Known by Its Fruit
by James Hanna
|
Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
Following Jeb to the nearest barn, Molly felt as though she were crossing an ocean. She remembered a line from Julius Caesar, her favorite Shakespearian play: “And we must take the current where it serves...” But how would this current serve her? Would it lead her to love and good fortune or to something she’d rather not see? Even Jeb seemed to sense the pregnancy of the moment. His face had lost its ironic smirk and had hardened into a soldierly resolve.
When they reached the barn, Jeb nodded to a Latino laborer. Slowly, as though cracking a safe, the man unlocked the door. Molly smelled the interior of the barn before she saw it, a smell so strong that it made her nose itch. Her eyes began to water, her head began to swim, and she felt as though she were walking in quicksand. And so it seemed strange, when she entered the barn, that she saw little reason to panic.
Inside the barn was a large shallow field beneath rows of low-hanging grow lights. And peeking through the ruts in the soil were a few dozen orange balls the size of cantaloupes. Men in white lab coats were ducking beneath the grow lights, adjusting sprinklers and carefully inspecting the balls. Is this what had me so worried? she wondered. A silly pumpkin patch? She was not at all impressed.
“Jeb,” she said when she was able to draw a breath, “you call this an adventure?”
“We call it our nursery,” Jeb replied. “Here is where we plant the mutants. Where we let ’em ripen like fruit on the vine.”
He took her by the elbow and guided her onto the field. The damp earth pulled stubbornly at her pumps, and it was all she could do not to trip. Releasing her elbow, Jeb paused for a moment then knelt beside one of the larger balls. He squeezed it tenderly, as though fondling a breast, then began to dig gently with his fingers. “Prepare yourself, darlin’,” he said. “This is all the adventure you’re ever gonna need.”
Jeb’s fingers blackened from the soil, and the ball began to loosen. As he started to pull it from the ground, Molly suppressed a gasp. It was not a pumpkin, it was a little head, complete with bulging eyes, a scrunched-up nose, and a wide, rather slobbery-looking mouth. A pear-shaped body followed the head as Jeb continued to tug, a body with a ropey umbilical cord and tiny hands and feet. It was the size of a newborn baby.
“This one’s ready for harvesting,” Jeb announced. He pulled a box cutter from his pants pocket, pushing out the blade as he did so, then he cut the umbilical cord in two. A substance that looked like green custard dribbled onto the ground. After rinsing the creature under a sprinkler, Jeb mopped it dry with a handkerchief and handed it to Molly.
“The smell will soon go away,” he said. “But don’t be holdin’ it too long. We don’t want it thinking you’re its mother.”
Molly clutched the thing with shaking hands, too startled to let it drop. The creature was cute, in a French bulldog sort of way, but how ridiculous to think she might pose as its mother. Its body was cold, its skin was rough, its fingers were wiggling like worms. And its wide, gaping mouth was emitting a sound that set her teeth on edge. “Eeek, eeek, eeeek,” it went, a noise just like chalk being scraped along a blackboard. And it smelled so strongly of fertilizer that it was all she could do not to sneeze.
Molly held the creature away from her. “Take it!” she said. “Take it away! It needs a cage, not a mother, Jeb.”
As Jeb took the thing back, tucking it beneath his elbow, she remembered a Biblical quote: “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” She was not at all religious; she rarely went to church, and she now realized the full impact of her shock. If runts like that thing were the fruits of Jeb’s labor, cold little cretins that smelled like an outhouse, he might not be the nicest of men.
She started to sob. “J-Jeb, how could you? It looks like a freak. It smells like a toilet.”
Jeb grinned sheepishly then shrugged. “The whole country’s in the crapper, darlin’. That’s why we need desperate measures. And desperate women, too.”
“You sound like you just made a deal with the devil.”
Jeb flushed like a scolded schoolboy, a sight so touching that she knew she was going to forgive him. He seemed so lonely, so in need of companionship, that she wanted to pull him tightly to her breast. But when he spoke to her again, her stomach knotted.
“You sound like an exorcist, darlin’,” he said. “Don’t turn away the devil until you’ve heard his offer.”
“W-what do you even feed it?” she asked; it was all she could think of to say.
Holding the podling under his arm, Jeb began stroking its head. “We raise ’em on dog food,” he said with a smirk. “It’ll reach its full growth in six short weeks. That’s when we start training them.”
“Training them?” Molly muttered. “Training them to do what?”
As she watched the thing squirm in Jeb’s hands, her mind began to rebel. Was he actually fond of that little gremlin? Did he think she would find it endearing as well? But her heart was starting to bleed for him, and she knew she was falling in love. What a sad and lonely man he must be to regard such a thing as a pet. How badly he needed a good woman’s love to save him from himself.
“Darlin’,” he said, “let’s get on with our tour. I’ve told you the answer already.”
Smiling thinly, Jeb scratched the creatures belly. “Eeek, eeeek, EEEEK,” it went, like a mouse caught in a trap.
* * *
As they walked to another barn, Jeb took her hand in his. A chorus of squawks was coming from the barn, as though circular saws were biting into timber. The squawks were so raw, so primitive and sharp, that they stung the fillings in her teeth.
Jeb unlocked the door to the barn. “We’re breaking these in for the auto plant,” he said. “They’re a bit feisty at first, but they get with the program soon enough.”
Jeb’s voice had lost its gentleness and now sounded smug and pedantic. Has he actually bested the devil? thought Molly. How could that possibly be? He’s so clearly a man cut off from the world, a broken, discarded soul. As Jeb pushed open the door to the barn, generous tears filled her eyes.
Her tenderness for Jeb vanished the moment she stepped into the barn. Never had she seen anything remotely like this. A mob of the freaks, each six and a half feet tall, was standing alongside a long conveyer belt. Their eyes were glassy, their shoulders were sagging, their bodies were pitted with large crusty sores. Behind them stood more men in lab coats, men clutching hypodermic syringes and cattle prods.
The men watched closely as the creatures lifted chassis, engine blocks, and tires from the conveyor belt and lugged them to nearby tables. When one of them deposited its load on a table, it was rewarded with an injection. Miracle-Gro, Molly guessed, or maybe some kind of sedative. If one dropped its burden, a cattle prod stung it. “Rawk, rawk, RAWK,” cried the things when given electrical shocks. They sounded like angry crows.
Jeb squeezed her hand and beamed. “Next month,” he said, “the General Motors plant will reopen. We’ll be fitting these fellas with memory chips, they’ll be working the robot arms. If things work out as planned, the entire auto industry will return to America.”
Molly felt as though someone had punched her and run away with her purse. How alarming to know she’d been charmed by a man who merited only contempt. What an elitist. What a swine. I must have been crazy to want him. I must have been out of my mind. “Those poor, poor creatures...” she mumbled, her tongue so dry she could barely form the words. It was only a perverse fascination that kept her from leaving Jeb’s side.
Oblivious to her heartbreak, Jeb continued to lecture. “Low maintenance would better describe them,” he said. “No more health care to pay, no more strikes to settle, no more pensions to drain away the budget. These go-getters work eighteen hours a day and make good fertilizer when they die. The stockholders will be overjoyed.”
“No more jobs for the people in town,” Molly blurted, a remark so reflexive that she instantly regretted it. Jeb’s attitude had grown so superior, his manner so didactic, that she felt like a child who had scattered her toys and neglected to put them away. She wanted to cry on his chest, but she felt too stunned to move.
Jeb sucked a tooth and shrugged. “The people,” he muttered, “are cattle as well. This isn’t that big a transition.”
Before Molly could reply, a commotion arose at the other end of the barn. A few of the freaks, all blazing with sores, were standing in a row. They were bound to one another with waist chains and watching a cluster of tackling dummies. They were squawking excitedly among themselves.
“Watch this,” Jeb instructed. He removed a whistle from his back pocket, put it to his lips, and blew. At the chirp of the whistle, the things lowered their heads and assembled into a flying wedge. Jeb blew the whistle a second time and they lumbered towards the dummies. The sound of their skulls bashing foam thudded throughout the barn.
“There’s bound to be demonstrators,” Jeb said. “Those UAW shirkers who drove the industry abroad. This’ll send them packing.”
“And so you’re a strike breaker too?!” Molly cried. Her mind was reeling, her senses were numb, but she could not tear her eyes from the sight.
Jeb grinned. “There will be no more strikes, no one’s getting his job back. Scab labor is going to take over.”
Molly held her face between her hands. What a revolting man he was. What a self-entitled bore. If he had been born in the eighteenth century, he’d have surely been a slave owner. “Jeb, take me from here,” she sobbed, it was all she could manage to utter.
Jeb smiled kindly and cleared his throat. His face had lost all self-consciousness now and he seemed to be looking at her from a very great distance. What a child you still are, his eyes seemed to say. How much you still have to learn. “Let’s go back to the house, my darlin’,” he said. “You haven’t had dessert.”
* * *
“Devils food cake!” Molly cried. “You’re serving me devil’s food cake?!”
Jeb finished cutting the rich chocolate cake and handed her a piece. There was not a trace of irony in his face.
They were sitting at a coffee table inside an enormous study. The walls were lined with dozens of bookcases, all of them crammed full of books. There were science logs, history books, manuals on animal husbandry. There were texts on organic farming, molecular biology, and plant pathology. There were rows and rows of philosophy books: Spinoza, Kant, Spencer, Nietzsche filled up two whole shelves. There were endless volumes of literature: Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer, Goethe, the titles went on and on. There was even a sagging bookcase devoted entirely to erotica. Molly’s head began to ache.
Jeb smiled at her reassuringly and took a bite of cake. “Yes, darlin’,” he said. “I’ve read every one of them. Some I’ve read several times.” He looked at her thoughtfully, took a slow breath, then he spoke as though reading out loud. “‘Football, films, and beer filled the horizons of their minds.’ That’s from George Orwell’s 1984. I think it describes the goddamn people you feel such sympathy for.”
Molly shook her head and tried to scowl, but could not hide the shock in her face. “So what does that make you, Jeb?” she snapped. “An educated monster?”
“Maybe,” Jeb chuckled, his mouth full of cake. “But at least I’ve impressed a librarian.”
“Have you?” she spat. “Have you really?” She did not wish to make that concession to him, and yet she was deeply in awe. Clearly this man, this very strange man, was far better reader than she would ever be. Perhaps he was even smarter. Perhaps he was a genius.
Determined to puncture his maddening pride, she sniped at him again. “What good have all these books done you, Jeb, if you treat those poor things like slaves?”
“Darlin’,” Jeb said, “there’s a far bigger picture.” He burped, rose from his chair, and wandered over to one of the bookcases. He fingered the books as though tuning a piano then recited some titles out loud: “Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Last Man Standing: The Ascent of J.P. Morgan. Today and Tomorrow: The Autobiography of Henry Ford.” He looked at her kindly and folded his arms; his eyes were twinkling like stars. “Those men were monsters, all of them. But they rose above the horde. And they took the country to places nobody could have imagined.”
My God, Molly thought. What an ego he has. How could I ever have thought of reforming this dreadful, impossible man? “Jeb, there’s cake on your chin,” she murmured. “Besides that, you sound like Satan.”
“Devils are all around us.” Jeb shrugged and rubbed the cake from his chin. “Not all of them can be bargained with. Not all will bother to court you. Better we should out-monster them than allow them to eat us alive.”
Oh no! Molly thought. He’s a Nietzsche nut, too. She had always hated that little German prude. His rants about apes, man, and the superman to come were so pompous, so smug, so utterly contemptuous. Why, out of all the books in his study, did Jeb have to quote from Nietzsche?!
“So you’re the ascender of man,” she joked. “I always wondered what he would look like.”
Jeb laughed and shook his head. “I’m not that ambitious, darlin’,” he said. “I wish only to be a monster.”
Molly felt her skin crawl. The man was insane, totally insane. No wonder he was alone. And yet his eyes, his clear blue eyes, were as tranquil as a lake. It was the accommodation in his eyes, the gentleness with which he now looked at her, that gave her the courage to lecture him. “The townspeople are all against you, Jeb. They think you’re a monster already.”
He chuckled proudly and smirked. “I would be worried only if they were my friends.”
More Nietzsche, she thought; her fists tightened into balls. “Must you keep quoting that crass little German? What are your thoughts, Jeb. What is inside that head of yours?”
He returned to his chair, slowly sat down, and picked up the remainder of his cake. He poked at the cake as though touching up a sculpture then put it back on the coffee table. He took a pause before speaking. “I’m a jaded man, darlin’. I am drunk with power, poisoned with knowledge, callous to all that I touch. But the people, without even trying, are far greater monsters than I am.”
Look into the abyss, Molly remembered, and the abyss will look into you. Was that vain little Kraut actually right about something? Was the nihilism in Jeb Judson’s eyes about to seep into her soul? The thought only made her angrier. “Oh really?” she muttered. “Just what is their sin?”
“Ignorance,” replied Jeb; the word struck her like a hammer. “Willful, church-bred ignorance. They breed, they doze, they die, that is all. Like cattle on a plain.”
Molly could hardly believe her own thoughts. Did this arrogant man, this self-centered pig, believe he was some kind of savior? “You tether innocent creatures,” she stammered. “You bury their babies in dirt.”
Jeb looked at her sharply and glared. How quickly his moods changed. “Knowledge can kill you,” he said with a shrug. “Nietzsche probably died of it. But it also can make you a brute.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” Molly snapped.
“I plan to tether the people as well. Lead ’em around by the nose. Their kind of monster we cannot empower, the world is too dangerous a place.”
He rose from his chair, cracked his knuckles, then turned on a small television. “Nietzsche had it wrong,” he said. “Mankind will never ascend. Not...”
An NFL playoff game was on, a contest between the Titans and the Patriots. The stadium was packed with fifty thousand people, all of them on their feet screaming. He looked at the game disgustedly then turned the television off. “Not,” he repeated, “till they can get that excited over things that really matter.”
Despite the condescension in Jeb Judson’s face, Molly felt a stirring in her heart. Was she, an unstable female, being swayed by this alpha brute? Your damn bitch is having puppies in my brain. This line from East of Eden, a novel she adored, flashed like a warning sign through her head. Utterly ashamed of herself, she buried her face in her hands.
She felt Jeb’s hand on her shoulder, a gentle protective touch. “Finish your cake, my darlin,” he said. “There’s much I still have to show you.”
* * *
Copyright © 2024 by James Hanna
