Free I Live With You by Carol Emshwiller Page A

copulator for the rest of my life. I can’t think of anything more dishonorable. I should send Hob back to the citadel to report on what’s happened and to get help. If he was found trying to escape, would Una let the women kill him?
    I try to get Hob alone so I can whisper his orders to him. Only when Una goes out to the privy do I get the chance. “Get back to the citadel. Cross the wall tonight. There’s no moon.” I show him my map and where I think there are fewer women. I want to tell him to take care, but we don’t ever say such things.
    In the morning I tell Una to tell my leaders to come in to me. I’m in pain, in a sweat, my beard is itchy. I ask Una to clean me up. She treats me as a mother would. Back when my mother did it, I pulled away. I wouldn’t let her get close to me. I especially wouldn’t let her hug or kiss me. I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted nothing to do with mother things.
    All the boys are looking scruffy. We take pride in our cleanliness, in shaving everyday, in our brush cuts, and our enemy is as spic and span as we are. I hope they don’t launch an offensive today and see us so untidy.
    I’m glad to see Hob isn’t with them.
    I find it hard to rouse myself to my usual humor. I say, “Pillows, nipples,” but I’m too uncomfortable to play at being one of the boys.
    I’d prefer to recuperate some, but the boys are restless already. I can’t be thinking of myself. We’ll storm the wall. I show them the map. I point out the less guarded spots. I grab Una. Both her wrists. “Men, we’ll need a battering ram.”
    Wood isn’t easy to get out here on the valley floor. This is a desert except along the streams, but every village has one tree in the center square that they’ve nurtured along. As here, baby’s graves are always around it. In other villages, most are cottonwood, but this one is oak. It’s so old I wouldn’t be surprised if it hadn’t been here since before the village. I think the village was built up around it later.
    “Chop the tree. Ram the wall.” I tell them. “Go back to the citadel. Don’t wait around for me. Tell the generals never to come here again, neither for boys nor for copulation. Tell them I’m of no use to us anymore.”
    The women won’t be able to shoot at the boys chopping it down. It’s hidden from all parts of the wall.
    When they hear the chopping, the women begin to ululate. Our boys stop chopping, but only for a moment. I hear them begin again with even more vigor.
    Here beside me Una ululates, too. She struggles against me but I hang on.
    “How could you? That’s the tree of dead boys.”
    I let go.
    “All the babies buried there are boys. Some are yours.”
    I can’t let this new knowledge color my thinking. I have to think of the safety of my boys. “Let us go, then.”
    “Tell them to stop.”
    “Would you let us go for the sake of a tree?”
    “We would.”
    I give the order.
    The women move away from a whole section of the wall, they even provide their ladders. I tell the boys to go. There’s no way they could carry me back and no way I could ever climb to the citadel again.
    No sooner are the boys gone, even to the last tootle of the fifes, the last triumphant drum beat…. (We always march home as though victorious whether victorious or not.) Hearing them go, I can’t help but groan, though not from pain this time. No sooner have the mothers come down from the wall, but that I hear, ululating again. Una stamps in to me.
    “What now?”
    “It’s Hob. Your enemy….
Your
enemy has dropped him off at the edge of your foothills.”
    I can see it on her face.
    “He’s dead.”
    “Of course he’s dead. You are all as good as dead.”
    She blames me for Hob. “I blame myself.”
    “I hate you. I hate you all.”
    I don’t believe we’ll be seeing many boys anymore. I would warn us if I was able, I would be the spokesman, though I don’t suppose I’ll ever have the chance.
    “What will the women do with