All Sweet Things

       Lizzie-Beth first realised there was a thief in the cornfield when she discovered a neatly stripped cob right by the yard gate. Clearly cut down with a knife. So, she saddled up the Horsie, loaded Harold’s rifle, and set out on patrol at first light, before even the sun crested the Red Mountains. She rode until noon and found only more denuded cobs, shredded leaves, and even the pest’s bed: a haphazard nest of stalks laid on the ground in the thickest part of the field. It was far from the irrigation channel, so the ground there was hard as stone; no tracks remained. Just a faint, foreign scent, a couple or roll-up cigarette butts, and a few short brown hairs and stalks of straw, clearly not from her field. Over by the northern slope, where a bit more water ran down from the mountain, there were tracks. Pronghorns. And corn trampled by them. Wonderful. The wire fence was torn again, somewhere. There were no tracks by the aqueduct either. If the thief came to drink, they did so with utmost caution. The Horsie and Lizzie-Beth snorted in unison and thought some nasty words. From the next day, Lizzie-Beth applied herself to the pest in earnest. She set several traps by the aqueduct, camouflaging them with corn stalks. She dug out some rat poison from the shed, laced a flatbread with it, and hung it in a canvas bag on a fence post, as if she’d forgotten it. She would have liked to dig a pit right under the scoundrel’s bed, but judging by the size of the nest, the creature wasn't much shorter than she was. That wasn’t a hole she could dig in a day. Harold could have… She looked down at her own thin paws, clad in grey-brown fur. No matter. She had managed droughts and insurance assessors. She could manage a corn thief. Not very soon, maybe. All week, the thief stubbornly avoided her traps and seemed to mock her: they triggered all the traps with either cob-ends or stones, and in the bag on the fence, Lizzie-Beth found the gnawed flatbread and a pile of dead mice. At least she didn’t feel sorry for mice (despite being a Rat herself). Small mercies. Harold, returning from his church meetings, had always said one must be grateful for what one had. “Hey, you!” Lizzie-Beth yelled at the wall of stalks, having reached the top of the hill overlooking the field. “Since you’ve taken to eating my corn, you might as well make yourself useful! Chase off the competition! Like the pronghorns coming down from the mountain on the north side!” Of course, no one answered her from the thicket of stems. *** She had nothing better to do than ride around the fields, while at home the floors weren't washed, the sacks for the harvest weren't sewn up, and the cart for the harvest wasn't mended. In short, her mood was foul enough as it was, and then, right on the very edge of the field, she found the remains of a chicken. From her own henhouse, no less! Just feathers and bones, and not even all of them. Right, that's it, decided Lizzie-Beth, she would mount a raid, even if she had to do it alone, she would spend her last cartridges but she would nail the parasite! She checked her mental indignation, noticing a patch of grey fur a little further into the corn. A coyote. Dead. Its neck was twisted, and between its bared teeth were white downy feathers. She rode back. Yes, just as she thought. A tunnel under the fence around the henhouse, with greyish-red coyote fur caught in the planks. Well, at least the thief was some use. But they could have shared the chicken. As if sensing her faint glimmer of goodwill, the scoundrel went loose. When Lizzie-Beth returned from mending the fence on the northern edge of the field the next day, she discovered the house door open and a clean plate and spoon on the table. The level of lentil soup in the big pot had gone down. The nerve of them! But at least they had washed up after themselves. Harold had never done that; he had considered domestic chores women's work. Outside the house, though, he had worked himself to the bone. It was still galling. In her outrage, Lizzie-Beth wanted to go outside and tell the field exactly what she thought, but on the doorstep she remembered she was hungry and limited herself to grumbling from the porch, "You could at least say thank you." "Thank you," came a voice from above. Lizzie-Beth jumped in surprise and even thought for a second the Creator Himself answered from the heavens. But no, she was a sensible woman, and besides, not nearly a good enough churchgoer for the Creator to speak to her. She ran off the porch and craned her neck back. The scoundrel was lying on the tiled roof, right in the full sun, stretched out like a cat, if cats were made of ragged cloth, straw, and a wide smile. "Get down here, you wretch, I'll box your ears!" she threatened in her sternest tone. "Nah, too much effort," he replied, so nonchalantly it was as if he were turning down an invitation to a game of poker. "You'd better come up here. It's nice." Oh, is that how it is?! She stomped off to the shed to fetch the stepladder. On the way, though, her stomach rumbled, reminding her about lunch. But how could she stay indoors with him on the roof? The result was that Lizzie-Beth climbed the ladder with a full, hot bowl in one paw. She wobbled at the top, but the thief steadied her by the elbow, shifted over, and made room for her. He smiled again. Dazzling. Up close, he turned out to be a young guy, about twenty, as far as Lizzie-Beth could guess the age of human-like creatures like Harold, being of the beast folk herself. Slender (or, rather, underfed—she felt a momentary urge to run and fetch a second bowl… but no, one portion was quite enough for him!), lithe, and tanned all over, which was clearly visible through the holes in his trousers and shirt. Untidy, light chestnut tufts of hair stuck out from under a half-collapsed reed hat (so that was the source of the foreign straw!). But the most astonishing thing was his eyes: a piercing, icy blue, even in the golden rays of the evening sun. Harold's eyes were pale blue too, but at times like this, at sunset, they looked light brown. "So, what's your name, trump?" The guy screwed up his eyes, yawned, showing canines that were far too sharp for a human or a whooper. "Joxter." “And I’m Lizzie-Beth, the owner of these fields you’ve been eating the corn from without so much as a by-your-leave.” And she set about eating her stew with gusto, giving him time to gather his thoughts for a reply. Not that he needed much time. “Can anyone truly be the owner of the land,” he mused, shifting his gaze to the distance, to those very fields and the mountains on the horizon. His pupils contracted to pinpricks, “and not merely call themselves such? Did you create the seeds you sowed? The soil in which they grow? The rains that nourish them? All of this existed long before you and I, and will remain long after. We are but guests upon this earth and are free to borrow all its fruits, for one day we shall return to it everything we have acquired…” Listen to him, talking so smoothly you’d be captivated and fail to realise he’d just justified his right to steal anything that isn’t nailed down. Lizzie-Beth wanted to get properly angry, but she didn’t quite manage it. She remembered how Harold had also tried to explain the essence of his family’s faith to her, but he’d get flustered, trip over his words, and then would be silent and sulky until the next morning. This one didn’t stumble. “Well, it rarely rains here,” she said, finishing her meal and hurrying to justify her property rights, “so the water runs down from the mountain precisely through the irrigation channels my husband built. And if he and I didn’t work hard every single day, no corn would grow here, and you’d be walking past the thornbush and the tumbleweeds on an empty stomach.” “The water in the mountains also…” Joxter, without finishing, carefully took the bowl from Lizzie-Beth’s hands and licked it. Clean. A discomfiting thought crept up on her that the bowl in the house had also been cleaned without water or soap. Well, a farmer’s life doesn’t allow for squeamishness. And her pity for a hungry (though uninvited) guest hadn’t gone anywhere. “Don’t trample corn at night,” Lizzie-Beth grumbled. “You can sleep in the stables—if the Horsie takes a liking to you.” Peeking into the stall the next morning, she found the two of them practically cuddling: the mare was lying on the hay with her legs tucked under her, and Joxter had curled up by her side in a thoroughly cat-like manner, and he refused to get up until Lizzie-Beth threatened to pour a bucket of cold water over him. He turned out to be a useless worker, both in the house and in the field. Turn your back and in a second he’d be lying on a table or a pile of straw, having a nap. The only thing he was good for was getting on with the Horsie and riding out into the fields to scare off the crows, partridges, and coyotes. Once, he even brought back a prairie chicken for supper, its neck wrung. And he managed to grab and strangle mice at the stall (though Lizzie-Beth refused to utilise them for meals). And he told stories of far-off countries and wondrous deeds. Lizzie-Beth could listen to him for hours. At the height of the harvest, the northern winds began to blow. She was used to their howling and so didn’t immediately realise what had woken her in the night. Then, through the wailing in the chimney, another sound seeped through… Wrapped in a blanket and holding a kerosene lamp, she trudged into the living room to give that cheeky drifter a piece of her mind, to tell him not to intrude in the house and to keep his nose out of other people’s business. And sure enough, there was Joxter, standing on the sofa, plucking the strings of Harold’s guitar, which hung almost under the ceiling. “Don’t you dare!” Lizzie-Beth hissed. “That’s my husband’s.” In the dim lamplight, the guest’s eyes gleamed like a cat’s or a coyote’s. “Hmm,” he shifted his gaze to the dresser where a photograph in a mourning frame stood. “Seems he doesn’t need it anymore. And you know what’s odd,” he added, before Lizzie-Beth could take offence at his tactless note. “Turns out you’re a very romantic woman. You find a use for every bit of string or straw, yet you keep this bulky instrument purely as a keepsake, not using it for its purpose. Music is needed to make you happier or sadder, to wash your soul from the inside… Wouldn't you remember your husband longer if the guitar sang again and not just gathered dust? Judging by your stories, he wouldn’t have approved of such wastefulness.” And he took the guitar down from its nail and settled on the sofa with it in his arms. He clearly didn’t know how to play, and Lizzie-Beth, putting the lamp down, showed him what she remembered. Joxter picked it up on the fly and soon managed to work out a fairly harmonious tune, then a second one… Lizzie-Beth tucked her feet up and wrapped herself in the blanket up to her neck at the other end of the sofa, listening to the notes chasing one another, remembering… Harold had played rarely and clumsily, quickly getting angry when it didn’t work out and putting the guitar aside for days on end. He had been actually very romantic, artistic, even whimsical—for a whooper. That is, compared to the wayward humans or stortasses, the eccentric hemulens or fillyjonks, or even this strange vagabond here, Harold had been a gloomy, dull, silent sort. But against the backdrop of his even more tedious brothers and cousins, he had stood out, and Lizzie-Beth had agreed to marry him without a second thought. She woke up late. Every side of her ached from lying in an awkward position, and so much time had been lost! Joxter was found in the stable, under the Horsie’s warm flank. This both reassured and slightly annoyed Lizzie-Beth. Shouldn’t a young, unprincipled man be trying to pester a lady? The wind was still whistling through the cracks, and out in the field it would be enough to knock the farmers off their feet. She needed to put on her stockings and her quilted jacket… The woman glanced back at the youth, at his tattered straw hat, at the holes in his clothes—and led him into the house. She mentally apologised to the photograph on the dresser. No, truly, Harold wouldn’t have liked it if his things were eaten by moths for no good purpose. Her husband’s green shirt and trousers hung on Joxter, of course, like on a scarecrow, but tied with a bit of string, they’d do. And the reddish-brown hat sat on his unruly mop of hair as if it were his own. But out in the field, he was probably cold all the same, because he even deigned to help cut the cobs and toss them onto the cart. To warm himself up, one must assume. Lizzie-Beth smirked, and in the evening she allowed him to sleep in the house, on that very sofa. On the condition that he wouldn’t go rummaging through the cupboards and chests! And the simple music really did help shake off the gloom after a whole day of hard work in the field. And when the last of the cobs had migrated from the cart to the barn, Lizzie-Beth decided to fetch some other items buried in the back of a chest without use. A smoking pipe. A bottle of whisky. Chicken in maize flatbreads with various sauces, burning alcohol, lively guitar melodies… It had been a long time since she’d had such fun. Probably never. “If only the guitar could play by itself, and you knew how to dance the polka,” she mused aloud. “Well then, teach me, if you know how,” Joxter grinned slyly, put the instrument aside, and began to hum the last song. He had a wonderful, soft singing voice, and Lizzie-Beth struggled to concentrate on the long-forgotten steps and turns of the dances, but they both quickly found the rhythm. And his hand under her shoulder blade guided her firm and confident, and his other hand held her paw so light, almost ticklish. Lizzie-Beth laughed at the wrong moment. This was surely the whisky’s fault! But Joxter just smiled, and sapphire glints danced in his eyes. “You know what else in this house is going to waste?” Lizzie-Beth shook her head. “You.” And in response to her puzzled look, he clarified: “A beautiful woman, and not at all old.” And he pulled her close, kissed her: touched the tip of her muzzle with his nose, ran it along her whiskers, licked the corner of her mouth, and his hot breath seeped through her fur. That’s how her father used to kiss her mother long ago, Lizzie-Beth remembered, for they were both rats. Harold, being of the whooper kind, had never done it like that; he kissed her in the manner of all flat-faced creatures, and it was never this sweet with him, her knees and tail never trembled… “So soft…” Joxter purred into her ear as they stumbled onto the sofa—hey, weren’t they quite far from it just a moment before? Oh, who cared… The next morning, Lizzie-Beth discovered the meaning of a hangover. And her overstaying guest just kept on snoozing and hadn't even brought her tea in bed. Her mood only improved the following day: the headache and dry mouth were gone, but a certain heaviness remained inside, in her guts. Though she hadn't drunk anything but water and tea. Probably one of the sauces had been too spicy. But when, late at night, she was visited by a sudden, sharp urge to gather all the blankets in the house into a pile and build a nest out of them, it finally dawned on her. Her elder sister had told her about this urge, but Lizzie-Beth herself had never encountered it. She and Harold had had no children. And now this… this trump, in one go (the next day he’d pleaded tiredness and hadn’t touched her since)… Some invisible paw wiped away all the sleep. She jumped out of the lonely bed and, once again wrapped in a blanket and holding the lamp, went to the living room. There was no one on the sofa. Not in the kitchen either. Lizzie-Beth rushed into the yard, towards the stable, but even from the porch she spotted a retreating back with a pack, under a wide-brimmed hat, at the very edge of the lamp's circle of light. "Stop!" she yelled. "I'll shoot!" Her sister had mentioned something about sharp mood swings, but right now Lizzie-Beth had no desire to think clearly. She was furious. Truth be told, to actually shoot, she'd have to go deep into the house for the rifle, and by the door there was only… Joxter froze, turned around, and she used those seconds to put the lamp down on the porch and fumble along the wall behind the door. Aha, there it was. The trump, noticing she didn't have a gun, had already turned to leave and didn't see her rewinding the lasso around her paw on the move. He certainly heard the whistle of the rope in the air, jerked forward, but Lizzie-Beth knew how to lasso even skittish, nervous pronghorns, and she threw with an adjustment for the wind and the quarry's jerk. The loop, knocking off his hat, coiled around his arms; all that was left was to pull the rope towards her to bring him down to the ground and not let him loosen the loop until she got right up close. Then she’d drop her sharp knees onto his back, knock the wind out of him for a moment to throw another coil, to tighten a non-slip knot. "And just where do you think you're going?" she demanded, her voice tight with anger and something else she refused to name. Joxter went limp in the ropes, but answered as if nothing were amiss. "South. I don't fancy winter." "You're going to be a father." The words were flat, an accusation. "Yes," he replied, his tone infuriatingly light, devoid of any surprise or annoyance. "That does happen. Call him Snufkin, okay?" The sheer lack of reaction in his voice—no shock, no regret, nothing—made Lizzie-Beth's anger boil over. It was as if she’d told him it might rain. "I need help!" she snapped, the rope taut in her paws. "I can't raise a child alone—why are you so sure it’ll be a boy? And since you're the father—" "I'm a mumrik, Lizzy," he said, as if explaining something simple to a child. A faint, almost imperceptible smile played on his lips. "Mumriks can only have sons, but never raise them. Mumriks don't stay in one place. And we belong to no one. It's our nature. You can't fight nature." Her grip on the lasso tightened until the fibres dug into her fur. "Well, I'll damned well try!" she hissed, her voice low and fierce with a determination that surprised even her. "I made corn grow in this dust bowl, didn't I? And I’ll make you…" She trailed off, the unspoken stay hanging in the cold air between them. He snorted. And he clearly had no intention of getting up. She had to drag him, heavy as he was, back to the house. Never mind, Lizzie-Beth was strong. And from the porch, she could dash in for the rifle, to give him an incentive to get up and walk into the house himself, and down into the root cellar. Before the hatch closed, he glared up at Lizzie-Beth. His eyes shone with a distinct, icy, malevolent gleam, and sharp fangs flashed in a snarl. She shuddered. Indignation and anger ebbed away, yielding to a clammy fear. It was as if it wasn't a drifter sitting in the cellar, but the whole house had become a mousetrap for her, where she was locked in alone with a wild, predatory beast. She remembered the corpses of the coyote and the prairie chicken with their wrung necks. What a fool she’d been! How could anyone hope to tame such a thing? All night, Lizzie-Beth lay dressed under the blanket, clutching the loaded rifle. Sleep was out of the question. Down in the cellar, the prisoner was scrabbling like a giant mouse. The scraping and rustling sounds seemed to be receding, echoing as if not from the cellar at all, but she didn't dare get up to check on him, to move the heavy chest from the hatch. Only in the morning, when she was tired of being afraid, did she go to Horsie to calm down, to draw some courage. But the stable door was wide open, and no one inside. Faint hoofprints led beyond the fence and away, to the south. He had taken the Horsie! And the mare was no better, she hadn't even whinnied in protest! She too had fallen for that scoundrel's charm! Lizzie-Beth rushed back into the house. Of course, the cellar was empty. Just a hole into the living room, the floorboards split by some thin, blunt instrument and pried out. And it was a good thing it was just floorboards, and not the mistress's throat. Her legs gave way, and she sank onto the clay floor of the cellar. It was all for the best. This was all for the best. The Horsie returned that evening. A bouquet of dried field flowers was threaded through the stirrup loop. Sage, asters, verbena. *** And indeed, a boy. A mumrik, not a rat. Only his eyes were dark brown, like his mother's. Lizzie-Beth wasn't angry anymore and, perhaps, would have kept him, but the truth was she couldn't manage alone. She would indeed have to take him in a basket to her husband's relatives, to lie, timid and stammering, that this little surprise had been left on her doorstep. Yes, complete with a note bearing a strange name. Snufkin And in the years to come, she would visit the relatives on various pretexts—but not too often, so as not to arouse suspicion—and listen intently for the sound of a child's cry or laughter in the house, her eyes searching for a reddish tuft of hair.