Johnny had waited that morning for his mother to leave, before he entered the shack, thoroughly washed, and smelling of soda and lake. Pearly wasn't there, he didn't know where she'd gone.
He had slept the whole morning and was now teaching Tuto how to work the steel spring rattraps without getting a finger caught, and he had brought along Marlon and Damian, two ferrets, so they and Tuto could get used to each other. During this he told Tuto, speaking Spanish, about Faye.
Tuto was surprised, but not shocked.
"She's the skinny blonde one, right?" Tuto asked. Johnny said, yes, with the green eyes. Tuto said she had seemed nice, and Pearly seemed to like her a lot, but he hadn't really gotten to know her, since she hadn't spoken much whenever they met. "She always seemed to be thinking, and seemed to be worried about something. Now I know what about..." Tuto said with his nice smile, while the two ferrets ran small circles around him, "...about you. Those two friends of hers, now they talked, man. There's this one girl, small, with freckles, and these huge eyes swimming behind thick glasses... she looks a bit like a squirrel, a very happy squirrel, she's very nice. And there's this other girl, who I met only once, 'Claudette' is her name. Her black hair hangs down her face, like this, like two curtains, and she looks at the world through these curtains like it's all one big show. I don't think she takes anything very seriously. I've been thinking about this girl, hoping I run into her again. Maybe if your girl is crazy enough to fall for a stinking lemurian, maybe her friend can fall for a stinking Mexican, right? I didn't even know this was a thing, humans and lemurians falling for each other."
"It's not a thing, normally," said Johnny, "not naturally, that is. But don't forget I'm half human, so maybe it's my human half that's mad about this girl.
"In the past humans and lemurians were regularly coupled, but they were forced. These were both slaves, Africans and lemurians, and they were made to breed halflings, like me, who would also live their life as slaves. It was not unlike the breeding of new types of dog. I recently learned this still happens, when I was trying to get back home, traveling through Kansas.
"In these cases there's no love involved, obviously, or lust. Lemurian women have been raped by humans through the ages, but I believe that's more to do with power, with dominating the other, than with actual lust. But who knows? And if you believe the stories humans tell, the other way round also happens: lemurians are said to rape human women, human daughters. Part of the reason half-breeds like me are permitted in human society, as long as we behave properly, is that we can't procreate. Because of that, we're not expected to have any feelings of love or lust, whatsoever. We're like the eunuchs in human history, who watched over harems." Johnny didn't know the Spanish word for eunuch, so he had to explain the concept to Tuto, who had never heard of it, was appalled, and sure hoped there wasn't a Spanish word for it.
Johnny wondered why he was telling Tuto about Faye, while he hadn't even told Pearly. Did he want to get advice on the matter from a human point of view? He shouldn't expect this from Tuto, he knew, who was hardly a well-adjusted member of human society. In his own way, Tuto was as much an outcast as Johnny...
...Tuto's mother died giving birth to him. His young father left him with a large neighboring family, and promised to pay them each month for raising the child. He never did pay, and disappeared, never to be heard from again.
The boy grew up with the many children of this family, and when times got hard and food got scarce, all children went hungry. For some biological reason, Tuto's body could handle being sustained on very little nourishment much better than his many foster siblings. He grew taller and seemed healthier, which didn't make him very popular with his hard-working foster parents. The very superstitious community of Mexicans in the shantytown would call him a 'cuckoo's child' or believe him to be devil's brood, and they would always suspect him of trickery and deviousness, no matter how friendly he acted...
