Aborigen

The sun was drifting low, a brilliant slice of orange setting the clouds on fire. Below, as far as she could see, a tranquil ocean of wheat swayed in waves, tracking the warm winds in expanding arcs. Times like this, it looked like the fields were breathing, maybe some thought was being communicated from the farm out to the orchard far off to the right.

Layton stared at the sunset, transfixed by the display. What was it about the atmosphere that had to make something so beautiful, she wondered, and why were humans programmed to see it as beautiful? Regardless, it was difficult to tear her eyes from the visual symphony, drinking it in as it slowly, subtly shifted in shape. She wanted very badly someone to share this with, as though this sunset (like the hundreds before it) was too remarkable to keep to herself. Someone else had to see this, she had to prove to someone else that it existed.

Well, maybe soon she’d have someone. A little red light blinked through the pocket of her sundress.

A yellow sundress, only a little brighter than the wheat fields, short enough to show dirt-scuffed knees, legs running down into huge, clunky, olive green gum boots that would last her most of her life. She twisted the ball of her foot in the dry dirt, watching the mown stalks bend and flatten under her step, the little puffs of dust around the diamond-textured toes. Dry here, but not where she was going: one palm over the device in her pocket, kicking with gentle pulses every three seconds, she turned her head to the irrigation ditch that ran from the farm to the orchard.

Two evenings ago, she set a live trap by the irrigation ditch. It only made sense: everything needed water. Stoke that with candy, or freshen it up with cheese every half-day, and you never knew.

Her heart hammered in her chest as her boots kicked their way indomitably through the dry stalks, down the shadow of a path she made two days ago, but she didn’t run. There was no need to. The trap was good, he’d be there or he wouldn’t, and odds were he would. Layton spread out her arms and let the furry heads of wheat brush under them. She inhaled deeply, smelling the sun-warm grains. Crunch, crunch, one heavy boot after another, closer and closer to the ditch. She spoke aloud to herself, practicing the first lines she’d say, picking at the word choice in her questions. It was important, it would be important, to established the roles right off the bat. She’d only have a couple chances to impress him with the way she wanted to be seen. The rules could come later.

She’d have someone. Layton would have a companion. A pet? A lover? That remained to be seen, but her empty hands would finally close around someone, after all these years.

There was the anodized metal carton, bent without seams to form something like a boxcar but for a mouse. Cheap little job, with grates on either end. The hard part was the spring-release door that wouldn’t cause injury. Everything else, she was able to cobble together in her uncle’s metal shop. He and her father would just as soon have poisoned the place, if they’d thought there was a rat problem, which there wasn’t. They knew that Layton had a soft, warm heart, and if she wanted to take a few minutes out of her days to humanely resolve a pest problem, well, there were worse ways to spend your time.

She saw the sheen of sheet metal through the wheat, a few feet from the burbling irrigation ditch about about a foot deep into the wheat. She paused, listening. The squeak of metal-on-metal, as though something was rattling the grate on one end of the box, maybe, drowned under the susurration of the field’s activity. One step, another step, and she pushed the stalks aside to kneel beside it on one knee. If there was something in there, she gave him a free show up her skirt.

Layton had punched holes in the side of the box, not for ventilation but to cover with metal mesh, to see inside. The box looked empty. She reached into her pocket and shut off the transponder, set to go off when the trap door locked shut. The door was indeed shut, but what the hell.

Holding her breath, she leaned left and leaned right, until she saw him. A little guy, a couple inches tall, messy dark hair and bright eyes. Torn shirt. Oh no, he tore his shirt in the trap. Layton frowned, trying to figure out how that might’ve happened. His face was dirty but likely he wasn’t starving: she came out as soon as the transponder started beeping. She would never have left a potential new friend out here for hours, absolutely not.

He hunkered in the far corner of the box, and her heart broke. He was terrified, and maybe that was reasonable, but he couldn’t know how much she already loved him. He stared at her, alert, waiting for the worst, but it never came. Layton only scooped her dress under herself and made a comfortable spot in the wheat to sit and watch him. She grinned warmly, she hoped. She had no idea how to soften her eyes. But what she didn’t do was loom over him and grab at the cage and start making demands of him.

He froze there for a long time, defensively, but Layton never moved, never swayed an inch. She only lifted her eyebrows once or twice, an unspoken question, then leaned back to give him his space. And so he made the first move, tiny bare feet crossing the metal floor, taking him to one of the little windows. The mesh grayed out his features, but he was there, at least.

She drew a long breath, swallowing her scream of delight. “Do you have a family?” That was supposed to be the fourth or fifth question, but honestly, seeing him there just chased all sense of orderliness out of her mind. Within the cage, through the mesh, she could make out his little head turning back and forth. Angry eyes, a pout. Still not sure.

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

If Layton could have stepped out of her own body to confront herself, she would have lashed out with a viper-quick slap across her cheeks. Way to reveal your hand, girl.

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t retreat. The edge in his glare softened, likely out of confusion, but he didn’t pull back. He only looked up, way up at her, weighing things in his head maybe.

She could feel him. She could feel his thoughts, like puppies in a cardboard box. She could feel the shift in his heart, as though the sun had reversed course and shot a warm beam where they sat. He was small and weak, thin like a grasshopper, but she didn’t overpower his prison and clutch him in her fists. She only asked him a personal question, personal about her.

Layton let that sit there for a while, then lifted up her left hand. His tiny eyes glinted at it, but she made no sudden movements. He watched her as she reached down for one end of the cage. It lay laterally on the ground before her, one grate pointing to the right and the door emptying to the left. He wouldn’t be trapped, when she pinched the bracing rods of the door and squeaked it open.  She leaned back, holding her breath, and quietly placed her hand, palm up, on the ground before her. That was all. No more words, just a choice.

His shape disappeared from one mesh window, moved against the next window and left again. Tiny fingers wrapped around the edge of the cage (Layton had thoughtfully folded the metal over, no sharp edges for her new friend), a thin leg in ratty denim poked out, and then came his dark-haired head. A couple streaks of dirt on his cheek. He estimated where to place his bare feet in the soil, among the snapped stalks, then glanced up at her again.

He was fully out of the cage. He could’ve sprinted off like a dormouse, easily, instantly lost in the wheat. She wouldn’t have chased him, either, not even called after him. Just let him go, chalked it up to a loss, and hoped that putting the cage somewhere else would attract someone he hadn’t had the time to tell his story to.

It was a long moment, sitting there. Behind her head the first stars peeked through the cornflower edges of night. Layton didn’t move, only gave him a choice.

Each weightless, soft footstep upon her fingers made her want to shriek.

---

He had a space of his own. Layton had spent weeks building it, cutting and gluing furniture from matchboxes and cotton wadding. Each piece, the chair and table, the bed with its blankets, even a dresser, were all made by her hands. She didn’t make his house: some family down the road had set out a small, cheap dollhouse at the end of their driveway, and it was 45 minutes round-trip but she brought it home, washed it out, checked it for bugs, and began to decorate it. It didn’t crack open down the middle like a nice Victorian jobber: the heavy plastic roof had a latch, you accessed the interior that way, if you couldn’t use the front door. But Layton would not do this, not when he was in it. That was his space, his privacy. She’d stock it with furniture when he wasn’t around, but his place was his. It had to be.

Once she realized how big he actually was, of course, she had to start over on some of the pieces, but she didn’t mind. He sat on a wooden sewing spool, watching her fingers bend and tear and press until stout paper adhered in place. She sized them against him, and he posed against her crafts, getting the length of the bed right, building a chair that wouldn’t cut the circulation in his knees.

He went inside. He’d yanked the injection-molded white plastic door hard to open it (she’d fix that later), looked back at her, and slipped into his little home. She hoped he’d think of it as his home.

Patience, Layton. She watched his shape block out some of the windows as he moved from room to room. There was a cookie waiting for him to find. There was a two-liter bottlecap for him to relieve himself in, pinches of tissue for him to use, a shot glass from Cody, Wyoming, full of water for whatever he needed. She didn’t ask what he needed, and she didn’t stare too long. It truly had to be his place, if this was going to work.

Her father didn’t notice when she diced up a variety of meats and veggies as small as she could manage; if he did, he didn’t feel it bore scrutiny. Ever since his daughter came back from college, she’d brought home all these weird ideas that felt like they came from another universe. But he loved her, and sometimes that means leaving a weird little thing alone, was how he saw it.

Layton worked all day in the nearest town, just an office job nobody wanted. The car her father gifted her with for college, she’d kept it running all this time. Each night, she left the little mounds of food by her little guy’s door, and he left the little white bottlecap with dust-like waste out for a quick rinse. She would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking, whether he was planning his escape or just lapsing into a death-stare before giving up the ghost, like a firefly in a jar.

One night, not long since she met him, she stood before the bookcase in her nightgown. She liked nightgowns, she liked wooden sewing spools, she liked durable wooden boxes with printed labels of produce inked right on them, a hundred years old. The rural life suited her, and now she had this. She stood by the bookshelf, by his shelf, peering into the house more than she’d done this week. The urge was driving her crazy, he couldn’t have any idea how hard she was fighting it right now.

She didn’t unlatch the roof. She didn’t grab the house and shake him out, demanding gratitude and service. She only laid the back of her hand on the bookshelf, not far from his door.

She waited. She cast her eyes down and controlled her breathing, box-breathing they called it, and she only let her hand rest on the shelf. Occasionally one of her fingertips twitched, she couldn’t help that.

On one side of the house were tall, beaten-up hardcover children’s books with leering fairies and animals partially clad in human clothing. On the other side were several text books her college bookstore didn’t want back. The rest was a property between books, all for the house. She assumed he got out and walked during the day, when he wasn’t around. Setting up a camera to watch him was out of the question. The trust had to be absolute, nothing could be forced.

She only stood there, breathing, eyes averted, leaving her open palm on the bookshelf. Ten-thirty wound up to eleven, down to eleven-thirty as she only stood there. At one point, of course, she wondered whether he was actually in there. He could’ve fled, or he could simply be asleep. She hadn’t checked and there was no way to know.

Except just before midnight, there was the soft click of plastic-on-plastic when he shouldered his front door open. Now he didn’t wear the shirt, only the jeans, stitched together well with dental floss from a scrap of denim nobody else wanted.

His eyes were no less intense since the first day. The shock down her spine was just as electric, when he tiptoed over like a whisper of smoke, knelt on the padding of the base joints of her index and middle fingers, and curled up in the center of her palm in feline style.

Layton stared at him, terrified to move. Even a wrong breath could shatter the spell. She stared down at the little man, weightless but so very warm in her palm. The slight shadow of his spine, in the ambient glow of the lamp on her nightstand. His ribs almost imperceptibly expanding as he slept.

She stayed there, watching him, feeling him, until the thinnest line of light blue spread across the horizon outside her window. Her eyes were dry, her shoulder cramped, but this was his choice. It had to be.