Big If

by Mark Costello

  In fairness, Boone only knew the official story: how Felker wrote the Dome and how, in his twilight, he had tried to make it stronger by unwriting it, by writing murder plots to give the planners something real to plan against; how the Service shut him down; how Felker, seeking freedom from the thing he had created, did something risky and quite foolish, it now seemed, which was to go out in the field and join the Dome as deputy lead agent. He saw what Beltsville never saw—that there are no theories in the field, no zones of pure control, there is only waiting, boredom, preparation, and the crowds are always out there, a seascape of potential threats, waves in all directions, cresting and receding and re-forming somewhere else.

  The official story, though not inaccurate, missed the other side of every agent’s life, your marriage or your lovers, your kids and lawn and dog. For Gretchen, this meant her son, asleep at that hour (she looked at her watch). For Felker it meant—what? All the years he worked in Beltsville, commuting from his farm, building a grand structure on his Certainties, he went home again each night to a mirror-set of certainties: this is my house, this is my chair, this is my wife, Jasper is my son. Gretchen thought the real unraveling of Felker had begun not when he started stalking/protecting Miss Nguyen, nor before that when he left the Dome in Hinman, nor before that with his murder plots in Beltsville. She thought the crackup started on the night Lydia told him that his son was not his son. How did Lloyd, then a planner of unquestioned orthodoxy, process this new data? Several options were available. One: denounce his wife and leave her, the macho option—but what about Jasper? Two: forgive, forget, move on—you’d have to be Jesus to do that. Three: accept, acknowledge, roger-copy, keep the family whole, outwardly forgive, but, inside, brood and wonder—if my life has been based on lies, if nothing that I thought I knew has turned out to be true, if uncertainty is queen, what does this imply about the Dome? Gretchen thought the breakdown started there, Felker asking the first, forbidden question and following the answers where they led him. They led him to dead ends, reversal and inversion, Felker guarding Nguyen, scaring her with “safety,” a fine and final paradox.

  Boone droned on, summarizing threats. Gretchen listened, or tried to. She was thinking, that’s the story, fine, but what’s the lesson? Maybe that’s not the question—maybe it was lame to expect a lesson. So, what is the question? There can’t be no lesson and no question, right?

  Tashmo and Elias drove the chosen length of river road twice in each direction with a Portsmouth traffic captain, watching the odometer, measuring a mile. The mile ran from a rotary, down a hill, around the bend, around another bend, past nine quiet side streets, and up a gentle grade to a four-light intersection. There were houses on one side, woods on the other, sloping to the river’s edge.

  Coming back the second time, Elias stopped the car. He spread a city map on the dashboard and told the captain to close the rotary to all traffic for a distance of a quarter mile and the four-light intersection southbound only. The side streets would have to be secured in both directions for at least five blocks.

  “Five blocks?” said the captain. “How are these folks supposed to get to work?”

  “Four blocks ought to do it,” said Tashmo from the backseat.

  “What about the woods?” Elias asked. “They worth sweeping, do you think?”

  The captain said, “There’s nothing down there but the river, junky cars and old refrigerators. Sometimes in the warmer months you’ll get hobos living in the cars.”

  The captain was an oldster, many times a granddad from the looks of him, and he made the homeless sound almost picturesque. Elias went over the traffic plan again, making sure the captain had all the arrows in his head, no flow going this way, no flow going that way.

  The Army trucks appeared and Tashmo led a group of soldiers to the river woods. Another group of soldiers took the bomb dogs up the street. The dogs ran, ass-waggling, snouts to the pavement, sniffing the tires and the tailpipes of the trucks they had arrived in, finding no explosives, moving on to the parked cars, sniffing trunks and tires, the mailboxes, the trash bags on the sidewalk, the hydrants on the grass. One dog paused and took a leak.

  Cop cars started showing up, parking on the shoulder around the Army trucks. The captain went up the street to seal the intersections, leaving a young sergeant to liaise.

  Tashmo came back from the woods. “Hobo check is negative,” he said.

  Elias called Gretchen at the coffee shop, reporting the all clear.

  Tashmo was standing with the young sergeant, looking at the map spread on the hood. The sergeant came from the motorcycle unit. He wore a leather jacket, blue jodhpurs, and white helmet, chin cup unsnapped and dangling.

  “Where’s the nearest trauma center?” Tashmo asked. “Show me on the map here, Sarge.”

  The sergeant pointed to the map.

  “What would be the quickest route, trafficwise?”

  The sergeant traced a route.

  “Where’s the nearest place the gunship could put down?”

  The sergeant pointed. “That’s a little city park. Not too many trees.”

  “Where’s the nearest halfway decent breakfast place?”

  “Right up here,” the sergeant said.

  “What is that, McDonald’s? ’Cause I’m sick of McDonald’s. Eli loves McDonald’s, but I’m sick of it.”

  “It’s a diner,” said the sergeant.

  “Is it any good?”

  “They say it’s pretty good.”

  “The coffee or the food? Because some diners with bad food have excellent coffee. The coffee fools you into ordering the food.”

  “They just say it’s generally good.”

  “Do they do a breakfast sandwich? Hey Eli, want a breakfast sandwich? Never mind, I’m sure he does.”

  “I assume they do,” the sergeant said. “We could call them when they’re open and find out.”

  “When they’re open?”

  “I don’t think they open until later.”

  “How about a halfway decent breakfast place that’s open?” Tashmo said. “What do you think, this is some kind of academic inquiry? I’m hungry, Sergeant.”

  The sergeant pointed to the map.

  Tashmo said, “What’s that?”

  “McDonald’s, but they do the Egg McMuffin.”

  “Fuck it, never mind. I’ll just get some coffee.”

  “Should I wait here then?”

  “Why, do they deliver?”

  The sergeant left to get the coffee. The sniper vans unloaded, the bomb dogs finished with their sweep. A campaign van parked on a side street. Several aides piled out, Fundeberg’s young minions. They started an inspection tour, making sure the street was typical and scenic.

  Tashmo was sitting in the front seat of the Taurus. He watched the campaign workers frantically chalk hopscotch squares on the sidewalk as Elias scanned the housefronts through binoculars. The snipers on the rise were scanning the same housefronts. The gunship overhead covered the backyards and the river woods. Tashmo, rooting through the glove compartment, came out with an orange. He bit the skin to get a start and peeled it with his thumbnail.

  “Eli.”

  “What?”

  “Who had this car before us?”

  “I think the comm techs brought it down from the Moose Lodge. Why?”

  “No reason.” Tashmo finished peeling. “Want some orange?”

  “No, I’m good,” Elias said.

  Up the road, two cops blocked a driveway with their car and argued with a man in painter’s pants who was sitting in the cab of a large luxury pickup.

  The captain hailed Elias on the comm. “I’m with this painter guy down here,” the captain said. “He wants to know why he can’t leave his driveway.”

  Elias said, “Explain the situation.”

  Tashmo said, “And tell the guy, nice truck. That rig goes for thirty Gs, Eli. I priced it when I got my little Jap.”

  Tashmo ate the orange like an apple, in big bi
tes, sucking juice and spitting seeds as he chewed.

  “Hey Eli.”

  “What?” said Elias, still scanning the housefronts.

  “How long you been married?”

  Sean Elias smiled. “Seven blissful years.”

  “Out of how many total?”

  “Nine,” Elias said. “I’ve been very blessed.”

  “You ever cheat?”

  “On my wife?”

  “No, your taxes, dopey. Of course your fucking wife.”

  “I don’t cheat on either, Tashmo, actually.”

  “Ever come perilously close?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say—it’s so subjective nowadays. How do you depreciate a timeshare on a sailboat? I took a guess, but maybe I was cheating without knowing it.”

  “How about your wife?”

  “We file jointly.”

  “Ever come close to cheating on her?”

  “Never,” said Elias.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Well,” Elias said, “I have my faith. Also, I stay sober at office parties. What’s on your mind there, Tash? Something wrong with Shirl?”

  “I’m just asking,” Tashmo said. “I have this buddy, see? He cheated on his wife a long time ago. He cheated with this one woman in particular, the wife of his best friend.”

  “This anyone I know?”

  “No—it’s just a guy from my Bible study class.”

  “You’re doing Bible study, Tash? Good for you.”

  “Yeah, thanks—anyway, now the husband’s dead and the lady’s saying that her son with the husband is actually my buddy’s son and has been all along. It could be pretty messy, if it all comes out.”

  “Sounds like it’s already messy,” said Elias, looking up the street. “It’s nearly J-hour—where’s the goldang motorcade?”

  The motorcade had left the inn thirteen minutes late and lost more time along the way. The roadblocks coming north were less than textbook, two intersections not locked down, two others locked down partially, and for at least a quarter mile there they were actually in traffic, surrounded by non-decoys, by true ordinary cars, part of the world’s commute, which Gretchen didn’t like one bit. She hailed Tashmo on the comm and gave him a good reaming for fucking up the roadblocks. This wasn’t fair. She knew it; Tashmo knew it too. While the intersections coming north were on the master traffic plan, this aspect of the jog had been farmed out to the locals. If anybody was to blame, it was the traffic captain or maybe Sean Elias, who, as deputy lead agent, was the ranking man on scene. It wasn’t a big deal, though it created more delay, and even if it was, it wasn’t Tashmo’s fault, but Gretchen let him have it anyway. She was thinking about Felker, still looking for a lesson (or at least a question), and she was mad at Tashmo. She wanted him to suffer for the role he’d played, betraying Felker in the good old Reagan days, fathering the son who wasn’t Felker’s. Few things made Gretchen madder than men who tried to slide through life. Thoughts of Jasper Felker had led her back to Tevon, and to Carlton Imbry, Tevon’s father in L.A., another slick-ass law-enforcement Casanova, a black Tashmo almost. She gave Tashmo a tongue-lashing for the two blown roadblocks. Tashmo, to his credit, took it like a man, not finking on Elias or the captain.

  Gretchen signed off. It was seven fifty-five. She dug through the pockets of her overcoat, looking for her cell phone. Every morning on the road, Gretchen called her son in Maryland. It didn’t sound like much in the mothering department—a phone call, what was that? Pathetic—especially with Tev at such an awkward age and with all the trash out there, drugs and gangs and thievery and evil on CD, computer, television, movies, drops of poison in the well. She tried to protect him from the poison in the well. When she was home, she took him to the movies at the mall. She let him pick which one, PG, PG-17, she’d even do an R. She knew that movies got R ratings for sex, violence, or explicit language. Explicit language didn’t worry her; kids heard worse in schoolyards. The violence scared her, but the sex scenes were the worst—damn embarrassing to sit through with your kid right next to you. She let him pick the movie because he wouldn’t go to any movie she had picked, and wasn’t that the purpose of the cineplex, the batting cage, the sneaker store, Tevon-time, son-and-mother bonding, all of that? Tevon liked cop movies, so they saw a lot of them. Often she was so worn out from the road that she fell asleep before the first burst of small-arms fire and missed the scene, somewhere toward the middle of the movie, where the cop rivals became buddies, and she woke up to explosions at the climax, throwing herself on the person sitting next to her, screaming in the dark, Tashmo, Felker, gun gun gun! The ushers would hustle down the aisle and eject them and Tev would be so angry and embarrassed, riding home.

  Gretechen knew her morning phone calls weren’t a substitute for mothering. She could only hope that Tevon understood that it was a major pain in her ass to line up five private minutes at exactly seven fifty-five each day. The jogs, generally scheduled for eight, were small invasions to bring off; she couldn’t really stop the show to call her house and tell her son to get out of bed. Seven fifty-five was an awkward time for Gretchen, but she was stuck with it. If she called before that time, Tev would be in REM sleep and a SWAT team couldn’t rouse him. There was no point in trying to do battle with her son’s biological clock. Tev’s clock was more like a biological Stonehenge, mute boulder, enduring and immovable, slow cycle of the seasons, spring planting and the harvest, Tev wakes and lies there for a time and slowly, very slowly does he reach to scratch his buttcrack. If she called much past that time, Tev would be awake and still in bed, but already behind schedule, not yet showered, much less dressed. The school bus left at half past eight and Tev would have to go through at least four outfits, careful self-inspections in the mirror, before he was ready for his cereal and the daily hunt for the missing backpack, which contained the undone homework and a certain crucial comic book he’d be needing if they sent him to detention. Her phone call set it all in motion—shower, dressing, breakfast, the dead run to the bus—and if she called at eight, say, or five minutes past, Tevon’s morning went to hell from there. She told him what a pain it was to call on his schedule, not to make him feel guilty, but to let him know that he was fully worth it.

  The vans pushed through traffic. Gretchen got her mother first. Mildred Williams was her usual fount of small complaints involving joints and poor digestion. Gretchen asked her to get Tevon—it’s late, Mother, for chrissakes put him on.

  Tev picked up in his bedroom. “Hello, Moms.”

  Gretchen said, “It’s late—you should be in the shower.”

  But Tevon was relaxing like a pasha in his undies. “So how’s the P machine?” he asked.

  The what? Then Gretchen remembered the lie she had told him in the driveway Sunday afternoon, the secret weapon of Protection, the two-three-one-two-three-six-P, the ring of energy around her in the crowds, the reason why he didn’t have to be afraid for her.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s great. They’re getting it off the truck right now.”

  Tevon said that he had been thinking about the P machine. He’d figured out that it was a lie.

  “Like Santa Claus,” he laughed.

  Gretchen said, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m looking at the P machine right now, pal. They’ve got the extension cord out and everything. Come on, Tev, it’s late. Get your butt into the shower.”

  Tevon said that he had been talking to Carlton Imbry in L.A.—just talking, no big deal, they were having some good talks.

  “You can’t stop me, Moms,” Tevon said. “I can talk to my father if I want.”

  Gretchen felt tired and afraid, hearing this—Tevon plunging into the uncertainty of fathers and of love.

  She said, “I can stop you, son. You don’t think I can? Wait’ll I get home—we’ll see who can’t stop what.”

  Tev said nothing. It wasn’t a long call.

  She said, “Take a shower, Mr. Man. Let’s try and make the bus today.”

 
The vans were out of traffic, coming up a hill. She looked out at the neighborhoods. Typical and scenic, she thought bitterly. She was starting to have fundamental doubts about herself. Not about her job, her methods as lead agent, the way she drove her people. The whole team had heard her ream out Tashmo and most of them understood traffic plans well enough to know that the bungled roadblocks were not Tashmo’s fault. Tashmo wasn’t beloved by the other agents. They saw him for the selfish civil service schemer that he was, but they also knew that when you gave him an assignment, it usually got handled (usually by Elias—Tashmo had Elias wrapped around his finger). If Tashmo handled it, he handled it on Tashmo-time, complaining the whole way, but in the end the thing got done. The agents knew that Gretchen wasn’t in the right, blasting Tashmo for the roadblocks, and they probably chalked it up to She’s a bitch.

  Gretchen didn’t want to be a bitch. She wanted to be an asshole, a bastard, a ball-buster, but she had to admit that she was sometimes bitchy too. She knew that every slipup, every lapse, could lead to Tevon in his room watching an assassination on TV. This was another thing she had lived through as a kid (Dr. King in Memphis, Robert Kennedy in L.A.—blood looked black on the black-and-white TV her mother had in ’68, when the country went to hell). Tevon was her country now, the only country Gretchen knew, and he wouldn’t see the VP die on television, not while she was chief-of-detail. She drove her agents to protect her son, and if they didn’t like it, well, they could fuck themselves and go back to Crim, in more or less that order. This was Gretchen’s way, maybe not the best way, but she didn’t doubt that it had to be her way. Riding in the van, she was doubting something else. Was she a good mother? She thought of Tevon searching for himself in cyberspace. She saw him at the terminal, typing the same lonely search, Tevon Williams, T. J. Williams, Tevon Joseph Williams, trying it all-caps to see if this picked up some hits—it broke her heart. The search had led him to back to L.A. and to Carlton Imbry, and now they were talking, son and father, though she had forbidden it. She couldn’t let Tevon come to know his father because Carlton Imbry was one of those handsome, talented, weak men who hurt you in the end, and she couldn’t watch her son get hurt. She also didn’t want him to grow into that kind of man—she couldn’t watch that either. She had built a Dome named Gretchen Williams all around her son, his promise and his future, but she was tired and she couldn’t stand the fighting, or the silence on the phone, or the locked doors at the house, and maybe it was time to let it go.