Survival( Part One)

1.

Wrapped in the fragrance of the honeysuckle bush under which he sat,he was painted by a cathedral like light filtering through.

That afternoon had been spent watching the hummingbird frantically defending his territory and seeking food. He had watched the hummingbird many times, but today the hummingbird was watching him.

He had been squinting his eyes and enjoying the sparkling stars made by the rays of the sun filtering through the green canopy.

After awhile he turned his head toward an opening large enough to allow a beam of light to shine through and make a red movie screen behind his closed eyelids. His body melted into relaxation as he sat cross-legged, arms akimbo, enjoying the show the strange squiggles made.

The faintest shadow caused his eyes to drift lazily open. It was then, before he had time to blink or think, that the hummingbird came into focus — right in front of him. He was only a spectator as his arm came up and into view. It wasn't a conscious effort, and maybe that’s why the hummingbird stayed and landed on his finger when he extended it. It was a perfect and beautiful moment which seemed to last forever.

Finally, the spell was broken, and the bird gone, when his mom called him to come to supper. Supper meant comfort and safety of a physical and intellectual sort. It was good, but it was not the moment of perfect peace and beauty that was a food for his soul he would enjoy over and over forever.

That morning he had walked down the hill and across the old stone bridge barefooted to get a pail of milk from the old lady's cow and carried it back, frothy and steaming, to put on the large black cast iron wood stove in the kitchen. His companion, not his pet, on this simple mission was his dog.

He had to be careful what he said to the animal. If he told him to stay, he would be there the next day, week, or even year. He would be there until he told him to move. Of course this loyalty did not extend to brief bathroom, food, water, or rabbit chasing breaks. There was a total commitment there he assumed was everywhere in the world. Even the wild dogs listened to him. He loved and protected them, and they loved and protected him in return. He took that as a given in life.



2.


"Speaking," his mother had said to him that evening, "is like letting go a drop of water into an ocean and seeing where the ripples stop. On earth there are many oceans, but they are all connected so that the ripple we start often comes back to us full circle."

" I've never been to an ocean," he had said.

"In a way," she said, "you have. When you drink from the spring, drops from your lips fall back in the spring taking parts of you with them, from creek to river to bay to ocean you travel with the drops."

As she watched him digest this with his eyes closed he felt his lips, licked his lips, and gently swayed back and forth. It was pantomime plain to her. He had checked his lips to see if anythig had come off. Finally, getting by that mental hurdle, he swayed gently as he was carried to the ocean.

Sure enough, after awhile, he opened his eyes and said, "O.K. I'm a me - drop in the ocean. How do I get back? It's all upstream!"

She laughed in delight at both his imagination and stubbornness.

"You evaporate with other drops, form a cloud, get blown back over land, condense and fall as rain in the upper pastures, and hurry through the cool grass to arrive back at the spring house where you started."

He closed his eyes and sat there for awhile, maybe making the journey back in his mind, and maybe not. When he was still, and he could be very, very, still, it was difficult to tell what he was thinking because there were no physical clues.

Finally, he opened his eyes. "That was fun... but strange, " he said.

"Let's do something more practical then," she suggested. "What do you say when you answer the telephone?"

"We don't own a telephone!" he shot back. "Wouldn't it be more practical if we got a phone?"

It was something they had gone over before. He knew they couldn't afford a phone. She would say that didn't mean they couldn't afford good manners and insist he say it.

So he said it.

"Hello, this is Estevez."



3.

Estevez loved the story of how his mother and father had met, even though he knew it was just a story.

"Waiting for a friend," his mother had said when his father had first met her at a bus stop and asked her what she was doing.

"Then his dad had said, "I'm about as friendly as you can get."

His grandmother had told Estevez that story, but his dad had shaken his head during the telling, and his mom had winked at him, so he knew it had been different than that.

Estevez also loved his parents. He loved them as much for what they didn't do as much as for what they did.

One thing his parents didn't do, ever, was argue in front of him. For all he knew they never argued.

Another thing his parents didn't do was embarass him by laughing at him when he made a mistake. One of his most memorable mistakes as a child started out innocently enough with one of their rare family trips from the mountains to the nearest town of any size. Estevez had seen his first television in a store.

It wasn't long after that that someone gave his parents a used toaster oven which they put into the trunk withour Estevez seeing what it was because it was in a box. They took it from the car and set it up after he had gone to bed.

When he got up in the morning he saw it on the kitchen counter. It looked complicated, had a glass front, had knobs, and was plugged in. He knew what it must be.

His mother was brought up short in the doorway to the kitchen by the sight of him perched on the stool in front of it. However, after rocking back on her heels, she pressed forward without saying anything and started fixing breakfast.

His father did the same double take but after seeing the shrug from his mother came in, sat down, and started eating breakfast.

During breakfast his dad kept looking over but his mother signaled no.

Finally, his mother asked, "Estevez, what are you doing?"

" Waiting for the television to come on," he had replied happily.

His father spewed coffee all over the table and his mother let out a half laugh and half choking sound, but managed to cut it short.

Estevez, like their cat, was full of mischief and fun, but was too young to have a sense of humor about his own mistakes, even if accidental. If the cat slipped stalking a bird on a branch they dare not laugh. What it was doing was serious business.

Being a child was serious business as well. Estevez's parents respected that his sense of dignity was more important than their sense of humor. If the incident was brought up again, it would be brought up by Estevez.



4.

Before he could leave for work that morning after the television/toaster confusion his dad had to put the new inner tube in the punctured tire. Money, as always, was tight.

Because of the coffee spewing episode earlier that morning, which involved changing a shirt after cleaning up, he was running a little late and was rushing.

He laid the new inner tube out next to the old inner tube and searched for the hole in the tire.

Finding it, he cut a patch from the old inner tube to patch the tire. This was no problem.

When he reached for the new inner tube he found, to his dismay, that the new inner tube had a hole in it. It was the hole he had cut to make the patch for the tire.

He wound up patching the old inner tube with the new inner tube and making do.

It was a catastrophe, of a minor sort, but he had survived it.

He had survived the World War, even when half the planes leaving from his base didn’t come back some days. Before that he had survived dropping out of school in the eighth grade to be the bread winner for his family in the worst of the depression.

He looked up the hill to see his wife and child. He was living the life he loved.

It was a pleasure to work with his hands to support his family and himself. His favorite job had been as fireman on one of the last steam engines in operation.

However, on the railroad there were layoffs and layovers, and he needed to be with his family, and he needed a steady paycheck each week.

Even between jobs he found work - odd jobs, any jobs.

He separated work from home. The worries at work stayed at work. He reported to work, did the best he could do, and came home. He always had.

5.

Before Estevez had been born his dad had taken a government job to make ends meet. At the interview he was told he would be an animal technician and that the job would be easy, but he'd have to stay on the ball.

The ball had been three stories tall and made of steel and plexiglass.

To get inside the building which housed the ball Estevez’s father had had to first take all his clothes off.

Then he proceeded through a series of showers, some liquid or chemical and some ultraviolet.

Before he stepped in the showers he always received at least one shot, sometimes several.

When he got through all that there were white coveralls, booties like surgeons wore, and a lounge to wait in. Some days that was all he had done, wait.

Other days, however, he got a call. He would walk up about fifteen feet on one of the sets of open steel steps that ran the entire circumference of the ball. He would then proceed to the test unit and plug the hose from the helmet he had put on into one of the receptacles there.

The unit consisted of nothing more than a booth with three, not two, arms (sleeves with gloves all in one piece), extended inward by negative air pressure.

Another technician would arrive, enter the partitioned booth and using the left most glove put an animal, usually a mouse or guinea pig, in the chemical solution which ran in a channelentirely around the inside circumference of the ball. The animal was brought in a glass jar with a screw cap on top and a label on the side. The other technician, who never spoke, pushed the jar with the animal in it, still under the solution, underneath a baffle far enough so that he could reach it. His job done, that technician left.

He then took the bottled animal from the solution and placed it on a shelf made for that purpose. The directions always started the same. Unscrew the lid, take the animal out, place it in the fine mesh wire basket, and latch the lid. The directions were printed on the label on the jar.

The directions always continued the same. The fine mesh cage was attached to a cable running on pulleys to the center of the gigantic steel ball. He was to pull the proper cable to place the animal at the proper location, often the center.

The part of the directions which varied the most was the amount of time to allow before reversing the process and waiting for the technician to come back to retrieve the animal he had brought.

Sometimes a pop or hissing sound could be heard in the gigantic ball. Sometimes a puff making a small, temporary cloud could be seen. Most of the time nothing could be seen or heard. He was assured that the animals were not being harmed, and that these were simple, but important, experiments.

There was a larger entry near the base of the gigantic ball where, he knew, larger animals were put inside. However, he never did that, and so didn’t know how it was done.

Although he had a low governmental job rating, and correspondingly low pay, he was sworn to keep secret where he worked and never to talk about it to anyone outside the facility. This was largely unnecessary since he didn’t know anything anyhow except that he handled animals, and at home his habit had always been not to talk about work anyway.

When he finally turned in his resignation because he found a better paying job, which had the added advantage of being outside where the sun could warm him and the breeze cool him, the secretary put his base papers with his resignation, intending to put them into a secure envelope to pass on.

At that moment she knocked over a cup of coffee scattering papers in her attempt to intercept the errant cup.

Somehow all his papers wound up in the burn pile and were incinerated.

On paper, at that moment, he didn’t exist. But, of course, he existed physically and the mistake should have been caught.

It wasn’t.

“He’s no longer with us,” the secretary had told those who called after he left.

Proving once again that military intelligence can be an oxymoron, various callers took that to mean he had resigned, transferred, or died.

By the time “no longer with us” could be reasonably construed as a euphemism for being deceased, things had gone terribly wrong. Even if someone had the courage, or authority, to need to know, there were no papers left to prove anybody’s assumptions right or wrong.

So it was that he left without leaving a trace of himself.

However, he took with him a trace, just a trace, of something from inside the gigantic ball.

6.

After that Estevez had been born. Time had moved on and Estevez had had to move with it.

In elementary school there had not been a gym or a gym class for Estevez.

Now, about to enter junior high school the next year, he needed an athletic supporter to participate in physical education class.

His father had taken an extra job helping a man fix up a house up the rocky lane that ran by their house. One Saturday, while his father worked, the man offered his mother and him a ride into town.

On the way to town the man talking to his mother about his daughter was indistinct, inconsequential background noise to the whistling of the wind in the back seat and to the moving panorama of the countryside that occupied Estevez.

When they got to town his mother, having other shopping to do, sent him to the department store to buy the supporter he would need for school.

Brave enough to ask a gentleman clerk for directions he quickly and easily found the right department.

Confronted there by a lady clerk he got out, barely, what it was that he wanted.

“ What size?” she had asked, taking him completely off guard.

He thought about it while the nice lady clerk smiled at him.

“About average,” he had finally mentioned, turning red.

Enjoying this little slice of life another lady sales clerk had wandered over.

After asking the other clerk for the cloth measuring tape she had been holding, she motioned for him to come closer and said, “Here, I’ll measure you.”

Estevez started backing away and shook his head.

"Around the waist," explained the clerk gently after perceiving the misunderstanding.

On the way home Estevez didn’t say a word. It barely registered when his mother discovered in the course of conversation that the man had once worked at the same research facility where his father had worked before he had even been born.

“It’s a small world,” his mother had said.
7.

The day after his adventure in town was oppressively hot.

The springhouse near the creek was built of stone. The steps down were cool to the touch after the smothering heat of the day. Estevez had entered and knelt to scoop up the icy water in the palms of his hands. As he drank absent mindedly, all he could hear was the faint gurgle of the nearby creek and the busy hum of a thousand insects. The sounds did not register on his consciousness – he just knew deep inside that they were there. Sometimes, walking in the woods, he would stop before a tree because he could sense something there, and if he stood perfectly still, after awhile a rabbit or some animal would come hopping out.

Eyes closed as he drank, he relaxed as the heat dissipated and cooled his skin. He did not know when he stopped drinking and just knelt there with his eyes closed and rested. This relief from the heat felt good and he enjoyed it for a long, long time.

After awhile he opened his eyes, and she was there. Not behind him, but lying beneath the surface of the deep basin where the spring water gathered before it moved on to the creek. Surprised, he jumped to his feet in one motion.

He had not seen her there under the water lying motionless, but she must have been there when he came. Stranger still, he had not sensed her presence. He could not understand it. In his slow paced world things could be understood. Even in books he read things could be understood with intelligence or imagination to put them in proper context.

As he stood there tensed she opened her eyes wider, under the water, and smiled at him. Little bubbles of air escaped as her eyes twinkled and her hair wafted gently in the current.

He took a step backward and he could feel the edge of the first step touching the back of his ankle.

He was too startled to be frightened and so just stopped there – more alert than he had ever been in his life. She, still under the water, just looked at him curiously. Then he started to think about how long she had been under the water.

He would have been frightened then, but she sat up breaking the plane of the water.

He had no choice. He reached out and took the hand she offered and pulled her up. Dumbfounded, he went, she wouldn’t let go of his hand, up the steps and into the light.

She led him through the warm shallows of the creek, past monarch butterflies gathered on the mud banks, as swarms of tiny minnows darted randomly. What might have been the heat of his own embarrassment evaporated under the animated canopy of leaves moved, as he was, by a gentle breeze.

Finally, she stopped and sat down on a log that had fallen into the creek. Since she still had his hand, he, after awhile, sat down too.

She was dry by now and looked at him sleepily, leaned over, and put her head on his shoulder. Embarrassed, he started to pull away, but found she had fallen asleep almost instantly against him.

He spent the rest of the afternoon as a human cushion. He thought of all kinds of things and what he should have, or could, say to her, but after awhile the warmth and the gentle breeze tempted him to close his eyes too, just for a little while.

It was she who gently shook him awake, and giving a smile and a little wave, ran off – just like that.

8.

When he got home, she was there, on the porch, talking to his mother. His mother waved when she saw him and motioned him on up. When he got there his mother introduced the girl and turned, expectantly, awaiting the reply they had practiced so long ago. The habits of simple courtesy were part of him now. His mother was proud of him, and Estevez, for his part, could see how much eye contact and consideration meant to those he met. It was such a simple thing to do and it pleased his mother, who asked for nothing else except that he should be happy.

“Hello,” he automatically started, but then, suddenly, stopped and turned red. It was simple, really. He couldn’t remember his name.

His mother looked at him closely. He looked like a deer transfixed on the road at night by a car’s headlights.

Giving him more time didn’t seem to help.

Finally, the girl put out her hand, and he took it and walked with her into the house.

“We’ve already met,” the girl had explained to his mom, who was too surprised to say anything in reply as they walked by her hand in hand.

In the kitchen his father was talking to the girl’s father. When he saw them hand in hand he simply stopped talking, for a few seconds, and looked at his wife for directions. She shrugged and saved the situation by saying, “ Time to eat.”

After dinner it started to rain, so he and the girl sat on the couch and listened to the radio while the adults talked in the kitchen over coffee.

The sky outside the window started to turn dark as did the conversation in the kitchen. His hearing was exceptional, and they probably didn’t realize he could hear them despite the fact they tried to keep their voices down.

The girl, the scientist explained, was not his daughter. He had killed her parents, but not on purpose of course.

The girl put her head on his shoulder again as the radio droned on, and he pretended to listen to it and strained to hear what was said in the other room at the same time.

He was a good man he said. In the nuclear tests after the war they had staked animals in concentric circles from the center of the test blasts. Planes took them away never to be seen again. He stayed in a concrete bunker back from the blasts. It wasn’t until a technician asked why there were troops in open trenches in front of them when they were in concrete bunkers further back that he started to question the desperate importance of his work. He had never thought about it. He just followed orders. He mentioned it to his wife.

She was a biologist, too, but was more focused on people than he was – part of the reason he had married her in the first place. She said he had to ask about it. He did. He was told he didn’t have a need to know. He thought this strange since he was one of the scientists in charge.

Meanwhile the girl had fallen asleep. He could feel her breathing. Since his mother could see him from where she sat, he pretended to be asleep too.

It was explained to him, the scientist continued, that the soldiers were only placed in the trenches several times and were carefully checked for radiation after each test. He was satisfied with that for a while. Then his wife heard from other wives that soldiers were given weekend passes to Las Vegas if they would go in the trenches more times. When he asked his superiors about this, he was told that no such thing had ever happened. They were lying to him his wife insisted. She wanted him to find another job with the army.

He could hear his mother walk to the doorway to make sure they were asleep. Apparently satisfied, she got the pot to boil more coffee.

They finally transferred him to the job at the fort with the big ball. His wife and he worked together. It was biology and exciting and not, he thought, as dangerous as what they had been doing before. Exciting, that is, until one day his wife was outside the ball when a batch of animals was brought out that neither she, nor he, it turned out, had sent in. However, this time he really was in charge, or so he thought, and so felt more responsible. When he asked about this he was told, again, that he didn’t have a need to know.

He found out one day the lab technicians got three shots when he had sent over only two. He had lost control, and hadn’t even known it. Then a technician died, frothing at the mouth, at the base hospital. His wife went to check on the family and found out they had died too. She watched the last one die. But nothing got in the paper except “unexplained viruses.”

Estevez could barely hear now the talk was so low. The scientist had started checking the records and all the men he thought had transferred out were not where they were supposed to be.

He had blown up and threatened to quit until it was made clear to both him and his wife that quitting was not an option open to them.

“ How’d your wife take this? He could barely hear his mother say.

She hadn’t said a word, he explained, but later that night she killed herself.

“Why do you keep working?” his father had asked after a long time.

“It’s the girl. She’s the only one, besides you folks, who survived. They said they’d kill her if I didn’t keep working for them. Besides, she’s sick, and I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I couldn’t save her parents. I want to try to save her if I can. It’s all I can do for the memory of my wife.”

“What about us?” his mother asked.

“ They haven’t found out about the error, whatever it was, that made them miss you – but I’m afraid they will. The only reason I found you was I remembered you because you were there, and I saw you when I stopped at the country store down the road one time. The ball is gone. All the people, they think, except the girl and me, are dead.”

“What were they trying to do with the experiments?” his father had asked.

Before he started to sob the scientist explained that he just didn’t know, but the best he could figure was they had tried to create some kind of human weapons – until things went horribly wrong. Then he started to moan, and Estevez wondered how she could sleep through it, but, of course, she hadn’t been asleep at all, but was looking at him.

“What kind of weapons?” his mother asked.

In the now dark room the radio ominously proclaimed, “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?”

9.

A week before in an office far away a man was handed an envelope. In the envelope was a name, in this case the name of the girl sitting next to Estevez. Also in the envelope was the time that the assassination was to take place, in this case the first day of school in whatever district the girl happened to be in at the time after sunrise that day, but before she got on the bus or got to school, whichever applied. The third thing in the envelope was always a brief sentence explaining the hit. The sentence might say, "This is a good man, but he knows too much." In that case the death would be quick and painless. Or the sentence might say, "This man hurt many people and needs to be eliminated." In that case the death would not be quick or painless.

The man who accepted the envelope was called Fat Jack. He wasn’t fat. His name was not Jack. Some said Jack was the name of the first man he killed when he was ten years old. No one really knew.

Everybody was afraid of him and that, of course, was the whole point of what he did.

Once he had been rumored to be a criminal, but now he worked for the government. The optimists hoped it was their government.

He cut out all the red tape. If someone put money in, a lot of money, then bodies came out. No one knew what he did with the money. Some thought he burned it. Some even said he killed because he liked to kill. It really was hard to tell.

Although Fat Jack had a conscience, and knew right from wrong, he didn’t let it get in the way of business.

Fat Jack was surprised, after accepting the envelope and starting to walk away to hear his name called. He stopped, and turned.

The man behind the desk who had stopped Fat Jack after handing him the envelope was afraid. It didn't matter that the office was the Oval Office, or that it was located in the White House. It didn't even matter that he was the President of the United States. Once you gave Fat Jack the assignment you didn't interrupt him.

Fat Jack just looked at the man behind the desk and said nothing. To Fat jack it meant nothing that the man was the President, or even a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

"Open the envelope and read it," said the President.

The President knew that he couldn't use Fat Jack after this. Fat Jack never allowed his routine to be interrupted. However, once he accepted the envelope he always completed the mission and the President knew he could count on that.

Fat Jack opened the envelope and read the card in it. He had killed children before. He did not even pause as he read the target and the time. However, he looked up as he read the last sentence, "This girl has the capacity to start world peace, and that is an eventuality, as you might well expect, for which we are not prepared." It was the longest, and strangest, sentence Fat jack had ever read on one of these cards.


10.

After that first meeting in the springhouse, Estevez spent a great deal of time with the girl. For the first time in his life, he kept things from his parents, like how she had been under the water when he first met her, and how long it had been.

That day they had been sitting in the sunshine in the grass absorbed in playing one of her pretending games. White clouds had drifted peacefully across the sky until one, suddenly, blocked the sun and marched a shadow up the hill to where they sat.

Estevez waited. He knew that whenever the shadow, and her mood, passed they would continue the game.

“Do you notice anything on the hill across the creek that’s not part of nature?” she asked, testing him.

“Just the hunters with the big glass hiding behind the netting with the leaves stuck to it, “ Estevez answered matter of factly.

Surprised he had noticed at all, she prompted, “How many men are there now?”

“Five or six, “ he guessed.

“There are eight, “ she said looking at him seriously. “ It is something you should know.”

Estevez got very, very quiet – just like all those times his mother couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He had spent most of his life pretending to be dumber than he really was just to fit in. With her it was a relief not to have to pretend.

“You tell me every day, before every game, that you will die before the summer is over, and I must be strong and survive without you, “ Estevez sobbed. Trying to be reasonable and express what he wanted he continued, “Two hundred years from now nobody will care if I master these games or not. Why can’t I be selfish and focus on you, not me, while you are still here?”

She looked at him carefully. She could see his frustration was getting in the way.

“This is not about me, or you,” she said. “This is about species survival. Two hundred years from now there may be no people left to remember, or not, unless you get stronger now.”

She stopped for a while to let this sink into his subconscious, where it belonged. She waited until he had stopped crying.

“For now, I’ll make it simpler for you, “she continued slowly. “If you cry or complain, I simply won’t see you again. Do you understand that?”

Estevez nodded. He understood that.


11.

Across the creek, halfway up a hillside, behind a blind, Fat Jack had been watching Estevez and the girl through a spotting scope.

Before he had put his eye to the scope, Fat Jack had noticed that Refrigerator, the three hundred pound strong man, wasn’t there. Also, Indian, the best tracker on the recon team, had a scarf around his neck. He finished his examination of the area where the target had disappeared upstream and then reappeared twenty minutes later, soaking wet coming out of the springhouse with that boy. Her disappearing act had happened while under the direct monitoring of the best observation team in the world. He couldn’t see how it had been done any more than they could. Either the professional team,the best in the world, had suddenly become incompetent or he was up against something he had never encountered before. He meant to find out which personally.

Without taking his eye from the scope Fat Jack asked, “Indian, what’s with the scarf?” He wouldn’t have been surprised to see Indian naked with war paint, but a scarf in this heat – no.

“Umm, dog dragged me,“ Indian croaked from behind him.

Surprised, Fat Jack turned to look at the black and blue swollen mess Indian’s neck had become. He could see teeth marks. Still, Indian, like all his men, was a force to be reckoned with in his own right.

“No dog could have done that to you,” Fat Jack stated flatly.

Indian just pointed across the creek to a field where an animal stood with its head over the top rail of a fence.

“Oh, my God, “ exclaimed Fat Jack after he turned the scope there. I thought it was a horse. I stand corrected.”

The report from the hospital listed multiple fractures, broken bones, and a concussion for Refrigerator as a result of blunt traumas.

“A dog did this?” Fat jack wondered out loud.

“ No, bull did that, “ Indian informed him with some difficulty.

“Well, we’re just going to have to be more careful, “ Fat Jack said as he left for the day.

“Umm,” he could hear Indian say behind him. He didn’t know if that was agreement, pain, or both.

12.

“Want to play a game?” she had asked Estevez innocently enough the next day.

She had asked him to close his eyes and tell her what he saw. So he did. Then she said to keep looking. So he did that too.

Then she went on with directions so simple he could not hide his disdain. Regardless of reactions, she continued seriously.

“Do you understand the object of the game yet?” she ended.

He didn’t. It involved visualizing objects, and then doubling, and redoubling, their size, as far as you could, until (in your mind) they were bigger than the universe. There were ways to make it a little more difficult as you increased size, like rotating the object or turning it end to end. It all seemed so mindless and childish.

“You think this is a baby game?” she teased with a smile. “That’s because you haven’t really tried this, in your mind. You have no concept of how many limits you’ve put on yourself, even in your imagination.”

He had nodded dumbly. This had not been what he had expected.

Now he had promised not to cry or complain any more. The games were getting harder, much harder.

“You’re not breathing properly,” she scolded gently.

Estevez flinched. Estevez was tired. Estevez was always tired now. He made no response. What she said was true.

“ An average person’s brain uses twenty percent of their body’s total oxygen supply, with about a twenty watt power output. Controlling your breathing is something you have to work on. Without enough oxygen, how do you expect to burn brightly?”

“I don’t expect to burn brightly,” mumbled Estevez dimly. He had already discovered not answering was not acceptable.

“Your cortex will thicken in just a few days if your environment is enriched. That’s what these games do. Use your mind or lose it!” she was emphatic.

Estevez moaned.

“You promised not to whine, “ she politely reminded him.

Estevez just grunted.

“You’re doing it again!” she warned.

“I’m trying to breathe regularly, “ he pleaded.

“It’s not the breathing.”

“Not the breathing?”

“No, it’s the eye blinking. I told you that the eye blinking erases memories.”

“But I have to blink my eyes.”

“ Not so often, and don’t get yourself so excited. It’s destroying your breathing.”

13.

“I’m camping near where the creek empties into the river,” Fat Jack told the old lady at the country store. His new fishing vest with all the pockets still had the tag on it.

“ Did you want worms or hellgrammites?” she asked.

Never having seen a hellgrammite, he chose them.

While she prepared his bait he chatted about hiking to the stone bridge and stopping at the springhouse under the sycamores for a cool drink. The big dog, it turned out, belonged to the boy who lived at the house by the rocky lane that went straight up the mountain to the house the doctor was fixing up and ended up at old Macdonald’s farm which straddled the top of the mountain.

And on this farm, sure enough, was the meanest bull in North America. He was warned that sometimes the bull traveled with the rest of the herd on the rocky lane back and forth to a lower pasture further up the creek. He made a mental note to mention this to the rest of his men, especially Refrigerator, if and when, he got out of the hospital. The fact that there were breaches in the fence, and the bull could get loose, was useful knowledge.

Evidently, the dog was a local legend not just because of its size, but also because of its effectiveness as a watchdog. It didn’t bark. More than once it had stopped carloads of men from going up the lane by jumping on the top of their cars and not letting them out. It had been shot several times by men too drunk or mean to accept the animal’s dominance, but, in the end, no strangers had ever made it up the rocky lane.

Without being asked, the old lady had given him careful instructions on both the care and use of the hellgrammites.

For his part, Fat Jack made eye contact, did not interrupt, and asked questions at the right places. He didn’t insult her pride or dignity by either haggling over the price or trying to overpay her.

Looking into his eyes, she said, “ If you don’t use them all as bait, put the rest back in the water. Those that survive will evolve into Dobson flies and keep you company by flying over the water in the twilight the next time you come fishing.”

“ Thank you,” he said courteously.

As she watched him walk back towards the river she felt a chill.

Her eyes had twinkled as she spoke, but all she saw in his eyes was her own reflection. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, there.

14.
They were sitting outside, on the hill, in the grass, again.

“Do you like cats?” the girl asked.

“Yes,” Estevez replied.

“Good. If you didn’t like cats, this would be harder to explain. Cats sleep most of the time. That’s because they have limited lung capacity. They must catch their prey in short, quick spurts. I will teach you how to sleep and rest properly. This is partly because of the severity of your mental training, but also because when you apply this mental training to physical activity your body must be ready.”

“What physical activity?” he had asked. “ I thought these were just mind games.”

“ This is more than just pretend. This is even more than a fight or flight reflex. You will have to fight, but you must choose the place. You will have to run, but you must know where.”

Playing along, he had asked, “If I have to run and fight, shouldn’t I be practicing running and fighting?”

Smiling, she had answered, “You are.” Her smile always took his breath, and his doubts, away. Just the fact that listening to her stories enabled him to be with her was enough.

One story had been about a lady who lifted a car off her trapped child after an accident. Later, even though offered a lot of money, she could not repeat her feat. The strongest man anybody could find could not repeat the feat either.

Estevez wasn’t sure he believed this story, but listened anyway when she explained that the situation and instinct pumped adrenalin in fantastic amounts and overcame the reflex that keeps everybody from hyper-extending, and possibly injuring, muscles.

Estevez blinked. That was a reflex. Estevez took a deep breath. That was a reflex too.

What Estevez was getting was a mental picture of the reflex that would enable him to pick up a car.

“Is this something I could learn to do?” he asked.

She positively beamed at his quantum leap and carefully let out the breath she had been holding.

15

Holding the pencil held between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, he extended the middle finger so that the fingernail touched the paper. Putting the point of the pencil on the paper, he spun the paper under it with his left hand, drawing a perfect circle. She marveled at the control needed to hold steady.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with her that evening and had drawn other perfect circles of various sizes to which he happily added smiley faces, elaborate petals, and stems.

Earlier, she had instantly cured his hiccups by suddenly accusing him of faking them and offering him a nickel she had brought from her pocket if he could hiccup again. Of course, he couldn’t. He marveled at her ingenuity in gaining control over involuntary reflexes.

Exhaustion had overtaken her again, and she had taken refuge with her head on his shoulder once more. His eyes closed, Estevez rested with her.

In the living room his father described the hose that came from his helmet when he worked as a technician and how it had snapped into one of the fittings any time he went outside the waiting room to work at the giant sphere.

“A hose from the head can make you dead,” thought Estevez groggily, randomly rhyming.

The virus, explained the scientist, was defeating her immune system. His words echoed as though they came from far down a tunnel.

“ A virus from the ball could kill you all, “ Estevez rhymed, unable to stop himself.

Then he was running from the gigantic steel ball as it crushed everything in its path. The scrunching and screeching caused his hands to go to his ears destroying his balance as he ran. He pitched forward headlong and turned over quickly to get up and run again

He couldn’t get up. The girl was holding him tightly, and he couldn’t understand that. His heart was racing and his forehead was flushed. His eyes were wild.

She just held on tightly while he came out of it. She gave him time to wake up and focus.

Finally, when he was more awake than asleep, she smiled at him, and released him to take his hand.

“It’s only a dream, “ she assured him. “ It’s not real.”

16.

“ Do you remember the peripheroid you saw when you were little?” she asked suddenly as they sat quietly in the grass yet another day soaking up the warmth of the sun.

“Huh,” mumbled Estevez, always ready with the quick repartee when he was sleepy and relaxed.

“You know”, she reminded him, “the creature you saw in the other room, but which wasn’t there when you called your mother to come see it.”

He didn’t know how she had cured his hiccups, so understanding how she could see something in his mind even he couldn’t remember until she pointed it out baffled him.

He had called it a geekle. At the time he had not been old enough to describe it to his mother well. Now he was too old to remember it well.

Then she asked if he remembered when he couldn’t see it directly anymore, but only could see it with his peripheral vision. He couldn’t.

“Try now,” she prompted. “ It’s important.”

So he sat there and tried to look as far to the side as possible, but, of course, could make nothing out.

After placing his back to the sun, and reminding him about breathing and eye blinking, she asked him to try again.

He tried, he really did, but could see nothing but an elusive dark shadow.

“Oh,” she casually remarked when he told her, “That shadow is death. It lurks at the edges where we cannot go.”

Her hand, when she took his, was cold, but her words were strangely warm.

“ Do not worry,” she said. “ It gives our souls some place to go when our bodies fail or are worn out. It only looks shadowy because it is so much brighter on the other side.”

She smiled at him. He felt like crying, but he could see the truth of what she was saying.

Satisfied, and getting sleepy again, her words slowed and slurred once more as she put her head on his shoulder.

“The geekle…” she started, barely audible, as her breathing slowed and she drifted off.

Giving in to the rhythm of her breathing, he went to sleep without catching what she had said.

A sudden rustling to the side caused him to lazily open one eye part way. There wasn’t anything where he looked, but off to the side, smiling at him, was the geekle.