The Quiet Boy
Page 38
She looked at her darling Wesley now, at his eyes looking at nothing, at his body just moving and moving, and there was no doubt in her mind. This had not happened to him, by terrible chance, because of a bad fall and some fluke of neural chemistry. No. Something had been done to him. A force had invaded. He had been filled up with this darkness, which if it escaped would do irreversible harm to every human being on earth. Make them better. Make them worse.
The scale of it was breathtaking.
What it meant was that her son was not a block of wood, not a vegetable, but a rock at the mouth of a cave, protecting the whole of humanity. And it all sounded insane, but it was, after all, no more insane than what a brain actually is, this clod of dirt, this seat of wonders.
The nice thing about something that can never be known is that you, yourself, get to decide. There is no such thing as what we know for sure—there are only manifestations, impressions, and the meanings we choose to assign to them.
And so it was with Beth Keener, gathering meaning, zipping it up like a sleeping bag, weaving it around her body, like a cocoon.
Either Wesley had been stricken for nothing, by the brutal arbitrariness of life, or he had been stricken for a reason, and the fate of mankind depended on him remaining in this state forever.
Beth knew the answer. Her answer. She held it against her heart. It had to be, and so it was.
Beth Keener slung her pocketbook back over her shoulder, and for just a little while, before she went back out into the darkness to put Moshe back on duty and pick up Jay to drive back to the city, she did what parents are supposed to do, in the end the only thing they can do: she walked behind her kid, a step or two behind, not getting in his way, and just saying
“Thank you.
“Thank you.
“Thank you.”
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to all the professionals who gave to me so freely of their time and knowledge as I wrestled with this book. Having an excuse to talk to smart people about what they know is always my favorite part of writing anything.
First, the lawyers: I had meaningful and very useful conversations with Alex Ficker, Sarah Christian, Diana Pugh, Randy Reis, and Kimberly Kirkland, and especially, repeatedly, with Laurice Cheung of the Los Angeles Public Defender’s office.
As always, my favorite legal analyst is the one who has to talk to me: my brother, Andrew Winters of the Concord, New Hampshire, firm of Cohen & Winters.
In August of 2018 I sat for an unforgettable hour with plaintiff’s lawyer Jim O’Callahan, of the storied LA firm Girardi and Keese. We talked about our families, about the law, and about legal thrillers. He generously and expansively answered every tiny question I had about medical malpractice suits. I was saddened to hear of Mr. O’Callahan’s sudden passing, on January 29 of 2019. My heart goes out to his family and colleagues.
I spoke to a lot of doctors and scientists, including William Truitt at the Indiana University School of Medicine; the Los Angeles neurosurgeon Alexander Tuchman; and the UCLA radiologist (and my pal) Whitney Pope.
And if one is going to write a novel involving the human brain, I highly recommend having a first cousin who is not only literally a brain scientist but also a brilliant, effusive, and enthusiastic observer of its many weirdnesses—a thousand thank-yous, therefore, to Dr. Stephanie Simon-Dack of the Ball State University Department of Psychological Science.
Thank you to Rob Kirsch on adoption, and thank you to the private investigator Frank Knight. Thank you to the musicians Gabe Witcher (of the legendary Punch Brothers) and Madison Cunningham.
Thank you to the novelist Chris Farnsworth, whose early read provided crucial insights.
Thank you to my editor, Josh Kendall, whose many, many reads—early, late, and in between—led me gently but firmly to what mattered. Josh and the team at Mulholland Books—Pam Brown, Sabrina Callahan, Michelle Aielli, Lena Little, Helen O’Hare, Sareena Kamath…oh, who am I forgetting?—are always such a joy to work with. Thanks especially to Ben Allen and copyeditor Eileen Chetti for the final and crucial passes.
Thank you to my marvelous literary agent, Joëlle Delbourgo; to my overseas agent, Jenny Meyer; to my sometime Hollywood agent and forever friend, Joel Begleiter; and, in a book about lawyers, to my very own, the dapper and unflappable Bruce Gellman.
Most of all I am grateful to my family.
To my parents, Sherman and Adele Winters.
To my wife, Diana, and to our kids, Milly, Ike, and Rosalie.
(Rosalie who, in the week before starting sixth grade, accompanied me on a research trip to Culver City to figure out where to hide the bloody evidence of a crime. As this book comes out she is finishing eighth grade, and therefore maybe old enough to read it.)
This book is about a lot of things, I guess, but mostly it’s about family. I am so, so lucky in the one I got.
—Ben H. Winters
Los Angeles, November 2020
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About the Author
Ben H. Winters is the New York Times bestselling author of Underground Airlines and the Last Policeman trilogy. He is also the author of the novel Golden State, the horror novel Bedbugs, and several works for young readers. Winters has won, among other prizes, the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Philip K. Dick Award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. His writing has appeared in Slate and in the New York Times Book Review. He also writes for film and television and was a producer on the FX show Legion. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.
Also by Ben H. Winters
Underground Airlines
Golden State
The Last Policeman Trilogy
The Last Policeman
Countdown City
World of Trouble
Bedbugs
Android Karenina
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters