She cupped her hand behind the dying rabbit’s head, and gently brought its crusted black mouth to hers. “Thank you,” Evie whispered, and let it be quiet.
5
One benefit of living in this particular corner of Appalachia was that you could afford a decent-sized home on two government salaries. The Norcross home was a three-bedroom contemporary in a development of similar houses. The houses were handsome, spacious without being grotesque, had lawns adequate for playing catch, and views that, in the green seasons, were lush, hilly, and leafy. What was a little depressing about the development was that even at reduced prices almost half of its rather attractive houses were empty. The demonstrator home at the top of the hill was the one exception; that one was kept clean and shiny and furnished. Lila said it was just a matter of time before a meth-head broke into it and tried to set up shop. Clint had told her not to worry, he knew the sheriff. In fact, they had a semi-regular thing.
(“She’s into old guys?” Lila had replied, batting her eyes and pressing herself to his hip.)
The upstairs of the Norcross house contained the master bedroom, Jared’s room, and a third bedroom, which the two adults used as a home office. On the first floor the kitchen was wide and open, separated from the family room by a counter bar. At the right side of the family room, behind closed French doors, was their little-used dining room.
Clint drank coffee and read the New York Times on his iPad at the kitchen bar. An earthquake in North Korea had caused an untold number of casualties. The North Korean government insisted that the damage was minor due to “superior architecture,” but there was cell phone footage of dusty bodies and rubble. An oil rig was burning in the Gulf of Aden, probably as a result of sabotage, but no one was claiming responsibility. Every country in the region had done the diplomatic equivalent of a bunch of boys who knock out a window playing baseball and run home without looking back. In the New Mexico desert the FBI was on day forty-four of its standoff with a militia led by Kinsman Brightleaf (nee Scott David Winstead Jr.). This happy band refused to pay its taxes, accept the legality of the Constitution, or surrender its stockpile of automatic weapons. When people learned that Clint was a psychiatrist, they often entreated him to diagnose the mental diseases of politicians, celebrities, and other notables. He usually demurred, but in this instance he felt comfortable making a long-distance diagnosis: Kinsman Brightleaf was suffering from some kind of dissociative disorder.
At the bottom of the front page was a photo of a hollow-faced young woman standing in front of an Appalachian shack with an infant in her arms: “Cancer in Coal Country.” This made Clint recall the chemical spill in a local river five years ago. It had caused a week-long shutdown of the water supply. Everything was supposedly fine now, but Clint and his family stuck to bottled drinking water just to be sure.
Sun warmed his face. He looked out toward the big twin elm trees at the back of the yard, beyond the edge of the pool deck. The elms made him think of brothers, of sisters, of husbands and wives—he was sure that, beneath the ground, their roots were mortally entwined. Dark green mountains knuckled up in the distance. Clouds seemed to be melting on the pan of the fair blue sky. Birds flew and sang. Wasn’t it a hell of a shame, the way good country got wasted on folks. That was another thing that an old wag had told him.
Clint liked to believe it wasn’t wasted on him. He had never expected to own a view like this one. He wondered how decrepit and soft he’d have to grow before it made sense, the good luck that some people got, and the bad luck that saddled others.
“Hey, Dad. How’s the world? Anything good happening?”
Clint turned from the window to see Jared stroll into the kitchen zipping up his backpack.
“Hold on—” He flicked through a couple of electronic pages. He didn’t want to send his son off to school with an oil spill, a militia, or cancer. Ah, just the thing. “Physicists are theorizing that the universe might go on forever.”
Jared pawed through the snack cabinet, found a Nutribar, stuck it in his pocket. “And you think that’s good? Can you explain what you mean?”
Clint considered for a second before he realized that his son was busting his balls. “I see what you did there.” As he looked over at Jared he used his middle finger to scratch at his eyelid.
“You don’t have to be shy about this, Dad. You have son-father privilege. It all stays between us.” Jared helped himself to the coffee. He took it black, the way Clint used to when his stomach was young.
The coffeemaker was near the sink, where the window opened on to the deck. Jared sipped and took in the view. “Wow. Are you sure you should leave Mom here alone with Anton?”
“Please go,” Clint said. “Go to school and learn something.”
His son had grown up on him. “Dog!” had been Jared’s first word, spoken so that it rhymed with brogue. “Dog! Dog!” He had been a likable boy, inquisitive and well-intentioned, and he had developed into a likable young man, still inquisitive and well-intentioned. Clint took pride in how the safe, secure home they had provided Jared had allowed him to become more and more himself. It hadn’t been like that for Clint.
He had been toying with the idea of giving the kid condoms, but he didn’t want to talk to Lila about it and he didn’t want to encourage anything. He didn’t want to be thinking about it at all. Jared insisted he and Mary were just friends, and maybe Jared even believed it. Clint saw how he looked at the girl, though, and it was the way you looked at someone you wanted to be your very, very close friend.
“Little League Shake,” Jared said, and held out his hands. “You still know it?”
Clint did: bump fists, pop and lock thumbs, twist hands, smooth down the palms, then clap them together twice overhead. Though it had been a long time, it went perfectly, and they both laughed. It put a shine on the morning.
Jared was out and gone before Clint remembered that he was supposed to tell his son to take out the trash.
Another part of getting older: you forgot what you wanted to remember, and remembered what you wanted to forget. He could be the old wag that said that. He should get a pillow stitched with it.
6
Having been on Good Report for sixty days, Jeanette Sorley had common room privileges three mornings a week, between eight and nine in the morning. In reality that meant between eight and eight fifty-five, because her six-hour shift in the carpentry shed began at nine. There she would spend her time inhaling varnish through a thin cotton mask and turning out chair legs. For this she made three dollars an hour. The money went into an account that would be paid to her by check when she got out (inmates called their work accounts Free Parking, like in Monopoly). The chairs themselves were sold in the prison store across Route 17. Some went for sixty dollars, most for eighty, and the prison sold a lot of them. Jeanette didn’t know where that money went, and didn’t care. Having common room privileges, though, she did care about. There was a big TV, boardgames, and magazines. There was also a snack machine and a soda machine that only worked on quarters, and inmates did not have quarters, quarters were considered contraband—Catch-22!—but at least you could window-shop. (Plus, the common room became, at appointed times of the week, the visitors’ room, and veteran visitors, like Jeanette’s son, Bobby, knew to bring lots of quarters.)