Careful Measurements

by Layne D. Hansen

  “What’s your problem dude? I’m just sitting here trying to be cool with you.”

  Patton returned the younger man’s gaze, dumbfounded. He shook his head and looked away.

  “So what, are you too good for me or something?” David continued after an awkward moment, getting more agitated. “You barely met me.”

  Patton shook his head again. “Whatever, man. Look, like you say, we just met. I don’t mind being polite and all that, but I don’t like it when people force interaction down my throat. If you can’t tell when someone doesn’t want to talk, that’s your fault.”

  The younger man harrumphed and tried to interrupt, but Patton continued.

  “And … I was just sitting here minding my own business and you sat by me so don’t be offended if I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Time passed and light whirred through Patton’s window. The painful silence continued between them but Patton ignored it.

  David cleared his throat and asked “So what do you think of all this?”

  Patton groaned inwardly but replied “All what?”

  “This experiment,” David replied, sounding like a hairstylist trying to force conversation. “The reason we’re on this train.”

  “I think it’s just great,” Patton replied sarcastically.

  A curious grin painted David’s face. This particular expression made Patton want to punch him, but he resisted the impulse.

  “You think you’re better than me,” David remarked. It wasn’t a question this time.

  Patton’s merely shook his head. He could tell that the best way to get back at this guy was to give him no response. No satisfaction. Give him no rise at all.

  David shook off the perceived insult and continued. “I think this experiment is going to fail unless some people take it in their hands to shake it up a little.”

  Patton found this statement too disturbing to not respond.

  “What do you mean by shake it up?”

  David shifted in his seat and then struck a more confident, relaxed pose.

  “I mean … people are going to want to go on and do what they want to do. This experiment is supposed to reflect American society right? If people don’t try to reproduce American society, how will they know what the effects are?”

  Patton pondered this statement for a moment. Something was deeply troubling about this logic.

  David continued. “I mean, in America, you have conservatives, liberals, socialists, right-wing wackos, and anarchists. How is this supposed to work if all these groups aren’t represented? What’s the point really?”

  At first Patton found himself unable to respond, but then something occurred to him.

  “First of all,” Patton began, “the point of the experiment isn’t to reflect American society. They’ve already done that by who they’ve chosen. What they want to see is how people will react when all of them are put on the same financial basis. Some black people – and I agree with them on this to a point – feel that since they were slaves, they were forced to start out lower than white people. They feel they have to work to just be equal. But in this experiment, they will already be on the same level. You see what I’m saying?”

  David nodded but had a pensive expression. He wasn’t used to having people throw his arguments back into his face.

  “With money being equal, everything will be equal. At least for a while,” Patton continued.

  “So how will money equalize things? That doesn’t really make sense. People will bring their preconceived notions, their biases, their racism with them.”

  “You’re assuming that everyone holds these views, but you’re wrong.”

  “Am I?” David responded harshly.

  “Yes. The problem with you is,” Patton said, ignoring his childish response. “You underestimate everyone you talk to. For some reason, you assume – falsely – that you are smarter than everyone you meet.”

  David rolled his eyes this time but deep down he knew Patton was right. “You don’t know me.”

  “You’re right and that’s my point. You assume you’re smarter than everyone you meet. I’m sure you assume that you’re smarter than me.”

  David took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Patton was right, which embarrassed David even more. Patton continued before he could be interrupted.

  “And this is the most disturbing thing to me about what you’re saying. Events are going to play out and that’s what this experiment is all about. However, if you manipulate events you’re going to skew the results. Your thinking is wrong.”

  David was about to retort when a blond woman arrived and stood above them.

  “Hi Patton,” she said, harried and out of breath. Then she noticed David. “Who are you?”

  Patton sat up in his seat and gestured to him. “This is David.”

  “Hi,” David said, beaming his most flirtatious smile and offering his hand. She shook it and brushed her hair back from her face with her other hand. She was obviously attracted to him.

  The handshake lingered for a moment too long and Patton felt himself blush.

  “You ready?” she asked Patton.

  “Yeah,” he said excitedly, looking at Dave as if to say ‘take that!’ He stood and they walked towards the back of the entertainment car. As they reached the door, Patton looked back and smiled at David’s enraged face.

  Frank looked at his wife affectionately. He loved looking at her without her noticing. This was a relatively recent phenomenon for him, this secret admiration, this fondness he felt for her. Their marriage had been a rocky one, but now that they were starting over, in a sense, he appreciated her all the more.

  “How is it?” he asked his wife, nodding towards her salad.

  She was staring at a young couple that had just walked into the dining car. She turned her attention back to him.

  “Good.” She swallowed a bite and washed it down with a swallow of wine.

  There was a strain there. He could see it in her face and hear it in her voice. It was probably the pain, or maybe she was just tired. Technically she was in remission, but sometimes the pain returned. Although her illness had driven a wedge between them for a time, he loved her so deeply now—maybe more now than ever. He smiled at that realization. How strange, he thought, for them to be on their way to Utah as part of some grand experiment. The thought made him smile and chuckle lightly.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked, the strain now replaced with a twinkle in her eye.

  “Oh,” he said with his gap-toothed grin, “I imagine we’re probably the first black folks to ever live in this part of the country.”

  She smiled at that. Her husband was likely correct. She’d read the history of the area they were moving to. She couldn’t imagine that many African Americans had set foot in the Pocatello Valley.

  Shontae was fifty-two. Frank, whose full name was Chevelle Franklin Norton, was fifty-six. He had just retired as a partner in a large accounting firm in San Francisco. His career afforded her the opportunity to stay home with their children and pursue her hobbies of gardening and, most recently, painting.

  He broke out of his daze and looked at her again. She was beautiful and so radiant when she was happy and not in pain. In some ways her ovarian cancer had been the best thing for their marriage. It had calmed her, helped her lose unwanted weight, and humbled her—all of which she now agreed had been necessary.

  “You look tired, Baby,” he said, concerned.

  She leaned back, giving him an imperious look. But the gaze was playful and she was glad at his concern. “I am,” she said quietly, “but I like being here, out of that damned bed of ours..”

  He grinned slightly and ate a spoonful of soup. She reached her hands out and he grabbed them. Their eyes met and they shared one of those gazes that only long-married couples could share. Their years of exp
erience, both the good times and the bad times, passed between them through an invisible, emotional conduit.

  Their server arrived with their dinner plates, warned them of their temperature, refilled their water glasses, and left with a smile. They sat and ate in silence. Not an awkward silence, but one of exhaustion and a sense of relief to finally be on their journey. It had been a difficult decision for them to enter this experiment. Their youngest child had just graduated from high school and was about to enter college. Two of their children were married and had young children. Her cancer had finally gone into remission and Frank was about to retire. They had finally attained all that they had worked for, but something had beckoned them away.

  Perhaps they began to think that they could only find peace in new surroundings, around new people, and in a new profession. For work, Frank had chosen to enter into a corporation that would manufacture food products. His part in the enterprise was to operate a canning and bottling plant, processing the food that the other partners would raise and grow.

  At Frank’s insistence, Shontae wouldn’t work. Frank had always made a lot of money. However, his ban on her working would allow her to focus on her hobbies and allow her to heal. Although Frank had always been a workaholic – in fact his dedication to his job and not to his family had been a major sore spot in their marriage – he promised her that he would work long enough to make their business a success. Then they could spend time together.

  “Nervous?” she asked, knowing that he wasn’t.

  He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Anxious, more like.” He looked away for a moment. “The break will be good, though.”

  She had to laugh at that. A break for him was to work only sixty hours per week.

  “What about you?” he asked, concern returning to his eyes.

  “It will be nice to get away from it all,” she replied with a smile. Her face suddenly went stern while making a jabbing motion with her fork. “You better keep your promise, Frank, and not just for me, either. This is a new life and I think we should have a new way of doing things.”

  His first impulse at this type of talk used to be a flare of anger and then let her talk him down. But he had changed, too. He no longer felt that incessant clock in his head—the constant need to get on with the next task.

  “At first I’ll have to work hard to get things running, but I plan on finding a good assistant and letting them run the show.”

  She thought about that for a minute. The man had changed so much in such a short time. Better yet, he had made the changes for her and their marriage. They smiled at each other again. She suddenly felt the presence of someone standing above them. They looked up and saw a man. He was younger than Frank and had a blond woman in tow.

  “Aren’t you Frank Norton?” the man asked, grinning broadly.

  Frank wiped his hands on his napkin.

  “Yes I am,” he replied, confused.

  “I’m Patton Larsen. I’m running the farm and greenhouse.”

  “Oh … Patton!” Frank barked. He stood and offered his hand. The two had found each other on the microcosm.org site and had decided to work as partners with their two separate enterprises. “So nice to finally meet you!”

  “You too.” Patton patted Frank’s right shoulder with his free hand and repeated, “you too.”

  “Oh,” Frank said, embarrassed, “this is my wife Shontae.”

  Patton turned to her and smiled. They shook hands briefly. The two had spent hours chatting online. “Yes I remember. How are you?”

  “Great, Patton.” She released his hand and placed her hand on her husband’s broad shoulder.

  “Great, great,” Patton said, grinning broadly. He motioned towards Jennifer who walked over from their table. “Jennifer, this is Frank, the guy I was telling you about, and his wife Shontae.”

  There were smiles and handshakes all around. Shontae invited them to join them for dessert and they accepted. Jennifer and Shontae had their own conversation while Frank and Patton discussed business. Their conversations went on for a long time and stopped only when the train started to slow.

  “Must be coming up on Elko,” Frank said. “Are you two getting off the train?”

  They looked at each other and smiled, embarrassed for some reason.

  “We weren’t planning on it,” Jennifer replied.

  Frank stood, followed by Shontae.

  “Well, we were going to get off and get some air. Would you two like to join us?”

  Patton and Jennifer looked at each other. “We’d love to,” Patton said, standing. He helped Jennifer to her feet and the four waited for the train to come to a complete stop.

  The doors slid open and they were met by a wall of crisp air.

  “Well, what should we do?” Frank asked everyone.

  Patton shrugged and said, “It’s Elko. We can do whatever we want.” He stepped off onto the platform and the rest followed him, laughing loudly.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Charlie Henry grimaced at the view. Patches of crusty snow stood out like islands in the wide expanse of the drab, lifeless landscape. Although he’d never been in this part of the country he hated it, and for some reason he’d always hated it. His train had originated in Chicago. Now that was a city, Charlie thought. This … this flyover country … looked like it’d been nuked. There weren’t many things in the world, particularly in America, that he didn’t hate.

  He was born Charles Harrell Jr., but changed his name when he was nineteen and did so for two reasons. First, he was wanted by police for assaulting a Chicago police officer during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The second, and more important reason, was that his father’s name was also Charles Harrell. He hated his father. Charlie’s father wasn’t a bad man—quite the contrary. He was a good and kind man. What Charlie despised about his father was his seeming lack of passion. He’d been content with his quiet, boring, workaday life—satisfied with the little job, with his little house, and his little family.

  Charlie Henry had never been an introspective person, or one willing to accept criticism, no matter how constructive. He had been a sheltered and pampered child, brought up by two parents who had lived through the worst of the Depression and the Second World War. Despite his parents’ sacrifices, they had never passed their hard-learned lessons onto their son. Young Charlie had always had an unquenchable desire for adventure—to be a part of something big or something important. It was that desire that caused the irreparable rift between them.

  It started when Charlie and some friends went to witness the Detroit race riots. The young, skinny teenagers were the only white people in the crowd—who weren’t policemen, that is. Though scared, the boys wanted to get involved somehow—to fight the injustice in the city’s ghettos. Before they could find any trouble, a young police officer spotted them and ordered them to get into his squad car. The officer asked where they were from and who their parents were and then drove them home. He lectured them about how dangerous “black folks” are the entire way home. When Charlie’s parents saw their son being delivered home by a police officer, Charlie’s mother began to cry softly, looking to her husband for answers. Mr. Harrell, a soft-spoken man by nature, stared off into space, his jaw clenched with anger.

  Charlie was escorted to the front door by the policeman and stood awkwardly on the front stoop. His head hung low as the cop explained why he was bringing him home. Charlie was ashamed for his mother’s sake, but he was angry with his father and his meaningless life and this damn country that would allow its boys to go over to Vietnam and get blown to hell. As time passed, Charlie’s shame faded as his anger grew.

  Months later, Charlie returned to the house one morning after staying out all night with friends. There had been a big anti-war demonstration downtown and Mr. Harrell figured that that was where his son had been. The man had merely beco
me an observer in his son’s life, watching him slip away and become someone he didn’t recognize—and worse, a person that he no longer loved.

  “Charlie,” he said in his quiet way, “you don’t know what you’re playing with here.”

  Charlie had just looked at his father with disgust. The years of impotent rage that had been building within him – boiling and festering – finally escaped.

  “What would you know about it? You’re nothing but a fascist pig just like those other sons of bitches!” Young Charlie said, gesturing out towards the world he didn’t truly understand. He’d expected his father to lash out at him, maybe even hit him, but the old man did nothing. He just stood there, stoic, and for the first time that Charlie had ever seen, his father looked hurt.

  “As a matter of fact, Charlie, I do know what I’m talking about. I risked my life to fight fascists. I sat in a frozen hole, waiting for fascists to run across a field to kill me. Don’t tell me what I don’t know, son.”

  It should have been the end of it, but Charlie felt a sick satisfaction in pushing his father’s buttons.

  “Well it was a waste of time then. You come home just to become one of them. You and your useless life! Go to work, come home, kiss mom, eat dinner, watch TV. Over and over and over. But you accomplish nothing! You are nothing!”

  The look of pain and betrayal deepened in Mr. Harrell’s face.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this because you’re obviously being unreasonable, but I’m going to tell you anyway and then I want you to go to your room, pack your things and get out of my house and never come back.”

  Charlie looked shocked for a moment but tried to compose himself.

  “One night … sometime around Thanksgiving, the Germans shelled the hell out of us. Two of my best friends got killed that night. Anyway, I sat in my foxhole, freezing, scared out of my mind. Somehow I was able to pray and I asked God to get me through that night. If He would, I told Him that I would come home and live a quiet, peaceful life. I would find a job and I would start a family. He kept His promise. This life that you call useless is just me keeping my promise.”