Alien Rites (7 page)

“Rose throw something at you every time you come home?” Mel asked.

David nodded.

“You tried to talk?”

“She won't.”

“Hell, sooner or later, she's got to run out of dishes.” He raised his voice. “Hello, Rose!”

“Mel?” Rose came from the hallway into the living room. As usual, she had left the lamp on low. Lately, David had been wondering why she always left the light—Habit? Welcome? Help with her aim?

Her hair was full and messy, thick dark hair, with a loose natural wave. There were circles of fatigue under her eyes, a swelling bruise on her cheekbone, a scrape on her chin. She wore a loose black T-shirt that came to her thighs, and thick white cotton socks.

New socks, David noticed, with a stab of something that sort of felt like affection, and sort of felt like pain. Rose would put on a new pair of socks every day, if they could afford it. He pictured himself bringing her boxes of brand new socks.

David, he thought, you romantic devil.

Rose gave Mel a hug. “'Bout time you got out here to see me. You guys hungry?”

“What happened to your face?” Mel asked.

Rose touched the bruise. “Nothing.”

“Yeah, well, it could be an improvement.”

Rose yawned. “Come on in the kitchen; the girls and I had hamburger on a roll tonight, and we've got leftovers.”

David trailed behind them, wondering if there would be anything else to eat. He had never understood their passion for hamburger on a roll.

“You want to warm it?” Rose asked.

Mel shook his head. “No way. We eat it cold.”

David sat down at the small kitchen table. Rose rustled a package wrapped in butcher cling, put food on one of their few remaining plates, and set it in front of him. Then she and Mel stood side by side in front of the sink, munching happily, repeating some familiar ritual from their childhood. David wondered if Rose and the kids had happy rituals from which he was excluded. Rose took a single beer out of the refrigerator, opened the top and took a drink, then passed it among the three of them. David was grateful to be included. He preferred individual beers, and Rose liked to share—another point of contention among many.

He looked down at his plate. The white-bread hoagie was grey at the bottom, soaked with grease from the meat, which was ground chuck mixed with onion, catsup, and Worcestershire sauce. The hoagie had little brown sesame seeds. David took one bite. He did not like sesame seeds. They seemed pointless and he wasn't quite sure where they came from. What was a sesame?

Rose gave him what could have passed for a smile. Then the familiar shadow crossed her face; the smile faded.

“I didn't know you were working today,” David said. Which she would either take as a polite nothing, or an accusation that she never told him what was going on. The usual marital mine field.

She shrugged. “Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't.”

She was; he knew it, and she knew he did. She was wearing that old black T-shirt and sporting a bruise, so she'd been working somewhere—raiding a lab, freeing gorillas, saving horses, going wherever the animal rights organizations needed heavy artillery. She met an amazing number of very nasty people, many of them dangerous, and seemed quite satisfied to beat the crap out of anybody who had the bad sense to get in her way. David looked at her, wondering, as he often did, how such a petite, fine-boned woman could be so deadly. He'd seen her kill a man once—a man who had broken into the house and threatened the children. He still remembered what the man's neck bone sounded like when it snapped.

“Where's the poor, orphaned animal?” David asked.

“There isn't always an animal, David.”

Mel swallowed a mouthful of roll. “This from the woman who brought home an ostrich.”

“I really would like to know what happened to that bird.”

David and Mel carefully avoided looking at each other. David flicked a finger at the bruise on her cheek.

“You should put ice on that.”

Mel went to the refrigerator door, demanded ice from the side pocket.

“Don't want it,” Rose said, chewing hard.

David looked at her, thinking that the chewing must hurt. “Don't pass on the ice just because it was my idea.”

Rose frowned at him. Open warfare was a new level, but he wanted new tactics. He was weary of the undertow.

Rose put her hamburger down and went out the back, screen door slamming behind her. A moth scuttled into the kitchen, drawn by the light.

“I get dibs on the couch,” Mel said. “Or is that where you're going to sleep?”

THIRTEEN

David woke with the sun in his eyes, and the scream of a furious little girl in his ears. Rose's side of the bed had not been slept in. He closed his eyes again, thinking there was something to be said for a bed all to yourself.

He looked at his watch. Seven-thirty. Not much sleep, but it was time to be up and moving. He pulled on his jeans and wandered into the hallway. Mel stood at the edge of the kitchen, hair sticking up, eyes red-rimmed but wide open. Mattie's voice was shrill.

“She ate
all
the Elaki Marshmallow Pops, and yesterday she took the last micro strudel. What am I s'pose to eat?”

Mel scratched his head. “How about I scramble up some eggs?”

David heard a feminine medley of
Ooooo
s, which told him that all his daughters were up.

“Coffee, Mel?”

“Thank God you're up. Where do they get the energy to fight this early in the morning?”

Rose wasn't in the kitchen supervising, obviously. Mattie, Lisa, and Kendra looked sleepy-eyed and grumpy. Lisa sat with a book propped by her cereal bowl, oblivious to Mattie's upset over Elaki Pops. Kendra nibbled at a rice cake, watching weight that did not need to be watched. She curled her lip.

“You shouldn't eat that crap anyway, it's full of sugar.”

“Don't say ‘crap,'” David said, rote parental involvement.

Mattie squinched her eyes. “I can eat all the sugar I want, I don't have a big moon face.”

Kendra's eyes filled instantly. “At least I'm not a beanpole brat.”

David patted Kendra's shoulder, careful not to mess his daughter's hair, something he knew from sore experience would cause more havoc than the fight with her sister. “You have a very pretty face, Kendra.”

“I do not. I'm fat. I just don't like that brat throwing it up at me.”

David looked at his oldest daughter, who was not fat. He was going to have to talk to Rose about this. He picked Mattie up.

“There's leftover hamburger on a roll. Want some of that?”

She nodded, lower lip big.

“Share it with your Uncle Mel. And Mattie?” He set her on the edge of the counter, lowered his voice to a whisper. “Your sister is very sensitive about her weight. I don't want to hear you call her ‘moon face' again.”

“She called me beanpole brat.”

David set his jaw. “Let me put it this way. Any time I hear you tease her about her weight, you get to scrub every toilet in the house. Argue with me, same punishment. Is
that
understood?”

Her eyes widened, chin down. “Yes, sir.” Her tone of voice told him to go to hell.

Mel opened the refrigerator. “Come on, Mattie, come and share this with me.”

“Not hungry.” She hopped off the countertop, little feet thumping the linoleum, and headed out of the kitchen.

“Eat it while you can,” David told Mel, and headed out the back door.

The grass was newly trimmed, the ceramic lawn animals jumbled next to the barn. David looked at them suspiciously, and went to make sure they were turned off. They kept the grass trimmed, but he'd never trusted them.

The barn door was open to catch the air, and light filtered in through the slats of wood on the side. David peeped through the doorway.

Rose was curled up in an open stall, head resting on an old moldy hay bale. She was deeply asleep. Alex the cat was curled on top of the bale, head next to Rose's, tail hanging down the side. A small animal was tucked next to Rose's feet. David moved closer, wondering what she'd brought home this time.

The piglet's eyes were open and glazed over, rheumy with discharge. David thought it must be dead. He crouched close and put a hand on the animal's side. It was soft, not bristly like it would be as the animal matured. Someone had put it into a teeny harness, which had worked its way into the pig's hide as it grew bigger. The tiny heart beat slow and steady, but the piglet did not react when David stroked its side. Not good.

A bowl of dried chow had been mixed with expensive kiwi and strawberry. David grimaced. From the looks of the bowl, the piglet had not been tempted.

Alex greeted him with a deep-throated purr, and he scratched the cat's head. Rose opened her eyes, sighed deeply, gave him a quick glance. She bent over the pig and rubbed its back.

“Come on, little sweetie. Come on and eat.” She took a brown lump from the bowl, put it to the pig's mouth.

The piglet made a tiny squeak and blinked.

“This is not an animal?” David said.

“What?” Rose looked worse this morning, face swollen, bruise purplish-black and spreading.

As he said the words, he wondered why he kept at her over this. “Last night you said you hadn't brought an animal home from work. So I guess this isn't an animal.”

“Yesterday I was in Chicago checking on the security of a sea park marineland that trains dolphins with TaserPocs—illegal and thriving. There are no pigs there. I found this little guy on the way home, about thirty-five miles out Karlton Lane. He'd been staked outside in the sun all day, food bowl dirty and crusted over. See that little harness? They didn't take it off when he outgrew it. It was made for a kitten, and now it's grown into his hide. His owner had him out there with a ‘For Sale' sign, but didn't want to let me take him.”

“Did you offer to pay?”

Rose shrugged. “I didn't have any money, and if I did I wouldn't give it to a creep like that. I got him to let me take the pig for free.”

David looked at her. “How?”

“I broke his arm. Didn't really mean to bend it back quite that far.” She frowned. “I don't think we have to worry about assault complaints. He was too embarrassed at being roughed up by a shrimpy female to make any complaints. And the pig business could get him in trouble.”

“No wonder we don't get invited to block parties.”

“Don't worry, David. This little guy isn't going to be here very long. He's going to die. So it'll be an animal, but a dead animal.”

“No fair, Rose. I didn't say word one about the dog, did I? Or the cat—”

“
You
brought the cat home.”

“Not to mention the ferret, countless numbers of bunnies, the iguana, the goat, the calf—”

“Mattie is crazy about that cow.”

“For that matter, so am I, but—”

She raised her chin. “You didn't like the ostrich.”

“Is there some law that says I have to be grateful for an ostrich on my front porch?”

“He wasn't on the porch, he stayed in the yard.”

“Rose, when cute little piglets grow up they weigh over a thousand pounds, give or take an ounce. We can barely afford to keep the animals we've got. Are we going to send the kids to college, or feed pigs?”

“He's a miniature, David. Hundred pounds, tops.”

“I feel so much better.”

She laughed when he expected anger, and he was annoyed when he heard Mel calling from the kitchen.

“I guess I better go to work.”

“Yeah, David, you go on.”

It was there, in the tone of voice. Go to work, leave all the problems behind—cranky children, sick animals. The pig squeaked as David headed out the barn door. He paused, frowning at what was left of his garden. He had planted late, then Meat, the dog, had pulled up half the tiny tender green plants. No home-grown produce this year.

The work was calling him. He wanted to look into this business with Annie Trey, he wanted to talk to Miriam. So easy to turn his back and go—it's what he always did.

But the pig squeaked again, and something in that little piggy whimper stopped him cold. In his mind's eye, he saw Kendra crying at the breakfast table, ignoring a pantry full of food she was afraid to eat; Lisa reading and tuning out the world; Mattie, a small ball of fury.

He walked to the kitchen and called his daughters.

They were still in T-shirts and nightgowns, but something about his tone of voice made them appear instantly. They sat at the table, looking wary.

“We have a sick piglet in the barn,” David said.

Mattie leaned her chin on her open palm. “Mama brought it home yesterday. Haas is still in Chicago, he can't come look at it.”

David ground his teeth, smiled at his daughter. Haas. Rose's good friend and partner. “It just so happens I talked to three experts on saving animals just last night.”

“Who?” Kendra looked skeptical. She didn't believe him.

“Cassidy, Valentine, and Annie.”

“Who?”

“No more interruptions. Kendra, warm some milk. Lisa, add sugar to the milk.”

“How much?”

“Sweet but not icky.”

Kendra put a hand on her hip. “Better ask Mattie, she's the sugar expert.”

“Fine,” David said. “Mattie puts in the sugar. Lisa, find a cup to pour it in. Get it ready and take it to the barn. Where's Uncle Mel?”

“In the shower,” Lisa said.

“Uh, did you warn him about—” A bellow of rage and pain echoed through the hallway. “You guys get the milk ready. I'll go rescue Uncle Mel from the iguana.”

FOURTEEN

The children watched, quiet and big-eyed, as David curled up beside the bale and took the piglet in his lap. Rose was in the kitchen, summoned to the phone, and David breathed easier out from under her critical eyes. His daughters were still impressed enough to assume he knew what he was doing, but Rose wasn't.