Now and Again

by Charlotte Rogan

  Will seemed surprised that the counselor had taken the trouble to write so many letters. “I guess they believed their own story,” he said.

  Will spent the weekend picking the letters up and putting them down again. “About becoming a doctor,” he said when they were clearing away the Sunday supper things.

  “Yes?” said Lyle when his son didn’t continue.

  “I mean, how do people know who they really are?”

  The question unnerved Lyle, who had started to wonder the same thing. “Why don’t you call Mom in the morning?” he suggested. “She gets in early on Mondays. She’s sure to have some good ideas.”

  “Mom’s a perfect example of what I mean,” said Will. “We went for years thinking she was one thing, and then, all of a sudden, she was something else.”

  “People have sides to them,” said Lyle. “Your mother was just discovering a different side. Kind of like you discovering you want to be a doctor.”

  “But I don’t want to be a doctor,” said Will quietly. “I don’t want to now, and I never did.”

  “But I thought…” Lyle sat down at the table, stunned and silent. “Let’s call your mother,” he said. “I expect she’ll have some good advice for you.”

  “What would Maggie Rayburn do—isn’t that how it goes? The thing is, I don’t want to know what Mom would do. It’s what Will Rayburn would do that counts, so don’t you go telling her anything about it.”

  Lyle understood that in some way the conversation was about him, for all around him, people were changing while he sat stuck to his chair. He alone had no facets or hidden agendas. He suspected that when the doctors eventually cut him open, what they’d find would be a brown zip jacket and a red felt cap.

  After that, he spent ten minutes a day at the desk and watched the dwindling pile of bills with a deep sense of satisfaction. Less satisfying was the fact that the total in the right-hand column of the check register was going down. “I guess I won’t be fixing that muffler,” he said to Will, who was sitting on the couch staring out the window at the crows.

  “Did you ever notice that when one flies off, they all fly off?” asked Will.

  “That seems to be in the nature of crows,” said Lyle.

  “Yeah,” said Will. “Sometimes I think I must be part crow.”

  One day a representative of the bank that held the mortgage on their house called to say the automatic payment had failed to go through for the second month in a row.

  “My wife handles the mortgage payments,” said Lyle.

  “In that case, perhaps you could put her on the phone.”

  When Lyle couldn’t, the bank representative informed him that payment in full would be expected within a week. Then he told Lyle the amount of money owed, including interest and late fees. Lyle wrote the number down on a notepad and said he would send a check, but when he used his calculator to subtract the amount the bank wanted from the balance in the checkbook, the display blinked out -623.58.

  Negative numbers had always seemed highly theoretical and dangerous to Lyle. They reminded him of words like “antimatter” and “implosion” because they didn’t correspond to real things, but to the opposites of real things. He tried to laugh it off—first to himself, and then to Will. “What’s the opposite of a couch?” he asked.

  “There’s no such thing,” said Will.

  “That’s my point,” said Lyle, walking over to show Will the bank balance. “That’s exactly what I’m getting at.”

  “What about your paycheck, Dad? And didn’t Mom send you part of hers?”

  “Oh gosh, of course,” said Lyle, breathing a sigh of relief. He adjusted the numbers in the check register and experienced a warm rush of competence. But there was also a car insurance bill hiding in the pile along with an unpaid speeding ticket and a charge for filling the propane tank, leaving the bank balance still veering toward negative territory even without the mortgage payments. “I guess I don’t absolutely have to pay the phone bill,” he said. “I guess I don’t absolutely have to fix the truck.”

  “Nah,” said Will. “We can live without a telephone, and if the truck makes a little noise, so what?”

  “Turn off the lights,” Lyle said to Will when he went off to bed. As he said it, he remembered all of the things Maggie had been reminding him about in the weeks before she left. Had she been planning on going to Phoenix all along? “And we don’t need the heat on high either,” he added. “Let’s use extra blankets instead.” But Will just sank farther into the couch cushions and didn’t answer. He didn’t even turn his head.

  9.10 Will

  The day after Will visited the recruiting station, he called his mother and told her he was following his dream just the way she was following hers.

  “Will!” cried Maggie. “I’m coming home on the next bus.”

  “I won’t be here,” said Will, misrepresenting his departure date. Then he relented and said, “I’m proud of you, Mom. At least you’re doing something you believe in. We can compare notes on our adventures someday. In the meantime, I’ll be sure to write.”

  That evening he and Tula sat in their usual spot under the apple trees and had their first beer together. A few snowflakes sifted through the lacy branches as they laughed about how beer was a gateway drug and also about how straitlaced they’d always been.

  “Every class has rebels and good kids,” said Tula. “I guess we’re somewhere in between.”

  “We don’t fit in at all,” said Will. It was something he kept realizing and then forgetting again. He thought being straitlaced was generally a good thing, but he also didn’t want to be a stick in the mud. “Of course, I’ll have to follow the rules in the army, but I won’t follow them blindly. I mean, I’m going to think for myself.” The beer had loosened the gear that usually got in the way of speaking his mind, and he added, “Moderation—that’s the key, isn’t it?”

  The beer also made him feel good. Tula said it made her feel good too. Good and also a little reckless, a little like having a second beer. “Was there a reason we said we were only going to have one?” she asked. “It seems kind of arbitrary, but if there was a reason for it…”

  “It was kind of an assumption—I don’t really know.”

  “I can see how you might say you’re not going to have any. That would be a line worth drawing, but I can’t really see the difference between one and two, can you?”

  “Two never killed anybody.”

  “That’s what I think. I think two would be perfectly okay.”

  “It’s probably not even a good idea to stop at one,” said Will. “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

  But there had only been two beers in the Rayburns’ refrigerator, and it wasn’t easy to figure out how to get more. “Everyone in town knows us,” said Will. “If we want to buy beer, we have to drive to Glorietta, which means we have to get the truck from my dad, who is probably at the Merry Maid…”

  “Drinking beer,” Tula finished for him.

  “Exactly right,” said Will.

  The sky had been leaden and threatening all day, and now it started to snow for real, which only seemed to confirm that the world around them was changing and they would have to change too—either with it or in opposition. Either one would be good. They debated whether conformity was preferable to rebellion, and for once, they both agreed. It was exhilarating to run along the icy road in the knowledge that they had been marginalized by society and that, being excluded, they might not be bound by its laws at all. They whooped and hollered as they plunged down the hill past the athletic fields and through a dark stand of cottonwood trees to where a footpath ran beside the frozen slick of Ash Creek. They stopped for a long kiss, and Will located, deep within his alienation, a sense of belonging and completion.

  The streets were unplowed and the snow was piling up, concealing the familiar. Then Tula tugged at him with her mittened hand and they were running again, past the turnoff to the Ash Creek settlement wh
ere Tula lived and past the municipal recreation center before heading up the slope to the Super Saver parking lot and down the street to where Lyle’s truck was parked next to an empty lot where the foundation for a new office complex had just been poured.

  “Go inside and ask him for the keys,” said Will. “Tell him the truck is in the way of the snowplow and that you’ll move it for him.”

  “I can’t say that,” said Tula. “It’s a lie!”

  “You’d be protecting him,” said Will. “If he doesn’t know our plan, he can’t be held accountable for what we do. He can’t be pressured into revealing it to anyone.”

  “Pressured by whom?” asked Tula.

  “Whoever’s out to get us,” said Will, winking like a conspirator.

  Tula blinked at him, her eyelashes heavy with snowflakes, and just when he was going to grab her again, right there on Main Street where anyone could see them, she pushed him away and sashayed into the bar, leaving him to stamp his feet on the icy pavement, trying to stay warm. After what seemed like a long time, Tula emerged, swinging her hips like a cheerleader and dangling the keys triumphantly above her head.

  Will hadn’t expected there would be side effects to drinking. He hadn’t expected that he’d want to kiss Tula’s neck and her belly button or that he wouldn’t want to stop there. He hadn’t expected that driving the truck would become increasingly hazardous or that it would get stuck in a snowdrift driving back from Glorietta or that he’d push Tula into the drift instead of getting it unstuck or that he’d dive in after her when someone in a passing car stuck his head out the window and shouted, “Get a room!”

  “We’ve got the truck, don’t we?” he said to Tula. “It’s even better than a room.”

  “No, no, I can’t,” said Tula. She looked sorrowful and frail, shivering in her too-big parka. He wanted to protect her, so he put an arm around her shoulders, but instead of snuggling in close to him, she moved away. Tiny snowflakes were drifting down, and the light from a streetlamp made a halo around her head.

  “Why not?” asked Will. Something had changed for him; or, rather, many things had changed. He was motherless. He had joined the army. He had a girlfriend. And pretty soon he’d be quitting school. He was giving up a lot, so it seemed right that Tula give up something too. Not that she’d really be giving something up—they’d both be gaining. He said the word “sacrifice,” but it wasn’t exactly what he meant. Apparently it was the wrong word to use because suddenly, Tula no longer seemed frail. Will suspected she was even angry, but the alcohol was affecting his perceptions and he couldn’t be sure.

  “Give up. Abandon. Kill,” said Tula. “What kind of sacrifice are we talking about?”

  Will was confused as to whether having sex or not having it entailed sacrifice and whether sacrifice was a good thing or a bad one, but before he could ask, Tula stepped beyond the circle of lamplight and faded away behind a veil of snowflakes, leaving him to ponder the effects of the beer, which no longer made him feel happy and light-headed, but leaden and angry and thick. He ran partway down the road in the direction she had gone, skidding and panicked and shouting for her to come back. Now and then a car pushed past him, its taillights smearing in the snowy dark. Then there was only silence and a small but growing blister of loneliness and desperation. He was walking back to the truck when an SUV stopped and the driver helped him push the truck out of the snow.

  “Christ almighty, son,” said the driver. “You’re already at the Loop Road. Your girlfriend probably just walked on home. You must have really pissed her off.”

  Will drove around the loop, slowly at first as he looked for Tula, but then more recklessly when he realized she had probably taken a shortcut across the fields to her house, which was no more than a mile away as the crow flies. He turned the wheel this way and that just to make skid marks in the pristine whiteness. He opened the window and shouted out into the swirling blizzard, “I think I know a little bit about sacrifice, Tula Santos! I joined the army after all!”

  The snow absorbed the sound while Will absorbed the strange quiet of the town where he had lived his whole life. As he drove, he gazed at it in wonder, as if he had already left it or returned after an absence of many years. He was as good as gone, and he thrilled to imagine the adventures he would have while the citizens of Red Bud plodded around the same old track. He slammed on the brakes, turning into the skid before speeding up again and letting the thrill overtake him until he was riding the razor’s edge of chaos and control. He marveled at how the plumes of exhaust coming from a car that appeared in front of him turned red in the glow of the car’s taillights, at how the shapes of things seemed sharper and more brittle in the frozen air. He marveled at how things were already changing and would never be the same again. And he marveled at how slowly and inevitably the collision happened when the driver of the car he was following suddenly hit the brakes.

  10.0 VISIONS

  AND GOALS

  Danny’s girlfriend sent us proof the government not only knew the munitions were toxic, but was taking active steps to cover it up. She sent photographs of damaged babies. She sent some doctored scientific reports.

  —Joe Kelly

  We got more submissions from soldiers than we knew what to do with. And then it wasn’t just soldiers, it was government contractors and whistleblowers. Concerned citizens, that’s who it was.

  —Penn Sinclair

  They sent evidence about the war, but also about cancer clusters, toxic waste dumps, government surveillance programs, journalists detained at airports, corporate malfeasance, manipulation of financial markets, politicians bought and paid for. It blew our fucking minds.

  —Joe Kelly

  SWAT teams breaking up college poker games, moms who lost their kids because of false arrests, first graders handcuffed for talking in class, babies shot in no-knock raids, property seizures without due process, militarization of the police. I would have posted everything on the site, but the captain said we had to remember what the mission was, and the mission was to tell the truth about the war.

  —Le Roy Jones

  They got their share of hate mail too.

  —E’Laine Washington

  10.1 Le Roy Jones

  Le Roy was alone in the warehouse when a visitor knocked at the door saying he was a reporter and asking to be let in.

  “How did you find us?” asked Le Roy.

  “A woman named Dolly Jackson sent me here.”

  “Hunh,” said Le Roy. “Danny’s girlfriend sent you? How do you know her?”

  “A while back I wrote a series of articles on innocent prisoners. One of my sources told me that Dolly was on to an even bigger story, and Dolly told me about you.”

  “Hunh,” Le Roy said again.

  Three months before, Le Roy would have let anyone in. One day a serviceman who had been summoned to the building across the street installed a new Kenmore refrigerator before Danny returned and pointed out the mistake. Another time, Le Roy enjoyed takeout from a local Chinese restaurant that wasn’t meant for them. After that, Danny helped Le Roy develop a method for sensing when something was about to go off track, and a surefire indicator was that the doorbell would ring when everyone but Le Roy was out of the warehouse.

  “Don’t answer the doorbell,” Danny had reminded him just that morning. “If no one else is here, you should just let it ring.”

  But the reporter didn’t ring the bell. He clomped up onto the front porch and rapped on the windowpane.

  “The door’s not locked,” shouted Le Roy when he heard the rapping. He only heard it because he didn’t have his headphones in his ears. He didn’t have them in because the captain and Kelly had gone off somewhere and Danny had gone somewhere too, which meant he could turn the music up as loud as he wanted as long as the upstairs neighbors didn’t complain. Headphones were a good invention, but they weren’t as good as no headphones, which allowed the surfaces of the building to rattle and become part of the music, which Le Roy
thought was not only the way the musicians intended it, but what the music itself wanted.

  “Listen to this,” he said to the reporter, who just happened to be carrying a video camera and some recording equipment. “Does this sound better to you or this?” He played two versions of the same song, one recorded in a high-tech studio and one out on a busy street.

  “No contest,” said the reporter in a smooth voice.

  “Yeah,” said Le Roy. “Fuck that other shit.” He put the live recording on again and amped it up until the windows rattled and the computer speakers buzzed a little. “Even better, am I right?”

  “So right,” said the reporter.

  “More real,” said Le Roy.

  “Exactly what I was going to say.”

  “I’m thinking of recording this and then playing the recording so it picks up other sounds and then recording that and playing—you know, keep doing that until I reach a point where it no longer sounds better—if I ever reach that point. That’s what I want to find out.”

  “I’ve got a digital recorder,” said the man. “Why don’t we try it now?”

  After a while the man reached over to turn down the volume and said that his name was Martin Fitch and that he was investigating how a particular top-secret document had found its way to wartruth.com. “The document is called Countering Misconceptions, and it showed up on your website a couple weeks back.”

  “Sure,” said Le Roy. “I can help you with that.” Then he opened the email log he had created to track all of the submissions they had received in the weeks since the site went live. “This column shows who sent it, and this shows what, if anything, we did in terms of authentication. And this is the date when I put it up on the site.” He spent a minute scrolling through the log. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s the one we got in the mail from Dolly Jackson. You know Dolly, right?”

  “I do,” said Martin. “She’s the one who sent me here.”