More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon Page A

and pounding with her fist. “You wrecked my cel,” she said, and drank from a square-stemmed glass, “ebration, so you ought to know what I’m celebrating. You don’t know it but I’ve had a big trouble and I didn’t know how to hannel it, and now it’s all done for me. And I’ll tell you all about it right now, little baby Miss Big Ears. Big Mouth. Smarty. Because your father, I can hannel him any time, but what was I going to do with your big mouth going day and night? That was my trouble, what was I going to do about your big mouth when he got back. Well it’s all fixed, he won’t be back, the Heinies fixed it up for me.” She waved a yellow sheet. “Smart girls know that’s a telegram, and the telegram says, says here, ‘Regret to inform you that your husband.’ They shot your father, that’s what they regret to say, and now this is the way it’s going to be from now on between you and me. Whatever I want to do I do, an’ whatever you want to nose into, nose away. Now isn’t that fair?”
       She turned to be answered but there was no answer. Janie was gone.
       Wima knew before she started that there wasn’t any use looking, but something made her run to the hall closet and look in the top shelf. There wasn’t anything up there but Christmas tree ornaments and they hadn’t been touched in three years.
       She stood in the middle of the living room, not knowing which way to go. She whispered, “Janie?”
       She put her hands on the sides of her face and lifted her hair away from it. She turned around and around, and asked, “What’s the matter with me?”
    Prodd used to say, “There’s this about a farm: when the market’s good there’s money, and when it’s bad there’s food.” Actually the principle hardly operated here, for his contact with markets was slight. It was a long haul to town and what if there’s a tooth off the hay rake? “We’ve still got a workin’ majority.” Two off, eight, twelve? “Then make another pass. No road will go by here, not ever. Place will never get too big, get out of hand.” Even the war passed them by, Prodd being over age and Lone—well, the sherif was by once and had a look at the half-wit working on Prodd’s, and one look was enough.
       When Prodd was young the little farmhouse was there and when he married they built on to it—a little, not a lot, just a room. If the room had ever been used the land wouldn’t have been enough. Lone slept in the room of course but that wasn’t quite the same thing. That’s not what the room was for.
       Lone sensed the change before anyone else, even before Mrs Prodd. It was a difference in the nature of one of her silences. It was a treasure-proud silence, and Lone felt it change as a man’s kind of pride might change when he turned from a jewel he treasured to a green shoot he treasured. He said nothing and concluded nothing; he just knew.
       He went on with his work as before. He worked well; Prodd used to say that whatever anyone might think, that boy was a farmer before his accident. He said it not knowing that his own style of farming was as available to Lone as water from his pump. So was anything else Lone wanted to take.
       So the day Prodd came down to the south meadow, where Lone was stepping and turning tirelessly, a very part of his whispering scythe, Lone knew what it was that he wanted to say. He caught Prodd’s gaze for half a breath in those disturbing eyes and knew as well that saying it would pain Prodd more than a little.
       Understanding was hardly one of his troubles any more, but niceties of expression were. He stopped mowing and went to the forest margin near by and let the scythe-point drop into a rotten stump. It gave him time to rehearse his tongue, still thick and unwieldy after eight years here.
       Prodd followed slowly. He was rehearsing too.
       Suddenly, Lone found it.