Short Stories

True Story

2007-07-24T13:28:00.000-05:00

- A 28-year old male was brought into the ER after an attempted suicide. The man had swallowed several nitroglycerin pills and a fifth of vodka. When asked about the bruises about his head and chest he said that they were from him ramming himself into the wall in an attempt to make the nitroglycerin explode.

- A 50-year old woman came into the ER with a complaint of mild abdominal pain. During a pelvic exam the doctor found that the lady had inserted a whole chicken piece by piece into her vagina. Unable to have children she was hoping that the chicken would turn into a baby.

- A man in his mid-fifties did a Loraina Bobbit on himself in a drunken rage and ended up in the ER. The urologist thought that he could reattach the mans genitalia if it could be recovered and if it was in good condition. The police were dispatched to the man's house and the search was on. During the search one of the officers heard a choking sound coming from the man's poodle that was sitting in the corner. After a brief fight the officer was able to retrieve the man's jewels from the dog's mouth. After inspection of the parts by the urologist it was decided that the man would need to be taught to pee while sitting (if you know what I mean) The officer was given a commendation from his precinct for medical assistance.

- A woman with shortness of breath and who weighed approximately 500 lbs was dragged into the ER on a tarp by six firemen. While trying to undress the lady an asthma inhaler fell out of one of the folds under her arm. After an Xray showed a round mass on the left side of her chest her massive left breast was lifted to find a shiny new dime. And last but not least during a pelvic exam a TV remote control was discovered in one of the folds of her crotch. She became known as "The Human Couch".

- A doctor who spoke limited Spanish was rushed to a car in the ER parking lot to find a Spanish woman in the process of giving birth. Wanting to tell the woman to push he started yelling "Puta! Puta! Puta!" at this the grandmother started to cry and the baby's father had to be restrained. What the doctor should have been saying was "Puja!" (Push!). Instead he was saying "Whore! Whore! Whore!"

- An unconscious 36-year old male was brought to the ER with cocaine induced seizures. As a nurse pulled back his foreskin to insert a catheter (a tube passed through the urethra and into the bladder) a neatly folded twenty dollar bill fell out of the foreskin fold. When the man woke up and demanded to leave, the nurse gave him back his belongings and told him where she had found the money. His response: "It was a fifty, bitch!"

- An elderly woman came into the ER complaining: "I got the green vines in my virginny" (Interesting). A pelvic exam verifies that she did, indeed, have a six inch vine growing out of her vagina. Further inspection revealed that she had a mass in her vaginal vault. It was easily removed and looked very much like a potato. It was, indeed, a potato. The patient said that her uterus was falling out and that she "put a potato in there to hold it up" and then forgot about it.

- The most nonemergent ER visit: A male adolescent came in at 2 a.m. with a complaint of belly button lint.

- A young female came to the ER with lower abdominal pain. During the exam and questioning the female denied being sexually active. The doctor gave her a pregnancy test anyway and it came back positive. The doctor went back to the young female's room. Doctor: "The results of your pregnancy test came back positive. Are you sure you're not sexually active?" Patient: "Sexually active? No, sir, I just lay there." Doctor: "I see. Well, do you know who the father is?" Patient: "No. Who?"

- A 92-year old woman had a full cardiac arrest at home and was rushed to the hospital. After about thirty minutes of unsuccessful resuscitation attempts the old lady was pronounced dead. The doctor went to tell the lady's 78-year old daughter that her mother didn't make it. "Didn't make it? Where could they be? She left in the ambulance forty-five minutes ago!"

- A 15-year old boy was laying on a stretcher with his mother sitting next to him. The boy was coming down from "crank" (methamphetamine) that he had injected into his veins with needles he had been sharing with his friends. Concerned about this the doctor asked the boy if there was anything he might have been doing that put him at risk for AIDS. The boy thought for a while then said questioningly, "I've been screwing the dog?"

- A 19-year old female was asked why she was in the ER. She said that she and her boyfriend were having sex and the condom came off and she wasn't able to retrieve it with her fingers. I went to the bathroom and "gagged" myself to vomit but couldn't vomit it up either."

The Metamorphosis

2007-07-24T12:56:00.000-05:00

It's midnight in Nirashgi, and the world is beginning to unravel. At the crucial moment the clock tower draws a deep breath into its rounded belly. Pulleys and levers and chimes all tense, wrenched out of a habitual lethargy as the hands align over the face, pulling up straight toward the sky. The sound of the first bell pealing splits the air with a wrenching, tearing sound, and from a league away the ocean is stirred from its slumber. The men and women of the city draw in one more breath, then lay still as dolls in their bedrooms, and dining rooms, and parlors. The silence would be stifling if there was anyone around to hear it.

By the third chime, the air is quivering, sparkling with an energy of change. At the fifth the waters groan and swell beyond their shores, extending creeping tendrils up toward the darkest alleys at the city's edge. A ninth peal, and they rise like a blanket to smother the cobblestone streets. By the time the 11th bell rings out, the sea has conquered the city, and the walls of certainty begin to crumble away into dust.

The waters boil green and red and purple along with their daytime grayish blue, and everything the ocean touches is transformed into its opposite. The uniform walls of the business district melt and twist as the buildings gain an assortment of eyes and ears and teeth. The fountain in front of the capitol building chokes, and suddenly a pale yellow light is streaming from its mouth in place of the usual water. The traffic lights flash frantically, faster and faster until they sprout wheels and wings, and the cars in the streets stand up on their tailpipes with the windshields all aflame; industrial Christmas trees complete with four-wheel drive.

The 12th strike hits the air with a fiery, thundering crash, and the people themselves begin to transform. A boy in his bed stretches like rubber, until his head is as long as his legs, which double over themselves like taffy where they hit the wall. His mother sprouts a second head from the skin above her ear, and then a third and a fourth, each a slight variation on the form and color of the original. The dog lying asleep downstairs, who has until this moment only dreamed of being ferociously large, is suddenly granted his wish. A tendril of slobber drips from his open mouth, flooding the kitchen as his head lifts the ceiling from its rafters.

New creatures stir with awareness beneath the earth: foreign, ancient things that shed their twin covers of dust and namelessness to breathe in the night air. Most of them are formless — a blob of fleshy head on top of a colorful, checkered torso — but a few sprout the weedy arms of insects and prowl away from the fantastic madness of the sea. They venture to those places still cloaked in shadow, off on nameless deeds that signal empty beds in the morning.

In the heart of the city, the central business of the night is under way. Two red-winged raccoons have pulled down the door of a music store nearby, and there are instruments running wild in the streets: woozy, blue-toned saxophones and cocky, sure-footed trumpets. They sing their anthems proudly as they wobble from lamppost to street sign in an attempt to stay upright. Bursts of music surge forth and take on a life of their own — changing from sound to smell to vision with a flickering restlessness while the denizens of Nirashgi waltz and stomp their feet. It's not long before the cobblestones themselves are stirred from their slumber. They rush back and forth underfoot, tossing the people into the air and catching them again with the ease of an expert performer.

For a while it seems that Time himself has abandoned his usual stoic sense of duty, and the night has become truly boundless. But the hours pass, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the first hint of gray creeps into the horizon,

The festivities take on a note of desperation as the first rays of light puncture the black cloak of sky. Two stout, rainbow-skinned primates dissolve at the glancing touch of a sunbeam. Colors pale, and sounds are muted. The ocean, suddenly diminished in the light of day, pulls a rapid retreat toward its former boundaries, The walls straighten their stance, and the streets sink back into their earthen tombs. Everywhere things collapse back into the earth that formed them, or lose their brazen glamour and fade into normalcy.

It's dawn in Nirashgi, and the world is unraveling once more.
Take Me Away Contest Judge's Comments

This is a vision of transformation — the nightly transformation of dream, maybe? Starting at midnight, crazy things happen, told in fast, accurate, vivid images, with strong verbs and startling nouns, used with a sure hand and a light touch. The climax, with its red-winged raccoons and cocky, sure-footed trumpets and cobblestones that toss people into the air and catch them again, fades quickly and melts away into daylight. A strong, imaginative use of the very short story, making the limitations of the format into strength.

Winner

Megan Mikhail, 14, is a ninth grader at the Durham Academy in Chapel Hill, N.C. When she was asked what "Metamorphosis" means to her, Megan said, "The thing that strikes me most is that no one in the daytime world of Nirashgi will ever realize that it exists. There's something very eerie about that. It makes me wonder how much of my world I will never truly 'see' for what it is."

By Megan Mikhail

The Prank

2007-06-01T12:13:00.000-05:00

Here's one activity I'll have to leave off my college applications, Lexi thought as she shifted in her seat. The unofficial Prank Committee was meeting. Every year, tradition calls for a few seniors at Stanforth Academy to pull a practical joke on the school. It isn't exactly a school-sanctioned activity, but it isn't forbidden either. Which is why Lexi was now sitting at the Big Blend, sipping a smoothie and listening to the others discuss prank options. "No way can we loosen the bolts on every single school desk in one night," Carl was saying. He was the smartest guy in the class. If there were an election, he'd be voted Most Unlikely to Get Busted, which is why he was perfect for the prank.

"I like Tate's idea," Suzan chirped. She had red streaks in her hair today, to match her red-and-black paisley tights. Suzan was borderline goth, but — oddly enough — she had tons of school spirit. She was Lexi's best friend and the reason Lexi had agreed to help with the prank. "Let's go with that," Suzan said with a nod, "and soap flakes in the pool."

"Soap flakes are environmentally unfriendly," said a girl named Cat. "And I'm not sure it's ethical to bring a goat into the school." Lexi shot Suzan a sideways look. In her batik tie-dyed shirt and ripped jeans, Cat looked like a poster child for Earth First. She was president of the school's animal-rights group, and Lexi wasn't exactly sure how she ended up on the Prank Committee. "Why don't we just do what they did last year?" Cat suggested.

"Oh, please," Tate said, waving his hand dismissively. "That was so lame."

Even though she agreed, Lexi gritted her teeth. Tate could be amazingly annoying. OK, truth: She and Tate had a history. He'd placed a rubber snake in her lunch bag in third grade, and Lexi retaliated by smearing peanut butter in his gym shoes. They had never really gotten along since then, which was why Lexi was tempted to argue with him now. She resisted the urge.

"I agree," Suzan put in. "So the lunch tables were out in the quad — big deal."

"And the year before that, the prank didn't even make sense," Lexi added. The seniors stole the cafeteria's silverware — forcing everyone to eat with their fingers. Unfortunately, they had done it on pizza day so it lacked punch. "We need to go all-out this year. Forget soap flakes — let's use dye in the pool," Lexi suggested. "Green, maybe?"

Tate gave her an approving glance. He had razor-sharp features — a nose fit to slice bread, distinctly high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. His black hair often flopped over his right eye, as it did now. "Great idea, Lexi. And the goat will be fine," he added, "He belongs to my uncle. Believe me — I'll make sure he doesn't get hurt."

Suzan looked at Cat with lifted eyebrows. "Sound OK?"

Cat shrugged. "I'll buy the dye," she offered. "I know where I can get some that's made from plant extracts."

Slurping the end of her blueberry-and-wheatgrass drink, Suzan put the cup down and grinned. "Perfect!"

"Where's Suzan?" Tate asked three days later from the top step of the side entrance, readying to start the prank.

"She'll be here," Carl assured him as he cupped his hands around his eyes and looked through the glass doors. "She'd better be. She's got the keys."

"How did she get them?" Tate asked.

Lexi shrugged. "Last Christmas, she gave the janitor a box of chocolates that her parents had bought for the teachers. They've been friends ever since."

"Man, it wasn't easy to get Henry here." Tate cast a glance at the goat, who was standing at the end of a rope. "I thought he was going to chew off half the upholstery in my brother's car." As if to prove Tate's point, the goat leaned over to nibble the cuff of his jeans.

"This dye wasn't cheap," Cat added.

Even though it was nearing the end of May, Lexi shivered inside her sweat-shirt. It was 7 o'clock, and the sun had set. Light shone dimly from street lamps at the curb's edge. The ancient oak trees at the front of the school cast nearby shadows. Stanforth Academy was an old building with a massive limestone entrance, but it didn't have much charm. Now, in the almost-dark, it seemed sinister, like a jail. "This place is giving me the creeps," Lexi said.

A single white light cut through the darkness and into the parking lot. "That's Suzan's Vespa," Lexi said.

Suzan loped across the lawn. "You got it!" she cried when she saw the goat, which made everyone else realize they had been whispering.

"Bring the keys?" Tate asked.

Suzan jingled them. "Bingo!" she said as a key slipped into the lock. She gave it a twist and shoved the door open.

Footsteps echoed against the floor as the pranksters hustled down the hall and up the stairs. "OK, Lexi and Tate, you guys know what to do," Suzan said as she unlocked Mr. Sparks' history classroom. "We're headed to the gym. Once you're done, get out as fast as you can. I'll make sure the side exit is locked up."

Lexi gave her friend a wistful wave as Suzan let the door swing closed. She wished she could head to the pool with the others instead of staying with Tate. But Carl insisted that she and Tate were the funniest in the group, so they were to write all over Mr. Sparks' whiteboards — stuff like, I learned more about history when I was back on the farm! As if the goat had written it.

"Look!" Tate said, pointing at what he'd just written: Smells better in the shed!

Lexi snorted. "Hilarious," she said.

Tate frowned. "What have you got?"

History books: taste great, less filling, she scribbled. "That's ba-aa-aa-ad," Tate bleated, goat-like. Lexi threw an eraser at him, and he ducked, laughing.

They wrote a few more, and finally Tate said, "OK, let's get out of here."

"See you later, Henry," Lexi said to the goat. She put her hand on the doorknob. It didn't move. She tried again.

"What's up?" Tate asked.

"I think it's locked." Lexi shoved her shoulder against the door. Nothing.

"Let me try."

"It's locked," Lexi repeated. "You can't do anything."

Shoving her aside, Tate grasped the handle. Then he banged on the door. "It's locked," he said.

Lexi rolled her eyes. "I just said that."

Tate spun to face her. "Why didn't you make sure it was open before Suzan took off with the keys?"

"Like this is my fault?" Lexi said. "This goat thing was your idea!"

Tate opened his mouth, and Lexi prepared herself for a cutting comment. But he took a deep breath and said, "How are we going to get out of here?"

They turned toward the windows. "It's three floors up," Lexi said.

"Maybe we could tie my jacket to your sweatshirt," he suggested. "We could jump the rest of the way."

"That's the dumbest idea ever," Lexi told him as a loud thud sounded behind them. Henry was trying to nose his way into a desk and had succeeded in shoving it against the wall. "Besides," Lexi went on, trying to ignore the goat, "the windows don't even open all the way."

"We could break one," Tate said.

"And climb through broken glass?"

"Got a better idea?"

Lexi glanced around the room. Her heart was pounding. Suddenly, her eyes lasered in on a possible solution. "Transom!" she cried, looking up at the small window over the door.

"Genius!" Tate said. "I'll give you a boost." Interlacing his fingers, he nodded for Lexi to put her foot in his hands.

She winced, but there was no other way. At least, not one she could think of. She kicked off her shoes, grimaced at the hole in the toe of her left sock, and put her right foot in his hands.

"I'll lift you on three," Tate said. "One, two, three…"

Lexi reached for the edge of the transom, wrapping her fingers around it. Tate shoved her upward while she struggled to pull herself through.

Tate grunted. "You can do it!"

Her arms shook with effort as her chin reached the ledge, then her head went through- "I can't!"

"Come on, you have to!" Tate pushed up against her legs.

She flailed like a frog and pulled harder. "I can't do it, Tate!" Lexi snapped. "Let me down!"

"No!"

"Let me down!" She kicked at him, then fell to the floor in a heap.

Henry looked up. He gave her a puzzled look, then bent back over the pencil box he had been investigating.

"What now?" Tate asked, sinking to the floor beside her.

"Maybe I could boost you" she said.

Tate gave it some thought. "I could probably pull myself through," he said. "Do you think you could lift me?"

"Clearly, I'm incredibly weak," Lexi said dryly, making Tate smile. "But maybe you could stand on a desk and pull yourself up a little. Then I'll push you the rest of the way."

So Tate pulled and Lexi pushed. He lifted himself higher, higher, then he was through. "Oh, crap!" he shouted as Lexi gave him a shove that sent him over the edge, head first. He landed with a thud.

"Are you OK?" Lexi shouted.

Tate's head popped up. He gave her a smile, and Lexi's head felt light. We're getting out of here, she thought. It worked. We're going to get…

And that's when Tate ran off.

For a few minutes, Lexi couldn't believe what had just happened. He'd ditched her! He'd just left her here to spend the night alone with a goat in a creepy classroom. Lexi felt her blood boil and a sudden urge to strangle someone. Tate was the prime target, of course, but at this point, she'd settle for Suzan — the one who had gotten her into this.

Lexi climbed on top of the desk and tried again to pull herself up again. Her arms throbbed. It was useless.

She sat on the floor while Henry munched a page from the Flannigan-Murtry Guide to American History: Teacher's Edition. She lay down in front of Mr. Sparks' desk, imagining what Tate would tell Suzan. Probably something like, "Lexi had to go home. She said to tell you she'd see you tomorrow."

Why did I ever trust him? she thought. Why? But for a moment, they had been a team. Everything else — the arguments, the rubber snake, the peanut butter, all of that — had disappeared.

Now, she was going to get blamed for the goat and probably the pool dye, too.

She looked at the clock. Ten past 9. Halt an hour had passed since Tate had left. Only 10 hours and 50 minutes until Mr. Sparks unlocks his room and discovers her…with a goat.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Lexi sat up straight as the door swung open. Tate stood there, water dripping from his face and trickling onto the beige carpet, turning it a bluish-green. Suzan was right behind him.

"Sorry!" Suzan said brightly. "There were technical difficulties at the pool."

"I thought you weren't coming!" Lexi cried as she scrambled to her feet. She glared at Tate. "Why didn't you open the door before?"

"It was locked — both sides," Tate explained. "I had to get the keys. Sorry it took so long." A drop of water dripped from the tip of his nose.

"Why are you both wet?" Lexi asked.

Suzan snorted. "Oh, that lousy dye Cat got," she said. "She poured it in, and it sank, making a solid-green splotch on the bottom of the pool. We were wondering what to do when Tate showed up. He said we should jump in and kick the water until it spread around."

"My legs are killing me," Tate complained. But he was smiling.

Suzan swiped her wet red-and-black bangs from her face. "Let's get outta here," she said with a grin.

Lexi waved to the goat. Tate flipped off the lights, and Suzan locked the door. "I can't wait for tomorrow morning," she said as they squished and squeaked down the hallway.

As they stepped outside, Lexi breathed in the cool night air. Mission accomplished, she thought. Carl and Cat had already left. "I guess that's it!" Suzan said. She gave Lexi a damp hug, then took off on her Vespa.

"Did you really think I wasn't coming back?" Tate asked Lexi.

"I didn't know," she admitted.

"I wouldn't do that to you."

It took all of Lexi's strength not to blurt, "Are you kidding me?" But she could see Tate was serious. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "I just got worried."

Tate nodded. "Come on," he said. "I'll drive you home." He unlocked the passenger door to his brother's Jetta and held it open for her.

"I can't wait for tomorrow. Everyone will be shocked! A green pool — and a goat in history class!" he said as he slid into the driver's seat.

"Yeah," Lexi responded. "You sure are full of surprises."

"We are," Tate corrected. He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the darkness. "We're a team."

He looked so happy that Lexi just couldn't help laughing. Tate Islip and Lexi Jones, a team? It was hard to believe. But he'd come through for her. When she least expected it.

"I guess we are," she said at last.

Lexi is helping to plan a surprise that will shock the school … but is the joke on her?

"We need to go all out. Forget soap — let's dye the pool," Lexi suggested. "Green, maybe?"

Lexi couldn't believe what happened. He'd left her to spend the night with a goat.

By Lisa Papademetriou

Jack and the Bull

2007-05-20T11:10:00.000-05:00

There was a boy named Jack, who went to work for a man who was rich and had lots of cattle. The old man took a liking to Jack, but his old woman, for whatever reason, just hated Jack.

Jack had to work mighty hard. He didn't get anything for his work except the clothes on his back and precious little to eat. But because the old man liked Jack, he gave the boy a calf that grew up to be a fine black bull.

Jack had to go to the pasture to feed the cattle twice a day, and he would feed his calf then. And the calf grew into a bull, big and strong.

Yet that old woman, for whatever reason, decided she would get rid of Jack. Starving him seemed the best way to do it, so she made sure he was out in the fields morning, noon, and night, when meals were being served. Soon enough, Jack was nearly starving to death. He got so weak, he could barely walk.

It happened that one evening Jack went out to the field feeling so bad that he began to cry.

But the black bull Jack had been tending wandered over and asked, "What's made you cry so?"

Jack replied, "That old woman is starving me to death. Her husband don't dare cross her, and I'm sure to die afore very long."

"Don't you cry," the bull told Jack. "Just screw off my left horn and you'll find bread and butter inside. Then screw off my right horn, and you'll find milk and porridge."

Jack did, and found everything the bull had promised. He did this every evening, and soon the mean old woman wondered why Jack was getting fat. So she decided to send a spy to watch him.

As U happened, she had three sons of her own: one was three-eyed, one was two-eyed, and the last was one-eyed. First she sent the one-eyed boy to watch Jack. But the one-eyed son got sleepy after a while and lay down in the shade of a tree and went to sleep. So he didn't see Jack screw off the bull's horns and have himself a fine meal.

Then the old woman sent her two-eyed son to see where Jack was getting food. But this boy fell asleep also, so he didn't see Jack take a bite of anything.

The old woman grew hopping mad: She knew Jack was getting something to eat somewhere. The next day. she sent her three-eyed son, who closed two eyes in sleep, but kept his third eye open. He saw Jack get vittles from the bull's horns and ran home to tell his mother about it.

The old woman told her husband that she wouldn't have peace of mind until the bull in the pasture became her meal.

But Jack heard what she was planning. He told the bull, and that big black bull said, "Climb on my back. Jack." The boy did so, and the bull sprang over the fence and carried Jack away down the road.

They hadn't gone far before they heard another bull a-bellowin'. Jack's bull warned Jack to hold tight. The two bulls — Jack's all black, the newcomer all red — fought and fought, until Jack's bull slew the red challenger.

Soon after this, they met a big blue bull, bellowing and pawing the ground in front of him. Jack's black bull met him in combat, and took him down, so he ran away. Then Jack screwed off his bull's horns, ate his supper, and went on his way with his friend.

Soon they met a big white bull who blocked their way. Jack's bull locked horns with the creature, and the two battled this way and that. But the white bull finally bested Jack's bull and left him dying in the road.

Jack ran over and cradled his friend's head, crying at this sad turn of events. But the bull said, "Cut a tiny bit of skin from the root of my tail, touch it three times with your finger, and see what you'll see."

So Jack cut the bit off flesh off the bull, and touched it three times. To his amazement, the bit of skin grew into the finest horse he had ever seen, with a fine saddle and bridle upon it. Jack quickly climbed into the saddle. Away the two rode.

Soon they came to a place where the wealthiest man in the land had said that he would marry his daughter to the one who could ride a horse up a greased ramp and catch the crown of flowers at the top. All day long, would-be heroes had tried, only to slide down the slippery ramp. Though others laughed at him. Jack mounted the ramp, grabbed the crown of flowers, and claimed the rich man's daughter for his wife. To tell the truth, though, that gal had taken a fancy to Jack the moment she laid eyes on him, so getting hitched wasn't much of a problem for either Jack or his lady fair.

Bear Meat

2007-04-12T15:07:00.001-05:00

Evenings spent in a mountain hut are among the most sublime and intense that life holds. I mean a real hut, the kind where you seek shelter after a four-, five-, or six-hour climb and where you find few so-called comforts.

Not that chairlifts and cable cars and such comforts are to be looked down on: they are, on the contrary, logical achievements of our society, which is what it is, and must be either accepted or rejected in its totality--and those who are able to reject it are few. But the advent of the chairlift puts an end to a valuable process of natural selection, by which those who reach the hut are sure to find, in its pure state, a small sample of a little-known human subspecies.

Its members are people who don't speak much and of whom others don't speak at all, so there is no mention of them in the literature of most countries, and they should not be confused with other, vaguely similar types, who do speak, and of whom others speak: hot shots, extreme climbers, members of famous international expeditions, professionals, etc. All worthy people, but this story is not about them.

I arrived at the hut at sunset, and I was very tired. I stayed outside, on the wooden porch, to consider the frozen mystery of the seracs at my feet until everything had vanished behind silent ghosts of fog, and then I went in.

Inside it was almost dark. By the glow of a small carbide lamp one could distinguish a dozen human figures gathered around three or four tables. I sat down at a table and opened my backpack. Across from me was a tall, large man, middle-aged, with whom I exchanged a few words about the weather and our plans for the following day. This is a standard conversation, like the classic opening moves of a chess game, where what matters, much more than what one says (which is brief and obvious), is the tone in which one says it.

We found ourselves in agreement on the fact that the weather was uncertain (it always is in the mountains; when it isn't, it is nonetheless declared to be so, for obvious magical reasons), and on the forecast for the following day. A little later, two lanky men in their twenties entered, with long beards and ravenous eyes. They had arrived from another valley and were attempting an intricate series of crossings. They sat down at our table.

After we had eaten, we started to drink. Wine is a more complex substance than one might think, and, above two thousand metres, and at close to zero degrees centigrade, it displays interesting behavioral anomalies. It changes flavor, loses the bite of alcohol, and regains the mildness of the grape from which it comes. One can take it in heavy doses without any undesired effects. In fact, it eliminates fatigue, loosens and warms the limbs, and leads to a fanciful mood. It is no longer a luxury or a vice but a metabolic necessity, like water on the plains. It is a well-known fact that vines grow better on a slope: could there be a connection?

Once we started drinking, the conversation at our table became much less impersonal. Each of us spoke of our initiation, and we established with some surprise that we had all begun our mountaineering careers with an extremely foolish act.

As it turned out, the best of these foolish acts, and the best told, was the one recounted by the tall, large man.

"I was fifteen. A friend of mine, Saverio, was also fifteen. Another, Luigi, was seventeen. We had gone out a number of times together, to fifteen hundred, two thousand metres, without a plan or a destination; I should say, without a conscious destination, but, in essence, impelled by a subtle desire to get ourselves in trouble and then get ourselves out of it. Nothing easier: it's enough to go straight up the mountain following your instincts, in any direction, by the steepest slope, struggle for a quarter of an hour across the mountainside, and then try to get back down. Of course, one also learns a few things in this process: that pine trees, when they're available, make safe and friendly supports, especially during the descent, and that scree is hard to climb but easy to descend by. One learns different types of grasses, those peculiar terraced slopes, and the art of losing the trail and finding it again. Above all, one learns the limits, both quantitative and qualitative, of one's own strength: when the breath, the legs, and the heart give out, and when, so to speak, it's psychosomatic. It's a great school--I wish I had attended it longer.

"September came and we felt like lions. Luigi said, 'The G. Pass is twenty-four hundred metres high--eleven hundred vertical metres from here. According to the guidebooks, it should be a three-hour climb, but it'll take us barely two. There's nothing difficult, just scree and small rocks--no snow this time of year. On the other side, there's a six-hundred-metre descent, one hour, and we arrive at the border-patrol hut; you can see it clearly here on the map. Then an easy return along the road. We'll leave at two today; at four we're at the top, at five at the hut, and home in time for dinner.'

"That was Luigi. We met at his house at two, with our good boots on our feet, but no backpacks, no rope (about whose use none of us had any real notion anyway; but we knew--having studied the Alpine Club guidebook--the theory of the double rope, the respective merits of hemp and manila, the technique for rescuing someone from a crevasse, and other fine points), a hundred grams of chocolate in our pockets, and (may God forgive us!) wearing shorts.

"We progressed well uphill. First, through a pine forest, spurning the mule trail and the shortcuts, and sampling the blueberries; then through an alluvial cone, wasting precious energy. It was the first time we had set off without grownups getting on our nerves with all their advice, without uncles, without experts. We were drunk on our freedom, and because of this, we delighted in the dirtiest high-school slang, accompanying it with lofty quotations from the classics, for example:

"It is another path that you must take . . .
if you would leave this savage wilderness";

Or:

That was no path for those with cloaks of
lead,
for he and I--he, light; I, with support—
could hardly make it up from spur to
spur.

And also:

. . . he'd see another spur,
saying: "That is the one you will grip
next,
but try it first to see if it is firm."

"Forgive me if I get a little carried away. You see, I'm not a Dante expert, and yet, believe me, one of these days an honest man will come along and prove that Dante couldn't have just invented these founding principles of rock climbing--he must have been here or in a similar place. And when he says:

Remember, reader, if you've ever been
caught in the mountains by a mist through
which
you only saw as moles see through their
skin—

I congratulate him! I, for one, never doubted that he was a professional.

"At any rate, we were climbing at a brisk pace, saying and doing foolish things. And so it happened that we reached the pass at six, not at four, near collapse, and with a certain trembling in our knees that wasn't just from exhaustion. Saverio was the worst off. Luigi and I were already at the top and saw him struggling among the loose rocks fifty metres below us. ' "Now you must cast aside your laziness!" ' Luigi had the gall to shout to him. At which the poor boy paused to catch his breath, looked upward like Christ on the Cross, then clambered up to us and breathed out, in a faint voice, the implausible yet utterly correct reply: ' "Go on, for I am strong and confident." '

"When all three of us were at the pass, two unhappy truths became clear. One, that night was falling; and I swear on this bottle that I have never since then (and many years have passed) seen darkness fall in the mountains without feeling an emptiness here in the pit of my stomach. The other truth was that we were trapped.

"From the pass, there was no logical descent to the hut. There was a gentle, rocky valley, with no human trace, and beyond it a terrifying precipice, not vertical, no, but of broken rock and gullies of crumbling earth--one of those places no one ever wants to go because you'll break your neck without glory or satisfaction.

"With the last light, we pushed on all the way to the edge: you could see the big dark leap of the valley and, if you stuck your nose out, even the light in the hut, almost beneath you. But as for getting down there on our own, we couldn't even consider it; we sat there and started shouting. We took turns. Saverio shouted and prayed. Luigi shouted and cursed. I just shouted. We shouted until we were hoarse.

"Toward midnight, the light in the hut split into two lights, and one of the two blinked three times. It was a signal: we shouted three times in response. At that, a faraway voice called, 'We're coming,' and we replied with a cacophony of shouts. The voice asked, 'Where are you?,' and we three, without a single match to strike, blurted out confused and irrelevant information, all at the same time.

"Our rescuers, poor devils, cursed as they climbed, and stopped now and then to sing, drink, and laugh loudly. They weren't very enthusiastic. Many years later, I also happened to be part of a rescue party, so I know exactly how they felt. These expeditions are tedious and dangerous affairs, and in most cases they can only lead to trouble, because no one wants to pay for the emergency supplies--least of all the rescued, who are rarely solvent.

"They reached us at around two in the morning; and here I must tell you that, on top of everything else, they were members of the border patrol. Once they'd found us, a signal was sent to the valley with a flashlight. 'Who are they?' a voice asked from below. 'It's just three whiny gagno' was the fierce reply, in dialect. Then, turning to us, 'Is this what they teach you in school?'

"After that, they tied us up like salami and lowered us down to the valley without talking to us but stopping often to drink, and curse, and guffaw among themselves. Pass me the bottle, please."

I passed the narrator the bottle and asked him what a gagno was.

"Gagno," he said, "means child, but it's a word loaded with mockery. Second-grade kids say it to first graders.

"That's how I started. It's not a story to be proud of, you might say. And I'm not. But I'm sure that even this foolish adventure was useful to me later. These are things that make your back broad, which isn't something Nature gives everyone. I read somewhere--and the person who wrote this was not a mountaineer but a sailor--that the sea's only gifts are harsh blows and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head. . . . But, excuse me, that's another story. The one I told you ends like this. They called me 'whiny gagno' for years. Some people still do and, I assure you, I don't mind at all."

He drank, and silently busied himself with the complex rituals of a pipe smoker.

"I, too, started with an extremely foolish act," a voice interjected at this point, and then we noticed that there were no longer four of us but five at the table. The voice had come from a man who, in the dim light, appeared to be thin, balding at the temples, with a sharp face furrowed by shifting wrinkles. He told his story at an uneven pace, swallowing his words and leaving sentences incomplete, as if his tongue had difficulty following the thread of his thoughts; at other times he struggled to find the words and would stop as if under a spell.

"There were three of us, too, but not so young--in our twenties. One was Antonio, and I wouldn't want to say much about him, nor would I know how to. He was a fine, handsome youth, smart, sensitive, tenacious, and bold, but with something in him that was elusive, dark, wild. We were at that age when you have the need and the instinct and the immodesty to inflict on others everything that is seething in your head and elsewhere; it's an age that can last a long time, but ends at the first compromise. Yet with him, even at that age, nothing had slipped out of his wrapping of restraint; nothing escaped from his inner world--though we sensed it to be rich and dense--except some rare allusion dramatically cut short. He was like a cat, if I may put it this way, whom you live with for years but who never allows you to get under his sacred skin.

"The third was Carlo, our leader. He is dead; it's best to say it right away, because one can't help speaking in a different way of the dead than of the living. He died in a way that suited him--not in the mountains, but the way one dies in the mountains. Doing what he had to do: not the kind of duty imposed by someone else, or by the state, but the kind that one chooses for oneself. He would have put it differently, called it 'reaching the end of the line,' for example, because he didn't like big words, or, for that matter, words.

"He was the kind of boy who doesn't study for seven months, who is known as a rebel and a dunce, and then in the eighth month absorbs all the courses as if they were water and comes through with straight A's. He spent the summer as a shepherd--not a shepherd of souls, no, a shepherd of sheep, and not to show off or to be eccentric but happily, for love of the earth and the grass. And in the winter, whenever he got restless, he would tie his skis to his bicycle and 'go up' alone, with no money, only an artichoke in one pocket and the other full of salad. He would come back in the evening or maybe the following day, having slept who knows where, and the more storms and hunger he had endured the happier and healthier he was. When I met him, he already had a considerable mountaineering career behind him, while I was still a novice. But he was reluctant to talk about it: he wasn't the type--which I respect, because I'm like that, too--who goes into the mountains to be able to tell a story. On the other hand, it was as if no one had taught him how to speak, just as no one had taught him how to ski: because he spoke the way nobody speaks, he voiced only the essence of things.

"He seemed to be made of steel. If necessary, he could carry a backpack that weighed thirty kilos as if it were nothing, but usually he travelled without a pack: his pockets were enough. Besides the vegetables, they held a piece of bread, a pocketknife, sometimes the Alpine Club guidebook, and always a spool of wire for emergency repairs. He could walk for two days without eating, or eat three meals in one sitting and then be off. Once, I saw him at three thousand metres in February, in the sleet, bare-chested, eating calmly, a spectacle so upsetting to two men nearby that it turned their stomachs. I have a picture at home of the whole scene."

He paused, as if to catch his breath. People from the other tables had gone to bed: in the sudden silence we distinctly heard the deep roar of a serac, like the bones of a giant trying in vain to turn over in his bed of rock.

"I beg your pardon. I'm no longer young, and I know that it's a desperate endeavor to clothe a man in words. This one in particular. A man like this, when he's dead, is dead forever. He's not the kind you tell stories about or build monuments to; he's all in his actions, and, once those are over, nothing remains--nothing but, precisely, words. So every time I try to talk about him, to bring him back to life, as I'm doing now, I feel a great sadness, an emptiness, as if I were on a cliff, and I have to be silent, or else drink."

He was silent, and drank, and then continued.

"So one Saturday morning in February Carlo came to us. 'Tomorrow, eh?' he said. In his language, what he meant was that, since the weather was good, we could leave the next day for the winter ascent of the Tooth of M., which we had been planning for a while.

"I won't give you all the technical details. I'll tell you, briefly, that we left the following morning, not too early (Carlo didn't like watches--he felt their tacit, continuous warning as an arbitrary intrusion); that we plunged boldly into the fog; that we came out the other side at around one in the afternoon, the sun was shining, and we were on the ridge of the wrong mountain.

"Antonio said that we could go down a hundred metres or so, cross along the mountainside, and climb back up the next mountain. I, who was the most cautious and the least able, said that, while we were at it, we could just as well continue along the ridge and arrive at a different peak--it was only forty metres lower than the other one anyway--and be satisfied with that. Carlo, in perfect bad faith, said with a few harsh, cackling syllables that my proposal was fine but, then again, 'by the easy northwest ridge' we could reach the Tooth of M. in half an hour; and that it wasn't worth being twenty-one if you didn't allow yourself the luxury of taking the wrong path.

"'The easy northwest ridge' was described rock by rock in the battered guidebook that Carlo carried in his pocket, along with the wire I mentioned. He took this guidebook along not because he believed in it but for the exact opposite reason. He rejected it because he perceived it, too, as a constraint, and not just any constraint but a bastard creature, a detestable hybrid of snow and rock and paper. He took it with him into the mountains to scorn it, delighted if he could catch it in error, even if that error was to his own detriment and that of his climbing companions.

"The easy northwest ridge was truly easy, in fact elementary, in the summer, but the conditions we found that day were difficult. The rocks were wet on the side that faced the sun and glazed with ice in the shade; between one rock spike and the next were pockets of wet snow where we sank up to our shoulders. We arrived at the right peak at five, two of us dragging ourselves pitifully, while Carlo was seized by a sinister hilarity that I found slightly irritating.

"'How will we get down?'

"'We'll figure it out,' Carlo said, and added mysteriously, 'The worst thing that happens is we taste bear meat.'

"Well, we tasted it, bear meat, in abundance, during the course of that night, the longest of my climbing career. It took us two hours to descend, feebly assisted by the rope. I'm sure you know what an infernal instrument a frozen rope is: ours had become a stiff, evil tangle that got caught on all the outcrops and clanged against the rock like a steel cable. At seven, we reached the shore of a small frozen lake. It was dark.

"We ate the little we had left, built a useless wall of stones to shelter us from the wind, and lay down on the ground to sleep, huddled side by side. We took turns--the man in the middle slept while the others acted as a buffer. For some reason I can't explain, our watches had stopped--perhaps because we had forgotten to wind them--and without watches we felt as if time, too, had frozen. We stood up now and then to get our circulation going, and it was always the same: the wind was always blowing, there was always a semblance of moon, always in the same spot in the sky, and in front of the moon a fantastic cavalcade of ragged clouds, always the same. We had taken off our shoes, and put our feet in our backpacks. At the first ghostly light, which seemed to radiate not from the sky but from the snow, we got up, our limbs numb and our eyes glazed from sleeplessness, hunger, and darkness, and found our shoes so frozen that, when struck, they rang like bells. In order to put them on we had to sit on them for half an hour, as if we were hatching eggs.

"But we returned to the valley on our own: and when the innkeeper asked us, chuckling, how it had gone, all the while stealing glances at our two-day stubble, we answered without hesitation that it had been a great outing, paid the bill, and left without losing our composure.

"That was bear meat. Now, you must believe me, gentlemen, many years have passed, and I regret having eaten so little of it. I think and hope that each of you has gleaned from life what I have--a certain measure of ease, respect, love, and success. Well, I'll tell you the truth, none of these things, not even remotely, has the taste of bear meat: the taste of being strong and free, which means free to make mistakes; the taste of feeling young in the mountains, of being your own master, which means master of the world.

"And, trust me, I am grateful to Carlo for having deliberately got us into trouble, for the night he made us spend, and for the various enterprises, senseless only on the surface, that he involved us in later on, and then for various others, not in the mountains, which I got into on my own, by following his doctrine. He was a young man full of earthly vigor who had a wisdom of his own, and may the earth in which he rests, not far from here, lie light on his bones, and bring the news, each year, of the return of the sun and of the frost."

The second narrator fell silent, and he seemed to me to be looking with some embarrassment toward the two young men, as if afraid that he had disturbed or offended them; then he filled his glass but did not drink. His last words had roused in me a rare echo, as if I had heard them somewhere before. And, in fact, I later found almost those exact words in a book that is now dear to me, by the same sailor, cited by the first man, who had written of the gifts of the sea.

By Primo Levi

Translated, from the Italian, by Alessandra Bastagli

Detective Story

2007-04-12T14:44:00.000-05:00

DETECTIVE STORY, type of mystery story that features a private detective or a police officer as the prime solver of a crime—usually a murder case. The detective is the main protagonist, through whom the story is told either as a first-person narrator or in the third person as portrayed by the author. The detective interrogates the suspects, ferrets out the clues, and tracks down the murderer. To play fair, the detective shares all the clues with the reader but withholds their significance until the end.

The thrust of the detective’s investigation is based on motive, opportunity, and means, and he or she arrives at the solution by eliminating those suspects who do not fulfill these criteria. To make the case difficult for the detective and interesting to the reader, the author puts complications in the detective’s way: several suspects, additional murders, red herrings, and, often, threats of violence. Only at the end does the detective unmask the culprit, explain the plot, and present the deductive reasoning that he used in solving the case.

The detective story, often called a whodunit, did not spring into being in this form. Rather, it evolved, early in the 20th century, from stories about detectives in which the reader was not a participant, but a witness, so to speak, looking over the detective’s shoulder.
Earliest Detective Stories.

The originator of this early type of story of detection was the American poet and short-story master EDGAR Allen Poe, creator of the world’s first fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin’s methods of deduction and his bizarre personal habits provided the model that most detective story writers have followed since. Dupin made his bow in April 1841, when Graham’s Magazine published Poe’s classic horror story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The detective appeared thereafter in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842–43), “The Purloined Letter” (1845), and three other stories. During this period the first real-life detective, François Eugène Vidocq (1775–1857), was making history as chef de la Sûreté (head of the Criminal Investigation Department) in Paris, and Poe’s hero, Dupin, was no doubt modeled on Vidocq.

During the next 45 years the genre was largely neglected. CHARLES Dickens ventured into the writing of detective fiction with The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), but he died before completing it, leaving the identity of his murderer unknown. Another English novelist, WILKIE Collins, contributed The Moonstone (1868) and The Woman in White (1860) and created the detective Sergeant Cuff.
Sherlock Holmes and His Followers.

Stories about detectives did not become truly popular, however, until Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887 published A Study in Scarlet, introducing to England and the world the most famous detective—real or fictional—of all time, Sherlock Holmes. Sir ARTHUR Conan Doyle, the British writer who created Holmes, was much influenced by Poe; he gave Holmes the essence of Dupin’s mental traits and equally bizarre, although different, habits, and he narrated his detective’s exploits, as did Poe, from the vantage point of a close companion, in this case the good-natured and perpetually naive Dr. Watson.

Despite his success with Holmes, Conan Doyle, more interested in “serious novels,” soon tired of his detective and tried to kill him off. The enormous popularity of this character, however, would not allow it. The author produced The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904) and Holmes outlived his creator, being the hero, even today, of adventures penned by other writers. Altogether, Conan Doyle’s production of what is called the “canon,” that is, the original Sherlock Holmes mysteries, consists of 4 novelettes and 56 short stories.

The impact of Sherlock Holmes popularized the detective story and brought it to its present form. From the time of Conan Doyle on, writers have sought to develop detective heroes who echoed both Holmes’s unique character and his omniscience. The English writer G. K. Chesterton, in the early years of the 20th century, developed the character of Father Brown, a priest-detective. In 1920, with the advent of what may be called the golden age of the detective story, the English writer AGATHA Christie introduced her hero, Hercule Poirot, a dapper Belgian detective who actively employed the “little gray [brain] cells” in the solution of crimes. In the U.S., the ELLERY Queen series was begun, and S. S. Van Dine (pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright, 1888–1939) wrote about the dilettante detective Philo Vance. Meanwhile, another American writer, Earl Derr Biggers (1884–1933), was creating his famed Chinese detective, Charlie Chan. Other authors who emerged in the 1930s are the American Rex Stout (1886–1975) with his famous gourmet detective, Nero Wolfe, and the scholarly English writer DOROTHY Sayers, whose detective hero was an aristocrat, Lord Peter Wimsey.

During the 1930s authors, in their efforts to outwit the reader, began to concoct elaborate, highly ingenious puzzles, such as the locked-room mysteries of the American writer John Dickson Carr (1906–77). The aim was to produce as the murderer the least likely of all suspects—a game in which Agatha Christie excelled.
Private-Eye Tales.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. during the 1920s, another kind of detective story was emerging. This was shaped by the pulp magazines of the time (notably Black Mask), which wanted hard-hitting detective heroes and clipped, tough prose. Authors of this school include ERLE Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, the most famous lawyer-detective of them all; DASHIELL Hammett, creator of Nick Charles and Sam Spade; and RAYMOND Chandler, whose Philip Marlowe is another all-time great. In these hard-boiled private-eye novels, sleuths worked for money instead of intellectual fun, and murder took place in gutters rather than in drawing rooms. Although these detective stories obeyed all the rules of the genre, the accent was on action, and the puzzle was underplayed. The story’s physical activity (which ultimately degenerated, in many cases, into raw sex and sadism), rather than the puzzle, held the reader.
The Police Procedural.

Then, in the early 1950s, a trend away from the sex-and-sadism school, and away from the private-eye tale in general, developed. The “police procedural” was born—stories about how real police detectives go about solving real crimes.

As did its predecessors, the “procedural” obeys the rules of the detective story. The difference is that the reader consorts, not with geniuses, but with fallible, ordinary people, specially trained in detection, operating out of police stations. The most prominent writers in this field are John Creasey (1908–73), writing under the pseudonym J. J. Marric, with his tales of Gideon of Scotland Yard; Evan Hunter (1926–2005), using Ed McBain as his pseudonym for his 87th Precinct series; and Dorothy Uhnak (1933– ), once a New York City transit policewoman herself, who has broken through the male bastion with her series featuring a policewoman, Christie Opara.
The Future of the Detective Story.

Although the detective story undergoes pendulum swings in popularity, it seems likely to endure as staple reading fare. Its strength is that it provides pleasurable excitement and satisfaction. It deals with evil, which is always fascinating, at the same time promising that good will triumph, that all loose threads will be tied, and that the ending will be at least relatively happy and complete. It is an entity in the same way that the fairy tale, for example, is an entity.

American detective- and mystery-story writers banded together in 1945 to form the Mystery Writers of America (MWA), adopting as their slogan, “Crime Does Not Pay—Enough!” MWA has some 1500 members; its purpose is to fight for authors’ rights, promote the mystery story, help new writers, and generally serve as a forum for members. In Great Britain a comparable organization, Crime Writers Association, was started by John Creasey in 1952. In Canada, a similar group, Crime Writers of Canada, was formed in Toronto in 1982.

HILLARY WAUGH, B.A.

The Case Of The Hot Chocolate

2007-04-08T13:13:00.000-05:00

This month, learn about the greenhouse effect

"What a great day to be outside," said Danielle. She dropped an empty soda can into a bulging trash bag. She and her friend Peter were celebrating Earth Day with their science class by picking up trash in a local park.

"It is really warm out today," Peter agreed. "I wonder what the temperature is."

Danielle spotted their teacher walking over. "Maybe Mrs. Woodward knows." she said.

"Mrs. Woodward, do you know what the temperature is today?" asked Peter as their teacher approached.

"I don't know," replied Mrs. Woodward. "But we can check.

I have some thermometers for an experiment we are doing later Let's go and find out."

Danielle and Peter followed their teacher to a nearby picnic table. Mrs. Woodward handed each of them a thermometer.

Peter peered at the thermometer she passed him. "It's 70 degrees out!" he said.

"Wow! That's very warm for this time of year," said Mrs. Woodward. "You two can hang on to those thermometers until later. Now, it's time for lunch."
HEATING UP

Peter and Danielle were eating lunch with their classmates.

As they ate, Mrs. Woodward stood in front of the class. "After lunch, we are going to continue our Earth Day celebration by planting trees," she said. "This activity could help prevent global warming."

Danielle raised her hand. Mrs. Woodward called on her. "How does planting trees help fight global warming?" Danielle asked.

"Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air," said Mrs. Woodward.

"That's interesting," said Danielle. "But how does carbon dioxide affect global warming?"

"Carbon dioxide is one of many gases that surround Earth," replied Mrs. Woodward. "This layer of gases is like a blanket that traps the sun's heat. That process is called the greenhouse effect. But if there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, extra heat will be trapped."

"And that can cause global warming?" asked Danielle.

"That's what scientists say," said Mrs. Woodward. "OK. It's time to finish eating and then we can plant some trees."
LEFTOVERS

As Danielle and Peter finished their lunch, they each had a small piece of chocolate left over.

"Are you going to eat that?" asked Peter, eyeing Danielle's chocolate. "If not, I'll take it."

"Sorry, but I am going to save it for later," said Danielle.

"Oh, OK. I'll save mine too" said Peter. "I'm going to put mine in my sandwich container. Do you want to put yours in there?" "That's OK," said

Danielle. "I'll just leave it here." She placed her chocolate candy on the picnic table. Peter placed his in a container and wrapped a piece of plastic wrap over the top.

"Let's go help with the planting of the trees," said Peter.

SPECIAL EARTH DAY ISSUE

Read the story below. The use the materials listed at the end to solve the mystery.

MELTED MESS

"Planting trees is hard work!" said Peter a little later. He wiped sweat from his forehead.

Danielle patted down the dirt around a newly planted tree. "I know. Our chocolate would taste great right now," she said.

"I'll get them," said Peter.

A minute later, Peter returned with the two chocolate candies. He handed one to Danielle.

"Oh no!" said Danielle as she unwrapped her candy. Melted chocolate oozed from the wrapper and dripped onto the dirt. "Our chocolate is ruined!"

She looked over at Peter. He had his back turned to her.

"Hey," she said. "Isn't your chocolate melted too?"

"Um … no," he said, popping the piece of chocolate into his mouth. "Mine must have stayed cool because it was covered with plastic wrap," he said.

Danielle looked at Peter suspiciously. "You took my chocolate, didn't you?" she exclaimed, sounding angry.

"No I didn't!" said Peter. "Why would I do that?"

"It was your chocolate that melted!" said Danielle. "I can prove it." She stomped toward the picnic tables. Peter followed her.

Danielle picked up one of the thermometers from the picnic table. She placed it inside Peter's plastic container and covered it with his plastic wrap. She placed the other thermometer directly on the picnic table next to his container. "We'll know the truth soon," she said.

A half hour later, Danielle peered at the two thermometers. "I know whose chocolate was melted!" she said.
solve the mystery Whose chocolate treat melted?

To solve the mystery, grab these materials:

* plastic wrap
* scissors
* plastic container (large enough to hold a thermometer)
* 2 thermometers
* large rubber band
* lamp or sunny windowsill

Cut a piece of plastic wrap large enough to cover the top of the plastic container. Place one of the thermometers inside the container. Lay the plastic wrap over the container and use the rubber band to hold it in place. Put the container beneath a lamp or on a warm, sunny windowsill. Place the other thermometer next to the container. Position the lamp so that it is equally far away from each of the thermometers. After 30 minutes have passed, check the temperature on each thermometer. The thermometer that is warmer is the one that solves the mystery.

By: Norlander, Britt, Scholastic SuperScience

Cat Tails

2007-03-20T03:01:00.000-05:00

…therefore, I believe it would be good to–

SWEET! My Purr pet finally evolved!

Sorry guys, but this requires my immediate attention. See you all later.

Oh dear… she's got one of those needy little electronic pet thingies.

This could be very bad…

Can she really just walk out of a student council meeting like that?

Sigghh…

Next day…

Morning guys …

Wow, Aiko, you look awful! Did you sleep at all last night?

Uhhh … not really …

Well, it's just it's my Purr pet♥, you see? He's such a naughty boy, he kept calling out all, night for Food and stuff, and so then I had to feed him and–

BIP!

This is far more serious than we imagined. You know what must be done.

Yes, Sir.

INTERVENTION!!!

It's for your own good, you know.

SNATCH!

Mission accomplished.

Thanks, guys. No, seriously. What great friends … ZZZ …

THE END

By Emily Kawachi

The Great Date Auction

2007-02-08T01:56:00.000-06:00

"You have to help me," I begged, looking around the auditorium. It was rapidly filling up with friends, acquaintances, teachers, and everyone I had ever made fun of or been rude to in my life. With each new face, the possibilities for humiliation only increased.

"You're the one who volunteered to get auctioned off as someone's dream date," David countered. "It's not like I made you do it."

I narrowed my eyes into blade-thin slits. "You totally made me do it, jerk."

David gave me a smug smile. "This is what happens when you let people give you a double-dog dare."

OK, I admit I never should have risen to the dare. But when Patty Nickerson bopped over to our lunch table two weeks ago to ask if one of us would volunteer for the Regional High School Great Date Auction — well, the whole thing had seemed so ridiculous that it actually, for a brief moment, seemed like a good idea. Fact is, neither David nor I are particularly Great Date material. Neither of us is totally unpopular, but we're not exactly among the reigning gods and goddesses of the quadrangle either. We were — at best — demi-gods. Well, more like gnomes, really.

"These auctions are offensive, anyway," I'd said once Patty trotted off to recruit other victims. "Are we living in the 1800s? The whole thing is a joke."

"That's why you have to do it, Liza," David said before taking a swig of his Dr. Pepper. "While everyone else is all dolled up, you could dress up as the World's Laziest Date. Put on your pajamas, rent a DVD from Blockbuster, and walk in with a big bucket of popcorn."

Actually, it was a pretty funny idea. I could picture myself onstage, wearing my pink fuzzy slippers and munching popcorn while Analissa Jenkins and Melanie Wallace stood behind me in designer dresses. The mental image made me laugh out loud, and a little piece of the carrot I had been munching caught in my throat. I took a quick drink of chocolate milk to dislodge it.

And that's when he said it: "I double-dog dare you to do it."

Which is why I am, right now, at this very moment, standing in our school's auditorium in my pajamas and fuzzy slippers, holding a Jackie Chan DVD and a tub of Orville Redenbacher.

I groaned. "This is serious, David," I told him. "What if nobody bids on me? You can't just let me go up there and humiliate myself."

"Really?" David folded his arms across his chest. "Yet it's so tempting.…"

I grabbed his collar, yanking his face right up to mine. "Let me put it to you this way — you'd better help me, or else the yearbook will end up with one of your baby bathtub pictures."

Apparently, this mental image was vivid enough to do the trick because my oldest friend in the world finally choked out, "What do you want me to do?"

"That's more like it." I released my grip. "Bid me up," I said.

"I'm broke," David protested.

"You always have money, cheapo," I told him. It's true. David has been socking away every nickel of his allowance since he was 9. He hates to spend. The only thing he ever bought me was an ice-cream cone when we were 13, only because he had a two-for-one coupon.

"Maybe I would prefer to spend my money on a real date."

I snaked a finger into my pajama pocket and fished out a bill. "Here's a twenty." I pushed the money into his hand. "Just bid on me. And don't let me go to anyone gross, either."

"How do I know who you think is gross?" David asked.

I lifted my eyebrows. "You're kidding, right?" As if we hadn't spent the past three years' worth of Saturday nights eating pizza and playing Who's Hot/ Who's Not in his basement rec room. David knew every guy I'd ever looked at, just like I could name every single one of his million three-week crushes.

"Please, David," I said. I wasn't kid-ding anymore. I was really scared. I could just imagine me — standing by myself at the center of the stage while the audience sat in silence, not bidding. I'd have to be in therapy for the rest of my life. If not longer.

He pressed his lips together, the way he does when he's considering something. "OK," he said at last.

"Next up is Liza Cooper," Patty announced as I bounced onstage waving my DVD. My three best girl friends — Emma, Grace and Lally — let out a cheer from the third row as the rest of the crowd politely clapped.

Don't let them smell the fear, I thought to myself as I shoved a handful of popcorn into my face.

"She's offering the World's Laziest Date," Patty said, "complete with action movie, popcorn and sarcastic comments. The bidding will start at five dollars."

The popcorn turned to Styrofoam in my mouth as an excruciating silence lapped over the room. The bottom fell out of my stomach, but I barely had time to feel faint because, in the next moment, I heard David shout, "Five!"

A whoosh of air seeped out of my lungs, and I managed to swallow my popcorn. Then Tyler Reese raised his hand and shouted, "Six!"

Oh, lord. Not Tyler Reese. Lally and Grace actually refer to him as Mister Yuck, which is kind of mean but freakishly apt, given that his face is as perfectly round as those stickers my mom used to put on poisonous substances like toilet bowl cleaner. He also usually wears an expression like he just tasted something bad. And, OK, here's the truth: He's smelly. This sounds really shallow, I know, but his personality is a little off so I don't feel too bad about it.

"Seven!" David cried.

Remind me to kiss you later, I thought about my best friend.

"Do I have eight?" Patty chimed in.
Remind me to kill you, Patty.

"Eight!" Tyler hollered.

"Nine," David said.

Tyler's permanent frown got more permanent. "Twelve."
Oh, geez. Why is Tyler even bidding? Have I ever even been nice to him?

I wracked my brain but came up empty. Note to self: Stop being nice to people.

But David, bless him, cut to the chase. "Twenty!" he cried.

OK, so it's my money he's spending, I thought. At least it's for a good cause.

"Twenty!" Patty grinned madly. She looked at Tyler. "Do I have twenty-one?"

Tyler folded his arms across his chest.

Oh, this was perfect. Thank goodness I'd asked David to save my butt. I owed him one, that was for sure.

"No other bidders? All right. Twenty. Going once…going twice…"

"Twenty-one!" called a voice.

I bunked out into the audience. Was that…was that John Marks? I heard an "Ohhh!" from the third row — my friend Lally, most likely — and knew the answer had to be yes.

John Marks is in three of my classes, and is known by everyone as a total sweetheart. He has long, shaggy blond hair and a lopsided smile. He's cute but not in a totally obvious way. He'd never made it to my Who's Hot list," but, now that I was standing up on this stage to be auctioned off, I wasn't so sure why.

John Marks. Not bad. And he's bidding twenty-one dollars on me. The highest bid of the night so far had been thirty, and the lowest had been five. Poor, poor Bo Ivendarg. Nobody wanted him because his girlfriend Haylie Cooper had busted him making out with her best friend Nicole at a party the week before. Haylie's posse had let it be known that anyone who bid on Bo would pay in blood and tears, so when it came time to ante-up, Nicole was the only bidder. Anyway, point being — twenty-one was a respectable bid. John Marks was a cutie, and this night had turned out way better than I had planned.

"Twenty-one, going once," Patty announced, her red lips brushing up against the microphone.

I looked out at David. His face was a question mark. I could tell he didn't know whether to bid on me or not.

I gave him a thumbs-up. Way to go, my friend,

He nodded. Then he put up his hand.

"Twenty-two!"
What?

"Twenty-three," John shouted.

"Twenty-five," David snapped back. His blue eyes flashed. I knew that look. That's David's dug-in look. It means he's not going to give up on something. It's a look I had seen a zillion times over the years — during Monopoly games, Zelda, arguments, soccer matches, crossword puzzles, you name it.

Stop it! I beamed at him mentally. I made some frantic arm motions, but I guess they didn't carry the meaning I intended because Patty looked at me and said, "Well, it looks like Liza is excited to be raising money for.

John broke in. "Twenty-eight!"

"Thirty!"

I groaned. I am standing up here, going broke because my best friend is a total idiot.

"Thirty-five," John said.

David didn't let up. "Forty!"

"Fifty!" This, inexplicably, was from Tyler, who had somehow gotten swept back into the action.

"This is exciting!" Patty chirped. "It's our highest bid of the night! All right, fifty dollars, going once…"

Ohmigosh, David, if you stop now, I'm going to kill you. Double-kill you. I looked down at him. His blue eyes were locked on me, his expression unreadable. What is he waiting for?

"Going twice…"

"No, wait!" David shouted. He took a few steps toward the stage, and people parted to let him by. "Two hundred forty-three dollars and…" he dug into his pocket. "Sixty-seven cents!" he said, flipping through the change in his palm.

The crowd murmured, and I heard Emma, Grace and Lally gasp. I'm dying, I thought as I stood under the light. My heart has stopped and I am passing into the next 'world. I am going to have to borrow money from my parents to pay for my own non-date. I am going to have to mow the lawn, babysit my sister and take out the trash until I turn 30. This… is…. horrible.

"I guess a lazy date is the way to go!" Patty announced. "Two hundred forty-three dollars and sixty-seven cents, going once." Her face was glowing.
Well, at least somebody's happy.

"Going twice…Sold!" Patty cried. She turned to me. "Congratulations!" She put her hand over the microphone and leaned over to whisper in my ear. "This is so great! You've just raised a ton of money for the Boosters!"

I stuck my hand in my bucket of popcorn and tossed a few kernels into the air. They fluttered down on me like confetti, like rain. "Yippee."

"Liza!" David called, trotting after me as I strode down the hall. "Liza, stop!"

The metal bar was solid and cold under my hands as I slammed it down, burst through the fire doors and stepped into the cool night air. The moon hung overhead, a gleaming thumbnail.

David followed me. "Liza, I'm sorry."

I shook my head, grinding my teeth. "Why did you do that?"

He took a step back. "Well, you gave me a thumbs up and…"

"The thumbs up meant 'good job!'" I punched him on the arm, hard. "It meant 'OK, John Marks — not gross!' It meant 'done deal!'" I punched him again.

"Ow!"

"I'm not giving you two hundred and twenty-three dollars, David," I said, folding my arms across my chest. "I'm not paying for your mistake!"

"I don't expect you to give me the money." David looked really hurt, and I suddenly felt like a complete jerk. After all, he had been trying to help me. He'd only done what I asked him to do. This mess was my own fault.

For a moment, I couldn't speak. "I'm sorry," I said finally.

David nodded. "Hey, at least you don't have to go out with Mister Yuck."

"There's a positive spin," I agreed.

"And…" he cleared his throat. "It won't be so bad for you to have to go on a date with me…right?"

"We spend every Saturday night together, anyway," I pointed out.

One of David's shoulders darted up in a shrug. "But not on a date." He dug his fists deep into the pockets of his khakis. "I mean, you'd rather hang with me than John Marks, right?"

"Not two hundred and twenty-three bucks worth," I said. "John's a nice guy."

"It's not like he ever made your Who's Hot list," David insisted.

"It's not like he's on my Not list, either," I shot back. I thought for a moment, imagining myself curled up on my family's couch next to John Marks. What would we talk about?

What does anyone talk about on a first date? Who knows? I spend all my time with Emma, Grace and Lally. Or with David. It's not like I have a huge amount of experience to draw on. Still, David always says I'm interesting to talk to. And I can usually make almost anybody laugh. "I'll bet John and I would have had a pretty decent time together."

"Yeah." David looked away, toward the darkness of the parking lot. He ran a hand through his wavy brown hair, then jammed his fist back into his pocket. "That's precisely what I was afraid of," he finally muttered.

Gravel crunched, and light traced across his features as a car pulled out, turned and drove away. He looked down at me and, suddenly, I understood.

David hadn't been doing me a favor. He had been bidding on me. For real.

"Do you…" I started, but before I could even finish formulating the question, he leaned forward. I could smell the sweetness of his breath — I could tell he had eaten something chocolate — and the clean, familiar smell of his shirt. And then he kissed me.

We were so close that our noses were almost touching. He cradled my face in his hands. "OK?" he asked. His voice was low, an almost-whisper.

I felt dizzy, almost breathless. My mind was whirling with a ton of questions: But what about our friendship? How long have you felt this way about me? How long have I felt this way? Is this all a big mistake?

But, in the end, I didn't ask any of them out loud.

In the end, all I said was, "Yes."

Liza is clueless that she's so crushworthy…until she finds herself on the auction block.

'She's the world's laziest date, complete with action DVD, popcorn and sarcasm.'

By Lisa Papademetriou

Colin's Christmas Candle

2006-12-08T03:08:00.000-06:00

By Barbara Raftery

Colin walked slowly home from school, scuffing his feet. He looked across the hills at the little Irish fishing village. It did not seem like Christmas Eve. Perhaps this was because it still had not snowed.

But Colin knew there was another reason why it did not seem like Christmas--a reason he did not dare whisper even in his heart.

He looked toward the lead-colored sea. There was not a single ship on the horizon. And seven days ago his father's fishing schooner had been due home.

"I'll bring you a sheep dog pup from the Shetland Isles," Colin's father told him the morning he left. "Ye'll have it a week before Christmas, I am certain."

But now it was Christmas Eve. Colin looked toward the lighthouse, high on the hill. Seven days ago, a storm had short-circuited the lighthouse wires. The great beacon's light had been snuffed out. For seven days, there had been no light to guide his father's ship.

Colin pushed open the door of his cottage. "We'll need more peat for the fire, Colin," said his mother as he entered. "It has burned itself out. And it's near time to light the Christmas candle."

"I'm not carin' much about lightin' a candle, Mother," he said.

"Aye, I know, for I'm not carin' much either," replied his mother. "But everybody in Ireland lights a candle on Christmas Eve. Even when there's sadness in the house, you must light the candle. It shows that your house and heart are open to strangers. Come now, I've two candles, one for each of us. If you gather some peat, we'll be ready for supper soon." Colin nodded and went outside.

He led their donkey up the hill so that he could gather the peat. "Who cares about a silly candle," he said as he glanced toward the lighthouse, "when there's not so much as a beam of light to guide a fishin' boat home?" The donkey shook his head and brayed sadly, as if he understood.

But while he was staring at the lighthouse, Colin had an idea. It hit him like a gust of warm spring wind. He started running up the long hill. When he came to the lighthouse, he pounded on the door.

Mr. Duffy, the keeper, opened the door. "What's got into you, young fellow? You startled me--and on Christmas Eve, too!"

"Mr. Duffy," gasped Colin, "how did you used to light the beacon?"

"Why, with electric batteries. But they are blown, my boy. Dead as can be! And we won't be able to replace them till after the new year."

"No, I mean, how did you light the lighthouse before there were such things as batteries?"

"Well, they used an oil lamp. It's down in the cellar. But we've no oil to burn, lad."

"Would kerosene light the lamp?" asked Colin, holding his breath.

"Well, I suppose," Mr. Duffy mused. "But don't go gettin' silly ideas in your head, lad. You wouldn't find even a pitiful quart of spare kerosene in this village. Everyone is so poor for money this year…"

Colin was gone before Mr. Duffy could finish his sentence.

Down the hill he ran, back to the cottage. Quickly he gathered four pails from the kitchen. Then he darted out the door.

Colin could see candles glowing in nearly every cottage in the valley below him. A candle on Christmas Eve meant that a stranger would be welcome and given whatever he asked. He didn't stop running until he came to the first house.

"Could you spare me just a half cup of kerosene from your lamp?" he asked. Colin went to every house where a candle shone in the window.

In one hour he had filled two pails. Slowly and painfully he carried them up to the lighthouse door. He knocked.

"What's this?" Mr. Duffy asked. "Laddie, this won't keep the lamp burnin' for more than an hour or so."

"I'll get more!" Colin shouted as he started down the hill. "It's early still."

After three more long hours, Colin had gathered five more pails of kerosene. He was on his way with the sixth pail, when the tower suddenly flickered with light. A great beam spread out over the valley. It stretched toward the dark heart of the sea like a finger pointing home. Mr. Duffy had lighted the lamp!

It was very late when Colin reached home. His mother jumped from her seat near the fire.

"Colin, where have you been? You've had no supper, nor lighted your candle!"

"Oh, Mother! I've lighted a candle, and a big one! It's a secret, so I can't tell you--yet. But it was a huge candle indeed!"

Colin slept soundly that night, dreaming of candles. Suddenly, a great shouting aroused him from his sleep.

"The boat! The boat has come in!"

A hundred voices were spinning in his head. "The light--'twas the light they said--the light from the beacon. They were only ten miles away after all. The boat was just a-driftin' in the fog, lost."

Dawn was breaking. Colin dashed to the window. People were milling around outside. His mother was running toward the harbor. It was true! There floated his father's schooner, standing out black as coal against the gray of the sea.

Colin darted across the yard and raced for the harbor. He felt a moist wind on his face. It was beginning to snow.

Oh, it was Christmas morning all right, falling right from heaven and into his heart!

Buddy

2006-12-07T18:46:00.000-06:00

There was once a little girl named Alizabeth. She lived up in the mountains where there was snow and woods with her mother and father and her older brother John. Alizabeth always walked to school by herself every morning. One morning when she was walking to school, she tripped and fell. She looked up and saw a big, hairy creature. It looked like Bigfoot, but she wasn't sure what it was. She screamed and stared at the creature. And the creature just stared right back at her. So she got up and ran home, and the hairy creature followed her home.

When she got home, she showed the rest of the family the hairy creature. They didn't know what to do so they called the police. A tired cop answered the phone. The cop said, "Hello." She was sort of grumpy. Alizabeth's dad said, "There's a big, hairy creature that my daughter ran into on the way to school." And the police lady said, "Uh-huh. Right. So let me get this straight. There's a big, hairy creature that your daughter ran into on the way to school and the creature followed her home. Listen, Mister, every time I get calls about big creatures, I come and the creature is not there."

"Hurry up," yelled Alizabeth's dad. "He's going to break the phone."

"All right, tell me where you live, and I'll be right there." Then she hung up.

It was as if the big, hairy creature had heard the whole conversation, and he ran away. Then the police officer pulled up, and she said, "Uh-huh, right." And the father said, "No, really, he just ran into the bushes." And the grumpy police officer drove off.

That night everyone fell asleep right away. But Alizabeth couldn't fall asleep. She had a dream about the big, hairy creature breaking into their house. And the dream was real. The big, hairy creature really was breaking into their house right then. And he went into Alizabeth's room and she started screaming. Then all the lights suddenly were put on, and her parents came rushing in the room.

Her Dad had a gun in his hand, and Bigfoot was threatened, so he left the house.

When Alizabeth came home from school that day, her morn asked her, "Where's Johnny?"

"I thought you picked him early or something," Alizabeth replied.

"No I didn't." So they went outside and started calling his name: "Johnny! Johnny!"

Then they heard some crying sounds. They found Johnny. He was stuck up in a tree, dangling by one leg. They couldn't get to him.

"I thought I told you not to climb that tree," Alizabeth's mom said.

"I know, but I really just wanted to, just this once. I'm sorry," Johnny cried.

"Don't worry, honey, we'll get you down. I'll call the ambulance or something."

Then suddenly out of nowhere came the hairy creature, and he leaped on the tree and saved Johnny. He brought him down to the ground gently. Alizabeth's mother and father ran up to Johnny and hugged him, and Johnny promised he'd never do it again. Alizabeth thanked the hairy creature. The whole family thanked him, especially Johnny.

"He can be part of the family, can't he, Dad?" Alizabeth and Johnny asked.

"Of course he can," Dad answered.

When they got home, they fixed up a bed for the hairy creature. The bed was made out of leaves, since he loved nature and it was in the living room. They decided to name him Buddy. Then everybody went to bed. Alizabeth slept well.

In the morning, Johnny and Alizabeth went to school. Alizabeth didn't have many friends at school. Nobody really liked her, and when she told them about the hairy creature, nobody believed her. They all started to laugh at her.

At recess, Buddy came. She told him to go away, since it was not a place for him to be. But he didn't listen. He just went over to the other kids and started playing with them. They thought he was cool.

The teacher looked nervous. Alizabeth told her that Buddy was safe. "He saved my brother when he was stuck up in a tree. He's very gentle," she explained. Alizabeth's teacher looked like she believed her. Then everyone started to be much nicer to her than they usually were. Alizabeth felt special. When she came home from school, she told Morn and Dad about the great day she had. She said thank you to her new friend, Buddy.

Editor's note: Jessie was 9 when she wrote this. She is now 10 and lives in Florida.

By Jessie Greenberg, Child Life, Nov/Dec2006

Bartlestein's First Fling

2006-12-07T18:38:00.000-06:00

LARRY BARTLESTEIN has played it safe all his life, and playing it safe has paid off. At sixty-four, he is a wealthy man, his two daughters are married, he has two grandchildren and another on the way, and he and Myrna will soon celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. In his set of friends, this last fact is nearly worthy of Ripley's Believe It or Not. There were lots of early divorces, and a number more when couples reached their mid-forties. Some had still not settled in. Bartlestein read in Chicago Magazine last month that his high-school classmate Joel Meizels, the real-estate developer, had just forked over $40 million to his third wife. The figure made him whistle. The two earlier wives probably hadn't done much worse.

To Bartlestein, playing it safe came naturally. He had been a passably good student in high school, majored in business at the University of Illinois, taken and passed the CPA exam, and married Myrna Perelman, his high-school girlfriend, soon after graduation. Myrna, who had gone to the National College of Education in Evanston, taught grade school for the two years that it took Bartlestein to get his MBA at the University of Chicago. A job offer from Merrill Lynch followed, but it involved moving to Dallas. It was around then that his father-in-law made Bartlestein one of those offers not many people could refuse.

Perelman Plumbing is a major manufacturer of sinks, tubs, and faucets in the Midwest, one of the four or five largest in North America. Irv Perelman, the first Jewish licensed master plumber in Chicago, built the business out of a small warehouse on Western Avenue, near Diversey, after returning home from World War II. A genuinely modest man, he retained the thick, callused hands of a plumber, grime permanently encrusted under his fingernails.

"Larry," Irv Perelman said when his daughter told him about their prospective move to Dallas, "what's it going to take to keep you two here? I'd like the business to stay in the family, and Myrna's mother and I like having our daughters close by." Myrna's older sister Susan was married to a dentist in Highland Park.

"What do you have in mind?" Bartlestein asked.

"I was thinking about making you a vice-president in charge of the administrative side of the company, and eventually let you run the whole business if you turn out to be good at it. Starting salary of $50,000 a year."

In 1966, $50,000 was serious money, more than twice what Merrill Lynch was offering to move Bartlestein to Dallas. Besides, Myrna wasn't eager to leave Chicago. Why not, Bartlestein figured? He told his father-in-law he was grateful for the offer, and ready to give it his best effort.

Irv Perelman was of the my-word-is-my-bond school. He had no craving for power or status or glory, and he felt no need to bully or lord things over his son-in-law or anyone else. He just wanted to turn out a good product at a reasonable profit. His employees, who after five years became automatically vested in the company's profit-sharing plan, tended to stay put, many for their entire working lives. "No need to be a pig," he once said to Bartlestein. "Run this business right and everyone will do OK."

Bartlestein spent long hours mastering the details of the plumbing business. When Irv Perelman turned seventy-five and stopped driving, Bartlestein began picking him up on the way in from Northbrook. Most mornings, Irv read the Trib and then, after he put down the paper, the two generally talked business: investing profits, enlarging the plant, designing a new line, patching up troubles. After much careful effort, Bartlestein had gotten the firm's less expensive sinks and faucets into Home Depot, which turned out to be a shrewd move. His father-in-law treated him without condescension, as if he were a full partner, which is what he made him on his 50th birthday.

One morning, on the drive down, Bartlestein mentioned that he was thinking of getting a new car, a Mercedes. His father-in-law came alive. "Do me a favor," he said, "and buy another kind of car." Bartlestein asked why. Irv, who never talked about his wartime experiences, answered that even today he didn't like to think about it, but his battalion had been among the first to liberate the Jews at Treblinka. "I don't consider myself a prejudiced man," he said, "but the least I can do to keep the sights of those days out of my mind is not to have to drive to work with my son-in-law in a German car."

Bartlestein bought a Lexus. He continues to buy a Lexus, a new one every three years. He has come to think the Lexus is the perfect car for him: dependable, not too showy, efficient, quietly luxurious. He has himself become a kind of human Lexus.

AFTER THE death of Irv Perelman--at eighty-one, of a heart attack, early one morning at his desk Perelman Plumbing has continued as a family business, with Lawrence R. Bartlestein as chairman and chief executive officer. Bartlestein has invested both the company's and his own personal profits well. He has twice been president of Temple Jeremiah. He is among the major contributors in metropolitan Chicago to the Jewish United Fund, manufacturing division. He golfs at Bryn Mawr Country Club. Myrna, a better golfer than he, regularly wins the over-fifty women's title at Bryn Mawr. His daughter Debbie is married to a cardiologist and has two children Of her own. Jennifer, his younger girl, married a documentary filmmaker and is now, after two fairly traumatic miscarriages, in her eighth month. Her husband Charlie isn't making his nut, so Bartlestein helps out with a couple of grand a month.

At his annual physical less than two months ago, Bartlestein was assured by his internist that he is in excellent health. He does the treadmill and rowing machines at the East Bank Club, his weight is about what it should be, and all his numbers--cholesterol, blood pressure, PSA, and the rest--are good. Financially, medically, domestically, he is in the black, in the clear, sailing in calm waters.

So the question is, what is Lawrence R. Bartlestein doing in his office at 6:45 P.M. on a Wednesday night slipping his hand under the blouse of a young woman named Elaine Leslie, a designer at Perelman Plumbing? Elaine at this moment has her hand on Bartlestein's belt buckle, loosening it with what seem like very deft hands.

Only minutes ago, Elaine Leslie was standing behind Bartlestein's chair as he studied the designs and production costs for a new mid-priced line of faucets, a project she had brought in for his comments. He felt her hand touch his shoulder, then go upward, massaging gently, her fingers raveling the hair on the back of his neck. He pushed his chair away from his desk, and before he had time to say anything she slid smoothly onto his lap, and his arms were around her. Presently she will descend to do unbidden what Bartlestein, head of a company whose estimated worth is well over $100 million, has never quite found the nerve to ask his wife to do.

Bartlestein feels himself trembling slightly as Elaine, moving quickly, removes her blouse and slips out of her skirt. Now they are on the floor, Ms. Leslie (as Bartlestein persists in thinking of her) directing the show. Bartlestein feels oddly detached, hugely excited yet curiously outside himself, looking in. He recalls that he is a grandfather. He has had back trouble of late, and hopes he will not throw something out of whack before this session on his office floor is over. Until now, he has never in his life slept with anyone but Myrna.

Earlier this year, Bartlestein had lunch with Eddie Jacobs, who handles his account at Bear Stearns. Eddie's third wife is in her early thirties, and, Eddie confided, he is sexually very active. That was the slightly bragging phrase he used, "sexually very active." Bartlestein's own sex with Myrna is and always was decidedly less so. He enjoyed it, and tried to be a patient and in no way brutish lover; Myrna was without expressed complaint. But after the first year or so of their marriage, sex had never been at the center of their life. When their daughters arrived, and his responsibilities at the office increased, most of Myrna's complaints were about the hours he worked at Perelman Plumbing. Bartlestein's adult life has been lived through a very sexy age, and he has tried his best not to be swept up in the craziness.

Bartlestein and Elaine Leslie are now lying on the Oriental rug in front of his desk, she on her stomach, he still on his back. He looks at his watch: 7:18. The Polish cleaning women, he knows, come on at 9. Clothes are scattered across the floor. He is still wearing his T-shirt and black socks--"executive length," as the saleswoman at Marshall Field's described them to him. Now they remind him of those ridiculous movies shown at the stag parties he used to attend for friends on the night before their weddings.

"What exactly are we doing here?" he hears himself ask.

"I believe there are several names for it," Ms. Leslie answers.

"I guess I mean why are we here?"

"For pleasure," she says. "It pleased me. I hope it didn't displease you."

Bartlestein feels complimented. "I'm still not putting it right," he says. "How did we get into this position?"

"I got us into it, Larry," she said. "It's OK to call you Larry, isn't it? I thought you could use a little relief."

Relief, Bartlestein thinks: interesting word.

They dress, and Bartlestein asks if she would like dinner; he can tell Myrna he has to entertain a customer at the last minute. She says no, thank you, but since her car is in the shop, she would appreciate a ride home.

On the way, Bartlestein finds conversation awkward. He asks if she grew up in Chicago and she answers New York, but she has lived here for almost twelve years. "I still think of myself as a New Yorker," she adds. "Can't help it. Being a New Yorker is like being a member of an ethnic group." This makes Bartlestein wonder. Is she Jewish? Her name doesn't give much of a clue.

Bartlestein drops her in front of her large apartment building on Armitage, off Lincoln Park. No talk about his coming up; no mention of their getting together again. Looking back as she closes the car door, she says, "Thanks for the ride, Mr. Bartlestein," forgetting to call him by his first name.

DRIVING HOME, Bartlestein attempts to decipher Elaine Leslie's motives. He rules out simple sexual attraction, at least on her part. Although, like all men, he still checks out every woman in sight, and figures he will probably do so on his deathbed, there is nothing of the flirt in him. He is careful to send no signals to his female employees, and has certainly never sent any to Elaine Leslie, who was hired not by him but by his father-in-law. He is without illusions about his own attractiveness; women, he knows, find him perfectly resistible.

Perhaps, Bartlestein thinks, still searching for motives, she views sex with him as a way of getting ahead in the office? Blackmail is always a possibility. A wealthy man with a settled home life, Bartlestein has put himself in a position where Elaine Leslie could do him real damage. His mind racing, he conceives the possibility of an office pool, with the prize going to the first female employee to bang the boss. Who knows?

He thinks back to the day when, near high-school graduation, he and Myrna first made love--"going all the way" was the name for it then, a phrase, it occurs to him now, that assumed there was no way back. Having taken her virginity and in the same moment given up his own, he felt, rightly or wrongly, beholden to her. In those days the sex act was not only exciting but a matter of the deepest intimacy, implying trust on every level. There was nothing trivial about it. Now, for Elaine Leslie, it was a means of relief. Which was the better arrangement? Bartlestein hasn't a clue.

He is not disappointed to discover that Myrna isn't home. A note in the foyer tells him she has gone to her book-discussion group at Sue Levin's. There's lasagna in the fridge, with instructions for warming it in the microwave. She may not be home until after 11, and will try not to wake him. Bartlestein, who gets up at 5 A.M., is usually asleep by 10:30. The note, as always, is signed "Love, Myrna."

Eating the lasagna quickly, Bartlestein moves to the bedroom where he checks his shirt for lipstick and his clothes for perfume, and--always the safe player--showers before getting into bed. He is sure sleep won't come easily but it does, and without any of the anxiety dreams that have plagued him since he turned sixty.

In the morning, Bartlestein looks over at his wife, her face, even in sleep, shining with kindness. He and Myrna don't confide in each other regularly; there are many things, chiefly business worries, that Bartlestein keeps to himself. But their marriage is built on being able to count on each other, on never being a cause of embarrassment, let alone humiliation. What happened last night, if it were to come out, could only cause her both.

Usually they have coffee and toast together, but this morning he decides not to wake her. After he has shaved and dressed, he kisses Myrna gently on the forehead, and tells her he is leaving a bit early. "Love you," she says, pulling the covers up and falling easily back to sleep.

IN THE office, checking Elaine Leslie's file, Bartlestein learns that she is 23 years younger than he, is a graduate of the Pratt Institute of Design, earns just under $70,000 a year, and is divorced with no children. She has been with Perelman Plumbing for eight years. According to the reports of the people she has worked for, she is excellent at her job. She is also, Bartlestein reflects, good-looking, dark, petite, and vibrant. Not to mention fine in bed, or on the floor.

The question is how to erase what happened last night. These days you have to be very careful about letting someone go, even someone who royally deserves to be fired, which Ms. Leslie clearly does not. Screwing the boss hardly qualifies as a reason, especially when the boss has put up no fight whatsoever; more likely it qualifies as grounds for a high publicity sexual-harassment suit.

Earlier, driving to work, Bartlestein wondered whether he might arrange to have her lured away by another firm, perhaps even fix things so as to pay part of her salary. He is on friendly terms with Teddy Mohlner, head of a rival and larger plumbing firm. What if he confessed to Teddy his "indiscretion"--that is the word he decides he will use--and asked him to take Elaine off his hands by hiring her for $20,000 more than she is now making. He would come up with the additional money out of his own pocket. Once the deal was in place, he could tell Elaine he had heard Mohlner was looking for designers and was willing to pay up to $90,000. Was she interested?

But now Bartlestein thinks: what am I, nuts? Imagine confessing his problem to Teddy Mohlner. Imagine signing up to pay twenty grand or more a year for the foreseeable future, all for a quick roll on the floor. Talk about dumb schemes!

"Hi. Larry Bartlestein," he finally says to Elaine Leslie on the office phone. "I think we should probably have a talk. Are you free for dinner any night this week?"

"Tonight I can't," she says. "But tomorrow night's OK."

"Great," he says. "You know Erwin's, on Halsted? How about we meet at 7."

"See you there," she says.

Bartlestein's heart is racing. How the hell did he get himself into this? He sees scandal, lawsuits, a divorce, his careful life going down the tubes. The problem facing him is how to disengage smoothly, without bad feelings and worse consequences, but his mind floats off when he seeks a solution.

AT THE bar at Erwin's, it occurs to the waiting Bartlestein for the first time that maybe he doesn't really want to disengage from Elaine Leslie. Doesn't he deserve a little time off for an entire life of good behavior? He can afford a lady friend, and what with his long working hours and frequent business travel he feels reasonably sure he could arrange to bring the affair off. Maybe it makes sense to let this business unfold, wind down of its own accord.

Erwin's is a restaurant with good food and a fairly low level of pretension. Hoping that he won't be seen, at least not by friends or business associates, Bartlestein has scanned the room with care. Elaine Leslie is only a few years older than his daughter Debbie. Seeing them together, would someone take him for her father? Better that, he thinks, than for some old guy chasing young broads, a sugar daddy. As he ponders whether people use words like broads and sugar daddy any more, Elaine walks up to him at the bar.

She is wearing jeans, close-fitting, and a red cashmere cardigan over a white T-shirt. Her dark hair, cut short and brushed back, accentuates her delicate ears. On them she wears simple silver ball-shaped earrings; on her feet, moderately high heels. Her lipstick is darker than what she uses in the office. Noting these things, Bartlestein thinks that Myrna, who jokes about his obliviousness to her clothes and jewelry, would be amazed at his powers of observation. He also thinks he would have a hard time convincing anyone that this young woman, dressed for the attack, is a niece from out of town, or a business associate.

"I don't know this restaurant," she says. "Looks like a good place for a tryst. Or are trysts only in the afternoon?"

"Good place for dinner, actually," Bartlestein says, "and for talk. What're you drinking?"

She orders an apple martini, something Bartlestein has never heard of. From a small bag she takes out a white box of long, slender cigarettes. Lighting one for her, Bartlestein feels he is in a movie from the late 1940's, which, he reminds himself, is well before Elaine Leslie was born. In fact, everyone in the restaurant seems young to him: the fellow who asked for his reservation, the bartender, the woman who has shown them to their table, the waitress who recites the list of the evening's specials. After the first two specials, Bartlestein can never keep track. Elaine orders a veal chop, he the swordfish.

"So," Bartlestein begins, as the waitress goes off. "What do you see happening here?"

"Between us?" she says. "I kinda think that's your call."

"I'm a lot older than you, I'm your employer, I'm married, I'm even a grandfather."

"Really," she says. "I don't think I've ever slept with a grandfather before. I certainly never slept with my own."

Her jokiness puts him off, but he persists. "Why would you want to waste your time with me?" he asks.

"Think of me as Florence Nightingale," she says, lifting her martini glass--tall, with a blue stem--in a toast to herself. "I like the idea of bringing comfort to the wounded troops."

"Wounded?"

"Maybe not wounded. Maybe stifled. I don't know, but when I was standing behind you at your desk, I felt an overpowering sadness, as if you were a little boy who always did what he was told and didn't have all that much fun doing it."

"I don't think of myself that way at all," Bartlestein says. "I think of myself as a lucky man, in lots of ways."

"I'm only reporting what I felt," she says. "Funny: you say 'think,' I say 'feel.' Difference between men and women, I suppose."

When their food comes, Elaine's veal chop is enormous.

"They don't spare the horses here," Bartlestein says.

"Let's hope they do," she replies with her quick smile.

Bartlestein is impressed by the way she tucks into her food. Myrna, who worries about her weight, nowadays rarely eats anything but salads and fish, and never much of either.

"How do you eat like this and stay so slender?" Bartlestein asks after she has polished off the chop, the potato, the broccoli, and a large salad, and ordered a dessert of chocolate mousse and raspberries and a double espresso.

"The torture of exercise," she says. "The choice for me is simple: jog five times a week or buy my clothes at maternity thrift shops."

"Which reminds me to ask, if it's not too personal, how come you've never had children?"

"Pretty personal," she says. "My ex-husband turned out to be a child himself, and since he didn't show any signs of growing up, I didn't see much point in raising another one. There's another reason. I had an alcoholic mother. I'll spare you the details, except to say that my dad took off and left my brother and me in her very shaky care. When your own childhood has been a misery, you think hard before bringing more children into the world. At least I did. Still do, actually."

BARTLESTEIN FINDS himself touched by this young woman. He learns that her younger brother died in a car accident. She went to college on Long Island, to a school called Adelphi that he had never heard of. To help pay her way, she had waited tables. She wanted to be an actress, but auditioning made her too nervous. She had always been good at visual art, had an instinctive sense of design, and was able to get together a portfolio that won her a scholarship to Pratt. Her marriage, she tells Bartlestein, lasted four hellish years.

What Elaine described was a life lived pretty much on her own. How different from the case of Bartlestein's own daughters. Mostly thanks to Myrna, the girls had been carefully guarded and ushered through a gentle girlhood ending in safe marriages to Jewish boys of roughly their own background. They had been backed up all the way. Elaine Leslie flew solo, and was still doing so. Bartlestein admired that.

"You know," he says, driving her back to her apartment on Armitage, "we really haven't talked about the purpose of this dinner."

"You mean the purpose wasn't strictly nutritional?" she says.

"I mean where we're going."

"I think I'll let you decide that," she says. "I understand your situation is much more complicated than mine. If you want to put a stop to things now, we can do that, too."

"You're an amazing kid," Bartlestein says, pulling up in front of her apartment. "But maybe you already know that."

"I do," she says. "But it's nice to get reinforcement." She gets out of the car before he can come around to open the door for her. "Have to be up early," she says, looking in, "I work for a real tyrant. Thanks for dinner."

On the drive home, Bartlestein feels exhilarated, youthful, high and happy as he hasn't been for years--decades, really. He knows men whom he thinks of as terrific chaos managers. At the East Bank, he occasionally runs into Jack Meltzer, a friend from high-school days. On his fourth marriage, all of them to much younger women, Jack has twice declared bankruptcy, is in serious hock to the IRS, and at one point had mafia goons after him for too-slow payment of juice loans. Yet he shows no obvious traces of stress. At the club he still takes more than his share of shots at half-court basketball, flirts with women, tells jokes at which he himself laughs the loudest.

Bartlestein is not like that. If a shipment is delayed or profits are down by a half-point from last year, he can't sleep. How he has avoided ulcers is a mystery. "Know your limitations" was one of his father-in-law's great mottos, and Bartlestein, taking it seriously, had discovered his early on. He needs his risks to be carefully calculated, his days to be orderly, his life to be routinized. Take care of the details, he believes, and the larger matters will take care of themselves.

Are we talking about a mid-life crisis here, Bartlestein wonders? He had never put much stock in the notion. Men of a certain age become interested in younger women and want to drive around for a while in red convertibles. Not much crisis there, it seemed to him, just random desire conquering good sense. So isn't he entitled, too? At sixty-four he is already well past mid-life. Hasn't he earned a last--make that a first--fling?

Details, it is all a matter of details, and details are Bartlestein's specialty. If he could master the details of the sink-and-bathtub business, surely he can master the details of a relatively simple love affair without stirring up trouble. True, the stakes are high. If he is caught at it, Myrna will never again regard him in the same trusting way; she might even want a divorce. He will lose the respect of his daughters and their husbands.

Before he turns off the freeway at the exit for Dundee West, he has decided not to break things off with Elaine Leslie.

"LARRY," MYRNA says as soon as he enters the house, her voice shaking, "I've been trying to reach you for hours."

Bartlestein takes out his cell phone. He'd turned it off before going into the restaurant.

"What's the matter?"

"It's Jen. The baby was stillborn, strangled on its umbilical cord. She went to the hospital by ambulance, but it was too late. Larry, it's horrible. Almost full term, and now this nightmare." Tears are in his wife's eyes. She embraces him. She sobs, clutching at him. Bartlestein holds her, rubbing her back slowly in a circular motion. He tries to block out everything he has been thinking on his ride home. The thought crosses his mind that his own behavior may have had something to do with his daughter's misfortune.

Bartlestein does not think of himself as religious, but he leads his life as if cosmic justice prevailed. A man does good, and good is likely to be his reward. The reverse is also true--not always, not inevitably, but mostly. He knows there are thousands of exceptions, but somewhere firmly lodged in his mind is the certainty of cause and effect, of acts having roughly predictable consequences, of people getting what they deserve. Somewhere, an accountant keeps a fairly careful record.

"Dr. Oberman says that Jen isn't going to be able to have children, ever," Myrna says. "She's heartbroken. The hospital put in a cot, and Debbie is going to spend the night. Thank God Jen won't be alone."

Bartlestein's mind, usually so concentrated at moments of business crisis, is scattered. Despite himself, he can't help comparing his wife, her makeup ruined by tears, body slumped in grief, eyes red, exhausted by her daughter's suffering, with Elaine Leslie's youthfulness. He feels a perfect son of a bitch; and he feels his own age.

EARLY THE next morning at Highland Park Hospital, Bartlestein finds his daughter sitting in a chair near the window. Her older sister has gone home. Her mother is coming in later. Jennifer is his perennially troubled child. True, until now her troubles, though real enough to her, have been minor. She needed glasses, then braces. Her skin wasn't as good as Debbie's. She turned out to have a bit of a learning disability, and needed remedial teachers in grammar school and special tutoring later on. She sulked through adolescence, her sadness strong enough to send her to a therapist. She was unhappy with her nose--the Bartlestein nose, high-bridged, nostrils flared. Bartlestein didn't protest when Myrna said it should be fixed.

Nothing has seemed to go easily for Jen. Maybe because of this, Bartlestein loves her even more than her sister, though he tries never to show it. He loves her more because she needs him more.

"You OK, baby?"

"I'm OK, Daddy," Jen says, and her eyes begin to tear up.

"How's Charlie taking it?"

"He's been great. He's talking about adopting. I wanted my own children so much." All her efforts at bravery collapse, her head drops to her chest, she begins crying. "Why me, Daddy? Why always me?"

Bartlestein holds her, kisses the top of her head, rubs her back as he did her mother's last night, mutters over and over that everything's going to be all right. He feels her thinness through the robe. He stays for twenty minutes, holding his daughter's hand, neither of them saying much. He leaves after hugging her at great length, feeling inadequate.

Will this inability to have a child become the story of his daughter's life? Maybe he has raised both his girls too protectively. He has done everything he could to make them safe, has been the net over which they flew. Except they never really quite flew, not even Debbie; they never even quite got off the ground. They are conventional girls-decent enough, not mean or selfish, but in no way out of the ordinary.

But then, Bartlestein thinks, neither is he. Through cautiousness he has ventured little while gaining much. He has concentrated all his energies on his business: making and selling sinks and tubs and faucets. But what has he given up in return? Passion is what Bartlestein feels missing from his life. If he lived more by his instincts, he would already have begun to let his affair with Elaine Leslie play itself out, to see where it led. But he doesn't live by his instincts; he lives by rules, by repression and self-sacrifice, by fear of shame and worry about guilt, by what he has always taken to be moral principle. At the moment, he doesn't feel particularly moral.

On the floor of his Lexus, Bartlestein notices a small suede bag. Opening it, he discovers lipstick, a tweezers, a small mirror, a compact. It must belong to Elaine: lucky thing he didn't take his wife to the hospital. It's only a little past 7:30, so he decides to drop the bag off before Elaine leaves for work.

On the freeway, his cell phone rings. Myrna.

"What do you think?" she asks anxiously. "Is she going to be all right?"

"She's obviously very depressed. It's understandable enough."

"What terrible luck!" his wife says. "She wanted this baby so much."

"Rotten luck," Bartlestein agrees. "Crappy, crappy luck."

"We have to stand by her, Larry. Jen's going to need a lot of help."

"Right," Bartlestein says. "Look, babe, I'm just getting off the freeway. Call you later."

Bartlestein finds a parking spot half a block from Elaine's building. Ringing her up from the lobby, he's answered by a man's voice. Bartlestein says he has Elaine's cosmetics bag. The owner of the voice says she's out jogging but he'll come down to get it. A minute or so later, a young guy, tall, in shorts and a tank top, a baseball hat worn backward on his head, greets Bartlestein.

A relative of Elaine's, Bartlestein asks?

"No, a friend. Scott," the young man says with a smile, putting out a hand for Bartlestein to shake. He has large good teeth, very white. Bartlestein, a grinder in his sleep, has lost four teeth on the lower left-hand side and now wears a bridge.

"Thanks," the young man says. "I'm sure Ellie will be glad to have this." As he walks away, Bartlestein notes his long sun-tanned legs and athletic calves.

BARTLESTEIN GOES through his day, takes meetings, deals with suppliers over the phone, answers correspondence. Part of his plan is eventually to leave the business. He has thought he'd probably sell it to one of his larger competitors. What exactly he will do with the time available, he doesn't know. He'll find something.

Actually, until meeting Scott, he had been thinking that one of the things he might do was to show Elaine a few bits of the world in an expansive, expensive way. Now, he is thinking about his foolishness in imagining this could ever have happened. At a little past four, his secretary buzzes that Myrna is on the phone.

"Larry," she says, speaking quickly. "Bad news, but everything's OK."

"Myrna, be clear, please."

"Jennifer stuffed a fistful of pills down her throat. Thank God they got to her in time." Myrna is sobbing.

"My God!" Bartlestein says. "What do we do now?"

"I don't know," she says. "Please come home right away. I need you. We all do."

Bartlestein drives in a dark rain along the Kennedy expressway. Myrna's last words on the phone had been, "You're so good in emergencies, darling." Vaguely, he wonders if he will ever create an emergency or two of his own before he leaves the earth. But that is not his role. He tries, without much success, to imagine his daughter's despair as she grabbed and gobbled down those pills.

A list is forming in his mind as he turns off the freeway. He will press ten grand on his son-in-law to take Jennifer on a vacation once she has her health back. He'll find the best shrink in the city for handling this sort of post-partum problem, if post-partum depression is what Jen is going through. He'll call Marry Cohn, his lawyer, to see what he knows about adoptions in China, in Korea, in Guatemala, here at home. He'll look into the business of surrogate mothers; another lawyer he knows, Henry Waller, has made a minor legal specialty of this. Naturally he'll pay the expenses.

Tomorrow he'll call in Elaine Leslie. In his office he'll tell her that, pleasing as the prospect is, his life is too complicated just now for them to continue seeing each other. He'll mention serious family troubles, not going into any details. He will always be grateful to her, he'll say, leaving unspoken what, exactly, he is grateful for. What he is truly grateful for, he realizes almost with relief as he pulls into the driveway, is that she showed him a kind of life he is now certain he could never lead. He pauses for a second or two as the engine of the Lexus dies away, breathes deeply three times through his mouth, and heads for the house. It's a little past 5. Marty Cohn never leaves his office before 6:30. Might as well call him now, Bartlestein reasons, his spirits picking up.

By Joseph Epstein, Joseph, Commentary

Peter's Treasure

2006-12-07T18:34:00.000-06:00

"Chessie, look what I found."

I was lying on the rug in my room, watching the rainbow that my mirror makes on the floor at the same time every day. I was wishing that it weren't Thursday, and that Mom wasn't at the hairdresser, and that I could be at Beth's working on my history assignment. I was also wishing that someday Peter would call me Jessie, not Chessie.

"Chessie, why didn't you answer me? Hey--what are you doing lying on the floor? What are you looking for? Do you want to see what I found?"

Peter appeared in the doorway of my bedroom. He was mostly freckles and missing front teeth, disguised as a brown-haired, seven-year-old boy.

They should have named him Question Martin Rogers instead of Peter Martin Rogers. I have never heard anyone who could ask so many questions at once.

"Why aren't you outside playing with your trucks?" For a change, I asked Peter a question.

"Because I wanted to show you this."

He held up what appeared to be a very dirty penny. He had tried to scrape some of the dirt off with his finger. I took it from him and looked at it quickly.

"That's just a penny, Peter. Why don't you put it on the kitchen counter so Morn and Dad can see it? Go back outside to play until Morn gets home." I handed the penny back to Peter, then turned back to my rainbow. I was so lost in my daydream that I almost forgot about my brother.

"… some funny writing and a picture of a lady on it."

"What? What did you say?"

"My penny has some funny writing and a picture of a lady on it."

"That lady is Abraham Lincoln and that writing is Latin. Now go outside and play."

"No, it is a lady sitting down," Peter insisted. "Here, look at it again."

He was right. There was a lady sitting on a bench or something, holding a wand. The kid was pretty observant for a seven-year-old. It was hard not to be interested in Peter's discovery.

"Where did you find this, Peter?"

"Over by the stone wall. Do you want me to show you, Chessie?"

We went out back to the stone wall, where Peter had been playing. He had used the garden trowel to dig up small mounds of dirt near the wall.

"Don't forget to put the trowel away," I said absently. "Now where did you find this coin?"

Peter pointed a dirty finger toward a space between the rocks at the bottom of the wall. I tried to put my hand in the space, but it wouldn't fit. The best I could do was wiggle my fingers around in the emptiness.

"You try it, Peter," I said. "Your hands are smaller than mine. Feel around in there and see what you can find. Be careful not to scratch yourself on the rocks."

A look of intense concentration came over Peter's face. He frowned; he shut his eyes; his tongue came out and followed every move his hand made. After a couple of minutes (which seemed like hours), he began to smile. He pulled out his hand. In it was a small pouch. The pouch was badly decayed, but it looked as if it were made of leather.

Peter had a look of surprised victory on his face now. It was almost as though he hadn't been sure there was something hidden in the wall, and he had been afraid to be disappointed. He tried to shake the pouch. At the first movement, the seams split, and several coins fell out onto the ground. We both reached for them at the same time. Each of us picked up a coin. Since I was thirteen (almost fourteen) and therefore much wiser, I decided to impress Peter with the importance of his discovery.

"What you have here, Peter, are some very old coins. They were probably hidden in the wall a long time ago by one of the owners of our house. You have heard Mom and Dad say that our house is one of the oldest houses in Westfield. This could be an important discovery. We will have to show Dad what we found. He will give us advice."

"What I found," Peter corrected. "You were only a helper."

"OK, what you found. Let's go in and wash all the coins. I'll carry them. You take your trucks and the trowel."

"I'll carry the coins and come back later for the trowel and the trucks," Peter retorted.

His seven-year-old logic sounded so right that I let him have the coins. I picked up the trowel and the trucks instead.

He was standing at the sink, waiting for me. "You can wash and dry them, Chessie. You are better at that than I am."

Carefully, he placed the coins in my hands. In the excitement, we hadn't stopped to see how many there were. I put them on the counter. There were nineteen of them--twenty, counting the one Peter had found in the dirt. Not a fortune, but probably someone's nest egg.

"This was probably a nest egg, Peter," I said aloud.

"Did a bird put that there? I didn't think birds had money. Do they, Chessie? If I were a bird, I'd build my nest in a tree, not way back in some dirty stone wall."

How did he always manage to ask crazy questions?

"A nest egg is when people put some money in a safe place for an emergency. They hide it so they can get it quickly if they need it. Like the money you hide in your toy box."

Peter's discovery caused a lot of excitement in our house that night. Both Mom and Dad said the coins were antique, but they didn't know anything about them. Dad was going to the library after work on Friday to borrow books about old coins and the history of Westfield. Mom was going to the college to do some research about the former owners of our house. Peter was a celebrity; he fell asleep with a glowing smile on his face. I hated to admit it, but I was pretty proud of him, too.

I hurried home from school on Friday. I didn't want to miss finding out what Mom and Dad had learned about the coins. Peter kept following me around when I got home, so I was glad when Dad drove up the driveway.

Dad had a big smile on his face. He tried to hide it, but we all knew he had good news. Peter tackled him on the front lawn, demanding to know all about the treasure.

"Those coins are the type used around here in the early 1800s," Dad began. "They have some value, but they are not made of gold. There are coin collectors who will buy them. You would have to advertise in a coin collectors' magazine. So that's one option."

There was a lot of conversation at the dinner table that night. Mom and Dad did most of the talking; it was hard to tell whether Peter was paying attention.

Finally Mom said, "Well, Peter, what do you think? Have you decided what to do with your treasure?"

"Yes," he answered. "I am going to keep one of the coins."

"But what about the other nineteen?" I asked.

"I am going to give them to the museum in Westfield so other people can look at them," Peter said firmly.

"Why, Peter!" Mom exclaimed. "How wonderful! Did Jessie give you that idea?"

I was flattered, but, to tell the truth, it had never entered my head.

"No, I thought of it myself," he said. "We are going to take a field trip to the museum in the spring. We talked about museums in school."

Mom and Dad said they would take Peter to the museum the next day to make arrangements for his contribution. He was very excited. I tried to fight back the tiny feeling of jealousy that was creeping into my head.

That night when I was getting ready for bed,. I noticed something wrapped in a tissue on my pillow. "Love, Peter" was scrawled on the note beside it. Inside the tissue was one of Peter's coins. I didn't understand what was going on. I went across the hall and stood at his door.

"Peter," I whispered. "Peter, are you still awake?"

"Yes. Did you find it?"

"'Yes, I did. But why did you give me one of your coins? You are going to give them to the museum."

"I know, Chessie. but you were the helper. And besides, I thought you might want to start a hen's nest."

"You mean a nest egg, you silly! Thank you very much, Peter." I tiptoed over and gave him a big hug and a kiss. "This is the nicest present I've ever gotten. I'm going to put it in a safe place."

"You can put it in my toy box, Chessie. That's where I put mine."

I couldn't answer him because I was afraid he would know I was crying. I just gave him another hug before I tiptoed out of the room.

At the door, I stopped. "Good night, Peter. See you in the morning."

"Good night, Jessie," came the sleepy reply.

By Carol S. Meldrom, Children's Digest, Nov/Dec2006

A Real Somebody

2006-12-07T18:06:00.000-06:00

We'd been together for a year, engaged one month and my only intention was to love her. I swear to God. I was content to cherish every moment of every minute just being with her. But Lena was impatient and seemed agitated in her own skin. Like she was desperate to escape herself and re-emerge in some alternative universe where everything was 'perfect'. It made me wonder how she'd ever be able to love me at all but I didn't let myself worry too much because she was beautiful and there aren't many beautiful lesbians in Bakersfield.

She wore a thick coat of peach lip-gloss and I'd stare at her mouth every time she implied I wasn't enough. My jobs as grocery bagger and self-published poet didn't impress her at all and she made a lot of hand gestures emphasizing how I was not her idea of an ideal spouse.

Lena was a radiological technician and proud of it, although I'm not sure she really enjoyed operating the equipment. When I would wonder about it to her, she would just wonder back why she was with someone on such an inferior track, as she liked to call my life. I tried to ignore her cruelty by fantasizing elaborate scenarios of what our future life would be like. I imagined us sitting together under a huge canopy of misty trees, like the old growth forests of yesterday. I'd pour her blueberry tea and rub her feet while we discussed all the ways in which consciousness is now evolving on the planet. The sun shining through the branches would cast appealing shadows across her face and she would swoon as I kissed her. It was all wonderfully cinematic.

Sometimes she'd catch me staring off into space and bark at me that daydreaming doesn't pay the bills and that I needed to either go to medical school or get my air traffic control training. Neither of these options held any appeal for me, as stress was something I didn't necessarily thrive on. I did make an appointment at a community college to figure out some premed classes but I got a really bad cramp in my eye and had to come home.

On days when I'd feel shameful, I'd clean the house really well or offer her a back massage with my homemade raspberry body rub. She'd either ignore me or tell me to concentrate on ways to afford the 2007 GL450 Mercedes SUV. I wanted to scream at her that big gas guzzlers are no longer sexy now that the planet is melting but I held my tongue.

Every now and again she'd be really sweet to me and totally melt into my arms. She'd be kind and accepting and affectionate. This rarest of Lena's actually felt like the real Lena. But she didn't allow herself this freedom very often. I could almost see the instant that some anxiety-ridden thought warrior would burrow into her mind and take over completely.

But I still held out hope for us until one Friday in July when two very odd and unexpected things happened to me. I came home from my usual morning writing session in the park to what I can only describe as an awful sight. All of my belongings were stacked on top of each other in the front yard. It was like the U-HAUL thing in reverse, too quick for comfort. Lena was standing on the lawn, looking truly pissed off, almost enraged.

"I'm leaving you," she said.

"Why?" I asked.

"You've done nothing towards building a life for us. Nothing towards that SUV and I'm not gonna drive an economy car forever. It's just not who I am. You do nothing and you dress like a slob!" she screamed.

I stood and stared incredulously at her feet. She was wearing blue tube socks stuffed into brown sandals.

"But I love you Lena," I said.

"Stop!" She was squeezing her hands into fists.

"We're not gonna end up on the street," I said.

"You're a selfish, lazy artist. I don't have the time or luxury to sit around and lolly-gag through life. We're meant to do something, be somebody!" she yelled.

"You are somebody!" I yelled back. The tears I was trying to hold had started their slide down my face.

"Yes, I know. I'm a radiologist!"

I should have added 'technician' but instead I said, "I love you."

She was silent and for one glorious instant, I thought I could sense the real Lena making a comeback.

"Go away Trish."

It was an awkward scene as I gathered up my stuff and wiped the snot from my face. It would have made for great television but I was devastated. I figured I could stay a week or so at Jake's place. Jake was my best friend, another selfish, lazy artist like myself.

"And don't come back because I'll be seeing somebody new," she said.

"What?" I said. It felt like someone was ripping my guts out through my throat. I moved towards her wanting a really good look at her eyes.

"Her name is Jeannie and she lives in Long Beach. I met her online," she said, near tears.

"So you haven't actually met her in person yet," I stated.

She squinted at me like she might charge, "That doesn't matter. She's a trial attorney. She's got her shit together. She's actually doing something with her life. Not like you Trish. You'll be on the turtle track forever!"

She was crying when she slammed the door in my face.

I started walking to Jake's place with my three suitcases when the phone rang. God how I was hoping it was her calling to tell me she'd finally come to her senses, that she'd had an epiphany and that she would love us both AS IS from this day forward.

Instead it was Bruce Jacks, my literary agent, whom I had not spoken with in over a year. He said he was calling to inform me that my long-dead screenplay, A REAL NOBODY, had just been optioned for a five-figure development deal.

I asked him how and he said people 'are into that metaphysical shit now". I looked up at the sky with my tear-stained, quizzical face. The rest of my night was bittersweet. Jake and I laughed and cried and wrote really bizarre haikus. Lena never called me and I never called her, even though Jake nearly begged me to ring her up and gloat.

The next day I flew to Los Angeles, an old tattered script in hand, wondering what it would feel like to finally be a real somebody.

By Katherine Carlson, Lesbian News

The Hat Boy

2006-12-07T18:03:00.000-06:00

Try this on for size.

Rosie and kirsten sat in the school library, bored. How had they gotten themselves into this?

"Girls? Girls!" Ms. Ellings' scratchy voice called from the biography section. "Are you being lazy again?"

"No, Ms. Ellings," Rosie replied, quickly shutting the costume design book she'd been flipping through.

"Well, what are you doing? You should be in the Ls by now! Why are you still in the Cs?" the librarian asked, coming over to them.

"Well, um …" Kirsten closed the book about women's hats and bonnets she'd been skimming.

"These books were all out of order, Ms. Ellings!" Rosie said quickly.

"Yes, it really was horrible! We were going through the As and Bs and then we started finding Ys and Zs!" Kirsten exclaimed.

"Oh, no!" Ms. Ellings gasped. Just then, the phone rang. Ms. Ellings hurried to her desk.

Kirsten and Rosie had to come in this rainy Saturday afternoon as punishment. On Thursday they had run through the library, late for English, and knocked over a stand of books about the 1920s. Ms. Ellings demanded they come in and help her organize her books on Saturday to make up for the trouble they'd caused.

"Girls! I'm terribly sorry, but I have to leave early!" Ms. Ellings said, hanging up the phone.

"My brother just flew in from out West, and he's arrived much earlier than I expected. I have to pick him up from the airport."

"Can I use the phone to call my mom?" asked Kirsten. "She was going to pick us up in two hours."

"Yes, of course. But I really do need to leave--can you find your way out?"

"Sure. Bye!"

Ms. Ellings left the library as Kirsten started dialing her mom.

"Ugh," Kirsten said, "it's not working."

"Oh, you have to dial a certain number first, but I don't remember what it is. I used the school phone like, once, in fifth grade."

"I've never used it," said Kirsten. "I always sneak calls on my cell. But I didn't bring it because I didn't want to risk anything with Ms. Ellings."

"Great," Rosie said. "We're stuck here for two hours."

They wandered through the hallways, randomly checking doors to classrooms and closets. They were all locked--except one leading to the auditorium costume room. They sat down to rest among the costumes.

"Do you remember those rumors we used to hear when we were younger--all those strange things that happened in the plays and stuff?" Rosie said, looking around at the racks of clothes. "I'm getting goose bumps just looking at all these costumes!"

"I remember those stories! Like the girl who disappeared in the dressing room right before she went on stage as Dolly in Hello, Dolly! Or the guy who played the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz and then vanished in the middle of singing 'If I Only Had a Brain'! I think the older kids were just trying to scare us." Kirsten looked around the room. "We shouldn't just sit here. We should explore."

"Yeah, I have to get those legends out of my head." Rosie jumped up and walked around the room, looking at all the dresses and suits and various accessories. "I wonder what's in here.…" Rosie reached up and pulled down a big box from a shelf. She opened it and found it stuffed full of hats. "Ooh, Kirsten, look at these!" She put on a big floppy sun hat and suddenly she felt like she was spinning, and things started to blur. "Kirsten? Kirsten!"

Rosie opened her eyes to find herself outside in a sunny countryside. "Where am I? Kirsten, are you--" Rosie closed her mouth and opened it again. Did she just speak in a Southern accent? She looked around and saw cotton fields all around her and barns in the distance.

"Rosie!" someone cried in a strong Southern drawl. Rosie whirled to see Kirsten standing a few feet away wearing a large straw hat with a big red flower in it. "Wow, did you hear my voice?"

"Mine's like that, too. How did y'all get here?"

"I came over to look at the box of hats, and you put yours on and simply disappeared. So of course I grabbed a similar one and put it on, and here I am."

"This is so weird!" Rosie said, noticing their old-fashioned gingham dresses and big white aprons. "Did we go back in time?"

"Oh my goodness, maybe those old stories are true!" Kirsten said. At that moment, a gust of wind swept off Rosie's hat and she was gone. "I'm all alone again!" Kirsten said, annoyed. She threw off her hat, and in a moment, she was back with Rosie at school.

"That was so strange!" Rosie said, looking down at the box of hats. "Let's see if these other hats do something. But we should always wear the same types of hats, so we go to the same place."

"OK." Kirsten picked out a silver cloche and Rosie picked a gold one.

Rosie and Kirsten found themselves in a stuffy, smoky room crowded with dancing people. The two of them were dancing to the loud, old-fashioned music, too, even though they didn't know the dance step at all. They wore silky, fringy dresses and lots of necklaces that jumped up and down as they danced. They managed to stop and get out of the crowd.

"This looks just like the pictures from that display we knocked down," Rosie whispered to Kirsten as they sat down at a small table. "That must mean we're in the roaring twenties, right?"

"Hey! You kids can't be in here! How'd you get in, huh?" A large man with slicked-back hair loomed over them.

"Oh, sorry! We were just leaving!" Rosie said quickly. They stood up, looking for a way out of the room, but the man stopped them.

"Not so fast. I don't want you spilling to your mothers about this place."

"Quick, Rosie. The hats!" Kirsten said, pulling hers off.

Instantly, they were back in the costume room. "That was exciting!" said Kirsten, sitting down against the box.

"I know! What other hats are there? Oooh, let's wear these!" Rosie picked out a white hat, covered in lace and ribbons. Kirsten picked one in black and off they went…

They arrived on a cobblestone street with buildings all around. A carriage stood in front of them with a short, skinny driver and a tall, dark horse.

"Miss Rosie! Miss Kirsten! You'll be late for your appointment!" the driver said.

"Um, all right, we're coming," said Rosie, and laughed when she heard that her accent was English, like the driver's.

Rosie and Kirsten stepped into the carriage, which rushed through the streets. They admired the gorgeous gowns they wore, the spotless white gloves, and the elegant shoes. Then they realized where they were heading--Buckingham Palace!

"Are we meeting the queen?" Rosie asked.

"Of course. Did you forget the appointment to have tea with her?" the driver asked as the carriage arrived at the palace gate.

"No, of course not."

The driver helped Rosie and Kirsten out of the carriage, then stepped back into his seat and grabbed the reins. "Shall I return in an hour or so?"

"Yes, thank you," Kirsten answered, and she and Rosie waved goodbye. The two of them turned toward the entrance, where a tall man in uniform ushered them in. As they walked through an elaborately-furnished hall, Kirsten and Rosie were struck by the grandeur of everything around them. "Can you believe it? We're about to meet the Queen of England! This is like a dream!" Kirsten whispered.

"I hope I don't make any mistakes--can you imagine the embarrassment?" Rosie said, trying to remember all the etiquette her parents had taught her.

They entered a high-ceilinged room with tall windows and walls lined with elegant portraits. Right in front of them was the queen herself, sitting on a chaise wearing a beautiful azure-colored gown and several strands of pearls around her neck. A table in front of her was piled with miniature cakes, cookies and tea in fine china.

Rosie and Kirsten stared at the scene for a full minute before realizing they must look silly. The queen looked at them expectantly, as did the various servants around the room.

Rosie nudged Kirsten. "Maybe we should curtsy," Kirsten suggested as quietly as she could, and the two of them gave their best curtsies, taking care to keep their hats on.

"Good afternoon, ladies," the queen said, and gestured to the chairs. "Please do sit down."

"Good afternoon, your Majesty," the girls said nervously, and each sat down. A maid came over and poured the hot tea without spilling a drop. Then she asked the girls for their hats and gloves. Rosie and Kirsten exchanged worried looks. They knew what would happen if they took off their hats, but they really wanted to stay--how could they pass up tea with the queen?

Slowly, Rosie pulled off her gloves, and Kirsten did the same, handing them to the maid. "Would you mind if I keep my hat on? I'm having a bit of a bad hair-" Kirsten stopped abruptly when she saw the look of horror pass across the queen's freshly-powdered face. She hurriedly took off the hat and arrived instantly back at the school. Several seconds later, Rosie was back as well.

"How annoying!" Rosie said, carefully placing her hat in the box. "I really wanted to stay!"

"Me, too." Kirsten looked at her watch. "Oh my gosh--it's been over two hours. My mom will be here by now. Do you want to come back tomorrow? We could tell our moms we have to help again with the library!"

"Yes!" Rosie pushed the hat box back onto the shelf and hurried out of the costume room. "I'm sure we'll figure out a way to keep our hats on next time!"

By Isabel Bird, New Moon, Nov/Dec2006

Drum and Dance

2006-12-07T18:00:00.000-06:00

Koda had traveled the steppes long enough to predict what welcome a town would grant him. As the donkeys hauled his wagon over a hill crest, he pushed back his burnoose and assessed the settlement below. Roofs of brushwood and clay were just visible over the encircling mud-brick wall, everything dusted with creamy petals blown from tall acacia trees. Stout date palms flanked the southern wall, pasture the northern. The distance-muted hum of a marketplace boded well.

But the shouts of folk driving their goats toward pasture were sharp and mean. The town's gates were open but a smidgen and guarded by three men whose black sashes and burnooses marked them as fighters of high regard. There were also their curved swords to consider. Already the warriors had noticed Koda and his ornately canopied wagon. Their steady regard made his nerves itch.

"What's there?" Seesha called from the wagon's confines.

Koda scowled and scratched his graying beard. "Naught but a place we'd be paid best to pass by, girl."

"I'll decide that, you grumpy old goat."

"Neither old nor goat," he countered. "Grumpy I confess, naming you the cause."

The flaps behind the wagon bench parted, and Seesha peered out. A mere sliver of black hair showed between her smooth brow and head scarf, but her face was bared to the world. When Koda clicked his tongue, she grimaced, but lifted a veil to cover nose and mouth.

Koda dabbed his sweaty temples as a fourth warrior joined the three at the gate. "Quickly, Seesha. I prefer my blood remain within my skin."

"A little look is all I need."

Then she closed her eyes as she drew a long, slow breath. The next breath was sharp and quick, and when she opened her eyes, only thin circles of sienna brown ringed her pupils.

"We must perform here," she murmured.

"No."

"We will profit."

"And if they'll not grant us entry?"

"Has such happened once since I joined you?"

Koda grunted rather than say nay. "Joined, says she. Commands my life, more like."

"You're ruled by naught but your purse and your drums, which is why you listen to me." She smiled before ducking back into the wagon. "I'll be dressed by the time we reach the gates."

"You showed your face, and you're not even dressed?"

"Don't you ever tire of being proper?"

"No!"

She chuckled. "Perchance that's the reason you're a grump."

Koda rolled his shoulders to ease the tension, then tapped the reins. The donkeys trudged willingly toward town, no doubt anticipating cool water and clean lodging. Koda's expectations were equally mundane, simply because he chose them to be so.

Three months of performing with Seesha had planted two certainties in his life. When the performance ended, his basket would be heavy with coin. And before they left the next morn, someone was likely to have met with trouble. Seesha thought the coincidence beneath consideration, and Koala would of course agree were it not for the casual superstition most folk shared: if two events occurred together, one must have caused the other. So he and Seesha traveled, and traveled far. Only twice in his life had he been so near the western desert.

True to her word, Seesha whispered her readiness as they neared town, but a warrior raised a stiff hand to order a halt before the wagon was within a stone's throw of the gates. Ruts veered off into the dry grass, indication of how many visitors had failed to pass these men. Koda affected his most affable smile--one that had served him well for more years than Seesha had been alive, he'd have her know--and bowed his head.

"Your business," the man demanded.

"Drums and dancing, good sir, no more and no less."

He cocked an eyebrow. "If you be the dancer, good elder, pray move on to more desperate towns."

Koda kept his grin untouched by their guffaws. "I drum. My daughter dances."

"Daughter, eh? One you sired, or bought for the purpose?"

"Good sir, have a care!" he said with the proper touch of indignation. "Gods forbid her mother's soul hear such infamy."

He snorted. "Let's see this … 'daughter.'"

Koda called for Seesha, tense despite her confidence. No one ever believed the lie when he spoke it, but once Seesha came into their presence …

First her hand--palm up, fingers slightly curled in invitation--slid between the canopy flaps. Then she turned her wrist precisely that same way as she had at every town, and waited for Koda to clasp her fingers. Slowly, slowly, she let him draw her from seclusion.

Her head scarf and veil of silver-shot blue hid her face, yet intensified the allure of her eyes. Layers of filmy turquoise silk draped from head to wrists and ankles, clung to legs and arms, reminiscent of distant seas lapping against sifting shores. Tiny bells strung low around her hips chimed--exquisite wine trickling into empty goblets. The warriors stared with veneration that never once slid into vulgarity.

"I am his daughter," she said, and even Koda almost believed her.

The warrior recovered his wits with admirable dispatch and gave a firm nod. "Be welcome to Mengásan, please. We shall receive your performance with cheer."

"Thank you, good sir," Koda said and motioned for Seesha to sit beside him. Displaying her like goods for sale jittered his nerves. He waited until the wagon had rolled through the gates to grumble, "You'll see me slain one day, girl. Why no man has yet offered me coin for your virtue--"

"Because most men are decent," she murmured, gaze properly downcast. "Once reminded, most men behave accordingly."

Koda turned his scowl into a smile when he noticed the curious glances from future patrons on the streets. "And the women?" he mumbled.

She slid him a mischievous glance. "We are not so different, Father Trust to it."

By nightfall, Mengásan's marketplace had been transformed into a theater. Braces of torches ringed the square, arranged to cast light and shadow as Koda wished. The canopied wagon, draped with great lengths of black cloth, would be Seesha's backdrop. Flats were pulled from beneath the wagon and laid atop the raised well to serve as Seesha's stage. Koda ran his hands over their flawless black finish. He'd balked at the expense, but Seesha had insisted, and now he was glad for it. When she danced in blue silks, she was the silver moon against the night sky. When she wore white, she was the stars. Or so he had been told.

Men gathered in the square, lounging on mats and cushions, drinking and eating and chatting. The few women in the crowd sat isolated among the men, faces and eyes obscured by heavy veils. Koda noted the locked bracelets on their wrists, the absence of women without such tokens of ownership, and sucked his teeth. Mengásan was proving too strict for his tastes. Despite the incense he'd cast in braziers near the stage, the smell of burnt flesh still greased the air. A blessing it was that custom had required Seesha to remain in the wagon all day. Tomorrow he would demand they head eastward.

When he felt certain the crowd had reached its height, Koda made his obligatory pray-patience-we'll-soon-begin oration. A smattering of impatient cheers chased him to the wagon to fetch his drums. He could already feel the smooth embossed face of silver coin between his fingers.

But when he stepped inside the lamp-lit wagon, his fingertips went numb. Seesha sat on the narrow floor between their bunks, huddled within a coarse brown dressing robe, knees drawn to her chin. The kohl she'd used to outline her eyes made them look unnaturally wide. Tears had drawn black streaks down her cheeks.

"Seesha? Child, are you ill?"

"The smell," she whispered. "Once you know what it is, you can never forget."

Koda crouched in front of her, trying to seem uninterested in the restless crowd. "A funeral pyre is all."

"I heard screams. Horrible screams."

"His widow," he mumbled, hoping that would suffice.

She wiped her eyes, smearing kohl across her cheeks. "Are the stories of the West true? Did the widow die today?"

"She did so. Willingly."

"Had she not, would they have forced her onto the pyre? Alive?"

"Seesha …"

"Please, Koda." Her hands gripped his arm with surprising strength. "I cannot dance unless I know the truth."

Koda lifted his gaze, felt her ragged breath against his face. Never before had he glimpsed fragility dwelling beneath her poise. "Yes, Seesha. It is the common custom here."

A squint of anger replaced the fear in her eyes as she pushed to her feet. Her heavy robe snapped the air when she made a sharp spin. Then she stopped, arms crossed, hands cupping her elbows. The bells around her wrists jangled with harsh finality.

"Then I will dance."

Koda pushed to his feet, wary of her changeable mood. She reminded him of a cobra set to strike the moment her charmer's attention wandered. "You're certain?"

"Most."

"Your clothes and … cosmetics …"

The intensity of her glare dimmed in a blink, and she broke her pose to glance at the mirror propped on a shelf. With a breathy laugh, she took up a cloth and cleaned her cheeks.

"But a moment, and I'll have them fixed. A moment more, I'll be dressed. Go caress your drums awhile."

"The veil, Seesha. Do not forget."

"That would be an unwise oversight here, yes?"

"Yes." Then he put on his most stern expression and announced, "We head east tomorrow, whether you like it or nay."

She stared at her reflection. "That … might be best."

He held his breath, waiting for the "however." When none came, he set about pulling his drums from beneath the bunks. The largest was Thunder; the smallest was Child. The three of middle size, from which he could coax any medley depending upon where he struck the hide, were Battle, Love, and Dream. With Thunder on his back, Love and Battle clasped to his chest, Dream and Child tucked under his arm, he headed from the wagon.

"Koda," Seesha called before he made his escape. She had relined one eye in thick black and held the kohi brush beneath the other. "What happens if there is no body?"

"No body?"

"Surely a wife wouldn't be deemed a widow if there were no proof of her husband's death."

A few calls from the crowd snagged his attention. Too much longer and hostility would taint the night. "Can we discuss custom later?"

She pressed her lips together, then smiled at him in the mirror. "Worry not of the crowd. I'll dance long for them tonight."

He bustled to the stool beside the stage and sat, his turmoil silenced by the audience's presence and the ritual of arranging his drums. He snugged Love between his thighs, brought her to life by thrumming thumb and little finger on opposite sides of the rim. The smaller Child he placed in front of her, made him giggle with a flick of four fingers. Battle and Dream rose outside the embrace of his knees, one on either side of Child. Both received a soft rap with the heel of his leathery hands to rouse their fickle penchants--Battle's changeless intensity and unpredictable volume, Dream's steady power and intemperate tone. Then he set Thunder in place, where Child separated him from Love. He slid his fingers along Thunder's thick rim, not yet ready to call forth the deepest resonance.

Koda drank from the crowd's intrigue, let it saturate his senses as he shushed his hands over the hides. He timed the shushes to slide between snippets of conversation, adding tender taps as voices diminished, seeking the rhythm unique to this gathering. Seesha alone understood his enigmatic quest, professed she did much the same when she danced, and their earnings attested to how well their instincts harmonized.

He had it now--the heartbeat that pulsed in unison with his listeners--and began slipping into the trance that had made his life worth living since he first touched a drum. Thrice more he called the rhythm from the hides, imprinting it in his hands and Seesha's ears, and stopped.

Silence. Success.

He stretched his arms above Thunder, then brought down his fists with a monsoon's strength. Seesha spun from darkness like a writhing blaze, her brass finger cymbals chattering. The pose she struck--made deadly by the blood-red veil pulled tight across her nose and mouth--was more like a swordsman than a dancer. Never before had he seen her perform in red.

In the expectant hush, Seesha tapped out Koda's rhythm with the heel and ball of one bare foot, the rest of her so still that not a single bell of her costume sounded. Koda struck Thunder again, Seesha began to dance, and the trance engulfed him. He saw nothing but his hands and the drums, heard nothing but the harmony of Seesha's dance, knew nothing but the life they created together.

Though Seesha often rehearsed in his presence, he'd only once watched her perform. That evening had convinced him that her talent could render the gods breathless. The tilt of her head had reminded him of his departed wife; the stretch of her arms betokened the mother he wished he had known. The turn of her knee told of journeys that ended in homecoming; the curl of her hands bestowed riches beyond imagining. When Seesha had sought him out to propose they work together, her entreaty had been needless. He would have begged her.

But he couldn't watch her dance while he drummed, for the drums demanded all. So he layered memories of that first performance atop the present. In his mind's eye, Seesha became a sinuous flame against a sea of obsidian. His sole link to her was the bright tink of her finger cymbals, signaling when she wished to vary the pace.

This night she demanded speed, urging him faster and faster until he attacked the drums with rage. Just as quickly she begged him to slow until the rhythm became a series of disconnected beats interspersed with the trickle of her bells. Then rage again, pushing his hands into a blur that neglected Love and Child, forcing impulsive Battle to clash with volatile Dream, demanding Thunder embrace the mortal world.

At long, long last, her cymbals clanged a double cadence of threes. Koda pulled reluctantly from his trance and transitioned into the standard meter with which they always ended. He lifted his head as he drummed the final beats, in time to see Seesha slide to the stage floor, one leg folded back and the other forward. Hands overhead, she rang the cymbals a last time, then lowered her head to her knee. Her arms made a graceful arc behind her back before settling at her sides. The silks rippled a moment longer--then all was at rest.

No applause, no cheers, no pleas for one more twirl. Silent, the crowd stared at Seesha as her back rose and fell with panting breaths. Koda's hand shook when he wiped sweat from his face. Only then did he notice the ache spreading from wrists to shoulders to back, the painful tingling of his palms. Drumbeats echoed in his ears. How long had he drummed this night? How long had she danced?

Cautious sound returned to the square--reverent whispers to augment the spell rather than fracture it. Koda lumbered to his feet and brushed his fingers over Seesha's head scarf. Heat pulsed through the silk.

"Rest," she whispered. "I need rest."

He stayed with her as the clink of metal began. Man after man granted approval by dropping coins in the discreet basket near the stage. Each gave Koda a nod of respect and Seesha a glance of longing. Usually Koda smiled and truckled in gratitude. Tonight he did nothing. A touch of the gods yet lingered in the air, held captive by Seesha's immobile form.

One man stood apart from the rest, staring at Seesha from beneath lowered brows, ignoring the woman behind him. Koda rested his hand on Seesha's shoulder as fingers of fear tickled his gut. When the man stalked into the darkness, his woman shuffling behind, Koda released the breath he'd held. Perchance he and Seesha would leave tonight.

"Worry not about Bolo, drum master."

Koda turned to the speaker--the warrior who had granted them entry to Mengásan. He'd pushed back his burnoose to reveal a face aged by sun and wind rather than years.

"A spiteful man, Bolo," the man continued. "No doubt scheming ways to stem your daughter."

Koda snorted. "And you tell me to worry not?"

"I'll not see it happen, drummer." He touched a single finger to the hem of Seesha's scarf. "No guest of Mengásan comes to harm while I watch."

The warrior departed, not noticing Seesha flinch. But Koda saw it and stroked her head. Gone was the flame, the fighter. She was a fallen butterfly, too exhausted to flutter her wings.

Koda remained with her until the square emptied of all but the promised protection--a pair of warriors who leaned against shadowed doorways. When he roused Seesha, she merely slitted her eyelids before falling limp into his embrace. He gathered her in his sore arms and carried her into the wagon.

"Koda," she mumbled when he lay her on the bunk. "We're not so different."

"Sleep, Seesha. You're safe."

She let out a tremulous breath and didn't stir when he settled a blanket over her silk-clad body. He drew the curtains closed around her bunk, as was proper, then fetched his drums. By the time he had them cleaned and stored, he felt every bit the old goat Seesha teased him of being. The warriors took pity on him when he struggled with the flats, offering their help with kind deference. Koda bowed to their strength and let them quietly prop the flats against the wagon lest they waken Seesha by sliding them underneath. No sooner had a tarp been settled over them than quick footsteps slapped toward the square.

"Fear not, drummer," a warrior said. "He's alone."

But Koda did fear. He and Seesha had woven a zephyr of mystique this night, and if a man such as Bolo were denied what he desired, he'd ensure all men were denied the treasure. Adoration could too easily become sacrilege.

"Go home, Bolo," the warrior said. "There's naught here that's yours."

Bolo entered the moonlit square, squinting at the armed men, at the wagon, and at Koda pressed against the flats. He adjusted the pack slung over his shoulder and jutted his chin. "Have I lost the right to stroll the streets?"

"Not so long as it's home you're strolling to."

"I've a journey to take." He scratched his chin with the back of his hand. "One I should have taken long since."

"And you must leave tonight?" The warrior tossed a wink to his fellow when Bolo nodded. "Then I'll see you out the gates without delay, good Bolo."

Bolo gave a stiff shrug. "Suits me fine."

One warrior remained behind as the other strode at Bolo's back. Bolo cast glances over his shoulder until a turn in the street took him out of sight. Koda couldn't tell if the looks were for the warrior or for him.

"No loss there," the warrior mumbled. "I'll lay bets his wife be weeping with relief to have him gone awhile."

Koda thought of Seesha, and of the superstitions of others. "Is it not strange he'd want to leave now?"

The man grimaced. "Bolo has always been strange. Years he's spent claiming he glimpsed treasure in a cavern east of here. Only mutters it when he's drunk, so we figure he saw it in the same state. Probably had a cup too many tonight and reasons now to find his fortune." He chuckled and hooked his thumbs in his sash. "Either or neither, you're safe enough tonight. No one will open the gates for Bolo before dawn."

Koda bid the man fair night and hauled his aching bones into the wagon. He collapsed on his bunk and drew the curtains, but exhaustion did not take his thoughts. He remembered the murderer who'd been discovered after Koda and Seesha's first performance together. Then there had been the mother who gave up her children, along with a confession she'd been beating them. Then the man who'd cast himself from the rooftop for reasons no one knew.

But Seesha knew.

Koda shivered. He had no reason to believe such a thing. And even if she'd known, what could the woman possibly do about it, shut up in the wagon for all but the time she danced?

What if there is no body?

Koda stared wide-eyed at the flimsy curtains separating him from Seesha. He swallowed hard, then drew the barrier back just enough to see the curtains of her bunk. "Seesha?"

"H'm?"

That she answered so quickly, as if she'd been waiting, chilled him. "What do you do, Seesha?"

"That's a silly question, old goat."

"One deserving an answer," he whispered.

There was a long silence, then she lifted the curtain's edge. The veil had fallen from her face, revealing full lips curved into a faint smile. "I dance, Koda."

"And?"

"Must there be more than that?"

"Is my music nothing but the drum?"

Her smile faded as she studied him. "We do not perform, you and I. We create. Longings and desires, hatreds and fears--what our watchers dare not admit. They peer at those unlived lives, shudder and sigh, and are content to escape them with applause. But sometimes …" She lowered her gaze. "Sometimes they deserve to be locked in with their terrors, given no respite from memory, and left to find whatever escape they can."

Suicide, confession … or a fleeing in the middle of the night. Koda held his breath.

"It is not always," she continued, "an honorable deed. But there is power in every creation, and I shall not let it go to waste."

"Bolo," he said on a breath. "The man has left Mengásan."

She grimaced. "He was too bitter and hateful already. He had to be bribed instead."

Dreamed-of treasures in an unknown cave.

Koda waited. She offered nothing more. But he couldn't look away. "Why did you choose me?"

The smile returned, gentle and kind. "Because you're a better man than you know, drum master, and because you never watch while you drum." She let the curtain fall back in place. "I'm tired, Koda. Tonight's dance was … complicated."

He held the curtain until his sore hand trembled. As the fabric rustled into place, he tucked his arms against his chest and tried not to consider the musings at the rim of his thoughts. When sleep finally took him, he dreamed of Seesha dancing on a cliff while enemies from his past jumped over the edge and shrieked all the way down to the rocks.

Seesha sat on the wagon bench as Koda put the donkeys in their traces. She wore no silks this morning, but loose layers of dull, brown linen. Her head scarf was wrapped low across her brow, the veil tucked high beneath her eyes. Even her bearing bore little resemblance to the apparition that had graced Mengásan last night. Koda was glad for it. The comments he overheard were of costumes and drums--not of a dancer and her enchantment--and how darkness made the homely more appealing.

"East," Seesha whispered as he settled on the bench beside her.

"Yes, daughter. East."

As the wagon left town, Koda managed a jaunty farewell for the warriors but didn't make his usual promise to return in good time. Mengásan was too strict for his liking, too revealing of things he didn't wish to know. He wanted to shake its dust from his sandals and leave his absurd suspicions in the dirt. Seesha was a remarkable dancer. He was her adept drummer. No more. No less.

In silence they rolled along the dusty road. Seesha's gaze was never still, searching the rocky grasslands and ridges. When he spoke his intention to stop for a meal, his voice more gruff than he intended, she shook her head.

"Not yet," she said. "We must not stop so soon."

"I want away from here as much as you," he snapped, "but not so much as to kill the donkeys with my haste."

Her hand clenched the bench between them. "If you find no reason for haste by nightfall, you may beat me for insolence."

"Beat you?" The notion shocked Koda from his seat and back down with a thump. "I've never raised a finger at you!"

"Why so indignant? Is it not the custom?"

"Not mine."

She looked away. "It was Bolo's."

"And just how would you know that?"

"Do you never wonder what the veil hides?"

Koda paused. Before he could answer, she spoke again.

"Oftimes, nothing but a face. But sometimes there is sadness. Fear. Anger. And when it finds me--" She sighed deeply, her deft fingers loosing the veil from her face. She looked at him with all the boldness and bravery of a man. "You asked me what I do, Koda. I feel. I feel their fears, no matter what I do, and they come to me. I hear their troubles and I make them real inside me. And then I dance to make it end."

Koda felt his lips working to form words, then pressed them together to stop their flapping. "You spoke with no one in Mengásan."

Her lashes fluttered, and tears slipped from her eyes. "You think so, because we're invisible unless we tempt you or anger you."

Scowling, he looked away from her naked face. Foolish talk would get them both killed. "Go inside. Don't speak to me."

Seesha sighed again, shorter than before, and replaced her veil. He tensed to think she'd choose now to challenge him, but after a final survey of the landscape, she climbed over the bench and ducked between the flaps. Koda wriggled his shoulders to rid himself of the tension. He hadn't noticed the lingering ache from last night's drumming until now.

The donkeys strained to pull the wagon uphill, and Koda resolved to rest them at the summit. But as they crested the hill, he spotted a trio of buzzards alongside the road below and urged the donkeys onward. Stopping at the bottom, he stared at the horizon rather than the buzzards' prize.

"Stay there," he said over his shoulder when Seesha called out. Then he climbed from the wagon, refusing to admit he knew what he'd find.

The buzzards hissed and squawked as he neared the corpse. They'd already feasted on the face. The only way Koda recognized Bolo was by the pack still clutched in one beak-torn hand. From the way the limbs were bent, in places where there were no joints, Koda guessed the man had lost his footing at the crest and tumbled unchecked all the way to the bottom.

What if there is no body?

Koda planted his fists on his hips and looked westward, past the wagon. Mengásan had long since slipped below the horizon. No doubt it would be days before anyone wondered about Bolo, days more before anyone mustered enough concern to search. By then the corpse would be bones on the way to bleaching. But there was a risk that someone would put a name to the bones, and a widow would be linked to that name.…

Seesha whispered his name when he opened the back of the wagon and stepped inside. He didn't answer, didn't even look at her. Instead, he pawed through the gear stored above the bunks until he found the spade. His muscles had forgotten the strain of drumming.

The earth was not easy to break but at last gave way to Koda's resolve. The buzzards threatened and complained but leaped from the corpse when Koda swung the spade at them. He rolled Bolo into the hole, made swift work of covering him, then smoothed and scattered the dirt and rocks. It wouldn't take long for the dark earth to dry into obscurity.

"Koda"

Seesha's voice was soft and firm, longing and distant. He didn't open his eyes until he'd turned, until he knew she'd be the first thing he saw. Silent, he reached for her veil and tugged it loose, casting the end over her shoulder. Her cheek was smooth against his callused palm. The touch reminded him of Dream--the drum changeable in tone but faithful in strength, the drum that gave the smoothest resonance when he ceased to force the cadence.

"Tell me," he said softly. "Where must we go from here?"

She turned away from his touch and lifted her face to the wind. "East. For now."

He nodded his agreement, then put the shovel away. When Seesha hesitated, he clicked his tongue and led her to the wagon bench. With an enigma seated beside him, where she belonged, Koda tapped the reins. East was indeed the best course. True, the coins there would be more copper than silver, unless … "Do you sing as well as you dance, girl?"

She smiled. "Only for my enemies."

"Ah. Never mind."

When she laughed, the timbre was Child.

By Blair MacGregor, Cicada, Nov/Dec2006

KINDERSCENEN

2006-12-07T17:57:00.000-06:00

Windows frame pictures of the world outside. A window along the side porch shows the painted porch boards and the curved backs of the wicker furniture and, beyond the porch edge, the bricks of the walk where it broadens beneath the grape arbor and the boards and posts of the arbor and the ragged gaps of sunlight and scenery between the broad grape leaves. Ants make mounds like coffee grounds between the bricks, and the grapevines attach themselves to the arbor with fine pale-green tendrils that spell letters of a sort: these are things Toby knows from being outside and looking. What he does not know and never thinks to ask is who built the arbor, whose idea was it, his grandparents' or that of the people who owned the house before him. He will never think to ask; he will never know. What he does know is how Daddy's cigarette looks in the evening when, sitting on a wicker chair with the other grown-ups softly talking in a row, he flips it away, its red star tracing lopsided loops before shattering into sparks on the bricks. The grapes make a mess on the bricks in the fall; nobody ever thinks to pick them. The panes in the window have bubbles in them, like hollow teardrops, that warp the edges of things when the boy slightly shifts his head, a little like the way that bad boys hold a magnifying glass above an ant until it stops moving and shrivels up, with a snap Toby can almost hear.

The thin glass divides the world outside, which is ordinary, from inside the house, where something is out of the ordinary and feels sad and wrong. The adult assumption that the town is an ordinary one, just like many another, is in the air, along with fireflies in summer and snowflakes in winter. Toby sees nothing ordinary about it. It is a tiny piece of the world but the piece nearest him. In his heart he knows that it is the best town in the world, and he the most important person, though he would never say that to the grown-ups around him. There are four--Mother, Daddy, Grandfather, and Grandmother--the same way the house has four sides.

On the side that has the porch and the grape arbor on it, toward the alley that goes along beyond the hedge, where bigger boys walk along talking loudly and rudely on their way to the school grounds and the baseball field, there is a large complicated territory crowded with bushes and flower beds. Toby's mother and grandmother preside above this fancy area, a showplace maintained for the neighbors as they walk by, in case they look in over the hedge. The bushes need to be clipped and to have their lower branches held up while Mother, red-faced as if angry, pushes the lawn mower with its noisy scissoring underneath to get at the grass growing secretly there. She calls this job "holding up the bushes' skirts," which has a naughty sound to it that nevertheless doesn't make it fun. She makes Toby do it, calling him outdoors from his toys and his Big Little Books and his pretending things to himself. The stiff branches poke his arms and face and some have little thorns that scratch, it seems on purpose. If he isn't careful he could lose an eye. His mother doesn't care about that. She is always working in the garden in pants with dirt-stained knees, but he likes her best when she dresses up to go to the city, in blue skirt and coat and a little hat tilted on her head, walking down not the alley but the street at the front of the house, through the thick shade of its horse-chestnut trees, to the avenue to catch the trolley car.

Across the alley is the vacant lot where the bigger children in summer have noisy games, with a lot of shouting and tumbling down into grass so tall it goes to seed at the top and at the bottom never loses the dampness of dew. Beyond this shaggy lot, houses stretch one after the other to a farm where the pigpen smells terrible. Some of the houses are tucked back from the sidewalk, like Toby's own, "out of harm's way," as Grandfather likes to say, twiddling his cigar on the sofa and putting on that foxy sly look that irritates Mother. She says he should smoke his cigars only outdoors. But it is his house. He and Grandmother own it. Mother and Daddy and Toby moved in when Daddy lost his job and have stayed even though he got another job. Most of the houses along the street have only a little piece of grass in front of their porches, and many are really two houses, with two different house numbers and shades of paint, joined in the middle, so each has windows only on three sides, unlike the long white house Toby lives in.

The other side yard is toward the Eichelbergers, an elderly couple of which Mr. always wears a creased gray hat and Mrs. has a goiter hanging under her chin. Toby is afraid of the narrow gloomy yard in their direction and hates even to see it out of a window. Mr. and Mrs. Eichelberger always seem to be creeping about together, murmuring together, poking at things. Mother says their tragedy is they never had any children. Toby is an only child and so is his mother, so he escaped into life by the narrowest of chances.

People call his house white but in fact it is yellowy--"cream," he has heard his mother say. Cream, with green wooden trim, including the windows. In crayoning at elementary school a picture of the house where he lives, he discovered that green and yellow go together in a way some colors don't. Black and orange also go together, as at Halloween, and purple and gold at Easter, and red and green at Christmas. Red, white, and blue together in the American flag are like three notes on a brass trumpet. Discovering such harmonies excites him, more than it does other children.

His playmates, when he has them, come to him through the side yard toward the alley, by the little brick walk leading in past the pansy bed from the gap in the hedge. The gap used to have a heavy green-painted gate that creaked and clanged until eventually Grandfather gave it to the scrap drive for the war. It was rotten with rust anyway, he said, and he was sick of painting it. Betty Lou Polyak, who is a year ahead of Toby at school and tall for her age in any case, peeks in at the gap to see if he is in the yard or on the porch, so she doesn't have to knock on the side door and face Grandmother in the kitchen. Grandmother makes her feel unwelcome.

Mother once commented humorously on this peeking habit of Betty Lou's. To amuse her further, Toby made a little card from stiff paper like a comical birthday card with a movable insert of Betty Lou's long neck and little face poking in and out of a slot at the edge of the hedge, which he cut carefully to show the leafy roughness. He showed it to Mother, but she didn't smile and asked him if he wasn't being unkind.

Unkind. It is true, Betty Lou is the best friend he has. The only friend, in a way. She follows all his suggestions for games and activities. Sometimes on the side porch they turn the wicker chairs upside down and pretend they are caves in which they are hiding from Indians or bandits. Or they cut out and color paper apples and pears and bananas and set them up in an empty orange crate to sell to imaginary customers.

Betty Lou likes his back yard, its lush lawn and abundance of trees compared with her own. Hers is beaten bare of grass by all her family and has a cross dog tied at the lower end. The dog terrifies Toby, having lunged at him once, his snarl showing horrible blue gums. He tries never to play at the Polyak house, which is small inside and doesn't have much plumbing. Mrs. Polyak gives Betty Lou a bath by standing her naked on a chair in the kitchen and wiping her all over with a washcloth wet in a soapy basin. Toby knows this because he once peeked though the crack where the kitchen door didn't close completely, until Mrs. Polyak announced out loud that he wasn't being very nice. How had she seen him peeking? Girls, he glimpsed, had bottoms like he did but in front there was something different, hardly anything, a little dent.

For some reason there are no boys near his age in the neighborhood, on his side of the street, which should be crossed without a grown-up only at a traffic light far away, at the avenue. A kind of tough boy, Warren Frye, in Betty Lou's grade at school, lives in the other direction, down the alley, where it turns along the school grounds and becomes a street, with a row of houses. He comes to the house from the lower end, past the chicken house beside the vegetable garden. Grandmother doesn't like him either. She doesn't care for his "people." She has known the Fryes since she herself was a child, way before Toby was born. He doesn't like to think about that strange blank period of time when he must have been someplace that he can't remember.

One day when Warren and Toby were wrestling on the linoleum kitchen floor, fighting because Warren had been treating Toby's toys too roughly and then teasing Toby for being too fussy about it, Toby sneakily tripped him so his head went into the radiator spines and bled as if he might die. Grandmother made a nice tidy bandage for him out of a dust rag and sent him home still bleeding, and though Warren came back the next day already pretty much healed he never did return the dust rag. To hear Grandmother tell it, there had never been a dust rag like it.

Grandmother doesn't like Betty Lou's people either. What she doesn't like has something to do with how many brothers and sisters Betty Lou has and with money, though from what Toby overhears in the house Grandfather doesn't have money anymore either; it was eaten up in the stock market crash. What money they live on Daddy earns being a schoolteacher and is kept in a little red-and-white tin box saying Recipes on top of the icebox. The grown-ups dip into it when they go off shopping, Grandfather to Hen Geiger's little front-room grocery store a few houses up from Betty Lou's house, with floorboards so worn the nail heads shine, and Mother and Grandmother up the hill two blocks to Pep Miller's bigger store, which has more kinds of ice cream and meat so fresh it oozes blood onto the butcher block, all crisscrossed with marks of the cleaver. Pep has a refrigerator so big he can walk into it without bending over and comes out breathing the smoke your breath makes in January. When Toby got big enough to move a kitchen chair to the icebox and stand on it, he was allowed to dip into the Recipe box too and take out a nickel for a Tastykake or a lemon-filled doughnut at Hen Geiger's on his way back to school after lunch. He loves eating while he is walking along instead of sitting down and being told to have good manners. Because there are five of them, he sits at the comer of the little kitchen table, and it pokes him in the stomach.

There is the alley, the street, and the avenue, where the trolley cars run and the elementary-school building stands on its asphalt lake. As he walks down the street toward the avenue, the houses he passes get smaller, their porches lower to the ground, without railings. Grandmother complains about "people," but it seems to Toby that these are the people his family lives among and they should make do with them. These are the people of his life.

The side yard is too crowded with bushes and flower beds to play in, except for hide-and-seek. But the back yard stretches all the way to the chicken house and the garage for the green Model A Ford in the days, when Grandfather had a car. Toby remembers the car before they sold it, sitting squeezed in the back seat between his parents. Near the fenced-in chicken yard is the burning barrel where he is allowed to hold a match to the previous day's newspaper and the other paper trash, including magazines that won't burn up unless you poke them, separating the pages. The barrel has flaps cut near the bottom because fire needs oxygen. Table scraps don't bum and go to the chickens.

Above the burning barrel, nearer the house, is the vegetable garden that Grandfather spades in the spring and where they all hoe and weed through the summer. Daddy is exempted from such farm labor, but not Toby. The weeds between the rows of lima beans and beets and carrots and kohlrabi have to be pulled and carefully laid flat, otherwise they will take root again. Until it dries, the hoed earth is the same dark damp color it was when Grandfather turned the soil in the spring. In the fall, Mother and Grandmother put up tomatoes and sliced peaches and rhubarb in Mason jars, filling the kitchen with clouds of steam. The jars are sealed with red rubber rings that are good to play indoor quoits with. Each ring has a little tab that just fits your finger.

The way the weeds lie helpless in the sun and then shrivel seems cruel to Toby, but then he didn't ask them to grow there. There is a plan and a purpose to things. At school Miss Kendall, who teaches second grade, told the class that grass was green because green was the most soothing color for the eyes. God designed it that way. If everything was red or yellow, she explained, people would go crazy with there being too much of it. The same with the sky being blue, though even so sometimes when Toby looks straight up his eyes wince as if pinched in all that blue, and if he catches the sun in his glance a circular ghost stays in his vision for minutes. God made the world to suit Mankind, Miss Kendall says.

The back yard slopes from the brick walk along the porch and the wooden cellar door down to the vegetable gardens through a breadth of grass where Daddy, the sleeves of his white teacher's shirt rolled up past his elbows, pushes the lawn mower on Saturdays. After dinner they move porch chairs out to the top of the yard and sit as the fireflies come out, Grandfather smoking his cigar and Mother not complaining. It keeps the mosquitoes away, he explains to her. He speaks to her in a rumbling, friendly way. She is his daughter. "Lois," he calls her. It is a strange name, two syllables, like "Toby," and the same number of letters, and enough like it so that it seems his came out of hers, as he is supposed to have come out of her. And as she came out of Grandmother, whose name is Elizabeth, which in a way has Lois in it. Picturing all this makes Toby sleepy.

After school Betty Lou and Warren Frye before he stopped coming and some others from the neighborhood, mostly girls, sometimes come to play in the back yard, climbing the trees or swinging on the swing Grandfather once hung on a low branch of the English-walnut tree for Toby when he was smaller. The swing gets quickly boring, with the ropes babyishly short, but there are all the trees, the peach trees with their long, pointy, deeply creased leaves, and the leaning cherry trees with their ringed bark like stacks of black coins, and the maples whose winged seeds you can split and stick on your nose, and the English walnut whose lowest branch is shiny from being climbed on. From tree to tree the children race squealing in their versions of baseball and dodgeball, where when the person who has the ball yells "Freeze" everybody must stop, even off-balance in mid-step.

In his element, proud, Toby leads them to the stone birdbath that rocks a little on its pedestal, spilling some water onto the girls' shoes, and to the Japanese-beetle traps on the grape arbor, loudly buzzing with the beetles' angry dying, and the broad lilies-of-the-valley bed where it is against the rules to look for a lost ball, though what else can they do, treading on tiptoe to minimize the flowers they flatten as they search?

This lilies-of-the-valley bed is dizzyingly fragrant when the little white bells on their arched stems are in bloom. Once Toby stood on its edge, persistently worrying at a loose front tooth with his tongue and fingers until finally it came out, with a fleck of blood at its rubbery root. He carried the tooth back into the house to win praise from the grown-ups, for growing. He wants to cheer them up. They give off a scent of having lived so long they are stuck where they are for good, like a disease he doesn't want to catch. His mother is not pleased by the tooth, worrying that because he forced it out the next ,one will come Tin crooked.

The grown-up sadness he feels around him is thickest in the smaller side yard, the neglected one toward the Eichelbergers'. The houses cast a constant shadow between them, and poisonous-green moss grows in the gloom beneath the hydrangea bushes. These bushes produce blossoms as big as a woman's hat but are almost the only flowering things here, as opposed to the other, sunny side. There is on this shadowy side (its lawn faintly spongy underfoot) the stillness of things Toby doesn't like to think about--church, and deep woods, and cemeteries where a single potted plant has been left in memory of someone but, itself forgotten, has long dried out and died. The Eichelbergers' house looms close, and the child has the fear that Mr. will somehow pounce, though in fact the stooped stout old man, in his baggy gray sweater with gray pearl buttons down the front, slightly smiles on the rare occasions when his and Toby's eyes meet across the property line.

All by himself on this side of the house, Toby becomes more frightened than when alone elsewhere in the yard. The house has fewer windows on this side, so there is less chance of Mother or Grandmother glancing out and seeing him to check on his safety. He might almost be on the moon. Though there is a long clear space here for a game of catch, he and Betty Lou never stay at it long. If the ball gets loose and goes into the Eichelbergers' peonies next to their house, the pair of them--Mr. in his greasy gray hat and then Mrs. with the apron she always wears and her horrible goiter-might come out and catch him retrieving the ball and, after giving him a good shaking, pen him into their cellar, among the cobwebby shelves of sealed fruit staring out and the skeletons of other caught children. Already the Eichelbergers, he has overheard, have complained to Grandfather about children making noise when they are trying to nap.

And yet, safe inside his own house, his grandfather's house, Toby looks out one of the few windows in that direction and feels sorry for the side yard, it looks so unused and unvisited. It is as still as the toadless terrarium at elementary school. It brims with the adult sadness he feels at his back, in his family.

What is the sadness about? Money, Toby guesses. They never spend any without Daddy worrying. When the coal truck comes and backs up over the curb on thick wooden triangles carried along for just that purpose, and the long chutes, polished bright by sliding anthracite, telescope out of the truck's body into the little cellar window under the front porch, and the whole house trembles and fills with the racket of coal roaring into the bin, Toby feels the wonder of all the world's provisions for his happiness, but Daddy feels money sliding away. He is usually at work, but when he is at home he looks worried, wringing his hands in a way Mother calls "womanish." They are a man's hands, square and freckled with raised warts on the backs, but they do perform a scrubbing, wringing motion like women's housework as the man tries to rub away the sadness inside him. He himself says that he has "the jitters" and "the blues." He is a schoolteacher and has a way with words. He calls Toby "Young America" and, when Toby is bored or complaining, announces as if to an unseen audience, "The kid has the wim-wams."

The sadness accumulates toward the back of the house, in the kitchen, farthest from the street and its daily traffic. The linoleum floor with its design worn off where feet walk most, and the old slate sink smelling like well water, and the long-nosed copper faucets turning green, and the oilcloth that covers the little table where the comer pokes him in the stomach and they eat with bone-handled knives and forks--it all looks tired and old-fashioned, compared with the kitchens some of his playmates have. Not Betty Lou Polyak's people, but the Nagel twins three doors up from there, and some of the houses across the street, which sit higher than the houses on this side, above retaining walls and flights of cement stairs so long the mailman takes a shortcut along the porches by stepping over the low hedges--these ordinary houses have purring electric refrigerators instead of iceboxes dripping water into a tin tray and toasters that plug in and pop up the toast instead of simply sitting on a smelly old gas stove, the dirty burner with its little purple flames like dog teats.

And at Christmas, other front parlors, where people passing on the sidewalk can look in and see, hold in their windows like illustrations in a magazine visions of luxurious long-needled evergreens drenched in tinsel's silver rain and bearing as thick as holly berries thin-skinned hollow ornaments sprinkled with glitter. Mother, favors keeping the tree natural, and her ornaments, as simple as the false eggs that trick a chicken into laying, emerge from a few boxes in the attic, where each is thriftily nested in tissue, in its own little cardboard square. The Nagel twins say their parents buy new ornaments every year, all blue or red, like a Christmas tree in a department store. Toby doesn't want that; he just wants to be ordinary, and to have an ordinary amount of money.

Toby is not always good. He is timid and obedient but harbors violence inside. His grandparents' house reaches around him with comers and spaces and even entire locked rooms where monsters of living death, ghosts and demons, have room to lurk and breathe. The five human lives in the house are not enough to crowd out these menaces, to oust the terrors in the coal-dark cellar and in the musty attic with its scent of mothballs and cedar. The attic, deep under the eaves, holds folded old carpets and fancy dishes with piecrust edges and kerosene lamps and knobby trunks that will never travel again and cloth-covered albums full of his grandparents' "people," ancestors long dead but with button-bright eyes staring right at him when he opens an album's thick gilt-edged pages. The men have mustaches and hair parted in the middle. The women have hair pulled tightly back and layered stiff clothes of different shades of black. Throughout the house Toby is aware of little-used closets and built-in cupboards and spaces under the bed, and a back stairs whose doors are never unlatched, as if a mummy or a maniac is locked in there.

He rarely goes into his grandparents' room, and when he does there is a smell, an old people's smell, parched and sweet, that frightens him. Right at the heart of the house there is a space that frightens him: the front stairs climb to a landing from which little sets of two steps lead one way to his grandparents' room and in the opposite way to his parents' room and then a third way into the upstairs bathroom. When he does "toidy" in the bathroom, he is frightened by the door that closes behind him; something might be waiting for him behind the door when he comes out, so he makes Grandmother wait there, sitting on the little steps, to protect him. It is her duty, because next to Toby she is most sensitive to the ghosts in the house. He has caught his belief in them from her.

One time when he came out of the bathroom she had fallen asleep on the steps, her wire-rimmed glasses tipped on her sharp small nose and her false teeth slipping down in a terrifying way, and Toby was furious to find she wasn't protecting him. He leaped up and pounded on her hunched bony back as she tried to stand. She softly grunted as his fists hit. Her long gray hair seemed to fly out in every direction from her head. He knew he was being bad but knew she wouldn't tell Mother, and even if she did Mother would understand his being upset. Her mother annoyed her, too.

The worst thing he does is torture his toys. His teddy bear, pale woolly Bruno, once lost one glass eye, the brown of a horehound drop, to Toby's infant fingers, in the time before he can remember. The baby he once was pulled it out on its wire stem and then forgot where it went. Now that he is older he likes to pull out the remaining eye, and gloat at Bruno for being blind, and then have mercy and kiss the woolly blank place and stick the eye back in. If he loses this eye they will have to throw Bruno away.

By saving pennies and begging for presents, Toby has collected rubber dolls of Disney characters--a black-limbed Mickey with a hollow head that comes off, leaving a neck with a rim like the top of a bottle, and a Donald with a solid fat white bottom that weighs pleasantly in Toby's hand, and a Pinocchio who isn't as satisfactory, with his knobby knees and goody-goody, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed boy's face without the long nose you get by telling lies. In the stretch of bare floor beside the dining-room carpet he lines them up and bowls them down 'like tenpins, with a softball. The hardest to knock over is a chocolate-brown Ferdinand the Bull, dense and short-legged. When he is playing this game just by himself, not with Betty Lou, as he sets them up again he tells them what he will do to them if they don't obey him and fall down.

Once Toby got carried away with a single-edged T reet razor blade he used for cutting cardboard into shapes, holding the edge against Donald's long white throat, and to show he meant business went deeper than he had meant to, so that now when he bends Donald's head back a second mouth opens below the yellow beak. This evidence of his own cruelty shames Toby to see--each time he tips Donald's head back, the cut widens a little-but then he doesn't step on ants like a lot of boys and even girls do, showing off, or go fishing out by the dam and put worms and grasshoppers on hooks. He doesn't see how people can do it.

After Pearl Harbor the United States is at war and violence has taken over the world. There are mock air raids in town. They have to turn off all the lights and sit, he and Mother and Grandfather and Grandmother, in the windowless landing that has always slightly frightened him anyway. Daddy is out in the dark with a flashlight, being an air-raid warden. While they are sitting there trying not to breathe, an airplane goes over, high above their roof. Toby knows in the bottom of his belly that it will drop a bomb and they will all be obliterated. That is a new word in the paper, "obliterated," along with "blitzkrieg" and "U-boat." Incredibly, in England and in China children are among the obliterated. The saw-toothed drone of the airplane above slowly recedes. Toby's life goes on. Elsewhere, millions die.

When he strips a tin can of its paper labels and removes the top and bottom and bends them in and, on the cement floor of the chicken house, jumps to flatten the shining cylinder, it is like jumping on the face of a Jap. Chicken-dung dust rises from the cement with each impact. Mother doesn't understand fighting--that you have to do it sometimes. On the walk back from fourth grade the fifth-grade boys pick on Toby because he is still wearing knickers, or is a schoolteacher's son, or lives in a big white house beyond his family's means, or raises his hand too much in class. They know this even though they aren't in class with him. They sneer to him, "You think you're much," when all he wants is to be an ordinary boy.

Boys from the ordinary world keep attacking him. One time, one of the fifth-graders, Ricky Fritz, wrestled him to a sort of standstill on the dirty macadam of the parking lot behind the Acme, except that Toby was on the bottom and came up with a bloody nose. When he came in the front door, his mother saw the bloody nose and in a minute was on the phone (a stand-up model of black Bakelite, his grandfather's pride, along with the Model A, when it was new) to Ricky Fritz's house and the principal of the elementary school.

An even more humiliating interference occurred on the softball field. The field is a two-minute walk from the lower end of his yard, through the narrow space between the chicken house and the empty garage. Mother complains that the space smells of urine, and blames the men of the house, including Toby. It makes her wild just to think about it. "What's the point of having indoor toilets?" she asks, getting red in the face. Still, Toby keeps doing it. Just being in this space between the two walls, the chicken-house asbestos-shingled and the old garage wooden clapboards with the paint flaking off, makes his belly feel watery.

Daddy walks his way to the high school every day, wearing a coat and tie, out past the buzzing Japanese-beetle traps, down between the yard and the asparagus bed, out through the lower hedge. Mother almost never comes down here; she avoids the school grounds. That is part of what makes what happened so shocking. It involved Warren Frye--Warren Frye of the bleeding head, who never came to the house anymore, and possibly resented Toby's being here, in the territory of the lower alley, where Warren lives in a tight row of asphalt-shingled houses. Behind the backstop of the softball game--not a school game, a league game, on a Saturday, with players graduated from school, and a raucous mood in the crowd of grownups--Warren pushed Toby, and Toby pushed back, and soon they were tussling on the dirt, before a small standing crowd that included Daddy.

Daddy was just standing there, his combed head high, trying to forget his worries and watch the game, trying to blend in, as was Toby in his way. Perhaps, teaching school all week, he was enjoying not having to enforce any discipline, letting nature take its course, ignoring the child's fight in front of him and the crowd around him, which was noticing and loudly beginning to take sides. Toby was getting slightly the worse of the tussle-Warren had had a growth spurt, in the thickness dimension--and tears of fury were spouting in Toby's eyes when his mother appeared.

She was just suddenly there, his tall slender mother, seizing Warren by the hair and slapping him in the face, as loud and sharp as a baseball being hit. Then, not missing a beat, holding Toby tightly by the hand, she wheeled and with the same amazing accuracy reached out and slapped Daddy in the face, for just standing there and letting nature take its course.

She pulled Toby home. He was blinded by his tears and burbling protests, while the part of his brain not incoherent with shame tried to figure out how she had known to appear. She must have heard crowd noise from inside the yard, and then somehow seen, out across the lower hedge. Why, Toby wonders at the center of this scene (the softball field fading behind them, the white house and side porch drawing closer, the asparagus bed on their left already beginning to turn frothy and go to seed, his tears warping everything like bubbles in windowpanes), does he have to be the one with a mother living so close to the school grounds, a mother so magical and fierce and unwilling to let nature take its course? Not entirely unhappily, as his arm feels tugged from its socket, he resigns himself to the fact that with such a mother he can never be an ordinary, everyday boy.

By John Updike, Harper's Magazine, Dec2006

Death Comes Calling

2006-12-07T17:39:00.000-06:00

Selous Scout, buffalo hunter, barroom brawler… "Dog" Varley thought he was tough, until the day a wounded buffalo did a tap dance on his back

Hard men settled the harsh country that once was Rhodesia. On the surface, life in their spar tan colony mimicked that of the old world. Homes were built, families were raised and the young men went away to school. But one academy, Plumtree School, on the country's western border, at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, was a far cry from the prep schools in jolly Old England. The regimen there would please a Marine Corps drill instructor.

Plumtree became a nursery for Rhodesian soldiers, whose fighting spirit was legend in the Second Chimurenga (1971-1979), the civil war that led to the establishment of Zimbabwe. Leon "Dog" Varley was one of those fighters. After Plumtree he joined the Selous Scouts, a multiracial special forces team that operated through the end of the conflict.

When the war ended, a scruffy, irreverent Varley found work as a buffalo hunter in the Rhodesian Tsetse Control Department. The life of a roaming rifleman, eliminating Cape buffalo herds to make way for ranches, was arduous and dangerous. Each day brought a shootout in dense cover with wily beasts big on aggression.

Seeking a career with more of a future, he became a guide at a lodge where tourists paid top dollar for a pampered look at the Zimbabwe bush. The spoiled life wasn't for Varley, though. After wrestling with a crocodile in front of the guests, he was fired. Next he worked as a professional hunter, and then he branched out into me tamer business of walking safaris. Ironically, it was this job that led Dog Varley to his deadliest encounter in the wild. This is his story.

Mission of Mercy
While walking one day on a photo safari, I picked up Cape buffalo tracks hut quickly noted a drag mark. I looked closer and followed for a while until I realized that not only was a foot dragging but it was connected to something. It was almost certainly a snare.

Since this was not a hunting safari, my clients were unarmed, which left me without any backup. I also had to carefully consider their welfare. I should have erred on the side of caution and abandoned the tracks, but the thought that the animal was in a state of agony made me want to find it and put it out of its misery. I checked my weapon again, made sure there was a solid in the breech and pressed on warily.

There was no blood on the spoor, so I figured it was probably a fairly old wound, yet I knew flail well the buffalo was not going to be happy. I followed for a while, but movement became tough as the bush closed in. I struggled through thorn thickets and over some rocky ground underfoot. It was damned hot, and I felt the heat in more ways than one when I got a premonition that something was about to happen. The hair on my neck stood up, causing me to pause for a moment before easing forward into the cover.

The tracks led me into some particularly dense bush, and I approached with great caution, searching for any sign of the animal. Suddenly, there was a puff of dust, a burst of black and the thunder of hooves as the animal came crashing toward me. The brush obscured my vision, but I caught a glimpse of the buffalo's head held high, his beady black eyes riveted on me as he lowered the tips of his horns.

Blindsided
It happened incredibly fast. By the time I got the .458 to my shoulder, the head and horns had disappeared into a bush in front of me and it seemed the whole bush was moving. I fired blind at where I thought his head was just before the bush and the buffalo arrived at speed and smacked into me. Everything went dark for a moment. I went flying backward and landed face down in the dirt, my mouth full of sand. With my rifle lost to me (it was pegged barrel-down in the ground), I was helpless. I told myself that this was probably the end of the road. But my thoughts of an early departure to the great saloon in the sky were mightily interrupted when the bull landed on my back, knocked all the wind out of my lungs and started a thumping tap dance on my spine. Using my back as a stage, it pounded its hooves into me. I heard stuff cracking. I assumed he was going to break every bone in my body, and I felt bolts of sheer bloody agony as the hooves ripped into my skin.

What could I do? I lay there and prepared for the worst, certain my spine was broken, because everything had gone numb. Then the stomping suddenly stopped. I couldn't feel or move my legs. The thought went through my mind that this was simply payback time and that I should take this as punishment for all my sins. To my horror, I looked down and saw a pool of blood appear before my eyes, getting bigger as I watched. I panicked and checked for a new hole in my head but found nothing. I couldn't locate the source of the injury, which made things worse.

My mind wandered. I had always been of the opinion that I'd rather be dead than paralyzed, and now it looked like I might have to make that call. Gingerly, I tested my arms--they seemed to be working. I lifted my chest off the ground and was thrilled to see the top half of my body functioning (although the aches and pains were agonizing).

With my prognosis looking up, I immediately decided to change my view of life as a paraplegic. God willing, I thought, I'd like to live on even if my walking days were over. I thought of the upside. I could still go to the pub and shoot the breeze. Demands on me to perform would be greatly reduced and life was certain to become more leisurely. Yes, there was hope.

Insult to Injury
Unfortunately, my legs felt like they were lost to me. Everything was smashed; my glasses and binocular were smithereens. I assumed my spine was in similar shape, but then I twisted my neck slowly, looked over my shoulder and got the fright of my life. I suddenly realized that the reason I couldn't move my legs was because the buffalo was squatting on me! To my great joy, I jerked my legs and saw them move. Then the buffalo stood up and, without a backward glance, trotted off into the thicket.

Battered and broken, I came slowly to my feet and was trying to get a grip on my situation when a new problem revealed itself. An awful smell blasted my senses and I felt something warm and soft on the back of my legs that stank to high heaven.

Horrified, I feared I had committed the absolute worst of all possible improprieties and filled my pants. An exquisite sense of embarrassment overwhelmed me as I struggled to come to terms with my fall from grace. Then I reminded myself that I had just had 1,500 pounds of muscle and bone using me as a dance floor, and the forces of displacement, rather than nature, had probably had their ruthless way with me. I reached tentatively behind me to sample the texture of the offending substance when again I found relief.

My adversary, I suppose to add insult to injury, had used the opportunity to empty his ample bowels upon me. Talk about bullshit--I was completely covered in the stuff.

Blood streamed down my face as I looked for the' others in my party, but my group had understandably run for cover. First to reappear was Obert, my tracker, who approached very sheepishly, looking unusually timid, almost as if he'd seen a ghost. I asked him what my face looked like and whether there were any new holes I should know about, but he seemed to be in a trance and just shook his head forlornly. Unable to get any sense out of him at all, I spotted a digital camera in the dirt and took a self-portrait. High tech saved the day. I was very pleased to see that my head was intact and the blood was coming from a minor cut above my eye.

When my guests regrouped, I cleaned and dressed my wounds and then managed to get in touch with staff from National Parks, who sent in a team. They tracked the animal down and destroyed it. As it turned out, my shot, although virtually blind, had not been far off the mark but a tad low. That's the thing about these encounters. An inch can mean the difference between dying and dying of embarrassment.

By: Hannes Wessels, Outdoor Life, Dec2006

The Story of William Booth Christian and the Salvation Army Soldiers

2006-11-11T17:27:00.000-06:00

How did a Victorian pawnbroker's apprentice come to found a church that now, with nearly 1.6 million members, functions in more than 109 countries? How did an organization that married the jolly sounds of the music hall with the jargon of the military develop into one of the world's largest, most diverse providers of social welfare? How did a persecuted band of evangelists, who set up in 1865 to convert the roughs of East London, grow into the respected, faith-based relief agency that in recent times alone has helped in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the July 7 London bombings and the Asian tsunami?

The story of the Salvation Army is full of such fascinating questions, not least because its founder, his methods and his followers excited vehemently contradictory reactions: Polite society thought William Booth was a bearded fanatic, others saw a charismatic champion of religion and reform. His wife Catherine was both social heretic and pioneer of women's equality. Their tale is a compelling one.

William Booth was born, the third child of Samuel and Mary, on April 10, 1829, at 12 Notintone Place, Sneinton, Nottingham (now his birthplace museum). Samuel was variously an entrepreneur and builder, but when he died in 1842 family finances were in such a ruinous state that 13-year-old William was apprenticed to a local pawnbroker to help support his mother and sisters. He also began taking the first steps in his religious career — away from the "formal, unfriendly" services of the Church of England, into Methodism. Inspired by the fiery theatricality of the likes of controversial American preacher James Caughey, who traveled around England between 1841 and 1847, Booth felt God was calling him to some (as yet unspecified) great work. Despite ill health, which would dog him all his life, the zealous adolescent began spreading religion in the back streets of Nottingham. Then in 1849 he moved to London to continue preaching — and pawnbroking — there.

Booth's approach to religion was instinctive rather than intellectual, and he had little time for academic or theological debate. He therefore easily moved between several churches that had sprung from the disputes that racked Wesleyan Methodism in the 19th century. Eventually, he threw off pawnbroking and became a minister for the Methodist New Connexion. More important, in 1855 he married Catherine Mumford.

If William had shown precocious teenage interest in preaching in Nottingham, Catherine's youth was no less remarkable. She was born January 17, 1829, in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, although the family later moved back to Boston, Lincolnshire, Her father had been an occasional preacher before losing his faith; however, her mother was so zealously pious that she kept Catherine away from school lest she pick up undesirable habits from less God-fearing children. In fact, Catherine's formal education effectively began when she was 12.

Like William, Catherine was frequently sickly throughout life, bur where she differed from him was in her close study of theology. She held strong moral convictions and joined the Temperance Movement. In 1844 the family moved again, to London, and shortly afterward 16-year-old Catherine experienced the divine moment that finally convinced her of salvation while she was reading a Charles Wesley hymn. She taught at Sunday school and gave classes before meeting her future husband at a tea party in 1852.

Devotion to religion was their bond, and where William showed passion but a lack of direction, Catherine provided the iron hand to guide, including constant chiding that William should improve himself but guard against ambition. Theirs was a relationship of equals — an eyebrow-raising proposition in Victorian England. Moreover, Catherine held the heretical view (backed up by her biblical studies) that women should, with as much entitlement as men, be allowed to preach in church. William soon accepted this standpoint. For her part, Catherine lived up to the conventional bargain of wedlock, producing eight children.

William spent the early years of their marriage at different postings on the Methodist New Connexion circuit, with Catherine and their growing family in tow. He was beginning to make a name for himself — and also to attract criticism from more traditional churchmen. His flamboyant, hellfire style, combined with hymns sung to popular contemporary tunes, might appeal to the benighted masses ignorant of the standard melodies of the church, but the educated middle classes who "knew better" were deeply offended. William, though, was in no doubt that he should be communicating his message of salvation to the downtrodden folk neglected by the established church, and if a touch of music hall was required, so he it.

In 1862 the Booths split from the New Connexion. William had been outvoted in wanting to ban producers and purveyors of alcohol from joining the movement; he was also desperate for the life of an itinerant preacher pursuing the active Christianity of his hero John Wesley, rather than ministering in one location. By now, following the urging of the Holy Ghost to assume full female ministry, Catherine was preaching, too — and drawing sensational, half-horrified, half-rapt audiences.

At the time "undenominated work" was on the rise in England, the idea being to convert sinners, then point them to local, established churches to continue their newfound religion. The Booths, supported in their endeavors by various wealthy benefactors as they would be throughout their careers, embraced their venture with gusto, buoyed by the success of their recent Cornish campaign (1861-62), which yielded at least 7,000 souls for Jesus. Whether such sudden salvations endured was debatable; nor did every church welcome the alarming descent of ill-dressed hordes into its tidy pews.

The Booths learned valuable lessons as they roamed the country for the next two years. One was that the poor were more likely to listen to their own kind and be saved — Who could resist addresses by "converted pugilists, horse racers and others"? So Booth recruited these unlikely helpers into his catchily named Hallelujah Band. Secondly, Catherine's eyes in particular were being further opened to the social wreckage caused by drink, prostitution and poverty.

Their peripatetic lifestyle came to an abrupt end in 1865. A group of missionaries, impressed by William's preaching in the seedy streets of London's East End, asked him to lead a series of meetings for them in a large tent at Mile End. William was so struck by the amount of work to he done among the local poor that the Booths agreed to stay. Despite never intending to found their own Christian church, they set up the East London Christian Mission, soon renamed the Christian Mission to reflect its nationwide potential.

William preached in unusual venues ranging from a stable to a disused pub, while Catherine raised funds among the city's well-to-do. Crucially, the Booths had espoused social work as a means to an end, William reasoning that no one could concentrate on the message of the Lord on an empty stomach. Soup kitchens and "Food for the Millions" shops were created to help provide the poor with sustenance.

Yet all the while, the Booths were stirring antagonism. Brewers feared they would lose their clientele to the church; middle-class Victorian England was perturbed by this loud evangelizing that disturbed its complacency; rowdies just liked an easy target. Mission meetings were disrupted by jeering, stone throwing, fireworks and worse. William and his people merely turned the other cheek; in fact, persecution became tantamount to a badge of honor. It took a special kind of person to deal with such hostility, and among the Booths' recruits were a good number of eccentrics, like the impetuous radical George Scott Railton. They were instrumental in growing support, and Railton in par ticular endorsed Catherine's endeavors to gain women equality in what was about to become the Salvation Army.

The name change was the result of a family "joke" by the Booths' eldest son, Bramwell. All the Booth siblings had been immersed in religion and strict discipline from birth, presenting a formidable dynasty. Bramwell was now an industrious second-in-command to William in the new church. On hearing them called a "volunteer army," he thought it a rather under-stated description for such assiduous workers. So William replaced the offending word with "salvation," and from 1878 the Christian Mission became the Salvation Army.

From this moment the movement really took off, and its familiar iconography and trappings developed. The concept of an army (albeit peaceful) captured the imagination of certain jingoistic sections of Victorian society, though inflated martial jargon led to some absurd juxtapositions — as a poster publicizing a Whitby campaign had shown, screaming: "We are rushing into war…. It is a field of blood already," deflatingly adding, "A public ham sandwich tea will be provided in the Congress Hall."

But war it was. Ranks were adopted in the Army, with William as general, and uniforms were designed so that members could immediately recognize each other. For women, the unflattering "Hallelujah Bonnet" served the double function of separating wearers from worldly fashions and protecting them from missiles. The War Cry newspaper started publication, and the Army marched with flags and took the motto "Blood and Fire" — signifying the blood of the Lamb and the fire of the Holy Ghost. For long, William had realized the power of popular music to aid conversion, and he found that brass bands were great for attracting crowds as Army corps progressed through the streets; they also helped drown out hecklers.

Violent persecution increased, notably by the Skeleton Army, a rabble shamefully supported by publicans, beer sellers and the like. There were martyrs, and some Army soldiers, blamed for "provoking" attacks simply by holding noisy open-air meetings, were imprisoned. The Booths used the oxygen of publicity to rally even more folk to their cause: By 1884 there were 910 corps (church centers) and 2,332 officers in Britain. In its nonuse of the sacraments and its proscription of alcohol the Salvation Army might differ from the Church of England (which kept a wary distance), but it was becoming part of British life.

At first, William Booth resisted the idea that the Army should spread internationally. An autocrat, he feared not being able to control far-flung outposts that might discredit the Home Front. There had been a short-lived, unsanctioned venture in Cleveland, Ohio, but after the Shirley family from the Coventry Corps successfully set up in Philadelphia from 1879, William allowed George Railton to lead a small contingent to New York. Despite an initial misunderstanding when they were booked as a music hall act, the seed was sown, and soon Ballington, William's second son, was sent to command forces in the United States. Penetration of other countries — France, India, Australia — rapidly followed.

Back in Britain, the Army became involved in 1885 in exposing the sale of young girls into prostitution. W.T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and longtime Salvation Army supporter, was imprisoned for his part in the "abduction" of 13-year-old Eliza Armstrong, staged to prove what went on. Nevertheless Army efforts helped influence the raising of the legal age of consent from 13 to 16 years.

Then in October 1890, "Army Mother" Catherine Booth died after an arduous fight against cancer. Her funeral in London was attended by 36,000 people, a mark of not only the respect in which she was held but also the strength of the Army. William and the whole organization sorely missed her guiding hand.

Two weeks after Catherine's "Promotion to Glory" (Salvation Army terminology), In Darkest England and the Way Out was published. Doubt hovers over how much of the work was personally authored by William Booth, but it certainly contains his ideas on practical Christianity. After spotlighting the poverty and social injustice that he believed hampered people's path to salvation, William described the ways in which the Army could remove those hurdles. These included the establishment of city colonies, farm colonies and overseas colonies as places of rehabilitation; shelters for the destitute in every town; lost persons bureaus; and prison reforms like rehabilitation for ex-prisoners. (The Army already ran a home for discharged felons in King's Cross.) Many Victorians still held the view that the poor had only themselves to blame for their plight and sin, so reactions were mixed.

In the last years of his life, William turned again to itinerant preaching and met the world's wealthy and powerful, from King Edward VII to Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. From 1904, and despite failing health, he embarked on a series of annual motor tours of the UK, covering thousands of miles and speaking at hundreds of meetings. It was a punishing challenge for a septuagenarian, but he was in his element. Unfortunately, the founder's latter years were also marred by differences within the Booth family that ended with his children Ballington, Kate and Herbert, all leading lights in overseas operations, quitting the Army.

William Booth, worn-out and blind, was Promoted to Glory on August 20, 1912. Some 150,000 mourners passed his bier, and tributes flowed in from the great and the good. He may have upset people with his strident, unconventional style, but his practical Christianity inspired countless more. Certainly today many of his visions for social and missionary work have continued to come true.

The Salvation Army is the fifth largest charity in the UK, As of 2005, its outreach has been expanded to include 109 countries, in 175 languages. The Salvation Army's membership consists of 3,500 officers, 60,000 employees, 113,000 soldiers, 430,000 adherents and more than 3.5 million volunteers. Its Web site is www.salvationarmy.org.

We are rushing into war….It is a field of blood already. A public ham sandwich tea will be provided in the Congress Hall'

By Siân Ellis

Strength after Struggle

2006-11-11T17:23:00.000-06:00

Logan's heart attack made her life more difficult. But it also made her spirit stronger.

Logan Olson expected the haunted house to be scary. She did not expect her visit to change her life forever.

Yet once inside the dark house on Halloween of 2001, Logan collapsed to the floor. Her heart stopped beating. "Call 911 !" shouted her terrified cousin. Logan's dad, Tim, and another man performed CPR. Still, Logan didn't breathe.

By the time paramedics arrived and Logan's heart started beating again, her brain was badly damaged. She slipped into a coma. No one knew if she'd live.

Starting Over
Logan doesn't remember the helicopter ride to a hospital in Spokane, Washington. Because of her brain injury, she recalls little of the seven months she spent in medical centers.

When she first woke from the coma, Logan thought she was a little girl. She was actually a 16-year-old student with a job, a boyfriend, and a driver's license. Now, though, she couldn't even talk or raise her head.

Day after day, Logan struggled to simply sit up. "Why did this happen to me?;' she remembers thinking. "I want my life back. Dating, driving, working, I had it all. Then bam! Goodbye."

She was frustrated by her slow recovery. "I had to fight every day to walk, to eat, to drink, to sit, to stand. It wasn't easy." She also sometimes passed out when the blood flow to her head decreased.

Logan was born with a heart problem. By age 16, she'd already had six operations to fix it. Eight months before that Halloween, a weak part of her heart was replaced with a valve from a pig. The stronger valve may have saved Logan's life, says her mom, Laurie.

"I'm part pig," Logan jokes. Logan had always hoped to work as a makeup artist or model someday. But her stiff fingers made it hard to put on makeup and button her favorite jeans.

Her mom searched stores for products that would be easier to use. For instance, Logan can handle wide makeup sticks. A rubber pencil grip helps her hold eyeliner steady. These discoveries inspired Logan and her mom to create a magazine for girls with disabilities. They wanted to share helpful fashion and makeup tricks.

A teen fashion magazine was just what Logan needed. To meet with photographers and advertisers, she would have to speak more clearly. She began working extra hard in speech therapy. She repeated sentences such as, "Let's go to Nordstrom and buy shoes"

Logan took her walker to the mall to study the latest fashions. She quickly became stronger and more coordinated. She passed out once in JC Penney. It didn't keep her away.

Proudest Moment
Logan faced another major challenge in the classroom. She'd missed so much school that her younger brother, T.J., was set to graduate before her. Logan's teachers knew she was studying hard. They offered to let her cross the stage first. In return, she would finish classes the next school year.

Logan's parents were afraid she would fall. But Logan was determined to graduate before T.J. She also insisted on wearing new stylish shoes.

Logan was nervous and tripped three times before the ceremony. Still; she safely crossed the stage while the audience clapped and cheered. It was Logan's proudest moment.

A Better Person
Five years after her haunted house heart attack, Logan's life is far from easy. She misses friends who drifted away to busy social lives. She longs to drive a shiny Ford F-150 but settles for a motorized shopping cart.

There are many things Logan can no longer do. Instead, she stays busy with Other fun and challenging activities. That includes this fall's debut of Logan Magazine. As creative director, she gets to attend workshops and fashion shows. She also models trendy clothes, sometimes sitting in her wheelchair.

Memory problems still haunt Logan, who's now 21. She can type business plans but often forgets her computer password. Two detailed calendars help her remember meetings.

Logan believes she's a better person this Halloween. She has become more mature, and far more compassionate, she says. "I had it all back then. But I've gained even more now through everything that's happened to me."

By Jeanette White

Stairway to Heaven

2006-11-11T17:20:00.000-06:00

It was a perfect African night, straight out of Conrad: the air was pasty and still with humidity; the night smelled of burned flesh and fecundity; the darkness outside was spacious and uncarvable. I felt malarial, though it was probably just travel fatigue. I envisioned millions of millipedes gathering on the ceiling above my bed, a fleet of bats flapping ravenously in the trees below my window. But the most troubling thing was the ceaseless roll of drums: a sonorous, ponderous thudding that hovered around me. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer, I couldn't tell.

I was sixteen, at the age when fear arouses inspiration, so I turned on the light, dug a brand-new Moleskine journal out of my suitcase, and had just managed to write, on the first page, "Kinshasa 7.7.1983," when I heard my parents' bedroom door slam open and Tata cursing and stomping away. I leaped out of bed and followed him into the living room, where he had already flipped on the lights. I bumped into Mama, who was cradling her worrisome bosom in her arms; Sestra was there, too, pressing her face into Mama's side. All the lights were on now; a gang of moths fluttered hopelessly inside a light fixture; there were cries and screams; cymbals crashed all around us. It was terrifying.

"Spinelli," Tata exclaimed. "What a dick."

Tata slept in flannel pajamas that were far more appropriate for an Alpine ski resort than for Africa--air-conditioning allegedly irritated his kidneys. Before he vanished into the thrumming murk of our building's stairwell, he put on a pith helmet, lest his bald dome be exposed to drafts. I stood in my underwear, my pen still in hand. The possibility that he might not return flickered in the dark, but it did not occur to me to go after him. The stairwell light went on and we heard a plaintive chime. The drums continued to roll. Tata abandoned the bell and started pounding on the door, shouting in his stuttering English, "Spinelli, you are very crazy. Stop noise. We are sleep. It is four in the morning."

Our apartment was on the sixth floor; there must have been scores of people living in the building, but it appeared to have been abandoned. As soon as the stairwell light clicked off, the drumming stopped; the show was over. The door opened and a nasal American voice said, "I'm sorry, man. I absolutely apologize."

By the time I went back to bed, it was dawn already. In the trees outside, a nation of birds had replaced the bats and were now atwitter in a paroxysm of meaningless life. Sleep seemed beyond me; nor could I write. Smoking on the balcony, I waited for everything to make sense. Down on the street, a barely clad man squatted by a cardboard box with cigarettes lined up on top of it, as though he were guarding them from some invisible peril.

In the early eighties, Tata was mostly absent from Sarajevo, working in Zaire as a minor Yugoslav diplomat in charge of communications (whatever that meant). Meanwhile, back home, I responded to the infelicities of adolescence and the looming iniquities of adulthood by retreating into books; Sestra, not yet a teen-ager, was oblivious of the aches sprouting inside me; Mama was mid-life, miserable and lonely, though I could not see this at the time, with my nose stuck in a book. I read compulsively, only occasionally surfacing to reality. I read all night, all day; at school I kept a book hidden under my desk, a felony frequently punished by a junta of class bullies who made me lick the pages until my tongue was black with ink.

I met Azra while checking out books from the school library, and I immediately liked the readerly quietude on her bespectacled face. I walked her home, slowing down whenever I had something to say, stopping whenever she did. She had no interest in "The Catcher in the Rye"; I had not read "Quo Vadis," feigned interest in "The Peasant Uprising." We shared an interest in "The Dwarf from a Forgotten Country," even though it was a children's book. And it was clear that we also shared a passion for imagining lives that we could live through others--a necessary ingredient in any love. We started dating, which meant that we often read to each other on a bench by the Miljacka, making out only when we ran out of things to talk about, kissing cautiously, as though letting ourselves go would have exhausted the quaint, manageable intimacy we had accrued. So when Tata announced, on returning to Sarajevo for a leave, that we would all spend the summer of '83 in Africa together, I felt a strange relief: if Azra and I were apart, we could resist temptation and eschew the taint that the body inflicts upon the soul. I promised I would write to her every day--in my journal, as letters from Africa would have arrived long after my return. I would record every thought, I told her, every feeling, every experience, and, as soon as I came back, we would reimagine it all together, reading, as it were, the same book.

There were many things that I wanted to note down that first night in Kinshasa: the west ablaze, the east impenetrably dark as we crossed the equator at sunset; my perfect recollection of the smell of her hair; the line from a book that we had both liked so much--"I have to find my way home before the fall, before the leaves cover the path." But I wrote nothing and assuaged my conscience by ascribing this failure to the drumming disturbance. What I didn't write stayed in the back room of my mind, like the birthday presents I was not allowed to open until everyone had left the party.

The following morning, I found Sestra in the living room, staring with vague fascination at a puny man in a T-shirt with an image of an angel pierced by an arrow in midair. Mama was sitting across the coffee table from the man, her legs crossed, listening intently to his high-pitched warbling.

"Svratio komsija Spinelli," she said. "Nemam pojma sta prica."

"Good morning," I said.

"Good afternoon, buddy," Spinelli said. "The day is almost over." He exposed a set of teeth that descended evenly in size, like organ pipes, from the center toward the cheeks. He had both of his hands parked on his thighs, and they were calmly immobile, as though resting before their next task--which was to push apart the two curls parenthesizing his forehead.

"Sorry for the noise," he said. "A bored dog does crazy things."

At sixteen, I spent a lot of energy affecting boredom: the eye-roll; the practiced blankness of expression; the terse, short answers to parental inquisition. I had built an iron-clad shield of indifference that allowed me to escape, roam, and return to my cell without anyone's noticing. But that first week in Africa the boredom was real. I could not read; I kept scanning the same--twenty-seventh--page of "Heart of Darkness" and could not move beyond it. I tried to write to Azra, but could come up with nothing to say, probably because there was too much to say.

There was certainly nothing to do. I was not allowed go out alone into the human jungle of Kinshasa. For a while I watched TV, broadcasts of Mobutu's rants and commercials featuring cans of coconut oil floating in the blue sky of affordable happiness. Once or twice, in the middle of the day, I even felt a rare, inexplicable desire to be with my family, but Tata was at work, Sestra had her Walkman turned way up, and Mama was remote, interned in the kitchen, probably crying. The ceiling fan spun sluggishly, a cruel reminder that time here passed at the same mind-numbing speed.

Tata was a great promiser, a fabulist of possibilities. In Sarajevo, he had projected onto the vast, blank canvas of our socialist provincialism a Kinshasa that was a hive of neocolonial pleasures: exclusive clubs with pools and tennis courts; diplomatic receptions frequented by the international jet set and spies; cosmopolitan casinos and exotic lounges; safaris in the wilderness; and Phillip, a native cook whom he had hired away from a Belgian by increasing his piddling wage to a slightly less piddling amount. That first uneventful week, these promises were drably betrayed; Phillip didn't even show up for work. When Tata came home from the Embassy, we had humdrum dinners that Mama improvised from what she had discovered in the fridge: wizened peppers and sunken papayas, peanut paste and some kind of animal flesh that may have been goat meat.

Determined to dispel the cloud of tedium hanging over us, Tata finally put in a call to the Yugoslav Ambassador and invited himself and us to the Ambassador's residence in Gombe, where all the important diplomats lived. The mansions there were large, with wide lawns and majestic flowers blooming in impeccably groomed bushes; the venerable Congo flowed serenely. His Excellency and his excellent wife were polite and devoid of any human vigor. We sat in their receiving room, and the adults passed around statements ("Kinshasa is strange"; "Kinshasa is really small") as if handing around a sugar bowl. Exotic trophies were carefully positioned around the room: a piece of Antwerp bobbin lace on the wall; an ancient Mesopotamian rock on the coffee table; on the bookshelf a picture of their Excellencies on a snowcapped mountain. A servant with an implausible red sash brought in the drinks--Sestra and I were each given a glass of lemonade with a long silver spoon. I didn't dare to move, and when Sestra, abruptly and inexplicably, rolled like a happy dog on the ankle-deep Afghan rug I feared that our parents would renounce us.

As soon as we returned home, I went up to Spinelli's place. He did not seem surprised to see me, nor did he ask what had brought me around. "Come on in," he said, smoking, a drink in his hand, music blasting behind him. I lit up; I had not smoked all day, and I was starved for nicotine. The smoke descended into my lungs like feathery silk, then out, thickly, through my nose; it was so beautiful I was breathless. Spinelli was air drumming along to the loud music, a cigarette dangling from his lips. " "Black Dog,' " he said. "God damn." In the far corner, under the window, there was a set of drums; its golden cymbals trembled in the stream from the air-conditioner.

Between his imaginary drum solos and bridges, Spinelli made unsolicited confessions: he had grown up in a rough Chicago neighborhood and beat it as soon as he could; he had lived in Africa forever; he worked for the U.S. government and could not tell me what his job was, for if he did he would have to kill me. He started each sentence sitting down and finished it standing up. He never stopped moving. Space organized itself around him; he exuded so much of himself that I felt absent. Only after I had left his apartment, exhausted, could I really think at all. And then I thought that he was a true American, a liar and a braggart, and that hanging out with him was far more stimulating than the shackles of family life or the excellent diplomats in Gombe. At some point during his restless monologue, he christened me, for no apparent reason, Blunderpuss.

I went back upstairs a couple of days later, and then again the following day. Mama and Tata seemed fine with that; if I removed my boredom, we could avoid long stretches of crabby silence. They must also have thought that engaging with the real world and its inhabitants without actually leaving the building was good for me, and I got to practice my English, too. As for me, I could smoke as much as I wanted at Spinelli's; the music was much louder than my parents would ever have permitted; and he poured more whiskey into my glass before it was even half empty. But most of all I enjoyed his stories: he delivered them slouching back on the sofa, blowing smoke toward the ceiling fan, sipping his J&B, interrupting his delivery for every drum solo. There may be a taint of death, a flavor of mortality, in lies, but Spinelli's were fun to listen to.

In high school, he'd run a cigarette-selling business and had regular sex with his geography teacher. He'd hitchhiked across America: in Oklahoma, he'd drunk with Indians who fed him mushrooms that took him to where their spirits lived--the spirits had big asses with two holes, both of which smelled equally of shit; in Idaho, he'd lived in a cave with a guy who watched the sky all day long, waiting for a fleet of black helicopters to descend upon them; he'd smuggled cattle from Mexico into Texas, cars from Texas to Mexico. Then he'd joined the Army: avoiding rough deployment by applying onion to his dick so as to fake an infection; whoring around in Germany, cutting up a Montenegrin pimp in a disco. Then Africa: sneaking into Angola to help out Savimbi's freedom fighters; training the Ugandan special forces with the Israelis; setting up a honey trap in Durban. He told his tales laterally, moving across his life without regard for chronology.

Afterward, I would lie in my bed, trying to organize his stream of consciousness in my giddy head so that I could write it down for Azra. Only then could I see the loopholes in the texture of his tales, the inconsistencies and contradictions and the plain bullshit. Once I was out of his proximity, he made little sense; he had to be physically present in his own narratives to make them plausible. Therefore I sought his presence; I kept going upstairs.

One night when I went upstairs, Spinelli was all dressed and ready to go, wearing a black unbuttoned shirt, reeking of cologne, a gold chain dangling below his Adam's apple. He lit a cigarette in the doorway, inhaled, and said "Let's go!" and I followed without a question. It did not even cross my mind to tell my parents where I was going. They never came to check on me when I was at Spinelli's. It turned out that we were going to a casino around the corner.

"The guy who owns the casino is Croatian," Spinelli said. "Used to be in the Foreign Legion, fought here, then in Biafra. I don't wanna know the things he did. We do business sometimes, and his daughter likes me pretty well, too."

I could not see his lips moving as we walked; his voice was disembodied. We turned the corner and there was a splendid neon sign that said " PLAYBOY CASINO," the "S" and the final "O" flickering uncertainly. A few white cars and military Jeeps were parked in the gravel lot. On the stairs were several hookers in ridiculously high heels, neither climbing nor descending, as if they were afraid they might fall if they moved. But move they did as we passed; one of them grabbed my forearm and turned me toward her. She wore a helmetlike purple wig, and earrings as elaborate as Christmas ornaments; her breasts were pushed up by her tiny bra, so that I could see half of her left nipple. I stood petrified until Spinelli released me from her grip. "You don't fuck much, do you, Blunderpuss?" he said.

Three men were sitting at the roulette table, all plainly drunk, their heads falling on their chests between the revolutions of the wheel. A heavy fog of masculine recklessness hung over the table, the green of the felt fractured by piles of colorful chips. One of the men won and snapped out of his torpor long enough to gather up the chips with both arms, as though embracing a child. "Watch the croupier steal from them," Spinelli said with delight. "They're going to lose it all before they get another drink, then they'll lose some more." I did watch the croupier, but could not see how the stealing happened: when the players won, he pushed the chips toward them; when they lost, he raked the pile toward himself. It all seemed simple and honest, but I believed Spinelli. I had already started composing a description of the place for Azra: the cone of smoke rising to the light above the blackjack table; the hysterical flashing of the two slot machines in the corner; the man standing at the bar in the attire of a plantation owner--a light linen suit and a straw hat--his right hand hanging down like a sleeping dog's head, a ribbon of cigarette smoke passing slowly between his knuckles.

"Let me introduce you to Jacques," Spinelli said. "He's the boss."

Jacques put the cigarette in his mouth, shook Spinelli's hand, then looked me over without saying a word.

"This is Blunderpuss--he's Bogdan's kid," Spinelli said. Jacques's face was perfectly square, his nose triangular; his neck was a stovepipe of flesh. His expression bespoke the chummy ruthlessness of someone whose life was organized around profit and survival; as far as he was concerned, I did not exist in the world of straightforward facts. He put out his cigarette and, in English marred with clunky Croatian consonants, said to Spinelli, "What I am going to do with those bananas? They are rotting."

Spinelli looked at me, shook his head in bemused disbelief, and said, "Put them in a fruit salad."

Jacques grinned back at him and said, "Let me tell you joke. Mother has very ugly child, horrible, she goes on train, sits in coupe. People come in her coupe, they see child, is very ugly, they cannot look, they leave, go away, disgusting child. Nobody sits with them. Then comes man, smiles at mother, smiles at child, sits down, reads newspapers. Mother thinks, Good man, likes my child, is real good man. Then man takes one banana and asks mother, "Does your monkey want banana?' "

Spinelli didn't laugh, not even when Jacques repeated the punch line: "Does your monkey want banana?" Instead, he asked him, "Is Natalie here?"

I followed Spinelli through a beaded curtain into a room with a blackjack table and four players; they all wore uniforms, one of them sand khaki, the other three olive green. Natalie was the dealer, her fingers long and limber as she placed the cards; her pallor was luminous in the dark room; her arms were skinny, with no muscles whatsoever; she had bruises on her forearms, scratches on her biceps. On her shoulder she had a vaccination mark, like the imprint of a small coin. Spinelli sat at the table and nodded at her, slamming a cigarette pack against his palm. Her cheeks rose, quotation marks forming around her smile. She raised her hand gently, as though lifting a veil, and scratched her forehead with her pinkie. She blinked slowly, calmly, as though pulling her long eyelashes apart required effort. I was enthralled. Natalie was from out of this world, a displaced angel.

From then on, for a while, there were three of us. We went places: Spinelli driving his Land Rover, drumming on the wheel, slapping the dashboard, calling Natalie his Monkeypie; Natalie smoking in the passenger seat, looking out; I in the back, the breeze from the open window blowing her smoke, her intoxicating smell, directly into my face. The three of us: Spinelli, Monkeypie, Blunderpuss, like characters in an adventure novel.

One day, we went to the Cité to look for Phillip, who still hadn't shown up for work. Presumably, this was a means for Spinelli to expiate his drumming sins, arranged between Tata and him. Spinelli and Natalie picked me up at the crack of dawn, the light still diffused by the residue of the humid night. We drove toward the slums, against a crowd marching in antlike columns: men in torn shorts and shirts; women wrapped in cloth, carrying baskets on their heads; swollen-bellied children trotting by their side; emaciated dogs following at a hopeful distance. I had never seen anything so unreal in my life. We turned off onto a dirt road, which became a car-wide path full of mounds and gullies. The Land Rover stirred up a galaxy of dust, even when moving at low speed. Shacks misassembled from rusty tin and cardboard were lined up above a ditch, about to tumble in. I understood what Conrad had meant by "inhabited devastation." A woman with a child tied to her back dipped clothes into tea-colored water and beat the wet tangle with a tennis racquet.

Soon a shouting mob of kids was running after the car. "Check this out," Spinelli said and hit the brakes. The kids slammed into the back of the Land Rover; one of them fell on his ass. "Oh, stop it!" Natalie said. As soon as the car got up some speed, the kids were running after it again; they didn't often see a Land Rover in the Cité. Spinelli hit the brakes again, slapping his thigh with glee. I could see the face of the tallest boy smash against the glass, blood blurting out of his nose. Spinelli's laughter was deep-chested, like the bark of a big dog. It was infectious; I was roaring with laughter myself.

We stopped in front of a church, where a choir was singing with sombre voices. Spinelli went in to leave a message for Phillip while Natalie and I stayed in the car. He pushed his way through the kids, who parted, murmuring, " Mundele, mundele." "It means skinless," Natalie said. The tall boy was still bleeding, but he could not take his eyes off Natalie. She took a picture of him; he wiped his bloody nose and turned away.

"You're gonna have to get yourself a new cook, Blunderpuss," Spinelli said, climbing into his seat. "That's Phillip's funeral they're singing for."

From the Cité we went to the market--Le Grand Marché--and wandered around; it was too early to go home. Bartering in Lingala and English, Spinelli pretended to be interested in a dried monkey, whose hands grasped nothingness with unappetizing despair; he picked through yams but didn't buy any. Natalie took pictures of terrified goats waiting to be slaughtered, of eels still fidgeting in a beaten pot, of worms squirming in a shoebox.

These people had no abstract concept of evil, Spinelli said. For them, it was black magic coming from a particular person, so if you wanted to get rid of the evil spell you eliminated the guy. The same thing with the good: it was not something you could aspire to, the way we did; you either had it or you didn't. He delivered his anthropological lecture while bargaining over an enormous, baroque cluster of bananas, which he bought for nothing and loaded onto his shoulder. You couldn't die of hunger here, he said, because bananas and papayas grew everywhere like weeds. That was why these people had never learned to work; they'd never had to harvest and store food to survive.

A mass of people followed us, offering things we could not possibly need: toilet brushes, knitting needles, figurines carved out of what Spinelli claimed was human bone. I bought a bracelet made of elephant hair and ivory, a gift for Azra.

Later that day, we went to the Inter-Continental and sat in the lounge, where a ponytailed pianist played "As Time Goes By." We ordered colorful cocktails with tiny umbrellas stuck into unknown fruit. There were men in Zairean attire: wide collars, bare chests adorned with gold, hands bejewelled. Spinelli called them the Big Vegetables; they liked to stick out of Mobutu's ass, he said. Those expensive white whores with them came from Brussels or Paris; they spread their legs for two or three months, then took a little pouch of diamonds back home to live it up for the rest of the year. And that man over there was Dr. Slonsky, a Russian who had come twenty years ago, when you had to import ass-wipes from Belgium. He used to be Mobutu's personal physician, but now he only did the Big Vegetables; Mobutu had a Harvard graduate taking care of him these days. Slonsky liked heroin and boys, Spinelli said.

Natalie sucked at her straw, as if she had heard it all already.

Then there was Towser the Brit; his wife worked at the British Embassy. And that scruffy youngster sitting next to him was their Italian boyfriend. They were talking to Millie and Morton Fester, New Yorkers who dealt in tribal art, most of it pilfered away from the natives by the Big Vegetables. Millie wrote fancy porn novels; Morton used to be a photographer for National Geographic, trawling the Dark Continent for images. Spinelli actually waved at them and Morton waved back. Somehow, the waving confirmed Spinelli's stories, as though he had conjured them into existence with the motion of his hand.

Then we were joined by Fareed, a Lebanese whose head was as smooth as a billiard ball and whom Spinelli affectionately called Dicknose. He bought us a round of drinks, and, before I could even agree to it, we went up to Dicknose's room, where he opened a black briefcase for us. Inside was a velvet cloth, which he unwrapped, proudly exhibiting a tiny heap of uncut diamonds, sparkling like teeth in a toothpaste commercial. They had just arrived from Kasai, Dicknose said, fresh from the bowels of the earth. Natalie touched the heap with her fingertips; her nails were bitten to a bloody pulp. "All you need to make your girlfriend here happy, Blunderpuss, is twenty-five thousand dollars," Spinelli said. Natalie looked at me and smiled, as if confirming the price.

From the Inter-Continental, we drove to Spinelli's place, past the American Embassy, a large building surrounded by a tall wall. Bored guards smoked behind the iron-grille gate. On top of the Embassy there was a nest of sky-begging antennas. I imagined a life of espionage and danger; I imagined the letters I would send to Azra from behind enemy lines. They would be signed with a false name, but she would recognize my handwriting: When you get this letter, my dear, I will be far beyond the reach of your love. "This is where I defend freedom so I can pursue happiness," Spinelli said. "One day I'll take you there, Blunderpuss."

As we climbed the stairs of our building, I passed the apartment where my family was likely having dinner, but it felt as though they were not there, as though our place were empty. The absence could have been frightening, but I was too excited to care.

Spinelli went straight to his magnetophone and turned it on. The reels started revolving slowly, disinterestedly. "Ladies and gentlemen, "Immigrant Song'!" he hollered and then howled along with the music: "Aaaa Aaaa Aaaaaaa Aaaa Aaaaaa!"

I put my hands over my ears to signal my suffering, and Natalie laughed. Still screaming, Spinelli rummaged through the debris on his coffee table until he found what I believed was a joint of marijuana. He interrupted his howl to light it up, suck on it briskly, and pass it on to Natalie. I was innocent in the ways of drugs, but when Natalie, holding her breath so that her eyes were bulging and somehow bluer for that, offered it to me, I took it and inhaled as much as I could. Naturally, I coughed it all out immediately, saliva and phlegm erupting from me. Her laughter was snorty, pushing her cheek apples up, dilating her nostrils. A chenille of snot hung from my nose, nearly reaching my chin. "If you can't stand the heat, Blunderpuss," Spinelli whinnied, "stay out of the oven." Well, I was enjoying the oven and once the cough subsided I sipped the smoke from the joint and kept it in my lungs, waiting for the high to arrive.

Spinelli sat at his drum set and grabbed the sticks. He listened intently to a different song now, waiting, biting his lips to express passion. "The greatest goddam bridge in the history of rock and roll," he said, and attacked the timpani. I recognized the beat: it was what had frightened us on our first night in Kinshasa.

"What's the name of that song?" I asked.

"'Stairway to Heaven,' " Spinelli said.

"It sounds so African."

"That ain't African. That's Bonzo, white as they come."

Natalie took the joint from my hand; her fingers were soft and cold, her touch eerily gentle. I leaned back and stared at the fan revolving frenziedly, as though a helicopter were buried upside down in the ceiling. Spinelli stopped drumming to take a puff.

"See," he said, exhaling, "you're just an innocent kid, Blunderpuss. When I was your age, I did things I wouldn't do now, but I did them then, so I don't have to do them now."

He was rewinding the tape, pressing the "stop" and the "play" buttons alternately, trying to find the beginning of the song.

"There's so much you don't know, son. You have no idea how much you don't know. Before you know anything, you have to know what you don't know."

"I know."

"The fuck you do."

"Leave him alone," Natalie said, dreamily.

"Shut up, Monkeypie." He took another puff, spat on the minuscule butt, and flicked it toward the ashtray on the coffee table, missing by a yard. Then he asked me, "Why are you here?"

"Here? In Kinshasa?"

"Forget Kinshasa, Blunderpuss. Why are you here on this goddam planet? Do you know?"

"No," I had to admit. "I don't."

Natalie sighed, as though she knew where it was all heading.

"Exactly," Spinelli said. "That's exactly your problem."

"Are you O.K., sweetheart?" Natalie asked me, extending her hand, but she couldn't reach me and I couldn't move.

"I feel nothing," I said.

"Stairway to Heaven" was picking up, the drums kicking in. "That's the way!" Spinelli leaped in excitement. "There is always a tunnel at the end of the light."

By this time he was leaning over me, blocking my view of the ceiling fan.

"Steve," Natalie said without conviction. "Leave him alone."

"He is alone," Spinelli said. "We live as we dream. Fucking alone."

"That's Conrad," I said.

"What's that?"

"That's Joseph Conrad."

"No, no, no, no, no, sir. That ain't no Joe Conrad. That's the truth."

He played the "Stairway to Heaven" bridge over my head, closing his eyes, curling his lower lip. Natalie slipped her hand under her cheek and closed her eyes, producing a celestial smile. He dropped down next to me, his back to Natalie's stomach.

"There's a tribe here," he went on, his voice lowered, "that believes that the first man and woman slid down from the sky on a rope. God let them down on a rope, they untied themselves, and the boss pulled the rope up. And that's exactly what happened, my friend. We were dropped down here and we wanna go back up, but there's no rope. So here you are, Blunderpuss, and the rope is gone."

He spread his arms to point at our surroundings: the coffee table with its pile of formerly glossy National Geographics; an overflowing ashtray and a bottle of J&B; ebony sculptures of stolid elephants and twiggy warriors, one of them draped in a T-shirt.

"But we can at least try to get up as high as possible," he said, and he excavated a tinfoil nugget from his pocket, unwrapped it with delectation, and showed me a lump of green paste at its heart. "That's why God gave us Afghanistan."

The day I smoked pot for the first time was the day I smoked hashish for the first time. He chipped slivers off the lump, then stuffed it down the narrow bowl of a clay pipe, murmuring to himself, "Yessiree bob!" This time I had no trouble inhaling and releasing the smoke impressively slowly.

"I'm here," Natalie said, and I passed the pipe to her. She smoked on her back, her eyes still closed. The smoke crawled out of her mouth, as though she were not breathing at all.

"See, I was much like you when I was a kid," Spinelli said. "And here I am now."

My head and stomach were completely empty. I tried to inhale air to fill up the vacuum inside me, but it didn't work. I was gasping, as though rapidly deflating, and it sounded like a giggle--I heard myself as someone else.

"You might wanna munch on a banana or something," Spinelli said. "You're pale as shit." Abruptly he stood up and charged off to the kitchen. Natalie's face was ashen, her lips pink; a single hair stretched from her forehead to her mouth. Before I could make any decision, I leaned toward her, planting a kiss where the hair touched her lip. She opened her eyes and widened her smile until I could see the tip of her tongue protruding between her teeth.

I retreated into my throne of stupor just as Spinelli came back with a huge, blazingly yellow banana. He offered it to me and said, "Would the monkey like a banana?"

The monkey ate the banana, promptly passed out, and dreamed of two women, one fat, one slim, knitting black wool to the rhythm of drums, chanting angrily, "Spinelli! Spinelli! Spinelli!" Whereupon I woke up to see Tata in his pith helmet and flannel pajamas shaking an enraged, ruddy finger in Spinelli's face. Spinelli had his hands on his hips and they slowly curled into fists; he was about to punch my father. Natalie sat up and said, "Steve, let it go. Let Bogdan take the boy home." The hair on the right side of her head was bunched up in the shape of a harp, or half a heart.

"All right, man, I apologize. We were just partying a little," Spinelli said. "Hopefully, it's all bridge under the water."

Walking downstairs was much like crossing an underwater bridge: an invisible stream pushed against my knees; I could not feel the solid concrete under my feet. Tata practically carried me, his hands grasping my flesh sternly. He was talking to me, but I could hear only the tone of his voice: angry, quivering. Downstairs, Mama and Sestra sat on the couch like a two-member jury; Sestra watched me with slumberous amusement; Mama's face was awash with tears. For some reason, it was all funny to me, and, when Tata dropped me into the armchair across from them, I slid down to the floor and convulsed with laughter.

Later on, in the middle of the night, I tottered to the kitchen, found the trash bin in the darkness, pressed the pedal to open the lid, and pissed a thick, pleasurable stream into its mouth.

There was no talk given by my parents, no warning about drugs and alcohol, no lecture about self-respect, no complaint about having to clean up the piss lake on the kitchen floor. They just stared at me, mute, across the dinner table: Tata pursed his lips, contemplating the troubling question of my future; Mama pressed her hand against her cheek, shaking her head in disbelief at her extraordinary bad luck in having had such a son.

I was forced to go everywhere they went: to the Lolo La Crevette, where we devoured shrimp with a malarial Macedonian prone to delivering unhurried reports on his talkative cockatoo; to the Portuguese club, where I watched two decrepit Frenchmen play tennis, a skinny boy fetching their scattershot balls; to the Belgian supermarket, pristinely overlit, where everyone was immaculately white, as though the place had been magically transported from the pallid heart of Brussels. I carried "Heart of Darkness" around and tried to read it when no one was talking to me, which was far from often enough. All I wanted was to be alone.

I was alone only when I smoked on my balcony in the tarrish heat, hoping to catch sight of Spinelli or Natalie on the street, but I never did. There was no shuffling of feet upstairs, no slamming of doors, no drumming or hollering along to Led Zeppelin. When I thought of our time together, I could not recall our doing anything or being anywhere. All I could recollect was the sound of Spinelli's voice reciting his adventures: Spinelli going up the Congo with a crew of mercenaries, looking for a fallen Soviet satellite; Spinelli in Angola, submerged in a shallow river, like a hippo, invisible to a Cuban patrol; Spinelli in a Durban restaurant, spooning raw monkey brain out of a cut-open skull.

One Sunday, we went to the Czech Ambassador's garden party in Gombe. There was beer and champagne, marakuja juice and punch; there were piles of niblets and fruit, offered on vast trays by a couple of humble servants; there were the blond twin daughters of the Romanian Ambassador; there was our Excellency and his wife, and a lot of wily Communist kids scurrying around and taunting an angry chimpanzee in a cage by the garden shed. I wanted to find a quiet spot to read, but Tata compelled me to join a volleyball game. We were on the same team as the Romanian twins, and a squat Bulgarian whose many gold chains rattled every time he missed the ball. Fortunately, there was also a Russian named Anton, tall and lanky, potato-nosed, gray-eyed. He was by far our best player and handily destroyed the other team. He showed me how to make my fingers flexible so that the ball would float high enough for Tata to smack it into the Ambassador's excellently flabby flesh.

Anton was the only man who did not smoke or drink after the game; he knew how to stay in control. I followed him and Tata to a table under an enormous umbrella; they spoke Russian together, and Anton's voice was deep and curt, used to giving orders. He tapped on the table with an agitated finger and Tata threw up his arms; I thought I heard him say Spinelli's name. When I turned around, I saw Natalie walking barefoot toward me in a diaphanous white dress, and a flare of hope went off in my chest, but it was just one of the Romanian twins, guzzling beer out of a large mug, two streaks curving from the corners of her mouth toward her bepimpled chin.

Soon thereafter we went east for the promised safari. A man was waiting for us on the tarmac of the Goma airport; we saw him as soon as we stepped out of the plane. He wore dark shades, a white shirt, and a black tie; he walked up to Tata and shook his hand diplomatically, as though welcoming a dignitary. His name was Carlier; he assured us that he was at our service and kissed Mama's hand as she was trying to extract it from his grip. He stroked Sestra's hair and nodded at me, as if he thought I was tough and he respected it.

Carlier was slurring his words and I could not tell whether it was his accent or whether he was drunk. Except for his shades and a large diamond ring on his middle finger, he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood: he had a heavy, fat-rounded head, large ears with meaty earlobes, blood speckles on his mercilessly scraped face. He bribed our way through the ovenlike airport, extending his money-stuffed hand to uniformed officers. Outside, he chased away a swarm of cabbies and crap-hawkers and led us to a van next to which a man stood at attention in a suit with a tightly knotted tie. Carlier barked at him and he leaped to open the door for us.

The streets of Goma were enveloped in roiling clouds of black dust. In an uncanny moment, I realized that everyone in sight was barefoot and, for a moment, I could not remember what the purpose of shoes was. But then I saw booted policemen standing on the porches, leaning on walls, like idle villains in Westerns, and the world of straightforward facts was restored. When we stopped to let a skittish herd of goats pass, nobody approached the van to offer us carved human bones or knitting needles.

"You make a right turn here," Carlier said, "and you are in Rwanda."

We turned left, got out of town, and drove through the fields of black lava rock surrounding intermittent islands of jungle verdure. A gray mountain beyond the green-and-black landscape exuded smoke; the earth seemed unearthly. "Nyiragongo," Carlier said, as if the word were self-explanatory.

The Karibu Hotel consisted of huts scattered along the shore of Lake Kivu, which, Carlier told us gleefully, contained no life: the last time Nyiragongo had erupted, the volcanic gases had killed every living creature in it. Sestra and I shared one of the huts, which was redolent of clean towels, insecticide, and mold. As she unpacked, humming to herself, I stared out the window: a pirogue glided unhurriedly on the waveless water; the sky and the lake were welded together seamlessly; a pale moon levitated in the haze. The sun was setting somewhere; it seemed as if everything were returning to darkness after an unhappy day out.

The ban on my wandering seemed to be suspended here; I left Sestra sprawling on her bed, happily attached to her Walkman. "Heart of Darkness" in hand, I took an uphill path past the other bungalows. I was hoping to escape dinner with my family. On the way from the airport, they had felt as foreign to me as if they were hired actors mindlessly performing gestures of care and kinship: Tata in his absurd pith helmet, Mama smirking, routinely afraid of the future, Sestra approaching everything with pointless curiosity. I could remember that I used to love them, but I could not remember why, and I was terrified.

The carefully trimmed hedges were moist with dusk; low, mushroomlike lanterns flickered along the path. I walked onto a terrace extending from a vast dining hall. At its center, like an altar, was a table laden with food and flowers. And there, with his back to me, picking up slices of meat and chunks of fruit, mounding them on his plate, was Steve Spinelli. I recognized his triangular torso and narrow hips, his clawlike curls and cowboy boots. For a blink, I considered sneaking out, but then he turned--a veritable hillock of victuals on his plate--and looked at me with no surprise whatsoever.

"Look what the bitch dragged in," he said.

He walked out onto the terrace and I went with him to his table; he offered me a seat and I took it, determined to leave before Tata caught me there. Without being asked, I said, "We are going to the Virunga National Park tomorrow, for a safari."

"It's a fun world, Blunderpuss," Spinelli said. "Getting funner every day."

"Is Natalie with you?"

"She is."

"Why are you here?"

He chewed heartily, with his mouth open, ignoring me. Between forkfuls, he puffed on a cigarette.

"For a vacation," he said. "And, who knows, there might be some business to be done."

I grabbed his Marlboros and lit up. The possibility that the cigarette might be drug-laced crossed my mind, but it tasted good. He seemed to speak to me from a space in which no life mattered--all the roles had already been assigned and I did not know what mine was. I fidgeted and tapped the ashes off my cigarette until the ember broke off.

"I hear that you're a good volleyball player," he said. "Did you like Antonyka?"

"How do you know him?"

"I know a lot of people. Anton is a remarkable gentleman, as well as a Communist cocksucker."

He waved at Carlier, who was just walking into the dining hall, accompanied by a tall man with sideburns and a scaphander-like Afro. Carlier spoke to the man brusquely, pointing at the meat tray, then at the flowers--there was some disorder to be redressed. "I know Carlier, too, for example," Spinelli went on. "We used to run guns to Angola together." The man took notes, looking at Carlier with dismay that tightened the muscles and sinews in his forearms. I envisioned him suddenly punching Carlier's face in, blood spraying onto his white shirt.

"Your dad also played with you and Anton, didn't he?" Spinelli said. "I bet you played pretty good together."

Carlier dropped into the chair next to Spinelli. He pulled a pipe out of his breast pocket and picked some detritus from its mouth with his pinkie, but didn't light it.

"Whipping would be too good for Monsieur Henry," he said peevishly.

"One day, Carlier, he's gonna slit your throat," Spinelli said. "And I'll cry over your corpse till I can piss no more."

Scoffing with approbation, Carlier picked up my book, looked at it without interest, and put it down. I took it and bid them good night.

The mushroom lamps cast a feeble light on the path, but not on anything else. The lava gravel crunched under my feet. Obscure creatures rustled in the black trees and bushes. The sky was splattered with stars, smeared with the Milky Way. I was lost; I could not remember the number of my hut, which was identical to all the others; the path seemed to go in circles.

I don't know why I behaved like a lunatic. I heard footsteps coming down the path behind me; I stepped off into the darkness and ducked behind a tree, with a precise clarity of action, as though somebody had already done it once and I was just repeating his motions. Whatever was in the tree shuffled its way up; I dropped my book. The footsteps stopped.

"Come out, Blunderpuss. I can see you."

I was afraid to move or look at him, exhaling until I was out of air, then inhaling through my nostrils, getting light-headed and elated, as though that were the way to make myself invisible. Something fell on my head from above--a leaf, an insect, monkey hair--but I did not brush it off. It was so easy here to forget everything, to lose all bearing. I stepped out onto the path.

"Let's go and say hi to Monkeypie," Spinelli said. "She'd love to see you."

"Maybe later," I said. "I must go."

"She's crazy about you, you know. She talks about you all the time. She'd love to see you." He put his arm around my shoulders; I felt the weight of his forearm on my neck as he softly pushed me forward.

Their room smelled of burned sugar; the ceiling fan was dead. Natalie lay on her side, her hand tucked between the pillow and her cheek, her tranquil face lit by the bedside lamp. Around her biceps a loose rubber rope twisted. On the nightstand there was a syringe and a spoon and a lit candle. I was an instant behind myself: I saw what it all was, but the thought could not encrust itself with meaning. Spinelli caressed her forehead with the back of his hand and moved a stray hair from her cheek.

"She is beautiful, isn't she, so peaceful," he said. "Would you like to fuck her?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't think so."

"She's a little out of touch, but she'd love it, believe me."

"No, thank you."

"What's your problem, Blunderpuss? When I was your age, I had a hard-on twenty-four/seven."

He stood above her with his hands on his hips. I couldn't move, until my knees got so weak I sat down next to Natalie, my back to her; she did not flinch when I leaned on her belly. I had reached the farthest point of navigation. Dear Azra, The leaves have covered my path. I do not know if I will ever see you again.

"You can't get it up, can you?" he said, chortling. "You can't get it up. Let me show you something." He quickly unfastened his eagle-buckled belt and let his jeans drop. His dick stood in my face like an erected cannon. Its head was perfectly purple; the blue veins seemed to be throbbing.

"A solid torpedo and ready to explode," Spinelli said and stroked it. "Do you wanna touch it? C'mon, touch it."

Natalie sighed but did not open her eyes; the candle flickered, nearly going out. With indescribable effort, I finally stood up and pushed him away. "Hey!" he said, stumbling backward with his pants at his ankles. Still, I expected him to grab me from behind. I was ready for him to smash my head against the door until I blacked out, but nothing happened.

Outside, a tremulous wake of light stretched itself toward the cataractous moon. My heart was playing the bridge from "Stairway to Heaven," but beyond the noise in my veins, beyond my limp limbs, beyond my clammy skin, there was a serene flow carrying me away from everything that had been me. Up the path, past an oddly azure pool with a school of insects drowning in it, I walked back toward the dining hall.

At the dining hall there would be my family: Sestra picking the green beans off Tata's plate; Tata slicing his steak, still wearing his pith helmet; and Mama separating the mashed potatoes from the carrots on Sestra's plate, because Sestra never wanted her foods to touch. I would take my place at the table, and Tata would ask me where I had been. "Nowhere," I would say, and he would ask me nothing more. "You'd better eat something--you look so pale," Mama would say. My sister would tell us how much she was looking forward to the safari, to seeing the elephants and the antelopes and the monkeys. "Tomorrow is going to be really great," she would cry, clapping her hands with joy. "I simply can't wait." And we would laugh, Mama, Tata, and I, we would laugh, Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, desperately hiding our rope burns.

By Aleksandar Hemon

The Photograph

2006-11-11T17:18:00.000-06:00

Getting older wasn't too bad. The baldness suited Martin. Everyone said it. He'd had to change his trouser size from 34 to 36. It had been a bit of a shock, but it was kind of nice wearing loose trousers again, hitching them up when he stood up to go to the jacks, or whatever. He was fooling himself; he knew that. But that was the point—he was fooling himself. He'd put on weight but he felt a bit thinner.

There were other things, too, that had nothing to do with his body and aging. The kids getting older was one, and the freedom he'd kind of forgotten about. For years, if he stayed in bed in the morning, if he wanted to, it had to be carefully planned. Lizzie, his wife, had to be told. The kids had to be told, and nearly asked. It hadn't been worth it, the fuckin' palaver he'd had to go through. For years, all those years the kids were growing up, he'd been on call. A pal of his had used the phrase, on call. He'd been talking about his own life, but—there were four of them there that night in the local, sitting around one of the high tables—he'd been describing all their lives.

—I'm like a doctor without the fuckin' money, Noel had said.

They'd all smiled and nodded.

He'd loved it, mostly, the whole family/kids thing, and he'd ignored the throb above his left eye that had often felt like too much coffee or dehydration, too much or too little of something, that he thought now had probably been the pressure of that life. For years, the throb—the vein. Everything he'd done, everywhere he'd gone. Every minute had been counted and used. He had four children, and there were eleven years between the oldest and the youngest. It was over now—it seemed to be over—and the throb had gone away.

It had taken a while. He'd be wide awake early on Saturday, with nothing to do. He'd drive down to the recycling center in Coolock with five empty bottles and a cardboard box. He'd shove the box in on top of the other boxes and newspapers and he'd remember holding up one of the kids, usually the little girl, so she could reach the slot the cardboard was pushed into. He'd wonder what the fuck he was doing up and out of the house when he could have been at home in bed. He'd drive out to Howth and watch other people buying fish. He'd feel useful while he was driving. There were no kids in the back, only more cars behind him in the rearview mirror. It took him a good while to stop. Well over a year. He was driving long after the kids stopped needing him. But he did stop. He could relax now without thinking too much about it.

He wasn't on call anymore, and Noel was dead.

He missed the kids. Two of them still lived at home. They smiled when they saw him. They sometimes stayed at the table for a few minutes after they'd finished eating, and they'd chat. They'd talk more to Lizzie than to him, but it was easy enough; it was nice. They'd been wise that way, him and Lizzie. They'd got through the teen years without too much grief. There'd been no drug habits or pregnancies, not too much puking and far less screaming than they'd heard coming from some of the other houses on the road. They were great kids. He missed them. If he thought of it, the fact that he didn't have children anymore—if he'd been an actor, it was what he'd have done to make himself cry.

There was sex as well. That was a nice surprise. There'd always been sex, more or less, in among the nappies and the Calpol and schoolbooks. They'd never really stopped fancying each other. But the big surprise was some of the stuff they'd got up to since the kids had stopped being kids. Without any announcement or decision. She bit one of his nipples one night, and she'd never done that before. It hurt but, fuck, it woke him up. And he'd made her come—this was a different night—just by talking to her. So she'd said, anyway. She was hanging on to him and crying before he really knew what was going on. He just thought it was a bit of gas, whispering into her ear. He even put on an American accent, all that pussy and cock palaver. He was still just getting the hang of it, deciding what part of the States he was from, when she came. He'd never fuckin' forget it.

And there were other women. Women liked mature men. He'd read that somewhere, in a waiting room somewhere—the dentist or the doctor. Or it was just one of the things you grew up with. Women went for older men. He'd never believed it. Even when he changed it a bit, to some women, and some older men. He'd always thought it was a load of bollix. He still thought that, even more since he'd started noticing women looking at him, kind of giving him the eye. Not young ones—he didn't think he could have coped with that, smiling back at some gorgeous monster less than half his age. No, it was mature women, older women—some older women. One or two of them. There was a woman from up the road who always waved at him—she lived on the other side, nearer the shops—and she looked great from that distance. He'd looked up from the pile of newspapers in the SPAR one Sunday morning, and she'd been right beside him. He smelt her perfume, and she looked nice up close, too. She was dressed up a bit, in the old-fashioned Sunday way. And she blushed when she saw him.

—Hi.

—Hi.

She looked a bit flustered.

—Great day.

—Lovely.

He loved that, thinking that, that he'd knocked her off course a bit, just by being there, older man himself, in the SPAR on a Sunday morning. He felt the heat in his own face. He bought his Indo and kind of drifted out of the shop, took his time. He hoped, half hoped, they'd walk back up the road together, and chat till they got to her place, and a little bit more at the gate, then he'd go on to his. But it didn't happen. He walked home alone, and she passed him in her car and she kept going, past her house. She must have been going somewhere, her ma's or somewhere. Her husband was driving.

It was fine. He wasn't interested in taking it further, and he didn't think he'd have had the guts. Anyway, another of his friends, Davie, had separated from his missis a few years back and he was living back home with his mother, the poor fucker, because he couldn't afford to do anything else. But he, Davie, went to a different pub on Sunday nights, where men and women like himself, unattached and out of practice, went. And, after a few months of this, he'd come up with Davie's Law: All women over the age of forty are mad. He'd announced it in the local, one of their Wednesday nights, and none of them had disagreed.

Martin was lucky, though. Lizzie was kind of sexy mad. The insanity suited her. She knew it, and that made it even better. He'd never have done anything to wreck it.

But it wasn't all great, the getting-older business—far from. He'd started grunting whenever he picked something up or bent down to tie his laces, or whatever. He hated it. He'd tell himself to stop. But he'd forget. It became natural. Pick the soap up in the shower—grunt. Start the lawnmower—grunt. He didn't have to grunt. He was well able to bend over and the rest of it. He asked the lads, and they all did it, too.

And there was the cancer. Not his. He'd never had it. His friend who'd died. Noel. That was cancer. Felt a bit short of breath. Went to the doctor. Straight up to Beaumont Hospital. Came out two days later with the news and the dates for his chemotherapy. He told them about it the day after that, in the local, sitting in all the smoke—this was a few months before the smoking ban.

Martin didn't smoke. He never had. Noel did. But he'd given them up a year or so before the cancer, or at least before he found out about it.

None of them said anything, for a bit. They waited for him to go on, to make it less terrible. Martin watched Davie put out his cigarette, crush it into the ashtray. He pushed away the last of the rising smoke with his hand.

—They say it's early enough, Noel said. With the chemo and that. They should be able to stop it.

And they'd watched him slowly die. Not slowly. Only now it seemed slow, start to end. But at the time he'd been fine—he'd looked fine. He'd lost the hair with the chemo, but he'd looked good. Into the second year, they'd all thought he was going to make it. But then it had really started. They'd had to visit his house. He sat there with his oxygen beside him, one of those cannister things. His eyes started to look huge and he struggled to get up when he was going to the door to say goodbye to them.

—Stay where you are. We're grand.

—No, no, I'll come out with yis.

It took him forever to get to the door. They waved at the gate, and smiled back in at him and his mad skeleton smile, his shirt way too big on him.

They got into the car. And then they spoke.

—He's not going to make it, is he?

—No.

Then nothing for a while.

—We'd better get going. He'll be wondering why we're not moving.

—Right. O.K.

Lizzie knew Noel wasn't well, and she asked Martin how he was every couple of days. She asked this time and he told her and he cried and she held his head. About a week after that, he went to the jacks and there was blood on the sides of the bowl when he stood up and turned to flush it. He'd pulled the handle before he properly knew: that was his blood. He said nothing. There was no blood the next time, or the time after that. But it was back the next time; it looked strange on the toilet paper, too red. He had to phone in sick and stay home, because he was getting cramps and sweating like a madman. He told Lizzie. He went back to bed. She sat beside him.

—Blood?

—Yeah, he said.

—Jesus. Sore?

—Kind of, he said. Uncomfortable.

—I'll phone the doctor's, she said.

She looked at her watch.

—He should be still there.

—No, he said.

—Yes.

—O.K., he said.

He had to get up again. He had to go back to the jacks.

—You poor thing, she said.

He went past her.

—Sorry, he said.

He heard her at the toilet door, waiting. He wished she'd go away.

It wasn't cancer. He'd ended up going to a specialist and he had a colonoscopy three weeks later, a fibre-optic camera all the way to his appendix. He lay down on the bed thing, turned on his left side, like he was told, and the specialist gave him the jab, a needle in the arm. It was over when he woke up, and he was in a different room. They gave him toast and tea and the specialist was suddenly there, beside him—Martin was still a bit dopey—and told him that he had diverticular disease. The specialist wrote it down on a piece of paper, said something about looking it up on the Net, and then he went back behind the screen and Martin didn't see him again.

He Googled it when he got home, and for a few stupid minutes he wished he had cancer. It was fuckin' disgusting. Diverticula are pockets that develop in the colon wall. He could feel his own colon; he could feel it throbbing, coiling. He got up, and sat down again. Pain, chills, fever, change in bowel habits. His finger was on the screen, under each word. Perforation, abscess or fistula formation. He found a dictionary in his daughter's room and looked up abscess. He'd never been sure what an abscess actually was, some kind of spectacular toothache. A swollen area within body tissue, containing an accumulation of pus. He put the dictionary back on her desk. He sat on her bed and ate the Mars bar he'd found beside the dictionary. He didn't look up fistula. It could wait. He knew enough.

He couldn't tell anyone. He couldn't tell Lizzie. She'd never let him touch her again. Or she would and he'd see it, the pity and revulsion.

Pus.

Stand well back, lads, the next time I fart. He could make a joke of it. He was good at that. It was part of the way they were, making a laugh out of everything. But they'd still all be disgusted.

Why him—why Martin? What had he done to deserve perforations and pus? Cancer was dignified, something nearly to be proud of—a fuckin' achievement, compared to this. What the fuck was a fistula formation? He still didn't look it up.

Noel was in the hospice. He was too weak for home. They went in to see him one Sunday afternoon, one of the last summer days. It was a nice room. The window was open. Martin could smell flowers, hear birds. Noel sat on the side of his bed. His head was bent and everything he said came through the oxygen mask. He sounded high-pitched, like his voice had never broken, like every bit of each word was being pulled out of him. They chatted about the usual, the football and that. They laughed more than they had to, and then the laughter became more even and Martin thought he'd tell them about the diverticular thing. But Noel got in there first.

—Look it, he said.

They said nothing. They waited.

—I'm fighting this, he said.

They waited.

—Yis know that, he said. But, in case.

They watched him swallow air and keep it.

—Yis've been. Great friends, he said. I just wanted. To say that. In case. You know.

—Works both ways, brother, said Davie.

—You'll be grand, Noel.

—Just, wanted. To say it.

He died four days after.

The trick was the diet. As far as he could see, from what he'd read on Google. It wasn't really a disease. It was more like waiting to be a disease. Most people who had it didn't even know. Plenty of fresh stuff, vegetables and that. No nuts or big seeds, nothing that might block one of the pockets on his colon.

For fuck sake.

My arse is a time bomb, lads. He could hear himself saying it. Making small of it. Maybe when they were having a pint after the funeral. He could see it and hear it. The questions, the laughter.

He told Lizzie.

He actually blamed Lizzie, but only for a little while. It was the food she'd been giving him for the past twenty-nine years. She'd been killing him. But he didn't really think that. He told her the same day Noel died. He should have waited—he thought that later. He shouldn't have jumped in with his own bad news. He knew he was doing it. Throwing himself into poor Noel's grave. But he did it.

—I've a thing called diverticular disease.

He stopped himself from adding "myself." I've a thing called diverticular disease myself. He didn't go that far—I've got cancer, too. He didn't. But it sat there. He knew it. On the kitchen table.

Disease.

He told her what it was, as far as he understood it.

—I can swing between constipation and diarrhea. Or, if one of the yokes gets blocked . . .

He was stuck now. He had to go on. She was looking straight at him.

—If the fecal matter gets caught in one of them, he said. One of the pockets or pouches, like. It'll become inflamed. Even perforated.

Her hand went to her mouth.

—If I'm not careful, he told her. They'll have to take out my colon.

—All of it?

—Most of it.

He wasn't sure. He hadn't really read that far.

—But that's only if I'm not careful.

—What d'you mean, careful? she said.

—About my diet and that, he said.

—What's wrong with it?

—Nothing.

He was leaning over, taking the big words back off the table. Why hadn't he kept his fuckin' mouth shut?

—Will you have to become a vegetarian or something? she said.

—No, he said. I don't think so. But I'll have to eat vegetables.

—You do already.

—I know.

Just don't boil them to fuck.

He didn't say it. He didn't even think it, really.

He shrugged.

—It's just . . . Anyway. Now you know.

They sat at the table. He thought about Noel.

They walked up to the church together, him and Lizzie; it was no distance from the house. There was a big crowd, waiting on the steps and on the bits of grass, out onto the street.

—That's good, he said to Lizzie.

He wasn't sure why. A bit of a comfort for Noel's wife and kids, who'd be arriving soon in the black cars, with the hearse. It was what he'd have thought. My husband was popular. All these people knew my father. Familiar faces. Unfamiliar faces. He'd had a big, full life.

Martin had bought a new shirt, to go with his jacket. It was a bit tight on him, but grand as long as he kept the jacket on. He'd be losing weight soon. The whole new regime. Fruit, grains. The fresh veg. Legumes. Another of the words he'd had to find in the dictionary. Peas, beans. Health and boredom.

He hadn't slept. Not since Noel had died. Since a good bit before, actually. He'd jump awake before he was really asleep. Afraid to sleep. Afraid of falling. His skin was dry. He saw that when he brought his face up to the mirror. Dry skin all over his face. Especially across his forehead and at the sides of his nose. And spots. He could feel them, threatening, angry, right over his forehead. He looked desperate.

—Stress, said Lizzie.

He nodded.

—Grief.

—He's only dead a few days, he said.

—You've known for two years, she said back.

She was right. It made sense. The death, the news, hadn't done anything. He'd known what it was when the phone rang. He'd been waiting.

The sleep was the worst part. One good night would have made the difference, would have put whatever was missing back under his skin. That was how he felt, what he nearly believed. The night before, Lizzie had handed him a bottle of Benylin, the cough mixture, half empty and sticky. He hadn't seen Benylin since the kids had grown up.

—Take a mouthful of that.

He looked at it.

—What's the best-before date? he said. It must be fuckin' ancient.

—Never mind the date, she said. If it pours out, it's grand.

He got the lid off. He filled his mouth. He'd always liked the taste of it. He swallowed.

—Here, she said.

He gave her the bottle. She put it to her mouth and swallowed the rest.

—Good night, she said.

—Good night.

He conked out but he was awake again at half-three. Wide awake. Looking at the ceiling becoming brighter, the big swinging cobweb he always meant to get at with the brush. He got up. Had his breakfast. His new breakfast—a sliced banana, a sliced pear. Yum fuckin' yum. It was all right, though, and good for him. He was hungry again by the time the rest of them got up.

They stood at the church gate and chatted a bit as they waited for the hearse. It was weird, like pretending they weren't there for the funeral.

—Here they come.

The hearse came off the road and up past them to the front of the church. They blessed themselves. The coffin in there—Noel. It didn't seem real. And the black cars after the hearse. Two of them. The wife, the kids, a boyfriend; his sisters, the brother from Australia. They watched as they all got out of the cars and the undertaker's men took the coffin from the back of the hearse and carried it into the church.

He and Lizzie went about halfway up the aisle, not too near, not too far back. Martin hadn't been in the church in years. But he remembered it exactly, how cold it always was. How far down his knees would have to go before they landed on the padding that ran under the back of the seat in front of him, when the priest told them to kneel. How Jesus in the Stations of the Cross looked a bit like Keith Richards. He was going to show Lizzie, to remind her.

But he heard the gasp. That was what it sounded like, the whole place gasping, softly, everybody there. He looked. Noel's wife was walking away from the coffin. She'd put a framed photograph on top of it.

Noel. That was what the gasp was for. Noel, twenty-five years before.

—Jesus. Look at that.

He'd forgotten. He'd forgotten that Noel used to look like that. A big man with a big grin and a big collar on his red shirt. A big handsome man. A young man, looking back at the camera. Right into his future.

He'd forgotten. The last two years, they'd watched Noel get smaller. And, in the last months, the smaller version became the man. The man Martin hoped he wasn't talking to for the last time. He'd looked at him carefully, already remembering, storing him away. And he'd forgotten about the real man. The full man. But there he was now, on the coffin.

It should have been heartbreaking. And it was. Seeing the faded color, the big collar. He felt guilty. He'd let himself forget. He'd let the sick man become the man. He'd forgotten why Noel had been Noel, why they'd been friends. But there was more—the guilt didn't settle. He could feel it, and hear. The gasp had become whispers. The photograph. Noel's wife—Barbara—her putting the picture there, on the coffin, that was brilliant. And brave—going up there, letting the wood of the frame clatter against the coffin lid. Keeping her hands steady. She was even smiling when she came back and sat down.

Martin could see Davie in front of him, and the other men he knew and liked, all looking at each other, over other people's heads, smiling. Sad and good had become the same thing. Martin wanted to talk. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to stop being the man with diverticular disease. He felt Lizzie beside him. He nudged her knee with his. She nudged back.

The priest was walking over to the platform beside the altar, and the microphone. Martin heard a soft voice somewhere behind him, a man.

—Here goes.

They stood.

By Roddy Doyle

Landfill

2006-11-11T17:16:00.000-06:00

Tioga County landfill is where Hector, Jr., is found. Or his "remains"--battered and badly decomposed, his mouth filled with trash. He couldn't have protested if he'd been alive, buried, as he was, in rubble and raw garbage. Overhead are shrieking birds; in the vast landfill, dump trucks and bulldozers and a search team from the Tioga County Sheriff's Department in protective uniforms. For three weeks, Hector's disappearance was in all the newspapers and on TV. Most of his teeth are broken at the roots, but those which remain are sufficient to identify Hector Campos, Jr., of Southfield, Michigan. Nineteen years old, a freshman engineering student at Michigan State University at Grand Rapids, reported missing by his dormitory room-mates in the late afternoon of Monday, March 27th, but said to have last been seen around 2 A.M. Saturday, March 25th, in the parking lot behind the Phi Epsilon fraternity house, on Pitt Avenue. And now, in the early morning of April 17th, Mrs. Campos answers the phone on the first ring. These terrible weeks that her son has been missing, Mrs. Campos has answered the phone many times and made many calls, as her husband has made many calls, and now the call from the Tioga County Sheriff's Department they have been dreading. Mrs. Campos? Are you seated? Is your husband there?

Mrs. Campos is not seated but standing, barefoot and only partly clothed, shivering, with matted hair and glazed eyes, her mouth tasting of scum from the hateful medication that has not yet helped her to sleep. Mr. Campos, hurriedly descending the stairs in rumpled boxer shorts and a sweated-through undershirt, says, "Irene, what is it? Who is it?" and rudely pries her icy fingers off the receiver. The Tioga County landfill, approximately eighty miles from the Campos home: how soon can Mr. and Mrs. Campos drive to the morgue to corroborate the identification?

Of course, the body has "badly decomposed," so Mr. Campos views it alone, through a plate-glass partition, while Mrs. Campos waits in another room. Remains! What is this strange, unfathomable word? Mrs. Campos whispers it aloud: "remains." She seems to have stumbled into a rest room, white tiled walls, door locked behind her, and the light switch triggering a fierce overhead fan that blows freezing antiseptic air: the stark settings to which, on a weekday at 10 A.M., emergency brings us. Why is Irene Campos here? Why has this happened? Is this a public rest room? Where?

Elsewhere, Mr. Campos observes the body laid upon a table beneath glaring lights, most of it shielded by a sheet so that only the head, or what remains of the head, is exposed. How is it possible that these "remains" are Hector, Jr., who once was a hundred and seventy-five pounds of solid flesh, who was, like his father, slightly soft at the waist, short-legged, with thick thighs, a wrestler's build (though Hector, Jr., who'd wrestled for Southfield High in his senior year, had not made the wrestling team at Grand Rapids)? What now remains of Hector, Jr., could not weigh more than ninety pounds, yet his father recognizes him at once, the shock of it like an electric current piercing his heart: the battered and mutilated and partially eaten-away face, the empty eye sockets. Oh, God, it is Hector, his son.

Mr. Campos can barely murmur "Yes," turns away quivering with pain. "Yes, that is Hector, Jr." Mr. Campos will never be the same again--now that he's a man who has lost his son, his soul cauterized, telling his anxious wife, "Don't ask, don't speak to me, please," even as she loses control. "Are you sure it's our son, I want to see him, what if there's a mistake, a tragic mistake, you know you make mistakes, why would Hector be in that terrible place, how has this happened, how has God let this happen, I want to see our son."

Hector, Jr. Called by school friends Heck or Scoot. Within the Campos family, sometimes called Junior (which he hated, as soon as he was old enough to register the insult) and sometimes Little Guy (until the age of twelve, when Hector, Jr., was no longer what one would call "little"), more often simply Hector. At Grand Rapids, Hector, Jr., was called Hector by his professors, Scoot by his fellow-pledges at Phi Epsilon, and Campos by the older Phi Epsilons he so admired and wished to emulate. Campos was a good guy, great sense of humor, terrific Phi Ep spirit. Of the pledges, Campos was, like, the most loyal. Seems like a tragedy, a weird accident, what happened to him, but it didn't happen at the frat house, that's for sure.

On the Hill, partying begins Thursday night. Mostly, you blow off your Friday classes, which for Scoot Campos were classes he'd got into the habit of cutting, anyway: Intro Electrical Engineering, taught by a foreigner (Indian? Pakistani? whatever) who spoke a rapid, heavily accented English that baffled and offended the sensitive ears of certain Michigan-born students, including Hector Campos, Jr., whose midterm exam was returned to him with the blunt red numeral 71; and Intro Computer Technology, in which, though the course was taught by a Caucasian American male who spoke crisp English, he was pulling a C, C-minus. Probably, yes, Scoot had been drinking that night, maybe more than he could handle, not in the dorm here but over at the frat house. Most weekends he'd come back to the dorm pretty wasted, and, yes, that was kind of a problem for us. But basically Scoot was a good kid. Just maybe in over his head a little. Freshman engineering can be tough if you don't have the math, and even if you do.

His roommates in Brest Hall reported him missing late Monday afternoon. They guessed something might be wrong, called the frat house, but there was no answer. Scoot's things were exactly as he'd left them sometime Saturday afternoon, and it wasn't like Scoot to stay over at the frat house on a Sunday night, or through Monday. He was only a pledge and didn't have a bed there, and he'd missed four Monday classes.

Weeks later, Mr. and Mrs. Campos are signing forms in the Tioga County Morgue, as through the twenty-two years of their marriage they have signed so many forms--mortgage papers, homeowner's insurance, life insurance, medical insurance, their son's college-loan application at Midland Michigan Bank. Hector Campos, Sr., one of the most reliably high-performing salespersons at Southfield Chrysler, at least until recently, has often lain sleepless in his king-size bed in the gleaming-white, aluminum-sided Colonial at 23 Quail Circle, Whispering Woods Estates of Southfield, his thoughts racing like panicked ants, his head ringing with the crazed demand for money, always more money. Apart from the sum quoted by the university admissions office for tuition, there was room and board, textbooks, "fees" for fraternity rush, for fraternity pledging, a startlingly high fee (payable in advance, Hector, Jr., said) for fraternity initiation in May. "Send the check to me, Dad. Make it out to Phi Epsilon Fraternity, Inc., and send it to me, Dad. Please!"

Mrs. Campos, lonely since Hector, Jr., left for college, took up the campaign, excited and reproachful. She pleaded and argued on Hector's behalf. "If you refuse Hector you will shame him in the eyes of his friends, you will break his heart. This fraternity--Pi Episom, Pi Epsilom?--this fraternity means more to him than anything else in his life right now. If you refuse him he will never forgive you, and I will never forgive you."

Only when Mrs. Campos threatened to borrow the fifteen hundred dollars from her parents did Mr. Campos give in, disgusted, defeated--as so often through the years, if a man wishes to preserve his marriage, he gives in. Married for love--does that mean for life? Can love prevail through life?

Now, in the chilled antiseptic air of the Tioga County medical examiner's office, Mr. and Mrs. Campos are co-signing documents in triplicate that will release the "remains" of Hector Campos, Jr., for burial (in St. Joseph's Cemetery, Southfield) after the medical examiner has filed his final report. The police investigation has yet to determine whether Hector died in the early hours of March 25th in the steep-sided Dumpster behind the Phi Epsilon frat house--where investigators found stains and swaths of blood, as if made by wildly thrashing bloody wings--or whether he died as many as forty-eight hours later, after lying unconscious, possibly comatose from brain injuries, until Monday morning, and then being hauled away unseen beneath mounds of trash, cans, bottles, Styrofoam and cardboard packages, rancid raw garbage, stained and filthy clothing, and paper towels soaked in vomit, urine, even feces. At approximately 6:45 A.M. on March 27th, he was dumped into the rear of a thunderous Tioga County Sanitation Department truck and hauled sixteen miles north of the city to the Packard Road recycling transfer station, to be compacted and then hauled away again to the gouged, misshapen, ever-shifting landscape of the Tioga County landfill.

Carefully, the Tioga County sheriff has explained that "foul play" has not been ruled out as a possibility, though the medical examiner has determined that the "massive injuries" to the body of Hector Campos, Jr., are "compatible" with injuries that would have been caused by the trash-compacting process. A more complete autopsy may yield new information. The police investigation will continue, and the university administration will convene an investigating committee. As many as a hundred college students have been interviewed: Hector's roommates, classmates, Phi Epsilon pledges and brothers, even Hector's professors, who take care to speak of him in the neutral terms befitting one who has suffered a terrible but inexplicable--and blameless--fate. Jesus! You have to hope that the poor bastard died right away, smashed out of his mind, diving down the trash chute into the Dumpster and breaking his neck on contact. Only the police investigators can bring themselves to imagine that Hector Campos, Jr., may have been "compacted" while still alive.

During the strain, anxiety, and insomniac misery of the three-week search, Mrs. Campos was fierce and frantic with hope, holding prayer vigils at St. Joseph's Church. Relatives, neighbors, and parish members lit votive candles, for God is a God of mercy as well as wrath, while she hid her face in prayer. God, let Hector return to us, send Hector back to us, Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.

Mrs. Campos would forever relive the shock of that call out of nowhere: a man, identifying himself as an assistant dean at the university, and Mrs. Campos saying, "Yes? Yes, I am Hector's mother," drawing a quick short breath. "Is something wrong?"

In weak moments, she imagined the possibility of a phone call bearing different news. The possibility of subsequent phone calls bearing different news. For it was crucial, during those days, those interminable stretches of (open-eyed, exhausted) time, to believe that Hector was alive. Our son is alive! She had only to shut her eyes to see him as he looked when he came home for a few days the previous month--his frowning smile, such a handsome boy. Mrs. Campos always had to tell him how handsome he was. Hector had hated his "fat face" since puberty, his "beak nose," his "ape forehead, like Dad's." Mrs. Campos winced at such words, pulled at Hector's hands when, unconsciously, he dug and picked at his nose. Any serious discussion between them had to be initiated by Mrs. Campos, and then only gingerly, for her son so quickly took offense. "Jesus, Mom, lighten up, will you? Must've missed your call--what's the big deal, this crappy cell phone you bought me." And Mrs. Campos cried, "But I love you! We love you," but her words were muffled. She was sweating and thrashing in her sleep; the nightmare had not lifted. She had to keep the flame alive those terrible days, weeks.

At Easter Sunday Mass, she shut her eyes tight, but this time saw only Hector, Jr.,'s grimace--how he'd hated going to church. In recent years he'd refused altogether, even refused midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Mrs. Campos had been so ashamed, so hurt. Now she was kneeling at the Communion rail, hiding her hot-skinned face in her hands, her numbed lips moving rapidly in prayer. She was dazed and desperate, snatching at prayer as you'd snatch at something for balance. The tranquillizers she was taking had affected her balance, her sense of her (physical) self; there was a buzzing in her head. Please help us, please do not abandon us in our hour of need. She looked up as the elderly priest made his way to her, and craned her neck like a starving bird, opening her mouth to take the doughy white Communion wafer on her tongue, her dry, dry tongue. This is my body, and this is my blood.

She was half fainting then, in ill-chosen patent-leather pumps, staggering away from the Communion rail, into the aisle, all eyes fixed on the heavily made-up woman with so clearly dyed, dark-red hair, a middle-aged fleshiness to her face, bruiselike circles beneath her eyes, and quickly there came Mr. Campos to help the swaying woman back to the family pew, fingers gripping her arm at the elbow. Hector Campos, Sr.! Father of the missing boy! Swarthy-skinned, with dark wiry hair, a low forehead crisscrossed with lines, and large, oddly simian ears protruding from the sides of his head. There was a grim set to the man's mouth, a flush of indignation or impatience, as Mrs. Campos confusedly struggled with him as if to wrench her arm out of his grip, as if he were hurting her.

In the car driving home, Mrs. Campos dissolved into hysteria, screaming, "You don't have faith! You've given up faith, I hate you!" For it was crucial to believe, as Mrs. Campos believed, that, nearly three weeks after Hector, Jr., "disappeared," he might yet be found unharmed. He might yet call his anxious parents, after so many days of (inexplicably) not calling. He might show up to surprise his parents on Easter Sunday when they returned from St. Joseph's, might be in the kitchen, eating from the refrigerator.

Or maybe Hector had been injured and was amnesiac, or had been abducted but would escape his captor or be released. Or he had been wandering, drifting, who knew where, hitchhiking; he'd left the university without telling anyone, he was upset, had problems with a girl, a girl he'd never told his parents about, just as he'd never told them much about his personal life since sophomore year of high school, since he put on weight, grew several inches, and became so involved with weight lifting, and then with wrestling, the fanatic weight obsessions of wrestling--fasting, binge eating, fasting, binge eating. And maybe the Phi Epsilons had been putting pressure on Hector; maybe he'd been made to feel inferior among the pledges. He'd once called his mother to say how crappy he felt, never having enough money--the other guys had money, but he didn't. He'd told her how shitty he was made to feel, and that if the fraternity dropped him, didn't initiate him with the other pledges, he'd kill himself, he would. He swore he'd kill himself! And Mrs. Campos had pleaded, "Please don't say such terrible things! You don't mean what you're saying, you're breaking my heart."

Mrs. Campos blamed Mr. Campos for coercing Hector into engineering. Such difficult courses, who could have excelled at such difficult courses? It was no wonder that Hector had been so lonely, away from home for the first time in his life. None of his Southfield High friends were at Grand Rapids. His classes were too large; his professors scarcely knew him. Twelve thousand undergraduates at Grand Rapids. Three hundred residents in Brest Hall, an ugly high-rise where poor Hector shared a room with two other guys--Reb and Steve--who, in Hector's words, never went "out of their way" to be friendly to him.

In turn, Hector's roommates spoke vaguely of him when they were interviewed by Tioga County sheriff's deputies. Didn't know Scoot too well, he kind of kept to himself, kind of obsessed about things, like the wrestling team last fall. He didn't make it, but the coach encouraged him to try again, so he was hopeful. It was hard to talk to him, y'know? You had to care a lot about Scoot's interests--that's all he wanted to talk about, in kind of a fast, nervous way. He'd be, like, laughing, interrupting himself laughing. Fraternity rush was a crazed time for Scoot. He was really happy when he got a bid from the Phi Eps. He was so proud of his pledge pin, and he was looking forward to living in the frat house next year if his dad O.K.'d it. Because there was some money issue, maybe. Or maybe it was Scoot's grades. He was having kind of a meltdown with Intro Electrical Engineering, also his computer course. He'd ask some of the guys on the floor for help, which was mostly O.K.--you had to feel sorry for him--but then Scoot would get kind of weird, and sarcastic, like we were trying to screw him up, telling him the wrong things. There were times Scoot wouldn't speak to us and stayed away from the room and over at the frat house. Phi Eps are known for their keg parties--they're kind of wild-party guys. There aren't many engineering majors there on the Hill, not in the Phi Ep house, anyway.

No. 228 Pitt Street is a large, three-story Victorian house with peeling gunmetal-gray paint, moss growing in rain gutters, rotting turrets, and steep shingled roofs in need of repair. The Phi Epsilon house dates back to the early decades of the twentieth century, when the Hill was Grand Rapids's most prestigious residential neighborhood. Now the Hill is known as Fraternity Row, and Phi Epsilon exudes an air that is both derelict and defiant, its enormous metallic-silver "??" above a listing portico. Scrub grass grows in the stunted front yard. Vehicles are parked in the cracked asphalt driveway, in the parking lot at the rear, in the weedy front yard, and at the curb. Often, the Dumpster at the rear of the house overflows and trash lies scattered at its base. It's a feature of the Phi Epsilon house that, warm weather or cold, its windows are likely to be flung open to emit high-decibel rock music, particularly at night; and that, out of the flung-open windows, begrimed and frayed curtains blow in the wind.

Inside the house there's a pervasive odor of stale beer, fried foods, and cigarette smoke. The high-ceilinged rooms are sparsely furnished with battered leather sofas and chairs, the decades-old gifts of alums. On the badly scarred hardwood floors are threadbare carpets; on the walls, torn and discolored wallpaper. Brass chandeliers have grown black with tarnish. There are rickety stairs and bannisters, gouged wood panelling, and in the dining room a long table carved with initials like fossil traces. In the basement is the enormous party room running the width of the house, with a stained linoleum floor, more battered leather furniture, leprous-green mold growing on the walls and ceiling, and more intense odors. Scattered throughout the house are filth-splotched lavatories, and in a small room beyond the party room is an ancient, rattling oil furnace.

For several years in the nineteen-nineties, Phi Epsilon fraternity was "suspended" from the university for having violated a number of campus and city ordinances: underage/illegal drinking on the premises, keg parties in the front yard, "operating a public nuisance," sexual assaults against young women and high-school-age girls, and even, during a secret initiation ceremony in 1995, against a Phi Epsilon pledge who had to be rushed to a local emergency room with "rectal hemorrhaging." Bankrupt from fines, lawsuits, and a dwindling membership, the fraternity had gone off campus until, in 1999, a group of aggressive alums, led by a Michigan state legislator, campaigned to have it reinstated. Still, by 2006 the fraternity hadn't yet regained its pre-suspension numbers--it had only twenty-six active members, one-third of whom were on academic probation.

In the rush season when Hector Campos, Jr., became a pledge, the fraternity had needed at least seventeen pledges, but only nine young men accepted bids: Zwaaf, Scherer, Tickler, Tuozzolo, Vreasy, Felbush, Herker, Krampf, and Campos. Of these, only the first three were first choices of the fraternity; the others were accepted to help fill out the membership. None of the pledges knew this, of course. Although, you know how guys are when they're drinking. It might have been, nobody can recall exactly, but it might have been the case that Herker's "big brother," who was pissed off at Scoot Campos for his falling-down-drunk belligerence and his all too frequent assholish behavior, told him that he wasn't anybody's first choice. "Fuck you, fuckhead!" the guys yelled, lurching at each other. Or maybe this never happened, or didn't happen in this way. When interviewed by the Tioga County investigators, none of the guys could remember, exactly. First we knew Scoot was missing, it's the dean calling. Nobody here knew he was missing. Must've gone back to his dorm and something happened there, or maybe he never went back. But whatever happened to him didn't happen here.

Mrs. Campos tried to take pride in this fact: Mr. Campos brought his family from Detroit to live in the city of Southfield, in a white, four-bedroom Colonial, and no one in Irene Campos's family had such a beautiful home--not her sisters, not her cousins--and no one in Mr. Campos's family, either. Mr. Campos's mother was living out her life on lower Dequindre, in mostly black Detroit, where for thirty-five years her husband, Cesar, worked for Gratiot Construction & Roofing--he squatted and stooped on roofs in the blazing sun and drove a truck for the company, hauling rubble from construction sites until his back gave out. He died of heart failure at the age of sixty-seven, and Irene Campos was terrified of seeing in her husband's face the defeated look of the old father, resigned always to the worst--that peasant soul, bitter in resignation--dying before his time. He has given up, he has lost hope that we will see our son again. I will never forgive him. Mrs. Campos continued to have faith. How many times had she called Hector, Jr.,'s cell phone, knowing that her son's cell phone was no longer in operation, that no one knew where it was. (In the vast Tioga County landfill amid tons of rubble, very likely. Where else? Hector, Jr., kept his cell phone in the back pocket of his jeans, and that part of his clothing had been torn from him.)

Mutations are the key to natural selection, Hector had learned in Intro to Biology, his science-requirement course--said to be the easiest of the science-requirement courses, though he hadn't found it so easy, had barely maintained a C average. Natural selection is the key to evolution and survival, he'd written in wavering ballpoint, fighting to keep his eyelids open, so very tired, still wasted from the previous night of hanging out with the guys. He was trying to concentrate, a taste of beer and pizza dough coming up on him even now, hours later. Genes are the key to change, evolution is only possible through change, species change not by free will but blindly. No idea what this meant, what the lecturer was saying. If words were balloons, these words were floating up to bounce against the ceiling of the windowless fluorescent-lit lecture hall, colliding with one another and drifting about, stupidly. He would've used his laptop, except his fucking laptop wasn't working right. No purpose, just chance. The pattern of scout ants seeking food would look to a viewer like "intelligent design" but was really the result of the random, haphazard trails of ants seeking food. Ants? No idea what the hell this guy's droning on about, like it matters. Jesus, he's so bored! And thirsty for a beer--his throat is parched.

He checks his cell and finds a text message: " PLEASE CALL MOM DARLING." His heart sinks, and with a stab of annoyance he erases the message. What looks like "intelligent design" is merely random. Instinct, not intelligence. Any questions? Meant to call his mother, but, Jesus, why doesn't that woman get a life of her own? It's pledge-party weekend. Scoot Campos has other priorities. The girl he'd been planning to take to the party had sent an e-mail: Something's come up. Bitch, he knew he couldn't trust her. A girl one of the Phi Ep guys hooked him up with last time said thanks, but she'd be out of town starting Friday. Scoot is damn disappointed, depressed. What's he going to have to do, pay for it?

Kind of earnest and boring when he was, like, sober. You got the impression Campos hadn't a clue how totally uninterested people were in the things he'd talk about--the frat house, wrestling, his opinions on his courses, girls. Me and Steve liked him O.K. at first, it's cool we got a Hispanic roommate, or what's it--Latino?--that's cool. But Campos, he's just some guy, nothing special about him you could pick on, except he wanted to hang out with the frat guys. Thought we were weird for not signing up for rush. After he pledged, he'd start coming back to the room really late, stumbling around drunk like an asshole, mess up in here, piss on the toilet seat and the floor and next day act like it's some goddam joke. That last weekend he didn't come back, truth is it was great. That poor guy, you have to feel sorry for him, but we didn't, much. It's a shitty thing to say, can't tell any adult, but we don't miss Scoot. And we're fed up answering questions about him--we told all we know. Fed up with everybody assuming we were friends of his, involved somehow, or responsible. Fuck it, we are not involved and we're not responsible! And seeing his parents, Mrs. Campos so sad and so pathetic, trying to smile at me, hugging me, and Steve, like we were Scoot's best friends. It's totally weird to realize that a guy like Scoot Campos, so pathetic, a loser, is somebody that is loved by somebody.

At the party, things are going O.K. in spite of the red-haired girl ditching him first chance she has, hooking up with one of the older guys. O.K., Scoot can live with that, but later there's some exchange of words--he's hot-faced, trying not to show he's pissed at the guys taunting him. Then he's laughing to himself, crawling--where? Upstairs, where? He can't think, his head is bombarded with deafening music, so loud you almost can't hear it. Some kind of a joke, eager to make the guys laugh to show that he isn't hurt by, who was it, that girl, blond girl, little-bitty tits, skinny little ass in jeans so tight it's all you can do not to trace the crack of her ass with your forefinger. Maybe, in fact, somebody did just that, and he's cracking up with laughter, braying belly laughter, until somebody slaps him, kicks him, and he's on his knees, on his hands and knees crawling, needing to get to a toilet, and fast. Maybe it isn't funny, or is it? Scoot Campos has fine-honed a reputation at the Phi Ep house as a joker, funniest goddam pledge. The other pledges are losers, but Scoot Campos is a wrestler, he's witty and wired. And good-looking, in that swarthy Hispanic way, with dark wavy hair, a solid jawline, and a fleshy mouth. Funny like somebody on Comedy Central, except Scoot makes it up himself, improvises. A few beers, some tequila, and Scoot isn't tongue-tied and sweating but witty and wired. By coincidence it's Newman's Day, the twenty-fourth of the month, named for the actor Paul Newman--Scoot doesn't know why, nobody knows why, and the challenge is to chug twenty-four beers in some record time, and, of course, there's tequila at the party, too. Scoot has acquired a taste for tequila! If he'd known about tequila in fucking high school, he might've had a goddam better time.

Now he's trying to remember what it was, a few weeks ago--some crappy thing one of the brothers did, humiliating, hurt his feelings, right in the middle of midterms. He'd fucked up the engineering exam, he knew, so he was drinking with some of the guys over at the frat house and (somehow) fell down the stairs somewhere. He'd been puking, and sort of passed out, and somebody had dragged him into a bathroom and turned on the shower and left him, and after a while one of the guys came back and turned off the shower, and by this time Scoot had crawled out onto the floor and flopped over onto his back. The guy kicked him-- Hey, Campos. Hey, man, how ya doin'?-- meaning to wake him, maybe, or turn him over, but when Scoot didn't move he left him to sleep off the drunk, soaking wet and shivering in the cold. Next morning when Scoot woke up, groggy and dazed, with a pounding headache, a taste of vomit in his mouth, and dried vomit all down his front, he'd had to admit with the cruel clarity of stone-cold sobriety: They left me here on my back to puke and choke and die, the fuckers. His friends! His fraternity brothers-to-be! And he thought, Never again. Not ever. Meaning he'd de-pledge Phi Ep, and he'd stop drinking. But, somehow, the next weekend he'd come trailing back, couldn't stay away. These guys are his friends, his only friends.

Except tonight there's some kind of bad feeling again, Scoot's feelings are bruised, but, fuck, he isn't going to show it. Of the pledge class, Scoot Campos is possibly the alums' favorite, he's been given to know. Ethnic diversity--an idea whose time has come for Phi Epsilon. At the top of the stairs he's out of breath, can't hold it back, God damn, is he pissing his pants? Can't help it, can't stop it. How'd this happen? If the girls downstairs learn of Scoot's accident they'll be totally grossed out, and who can blame them? The guys are going to be disgusted. It's not the first time that Scoot has been too staggering drunk to lurch to a toilet, or outside to the lawn, too confused about where he is, if he's awake or, in fact, asleep. Maybe this is a dream, one of those weird dreams, and it's O.K. to piss, nobody will scold, it's O.K. to piss into some receptacle or crack in the floor, that hot wet sensation spreading in his groin, soaking his underwear and down his legs, quickly turning cold.

A piss trail follows Scoot Campos up the stairs, soaking into the carpet, and he's laughing like a deranged little kid who's wet his diaper on purpose--hell, the carpets at the Phi Ep house are already (piss?) stained, what's the big deal? "Fuck you," he's saying, defending himself against some guy, or guys, stooping over him, calling him names. Scoot Campos is wired tonight, he's laughing in their faces, and somebody's dragging him--where? Toward a window? Through the wide-open windows the curtains are sucked outside and flapping in the rain, and there's a moon, a glaring-white moon like a beacon, some kind of crazy eye peering into Scoot Campos's soul, like, How ya doin', Scoot? Hey, man, know what? You're O.K.

This is God's eye, Scoot thinks. (Or maybe a street light? Outside on Pitt Avenue?) Somebody is lifting him, and he's thrashing and flailing his arms, laughing so hard that any remaining dribble of piss leaks out, and whoever it is grabs Scoot in a hammerlock. Probably one of the older guys, one of the wrestlers, built like a tank and taut-jawed and giving off heat and the pungent smell of a male body in fighting mode. He's cursing Scoot, calling him asshole, dickhead, fuckhead, and Scoot is being lifted, pushed into an opening in the wall--the trash chute. Or maybe the drunken pledge is crawling head first into the chute of his own volition, and one of the guys grabs his ankles to pull him back, and Scoot is kicking and yelling and laughing. At least it sounds like laughter; with this wild-wired spic anything is possible. Hey, guys? Help me? Help me, guys?

He's kicking like crazy, so whoever has hold of his ankles has to let go--Campos is goddam dangerous when he's been drinking--and then his thick, stocky body lurches down the trash chute. It sounds like a pig squealing, or a kid shooting down a slide in an amusement park. At the end of the pitch-black, stale-air chute there should be something soft to break his fall, except there isn't, and with the impact of a hundred and seventy-five pounds Scoot Campos strikes the edge of the trash bin and his forehead hits its sharp metal lip.

Immediately he's bleeding, dazed; his neck has been twisted, his spine, his legs are buckled weirdly beneath him. He's too dazed to be panicked, not knowing what has happened or where he is. Feebly, he pleads "Hey, guys? Help me?" amid a confusion of rich, ripe, rotting smells, something rancid. He's upside down trying to turn, to rotate his body, stunned and quivering like a mangled worm, trying to lift his head, to breathe, to open his mouth, a terrible throbbing pain in his neck, in his upper spine. Like a gasping fish he opens his mouth, but he can't make a sound, can't call for help. For sure the guys will check on Scoot, make their way downstairs shouting and laughing like hyenas. Craziest damn thing, this drunk pledge, smashed out of his head, slid down the trash chute. It's not the first time a drunken pledge or active at the Phi Ep house has slid down the trash chute into the Dumpster. Anyway, at some point there was the intention to check on the pledge in the Dumpster, but amid the party noise, the swarm of people--including heavily made-up high-school girls--and the pounding music there were too many distractions.

Later, it will be claimed that a couple of guys did, in fact, check the Dumpster but Campos wasn't there. Possibly Campos had been bleeding, but he couldn't have been seriously hurt because evidently he'd crawled out of the Dumpster and gone away, back to the dorm maybe. Anyway, nobody was in the Dumpster when they checked, they swore. Yet the guy had a weird sense of humor--everybody would testify to Scoot Campos's weird sense of humor--and he might've returned and crawled back into the Dumpster, like a little kid would do, like hide-and-seek, except he'd fallen asleep there, or he'd hurt his head and passed out, and got covered in party trash. Had to be some freak accident like that--what other explanation was there?

As Scoot's brain is bleeding, as Scoot's mouth is filling with trash, as Scoot's heart beats and lurches with a frantic stubbornness, seventy miles to the east, in Whispering Woods Estates, Southfield, Irene Campos lies awake in bed uncomfortably perspiring, hot flushes in her face and in her upper chest. Her thoughts come confused and slow, and have something to do with the moon veiled by curtains, or by high scudding clouds--the full moon is a sign of good luck and happiness, or is there something disquieting about the full moon, so whitely glaring? Or is it a neighbor's outside light? Mrs. Campos isn't fully awake, nor is she asleep, and she is planning tomorrow to insist to Mr. Campos that they drive over to Grand Rapids to visit with Hector, Jr., who hasn't been answering her calls. Beside her, Mr. Campos is sleeping fitfully on his back, twitching and thrashing in the smelly underwear that she'll sometimes find kicked beneath the bed or in a corner of Mr. Campos's closet--why? Why would a man hoard soiled underwear? And socks?

Mr. Campos snores, snorts, sounds like a drowning man, and, careful not to wake him, Mrs. Campos pokes and nudges him until he rolls off his back, now grinding his teeth but facing away, at the edge of the bed. Earlier that day, Mrs. Campos sent Hector, Jr., a pleading text message: " PLEASE CALL MOM DARLING." But Hector, Jr., did not respond, and she has become seriously worried. Oh, if only that college hadn't been so aggressive about recruiting students from Southfield High, sending brochures and pamphlets, even calling on the phone--not that the university was going to offer Hector, Jr., a scholarship, not a penny, his parents would be paying full tuition. If only Hector, Jr., had decided to go to Eastern Michigan University at Ypsilanti, no more than forty miles away. There's an engineering school at Ypsilanti, too, and fraternities, and Hector, Jr., could live at home, and Mrs. Campos could take better care of him. Unconsciously caressing her left breast, holding her left breast in her right hand--how like a sac of warm water it is, or warm milk--and, on the brink of a dream of surpassing beauty and tenderness, Mrs. Campos shuts her eyes. Why does Mr. Campos never caress her breasts anymore? Why does Mr. Campos never suck her nipples anymore? Mrs. Campos runs her thumb over the large soft nipple, stirring it to hardness, like a little berry. She is driving back from the city, driving back from ugly Detroit to Whispering Woods Estates, such joy, such pride, turning into the brick-gated subdivision off Southfield Road, making her way floating along Pheasant Pass, Larkspur Drive, Bluebell Lane, and, at last, to Quail Circle, where, in the gleaming-white Colonial at No. 23, the Campos family lives.

By Joyce Carol Oates

Pinchuck's Law

2006-11-11T17:04:00.000-06:00

Twenty years in the homicide division of the N.Y.P.D. and, brother, you've seen everything. Like when some Wall Street broker juliennes his little petit four over who gets to work the channel changer, or this lovesick rabbi decides to end it all by salting his beard with anthrax and inhaling. That's why when someone reported a dead body on Riverside Drive at Eighty-third with no bullet holes, no stab wounds, and no signs of struggle I didn't freak to some film-noir conclusion but put it down to one of the thousand natural shocks the Bard claims the flesh is heir to but don't ask me which one.

When another stiff turned up in SoHo two days later, though, also without the least trace of foul play, and a third likewise in Central Park, I got out the Dexedrine and told the immortal beloved I'd be working late for a while.

"It's amazing," my partner Mike Sweeney said as he strung the usual yellow bunting around the crime scene. Mike is a bear of a man who could easily pass for a bear, and has in fact been contacted by zoos to fill in when the real bear was ill. "The tabloids are saying it's a serial killer. Naturally, the serial killers are claiming bias and that they're always the first ones accused when three or more victims are killed the same way. They'd like the number raised to six."

"I'll level with you, Mike, I've never seen anything like this one—and you know I'm the guy who collared the Astrology Killer." The Astrology Killer was a vicious maniac who liked to sneak up and bash people's heads in while they were yodelling. He was tough to nab because there was so much sympathy for him.

I told Mike to call me if he came up with any sexy clues and I beat it down to the morgue to ask Sam Dogstatter, our coroner, about poison. Sam and I go way back to when he was a young coroner starting out and used to perform autopsies at weddings and sweet sixteens, for cigarette money.

"At first I thought it might be a tiny dart," Sam said. "I tried to check out everybody in New York City who owned a blow gun, but the task was insurmountable. No one realizes half the town's got one of those six-foot Jívaro jobs and most citizens have carrying permits."

I brought up the possibility of the Amanita mushroom, which can kill without leaving any trace, but Lou shot it down. "There was only one health-food store that sold really deadly mushrooms, but it stopped years ago when it turned out they weren't organically grown."

I thanked Sam and put in a call to Lou Watson, who was excited because he'd gotten a very good set of fingerprints at the crime scene, which he instantly traded to another precinct for a rare set of Enrico Caruso's that were quite valuable. Lou said the lab had come up with a hair. They had also come up with a bald spot. The hair unfortunately matched an eight-year-old kid's and the bald spot was traced to a row of nine men in the front row of a girlie show, who all had airtight alibis.

Down at headquarters, I chatted with Ben Rogers, my mentor and the man who solved the Yuppie Restaurant Murder Case, where the victims were shot and then lightly dusted with lime and fresh mint. Ben had waited till the killer ran out of fresh mint and was forced to use chopped walnuts, which were traceable by their serial numbers.

"Tell me about the victims," I said. "Did they have any enemies?"

"Sure, they had enemies," Ben said, "but their enemies were all at Mar-A-Lago, in Palm Beach. There was a big Enemies Convention and practically every enemy on the East Coast attended."

I had just left Ben to grab a sandwich when I got word that a hot-off-the-griddle stiff had turned up in a Dumpster on East Seventy-second Street. This time the pristine corpse was Ricky Weems, a young actor who specialized in sensitive rebels and was the star of the TV medical soap opera "When a Mole Darkens." Only this time a homeless lady caught the action. Wanda Bushkin, who'd once slept every night in a carton on the Lower East Side, had recently moved to a carton on Park Avenue. At first, she worried that she wouldn't get board approval, but when her net worth was shown to be above four dollars and thirty cents she was accepted at the more desirable box.

Bushkin couldn't sleep on the night in question, and caught sight of a man who drove up in a red Hummer, tossed a body, and sped away. At first, she didn't want to get involved because she had once identified a criminal who then broke off his engagement to her. This time, she described the suspect to our sketch artist, Howard Inchcape, but Inchcape, in a fit of temperament, refused to do the picture unless the suspect would come in and sit for it.

I was trying to reason with Inchcape when my mind suddenly twigged on B. J. Sygmnd, the psychic. Sygmnd was a poor Austrian who'd lost all the vowels in his name in a boating accident. In 1993, I had used Sygmnd to find a cat burglar, whom he rather miraculously picked out from almost a hundred strays. I watched now while he poked around at the victim's belongings and then went into some kind of trance. His eyeballs widened and he started to speak but the voice that came from him was that of Toshiro Mifune. He said the man I was looking for employed Novocain and worked with drills on molars and bicuspids, and he might even be able to pinpoint the profession but he needed a Ouija board.

A quick computer check corroborated that all the victims were patients of the same D.D.S., and I knew I'd hit pay dirt. Anesthetizing myself with four fingers of Johnnie Walker, I used a Swiss Army knife to pry out the silver amalgam in lower seven, and the next morning sat openmouthed while Dr. Paul W. Pinchuck worked on my cavity.

"This won't take long," he said. "Although if you have a little time I should also do the tooth next to it. I'm surprised it hasn't given you any trouble. You're not missing anything outside today, anyhow. Can you believe this weather? April set a record for rainfall. It's this global-warming thing. Because too many people use air-conditioners. I don't need one. Where we live you sleep with the window open even in the hottest weather. I have a good metabolism that way. My wife, too. Both our bodies adjust well. Because we're very careful about what we eat. No marbleized meat, not too much dairy—plus I exercise. I prefer the treadmill. Miriam likes the StairMaster. And we very much enjoy swimming. We have a house out in Sagaponack. Miriam and I usually begin taking the weekends, the start of April, out in the Hamptons. We love Sagaponack. There's people if you want to socialize but you can also keep to yourself. I'm not a big social person. We like to read, mostly, and she does origami. We used to have a place in Tappan. There's a few different ways to go but I usually take I-95. It's a half hour. We prefer the beach, though. We just put in a new roof. I couldn't believe the estimate. My God, those contractors get you every which way. Look, it's like anything else—you get what you pay for. I tell my kids there are no bargains in this life. There's no free lunch. We have three boys. Seth will be bar-mitzvahed in June."

I began to feel myself gasping for air as Pinchuck's drill cut through my enamel and I fought the onset of Cheyne-Stokes breathing. I sensed my vital signs were ebbing, and I knew I was in trouble when my life began to pass before my eyes and my father was being played by Dame Edna.

Four days later I awoke in the intensive-care unit at Columbia-Presbyterian.

"Thank God you're made of iron," Mike Sweeney said, leaning over my bed.

"What happened?" I queried.

"You were very lucky," Mike said. "Just as you lost consciousness, a Mrs. Fay Noseworthy burst into Pinchuck's office with a dental emergency. She was an F.W.I.: Flossing While Intoxicated. Apparently it caused her temporary crowns to slip out and she swallowed them. When you hit the floor at Pinchuck's, she began screaming. Pinchuck panicked and made a run for it. Fortunately, our SWAT team got there just in time."

"Pinchuck ran? But he seemed just like any regular dentist. He worked on my teeth and chatted."

"Right now, you get some rest," Mike said, flashing his Mona Lisa smile, which Sotheby's had claimed was a forgery. "I'll explain it all when you're up on your feet."

In case you're wondering where this little homicide tale goes, keep watching the back pages for news out of Albany, where the legislature will be taking up the bill that will lead to Pinchuck's Law, which makes it a felony for any dentist to endanger the life of a patient by relentless conversation or by saying anything other than "Open wide" or "Please rinse" without a prior court order.

By Woody Allen

Other People's Deaths

2006-11-11T14:18:00.000-06:00

EVERYBODY LEAVING

The coroner's men put James in the back of the truck and drove away, and the Bernstines, once again, urged Ilka to come home with them, at least for the night, or to let them take the baby. Again, Ilka was earnest in begging to be left right here, wanted the baby to stay here with her. No thank you, really, she did not need—did not want—anybody sleeping over.

The friends and colleagues trooped down the path: Leslie Shakespeare, the director, and Joe Bernstine, the co-founder of the Concordance Institute—genus think tank, of which Ilka was, and poor Jimmy had been, junior members—and their colleagues the Ayes, the Zees, the Cohns, and the Stones. Outside the gate they stopped, they looked back, but Ilka had taken the baby inside and closed the door. They stood for a moment, they talked, not accounting to themselves for the intense charm of the summer hill rising behind Ilka's house, of standing, of breathing—of the glamour of being alive. Leslie asked everyone to come over for a drink.

The report of the accident had come at the very moment the committee was about to vote on Jimmy's retention.

Jimmy had told Ilka not to worry when he accepted the job as the institute's director of projects: what he didn't know about the Who's Who of scholarship he would pick up as he went along. Ilka had worried. She watched him not writing the book stipulated in his contract. She watched him worry when he screwed up the institute's directories on the new computer. Called on the carpet most recently for failing to file a duplicate of his letter to one conference participant, Jimmy had failed to confess that he couldn't find the fellow's address. Leslie Shakespeare had sent Jimmy out of town on institute business while his retention was under discussion.

The friends and colleagues began to move along the sidewalk in groups and pairs. Alfred Stone walked with his wife, Alpha. Alfred was a doctor, the only one of the group unconnected with the work of the institute. It was he who had attended at the scene of the accident. As he walked, he was arranging the sentence he ought to have spoken to the widow when he arrived at her house or at some moment in the hours since.

Everybody stopped at the corner. Ilka's door had opened and the two policemen came out. They had spent the day in the hallway trying to look inconspicuous. Now that the dead man, brought so inexplicably home from the scene of the accident, had been removed, they could finally leave. The small Puerto Rican policeman walked out the gate, but the big young policeman turned to wave. Ilka must be standing back in the darkness. The two policemen got into their car and drove away.

Inside her foyer Ilka closed the door and leaned her head against it, devastated at everybody's leaving.

WORDS TO SPEAK TO THE WIDOW
At the Shakespeares' there was the business of walking into the sitting room, of sitting down, of the drinks. "A lot of ice, Leslie. Thanks." "Martini, please, and hold the vegetables."

Little, agile Joe Bernstine smiled sadly. "I wonder if we retained Jimmy."

Leslie Shakespeare said, "Alpha will schedule us a new search committee."

Nobody said, We could hardly do worse than poor Jimmy.

Jenny Bernstine said, "Ilka is being very gallant and terrific."

Nobody said, She didn't cry.

Alicia Aye said, "Ilka isn't one to throw her hands up."

"Or the towel in, or the sponge," said Eliza Shakespeare. "Joke. Sorry!"

Alicia said, "Ilka is not one to drown in her sorrows."

"Well, I'm going to drown mine," Eliza said, holding her glass out to Leslie, who refilled it.

Alicia said, "We live on borrowed time."

Alpha asked her husband, "The policeman said there was fire?" and the friends' and colleagues' imaginations went into action to dim or scramble or in some way unthink the flames in which Jimmy—this person they knew—was burning. They wished to avoid an image of which they would never entirely be able to rid themselves.

Dr. Stone replied that Jimmy's body had been thrown clear of the burning car. The fall had broken his neck.

The flames went out. The friends envisaged an unnaturally angled head with Jimmy's face.

Dr. Alfred Stone took his drink and sat down. He was a very large man, with a large head that, Ilka had once told the Shakespeares, she thought would look good on Mt. Rushmore. Eliza said that jaw, that forelock were from the Sunday funnies—the muscle-bound superhero with the heart of tin. "Aw!" Ilka had said. "Poor Alfred! I like Alfred." Dr. Stone looked around the room and located his wife, Alpha, sitting beside Eliza Shakespeare. Were they talking about the death? Alfred had, earlier in the day, looked across another room and seen Alpha talking with Ilka. He had wondered what words Alpha might be saying to the widow: To refer to the death would be putting a finger in the wound, but how not to mention it? And wasn't it gross to be talking of anything else? Alfred mistakenly believed himself to be singularly lacking in what normal people—the people in this room—were born knowing. He thought that other people knew how to feel and what to say. He watched them walk out and return with drinks. They stood together, they talked. Dr. Stone remained sitting.

At eleven o'clock that first night a brutal loneliness knocked the wind out of Ilka. Then her phone rang. "We thought we'd see how you were doing," Leslie said. "Did the baby get to sleep?"

"The baby is O.K. I'm O.K. Is it O.K. to be O.K.? I could do with some retroactive lead time. I need to practice taking my stockings off with Jimmy dead. Relearn how to clean my teeth."

Leslie said, "Wait." Ilka heard him pass on to Eliza, who must be in the room, who might be lying in the bed beside him, that Ilka was O.K. but needed to relearn how to clean her teeth with Jimmy dead. His voice returned full strength. "Eliza says we're coming over in the morning to bring you breakfast."

SITTING SHIVAH
"I don't know how," said Ilka. Joe Bernstine remembered that when his father died his mother had turned the faces of the mirrors to the wall. Ilka was struck by the gesture but embarrassed by its drama. "I know I'm supposed to sit on a low stool, but I can't get any lower," she said. She was sitting on the floor tickling Maggie, the fat, solemn, comfortable baby. Baby Maggie's eyes were so large that they seemed to round the corner of the little face, with its hanging cheeks.

"A baroque baby," Eliza said.

"She's fun to hold because she collapses her weight in your arms." Ilka jumped Maggie up and down. "She must have heard me scream when the policemen told me."

Eliza unpacked the tiny tomatoes from her garden. She had baked two long loaves of white bread. Jenny was arranging the cold cuts that she had brought onto the platters she had brought. At some point in the morning Joe and Leslie rose to go to the institute. They would be back in an hour. Leslie bent his fine head over Ilka's hand and brought it to his lips.

Ilka said, "I called my mother and she's coming tomorrow."

IN THE INSTITUTE
Celie, the receptionist, sat at her desk across from the front entrance and fanned herself with an envelope, like someone trying to avoid fainting. She told Betty, one of the assistants, "I talked with him that actual morning! He comes running in, punches the elevator button, doesn't wait and runs right up those stairs, comes right down. He's stuffing papers in his briefcase. I told him, 'You have a good trip now,' and he says, 'Oh shit!' and he's going to run back up except the elevator door opens, and he gets in."

Betty was able to one-up Celie with her spatial proximity to the dead man, though at a greater temporal remove. The day before James drove to Washington he had tried to open the door into the conference room with papers under his arm, carrying a cup of coffee, saying, "Anybody got a spare hand?" Betty had held the door for him. He had said, "Oh! Thanks!"

Could a person for whom one held a door, who said, "Oh shit!" and "Oh! Thanks!" be dead?

WORDS TO WRITE TO THE WIDOW
Nancy Cohn and Maria Zee talked on the telephone and one-upped each other in respect to who was the more upset. "I got to my office," said Maria, "and just sat."

"I," Nancy said, "never made it to the office, because I kept waking up every hour on the hour."

"I never got to sleep! I kept waking poor Zack to check if he was alive. He was fit to be tied."

"Have you called her?"

"I thought I would write."

"That's what I will do. I'll write her," said Nancy.

SITTING SHIVAH, DAY TWO
"It's good of you to come," Ilka said to the visitors. The institute staff dropped over together, after office hours. Celie, Betty, Wendy, and Barbara sat around the table in Ilka's kitchen. The fellows sat in the living room. Ilka's mother held the baby on her lap. Ilka let out a sudden laugh, and said, "What'll I do when the party is over!" She rose, picked up little Maggie, and carried her out of the room, up the stairs, past Dr. Stone hiding in the foyer.

Dr. Stone believed that by the time Ilka returned he would be ready with a sentence to say to her, but he was relieved, when she came down, that the baby's head intervened between his face and Ilka's face, and the front doorbell was ringing again. Martin Moses, a junior member, walked in, took Ilka and her baby into a big hug, and said, "Christ, Ilka!" Ilka said, "Don't I know it."

"Give her to me," Ilka's mother said and took the child out of Ilka's arms.

Alpha came out of the living room, saying, "Hello, Martin. Ilka, listen, take it easy. You take a couple of days—as long as you like, you know that! Alfred, we have to go." And the Ayes and the Zees had to go home. Celie and the rest left. Martin left. The Shakespeares said they would be back. Ilka thought that everyone had gone when she heard a gentle clatter in the kitchen. Jenny Bernstine was washing dishes.

People trickled over in the evening—a smaller crowd, which left sooner. Jenny washed more dishes. When Joe came to pick her up, she looked anxiously at Ilka, who said, "I'm O.K."

WRITING TO THE WIDOW
Nancy Cohn went to look for Nat. He was on the living-room couch, watching TV.

Nancy said, "I'm embarrassed not to know what to write to Ilka. It's embarrassing worrying about being embarrassed, for Chrissake!"

"Calamity is a foreign country. We don't know how to talk to the natives."

Nancy said, " You write her. You're the writer in the family."

"I'm not feeling well," said Nat.

"She's your colleague!" said Nancy.

And so neither of them wrote to Ilka.

Maria Zee called Alicia Aye and asked her, "I mean, we went over there. Do we still have to write?"

Alicia said, "Alvin says we'll have her over next time we have people in."

A CASSEROLE
Celie cooked a casserole and told Art, her thirteen-year-old, to take it over to Mrs. Carl's house.

"The woman that her husband burned up in his car? No way!"

Linda, who was fifteen, said, "For your information, he did not even burn up. He broke his neck." She advised her brother to check his facts.

Art said, "Linda will go and take it over to her."

Well, Linda wasn't going over there, not by herself, so Celie made them both go.

Nobody answered the front bell.

Art said, "I never knew a dead person before."

Linda said, "You mean you never knew a person and afterward they died, and you didn't as a fact even know this person at all."

Art said, "But I know Mom, and Mom knew him. Ring it again."

They found a couple of bricks, piled one on top of the other, and took turns standing on them to look in the window. Those were the stairs the dead man must have walked up and down on. There was a little table with a telephone on it, and a chair. Had the dead man sat on that exact chair and lifted that phone to his ear?

RUNNING AWAY
Yvette Gordot, the institute's economist, who had not called on Ilka, drove over, rang the bell, saw the casserole by the front door, thought, She's out, skipped down the steps, got in her car, and drove away.

"She was out," Dr. Stone reported to his wife.

"Who was?"

"Ilka was out, with the baby. I practically fell over the stroller, corner of Euclid."

"What did you say to her?" Alpha asked him

"Say?" said Alfred. "Nothing. She was across the street on the other sidewalk."

Trying to imagine an impossibility hurts the head. Having failed to envisage Alfred falling over a stroller that was on the other sidewalk, Alpha chose to assume that she had missed or misunderstood some part of what he had told her.

Alfred came to remember not what had happened but what he said had happened. The unspoken words he owed the widow displaced themselves into his chest and gave him heartburn.

NIGHT CONVERSATION
"Celie left a casserole. Alfred fell into Maggie's stroller," Ilka reported to the Shakespeares when they phoned at eleven that night.

Leslie said, "Eliza says, 'What did Alfred say to you?' "

"He slapped his forehead the way you're supposed to slap your forehead when you remember something you've forgotten—and ran across the street to the other sidewalk. Poor Alfred! He's so beautiful."

Eliza took the phone from Leslie. "Why 'poor Alfred' when he's behaving like a heel?" she asked Ilka.

Ilka said, "Because Jimmy's death is making him shy of me. He thinks it's impolite of him to be standing upright."

Eliza said, "The good Lord intended Alfred to be your basic shit, and Alfred went into medicine in the hope of turning into a human being."

"Doesn't he get points for hoping?"

"Why can't you just be offended?"

"Don't know," said Ilka. "I mean, people can't help being heels and shits."

"You sound like Jimmy," said Eliza, and Ilka listened and heard the sound, over the telephone, of Eliza weeping for Ilka's husband.

INVITING THE WIDOW
Nancy said, "We'll have her in when we have people over. The Stones are coming Sunday. Only, you think she wants to be around people?"

"Call her and ask her?" said Nat.

"You call her and ask her."

"I'm not going to call her. You call her."

"She's your colleague, you call her."

"I'm not well."

"I don't think she wants to be around people," Nancy said. "And her mother is staying with her."

DR. ALFRED STONE
Dr. Alfred Stone continued to mean to say to the widow what, as a doctor—as the doctor who had been on the scene of the accident—he ought and must surely be going to say to her. He always thought that by the next time he was face to face with her he would have found the appropriate words, and blushed crimson when he walked into the Shakespeares' kitchen and saw little Maggie sitting in a high chair and Ilka crawling underneath the table. She said, "Hi, Alfred. Look what Maggie did to poor Eliza's floor! And now Bethy is going to take Maggie to play in the yard so the grownups can sit down in peace and quiet. O.K., Bethy. She's all yours!"

Bethy Bernstine had grown bigger and bulkier. The bend of Bethy's waist, as she buttoned the baby into her sweater, cried out to her parents, to her parents' friends, Watch me buttoning the baby's sweater! Bethy's foot on the back stair into the yard pleaded, This is me taking the baby into the yard. Notice me!

Murphy's Law seated Dr. Alfred Stone next to the widow. While the conversation was general, he tried for a sideways view of her face, which was turned to Eliza on her other side. Alfred was looking for the mark on Ilka, the sign that her husband had been thrown from a burning car and had broken his neck. Alfred studied his wife across the table. Would Alpha, if he, Alfred, broke his neck, look so regular and ordinary? Would she laugh at something Eliza said?

As they were leaving, Alpha asked Ilka to dinner and Ilka said, "If I can get a sitter. My mother has gone back to New York." Jenny Bernstine offered Bethy.

After that, and for the next few weeks, the friends and colleagues invited Ilka to their dinners. She always said yes. "I'm afraid," she told the Shakespeares, "that my first 'No, thank you' will facilitate the next no and start a future of noes." Then, one day, as she was driving herself to the Zees', Ilka drove past their house, made a U-turn, and drove home. She insisted on paying Bethy for the full evening.

"We missed you," Leslie said on the telephone.

"How come it gets harder instead of easier? You put on your right stocking and there's the left stocking to still be put on, and the right and the left shoe…"Ilka heard Leslie tell Eliza what Ilka said.

In the morning, Ilka called Maria Zee to apologize, and Maria said, "Don't be silly!"

"A rain check?"

"Absolutely," said Maria. "Or you call me!"

"Absolutely," said Ilka. But Ilka did not call her, and Maria did not call Ilka. One's house seemed more comfortable without Ilka from Calamity.

BETHY BERNSTINE
The Bernstines and the Shakespeares were the true friends. Ilka loved them and missed Jimmy because he was missing the pleasure of Eliza's risotto and of Leslie's wine that yielded taste upon taste on the tongue. Ilka held out her glass, watched Joe's hand tip the bottle, and thought, Joe will die, not now, not soon, maybe, but he will die. Ilka saw Jenny looking at her with her soft, anxious affection and thought, Jenny will die. "Will you forgive me," Ilka said to them, "if I take myself home?" Of course, of course! Leslie must drive Ilka. "Absolutely not! Honestly! You would do me the greatest possible favor if you would let me go by myself." "Joe will drive Ilka." "Let me drive you!" said Joe. "No, no, no!" cried Ilka. They could see that she was distraught. "Let Ilka alone," said Leslie. "Ilka will drive herself. Ilka will be fine."

Leslie and Joe came out to put Ilka into her car. She saw them, in the rearview mirror, as she drove away, two old friends standing together, talking on the sidewalk. There would be a time when both of them would have been dead for years.

Bethy was curled on the couch, warm and smelling of sleep, her skin sweet and dewy. Cruel for a sixteen-year-old to be plain—too much chin and jowl, the little, pursed, unhappy mouth. Ilka woke Bethy with a hand on her shoulder. She helped the girl collect herself, straighten her bones, pick her books off the floor. Ilka walked her out and stood on the sidewalk.

Maggie was sleeping on her back, arms above her head, palms curled. In her throat, and behind her eyes, Ilka felt the tears she could not begin to cry and she feared that beast in the jungle which might, someday, stop the tears from stopping.

When Leslie called to make sure she had got home, Ilka said, "I've been doing arithmetic. Subtract the age I am from the age at which I'm likely to die and it seems like a hell of a lot of years."

Though the words Dr. Alfred Stone had failed to say to Ilka had become inappropriate and could never be said, he tended, when they were in the same room, to move along the wall at the furthest remove from where Ilka might be moving or standing or sitting.

By Lore Segal