Pathological

by Jinkang Wang

  Sun knew the county had planned a whole follow-up agenda, a round of banquets hosted in turn by important government agencies, followed by visits to local scenic spots. This was all in keeping with local custom, the only way they knew how to express hospitality. Yet he knew it was precisely these rituals that Mei Yin wanted to avoid, and so didn’t say anything, just nodded in agreement. While Mei Yin went to get her car, he dashed to the hotel restaurant and returned with a bowl of soy milk and several bean-paste buns. Mei Yin thanked him, drank the milk, tossed the buns into the passenger seat, and zoomed off.

  She was rushing to Nanyang to check up on the preparations for another project she was planning there: the Sacred Heart Orphanage. She had already been through two rounds of negotiations with the city government and the Protestant “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” committee, who were in support of her plan. Two older women, Mother Liu and Mother Chen, were willing to join as her “mothers.” This place was about forty miles from the site of the future facility, a half hour’s drive, in the old part of Nanyang, where the roads were narrow, lined with stalls and hawkers. Mei Yin had to honk her horn and reverse quite a few times before she managed to get her car through. The building, a former church, had been freshly painted, including the Latin-style cross mounted on the roof. The rooms were spick-and-span, with neat little beds piled with all sorts of toys. None of this had cost her adoptive father a penny—she’d funded it all out of her own salary.

  Hearing the car pull up, Mother Liu ran out joyously. “You’re back, Director Mei! Look, even before our official opening, someone’s already brought us a child. It’s a baby girl, perfectly healthy. Isn’t she beautiful?”

  “Really? Let me see.”

  Mother Chen was inside, feeding the baby from a bottle. When she’d had her fill, she looked with her dark eyes at the grown-ups around her. She really was lovely: pale skin, large eyes, about a month old from the looks of her. Mother Chen said, “We’ve examined her carefully, and there’s nothing wrong with her. Such a pretty child, in fine condition. How could the parents bear to get rid of her?”

  Many people got rid of their girl babies, of course, hoping the next one would be a boy. Mei Yin scooped up the child, who stared with gorgeous eyes, her tiny hand gripping Mei Yin’s finger, sending a shiver through her heart. Touching her tiny face, Mei Yin asked Mother Liu, “How did she arrive?”

  “Late at night, left at our front door. She’d thrown off her blanket, and by the time we heard her crying and rushed out, she was lying there completely naked, legs and arms thrashing, out in the freezing cold for God knows how long. It’s a miracle she didn’t get pneumonia or even a cold. A strong child.”

  These words struck a chord in Mei Yin’s memory, and she froze, an image flashing before her eyes: snow-covered ground, frosty air, two children about two or three years old—a boy and a girl—getting out of bed in the morning and running out naked into the courtyard for a snowball fight. She’d been an orphan herself, but it had happened so early she knew no sorrow, and happily ran around naked in the snow with the neighbor’s son. Her adoptive father was at the time an expert with the World Health Organization, working to eliminate contagious diseases. He happened to see this scene and—he later told her—was utterly stunned. The strength of a poor child’s life force, her joy in the midst of tragedy. This struck him with the force of a blow. From that instant, he decided to formally adopt her, but the Cultural Revolution had just begun, and the paperwork dragged on for eight years until, at the age of ten, she finally joined her new family.

  Mother Chen brought her back to earth, reminding her that the child had arrived without a name, so would Director Mei please give her one. Still thinking of the frosty ground, Mei Yin said, “Let’s call her Little Snow. As for her surname—she can be a Mei. Mei Xiaoxue, Little Snow.”

  “What a lovely name. Mei Xiaoxue. Mei Xiaoxue, you have a name now!” Mother Chen prodded her adorable tummy, and Little Snow gurgled. That night, Mei Yin hosted a simple dinner, to celebrate the orphanage’s official opening. The guests were only three adults and a small child, and although Mei Xiaoxue wasn’t able to partake of the food, she was unquestionably the most important person present. The three adults clamored to hold and amuse her, and she played along, smiling and gurgling, staying awake till the very end of the party. And so this abandoned baby, Mei Xiaoxue, became the first formal member of the Sacred Heart Orphanage.

  Late fall 2002—Payette National Forest, Idaho, USA

  A fire had swept through Payette National Forest; the culprit wasn’t a human being, but nature itself. The Forest Service did nothing to control the fire, and the flames surged for a week before burning themselves out. The next day, Forest Ranger Sam Hoskirk and Cornell geologist Bruce Malamud went into the hills together.

  As they entered the remote mountain zone, they caught up with a Ford van, slowing as it prepared to turn into a smaller road. Sam and Bruce slowed down too as they overtook the vehicle, calling out a warm hello. The other driver waved and said hello back, but then quickly sped away. The rear window of the van was open, but the two backseat passengers remained rigid and expressionless. Sam found this a little odd. There weren’t many vehicles around here, and it was normal to stop for a chat when you happened upon another car. “Maybe those two in the back were foreigners,” Bruce surmised, “and don’t speak English.”

  “The road they turned onto only leads to a small farm owned by my friend Moraine,” Sam answered. “I wonder what those three want with old Moraine?”

  They drove on to the end of the mountain road, locked the car securely, then headed into the hills with their equipment.

  This year had seen the most wildfires of any year for half a century, 150 of them in a forest of more than two million acres, destroying a whole seventy thousand acres. This was the result of Bruce’s theories and mathematical models, recently accepted by the Forest Service, which suggested it would be better not to attempt fire control, but to simply let them burn themselves out naturally. Today, the two men were there to study the aftermath.

  It was a mixed forest: oak trees in the lower reaches, up above ponderosa pines, white pines and lodgepole pines, spruces, fir trees and western hemlock. Undergrowth flourished below the tall trees, the ground covered in piles of dried leaves. Great tits and northern cardinals chirped in the branches. The two men arrived at the site of the fire. The undergrowth had been burned away, as had the fallen leaves. All around were blackened branches and ash. The air still held the dry heat of the fire, and the ground was warm too. Yet the trees hadn’t been too badly damaged, and while the bottoms of the trunks showed scorch marks, they hadn’t been burned through, and the health of the trees had not been threatened. Their crowns were still perfectly healthy, all green leaves and branches. Sam noted that the damage caused by a fire depends on how long the flames lingered in one place. If they remained at the lower levels, then they’d quickly move on after consuming the fuel of fallen leaves and underbrush, leaving the trunks and branches untouched. The forest would recover quickly.

  As they chatted, they continued to study and record the state of the site, measuring the highest extent of the scorch marks on the tree trunks, the height of the burned shrubbery, the density of insect corpses left by the flames. They also dug into the soil to examine how deep the effects of the fire extended, and particularly how it had affected buried seeds. After a while of this, Sam smiled. “Bruce, I really have to thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “That computer game of yours. Those old men in the Forest Service wouldn’t trust what I told them, a ranger of thirty years’ experience, but they believed a simple computer game.”

  Bruce had created a forest-fire simulation game that convinced the higher-ups to adopt the tactics long suggested by Sam. The program placed trees and fallen branches at random places around a grid, allowing undergrowth and debris to accumulate at different rates. Next, it dropped flames onto the grid at unpredictable intervals, and m
odeled the results based on how much undergrowth had built up, how long the conflagration lasted, and how often it changed direction. After running the simulation several times, the final conclusion was that allowing low intensity, high frequency fires would reduce the amount of flammable material, creating a mosaic of clear spaces and reducing the destructive power of future incidents.

  Sam was a little peeved. He’d been screaming about this for more than a decade, but the old fools in charge treated his arguments as the ravings of a lunatic. Then someone showed up with a computer game and suddenly it was “theory,” and they believed it at once. How did that make sense!

  They were a little tired, and it was lunchtime, anyway, so they found a clearing to sit in and have their bottled water and sandwiches. They continued their investigation after lunch, covering the entire site of the fire on foot. The federal government had issued a policy statement that year, acknowledging that “forest fires are a part of the ecological cycle,” a historical shift as far as the Forest Service was concerned. The report that Sam and Bruce planned to present after their study would serve as proof of this new strategy. Having seen the site, Bruce had even more confidence in his theory—and in Sam’s instincts.

  Bruce said, “I was thinking—in the future, instead of just not putting out fires, perhaps we ought to set them at regular intervals, so we can control when and how they happen, and be prepared. What do you think of that?”

  Sam was looking down to study an anthill. The creatures were busily storing food to get them through the winter. The inferno hadn’t done any harm to the ants—they’d probably hidden deep within their nest while the fire raged. Whatever means they’d used to escape death, you couldn’t help admiring God’s arrangements for every species, as well as the resilience of life. Sam didn’t answer Bruce at once, and only when Bruce had repeated the question did he say, “In theory, you have a point. But—”

  “I want your honest opinion, Sam. I value your point of view.”

  “I don’t have a clear idea, just a sense that there are times when scientists don’t necessarily make better choices than God. You all are clever in a small way, and have a kind of ‘short-term logic,’ but the Lord’s mighty intelligence is the ultimate logic.” Sam chuckled. “But you don’t need to go along with this. The Bible teaches that Christ is infinite, omnipotent and all-knowing, beyond human understanding. Apostle Paul warned that we have to beware of favoring human reason and logic over the teachings of God, lest we end up captive—and it seems to me that when he says to beware, the people he’s talking about are scientists.”

  Bruce, an atheist, didn’t want to get into an argument, so simply smiled. “God doesn’t seem to mind having the Bible printed with modern technology, nor his teachings being spread on TV.”

  It was getting late. The two men made their way back downhill and got in the car. When they were almost at the junction, Sam suggested visiting Moraine’s farm. He liked to pay his friend a visit whenever he was in the area. From a distance, they saw the Ford they’d passed earlier, parked at the start of the lane. The three passengers were prostrate, facing southeast as they bowed three times. Bruce recognized this as sunset prayers. Sam slowed down, partly to prepare for the turn, partly because he thought it would only be polite to say something to them. But even though the trio saw the car, they showed no inclination to chat, instead finishing their devotions quickly and hurrying back into their van. As the two vehicles passed each other, once again the driver waved, while the two people in the backseat remained rigidly inexpressive, still as painted idols. After the van had gone, Sam said, “You might be right. They’re probably foreigners who haven’t been in the country long, and don’t know how to be polite.”

  Hearing the car arrive, old Mr. and Mrs. Moraine came out, beaming, hugging their visitors. Sam explained that they’d been held up and apologized for stopping by so late. Moraine insisted, “But that doesn’t mean you have to go right away? That won’t do at all. I insist you join us for dinner, and spend the night here. You can leave in the morning. Besides, Sam, this will be the last time I’m able to host you. I’m selling the farm.”

  “What? To who?”

  “You probably bumped into them. They just left, the ones in the Ford van.”

  “Were they foreigners?”

  “The one who signed the contract was called Zia Baj, an American. He works at the University of Idaho. The other two had just immigrated here from Central Asia, and didn’t speak English.”

  Sam turned to Bruce. “Would you mind spending a night here?”

  Bruce shrugged. “Up to you. I don’t have anything urgent to do tomorrow.”

  Moraine was pleased to hear this, and urged his wife to prepare dinner quickly, while he took his guests to have a look at the farm. This was a small piece of land, about seventy acres. The courtyard was full of farming machinery, including a hand tractor, lawnmower, and harvester, all looking fairly old. In an enclosure were some cows and alpacas, about fifty in all. There were also a number of sheds, including simple greenhouses in which straw mushrooms, shiitake, and other fungi were grown. Moraine spoke, his voice full of affection for the place. “I took over this farm from my father, forty-five years ago. I can’t bear to give it up, but I also can’t go on like this. The place is too small, and too remote. I can’t compete with the bigger establishments. Nancy and I are old, we can’t keep doing this kind of labor.” He sighed. “We’ve made a loss three years in a row. We really can’t go on.”

  Sam tried to comfort him. “It’s good to get it off your hands without any fuss. Now you can go back to the city and enjoy your retirement. How much did you get?”

  “It was a good price, six hundred and eighty thousand. I’d thought six hundred grand would be as much as I could hope for. Now we’ll be able to buy a nice place in the suburbs.”

  “That’s great. Move in quickly, and I’ll come for your housewarming.”

  Moraine asked what they’d been doing in the mountains. Sam told him about their new forest-fire theory. He briefly summed up the tactic of allowing fires to exhaust themselves, and mentioned that he and Bruce were debating if controlled burns would be the next step. When he asked Moraine for his opinion, the old man laughed. “I’ve never thought about it. But I’m sure there’ve been forests here for millions of years, and they’ve never been wiped out by infernos. So it seems that without man interfering, God manages the whole thing pretty well.”

  This was exactly what Sam thought. He turned smugly to Bruce. “You see? Another vote for me.”

  Bruce looked startled. “What? Oh, right, yes.” His mind had been elsewhere.

  Mrs. Moraine summoned them to dinner with a bell. The chatter continued merrily over the meal, only Bruce remaining sunk in thought. His hostess, a thoughtful woman, was the first to notice he seemed unsettled, and asked in a concerned tone, “Mr. Malamud, you didn’t know you’d be spending the night here. Is there something you need to take care of at home?”

  Bruce quickly answered, “Ah, no, no.” He looked around the room. “But something is worrying me tonight. I’m suspicious about the three people who bought this place. I didn’t say anything earlier in case you thought I was a racist or Christian extremist, but—Mr. Moraine, you’ve said your farm’s been losing money, and yet they offered you a good price?”

  “Yes. They didn’t really bargain. I thought that was odd too. They didn’t seem particularly concerned about how the farm was doing. All they asked was about the surroundings, and how many buildings there were.”

  “I wonder why they’d come all the way out here to buy a farm?”

  “They saw the ad I placed. But this really is remote, most people wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Hmm,” Bruce said. “You must have seen those news reports: how some of the 9/11 terrorists rented a farmstead in the States, and turned it into a training camp for terrorists within the country. They even had a shooting range, with Westerners as the targets! I love this country, but I’d
also hate to report a neighbor or colleague to the FBI. Yet . . .”

  Old Moraine hesitated. His suspicions had no basis in fact, and he, like Bruce, loathed stool pigeons.

  After they’d talked it over a while, Bruce said, “How about this: when Mr. Moraine hands the property over to the new owners, he can tell them that his old friend Sam Hoskirk often spends the night here when he’s in the hills, and he hopes they’ll be able to keep letting him stay. I think a neighborly farmer wouldn’t refuse to help. Besides, they don’t know anyone here, so why wouldn’t they want another friend? Don’t you think so? If they agree, then Sam can continue keeping an eye on them. But if they refuse to let Sam come, then—that’ll be suspicious.”

  Everyone agreed that this was a sensible plan. Mr. Moraine added, “When they come back, I’ll definitely speak to them. Sam, you should drop by a couple of times as well.”

  Someone changed the subject, and the conversation moved on.

  A week later, the new owner of the farm, Zia Baj, arrived. Moraine asked if he’d continue hosting his friend, Forest Ranger Sam Hoskirk, to make things easier for him on his mountain expeditions. Mr. Baj froze for a moment, then reluctantly agreed. Moraine thanked him on behalf of Sam, then told Sam what had happened. A few days later, Sam decided to pay the farm a visit, even though he didn’t actually have any official business there. He found the turn onto the small road barred by a gate, crudely nailed together from untreated wood. It was secured with an old-fashioned combination lock, and a sign proclaiming “Private Property, No Entry Please.”

  This was obviously meant for Sam. Even after Moraine’s request, the new owner was determined to keep him out. Sam drove back to town. Instead of going home, he headed straight to the office of the Fremont County FBI dispatch center.

  Senior agent Rosa Banbury, a twenty-five-year veteran of the FBI, was waiting for him. She listened patiently to his story, smiling as she encouraged him to tell the whole thing. He felt awkward, and kept emphasizing his lack of evidence even as he shared his suspicions. Finally, Rosa said, “Ranger Hoskirk, please don’t worry, I’ll be sure not to take my eyes off that farm. Of course, I hope they’re innocent. No matter what happens, I’ll keep you informed.”