Page 34 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Nothing. Whatever it was, it was born dead. Not even a twitch or gurgle to show for it.
Jess and Tammy didn’t react like anything about it was strange, but. That can’t be right. He casts around mentally for an explanation and can only come up with shock, the same way he did onAspen and Birdie’s porch. It’s his go-to. Shock can explain just about anything.
“Um,” Jess says, shoulders hunched as Stagger steps out of the shed with a shovel. Crane lowers the bag and loops his fingers through the rabbit-ear handles to hold it normally. “The woods? Away from the house?”
It’s late afternoon, balmy with a pleasant breeze smelling like tall grass, the faint scent of the honeysuckle crawling up the rotting back steps. Still holding the bag, because it’s hard to forget about the bag, Crane peels a powder-yellow flower from the vine, plucks out the stamen, and places the single bead of nectar on his tongue. Ever since he was a kid, he’s had the intense urge to eat the flower whole. He’d never done it, but he got the sense that the petals would crunch and squeak between his teeth like fetal cartilage.
Then, realizing he’s been asked a question, he nods. Away from the house. Don’t need anybody asking questions, not with a murder weapon buried in the garden.
Jess says, looking at the bag, “Poor thing.”
He hears Hannah crying inside, Tammy talking her through passing the placenta. Time to go.
Stagger sticks close as a burr. Even with the gaiter pulled back over his nose, the entirety of his body keeps shifting and readjusting under the skin. His eyes dart between Crane, the bag, Jess, then back again. Crane tries to get his attention, but it won’t stay in one place.
Well. They can’t be doing anything wrong. If they weren’t supposed to be doing this, he’s pretty sure Stagger would’ve stopped them.
Again, Crane one-handed signs,What?
“Little one,”he says again.
Jess cringes involuntarily at the sound of his worm-chatter voice. “Oh my god.”
Unfortunately, it’s a nice enough afternoon that people are out. Crane hasn’t made a habit of getting to know Washville’s few remaining inhabitants. Why would he. The people here are good people, trying to eke out a few more mortgage payments or insurance copays, and Crane is—well, Crane.
Not that it’s hard to recognize people. With so few residents, you learn faces eventually. An old man with nine fingers who comes by the gas station every now and again and pays with change; a group of kids from the next town over buying beer every weekend because they’ve been banned from the local spots. There’s a lady at the Dollar General who started smiling at Crane last year and never stopped.
He keeps his distance, though. He’s mentally incapable of maintaining two halfway-decent relationships at a time.
A ways down Victory Lane, a woman on her porch raises a hand in greeting.
“Jessie girl,” she calls, rough from what must be decades of smoking. “Them boys ain’t giving you trouble, are they?”
If it were up to Crane, he’d keep going, but Jess stops, so he stops too—on the side of the road, because there’re no sidewalks up here—and Jess breaks into the biggest, most sunbeam-bright smile.
“Hi, Miss Addie!” she says. “No, ma’am, not at all. These are my coworkers. We were just helping Miss Tammy around the house.”
Miss Addie pulls down her bifocals to inspect Crane and Stagger, thankfully with enough distance between them that Crane can pull at his shirt and Stagger can duck his head and they won’t looktoowrong.
She seems to at least recognize Crane, because she says, “When did you start working at the gas station?”
“Few months ago. Sean wasn’t too happy when I got the job, so Miss Tammy’s letting me stay with her is all.”
Miss Addie hums. “I ain’t seen him around.”
“Huh. Not missing much.”
Miss Addie says, “You look better for it, sugar, that’s all I’ll say,” and tells the lot of them to get on with their errands then. Jess laughs. It’s bright and genuine and sweet.
Sophie smiled too, sure, but she hated to show her teeth. Her favorite pictures of herself caught only a suggestion of her; the back of her head, face obscured by long hair, turned from the camera like a ghost.
Five minutes past the tree line into the woods, Jess stops in front of a tree, looks down into the gap in the roots of an old oak, and says, “Here.”
Stagger jams the shovel into the dirt and begins to dig.
Crane, then, is left holding the bag.
He’s sat himself in the underbrush because he’s tired and his feet hurt. Everything is a goddamn pregnancy symptom these days. Don’t get him started on how often he has to piss now, the uterus pushing itself right into his bladder. It doesn’t feel right to put the bag on the ground, so it’s in his lap.
