But he was not a child anymore. And these days dinner was, more often than not, a silent, joyless affair. He refused the shovel Selia offered by turning away and lifting his book bag from the sand.
Selia shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. Her tone struck Arnold as a bit too indifferent, and he winced to realize he’d wounded her, though that was exactly what he’d intended.
In his bedroom Arnold lit the two candles on the shelf beneath the framed photo of Amanda that hung on the wall. He sat on his bed and checked his cell phone, that essential apparatus of teenage society which his father had recently agreed to buy for him despite Selia’s protests. There were 253 new text messages, all of them from Lisa Beard, a sophomore at the girls’ school on the mainland. This is how love was now—Arnold had his own supplicant (as did many kids his age) whom he did not know and to whose messages he never responded. He erased them without reading and typed in his own message, to Amanda:
Divine Amanda—open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
Always,
Arnold sent the message. He put the phone down on the bed beside him, slid back against the headboard with his booted feet on the comforter, and thought a moment. He picked up the phone again and typed:
Divine Amanda—things are not good, and I need your help. I feel like I don’t belong here anymore. There are bigger things that I’m bound for, things I know you would want me to do. PoMo Anthropology teaches us that what we do in life, the kind of people we become, is up to us. But I don’t know if I’m ready.
Always,
Arnold sent the message, then groped around in the book bag for his copy of the Institutional Selves textbook. He flipped to the section that Mr. Oswalt had assigned them to read, but couldn’t manage more than a few paragraphs at a time before his attention wandered and his thoughts drifted to Amanda. He sent her another brief, pious message and tried again to read, but almost of their own accord his eyes moved to the framed picture of Amanda, mounted on the wall opposite his bed for easy viewing. The photo was a blown-up copy from the girls’ school yearbook. Amanda’s eyes, bisected by a loosely curled lock of blond hair that fell across her forehead, flickered in the light from the candles, the same blue as the ocean on Arnold’s beach. Like the ocean, her eyes stared into him, steady and benevolent. Arnold felt that exquisite thrill rising slowly, still new enough to make him breathless, until he had no choice but to relieve it in the only way he knew how. Which he did, and quickly, to avoid being caught. He cleaned himself up with a handful of tissues, then deposited these in the bottom of the trash can under his desk. After sending one more message to Amanda, he turned back to the textbook and managed to read twenty pages before his father knocked twice, quietly.
“Come in,” Arnold said.
His father opened the door. “Dinner,” he said.
Arnold did not look up from his book. “Okay. I’ll be right there.”
His father remained in the doorway. “Arnie,” he said, “you know it drives your mother nuts when you put your shoes on the bed.”
Still reading, Arnold swung his feet until they hung awkwardly off the side.
“Nice effort,” his father said. “But my point is, you don’t have to do things just because they upset her.”
At this Arnold looked up. “Dad,” he said, “I’m a postmodern anthropologist. I don’t have to do anything. I choose my own fate.”
“Okay,” his father said, trying to suppress an indulgent smile. “But so you know your fate is going to be a painful death at your mother’s hands if she catches you with your shoes on the bed again.”
PACIFIC THEATRE SITUATION “DESPERATE”
PoMo Marines in Kauai, Oahu Prepare “Alamo” Defenses
With the 3rd Postmodern Anthropologist Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Kauai (AP)—Marines on this westernmost island in the Hawaiian archipelago continued to prepare Wednesday for an attack by Evo-Psych forces, laying tank traps, erecting pillboxes on hills overlooking the beaches, and fortifying artillery emplacements. Meanwhile, units retreating by ship from the defeat at New Guinea began to arrive late Tuesday. “Nothing is inevitable, of course,” said Colonel Francisco Garcia, commander of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. “There are many perspectives from which to consider the situation, as we know. But it seems fairly certain that an assault will come in the next few weeks. And we are at a grave disadvantage in manpower, even with the units arriving from Australia and New Guinea.”
“One of our great dilemmas,” Mr. Oswalt said to the class, “raised by the text you were assigned to read, is how to strike a balance between our principles, as Postmodern Anthropologists, and our security—or, put more dramatically, the survival of our way of life. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?”
Most of the boys were preoccupied with the sight of a bull moose grazing in the baseball field outside the window. Arnold, seated toward the rear of the classroom, wondered if Amanda would want him to raise his hand.
“Mr. McCutcheon?” Oswalt said, striding slowly between the rows of desks.
Kelly McCutcheon cleared his throat. “I don’t really understand the question.”
Oswalt pushed up his glasses with one finger. “Did you do the reading?”
“Most of it.”
“Most of it,” Oswalt repeated. “Translation: You skimmed a few pages.” He returned to the front of the classroom and leaned against his own desk. “Anybody have an idea what I’m driving at here?” he asked.
Arnold said, “We believe that no one paradigm is superior to another.”
“Riiight,” Oswalt said. “It’s there in the Constitution for everyone to read: Congress shall make no law regarding epistemologies, as different theories offer different perspectives and are therefore equally valid. And so…”
Arnold hesitated. “I’m not really sure how to put it.”
“You could put it quite simply,” Oswalt said, “and say that our war with the Evolutionary Psychologists violates the very principles we’re fighting to defend. After all, Evo-Psych is just another of the paradigms protected by our Constitution.”
At this, an angry chorus went up among the twenty boys in the class.
“Yeah, but they’re evil!”
“They started the war!”
“Evo-Psychs are savages! All they understand is violence!”
Oswalt raised his hands in a shushing gesture. “Before you get too excited, gentlemen, understand that I’m agreeing with you. They did start the war. They are savages. This is precisely the reason that, even in societies as advanced and enlightened as ours, principles must sometimes be sacrificed in order to meet and overcome threats.”
Mike Raboteau, who had been staring silently at his desktop the entire period, spoke without looking up. “I hate them,” he said.
Oswalt went to Mike and put a hand on his shoulder. “And with good reason, Mr. Raboteau. With good reason.”
Outside on the baseball field, the moose raised its head, displaying a rack six feet across with too many points to count. It moved toward the home dugout, its long, multijointed legs unfurling languidly.
“That will do it for today,” Oswalt said. The boys rose from their desks and gathered their books and cell phones. “We’ll be discussing chapters twenty-six through thirty next week, so please be sure you’ve read them. And I’ll expect to see you at the parade on Sunday to honor Mr. Raboteau’s brother Paul. Enjoy your weekend.”
Arnold smoked on the ferry home to ensure that there was no way Selia could catch him. He spent the afternoon helping his father in the garden. Together they weeded the rows and picked cucumbers and carrots for a salad, which Arnold prepared while his father broiled fillets of striped bass.
At dinner Arnold kept his phone on the table near his plate, putting down his fork every few minutes to type a message to Amanda.
“Does he ever actually talk on that thing?” Selia asked.
“It’s mostly text,” Arnold’s father said. “That’s how the
kids use them these days.”
Divine Amanda, Arnold typed. I am a coward.
“Yeah, well, the kids are doing a lot of things these days that don’t make much sense,” Selia said. “How do they even plan to mate, for Christ’s sake?”
“It’s a developmental phase, Selia. Studies show they graduate from it and have normal relationships.”
“You’re the expert. But perhaps he could take a break from developing long enough to have a meal with us.”
How can I find the courage to go to war, Arnold typed, when I can’t even stand up to my mother?
“I wish he’d put it away during dinner,” Selia said. “It’s rude.”
“So is talking about someone as if they’re not here in the room with you,” Arnold’s father said.
“Stick up for him, like always.”
His father sighed. “Arnie, put the phone away.”
I’m too much like my father. Content with keeping the peace, Arnold typed. You must be ashamed of me. But I will do better.
Always,
Arnold sent the message and put the phone in his hip pocket. “There’s a parade on Sunday,” he said, flaking his bass with the fork. “For Mike Raboteau’s brother.”
“The boy who was killed in New Guinea?” his father asked.
“Yeah.”
“Ghastly war,” Selia said.
“I’ll go with you, if you like,” Arnold’s father said.
“And I’ll stay here,” Selia said, “and ponder the reasons why we moved to this island in the first place.”
“You do that, Selia,” Arnold said, before he could clamp his mouth shut over the words.
A shocked silence hung in the air over the table. Arnold’s father closed his eyes and rubbed at them with the thumb and forefinger of one hand.
“Okay, Arnold, let’s have it,” Selia said. “Boy, has this been a long time coming.”
“I don’t want to fight, Ma,” Arnold said.
“No, of course you don’t. You’d rather defy me quietly, and sulk around as if I live for the pleasure of making your life miserable. Well, now the gauntlet’s down. What do you have to say? Let’s hear it.”
“Nothing. Look, I’m sorry, Ma.”
“Changed your mind? Okay. But I have a few things I’d like to get off my chest, if that’s all right with you.”
“Selia…” Arnold’s father began.
“No. He needs to hear this. Besides, if you didn’t indulge him so much we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You decided it was okay for him to go to that propaganda factory they call a school—”
“He needed to be around kids his age,” Arnold’s father said.
“You bought him the phone. So maybe you could try being part of the solution, for once.”
Arnold’s father tossed his napkin on his plate, folded his arms across his chest, said nothing.
Selia turned her attention back to Arnold. “I think you need a little perspective. Here’s the thing—you’ve only ever known one world, the one you were born into. But your father and I have been around long enough to see three very different worlds, and each new one has been worse than the last. So that by the time this Postmodern Anthropology nonsense started, we”—here she looked pointedly at Arnold’s father—“we decided that we wanted nothing more to do with it.”
But I’m not you, Arnold thought and did not say.
“I mean, come on, kiddo. Don’t you think sometimes I’d like to have neighbors? A manicure? Electricity? But the trade-off—having to live among those PoMo psychos, to watch them send their kids off to the slaughter—isn’t worth it.”
Arnold looked down at his fish, studied the greasy flap of skin where he’d eaten the meat away.
“You think I’m a big-time bitch,” Selia said. “I can live with that. Comes with the territory, really—you’re sixteen, so by default I’m an old fucker who just doesn’t get it. Fine. All I ask is that you consider the possibility that the reason I’m hard on you is not because I enjoy it, but because contrary to popular opinion, you’re still a few years removed from knowing everything about everything.”
Arnold pushed his plate away, a tiny gesture.
“Also, because I love you,” Selia said.
“May I be excused?” Arnold asked.
“Arnie, we need to sit here and hash this out,” his father said, but Selia waved her hand and Arnold was gone, up the stairs to his bedroom, fishing the phone from his pocket as the door swung shut behind him.
Divine Amanda, he typed. For the first time, I feel sorry for my mother. I don’t think she’s ever believed in anything her whole life.
SUICIDE ATTACKS IN MELBOURNE
PoMo Partisans Detonate Bombs in Stadium, Harbor
Evolutionary Psychologist–occupied Melbourne (AP)— PoMo resistance forces staged a series of coordinated suicide bombings here Saturday, killing an estimated 75 Evo-Psych shock troops and destroying a staging area where soldiers boarded transport ships in preparation for the impending assault on Hawaii. As many as a dozen civilians were also killed in the blasts.
“While we regret the loss of our soldiers, and the slight delay to our plans for invading Hawaii,” Evo-Psych Premier Nguyen Dung said in a statement, “we applaud your insurgents for obeying their nature and continuing to fight.”
Sunday was warm for mid-April, with plenty of sunshine, a postcard day ideal for a parade. Arnold and his father took the ferry to the mainland, then followed the crowds downtown, where people were lined up ten and twelve deep along the concourse, waiting for the procession to begin and jockeying for the best views. Young children drifted above the crowd on their fathers’ shoulders, clutching miniature flags in tiny fists. Without having to be asked, people made room on the roadside for the old and disabled to sit in lawn chairs.
The parade started promptly at ten. From where they were standing, on the western edge of the concourse, Arnold could hear things before he saw them. First he heard the slow approach of a song blaring from loudspeakers. As it drew closer he recognized the tune as “Proud to Be a PoMo,” a country hymn that had been wildly popular during the last war, when Arnold was still being homeschooled. Now, though, the song had been set to a driving dance beat, and a group of girls, ranging in age from six to ten and dressed in spangled purple leotards and tap shoes, was dancing a poorly synchronized routine to the thump of the bass. Behind them followed an armored personnel carrier, two artillery pieces towed by camouflaged trucks, and a tractor trailer with a picture silk-screened on its side of grim but handsome young men in uniform. “The Few. The Proud,” it read.
The crowd applauded as the parade rolled slowly past them for more than twenty minutes. Fire engines flashed their lights and sounded air horns. Marching bands marched, as did a small and hobbled group of veterans in old uniforms that were now a poor fit. Shriners provided comic relief, racing figure eights in undersized cars, their knees jammed up around their ears. The last vehicle in the procession, a convertible, held Mike Raboteau and his parents, who gave weak, perfunctory waves to the cheering crowd.
A portable stage had been erected in the center of the concourse, beneath the shade of the town’s Free Will tree, a stately old elm which had been transplanted to the spot when the original Free Will tree, dedicated as a sapling, had fallen victim to beavers. The convertible lurched to a halt when it reached the tree, and the town mayor and a tall, grizzled man wearing a Marine uniform greeted the Raboteaus as they mounted the stairs leading up to the stage.
After the family had been seated the mayor approached the podium at center stage and spoke into the microphone. “Thank you all for coming today,” he said, his amplified voice echoing off the brick facades of the buildings that surrounded the concourse. “Your presence does honor to our fallen hero, Corporal Paul Raboteau, and his family. Many of us knew Paul as a smart, honest young man and a dedicated member of the Postmodern Anthropologist Party. Having known him has brightened and enriched our lives, and having lost him, espec
ially at a time when we need all the Paul Raboteaus we can find, grieves us beyond words.”
The crowd, so energized only a few minutes before, now grew quiet and still under the mayor’s eulogy.
“As many of you know, Paul was one of the Marines who refused to retreat from New Guinea, choosing to face almost certain death rather than yield another inch of ground to the Evolutionary Psychologists. He died in a distant, foreign land, separated from those he loved, but no doubt comforted by his faith in Postmodern Anthropology and the righteousness of our struggle. All of us, I’m certain, are humbled by this act of courage and selflessness. While it’s clear that nothing we do will compare to the sacrifice that Paul has made on the altar of free will, still we must do what we can to celebrate and memorialize that sacrifice, and to encourage others to follow his example. To that end, I declare that today’s date, April sixteenth, will henceforth be celebrated in this city as Corporal Paul Raboteau Day, so that we may be reminded of this brave young man, and so that his name and his story will not be forgotten by future generations.”
The people assembled burst into delirious applause. Flags waved. A boy of two or so standing near Arnold began to bawl soundlessly, his cries drowned out by the uproar.
The mayor raised his hands for quiet. “Thank you. Thank you. Please. The Colonel has something to add. Ladies and gentlemen, Colonel Gene Redmond.”
The uniformed man stepped to the podium amidst another burst of applause. He ran one hand over the bristles of his salt-and-pepper hair. “I doubt anyone could follow that,” he said, casting a smile over his shoulder at the mayor, who had taken a seat. “So I won’t try. I just wanted to announce that young Michael Raboteau here has recognized the military’s need for every able-bodied young man we can get, and decided to forgo his final year of high school to join the Marines. His parents, despite the loss they’ve already endured, have given their blessing for him to do so. Not that they had a choice in the matter, mind you, but that’s not the point. Folks, these people are truly pillars of the community. You should be stopping them on the street to thank them at every opportunity. You should be giving them free oil changes and satellite television service. You should be showing up at their door to do their shopping and walk their dog. Better yet, you should be following their lead and making sacrifices of your own. Thank you.”
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