Evolution Unfolding in a Small Town in Western Pennsylvania

By Derek Davis

The last breeze from the Big Bang fades to nothing along the road to Deffenburg PA, leaving this town of Chinese, Poles, WASPs, Suscogen Indians, animated shadows and bridge trolls to take up the unfolding. But nothing comes easy as government scientists, militant Amish, black revolutionaries, nuclear protestors, pygmies, cultists, the ghosts of commuters past, a retired Mafia don and a crazed CIA agent turned town mayor confound the social genome.

From there, things become complicated. For what, after all, is the End of evolution?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derek Davis
• Release date: Mar 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386764533

Derek Davis

A big-city escapee, I live in the quiet hinterlands of northeast Pennsylvania. Former editor of the alternative paper now known as The Philadelphia Weekly, I've published over 60 short stories and and wrote a book-length history of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Did a bunch of freelance editing, such as running the SAP Americas customer magazine, interviews with the likes of Noam Chomsky, and smoothing English translations of German PR. I had the most fun collaborating on a screenplay with my daughter, Caitlin and writing a cycle of eight local-history plays up here – as well as vaudeville routines. My favorite activity (other than writing) is turning trees into firewood for the wood stove that provides our "central" heating. My wife is the most wonderful potter I've ever known.

Book preview

And here it begins

One near stagnant June afternoon, the last fitful breeze from the Big Bang that jump-started the universe arrived near the western edge of Deffenburg. Exhausted from squeezing primal gases into galaxies, whirling galaxies into suns and solidifying the rocks of Earth into a compact, spinning ball, the expiring puff bobbed the snowflake shawls of early Queen Anne's lace, rapped the resisting heads of black-eyed Susans and rocked spheroids of rabbit droppings where green-backed flies – their sheen catching-losing-catching the sunlight – dug pockets for eggs. A juvenile grasshopper, swept forward by the aerodynamic push and the ecstasy of leaping, brushed the pinkly purple blossom of a cowclover, rustled a hodge-podge hedge of verbena, came to rest under the milkmaid blue of a cornflower, then leapt again, from sun to shade to sun, past centipedes and caterpillars gnawing the undersides of leaves.

Sapped and almost silent, the cosmological afterthought drifted onward. Shimmering silicate winked in the macadam of the roadway. The clapboards of an abandoned home dipped in resignation, its loosening paint adding lead to the soil (which cared not the least). The house directed its hangdog stare across the road to the rock garden of Mrs. Nugent, dampened twice daily, lush with ferns and wildflowers ordered from a catalog. It teemed with stag beetles, ants, bees and ladybugs. From under the rocks, roly polies – the tiny crustacean descendants of those madly prolific trilobites that once laid claim to the whole wide world – waddled out to do damage to roots. In the sandy loam under the side yard, a family of moles, not quite so blind or talented as Homer, undermined her attempts to maintain the Perfect American Lawn.

Meeting a vertical expanse of compressed cinders, the thermodynamic good intentions from time's beginning rolled upwards and dissipated forever in eddies of mild turbulence; in response, the cinderblock wall retreated the thickness of a wanton thought. Within the hollow blocks, tiny grains of ash snapped loose and tinkled into wells of darkness. In the greater hollow beyond the wall, mad-hatter photons from fluorescent tubes concentrated their kamikaze rushes

wave or particle

wave

  (or particle)

    what do we care

onto formica-topped surfaces that tipped from one tripod to another on the uneven surface of vinyl tile slapped over hastily poured concrete. Armed with shafts of wood and graphite, Project Sniff's worker bees assaulted sheets of compressed cellulose with the basic 36 symbols of Western language and mathematics. Nestled in a small nook at the end of the room, a dot matrix printer sweated to bring forth inconclusive results. Three window air conditioning units cycled erratically, lending a Quaternary alternation of ice age and swelter.

Inside the Holy of Holies – a 14-foot-square projection separated from the scribblers by an inedible sandwich of plasterboard and spun-glass – a round-faced man with curly black hair tapped his pencil idly across the face of a printout, forming a blur of dots statistically definable by a bell-shaped curve. The printed numbers told him

not a damn thing

  same load of crap

  'other side of the mountain'

  wind pattern not other side of the mountain

        gotta get into Wenego

      goddam fairytale

  princess little twat

dripping pussy juice on her seat

                    shit

  hardon

midbrain activation of his pituitary inflating his trousers in front even as their rear parted the vinyl with the zzzzziizzt of a Bandaid leaving an arm. The printout pressed before his fly, he sidled through the outer office past Little Miss Pincushion, the proximate cause of his tumescence, into the relief of the restroom.

Beyond the eastern wall, flames of yellow leapt from the phalanx of mustard grass that Mrs. Fitch, old and about as deaf as a mole is blind, had ranked as sentries around her vegetable garden. Packed into a wicker chair on her enclosed front porch, she contemplated the fruitfulness of the garden patch while avoiding the memory of deceased Mr. Fitch, who had minded the Deffenburg Methodist Church for 33 years, drumming in the faithful with his craggy voice and craggier face that had seen God, if only in pictures.

While Mr. Fitch’s congregation, fishing for his replacement, tended the Christian-white church next door as diligently as Mr. Fitch had tended them, termites invaded its joists and devoured the heart of the 6 by 6 beam upholding the closet where Sexton Beetle – or Beadle Beetle as he preferred – hung up his overalls before locking the Lord's doors, a habit peculiar to him in a district almost devoid of crime.

He limp-bumped down the three wooden steps to the sticky asphalt parking apron that gripped his shoes as though the Devil Himself had him by the sole

hee hee

  souls these days mighty unappetizin

shut up in formaldehyde

    tighteren a nuns muffler

half acre Methodists flat on their backs

  pleasin to God I spose

    dead dont care

me neither

    settin by road in sun or settin underneath its settin anyhow

lowering his rump to the bottom step.

Across the roadway, the foursquare brick cube of the Heinrich Township Volunteer Fire Company squatted smackdab center in a massive square of fierce blacktop and flicked through memories of chicken barbecues, raffles, line dances led by local bands and the gathering of clans from as far as Alabama to a yearly dinner festivity with mounds of homemade baked ham – co-sponsored by church and fire company in the parish hall $7 a plate all you can eat damned good (most of it) – available to anyone who could legitimately ask, How's it goin?

A massive gorilla snarled from the side of a Dodge Ram that slipped lackadaisically past, its tires pressing down the road, filling minute cracks with exuded tar. It skirted the early stages of corn and a long-abandoned orchard, crossed Oleday Creek over a gentle stone arch and rolled into Deffenburg.

The date was June 11, 1979, though it could as easily have been earlier or later.

The van sidled past Wang's Oriental Wonderland Chinese American Bar and Grille where the watchspring form of Wing Wang buffed the already crystal-clear glass of his front door, moseyed by the undistinguished clapboard and screened-porch homes along Main Street, turned left onto West Street, parked at the edge of Deffenburg Common. It covered the 1.43 miles from the Deffenburg Methodist church to the center of town in 3 minutes, 27 seconds, making 3,447 revolutions of its underinflated tires.

2 young men dropped from the front seats of the van and ambled toward the rear. The driver – sunglasses, tapered blue denim shirt tucked tightly into tapered blue velour pants despite the heat – unhitched the rear doors. The other – jeans, cowboy boots and jeans jacket with a gaudy parrot embroidered on the back – reached into the dark interior space and withdrew an array of video and still cameras. He retained a Nikon and a minicam, tossing the rest onto their cushion of sleeping bags. He handed the minicam to the driver and stepped onto the Common. The sharp heels of his boots bruised the lush carpet of grass.

At the north end of the Common, a circle of men and women, in puffy black robes and trousers tied at the ankles, joined hand to hand. Across Plane Tree Street, the gold-numbered tower clock of Council Hall read 12:59. Its minute hand jerked against the pull of gravity in 10 -second hitches toward that precious, fleeting moment of equilibrium at the hour. A bell tolled, and the linked hands swung upwards, minor echoes of the steepled clock tower. Reflecting the brilliant day, clean-shaven heads (each embellished with a pentagram, red for men, blue for women) tilted back, and a discordant eruption of voices intoned

13.

Their vocal clatter carried over the bright open air to the clocktower, where Jack Sharkey, a man without measurable intelligence, polished the great gears and levers of the clock as part of his sinecure. Unrecognized by his townsmen – even by his brother, Robert, a member of the Town Council – he was the rarest of savants, an otherwise vacant mind that viewed the full tapestry weave of mechanics and mathematics. The operations of calculus, the nesting places of prime numbers, the intermeshing of the most complicated machinery – all shone as clear to him as sunlight to a washerwoman. Hai Ding, owner of Deffenburg Hardware, had watched Jack strip an ailing Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder to its components and reassemble it in perfect working order after Ding's own ace repairman, Jake Welesa, had heard its last confession. Ding held this wonder a vision of some rare truth.

Without calculation or consideration, Jack saw that in 37 years, give or take 3 months, the worn and whittled gears of the clock would slip, the teeth snap, the whole congeal to a mass of jumbled alloy. His ministrations would not retard that inevitability by a day, only assure that his one true friend would meet its allotted fate shining like the Reckoning.

Jack hobbled down the tower stairs, retrieved his dustbroom and swept the hallway for the 3rd time that day. The 1st whisking had fled his mind on silent feet, the 2nd remained an image too indistinct to be trusted. Through the cheap hollowcore door to the office of C. Haily Mayley, deputy mayor, 2 voices passed unregistered by Jack, who factored 10-digit numbers as nimbly as Willy Mosconi running a table.

Mayley, body straight and featureless as a length of tubing behind his desk, leaned his vulture face forward and spoke in an uninflection that occasionally slipped sideways into a squeak. You must understand. The Council views these things, shall we say, as possible sources of indiscretion.

I've told no one anything but technical information – all of it functionally misleading, as far as that goes.

"But it must go nowhere. Do you see? It must never be, or if it escapes, it must vanish as though it never was. This is not a game. The Council insists that all future statements – to anyone, of whatever nature – be cleared through me."

The Council insists? And what if Miss Otis regrets? All right, I'm tired of spending hours explaining details to the press and still having them get it wrong. Now they can come to you and get it wrong from the horse's mouth.

Mansion, if you would adopt a more cooperative attitude –

My attitude is my concern. Now I'd be only too happy to stay and chat, but I have to rush off and put my indiscretions in order. If the Council decides to target any more of my civil liberties, by all means call me.

That is an unnecessary remark.

But hopefully sufficient.

Robert Hollyer Mansion closed the office door and nodded to Jack Sharkey, who released the slow grin he displayed for those he might (or might not) have seen before. Robert crossed Plane Tree Street to his Volkswagen Rabbit, parked on the northern border of the Common.

Half a block to the west, beyond the paired lines of maple trees expansively known as Stewart Park, a black head, an incarnation of Krazy Kat, appeared, disappeared, reappeared above a palisaded fence 6 feet from the ground. Robert watched, blinking rapidly. The next time the black head rose, a black hand rose beside it, palm forward, recognition without greeting. Robert did not return the salute. He rounded to the Rabbit's driver side, his feet crunching plane tree bark.

Albert Razorback dropped his hand and continued his pushups, numbers 47, 48, 49 and 50. The rough wood of the platform forced splinters into his hands but did not pierce the calluses. Below the platform, rats skittered and chittered, gnawed bones, pushed orange peels aside, traded comments, pawed deeper.

Razorback thumped down a handmade ladder into a solid wall of odor, an invisible aura of things half eaten. Like the splinters, it did not penetrate. Inside the house, in an aging room piled high with the detritus of food, clothing and objects that no longer seemed related to human matters, he unzipped his fly and pissed into a ragged hole in the floor. Returning to the ramparts, he resumed his tour of guard duty, walking south, then west, then north along the rear platform that, if extended, would graze the front wall of the Herman Deffen Elementary School.

The school's playground, deserted in the after-lunch hour of its summer day camp, sloped down to a wooden footbridge that crossed Oleday Creek to the Stewart Lumber Company sawmill, set on a stretch of former marshland acquired by Edward Stewart in 1873, one month before his perennial but unacknowledged partner, Joseph Clayman Palmer, assuming his accustomed air of bemused innocence, introduced 2 bills into Council. One would annex this northern carbuncle to the town, provide public funds for its development and exempt any business thereon from the payment of taxes for 99 years. The other authorized the construction, below South Street, of modest brick housing for soon-to-be imported Polish labor who would be exempt from nothing.

In his sawdust-filmed office, saturated by the saws’ treble whine of a mutant horror-film insect, the mill's former owner, Emerson Stewart Palmer, slumped in an ancient wooden swivel chair, cleaning the battery contacts of a walkie-talkie. He bent them, bapped the unit's sides lightly with his hand, all to no avail, for a hairline fault in a solder connection had sheared an unbridgeable chasm. Electrons hovered on its lip, tiny pearl divers waiting for the command which would never come to do a double gainer.

Palmer chucked the unit onto his desktop and settled an unfocused stare on the Mosely Machine Works calendar, a daring nude of a sleek young bulldozer, then out the window to cut green lumber drying in the fierce sun

nothing left

  Boise Cascade pulling strings

          puppet

    jerking me around

buying a dipshit operation like this

    all their horseshit

    how's it goin Emerson

to hell in a bandsaw

    what you think

scooted the walkie-talkie into a desk drawer and stood. Time to pack it in, half a day of office presence, a quarter day of work.

Out in the mill yard, the sparse hairs on his arms vibrated sympathetically to the screech of the saws as he passed the cutting shed and fumbled open the door of a 1975 Mercedes SL 350. Across the creek, the squat castlette of his home sat rammed by some giant hand into the area's sole noteworthy geological feature, a misplaced tongue of schist just outside the town's northeastern boundary.

The blanket of saw-sound swallowed even the vroom of his car until he turned from the oil-stained gravel mill road onto Rte. 43, where the roadbed gratings of the rusted iron bridge over Oleday Creek rattled and chittered like mechanical rodents. Past the bridge, the highway curved southeast. 100 yards farther, where the curve straightened, he turned right onto Palmer Drive.

Across the highway, by a packed-earth drive, a mailbox pillar supported a bark-edged plank on which grew a painted green stem dividing into 3 leaves – 2 to the left, one to the right – topped by a pastel purple coneflower outlined in violet. In a shallow arc above, foursquare black lettering announced DAHLIA SUMMERSTEM.

To the southeast along Rte. 43, a spur of the Allegheny National Forest touched the road’s shoulder – a youthful gaggle of birch and beech and maple, relieved by an occasional spruce or hemlock or cherry. An unpaved gravel road wandered uphill into the forest, intersecting a drift of voices from a tent-filled clearing where 2 young men in shorts tossed a football, 2 young women sang folksongs, a man and a woman touched hands momentarily.

One of the footballers lobbed a final pass, cupped his hands and hooted twice: Meeting time, meeting time, ding ding ding.

3 more young people, 2 men and a woman, drifted out of their tents, bringing the total to 9. They adjusted their buttocks to logs and rocks around the burnt-out campfire.

Who's coming? With the next bunch?

Bob and Maurice, they said. Claire.

Bob come here? And get bitten by bugs? He'll be at TMI, that's the action.

Bob wouldn't care about that.

"Ever shake hands with him? 'Heeeey, great to see all this wonderful human energy.' Wipe all the fucking Quaker fellowship off on your pants."

Can it. Maybe that guy Hunter – remember him? From Newark? Gibson's guy.

Baraka's.

Same thing.

Not these days.

They're together, just separate organizations.

"Bullshit."

Who's Baraka?

LeRoi Jones, for Chrise sake.

LeRoi Jones?

We gonna do something or sit around like leaf mold? I can't take another can of Chef Boy-ar-dee.

John Fortril looked right and left, quick squirrel glances, then stepped back, obliterating a liverwort with his boot. His face transformed from slack expectation to forceful passion.

"You're asking what we're here for? We're here to make a racket. We’re here to make noise, to get attention. Media attention. What we've got here is radiation. After Three Mile Island we need to stand up and yell. But the town government says there isn't any radiation. The lapdog scientists say there isn't any  radiation. See those Wallace stickers on the trees from '68? They're afraid somebody wants to take away their guns so they can't get drunk and shoot cows, but they don't give a shit about gamma rays: ‘What’s a gamma ray? I don’t see none.’ So we've gotta have a focus, a symbol – you can't fight invisible gases. So what we're going to do is yell – 'conspiracy' – government conspiracy of silence involving the Project and all its fellow travelers. So we work up a press release – "

Here we go again.

Mike, I'm –

"What the fuck with these fuckin press releases, man? Who you give it to, Pa Kettle at the Deffenburg Weekly Fart?"

"Shut up, Mike, shut the fuck up. I'm talking, you talk when I'm finished. A release about the conspiracy – nothing else. A heavy release, but oblique, like we've found something so horrible we can’t talk about it straight off. And a schedule. The release tomorrow, Friday another meeting on the Common. If no action, a march to picket the Project."

What if they bring in state troopers or something?

"Pray for it. If these yokels pull a Selma, we're in."

Young men traded looks and unexpiated longings with young women, then the meeting dissipated. 2 of the men slipped behind the tents to paw a 6-pack of beer from under the pile of leaves where they'd stashed it after a ranger reminded them of the forest's alcohol prohibition.

None of the 4 women had spoken. Sweating and shifting on their improvised seats, 3 had kept their heads down, nodding occasionally to some small point. The eyes of the 4th, Janet Newcomb, roamed the trees, as though seeking a part of her that had drifted loose. They passed unnoticing over a motionless form by the trunk of a stalwart ash.

Reckless Raccoon would not be seen when he did not wish to be seen. By tree, he became tree, by stream, liquid, by rock, adamantine, a part of the earth itself. His body camouflaged his presence as his ears camouflaged English, the language of his youth, skewing it to unintelligibility, for it was not the tongue a true Suscogen should speak or recognize.

Once Janet's eyes had departed, Raccoon slipped behind the ash, keeping it between himself and the camp, moving silently in his moccasins and loincloth (a brown, berry-dyed mass of old sheeting like a stained diaper). He squatted to capture raspberries, the first of the season. His bow and a single arrow rested by his left hand so that he might snatch them up and set the arrow aflight with fluid motion. A rabbit hopped at the edge of his vision, but today there was no one to accept the kill should he bring it down. Yesterday he had carried a squirrel to Painter of Bridges and she had taken it, but her needs were small.

Raccoon flowed up a gentle incline, following one of his favorite ways, though none who came after would have discerned his passage through larch so sparse of needle they looked unfinished, through tenting spruce, birch and beech, past Elledeh, the Wise Tree – a towering lone hemlock hooked to an outcropping by claws of root to survey the forest valley and the creek (also Elledeh, corrupted to Oleday).

Bent low, Raccoon loped up a steeper incline to the place the Lookout-Whiteman would approach. A rattle of stones heralded the other's clumsy ascent, accompanied by half-spoken expirations, a pattern of sound unlike that of the men Raccoon knew by sight. The Indian stood well away, for the scantily clad ridge offered little concealment.

Tall and lean with sloping shoulders, this whiteman had the cast of Sleep-Toward-the-World, eyes that see not outward, but focus within. Robert Mansion slipped the padlock from the door of a sheet-metal box strapped to a 4 x 4 post and scanned the numbers printed by the small machine inside. High readings in the morning, peaking at 9:15 am, falling again throughout the day, reaching normal by 3:00 pm, remaining there.

He looked across at Mt. Dugan. The reading station was set on the windward side of a minor hill; the channeled prevailing windflow from west-southwest carried with it stray belches of radiation

wrong direction from Erie

  yawp

  finish the edges on these things

    Kress Creek wrong way too

      just growed

        topsy turvy science

  which laws how what combination

sucking blood from a sheet-metal cut on his left middle finger, locking the steel door and careening down the mountainside, leaping, hopping, grabbing saplings to swing along or stop his plunge, sliding on flat rocks that scooted from under him, exploding onto the lower path like a clown from a circus car, rills of sweat under and through his clothes, laughter in his formerly sleepy eyes that faded slowly as he slouched into his Rabbit and tootled along the forest road, stones ratting against the car's undercarriage.

Robert turned left at Rte. 43 and angled across the highway onto the gravel parking strip of a small commercial cluster, all that passing motorists knew of Deffenburg: the Strout Realty office, Fanny's Everything convenience store (and Greyhound bus stop), the combination barber shop and state liquor store, Nick's Used Cars and Nick's Texaco, where he stopped to inflate the Rabbit's right front tire, losing a half pound of pressure daily for the past 2 weeks. Nick's was owned, nominally, by Suscogen businessman Nick Rankmuskrat, with major interests controlled by George Redhawk and Hyram Littlebear, holder of double shares in the unacknowledged mine located on the Suscogen reservation.

Robert pulled out of Nick's from its southern edge, onto Main Street. Poles lay to the left of him, Saxons to the right, seedy, faceless rowhouses for the former; seedy, faceless clapboard singles for the latter with rose of Sharon and plantain in their minuscule front yards. The Rabbit hopped left, right, right again, left where Main Street skirted the southern end of the Common, across Curry Street, past the Suscogen National Bank, the post office and the Deffenburg Free Library, past Dulaney Street to Robert's rented home, a clapboard painted light green. Parking the car, he flattened a Miller beer can, 19.5 grams of aluminum worth less than one cent recycled (though, in Pennsylvania, it could not be).

He unfolded his long frame from the Rabbit and shanked up the front path, 7 rectangles of concrete flanked by jaunty petunias that Gloria Mansion kept watered faithfully. Newly added marigolds still adjusted to their home – less the indomitable national flower than spiky weeds asked to support highly scented blossoms beyond their means.

A small enclosed porch fronted the house; ancient copper screening filled with pinprick holes let in the mosquitoes that Robert and Gloria could not account for. Inside, a long room spanned the front, with a stairway going up the left wall before turning. The kitchen and dining room, square and of equal size with a connecting doorway, sat side by side in the rear, both entered from the living room. Altogether, the floor plan of a dollhouse.

In the kitchen, Paul Mansion spoke to his mother in rapid jerks of sound while he picked up vegetables and put them down, tried to sneak pieces of raw meat from the cutting board and kicked idly at the wastebasket under the counter. He turned his chatter 90 degrees without pause when Robert stepped through the kitchen doorway.

"Mrs. Wajda cut herself with a big knife today trying to cut up the apples. It got blood on everything, the peanut butter sandwiches and the lettuce and Lucy-Lou's dress and I think even Andrej's hotdog but he said it was ketchup."

How's Mrs. Wajda? asked Robert.

She put a Bandaid on.

So it wasn't a really big cut?

"It was a really big Bandaid." Paul held his hands 5 inches apart then slipped the right one to the back of the cutting board.

Gloria flapped her hand. You have to stop that or go in the other room. Raw meat is bad for you. It has germs. The words were ones of motherly remonstrance, but Gloria's voice held waterfalls. Paul released a cube of meat.

I ate raw meat all the time when I was a kid, said Robert. I'm healthy as a horse.

Maybe horsemeat doesn't have germs. Hi. She popped up on her toes and kissed the sheen of perspiration on his nose, then sliced more bok choi on the diagonal. The cutting board overflowed with chunks of carrot and beef, slices of mushroom, shredded leafy something, paper-thin water chestnut. Along the back of the counter, open cans of pineapple and bamboo shoots waited patiently.

Where's Keith? Robert held a slice of water chestnut to the light.

At Chin's.

Gloria heated the wok she had bought at Chief Redhawk's Trading Post. When it began to smoke she poured in oil. Hot wok/cold oil, the mysticism of the East or, Robert suggested, high heat promoting the quick bonding of lipid molecules – a one-shot Teflon finish.

She tossed in the vegetables and stirred with the outsized implements that usually accompany woks, ejecting an occasional piece of leafy something. Robert wandered across the kitchen and back, into the living room, around through the dining room and into the kitchen again, Paul close at his heels monologuing and munching a carrot stick. Robert smiled, nodded and raised his eyebrows at appropriate points in the monologue but said nothing. The screen door slapped sharply against the jamb and rebounded before settling in place. Keith Mansion barreled through the living room and up the stairs to the bathroom.

The supper was damned good. After 3 months Gloria had become a mistress of stir fry – one guest had placed her on a level with chef Wang. Robert maneuvered his chopsticks well on everything but the rice which he pinched too hard, pushing it up and over the sticks, leaving 4 or 5 grains to eat. Paul did better with his. Gloria's technique was flawless. Keith used a fork.

What's wrong with the readings today? Gloria asked.

Hmm?

The readings – your eyes are still on top of the mountain.

Oh ... a little high.

Hey Pop, Chin's father's all dookeyed about the radiation. He makes everybody wash all the time. Keith shoveled stir fry from the serving bowl onto his plate and the table.

Sanitation – a healthy side effect. How does Chin's father know about that? Are you –

"Geez Pop, you never tell us anything, what could I tell him? All the Chinese know about it."

Inscrutable, said Gloria.

Robert miscued his chopsticks, flipping bok-choi onto his shoulder. Haily Mayley won't be amused.

How does he expect to keep everybody from knowing? Is he really that dense?

"Not dense exactly, he just operates, ahh ..."

Very close to himself.

That's it.

Whereas you ...

Umm?

"Are dense."

Robert blinked. I don't understand.

Exactly.

Oh.

Gloria cleared the dishes and Keith washed them with minimal ill grace while Gloria wiped surfaces. She used her scrubber methodically, plastic mesh side first, round and round, up and down, then flip to the terrycloth, a last up and down. The spattered counter gave way to pristine white formica with gold flecks, a painfully unblemished surface

fool's gold

    Tut's treasure

  world's oldest collection formica kitchen counters

    gilded faucets

  Michaelmas Pewter Foundry and Dinnerware Inc

  gold leaf Ladies Undergarment Workers Local 1066

    hot dry mummy smell

      mummys-kids lungs x-rays

            y-rays

    why here

  someplace safe

      clean air

clean plates

stacked by Keith in the dishrack, Bye Ma, goin out.

Wait a minute. How much homework do you have?

Nothin.

Why not?

Did it in school. On free time. I told Chin I'd be over at 7.

You have to be in by 9 o’clock. No later.

"Sure Ma. Bye. Byyyye Pop," bellowed as he cometed through the living room, failing to notice his father seated in the easy chair 3 feet from his illuminated trail.

Robert cringed. I didn't think I'd produce a child with a voice like that. Is Paul watching TV again?

Only an hour.

What's on this early?

The news.

Robert tapped his knee. Is it possible to be too intellectual at the age of 6? He swiveled his head as though looking for an airborne wombat. Come here a minute, I'd like to try to explain something to you.

Gloria squatted on the hassock and rested her chin on her folded arms on his knees. The bristly fiber of his pants pushed and pricked. Why something so uncomfortable in this weather? Hair pants? Hirsute.

"First of all, you know I can't discuss any of this, even with you, so this conversation does not exist. What we've been dealing with – what we're looking at at the Project – is a higher than normal count, roughly 50% above standard background radiation. It's not harmful or even particularly interesting in itself. The past 2 days it's been erratically 100% to 150% above anyone's standard – still, statistically speaking, nothing to write home about. The only problem is we don't know the why – where it's coming from, what any of it means. The big mystery – woo woo."

But if it keeps going up ...?

It doesn't. We had numbers like this a month ago, then they tailed off with as little fanfare as they came. We're talking about minimal increments caused by a factor we can't yet identify. If I thought there was any real danger, I'd wrap you and the kids in lead and ship you back to Philadelphia.

"But what are you supposed to be doing – that's what I don't understand."

Doing?

Why would they send all you people out here to look at something that’s nothing to worry about? And build those outhousy buildings?

There are 2 basic ways to learn in science. You can pile up facts about normal occurrences until a pattern begins to emerge, or you can look carefully at anomalies. These readings are anomalies, so they're worth looking at to understand their ... characteristics, why they're there, their effects ... and so forth.

Their effects. Environmental effects?

If any.

Study the environmental effects of radiation that can't hurt a fly.

Flies ... well, despite drosophila we don't have that much data on flies and radiation. I was saying it can't hurt people.

Flies are pretty complex, aren't they? What if some fly-sized part of Paul gets mutated?

You sound like Carmelia.

"Your cousin? Your extremely beautiful cousin?"

"Umm, yes. I got a letter from her today. She's studying pygmies in Africa. What do you suppose they make of her?

She's probably too tall and ethereal for their tastes.

Actually, she’s ... quite substantial. But tall, yes. I was wondering how they could keep up with her flights of besotted inspiration. I think you'd like her.

Really? I don't.

Robert expelled 1.86 liters of air, heavily laden with carbon dioxide, in the form of a sigh. A prayer plant on the windowsill, most of its leaves flipped high to catch the tropical evening rain of its faraway home, accepted the gift and respired contentedly. The last of its daytime-drooped leaves popped erect with a quiet tck.

The evening settled slowly, the furniture hugging closer to the floor. Gloria took a rumpled shirt from an old wicker picnic basket and continued her embroidery, intertwined dragons and stylized flora, an iron-on pattern from Chan's Oriental Groceries and Gifts.

Peterkin, a grayish mongrel of terrier outline, scratched and moaned at the back door. Gloria let him in. Look what you did to the screen. Damn.

She settled again to her embroidery. Paul removed the brightly colored hanks of thread from their antique English biscuit tin one by one, spread them on the carpet to form a spectrum, and offered to untangle an intricate jumble of unrelated hues. Keith returned home at 10 minutes past 9. Gloria looked at the clock, then at Keith. He put his hand to his mouth in mock wonder. A repressed smile from Gloria exploded into laughter that spattered the embroidery. Keith ran at her full-tilt, head down, butted her roughly to the carpet. She spun him onto his back, almost pinning him. Peterkin, excited to slurping yaps, joined the melee, tugging sleeves, nipping knuckles, slapping hard-clawed feet on exposed skin. When Keith tried to squirm free, Paul grabbed his left leg, Gloria his right. Keith tumbled into Peterkin, who rowfed backwards, upending the tin of thread. Keith, his nose flattened against the footstool, howled horribly. Gloria sat up, fingers to her mouth. Keith danced away, flapping his tongue and waggling his fingers in his ears. Paul made his own belated lunge at his mother, a poorly executed copy of his older brother's that ended in a rolling, sweat-slippery hug.

Robert took an open envelope, return address Kisangani, Zaire, from his shirt pocket, removed the contents and bent the creases back to lay the letter more or less flat.

Dear old Robert,

You do remember you have a cousin wandering through deepest Africa? Or did you think I was still trying to collect Dad's bones in Borneo? I've found Livingstone's bones instead, tripped over them one morning a la Mary Leakey and said the most shocking four-letter words – they always wither Marcel (Marcel even withers nobly). You don't know Marcel.

I'm coming back home (the States) in the next month and I might see you. I will see you. You still believe in science, don't you? I think of protons as so many little no-see-ums kicking the universe in its ever-present arse. I don't want to believe in science (anthropology isn't really science, as you've always said. So does Marcel).

I should tell you about Africa. I'm living with the Ituri pygmies, those toy-poodle people Colin Turnbull wrote so beautifully about. Marcel's doing food clusters (that means he bothers the women when they're trying to make soup), Pella's working with kinship (they don't have much, but she doesn't have much either) and I'm supposed to be doing a comparison of a society that's environmentally well-provided-for (the Ps) and those that aren't (the other 99% of the undeveloped world). I'm not doing it – at least not in a way the scientific establishment would approve.

What's really happening is that I've come up with a new religion. The Free Life Movement. I don't think of it as a religion, but since everyone else will, I might as well get the jump on them. It's based on freedom from everything authoritarian, including belief. Bless them (the Ps) – short on body, long on natural freedom. For revelation I've called out the abstract power of the Clear Mind. Don't worry too much about what that means.

Doesn't it all sound intriguing? I knew it would.

You married someone named Halleluia Swedenborg, I think. Oh, here it is, Gloria Nordlund. You know how all the sailors in the Scandinavies sound alike. I hope she doesn't get alcoholic and depressed when the sun goes down.

You must be wondering how I, in deepest Africa, knew where to find you? There's a certain someone at the NSF, willowy and a bit precious, who worships the ground I walk on (though he might not worship this particular ground, covered with monkey dung). He knows things through bureaucratic osmosis. One of the treasures of being independently almost-wealthy is being able to make phone calls from anywhere in the world on whim (all phones in deepest Africa work on whim, the only dependable energy source). He tracked you down for me and – on his own bureaucratic pittance – returned my call. I was (am) flattered. Willowy, a bit precious and – faithful. The Ps, by contrast, are short, knobby and pragmatic, sexually and otherwise.

I write you this letter out of friendship. My ulterior motive will arrive by separate post. I don't know why, but you were the only one of our generation (the now middle-aged) I could stomach. Most peculiar, since we never agreed on anything. But you're stimulating: That must be it – even if, to the world at large, you might appear bland.

On that note, I take leave of you with my usual charm. Expect a small parcel marked Hair-Trigger Explosives within the week. Or I'll send you Pella. There would be a gift.

Love (really),

Carmelia

Behind the living room furniture, beyond the circles of lamplight, the evening shadows coalesced into the collective umbra called darkness, that earthly echo of the Void from which all evolved and into which all will return. Slyly, each wisp detached itself from the 3-dimensional solidity that fancied itself its owner and slid with as little sound or substance as yesterday's news into the great congregation of the night. As the artificial lights of evening snapped out one by one, new shades joined the throng, freed to deal 5-card stud from all-spade decks, trade gossip with the silhouettes of overstuffed chairs or flow, substanceless amoebae, into the countryside, dodging the bane of all shadows, the moon just past full.

Some sped west toward the torpid town of Marella; some north past the in-town homes of the wealthier Suscogen – manicured lawns dotted with twisted Japanese imports – and the scattered ignoble shacks bordering the Suscogen Reservation; others south through the Chinese community of Prussia Street and the dead factories of Industry Boulevard, into the desolate Southern Piece, a plot no longer man's yet unreclaimed by nature; still others east along Main Street into the great coatcloset of the Allegheny National Forest, where they could bet on eclipses, wax nostalgic about underpasses or just shoot the shit without fear of flashlights.

As the pre-daylight sun slipped up to redden the gap below Mt. Dugan, the shadows fled back into hiding behind the objects they nominally supported. A brief balanced vacuum of sound separated night from day. Then the early birds began to chatter each other awake and zip through low branches in search of – not worms, but the light and freedom of morning itself.

The No Nukes also woke early, some by choice, others to extract the stones and twigs that had burrowed through foam pads, sleeping bags and flesh to lodge deep in internal organs. Janet brewed coffee, Maryann fried eggs on the Coleman stove, Rosalie opened the orange juice can, Michael bitched. John slept, denying that day had come again.

Angel and Mark blundered back through the undergrowth, each carrying 4 one-gallon plastic milk bottles filled with water from what they hoped was not a contaminated stream. They put down their charges and slowly uncurled their fingers. The last remaining coal from the evening's fire nestled under a stone of the firepit. Despite signs declaiming the land's increasing dryness, no one had doused or scattered the fire before going to sleep, since all fires, eventually, go out. Maryann yodeled that the eggs were ready. The coal went out.

Janet shook John's sleeping form, piled outside his tent in vain hope of catching a breeze. You're supposed to see Startleton at 10. You have to get up to be clearheaded.

Never, in my life, clearheaded, morning. He untangled himself from his sleeping bag, staggered to a log, sat down, looked at his fried egg. The egg looked up at him. Fuck you. He stabbed the yolk and it ran. He shoved the egg away.

Sunlight lanced the valleyside, and the temperature began its inexorable rise. John forced down his cold egg, sipped his cold coffee and his warm orange juice.

At 9:45, already dripping sweat, he climbed into his 1967 VW bus and turned the key. For once the electrical system did not lie snoozing, some vital part rusted or fused solid. In 2nd gear, the bus jounced along the rutted dirt road and onto Rte. 43, right onto Main Street, then 2 long blocks to Oak Street and the home of the Deffenburg Weekly Times. The VW consumed .09 gallons of regular leaded gasoline during the 2.15 mile trip of its relatively efficient though grossly underpowered engine.

The sign of the Times hung slightly askew, its gold leaf, thin as a mouse fart, peeling like sunburn. Ed Grubb, editor, stood in the open doorway a bit askew and peeling himself. For 27 years he had been cultivating the look and sound of a small-town editor; he was stuck with it, for better or worse. He nodded to John and waved him inside, where a wax-museum figure sat in a decrepit wooden chair.

Nothing was askew about the surface of Richard Startleton. Each shirt cuff extended 3/4 of an inch beyond its jacket sleeve, allowing a glint of gold from the cufflink but not a full view of its magnificence. A pin stabbed his tie dead center to his shirt and his glasses hung exactly horizontal on his nose. One hand cupped each knee and he arose from his chair with even pressure of both feet. The heels of his shoes were worn at a precisely equal angle. His legs sported identical moles (not now visible) 1 1/4 inches above each kneecap. He parted his hair on the right side and shook hands, as commonly, with his right hand but was otherwise that rarest of human physical specimens, a symmetrical mirror-image along the central axis.

Richard Startleton, John Fortril. Ed Grubb made the introductions, pointing to each man as though the other might not know to whom he was referring, then wobbled around the office in search of another chair.

I believe we are acquainted, said Startleton.

Of course we’re acquainted, said Fortril. Look, I don't want to waste a lot of time. We've been marching, meeting, picketing and we're still treated like visitors to hicksville. We're here because we consider this a serious matter, a case of a clear misuse of power by government, of a coverup, of, uh, a dangerous situation that is being ignored. It can't go on being ignored so ... we're trying to bring the entire situation to the notice of those who ... who can do something about it. We've got a press release.

John looked down at his shoes. Startleton looked straight ahead at the top of John's head, as though it were speaking.

You haven't done much, said John. Are you going to cover this?

Startleton glanced at the release though his eyes showed no sign of actually reading it. This is very newsworthy, extremely so, and if it were up to me, I certainly would have no doubts. However, I can only present it to my superiors, with my recommendation.

Grubb thumped down a chair for John, who ignored it.

Don't you understand? Everybody's talking about radiation at TMI and over by Erie, but it's right here. Too.

Oh yes, it's certainly serious. Ahem. Startleton withdrew a small notebook from his inside jacket pocket. Mr. Fortril, how do you see the protest movement, going into the ’80s?

How do I see it?

How do you view the advocacy, of, um, radical causes?

This isn't a radical cause. What's radical about it? Radical causes are a civil war of the soul.

Ah.

Don't write that down. I’m not Chairman Mao, it just came into my head. It has nothing to do with anything. I'm talking about – right now, right here there's measurable radiation that the government is doing nothing about and may even be causing.

Causing? How would that be?

"I don’t know how, that’s it, nobody’s saying anything. That’s what makes it so suspicious. Oh, fuck it." John walked through the office, massaging his neck.

Grubb pointed to one of the chairs. You oughta sit down, Mr. Startleton.

Yes, of course, but Startleton remained standing

2 young men, one in a denim jacket with a parrot on the back, walked into the office.

That Razorback's whacked outa his head, said the other, dressed in a light green oxford shirt and dark green velour pants.

Been up talkin to the Home Tribe? Grubb asked.

Zorba Muhly made corkscrew motions at the side of his head. "You don't talk to em, you stand there while they drill little holes in your ears. Got a couple good shots, wouldn't let us get the rats. Stinko." He held his nose.

"Whacked outa their heads," said Amie Diefenbacker.

You guys covered the No Nukes picketing in May. Didn't you? said John. I think I saw you.

"Sure man, we cover everything. Those Anti-Krishna jerkoffs and Razorback and the Chink stores and the while beezarre works. You're sittin right here in the can." Zorba held out an imaginary film canister and pointed to the nothing.

Who's going to use it?

Zorba shrugged. We do it, they pay us, we do it some more.

Who's 'they'? Who pays you?

C'mon man, don't jerk my chain. He made rapid yanking motions.

I need to know how this works, publicity. Mind if I tag along just to see ... you know? John fluttered his hands in the air, infected by Zorba's manual disease.

Hey Amie, yeah?

Sure man, what the fuck. Amie's sash-weight hands hung motionless at his side.

John turned to Startleton. We've got some stuff planned. Protests. Will you cover us if I call you?

I will certainly do my best. Naturally. Of course.

Fortril looked at Startleton as though sizing up an unruly beast he was unfortunately dedicated to taming, then his shoulders slumped. He waggled his head in a confused shake and followed Amie and Zorba from the office.

Grubb pulled up one of the chairs and succeeded in getting Startleton seated again.

Whatcha think, Mr. Startleton, about the No Nukes?

That would be hard to say. Journalistically speaking.

Ummm. Seems like they're runnin outa gas, which is maybe a shame. Not a bad bunch, not at all, a few of them in it for the yap, but they've got a point. Give my eyeteeth to find out about that radiation myself. How much, where it's coming from – don't even know if it's really there. All those denials, so much horseradish. You talk to Haily Mayley?

I spoke to him as a background source. We did not discuss the radiation controversy.

Grubb chuckled. Wouldn't sell his turds for fertilizer. He leaned close. CIA, they say.

CIA? Startleton brought out his notebook again, a practiced, fluid gesture. Is that confirmed?

Nothing, no-way is confirmed around here these days. I could run my whole front page filled up with 72-point question marks. If I want to have stuff definite, I stick with babies and the ladies' auxiliary. Even that's not safe with the Home Tribe around.

Ah, the Home Tribe.

Grubb whacked his chair and chuckled again. "Yup, come out MFing all over the place, Lacey Stewart – wife of Charles Stewart, the lawyer? – she so help me peed in her drawers. Well, 4 of these black bucks with their Jamaican hairdos and smelling like the plague. Couple women too, one of em white. Supposed to be one or 2 kids, but nobody's actually seen em that I know of. Can't figure what they're after. Blockaded a truck full of lettuce out by Fanny's, something about the farm workers' union. Next thing, they beat up some Chinese. Then Razorback's out on the bullhorn callin Jane Fonda names you never even heard. And they hate any kind of government – any kind – nearly landed the electric meter reader in the hospital. How's it hang together? They've got a pile of typed-up pages this thick – he held his hands 4 inches apart – they'll show anybody's interested, says it's what they believe in, but there aren't 5 words in a row make logical sense. They'd be a perfect godsend for news, cept you can't print a word they say."

Oh?

Motherfucker this, motherfucker that. Now this is a direct quote. He slid a rat-eared spiral notebook off his desk. "From Razorback. 'Any motherfucker tries to take away our motherfuckin rights, I tell you, that man is a motherfucker.' Kinda poetic in its way, but not exactly fit for a family-type newspaper."

Startleton made precision notes. Have they always spoken so ... forcefully?

Since they been here, yeah, and I can guess why else they got kicked outa Rochester before – rats, lice and hysteria. Now I imagine you're wonderin how they've lasted this long in a puritanical backwater like Deffenburg?

That certainly is a major question.

"You fellows at KOPE, always onto things. Well, it's a little hard to get clear. Emerson Palmer – know him? Yeah, he had the place pretty much under his thumb, then bout 3 years back, after his 2nd marriage went sour, he started – I don't know, wasn't that people didn't look to him still, but stuff slid away from him. Not like