Peace On Earth

Immediately before the end of the world, Americans felt as if their country was ascending to a place of limitless growth and opportunity. A series of crisis had nearly crippled the nation, and though the details of the troubles were already fading from the public mindset, the people remembered vividly how they personally had suffered. There was a sense among the people that a natural cycle of challenges to the American way of life had come and passed, just like all of the other challenges that the people considered passed and no longer threatening. And so the American culture became irreverent and childish in a renewed sense of superiority. New movies were all comedies, smug talk radio DJ's returned to popularity. The President continued to talk about the "general adversity and gathering evil" abroad, but almost no one paid attention. It was generally accepted that his white-knuckled rhetoric was due to the upcoming election: he was simply being a politician and, like other politicians before him, he was trying to make them afraid so that they would rely on him. Then one day, late in the long, lazy summer, the President appeared on T.V. looking as if he hadn't slept all night and had, in fact, been crying.

"The Pakistani government has sent word. There was an attack on one of their government facilities last week and almost one fifth of their nuclear armaments cannot be unaccounted for. I have called all active troops into duty to secure our borders, our oceans and our skies. They will not," the President said, "be allowed to win." The message was as short and simple as that, barely a minute long. It played on repeat everywhere for 48 hours straight.

So all of culture fell silent, and a long waiting began. As quickly as the people had declared their society victorious, superior to all, the Americans now fell hard into their vivid nightmares. Almost every young person who could joined the military, and every family and every individual mobile enough to do so fled the big cities. People walked away from their jobs, their homes, all of their worldly goods. By day there was heard across the landscape of the country the sound of feet scrapping across dusty ground, and there was no talking and no sound of breathing. By night there was always someone, somewhere close by screaming. In all of this frenzy it almost went unnoticed when, by some anomaly, every microwave oven in San Jose, California and the surrounding area stopped working.

It was almost beneath notice at first, considering the world-shattering news of impending nuclear attack. The microwaves would turn on. The timer would count down and the glass tray would rotate, and after the timer cheeped, the food would be as cold as it had been when it was placed inside. Hundreds of people noticed, but, due to the Situation, no one reported it. Most people assumed their appliance had stopped working due to disrepair, and only a few attempted to fix it or replace it and thusly discovered the larger scope of the problem. Then the next day the "microwave dead zone" doubled its area. Then the next day it doubled again, so that it covered a large portion of Northern California, and the military began to investigate. It wasn't just the microwaves. Their radar systems went haywire, and all radio frequencies became jumbled, unlistenable. Wireless Internet, on the other hand, was suddenly amplified to a degree that it was available for free on any computer. Five days after the "microwave dead zone" first appeared, snowflakes inexplicably fell from the sky over all of the Bay Area. On the same day, the nuclear material kept at the Livermore Lawrence Labs in the East Bay Area displayed significant changes. It was as if, the scientific conclusion was, all their plutonium had ceased to be radioactive.

On the afternoon of the day of the snowflakes, black military vehicles descended on a small house in Mountain View, California and droves of soldiers and military scientists flooded into the residence. It had not been difficult for them to track the point of origin for the "microwave dead zone," but they had ended up wasting three days debating how to respond. Some of the officers had been pushing to drop a nuclear bomb on the entire region. This concept, though inconceivable by decent human beings, took the personal intervention of the President to quell.

"Shut up and get out there!" The President hissed at his men.
Inside of the residence they found a young, thin man sitting watching T.V. and wearing a nice, if rumbled, suit. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days. Upon seeing the soldiers flood into the room and surround him with their large automatic weapons, he sighed and relaxed and said,

"Finally! What took so long?"

After spending almost an hour to determine that the man was not a threat, they let him explain what had happened. His name was Trunzo and he was an engineer. He had created the "microwave dead zone" accidentally.

"Microwave ovens are the least of our worries," Trunzo said tiredly. "It's very, very bad."

After he had first heard about the Situation he had decided to use his scientific knowledge to try and end the nuclear threat, he told his visitors as he lead them to his garage. "I stopped going to work," he said. "Who wants to be at work when they're possibly moments away from being incinerated?" He asked.

"Ever since I was a kid, I've thought," he said as switched on the lights in the garage, "that after men created the first nuclear bomb, it was only be a matter of time before humankind eradicated itself. It's like Chekhov's gun. Once the Bomb was placed on the mantle, someone had to fire it eventually." Inside the garage was a large glass canister surrounded by wires and circuitry, all welded together crudely. Trunzo continued: "As long as the reality of nuclear power existed, I concluded, the reality of eventual nuclear war existed. It didn't matter what the circumstances were. It was going to happen."

He tapped his palm against the glass canister and sighed. "I came up with the concept years ago, but I didn't commit myself to actually trying it out until the Situation..." He looked remorsefully at the canister. The soldiers continued to level their weapons at his head and stood silently waiting for him to finish. The soldier scientists were scribbling notes about the equipment in the room, barely listening to the man's monologue.

"So I built this little test reactor to see if my concept would work. I wanted to see if I could change the atomic composition of the matter inside the canister so that a nuclear reaction would not occur."

The military scientists were confused. "You would disable a nuclear explosion?" The lead scientist asked. "Contain it?"

"No," Trunzo replied. "I made it physically impossible for a nuclear explosion to occur."

There was silence in the room, as the soldiers began to look confusedly at the military scientists for explanation. All of the military scientists were staring at the engineer in shock.

"How would it work?" One asked.

"I altered a neutrino to engineer a new sub-atomic particle that I call a 'nullifier.' Nullifiers attach to atoms and increase their atomic weight." Trunzo explained. "I shot a bunch of them into this canister to see if, by increasing the atomic weight of the matter just slightly, I could make nuclear reactions impossible."

"What happened?" The lead military scientist asked, fascinated.

Trunzo looked uncomfortable. "Well, it worked. But it created a chain reaction. Each time a

n atom accepted a nullifier, another nullifier was created and jumped into the nearest atom, and then that atom would create another nullifier and that nullifier would jump into the next nearest atom...before I realized what had happened, the nullifier wave went straight through the matter of the glass in the canister and continued into all of the matter in my garage and me, and then my house and then my whole neighborhood. I've estimated that in another few weeks the entire world will contain nullifiers. So I ended the nuclear war," Trunzo said with a small smile. "As you can see from the plutonium in Livermore, my theory was correct. Nuclear reactions won't be physically possible anymore." He stopped smiling, and continued. "But that leads into the next problem. In about 25 years this nullifier wave will reach the sun."

There was complete silence in the room for almost a full minute. "You stopped the nuclear threat?" One of the soldiers asked confusedly.

"Well, yes," Trunzo said sheepishly. "Among other things, I stopped the potential nuclear war."
Slowly the soldiers lowered their weapons. There was a sudden manic feeling in the room. The young men and women wanted to laugh and shout. They knew that they had to follow orders and procedure, and they had to take Trunzo in and have all of what he was saying verified and studied before it could be declared as truth. But they, like

everyone else in the country and the world, was so tired of waiting and waiting for either death or something possibly worse, that the idea of the Situation being over was enough to send what felt like an electric charge through each and everyone of the soldiers and military scientists alike. Salvation! They were saved! And by an American! It was too much.

Trunzo looked around, slightly confused by the soldiers' and military scientists' failure to react

as he saw fit. "I mean, yes. I stopped nuclear holocaust. But did you hear what I said? I really, truly have brought peace to Earth. Because this atomic change is going to hit the sun in 25 years. Don't you understand what that means? The sun is a nuclear reaction!"

The Murder of Timothy Kearne

On Wednesday, before the work day had barely begun for the Assistant US Attorney, Naseer Stevens was jolted from the preparation of his morning coffee by the click of his doorknob being turned, then held and not opened. Stevens frowned at the door and then went across the room to his desk, where he picked up the telephone and pressed the intercom button to connect to his secretary.

"Who is it?" He asked.

"City Councilman Ortega-" was all the secretary was able to say before the man burst into Stevens' room and came up to Stevens' desk with a look of a "man on a mission." He was a short man with an enormously broad frame, whose bright red face shone at that moment with the stately tempestuousness that was the only other mood the typically haughty, self-possessed character ever displayed.

"Are you working on a case against Your Cafe for the Original Man?" The councilman asked forcefully, but not, Stevens' noted, able to hide the tentative nervousness one expected of a person encroaching in foreign territory.

Stevens frowned and laughed, sitting on the edge of his desk and pulling from his pocket a packet of Wrigley's fruit-flavored gum. "I have to tell you, Jim, all of the cases that the office of the United States Attorney are pretty strictly confidential. I'm sure I don't have to tell you why."

Ortega gave the attorney a sour look. "Timothy Kearne has a story in the works over at the Oakland Herald, all about Your Cafe for the Original Man's tax evasion scam. He mentions that you're building a case."

Then it was Stevens' turn to darken to a deep red color. Naseer Stevens was a very tall man with terrible posture and the life-long affliction of looking older than he was. He had an almost handsome plainness in the particularly deep lines of his face, and he was never better-looking than when he was angry, which was unfortunate because he almost never lost his cool demeanor. As keeping with that quality, Stevens swiftly reigned in his desire to curse and instead offered Ortega a piece of gum. The councilman frowned, shook his head and continued to study the attorney's face. Then, in a sort of mournful manner, Stevens pulled a piece of gum out of the pack for himself .

"Well, it's a good guess on Kearne's part," Stevens said to the piece of gum, "I'd go as far to say that anyone paying attention to the cafe's operations, or living in a two mile radius to the place, could probably make a very similar guess."

Ortega grunted, starting to relax. "Kearne thinks he can protect himself from retribution for his article by scaring the cafe's Nation of Islam types with federal prosecutors and your SWAT teams. Personally, the situation makes me very nervous."

Stevens cleared his throat, annoyed. "For all of its flaws, the Nation of Islam is an important spiritual pillar of the black community," Stevens said absently, "the people that run Your Cafe for the Original Man are power-hungry bullies."

"Kearne doesn't know what he's about to open up," Ortega said, finally comfortable enough to shift into his serene statesman persona. "Say what you want about the cafe, it is a source of inspiration for many people in that community. I certainly don't want the city government to be characterized as persecuting any religious organizations."

Stevens almost lost his cool once again. "Kearne is trying to do what you seem unable to do: hold Ibrahim Al Yassar III and his cafe associates accountable for terrorizing and intimidating people," Stevens returned sharply, irritated by the politician. "I suppose you are content with the situation, as long as someone is controlling all those black people."

Ortega flinched slightly at this comment, but suppressed whatever further reaction he might have had and said, "Well, I just wanted to let you know. Your case is about to become public prematurely." And with that, the councilman left.

Stevens went back behind his desk and slumped in his chair, exhaling loudly. He leaned back in his chair and put his hands on his eyes, the way he always did when he was thinking. Then he got his book of names and numbers and looked up Timothy Kearne.

Once he had gotten through to the reporter he introduced himself and clarified that he was speaking only as an anonymous source. Kearne replied in a very serious, very quiet manner. He was clearly a man accustomed to listening. Stevens had, of course, read much of the reporter's work in the Herald and had some respect for the man. He was one of only three black reporters working for the mainstream Oakland paper, and he had managed to carve for himself a standing in among both the white and black Oaklands.

"That's fine," Kearne said, and then immediately he asked, "I've heard that the cafe has been audited several times by the IRS, and-"

"Listen, the cafe is being investigated by several agencies of the federal government. It is possible that federal prosecutors will have enough information to make a case against the cafe within the next few months, unless the cafe owners can clean up the appearance of improper conduct by their staff." This was all delivered in Stevens' most level, disengaged tone, the one he joked privately was the most suited for a federal employee. "When will the article see print?"
There was a moment of hesitation. "Possibly by the end of the week," Kearne replied in a distracted tone.

That was just about all that Stevens was willing to say, and he quickly got off of the phone. His small office was on the 15th storey of the federal building, and, as he did only when he did not know exactly what to expect next or what exactly the best next step would be in a confusing matter, Stevens went to the window and looked out over the city. It was one of those hazy day of summer, the smog having lifted from the streets and drifting between the buildings in the quickly rising heat. The sight left him more frustrated than before, and he growled to himself, "It's no use." No matter how he tried to frame the situation in his mind, Stevens realized, he could not shake the definite impression that the cafe would not react with any caution when confronted with Kearne's article. Stevens cursed and quickly went out. He told his secretary that he was going to get some lunch.
The walk to the cafe was punishing, due to the heat, and Stevens was drenched in sweat before he had made it halfway through the dingy, boiling downtown. The cafe was located along the lake, a good three or four miles from his office, but Stevens disliked driving and almost never used his car. The heat was quickly reaching a level that, like the rain in the winter, cleared the street of pedestrians. As he approached the cafe's large, square brick complex, Stevens begrudgingly put his coat on to hide his sweat stains.

Inside the cafe smelled strongly of warm bread and cooked fish. He went inside and ordered a sandwich from the friendly young lady behind the counter.

"Can you also go and tell Ibrahim Al Yassar III," Stevens said in a pleasant a voice without looking directly at the woman and instead focusing on dressing his sandwich with vinegar, "that agents of the federal government are watching his business activities very, very closely."

The woman looked shocked, and then went back into the rear of the cafe. Stevens went to one of the tables and sat down. On the walls were pictures of the cafe founder, and of various Nation of Islam leaders. As Stevens began to eat, a large group of young men came out of the back room and surrounded him.

"Who are you?" One of the men, whom, judging by the way the other young men stood around him, was most likely the leader. "What are you doing, talking about federal agents and all of that?"

Stevens inspected the man. He was short and had a plain, blank face. He was frowning and attempting to look threatening, and he certain was in some respects, but the overwhelming feeling Stevens received from looking into his face was that he did not tend towards ruthlessness or violence. This struck Stevens as a direct contrast to the reports of intimidation and violence associated with the cafe, but then Stevens realized that he didn't know the circumstances within the organizations' power structure. No one really knew, who wasn't involved, though once could guess based on some of the facts. The attorney knew, of example, that when the original founder of the cafe had died, there had been a rotating change of leadership for almost a year afterwards. There had been a battle for control of the organization, Stevens thought to himself. This man is the result of that battle, and all the violence and ruthlessness that such a struggle would entail.

"I'm here to warn you," Stevens said icily. "You need to clean up your act. You're attracting the wrong sort of attention from a much bigger gang than your own."

The circle of men tightened around Stevens, and the attorney had to force himself to remain calm. He looked at the leader and spoke as if there were no one else there.

"A lot of people look up to this place for inspiration. Or at least, they'd like to. They need to, they need a symbol of independence and strength and virtue." Stevens said all of this gently, striving to not sound like the government lawyer he was. "The violence and the ruthlessness are your organization's supreme weaknesses. And a lot of people outside of your community are getting ready to capitalize on that weakness. I don't think I need to tell you how those people feel about your community. If the violence keeps up, this place will cease to exist by the new year."

The men all stared at Stevens as he stood up, and they begrudgingly moved apart to let him pass. Stevens walked slowly the whole way back to his office, feeling a powerful unease and no longer feeling the heat of the day. I've done what I could, he tried to assure himself. What matters is that I've done my best.

Kearne's article ran Sunday and by Monday he was dead. The police took a teenage boy into custody, who immediately gave two conflicting statements: he was acting alone, and he was acting on orders. While the police investigated for more suspects, a SWAT team blew through the cafe and detained just about everyone within two blocks of the building. That was the worst part, Stevens thought disgustedly as he read about the community's horrified, shell shocked and silently outraged reaction in the following days. There would be no heroes in the story, Stevens thought, feeling as if he were about to vomit. At least no heroes left alive.

Stevens' boss called to congratulate him for taking down the cafe, and the attorney accepted it with as polite an attitude as he could muster. He didn't sleep for a week.

Saul and the Ownership Society

Due to my unrelenting magnanimous-ness, I aided my best friend and insufferable roommate Saul in getting a job at my place of business. So we worked together at Franklin's Figurine

Manufacturing, Inc, and were paid a weekly pittance to inspect each of the hundreds of the miniature figurines of groomsmen coming off the Franklin assembly line before they were shipped off to wedding cakes across the world. It was perhaps the worst job I have ever had to endure, though maybe slightly better than my time in the Financial District, where I served as one of four legs for a very important desk.

Saul was immediately promoted. I felt that this was due to our employer's desire to teach me humility, though it may have been resultant of my habitual chortling. Also, perhaps my inclination to insult our profession at any and all opportunities hurt my attractiveness as a promotable employee. Or maybe Saul was sleeping with our boss, Richard. Who knows? In any case, Saul suddenly got a raise and was thus slightly less in credit card debt than I.

We decided to celebrate by treating ourselves to coffee. However, due to aforementioned debts, our ability to purchase coffee or anything else aside from that which could be purchased with food stamps relied entirely on how well we could sing showtunes on street corners. I, of course, knew the entire discography of the Eagles, but experience had shown me that such material was not necessarily meant to be shared with the unsuspecting public. Suffice to say, our coffee options were limited.

Luckily, Saul knew of a grocery store that served free samples of coffee. It was great. We found a wonderfully soft spot to lean against in the bre

ad aisle. We discussed the recent torrential rain.

"It's great," Saul said. "So refreshing. I wish it was always raining all the time, so that I could constantly feel as refreshed as I do right now."

"You're a bad person," I replied, "I'm getting chills whenever you say the word, 'rain.' The other day the cardboard box where we live officially became not-a-cardboard-box. It is more parts water than any substance that can scientifically be called a 'solid.'"

"Awesome. That is great. We spent all of college talking about how we didn't want to

get stuck in mundane lives. So far, we haven't even been given that option. And that's great," he joked. At least, I think he was joking. "You're being ridiculous, anyways. We don't live in a cardboard box. We live in a cubicle."

That was Saul's way: to always look on the bright side. Our cubicle was a cubicle and not a cardboard box, sure, I could grant him that point. But it still was not actually, technically a legally habitable space. It was located inside of a flimsy office building out near the Oakland Airport. It leaked terribly. We had found the cubicle while trying to find housing, and discovered that it was the only "room" that was within our price range. Our landlord thought we were a high-tech firm that specialized in "winkis," which were sort of like "wikis," except pretend.

Saul and I made several trips to the coffee sampler station as we turned our conversation to more important things, specifically that week's Superman comic book. On our fourth trip there, we ran into Celancy.

"Saul," he exclaimed excitedly. "Oh, and Philip," he added, mildly distracted from Saul momentarily. "What are you guys up to?"

"We're talking about the un-inhabitability of our cubicle," I informed him.

"Yeah?" Celancy laughed. "Try living on a sailboat!"

"A sailboat?" Saul said in awe. "Really? I've always wanted to live on a sailboat," he continued, "every since I turned 23."

"Yeah," Celancy said with a shrug. "It seemed like it would be pretty cool before I moved in. I'm actually thinking about getting rid of it."

"Really?" Saul asked. "How much were you thinking of selling it for?"

"$100?" Celancy said. "I got it for free, but I bet I could sell it to some mor-"

"I'll take it!" Saul interrupted, smiling broadly. "Great. This is wonderful."

"Wait," I said. Unlike Saul, I had a mild instinct for subtext, and that instinct was right then telling me that the boat might be booby-trapped. "Maybe we should take a look at this 'boat.'"

"Yeah," Celancy was looking at Saul, perplexed.

So we went over to the Emeryville Marina. We took Celancy's car over, and I was mostly sure, from the brief time I spent in the vehicle, that he had been using the space for sleeping. The sleeping bag and the pillow were my biggest clues. All the way over, Saul kept on talking about how great it would be to live on a boat. Celancy adopted a tone that was somewhere between bemused sarcasm and unconvinced agreement.

"Yeah," Celancy agreed unconvinced-ly again as Saul gushed about the possibly wonderful

effects of constant tidal movement on sleep patterns. "Living on a boat is really interesting!"

"I'm almost 100 percent sure that I want to buy this boat," Saul exclaimed for the fifth time. "Everyone wants to live on a boat. It's like the American dream come true," Saul continued, adding "living on a boat" to his ever-growing list of stupid lifestyle choices that he characterized as the American dream.

We arrived between bouts of the downpour and slipped and slid in the mud down a small slope that led from parking lot to marina. There were all sorts of interesting, attractive boats sitting along the docks, and there was also Celancy's thing. I wasn't sure if Celany's boat could be classified as a "sailboat," as it did not have a sail.

"I think the harbormaster is going to throw me out," Celancy said. "You're not supposed to sleep on the boats, and he keeps asking me when my boat is going to be 'sea-worthy.' I don't know what that is supposed to mean."

"'Sea-worthy,'" I said the word over, frowning. "I bet it's some sort of maritimal term."

"That's great," Saul gushed, "The ocean is great. I love it. I love pirates. I want to live here."

We stepped onto the boat, which was about the size of a very large bathtub, and the craft immediately sank dramatically into the bay water. This was alarming, especially since we were brought much closer to the horrific stench of the water. It smelled like a men's restroom at a truck rest stop.

"Spread out! Spread out!" Celancy commanded us with some urgency. "If we are all on one side of the boat, it'll tip over."

He had laid tarps and flat pieces of wood over the boat, in an attempt to plug up the leaks where rainwater poured into his sleeping area. In order to enter the hold, we had to go through a tiny portal and lower ourselves into a literal swamp of filth and trash. He had a futon and a camp stove and an acoustic guitar, minus two strings.

"I do not want to live here," Saul announced after a few seconds spent taking in the disastrous hovel. "This is awful."

"It's been the worst experience of my life, living in this shithole. I fucking hate it," Celancy immediately said, relieved to no longer restrain his now very obvious disgust for the boat.

As we walked back to the car, we discussed what Celancy's future plans were.

"I'm gonna go with these guys to Mexico. They have this beat-up old school bus, and we're gonna drive it down there and make a movie," he explained.

"What's the movie going to be about?" I asked.

"I don't know," he shrugged.

"Awesome," Saul said, regaining his enthusiasm. "That's great."

"It's the American dream," I suggested.

"Sure," Saul agreed. "Definitely."

Supposed To

When Carl's teacher told her third grade class to write about someone in their family, Carl chose to write about his uncle. He wrote: "His name is Ryan so he is angry lots of the time and yells at Aunt Caroline. He has to hit her when he gets mad, and he does not like me because I cried one time that he yelled."

There was more of it, but that was all that his mother read when Carl's teacher handed it to her that afternoon. She looked at her son and sighed and began apologizing to Ms.

Swift.

"You don't need to apologize to me," the young woman said. "You need to think about what your son is seeing and what he is thinking about your husband's brother. I don't mean to be forward, and I certainly don't want to pretend to know your family's personal life, but Carl seems troubled by a situation that is probably difficult for a young boy to witness. I think he needs you to help him understand, as best as a young boy can be expected to, what is happening between his aunt and his uncle."

Laura accepted this advice gracefully, stiffly, and then left, humiliated and e

nraged. She took Carl to her husband's office and left her son with the secretary while she discussed in the most tense and pointed terms the need to stop his brother from abusing his brother's wife, at least in the presence of their son.

"I understand that you are upset," her husband protested with a tired and heavy sense of understanding. "What do you think we could say to Ryan, that would make him change?"

Steven, Ryan's younger brother, was of slightly lesser frame and dramatically different temperament than the elder sibling. He walked with a slight limp, the last remaining physical scar of a near-fatal and months long childhood struggle with a potent strain of the flu. He was a product of that sickness in at least as profound a way he was the product of his mother and father. When he recovered he weighed nearly 60 pounds, and was red and swollen like a fetus, but with the ancient, badly marked face of a elderly man. His and Ryan's father had been beaten by his father and that man had been beaten by his father before him. It was a physically brutal family, following the ancient tradition and rite of loving sons and wives with one's fists, but Steven had been spared that rite by his illness and consequent fragility, and had thus, by fluke, become the first male member of his family to not be beaten or, in turn, beat Hell out of his own son, in more than four generations.

"I'll say it again," Steven continued quietly, waiting patiently for his wife to calm down. "W

e can call the police and have Ryan arrested, if you are worried about Caroline's safety. Even

then, I doubt she would leave him. Aside from calling the officials, the only other option you or I have is to cut off our relationship with them. And you know how I feel about that."

Steven cut her off as she protested, his voice more forceful than before: "He won't listen to you. She won't listen to you."

So Laura stormed out and took Carl across town to Ryan's house, and made the boy wait in the car while she stormed up to the front door. Ryan was a short, incredibly wide man with a shaved head and an enormous beard. He clung to the edge of respectability due only to his ability to get along famously with people who barely knew him. He almost always stunk of beer, though he was rarely actually drunk, and he had recently been aspiring to get a teaching position at the community college, despite his 5-year-long inability to find a job in his cho

sen field of nuclear physics. He had a secret tattoo of a swastika near his heart, attained at the tender age of 13 from another boy in his neighborhood, which only Caroline knew about.

"Hi, Laura," Ryan said as he stood in the doorway, sounding neither particularly surprised to see her unannounced nor interested in her presence.

"Carl wrote a story about you for his class today," Laura said caustically. She handed him the story. "Here, read it."

Ryan read over the paper stoically. Slowly, he turned a deep beet red. Saying nothing, he slowly looked up at Laura and he started to try to say something in protest, or in defense, or even, generally, in response at all to Carl's story. It was the first time anyone aside from Steven had acknowledged his treatment of Caroline. Of course, Steven had tried to counsel his brother, in a way that was always steeped in sympathy, in pity; which made it all the easier for Ryan to dismiss him angrily. Steven hadn't grown up under the old man's fists. Steven had been coddled, babied. He didn't understand. Ryan had always wallowed in those sorts of angry thoughts after Steven's various attempts to reach out to him, and in that way he had always managed to avoid considering Steven's criticism.

"What sort of example are you setting for your nephew? What sort of man does he think his uncle is?" Laura went through the front door as Ryan held the screen open for her. "He's scared of you."

Ryan stood there sputtering, thrown off utterly. Then Caroline came out of the bedroom where she had been folding laundry, and she started screaming at her sister-in-law. Caroline hadn't had to of heard very much of what Laura was saying in order to piece together at least the fact that Laura was intruding in her house in order to pass judgment on her and her husband's private business.

"Excuse me, Laura! Who do you think that you are, coming in here like this, thinking that you can tell us our business? As if you and Steven have the perfect relationship! Do you know that he's bored with you? He told my Ryan just last week that you two haven't been intimate in months!" As she said all of this, Caroline moved her wide-shouldered frame in front of Laura's much thinner one in order to push the other woman back out of the door. Stunned by having her own life's secret frustration and shame laid callously before her, Laura was easily rebuked

and allowed herself to be pushed out. She did not go back there again.

It got worse between Ryan and Caroline, for a time. It wasn't that he hit her any more than he used to. It became verbal assault. He would demean her. Before, it had been a periodic thing, always a fluke and never exactly what either of them considered a pattern. He would get frustrated with something menial and then he would get angry at her, they would exchange words and he would hit her. She was an

argumentative woman, which was part of the reason why he had fallen in love with her. Immediately after the ugliness, they would spend some time apart and then come back together as if colliding, grabbing at each other with a different kind of passionate violence, kissing and sobbing, apologizing tenderly and in hoarse whisper. But after the day that Laura confronted Ryan, it was as if he had started to slip off a ledge he had previously not known he was on. The pattern became so obvious that both of them could see it and talk about it, though neither of them knew how to change it. He didn't even want to look at her, and he winced whenever she spoke. He began eating all of his meals outside of the house, exclusively at fast food restaurants, and he ate constantly, so he became incredibly fat. He lost his job at the hardware store, and he stopped shaving. And then one day, three months into his decline, he took control of his life.

He started to shave again, and he started to lose weight. He checked himself into an anger management class, and moved out of the house and into a hotel. He talked to his wife every night on the phone, and got into teaching program at the local state university. He wrote his nephew a letter, despite having no experience or skill at communicating with children. It started like this:

"When I was a kid, I didn't know why my dad would hit me sometimes. I thought about it all the time, and I tried to imagine what, exactly I was doing wrong that made him hit me. I tell you, I had so many different reasons by the time I turned 18 years old that it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to get kicked around by your old man. And then I got married and found out why he beat me up. It's because he thought he was supposed to. And I thought I was supposed to. At least, I used to."

And then, to the utter shock of his brother, sister-in-law and wife, Ryan changed his life.

Seventeen

On the first day of class after the summer that Tracy was saved, he floated through the hallways of Sequoyah High School carrying a placard that displayed images of mangled tiny human corpses. In large bold blood-red letters he had written, "VICTIMS OF THE ABORTION HOLOCAUST" on one side, and "ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART" on the other. He wore that expression of "absolute clarity," which Father Ben had advocated when marching the banners of "TRUTH" through the throngs of the unsaved, making eye contact with anyone who crossed his path and not only ready but anticipating the abuse that Father Ben had said the mislead would hurl at him. Instead, his classmates cleared the hallway, staying close to the lockers and staring at his placards in almost total silence. The only audible reactions were quiet, horrified gasps, and one girl, a freshman, began to moan and sob as he passed. When the principal came and ordered him to remove the placard, Tracy simply gazed at him, silently grateful that finally someone had offered some kind of hindrance to his march, and he said nothing. The school security had to come and physically remove him, actually hoist him up and carry him out of the building and out to the edge of the parking lot and deposit him there to wait for his mother. The vindication that Tracy felt slammed into his head as he hung limply in the two large men's arms, and bright red images of slaughtered homunculi opened like flowers in his mind. He saw explosions and heard gun shots and screaming, and, like that beautiful summer day just months before, he saw Christ's flaming sword, the one beacon in an expanse of gray.

His mother's dirty old station wagon pulled into the parking lot as it began to rain, and wordlessly she watched through the rear-view mirror as Tracy loaded his placard into the trunk. As he sat down in the passenger's seat, she began to talk without even the vaguest hint that she knew anything at all about her son's protest, or his recent transformation at all.

"I'm thinking that we're going to have some burgers for dinner tonight," she said, "but we'll have to make a quick run by Costco, cause I'm all out of meat. Of course I'm not going back into work today, Kathy will have a fit, but that's just too bad because they can get on without me, and she knows that. I have to be over at Mrs. Linden's house by 6 p.m., to help her have dinner, and maybe I'll ask her if I can work Saturday as well to catch up on my hours. The price of ketchup went up the other day. Can you believe it? You'll have to be getting a job before too long if these prices keep on going up. Ha ha." She laughed with a happy chirp. "Now let's see. We'll have burgers tonight. Meatloaf tomorrow. Steak Friday? We'll see if I can afford it. Maybe we'll end up having some KFC on Friday. Yes, we'll save the steak for next week, after pay day." She paused there, and the car was silent for a few minutes. Her son sat completely still in the seat next to her, breathing softly and not listening to her. Outside, the light rain became a downpour, just as the sun broke through the clouds.

When they arrived home, Tracy's mother grunted and slowly pulled herself out of the car. Tracy went around to the trunk and removed the bags of groceries, setting them on the wet driveway, and then pulled his placards from the car and took them inside. Everything was in boxes, and ostensibly they were moving though Tracy wasn't sure when and his mother hadn't given any indication where. He lay on his bed and shut his eyes, feeling a roaring heat spread from his stomach outward as a rapture overtook his soul and the flaming sword pointed at him. The flaming sword cleaved the sky and the land, reducing the frills and gilded lifestyles of the abortionists and the promiscuous and the gays to ash and leaving them to howl in utter spiritual destitution. The flaming sword flashed in the eyes of the faithful and good, calling them to rise up as one army of God and trample the serpent. Tracy shuddered, as he very slowly and with the gentlest of tugs, unzipped his pants.