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Decision Point (ARC)

Page 10

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt


  Jerry scrambled into the driver’s seat and slammed the door

  behind him. He threw the car into reverse, but not before the man

  brought the hockey stick down on the front of the hood—

  somewhere near, Jerry felt sure, the spot where the car had

  crashed into poor Tammy Jameson.

  *

  Jerry had no idea what was the right thing to do. He suspected

  that the bassett hound was correct: the police would laugh him

  out of the station if he came to them with his story. Of course, if

  they’d just try driving his car along Thurlbeck, they’d see for

  themselves. But adults were so smug; no matter how much he

  begged, they’d refuse.

  And so Jerry found himself doing something that might have

  been stupid. He should have been at home studying—or, even

  better, out on a date with Ashley Brown. Instead, he was parked

  on the side of the street, a few doors up from the man’s house,

  from the driveway that used to be home to this car. He didn’t

  know exactly what he was doing. Did they call this casing the

  joint? No, that was when you were planning a robbery. Ah, he

  had it! A stakeout. Cool.

  Jerry waited. It was dark enough to see a few stars—and he

  hoped that meant it was also dark enough that the old man

  wouldn’t see him, even if he glanced out his front window.

  Jerry wasn’t even sure what he was waiting for. It was just

  like Ms. Singh, his chemistry teacher, said: he’d know it when

  he saw it.

  And at last it appeared.

  Jerry felt like slapping his hand against his forehead, but a

  theatrical gesture like that was wasted when there was no one

  around to see it. Still, he wondered how he could be so stupid.

  That old man wasn’t the one who’d used the hockey stick.

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  Oh, he might have dented Jerry’s hood with it, but the dents in

  the garage door were the work of someone else.

  And that someone else was walking up the driveway, hands

  shoved deep into the pockets of a blue leather jacket, dark-haired

  head downcast. He looked maybe a year or two older than Jerry.

  Of course, it could have been a delivery person or something.

  But no, Jerry could see the guy take out a set of keys and let

  himself into the house. And, for one brief moment, he saw the

  guy’s face, a long face, a sad face … but a young face.

  The car hadn’t belonged to the old man. It had belonged to

  his son.

  *

  There were fifteen hundred kids at Eastern High. No reason

  Jerry should know them all on sight—especially ones who

  weren’t in his grade. Oh, he knew the names of all the babes in

  grade twelve—he and the other boys his age fantasized about

  them often enough—but some long-faced guy with dark hair?

  Jerry wouldn’t have paid any attention to him.

  Until now.

  It was three days before he caught sight of the guy walking

  the halls at Eastern. His last name, Jerry knew, was likely

  Forsythe, since that was the old man’s name, the name Jerry had

  written on the check for the car. It wasn’t much longer before he

  had found where young Forsythe’s locker was located. And then

  Jerry cut his last class—history, which he could easily afford to

  miss once—and waited in a stairwell, where he could keep an

  eye on Forsythe’s locker.

  At about 3:35, Forsythe came up to it, dialed the combo, put

  some books inside, took out a couple of others, and put on the

  same blue leather jacket Jerry had seen him in the night of the

  stakeout. And then he started walking out.

  Jerry watched him head out, then, he hurried to the parking

  lot and got into the Toyota.

  *

  Jerry was crawling along—and this time, it was of his own

  volition. He didn’t want to overtake Forsythe—not yet. But then

  Forsythe did something completely unexpected. Instead of

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  walking down Thurlbeck, he headed in the opposite direction,

  away from his own house. Could it be that Jerry was wrong about

  who this was? After all, he’d seen Forsythe’s son only once

  before, on a dark night, and—

  No. It came to him in a flash what Forsythe was doing. He

  was going to walk the long way around—a full mile out of his

  way—so that he wouldn’t have to go past the spot where he’d hit

  Tammy Jameson.

  Jerry wondered if he’d avoided the spot entirely since hitting

  her or had got cold feet only once the cross had been erected. He

  rolled down his window, followed Forsythe, and pulled up next

  to him, matching his car’s velocity to Forsythe’s walking speed.

  “Hey,” said Jerry.

  The other guy looked up, and his eyes went wide in

  recognition—not of Jerry, but of what had once been his car.

  “What?” said Forsythe.

  “You look like you could use a lift,” said Jerry.

  “Naw. I live just up there.” He waved vaguely ahead of him.

  “No, you don’t,” said Jerry, and he recited the address he’d

  gone to to buy the car.

  “What do you want, man?” said Forsythe.

  “Your old man gave me a good deal on this car,” said Jerry.

  “And I figured out why.”

  Forsythe shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking

  about.”

  “Yes, you do. I know you do.” He paused. “She knows you

  do.”

  The guy told Jerry to go … well, to go do something that was

  physically impossible. Jerry’s heart was racing, but he tried to

  sound cool. “Sooner or later, you’ll want to come clean on this.”

  Forsythe said nothing.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” said Jerry, and he drove off.

  *

  That night, Jerry went to the hardware store to get the stuff

  he needed. Of course, he couldn’t do anything about it early in

  the day; someone might come along. So he waited until his final

  period—which today was English—and he cut class again. He

  then went out to his car, got what he needed from the trunk, and

  went up Thurlbeck.

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  When he was done, he returned to the parking lot and waited

  for Forsythe to head out for home.

  *

  Jerry finally caught sight of Forsythe. Just as he had the day

  before, Forsythe walked to the edge of the schoolyard. But there

  he hesitated for a moment, as if wondering if he dared take the

  short way home. But he apparently couldn’t do that. He took a

  deep breath and headed up Thurlbeck.

  Jerry started his car but lagged behind Forsythe, crawling

  along, his foot barely touching the accelerator.

  There was a large pine tree up ahead. Jerry waited for

  Forsythe to come abreast of it, and …

  The disadvantage of following Forsythe was that Jerry

  couldn’t see the other kid’s face when he caught sight of the new

  cross Jerry had banged togeth
er and sunk into the grass next to

  the sidewalk. But he saw Forsythe stop dead in his tracks.

  Just as she had been stopped dead in his tracks.

  Jerry saw Forsythe loom in, look at the words written not in

  black, as on Tammy’s cross, but in red—words that said, “Our

  sins testify against us.”

  Forsythe began to run ahead, panicking, and Jerry pressed

  down a little more on the accelerator, keeping up. All those years

  of Sunday school were coming in handy.

  Forsythe came to another tree. In its lee, he surely could see

  the second wooden cross, with its letters as crimson as blood:

  “He shall make amends for the harm he hath done.”

  Forsythe was swinging his head left and right, clearly

  terrified. But he continued running forward.

  A third tree. A third cross. And a third red message, the

  simplest of all: “Thou shalt not kill.”

  Finally, Forsythe turned around and caught sight of Jerry.

  Jerry sped up, coming alongside him. Forsythe’s face was a

  mask of terror. Jerry rolled down his window, leaned an elbow

  out, and said, as nonchalantly as he could manage, “Going my

  way?”

  Forsythe clearly didn’t know what to say. He looked up

  ahead, apparently wondering if there were more crosses to come.

  Then he turned and looked back the other way, off into the

  distance.

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  “There’s just one down the other way,” said Jerry. “If you’d

  prefer to walk by it …”

  Forsythe swore at Jerry, but without much force. “What’s

  this to you?” he snapped.

  “I want her to let my car go. I worked my tail off for these

  wheels.”

  Forsythe stared at him, the way you’d look at somebody who

  might be crazy.

  “So,” said Jerry, again trying for an offhand tone, “going my

  way?”

  Forsythe was quiet for a long moment. “Depends where

  you’re going,” he said at last.

  “Oh, I thought I’d take a swing by the police station,” Jerry

  said.

  Forsythe looked up Thurlbeck once more, then down it, then

  at last back at Jerry. He shrugged, but it wasn’t as if he was

  unsure. Rather, it was as if he were shucking a giant weight from

  his shoulders.

  “Yeah,” he said to Jerry. “Yeah, I could use a lift.”

  Robert J. Sawyer is one of only eight writers in history to win all

  three of the world's top awards for Best Science Fiction Novel of

  the Year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell

  Memorial Award. The ABC TV series FlashForward was based

  on his bestselling novel of the same name. His 23rd novel,

  Quantum Night , has just been published. He lives in Toronto.

  Website: sfwriter.com.

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  E.C. Myers made a huge splash on the YA scene with his debut

  novel, Fair Coin, and its sequel. In this tale, the young

  protagonist seeks the devastating truth about what happened to

  his father and what it might bode for his own future …

  M Y F A T H E R ’ S E Y E S

  By E.C. Myers

  My hands tremble as I swirl developer solution over the

  photographic paper. I’ve never been more anxious to see one of

  my pictures before. My classmates would say this is another

  drawback to traditional photography over digital: delayed

  gratification. I’ll never make that technological leap; I still shoot

  in black and white. My father never dabbled with digital

  photography either, and it’s because of him that I decided to

  become a photojournalist in the first place.

  A cloudy scene emerges on the paper floating in the tray.

  Shapes and shadows magically replace the blank white surface,

  gradually forming trees and rocks. I’ve had this image burned

  into my mind ever since I glimpsed it through my lens and my

  finger instinctively clicked the shutter. It’s a bad photo, the

  subject slightly unfocused and too far away, though I’ve blown

  it up as much as I can. It won’t help my thesis project or launch

  a career, but it’s the single most important picture of my life.

  As I squint at it in the dim red glow of the safelight, a

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  crouching figure fades into the scene like a ghost. His face is

  blurred, captured in motion just as he’d turned and darted away.

  Despite the blurring, and the fact that I haven’t seen him in

  fifteen years except in other pictures, I know he’s my father. I

  knew it even before I unloaded the film from my camera.

  In my haste to fish the page out of the developer, I fumble

  the metal tongs into the tray with a splash. I lift the photo out,

  but I don’t bother to let the chemicals run off completely before

  dunking it in the stop bath and submerging it in the fixer.

  I study the damp photograph at the kitchen table, with an old

  family photo beside it for comparison. My father’s hair has

  grown long, falling below his waist and draping his broad

  shoulders in mangy tangles. He’s bigger than he used to be, his

  large muscles taut and defined as he springs into motion. A bushy

  beard obscures much of his face, and his naked body is patched

  with dried mud. He seems feral, more animal than man, except

  for his eyes. I remember those eyes: clear, brown and sharp, like

  mine. When I looked into those eyes, I knew.

  By the time my mother comes home from her late shift at the

  hospital I’ve made multiple prints of that photo, enlarging it over

  and over. I cropped many of the prints around his eyes, his most

  human feature. I’ve also scanned the image into my computer,

  trying to enhance it into something more recognizable as my

  father. He’s in there, somewhere. Alive.

  “What’s all this?” my mother asks as she enters the kitchen

  and drops a bucket of fried chicken onto the table with a hollow

  thump. She looks around at the drying photos I have suspended

  on wires across the room, the warped and curling prints scattered

  on the table, the family portrait that was taken a little after my

  fifth birthday. A little before my father disappeared.

  She never told me what happened to him. He was just gone;

  that’s what my mother said whenever I asked, until I stopped

  asking. “Gone,” she would say, which could mean anything. He

  left, he died, he was killed. Whatever I wanted it to mean, really.

  In my favorite fantasy I made him a secret government agent on

  an important mission. Kids want their dad to be someone they

  can be proud of, someone they can brag about—especially if he

  can’t be someone they can come home to. Who thinks that his

  dad might be running around naked in the wilderness?

  “When were you going to tell me, Mom?” I ask.

  “Tell you what?” she says distractedly. She looks at the

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  pictures, but doesn’t see them. I toss her a printout of one of my

  best efforts and she picks it
up. She drops it a moment later.

  “Why didn’t you tell me my father’s a devol?” I ask.

  “Don’t use that word,” she says. She sounds tired. She

  suddenly looks old and weary, like life has defeated her at last.

  Like she’s given up. Maybe she has—or maybe she gave up

  fifteen years ago.

  She sits down at the table across from me, the evidence

  spread between us. She covers her face with her hands, then

  removes them, like a game of peek-a-boo. She does it again, and

  now her face and palms are wet.

  “What’s a better word? Is this what you call ‘gone’? When

  people go, they usually end up somewhere.”

  “It’s all the same, Ambrose. This—” She picks up the

  printout and crinkles it up. “This isn’t your father.”

  “It sure looks like him,” I say.

  “Your father was go—He stopped being Randall Welling a

  long time ago.”

  “Did you ever visit him at the reservation?”

  “There was no reason to.”

  “He would’ve liked to see you. Us.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Well, I’d have liked to see him,” I say.

  “I hoped you’d never see him like this.” She bows her head,

  eyes shut and tears falling. “I wanted you to remember him as he

  was, before.”

  The sound of her tears dripping onto the photograph fills the

  silence.

  “I barely remember him at all. I had a right to know!” I tell

  her. I stand up and leave her alone. Her sobs follow me all the

  way to the basement until I close the darkroom door and shut

  them out.

  *

  Devols, Neo-anderthals, or, to be politically correct,

  regressives—whatever you want to call them—have been around

  for almost sixty years. They all suffer from a rare form of

  dementia called Hollander’s disease, named for Dr. David

  Hollander, who diagnosed it in 2017. Or maybe it was named for

  the first case he studied: his teenage daughter Alessandra.

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  Most victims of this degenerative disease, unable to function

  in society, end up in one of three national reservations. Some are

  sent to smaller asylums that specialize in managed care for

  devols. Dr. Hollander contributed millions to the development of

 

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