastic. You can’t believe everything you see in the movies. I mean, sure, there are guys who probably ride on the range and don’t get to change outfits very often, but in real life, most of the men ‘in these parts’ wear boxers to bed. Pajama pants, that sort of thing.”
I cut my eyes to her. “Should I?”
Curiosity plays inside her brain and on her face. “What did you wear when you were living in the ocean?”
“A tail,” I tell her.
She glances at my lower half. “You really are one of those merman cyborgs, aren’t you?”
“You already asked me to identify myself earlier, but to double the confirmation, yes, I am.”
There are dark circles under her reddened eyes, and her hair corkscrews around her damp face. I look at the rest of her and find she’s grasping at her back again. “Why do you press on your back like that?” I find myself asking .
She twitches like she might pull her hand away, but then she makes a conscious-seeming effort to remain in the pose she was before I pointed it out. “My back hurts.”
“Why?”
She darts a look at me. “Because I’m pregnant.” Her eyes narrow. “How much do you know about humans? Wait, how do you know about humans?”
“Traxian vids are very popular entertainment where I’m from,” I explain. “I’ve gained extensive knowledge of your culture through my vid education.”
She huffs a sound that is akin to laughter, yet it sounds like it holds little humor. It even seems to contain maybe some scorn. “If old Western movies were your education, it’s starting to explain some things.”
“Like what?” I ask.
She stiffens a little, and shakes her head. “Nothing. Never mind.”
I dip my rag back into her soap bucket, and examine the cupboards I’ve done, and the one she seems to be polishing. “They’re clean,” I murmur, announcing something she must be able to see easily enough for herself. Yet my next statement makes her freeze. “Now is it time for us to retire for the night?”
I’d like to. I find I’m feeling significant exhaustion.
If I were asked to guess, Becky must feel the same way. But now that I’ve asked her this, Becky’s arms are straight out, hands pressed over a battered scrubbing brush. Soap water trails down from the wooden cupboard face, and her face has gone ashen.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She shakes her head and with jerky movements wipes the cupboard, forces herself to her feet, empties the dirty soap water into the sink, and washes her hands.
I set my rag into the other side and carefully watch her. “Are you tired?” I ask .
She doesn’t say anything.
“You look tired,” I tell her, wondering why she’s suddenly lost her voice. “And if I can share my preference, I’d prefer to go to bed now, if you’d agree?”
For no reason I can discern, she shudders. But then she nods.