Defective (4 page)

Santa was shorter,
plumper and more bosomy than her older sister. Ma said she took
after her grandmother, Ma's ma. Her thick dirty blonde hair hung
down her back in a tight braid, out of reach of Mixer's fingers.
Mixer was awake, peeking out from between the folds of the sling,
his mind tuned to Forest.

Titania was the
tallest of the sisters; thinner and less voluptuous. She walked
down the road with a fluid grace but, despite the flannel underwear
she wore, she shivered when the cold wind whipped up her wool
skirt. She pulled tight the shawl she used to cover her head and
face.

Forest opened the
top of his jacket. He was sweating under his arms but his nose and
the tops of his thighs were cold. He took off his cap and ran a
hand through the dark waves of his sweaty hair. At fourteen Forest
was the same height as his oldest sister but weighed less.

Forest had been
thinking about his parent's deaths. Neither made sense; neither
should have happened. There was always a rope ladder inside the
vat; Narrow had only recently fixed the top rung and Forest had
seen Pa reattach it a few days before he died. Why hadn't Ma used
it? Pa wasn't allergic to stinging insects; in fact, they seemed to
leave him alone even when he occasionally stumbled into a hive when
he was drunk. They'd sting him once or twice then fly off. Pa had
been hung over that morning, he remembered. He felt a sudden jolt
of pain in his head and he stumbled a bit on the road. When he
regained his footing he couldn't remember what he'd been thinking
about.

"What do you think
it'll be like?" Narrow asked Forest in front of him. Forest
shrugged.

Narrow was a copy
of Pa. The same open, friendly face, the same smile that leaned
more to the left. The same colour hair, although Narrow's light
brown hair was corkscrew tight whereas Pa's was wavier. Narrow
preferred his hair long but Ma didn't. She cut or trimmed all but
Jelly's hair every few weeks. He hoped that Porkchop wouldn't make
him cut his hair. Narrow was small for his age, agile, with slender
hands.

Bull was eleven,
almost twelve, but was the tallest and largest of them all. He was
over six feet tall, broad and well muscled but he also had a
heaviness about him that belied his age. Bull moved with
calculation, with deliberation. He trudged along the road, his
nostrils thrown wide open to catch anything unusual on the air.

Jones and Jelly
walked beside one another as they always did when they were
together. They were identical twins; the only physical difference
was in the length of their hair. Both were tall and thin, taller
than their older brother Narrow, although Jones was ever so
slightly taller than his sister. They had soft, triangular-shaped
faces that widened at their foreheads and slimmed to a point at
their chins. They moved silently over the stones and dead leaves on
the road.

Halfway down the
road, a stick-thin figure with a nose like a rotten tomato and
wearing faded long red underwear emerged from the house. He held a
bucket filled with what looked to be brightly coloured balls. This
must be Pater, Porkchop thought, and raised an arm in greeting.
Pater reached into the bucket and lobbed one of the balls in her
direction. It hit Forest in the head and exploded, spraying him and
Narrow and enveloping them in a stench that made them gag.

"It’s piss!"
Narrow hollered.

Pater chucked one
urine-filled water balloon after another at them. He had
surprisingly good aim. The children dove into the yew ferns that
lined the road.

When the bucket
was empty and the road was littered with thin pieces of coloured
rubber, Pater turned on his heel and stomped back up the porch. He
removed a piece of paper from inside his long underwear and tacked
it to the door then went inside, slamming the door so hard it shook
the house.

"Jones," Porkchop
said, "go get that."

He was back in a
moment with the paper. His brothers and sisters had barely seen him
move.

It was a crude
drawing of Pater's house with a large X through it and nine stick
figures standing in front of what Porkchop deduced was the
barn.

"Nice welcome,"
said Narrow.

Porkchop pointed
her chin at the barn. "This way."

Inside, the barn
was warm and dry and smelled familiar. In the growing gloom
Porkchop had a cursory look around. Wood pile, huge cast iron
stove, dark corners filled with shapes. She looked up. High in the
rafters was a loft with hay bales and blankets piled in one corner.
She looked at her brothers and sisters; they were tired. She knew
they should eat but she dared not approach the old man for food.
Not after what had just happened. They'd wait for morning. She
ordered them up the long ladder to the loft where they stripped off
their clothing, draped it over the railing and fell asleep in the
hay.

___

Mixer lay awake
beside Santa. He was furious. His vague plan had been coming
together so well until this happened. He didn’t want to start over;
he needed to be at the orchard. He forced himself to think.

He totted up what
he knew. It would be useless to run away; his abilities were
growing but his brothers and sisters had size and speed on their
side. He needed to know more about the county law that the
Constable had told Porkchop about. He also needed to find out more
about the old man.

There was little
he could do tonight. He closed his eyes but when sleep wouldn’t
come he snuck into Santa’s head. Inside it was quiet and peaceful;
a midnight blue sky punctured with the bright eyes of stars. He
soon drifted off.

___

PC Pierre hadn’t
wanted to leave the children with Pater so abruptly but he'd
promised the old man.

If only Porkchop
were just a little older, he thought. He would have been more
worried about them surviving the coming winter had it not been for
her. She was sensible and would do what was best for the
others.

Just as he'd
studied Pater, he had also observed the family for years; watching
the children grow and seeing some of their talents emerge. Unlike
the Landlord, he always spoke to them whenever he stopped by the
orchard on his rounds or delivered a message from the Landlord, or
the times he brought their father home drunk from the Piggy
Gristle. His visits rarely lasted long; Ma usually shuffled him out
the door the moment his business was concluded.

But he had been
there the day Titania was burned, five years ago. The Landlord was
spending a week in Andrastyne and had asked PC Pierre to pick up
that month's cider. He and Pa had just loaded the last of the kegs
into the cart when they heard a scream.

Titania had always
been the most beautiful of all the children. Her eyes saw
everything and everything she saw became beautiful to everyone
else. She would have grown up to be a beautiful woman had Ma not
accidentally backed into a pot of boiling hot water on the stove
when Titania was eleven. It crashed to the floor and the water
splashed into Titania’s face, leaving most of the left side
disfigured. Ma, who never felt remorse for the beatings she laid on
her children, was inconsolable and promised Titania that nothing
bad would ever happen to her ever again and that from that day
forward, the family would do everything for her.

Winter, PC Pierre
thought. I could use a rest. It was hard work being the only police
officer in a county this size. All the towns and villages were
spaced far apart and in the woods and forests between them there
still lived a few old survivalists who could be dangerous. Every
now and again he would also discover an infected colony of adults.
They’d either moved or been forcibly moved from their town and were
now living along the rivers and streams. They never survived long.
By comparison, the family at the orchard was only a little odd.

He spent the
winters in Battery, a town of about one hundred people. It was
primarily a through-town for lumbermen but had diversified over the
years into a fruit and vegetable hub. A tidy but tired row of
wooden homes lined either side of Main Road and beyond them was
forest. The line of homes was divided by the market square. On one
side of the road were a few shops that sold fruits and vegetables,
meats, cheeses and milk, grains, hardware and farm supplies. On the
other side of the street, two buildings dominated the property.

The first was the
Piggy Gristle pub, a two-story wooden house. In the back, on the
main floor, the Landlord had his office and upstairs his private
quarters. At the back of the pub was a barn that housed the
Landlord's horses and wagon. The Gristle was also, technically an
inn, with three extra rooms on the second floor, although few
people ever slept there. They preferred Baker's Yard if they had to
spend a night.

Baker's Yard, an
immaculately maintained three-storey, red brick house, contained
the town's bakery, a small restaurant and a kitchen on the main
floor. The seven upper floor rooms were rented to boarders and
travellers. The two largest on the second floor were allotted to
the Constable, who only really needed one. Mrs. Baker, the
Landlord's elderly aunt, ran the place. Her quarters were off the
kitchen.

He’d been the sole
Deloran County Constable for eight years. Spring through fall, he
lived in a cabin in the lower hills of the Western Woods. A lookout
post stood atop the highest hill. He would climb the hill to the
post, ascend the thirty-four rungs of the ladder, and look out. He
could see for miles and miles. He could see Honey Hill, the edge of
Pater’s farm and part of the valley; beyond the valley, where he
couldn't see, was the orchard. He always looked.

The Constable’s
main duty was to watch for forest fires and nuisance animals and
tree poachers. There had been a time when trees were poached,
ripped from the forests using huge machines that could carve up a
hillside in a matter of hours and haul out hundreds of trees in a
day, or night as was often the case. It was dangerous work. It was
also illegal. The trees rightfully belonged to Deloran County.
Trees meant life: they were food, fuel, housing, and were traded
with neighbouring towns for other goods. Without them, Deloran
County could not survive. The landowners at the time had responded
to the crisis by establishing the Forest Police Force. Initially,
the force comprised more than one hundred officers who were sent
out to battle the poachers in any way they could. Dozens died every
year in skirmishes; even more were injured or permanently
disabled.

Over time, as the
fuel dried up making the motorized machines useless, the tree
poachers went in search of easier ways to make a living. The force
was disbanded but the County retained the lone post of Police
Constable.

PC Pierre's
great-grandfather, Pappy, had been the town's first Police
Constable. His grandfather and father had also held the post. His
grandfather was killed by a grizzly bear before Pierre was born.
Pierre's mother had died giving birth and his great-grandfather,
now long since retired, had looked after Pierre when his father was
working. Even at 99, Pappy had chopped wood every day and went
trapping or fishing every week. He would tell him stories about the
days of the tree poachers. At 106, he died in his sleep; his father
was killed a month later in a mudslide. By law, Pierre should have
been sent to a labour camp but his family's history with the town
saved him. By a special decree, Pierre was sworn in as Battery’s
Police Constable at the age of nineteen.

Pierre was well
suited to the job. He had the blood of three generations of police
officers running through him, plus he was a good listener and read
everything he could get his hands on. All policemen had to be able
to read but the amount that Pierre read was unusual and his Pappy
told him not to tell anyone how he liked to spend his evenings.

He loved listening
to his Pappy's stories. His father had sometimes scoffed at some of
them, but PC Pierre had found out, eventually, that many of there
were true. Or parts of them were. The things that counted were
true.

He inherited his
love of history from his great-grandfather, who had kept a
reference library. Most were the police record books that
constables were required to keep but there were other records, some
hundreds of years old. Some were thick Deloran County law books;
others were shorter thread bound policies and pamphlets. Pierre
received them all when Pappy died. Many were old and in poor shape
and Pierre handled those as little as he could. He'd made notes and
summaries of them instead, copying out whole pages in some
cases.

PC Pierre's job
description was vague — keep the peace, protect the forest — but he
became a de facto jack of all trades in the compact town of Battery
when winter came. Once travel became limited most people, PC Pierre
included, hunkered down inside. His days were spent filling pot
holes with soil and manure, dealing with the few drunks who'd
stumbled through the bush to the Piggy Gristle, or breaking up
fights. Evenings were spent reading and re-reading his reference
books until his legal and historical knowledge could rival anyone's
in the county.

When the weather
was bad, which was often enough, he and Mrs. Baker were each
other's only company for days at a stretch so he spent much of his
time with her, helping with chores. He didn't mind. Mrs. Baker was
the sort of logical, no-nonsense woman who could sum up a situation
at a glance that he admired. It also led him to conclude that Mrs.
Baker probably knew more about her nephew than she let on. But
whenever he tried to steer the conversation that way, she would
pick some adage from her memory about family or privacy or
curiosity and that would be the end of the discussion.

He reached Baker’s
Yard and put Josephine in her stall beside Chester, Mrs. Baker's
brown quarter horse for the night.