by Proehl, Bob
Owen Curry nods. He thinks of what his friend told him about delivering justice. He thinks about Miss Washington’s speech to the jury. Before he can take the next step, the doors of the bar swing open, and the defendants parade in. Owen knows them by name. He’s been studying the case. The first one through the door is Danny Randall, who, according to Scott Lipscombe’s testimony, organized the whole thing. “Troy, I want to buy these innocent men some beers,” he crows.
The men file in behind him, itching in suits they’re not used to wearing. They collectively let up a whoop, as if they came from a softball game rather than a murder trial. Danny Randall takes up a spot on the other side of Miss Washington, close enough to cast her in his shadow. “Troy, let’s make it six pitchers of Bud and keep it simple.” As the bartender turns away, Danny Randall notices who he’s standing next to.
“Well, shit,” he says. “I did not imagine you’d be staying in town very long. Troy, get another glass of wine for the little lady.”
“I’m good,” says Miss Washington.
“It’s on me,” Danny says. “Part of how we do things out here in Wyoming. No hard feelings, is what I mean.”
Troy the bartender pours Miss Washington a glass, and it sits in front of her untouched. The bar is loud with the sounds of victory. Owen spins on his bar stool, scanning the room. He looks at Miss Washington and thinks about the Bible story his mother used to tell him in which God asks to see one good man in a city before he decides to destroy it. Owen can’t remember how it ends. Something about salt. He leans over to Miss Washington, whispers in her ear.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I think you’re a good person. And what you said yesterday meant something to me. I’ll tell people what you said. I wrote it all down.” He taps his notebook.
“Thank you?” says Miss Washington. She looks confused, nervous.
“I’m here to do what you couldn’t,” Owen says. “I looked you up, and I see you’ve been trying to fight for people like me. But we have to fight our own battles. That’s me. I’m the one who fights. I wish you didn’t have to be here. I’m sorry. It doesn’t change anything, but I am.”
Owen reaches into the place inside him where the null is. When he brings it into the world, it’s usually like lifting an egg, bringing a treasure up from the sea. This time, it’s the sea he’s bringing up. Owen Curry opens himself wide, and an ocean of beautiful nothing pours out, swallowing Miss Washington and Danny Randall and the other killers, and Troy the bartender, and the whole Chariot Lounge, and the towns of Gillette and Powder Basin and everyone in them, guilty or innocent, just and unjust alike.
The crater that was once Powder Basin is wide enough across that Avi can hardly see the agents working the opposite edge of the rim. The smooth, shallow bowl is striated with lines of white that catch the afternoon sun. There was heat here, pressure. The veins of coal that kept the people of Powder Basin employed and fed for three generations were crushed into diamonds in an eye blink on the ground where they died.
Louis Hoffman’s SUV pulls up behind him. He watched it make its way around the circumference toward him. All the Homeland agents drive essentially the same car, but Avi knew this one was Louis’s and that it was headed for him.
“There’s an argument to be made that this is on you,” Louis says, slamming the car door. He walks up to the very edge, digs his toe under a clump of dirt fused to glass on one side, and kicks it. It skitters down the curve with a sound like metal scraping teeth. “Assuming we’re looking at what we’re looking at. If you and I had been together on this years ago—”
“Kay was here,” Avi says.
“What?”
“Kay,” says Avi. “She was working with the prosecution. She’d been here for weeks.”
“I went over the list of the missing and didn’t see her.”
“She was practicing under her maiden name,” Avi says. “Kay Washington. It wasn’t legally changed yet, but that’s what she was going by professionally.”
“Jesus. Kay.” Louis stands with his back to the crater. His wife ran off when their kid was small. Before Avi lost his leg, Louis used to bring his kid over to play with Emmeline, but the two never got along. Kay spent time with the boy, helping him with his math homework at the kitchen counter while Avi and Louis drank beer and Emmeline drew countless pictures at the table. Avi knew she and Louis had kept in touch, not close but as close as Louis got to anyone.
“Anyway,” Avi says, “what were you saying?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, you’re right, Louis. This is on me.”
“Are you so desperate to feel important that you’d take the deaths of thirty thousand people on your conscience?” someone asks from behind them. Avi turns to see Patrick climbing out of a rental car. He puts on a pair of sunglasses before he approaches the glare of the crater.
“My wife was here,” Avi tells Patrick. “Emmeline’s mother.”
The stridency leaves Patrick’s face, as if he’s been replaced by another person, one with a functioning set of emotions. “Avi, I’m sorry,” he says. He puts a hand tentatively on Avi’s shoulder, and when Avi doesn’t swat it away, he rests it there.
“I haven’t told Emmeline,” Avi says. “I came here first. I should have gone to Emmeline. Tomorrow’s Wednesday. They have lunch together on Wednesdays.” It occurs to Avi that Emmeline already knows. Kay must have missed weeks’ worth of their lunches together. She told Emmeline where she was. If the news is out there already, if Emmeline has heard what’s happened here, she knows. Leaving all that aside, Emmeline has her own way of knowing things. She has since she was little, so pronouncedly so that Avi remains convinced it’s her ability. Since the beginning of all this, he’s had a question and an answer. He’s waited for someone, Emmeline, Fahima, any of them, to confirm that the two are a pair. Now he assumes that they are, that they always have been. Emmeline’s ability is knowing, even knowing something before it happens. Maybe she never told him because she’s known what would happen to Kay. Maybe she knows how Avi dies, too.
“Are you sure you want to be here?” Louis asks.
Avi shakes his head to clear it. Light glinting off the diamond veins burns on his eyelids. “I’m fine,” he says. “It’s fine.”
Patrick and Louis decide to continue as if Avi isn’t there. Avi returns his attention to the crater. He tries to imagine the spot above which Kay was standing when it happened. All points along the curve slide into one another. He pictures her floating over the center, the zero point. She’s reading her book, having a drink. He likes to think that she didn’t know what was happening. That she was there one second, gone the next.
“It’s amazing,” says Patrick, lowering his glasses.
“You sound impressed,” Louis says.
“I can be impressed and horrified,” says Patrick. “You think people who saw the atomic blasts weren’t impressed?”
“Scary analogy,” Louis says.
“Owen Curry is become death,” Avi mumbles. “Devourer of worlds.”
“Oppenheimer said that because he’d created the bomb,” Patrick says. “You didn’t create Owen Curry.”
Avi’s not sure this is true. He sees himself in the manager’s office of the Roseland Rest, about to call Louis and Homeland down on Owen Curry. Would they have gotten there before Patrick and Kimani and the others grabbed him? Would they have shot him down the way he deserved rather than throw him in a cell and forget to keep eyes on him? Owen Curry was a monster then. Now he was close to being a god. Avi had provided the time Owen Curry needed to blossom into a true horror.
“I can hold off press conferences another day,” Louis says. “There were people taking shots of the site before we got here. Photos are out there. People are going to assume one of you did this.”
Patrick nods. “There’s already been an incident near B
ishop. One of the second-years was chased down an alley. They threw stones at her. I suppose the classics never go out of style.”
“Is she okay?” Avi asks.
“She’s a lithic,” Patrick says. Avi and Louis look at him, confused. “She controls rocks. She sent the stones flying back at them. If it’d been beer bottles or bullets, it would’ve been a different story.”
“I can have the New York office—” Louis begins, but Patrick cuts him off.
“We’ll take care of it,” he says.
“Working with Homeland could be seen as a sign of cooperation,” Avi offers. “Or it could get you disappeared. Anything ever come of that, Louis?”
Louis glares at him. “No comment,” he says.
“Working with Homeland would be a gesture of appeasement,” Patrick says. “A sign that our people need protection.” He sweeps his hand out toward the place Powder Basin used to be. “Which of our people need protection, Agent Hoffman?” There’s a dictatorial grandeur in the gesture that makes Louis shuffle his feet nervously. Look on our works, ye mighty, it says.
“I’ve got to get back to it,” Louis says. He puts his hands on Avi’s shoulders awkwardly, the prelude to a potential hug. “About Kay—”
“Thanks, Louis,” Avi says.
“I’ll call you,” Louis says, getting back into his SUV.
“Yeah.” Louis drives away, leaving clouds of pale dust in his wake. Avi and Patrick stand side by side at the edge, looking at the crater in respectful silence.
“You should call your daughter,” Patrick says without turning to him.
“I should tell her in person,” Avi says.
Patrick lowers his sunglasses and looks at Avi over the rims. “You’re not allowed at Bishop.”
“Don’t you think they’d make an exception?”
“I wouldn’t let any one of you people through the door,” Patrick says.
Avi sniffs, pinches dust out of his nose. “I’ll have her meet me somewhere else,” he says. “The bakery on Lexington.”
“You want her leaving the school?”
“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” he snaps.
“I actually don’t care what you do, Avi,” Patrick says. “I never have. But I’d ask yourself if you’re helping Emmeline by staying in her life. Or if you’re blundering around, doing more harm than good because you can’t imagine the world as anything but a story with you as the main character.”
There’s no anger in Patrick’s voice as he says it, only calm disdain.
“I can’t leave her,” Avi says.
“Because it would hurt her or because it would hurt you?” Patrick asks. Avi doesn’t answer. “It seems impossible to cut yourself off from the people you love. But there are times it’s necessary. It can be done. I’m not sure it can be fixed after you’ve done what you need to do. After you’ve gotten yourself right. Once it’s done, it’s done.” He kneels down. His arm extends an extra yard so he can lay his hand flat on the surface of the crater. “There are days I don’t think about my friends at all,” he continues. “I think about what’s necessary. I wake up, and I move forward like a car someone else is driving. I get to the end of the day, and I don’t even know what I’ve done, but I know I’m one day farther along. They don’t even feel like bad days anymore.” He looks up at Avi and smiles, a grin that’s too wide and pulls the corners of his mouth out like someone’s tugging at them with hooks.
“I almost asked if you were staying in town,” he says, staring at the space where the town used to be.
“I’m in Moorcroft,” says Avi. “Twenty miles east. They have a Best Western.”
“Sounds nice,” Patrick says.
Avi shrugs. “It has a bar. You?”
“I’ve seen what I need to see,” Patrick says. “I’m headed back.”
“To Bishop?”
“Maine,” says Patrick. “Bishop left me his house up there. I’m supposed to be resting. I’ve been having headaches.”
“Now you’re back on the hunt?”
“My time ‘on the hunt’ hasn’t done sweet fuck-all,” Patrick says. “So no. I’m going to go do what damage control I can here, and then I am going to stare out at the ocean and wait for war.”
“It won’t come to that,” Avi says.
“No, of course not,” says Patrick. “Everything will be just fine.”
* * *
—
The bar at the Best Western in Moorcroft consists of four bar stools. Avi walks in and sees Louis sitting at one of them. He could take the one on the far end, but it would be a useless bit of aggression. He sits down next to Louis and orders them each a shot of whiskey. Louis downs his without saying anything, and Avi orders himself a beer.
“Your friend’s a piece of work,” Louis says after a while. “Real fucking charmer.”
“He never liked me,” Avi says. “From day one.”
“And you’re such a lovable guy,” Louis says.
“You’re never going to find Owen Curry, are you?”
“I’ve missed my best chances,” Louis says. “My guess is no. On the plus side, I am expensing my drinks to Homeland, so I am on my way to getting very drunk.”
“You stopped taking my calls.”
“Don’t act like a jilted prom date,” Louis says. “I gave you what I could.”
“I have missing persons reports,” says Avi. “Hundreds, all across the Midwest. I have names on the guys who picked me up, Louis. They match people on the payroll of the same corporation that funds the Kindred Network. There are land deals—”
“So what?” says Louis, turning toward Avi, angry. “You see what I saw today and you want to tell me those guys wouldn’t be justified? One of them killed your wife, Avi. Isn’t that enough?” Avi wants to argue with him, but he’s had enough. It’s not that he wants them put into camps, but there are days he wishes he could forget that the Bishop Academy and Owen Curry and all the rest of it existed. A flush of shame blooms on Avi’s face at the thought as Louis relents. “I’m sorry. Long bad day.” He signals the bartender for another round. “You want to see something strange?”
Louis pulls out both of his phones. He has one for work and one for personal use. The personal one is newer, nicer. He puts the work phone back in his pocket and pulls up an image on the other. It’s a large sample jar full of clear liquid. Louis hits “play,” and a small piece of matter, the size of one knuckle of a finger, wriggles and twitches in the liquid like a worm on a hook. It distends until it is a thin needle the whole length of the jar, then shrivels back up, a dark kidney bean in suspension.
“They found it when they were doing the autopsy on the kid from the Hargrave murder,” says Louis. “Darren Helms. It was in his fucking brain. The kid had been dead for hours, but this little guy was wiggling around in there, nestled up against his—” Louis snaps his fingers, looking for a word. “—para hippo.”
“Parahippocampal gyrus,” says Avi. He presses “play” on the short video again.
“It’s still alive in a fucking jar in a fucking lab,” Louis says. “The tech guys say it’s giving off a signal like they do.”
“Like who do?” Avi asks.
Louis looks around the empty bar, then leans in very close. “The freaks, Avi. The Resonants. It’s doing their whole resonating thing in the jar, just humming the fuck along like we didn’t cut it out of a dead kid’s brain.” The video ends, and Louis pockets his phone. “If you know one of them that’s got superbrainworm powers, let me know. I’d like to bring them in for questioning.”
An ugly thought forms in Avi’s mind, too large and terrible to share with Louis, to even speak yet. He tells himself it’s ridiculous as he orders another drink. The liquor won’t wash it away, and in the middle of the night he’s thinking it. It’s becoming more solid, crystalizing from
wild theory into probable fact.
* * *
—
When Avi lands in Portland, Maine, he has eight messages and countless texts from Emmeline. He eyes the departures board. There’s a flight to New York leaving in forty minutes and another late tonight, six hours from now. I’ll go and talk to him and make it back in time, he thinks. I can be at the school before midnight. I’ll go to her room and wake her. I’ll take her out of there, and we can be together.
He rents a car and drives south and toward the coast. Out of the city, on Highway 1, he speeds by a gun dealer at seventy miles an hour. He takes a hard U-turn and goes back. For an extra hundred bucks, waiting periods and background checks are forgotten, and Avi walks out with a .38 revolver, the same gun he has at home. What good is it going to do you? What are bullets to a man made out of rubber? But there’s a comfort in having it, seeing it on the passenger seat next to him.
The address is easy to find. Kevin Bishop is listed in the phone book. 2246 Oceanside Way. He thinks about this enclave of Resonants hiding in plain sight, shielded by their money. What would Kevin Bishop have been if he wasn’t rich? What would the world have looked like if Kevin Bishop hadn’t possessed the resources to hide them all?
Avi listens to talk radio the whole drive. On a Kindred Network station, a new Jefferson Hargrave, one lacking the original’s veneer of civility, is calling for open war. He’s calling for extermination squads. He’s calling for an attack on the Bishop Academy, “a nest of them right in the middle of Manhattan. Burn it down. Burn them out.”
Avi parks in front of the little bungalow. He fumbles bullets into the gun, four of them, before his shaking hands make the exercise ridiculous. He shoves another fistful into his pocket, tucks the gun into the back of his belt. He shuts the car door quietly and goes up the walk. Communities like this, you don’t need to lock the front door. Oceanside Way is a bubble of another time, when people felt safe around each other. Avi lets himself in.