To Sail Beyond the Sunset (7 page)

Charles was quiet while he drove us on into Butler—not at all the suave Don Juan who has just relieved a maiden of that which enriched her not. I was encountering for the first time that
tristesse
that some males have after intercourse…while I myself was bubblingly happy. I no longer minded that I had missed climax—if I had; I was not sure. Maybe those “fireworks” were something one could do only by oneself. We had gotten away with it cold and I felt very grown up. I sat up straight and enjoyed the beautiful day. I didn’t hurt, not enough to matter.

I think men often feel buffeted by sex. They often have so much to lose and we often give them little choice. I am minded of a very odd case that involved one of my grandchildren—how he was pushed around by fate and his first wife.

It involved our cat Pixel, too, at that time a small kitten, all fuzz and buzzes.

My grandson, Colonel Campbell, son of my son Woodrow who is also my husband Theodore, but don’t let that worry you; Woodrow and Theodore are both Lazarus Long, who is an odd one in any universe—don’t let me forget to tell about the time that Lazarus quite unintentionally got three women pregnant at once, a grandmother, her daughter, and her granddaughter…and thereby had to make some unusual arrangements with the Time Corps in order to carry out the first commandment in his own private decalogue, which is: Never leave a pregnant woman to face her destiny unsupported.

Since Lazarus has been knocking them up over centuries in several universes this has taken up quite a bit of his time.

Lazarus quite innocently broke his own first commandment with respect to my grandson’s mother, and this mishap resulted indirectly in my grandson marrying my sister wife, Hazel Stone, who was on leave of absence from our family for that purpose…for you see (or perhaps you don’t) Hazel had to marry Colin Campbell so that these two could rescue Mycroft Holmes IV, the computer that led the Lunar Revolution on time line three, code “Neil Armstrong.” Let’s skip the details; it’s all in
Encyclopaedia Galacta
and other books.

“The operation was a success but the patient died.” It was almost that way. The computer was saved and is alive and well and happy in Boondock today. All of the raiding party got away without a scratch…except Colin and Hazel Campbell and the kitten, Pixel, all of whom were terribly wounded, and were left dying in a cave in Luna.

I must digress again. In that raiding party was a young officer, Gretchen Henderson, great-great-granddaughter of my sister wife Hazel Stone. Gretchen had had a baby boy four months before this raid, which my grandson knew.

What he did not know was that he was the father of Gretchen’s son.

In fact he knew beyond doubt that he had never copulated with Gretchen and knew with equal certainty that he had left no sperm in any donor bank anywhere/when.

Nevertheless Hazel, dying, had told him firmly that he was the father of Gretchen’s child.

He had asked how; she had answered, “Paradox.”

A time paradox Colin could understand. He was a member of the Time Corps; he had been through time loops; he knew that, in a time paradox, it was possible to turn around and bite oneself in the back of one’s own neck.

Therefore he now knew that he was going to inseminate Gretchen somewhere forward on his own time line, somewhere backward on her time line—the inverted loop paradox.

But “God helps those who help themselves.” That would happen only if he lived through this squeeze and made it happen.

When the three were rescued shortly after this revelation, Colin had piled up new corpses and had been wounded twice more—but all three were still alive. They were flashed two thousand years into the future to the greatest physicians in any universe: Ishtar and her staff. My sister wife Ishtar won’t let a patient die as long as the body is warm and the brain is intact. It took some doing, Pixel especially. The baby creature was held at Kelvin ought point three for several months while Doctor Bone was fetched from another universe and a dozen of Ishtar’s best including Ishtar herself were put through a crash course in feline medicine, surgery, physiology, etc. Then they raised Pixel to simple hypothermia, rebuilt him, brought him to blood temperature and wakened him. So today he is a strong, healthy tom, still traveling as he pleases and making kittens wherever he goes.

In the meantime Hazel arranged the time loop and Colin encountered and wooed and won and tumbled and impregnated a somewhat younger Gretchen. So she had her baby, and later on (by her personal time line) she joined Hazel and Colin in saving the computer Mycroft Holmes.

But why such extreme effort over a kitten? Why not give a dying kitten the release he needs to end his pain?

Because, without Pixel and his ability to walk through walls, Mycroft Holmes would not have been rescued, all of the raiding party would have died, and the future of the entire human race would have been placed at risk. The chances were so evenly balanced that in half of the futures they died, in half of them they succeeded. A few ounces of kitten made the difference. He warned them, with the only word he had mastered: “
Blert!
”

On the way back from Butler Charles had recovered from his postcoital depression; he wanted to do it again. Well, so did I, but not that day. That buggy ride over dirt roads had reminded me that what I was sitting on was just a leetle tender.

But Charles was raring to go; he wanted an encore right now. “Mo’, there is a spot just ahead there where we can get a buggy clear off the road and out of sight. Quite safe.”

“No, Chuck.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not perfectly safe; anybody else could pull off there, too. We’re late now and I don’t want to have to answer questions today. Not this day. And we don’t have another Merry Widow and that settles it because while I do plan to have children, I don’t want to have them at fifteen.”

“Oh.”

“Quite so. Be patient, dear, and we will do it again…another day, with careful arrangements…which you might be thinking about. Now take your hand away, please; there is a rig coming down the road—see the dust?”

Mother did not scold me over being a half hour late. But she did not press Charles when he refused her offer of lemonade, on the excuse that he had to get Ned (his gelding) home and curried and the buggy wiped down because his parents were going to need it. (A too complex lie—I’m sure he simply did not want to meet Mother’s eye, or be questioned by her. I’m glad Father taught me to avoid fancy lies.)

Mother went upstairs as soon as Chuck left; I went out back.

Two years earlier Father had indulged us in a luxury many of our church members felt was sinfully wasteful: two outhouses, one for the boys and one for us girls, just like at school. In fact we truly needed them. That day I was delighted to find the girls’ privy empty. I flipped the bar to lock, and checked up.

Some blood, not much. No problems. Slightly sore, nothing more.

So I sighed with relief and peed and reassembled myself, and went back to the house, picking up a piece of stove wood for the kitchen as I passed the wood pile—a toll each of us paid for each trip out back.

I dropped off the wood and stopped in the wash shed adjoining the kitchen, washed my hands and sniffed them. Clean. Just my guilty conscience. I went to the clinic, stopping only to tousle Lucille’s strawberry hair and pat her bottom. Lucy was three, I think—yes, she was born in ’94, the year after Father and I went to Chicago. She was a little doll, always merry. I decided that I wanted one just like her…but not this year. But soon. I was feeling very female.

I reached the clinic just as Mrs. Altschuler was leaving. I spoke politely; she looked at me and said, “Audrey, you’ve been out in the sun without a sunbonnet again. Don’t you know any better than that?”

I thanked her for her interest in my welfare and went on in. According to Father all she suffered from was constipation and lack of exercise…but she showed up at least twice a month and had not, since the first of the year, paid a single penny. Father was a strong man, firm-minded, but not good at collecting money from people who owed it to him.

Father entered her visit in his book and looked up. “I’m taking your bishop, young lady.”

“Sure you don’t want to change your mind, sir?”

“No. I may be wrong but I’m certain. Why? Have I made a mistake?”

“I think so, sir. Mate in four moves.”

“Eh?” Father stood up, went over to his chess table. “Show me.”

“Shall we simply play it out? I may be mistaken.”

“Grrummph! You’ll be the death of me, girl.” He studied the board, I then went back to his desk. “This will interest you. This morning’s mail. From Mr. Clemens—”

“Oh, my!”

I remember especially one paragraph:

“I agree with you and the Bard, sir; let’s hang them. Hanging its lawyers might not correct all of this country’s woes but it would be lots of fun and could do no harm to anyone.

“Elsewhere I have noted that the Congress is the only distinct criminal class this country has. It cannot be mere coincidence that 97 percent of Congress are lawyers.”

Mr. Clemens added that his lecture agency had scheduled him for Kansas City next winter. “I recall that four years ago we failed of rendezvous in Chicago by a week. Is it possible that you will be in K.C. January tenth, next?”

“Oh, Father! Could we?”

“School will be in session.”

“Father, you know that I made up all time lost by going to Chicago. You know, too, that I am first among the girls in my class…and could be first including the boys if you hadn’t cautioned me about the inadvisability of appearing too smart. But what you may not have noticed is that I have enough credits and could have graduated—”

“—with Tom’s class last week. I noticed. We’ll work on it.
Deus volent
and the crick don’t rise. Did you get what you wanted in Butler?”

“I got what I wanted. But not in Butler.”

“Eh?”

“I did it, Father. I am no longer virgin.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You have managed to surprise me.”

“Truly, Father?” (I didn’t want him to be angry with me…and I thought that he had implied long back that he would not be.)

“Truly. Because I thought that you had managed it last Christmas vacation. I have been waiting the past six months, hoping that you would decide to trust me with it.”

“Sir, I didn’t even consider keeping it from you. I depend on you.”

“Thank you. Mmm, Maureen, freshly deflowered, you should be examined. Shall I call your mother?”

“Oh! Does Mother have to know?”

“Eventually, yes. But you need not have her examining you if it frets you—”

“It does!”

“In that case I’ll take you over to see Dr. Chadwick.”

“Father, why must I see Dr. Chadwick? It is a natural event, I was not hurt, and I feel no need.”

We had a polite argument. Father pointed out that an ethical doctor did not treat members of his own family, especially his womenfolk. I answered that I was aware of that…but that I needed no treatment. And back and forth.

After a bit, having made sure that mother was upstairs for her nap, Father took me into the surgery, locked the door, and helped me up onto the table, and I found myself in much the position for examination that I had been in earlier for Charles, except that this time I had removed only my bloomers.

I suddenly realized that I had become excited.

I tried to suppress it and hoped that Father would not notice it. Even at fifteen I was not naïve about my unusual and possibly unhealthy relation with my father. As early as twelve I had had the desert-isle daydream with my father as the other castaway.

But I also knew how strong the taboo was from the Bible, from classic literature, and from myth. And I remembered all too well how Father quit letting me sit on his lap, had stopped it completely and utterly, once I reached menarche.

Father put on a pair of rubber gloves. This was something he had started as a result of the Chicago trip…which had not been to allow Maureen to enjoy the Columbian Exposition but to permit Father to attend school at Northwestern University in Evanston in order to get up to date on Professeur Pasteur’s germ theories.

Father had always been strong for soap and water, but he had had no science to back up his attitudes. His preceptor, Dr. Phillips, had started practice in 1850, and (so said Father) regarded the rumors from France as “just what you could expect from a bunch of Frogs.”

After Father returned from Evanston, nothing ever again could be clean enough to suit him. He started using rubber gloves and iodine, and boiling and sometimes burning used instruments, especially anything used with lockjaw.

Those impersonal clammy rubber gloves cooled me down…but I was embarrassed to realize that I was quite wet.

I ignored it, Father ignored it. Shortly he helped me down and turned away to strip off his gloves while I got back into my bloomers. Once I was “decent” he unlocked and opened the door. “Healthy, normal woman,” he said gruffly. “You should have no trouble bearing offspring. I recommend that you refrain from intercourse for a few days. I conclude that you used a French purse. Correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. If you will continue to use them…every time!…and are discreet about your public conduct, you should have no serious problems. Hmm—Do you feel up to another buggy ride?”

“Why, certainly, sir. Is there any reason why I should not?”

“No. Word came in that Jonnie Mae Igo’s latest baby is ailing; I promised to try to get out there today. Will you ask Frank to hitch up Daisy?”

It was a long drive. Father took me along to tell me about Ira Howard and the Foundation. I listened, unable to believe my ears…save that Father, the only utterly dependable source of information, was telling me.

After a long stretch I at last spoke up. “Father, I think I see. How does this differ from prostitution? Or does it?”

The Worm in the Apple

Father let Daisy amble on quite a piece before he answered, “I suppose it is prostitution, if you want to stretch the definition to cover it. It does involve payment, not for intercourse per se, but for the result of that intercourse, a baby. The Howard Foundation will not pay you to marry a man on their list, nor is he paid for marrying you. In fact you are never paid; he is paid…for every baby you bear, sired by him.”