“You could live forever,” Fo said to the old woman. “Your daughter, too. Ms. Vita could live long enough to run Druont. She got the disposition for it.”
“She ain’t taking my grandkids to outer space.”
Fo and Mog both chucked. They sat at the woman’s feet on her porch where she rocked slowly and steadily in her chair. Fo and Mog had the appearance of healthy and strong young men in her twenties, though they’d both known the old woman since she was a little girl, and they had lived at least three hundred years before she was even born. Fo had the appearance of a light-skinned black man. He was tall and thin, and as he sat, his legs seemed to snake out from his torso and down the top three steps of the porch. He was handsome, full lips and a nose made wide when he flared his nostrils as he laughed. His jaw was soft, but he had a heavy brow that was intimidating when he frowned. Mog was a fair-skinned white man. He was practically the same height as Fo, but stocky with muscle. He had light brown hair and his eyebrows seemed to disappear when he was in the sun a lot.
The two weren’t dirty men, but they were not well groomed. They lived in the woods on Lucille’s property and only rarely slept in her house and used her bathroom, despite her insistence that they make themselves at home inside.
“Are they still coming this weekend?” Mog asked. He puffed at a pipe as they all sat, watching the sunset. “I’m mad we missed her when she was here last week.”
“If y’all wasn’t living in the woods like opossums you would’ve known Vita was here. We was talking for a while, too.”
“Do you really think Kevin is alive?” Fo asked, happy to change the subject. He and Mog lived in the woods because it reminded them of their home on Druont, or the home they made for themselves after they were made in a laboratory as Druinte-Human hybrids and managed to escape into the wilds as younglings. In all the time they’d been on Earth, they chose to live in the wilds that they discovered all over the globe, but they always came back to the Ellerson area because it was their first encounter with Earth, specifically chosen because of its resemblance to the wilds of Druont.
“Why people keep asking me that?” the old woman said with exaggerated exasperation. “All y’all done heard me say my son ain’t dead. I know he ain’t. And I’m gonna be right here when he come home.”
“Mog think he alive, too,” Fo said.
“I’m like Lucy, I never thought he was dead,” Mog said and tipped his head toward Lucille. “But I don’t think he on Earth either. If anybody did see him, it would be Lynnette.”
“That woman is the devil, though,” Fo said and he sounded like a shiver had run through him. “She ain’t come all the way out here just to bring good news. What she want from you, Lucy?”
“She want what everybody want,” the old woman said, “she want to know she ain’t alone in the world. She want to believe that we family after all we been through, like she ain’t snake her way into our lives. I know what she is, what she made herself into, trying to be like y’all, but she still human, just like y’all, and we ain’t that complicated. She want a friend and she want me to think she a good person. I think she care about my children, I know she love Vita, but like you say, she the devil. What it take for the devil to earn forgiveness?”
“We’ve done terrible things to be alive today, Fo,” Mog said, “and we have lived a life in pursuit of forgiveness.”
“You know he telling the truth when he start talking all serious,” the old woman chuckled.
“So, Lynnette is an ally now?” Fo asked.
“If she can bring Kevin home before I die in this rocking chair, I can give her a chance. She ain’t sleeping over or nothing, we ain’t inviting her to no cookouts no time soon, but if she come back and sit on the porch, I’m gone talk to her, ask her what she know.”
“You don’t have to die for a long time,” Fo said. “And you might be able to go to space and find him.”
“What I look like galavanting around space?” the old woman said and she laughed out loud. “I’m glad the world is the way that it is now, humans don’t always have to die if they ain’t ready, but I don’t need four hundred more years. I’m ready to be with my husband, and I’ve done my part. I raised my amazing children and they out there changing the universe. I got grandbabies! Lord, seeing them babies warm me up so much. I’m happy with the life I made and the life I gave to all of them, and I’m ready to go. I just need to talk to Kevin. I have to. He got to hear something from me. And Lynnette showing up here talking about him, is proof to me that he need to hear what I got to say.”
“Oh,” Fo said, nodding his head, “it’s like that? I would ask but you would’ve told me already if you wanted me to know. You want us to find Lynnette, see if we can track Kevin down and bring him here?”
“Ain’t that why y’all came by?” the old woman asked. “Sometime I get things out of order. Yes, please do what you can to bring Kevin back here. I think Lynnette still in Ellerson.”
“Yes ma’am,” Mog said and stood from the porch. He helped Fo up and they waved goodbye as they descended the stairs. The old woman watched the two disappear into the woods.
PRL Serials 