Skipping School

SKIPPING SCHOOL
(First published in Aoife's Kiss, Online, June 2007)
by Guy Stewart

 

Jonterrius “little dog crap” had been waiting in the rain for three hours. He wanted cash to get a meal that didn’t come out of a dumpster or with a sermon. He didn’t want Joewillis to catch and kill him. He wanted to get out from under that pain. Wanted to sit and read like when he was little.

He wanted to be gone.

On the rain slick sidewalks, second shifters were going to work and first shifters were coming home. They hurried past him, their black, blue and red umbrellas fountains overhead mixed with plastic bags spread like circus tarps.  School kids in yellow slickers shed water as they passed him, blinking owlishly in the downpour. If anyone noticed him – and he knew most didn’t – all they’d see was some sopping wet street kid hunched over begging for food or money or whatever.

He watched as they scurried between red and white, candy cane striped poles on the corner of Marquette and Sixth Street. The Light Rail train crackled along its tracks but didn’t slow down as the scurriers vanished suddenly. When the train was gone, Jonterrius saw them safe and sound and scurrying on their way across the street.

He sat on a square of gray plastic. His butt was dry, but cold water soaked through the shins of his thin black pants. His feet were numb, the dirty green All Stars drenched and one big brown toe sticking through a hole. His black, tight curled African hair had been hacked close to his head with a carefully sharpened tin knife three days ago. He carried the same knife taped to his shin under the pant leg. His faded red jacket was water proof, but the rain still leaked through small rips. Across the street, an old man lay on the sidewalk, curled around a bottle wrapped in wet brown paper.

A tiny white Minnesota girl dressed in a clean, green skirt with a white top covered by a transparent slicker caught his eye. On her way to school, dark red pack slung on her back, cellphone strapped to her wrist, she almost looked like the other school kids. But from his seat, Jonterrius saw skin stretched too tight over cheekbones. Dull, dark-ringed, hungry eyes followed flattened, tarnished gold curls as she swung her head, looking for a purse or satchel to snatch. A moment later, like a sparrow hawk, her eyes locked on a heavy woman carrying a large bag.

Jonterrius stood up, taking his plastic with him, tucked it into his pants and strode to the intersection. He hunched trying to disappear, but eyes noticed him: an old legless woman in a wheelchair wearing a thick, blue coat, a man in a dark suit with sunglasses, two little boys holding hands all went suddenly alert. He knew what he looked like: young black man in raggedy pants, filthy jacket, soaking wet and moving like he was up to no good. He scared them all. Joewillis had loved it. Jonterrius – “little dog crap” – and Johnmichal hated it. Hate or love, outsiders would judge him filled with rage, boiling over with violent intent, stereotyped.

He was neither angry nor had he planned violence.

He tracked the girl as she moved in for the snatch. He stepped between the candy cane poles, skipping over the street and came out the other side. The skipgate effect seemed to make everyone freeze for an instant around him as his atoms were transported instantly across the street to the other skipgate. His foot came down just as the girl snatched the bag.

She was a pro, hugging the bag to her chest and dropping down to run like a three-legged dog between the legs of the crowd.

The woman screamed even as the man in the suit, a woman in stilettos with a blue umbrella and the drunk drew stasers. The girl saw and her free arm with the cellphone on it came up to her chest. She dropped the snatch, keying the ‘phone. She bolted for the skipgate as the stasers discharged and the drunk reached her. She vanished as she passed between the candy striped poles as did the drunk, followed by the woman in stilettos.

Three plainclothes police officers on a snatch? “What’re the bluuz up to?” Jonterrius muttered as the man and woman reappeared across the street. He frowned.

The girl did not reappear.

They scrambled around, looking for her, jumping back and forth across the street, then around the intersection. Finally, they split up, each one sprinting for a different intersection, all of them talking on tracys.

A voice at his elbow rasped, “We better get out of here. They’re mad and might come back to sweep all of us out of spite.”

Jonterrius jumped sideways, cussing. The legless woman in the wheelchair sat next to him, watching the running bluuz. He could see her smirk as she said, “Sorry I scared you, son.”

“Nothin’ scares me.” Jonterrius sprinted for the skipgate. On the other side, he turned right down the block, skipped the intersection, cut left and ran two blocks. He kept on until he was home. Panting, he stood on the edge of the failed Uptown Renewal Project. He spun around to see if anyone was watching, then slid down the packed earth sides through scraggly dried weeds and paper and other garbage until he stopped level with a concrete pipe sticking out of the ground horizontally. The good end was buried and the broken end dangled chunks of concrete laced with rebar, screened by scrubby elm saplings. He slithered into his pipe past a half-rotted cardboard box and tangled plastic wrap. The short round space wasn’t big enough for a grown man and too high up the face of the sloping hole for a little one alone. It hid him from Joewillis and any stray kiddies. It was far from homeless shelters and soup kitchens and it was in a bad neighborhood – even among bad neighborhoods. Bluuz didn’t come snooping here – the screaming and sporadic gunfire kept them away. He’d woven a screen of garbage to keep out prying eyes, snow, rain and the worst of the wind.

Settled down, the only sound tonight was him scratching an old pencil across a paper grocery bag. Squinting light filtered through heavy rainclouds and the privacy screen of garbage, he read the lead-conserving code he used, “Bluuz r ftr skpsntchrs. Skpsntchrs r stpd bt sm kn jmp whrevr they wnt nd ignr th risk. I cd tch m, do it rght bt they wnt lstn T me. I CAN tch lik Dad! I kn! Wht wll mk m lstn?” Jonterrius lowered the bag. Dad would have been horrified to read the mostly vowel-free shorthand. He’d been an English teacher at Minneapolis 3M High School. Terrorists had killed him when they took the school hostage and mostly nobody paid any attention. 3M used it as an excuse to pull out of education altogether. Mom was bluuz and tried to keep Joewillis, Jonterrius and Johnmichal together, but she died in the line and after tries at foster and family, the three of them were on the street a year later.

Jonterrius looked at his big toe and wiggled it then wrote, “Hmlss kdz gt stpdr n stpdr cz they gt no spnsrs to gt thm n2 corpschlz.” He sighed, rolled the journal around the pencil and slid back to stash it at the back of the pipe near the ceiling. He tried snoozing under his marysquilt but that didn’t work so he stowed it again, slid out of the pipe and scrambled back up to the street. By now it was getting dark under heavy clouds. Colder than before, his breath came in white puffs. He had business to attend to.

 

Twenty minutes later, he took the plastic square from his pants and sat down.

Traffic tonight was light at Marquette and South Sixth Street, but it was steady. Too early for second shift to get off, second shift partners – poorer than firsts who got prime pay and thirds who got hardship pay for working all night – held the worst of the three legislated shifts, hurried on their way. Third shift shoppers were dollarstore, always hauling bags of cheap stuff. Full price mallrats shopped first shift at the best places. Second shifters hunted bargain, but for a homeless kid, even bargain hunters were better than nothing.

There were kids mixed with the crowd, mostly with moms or dads, but there were enough loners for skipsnatchers to blend in. Jonterrius rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. His stomach growled and he had to piss. He fidgeted then froze when he saw the little Asian boy across the street. Nice jacket, nice pants, but shoe soles flopping, eyes shifting as they searched for a target. Jonterrius scowled. This one looked scared. Desperate. No obvious cellphone, Jonterrius saw him spot a target and close in.

On his feet, tucking the square in his pants, Jonterrius focused on the kid. He had a good-bad feeling about this one. He stepped through the ‘gate and popped out just as the kid grabbed the briefcase of a man in a rainbow suit. Jonterrius clicked his tongue. Kid must be starving to try a snatch like that. The kid dropped to one hand, clutching the briefcase to his chest, but it must have been heavier than normal because he fumbled it and rainbow suit almost grabbed him. Jonterrius figured out which ‘gate the kid was headed for and skipped to intercept him when the bluuz moved in.

A pair dropped their undercover by pulled stasers and caught the kid in the crossfire while everyone else cleared the sidewalk. Every muscle in the kid contracted at the same time and he went down, back arched like Charles Bell’s “Tetanus”. Jonterrius had seen the painting at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and he’d had a headache for the rest of the day. Now he felt his insides clench in sympathy. After a moment of spasms, the boy lay limp, the briefcase forgotten. The bluuz carried him to the curb to a waiting squad car and then they were gone.

The crowd started moving again as Jonterrius and the others skipped through the gate, feet shuffling, elbow-to-elbow with the shift shoppers and the increasing traffic as some started skipping to make third shift jobs early.  He reached his usual wall then slid down to a narrow alley where he pissed. He came back out and nearly tripped over the legless woman in the wheelchair. “The hell!” he exclaimed. She looked up at him, grinned then wheeled away to a spot further down the glass wall. She pulled a gold dish from alongside her thigh and set it on her lap. She winked at him and then got to work begging.

Jonterrius pulled out his gray square and sat, sliding down the wall and wrapping his arms around bony knees. His stomach threatened to digest itself, rumbling. He watched the crowd swell as early second shifters got off and early third shifters headed leisurely to work. The flickering of people skipping increased to a steady strobe. Jonterrius had always wanted to do what the golden-haired girl had pulled off; he’d been about to do what the stasered boy had tried and failed. But Joewillis ran skipsnatching rings and sellinboot services. If Jonterrius started to make a name for himself, Joewillis would find him, hunt him down and kill him. But what if Jonterrius could go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted to? He could disappear from Joewillis’ radar forever. Where had the golden-haired girl gone?

Skipgates worked by quantum displacement through non-geometric space in multiple dimensions. When you went through a skipgate, your atoms passed through a dimension other than the four you were used to – he’d heard that it was a dimension with different…dimensions than this one where fifty meters here was only a millimeter there. The gates only worked over short distances maxing out at fifteen meters. Anything beyond that for the number of skipgates in Minneapolis was supposed to require energy in amounts most nuclear reactors couldn’t produce in a whole day – just to operate the ‘gates.

He’d seen his first real ‘gate five years ago. Now they were everywhere and people used them like they’d used crossing lights before. Of course, with the technology, came skipsnatchers followed by wild claims that there was technology that would let you go farther. The whispered caveat was that while you could go far, no one knew how to predict where a person came out.

Another skipsnatcher tried to grab a bag but was stasered by another undercover bluuz. A voice at his elbow said, “Two in one night. New record I think.”

Jonterrius jumped to his feet and moved away from wheelchair woman. How’d she get so close without him noticing?

“Keep acting like that and they’ll staser you for drunk and disorderly.”

“I ain’t drunk!”

“I know you’re not, but don’t seem like they be needin’ excuses tonight.” She started rolling and he picked up his plastic and started in the other direction. She called out, “Come with me, son. I can use a hand.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I might have something you want.”

“How you know what I want?”

She shrugged, turned and started rolling herself down the sidewalk. The crowd flowed around her, not stopping, not looking, not seeing. He clicked his tongue, rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, waiting for her to turn around and beg him. She was almost to the candy cane skipgate when he sprinted to her wheelchair and followed her for a few steps. She stopped suddenly and without turning around said, “Make yourself useful or I scream the bluuz down on you.”

He grunted and took the handles. They skipped and she said, “Left.” He pushed that direction and continued to follow her directions until she said, “I figured you’d be the one.”

“What?”

“People say you wanna be a teacher like your dad.”

 “How do you know my dad?” Jonterrius cried, yanking her backwards and spinning her around.

She was smiling slightly as she faced him and replied, “I was a teacher, too.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“I ain’t got no friends.”

“‘I don’t have any friends’. Your dad would have thought your grammar atrocious.”

“How do you…” he stopped sullenly then flung, “You bluuz?”

She snorted and said, “Long, long ago, before I lost these,” she gestured to the space below the hem of her coat. She paused. “Since then, a teacher. Son, I have a proposal for you.”

Jonterrius’ gut spasmed, the words loaded for a boy who’d spent five years sellinboot and the last twelve months trying to make it work any other way. It’s why Joewillis hated his guts, wanted to kill him – lost income is all he cared about. But if that was all wheelchair woman was after...he spun and sprinted as fast as he could and was back to South Sixth and Marquette before he’d consciously thought to return. He needed a minute to think so he pulled out his plastic and sat down, wrapping his arms around his knees and putting his head down as he glanced at the corner clock. Janitors, couriers, security, couple of doctors moved in a loose crowd, heads down, skipping without seeing. He kept his head down and disappeared.

When he looked up, the crowd had changed to third shift families and drifters. Still, no one saw him. Skipsnatchers didn’t either. That’s why he saw the white kid, real young, cellphone on his wrist about to make a major mistake. Stomach cramping powerful good-bad feeling surging through him, Jonterrius was on his feet and across the street and didn’t use the ‘gate. As he watched, the ‘snatcher moved like a ferret. The target looked at Jonterrius, startled, opened his mouth as the ‘snatcher bumped him and lifted his wallet. Jonterrius dodged the grab and followed the white boy to the ‘gate, grabbing his jacket sleeve just before the kid finished tapping on his cellphone. He cried, “I gotta deal for ya! I’m a teacher, show youse how to read and write...”

The ‘snatcher punched him, grazing his shoulder then they were through the ‘gate as the undercover bluuz from the next intersection finally got there.

 

When everything reappeared around them, they weren’t far from Jonterrius’ cement pipe home.

Then he saw the boy and rolled backwards, eyes wide as the kid’s head flopped soundlessly sideways. The wallet slid from lifeless fingers. The rest of the arm and the boy’s torso were embedded in an armored electrical box on the corner of Sixteenth Avenue and Fremont, directly under the streetlight.

Jonterrius’ hand had been a hairsbreadth from the box and he shook it as the fingers tingled like they were paralyzed. He’d heard stories of people who’d had hand, fingers or a toe materialize inside a structure. It happened even with regular skipgates. They said it didn’t hurt at all – not until they had to cut it off so you could move again.

“Sad, very sad,” said a voice down the sidewalk. The legless woman rolled into the pool of light spilling down around them.

“How’d you get here?” Jonterrius exclaimed, scrambling to his feet.

“I followed you,” she said so matter-of-factly it made his insides clench with tetanus strength.

“You can’t do that!”

She shrugged. “I did.”

“How?”

She smiled then said softly, “I have a key and I know how to use it – at least to get to some places. It was just a matter of flipping through my sites before I found you.”

Jonterrius felt a blinding rage – legacy of his mother she’d passed to two of her boys. The one who didn’t have it was dead. He shouted, “Who are you?”

“I’ll answer that in a bit. Once you answer my question: I need you to help me do a job. Will you?” She lifted her chin to the kid in the box. There was no blood. No gore. A living body merged with cold metal or plastic or stone gave no fantasy cyborg of movie proportions – just cold dead meat, metal, plastic and stone. She said, “They need to learn, but I can’t reach them. You can.”

Jonterrius blinked slowly and said, “That’s how Johnmichal died, ‘cept he was runnin’ drugs for Joewillis.” Like a bad LSD flashback, he went helplessly to that night, Joewillis screaming on the cell and by the time Jonterrius got there. In a cold rage, Joewillis beat him bloody, screaming “little dog crap”! in front of their oldest brother’s slack face poking wide-eyed from a brick wall, hands limp and one foot in a holey tennis flat on the ground.

Joewillis put Jonterrius on the street, threatened to kill “little dog crap” if he so much as touched a drug but they needed to live somehow and sellinboot was the only other way. Lasted five years until Jonterrius ran away. Joewillis had been lookin’ for him ever since. Wheelchair woman was once bluuz; Joewillis was skipsnatcher, murderer, pimp big time; Jonterrius the link between them. He could see clearly what she wanted in return for the key. It had nothing to do with helping him realize his dream and everything to do with revenge.

He ran, skipping all the way home and not looking at the armored electrical box under the streetlight. By the time he got there, morning was coming. It was late April still, the worst of winter past. Jonterrius unfolded the marysquilt, propped his feet level with his eyes across the concrete pipe. Took out the grocery bag and his pencil. Light still slanted down enough for him to write, “Fr sec, thot w/c wmn wz rel. myb hlp me w/ tchn. bt dz she jst wnt 2 ctch JW? Stl bluuz? Wht wll mk skpsntchrs lrn? Myb w/c wmn hz key? Tht th way? Trd key fr lrn?” He laid his head back against cold concrete. Gray plastic under his butt kept it from freezing. Marysquilt kept the worst from his skinny limbs. He rolled the journal up with the pencil, put it away and went to sleep.

 

Jonterrius got up in the dark and figured he was hungry enough to endure a sermon today. Soup kitchen at Mary’s Place was his usual best shot. He folded the marysquilt and tucked it away, scattered some garbage and dropped out of the pipe, pissing downhill. Shinnying up the slope, he reached the sidewalk as the streetlight turned off for the day.

He was glad. He had no desire to see the kid again. He headed to the nearest skipgate and made for Seventh and Hennepin today. It was an easier place to watch people from and no one was expecting him there, but he needed change today and it was the best for that. He found a wall across from a parking ramp, took out his square of plastic, sat, curling around himself, thinking invisible thoughts. The usual crowd skipped in and out, third shift well-begun and first shifters starting to trickle out on their way. Most kids hung near City Center, lots of food, arcades and specialty shops. He’d made Joewillis a living there for five years.

A deep voice near his head said, “Lookin’ good, little dog crap.” Jonterrius started, looking up into the scarred face of his brother. “Hear you’re hanging with a new crowd and someone’s lookin’ for me.”

“I’m not…”

“Another lie and I cut,” he said a real knife in his hand on Jonterrius’ neck. “What, you think wheelchair woman wants anything to do with you little dog crap? She wants me.” He paused, pressing the knife against Jonterrius’s neck harder. “I want what she got. I want the key.”

“I don’t have it yet.”

“When you see wheelchair woman, tell her I’ll meet her. Warehouse District, industrial skipgate thirty-three in two nights.”

Jonterrius hummed from the back of his throat. Moving his head would have killed him. The knife disappeared and Joewillis jerked him to his feet, grabbing the plastic square. “Don’t deserve this, little dog crap. After this, I’ll kill you.”

“Hey!” He made a grab for the square. Joewillis cuffed him then shoved him into the wall and sprinted for the skipgate half a block away. Ears ringing, Jonterrius tried to stand, follow his brother, get the square back. Nauseated, he fell back.

Joewillis reached the gate as six bluuz stepped out, shoulder to shoulder. Joewillis bellowed obscenities, stabbing the bluuz that threw herself into his path. He staggered and the others needed no more excuse to draw their stasers, firing lightning. Regular people screamed, falling over each other to get out of the way. After the first tetanus convulsion, Joewillis fell to the ground but bluuz didn’t stop firing until the target – Joewillis – was fried. Jonterrius turned away, closed his eyes and threw up.

Wheelchair woman said near his head, “You don’t have to worry any more, son.”

Jonterrius looked up at her. It was dark now. Green, yellow, orange, blue signs painted her coat black and the metal chair danced with firefly reflections. “You used me to bait Joewillis. Bluuzwork. Mom woulda been proud if it wasn’t Joewillis dead there.”

She grunted then said, “Your momma would have cheered.”

He swallowed bile because there wasn’t anything else to puke up and whispered, “You’re the same as Joewillis. All you want is what you want.”

She grunted again then jerked her chin. “We have to go or we’ll be arrested as material witnesses.”

“Why do you care, you’re bluuz?”

“Not any more. I’m just Jane Citizen doing what your momma would have wanted. We need to go.” She spun and started rolling away from the bluuz activity.

He lurched to his feet, grabbed the handles and spun her around, shouting, “How would you know what mamma wanted?”

“How do you think I lost these?” she gestured to the space below the hem of her coat.

“How’m I supposed to know?”

“I was there the night your momma died, Jonterrius. Same night I lost my legs.”

“You let her die?” His fingers found the tin knife on his shin and he pulled it free, pressing it to her throat.

Wheelchair woman snorted then said, her voice fearless, “I was busy bleeding to death when she took a hit. Six other bluuz died with her – gang ambush. She died fast. I’m not done dying yet.”

Jonterrius leaned forward, pressing his cheek to hers but not moving the knife. He whispered, “I think you been playing the game a long, long time, wheelchair woman. Maybe even before momma died.”

“No!” she gasped, “We were friends.”

“I don’t remember you,” Jonterrius said.

“You were three. 3M corporate elementary. I talked to Joewillis and Johnmichal all the time.” She drew a long breath but it was no longer steady. She trembled as she rasped, “I loved all of you.”

“Then why’d you let Joewillis die?”

“He died the day your momma died. He was nine. He dropped from school and grew murder in the place of his heart. He was growing murder even now. Your murder. He wanted everything bluuz to die and he was almost ready to make it happen.” She paused. “Everyone he touched grew evil – except you and Johnmichal.”

Jonterrius took deep breaths, head still spinning from Joewillis slamming him against the wall. He stood up, saying, “You really got a key?”

“Yes.”

“You really gonna give it to the kids?”

“Ain’t gonna give nothin’,” she said then spun her chair around. “They have to earn it.”

“I can teach them.”

She snorted. “You’re no more a teacher than I am a track star.”

“I can do it.”

“What would you teach them? You have no classroom, no books…”

“I can teach ‘em to read and write and use public databases. I can teach ‘em to survive without skipsnatching or sellinboot. I can teach ‘em to think, learn, maybe get a real job. They’s jobs for people.”

“Why didn’t you get one of them if there’s so many?”

“Joewillis woulda found out and I couldn’t deal with him.” He jerked his chin back to the intersection. “He ain’t here no more.”

“You tried to get into the police academy and they turned you down. How can you help other kids get jobs?”

He felt his face heat up in embarrassment but he said, “They need a real incentive.” Wheelchair woman’s brows went up and Jonterrius couldn’t stop the smirk before he said, “Yeah, I know big words, too. I can even spell it if you’d like.”

“How do you propose to use the key?”

“They go to school, we give them a skipgate.”

“That’s like giving a shotgun to a baby! They’ll take the code and never come back.”

Jonterrius scowled and started pushing wheelchair woman toward the next skipgate. “Nah, it’s perfect – we don’t give ‘em enough rope to hang themselves. One gate key? Bluuz’ll stake before you can count fifteen. They’ll need at least five keys if they gonna skipsnatch. But once they start learning some of ‘em will addict – keep on and on and on.” He stopped suddenly and wheelchair woman rocked forward then looked over her shoulder as Jonterrius said, “You can sponsor them to corpschools!”

“Me?” She barked a laugh, deep and harsh but dripping glad like he’d never heard. She shook her head, “Just like your momma and dad – big dreams, lotsa guts.” She paused then continued, “But it might work. She spun slowly around, held out a pale, veined, faintly trembling hand. “Partners, then?”

Jonterrius stepped back then slowly lifted his hand to take hers. He squeezed and she squeezed back with surprising strength. An LSD flash to his hand in momma’s as she hurried through a skipgate. He grunted. She smirked and said, “Just ‘cause I look old don’t mean I can’t beat you bloody silly.”

“Skipping school,” he said suddenly. Eyebrows up, bit of a nod. “What are you, wheelchair woman?”

“Just that in public.” Without releasing her hand, Jonterrius nodded. She lowered her voice, “Between us, Rowan Martin.” He lifted his chin and let go.

“Thanks, but not what I asked. What are you, Rowan Martin?”

“Bluuz,” Jonterrius nodded, waiting. She finally added, “Lotsa things. What are you?”

Jonterrius pursed his lips then said, “Jonterrius Green, teacher. Just like my dad.” He paused, thinking then added, “That’s the only thing gonna take me from all of this – if I take others with me.”

Wheelchair woman smiled slowly and said, “No poop, Poirot.”

Jonterrius frowned, “What?”

“Name of a great fictional detective, Hercule Poirot. I’ll get you a download of one of his stories. Take your mind off your worries for a while.”

He went around to the wheelchair handles, took them, turned her around and started pushing her toward the skipgate. “I think I can live with that.”

Wheelchair woman took out her cell, punched a long series of keys. When they rolled between the candy cane striped poles, they didn’t appear across the street.

A PIG TALE -- June 2000 ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT

 ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT - June 2000

A PIG TALE

by Guy Stewart

            Damp, cool air carried the words clearly.

            Rachel Sheffield said, “We’re splitting, Dad. I know you don’t like it, but…” The words seemed to hang between them as they tramped along the back road. Their heavy boots plowed through ankle-deep layers of tawny oak, golden poplar and yellow elm leaves.

            “Tried working it out with…um…Ray?” her dad asked. The plaid ears of his blaze orange hunting cap were turned up, showing wisps of salt-and-pepper hair tousled beneath it. His tan hunting jacket was stained, torn, mended, and worn thin by the years. Yet it covered his long, rounded frame as it had when they’d hunted squirrel, deer, and pheasant when she was a teenager.

            She didn’t say anything for a long time. Her hand went to the braid at the back of her head. She played with it for a moment, thinking that it was like the pigtails she’d worn as a child. Had she really tried to work things out with Ray? After he found out about her and her boss, Glenn Furman, he’d barely said a word. He’d spent every free moment with Jessica and Scott. He was civil when the kids were around, but he’d started coming to bed long after she was asleep. He was gone when she got up. She’d factored the equation pretty quickly and kept out of his way.

            Then he’d moved out with the kids and she’d gotten the separation papers.

            That was Thursday. She’d walked into Furman’s office and told him she’d be taking a leave of absence. He’d been furious. They were in the midst of clinical trials of a broad-spectrum memory reconstruction virus that she’d been instrumental in developing. The test results looked nothing short of miraculous. There was a medical ethics battle brewing regarding the use of the virus on Alzheimer’s patients.

            Fanatics were not limited this time to the Religious Right. The Liberal Left was weighing in with some hefty legal fist shaking, too. Things were about to blow.

            But she didn’t care. Didn’t care about Ray. Didn’t care about the kids. Didn’t care about her job. Didn’t care about Furman any more, either. He’d been a diversion. Nothing more. An attempt to stave off a haunting feeling of worthlessness. She’d walked out of the lab, gotten into her car and driven to Kenyon, Minnesota, in seven hours.

            She’d caught the scent long before she reached the hog farm. Most people hated it. So did Ray, but he’d learned to suffer in silence. But to Rachel, it evoked only one memory: safe haven.

            The back door had been unlocked when she pulled into the barnyard late at night. Ruthie remembered her and the car and didn’t bark. She’d crashed in the Twin’s old room and waked to the smell of coffee, fried eggs, bacon, sausage links, and peanut butter toast. She’d also waked to the sound of squealing pigs in the out buildings.

            “I think I did, Dad,” she replied.

            He stopped and turned to her, his shotgun angled down, draped casually over one arm. He fixed her with a long gaze.

            She returned it at first, then her vision blurred and she looked away.

            Her dad grunted, then started walking again. She wiped the pair of tears from her face and shuffled after him, fiddled with the pigtail again.

            They moved up a hill, then stopped on the crest that overlooked the back forty. A narrow stream – only full of water after a hard rain – wound its way through the fields. The back road dipped down into the small valley it had created. Beyond, crowning a hill in the distance, was a grove of cherry trees.

            She stopped beside him, looking out over the fields. The last harvest had been taken in, and the cornfields left stubbly for winter. Alternating with the stubbled fields were fields of alfalfa, still faintly green even though it was November. “When you weren’t tellin’ the truth, Rachel, you always had a guilt glint in your eyes. Like the time you took the car into town and went to that college-boy party.”

            Rachel hung her head. He’d known all these years. Yet the next day she’d lied bald-faced to him that they’d had an all-girl slumber party at Shelly’s. He took her at her word and never even implied that he knew he’d been lied to.

            “I see the guilt-glint then, and I seen it a second ago.” He turned to face her. “You really try everything?”

            This time she lifted her head to look him in the eye and said, “I haven’t tried it all, Dad.” She let her eyes wander back to the cherry grove. “The fact is that I don’t know what I want. I thought I’d be happy. I got the job I’d always dreamed of, respect in my field, a husband I once loved, and a pair of wonderful kids. I thought this would be it.” She blew softly, a cloud of white condensing before her. “But it’s not.”

            Her dad did the same thing. Exactly. He said, “Happy. Funny word that. Happy seems to come and go. Peaceful seems a more important thing to look for in life.”

            Stung, she snapped, “You don’t know what I’ve been through lately.”

            He looked at her, nodded and said, “You don’t know what I been through lately, either.”

            She scowled, curious despite the sting. Curiosity won. Always had. She asked, “What?”

            He started walking again. Stopped for a moment at the stream, looked both ways, then stepped gingerly over it and went up the other side. She followed. He stopped again and turned to look back. Rachel did, too.

            They couldn’t see the house from here, but the vent boxes on the tops of the barns seemed to float over seven acres of oak forest behind the house. Farm sounds drifted back to them: someone running a tractor, the conveyer belt going up into the barn loft rattling and squeaking away, hog noises. The safe smell of pig manure drifted on the chill autumn wind.

            “Gonna lose the farm.”

            “What?” Rachel exhaled.

            “The farm. Repossessed. Can’t sell enough pork at a good enough price to keep up on the bills. PorkCo down the road’s offered to buy me out. After this winter, I’ll sell out the hogs, and your mom and I’ll move into town.”

            “But, Dad, why?” Her voice pitched high – the way she’d sounded at her wheedling best in eighth grade.

            “Your Mom’s not getting any younger. Me neither. Little farms can’t produce at the big corp‘s level. We can’t sell our pork that cheap and still pay the bills. So now we can’t sell our pork at all – and the bank’s after all us small-timers.”

            “Can’t you do something about it? Organize? Something?”

            Her dad smiled. “It’s been coming a long time, Baby Doll.” He shook his head sadly. “We expected it. We’re gettin’ on. I forget things sometimes. Things I should remember. Your mom and I figured we’d retire on our own. As it is, they’re forcing us out.”

            “But how, Dad?”

            He made a motion with his head to the east. “You ever seen PorkCo’s operation? They have a hundred and twenty-eight barns. Four hundred hogs in each barn. You’re the doctor, you do the math. The larger the population, the more economical it is to deal with. PorkCo can feed, water, and heat more hogs than I can. But I still need to feed, water and heat ‘em. Same equipment, same supplier, same cost – and less than half the profit when all’s said and done. The meat plant don’t want to deal with us small-timers anymore, either. So we don’t have anywhere to sell locally…” He spun away and stomped off in disgust.

            Rachel stood looking at the barn vents. She turned and followed Dad. By the time we caught up with him, he was nearly to the cherry grove. When she pulled alongside of him, he said, “Besides, none of the kids want the farm, really.” He looked up suddenly. The hope in his eyes made her wince. “Do you?”

            He stopped, this time at the edge of the cherry grove.

            Memories rode from a mothballed past, things she hadn’t remembered for years. Adventures with her three brothers and her sister in the grove, the barns, the oak forest. Tree houses, treasure hunts, hide-and-seek, rope swings, and wild runs through moonlit forests. Hansi hit by a car, litters of kittens, piglets, a visceral understanding of Charlotte’s Web, and a crush on a handsome new veterinarian when she was fourteen.

            So much of her had remained here. The best parts of her. Then she shook her head and said, I’m not a hog farmer, Dad. And I can’t imagine Jessica and Scotty wanting to move out here…” Then she remembered that, as of yesterday, she was legally separated. “It would never work. I’ve got my job and now I don’t have much of a family left – except for the one I started with.”

            Dad grunted, then put his big, heavy arm around her shoulder. They stood that way for a while, watching as a pair of crows flapped heavily into the air.

            “Gonna shoot ‘em?” Rachel asked after a moment.

            “Naw. Don’t shoot much of anything anymore. Gettin’ old, I guess. Don’t have much fight left in me.” After another moment, he dropped his arms and turned back toward the main buildings. “Should be gettin’ back.”

            She nodded as they set off together.

            They were at the foot of the hill again when he said, “Staying long?”

            Rachel shrugged they stepped across the dry streambed. She stopped, studying the hard, dry rivulets. Stones lay exposed by the water that had run along here days, weeks, or months ago. She looked up at Dad. “I don’t know. I took a leave of absence when Rau had the papers served to me.”

            He nodded, then looked off into the distance. She looked down at her feet again. With a long sigh, she set off. Dad walked alongside her. Gray clouds overhead made for a silvery, featureless ceiling, promising neither rain nor fair weather.

            When they got into the house, it was time for the evening chores. The silvery sky had taken on a deeper, softer shade of charcoal.

            Mom was standing by the stove, peeling potatoes and dropping them into a pot of boiling water after deftly slicing them into quarters. She looked at the two of them, deep lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes. “Just like when you were a kid,” she said softly. “I suppose you’ll be going out to help Dad with chores?”

            Rachel looked at Dad, then at Mom, shook her head. “I think I’ll stay in here, if you don’t mind. I brought some journals I want to look at – never any time at work.” Both of them nodded, and Dad went out into the mudroom to pull on his work clothes. Mom went on making dinner as Rachel headed for the family room.

            The glass doors of the fireplace were closed and there was a chill in the room. Rachel called, “Mind if I build a fire, Mom?”

            Her mother cam to the door, wiping her hands on a blue gingham dishtowel, a delighted smile on her face. “That would be wonderful! We haven’t had a fire in there since – oh, I don’t even remember. But the things are all there, dear. Go right ahead. Dinner will be in about an hour and a half. After Dad gets done with chores and cleaned up.”

            Rachel nodded and knelt by the fireplace and busied herself. Dozens of memories began to tumble again as the stream of happy past thawed. Christmases, Easters, Thanksgivings (she’d missed the last two), baptisms, funerals, confirmations, and weddings past bounced by her, each one glittering like wet corundum. On her fourth, a flame flickered and ate away at the dry tinder. She fed it until it was a snapping fire, almost forgetting to check that the damper was open. She rested back on her heels and closed the glass doors part way. An old, orange plaid chair sat nearby. She climbed into it and curled her feet hp, watching the flames eat away at the wood. Orange and white and blue. She smiled a little for the first time in weeks, the heat of the fire warming her knees and hands, adding a smoky, piney odor to the air already smelling of roast pork.

            Abruptly the kitchen door was thrown open.

            “Pat! Pat! It’s Chuck!”

            Rachel was on her feet and in the kitchen before the stranger had turned and run from the house.

            Mom threw her a terrified look.

            “I’ll go,” Rachel said. She shoved her feet into the boots still sitting by the door and ran out into the cold night air. It was dark. The yard light was on and the few windows in the big, main barn glowed yellow.

            Her mother was right behind her.

            The stranger – a hired hand, Rachel thought – was standing at the open barn door. “Hurry!” he shouted.

            They pushed past him and a second hired hand – a blond teenage boy. Dad lay on the floor, pale, eyes closed.

            “Heart attack?” Rachel asked as she knelt beside him.

            “We called 911. He must have just done it when we found him. He was kicking and swinging something terrible.”

            Rachel looked up at the first man. “What do you mean he was ‘kicking and swinging’?”

            He glanced at Mom, his eyes round. Mom huddled closer to Rachel, grabbing the material of the flannel work shirt she’d been wearing all day.

            Horrible realization swept like spring runoff over Rachel. “You’re telling me he tried to hang himself?”

            The teenager looked directly at Rachel, blue eyes pleading. He nodded.

            Mom gave a faint, moaning sigh and sank to the floor. The first man caught her as a wailing siren Dopplered into the barnyard. He gestured with his head and said, “Get ‘em in here.” The teenager waved the paramedics in and a moment later, there was no way to talk as the room was filled with people.

            Seven hours later, Rachel sat beside Dad. He was awake, staring up at the ceiling from his hospital bed. Eyes blinking slowly. Rhythmically.

            The bed was new. It monitored his vital signs without cuffs or pads or wires. All information was displayed on a screen at the floor’s monitor station.

            Mom was propped up in an easy chair, the footrest up, her head lolling to one side, mouth slightly open, eyes closed, sleeping. Rachel had asked for a sedative for her about an hour ago. Rachel wanted to talk. To Dad.

            “When were you and Mom going to have to leave the farm?”

            He didn’t move for a long time. Finally, he licked his lips and whispered, “Monday.”

            Rachel hung her head. “I thought you meant that you’d finish out the season, sell off the spring farrow and closed down after that.”

            He moved his head slightly from side-to-side, winced. “First of December,” he whispered. There was an angry red rope burn around his neck.

            She cursed silently, long, inwardly, deeply, viciously at…nothing. Dad had never approved of coarse language. He and Mom and been churchgoers all their lives. Once she left home for college, she’d never set foot in a church to worship again. It hadn’t been her and Ray’s style. They respected Mom and Dad’s beliefs without sharing them. Bitter regret threatened to sweep her away in a wash of frigid memories. She focused on Now.

            To let loose with a string of invective would probably wake Mom and upset Dad. So Rachel mentally flayed officials, the economy, the bank executives and the PorkCo magnates who had made Dad’s cry for help so harsh. She patted his upper arm in the non-silence of the hospital room.

            “Don’t hate me,” he whispered.

            She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Hate you for what? Trying to escape and intolerable situation you’re powerless to change? For trying to maintain a lifestyle you, and generations before you created close to the land you love?” Silently she added, For acting as keepers of one of the best parts of my life? “I don’t hate you, Dad. I…” Pressure built behind her heart. Feeling penned carefully inside pressed against the walls of the pen like hogs downwind of the special hot corn mash she and her parents and brothers and sister had doled on Thanksgiving day every year for as many years as she could remember.

            They broke free.

            Rachel wept.

            It was a long time before she lifted her head. Mom was asleep. Dad’s eyes were closed. For one horrible moment, she thought he’d died. Disoriented, she looked around frantically, her eyes finally coming to the monitor. Vital signs still normal. Breathing rhythmic and slow. Heart rate steady.

            Three o’clock in the morning. She stood on weak legs. Pins and needles surged from hips to toes as circulation came back and crimped nerves straightened.  Sleeping while leaning head-first against a hospital bed rail, lack of sleep the night before, rich food and her father’s attempted suicide had given her a sour mouth, queasy stomach, gritty, painful eyes and sense of temporal disorientation.

            She tottered from the room leaning heavily on the doorframe, then the wall as she stepped into the carefully neutral colors of the hall carpet and walls.

            Kenyon’s hospital was joined to a nursing home and served the town as well as the county and a half-dozen surrounding communities. It was warm – homey in an odd way that country hospitals have. Nothing like their big city counterparts. She wandered to the front desk, smiling blearily at the nurse working at the monitor station. He smiled back and said, “Can I help you find anything?”

            “No. I’m here with my dad and my mom,” she said. Her normal, professional tone had disappeared some time between her arrival and weeping. The nurse nodded and went back to his work.

            She made her way to the lobby. Overstuffed chairs were arranged in psychologically sensitive small groups. The wallscreen television was off. A massive, transparent column holding a marine aquarium grew in the center of the lobby. She went to a chair and dropped into it, facing the tank. Columns of tiny bubbles dribbled upward from the bottom. Brilliantly colored reef fish darted, swirled, hovered and back-finned over achingly white sand and muted orange, red, cream and yellow coral. Anemones and urchins fluttered and trundled as if blown by a slow-motion wind.

            She drifted off to sleep a moment later, dreams of dancing sea stars studded with silvery bacteriophage T4s – heads shaped like large, connectable baby toys, a collar, tail sheath, base plate and tail fibers fluttering around her, puncturing sea stars and making them shrivel and turn to sparkling glitter as they broke up. Then she was sitting in the farrowing shed on a bale of hay, piglets nursing, the warm, moist air close and comfortable. She plucked a lemon-colored sea star from the air and tossed it to one of the sows. She swallowed it and then suddenly someone was clearing their throat right beside her. She jerked into a sitting position, swaying dizzily.

            “Excuse me, ma’am?”

            Rachel looked stupidly up at a young man, long hair held back in a plaited braid. “Hmmm?” she managed, her mouth and lips dry.

            “Your mother is awake. She wants you to take her home.”

            Rachel nodded and pulled herself to her feet. The lobby’s clock showed that it was a little after five a.m. Without really looking at him, she rasped at him, “Thanks. I’ll…uh…take her now.” She made it back down the hallway to Dad’s room. Mom was standing, staring at Dad when Rachel walked in.

            “What’s wrong, Mom?”

            Her mom shook her head, then went to the window and pulled up the blinds. It was pitch dark outside. Winter solstice a little over a month away. “He likes looking out the window. Likes to be outside. Hates being cooped up.”

            Rachel nodded, then went to her mom and gently took her arm. All the lights in the room but a softly golden lamp set above Dad’s head were out. Its light made his face seem tan. Healthy. A shadow covered the noose burn. “Let’s go, Mom.”

            They drove home through the steady darkness, stars shining so brightly they seemed to be holes poled through some heavy fabric, allowing the light from a white-hot fire behind it to shine through. Cold, stubbly fields slicked past silently once they left the bright, reddish lights of town behind. Rachel closed her eyes hard, then opened them, trying to squeeze out the grit. By the time they reached the farm, she was shaking from fatigue.

            Mom stopped in the middle of the gravel turn around as they made their way from the garage to the house. “How are you, Rachel?”

            She briefly considered lying, then thought better of it. “I came out here to get away, Mom. Ray and I have separated. He’s got the kids right now. I left Chicago to…” abruptly she didn’t know why she’d left the city behind. Not to bury herself – the City had more to bury herself than the little town of Kenyon. She stammered, “I…I don’t know why I left. I don’t know for sure why I came here. And now, all this…”

            Her mother nodded, slipped her arms through Rachel’s and started moving again. Together they walked over frozen, crunching gravel. Hog song drifted from the nearby barns and the well pump came on suddenly, humming in the not-silent night. Overhead, the yard light buzzed, busily exciting mercury vapor to emit photons.

            “It’s why you came back, Dear,” Mom said.

            “What? To see Dad try and kill himself? To spend half the night in the hospital?”

            “No, to be here. Where you started.”

            “Where you’re going to end, Mom! Where Dad almost did end!” she shouted. Anger surged up past her normally rigid defenses. At work, she ignored the feelings that didn’t clearly move her closer to her goals. Her feelings for Glenn Furman had greased the wheels for special requests, made her projects magically rise to the top of the head and kept her ahead of everyone else. The anger faded. “Sorry, Mom. It’s been a long night. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

            They reached the back steps, walked up and through the mudroom, into the dark kitchen. Mom slid off her coat, draped it over the back of a chair. Rachel did the same. Mom said, “Want a cup of cocoa?”

            Rachel hesitated, then shook her head. In the dark family room, she could see the faint red glow of coals in the fireplace. “I’m going to get the fire going again.”

            Mom nodded. “Good night, then, Rach,” she pronounced it “Raych”, like she had all of Rachel’s life. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

            “Night, Mom,” she kissed her, then went into the family room, listening to Mom walk up the creaking steps, then cross the ceiling. Quiet shuffling, then squeaks from the bed as Mom got in. By then, Rachel had the fire blazing. She settled back in the chair, the reading lamp on, a journal in her lap. This one had an article by her and the team at ViroMax. She flipped it open. She flipped open to it, scanned it, smiled. Her work was good. Some were hailing her as the Louis Pasteur of viruses. She and her team – Furman included – had already developed a vaccine that arrested HIV-1 and HIV-2. She’d have had the Nobel last year if Jamal Harris at GeneTech in Atlanta hadn’t KO’s the most common cold virus. Next year, though – Americans were aging and Alzheimer’s was an increasing disturbing problem. ViroMax and others had shown that Alzheimer’s was a complex interaction between genetic factors, certain types of viral infections and memory-related steroids in the brain.

            She scanned other articles, mostly by people she knew personally. One article by Dr. Christine Hester touched the genetic engineering of specific viruses for use in terraforming Venus. Furman had tried to hire Hester. She’d turned him down flat, laughing at his money.

            Rachel started suddenly. When had she started calling him ‘Furman’? His name was Glenn. She looked at the fire and closed the magazine. She stared at the flickering orange, white and blue flames, momentarily frustrated by all that seemed to be happening. But only one thing was important now: Dad and Mom. Together. At the farms she’d been brought to as a newborn; grown up on – she smiled briefly – longed to get away from; returned to.

            It was going to be sold and her parents would move into town. And now with this suicide attempt, someone would suggest that they move into a ‘retirement’ home, and that would kill Dad just as surely as a noose around the neck. Yet what could she do?

            She tapped the Journal of Research Virology in her lap. There were many things she could do. Engineer a virus – perhaps something insidious – and infect PorkCo’s stock with it. Maybe something that needed lots and lots of pig breath to thrive. The is would skip over family farms and only hurt corporate farmers. She scowled and stood up. She put another log on the fire, stopping at the picture window that looked out over the empty fields to the place down the road. She couldn’t see anything this early in the morning. But she knew the Duerkops were down there. Dave, Barb, Nathan, Caleb, Elise. Always had been. Always would be.

            Not.

            Maybe they were just like her father – a family forced out by bigger and bier corporate farms. Maybe they were packing boxes at this very moment, bone-tired from the preparations for the move. Bone-tired, but with nowhere to lay their heads because some massive conglomerate had to make a few more bucks and destroy a little bit more of the competition so they could have a little bit bigger piece of a rapidly shrinking pie…

            Rachel went back to the chair and, closing her eyes, leaned back for a moment, trying to order her chaotic thoughts. She couldn’t change the world. She couldn’t even manage her own. She couldn’t save Dad and she couldn’t save the farm.

            She couldn’t do anything right…

            She woke with a start and the family room was bright with sunlight streaming through the picture window.

            The smell of coffee hung fresh in the cool air. The fire was dead. “Mom?”

            There was no response. She went into the kitchen, wrapping an orange afghan around her shoulders as she walked. There was a small square of paper on the kitchen table. She smiled, remembering the uncounted number of notes left the same way all through her childhood. She read, “Went to Hospital. Nurse said Dad was fine. Come if you want to. Mom.”

            Rachel poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the warmer. Two dirty cups sat in the sink, half-filled with water. One had a spoon in it. She picked it up, rinsed it, and spooned sugar into her own cup, stirring as she walked back to the recliner. She sat again, looking out the window.

            Abruptly, a memory surfaced. Snowmobile rides with Luke Jacob flashed back. She was fifteen and he was an older man. All of sixteen she recalled.

            They’d been racing another boy and girlfriend across the filed. The other boy had lost control of his sled. His girlfriend had been thrown clear, but he’d broken his neck. She and Luke had flipped their sled turning back, but they escaped with nothing but bruises. After the look of stark terror in her parents’ faces when they’d heard the story, she’d been banned from dating Luke for the rest of her natural life and grounded for the rest of the school year. It had taken Mom and Dad years to actually forgive him. She doubted if they’d ever forgotten the incident. She hadn’t.

            She caught her breath. The idea appeared complete, slamming her in the face like the hard, icy furrows had that day racing with Luke. Elegant. Stunningly complete. Simple, in fact, though experimental after a fashion and certainly not the use toward which the research had been intended. But Furman would never know, and she could easily alter a record here and say a few words there to cover any tiny tracks she made.

            She stood and went to the phone after looking up the number for the nearest airport. Once she was finished, she scribbled Mom and note and drove ninety minutes to Rochester. The flight in a twin-engine Baron to Chicago took just over an hour and a half. She slept hard even so. In a taxi, she was at Viromax an hour later. Her clearance got her through security had no problem, even though it was Saturday. In fact, she knew the weekend staff almost as well as she knew the regular crew. They knew her, too. Well enough that the college guy on duty at the check-in desk flirted with her – again.

            But she wasn’t interested in teasing him today. She hurried to her own lab and logged on. After a few moments, she started manipulating the images on the screen. Clearly imaged in her mind was the configuration of the memory reconstruction virus. The results of the initial tests were spectacular, but not everything was neat and clean. It was now clear that success was determined by various factors including the time between onset of symptoms, physical health of the subject – there were even some simulations that indicated that the individuals who were rarely exposed to preservatives or certain kinds of petroleum products, or who had been careful to eat well-balanced meals through their lives stood a better chance of recovering a larger portion of their memories – and current age. The virus ViroMax had designed helped to reconstruct damaged links between memory recall and storage by stimulating growth in the nerve cells.

            When she finally backed away from the screen, she had what she thought she wanted. She typed in a command that would set an automated, elaborately protected lab to manufacturing the viruses. In twenty to forty hours, there would be sufficient  product to conduct thousands of tests. In an hour, there would be enough for her purpose.

           

            The back door was still unlocked when she pulled into the barnyard early Sunday morning. Rachel rolled into bed without a sound, gently setting her shoulder bag on Eric and Ernie’s old desk. She peeled her clothes off and slipped into an old flannel shirt Eric had passed on to her years ago. She fingered it briefly, savoring the smooth, worn material. She lifted it to her face and breathed in. The odor of hay and sweat – a scent so distinct, the recalled abruptly a day he’d worn it. He’d been sixteen, she only twelve. Not long after, she’d asked for it and he’d laughed and given it to her.

            She slipped it over her head, and her mind drifting in memories, she fell asleep.

            Rachel woke to a silent house. The only smell was from decades of early morning pots of coffee and fried, roasted or baked pork. Cold light edged the green plaid curtains that were closed over the bedroom window. Rachel stood and picked up the shoulder bag, carrying it into the family room. The fire was long dead, and Mom had drawn the shade over the picture window while she was gone. She tugged the drawstring down and the shade rolled up. Thick gray clouds scudded before a brisk wind. Snowflakes bled sideways across the window. Sometimes she could see all the way down to the Duerkops. Other times, she couldn’t even see the edge of the field.

            She went to the kitchen. A note sat on the table. She picked it up. It read, “Dad comes home today. Between 12-3. Come if you want.”

            She took a deep breath, then started setting up the equipment.

            When they showed up at quarter past one, she was ready. She ran out to meet them as Mom pulled up in the old station wagon.

            She opened Dad’s door. He smiled faintly up at her, then grunted as he got out of the car. She took him by the elbow, and said, “I made us some lunch.”

            He grunted again and said, “It’ll be a damn sight better than that hospital garbage they served me.”

            “Chuck! Watch your language,” Mom snapped.

            He grunted again, but said, “Sorry, Hon. It was bad, though.”

            She nodded, conceding the point as they went into the mudroom and then into kitchen.

            The aroma of bread-and-butter pork roast wrapped around them, all the more rich for the cold, snowy air outside. Dad shot her a glance, then smiled. Genuinely this time. “My favorite,” he said.

            Mom smiled, too when she saw that Rachel had set the dining room table rather than the kitchen table. The old china, painted with faded roses and stems, set off the faintly tarnished silver and crystal goblets she’d arranged over a maroon, tie-dyed tablecloth she’d sent them from Liberia, long ago.

            Mom said, “I’ll just get…”

            “It’s all right, Mom. Just have a seat and I’ll get the sparkling juice.” Rachel ushered them into the dining room.

            Mom giggled and said, “I feel like I’m in a restaurant.”

            Rachel smiled as she retrieved the sparkling grape juice from the mudroom. It was cold enough to frost slightly in the damp heat of the kitchen. She set it out while her parents washed up and them pulled up to the table.

            Rachel pulled the roast from the oven, deftly lifting it from the roaster and on to the china serving platter. Fragrant steam rose from the tender meat. She spooned the soft potatoes and carrots and onions from the juices in the roaster and arranged them neatly around the cut. She placed it in the open spot in the center of the table and returned to the kitchen for a loaf of bread from the town bakery. She sat down.

            “I’d like to say the grace this afternoon, if you don’t mind,” Rachel said.

            Her parents looked at her, then at each other – then at her again. She laughed. “Don’t be so surprised! Maybe I’m coming back to my roots now that I’m getting old and gray.”

            Dad nodded and bowed his head and squeezed her hand. Mom did the same. Rachel said, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest. Thank you, Lord, for bringing Dad safely home – and for bringing me back home, too. Bless us now as we eat and fellowship together, and use this food to strengthen us to serve you better. Amen.”

            They repeated her, “amen”, then squeezed her hands tightly.

            They ate and drank and chatted about nothing in particular. Rachel watched them closely. Toward the end of their meal, they both began to lapse into longer and longer periods of silence. Their words seemed to slur together as they appeared to lose their train of thought. Finally, both sat silent, staring vacantly into space.

            Rachel sagged back in her chair. For a moment, she could feel her head throbbing. Though she’d thought this through a dozen times, she still had doubts about it. Ethical qualms. Moral instability.

            She took a sheet of paper from her back pocket. She looked at Dad. Degraded brain cells were experiencing rapid growth, reconnecting areas that had long been disconnected. He would be remembering incidents, scents, sounds, sights, tastes and touches he didn’t even know he’d forgotten.

            She started to read aloud. It was a simple story, really. As the cells regrew and were hyperstimulated, audio input would theoretically create accompanying multisensory input to match the words. Whatever they heard would become a complete memory – whether it had happened or not. It if worked the way they thought it would, an Alzheimer’s patient would need to be in isolation for the period of regrowth or risk introducing memories that had never really happened. Memories that would be indistinguishable from events that had actually occurred.

            Furman had called it the miracle drug of the Twenties. The Right and Left jointly denounced it as the ideal brainwashing drug.

            Her story was finished before her other thoughts were.

            She sat in silence with her parents. After an hour or so, they started talking again.

            Dad said, “I got a sore throat. How about a cup of honey-lemon tea, Hon?”

            Mom stood up, blinking as if she’d just awakened. But she worked slowly and by the time she presented the cup of tea to Dad, she was merely blinking as if she’d been dazzled by a bright light.

            “So, when are you and Mom moving out?” Rachel asked, her pulse roaring in her ears.

            “Well dear, the movers will be here Monday. Dad and I will be going to spend a few days with your Auntie June in Rochester.” She shrugged. “When we get back to town, everything will have been moved to the new condo.” She frowned slightly as she sat down with a cup of tea for herself. “We showed you the place, didn’t we, Rach?”

            Rachel nodded, watching Dad drink the tea. He rubbed his neck once and her heart froze. But he didn’t say anything else. They sat wrapped in a quiet, warm quilt of golden light over the remains of dinner.

            In the family room, she’d built a fire and her magazine lay waiting for her. Instead, she said, “Why don’t you let me get the dishes, Mom, while Dad goes out to the barn?”

            Her mom  smiled and waved at her. “Nonsense, Rach. You cooked, I’ll clean up. You just scoot to your chair by the fire. I’ll take care of this.”

            Dad stood and headed for the mudroom, just like he had for all the years Rachel could ever remember. He’d always looked forward to retirement. And now he was moving Monday because he and his wife were tired and wanted to spend the last years of their lives dancing, seeing movies, traveling, and enjoying one another. There was no bitterness. He wasn’t being forced out of his home. He had never tried to hang himself in the barn. Rachel shuddered at the memory of that night.

            She padded in stockinged feet into the family room and sat down slowly, pulling the multi-colored afghan over her lap. She stared at the crackling fire. Without thinking, she reached back and played with her braid – a single pigtail, really. She tugged at it, then absently put the tip of it into her mouth. A moment later, she pulled it free, staring at it. She thought she’d broken that habit ages ago. She smiled faintly and settled back into the chair. She read until late, Dad first, then Mom stopping briefly to say their goodnights.

            By the time her eyes were tired, it was after one. She clicked off the lamp, then sat and stared at the glowing embers of the fire, listening to the wind blow snow against the window. Beside her sat the case she’d brought form Chicago. Inside, a second dose of the memory reconstruction virus nested beside its empty twin. In her pocket, a long, involved letter she’d written for herself. She pulled it out and smoothed it on the afghan. It began, “You are a lab tech in a big city. A perpetrator of alcoholic-type behavior, you lost your husband and your children. You are jobless. Destitute. Your behavior has been successfully treated. Your parents gave you a plane ticket to Chicago in order to reconcile your marriage. You have always loved your husband – you still love him. He will completely satisfy you…”

            When the words grew blurry, she stopped and folded the sheet of paper in thirds, swallowed hard against the urge to cry.

            She stood up and headed for bed, leaving the case by the chair in the dim light of  a quarter moon shining through the window. In the morning, she would be ready to begin again. Forever.