Daryl Gregory: The Devil's Alphabet

It was true they were ignorant. They didn’t know that the baby she was carrying was actually two girls. They didn’t know that betas didn’t need anyone else to make a baby, that fetuses simply arrived, like new symptoms. The scientists wouldn’t figure that out for a couple years after Pax left town.

But Pax knew one thing, even then. Jo was right. He was a coward.

Pax walked back toward the house, turned, and looked up at the branch, the rope. “You don’t think she did this to herself,” he said.

After a moment, Deke said, “No.”

“Then who?”

Deke shook his head. “Nobody knows. Maybe it was outsiders. People from Lambert.” He didn’t sound like he believed it. The riots were over ten years ago.

“Outsiders who knew her well enough to hate her specifically?” Pax asked.

“They don’t have to know us to hate us. They just have to look at us.”

“What about Tommy?”

Deke looked back at him, frowning. “What about him?”

“What is he? Rhonda said he was a husband, but not a husband. Were they married?”

“They had an arrangement. For the kids.” He breathed out. “It’s a beta thing.”

“Did they get along?”

“Tommy didn’t live with them anymore,” Deke said. He rose up to full height. “Not since Jo moved out here.” He looked down and saw Paxton’s look. “There was some trouble with the Co-op,” he said. “With the other betas. You know how Jo could be. She was stubborn. So she left or they kicked her out, depending who you ask. Tommy stayed with the Co-op, and Jo moved here with the girls.”

“Are they investigating him?”

“Jesus, Pax, they’re not investigating anybody that I know of. Listen, I’m going to a meeting with the sheriff and the DA on Monday. If you’re still here then I’ll be sure to tell you what they say.”

Ah. There it was. Deke finally taking a poke at him.

“I can’t stay,” Pax said. “I’ve got to be back to work by Monday. In fact, I should probably drive back tonight.”

“Tonight.”

“Tomorrow morning at the latest. If you could drive me back to my car-”

“You’re not going to go see your dad?”

Pax opened his mouth, closed it. “Listen, my dad doesn’t want to see me.”

“You need to see him,” Deke said. “He’s not doing so well. The charlies-the old men anyway-things get worse as they get older.”

He had no clue what Deke was talking about. There weren’t any old charlie men when Pax left town; his father was one of the oldest who came through TDS-C alive, and he’d only been fifty.

Deke said, “I don’t think your dad’s leaving the house much.”

“Deke, he hasn’t called me or wrote me in twelve years.” Pax didn’t mention that he hadn’t tried either.

Deke put his big hand on Paxton’s shoulder. “Then you’re about due.”

They left Jo Lynn’s house, heading west until the road angled north and crossed the creek at the single-lane bridge. Some of the graffiti on the cement walls had been there since Pax was a kid. Deke turned onto Piney Road. They’d almost made a complete circle since leaving the church.

The house where Paxton grew up was a little three-bedroom ranch surrounded by trees. Paxton’s father’s car, a Ford Crown Victoria that was fifteen years old before Pax even left town, was parked in front in its usual spot. It looked like it hadn’t moved in years. The tires looked low, and leaves were shellacked to the body and windows by sap and dirt.

Deke pulled up behind the Crown Vic and stopped, shut off the engine.

Pax made no move to get out. His ears felt warm in the sudden lack of wind.

The picture window drapes were closed. The white siding had grayed, begun to flake. The screen door hung open, but the wooden front door was closed. The grass on the lawn stood a foot tall, the tips sprouting seed.

Deke said, “Some ladies from the church bring food by, but he throws them out before they can do anything else for him.”

“Really?” Pax couldn’t picture his father being rude to church folk, especially women.

“And Rhonda’s got some chub boys who come by every once in awhile. Mow the lawn, check in on him.”

“Chub boys?”

“Charlies. ‘Chub’ is just…” He shrugged.

“I get it,” Pax said. And thought, I bet you don’t call them that to their faces. “Anyway, it looks like they haven’t been around for a while.”

Pax climbed out of the Jeep. He stood there, holding on to the door, looking at the house.

“You want me to go in with you?” Deke said.

“No, no, you don’t have to do that.”

Pax walked across the lawn to the front porch and knocked. He was eye level with the small, diamond-shaped window set in the door. After a minute he cupped his eyes and peered through the smudged glass. He could make out a patch of familiar wall, then nothing but shadows. He tried the doorknob-locked-and knocked again, louder.

Something glinted in the grass beside the cement step. He crouched to pick it up: a syringe and needle, the tube empty. What the hell? He stood to show it to Deke. The man’s head stuck up over the Jeep’s roll bars like a giraffe’s. He squinted to see what it was, then shrugged.

Pax had no idea what that shrug meant. He set the syringe on the porch where he could find it later.

He walked around the corner of the house, stepping carefully through the high grass, wary of hidden needles. The side window for his parents’ bedroom was filled by a silent air conditioner; the glazed bathroom window next to it was closed and dark.

Behind the house, the backyard had shrunk from the advancement of the brush line. The rusting frame of his old swing set leaned out of the shrubs. Farther back, the low, cinderblock well house-made obsolete by the sewer and water lines added in the ’80s-sat almost buried in the undergrowth like a Civil War fortification.

The door to the back porch was unlocked. Pax went through it, to the kitchen door. He knocked once and turned the knob. The door swung open with a squeak.

“Hello!” he called. “It’s me, Dad.” The air smelled sickly sweet and fungal, a jungle smell. “It’s Paxton,” he added stupidly. From somewhere in the house came the sound of a TV.

The kitchen was as he remembered it, though dirtier than his mother would ever have allowed. Dirtier even than his father had kept it when it was just him and Paxton living here during the year of the quarantine. The garbage can overflowed with paper and scraps. Dishes sat in the sink. In the center of the breakfast table was a white ceramic casserole dish, the aluminum foil peeled back. From somewhere near the front of the house came the low murmur of television voices.

Pax made his way through the dining room, dusty and preserved as an unvisited exhibit, to the living room, where he found his father.

The Reverend Harlan Martin had a firm idea of what a pastor should look like, and it began with the hair. Each morning after his shower, he’d carefully comb back the wet strands from his forehead and spray everything down with his wife’s Alberto VO 5, clouding the bathroom. Sunday required extra coats, enough hairspray to preserve his appearance through a fire-and-brimstone sermon, a potluck dinner, a visitation or two, and an evening service. His Sunday hair was as shiny and durable as a Greek helmet.

As a child, Pax loved when the hair was down, as when his father slept late and came to the breakfast table unshowered, pushing the long bangs out of his face like a disheveled Elvis. Like now.

His father sat sprawled on the couch, head back and mouth open, eyes closed. His dark hair, longer than Pax had ever seen it, hung along the sides of his wide face to his jaw.

“Dad?” Pax said. The atmosphere in the room was hot and unbearably humid, despite the ceiling fan turning above, the air heavy with a strange odor like rotting fruit. He took a step forward. “Dad?”