Girl in Landscape (14 page)

“Oh, oh—,” said Truth Renowned.

“Not here, Truth,” said Efram. “Outside.” He pointed at the door.

“Truth Renowned is a guest in my house,” said Clement, stammering. “He—
it
, I mean, can stay as long as it likes.”

“I wish to depart,” said Truth Renowned.

“You mean you want to go with them?” said Clement.

“I think I would prefer not to do that,” said Truth Renowned weakly.

“Enough,” said Efram. “Let’s go.” He pushed Truth Renowned roughly on the shoulder, and the Archbuilder stumbled to the door. Doug Grant moved out of the doorway, a twisted expression on his face, and grabbed Truth Renowned’s arm as the Archbuilder passed.

Efram took Truth Renowned’s other arm, and together they steered the alien across the porch and down
the steps. Clement rushed after them, but Ben Barth put his hand out and caught Clement’s shoulder. “Slow down, Mr. Marsh. Efram knows what he’s doing.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Clement.

“Be patient, Clement,” said Ben Barth. “Let Efram get his information straight, so we’ll know what’s called for.”

Clement lifted Ben Barth’s hand and went past. Joe Kincaid followed, and so did Hiding Kneel. The children trailed after them, onto the porch, into the sun. Pella was grateful to Efram for dragging them out of the cloistered schoolroom, into the day. No matter how he had to do it.

Her fear of the sky was gone. Now she only wanted to be a thing out in the valley, running.

Efram and Doug Grant pushed Truth Renowned ahead of them on the path from Pella’s house, in the direction of Hugh Merrow’s. They let go of the alien’s arms and the Archbuilder trudged along, acquiescent.

Clement rushed after. “What are you doing?” he demanded again.

“I want Merrow to look his friend here in the face,” said Efram. “See what they have to say when they’re both at the scene of the crime.” He turned back to Clement, putting his hands on his hips. “Come ahead if you want,” he said, and grinned to mark the challenge. “You probably ought to be there.” He gave Truth Renowned another shove, just for show.

Clement was defeated. If he followed it was as if he’d taken part in the posse. He followed anyway. Joe Kincaid jogged along sheepishly behind him.

Morris Grant jumped down off the porch, ran out and fell into step beside his brother, as the captive Archbuilder was led over the ridge.

Ben Barth turned to Hiding Kneel. “C’mon, Kneel,” he said. “You can help your friend find his tongue. Figure talking’s the one thing you know something about.”

Hiding Kneel shuffled down the porch steps after him, silent for the moment.

“Let’s go,” whispered Bruce to Pella.

Pella couldn’t think. The men and Archbuilders were disappearing into the valley, behind the cloud of dust raised by their scuffing steps. Rushing off to make their disaster. Pella felt she had to witness it. But not with Bruce. She would have preferred to follow invisible, as a household deer.

“Someone has to take care of Martha,” she pointed out.

“She can stay here with Ray and Dave,” said Bruce.

“I want to go,” said Raymond.

“You have to watch David,” said Pella to her brother. “And Martha too. Get her a snack.”

Hugh Merrow had been drinking. His house was like a tableau arranged to produce that impression, littered with bottles and glasses and laundry, shades pulled down against the light, a twice-bitten sandwich rotting on a plate, and the artist himself slumped in a chair in the center of the room, his forehead braced against his palms. The easel was empty, the sketch for the portrait of Truth Renowned down, facing the wall. The self-portraits on the walls glared into the middle of the room accusingly now, and the rosy landscapes seemed to mock the sealed windows.

The painter barely looked up as they came in. First Truth Renowned, pushed ahead roughly by Efram and Doug Grant, then Clement and Joe Kincaid. Next, trickling in silently, came Ben Barth, Hiding Kneel, Morris Grant, Bruce and Pella. Jammed into Hugh Merrow’s cluttered, solitary space they seemed an invasion, an
explosion of bodies, though the studio was no smaller than the cleared-out schoolroom they’d been in a few minutes before.

The fading daylight shone too harshly on this scene. Pella closed the door behind her, and it seemed a small act of mercy.

“Here you go, Merrow, here’s your beautiful Archbuilder,” said Efram, thrusting Truth Renowned into the middle of the room. The Archbuilder stumbled, righted itself, a distant look in its eyes.

“What’s that supposed to prove?” said Hugh Merrow in a soft voice. He didn’t lift his head from its crutch of hands. “Truth is my model. Bringing—it—back here to me doesn’t mean anything.”

“You didn’t say
it
last night.”

“What’s this all about?” said Clement.

“Linguistic dissension—” began Hiding Kneel from behind Clement.

“Wait, Kneel,” said Clement, waving his hand. “I’m asking Efram.”

“We were at Wa’s, last night,” said Efram. “Me, and Ben, and Merrow here. Having a drink. Wa’s little general store turns into a place for drinking, after hours.” He spread his hands to indicate the counter in Wa’s shop. “I don’t know if he’d let you family men in on it. Can’t imagine you’d bother with it if he did. It’s for us lonely types. But after Merrow got in his cups last night he started talking like he wasn’t really all that lonely.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Merrow burst out, looking up angrily at Efram.

“Going on about how beautiful
she
was, tearing his hair about it—”

“I was talking about my painting, the difficulty of capturing in a portrait—”

“You were talking about a hell of a lot more than that and you know it. And so does the native beauty here.”

The accused Archbuilder stood helplessly between them, fronds depressed against its head.

“He was baiting me,” said Hugh Merrow, turning to Clement. “He was feeding me drinks, first of all, and planting this idea, this thing he wanted to think—”

“Baiting and planting, now debating,” said Hiding Kneel.

“Yeah, and next comes mass debating,” whispered Morris Grant to Bruce and Pella. Bruce shoved him, so hard that he stumbled forward and jarred a palette-table. Several thin tubes of paint fell and scattered on the floor.

“
Morris
,” said Joe Kincaid.

“It was Bruce!” Morris said plaintively.

Joe Kincaid put a hand heavily on the shoulder of each boy.

“Let’s get the kids out of here,” said Ben Barth. “Seems like keeping them away from all this is the whole point.”

“I’m not convinced there is a point,” said Clement evenly. “Apart from spreading innuendo.”

“Well, they don’t have to sit through this, whatever it is,” said Joe Kincaid, guiding the boys to the door. “Bruce, Morris, Pella, why don’t you—”

“Pella can stay,” said Clement.

“Okay,” said Joe, a little awkwardly. “You boys clear out, Pella can do what she wants—”

“I’d
prefer
it if she stayed,” said Clement. “If that’s all right with you, Pella.”

Pella shrugged.

Efram watched, a hand on one hip, his mouth set into something like a grin, his eyebrows raised. The very image of smoldering patience. “Let her stay,” he said. “Maybe she can help us sort this out.”

Hugh Merrow let his head sink back into his hands.

Then Bruce and Morris were gone, and the room was all men and Archbuilders, the men tense, crushed, proud, the Archbuilders impossible to fathom. Men and Archbuilders and Pella. Only Doug Grant was near her age, and he burned with an aggrieved hostility that made him distant, unreachable. More alien than the Archbuilders.

Pella knew she stood as a marker of Clement’s resistance to Efram. As with the pills, she’d become their battleground. She knew too that she counted as older because her mother was dead.

She fought not to think of what she’d seen at Merrow’s studio. A deer saw it, she decided. Not me.

“Let’s get to the bottom of this thing,” said Efram. He pointed lackadaisically at Hugh Merrow. “I’d like you to tell the rest of these people what you told me at Wa’s.”

“I didn’t tell you anything,” said Merrow, his breath ragged.

“This isn’t a tribunal,” said Clement.

“I didn’t, say it was,” said Efram. “I just want to ask the man some questions.”

“Perhaps a reenactment—” suggested Hiding Kneel.

“Shut up, Kneel,” said Ben Barth.

“Maybe it’s time for your Archbuilder to talk,” said Efram, pointing his thumb at Truth Renowned, “since you already did. Just give it permission, Merrow—it’ll do what you tell it. Just like when you two are alone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hugh Merrow, finding his courage so suddenly he seemed startled by it. “The conversation you’re referring to didn’t happen. Nothing happened.” He turned to Clement, an appeal in his eyes. “I
paint
Archbuilders, Mr. Marsh. Along with a lot of other things. And last night I had a drink with Efram Nugent. He was drunk, I was drunk, we
talked
about a lot of things.”

Merrow leaned back in his chair now, eyes hollow, and stroked his yellow beard absently. He didn’t look at Truth Renowned. “
Efram
talked about some things that were on his mind,” he went on. “Things that maybe excited his imagination, I don’t know. I humored him. I allowed him to make certain insinuations. I laughed along. That was a mistake, I see now. But I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Truth Renowned just stood, arms braided, looking at the floor.

“There’s at least one of us here who knows you’re lying,” said Efram. “Besides me, that is.”

He turned, met Pella’s eyes, seemed to look through them. She froze.

“How long do you think before your Archbuilder blurts something out, Merrow?” said Efram, still looking at Pella. “Or worse, does like Kneel here says and provides somebody with a reenactment?”

Pella breathed again. Efram meant it was the Archbuilder who knew. Though he’d said
at least
.

“You don’t have any evidence,” said Clement. He moved closer to Truth Renowned, perhaps hoping the alien would speak, defend itself. But no. And Hugh Merrow was less than useless again, huddled in his chair. “It’s not enough to bully an Archbuilder into some confession,” Clement went on. “You need proof of harm.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Efram.

“Show not just that something happened, but that anyone was hurt by it if it did happen. That anyone cares, Efram.”

“You don’t grasp what’s at stake here, Marsh. How do you know your proof won’t come when an Archbuilder leads a kid off into the hills for some more of what Hugh Merrow’s been teaching them? That’s the kind of reenactment I’m talking about.”

“That’s a bit far-fetched—”

“You assume they make the same distinction between kids and adults that we do. Well, think again. Talk to the Archbuilders and you’ll find they consider
themselves
children.”

Clement said nothing.

Pella wanted Efram to be wrong, wanted that slow
malevolent voice to stumble and fall instead of endlessly rolling forward. But hadn’t Hiding Kneel said the same thing in Clement’s classroom—when?

The class was a distant memory now.

“Watch them with your kids,” said Efram. “You’ll see. They respond to children more than to you or me. Children and portrait painters.”

“I respond excellently to you, Efram Nugent,” said Hiding Kneel eagerly. “But then I had not gathered that you were not a child—”

“Don’t clutter this up with your claptrap, Kneel,” said Ben Barth.

“Yeah, quiet,” said Doug Grant gratuitously.

“Regarding another Archbuilder, my claptrap might be deemed vital,” said Hiding Kneel. “A necessary prerequisite to your own claptrap.”

“Be vital if you got Truth Renowned talking,” said Efram. “Otherwise—”

There Efram broke off. Pella thought he’d left his sentence unfinished. Then she heard the unintelligible bubbling noise that followed his words. She came slowly to the realization that he was speaking another language.

The string of sounds issuing from Efram’s mouth was broken into the same laconic measures as his English. It was like nothing Pella had ever heard and at the same time seemed the absolute distillation of Efram, as if his persona had been converted out of language into pure and utterly revealing music, a song of lazy menace.

That much was revealed. But the meaning was hidden.

•   •   •

“What was that?” said Clement warily.

“Hey,” said Joe Kincaid. “You speak pretty good Archbuilder.”

“I thought nobody—” started Clement.

He stopped because Truth Renowned was bubbling back at Efram, offering its own quavering, high-pitched version of the same noises.

“Not
Archbuilder
,” said Ben Barth quietly, chidingly, to Clement and Joe. “They call that stuff
Table Talk
.”

Truth Renowned paused, fronds rustling, then bubbled on, unstoppable now. The word
Merrow
jumped out, obvious like an off-note in a familiar melody.

Hugh Merrow stared at Truth Renowned, plainly as baffled as Clement.

“Efram just told Kneel to shut the hell up,” whispered Ben Barth. “To let Truth do the talking.”

At last the Archbuilder fell silent. Efram nodded, apparently satisfied.

Doug Grant said, “What, Efram? You find anything out?” His eyes darted wildly from Efram to Clement to the Archbuilders.

“Tell us, Efram,” said Clement. “What did Truth Renowned say to you?”

“This meeting is over,” said Efram, turning away.

“That’s what it said?” said Clement. “That the meeting is over?”

“That’s what
I
said,” said Efram. “I’m calling it done.”

It was ludicrous. Had a meeting even begun?

With Efram, talk was all interruptions. He was like the Archbuilder landscape, a series of things broken off.

Pella herself felt broken off.

“I’ve learned all I need to,” said Efram. “Unless somebody else wants to add something.” He looked at Pella and she felt the blood steam in her cheeks.

She hated him.

“I’ll let you worry about your own kids from here on,” he said. “Someone’s lying, but let the lie stand.”