Free Grazing The Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones

symmetry. Every time he ran his messages, his wife jabbered at him in gradations of bewildered panic. Every time he called her, her number was busy.
    Now she was at work, where they didn’t allow personal phones on the floor, and he was twenty-four hours out in the boondocks with a two year old in tow. She couldn’t be too badly worried though: he was keeping her well informed.
    He stood and watched the advancing wall, brooding sourly on the amount of work he put into their relationship. He had practically invented everything, all the little rituals of bonding. He wondered, did Izzy feel that she was doing the same: building their life together, brick by sodding brick. Maybe she did. It’s called marriage. It works, more or less.
    The breakdown truck careened to a halt, followed by three motorbikes. Three men got out of the cab. The bikers remained mounted. Johnny still had the phone in his hand. He took a step, casually, and let it drop onto the driver’s seat.
    “What’s the problem, kid?”
    The speaker was tall and basically skinny, but with bull shoulders and heavy arms from some kind of specific training, or maybe manual labour. He was inappropriately dressed: a suit jacket over bib overalls, no shirt. The rest were the same—not exactly ragged, but it was clear they’d left certain standards far behind. They were all of them technically white, a couple dusky; a shade further off the WASP ideal than himself. Every one of them was armed.
    Johnny immediately realised that these people would find an aesthetic impulse hard to understand. It would be as well not to brand himself a city slicker, to whom rainfall is a spectacle.
    “Some kind of breakdown?”
    “I guess so,” said Johnny. “Engine died, no reason why. I was about to look under the hood.”
    “Whaddya use for fuel?” A biker, nursing his mighty steed between his knees, seemed amiably curious.
    “Uh—just about anything.”
    “Well, all we got is just about plain gas.” The bikers laughed, contemptuous of city slicker modernity.
    Ouch. That was a warning. Don’t pretend to be too like them. They’ll always smell you out.
    “Let’s take a look.”
    The man in the suit jacket bent over Johnny’s engine. He took his time, considering there was absolutely nothing wrong. Johnny’s assistance didn’t seem to be required, which was good because he didn’t feel like turning his back, and particularly not like bending over in a peculiarly vulnerable invitation. The other two men from the truck came close. They looked into the back of the car and saw Bella—whose existence had, for the past few minutes, vanished from Johnny’s consciousness. Something, some lax, living system inside him—blood or lymph or nerves—went bone-tight from the crown of his head to his heels.
    “That your kid?”
    “Yes, she’s my kid.”
    “Can you prove you’re the father?”
    This bloodcurdling question did not require an answer. As Johnny mumbled “Why yes, certainly…,” the speaker, a squat youth in baggy cut-offs worn over a stained but gaudy one-piece that surely belonged in another tribal culture altogether, turned away. The guy in the suit jacket slammed the hood down, saying: “Yep. That certainly is a catastrophic breakdown.”
    At the same moment Johnny understood that the truck, which he’d taken to be a mere accidental prop, was here on purpose. A chill and horror of excitement ran through him. He was afraid he was shivering visibly, but in fact he’d have had some excuse, because just then the rain arrived. It fell over the whole scene like a roll of silk tossed down, as purple as it had looked on the horizon: scented and cold and shocking.
    “What’s your name, boy?”
    “Johnny.”
    “What d’you do?”
    “Uh—I’m an engineer.”
    “Looking for work? We could find you some. You need a wife to go with that kid. We got women too.”
    This banter didn’t mean anything. Johnny had discovered that everywhere you go in the boondocks,