Free Cottonwood by R. Lee Smith

he said. There was Levin, who came flying out of his house at her knock with a nail-studded club in one hand and who kept it raised over her head when he wasn’t beating it against his door in a shouting rage. They swore at her. They shoved her. They slammed doors in her face and knocked the briefcase out of her hands. The day dragged on hour by hour, and not only did it not get easier, it got worse. Five o’clock could not come fast enough, but before it did, there was Good Samaritan.
    It was his real name, or at least, it was really the name someone had assigned him. She guessed that with so many aliens to name, it was either get creative or start repeating them, but Good Samaritan? That wasn’t a name, it was a joke. Even before she knew just how meanly unapt it was, she knew it was a joke.
    He lived in a pretty nice double-wide trailer, one raised up on struts, with a somewhat crudely-constructed and sagging front porch that was nevertheless better than the one on the house where she’d lived with Kate. He answered her knock in a slouching stagger, one hand raised to shade his bloodshot eyes, so obviously hung-over that her first words on seeing him were not “Hello,” but a meek and rapid, “I can come back another day, Mr. Samaritan.”
    “Fuck that, you’re here now,” he’d answered, and then looked her up and down. “What the fuck for?”
    She’d explained about the census in some detail (his habit of just standing there, blearily staring at her, was a deeply unnerving one and she tended to babble when she got nervous, and to stutter, which only made the babbling last longer), and it had actually started out okay, with him grunting yes or no to her questions, but right in the middle of the medical history, he’d stepped down out of his house, moved her aside, walked out to the edge of his porch, and pissed an amazing spray of pungent urine all over the alley behind him. Not a stream, but a spray, as of a hose with a thumb over the nozzle. And as he’d tied his wraparound skirt back on, he’d interrupted her stammering efforts to continue the questionnaire with, “Are you asking everyone all these pointless questions or just me?”
    “Everyone. Well, I only have about two hundred clients, but—”
    “Clients?” He uttered the same shrill, buzzing sound as Byrnes had done. It looked less like laughter the more she saw it. “Clients,” he said again, and suddenly reached out and squeezed one of her breasts in his hard, plated hand. “A woman,” he muttered, ignoring her flinching cry. “Why would they send a woman in here?”
    She had to do something, say something, take control. Sarah took a steadying breath, tugged her blouse straight, and said, “Mr. Samaritan, I don’t think the fact that I’m a woman has anything to do with anything,” in her most no-nonsense tone.
    “Not anything, huh?” And he’d looked at her with disturbing intensity, the way no supposedly unisexual worker drone should look at a human female. “Well, if you’re so sure you’re a waste of fucking space, why don’t I help you out by popping that pink head off your scrawny little neck for you?”
    “I could c-come back anuh-uh-ther day, Mr. Samaritan.”
    “And I believe I told you to fuck that, you’re here now. I’m just confused.” He looked her up and down, slowly, clicking to himself. “So, if I’m your client, what does that make you?”
    “Your caseworker.”
    He did not attempt to repeat the words, but he did nod (the gesture startled her a little) and rub at the soft patch of his throat. “Everyone gets one?”
    “Yes. It’s part of Cottonwood’s social reform—”
    “Are you all women?”
    “Uh, no.”
    “Just you?”
    “I’m…not really sure how many female caseworkers are in the program, Mr. Samaritan. There were at least a dozen at my orientation seminar, though.”
    “No shit.” He looked out over the causeway, the small appendages on his abdomen flexing outward so that the