Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  The Thursday of the first week, we were catching a bite to eat in the cafeteria between simulator runs and discussing, as we often had, what the base was hiding in the hangars. I tried my best to keep things under control. “We’ll find out next week. I’m pretty sure it’s part of this program. Be patient.”

  Evan, enjoying a turkey leg and potatoes, said, “What if they are trying to test our initiative? They probably want us to sneak in and find out for ourselves. We’re going to be mystery solvers, right?” He peeled off some fatty skin and discarded it onto his plate.

  Norma and Marge eagerly agreed. “I bet Evan’s right. You know how these things go. There’s always more to a class than what’s in the description. Dean Bligh would never admit it, but I’m sure we’re being evaluated for personality traits, too. Aren’t you curious, Billings?”

  I had a few wings and a pile of steamed carrots. “Of course I am. Have you considered they might be testing our ability to follow the rules? Our self-control?”

  “What about creativity? Or planning? Or group dynamics?” Rachel contributed. I think she was leaning in Evan’s direction, too, which made the score three to two in favor of breaking into the hangars.

  I’d already made my decision. “Look, guys. If you want to take the risk, I’m not going to stop you. I won’t snitch, either. But I want no part of it. I can’t afford to get expelled from this course.” They all knew why I was here and what my situation was. I’d told the story during the introductions in orientation.

  The four of them looked at each other. “I’m going,” said Norma. “Tonight. Who’s with me?”

  I thought at least Evan would jump on board. It was kind of his idea. But when push came to shove, he couldn’t. He took another bite from his turkey leg and washed it down with his Diet Pepsi. “I wasn’t thinking expelled. I thought maybe a reprimand, if we were wrong about it. Expelled is big time. My dad would kill me, dudes.”

  Norma took another shot. “What do you say? Girl’s night out? Come on.” She peered fiercely at both Rachel and Marge. Marge said she would think about it. Rachel shook her head. “Fine. I’ll go alone if I have to. I know where to find a flashlight.”

  Carrying my uncertainty with me, I headed back to the simulator room. It was Thursday and I still hadn’t had a successful run on the Big Rig Simulator. It might have helped if the program was always the same, like on many video games, but these simulators randomized everything. It was never the same run twice, in length or selected obstacles. In the bus simulator, for example, we sometimes had to cross train tracks and only about half the time was there an actual train. The hardest scenario in that one was a winter scene on a steep hill where the brakes went out and two kids were waiting at the stop at the bottom. I jackknifed and took out a speed limit sign but I stopped the bus without serious damage or getting near the kids (who were apparently too stupid to move out of the way). It counted as a successful run. But on the Big Rig, I kept going off the edge of the mountain road. Occasionally I burst into flames, but most of the time I rolled it. Either way I was scored as dead every time. As far as I knew, no one else had been successful, either. It didn’t make me feel any better.

  I spent the next hour in the Big Rig without success, then had to let someone else have a turn. There was only three of each simulator so we had to work it out. After an hour of plummeting to my death, however, I didn’t need much encouragement to try something else. I let Evan take over and wished him luck. I’d been successful on all the others multiple times, but I was still short of my fifty hours, and even building up to a hundred wouldn’t help if I couldn’t master the Big Rig. While I waited for another turn, I burned off some frustration on the motorcycle before I realized I was too worried about the trouble Norma was going to get herself into.

  I found her sitting outside on the front steps, smoking, staring across the expanse of the parking apron at the hangars. The cigarette looked hand rolled, so I wasn’t sure if it was a cigarette or a joint. Not that it mattered. Joints are perfectly legal now, though I could vaguely remember when they weren’t, before I really understood the difference. The late afternoon air was chilly, probably dipping into the upper 30s, and I zipped up my jacket, but Norma was in shirt sleeves. She had a tattoo of the name Vincent on the back of her left elbow that I noticed as I walked past her. I casually turned to face her. It seemed like a nice, inconspicuous opening. “Who’s Vincent?”

  The question caught her off guard. It only occurred to her after a moment that I’d seen the tattoo. She took a drag and blew out smoke sideways. “Old news,” she said.

  Okay, I thought. She doesn’t want to talk about Vincent. That’s fine. “Look, if you’re doing that,” I said, indicating the cigarette, “to work up the courage to go tonight, maybe you should change your mind. No one will hold it against you. I’ll see to it.”

  Her tongue licked the top molars on one side and she laughed. “Oh, I’m going.”

  My heart skipped a beat when behind her, silently, my mother appeared. She put one finger over her lips, but she didn’t really have to. What did she think I was going to do, introduce her? Seeing her made me self-conscious of the canvas bag tucked under my left arm, totally hidden by the jacket. I kept it with me all the time now and I forgot about it just like Norma forgot the tattoo. But seeing Mom was as if the contents of the bag had jabbed me in the ribs. She folded her left arm and pointed to the back of her elbow, giving me a reassuring nod with her head.

  Norma was waiting for me to argue with her, beg her not to go, I suppose. “What’s the big deal? After the road tests on Saturday and a break on Sunday, we’ll be starting phase two on Monday. It’s not really that long. You should be focused on what you need before then. Have you finished the Big Rig yet?”

  Another drag on the hand-rolled, questionable cigarette. I got a whiff of the smoke and though I haven’t had a lot of exposure to cigarette smoke, it seemed a little off to me. It was probably a joint. As I understood it, weed makes you hungry. Maybe I could bribe her with a trip to the cafeteria. She looked down at the step below her feet. “Nope. Probably not going to. I need to know what’s coming.” She took two drags in quick succession.

  Mom was pointing to her elbow again.

  “Does this have something to do with Vincent?” She didn’t answer and she didn’t look up. Her attention seemed to be very far away. I turned my back on Mom and sat on the step next to Norma. “Tell me about Vincent. Please.”

  Norma dropped the remains of her cigarette, oh face it, joint, on the step and ground it out with her foot. “My son.”

  “I’m sorry.” I was jumping ahead.

  She didn’t like it. “You’re sorry I had a son?”

  “I’m sorry you lost your son,” I said. “Because that’s why people get tattoos of names. It’s written all over your elbow. What happened?” I kept my voice gentle and low, sent a glance to the hangars, where the Native American was hauling buckets again, going in and out of each hangar as we spoke. I let my eyes flit backwards, where Mom had been but she had disappeared. I assured myself that the front door was still closed. No one was coming out to disturb us.

  “Why do you care?” she said, annoyed with me.

  “Because it’s bugging you. Because even though we took this course individually, we’re in this together now. We help each other. That’s what working for CURDS is all about, you know. If you want a spot on a field team. Remember, I’ve been there. This idea of yours is not going to help you.” She was staring across again, her eyes trying to pierce the walls from a distance. “Did he get Obstruction?”

  Her gaze didn’t waver. “He didn’t live long enough to get Obstruction. His brain was 90% water.”

  “Anencephaly,” I said. “That must have been awful.”

  “If I’d known, I would have aborted him.” The floodgates were open now. “It would have been hard, but not as hard as carrying him for nine months, going through seventeen hours of labor, holding him in my arms…” She stopped t
here, taking a moment to hold back tears, looking at her hands dangling between her legs. They were trembling and she consciously made them still. “None of the tests showed it. We had no idea.”

  “I see.”

  “You do?” She looked at me, still annoyed.

  I shrugged. “It’s not that complicated. You got hit with a very bad surprise, so now you have an issue with surprises. You want to know what’s coming so you can be prepared.” From the look on her face, I think she wasn’t expecting me to be so perceptive, or maybe she thought her problems were more complex or subtle. “There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way. But that’s not how the real world works. Especially out in the field. You don’t know what’s coming and you have to be prepared for everything. You can speculate, run scenarios –“ I stopped myself. That was exactly what the simulators did for us. Every run was a speculation. “How many successful runs have you had?”

  “Sixty-seven.” I was almost expecting a very low number. It’s not like someone could come in off the street and do well. The simulator runs weren’t a Sunday drive through the park. They were all high speed, around obstacles that you could knock over and obstacles you couldn’t, like pedestrians. She had to have passed those courses, too. This couldn’t have been her first rodeo. “But not the Big Rig. I don’t think anyone has. You?”

  “Same ball park.” Okay, so my ball park was fifteen runs below hers. Seemed close enough to me. I found myself gazing across at the hangars with her.

  She pointed. “What’s the point of figuring out the Rig, if what’s in there is even worse?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that. She had a legitimate point. Most course work was arranged in order of difficulty. They wanted people who could push themselves. Who would keep trying, no matter what. But the what DID matter. Everyone had their limits. Beating the Rig would get us our CDLs, but it wouldn’t get us our T.S. certificate. If the certificate was the goal, did it make sense to settle for the CDL when it wasn’t going to get you the job you wanted? I was kind of with her on that. This was all about me getting to be a Transportation Specialist so I could keep working with Avis and Agnes and the rest of my team. If stage two was something I knew I couldn’t handle, I’d rather know sooner so I could find a way to bow out and look for something else. Mom had always taught me I could do anything if I kept trying, but I knew that wasn’t entirely true. Now Norma had me worried about it. I couldn’t imagine what the something else might be that I’d have to change to, though I definitely understood how my indecisiveness would look on my record. It was a confusing mess in my head and there seemed to be only one way to clean it up.

  Turned out Norma was just as perceptive as me, if not more so. “You want to come with? You could change your mind. No one will hold it against you. I’ll see to it,” she said, throwing my own words back at me.

  “Can you get two flashlights?”

  “No problem.”

  We agreed to meet right there on the porch at 7 p.m., more than an hour after sunset. In between, I drove the Big Rig over the side of the mountain three more times and cursed under my breath. Promptly at 7, I went quietly down to the front porch. It was very dark. There was nothing but a single porch light and a thin, crescent moon illuminating the night. As promised, Norma had a flashlight for me. “Don’t turn it on until we get inside. We don’t want to be seen.”

  “We’ll be heard if I trip over a stack of 5-gallon buckets,” I said quietly.

  She turned her back to me, then reached across her body to grab my hand and put it on her shoulder. “I have great night vision, and I’ve been watching the Indian. I know where to go.”

  “Native American.”

  “What?”

  “You said Indian. You should have said Native American.”

  “I will cut you.”

  I stayed quiet after that, kept my hand on her shoulder, and stepped carefully as we moved forward across the apron of the parking structure. Shadows of shadows led the way. I followed Norma in between the first and second hangar all the way around to the back. She went to the rear door of the second hangar and pushed at the top edge of an empty pail with her flashlight to make it lean backwards. She felt blindly underneath and finally came out with a brass key in her hand. The pail settled quietly into the packed dirt and she put the key into the padlock on the door. “Wait, why not the first hangar?” I whispered.

  “Bligh can see it out of her window,” she said. “Second one is blocked by the first.”

  “You think she’s watching?” I was starting to wonder if Norma was just paranoid.

  She pulled the shank out of the body of the padlock and slipped it off the door latch. “You want to find out or just assume?” she asked as she slipped the lock into her pocket. No one would be able to lock us in if we brought the lock with us. Opening the door, she waved with her flashlight. “Get in. Don’t light up until I close the door.”

  We entered the pitch black hangar, welcomed by air thick with a foul odor and oppressive heat. I unzipped my jacket immediately. Norma gagged. “Oh my God, something died in here,” she whispered harshly. I could hear something moving around. As soon as the door closed Norma snapped on her flashlight. I did the same. We played our beams around, setting off startled responses from several of the inhabitants.

  Wooden rail fencing divided the hangar into six large pens, three on each side of a central walk. In each pen was a pair of animals. Closest to us were Dromedary camels on one side and Bactrian camels on the other. Further down were llamas, yaks, water buffalo, and some kind of large deer that might have been elk or moose. It was so distant and so dark in the hangar I couldn’t tell. It looked like a staging area for Noah’s ark. The animals all had troughs of food and water, with abundant hay and bedding. They all started to make noise. “We’re scaring them. Maybe we should go,” I said. “Someone might hear them.”

  Norma had planted herself dead center in the aisle. She didn’t move and she didn’t even appear to be breathing. “Good idea. Let’s go. Billings, get me out of here.”

  “What? Why? It was your idea to break in.” The animals were calming quickly and settling down. I didn’t think it would hurt to stay a short while. We caught them by surprise. That’s all.

  One of the Dromedary camels came closer to the fence and made a loud rumbling, growling sound and Norma let out a short scream and dropped her flashlight. Her face fell into shadow and the beam rolled around on the ground, illuminating her feet and ankles. “I can’t move. Get me out of here. I can’t stand animals!”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. They’re not going to hurt you. They’re all herbivores.” I didn’t want to leave now. I wanted to visit all of them. I took off my jacket and draped it over the top rail of the fence, but still I was already sweating. Instead of moving toward Norma, I moved toward the Dromedary that was attracted by my light. It probably thought I had a special treat, and I wished I had an apple or something. Its head came toward my hand and I stroked its slobbery mouth. “Hey there.”

  “I’m not kidding, Billings.” Her disembodied voice floated out of the darkness.

  “You sound like my mother when she saw a spider,” I said.

  “Oh, there had better not be any spiders in here. Six eyes. Eight legs. It’s unnatural! Let’s go!” Her voice was forceful, but she didn’t pick up her flashlight or try to find the door. She was frozen in fear. Fine, I thought. It won’t hurt her to stand there a few minutes while I petted the animals a bit.

  I didn’t tell her that, being a huge hanger, there was an excellent chance there were dozens of spiders up in the rafters. The camel bumped my arm with its powerful neck, searching for something to nibble. Reluctantly, I turned my back and shone my light on Norma. She looked like more of a ghost than my mother did. She was white as the proverbial sheet and her eyes were fully dilated as she reached out a hand toward me, her feet still frozen to the packed earthen floor.

  “We’ll leave in a few minutes. Look, they’re friendly. I want to vi
sit them. Maybe they’ll remember me later and be nice when we have to ride them.”

  “RIDE THEM???”

  “What did you think they were here for?”

  “Punishment. Torture. Psychological warfare.”

  I could see she was in full blown terror, but it was hard to feel real sympathy. None of these animals were even carnivorous. “Haven’t you ever been to the zoo?” I asked her.

  Still frozen, she responded in a monotone. “Once. I was five. Had hysterics. Broke a blood vessel in my eye.”

  “Chill. I won’t be long. Just stay right where you are. I’ll help you in a few minutes, okay?” I turned around again, lowering my flashlight beam so it wasn’t directly in the camel’s eyes.

  “Hey there, sweetie. It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  The hangar apparently had climate controls and despite the forty degrees outside it felt like almost eighty in here. “Well, that’s the big secret. Animal transportation.” The animals at the other end had already settled down. Even the Bactrian camels behind Norma were uninterested in the company. But the Dromedaries were both approaching me and my light source. “That explains why it’s so hot in here. Why weren’t you wearing a jacket, by the way?” Maybe if I distracted her with questions, she’d calm down like the animals had.

  “Cold doesn’t bother me. Heat doesn’t bother me,” she said. “Runs in the family. My Dad always said the Van Luxe metabolism regulates better than Democrats.” She laughed lightly at the joke, or the old family memory. “Not funny?” She asked in a voice that didn’t sound at all receptive to humor just then.