Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Read online

little Edward, for all his girth, was very light, andwondered if the baby was full of helium or some other airysubstance. Certainly he hardly appeared to be full of *baby*, sinceeverything he ate and drank passed through him in a matter of seconds,hardly digested at all. Alan had to go into town twice to buy newtwelve-pound boxes of clean white shop rags to clean up the slime trailthe baby left behind him. Drew, at three, seemed to take a perversedelight in the scummy water, spreading it around the cave as much aspossible. The grove in front of the cave mouth was booby trapped withclothesline upon clothesline, all hung with diapers and rags drying outin the early spring sunlight.

  Thirty days later, Alan came home from school to find the younger kidssurrounding his mother as she rocked from side to side, actually poppingfree of the grooves her small metal feet had worn in the cave floor overthe years.

  Two babies in thirty days! Such a thing was unheard of in their father'scave. Edward, normally a sweet-tempered baby, howled long screams thatresonated through Alan's milk teeth and made his testicles shrivel upinto hard stones. Alan knew his mother liked to be left alone when shewas in labor, but he couldn't just stand there and watch her shake andshiver.

  He went to her and pressed his palms to her top, tried to soothe andrestrain her. Bill, the second eldest and still only four years old,followed suit. Edward's screams grew even louder, loud and hoarse andutterly terrified, echoing off their father's walls and back tothem. Soon Alan was sobbing, too, biting his lip to keep the soundsinside, and so were the other children. Dillon wrinkled his brow andscreamed a high-pitched wail that could have cut glass.

  Alan's mother rocked harder, and her exhaust hose dislodged itself. Ahigh-pressure jet of cold, soapy water spurted from her back parts,painting the cave wall with suds. Edward crawled into the puddle itformed and scooped small handsful of the liquid into his mouth betweenhowls.

  And then, it stopped. His mother stopped rocking, stopped shaking. Thestream trailed off into a trickle. Alan stopped crying, and soon thesmaller kids followed suit, even Edward. The echoes continued for amoment, and then they, too, stopped. The silence was as startling -- andnearly as unbearable -- as the cacophony had been.

  With a trembling hand, Alan opened his mother's door and extractedlittle Frederick. The baby was small and cyanotic blue. Alan tipped thebaby over and shook him gently, and the baby vomited up a fantasticquantity of wash water, a prodigious stream that soaked the front ofAlan's school trousers and his worn brown loafers. Finally it ended, andthe baby let out a healthy yowl. Alan shifted the infant to one arm andgingerly reconnected the exhaust hose and set the baby down alongside ofits end. The baby wouldn't suck, though.

  Across the cave, from his soggy seat in the puddle of waste water,Edward watched the new baby with curious eyes. He crawled across thefloor and nuzzled his brother with his high forehead. Frederick squirmedand fussed, and Edward shoved him to one side and sucked. His littlediaper dripped as the liquid passed directly through him.

  Alan patiently picked dripping Edward up and put him over one shoulder,and gave Frederick the tube to suck. Frederick gummed at the hose's end,then fussed some more, whimpering. Edward squirmed in his arms, nearlyplummeting to the hard stone floor.

  "Billy," Alan said to the solemn little boy, who nodded. "Can you takecare of Edward for a little while? I need to clean up." Billy noddedagain and held out his pudgy arms. Alan grabbed some clean shop rags andbriskly wiped Frederick down, then laid another across Billy's shoulderand set Edward down. The baby promptly set to snoring. Danny startedscreaming again, with no provocation, and Alan took two swift steps tobridge the distance between them and smacked the child hard enough tostun him silent.

  Alan grabbed a mop and bucket and sloshed the puddles into the drainagegroove where his mother's waste water usually ran, out the cave mouthand into a stand of choking mountain-grass that fed greedily and thrivedriotous in the phosphates from the detergent.

  Frederick did not eat for thirty days, and during that time he grew sothin that he appeared to shrivel like a raisin, going hard and folded inupon himself. Alan spent hours patiently spooning sudsy water into hislittle pink mouth, but the baby wouldn't swallow, just spat it out andwhimpered and fussed. Edward liked to twine around Alan's feet like acat as he joggled and spooned and fretted over Frederick. It was allAlan could do not to go completely mad, but he held it together, thoughhis grades slipped.

  His mother vibrated nervously, and his father's winds grew so unrulythat two of the golems came around to the cave to make their slow,peevish complaints. Alan shoved a baby into each of their arms andseriously lost his shit upon them, screaming himself hoarse at themwhile hanging more diapers, more rags, more clothes on the line, tossinghis unfinished homework in their faces.

  But on the thirtieth day, his mother went into labor again -- a labor sofrenzied that it dislodged a stalactite and sent it crashing andchundering to the cave floor in a fractious shivering of flinders. Alantook a chip in the neck and it opened up a small cut that neverthelessbled copiously and ruined, *ruined* his favorite T-shirt, with Snoopysitting atop his doghouse in an aviator's helmet, firing an imaginarymachine gun at the cursed Red Baron.

  That was nearly the final straw for Alan, but he held fast and waitedfor the labor to pass and finally unlatched the door and extractedlittle George, a peanut of a child, a lima-bean infant, curled and fetaland eerily quiet. He set the little half-baby down by the exhaust hose,where he'd put shriveled Frederick in a hopeless hope that the babywould suck, would ingest, finally.

  And ingest Frederick did. His dry and desiccated jaw swung open like asnake's, unhinged and spread wide, and he *swallowed* little George, atehim up in three convulsive swallows, the new baby making Frederick'sbelly swell like a balloon. Alan swallowed panic, seized Frederick bythe heels, and shook him upside down. "Spit him out," Alan cried, "Spathim free!"

  But Frederick kept his lips stubbornly together, and Alan tired of theterrible business and set the boy with the newest brother within down ona pile of hay he'd brought in to soak up some of Edward's continuousexcretions. Alan put his hands over his face and sobbed, because he'dfailed his responsibilities as eldest of their family and there was noone he could tell his woes to.

  The sound of baby giggles stopped his crying. Edward had belly-crawledto Frederick's side and he was eating *him*, jaw unhinged and gorgeworking. He was up to Frederick's little bottom, dehydrated to aleathery baby-jerky, and then he was past, swallowing the arms and thechin and the *head*, the giggling, smiling head, the laughing head thathad done nothing but whine and fuss since Alan had cleared it of itsvolume of detergenty water, fresh from their mother's belly.

  And then Frederick was gone. Horrified, Alan rushed over and picked upEdward -- now as heavy as a cannonball -- and pried his mouth open,staring down his gullet, staring down into *another mouth*, Frederick'smouth, which gaped open, revealing a *third* mouth, George's. Thesmallest mouth twisted and opened, then shut. Edward squirmed furiouslyand Alan nearly fumbled him. He set the baby down in the straw andwatched him crawl across to their mother, where he suckedhungrily. Automatically, Alan gathered up an armload of rags and madeready to wipe up the stream that Edward would soon be ejecting.

  But no stream came. The baby fed and fed, and let out a deep burp inthree-part harmony, spat up a little, and drank some more. Somehow,Frederick and George were in there feeding, too. Alan waited patientlyfor Edward to finish feeding, then put him over his shoulder and joggledhim until he burped up, then bedded him down in his little rough-hewncrib -- the crib that the golems had carved for Alan when he was born --cleaned the cave, and cried again, leaned up against their mother.

  #

  Frederick huddled in on himself, half behind Edward on the porch,habitually phobic of open spaces. Alan took his hand and then embracedhim. He smelled of Edward's clammy guts and of sweat.

  "Are you two hungry?" Alan asked.

  Edward grimaced. "Of course we're hungry, but without George there'snothing we can do about it, is there?"r />
  Alan shook his head. "How long has he been gone?"

  "Three weeks," Edward whispered. "I'm so hungry, Alan."

  "How did it happen?"

  Frederick wobbled on his feet, then leaned heavily on Edward. "I need tosit down," he said.

  Alan fumbled for his keys and let them into the house, where theysettled into the corners of his old overstuffed horsehide sofa. Hedialed up the wall sconces to a dim, homey lighting, solicitous ofFrederick's sensitive eyes. He took an Apollo 8 Jim Beam decanter fullof stunning Irish whiskey off the sideboard and poured himself a fingerof it, not offering any to his brothers.

  "Now, how did it happen?"

  "He wanted to speak to Dad," Frederick said. "He climbed out of me andwandered down through the tunnels into the spring pool. The