Parts Per Million

by Julia Stoops

Nelson gets a small kick in his stomach. Not entirely unpleasant. He pinches the top of his tie. It’s the dark olive silk. Deirdre always said dark colors suit him, better than the tan of that old corduroy jacket. He worries that he looks too conservative in darks, but Kate also says they look good on him.

  “Thanks for your confidence,” he murmurs into the microphone. “Ah, bring it to the forum, okay?”

  Sylvia turns her car onto the Hawthorne Bridge.

  Nelson says, “I can’t keep asking you for rides.”

  Sylvia smiles. “Get one of those Priuses.”

  Nelson keeps an eye on Kate’s car in the side mirror. Kate’s Honda carrying Kate and Franky and Clarissa, and Adrian strapped into his little safety seat. He says, “But Fetzer wants to stick with biofuel.”

  “You can’t agree?” says Sylvia.

  “We can’t agree,” says Fetzer from the back.

  “They can’t agree,” says Jen next to him.

  Last week in the kitchen, Fetzer pulled up a chair. Sat down. “So.”

  It was time for the talk. Nelson was ready.

  Fetzer had tilted his freshly shaved head to the side. “How’re you doing?”

  “Fine,” Nelson had said. “Really.”

  Fetzer leaned closer. “How come?”

  “I feel very supported. You guys are the best friends I will ever know.”

  Fetzer winced. “That’s extremely nice, but, I don’t buy it.”

  Dear Fetzer, as Deirdre would say.

  Fetzer circled a finger near his ear. “What is going through your head? You’re planning, planning, working, working.”

  Nelson had smiled at him. “Future’s coming. There’s work to be done.”

  “Don’t give me your little catchphrase.” Fetzer propped his hands on his knees. “Don’t you miss her? I miss her all the time.”

  “Of course. All the time. But I get to start over, don’t you see? Isn’t that amazing?”

  Fetzer’s mouth pinched, searching for words. “It’s—no, I wouldn’t say ‘amazing.’ But then, I rarely do.”

  The kitchen floor was solid under Nelson’s feet. The air was very still.

  There are gifts that come and we can’t even explain it.

  “I was greedy for her, Fetz. I was addicted. And now I’m not.”

  Fetzer’s eyes opened a little bit wider, then for some reason he snorted. Put his hands over his face.

  Nelson said, “Don’t you see? I get another chance.”

  Fetzer moved a hand to Nelson’s shoulder. He nodded. “That’s good, John.” And at that moment love flowed across Nelson like clear water on white sand.

  Sylvia turns the car onto Thirteenth and looks into the rearview mirror. “Hybrid or biofuel?”

  Jen says, “I could go either way,” and Nelson smiles to himself. Dear Jen. How hard she’s trying.

  Sylvia says, “Do you think Franky could be persuaded to trade his in for something diesel?”

  Nelson turns to Fetzer and Jen in the back seat. “Now that’s an idea. Franky gets a new car, and you convert it. Think he’ll go for it?”

  “I don’t see why not,” says Fetz.

  Nelson faces forward again. “Excellent idea, Syl.”

  Sylvia pulls to a stop outside the house. Most of the top story is a deep forest green. It looks really good for recycled paint. Makes the house look more solid.

  Fetzer looks up at the paint job. “We got pretty far on Friday. Should be finished end of next week.” He slaps his knee. “Crap. I forgot to get more window putty.”

  “You need a pen?” says Nelson.

  “You need one of these,” says Sylvia, and she holds up her Blackberry.

  “I kinda covet that thing,” murmurs Jen.

  Nelson fishes in Sylvia’s glove compartment for a pen. He used to fantasize about the house he’d live in with Deirdre one day. How they’d pick out colors together. He was so blind.

  “I heard another good idea today,” says Fetzer. He opens his door but doesn’t get out. “Run for mayor.”

  Nelson gets the small kick in his stomach again. Turns around to Fetz and Jen. “That sure came out of left field.”

  “Mayor’s a stretch,” says Fetzer. “But what about city council?”

  Sylvia rests her forearms on the steering wheel and looks up at the sky. “A political campaign. Now that would be an interesting challenge.”

  Jen rakes her hair back from her face. “You guys are asking this anarchist to adjust to a lot.”

  EPILOGUE: FETZER

  By end of summer Nelson was back on air. The community forums were proving a success, and we were learning to listen without inserting ourselves in every conversation. A hard lesson for radio folk, who are used to talking, talking. But slowly communities opened up to us, and we heard things we hadn’t heard before. It drove us into even deeper commitment. And it changed our show. The term radical heterogeneity is getting tossed around lately, and as much as I hate buzzwords, that’s one I can get behind.

  Meanwhile, Sylvia worked her magic—or paid her penance, if you look at it that way—by setting us up as a foundation and shifting our paradigm. Franky was now our official receptionist and liaison, and our new assistant? Nancy’s daughter, Clarissa.

  “Despair is a sin against the holy spirit,” Nelson said to me one day. He and I were sitting in the kitchen, drafting a budget for ’04. The topic of hope came up. Or lack of it. That day’s bad news was the White House’s hatchet job on the official EPA assessment of climate change, to suit el Presidente’s skepticism about global warming.

  “Deirdre brought it up a couple of times before the end,” said Nelson.

  “Yeah?” Neither Jen nor I had mentioned the religious stuff to him.

  “She started going to church. And wearing a crucifix. I thought it was endearing. Like she was reconnecting with her heritage. She must’ve been in such despair. I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together.”

  “She hid it well,” I said.

  Nelson shook his head. “She seemed happy. I mean about being married, starting a family.”

  “You loved each other,” I said. “You get to remember it that way.”

  Nelson picked up the paper he’d been reading earlier. “We’re all so lost in our own issues. But we’re so tightly woven into so many networks and systems, and so dependent on them not just for our survival, but for the continued ongoing creation, moment to moment, of our selves, that self-centeredness is just petty. Don’t you think?”

  He looked up at me, those big eyes. And right then I got an inkling of what he was becoming.

  “It also creates fear,” he continued. “Something’s got to change. It just has to.”

  I felt like I was no longer on terra firma, but I nodded.

  He scanned down the article. “Jeez, they even removed a graphic showing rising global temperatures compared with the previous thousand years. Replaced it with a study, partly sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, that disputes those findings.”

  Feeling grounded again, I replied, “At least someone in the EPA had the stones to leak it.”

  Nelson gazed past the paper. “We will head for ruin or we will aim for hope.”

  “Is that one of those classical quotes of hers?”

  He folded the paper, put it down. “No, I just thought of it. We will head for ruin or we will aim for hope. And despair is a sin against the earth.”

  Hope was the theme of the next show. Themes were a new thing, and people loved it. Each month we called for submissions in the form of anecdotes, photos, essays. Thank god we had an assistant to handle what poured in.

  We had an intern program rolling by the winter. Kids were falling over each other to work with us, which was pretty cool. Well, our internships pay better than most student jobs, so that might have something to do with it. And we get to pay interns thanks to a big old grant Sylvia wrote for us.

  We’ve got three areas of training: Biofuel Technologies, Radio Journa
lism, and Open Source Computing. That one was Jen’s idea. And it turns out she likes teaching a whole lot.

  A couple of years later we bought the whole house off the landlord and fixed up both sides. Luckily it’s a big house. Kate moved in. Adrian is nearly seven, and in school. Nelson’s a great dad, naturally. And no one can deny that he and Kate are good together. She doesn’t need rescuing, and neither does he.

  Nelson’s also going to be a good city councilor. We’re still dusting off the victory confetti (the biodegradable kind, of course) and packing away the lawn signs. He was swept in on a wave of political change. Expectations are high. We don’t know what the next few years will hold, but like he says, he comes with a team, and we’ll do our very best.

  Every so often I pour myself a nice glass of wine, pick up a copy of Dee’s photo book, and look through it cover to cover. It reminds me that the year everything went up in flames had some good parts, too. And Dee’s original photos, the ones from her show, Sylvia’s planning an exhibition of them early next year. To coincide with Nelson stepping into city hall.

  We stopped working directly with folks like the EFB. Jen misses it, I know, but sneaking around at night just doesn’t mix with a public position like city councilor. Besides, cameras and editing technology have gotten so cheap, folks like the EFB don’t need us to do the legwork anymore. But we still include their material on the Omnia Mundi website. All still means all.

  When Nelson announced his candidacy, he got flak from direct-action radicals for selling out. But he’s been working hard to convince them we’re still going to keep the issues front and center on the radio show. He’s also adamant he’s going to bring a radical perspective to city hall. Personally, I have no idea how he’s going to pull that off in an environment that’ll force him to compromise. We’ll see.

  Meantime, the planet’s still being ransacked. The Pentagon keeps gobbling up universities. Kids are still being sent into the meat-grinder of a pointless war—justified by a fiction crafted to make the voting public afraid and compliant. And the Green Scare has removed some of the bravest activists from society.

  In this context I’m thankful for the simple pleasures of my life: I teach Biofuel Technologies half a day each week. Students bring their old cars and we have a good time. Sometimes I show them pictures of the Toro, and their eyeballs almost fall out. And I never have to make fuel anymore, since there’s always someone around who needs the practice.

  Another change? Nelson got himself a violin. Nothing fancy, but it’s a real pretty instrument. Shiny burled wood stained a clear dark brown. It’s hard to find a quiet space in our house, so he practices alone in the archive, the big room upstairs on the west side that used to be Deirdre’s space. And sometimes, if you’re outside and he has the west-facing windows open, you can hear him start and stop, start and stop, some Irish reel or other.

  About the Illustrator

  Gabriel Liston is an artist and illustrator of domestic scenes and water history. He was born in Texas, raised in Colorado, overheated in Iowa, and lives in Oregon. He has children and the children have chickens, a rabbit and a Newfoundland dog.

  About the Author

  Julia Stoops was born in Samoa to New Zealand parents, and grew up in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Washington, D.C. She has lived in Portland, Oregon, since 1994. She has received Oregon Arts Commission fellowships for visual arts and literature, and was a resident at the Ucross Foundation in 2016.

  Acknowledgments

  With gratitude I thank the many people who helped get this story into your hands.

  Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose, my insightful, deep, and patient teachers at the Pinewood Table, whose mentorship was powerful and profound. Without them this book would not have made it past the first draft.

  Harold Johnson, who showered attention onto single words, sentences, fragments, silences, and whose Private Birdsong was an inspiration.

  Laura Stanfill: friend, reader, fellow writer, community-builder, and brave publisher. Our meeting was fated!

  Jackie Shannon Hollis, Sarah Cypher, Christi Krug, David Nishizaki, Christian Gaston (twice!), Julie Perini, Hope Hitchcock, Scott Sparling, Amy Harwood, and Gabriel Liston, who at one time or another read the whole manuscript and provided honest feedback that helped me take it to the next level. Also Suzy Vitello, Mark Lawton, and Kristin Kaye, who read large chunks and provided more invaluable, honest feedback. Then there are the many fellow Pinewood Table writers whose insights over the years helped shape the story. Your thoughtful support means more than you’ll ever know.

  Gabriel Liston, the illustrator, the demiurge who brought these characters to life with such grace and humor and depth. You see dark and light with the same eye— and I’m not talking about photons. And Kristi Wallace Knight, fellow Pinewood Table alum and long-time writing peer, who generously helped Gabriel and me run a successful Kickstarter for the illustrations.

  Many thanks to the inimitable Gigi Little for her artistic vision and boundless patience designing the cover, and to Forest Avenue Press intern Samm Saxby for her energy and enthusiasm in getting the word out.

  I strove for accuracy across the board, and where I dared to dip my toe into subjects about which I have little first-hand knowledge, I sought help. Shannon Lee, Mark Keppinger, Andrew Clapp, David Severski, and Forest Basford helped me communicate the nuances of certain technical aspects. I am grateful for their generosity and expertise. Any remaining errors are my own.

  I also gratefully acknowledge that Nelson’s address to the (fictional) Science and Sustainability conference was inspired by an eloquent book review by Anna Lappé in The New Scientist, July 12, 2006.

  And a big thank you to the 82 people who backed the Kickstarter:

  Andria Alefhi

  Stevan Allred

  Anonymous

  Anonymous

  Anonymous

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&nbs
p; Ryan White

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  Afterword

  I have been asked, “How much of your novel is fact and how much is fiction?”

  The characters are entirely fictional, as are their activities. The university they investigate is fictional too, and I strove to make it not match any particular local institution. No, it’s not Reed College, even though it’s private, and it’s not Portland State University, even though it’s downtown. I hope my skewering of the fictional Harry Lane University is interpreted as a criticism of the influence of the military on higher education, and not a veiled attack on any local institution.

  Harry Lane, 1855 – 1917, was an Oregon doctor, mayor, senator, and Progressive Era reformer. He stuck to his ideals throughout his life, championing public health improvements, campaigning for women’s suffrage, and advocating for Indian tribes. He battled injustice, special interests, corruption, and the U.S. entrance into World War I.

  The inner Southeast industrial neighborhood the characters live in is real, but some streets are shuffled for the sake of narrative flow. The characters live on Southeast Novi, which is a fictional street between Southeast Ivon and Southeast Clinton. (Novi is Ivon backward.) That neighborhood has gentrified dramatically since 2002 and no longer looks the same.

  The characters’ radio show is fictional but is not unlike something you might hear on KBOO, Portland’s independent community radio station, where I volunteered in the news department during 2002 and 2003.

  Every word the characters read in a newspaper or hear on the TV is verbatim from news reports during the fall of 2002 and winter/spring of 2003. However, the exact date was sometimes nudged or the source was renamed for aesthetic reasons. The one exception is the report of the Maryville firebombing heard on the car radio in chapter 2. That is entirely fictional.

  The descriptions of rallies and protests are closely based on my experiences, as well as interviews with fellow protesters. (Indeed, they did pepper-spray babies at the Bush protest in August ‘02. You can see a picture of the family in distress on the partspermillion.net website.)