Chapter 35

1

It was the same, wasn’t it? He thought, in a way, that time was vicious, that it could circle on itself and rhyme events.

            He’d taken the call from Paul Holdren when he was at his lowest. Trevor had once thought about killing himself. He wasn’t sure then if it was because of what happened to him, but rather how he coaxed the Money Lenders not to kill him by dangling his family on a string, his little boy, his pregnant wife. He understood the virtues of his movement were purely orchestrated by selfish endeavors, or why else would he have been sitting in his old kitchen in that old house he could no longer afford thinking about sleeping pills and bourbon? His idealism was a fraud, and that was a crushing blow. Not just to his ego, but to his essence. Paul had changed his mind. The call was destiny. Serendipitous. Whatever fulfilling words or terms of endearment you could muster to equate one life-saving gesture to a mind at its tipping point, that was what Paul’s phone call meant. And the operation in Reedy Creek, the test project in a growing community, seemed like the sort of social experiment that would put his name in the history books. That’s always what redemption is about: not cold-cocking the reality of those thoughts you’d had at your lowest, but the erasure of that part of you so your legacy is catapulted beyond the miasma of your failures.

            Did you ever wonder about the timing? Did you? Did you ever wonder what Paul might have had on Hector, on Andy? Maybe even on Mary? Because Paul called you when you were at your lowest. Did you ever think he might have had cameras on you, even at that point? It’s not something you will ever feasibly remember, because the theory always afforded wilful blindness to a population who would rather remain convinced their lives were their own, and that their paltry secrets were too lowly to be of any significance. But maybe those thoughts were always there. Maybe he’d always wondered how Paul could have known he needed help. That if he’d never gotten those phone calls, those insistent phone calls, one after another until he picked up, that he would have wandered to the liquor cabinet, took out the good bourbon, swallowed a few gulps, and then retrieved the Ambien to empty the bottle into his hand and wait for as long as it would take for the deer to return. For the deer to come back and spirit him away.

            Trevor rushed home after the presser. After speaking to Paul. After seeing Barb’s medical records from the clinic in Davenport, where he’d spirited her so many times since coming to Reedy Creek to protect her from the inevitable consequences of an experiment that was running out of bodies. That was clear the moment Norris suggested Robert Wilson because of his weight. Because of what could potentially happen; the obese would be targets of a new civil war once resources were gone, because their indulgences would prove their squandering of more than their fair share, Norris had said. You didn’t disagree with him. Maybe you had your doubts, but you put your hand up when it came to the vote. You looked around that table, and Mary’s hand shot up, Hector’s, Andy’s. They were all raised. Wilson’s death is on all of you now. Just like Halliburton’s and Sarah Darling’s. Matthew Hodges. And likely Wendy Golding once the day’s out. Their deaths are on you. He felt sick to his stomach.

            He pulled up onto the driveway. The remaining service-goers had already left. He figured Barb would be cleaning up. She wasn’t. The house seemed empty.

            “Barb! Barb!” He rushed into the kitchen; the platters she’d set out were emptied, but still cluttered the counter. The chairs were still set a-row in the front room, the pictures of Lew still scattered among the available tabletops in the pattern of a life well lived. The garbage was over-stuffed and plates were piled in the sink. “Barb!”

            He heard something upstairs.

            He went toward the stairs, wondering what she might say. Wondering how she might react. She hasn’t made much of this place. She misses home. She resents you, even if she’d never say it. But she does. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t made friends here, why she hasn’t made an effort. Because she expects you to screw up again. She expects it of you. He hated the thought, he did, but at the same time he understood it might have been true.

            Adam’s bedroom door was open. He could hear his family in there.

            “Barb…we have to go…”

            She only turned and looked at him with indifference. She and Adam were watching something on his television, a luxury Lew had gotten the kid to grandstand his efforts coming here to the Creek with them. Patty was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, avoiding the TV.

            “Barb, didn’t you hear me? What are you guys doing?”

            “Trevor,” she finally said. “Adam was right. You have to see this.”

2

“It’s a trick, Barb. Even you can’t fall for that. They…they took that picture of your mom and spliced it into the feed. They’re playing with us.”

            “Who’s they, Trevor?”

             The two of them were sitting at the kitchen table. He’d seen something in her eyes that could only be belief; he figured it was the same sort of faith that made religions so idolatrous. Not even he could claim to have escaped that sort of idolatry: he’d made his own idealism a form of worship, hadn’t he? Watching that surveillance tape confirmed one thing: Adam had found the Backdoor. When he spotted his boy and his friends entering the clearing off Woodvine in the feed from the day of Robert Wilson’s accident, he’d assumed the four were explorers and might have wandered off the grid to find Grimwood. It was a tendentious thought, something Andy didn’t seem concerned about because they hadn’t been there to witness the car accident, but had only ventured by during clean-up; and Andy had informed him the boys never really returned to that forest in the days after. He’d kept his tabs. But this proved he was wrong, didn’t it? Because that tape was from Grimwood. That feed was from outside this house.

              “Where did you get this?” he’d asked Adam, angry. And his son only looked at him. Not afraid, but unsure of what answer he should give. Barb had gotten mad at him, and told him they were watching a miracle, that she’d watched the tape a hundred times, and that every time she could see her mother stepping into their house after her father opened the door. “What are you saying, Barb? That your mom took Lew? Your dead mom!” She’d looked at him with the version of hurt that meant he’d struck something deep, something in her core. But she’d understood how ridiculous it all sounded as well; she’d understood that maybe, just maybe she was being hoodwinked. She just wanted to believe, because the belief was easier. Was more touching and comforting.

              And now he had to express everything to her. The same way he once had in an older, nicer kitchen a few years ago after his banker put a bullet through his head. Rhymes.

             “The people I’m working with, Barb, the people that brought me here. That brought us here. The council. They did this. We’ve hit a snag here and I don’t want to be a part of it anymore. I don’t.”

             “A part of what?”

             He wasn’t sure how to answer her. When she’d first asked him why Reedy Creek, why this Podunk flyover shithole, he’d only told her it was because opportunity often wears unpleasant masks. She’d always bought into his idealistic beliefs, ever since he met her at uni, ever since he first came to her house at dinner and so crossed her parents, proving his efforts as a rebel of the Institution made him more attractive to her. “This tape,” he said, holding the cassette Adam and Barb had been watching, “is a part of the system here. An experiment. The Cause.”

             “Trevor. My mother was on that tape. You saw her.”

             “I saw what they wanted us to see. Because they want to fuck with us because I fucked with them. That’s what this is about, Barb. Trust.”

             “You’re not making any sense.”

              “Barb, do you know why we came here? Do you know why or how I could even rebound from what happened in Suffolk to come here?”

              “Because it was an opportunity. Because you were smiling again. Because I thought…I thought we could fix things.”

              “Yes,” Trevor nodded. “Yes, that’s what this is, what this opportunity is. Or was. I don’t even know anymore.”

              “You’re scaring me, Trev.”

              “After what happened back home,” he touched his hand, his fingers, just to emphasize without words, because he knew the words were too painful. The memory was too painful. “I was suicidal, I was…Look, I know how this sounds, I know what this might do to you to hear it, but it’s a part of everything. It’s a part of this place. I defined myself by what I was. By my work. And when that didn’t matter anymore, I didn’t matter.”

             “Jesus. I knew it was bad. I did. But…not this bad.”

             “It’s okay,” he said, touching her hand. “That was your pull. Yours and Adam’s. And Patrick’s. Before Patty was even born. It was a pull. It was keeping me here and focused. I needed that. Or a part of me did. But that other part was strong, Barb, it was strong. And one day I got so close I’d even thought about writing a letter. To say goodbye. But I didn’t because it would have affected what I could leave you with. The insurance. I figured I would wander away and you could move on. But Paul Holdren called me. You know that part. But what you don’t know is that call literally stopped me in my tracks from grabbing pills.” He was crying as he spoke. He figured he would. He took Barb’s hand in his and squeezed now. Because this was what always mattered. She needed to know that.

               “Trev…”

               “Paul offered me an opportunity. And I wanted to believe that was true then because I needed to. I needed to believe I could survive. But that was then. When you’re at your lowest, you’ll grasp at any offer if it means an escape. What I brought on this family, I was never properly punished for it. I wasn’t.”

              “What do you mean, Trevor? What on earth are you talking about?”

              “There’s an experiment in this town. Wide-ranging and wide sweeping. Paul set up the operation here because of the federal money and the population boom. He said it was a test course for wider pastures. Said if our project worked here, if it did, he could convince the government with his data that it might be time to act for the sake of our future. We’re idealists, Barb. We always were. He said we were building a legacy, that every innovation and breakthrough has its growing pains and its baby steps. And I bought it. Fuck, Mary even bought it. And Andy. The lot of us did.”

               “I don’t understand…”

               “I took you to Davenport after you found the lump, Barb. You always asked me why. I never had the right answer. Not until now. Paul set Norris up in the Clinic so he had access as the GP of the medical records coming in. I didn’t want him to see your records. I didn’t want him to see you.”

                Barb pulled her hand out of his. It was subconscious, but he was certain a part of her was beginning to understand. Wasn’t it?

               “We always knew there was a problem in the world. From the first time we met. You and I knew about man’s…self-righteousness, that we would never knowingly or voluntarily solve the problem. We couldn’t be the solution because we’re…we’re convinced our rights and privileges are certain. We…man always has. Paul’s experiment was taking choice out of the equation. Man’s choice. He was putting it up to us. Up to a council. Norris weeded out terminal diagnoses from the records…Barb, these were people who were dying, who had maybe months left. We were putting the choice up to a democratic vote.”

              “Jesus Christ,” she whispered. The look in her eyes, that focused belief that had been so ensnared by that image of her mother was mostly wasted away now. And he hated that he was the one to take it from her, like a priest who’d found an irrevocable loophole in the Bible and sermonized of its fallibility.

             “They know I took you to Davenport, Barb. I don’t know how, but my bridges here are burned. Or are going to burn. I’m sure Paul’s lighting the match right now. We have to leave. I know how this sounds, I do. I know how this looks. I know this is how our lives have been, that we’ve settled and then we’ve moved on.”

              “No…no, we haven’t moved on, Trevor, you’ve fucked up. You’ve always fucked up.” Her words were choked back in her throat. Her eyes were angry. And hurt.

              “Barb…this…what you watched, Adam’s proof, it’s nonsense. Okay. Paul, the council, they’re putting lies in your head to punish me, to punish us. This isn’t real. And I don’t want any part of it anymore. I don’t.” He thought about what he saw on the tape, Lew opening the door to the storm outside, and then Adam pausing it to the perfect frozen image of Betty as she once had been, so many years ago, staring back at the camera the same way she looked in the photograph Adam had been holding on the bed.

               “It’s all real.”

               Adam walked into the room. Trevor wondered if he’d been eavesdropping, if his son knew far more than he’d ever carried on. He was holding a backpack and he trudged between them to the table and dumped the bag over on its surface. Trevor watched videocassettes tumble out, clicking against each other, all dated, most from mid to late summer from what he could see. And his heart sank. Because he understood. You’re being punished through your son. If everybody turns on you, everybody you love, then you will have to take the pills this time because there’s nothing left. Nothing at all. There will be no phone call. You spent that opportunity. You didn’t like it.

              In the end he wondered if this was even about Paul anymore. Maybe it was about the bastard underground watching everything. Maybe this was the start of his coup.

             “Robert Wilson. Colin Perkins. They were murdered, dad. And they’re on these tapes. Both of them. Guys that died in car crashes this summer, but they weren’t really accidents…were they?”

              Trevor thought of the video he and Andy watched of Robert Wilson striking the power pole on Woodvine, the man’s head slamming into the steering wheel and rebounding like an over-filled basketball into the headrest; he remembered then how he’d questioned what they were doing. The morality of their choices. But then it just got worse, didn’t it?

             “These aren’t fake. The council is bad, dad. The council is a monster. What you’ve been doing here, why you even brought us here, it’s evil!”

             “Where did you get these, Adam?”

              Adam was silent. Somewhere upstairs Trevor could hear Patty crying.

              “Where, goddamnit!” Barb stifled a cry behind him. He could hear her sifting through the labeled tapes.

              “You know where,” Adam retorted. “Why did you bring us here, dad? Why? This town is dying. I can feel it every place I go. I can smell it and hear it in people’s voices. Grampa knew it too. Why do you keep doing this to us? Why?” Adam had started crying. This was some sort of spill over from his eulogy at the service. “Why do you hate us?”

              “Adam…baby…go upstairs,” Barb sobbed. “Please…go upstairs…”

              “Your council’s what’s doing it. Your stupid council. It’s a sickness, dad, and you’re not just killing people. You’re killing this fucking town!”

              “That’s enough! This is all nonsense, Adam. All of it!”

              “You can’t see it because you’re a part of it. You don’t care about me. About Patty. About us. You’ve always just cared about your…your goddamn work. About your stupid beliefs. And they are going to kill us. Like they would have if grampa didn’t save us.” Adam wiped the tears from his eyes. He bit his lip for a moment and then a sudden calm came to him. Settled the fury and the hurt in his eyes. Now it was just an earnest innocence; the look of a twelve-year-old who’d had enough. “Who will save us now, you asshole?”

              Trevor had reached forward before he even knew what he was doing. He slapped Adam across the face. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever hit Adam. It was the sound that struck him, more even than the feeling of the boy’s skin and bone against his palm. It was the sound of that dry clap, like slinging out sheets in the wind on a summer day; and maybe now he did feel what Adam was talking about, the sickness. It coursed through him, his veins, like liquid metal, heavy and burning. You couldn’t see it or feel it before because you were a part of it. Adam’s right. You were immune then. Now maybe you aren’t. He thought it should have been a relief, that discarding of his duties with the council would be an expression of freedom, of moral compunction, but it only left him hollow, standing in his kitchen staring down at his son whose shock masked any pain or the flaring redness on his cheek.

              Adam turned and ran. He snatched up his bag at the front door and was out of the house as Barb called after him, over Patty’s cries upstairs as if the kid sensed what was happening. Kids always knew when something was wrong.

             “You son of a bitch,” Barb muttered. “Get out of this house. Get out of this house!”

              Trevor felt the first tape hit him in the shoulder. The second struck the back of his head; he wondered if the one clattering to the floor showed Colin Perkins snorting blow or Robert Wilson fucking a cardboard cut out of Lea Thompson he’d taken from BB’s Rentals. He supposed even knowing that proved Adam right.

              This is Grimwood. You always understood he was a loose cannon. Now he’s given tapes of a secret operation to kids. To your kid. That is no coincidence, dipshit. This whole fucking thing rhymes, and if you don’t fix this now you might lose everything.

              Trevor climbed into the Acura and stared at his house. It was never a home. This town was never a home. For him it had always been a graveyard.

3

“What would you say to your father, Adam? If everything should come to a head. I’d assume Reedy Creek is witnessing its convergence now. What you call magic and the reality of what adults do is a collision that might leave what you see quite lost. It would be sad to watch this place drown, wouldn’t it?”

            Adam hadn’t known then just what he might say to his dad. Because then there had still been a chasm between them that had him finding solace in his grampa. But now that he’d found his chance, that he’d finally expanded on the railings of his speech during grampa’s service, he could look into his father’s eyes and unleash. He felt like a bomb. It was like Grimwood knew. He knew everything would come to a head. He knew there would be a convergence of his world and his father’s.

            But that’s just another part of his magic, isn’t it? Grimwood has access to magic, like Link in The Legend of Zelda. He can put on some special tunic or bracelet and he can dip his hand into the ocean of magic and make otherworldly predictions; he can see the future beyond even the goddamn streams of the monitors entombing Reedy Creek in a fishbowl. That’s what Grimwood is: a wizard.

            He was riding his bike. His face still stung. He understood his father’s reaction. And he appreciated it. Because for that one moment he felt like his dad was reprimanding him. That he cared just enough to punish him. He knew it was a strange thought, but it carried a powerful implication that beyond the convergence, beyond the council and the Creek coming to a head, he might find something of value beyond the destruction. That he might find a father in the ashes.

            “I expect the council to rip itself apart,” Grimwood had said when he handed Adam the sheaf of papers. “Sometimes all one needs is a little push. Imagine your own secrets. Imagine having something you believed private to you revealed to the world. Would you not want to silence your aggressor?”

            Adam had taken that thick pile of papers and nodded his head. He’d seen the title page. On it was written, If I’m Alive, First Draft Manuscript by Bethany Roberts.

            “Leave that in Sheriff Andy’s mailbox.”

            “Why?”

            “Because he needs a push. Like the rest of them. Wouldn’t you agree, Adam? I’d say it’s fair you do that since I’ve given you what you asked for.”

            In the end, what Grimwood had given him was better than any answer. Despite what his father had said. That the tape was fake. A ruse by a council that no longer trusted him. Because Adam understood grampa knew about the magic too. He thought that’s why he’d been so secretive near the end, so aloof. Because he sensed the magic too, and he wanted to protect Adam. Protect the boys.

            He knew where Andy lived. Not only because Grimwood had given him the address, but because he and the guys had been by his place a few times during the summer. Perhaps it had been preparation for what they would have to do, that their miles ridden, their time beating the bush had been their unofficial drafting into something important, but then Adam understood their exploration of Reedy Creek as a trial by fire, their means of immersing themselves into this new place, to be accommodated by it. Even then there was a possibility at least one of them could feel the growing sickness. Could feel the Creek’s bellyache. And Adam thought that very inclination was why Grimwood even addressed them in the first place. He left those tapes to be found because he knew the Fenway Four was special. Reedy Creek is magic, but what you are, what the four of you are, is different. The four of you are on the cusp of childhood, are the circuitry of that ever-devolving magic that soon turns to accountability and rationality once you trade in the bicycle for a driver’s license.

            He rode up to Andy’s place. The cruiser wasn’t here, and he knew Mrs Napolitano would be at school. The two didn’t have kids. He pulled the manuscript out of his bag and held its firm heft in both hands. He flipped the cover page over and read a few lines. He didn’t quite understand what he was holding. Why it was a bomb. Why it had so much power.

If I’m alive

When the machines breathe smoke

And we suffocate beneath their heavy chassis

But require them, like tadpoles of cluttered ink in viscous water

Breathing and breathing, lungs of tar now, walking addicts

Collections of what they need, their cogs, their veins

Then shall the grim dusk take me, and plunge the spade into clay by human hand

And offer me respite in her belly, her womb, so I may apologize for what we’ve done

If I’m alive

As the huddled masses disappear in the ether

Of digital hallucinations, and lose their spirits to binary consciousness

A singularity of hope lost to the clutch of metal

To the clasp of wires
To the cache of electrons

Then shall I walk alone in the aisles of their vessels

And live with you beyond the tombstones

            What the fuck? It was all he could think. This thing went on for nearly a hundred pages or so. Some pages had only two or three words. It didn’t matter. He had a job. His father reminded him of that. He’d been so lost in that tape, so lost in the hope of what he’d seen, what his grandma had become, he’d nearly forgotten what he promised Grimwood. And he figured a broken promise would be hard to mend.

            He opened the mailbox and shoved in the manuscript. Clipped to its front was a note. Adam hadn’t written it. He didn’t understand it. But he could see why it would be caustic.

I KNOW YOU ARE A PLAGIARIST.

4

He promised himself he’d never return to this shithole. But he also figured he’d see this project through to its end as well. He knew Reedy Creek would one day be studied. Once word ever got out about the operation, its successes and its failures would provide a case study in law schools, in ethics, in political science, in ideology, in philosophy; he thought what was being done here was Stanley Milgram writ large, a sociological experiment that reduced humans to statistics, to their vices and sins, to their idiosyncratic impulses, their private selves versus their public.

            He’d pulled off the 34 onto a dirt offroad; the rocks had been compacted over a storm sewer in the culvert, and he watched the corn fields begin to blossom further northwest, just beyond the clip of the woods that buffered the Creek from the rest of the world. He could just see the smokestacks further west where the profit was churned, where Bob Arnold was likely getting blown by his handsome assistant, gripping the sides of his chair as the camera by his windows watched two unknowing partisans of this experiment they’d signed off on by living in this town. By working in it.

            It was warm out, the sun high, the air still and quiet. He could see what the storm had done to the flatlands as the wind rolled in with the roiling thunderheads; he could see the felled trees, could see where small brush fires might have started after lightning strikes, only to extinguish when the plump rain fell in torrents. The farmhouse was just ahead. He’d looped along the gravel road now toward the skirt of the corn, growing in tangles in long rows to the north, mostly untended, but he was certain it would be used. Eventually. When the government provided subsidies for any crop, whether to grow or destroy, it often proved how disastrous it could be to oversupply when every man, woman, and child wanted his or her hand in the pot. Trevor pulled up between two old trucks, both propped up on blocks, and both mostly stripped for parts. He remembered these relics when they were new, when there were quite a few of them cluttering the streets, before he ever cared about this shit, about what convictions could steal from you long term. He killed the engine and stared at the back of the house. Besides the new windows that had been installed over a year ago, as part of Grimwood’s Residence Contract with the council, one of many stipulations in a booklet Paul had taken ownership of, the place was decrepit and reminded Trevor of the hotel from Hitchcock’s Psycho, the looming turret on the horizon with the rotting clapboards and the menacing aura of something that was watching back. There were no animals around back. When he’d come here in the summer, it was an obstacle course leading to the front clearing by the extended stoop, and he’d swatted away flies with one hand and covered his nose with the other before grabbing a tape of an older woman named Coriander Handelman; she wheeled around an oxygen tank wherever she went, a hose in her nose, and a lighter at the tip of a three-packs-a-day addiction that had already turned her lungs into what Norris had joked were as porous and black as bitumen, and probably more flammable. She lived a boring life; there was Bingo at the Church Hall, walking laps in the mall, speaking to her sister in St Louis, her only surviving family member, and on Saturdays, she would get driven to the Revue to catch a flick. She’d slipped in the shower and broken her neck on the rim of the tub. That was the official story. It was harder to rig accidents if your mark didn’t drive. But she was one of the first. And even then Trevor had felt an enormous pang of guilt. He’d never met Coriander. He never would, of course, but he did stop by very briefly to catch her funeral service. The pastor spoke with only brief snippets found in a diary she’d kept, with only intermittent entries that skipped years in some cases. He learned she was once a pilot. That she worked in the Air Force during World War II. She had been resorted to the crippling expectations of the elderly, this woman who’d worked on Bombers; she hadn’t really slipped in the shower. Trevor didn’t want to know what had actually happened, because he could imagine. Lazarus had likely snapped her neck and placed her in the tub, leaving the nozzle running, staging it, ripping down the shower curtain, and giving one last look at a poor old woman who’d leave this world alone and naked, a far cry from what she truly was, from who she truly was.

            Trevor had gotten out of the car and walked around to the front of the house. He judged you every time you came. He judged you and Andy at the Diner. What’s stopped him from blowing the whistle?

            It was in his contract. That’s what Andy believed. It was likely what Paul had told him if he’d ever asked too many questions. What if that was true? What if the contract bound Grimwood to just watching the darkness, and he found somebody beyond the reach of Paul’s booklet to do his investigating, to cast his judgment in the real world beyond the scope of the council? A boy like Adam.

            His head hurt thinking about these things. He figured that’s what it came down to for intelligent people. For thinkers. Always speculating. Always looking for an answer beyond Occam’s Razor.

            There were very few animals in the clearing today. Just the arc of that dying field and the rim of the dark woods that led toward the pasture where his son and his friends played baseball, where they stayed out of his hair for the summer. What would he even say? He’d come here without preparing and he knew a man like Grimwood would love to test his uncertainty, to dip his finger in the well and stir shit up. Stay away from my son. Stay in your hole. I’m done with this game. Whatever Paul’s told you to do to me, to scare me and my wife, that can stop as well. Leave Betty out of this. Leave Lew out of this. You’re just giving hope, telling stories, giving my family a reason to think this place was a good idea. Stop it. Or I’ll—or I’ll what? He didn’t know. He didn’t know how you threatened a man like Grimwood.

            He stepped up onto the stoop and went through the unlocked door into the kitchen. Was it always unlocked, or just when Grimwood’s expecting somebody?

            But he wasn’t expecting Trevor, was he? He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. He was having the sort of thoughts most would share if they ever came to what looked like a haunted manor on the fringes of a town that had forgotten it. The place was still, so old but alive as well. Alive in its bowels, stirring with the machinations of so enormous a project, so expensive an outfit; but here, the dust was plastered, the shelves empty and the kitchen cabinets an expression of neglect. He could hear the hum, that oh-so-familiar hum that was a generator, but it was distant and almost sleepy. He went to the door under the stairs. The new door. Fire-rated, should the kindling up here ever go up in flames, the world below would be protected. Is that true, or would the flames start there? In the depths.

            He knocked on the door. It was often as simple as knocking. If you came here, you were usually expected, and Grimwood himself would be standing at that opened door, the stone arcade leading down a set of old stairs that should have been a cellar but was something much grander. Like a terminal to somewhere else. It was what Trevor always thought when he saw the stairs; they didn’t go underground but beyond. Through the liminal to someplace far away, and this place was the threshold. He swallowed, listening behind the door, for footsteps, for voices. But it was just the hum—

            That wasn’t true.

            He heard something shift. Not behind the door, no, but upstairs. It’s an old house. Of course something shifted. The whole upper floor is probably sitting on joists and beams older than your fucking grandpa. He went to the oak balustrade, something that might have once been honey-colored but had bleached and split some with the house’s settling, and he looked up the stairs, the treads cupping, the nosings having mostly split and broken leaving bifurcated splinters. He heard the same noise again, but this time he heard a splash. He was sure of it.

            “Hello?”

            There was no answer. And that settled him. Because he wasn’t sure what he’d say if he did hear one. What he’d say if the house answered him, the way it seemingly watched him as he pulled up. Now you’re just trying to scare yourself. But fear wasn’t confined to childhood. Whatever he was afraid of in the past, it had every power to re-affirm itself now, to sink in its claws while he was alone, while he was already stressed about the position he was in. If his imagination wanted to, it could leave him a cowered mess in the corner with piss in his pants. He knew that. But then he was rational as well, wasn’t he? A scientist, a thinker. A fucking scholar, a best-selling writer.

            “Hello?” he repeated, and this time he did hear water. He was sure of it. From the storm. A leak through the old roof. Drip drip drip. Don’t be a fool, Trevor. Don’t succumb to your basest instincts. He was at the top of the stairs. He’d tested the risers, didn’t even hear a creak to prove his weight; he didn’t even remember making the decision to walk. To climb those stairs. Because that would have meant he was succumbing to whatever this was. Grimwood is messing with you. That’s what this is. Like putting a picture of a dead woman in a few frames of tape. To fuck with you.

            The top hallway had a liner of carpet over the old hardwood, and peeling wallpaper with a myriad of flowers, the surface leavened now and so faded, but he could imagine how striking all of the colors might have once been. He could see water damage on the walls, dark spots like moss, peppering the plaster ceiling, and he could smell the dankness of wet wood. At the end of the corridor a white door stood open. The paint was mostly flaked now and had scaled along the frame and where the central panels were raised. He heard the sloshing current of water, ebbing against a basin’s wall, and he knew something wasn’t right. Now he did. Now he knew he shouldn’t have come upstairs. That this old farmhouse wasn’t just fucking with him, it was pulling from him what he needed to remain calm: his reason, his rationality. He went forward because of the intrigue. Maybe that’s what it all came down to. He was intrigued, and curiosity was a far stronger influence than disbelief. Than trying to forget.

            There was a man standing over the tub, holding a mop, swishing it this way and that as dirty water scooped up over the basin and plashed the linoleum, whose corners were already peeling from the base of the wallpaper. The man wore a dirty jumpsuit, navy blue at one time but now a morose brown that reminded Trevor of earth, of the soil and clay you’d see when you looked into an open grave; he thought he saw a hand clasped to the edge of the tub only to disappear as the force of the mop came in contact, and he could only swallow because this was so familiar. It was. There was a patch on the arm of that jumpsuit, that uniform, sewn on many years ago and lilting now, its original reds and yellows tarnished to mere muted hues of the same earthen brown, but it read: IVY RAURUS. Trevor’s old school. The man stirring the dirty water, the man standing over that tub looking at whatever was drowned inside, eyes wide and whole staring back up, turned to look at Trevor as he wavered dumbfounded in that hallway, wanting to balance himself on either wall but not wanting to touch this place. Not wanting to be infected by it.

            “Hiya, Mr Trevor,” the man said, opening his cracked lips to a leering grin that exposed mossy teeth and black gums, the hint of a roach’s leg disappearing into the murk of his throat as he pulled the mop out of the water and brought a gush of bloody scum onto the lino with a slurp; his eyes were yellow, like ancient parchment, his irises the color of fog over a dim headlamp, and his head seemed misshapen, parts of his skull fragmented beneath the tenebrous flesh that had already rotted at his temples. “What’s got your tongue, Mr Trevor?”

            It was Mr Spigget. The old janitor from his childhood school. From oh-so-long ago, when such things as magic seemed real and the plight of the world, Rachel Carlson’s Blight, were far flung thoughts of people he didn’t care about. This was the thing he used to dream about. The man who knew his name and spoke to him with a compassionate idleness that always seemed like a lie, a cover, a mask for something far meaner, of the thing that murdered his brother, drowned him in a tub, and left the man the slow-gaited state-sponsored retard cleaning up hallways and nodding to the kids. Because he was just a big dumb kid, too. And now he was here. Pulling that mop with him as he stepped out of that wet bathroom, his large boots squishy on the liner, the threads on that mop moving of their own accord, like the snakes on Medusa’s head.

            “Jesus Christ,” Trevor whispered. “You’re not real.” He stumbled back, his legs heavy, the weight of the hall like a vice now, compressing him; he felt the air leave his body in one large gust and he wondered if he would end up in that tub as well, if he would lie side by side with Spigget’s brother. You’re not twelve anymore. Open your eyes and see what’s real. You wrote a book. You traveled the country. You spoke on television. This isn’t you anymore!

            “I’m as real as I evah been, Mr Trevor. An’ ya know something. Ya done fucked up. An’ ya know it too. Hyuk.” He was closer now. So close Trevor thought he could smell him. It. He wasn’t sure. The smell was like a wad of towels that had been in the hamper for too long, the smell of dust and damp, of dryness and moistness; he was a talking contradiction. “Paul Holdren nevah paid them Low Breed. Yup, I’m using Lew’s name for ‘em. Cause Lew, he sent me, he did, yippers. From the Great Beyond where the women ‘re all virgins and the guys’ peckers like forearms.” He smiled and his lip split down the center like a biscuit, showing an awful whiteness beneath the color of squirming maggots. Spigget didn’t seem to notice. “Even ol’ Coriander’s somethin’ to look at up there. A prime piece of ass.” He licked his lip now with an obsidian tongue, the sound like sandpaper on a planed 2x4. “Neck ain’t cork screwed. Robert Wilson ain’t fat, Clayton Miller ain’t bald and he doesn’ have that fucked up thing wid his ears. The ver-ti-go. Ya know. Thomas Halliburton can screw little Ms Darling whenever he likes, but she’s gotta say yes. Aye, consent is big up there, Mr Trevor. And Roger’s there too, yup, and his face is whole again. Ain’t no splatter o’ his brains hangin’ out his hair like drapes. He’s still got his Freddy Lynn pictures with him. Talks about ‘em all the time. Boston fuckin’ royalty, he says.” Spigget laughed and it sounded like ice being scraped. “Holdren never paid them Low Breed, Mr Trevor. But you knew that, didn’ you? I think you did. He holds an ace in his pocket with ‘em all, he does. The devil always has his plan. An’ he’ll hold a match to the gasoline to watch this whole place burn if he has to.”

            “What…whuh—what are you talking about?” Trevor stammered. He was in between real and unbelievable. He knew that. His own voice didn’t sound like it belonged to him, but rather just floated, pre-existed in this place.

            Mr Spigget regarded Trevor with his smoky eyes, like spun white glass. They reminded Trevor now of spider egg sacs beneath a globule of dew. “Ol’ Paul pulls the strings cause you let him. Ya needed him to. Believers are always blinded by their disciples.” Trevor thought that was something he would say. That maybe this whole thing was happening in his head. “Ol’ Peppermint wants what you owe. But he ain’ takin’ no fuckin’ checks. Nah. He’s past that, Mr Trevor. Ya slighted him. He wants blood. Paul has his fall boys. He’ll light the match, Mr Trevor, but ol’ Peppermint will torture your family while you watch them suffer. An’ he’ll drown you last. After ya’ve watched ‘em die. Drown you like I drowned my brother, hyuk.” That last sound, like a hiccupping laugh, nearly ripped the janitor’s throat. Something gargled in his mouth as he stood there, staring blankly at Trevor—

            And something was knocking on his car window. Tap tap tap. He was sitting in the driver seat out back, behind the house, its sunburnt clapboards still imposing, sandwiched between the 50’s trucks on cinders, waves of weeds blowing this way and that in the fall breeze. He was sweating, and he thought he might have pissed himself. Felt like it, but perhaps it was just the heat in here. The engine was off and the Acura was a hot box. He was drenched. He only swallowed.

            Grimwood was standing outside his car, peering in, his eyes condescending and curious. Trevor rolled down the window, wondering the whole time if he’d ever gone in the house. If he’d ever left the car, or if for some reason he’d stayed back and dreamed. He rolled down the window, quenching the cool, fresh air, wanting to gulp at it. Grimwood only smiled his toothsome grin; it was patronizing, chilling, taking him back to the hallway in the upper floor of this place, where his old nightmare had come to life, had spoken to him. But it wasn’t real, Trevor. It wasn’t. Your conflictions about all of this are finding a way out of you. Any way they can. To jar you.

            “I always wondered about you, Writer. Who might find his conscience first? I suspected you would find your way here for that reason. You’re the only one of them with kids.”

            Kids. “You…you were with my son…” He felt awkward talking to the man from inside the car. He opened the door and stretched his legs. “You leave my family the fuck alone.” He thought he sounded commanding, but he saw no reaction in Grimwood’s eyes. Nothing.

            The man in the fedora only looked back at the house. “You’ve all waged a war against Reedy Creek, Mr Kramer. Against me.”

            “That’s not true.”

            “You may recant to me, but that doesn’t change what you’ve done here.” He took a deep breath. Sniffing the air. “Can you smell that? The tension. It’s a sickness. Your council is a Cancer, like what you found in Barbara’s breast. Like what you tried to hide from Mr Holdren so he would not snap her neck in the shower, or shear her brake lines as she took your son for groceries. I don’t know why you’ve come here, Mr Kramer, but if it’s to accuse me of anything, then I would kindly have you leave. If you stay, then you’ve made a choice to join my side. Like your son and his friends. And I will accept your surrender.” He looked at the corn to the north, the endless stream of golden maize as it wavered in the wind. Trevor thought he understood something about Grimwood right then and there, and a part of him knew he’d been in the house, that he’d gone up the stairs and that something had happened. Something. Because the council had opened a door in this town. Had invited an adversary. “We are on the eve of finality, Mr Kramer. It is in the air. The way the wind tastes. Like it did in Normandy or Warsaw, Beirut or Nagasaki; like it does when the hills weep and the ground shudders beneath the boots of combat. Some ideas are dangerous. Some ideas have to be killed at birth.” He looked at Trevor. His eyes stormy, the color of thunderheads, beaded light whispering in his pupils like streaks of lightning. He was at Normandy on D Day; he was in Warsaw when the Nazis stuck Polish Jews in the ghetto; he was at the American Embassy in Beirut in ’83 when it was bombed; and he was standing in Nagasaki’s proper when it was vaporized, breathing in that air, the air of pre-death.

            “Some ideas, Mr Kramer, are born in the shadows and grow to become tyrants.”

5

He saw his boy riding his bike up Main Street and he instantly felt something. Something he hadn’t felt in sometime, and maybe that was because of Grimwood. He’d opened a door somewhere, and for now the memory of his conversation, of what he thought happened after stepping up the splintered stairs toward the tub at the end of the hall, of what he thought an old dead janitor had said to him, was vanishing to the choices he would have to make. It was at that point when he knew what he would do. When he looked at his mistakes and realized he could change them. Lew might have called it his aha moment.

            He pulled up next to Adam and leaned across the passenger seat to roll down the window.

            “Hop in.”

            “Dad?”

            The boy’s cheek was still red. If he stared long enough he might have even seen the mark of his fingers imprinted by Adam’s nose. But for a moment he felt like he shared something with his son. That punishment was something they both required. He pulled over to the curb and climbed out of the car. They were a few blocks north of the school. “You just out for a joyride?”

            Adam only nodded. His pack slung over his shoulder.

            “I’m sorry. About that,” he gestured to his cheek. “I guess we both had to blow off some steam. You were right, though.”

            “About what?”

            Trevor exhaled. He thought this was something Lew would have loved to witness; he would often wonder why it took him this long to make the right choice. He looked at his own father, at his failings, and he could blame the man for how he’d become, but that wasn’t the truth and he knew it. The truth was far simpler. He’d given priority to his convictions. “About everything, Adam. You hungry?”

            “A little.”

            He saw the color return to his son’s face.

            “We could sit down for a burger.”

            “A burger? With you?”

            Now his eyes were lit with wonder.

            Trevor nodded. “Yeah. Throw your bike in the trunk. We can stop off at the Diner. I’ve heard they grill a great slab of bacon.” He opened the trunk and Adam packed his bike. He did it with the joyousness of youth and for a moment Trevor remembered his own childhood; he remembered the freedom from expectation. Because adulthood, his adulthood, was the burden of idealism. Was the burden of breaking the status quo. And that was a lot of pressure. He looked at Adam next to him as the boy clasped his seatbelt. “Never take this time for granted.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Childhood. It goes so fast. You don’t realize what you’ve got while you’re still enjoying it. And then one day you have to make the choices that decide who you are. What you will be. And then you ask yourself if you made the right choices. And you go on and on like that until the decisions you make affect more than just you. Until the decisions you make have you tied…to a chair. There’s one decision I made that I regret the most.” He turned and looked at Adam. The boy’s not just a carbon footprint. He’s not just one more hungry mouth and belly in a world stretching thin of its resources. No, he’s a kid with his own thoughts, with his own ideas. He deserves life just like you do. You cannot make that choice for anybody. How he ever thought he could was a problem he’d have to confront. For now that was a concern for his future. “I decided early on what kind of dad I’d be. And I know what that’s done to you, Adam.”

            Adam only looked down at his lap and fiddled his thumbs together. He was probably embarrassed. He’d unleashed a ton of emotions of late; you couldn’t repress everything. Sooner or later the truth had to come out, and a part of Trevor was thankful for that. Because it forced him out of his bubble.

            “You don’t see me as much of a father. And you’re right. I always wanted to make sense of my convictions. And my biggest mistake is I never made you one of them.” He bit his lip and thought about that for a moment. Adam was silent next to him, still looking down at his hands. His thumbs had stopped dead in their tracks, and now he thought Adam was trying to quash something. He was trying to remain strong. Because he’s always wanted to hear this, ya dipshit. It was Lew’s voice, and Trevor could only smile. “You didn’t make sense to the man I was. The man I was trying to be. The man everyone said I ought to be.” He pulled up to the lot next to the Diner and parked in a spot next to a Chevy pick up. He sat there a moment, his hands still on the steering wheel. He hadn’t turned on the radio. The car was quiet.

            “You…you don’t have to say anything…even if it’s what you think I want to hear,” Adam whispered. He saw his boy quickly wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. He still looked down at his lap.

            “No, it’s something I should have said a long time ago. Your grampa made up for what I lacked, and I thank God you had your time with him. He knew what I wasn’t to you. He reminded me of what I wasn’t every time we spoke. And I hated him for it. But all this time, he was right, Adam.” He touched his son’s shoulder and felt the boy heave a long sob. “Your mother wanted me to be who I could be, and maybe I convinced her after all of these years that I was doing something more important than what I should have been. But we both know that’s not true. I know you’ve spoken to Grimwood.”

            “You…you do?”

            “He told me. And he’s right. You’re right. About this place. What you called a sickness. I can…I think I can feel it now.”

            “That’s the magic, dad. There’s magic here, and it’s getting thin. Thinner.”

            “What do you mean, Adam?”

            “I know you…I know you don’t believe grandma was on that tape…that, maybe Grimwood put her there. I don’t know why he’d do that, but I get it, I get why you’d question it. But she’s a part of the magic. Patty…he could see it. Sense it. I think my friends do too. Or at least they can feel how it’s drying out. I know this is hard to hear, but your…your council is the sickness, dad. It’s why Reedy Creek is breaking.” Adam looked up at Trevor now, his eyes rubbed red but earnest and certain.

            “So who do you think Grimwood is in all of this?”

            “I think…well, I think he’s the gatekeeper. And he’s mad about what’s happening to this place. Because he minds the magic. Takes care of it, I guess. And he wants help.”

            “Yes,” Trevor said, nodding. “He did ask for help. In a way.” He watched a lady and her son walk into the Diner, heard the ding of the entrance. He opened his car door and stepped out into the shade of the restaurant, smelling the burgers cooking as the grille pumped smoke into the alley. Adam climbed out as well. They walked inside and ordered. It was the most normal thing the two of them had done together, just them, in years. And Trevor hated himself for it. Because he’d waited this long. They sat at a booth near the lady and her boy, and Trevor watched them, nodding his head if she ever looked his way. He wanted what they had. He would have to earn it, yes, but he wanted it. Finally.

            “You know what I do, don’t you? I mean, what I’ve written, what’s made me, well, semi-famous?”

            “I know my friends’ dads think you’re a kook.”

            Trevor half-smiled. “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one.” Adam laughed. He took a long sip of his Coke. “Look, I had my beliefs but I didn’t truly live them. I think Lew was putting together that scrapbook for you. He wanted you to know that you’d be safe if he was ever gone. That was his biggest concern. He knew what he was to you, and he knew what I wasn’t. But I think he was convinced I wasn’t always so…aloof. I looked at the book, Adam. He put a lot of effort into making sure there were photos of you as a baby. Patty too. He wrote some nice things under them. I’m not sure if you’ve seen them, but I think you should have a look.”

            The waitress, a pen behind her ear and her dark hair tied up by elastics, dropped off a tray of cheeseburgers and fries. Trevor’s stomach grumbled. He wasn’t often one to indulge an appetite of red meats and saturated fat. For his principles, of course. But today was a day of freedom. Trevor smiled and thanked her. She tipped him a wink and scurried off. He looked up at the camera in the ceiling and wondered if Grimwood was watching this. If the gatekeeper would keep tabs on him to ensure he remained true. You can taste and smell something different in the air. Something you never could before. Adam said it was because you were a part of it. Maybe this means you aren’t anymore.

            “There’s a tape too. Says 1985 on it. That’s something I’ve kept secret for a long time. Something like a reminder for me. We always need to go back for those, the stuff that keeps us humble. Lew…grampa always wanted me to show that tape to you. Said it exposed something about me, something real, that had him convinced I wasn’t a…well, a lost cause.” Trevor took a bite of the burger; mustard and ketchup drizzled down his chin in warm ribbons. “I’m surprised Lew didn’t show it to you. I thought that’s why he asked me for it. And he might have if he didn’t…if grandma didn’t take him away.” Trevor smiled and wiped his chin with a napkin. Adam only stared at him over a fistful of fries. His eyes curious but joyous. “Maybe grampa expected it was my duty, that when I felt it was right, I could show you.”

            “What is it?” Adam asked, his mouth full, his words jumbled.

            “It’s the moment I realized what I really was, Adam. Caught on film. It changed my life. And I thought it was for the worse. I thought it was the end of me. But now, now that we’re here together, that I’ve made some new choices, I think Lew was right. He was always right.” He looked at the camera once more and then at the lady with her little boy; he wondered if she had any dark secrets, something Paul might like to expose and punish her for, a sin she could be reduced to. He saw a brief flash of her body, slumped in that booth, with a word, any word—DRUNK, maybe—scrawled in her blood across her furrowed brow as her glazed eyes stared beyond. “Tomorrow you and I are going to speak to a man named Cole Moore at the Post. After I make a few errands. I’ll tell mom I’m taking you to school. Assuming she’ll talk to me. It’s a start. If we’re meant to fix things, it’s a first step. I don’t want to be the man they think I am anymore.”

6

“I think your father will see it first. Of any of the council.”

            “Why?” Adam had asked, looking at Grimwood with a combination of fear and respect, of wonder and uncertainty.

            “Because he has you.”

            Adam walked into the house. His mom was holding Patty. It looked like she’d been crying since he left. She came rushing to him and hugged him with her free arm. If anything comes of this, bud, at least you can claim your family’s okay. At least your daddy’s back and your mommy cares.

            “Are you okay?” she whispered. She tousled his hair. But he was. He really was. And he didn’t think that would happen. Not after grampa died. He thought that was the end. He’d even told his mother that very fear; that his grampa represented the one buffer against alienation, and though it hurt her, he thought it needed to be said so she understood how he felt.

            “Yeah…yeah, I am, mom. I think dad and I both, I…just think we needed to blow off some steam.”

            His mother smiled and Patty laughed, calling him “Dam-dam.”

            He’d like to ask Pug if this is what it’s like. If this is what it’s like to be normal.

            One day you will take this for granted. You won’t mean to, but if it sticks, if it does, if the promise of family holds, you’ll forget whatever came before Reedy Creek. You will. I don’t know if that’s because of Grimwood, because of the magic, because of what grampa did for you when your father wouldn’t, I don’t, but I hope you recognize what this has meant for you. You could have sailed alone. You thought you would. That you would be lost in the mists of exploration, that whatever you found and opened in Reedy Creek would take you away for good. But you aren’t alone anymore. Remember why that is and the memory of this will survive long enough to remind you that normalcy was hard fought.

            Grampa’s room was dark and dusty, and it still smelled like him. It always would. He walked to the night table and found what his father was talking about. The tape. He sat on the bed and set the scrapbook on his lap. Felt its heft. He opened it to its middle and found pictures of his mom when she was young; he listened to her in the kitchen, mindlessly cleaning up after the service, to keep herself occupied. It was odd to see his mom this way, to see her the way he was now, to think she used to be like him, that she shared his burdens. When you’re a kid you figure your parents are monolithic, that they were always that way. Always a mom. It was a silly thought. He knew that. But it was no less silly to him than picturing his mom and dad at twelve.

            He found a picture of his mom, her belly round, holding her father’s hand. They weren’t posing, and he thought grampa must have snapped the photo without them knowing. Maybe because he was outside at that time, outside of them, outside their normal.

Barb with baby number one. The greatest reason she would ever keep me in her life.

            And then he found a picture of his dad. He’d never seen it before. These were all from grampa’s private stash. His dad was holding him in the hospital. Adam’s face was scrunched up in a cry, little bushels of hair tufted from his head, but his father was smiling, cradling his neck with a gentle hand. He could feel it even now, the way his dad took his shoulder in the car outside the Diner. He didn’t know the word, but it was sublime, that feeling, that connection.

This is when Trevor became a husband, became my son-in-law, became a father. When he became something other than himself.

            He closed the book. It was a sudden onslaught of awakenings, to learn it wasn’t always one way, to learn there were roots where your existence actually mattered, and he wondered if that was what his grampa was trying to prove. If his grampa had a hand in this from the very start. You think he died so your father would become this man again, this man from the picture, this guardian? Maybe, maybe not. Reedy Creek had seen far stranger things, he thought, and it would likely soon see far more. But family always meant everything to grampa. Everything. He touched his pocket where the pack of unopened cigarettes bulged and he wondered if this totem was left to be found, was left in Patty’s closet so he’d come across the pack and hold it like he was now. To always keep a part of his grampa close.

            “Okay grampa. Let’s see some more of your magic,” he said, putting the book back on the shelf and grabbing the VHS tape. His voice sounded eerily hollow in the room, and a part of him expected an answer; he expected his grampa to forfeit this ruse and jump out of the closet with a gotcha and ask how nice it was to have a conversation with his father over burgers. But there was nothing. And he knew there wouldn’t be.

            He took the tape to his room and closed the door. What changed your dad from the man in that picture, the man holding you as you were just born, the man so hopeful for you and of your future, into the man who ignored you, the man who avoided you, the man who nearly got you killed?

            He thought if a man was going to hold onto his shame, to retain a low point to keep him humble, then it would prove by its very nature that it was a pivot, a turning point.

            He pressed play. His father was on an opulent stage standing across from another man, both behind ornately dressed podiums; the superimposed text beneath, like something from a ball game, read: Is Man Good, or is Man a Blight? Harvard Debate Series. His father’s name was briefly there as he spoke. He was saying the things he always did, the things Adam never understood, the things that were so unquestionably rooted in disdain, the things written in his book that had his friends understandably concerned. The moderator had said: “Your closing statement, Mr Woods.”

            And the image switched to a close-up of the other man, an economist, who shuffled some paper and stared at his competitor. Not with contempt but concern.

            You know what this is. This is when daddy was on TV. When mommy watched, and she was just starting to show, had just told daddy she was expecting baby number two, and he was happy then, too, wasn’t he? He was happy just like in that photo, smiling and teary-eyed. This is when it changed. He was always your daddy, but work was busy and he was always away. But he had time to talk to you. To ask about your day. But after this he didn’t. After this he was just a version of himself, and he felt a little like this town, he felt a little thin and waning. He felt sick.

            “Mr Kramer, you are a writer. And you are a good one. I have read your book, and I have listened to your arguments, and what you’ve stated this evening has sounded plausible because of your verbal flourish. I commend you on that because articulation is an admirable approach to sell an idea. And that is what you are: a salesman. In the market of ideas, one has to find a catch to ensure that his good is stocked on the shelves; your capital is your vocabulary and your ability to spin a yarn. But your idea, Mr Kramer, is what I like to call Phlogiston. Do you know what that is?”

            There was a moment of silence, when the camera quickly panned to Trevor, who only watched. Adam could see something like confusion in his father’s eyes.

            “Phlogiston was once thought to be the driving force, or reason, for combustion. It was believed to be released from a combustible, like wood or metal. We know this is not true, of course, that there was nothing inherent to a combustible that would presume its ignition, no, it was oxidation, but this theory remained for over a hundred years. So I’ve turned phlogiston into a catchall to explain why a salesman can convince his readers that man and progress is any sort of blight; because it’s easy to use words like rape, consumption, corruption, colonization to explain man’s march forward in his dominion over nature. You have explained our innovation as a zero-sum game at the benefit of very few men, and at the detriment of earth’s bounty. These are your words, and they are poetic, if you’ll excuse my license to borrow them. But they are phlogiston, Mr Kramer. Empty. Hollow. The words of a man who doesn’t believe in the product he is selling. You are selling the idea that man is overpopulating the world, that we have to mandate regulations on the birthrate, that we will outgrow the supply of resources meant to benefit us. But you don’t believe this. You don’t believe in what you’ve written. Catholic priests take a vow of chastity in their role as intercessors, because they believe in the Word of God. You, a man challenging the very persistence of our species, who has proceeded to argue for a birth tax and ledger to allot one new life for every life lost, to facilitate some sort of balance in incoming and outgoing traffic, have a son and are expecting another baby. Is this true? Do the rules not apply to you, or do you simply just not believe in your own theory?”

            There was silence in that hall. Adam could hear the audience breathing. And he looked at his dad. He was waiting for an answer, like everybody, but he knew his father wouldn’t give one. He knew because this was when he resented Adam the most; the moment Adam was used against him while he was doing what he loved. When he was defending his convictions. This was when his father was given a choice: Is Fatherhood Good, or is it a Blight?

            “Mr Kramer?” the moderator asked.

            His father didn’t respond. Because there was nothing left to say.

            Grampa wanted you to watch this so you could see you always came first. Before his theories, his work, it was you. And when your dad realized that, when he realized his work and fatherhood were not compatible, that people would call his bluff, he made a choice to fix who he was. And that choice led you here. Brought grampa here. Reedy Creek starts here, at this very moment for you; this is where the sickness starts and it’s up to you to change that.

            Adam took the cassette that read 1985 and he pulled out the tape from its reels, snapping it into flayed ribbons. He thought of his father’s dumb silence. His eyes frozen, understanding he had no more defenses. He stared at the black stock dangling, unwatchable, unusable, and he fought the urge to stomp on the cassette. To drive his heel into the hard plastic. But he set it down instead.

            “You will have to be prepared, Adam. If you are with me. If you help me, very bad things will have to happen.”

            “Like what?” Adam had asked.

            “Reedy Creek will have to burn,” Grimwood answered. “It can only be saved by chaos.”

            “Why?”

            “Because our enemy will not recognize peace.”