Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Two Flash Fictions

1. The End Of The Affair.

"I told you we weren't meant for each other."

"How could you say such a thing?" The finality of her expression brought him to the edge of tears. "You're beautiful, I'm brilliant. We can't stand to be apart and everyone loves us together!"

She threw a glance over her shoulder as her bedroom door creaked. "Not everyone."

She put both hands to the top of the window sash and jerked it down. It barely missed his fingers as he allowed himself to fall the eighteen feet to the street below.

---

2. Policy Decision.

"Behold!" He spread his hands.

I burst into applause. "Jolly well done!"

He smiled, obviously pleased with Himself. "Yes, rather. The last batch were so long ago, I wasn't sure I remembered how."

Yet even when the winds of His power had quieted, the bipeds continued to scatter about the Garden. The animals fled them as if gripped by fear. Had this been part of His intention?

"Lord, was this the way you wanted it?"

His eyebrows rose. "Oh, didn't I mention? This lot will need room to grow, so I gave them the ability to move about on their own. No restrictions."

"But... but soon they'll be everywhere!"

He nodded and cast a fond eye over His newest creatures. "Afraid so, Michael. Made in My image, just like you and yours. But you'll keep a good eye on them for Me, won't you?"

"Uh, yes, Lord."

Bother!

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Names

(Possibly the hardest of all fictional feats is to retell a classic story -- a genuinely great and inspiring story -- in a fresh, original fashion that's truly your own.

The following story is the one of which I'm proudest. I doubt I'll ever write a better one. Consider it my Christmas gift to you, in this year of Our Lord 2005.)

---

Census has always been an irritant. There are many -- I am one -- who feel it to be intrusive, however necessary it might be. And the costs, both to the government and to the individuals it enumerates, should not be discounted.

I have the trust of certain highly placed persons. Because of my reputation for thoroughness and integrity, at the outset of the last two censuses, the tetrarch has assigned me the supervision of a district. I took advantage of this to tell him of the grumblings the census causes. On the first occasion he assured me that the complaints I heard were the braying of asses, nothing more. Census had never caused a revolt and would cause none. This last time he was slower to respond.

On my way back to Jerusalem with my tallies, I decided to take lodging at a country inn rather than travel through the night. The proprietors knew me from previous encounters. Well that it was so, for there was only one room left and a goodly throng clamoring for it. I tried to be unobtrusive about securing it for myself, but a few noticed and protested as vigorously as their fatigue would allow. To avert the disturbance, I slipped out of the common room as quickly and quietly as I could. When I'd divested myself of my bags, I descended the back stairs to wander the hills until my mind had quieted enough to allow me to sleep.

A census marshal has absolute authority over the procedures to be used in his district. Knowing the popular sentiment, I took the inconveniences upon myself. I went from town to town, consulting with local magistrates and figures of prominence, and took the count without requiring anything of the people save their names.

The local officials were always glad to see me go. What would be required of them and their neighbors afterward, of course, was money. Census is always about money: how many folk there are, and how prosperous, and what levy can be exacted of them without provoking an insurrection.

By the size and surliness of the throng on the roads that day, and at the inn, I knew I was passing through a district whose marshal was not so kindly disposed. As the law permitted, he'd ordered the people to come to him. He'd imposed enormous discomfort upon every man of that region, rather than burden himself with the dust and expense of my sort of circuit.

It was not a happy place.

In passing through a crowd, I am forever speculating. Which among these, I ask myself, is known to his neighbors as a person of substance? Which is reviled for his indulgences, or held in contempt for his dissolution? Which among them is known outside his village, and why? Which of them will become known? Which of them, by dint of deeds mighty or monstrous, will climb to stand on the shoulders of history? Which will change our world?

Usually it's a way of passing the dreary times, no more.

The day had provided me with copious fodder. There was an old man in a dirty samite robe, stooped nearly double from years of toil, who leaned so heavily upon his staff as he walked that I feared it might break beneath him. Yet when his wife addressed him in a manner he disapproved, he straightened like a spring suddenly unbound and struck her across the face with that same staff, to send her to the ground bleeding and blubbering. There was a merchant, a large, solid man in a rich cloak of gabardine, who intervened uninvited in a loud dispute between a traveler and a street peddler, to counsel them to moderation. They turned their wrath from one another to him, hurling the foulest of epithets into his face until he left them to resume their profitless quarrel. There was a tall youth of perhaps twenty, with a face of chiselled perfection and a body like unto the Greeks' statues of their gods. He strode smiling through the world as if he owned everything in it, and all marveled at his beauty as he passed. Yet when a raddled old harlot beckoned to him in terms too vulgar even to think them onto this page, he did not respond with derision or scorn. He stopped and went to her, spoke to her softly, pressed a coin into her hand, and passed on.

Of which of these would I hear again? Any? None?

Even if it should happen, I would not know. I did not know their names. My acquaintance with names was a professional one, confined to the tallies I carried in my saddlebags.

The Sun had dropped below the horizon, and the hills were growing cold. The traffic on the road to the city had dwindled to nothing. Outside the inn, the stragglers for whom there was no accommodation crouched and huddled against its southern wall, making what provisions they could for a night of unplanned exposure. In the near distance a shepherd surrendered his staff to his son and trudged back to his hovel for an evening meal.

Movers? Shakers? Doers of mighty deeds? Icons of superlative virtue or courage?

Not likely.

Even those acclaimed as such by the world often struck me as persons elevated to their stations by blind chance, rather than merit. One night, deep in his cups, a patrician of my acquaintance admitted as much to me. He called his chamberlain a more able man by far. In a better world, he allowed, their positions would have been reversed. I agreed, though I forebore to say so.

I passed no judgments. I was no mover nor shaker. I was a functionary, an industrious keeper of tablets with a gift for inspiring confidence in those of higher station, nothing more. No deed of mine would disturb the world's slumbers. My name would not be recorded in an annal of greatness nor praised from a tall tower.

There was some comfort in it.

The night grew cold. The clouds receded from the southern sky, and the stars brought their pale glory to that humblest of places. I headed back to the inn, with no thoughts but of a mug of mead and an early bed.

A faint commotion arose as I passed the stables. The doors were closed, of course, but human sounds issued from within. I stopped and laid my ear against the wind-worn wood. A woman was panting with increasing urgency. A male voice murmured repeated exhortations to courage.

It climaxed with a great cry, followed by a lesser one: the unmistakable wail of a newborn child. The tallies for that district would be augmented by one.

One what? Shepherd? Peddler? Laborer? Surely not a rich merchant, whose hands would flow with gold and whose path would be strewn with obsequies lifelong. Surely not a prince of the realm, whose stern gaze and unblinking eye would strike fear into lesser men and command them to instant obedience. Not a mover nor a shaker. Such were not born in stables.

I swung back the stable door and slipped inside. No one noticed.

There were only the three: man, woman, and child. A single frail candle burned against the back wall of the stable, casting their silhouettes at me like inverted shadows. The woman had wrapped the baby in a loose cocoon of white muslin, leaving only its head exposed, and was laying it in the feed-trough that stood between the rows of stalls. She straightened, stepped back, and wordlessly collapsed into the man's arms.

Around the little tableau, the horses were silent.

I stepped forward, started to address the couple, and stopped. He cradled her in his lap, his arms tight about her, his face ablaze with uxorious devotion. Her eyes, large and luminous, were fixed upon her new child.

It took all my strength to produce a voice. "Do you... require anything?"

Her gaze remained locked upon her child. He assessed me with a glance and nodded with a certainty I could not help but envy.

"Some water, perhaps."

I nodded and started for the inn, but something held me. I bent to the feed-trough, pulled the muslin back from the tiny face and looked into it, not knowing why or what I hoped to see.

The baby's eyes were open.

The eyes of the newborn are never open.

They were large, and dark, yet filled with the light of a million stars, and more knowledge than I had seen in the eyes of any man, high or low. They held recognition and regal acceptance.

I know you for what you are, that infant gaze said. Without knowing, you have sought me, and now I have come for you, and for all those like you. The humble and the just. Though you know not my name, though it be the least of the tallies for this census, and not even one of yours, when you hear it you will know it at once. On a day not far off I shall summon you, and instruct you in the ways of truth and righteousness, and together we will awaken this weary world to a dawn of hope.

The eyes closed. I stood and backed away.

"I'll fetch water," I whispered. Neither husband nor wife stirred. I slipped out of the stable and closed the door behind me.

The common room of the inn was crowded and painfully noisy. There were far too many folk there for its size. Servants moved quickly through the room with mugs, plates and coarse blankets, stumbling here and there, receiving muttered thanks or none at all. I stood at the arch to the kitchen and waited to be noticed.

"Is there water?"

A young girl turned away from the pot she was stirring and looked up at a portly man tending a large oven. He nodded. She filled an ewer from a dip well and presented it to me in both hands. I took it and thanked her.

"There's a couple in the stables..."

The man nodded. "We know."

"She's given birth."

"Is she well? And her baby?"

"I think so."

He took a loaf from a high shelf and brought it to me. "We haven't much left. The first harvest won't be soon enough for me. But we do what we can, as little as that may be."

I smiled. "It will serve."

He nodded and returned to his labors.

The family in the stable was as I had left it. The child was asleep. The man accepted the bread and water with grave thanks. He was dividing it with his wife as I left them.

We all do what we can. For some that is more than for others, but no effort is to be shirked. I was far from my place of resource, but that did not excuse me from my portion.

What of the child in the manger? What would his portion be?

I had met a great one at last. A king of kings, one whose proper place would be at the head of every table.

I hoped I might live to see him rise to his estate, but if I did not, it would be of little moment. I had seen him enter the world. That would be enough.

Jerusalem was a day's ride away. The next day I delivered the census rolls, and remarked again to the tetrarch how noisome and costly the census had proved, not for myself but for the least among his subjects. He thanked me with his usual courtesy, well beyond that owed to a lowly recordsmith, and bade me return to my usual duties. But each day since then I have remembered the child, and wondered what his name, the name I would know as I heard it, would prove to be.

-- The End --

Saturday, October 01, 2005

The Sport

(This one is a baseball story. I’ve always been a competition fiend. I’ll watch just about any sport. I’ve played quite a few as well. When men test themselves against one another, they rise to their highest heights. It’s always worth respectful attention. But meaningful competition depends on more factors than a ball, a playing field, and a set of agreed-upon rules. Some athletes don’t understand that quite as well as the fans who pay out good cash money to watch them cavort.)

You've gotta love 'em. They're the biggest bunch of crybabies, narcissists, and all-around scum you could find this side of a coke dealers' convention, but they think we're the worst vultures and fiends in creation. Miss one syllable of theirs, and they scream about being misquoted. Quote 'em accurately, and they yell about being taken out of context. If you catch one of 'em doing somebody a favor, you can be sure the favor's owed. If you catch him treating someone with what looks like respect, you can bet the debt is money. Big money.

Money's the only thing that gets their undivided attention. Which is why, when I spotted one who didn't seem to care about money, he got mine.

Truth be told, he would have gotten it anyway.

They have to register their contracts; it's league and union policy. The union is protecting its CBA, and the league is enforcing its salary arbitration system. The rule couldn't be tougher if they had an actual cap. And there has to be a contract. The date on the contract is what determines eligibility to play.

It's not unusual for a new guy to get the minimum. Hell, I wouldn't complain about it; the minimum is twelve times what I get for more or less honest work. A thirty-seven year old no-name should count himself lucky to get a shot at the majors, even with a going-nowhere expansion team like the Olympians. But when June starts to fade and the guy is 14-0 with twelve complete games, a no-hitter, and a 0.31 ERA, and he's still getting the minimum, you start thinking about alien invasions and sanity hearings.

And feature articles. Not Page One above the fold, but top, front and center of the Sports section, with your byline in bold, and serious prospects for TV spots and panel shows.

Not only was he getting the minimum salary permitted to a major leaguer under the CBA; he wasn't spending it. The money never hit his checking account at the team's bank.

As far as I knew, I was the only hack who'd noticed. I had to conceal the discovery. I wanted an interview with Conrad Bearing -- who didn't -- and the money angle was my crowbar, but I had to let him know what I knew without spilling it to my competitors.

We are a bunch of vultures. Vultures that will snatch up meat that's still breathing, if there's no carrion to be had.

With reporters all over him before and after every game, I had to slip him the hook in a way the others wouldn't snag. It was going to be a challenge. But if I couldn't find a way, I wouldn't get the scoop.

I wouldn't deserve it.

***

He didn't finish his fifteenth, but he won it. It would have been a shutout, but the reliever gopher-balled the Twins' number-one RBI man with one out in the ninth. Still, 4-1 wins just as well as 4-0, and the reliever got the earned run. Bearing's ERA was down to 0.30, and his statistics were screaming Cy Young and MVP. It would be the first time ever in the history of the sport, but if he finished the season the way he'd started it, no one in America could deny it to him.

The usual horde was besieging him. I was part of it. As he dressed, he answered the shouted questions, no matter how pointed or personal, the same way he always had: with silence and a shake of the head. He didn't look up but twice, both times with the same stony face he showed to opposing batters from the mound. His teammates, knowing they wouldn't get two seconds' worth of any of us while he was around, faded away without a word.

I'm used to pro ballplayers. I know why they all look older than their ages. But I'd never gotten over how old he looked. You could have convinced me that he was fifty. His hair was solid gray, his face was deeply lined, and I'd swear he had liver spots on his hands. He was fit and trim at six feet and one-eighty, but there was a suggestion of a stoop to him, even when he sat, that suggested that just maybe, the years on his face weren't just from sun and wind.

The other hacks were half-crazy. None of them had turned up the first thing about him. They knew his name, and his face, and his incredible pitching, but not one damned thing more. He saw no one but his teammates, and them only in the locker room, the dugout, and the clubhouse. He made no phone calls and received no mail. Nothing about him had turned up on the Web. Despite offers in six and seven figures for the beginning of a clue to who he was and how he'd risen from nothing to the top pitcher in the game -- in the history of the game -- no one had stepped forward with the smallest morsel of fact about him.

A man who arrives at training camp as a free agent, has never played pro ball before, then wins fifteen consecutive starts in sixty games has no business being anonymous. Maybe he wasn't doing it to spite us, but that was the effect it was having. At first, they just wanted to know who he was. Now they wanted to get him.

I had him. It was time to land him.

I held my tongue until the rest of the pack had stopped baying. I wasn't going to shout. Not likely he would hear me clearly over the rest, even if I did shout. But if I waited until the din died down a touch, and caught him looking my way, I could mouth what I had to say. Eyes like his would catch it.

They did.

His eyes caught mine. He looked about as if he were still attending to the others, but never more than a few degrees off our personal line of contact. I stayed stock still, hung back as unobtrusively as I could until the locker room cleared. The five seconds before the door swung shut behind the last of my colleagues were the longest of my life.

He turned to face me squarely, clapped his hands against his thighs, leaned forward and murmured, "What was that about my salary?"

Even his voice sounded old. I looked him in the eye. "You've barely spent the first dollar of it."

"And you know this...how?"

I smiled and said nothing.

He grimaced. "What are you angling for?"

"A scoop, of course."

He looked away. His hands clenched, relaxed, and clenched again.

"All right," he said. "You get an interview. Twenty minutes, right here and now. But strictly about baseball. Nothing personal. And only on the condition that you stop looking into my private affairs, permanently."

He sat back, plainly expecting me to start into a conventional sports interview. When I shook my head, his face fell.

"Then what do you want?" he said.

"The same thing everyone wants: to know who you are and where you came from. To know where you got that fastball, that curve and that control. To know where you're headed next, since a pitcher that good isn't going to stay with an expansion team for the minimum two years running." I pulled my cassette recorder out of my jacket and pushed the RECORD button. "Give me that if you want me to lay off your finances and your miser's ways."

He glared at me as if I'd hit a grand slam off him the inning before. I just smiled. But my smile faded when he chuckled.

"I don't know which of us is more ridiculous," he said. "You for overplaying such a weak hand, or me for taking you seriously. You lose. Take your best shot and we'll see what you can learn on your own hook. I won't try to stop you."

He rose, hefted his duffel, and left me there gaping at his back.

***

Yes, sports hacks socialize. Professionally, we'd cut each other's throats given half a chance, but we can be pals after curfew. After all, who wants to drink alone?

The Tenth Inning was its usual noisy post-game self. No major-leaguers, but a few triple-As and the customary swarm of collectors and jock itches. Most of them were there in the hope that a utility infielder might wander in, susceptible to a plea for an autograph or the offer of a bed partner. The hacks were there...well, why were we ever there? It was the boozery nearest the stadium, and we all had expense accounts, so why go anywhere else?

Besides, there was always a chance he might wander in, even if he never had before.

"What gets me," Mitch Rainier said, "is the endorsements."

"What endorsements?" Cal Martinez said. "He won't even do a no-lines spot for a soft drink."

"Right." Mitch flashed his one-sided grin. "Fifteen-and-oh with the All-Star break still three weeks away, he could probably pull down twenty million in spots this year alone, but none of the flacks have gotten within a county of him. The doormen at his hotels are all given instructions to pitch them into the street."

He's not interested in money, I thought. But why else does anyone play this game?

"He won't keep them at bay forever," Martinez said. "They'll hook him. They hook everybody sooner or later. Who was the last big guy said he wouldn't do a spot for anything?"

"Guidry," I said.

Martinez nodded. "And they got him, didn't they? They used a Cause. Once they found out he had a thing for dogs, he was meat on the table."

"So," I said, "if they find out he has a soft spot for dogs, or old buildings, or alcohol-soaked hacks, they've got him, eh?"

"Right. Of course," Martinez said, grinning, "that first step is a doozy." He hefted his glass and squinted down into it. "Who buys the next round?"

I was about to own up when Floyd Whiggins slouched through the front door. He scanned the bar, saw us and headed for us, and I nodded in his direction.

"He does."

***

Bearing was Torre's immediate choice to start the All-Star Game. It's not like he had to think hard about it.

The Olympians wouldn't have anyone else on the squad, but their star was enough for the whole league. Everyone in America wanted to see him pitch. Hell, there were hacks advocating rescinding the rule against more than three innings per pitcher just to see what he could do against the National League's finest.

Thing is, he didn't want to play at all.

Day after Torre announced his picks, Bearing made his first phone call that year. Hell, maybe the first of his life. He called Torre and asked to be removed from the squad, completely.

I hear the call lasted for nearly an hour. Torre finally persuaded him to play. It was close, but that's why Joe's a great manager. The manager's job is to get your lazy ass onto the field and goose it into performing no matter how sick or tired or hungover you might happen to be, and Joe is the best manager in the game. Ask any of the primadonnas he's had to coddle.

The game was special. First baseball game ever to out-draw a Super Bowl, and Conrad Bearing was the reason. Two days before, he'd won his twentieth straight game. Another complete game shutout.

He sauntered out to the mound as if he had nothing much to do that day, just crank up the windmill, throw a few balls, then go back to Spokane, win, lose, or draw. But I'd caught a glint in his eye and a hard line along his jaw as he warmed up. He wasn't happy to be there, but as long as he was, he was going to show us his best.

I didn't know that we hadn't yet seen his best.

The National League owns all the slugging records these days. They grow 'em big over there. But they also grow 'em quick. Every man in their starting lineup had an average of .320 or better. Some of those guys could hit Nolan Ryan's best fastball all the way to Paris.

Bearing peered in at Alec Altman -- .365, 22 homers, 76 RBI -- and whipped a fastball past him that practically fried the Jugg gun. It was right down the cock, a perfect hitter's pitch, but it clocked in at 115 miles per hour. Altman's mouth sagged open and he called for time. The ump, whose mouth sagged just as loosely, gave it to him. It didn't help.

Bearing threw two more whizzers, same place, same scorching speed. Altman swung at the last one, God knows why. Up went the thumb.

He threw three curves to Edgar Kretgen. Real yellow hammers. All three looked to be high and away. All three nicked the low-inside corner of the zone. Another thumb.

Juan Gottfried came to the plate holding his bat like a truncheon. A lot of the pre-game chatter had been about whether he could handle Bearing. He'd blasted the best pitchers in the NL all year long: thirty-six homers in eighty-one games. It seemed they could only keep the ball in the park by plunking him, and a lot of them did. His glower said he knew he had something to prove. He practically dared Bearing to throw at him.

Bearing didn't take the bait. He cocked and threw, and I gasped.

The ball seemed to float through the air like a dirigible. It was the fattest-looking pitch I'd ever seen. I was certain Gottfried would put it into orbit.

Just as it closed on the plate, the ball sank three feet. Gottfried missed it by two.

Bearing threw two more, and Gottfried could come no closer.

Nine pitches, three strikeouts.

He did it again in the second inning, and once more in the third. When he stepped off the mound at the end of his stint, the thunder could have cracked the world.

He looked up at the stands, and his face, for three innings a stone mask, melted into a sunny, boyish smile. He doffed his cap and waved, and the applause seemed to redouble.

When the hacks went looking for him after the game, he was nowhere to be found. Torre told us he'd left the stadium as soon as he was off the mound, and caught an early flight back to Spokane.

***

The Olympians weren't going anywhere. Expansion teams never do, Their team batting average never broke .220, and they didn't have a certified power hitter anywhere in their lineup. Their fielding was no better. Except for their star, their pitching frankly stank. Only Conrad Bearing could get them near to respectability, and he only played one game in four.

But every game, they played before a capacity crowd. Only the size of their piddly-ass beer-baron's stadium limited their gate. They could have packed the Grand Canyon.

It wasn't dreams of the postseason. It wasn't that there'd been an untapped market for baseball in the Pacific Northwest. It wasn't clever marketing or promotional days. It was Conrad Bearing. Whether he was slated to be on the mound or not, the people of Spokane wanted to be near him.

The hacks and the flacks continued to pursue him. There wasn't a reporter in the game who wouldn't have sold his children into slavery for five minutes of his time. There wasn't a corporation in America that wouldn't have given him a controlling interest for five words of praise for their products...and a replay of that All-Star smile.

He kept taking the mound every fourth day. He kept winning. He was even more unhittable after the All-Star break than before it. Game after game, he mowed down the American League's best as if they were toddler league scrubs. But the smile never returned.

I could learn no more about him. None of us could. Not that any of my colleagues would have shared even the smallest tidbit. Hell, just learning whether he liked his socks to be wool or nylon would have been a million-dollar scoop. It didn't matter. He revealed nothing, and no one could unearth anything. All we knew of him was his name and his prowess on the mound.

For the sportswriters, it was an agony of agonies. For the city of Spokane and baseball fans the world around, it was more than enough.

***

The season is long. Players tire, even the ones who keep up their conditioning regimens and scrupulously avoid the bars and the Baseball Annies. It's simple physics. We all knew that Bearing had to lose a game eventually.

Except that he didn't.

He won his thirtieth straight game on August 8: his second no-hitter. He threw not a single gopher ball. His ERA sank to 0.28. From the All-Star Game onward, he was never taken off the mound before the end of the game.

He just kept on, looking as strong or stronger each day than the previous one. And the crowds kept flocking to see him.

Fans have always preferred free-hitting games. There's more color to them. More seems to be going on. Paradoxically, because they demand less attention, they hold your attention better. The history of the game seems to bear it out. Back in the late Sixties, when hitting was on the skids and titans like McLain and Gibson ruled the field from the mound, attendance and viewership hit their postwar lows. So why did this unhittable pitcher command such adulation and love? Wasn't he doing exactly what the fans should have resented: taking the action out of the game?

I couldn't fathom it, any more than I could fathom him.

He kept accepting the minimum, and none of it ever reached his checking account.

***

Bearing was scheduled to start against the Angels on the last day of the season. His record stood at 40-0. He hadn't allowed an earned run since late July. As usual, the stands of Olympus Field were packed.

As he took the mound, Cal Martinez nudged me and murmured, "Think he'll go out undefeated?"

"What else would you expect?" I said. "Has anyone laid a bat on him this whole year long?"

"First time in the history of the sport," he said.

"First time for everything, pal." I settled back and propped my steno pad on my knee as the ump yelled "Play ball!" and the first Angel batter stepped to the plate.

Bearing didn't hew to the practice he'd followed the whole year long. He didn't concentrate immediately and wholly upon the batter. Instead he put his hands on his hips, scanned the stands from end to end and back again, and nodded as if he'd come to a decision. Catcher Roy Wriston started to rise from his squat, but Bearing waved him back down, peered in for the sign, wound up and threw.

The ball smacked into Wriston's glove with a clap so sharp I'd have sworn it could be heard in Canarsie. The catcher reeled backwards as the digits on the Jugg display whirled, slowed, and finally settled on their verdict.

128 miles per hour.

Right down the cock, yet completely unhittable. The crowd shouted in amazement.

Bearing nodded, wound up, and did it again.

And again.

And again.

Is there really a first time for everything? How would I know? Or anyone else, for that matter? As the game progressed, it dawned on me that never in the history of the sport had a pitcher eliminated his opponents without ever allowing the ball to touch their bats. It was inconceivable, a degree of dominance no player had ever achieved in any sport. But as Conrad Bearing strode out to the mound at the beginning of each Angel half-inning, it became ever clearer that I was witnessing exactly that.

After six innings he'd thrown exactly fifty-four pitches. After seven, exactly sixty-three. After eight, exactly seventy-two. All strikes. All about as hittable as a rifle bullet.

The crowd went by stages from amazement to hoarsely screaming delirium.

When he took the mound at the top of the ninth, I was no longer able to sit. I could hardly breathe. Martinez was apoplectic beside me. He'd been screaming along with all the others. The wonder of the game had flensed him of his sports hack's veneer and left him to stand without disguise, as the fan he really was. As all of us who cover this sport have to be.

I couldn't imagine what the hacks in the TV booths were saying, to their viewers, to one another, or to themselves. I couldn't imagine what I would have said in their place.

We were witnessing a miracle, a new definition for "the perfect game." It was draining us of words, the stuff of our trade.

In that time and place, Conrad Bearing had stripped us of our defenses. We jaded and cynical ones, too worldly wise to admit to our childlike devotion to a childish game, had been reduced to the same openmouthed state of awe a small boy feels in the presence of his hero, or a man feels at the discovery of his one true love.

We knew he had perfection in him. We'd seen eight innings of it. We were desperate to see him end as he'd begun. He did not disappoint us.

Three whizzers down the cock to Berglund. Three curves that seemed to swerve around the bat of Sant'Angelo. Two sinkers to Petrovich that looked like they'd dropped all the way to China.

He saved his best for last.

When he wound up, you could see him marshaling his forces for the pitch, a service that would ring all the bells in America. When he let fly, I half-expected his arm to catch fire.

Petrovich swung...about half a second after the ball reached Wriston's glove.

144 miles per hour.

"Yerrrrr....out!"

The crowd went mad.

His teammates converged on him at a sprint. Before they could reach him, he held up a hand in the universally understood sign to halt. They did. The stands fell immediately silent.

He stood there on the mound, scanned the stands end to end once again, and smiled: the supremely sunny smile from his All-Star appearance.

"Thank you," he said, and walked off the mound toward the dugout.

By the time Martinez and I got to the locker room, he was gone.

***

Time warps the memory. Things once bright and clear grow dim and indistinct. We illuminate the high points and efface the drudgery and drear. The lucky ones among us retain their "signposts:" the events that mark their transitions and achievements, and gave color to their undertakings.

I will never forget that last game. It would be the last game Conrad Bearing would ever pitch. He did not return for the following season. The Olympians' public relations office gave no explanation.

I thought I understood it. By baseball standards, he was an old man. He'd had a season to eclipse every other season any pitcher had ever played. Likely it would never be surpassed. Why return? Why show the fans he'd thrilled so completely anything less than that pinnacle of performance? It was obvious he didn't care about the money. He was letting us remember him at his peak.

It was several years before I discovered how wrong I was.

His departure from the game was as sharp as his arrival. Not only didn't he turn up on anyone's roster; he didn't turn up anywhere. No sportscasting billet; no endorsements; no appearances at charity events. No one had an inkling of where he'd gone or what he was doing. Conrad Bearing had absented himself completely from the public eye.

When I stumbled into him in a department store in Seattle, it took me a moment to recognize him for who he was.

I wasn't at my sharpest. I was sorting through flannel shirts and thinking about the mass of yard chores I'd been putting off all spring. He was passing behind me when an old woman lurched into him and knocked him into me. He was steadying her on her feet when I turned and registered his face.

"My God!" I said.

His eyes caught mine, he smiled meaninglessly, and tried to pass on. I grabbed him by the arm -- that incredible baseball machine -- and held him there.

"Where have you been?" I murmured.

He essayed another meaningless smile. "Excuse me? I think you might have mistaken me for someone else." He tried to pull away. I didn't let him.

"Oh, I don't think so, Conrad." I pitched the name so that only he would hear it. "I still want that interview, you know. And don't try to give me the slip or I'll call out your name, here and now."

"It's George," he hissed. "George Matulovich. Now let go!"

I shook my head. "Maybe that's what it is now. Your car or mine?"

He tried to stare me down, but I wasn't about to relent. I kept my grip on him and waited. Presently he conceded defeat.

"All right. Yours."

That must have been hard.

***

"What do you do now?"

"Not much. Until last year, I was a mailman."

"So why did you retire?"

"I got bored with delivering mail."

"No, from baseball!"

"I always wanted to be a mailman, and I didn't want to lose my last chance."

"Come on!"

He shrugged. "Don't you have a theory?"

I scanned his living room. It was as ordinary a place as I've ever been. Moderately used mid-grade sofa, recliner, and tables. Two bookcases filled with popular novels in paperback, plus two portrait photos of a handsome older woman. A small television propped on a homebuilt redwood stand. It was a modest house, in a modest rural neighborhood well removed from the clamor of city life. A retired mailman's house.

"At first," I said, "I figured it was that you wanted to go out at your peak. That would have been natural, so I believed it for a while. But then I realized that it would have been the only natural thing about you. So no, I don't. Would you tell me, please?"

He stared at me in silence for a long interval.

"George," I said, the name strangely ill-fitting in my mouth, "I'm as far out of the game as you are, now. I don't have a byline any more." I spread my hands. "No steno pad. No tape recorder. I don't want to sell you to anyone. I just want to know."

He rose from his recliner and paced the little room, hands in his jeans pockets.

"Who would believe me anyway?" I said.

"It's not who would believe you," he said. "It's whether I can get you to believe me."

I started to protest, thought better of it. If there'd ever been a figure to challenge credulity, on the field or off, it was he.

He stopped before one of the bookcases and caressed the photo it bore.

"Your wife?"

He nodded without looking at me. "She passed away six years ago."

I counted backwards. "Right after...your season?"

Another nod.

"Then you retired to be with her?"

"You could say that." He closed his eyes. There were tears at the corners. Presently he opened them and returned to his seat. I inched forward on mine.

"Doris was...very sick when I joined the Olympians. Pancreatic cancer, one of the worst forms. She had very little chance to live, and all of it depended on a treatment we couldn't afford. I had to raise a lot of cash very fast, and baseball was the only legal way to do it."

What?

"Are you telling me," I said slowly, "that you did it for the money?"

He frowned. "Well, of course! Why else would anyone play pro baseball?"

"Uh, never mind. But...you took the minimum! You never haggled, never tried to renegotiate, never threatened to, uh, strike. If it was all about money, why didn't you press your advantage?"

He looked at me as if I'd started babbling in tongues. "I made what we needed. We didn't need more. Why should I have demanded more?"

"But..." I fell silent. There are some things you don't probe. It took me two divorces and a catastrophic career collapse to learn it, but learn it I had.

It took me a moment to realize that I hadn't asked about what I'd always wanted to know. He'd startled the question right out of me with his revelation about money.

"George...the why makes sense, but I have to know about the how." He grimaced. I could see him casting about for a credible lie. I held up a hand. "No evasions, now. No one else will hear."

He hunched forward, dropped his eyes to the floor, and sat silent for a long interval. Finally, he rose and headed for the back door.

"Come with me."

***

He had a spacious back yard, well maintained. It sported a large barn and was surrounded on three sides by a split-rail fence. Along one run of the fence were propped a quartet of sheet-steel plates. The first three were irregularly perforated with ragged circular holes about a baseball's size. The fourth was unmarked.

"I used to stand over there," he said, pointing to the opposite run of the fence, "and throw baseballs at plates just like those until I could exactly control which hole it would go through. I did it for hours at a time, day after day, until it was almost a bore. Then I started experimenting with curves, screwballs, and sinkers. I got so I could make the ball do whatever I pleased, and still make it go through whichever hole I chose. It was mostly a way of passing the time, but I never completely outgrew it."

I squinted at the plates. "What made these holes?"

He shrugged. "A baseball."

"What? Are you telling me --"

"Want to see me do it right now?" He had a baseball in his hand.

"Uh, no.

The far fence was about a hundred fifty feet away.

"How old were you when you...developed your skills?"

"About ten." He smiled. "I've always loved baseball. The sport, not the professionalized entertainment spectacle and scandal factory."

"And you kept on at that for twenty-seven years, until your wife's illness made you decide to cash in?"

He pursed his lips and turned away.

A retired mailman.

"George, how old are you?"

He hesitated. "I'll be sixty next month."

"You were...fifty-three the year you played for the Olympians?"

"Fifty-four, actually."

I was six years his junior.

"What's the matter, son?" He grinned. "Do you think I needed more seasoning?"

I barked a laugh, halfway between absurdity and pain.

I'd have given everything I've ever had and everything I've ever been to play even one game in the majors. I'd never gotten beyond single-A, and I knew early on that I never would. He'd disdained it for fifty years, and turned his back on it once it had served his need.

He sensed my anguish and laid a hand on my shoulder.

"You're thinking I wasted something priceless, something you'd have given your soul to have," he said gently. "But think about that last game, the one where I let it all out. Suppose you were a freak like me. Suppose you could have done that, not once, but every game you played, once every four days, even into your sixties. What would that have done to you? What would it have done to the sport you love?"

I could not reply. He nodded and squeezed my shoulder.

"A sport like baseball is only worth playing if there's a rough equality among the players. Oh, some will always be better than others, no denying it. But for one player to be an order of magnitude better than all the rest, able to have his way with them whenever he pleases, would belittle the sport itself. Whenever he was on the diamond, it would be no fun at all, even for him."

"Are you saying it was no fun for you? All that ability and you didn't even enjoy it?"

His grin was rueful. "Very little, son. Until the very last game I had to hold myself in check, as much as morally possible. Except for the All-Star Game, of course."

"So you never gave the team your best, then?"

His eyebrows rose. "What I gave the Olympians won them forty-one of the sixty-five games they did win. What point would there have been in humiliating the rest of the league even further?"

"But that last game..." I misted up at the memory. He smiled.

"Yes, that day I let it all out. I had to know just how good I could have been. I told myself the sport wouldn't suffer too much from that one indulgence. Was I wrong?"

"No."

He hefted the baseball, loped to the opposite end of his yard, and tossed it at me. I caught it automatically, started to throw it back, and stopped.

"You do love the game, don't you?" I called.

He nodded. "Almost as much as I loved Doris. About as much as you. You just going to stand there, or are you going to throw that thing?"

We played catch for the rest of the afternoon.

-- The End --

Friday, May 13, 2005

Miracles

(From the Onteora Canon. Nothing so excites the derision of the materialist as a claim of a miracle. But miracles have their place in the world. For one thing, not all of them involve suspending the laws of nature. For another, not every skeptic survives contact with them unchanged.)

---

No one took any notice of Joseph Reinhold as he slunk into the city room of the Onteora Register. The eyes of the other reporters and editors remained glued to their typewriters, or their daily planners, or the scribbles on their desk blotters. He sauntered to his desk, slipped into his desk chair without removing his jacket, and laid his divorce decree on the almost-clean surface of his desk.

He flipped to the last page and stared at it. Mary had already signed it. Even on this document, seeing her rounded cursive made him remember high school, notes scribbled on pages from loose-leaf notebooks, and mini-flirtations snatched between classes.

He fumbled in his top drawer for a pen, gave up before finding one. There was no need to hurry this. It recalled too many fights, too many unapologetic admissions of infidelity, and too much regret. It made him feel tired.

The life of the newspaper swirled and hummed around him. Typewriters clicked, couriers trotted back and forth, muffled phone conversations blended into the characteristic city room din. The contrast with his own inertness amplified his sense of fatigue and his conviction of failure.

How long are they going to let me sit here?

The city editor had reminded him sharply that he hadn't filed copy in more than two weeks...and that was nearly a week ago. Granted that his wasn't the most demanding of positions, he was still expected to produce a story about something from time to time. He fought back the oppression of his weariness, pulled out his planner and leafed through it. He reviewed his list of popular themes and found nothing he wanted to pursue. His list of seasonal topics left him equally unmoved.

I should start looking for another job before they toss me out of this one.

He'd been sitting motionless for about twenty minutes when his phone rang. The sound startled him; it hadn't rung in more than a month.

"Reinhold."

"Have I reached the Religious and Cultural Affairs editor?" The voice was a smooth, mature alto.

"Well, they don't let me call myself an editor, but otherwise you're on target. How can I help you?"

"I think I might have a story for you." A note of tension had entered the voice.

Reinhold pulled a steno pad from a drawer. "And your name is?"

"Rachael Rosenthal. Look, this is sort of uncomfortable for me. Do you suppose we could talk face to face?"

Reinhold grinned to himself. "Humor me a moment more, please. This wouldn't be about a water stain of the Blessed Virgin on someone's basement wall, would it?"

There was a protracted silence on the line.

"Look, Mister, I'm the bookkeeper for Our Lady of the Pines Roman Catholic Church. I don't do stains, I do figures. And I'm a Jew, just so we have that out of the way. Now, do you have an hour or so to spare me, or not?"

A financial scandal in an Onteora church? This could get interesting really fast.

"Give me an address."

***

The Idle Hours Diner was diner-typical in shape and size, but was constructed and decorated entirely in chrome, glass and leather-like vinyl. Reinhold didn't care for it personally, but he supposed it was easier to keep clean than many other treatments would have been.

Rachael Rosenthal was a small, slender woman with dark coloration and an unassertive manner. She'd seated herself without removing her winter coat, and kept her hands jammed deep in its pockets. It made her look as if she were swaddled in several heavy blankets. Her air of diffidence reminded him of Mary.

Reinhold opened his steno pad on the table surface and wrote Rachael Rosenthal, December 12 at the top of a fresh page. "It's your dime, Ms. Rosenthal."

She nodded. "Have you ever looked into small-scale religious finance?"

"No, not as such. Why?"

"Because it's a struggle and a mess." She squirmed inside her envelope of wool. "I'm not in that area myself. I just count it as it comes and goes."

"Then why did you mention it?" He scrawled dances around on his steno pad.

She shrugged. "Bookkeepers talk, you know. I know all the other religious bookkeepers in the county. They all tell the same story: income down, expenses rising. The Episcopalian pastor is dipping into their capital reserve to meet monthly operating expenses. The Lutherans and the Russian Orthodox have decided to share space to save the rent on a building." A quick, mischievous grin. "That's going to be an interesting marriage, this time next year."

"How about the Catholics?"

She pressed her lips together, uncertainty showing in her eyes.

"That much worse?"

"No, the opposite. Father Schliemann says Mass attendance is steady or a little down, but parish revenues are up, like a spike, for the past three months."

He wrote Catholic revenues up sharply 4th qtr. "So what's Father Schliemann's secret? He hasn't started selling indulgences, has he?"

She shook her head but said nothing. Reinhold had the sense that she was sizing him up, trying to decide how much of a surprise he could weather.

"Are you telling me there's cash coming in through an anonymous channel?"

She laughed. "No, Mr. Reinhold, it's not cash. Each month for three months running, Father Schliemann has handed me a large check to deposit in the parish's operating funds account."

"Payable to?"

"The bearer. You know, cash."

He scribbled donations by untraceable check. "Drawn on whose account?"

She hesitated again.

"Miss Rosenthal?"

"The New York State Off-Track Betting Commission."

He straightened and sat back in the booth.

"I'll be damned."

***

Our Lady of the Pines' rectory was set slightly back from the church proper, and connected to it by a slender, screen-walled breezeway. It was a little after noon when Reinhold pulled up before it. He found a young man hard at work installing a snow fence along the path that led from the street to the rectory entrance.

The young man was short, pale, and slender, with brown eyes and a thick mop of dark brown hair. He wielded his mallet as if there were nothing in the world more important than making certain the fence would stay erect against the savage winter winds of central New York. He looked up as Reinhold approached, and their eyes met for a curiously uncomfortable interval.

The young man looked to be about thirty. His eyes were large and very dark. His perfectly neutral expression gave Reinhold a sense of being weighed in a balance, with his very life at stake on the reading of the scale. He held Reinhold's gaze locked to his so firmly that the reporter could not step past him.

"Good evening," Reinhold said. "Is Father Schliemann in the rectory?"

The young man's dead-neutral expression remained unchanged. "Yes, he is." His voice was a soft baritone. "Would you like me to fetch him for you?"

Reinhold held up a hand. "No need. I can introduce myself." He turned and started to make for the door, and found that the young man was already turning the knob. The door closed behind him with Reinhold still several strides away.

Well! But perhaps that's part of the service.

A minute later, the young man returned, accompanied by the tall, silver-haired figure of Father Heinrich Schliemann, Onteora's pastor for more than forty years. The young man gestured at Reinhold and went back to his yard work without a word.

Schliemann approached with a hand extended. "I'm Father Schliemann. And you are...?"

"Joseph Reinhold, Father." They shook hands. "Perhaps you've seen my byline in the Religious and Cultural Affairs section of the Sunday Register."

Schliemann's eyebrows went up. "I have, indeed. You've manned that post for, what is it, about eight years now? How is it we haven't met before?"

Reinhold smiled. "Partly chance, partly the good behavior of Onteora's Catholics and their priests. Newspapers have always thrived on the seedier side of life, Father. Even the life of the spirit."

Schliemann grinned ruefully. "Well, one who wears a Roman collar isn't supposed to want to be famous. Especially not these days. May I offer you some coffee?"

The pastor laid a gentle arm around Reinhold's shoulders and shepherded him into the rectory.

***

They'd lounged over coffee and cakes in the rectory's antique sitting room, passing an hour in a warm and animated conversation on diverse topics, when Reinhold realized that he was unable to frame the question he'd come to ask.

How do I ask this supremely courteous man of God why and when he started playing the ponies to pay the parish's bills?

Despite his trade, or perhaps because of it, Reinhold had held himself immune to the lure of religion. He'd felt it to be beneath the dignity of a mature adult. But in Heinrich Schliemann's presence, he had to concede that there were men of dignity who'd given faith a place of importance in their lives...that at least one man of a dignity well beyond his own had given it the whole of his life.

"Something private on your mind, Mr. Reinhold?"

The query arrested his spate of reverie. "Uh, well, no, Father, not exactly. I was just dithering a bit over, ah --"

"Over what sort of story you might wrap around your visit here?" Schliemann's eyes were warm.

Reinhold chuckled. "Bingo." He chuckled again. "Sorry, bad choice of exclamation. We've had a very nice chat. It's just, ah, difficult to put a journalistic angle on it. I can't just transcribe our exchanges about the Catholic faith. Those who don't already know all about it will hardly care. Is there any development of real significance going on in the Church, either here in Onteora or in the wider world, that I can use as a narrative hook for the other things we've discussed?"

Schliemann leaned forward in his armchair, hands clasped in his lap. "Real significance," he said. "You mean secular significance, don't you?"

Reinhold squinted in discomfort. "Well, yes and no. A secular hook is the easiest for a reporter to work with, of course. It also garners the most interest, even in the Religious and Cultural Affairs column. But any development that stands out from the steady state of parish practice -- I mean, that's out of the ordinary for you or your congregation -- would give me a good start."

Schliemann nodded. He sat silently for a long moment.

"There's a question in you that you can't quite disgorge," the pastor said. "You've been casting about for a way to ask it since you first shook my hand. Why not just let fly? I promise not to be offended, if that's what you're worried about."

Reinhold's mouth dropped open. He laughed as one will who's been caught in a dissimulation. Schliemann smiled.

"Go ahead, Mr. Reinhold." He spread his hands. "I'm unarmed."

Reinhold started to speak, halted himself, and thought furiously.

"Father," he faltered at last, "how do Catholics stay married?"

***

"More coffee?" Schliemann said.

Reinhold shook his head. "My back teeth are floating, and I've taken up far more of your time than I had any right to ask. But..." He looked away briefly. "Would you be amenable to another chat sometime? Sometime fairly soon?"

Schliemann's face crinkled. "Do you really expect any answer but yes?"

Reinhold bit his lip and nodded.

"Mr. Reinhold, giving counsel is my profession, but it's also my love. I could hardly have become a priest if I found it onerous or irritating to help others through their difficulties. Besides, I was flattered to be asked for help on such a sensitive matter by someone who isn't one of my communicants." The priest canted his head. "Would you happen to be considering that as well?"

Reinhold pondered.

"I wasn't when I came in here," he said. "And I wasn't when we started talking about my marriage, and I wasn't up to the moment you asked the question. But perhaps I am, now. I know the general teachings of the Church fairly well. The practical ones strike me as sober and sensible, if a bit straitlaced on certain subjects. But I've given no thought to the theological doctrines for many years." He leaned back in his chair and looked off into the corner of the room. "Religion was never a real presence in my life."

"Did you receive any religious instruction as a youth?" Schliemann said.

"I was baptized. That's about it."

"Which sect?"

"Episcopalian."

"Ah. That's not too far a throw from Roman Catholicism, you know."

"You think not?" Reinhold surged forward. "Episcopalian shenanigans -- Protestant shenanigans generally -- have kept me supplied with dirt for the last eight years. How can they be your close cousins when they're so mired in doctrinal wars and so prone to internal squabbling but you're...you're..."

"Not?"

"Yes!"

Schliemann rose and stepped over to the sitting room's bay window. The sun had set, but the gleam of the streetlights outlined the shapes of the trees that lined the front of the rectory yard and the silhouette of Reinhold's car.

The young man who'd been installing the snow fence when Reinhold arrived was still at work, digging a slit trench that would allow the flowerbeds around the large statue of the Blessed Virgin to drain into the semi-cylindrical gutters that ran along the edge of the walk. As before, he worked with the concentration characteristic of a serious craftsman rather than the surly effort of a typical day laborer.

"Who is that, Father?"

Schliemann looked back at him and smiled. "My enforcer."

"Hah!"

"Oh, I'm quite serious." Schliemann turned and crossed his arms over his chest. "He doesn't know it, though. His name is Louis Redmond, by the way. He's an engineer by trade. He spends his days making warplanes. Most of his free time he's here, maintaining the church and the grounds. He's been doing it for fifteen years, out of the goodness of his heart."

"You don't pay him?"

Schliemann shook his head. "He won't take a cent from me. The one time I raised the subject, he told me that Onteora Aviation already pays him more than he's worth, and anyway, it was his duty to support the parish. This is how he chooses to do that." He pursed his lips. "You've heard Christians use the motto 'What would Jesus do?' haven't you?"

Reinhold nodded.

"On most subjects that touch on modern life, it's an unanswerable question. At least, I can't think of anything Christ said that would help with questions about flex time, intellectual property or double-entry bookkeeping."

Reinhold immediately remembered the subject he'd originally come to broach. He did his best to suppress a wince and hoped the pastor hadn't noticed.

"But anyone who knows Louis," Schliemann said, "has a model that will serve for just about anything. He's a genius, a world-class athlete, and a moral paragon. He's no theologian. At least, he's never talked about abstractions of faith with me. He's just the best Catholic -- the best man -- it's ever been my privilege to know. I've never known him to succumb to malice, or envy, or cupidity, or sloth, or any of the other failings of men. So when some other parishioner falls short of the far looser standard to which most Catholics hold themselves, I cite Louis to him. And when I feel my own resolve beginning to slip, such that I might not be as open to those in need as my pastorate requires me to be, I cite him to myself."

Schliemann turned back toward the figure cutting the soil with a hoe. "And he's the loneliest, most tragic figure I've ever known, as well. He lost a beloved elder sister to epilepsy, and both his parents to a plane crash. He has no living relatives. He has no one to whom he's really close. Tell me, Mr. Reinhold, when you approached him, did he look you in the eyes?"

Reinhold felt the blood rush to his cheeks. He nodded slowly.

"I thought he might have," Schliemann said. "It has quite an effect, doesn't it?"

"You know it, Father," Reinhold said. "Is it a veneer he puts on to...protect you, or is it the real him?"

"It's quite real," Schliemann said. "He does it to everyone. Everyone who comes here, at any rate. You can almost feel him deciding whether you're fit to live. Between his gifts and his intensity, he terrifies nearly everyone. Fate has left him nothing except himself."

"And the Church," Reinhold murmured.

"And the Church. I've offered the consolations of faith to many a desolated or frightened parishioner, Mr. Reinhold. Every life knows loss at some point. Every man knows times of darkness and doubt. But I would never think to offer Louis the platitudes I bestow upon those others. I would be ashamed of myself for belittling his strength."

Reinhold rose and joined the pastor at the window. In the all but extinguished sunlight, he saw Louis scraping and firming the walls of his trench with a craftsman's precision.

"So," he said, "you have an Olympian genius of immaculate morals tending your church and grounds for no compensation, and he also assists you in your pastoral duties, by humbling anyone who complains about his lot in life just by his example. Does he leave you anything to do?"

Schliemann nodded. "I get to make us coffee."

***

Five days later, Reinhold returned to the rectory. He found Louis squatting before the stone half-wall that ran along the property's street border, touching up the mortar where it had begun to loosen and flake away.

"Excuse me," Reinhold said. "Mr. Redmond?"

The young engineer looked up. "Yes?"

"Might I have a minute of your time?"

Louis laid his trowel down and stood with a hint of reluctance. Reinhold noticed a tremor in his hands. His pallor, too, was more pronounced than it had been five days before.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Reinhold?"

Reinhold counted to three and put on his warmest, most reassuring expression.

"I could use some advice on picking winners at Aqueduct or Belmont Park."

Louis's eyes went wide. He drew a breath to expostulate, chopped it off and fixed Reinhold with a no-nonsense glare.

"Mr. Reinhold, if someone referred you to me for any such thing, I'd suggest that you put less stock in his next recommendation."

"On your authority," Reinhold said with all the assurance he could muster, "the Off-Track Betting Commission writes a check for ten thousand dollars once a month, payable to cash, and sends it to this address. Now, do you have an inside connection, or shall we talk about your system for handicapping horses?"

Louis gave him the most scorching glare he'd ever seen. After about fifteen seconds, the engineer realized it wasn't making the necessary impression, sighed, and shook his head.

"Shall we retire to my office, Mr. Reinhold?"

"Certainly. Lead the way."

Louis took two steps backward and sat on the stone half wall. He gestured to Reinhold to do the same. When Reinhold had achieved a stable perch, he brought forth his steno pad.

"Now, where would you like to begin?" the reporter said.

Louis grinned. "Right where I'd like to end: I don't gamble. Not in any way."

"Hm?"

"Was there something ambiguous about that, Mr. Reinhold? Should I have used shorter words?"

"Hey, all I want is --"

Louis held up a hand. "I know what you want. I also know what I want. The two are not compatible. Do you fancy yourself to be a capable investigator, Mr. Reinhold? Can you piece a puzzle together from fragments of evidence and the patterns they make? Or do you rely entirely upon your talent for goosing your victims into surrendering their privacy on their own?"

Reinhold was momentarily speechless.

"Because it would have occurred to a competent investigator, once he'd discovered the source of the funds and at whose direction they were being disbursed, to ask how they got into that account in the first place, instead of just assuming that they were track winnings. Did you do that?"

"...no..."

"Then your inside connection is getting off lightly. You haven't made him earn his keep. Go put him back to work." Louis hopped off the wall and bent to his trowel and mortar pan.

"Mr. Redmond?"

Louis stopped in mid-squat. "Yes? What now?"

"If I do find out, will you confirm it for me?"

Louis grinned crookedly. "You aren't going to find out. I assure you, there's no story in it. But beyond that, if you violate my privacy again, I'll hurt you. Not fatally, but badly enough that you'll never do it again. I don't care about what the gaming law allows you to learn, I don't care about your foolish notions about the public's right to know, and I don't care about your career or your journalist's sense of mission. I care about this church, this pastor, and this parish. Do you understand me?"

Reinhold gaped at him. Louis stood looking at him for a long moment more, then turned and resumed repointing the rectory wall.

***

Reinhold knocked on the door firmly, his misgivings stopped down as tightly as he could hold them.

Mary opened it, recognized him, and started in surprise. "Joe? What are you --"

"Looking for a miracle." He held up the divorce decree. "You signed this the day it reached you, didn't you?"

She hesitated, then nodded.

"No second thoughts, no might-have-beens, just like that?"

She studied his face, then moved aside and beckoned him in.

They sat in her kitchen, in the glare of an overhead light that had always been too bright for the little room. He'd meant to replace it with something more suitable for several years running, but there'd always been something more urgent to attend to.

"Mary," he said, "I want to give us one more try."

She winced.

"You don't, then?"

"I haven't allowed myself to think about it," she said.

"Why? After fourteen years of marriage, what could be more important?"

She looked away.

"Mary..." He paused to gather strength. "Is there someone else now?"

She shook her head without looking at him.

"But there was, wasn't there?"

Her mouth quirked. "Does it matter?"

He pondered.

"I guess not. Not if you'd like to try again. God knows, I haven't exactly been celibate since we separated."

Without looking at him, she said, "There's something else you're not."

"What?"

"Pregnant."

He fell back in his chair. "Ah."

She turned to face him again. "Does that matter?"

"Yes. It matters a lot. A baby should have a father." He drew a long, shaky breath. "Will I do?"

Her eyes went wide. "You're serious?"

He nodded. "I am."

"Why, Joe? Why now, after all the crap we've poured over one another this past year?"

"If I tried to tell you," he said slowly, "I'd almost certainly mess it up. So I'd like to propose an alternative: let me show you, instead."

They sat in silence for a long time. Finally, he said, "Do you know whether it's a boy or a girl?"

"No. It's too soon for the amniocentesis, and I'm not sure I want to know, anyway."

"Okay. How do you want to do the rest of this?"

She laughed, a duet for irony and tears. "You want to go fast, don't you? Are you afraid you'll lose your nerve?"

He grinned. "Maybe. But I've been changing a lot of things lately, and fast seems to work better than slow. Oh, one more thing."

"Hm?"

"I'm looking into becoming a Catholic. Don't start," he said when she opened her mouth to reply. "It's not about you, and it doesn't have to involve you. I just thought you ought to know."

"But..." She hesitated. "What about the baby?"

"Well," he said, scratching his head stagily, "I suppose we could use the Solomon method. I'd raise my half Catholic, and you could do whatever you want with yours."

"Joe!"

"Just kidding. We'll take it as it comes, okay?"

"Okay." She stretched a hand across the table and laid it on his. "I've missed you."

"I've missed you too, babe."

"But what's with the Catholic thing?"

"Oh, that." He sat back and steepled his fingers. "Well, it's about miracles. I saw one a few days ago, and I'd like to see a few more. Apparently they keep 'em in good supply, over at Our Lady of the Pines."

"Seriously?"

He nodded.

"Can you tell me anything else about it?"

"Sorry, babe. Clerical confidentiality and all that."

She frowned. "You're not a priest."

"Not yet."

"Joe!" But she was smiling.

"Just take my word for it, okay?"

"Okay."

Despite the garish lighting, the little kitchen felt warm and secure.

How do I tell her that miracles sometimes take human form? That a lonely young man with enormous powers, a forbidding demeanor, a tragic past, and terminal cancer has arranged to give his life's savings to a backwoods church, and has set it up so that no one will know? That he threatened me with bodily harm if I endangered his arrangement, and showed me something whole and unspoiled for the first time since our wedding day?

Maybe I don't.

"Joe?" she said. "This Catholic thing...?"

"Hm? What about it?"

"If you're serious about it, maybe I'll look into it too, but..."

"But what, babe?"

"We're not naming the baby Jesus!"

"Aw!" He pulled a face. "Not even if it's a girl?"

"Joe!"

"Okay, okay!"

Copyright © 2005 by Francis W. Porretto

Thursday, May 12, 2005

The Hawk

(From the Onteora Canon. Principles can be a hard master. All but the very best of us will set them aside under sufficiently demanding conditions. Nor is it always possible to know, even just beforehand, that we’re about to do so. Men just don’t know themselves that well.

Rolf Svenson and Kevin Conway also appear in my novels Chosen One and On Broken Wings.)

---

"Looks like war."

Svenson looked up and across the aisle. "You think so?"

Harris nodded, smirking cynically. "War means jobs, y'know."

"Sounds as if you think even less of the administration than I do."

Harris's eyes widened in mock astonishment. "Is that possible?"

Svenson smirked back. "Just not very likely." He twisted uncomfortably in his chair. Office furniture that would accommodate his tall, slight frame was uncommon. Though his desk chair was highly adjustable, he had never gotten it quite right for the length of his legs.

"You really think he'd intervene over there to justify defense increases?"

Harris snorted. "Come on, Rolf, grow up. His home state is dominated by defense contractors. They made him governor, and they sure as hell gave him a leg up on the presidency."

Svenson had often disagreed with George Harris on political topics, but then Svenson, an anarchist, disagreed with almost everyone. Although political exchanges at Onteora Aviation were frequent and intense, he had ceased to participate long ago. He'd reaped too much frustration from being repeatedly scorned or misunderstood. His older colleague was one of the few who granted him any measure of respect for his views, for Harris's own cynicism about politics was both wide and deep. In turn, Svenson granted Harris the respect due an intelligent man whose opinions had been formed by experience.

"And what about you?" Svenson said. "Are you for it?"

"Of course! The principal weapon we've got for this kind of thing is the aircraft carrier, right? Who builds the planes that take off from those carriers, who makes the support equipment, who does the maintenance? And who's looking at a thirty percent layoff within the next year if no new contracts come in?"

"I see."

Harris's smirk vanished and his tone acquired an edge. "How dismissive we are! Could it be that the company's top software engineer feels just a wee bit more secure in his career prospects than those of us who've spent our lives studying wings and missiles?"

Svenson looked up, surprised. "And if so, so what? You know me, George. For me, politics has a moral dimension. Do you think so little of me as to imagine that, if our professional positions were reversed, I'd be beating the drums? Do you think so little of yourself as to imagine that you wouldn't?"

Harris rose from his desk in silence. He stood at the office window and stared through it, his back to Svenson, for a long still moment.

"No."

Harris turned away from the window and quickly returned to his usual position, hunched over his desk. But Svenson had caught in Harris's eyes, as the older man turned back to his work, the bright glitter of tears.

***

The office was agog all afternoon, after someone came back from lunch with news of American fighter-bombers in action over the zone of conflict. As he had done over the preceding weeks of tension, Svenson rigidly refrained from entering any conversation on the subject. His colleagues seemed to solicit his participation, by wordless but pointed glance, more than once.

On his way home that afternoon, the all-news radio station he habitually played in the car was full of what he called "news clutter" -- opinions by professional opinion-mongers, man-in-the-street interviews on the intervention, prognostications about the administration's next step. Ordinarily he disliked and ignored it. that day he found himself listening with unusual concentration.

Among ordinary citizens the station's "roving reporter" had interviewed about the intervention, three had admitted to working for weapons makers. All were strongly in favor of the action. One had admitted that economic self-interest was among the reasons for his approval. The others had evaded the question, and the interviewer had not seen fit to press it.

At home, he had not even put down his briefcase before Anna asked him if he had seen the feature article on Onteora Aviation in the regional paper. He had not. It delineated OA's struggle to stay viable in a time of declining defense budgets. Once the bastion of the regional economy, it had laid off a third of its work force and had sold a similar fraction of its real property over the seven years he had worked there. The company had once been famous for lifetime employment, and for its paternalism toward its employees. All this, said the writer, was considered past and gone.

On impulse, he turned to the Help Wanted section, for the first time in seven years. Listings for software engineers were not so plentiful as they had once been, and most of the positions were uncomfortably distant. He looked up at his wife.

"Sweetie."

"Hm?" She continued to read.

"What would it take for you to consider relocating?"

She looked up at that, frowning. "Now that we've finally got this place in livable shape? Did that article tell you something you didn't already know?"

"No, not really . . . but I've got to admit, it has me thinking about our options."

She put down her reading and fixed him with her "auditor's look," the one she used to warn away inappropriate flights of imagination, to which she considered her husband, her children, and many of her accounting clients all too prone.

"Unless you have some hard reason to consider your job at risk, this is a subject I don't care to discuss. It means uprooting two minor children, selling a house, you changing your job and me finding an entirely new group of clients. If it wasn't the article, have you been told something you haven't told me yet?"

He tried not to react visibly. "No, I told you, I'm thinking about our options. The company's had some hard times lately, and I want to have some idea what we're really prepared to do if things go from bad to worse. We can't live on your income alone . . . at least, not this way."

She didn't flinch. "Unless your income is in jeopardy, we don't have to. You've told me over and over that you're the top guy in software there, that you'll be the one to turn out the lights when they close the plant. Is it true?"

Reluctantly: "Yes."

"Then stop vaporing. I'll only worry about things that are much more likely than the collapse of the company. If that's what you're worrying about."

"It isn't."

She seemed not to have heard. Her eyes dropped back to her book. "You shouldn't raise upsetting possibilities lightly. If trouble starts to brew, you'll have warning, you'll have time to expand your outside consulting or look for another job. Besides, that article says the company seems pretty well positioned now, what with the war."

***

"Hello?"

"Hi, Steve, it's Rolf."

"Hey! How're you doing? It's a dog's age since you've been here for a meeting."

Svenson grinned. Steve Carlucci ran the county chapter of the Freeman's Society; it was the most important thing in his life. He had once said that if his wife were to force him to choose between her and the Society, he'd surely miss her.

"Try having kids, Steve. It does things to your time budget. But I called to ask about the next meeting. Last Saturday of the month, as usual?"

"Yup. You plan to come?"

"I'd like to suggest a topic."

"Angie already had something planned, but what have you got?"

"The war, of course."

There was a brief silence on the line.

"What's to discuss? We're shoving our nose into an ethnic and religious dispute that goes back more than a thousand years. What justification could there be for forcing Americans to pay and bleed for that?"

"Well, don't you want to consider any other aspects of the thing? What about the morality of permitting innocent people to be slaughtered when we have the power to prevent it?"

"We've covered that argument before." A note of impatience entered Carlucci's voice. "American intervention can't prevent that. It can only change the identities of the innocent people who'll die."

"Still, warfare is one of the few constants in human history. We can't just dismiss it from consideration as a solved problem when so many lives are affected."

Another pause. "Alright, I'll ask Angie if she wouldn't mind waiting a month as a favor to you. She's put a lot of work into her presentation, though, so don't be surprised if she says no."

"What's she been pursuing?"

"Capture theory, George Stigler's stuff. It's amazing, she's been researching for most of a year, and she hasn't yet found a single case where individuals inside an institution were able to override its natural dynamics and hang on to change them. You'll love it."

***

All the next day his colleagues continued to chatter about the war news. OA's products were getting good publicity from the action. The planes were performing well; their crews were giving them high marks in all areas. Throughout the plant there reigned a night-before-Christmas atmosphere of expectancy and excitement.

He found it hard to fault them for it. Their livelihoods were so bound up with the ghastly business of dropping explosives on strangers, probably they couldn't see it the way he did. Moral clarity comes hard to a man facing unemployment. He had options they didn't, after all.

Just after lunch, he succumbed to impulse and phoned Harry Goetz, the recruiter who had placed him there.

"Rolf! How's life been treating you? Bet the war has everyone all stirred up over there."

Svenson swallowed. "You betcha, Harry. How's business by you?"

"A little slow. You know what the regional economy's been like these past three years."

"Any prospects for someone like your humble servant?"

"Whooo, I'd say not many. What are you making these days?"

Svenson hesitated, looked about to see if anyone might overhear him. "About seventy, before fringes."

The line was silent for a moment. "Same constraints as before? No government jobs, no commute longer than fifty miles, must have a 401K plan, little or no travel?"

"Yeah." Svenson scoped the room once more.

"Slim to none, fella. I'd love to move you, I'd make nearly twenty thousand dollars on it, but you're 'way high up the pyramid now, and the positions are pretty thinly spread out. Just for the record, any interest in relocating?"

"No, Anna won't consider it."

"Then you'd better plan to stay where you are. I haven't got anything in the order book that matches what they're doing for you over there. Why the sudden interest in other situations? I thought you were their fair-haired boy."

"Well, yeah, that hasn't changed, except that I've lost a little hair. I'm just rounding up my options, like my favorite recruiter told me I should do every so often. You know, to stay in practice."

Goetz chuckled. "Well, consider that you've just done it for the year. But there's really no reason to float your resume, unless you're willing to relocate. A position like yours is a pretty rare thing. All the same, I wouldn't worry. That article in yesterday's paper is probably what got you thinking, right?"

"Yeah, with maybe a touch of seven-year itch on top."

"Of course, you've been there longer than anywhere else by now, haven't you? But at your age and professional altitude, you ought to be thinking long term. That's a good place to retire from, if you can hang on, and if you can't, who could? A lot of your co-workers have never worked anywhere else."

"I know. Look, Harry, even if I'm being silly about it, I am nervous. Could you let slip some hints in the right places that I might be available, if the right position opens up?"

"Sure, no problem, but stay dug in over there. You really haven't got a thing to worry about, now. I can't turn on the radio without hearing about what your planes are doing to those poor clowns."

***

As the meeting broke up, Svenson found himself wishing he'd never called Carlucci, or that Carlucci had never called him back, or that he'd broken a leg that afternoon. Anything that might have kept him away from the meeting. Even discounting for the normally high rhetorical temperature of Freeman's Society meetings, and for his own anxiety, he'd probably alienated more friends and acquaintances on that one evening than he'd made in ten years. Several of them pointedly refused to look at him as they left. Angela Baldaserra, whose presentation had been postponed to make room for his topic, practically disemboweled him with her glare.

"Got time for a beer before you go, Rolf?" Carlucci called to him from the kitchen.

"Yeah, sure." Eager to escape further embarrassment, Svenson followed the voice, and found his host already seated at the kitchen table plying a church key.

"Rolf, that bit about 'moral absolutism' was not well done," Carlucci said after a long draught.

Svenson bridled. "Well, was there any give in Art's position? Was he willing to admit that he might be wrong?"

Carlucci raised an eyebrow. "Were you?"

"Of course! My whole premise was that we couldn't be sure of the absolute morality of a military intervention, but that it might be obligatory to act anyway -- "

"To which premise you clung like a fifty-year-old barnacle. C'mon, let's not recap the whole meeting. I just want to ask one thing: did you get what you wanted tonight?"

Reluctantly: "No."

"Rolf, you're very bright, maybe the brightest guy I know and certainly the brightest person who ever comes here. You know Artie almost as well as I do. You know how opinionated he is, and how grating his style can be. You ought to, you've crossed swords with him more than once. But I have never seen you make the mistake you made with him tonight, and I never expected to."

"What mistake was that?"

"Confusing argument with combat. You know the difference between them."

Svenson bit back an expostulation and forced himself to think it over. "Maybe I don't, not in your sense."

"Sure you do. The purpose of argument is to test something: either an idea, or your rhetorical skills. The techniques of argument are logic, evidence, analogy, examples and counterexamples, all of which require mutual respect. The ethics of argument require that truth be only the deciding criterion -- and that disagreement be respected wherever uncertainty leaves room for more than one opinion.

"The purpose of combat is to neutralize the enemy, because his desires and your desires are totally incompatible. The techniques of combat allow for the possibility of eliminating the enemy, if that's the only way he can be neutralized. The ethics of combat are simple: It's him or you."

Svenson glowered. "So I was trying to eliminate Artie instead of arguing with him?"

Carlucci nodded, face perfectly straight. "What else does a charge of 'moral absolutism' mean? It means 'this room ain't big enough for both our moral positions.' And suppose that's true? What's left then, but to fight to the death with sabers? You of all people ought to know you can't argue about morality."

"And why not? I thought our whole movement was based on our approach to morality. If we can't argue morality, then how do we sell our positions?"

"Jesus, why do I have to explain this to you? To a moralist, his morality is primary. It comes before everything else; all his other beliefs and behavior are derived from it. If he gives on his morality, his foundation is undermined, and his identity goes with it. To a consequentialist, morality is only a set of conventions that bind other people. He's got another set of primary concerns, and he's not interested in any moral constraint that might block them off."

Svenson waved in exasperation. "Sounds to me as if you've just eliminated all argument. Why bother if you can't argue about moral underpinnings or primary concerns?"

"You can, but not your way. Even an absolute moralist like Artie has an agenda of another kind. There are things he wants to see done in the world, and you can suggest ways to him that he can get them done. If he's taken with your ideas, he'll eventually adjust his morality as much as it takes to be able to use them -- but it has to be done by him."

Carlucci sat back in his chair and drained his beer.

"Not even a total pragmatist wants his morality questioned. He might not be quick to admit that he has one, but it's there. It's what allows him to decide what 'good' is, whether he realizes it or not. When you attack him on it, you're reading him out of the human race."

Svenson felt very small. Carlucci was the owner of a powerful intelligence, for which he gave himself too little credit. Admiring material success as he did, and having achieved relatively little, he esteemed the abilities of such as Svenson more highly than they deserved. He had just demonstrated it.

"So how do we get at morality, then?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's always a resultant, just a model that people and societies form out of their accumulated experience, not knowing that they're doing it. But we can't argue about it. If you don't have enough common moral ground with the other guy, you can't argue about anything. Trust me on this: I know. But what I don't know, what I'd still like to know, was what you were looking for tonight."

Svenson didn't answer.

***

In a few days, American participation in the conflict was over, with little visible impact upon the status quo. Government interest in the company's products did increase somewhat in the following months, but a year later the projected layoffs had occurred, and more company real estate had been sold. Otherwise, all was as it had been. Svenson remained employed but nervous. Harry Goetz had not called him back, and he had not tried to discuss relocation with Anna a second time.

That fall, the Republican candidate for Congress from Svenson's district bore down heavily upon the plight of the region's defense businesses. He vowed to spearhead military appropriations bills that would preserve his constituents' jobs, that would restore the economic health that had been theirs only a decade ago. Svenson clucked to himself over the brazenness of the appeal, the most blatant use of the defense budget as a welfare program he had ever heard, as he waited in line to register to vote for the first time in twelve years.

Late in September, George Harris announced his retirement. It was a mild surprise, since he was only fifty-seven and had been well regarded by both his peers and his management. Shortly before his going-away luncheon, he admitted to two colleagues that he had been encouraged to the decision by some modest financial incentives and by a series of oblique comments from his supervisor to the effect that his time was drawing near.

Svenson was saddened by the event. Harris had come to OA at age twenty-two, directly from the Navy. After thirty-five years in its protective embrace, being thrust from its bosom with a pension and a handshake was certain to be a shock. Yet how long could a man feel the imminence of such a thing without caving in? There was no way to fight it. And it was certain to recur, for the company had already announced to the press that further workforce reductions were planned.

In mid-October, a new man was put at Harris's desk, a recent college graduate whose job apparently included Harris's former responsibilities. Svenson was so taken aback by his youth and the abruptness of his arrival that he employed every available device to postpone becoming acquainted. It was more than a week before the new man, up to his eyelashes in the background reading required of him, took the matter into his own hands.

"Mr. Svenson? I'm Kevin Conway."

Svenson looked up to see Conway's hand thrust nearly into his face. The young engineer was built like a linebacker: tall, broad across the shoulders, and trim-waisted below a muscular chest. His imposing appearance was softened by a wide and gentle smile. Svenson repressed the impulse to recoil and shook the proffered hand.

"What can I do for you?"

"If you've got a minute, I'd like to buy you a cup of coffee."

Svenson rose from his desk with some reluctance and followed his new colleague down the corridor to the coffee machines. He waited in silence while Conway poured two cups of coffee, and accepted one with a murmur of thanks.

"What was George Harris like?"

Svenson's vague unease congealed at once into a desire to flee. "Why do you ask?"

"His name's on the cover of every document I have to read. I replaced him, didn't I?"

Svenson nodded.

"Was he very popular?"

Svenson reflected on Harris's peculiar combination of sarcastic acerbity and readiness with a quip or a joke. "Yes, he was popular. Why?"

"Because a lot of the older people have been treating me as if I murdered him."

Svenson flinched. The pleasant guilelessness of Conway's demeanor had unreadied him for such candor.

"Look, son, in an organization like this --"

"Please call me Kevin, Mr. Svenson." The younger man's expression of pleasant attention remained steady.

Svenson took a deep breath and started again. "I'm sorry, Kevin. In an organization like this one, in an exotic field, with so many older employees and a declining business base, a lot of people will identify with a George Harris. His retirement wasn't completely voluntary. Some of our colleagues probably see it as a mirror being held up to them."

Conway nodded. "I guess I understand. But can't they understand that I had nothing to do with it? He wasn't forced out to make room for me. This is just where I ended up."

"People aren't always that reasonable about things that frighten them."

The younger man started at that. "I frighten them?"

"Yes, or what you represent. They average about twenty-five years older than you. Most of them have spent all of their adult lives working here . . . just like George Harris, whom they liked and respected. For some of them, their work is their whole life. Their kids have grown up and moved away, their marriages have gone stale or busted up altogether, and they have literally nothing else to anchor to. When they see you sitting at George's desk, they don't think about you, they think about themselves, about what it would be like for them to lose their jobs to a twenty-two-year-old kid. It would be wrong to take that personally."

"But I'm a person, Mr. Svenson. I have feelings. There's no other way I can take it. And Mr. Harris is not gone from here because of me." Aside from a note of emphasis, Conway's voice had not wavered.

Svenson nodded. "I know that. It was mostly the suddenness of your appearance, so soon after his departure. Given time, they'll thaw out, and it won't be George Harris's desk any more." His brow furrowed. "Why did you bring this to me?"

Conway nodded. "I wondered if you'd ask. I've noticed that you're not in the mainstream here, Mr. Svenson. Everyone speaks highly of you professionally, but you don't take part in the group lunches and coffee klatches and such. I figured that if anyone here knew what it was like to be an outsider, it would be you. I hope you're not offended. I just want them all to know that I'm no threat to them.

"I did pretty well in school; I didn't expect to have so few possibilities when I graduated. But this was the only offer I received. I didn't plan to go into defense work. I have to admit, if I'd had any other option, I'd probably have taken it. But I have to be practical, Mr. Svenson. I have school loans to pay off, and I'm engaged to be married this coming spring. If this is all I can do to survive, then this is what I'll do."

Svenson was shaken by the young man's combination of innocence and realism. When he had first set out into the workaday world, that world had been far more benign. He found himself wondering how his younger self would have measured up to Kevin Conway, and firmly turned the thought aside.

"We all do what we have to do to survive, Kevin." He extended his hand. "Please call me Rolf."

When they returned to their desks, Conway gestured at Svenson to wait a moment, and turned the older man's desk chair upside down to study it. After a hard look, a twiddle and a yank, he set it upright again and invited Svenson to sit. The older man found that, for the first time, he could keep his feet flat on the floor beneath him without putting pressure on his back or knees.

"Thank you."

Conway grinned. "I know what it feels like not to fit in your chair. Anyway, I'm glad I could help."

***

Tuesday, November the second was a bright, crisp autumn day. All day long Svenson felt acutely conscious of both time and place, so much so that he was unable to get seriously to work. It had long been the company's policy to dismiss its employees two hours early on Election Day. Svenson had never taken the time off before, but on this occasion he felt he might as well.

His unnatural time-consciousness followed him home, through dinner, and into the evening. It oppressed him almost to the point of striking him dumb. Yet, if Anna or the children noticed his displacement, they gave no sign.

His unease turned gradually to restlessness. At eight twenty-four, he announced to no one in particular that he was going for a walk, and got in response only a soft grunt from Anna. He strolled through the neighborhood for about twenty minutes, unconscious of any purpose or direction, and presently found himself standing before the Civic Center, the hamlet's traditional polling place, unable to remember how he had got there.

You don't belong here, he said to himself. Yet he could no longer evade consciousness of what he was about to do, what he had come to do.

As he entered, he felt the pressure of innumerable pairs of eyes weighing him, even though only two clerks and a handful of local residents were present. He joined the short line and awaited the attention of the clerks.

"Name, please?" The clerk appraised him without recognition.

He swallowed. "Rolf Svenson."

"Are you registered in this district?"

"Yes."

The clerk flipped through a book of signature cards and found one with his name and address typed across the top. Her brow wrinkled when she saw its nakedness, but she shoved it across the table to him without comment.

Moments later he was in the booth, the curtains closed around him. His time-consciousness had been replaced by vertiginous panic. Reality had telescoped down to the few square feet around him, and it was surging and veering like a storm-tossed boat. He put out a hand to steady himself; it landed on the lever bearing the name of the Republican candidate for Congress.

He struggled to throw off the sense of imminent disaster, but all he could feel was a vast and formless fear. It was like being confronted by a ravenous beast so gigantic that its features could not be perceived, only its power and malevolence.

The crack of the lever snapping down rang like a pistol shot in his ears. Yet there was nothing more; no external tumult arose to match the storm within him. Straining for self-possession, he grasped the lever that would open the curtains and pulled it firmly. He heard a faint click from the voting machine's innards registering his vote as the curtains parted. It was irrevocable now.

If, to the others in that place, he looked as shaken as he felt, none saw fit to mention it. Not that there was much opportunity, for he hurried out and home as quickly as he could.

***

With the change in administrations there came a putative change in foreign policy, for the new president had been identified with noninterventionist ideals all his public life. It meant little to the company, which had apparently reached a stable workforce and a level of continuing business that could be relied upon for the foreseeable future. The anxieties of Svenson's colleagues had retreated. Anyway, they were less in evidence.

Despite the difference in their ages, Svenson got to know and like Kevin Conway quite well. The young engineer was highly intelligent, terse without being unsociable, and candid without being unpleasant. The two lunched together regularly. When first they tried a foursome evening, Anna Svenson and Dorothy Conway took to one another just as readily. Get-togethers between the two couples became a regular affair.

Yet it was nearly two years before their talk turned to politics. Much to his own surprise, Svenson discarded his habitual reticence without so much as a prod, and avowed his convictions frankly. Conway heard him out with an attitude of sober respect, which was not the surprise it might have been.

"As far as I can grasp the implications of your philosophical position, I agree with it -- I think," Conway said after Svenson had concluded his disquisition. "But why anarchy?"

"Because if self-defense is every man's right and responsibility, then no organization can rightly claim a monopoly over the use of defensive force." Svenson paused for a mouthful of liverwurst on rye.

"You don't consider private justice undesirable?"

"If I've read the history correctly, it's been far more efficient and responsible than the 'justice' dispensed by politics. Anyway, that's what you'd expect from competition."

"And who would defend such a society against invasion by the governments of neighboring countries?"

Svenson nodded. "You've hit the hard problem. In a world filled with predatory, unlimited governments, an anarchic society would probably be swallowed up by whichever state was first to act. But that wouldn't necessarily happen if there were a contiguous group of countries with sharply limited governments, and one of them decided to try going completely without. So I think an era of classical-liberal limited government has to come first."

"Special interest politics will be a problem, won't it? After all, a lot of people vote only for candidates who support their favored government activities -- the ones that put money into their pockets. We're one such."

"Bull's-eye! But you know, I think it's an illusion, an example of the will to believe triumphing over objective evidence. I don't think whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican has anything to do with our well-being." Svenson paused to swallow. "If you look back over the last forty years, the company's fortunes haven't correlated at all with national party dominance."

Conway looked skeptical. "You don't put any stock in the Republicans as the friends of the military?"

"Naah. Both parties are dominated by opportunists. They'll do whatever they think will best help them to gain or retain power. If military expenditures or interventionist actions are popular, a Democrat won't shrink from them. If peace is selling well, a Republican will put his so-called principles aside. And both will fund the welfare state to whatever degree they think is politically prudent."

"You make it sound as if it's pure calculation. I don't think you can exclude principle or emotion from political decisions. Why else would they screw up so often?"

Svenson grinned. "Just because they're scoundrels doesn't mean they're smart, Kevin."

"Well, what about principle, then? If there's anything more likely to lead you into a swamp than an unbreakable principle, I can't think of it."

Svenson shook his head vigorously. "I disagree. What the world needs most is more people with principles."

Conway's eternal smile quirked slightly. "With your principles, you mean."

For a moment Svenson could not believe he had heard correctly. "And how am I supposed to take that?"

"Oh, don't get offended, Rolf. But principles are the very things people fight over when there's no good reason to fight at all. If you were confronted by someone whose principles contradicted yours, it'd be pistols at dawn. There'd be no keeping the two of you apart."

Svenson controlled himself with an effort. "In a way, you're right, and I don't want you to think that I'm dismissing your point out of hand. A principle is a fundamental moral premise, so two people whose principles contradict one another would necessarily view one another as evil. But have you ever thought about the uniformity among people who're thought of as highly principled? The term just isn't applied to people whose premise is that it's okay to lie, cheat, steal, kidnap, torture or kill."

Conway nodded slowly. "I suppose you're right. Still, I tend to prefer a pragmatist to a dogmatist, myself. There's usually more ground on which I can dicker with them."

Svenson lurched forward across the lunchroom table so suddenly that Conway could not help but jerk back.

"Kevin, you're young yet. You don't know the full range of human depravity, and if you're lucky, you never will. Without principle, without internal constraints that say that no matter what, there are some things you just won't do, no one is safe from you . . . and you're never safe either. If you haven't got a long enough perspective, ethical behavior looks like a fool's game. Other people, not you, benefit from your morals. But the reverse is true too, and unless nearly everybody keeps that in mind, the world will go to hell."

The younger man was briefly silent.

"Rolf, you know I respect you."

Svenson cocked an eyebrow, uneasy about what might be coming. "I assumed so."

"I haven't respected very many people in my time. When I do, I don't always know why, and when I don't, I don't always know why not. Maybe you've just told me, and I have to get used to it. But tell me this, please: what would you set aside your principles for?"

"Nothing less urgent than sheer survival, or the survival of my family."

Now it was Conway's turn to lean across the table, but his expression and tone remained gentle. "Have you, ever?"

Abruptly Svenson saw that he had trapped himself. To say no was to assume the stance of an incorruptible bastion of virtue. To say yes was to plant in his young friend's imagination the seed of unjustified hero-worship for a fictional noble deed. The surge of tension closed his throat tightly. He only relaxed enough to speak when he saw alarm rising in Conway's face.

"I'm not perfect, Kevin. I've defaulted on my convictions. And I don't want you to think it was in the face of some awful crisis. It was a petty thing, and I regretted it immediately. The worst of it was how unworthy I felt right after."

Conway's expression was unreadable. "Do you think if the situation were repeated, you'd do it again?"

"I don't know." Svenson briefly covered his face with his hands. "Some of us don't get better as we get older."

After a moment's silence, Conway said softly, "Forgive me, Rolf, but I just had to ask."

***

They had never bothered to attend the company's summer picnic, so Svenson was greatly surprised when Anna announced to him that this year they should do so. When he asked why, she said she thought Signe and Thomas would enjoy it, and went no further.

Svenson knew the quality of his wife's character thoroughly. Along with her considerable intelligence, Anna was a rock: what she had decided must be, would be, come hell or high water. He also knew that she was able to withhold her real reasons for her decisions, even from him, if she thought it best. Having long ago conceded the management of the family's social dealings to her, he had followed a policy of not probing her thinking too deeply once she had made up her mind. It wouldn't change things for the better in any case.

Yet he found it difficult not to dwell on the subject. If Anna thought his career prospects or his security might be enhanced by attending the picnic, why would she refrain from saying so? The children had many friends and a more than sufficient number of summer frolics. Aside from Kevin Conway, his work circle and their social circle didn't intersect at all. He began to worry that he had somehow alarmed his wife about the security of his job.

The appointed day was bright and clear, denying him a reprieve by weather. By the time they arrived at the huge open field the company leased each year for the picnic, several thousand people were already in attendance, and the rides and the food pavilions were thronged. From the edge of the parking field, Anna spied someone she knew, called out, and strode off with the children in tow. Cut loose so suddenly, Svenson took what comfort he could in the knowledge that he had the car keys.

For a long while he ambled randomly, not seeing anyone he recognized. The few dozen engineers he worked with were a drop in this ocean, and mostly could not be counted on to attend a plebeian event like this picnic, dominated by the much greater numbers of the assembly-line workers and clerical functionaries.

The day had started warm, and grew warmer still toward midafternoon. Presently, Svenson sought the shelter of a food pavilion, less from hunger than to escape from the rays of the sun. He joined the queue for hot dogs and hamburgers, and had been waiting on it for some time before he realized, with a slight shock, that the man standing in line before him was George Harris.

"George?"

Harris turned and started in surprise. "Rolf! Be damned! I'd never have expected to see you here. Are Anna and the kids here too?"

Svenson smiled wryly. "Somewhere."

"What prevailed upon you to come to one of these?"

"Anna thought it would be a good idea." Svenson waved at the crowd beyond. "Yours is the first familiar face I've seen since I arrived."

Harris laughed. "I'm not surprised. The engineering section is dwarfed by the manufacturing personnel. You're best off at these things if you come as a family and stay together. Speaking of which, I'll bet you haven't met my younger brother Al." He gestured at a large man immediately in front of him in line, who turned and looked Svenson up and down.

Al Harris did not have his elder brother's affable manner even when he was sober. On that occasion, he was just sober enough to stand unsupported. The hand he extended toward Svenson was large and unsteady.

"Pleased t'meetcha." After shaking Svenson's hand, the big man began to turn away once again. Unaccountably, his brother stopped him with a comment.

"You probably remember my telling you about Rolf, don't you, Al? He's the company pacifist."

Svenson looked to his former colleague in surprise. "What's this about, George?"

The elder Harris paid no attention, speaking instead to his sibling. "Rolf was the only guy I knew who was against our getting into the war three years ago. You know, the one just before I was canned."

The hair on the back of Svenson's neck stood to attention. "George, I thought you retired."

"Oh, sure!" George Harris waved expansively. "That's what it is, when you wake up in the morning with nothing at all to occupy you, when you have to make distractions for yourself sixteen hours a day because you're no use to anyone any more. Retirement. I'll have to remember that." It appeared that the elder Harris was no soberer than his younger brother, though he carried it somewhat better. "Al here's retired too."

Svenson looked from the elder brother's face to the younger's. Al Harris was no more than forty-five years old. "Did you come into some good fortune, Al?"

Al Harris glowered while George Harris spoke. "Same good fortune as I had, old buddy. Al was a metal-bender on the EL-17. When the production orders were cut this past winter, the company retired him, just the way it retired me."

Svenson cast about for some way to escape the conversation without seeming rude. George Harris had turned to face his brother, addressing him as a schoolteacher might address an unusually slow pupil.

"Rolf here doesn't hold with the use of military force, even if it means jobs. Your job, my job, it's all the same to Rolf. I'm sure he'd feel exactly the same if it were his job, don't you think so? But I doubt it'll ever come to that. The company is Rolf's oyster. It's very fond of him."

Svenson stood paralyzed with alarm. All vestiges of affability and camaraderie had vanished from George Harris's demeanor. What remained was hatred, and it was undisguised.

Al Harris was not a bright man, but he was devoted to his brother. Drunk or sober, he could tell when his brother wanted something from him, as long as it was simple. This was simple enough. He swept back one huge arm and backhanded Rolf Svenson across the mouth with enough force to lay him out along the ground. The crowd around them gave way in all directions. There was suddenly silence.

When Svenson, bleeding from the mouth where his lips had broken against his teeth, failed to rise from where he lay, Al Harris strode forward and reached down to grab his shirtfront and yank him to his feet. He cocked his arm for another blow, while his elder brother stood motionless, arms folded, and the crowd watched in fascination.

Svenson closed his eyes and awaited the impact, but it did not arrive. When he opened them again, he saw that someone had seized Al Harris in a half nelson.

"Let go of him." The voice was Kevin Conway's.

Abruptly Al Harris released Svenson, who fell backward to the dirt once more. He jerked loose and whirled to face the man who had restrained him, obviously meaning to unleash his full fury on whoever had so presumed.

Conway gave him no chance, taking him with a straight punch to the solar plexus that left him gasping and retching on his face in the dirt.

The young engineer reached down and helped Svenson to his feet, then turned to face George Harris, from whose face the hatred and satisfaction had been displaced by anxiety.

All three remained still and silent for a long interval. Finally, Conway snorted dismissively at the older man, turned, and led Svenson away with an arm around the shoulders.

***

"I didn't expect to see you here. This never struck me as your cup of tea."

"It isn't." Svenson had to talk around the ice-filled dishtowel into which he was bleeding.

"Anna and the kids here somewhere?"

"Somewhere." Svenson gestured vaguely with his free hand. "This was her idea. Where's Dot?"

Conway's face lost all expression.

"I don't know."

Svenson looked up in surprise.

"You don't mean she's here somewhere."

Conway gave a tiny shake of the head, lips pressed tightly together.

"Kevin, is there a problem?"

The young engineer scowled. "Of course there's a problem. My wife has left me. I don't know where she is. Do you mean, is there some other problem? Something really serious?"

"Calm down, Kev. How long?"

"About three weeks."

Conway's uninflected monotone conveyed more pain than Svenson had ever heard modulated onto a human voice. He bit back a multitude of stupid questions and tried to slow his rising heart rate, his own recent indignities forgotten.

"Kevin, why are you here?"

Conway looked away. "No particular reason. Mostly I just wanted to be around people. Might have been hoping I'd run into you."

"Hah." The absurdity of the notion was heightened by its having come true. Svenson cast the bloody dishtowel aside and rose from the picnic table. "Shall we walk?"

***

"How long have you known her?"

They had strolled the perimeter of the picnic grounds in silence, not seeing anyone else either of them knew.

"About twelve years. High school sweethearts." Conway shook his head as if to clear it. "I don't remember us ever having been apart this long before."

"What do her parents have to say?"

"Nothing much." The younger man's tone remained level. "They assured me that she was all right, said she'd probably be in touch soon."

"For all that Anna can be a trial, if she were to leave me, I might kill myself."

Conway looked up sharply. "Don't say that."

"Sorry." The silence returned.

Presently, Svenson said, "I forgot to thank you."

"Think nothing of it."

"Impossible. That was a very large man."

"All the same." Conway looked straight ahead, hands in his pockets.

"Were you that sure you could take him?"

"I don't lose fights, Rolf."

"Have you trained?"

"Not in boxing, no. But I'm big, and I'm strong, and I'm quick, and I don't lose my head when the action starts, and that's most of what it takes."

Svenson nodded and drew a deep breath. "Well, now you've met George Harris."

"I could've skipped it."

Despite all, Svenson had to chuckle. "Me, too."

"Y'know, I never thanked you either."

"For what?"

"For easing me through those first few months, when no one would talk to me, when I was sitting at George Harris's desk."

"But you still . . . " Svenson trailed off, and turned toward his friend. The younger man was still looking blankly ahead of him, but there was no pain in his face, and no tension.

"The only thing I've ever regretted was allowing myself to suffer for no good reason. You helped with that."

"I did?"

Conway turned to look him full in the face. Svenson recalled the conversation in the cafeteria, and said no more.

***

That evening, when Signe and Thomas had been put to bed and Anna had resumed her reading, Svenson acted on his decision.

"Sweetie."

"Hm?"

"We're moving."

Anna Svenson looked up with a frown of displeasure.

"What nonsense is this?"

Svenson smiled pleasantly. "We'll know where in a month or two. I'm going to tell Harry Goetz to put me into his relocation system tomorrow."

Anna put her book aside with an ominously definite gesture. "I thought we had discussed this."

"We have. We're not discussing it any further."

Her eyes widened in astonishment. "Are you serious?"

"Perfectly."

She rose from the couch. There was a tremor in her limbs, and in her voice when she spoke again.

"You're willing to disrupt the children's lives and force me to start a whole new practice just because you're tired of your job? You're going to make me go through selling this house, finding another one in a strange place, and making it livable all over again? Have you completely taken leave of your senses?" Her voice had risen near to a scream.

He shook his head. "Not a bit of it, my dear. Families move all the time. The children are young and resilient. They have us. There are accounting clients everywhere. There are houses everywhere. And you can stay here, if you like."

She gaped.

He forced himself to look squarely into her eyes. "I've endured my job for eleven years. Endured it, not enjoyed it. I will endure it no longer. I'm tired to death of trying to hide from myself the fact that I hate what I do. There are superior alternatives, and I will find one."

He rose, crossed the room, and took her into his arms. She looked up at him mutely.

"All things have a price. The price of our stability here is my self-respect. I've decided it's not worth it. If the price of my self-respect, of my being able to look myself in the eye, is losing you, Signe, and Thomas, I'll pay it. My self-respect is what I need to survive, and I intend to survive. The only question that remains is, which is worth more to you: our marriage and family, or staying here, where I can no longer stand to be?"

She had remained silent, but her tremble had crescendoed to a near-convulsive shaking. Consciously marshaling his calm, he squeezed her against him.

"There'll be time. You'll get used to it. So will the kids." He kissed her gently on the cheek, and her arms came up suddenly to clasp him.

She began to sob. He held her and himself steady.

Whatever comes, I'll weather it.

Thank you, Kevin.

Copyright © 2005 by Francis W. Porretto

© Copyright 2001-2010 Francis W. Porretto. All rights reserved.

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