Now and Again

7.0 THE LINE

7.1 Maggie

By August, Max Gray’s file was so full of documents that Maggie had to create another, which she labeled “Mickey Grant.” And her dresser drawer was so full of what she called evidence that she had to move the sweaters to a shelf in her closet. “Spring cleaning!” she announced when Lyle asked her what she was doing.

“It’s not spring, it’s summer,” said Lyle.

“My goodness,” said Maggie. “I’m behind.” But something had shifted, and inside Maggie, it was spring. It was as if she had spent the past twenty years not only keeping house and mothering, but also training for some clandestine project that was so top secret, even she hadn’t been told what it was. Still, her intuition told her that a revelation was coming and that she had better be ready when it did.

She received a letter from George’s lawyer saying that Tomás’s documents had been received and forwarded to an attorney in another state, since cases had to be handled in the correct jurisdiction. Every time she tried to write a letter to Sandra Day O’Connor, the words sounded inadequate or easily dismissed. Finally, she wrote about Tomás’s innocence and about how George was the victim of a prosecutorial vendetta for failing to inform on others, only mentioning at the end the cover-up concerning toxic munitions. Finally, she wrote that she too had been a Rainbow Girl, which had instilled in her a desire to work for the greater good, and that she would welcome any advice on how she should proceed. Then she signed her name and dropped the envelope off at the post office before she could change her mind.

One oppressive day in the middle of a week when the temperature had reached 100 degrees for five days in a row, Maggie returned from lunch to find a report titled Prisons and Profits sitting on Valerie’s desk. Since Valerie was nowhere in sight, Maggie carried it with her to the cool dungeon of the file room, where she could read it undisturbed. The article talked about the revenue generated by three-strikes laws, where offenders would get mandatory sentences of twenty-five years to life for their third criminal conviction.

The first such law was enacted in Texas and was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1980. In that case, the defendant’s offenses amounted to a total of $230 worth of fraudulent activity. More recently, the Supreme Court held that harsh sentencing and three-strikes laws are not cruel and unusual, even in the case of minor offenses such as stealing golf clubs or videotapes or, in one case, a piece of pizza. It is interesting to note that in some states the first and second strikes can refer to individual charges rather than convictions, so that a defendant can accumulate more than one strike from a single illegal act.

The implications of three-strikes laws for private prisons is intriguing. Besides bringing in revenues upwards of thirty thousand dollars per year, each new prisoner increases the pool of available labor. This is a workforce that is available full time. Absenteeism due to vacations and family problems is nonexistent, and expensive benefits need not be paid. If workers don’t like the pay of twenty-five cents an hour, their attitudes can be adjusted by withholding educational opportunities or the use of isolation cells. To date, twenty-six states have such laws, leaving ample room for growth both by adding new states to the list and by strengthening existing laws.

Private prisons not only bring high-quality jobs to the state, but they also fuel growth in secondary sectors, such as prison construction, uniform manufacture, and food service. And they keep businesses at home that might move overseas in search of less expensive labor. Effective phrases to keep in mind when communicating with legislators and voters are public safety, job creation, and tough on crime.

Attached to the article with a paperclip was a newspaper story about the Supreme Court Ruling referred to in the article, the one that upheld the harsh laws and sentencing. The majority opinion had been written by Sandra Day O’Connor.

There must be some mistake, Maggie told herself as she copied the set of documents and made her way back to the basement to add them to Mickey Grant’s file. Sandra Day O’Connor was a highly educated woman of the world. She was a wife and mother of three who was revered by many and respected by all. How could she have upheld such draconian measures? There must be some vantage point from which things would be clear — if only she could find it! But then it occurred to Maggie that the justice had been duped and used. But duped and used by whom? Despite the August heat and the flagging air conditioning and the blazing inner furnace that had powered her up and down the stairs to the file room five times by one o’clock, her blood ran cold and a rush of adrenaline caused her heart to thump and her muscles to tense in preparation for confronting…but what exactly was the threat? And why did she think she could do anything about it?

Just as Maggie was deciding she should put all of the original documents back where she had found them and shred all of the copies she had made, she heard a rustle of fabric somewhere in the vastness of the file room. She hadn’t turned on the lights when she entered and whoever had come in after her hadn’t turned them on either, so the only illumination came in thin, mote-speckled shafts from the windows high above her. Was she being followed? Had someone discovered she was stealing documents? And was that person trying to keep her from passing on the information she had learned?

The rustle of clothing came again, and with it, the slightest tap of a shoe against the concrete floor and the soft hiss of air being sucked in and then expelled again. Should she continue to hide, or should she start to whistle, as if she were happily engrossed in some minor secretarial task? Filing — she’d say she was filing. But who in tarnation would she say Mickey Grant was if whoever had just entered the basement grabbed the fictitious file out of her hands and demanded an explanation?

Slowly she tensed her muscles and straightened her knees until she was standing. Slowly she slipped the article into the incriminating file and replaced the file in the drawer and eased the drawer shut. As she did so, she hummed a hymn from church, softly at first, and then a little louder: If I get there before you do, Comin’ for to carry me home. I’ll cut a hole and pull you through, Comin’ for to carry me home.

Cut a hole in what? she wondered. Even getting to heaven seemed like a prison break.

The shaky notes covered the sound of the file drawer, but also the sounds coming from other parts of the room, so she wasn’t expecting it when Hugo suddenly put his arms around her from behind and spun her into his arms, stifling her cry of surprise with a forceful kiss. Before she could stop him, his hand was up underneath her blouse and he was whispering in her ear, “You knew I was following you, didn’t you? You wanted to find a place to be alone.”

“Oh my goodness, Hugo. I didn’t…You startled…I can’t…”

“Oh, yes,” breathed Hugo. “Oh, yes you can.”

“I have to go!” cried Maggie in alarm.

“What’s the big rush?”

“The director has asked for these files ASAP. If I don’t get them back to him quickly, Valerie will come looking for me, and you know how Valerie is.”

“What files?” asked Hugo, nodding at Maggie’s empty hands, which were pushing against his chest.

“The ones I’ve come to get!”

“Why? What does he want them for?”

“I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. What kind of assistant would I be if I gossiped about my supervisor’s business?” Maggie felt on surer ground now, and her air of authority seemed to be having a good effect because Hugo took his hands off her breasts and moved a step away from her.

“Well, don’t keep me waiting too long,” he said. “I’m not what you’d call a patient man.”

It thrilled and repelled Maggie that Hugo was the sort of man who took what he wanted and that he wanted her. All the way home, she tried to shake off the notion that she had a dark side after all, and when she was unsuccessful at that, she told herself that all people had a dark side, but they had a noble side too, and it was how they used their various sides that mattered. She told herself that it didn’t take anything away if doing a good thing entailed a few thrills and indiscretions along the way. And then she told herself that people with no experience of the underbelly of existence would have none of the tools needed to fight against it.

That evening she arrived home to find two letters in the mailbox. One was her letter to Sandra Day O’Connor, which had been returned unopened. The second was from the new appellate attorney, saying he had received Tomás’s documents from a colleague and asking her to call. It was only when the two envelopes were lying side by side on the kitchen counter that she noticed that both the lawyer and the former justice were in Phoenix, Arizona.

Phoenix, she thought as she dialed the attorney’s number.

“First the good news,” said the attorney, who answered the phone himself. “The arresting officer in the case was later investigated for a string of false arrests. That’s very good for your man Tomás. The bad news is that I’m overworked and understaffed. And I’m going to need to hire a private investigator. All of which means I’ll take the case if you can foot part of the bill.”

“I don’t know how I’ll do that,” said Maggie.

“How about we trade services, then? You could come to work for me to offset some of the cost. Just until I find someone else.”

“Can I think about it and call you back?”

“Absolutely,” said the attorney with a chuckle. “It’s not as if Tomás is going anywhere.”

Phoenix, Maggie thought again. Sandra Day O’Connor was in Phoenix, and even if the idea of meeting the justice in person was far-fetched, once it had occurred to her, she couldn’t get the notion out of her mind. Besides, a letter wasn’t the right form of communication for her message, which had grown far beyond the individual cases of Tomás and George and even beyond the fact that radioactive substances were putting soldiers and munitions workers at risk. Human beings were being trafficked for corporate interests right underneath everyone’s noses! The judicial system was being used for private and political ends! Slavery was legal, at least in certain circumstances! All of which was far too much for a flimsy letter to convey. She would go to Phoenix, but first she had to get the rest of her evidence out of the prison, which, given the tight security and Hugo’s increasingly aggressive state of mind, wouldn’t be so easily done.

7.2 Lyle

Lyle had driven the forklift for four years, and whenever MacBride, who was the deputy director of fulfillment and shipping, said, “You’re doing a great job, Rayburn. Keep it up and there’s bound to be a promotion in it,” Lyle always said, “Yes sir” and felt pleased even though he never really expected anything to come of it. But now he wondered if he should knock on MacBride’s office door and ask more about the promotion. When he mentioned it to Jimmy Sweets, Jimmy encouraged him. “Hell yeah,” said Jimmy. “What are you waiting for?”

After that, Jimmy would bring it up whenever they were alone. “Did you do it?” Jimmy would ask, and then he would say, “Try it on me. Pretend I’m MacBride and see if you can convince me to give you a raise.”

“Not a raise,” said Lyle. “A promotion.”

“The only reason anyone wants a promotion is to get a raise,” said Jimmy. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be any point.”

“I’m waiting for the next time he stops by the floor.”

But when MacBride came through ten minutes later, he said, “He’s always in a better mood after he turns in the monthly report. I’ll ask him after that.”

“Don’t wait too long,” said Jimmy, “or he’ll give the promotion to someone else.”

Lyle could imagine himself saying, “About that promotion, sir,” but he wouldn’t know what to say next. Jimmy could probably give him an idea of the words to use, but Jimmy was fond of pulling people’s legs, and it might be hard to tell if he was being sincere in his advice or setting Lyle up as part of a joke. And it wasn’t as if Jimmy, who had worked as a supervisor in the shipping operation for fifteen years, had ever gotten a promotion himself. When Lyle finally said, “How would you ask him? Let me hear you do it,” Jimmy replied, “First of all, it isn’t about what you want. It’s about what MacBride wants. You don’t catch a fish by dangling pretty girls or chocolate cake under its nose. You use worms.”

“Sure,” said Lyle. “But what does that have to do with it?”

“Once you figure out what MacBride wants, you tell him how you can help him get it. You make him believe he can’t get it without you.”

“How do I do that?”

“The particular words aren’t important, but you have to make yourself seem indispensable to the operation at hand.”

It sounded very complicated to Lyle, and he almost gave up on the idea altogether. “Heck,” he said. “I’m happy where I am.”

“But underutilized,” said Jimmy. “Not to mention underpaid.”

When Lyle saw Jimmy in the break room the afternoon the monthly report was due, Jimmy winked at him and said, “It all boils down to tactics and execution.” Then he told Lyle that above everything else was strategy and goal-setting. “There are only a few real goal-setters in the world, and most of them are CEOs and generals. They set the agenda, and then it’s up to the rest of us to get things done. MacBride is in tactics, and you,” he said giving Lyle a poke in the chest, “you’re in execution.”

It sounded like a death sentence to Lyle, who had never asked himself any of the large questions Jimmy not only asked, but seemed to have an answer for. But once the idea of a promotion had occurred to him, it was like standing on a cliff looking down at a swimming hole. The only way to shut the cycle of indecision down was to jump.

Finally, Lyle could stand it no longer, and he made his way to MacBride’s office just so the imaginary harangue would stop. He reminded himself not to demand anything, only to ask politely, but first he washed his hands carefully with grease-cutting soap so he wouldn’t leave black smudges on any of the papers that always littered MacBride’s desk. He waited until most of the men had gone home for the day before knocking gently at the office door.

MacBride sat Lyle down and gave him his choice of a Dr Pepper or a Sprite. Then he went through the various job openings with him. It was a shock to Lyle to find out that all of the positions were paired with complex personality profiles. Managers were supposed to be highly self-reliant and strongly pragmatic by nature. They should emphasize realistic goals in the development of workable plans. They should be assertive and forceful and persistent in the face of frustration. None of the listed attributes were ones Lyle possessed, but Jimmy’s voice was in the back of his head, egging him on. “I think I can be indispensable to the accomplishment of your goals,” he told MacBride.

“And you are, Rayburn. You have a spotless record. On time every day. No accidents with the equipment.”

Lyle rubbed the place where the metal filings had gone in, but thought it better not to mention it.

“All this tells me that you’re right where you need to be,” said MacBride, who rambled on a little longer before telling Lyle he could take the rest of his Dr Pepper with him.

“He said I wasn’t a visionary,” Lyle told Jimmy the next day.

“That shows how much he knows,” scoffed Jimmy. “Being a visionary is only important for goal-setters and strategists.”

The next day Jimmy gave Lyle a dog-eared book. “This here is the bible on this sort of thing,” he said.

“What sort of thing?” asked Lyle.

“Getting what you want.”

“I thought it was about MacBride getting what he wants.”

“Jeezus, Lyle,” said Jimmy. “That’s only what you want MacBride to think.”

It was the first book Lyle had read in years. The table of contents wasn’t too bad — short phrases, one per line. But the rest of the book was a different story. Even though he read the first chapter over and over again, he couldn’t understand the point of it. The author told some amusing stories about gangsters who couldn’t see how all the terrible things they had done were wrong, but Lyle wasn’t a gangster. And he didn’t see what gangsters had to do with becoming a supervisor on the floor. The book said, The only reason you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. And it said a person usually had two reasons for doing something, one that sounds good and the real one. And it said to smile and talk about the other person’s interests and to let the boss think the idea of the promotion was his and also that it was Lyle’s job to keep MacBride from saying “no” because no was hard to overcome. Okay, Lyle told himself. I guess I can do that.

The next day he went back to MacBride and chatted with him about fishing and about MacBride’s grandson while MacBride showed him a few photographs he had taken at the lake. When the time seemed right, Lyle said, “About that promotion,” but MacBride, who had never been anything but friendly to Lyle, hardly looked at him as he said, “We’re in a holding pattern, Rayburn — especially considering the economy is in the tank. Not to mention that business with your wife.”

“What business?” asked Lyle.

“All that talk about how what we do here is harmful got some of the other employees upset, and now I hear she’s causing trouble up at the prison.”

“How is she causing trouble?” asked Lyle. Maggie had promised him that the prisoner records were only copies and no one knew she had taken them.

But MacBride just said, “That’s probably something you should ask her yourself.”

Lyle tried to find out what MacBride meant, but whenever he asked about work, Maggie said things were fine, and when he asked her about making a difference in the world, she said she wasn’t thinking about innocent prisoners or freaks of nature anymore. He wanted to believe her, but something about the way she was whacking at the lawn worried him.

“The trick is to get the clover without pulling up all of the grass,” Maggie told him.

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to poison it?”

“Easier for me,” said Maggie, “but lethal for the insects.”

Fall was coming, and soon Will would be back at school. The leaves on the Japanese maple were already tinged with orange, and the beautyberry bush was covered with fat purple berries. Maggie showed Lyle how to water the petunias she had planted in pots by the back door. “Just in case,” she said.

“Just in case of what?” Lyle wanted to know.

“Just in case I’m hit by a truck,” said Maggie. “Just in case I run off with the mailman.”

“The mailman?” asked Lyle.

“Remember what the pastor told us. One crazy thing, no questions asked.”

They had a good laugh, and then she showed him the drawer in the desk where she kept the passwords for the checking account and the health insurance card.

“Just in case you’re appointed ambassador to Japan?” asked Lyle.

“Yes,” said Maggie. “Just in case of that.” But Lyle could tell she wasn’t really listening. An army of sugar ants was making its way from the windowsill to a blob of goo that had been spilled by the kitchen sink. “Sugar is really bad for you,” said Maggie. “It’s worse for you than fat. And mostly it isn’t even sugar. It’s high fructose corn syrup, which is subsidized and overproduced, so they have to come up with more and more ways to use it. They put it in everything and then they make the portions bigger, which leads to obesity and diabetes. I don’t think any of us should eat it anymore.”

After dinner, Maggie sat at her desk to sort the mail while Will and Tula cleared the table and washed up. Lyle smiled to recall how he and Maggie had washed the dishes together all those years ago. He walked over to where she was bent over her papers in a warm pool of light from the desk lamp. He wanted to touch her that way again. He wanted to be young, with everything before him. He wanted to sit down beside her and ask her advice on how to handle MacBride, but when he stooped down to look over her shoulder, she said, “This is where I keep the checkbook, Lyle. Right here in the top drawer. And this is where I keep the stamps.”

Lyle backed away. He could see how the little pool of lamplight was just big enough to contain Maggie and the desktop and how there wasn’t any room in it for him.

7.3 Maggie

One day while Valerie was out of the room on an errand, Maggie answered the telephone to find a Mr. Pickering calling to speak with the director. “Please hold while I see if he’s available,” she said, but she was thinking, Pickering! Wasn’t he the author of the report called Prisons and Profits she had found on Valerie’s desk? When DC came on the phone, she disconnected her extension, and then, as quietly as she could, she pressed the button to connect again, ready with an excuse in case either of the men could hear her muffled breathing. But the two men were talking excitedly, and if the open line whooshed or echoed, they didn’t seem to notice. The ACLU woman had been right about the sense of urgency and importance. Right about the adrenaline rush. Right that the line was not wide and heavily patrolled but thin and alluring, as much a mirage as an identifiable boundary between what was acceptable and what was not.

“There’s a precedent for using prison labor if the business serves a public purpose,” Pickering was saying. “And what’s more important to the public than a safe supply of inexpensive food? What’s more important than keeping jobs right here in Oklahoma?”

DC sounded unsure. “I don’t know. The munitions factory is a government facility. We’re authorized to provide labor to government entities and even to some private businesses, but not to farms. How would we keep the prisoners from escaping? I don’t think chain gangs are a modern-day solution. I’d like to help you out, but my hands are tied.”

“What are they tied by?” asked Pickering. “Realistically, I mean.”

“Laws, for one thing,” said DC.

“And who makes the laws?”

When DC didn’t answer, Pickering said, “We’re not talking about Moses and the stone tablets, here. We’re talking about laws made and changed by human beings. Human beings who are a lot like us. Who could actually be us if you think about it. A few persuasive arguments are all we need — that and a tiny bit of access to the people in charge. That’s what the draft legislation group is all about.”

DC promised to keep an open mind.

“Just so you know,” said Pickering, “it’s projected that soon one out of every three African American men will go to prison at some point in his lifetime, and seventy percent of all released inmates will be re-arrested within three years. But it can’t just be the African Americans who are breaking the laws, even if they’re the ones getting caught. My point is that the industry needs to adopt a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, we need stricter laws and sentencing; on the other, we need better enforcement. Yours is a growth industry, anyway you slice it.”

“Hmm,” said DC. “Growth is good.”

“My firm leverages your clout with the movers and shakers. We place people in think tanks that draw up model laws. We help sell those laws to the public. That’s what I can do for you. What you can do for me is to review that draft legislation I sent you. The material is highly sensitive, so your eyes only and all that. And if you can provide some relevant statistics or any other supporting information, I’d be very grateful. I promised my clients I’d get it to some influential members of the state legislature next month, and time is running short.”

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look,” said DC. “I guess I can do that for you.”

As soon as Valerie stepped back in the office, DC stuck his head out of the door and asked, “Did that missing document ever show up?”

“No,” said Valerie. “It never did.”

“Damn it,” said DC. “Damn it all to hell.”

“DC seems awfully grumpy lately,” Maggie remarked in an attempt to elicit information, but Valerie merely grunted and said, “You would be too.”

“I would be when?”

“DC is under a lot of pressure. The rest of us assume it’s all wine and roses for the people with the important jobs, but they take on a lot of responsibility. We’re lucky they’re the ones making the decisions so we don’t have to.”

“What decisions?” asked Maggie.

“Important ones,” replied Valerie. “Decisions that benefit everybody else.”

Maggie tried not to let Valerie’s air of superiority bother her, but more and more she found herself thinking, Why should I always take a back seat to Valerie? But then she told herself, My job is only a means for accomplishing my real work, anyway. What Valerie and DC do on their own time isn’t my affair. Then she laughed at the word “affair,” and then she stopped laughing. Nothing was as it seemed!

During her last days at the munitions plant, Maggie had become progressively certain that Mr. Winslow was monitoring her movements, and now she had the same feeling about Valerie, who would quickly avert her eyes when Maggie looked up from her desk. And sometimes Maggie heard strange patterings in the hallway, as if she was being followed by someone wearing soft shoes. She knew from the movies that a guilty mind could play tricks on a person, but should a person feel guilty for defying convention or even breaking a few laws in order to do right? The sense of being watched was exacerbated by Hugo, who leered at her when she walked by the security desk and who had started to loiter in the hallway outside the director’s office at lunchtime or when he was on his break. Even when he was safely on duty, Maggie couldn’t help feeling he was lurking around the next corner about to burst into sight, which set her nerves on edge. “There you are!” she would cry whenever she saw him.

“Waiting for me again,” Hugo would reply, and even though she did her best to avoid him, Maggie found herself saying, “There you are!” several times each day.

Once, soon after she had given her notice at the munitions plant, Winslow had passed Maggie in the hallway and said, “I’ve got my eye on you,” but he had said it so quietly that Maggie wondered if she had only imagined it. Now it occurred to her to turn the tables on Hugo by making him think she was the one watching him. She found her opportunity the next day, when she happened to be walking back from the restroom just when Hugo was starting his lunchtime patrol. She fixed her eyes on the waxed linoleum floor tiles and tried to appear preoccupied with her own thoughts. As the hard soles of his boots clipped toward her, she almost lost her nerve, but at the last second she whispered, “I’ve got my eye on you,” very quietly, under her breath.

“What? What?” asked Hugo, stopping in his tracks and giving her a piercing glare.

Maggie raised her eyes and smiled as brightly as she could. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re hearing things now!”

This little act of aggression came seemingly out of nowhere. It gave Maggie confidence, but it also worried her, as if she had taken a step closer to the line the PATH woman had talked about. The trick was to use Hugo’s stubbornness to her advantage, for he was too big and too smart for her to make him go against his nature. Still, she could feel events gathering momentum, and when she approached the exit that evening, she looked at Hugo in a new way — not so much as an adversary, but as a tool. He might have a shiny badge pinned to his uniform and muscle-bound shoulders and a gun strapped to his hip and a savage glint in his smiling eyes, but she had the element of surprise. I know what you are, she thought, but what do you really know about me?

7.4 Maggie

Every year, DC took his family on a camping trip at the end of the summer, and as the date approached, Valerie became more and more irritable. She huffed and moaned and made cryptic gestures in the direction of the office where DC sat with his hands clasped together and his head bowed over his work. When Maggie asked what was wrong, Valerie said, “I’m going to be ill. I’m going to be physically ill.” Once DC left for his vacation, she started to miss work — first it was a broken alternator and then it was a summer cold.

With the director away and Valerie in and out, the office echoed with absence. Maggie’s eyes strayed to the bank of locked files in DC’s office, and when a bumblebee lit on the tall steel cabinet, it seemed an invitation to search for Valerie’s keys, which were easily found in her desk drawer, to stand on a chair, and to crush the brittle body in a scrap of paper from the waste bin — and, while she was at it, to slip the key into the lock on DC’s personal file cabinet and slide open one of the heavy drawers. She was so preoccupied she didn’t remember until too late that bees were dying left and right and that if people wanted fruit crops to exist in the world of the future, they needed to protect pollinators and not annihilate them. She rushed to the waste bin, but the bee was a smear of body parts. It was impossible to think of everything at once!

Maggie’s heart was thumping in her chest as she climbed back up on the chair. She had let the bee distract her, and she knew that lack of focus could lead to fateful mistakes. The hair on her arms stood on end as she opened the second-to-top file drawer and finally the top one. The air was buzzing as if it were full of bees or as if a warning bell was warming up for a full alarm. She knew Valerie wasn’t really sick and might show up at any moment. She even imagined DC might hear his own buzzing, leave his family zipped in their tent beside the Red River, and come rushing back to the office to catch her in the act. When someone dropped a stapler in the copy alcove, Maggie froze on the chair, swaying slightly and cocking her head toward the door, but no one appeared. Footsteps clumped down the hallway. Someone laughed. A minute later, the copy machine chugged to life.

The topmost drawer was the one she had seen Valerie open the day she had worn the inappropriate blouse and Maggie had watched her from the hallway. Right at the front of the drawer was a training brochure on prison discipline and a pamphlet called “You and STDs,” both of which she skimmed before slipping them into the waistband of her skirt. The PATH woman had been right about solitary confinement: among other things, prisoners had no right to question their confinement and the term of such confinement should not exceed ten years, although that was not a hard-and-fast rule. Ten years! thought Maggie. The idea of it was enough to break a person’s heart.

At the very back of the drawer was an unmarked accordion folder, and in the folder was a heart-shaped card from DC to Valerie that said, “Be good while I’m away.” Scrawled beneath the message was the address of the River Motel. And there, fallen down behind the unmarked folder, was the missing draft legislation.

A printout of a series of emails was tucked inside the cover, with a subject line saying THE SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS ACT: DRAFT 3.2. The email exchange started off:

The fact that spending on prisons has now surpassed spending on education has directed an unfortunate spotlight on our entire industry, but should community safety be sacrificed for budget constraints?

Maggie’s hands were trembling as she put the document into the top drawer of her desk. More people stuck to the flypaper, she thought. More money lining the pockets of the people in charge!

She spent the rest of the day devising ways to smuggle the draft legislation and her other files out of the prison and shuddering to imagine what would happen if she was caught. All personnel were subject to random searches, and there was never any telling how thoroughly the exit guards would search an employee’s purse and bags. She decided to start with something small, so as a trial run, she tucked the pamphlet on STDs into the bottom of her purse. Then she zipped the one on prison discipline into the side pouch where she kept her sunglasses.

She had wanted to leave with the five o’clock rush, but without Valerie to do her share of work, it was almost six by the time she reached the exit. Her heart sank to see that no one else was waiting in line for security — only Hugo was there, twiddling his thumbs and grinning at her. “Good evening, Hugo,” said Maggie, hoping she didn’t look as nervous as she felt.

“ID, ma’am,” Hugo replied.

“Oh, Hugo! You know who I am!” exclaimed Maggie.

“When a guard asks for documentation, the employee must immediately produce it,” said Hugo, reciting from the handbook.

Maggie opened her purse and fumbled around in it, finally producing both her ID badge and her driver’s license.

“Employees must wear the ID badge at all times while on prison premises,” recited Hugo.

At first Maggie had regretted the kiss, but now she wondered if she could use it to her advantage. “Any plans for the weekend?” she asked in an insinuating tone of voice.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky,” said Hugo.

“Luck comes in two flavors,” said Maggie. “Good luck and bad.”

Hugo made a show of starting to open the electronic door, but then he tapped his temple as if he had just remembered something. “I can search you or your bag, ma’am — your choice,” he said with a nasty smile.

None of the women wanted to be searched, so if Maggie opted for a pat down, it would be obvious she had something to hide and Hugo would search her bag anyway. Sweat was breaking out on her forehead and under her arms, but there didn’t seem to be a good alternative to continuing on the course she had started. As she held the bag open, she said, “You naughty boy,” all the while hoping the scarf and the sweater and the homemaking magazine that were stuffed into the purse would provide ample cover for the pamphlet hidden beneath them. Then she winked and said, “Search away.” But it made her stomach turn to watch Hugo’s beefy hands push the sweater aside and pull carelessly at the delicate scarf.

“Good Housekeeping,” said Hugo, sliding the magazine out of the bag. “My mother reads that.”

“Tell her there’s a fabulous recipe for lemon bars in the July issue. I’d tell you the secret ingredient, but then it wouldn’t be secret.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Maggie regretted them. Why had she said the word “secret”? It was almost as if she wanted to get caught.

Hugo dug out Maggie’s pink pearl lipstick and her baggie of emergency tampons and finally the pamphlet on prisoners and sexually transmitted diseases. “What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s a pamphlet on STDs,” said Maggie, trying not to look at the zippered compartment where the pamphlet on prison discipline was concealed.

“I mean, what are you doing with it?”

“It’s very well written. And as you might or might not know, I have a teenaged son.”

“Hmph,” said Hugo, leering again as he stuffed the items back into her purse. “So you’re going to talk to him about the birds and the bees, are you? What, exactly, are you going to say?”

All Maggie could think of was the bee she had killed earlier in the day, so she was late in replying. “Yes, I am. I’m going to tell him that love and sex are two different things and that he should be aware of the risks and take steps to protect himself.”

“Protect himself from love or from sex?” asked Hugo, belching out a laugh. Then he pushed the purse back at her and let her pass.

Maggie took her time walking across the baking asphalt to the bus stop, swinging her hips and wishing an evening breeze would break through the unrelenting humidity and cool her burning cheeks. The good news was that she had successfully gotten the two pamphlets out of the prison, even if the bad news was that Hugo had found one of them. But she had learned something, and she had to be happy about that. When she got home, she added the pamphlet on prison discipline to her stash of evidence before making her way to the kitchen, where Will and Lyle were eating the last of a chocolate cake.

“We’re spoiling our dinner,” said Lyle.

“I guess I can’t stop you,” said Maggie. Then she put the pamphlet on STDs on the table and said, “I got this up at the prison, Will. You might want to take a look.”

“That’s really embarrassing, Mom.”

“You’re going to have to make a lot of decisions for yourself at some point, so you might as well have the facts.”

“Gosh, Mom. What’s going on?”

“You’re growing up, that’s all,” said Maggie.

“She just wants you to be prepared,” said Lyle. “In case she’s abducted by Martians or whisked off to Hollywood to star in a film.”

7.5 Will

When the weekend came, Lyle drove Will to Glorietta for the first game of the summer play-offs. If they won, they moved on to the next bracket. If they lost, they were out. The mayor was standing at the entrance to the ballpark, handing out campaign buttons that said CALL ME BUDDY even though his name was Robert Hutchinson and up until then, everybody had called him Hutch.

“I guess he wants the citizens of Red Bud to think of him as inseparable from the town,” said Will.

“It’s all about winning friends and influencing people,” Lyle said. “I read about it in a book.”

“When did you ever read a book?” asked Will.

“Jimmy gave it to me. It said you have to make people think that whatever you want them to do is actually their idea.”

“Hmmm,” said Will. “That sounds like something the teachers up at school would do.”

It seemed that the whole town had driven up for the game. Jimmy charged past, headed toward the stands with Lily De Luca in tow. “Pre-med!” Jimmy called out. “That’s pretty heady stuff!”

“That’s an example of your theory right there,” said Will, but Lyle only beamed and called back to Jimmy, “Tell me something I don’t know!”

Mr. Quick waved over the heads of his wife and baby, and Lucas Enright, who had owned the diner for as long as anybody could remember, wished Will and Lyle both luck as if Lyle were on the team too. By the time Will hurried off to find his teammates, he was seething with an unfamiliar rage. When Stucky Place slapped his shoulder and said, “Here comes our secret weapon,” it took him a few seconds to respond, and during the warm-up, it seemed to be pure chance that determined whether he caught the ball or dropped it. Only the sight of Tula sitting in the third row eating a candy bar calmed him. From that distance he couldn’t tell what kind it was, but he could imagine the crinkling sound of the paper as she pulled it back to take a bite and the soft wet sounds as she chewed and swallowed.

“Rayburn, get your head in the game!” called the coach.

Will mouthed, “Yes sir,” but all he could think about was Tula. He could almost taste the chocolate and feel the crunch of the peanuts and the pulling of the caramel when it stuck to her molars.

Ever since breaking his arm, Will had felt that something else in him had broken. Where he had once done things without thinking too much about them, his head was now bursting with all of the advice his coaches had given him over the years: keep your weight back and your head down, square your hips, stay inside the ball, choke up on two strikes, make sure to follow through. And now there were advice and expectations on the academic side of things as well.

“You’re trying too hard,” said the team captain just as the coach interrupted to say, “Try a little harder, Rayburn. Give it everything you’ve got.”

“Muscle memory,” said Stucky. “That’s the way to go.”

Will was thinking about Tula, but also about his life goals, which didn’t seem to fit him right, as if he had put on somebody else’s uniform. The test scores hadn’t helped. Now there were college applications to fill out and essays to write. Mr. Quick had agreed to help him over the summer, but when Will had shown him a draft of his overcoming challenges essay, the effort had been greeted with a frown. “It sounds like the soldier you met at the clinic is the one who is overcoming the challenges,” said Mr. Quick. “The essay is supposed to be about you.”

Mr. Quick, who had once insisted learning was the point, started to go on about commitment and excellence and the importance of grades. “If a thing is worth doing,” he said, “it’s worth doing well.” So now Will was adding a paragraph about his broken arm and baseball, but he worried it sounded like he was comparing his injury to a war wound and a baseball game to war. If only something significant had happened to him, but it hadn’t.

A ball whizzed past Will’s ear. He hadn’t even seen it, but he recovered enough to relay the ball home, where the runner was tagged out. That left a man on second. The next batter grounded to the shortstop, who pitched the ball to third. The ball made a soft thud in the pocket of Will’s glove, but just as he stepped back onto the base and reached out to tag the player who was hurtling toward him, his wrist went limp. The ball fell to the ground, and the umpire shouted, “Safe!”

“Libby, go in for Will,” called the coach.

Will’s ears burned as he walked off the field. He didn’t look at the stands where he knew his parents and Tula were sitting and worrying about him. He chewed a piece of Juicy Fruit gum and tried to empty his mind the way it used to be empty. He shrugged his shoulders and tried not to care the way he used to not care. He tried to feel like Derek Jeter coming back from a dislocated shoulder to help his team make it to the World Series. Of course, all of that was in the future for Jeter as he faced Martinez in the eighth inning with his team trailing the Red Sox 5–2, hoping against hope that his shoulder would hold up and not knowing he was about to hit a double that would start an epic rally because no one, not even Jeter, could know what the future would hold.

7.6 Maggie

Maggie planned to move the files on the last day of DC’s vacation. While Lyle and Will chattered over breakfast about Stucky Place’s lucky homer and the upcoming championship game, Maggie put on a blouse she had bought for the occasion. It consisted of a sheer shell and a lacy undergarment and was exactly the sort of thing Valerie might wear. Although the day was bound to get hot, she covered the blouse with the bulky birthday sweater and packed two double-thickness grocery bags with magazines and party snacks. “They’re for the team,” she said to Lyle as she loaded them into the back of the truck.

When they reached the prison parking lot and she went to take them out again, Lyle said, “Why don’t you just leave them in the truck. The game’s not until tomorrow.”

“No, no,” said Maggie, trying to think of a reason why this wouldn’t work. “Some of the cookies are for the prisoners, and I haven’t sorted out which is which.”

“Can’t you do that now? No sense having to carry everything home again on the bus.”

“No, no,” Maggie said again. “If I do that, I’ll be late.”

“Really, Maggie. It’ll save you…”

“I said no! I really can’t!” Maggie tried not to look as if she was struggling under the weight of the bags, and after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “You can’t say anything to anyone, Lyle, but I might not be working at the prison much longer. I’ve been offered a job in Phoenix, and I’m considering taking it.”

“Phoenix!” cried Lyle. “What would you go to Phoenix for?”

“There’s an attorney there who can help Tomás, but he needs an assistant. It would just be for a little while.”

“Are you in trouble?” asked Lyle. “Jimmy mentioned something that day at the lake, and MacBride said something too.”

“Lots of people are in trouble,” said Maggie. “That’s the entire point.”

She watched from the sidewalk as Lyle slammed the truck into gear and roared off, before making her way up the steps to the employee entrance.

“That looks good,” said Louis, who was manning the scanner.

“Snacks for tomorrow’s big game,” said Maggie.

“Well, save some of those cookies for me.”

When everyone had left at the end of the day, Maggie made her way to the basement to clear out the two burgeoning fictitious files. She stuffed the folders into the paper grocery bags and covered them up with some of the snacks. She felt like a secret agent as she used a box cutter to remove the pages of a magazine she had bought to use as a false cover for the draft legislation. But first she had to copy it. The copier had already been turned off for the weekend, so she went into the alcove and flipped the switch. Since the machine was slow to warm up, she decided to make one last visit to Tomás. It took her almost no time at all to clear security, so she was already sitting on one of the folding chairs when Tomás shuffled into the visitors’ room.

“What’s going on?” he cried. “This isn’t your usual day!”

“I wanted to tell you I won’t be here next week,” said Maggie.

“Are you going on vacation?”

“Yes,” said Maggie. “I am.” She had brought a package of cookies with her, and now she held it up. After that, there seemed to be nothing to talk about, partly because there were no math problems to solve and partly because Tomás didn’t launch into his usual litany of complaints. He looked sheepish, almost like a schoolboy in front of a new teacher, causing Maggie to wonder what was up. Soon enough, however, Tomás peered out from under his eyebrows in the wheedling way he had, but instead of wincing as if someone was about to kick his shin or pull his chair out from under him, he seemed to be trying to hide how happy he was.

“What is it?” asked Maggie. “You seem happy today!”

“I brought you something. You’re always giving me things, and I wanted to give you something in return.”

Maggie had noticed that Tomás was sitting with one arm behind his back, and now he swung it around with a flourish. “Ta-da! I made it!” He set a lump of glazed clay on the table between them and grinned expectantly at Maggie. When she only stared at the object in confusion, Tomás carefully took the halves apart to reveal a hollow where some very small keepsake could be hidden. “It’s for your dresser at home,” he said. “I’ll bet Lyle has given you some piece of jewelry you cherish. Now you have a place to keep it!”

Maggie was not sure what to say, but Tomás was rattling on. “It’s not obvious that this is a container, so if thieves come into your house to steal your valuables, they probably won’t notice and your present from your husband will be safe.”

Maggie was speechless and a little appalled, but Tomás jabbered on about possible uses for his gift.

“Or it could hold a lock of a loved one’s hair,” he said. “Who would you choose — Lyle or Will?”

Maggie didn’t like it when Tomás mentioned her family, and now she interpreted his gift as a means of inserting himself into their home — into her very bedroom — by enveloping a present to her from Lyle with a present of his own.

“Thank you, Tomás,” she said, but she knew the words didn’t sound heartfelt, and when she dragged her eyes up from the ceramic object to meet his, it took her an extra second to make them sparkle with the delight he was expecting and she wished she could feel. She recalled how she would set the treasures Will brought home from school in a place of honor and how she would tell him they were the most remarkable things she had ever seen. It was clear Tomás was expecting something like that now, and there was an awkward silence while she tried to think of what to say.

As she was deciding between the words “imaginative” and “unique,” Tomás said, “I like your sweater.”

“Thank you!”

“Where did you get it?”

“My goodness,” said Maggie. “I can’t remember.” The birthday sweater was far too big for her, and she had only worn it because it covered up the sexy blouse she was wearing in order to distract Hugo when she left with the files. But now she felt defensive on her family’s behalf and didn’t want to let on to Tomás that they would buy her something so ill fitting and drab.

“I wish I had one like it,” said Tomás.

Tomás was small. The sweater wouldn’t fit him any better than it fit Maggie, and it was rude of him to basically ask for it outright. Still, she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him again, and she would be taking the sweater off in a few minutes anyway in preparation for her confrontation with Hugo. Perhaps it would be a way to buy him off — though exactly why she needed to buy Tomás off, she wasn’t sure. Adding to her guilt was the knowledge that in all these months at the prison, she hadn’t accomplished anything significant — all she had succeeded in doing was to flirt with a security guard and develop the same sense of superiority she had criticized in Valerie. So she unbuttoned the sweater and said as solemnly as she could, “I want you to have it, Tomás. It’s obviously too big for me, but I think it would fit you just fine.”

Tomás didn’t smile very often, but now it looked as if his cheekbones would pop right through the skin. He hugged the sweater to his chest and beamed at her over the plastic tabletop.

“I’m glad you like it, but that’s not even your real present,” said Maggie. “The thing I wanted to tell you is that I’ve sent your file to an appellate attorney who is going to review all of the evidence. I can’t promise that anything will come of it — in fact, it probably won’t. But at least we’ve taken the first step. We’ll just have to wait and see where it goes.”

Tomás fidgeted in his seat, taking her words in. “That’s a pretty big present,” he said. “But you know, don’t you, that if they hadn’t gotten me for running away that day, they would have gotten me for something else.”

“You might as well give up right now if you’re going to think like that. Promise me you’ll practice being optimistic.”

“Okay,” said Tomás. “Anything for you.”

“There’s one thing you can do for me,” said Maggie. “You can tell me about solitary confinement. Do they even do that here?”

“I’m not allowed to say.”

“Why ever not?” asked Maggie.

“It’s the rules, that’s all.”

“But who would know if you told me?”

For an answer, Tomás made a zippering motion by drawing his finger across his lips.

“Have it your way,” said Maggie. Then she repeated that she was going away for a little while, but she’d come to see him when she got back.

When she left him, Tomás was staring straight ahead with his mouth open and tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He raised one of his hands in her direction before letting it fall back into his lap. Maggie knew from the PATH woman that appeals were a long shot, but it was something, and probably the best she could do for now. As she walked back to her office, she was filled with a kind of love for Tommy. But then she thought about the flypaper and the thousands of human flies who were stuck to it, and she hurried back through security to finish what she had started all those months ago.

Her thoughts were racing as she turned down the corridor that led to the director’s office, so it took her a moment to realize that the office wasn’t empty. Valerie was standing in the open space between the desks. Her hands were on her hips, and her eyes were fixed on Maggie’s desktop, where the draft legislation was waiting for the copy machine to warm up.

“You found it!” cried Valerie. “The missing document!”

“It was misfiled,” said Maggie quickly.

“Where?” Valerie wanted to know, but Maggie couldn’t tell her without admitting she had snooped in the director’s office and found the file in the drawer where he and Valerie left notes for each other.

“It was in the wrong folder,” Maggie said, hoping she wouldn’t be pressed for a better answer, but Valerie seemed preoccupied with other things.

“I just came by to make it look like I was here at least some of the time DC was away. You’ll cover for me, won’t you?”

“Sure,” said Maggie. “Of course I will.”

“I don’t want him to know I followed him downstate.”

“You what?”

“Well, he knows I followed him, but I don’t want him to know I stayed.”

“I won’t say a word.”

“You’ll let me tell him I was the one to find the document, won’t you?”

“Of course,” said Maggie. “That’s no problem at all.”

“Okay, then,” said Valerie. “Close your eyes for a teensy sec.”

Maggie looked out through her lashes as her co-worker took the key to DC’s office out of her drawer and filed the report in the gray steel filing cabinet. As soon as Valerie clattered down the hall to the restroom, Maggie took the key from its hiding place, unlocked the office, and removed the file again, along with two other important-looking documents. There was no time to copy them. There was barely time to stuff everything into the grocery bags and hurry out of the office. Valerie would tell the director she had found the missing document, but when he went to look for it, it wouldn’t be there. It was Friday, and Monday was a holiday. At most, Maggie had until Tuesday before they figured out what she had done.

“Whoo-ee,” said Hugo when he saw her. “What’s the special occasion?”

As Maggie put the two large grocery sacks on the table, she told Hugo about the play-offs and the snacks for the post-game party, all the while batting her lashes and thrusting her hip provocatively out to the side. She tried not to think about the smuggled documents in case Hugo could pick up on thought signals, but sweat was pouring down her back and she was sure he could see that she was hiding something. He looked her up and down appreciatively before turning his attention to her things. “Whoo-ee,” he said again, running his hands up and down the first of the two bulging brown paper sacks as if it were a woman. “I have a bit of a sweet tooth myself.”

Maggie pretended to be worried that their conversation might be overheard by another guard who was standing by the exit. “Shshsh,” she said. “Anyway, I can’t talk now or I’ll be late.”

“You’re already late,” said Hugo ambiguously.

“You’re right,” said Maggie. “The last bus has gone, so I’ll either have to call Lyle to pick me up or catch a ride to the ball field. I’m sure one of the other parents can take me home.”

A tiny push was all Hugo needed. A tiny redirection of all that muscle and attention so that Hugo wouldn’t even notice she was the one controlling things.

“That’s an idea,” said Hugo, removing a package of cookies from one of the bags. “But I’m not sure you should wear that blouse in front of a lot of teenaged boys.”

“I didn’t wear it for the boys,” said Maggie.

“If you can wait until the end of my shift, I can take you home.”

There was no time to look too far down the possibility paths before choosing one of them. No time to imagine Hugo’s hot hands on the curve of her hip or the cold concrete of the basement floor against her skin or the twin shafts of slanting light from the too-high windows making their way up the wall as the sun sank in the vacant, distant sky before closing her mind to further thought and willing her features to radiate frailty and indecision. She reminded herself that doing good occasionally entailed actions that in other circumstances might be considered questionable and that love and sex were entirely different things. She said, “Or…” as if an idea had just occurred to her. All she needed was for Hugo to think he was the one giving the final push, so she added, “Silly me. No, never mind.”

“What?” asked Hugo. “Never mind what?”

“I was going to say, how about you search me instead of that bag?”

7.7 Pastor Price

Red Bud’s annual Glory Dayz festival coincided with the last game of the summer play-offs, and this year most of the town had turned out for the evening barbecue and baseball game. Pastor Price steered Tiffany toward the welcome tent, where three Rainbow Girls were selling raffle tickets to fund their annual project.

“What’s the project this year?” asked the pastor.

“We’ll know in a few hours,” said a girl who was wearing the kind of short shorts and cropped top that would have shocked the pastor only a few years before.

“That one’s going to be trouble,” he whispered into his wife’s ear as he tucked a raffle ticket into her pocket.

Tiffany stood on tiptoes to whisper back. “Does she remind you of anyone in particular?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact, she does.”

Tiffany drifted off to join some women she knew while the pastor lingered in the shade of the tent, watching the girls. He missed being outraged by female sexuality, but he guessed he had moved on to other, thornier, provocations, and after a few minutes, he made his way to where the mayor was holding court and passing out campaign promises even though the election was more than a year away.

“What’s this?” asked Price. “No one ever runs against you!”

“There’s always a first time,” said the mayor, poking his head into a nearby tent where Helen Winslow, who was dressed as a fortune-teller, was jangling her bracelets over a crystal ball. “What do you say, Helen?” he asked. “Will there be stiff competition in the mayor’s race next year?”

“Not unless that young Fitch boy is thinking of running.”

“The Fitch boy!” exclaimed the mayor. “Surely you can’t be serious!”

“He attracted quite a following among the younger folks with that article about government overreaching,” said Helen.

“Oh, that,” said the mayor. “I don’t see how encouraging a developer to give us a badly needed office building can be described as overreaching.”

“I don’t think ‘encouraging’ is what he called it,” said Helen.

“‘Kickback’ is a strong word,” said August Winslow, who was sitting next to his wife, drinking a lemonade. “I’ll bet you could get him for slander.”

“One hand washes the other,” said the mayor. “Anyway, let’s not go poking our sticks into the hornet’s nest after we’ve sprayed it with Raid.”

“Who did you spray with Raid?” Lex Lexington slid out of the crowd and entered the backwater created by the fortune-teller’s tent. “Don’t tell me Martin’s nephew is causing trouble again!”

“Why hello, Lex,” said Helen. “I’ve just been telling Buddy that young Fitch is going to make a name for himself by exposing all of Red Bud’s secrets. Then he’ll throw his hat in the ring and run for mayor.”

“You see all that in there?” Winslow leaned over his wife’s shoulder and squinted at the glass ball.

“Of course not, darling. I made it up.”

“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” said the mayor.

“You and me both,” muttered Lexington.

“It would serve you all right,” said Helen, glancing sideways at her husband. “You of all people should know that trying to shut someone up is the surest way to prolong an argument.”

“Let’s not tell these good people all our secrets,” said Winslow with a hollow laugh. “We have a reputation to uphold.” He turned to Lexington and said, “How was your vacation?”

“If you don’t count the fire ants and the heat and the bad fishing and the spoiled kids and all hell breaking loose back at the office…” Lex mopped at his forehead with a limp bandana and blinked several times in succession at the pastor, who finally caught on that Lex wanted to speak privately. When the notes of the national anthem floated to them from the ball field, the mayor said, “Okay Helen, now tell us who is going to win.”

“You’ll have to wait and be surprised,” said Helen. “The first Rainbow assembly of the school year is tonight. I just have time to go home and change out of this gypsy outfit. August, you’re in charge of the crystal ball.”

As soon as Helen and the mayor were gone, Lex sat heavily in the chair Helen had vacated, and the pastor sat down across from Winslow, as if his fortune were being told. “What do you say, August?” he said, making a joke of it. “Tell us what the future holds.”

It was a hot day, and Lex was sweating so profusely that patches of his polo shirt had turned clinging and translucent. “Good God, man,” said Price. He was proud of his ability to stay cool in most circumstances, and although it was probably a genetic trait and not technically something he could take credit for, he couldn’t help feeling slightly superior to the man who was practically melting in front of him.

“I need a little advice from you two,” said Lex. “I misplaced a confidential document at work — something given to me by a lobbying group — and while I was away, my assistant found it. So I dropped by the office to get it on my way over here, but it wasn’t there. Valerie tells me that the only person who could have taken it is Maggie Rayburn.”

“Maggie Rayburn!” exclaimed Winslow, his face turning purple. “Don’t tell me she’s at it again!” He slammed his fist on the table and stormed out of the tent into the crowd that was still streaming toward the stands, only to immediately turn back again.

“What? What?” asked Lex. “If there’s something you can tell me about that woman, I’d like to know about it!”

Winslow sat back down. “This goes no further,” he hissed. “Do you understand?”

The pastor nodded coolly, but Lex looked like he was about to explode. “For Chrissakes, man. What goes no further?”

“A top-secret document went missing from my office too. Back in the winter, just before that Rayburn woman quit working up at the plant. I haven’t told anyone because…well, because it wouldn’t look too good for me if anyone knew. But this is just a little too much of a coincidence, don’t you agree?”

There was no disagreement.

“That’s not all,” said Price. He was thinking back to the day Lyle had brought Maggie to his house for counseling. “She also admitted to stealing prisoner records. At least her husband said she did. He said so right in my own living room, and she didn’t deny it.”

“What if we turn her in?” said Winslow. “What if we turn the little hussy in? Lex and I will just have to take the heat and hope it doesn’t get too ugly.”

“We can’t do that,” said Lex. “There’s too big a downside.”

The pastor’s mental wheels were already turning — another trait he was proud of was the ability to see solutions while others were still poking at the problem like sad sacks with a sore tooth. “I’m wondering if there’s some way we can use this to our advantage,” he said.

“To our advantage!” cried Lex. “This is a disaster. How could it possibly work to our advantage?”

“Using a person’s momentum against him — or her — happens to be one of my specialties.” Price put his hand up to forestall interruptions. “Do you remember how young Fitch wanted to write an article about Maggie back when she left her job at the munitions plant and how we told old Martin to shut him down?”

“I do,” said Winslow. “No sense giving the woman a megaphone is what I said at the time.”

“Well, what if we give her one now?”

“Are you joking?” asked Lex. “That’s a sure way to get me fired.”

“I don’t mean we say anything about the top-secret documents. I mean we create a distraction. We tell Fitch that someone is stealing prisoner records — nobody cares much about those, do they? We say she’s got the best intentions, of course — peace and justice, et cetera, et cetera — all the same reasons that caused her to leave her job in the first place. We get Fitch to ask himself questions — for instance, can do-gooders carry a thing too far or does a good outcome justify illicit means? That’s exactly the kind of high-minded stuff he likes. Meanwhile, the Rayburn woman comes under scrutiny for theft — only of the prison records, mind you — which makes her think twice about making any other stolen documents public. Everyone is entertained by a local scandal, and young Fitch is happy because he has a story. All the better if the prisoner is actually innocent, frankly — then Fitch can go off on a tear about injustice and all that. There’s a good chance we can even leverage this thing to get your sensitive documents back.”

The three men were silent as they contemplated the proposal. A breeze had sprung up while they were talking and the sun had slipped past the topmost branches of a stand of cottonwood trees, leaving the day ten degrees cooler than it had been. Price moved Helen’s crystal ball closer to him, noting how it turned everything upside down. “You see that?” Price asked the two other men. “Crystal balls might not tell the future, but they can get you to look at things from another point of view.”

A roar erupted from the stadium, and the pastor took the opportunity to excuse himself. “If you’re both in agreement, I’ll get things rolling by contacting Fitch — anonymously, of course. And Lex, wipe that frown off your face and go get a plate of barbecue. You too, August. Things will work out just fine.”

The empty tents were flapping in the breeze as the pastor made his way up the path toward the bleachers, stopping first at the food court to treat himself to a lemonade. Two girls eating ice cream out of paper cups waved their spoons at him. A man bought his son a hot dog and hurried back to watch the game. A vendor refilled his ice chest with soft drinks and fitted the strap around his neck. “Who’s winning?” asked Price.

“Dr Pepper,” said the vendor. “It’s not even close.”

Price smiled, amused by the misunderstanding. That just goes to show, he thought, and then he let his mind drift away from lessons about human nature. The leaves on the sycamore trees were already turning. For once, no one was tugging at his sleeve asking him to slice a baby in two so they could each have half of it. One time, he had asked a divorcing couple, “Okay, folks, heads or tails?” But he had mellowed since then.

Just when he was thinking that fall was as good as spring for the way it made a man feel, Maggie Rayburn burst into view, running along the sidewalk with a paper grocery sack clutched in her arms and her hair falling from its clips. Their eyes locked for an instant, and the pastor zigged backward as though some high-voltage connection had been made and quickly severed. He stumbled on the edge of the pavement and almost fell before zagging forward again. Hells bells, he thought. She’ll think I’ve been drinking something stronger than lemonade! In order to cover his awkwardness, he called out, “Happy Glory Dayz,” but he said it too late, for Maggie was already scurrying toward the bleachers like a frightened rabbit.

She was definitely guilty. Chickens had a way of coming home to roost even if they needed a little encouragement now and then. “Encouragement.” That was the word the mayor had used when he meant “graft.” Tiffany would be wondering where he was, but the strange force of the encounter with Maggie had knocked him off course, and now, instead of following the stragglers into the stadium, he let his altered momentum carry him down a steeply cut embankment to the creek.

He’d swum in a creek just like this one as a boy. He and his friends had caught tadpoles and put them in jars so they could watch them turn into frogs if they didn’t die first from lack of oxygen. But now a slick of green slime covered the rocks, making the going treacherous. He thought how, if the theory of evolution was true, man’s ancestors must have crawled out of the slime and up the banks, their gills turning instantly into lungs. Of course, there were mutations not only of physical features, but also of outlook and character. How else had people emerged from the Dark Ages, and how else had tyrants given way to more enlightened rulers? But, like anything else, enlightenment could go too far. It was a strange world, and he didn’t pretend to understand it. Strange and wonderful, he told himself, shaking his head over an image of the cute little Rainbow Girls and only belatedly adding a thought about the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen! He sat on a fallen log and peered into the water, but it was sluggish and opaque, and if there were frogs or tadpoles hiding there, the pastor didn’t see them.

7.8 Will

The team was behind by two runs, but things were finally clicking for Will. His arm was smoking. His legs were on fire.

By the time he thought to glance up at the stands, it was the fifth inning. His parents were sitting on a high tier behind third base. Tula had another engagement, so she wasn’t at the game, but they had plans to meet up after. He wished he had a car. If he had a car of his own, he could take her out when the game was over. But he didn’t, which meant he’d have to go home with his parents, and if he couldn’t persuade them to let him have the truck for the evening, he’d have to ride the bicycle or walk the two and a half miles to Ash Creek Circle on foot.

Don’t let the future interfere with the present, his coach was always saying, so Will forgot about Tula and the truck. He excised the present from everything that had come before it and everything that would come after. He was coming from and going nowhere. He said his cue word, which worked to center him. “Spider-Man,” he said. He immediately felt a contraction of his body mass, as if his mind and body were undergoing a kind of cold fusion before releasing a blast of focused heat. As he approached the plate, the coach called out, “Okay, killer. Knock it out of the park.”

Will let the bat slide through his hands and settle into place before he tightened his grip around it, stepped up to the plate, and pounded the bat against it. Then he sized up the pitcher, who was pivoting to hold Stucky Place on second. Stucky gave a nonchalant shrug and spat in the dirt. When the pitcher turned back around, he squinted into Will’s eyes and Will squinted back, both eyes together and then each eye on its own. He refocused on Stucky. Then he let Stucky go and narrowed the universe until it contained only Will and the pitcher and then only the ball and the bat. He ran his left hand and then his right hand between his ear and his cap, as if to push a lock of hair out of his eyes. He swung the bat loosely in a figure eight before locking his wrists again, this time for real. Now when he said his cue word, the power surged from his hands up through his elbows and shoulders and down through his core, where it connected with a countering surge that started at the ground and ran up through his legs and groin. The forces met in a tightening of his abdominal muscles and culminated in what the coach called the resonating moment — a snapshot of approaching time showing only the smack of the bat and the sweet spot of the ball. When the pitcher wound up and released, Will’s muscles took over, transferring the blast of pure thermonuclear energy into the ball, converting the vision into reality, and sending the baseball out of the park.

7.9 Tula

Tula and the other rising juniors had drawn lots to determine the order of their presentations. As luck would have it, Tula was to go third, after Sammi Green and a tall, composed girl named Wanda Wallace who had moved from Oklahoma City the year before. Most of the presentations were predictable — only Sammi’s plan for honoring the heroes of Red Bud and Tula’s idea of a new bow station had never been done before.

Wanda had made a PowerPoint presentation with captions that said HELP FOR WORKING FAMILIES and GIVE A KID A BREAK. Each year someone presented a version of the same idea. Tula herself had played kick ball and consumed sugary snacks at just such an after-school program while she waited for her mother to finish her shift at a local motel. “Role model” was an enduring Rainbow concept, and the older girls who staffed the program competed vigorously for the title of most energetic and most sincere. They were the reason Tula had become a Rainbow Girl, so while the idea wasn’t original, it had a proven track record of making a difference in actual lives.

Sammi’s presentation featured a series of slides showing men in uniform and other slides showing wealthy donors handing over giant checks to the previous year’s Worthy Advisor, who beamed and blushed from her chair on the stage when her picture went up on the big screen. Sammi and Wanda sported broad smiles and gleaming teeth and paused confidently when their presentations were over to have their pictures snapped shaking hands with the people on the stage.

By the time her name was called, Tula was nearly faint with excitement. She had called her proposal Project Purity and had made a rainbow-colored banner modeled on the banner that hung on the wall of the meeting room. But where the traditional banner comprised seven bright swaths of color, hers consisted of eight, with the eighth made of the purest white silk her little stash of savings could buy.

When Tula stood up and tenderly unfurled the banner, she was greeted with an intake of breath. “My project is to expand the Rainbow principles to include an eighth bow station, represented by white to symbolize Purity,” she began. “Purity is not only the highest female virtue, but it also represents cleanliness and health.” When she said the word “cleanliness,” she had an unwelcome vision of her mother swabbing out a toilet at the motel, but she shook the image off. She explained that white was not an absence of color but included all wavelengths within it, thus symbolizing the very essence of the Rainbow tradition. Then she paused to gauge how the audience was receiving her presentation. People had clapped in the middle of Sammi’s presentation, and the tall girl had made everyone laugh when she told them that of course they could donate money instead of snacks and toys for the disadvantaged children. But now, except for the tick of acorns falling on the metal roof of the meeting hall, all was silent and blurred, the audience an undifferentiated flotilla of oval faces bobbing on a sea of frothy dresses and not even Sammi beaming out encouragement from the front row.

The silence was broken when someone coughed. Another person shuffled her feet. Tula tried to think of something funny to say, but she couldn’t. Tula’s strength wasn’t humor, but passion, which she hoped would come through when she talked about saving up her money for the silk, about borrowing the motel sewing machine to stitch the panels together, about her plans for rewriting the Rainbow Handbook to include the new station. But instead of emitting sparks of passion and enthusiasm as she rushed through the second part of her speech with the banner hanging limply in front of her, she found herself stuttering and blinking back tears.

That year’s Worthy Advisor had been elected by her classmates the previous spring, and presiding over the autumn assembly was her first official act. She was wearing a long white dress for the occasion, and when she got to her feet right in the middle of Tula’s presentation, the layers of fabric sprang away from her body and shimmered with subtle iridescence. “I’m not sure we understand,” she said, the words crisp with new authority. “Please tell us exactly how this is a project for the entire junior class to work on over the course of the coming year. It seems like you plan to do it all yourself. It seems, frankly, as if it’s already done.” She held her ivory arms out like a queen addressing her subjects, who were fanned out before her and beginning to whisper behind cupped hands.

Tula had thought of this. How purity translated into action was outlined in the last section of her presentation, but she jumped ahead to cover it now. Will had given her a pamphlet on STDs that his mother had found at the prison, and she had adapted it and added cartoon drawings so that it would appeal to middle schoolers. She had been pleased with the final product, but when she held it up, it looked like a piece of folded scrap paper the size of a business envelope. She should have made a giant version of it the way Sammi had done with the checks. “This is a pamphlet I made,” she said. “I thought we could go into the schools and talk to the younger girls about Purity, and also about abstinence and sexually transmitted diseases. I learned at the clinic where I work that this is a big problem in our area and that we need to target kids before they reach high school age.”

“So your project is about sex education?” asked Mrs. Winslow, patting a stray lock into place.

“Really, it’s about Purity. But it’s a multifaceted approach.”

“So you made a banner and tampered with chapter literature,” said the Worthy Advisor.

“Oh, no! I won’t change anything. I only plan to add…”

“Yes, yes. I understand that you want to add a new Rainbow station. But by what right? Who authorized this desecration of tradition? That is what we’re trying to find out.”

“I’m presenting it now, with the idea that the chapter can vote on it and adopt it according to official procedures,” said Tula. “I should have explained that right up front.”

But the word “desecration” said it all. Tula barely managed to sit through the rest of the presentations, and as soon as they were over, she slipped out the door into the darkening parking lot. She didn’t stay to see whose project would win the vote and the Rainbow scholarship that came with it. Sammi would win it, or the tall girl. In any case, neither the position of trust nor the scholarship would be hers, and without the scholarship…

Above her, the first stars blasted across the universe, and closer in, the dry leaves of an old oak tree rustled in the breeze. Acorns cracked like tiny skulls under her feet, so she stepped carefully, but she couldn’t avoid them all. She had hoped Will would be waiting for her, but he wasn’t, so she gathered the skirts of her long dress in both hands and started up the road toward home. She was halfway there when Will came laboring up the hill on his bicycle, calling out to her that his team had lost the game. They walked together, the bicycle between them, and talked about shattered dreams and contingency plans and how if the world had a place for them, it wasn’t at all clear what it was.

7.10 Dolly

Dolly took her feet out of the stirrups and used a tissue to wipe between her legs. Then she slipped her skirt over her hips and buttoned her blouse.

“Well,” said the doctor, coming back into the room. “Well, well, well. We’ll need to start you on prenatal supplements and schedule a sonogram.”

“What if there’s something wrong with it?” asked Dolly, who envisioned growing within her not a baby, but a misshapen clot of all the terrible things that could and did happen in the world.

“Why would anything be wrong with it?” asked the doctor. “You know as well as anyone that most new-parent fears are unfounded.”

“But Danny was in Iraq.”

“Lots of our patients were in Iraq or are married to people who were there. Was your boyfriend exploding unused munitions? Was he cleaning up blast sites or burned-out Humvees?”

“Not that I know of,” said Dolly. “But it’s not just my own baby I’m worried about. You know I’ve been thinking about this ever since those poor babies were…you know the babies I mean.”

The doctor tapped a sheet of test results. “Your hormone levels are good and high. It’s common to experience mood swings, so let me know if things don’t improve in that regard.”

“And I’ve been thinking about those two reports…”

“What two reports?” asked the doctor.

“The ones you told me about — the original and the one that was altered.”

“Those studies are to do with the First Gulf War, so I wouldn’t worry.”

“But why would this war be any different?” Dolly removed the package Maggie Rayburn had sent her from her purse and thrust it toward the doctor. “You told me that a report had been altered,” she said. “Well, this is more evidence that the government knows what’s going on.”

“I’ll look it over,” said the doctor. “Now if there’s not anything else, our first patient will be here in a few minutes. We don’t want to keep her waiting.”

When Dolly got home that evening, she poured herself a glass of lemonade and sat out on the porch to drink it. After Labor Day the temperature was supposed to drop, but the backs of her knees were sticky and her thin cotton dress was plastered to her backside. Maybe the doctor was right about the hormones, which would explain not only her discomfort, but also her fears for the little tadpole growing in her belly. Of course fears were normal. And despite the fears, or because of them, she gradually became aware of an inner starburst of hope and significance. Things that had seemed only moderately important before seemed absolutely critical now. How much to eat? Whole milk or skim? Exercise, but not too much. Stop whoever was poisoning the world! But how? How did a person accomplish a thing like that? One moment she was optimistic and the next she was on the verge of despair. What if Danny never got better? Oh, what did she need Danny for!

She called Kathy, the woman who had advised her about making lists of goals and core beliefs. “Guess what?” she said when Kathy came on the line and said hello. But Kathy had news of her own. Her husband had a new girlfriend and had filed for divorce. “It’s good you and Danny aren’t married,” she said. “Marriage just makes everything more complicated. Enjoy your freedom while you can.”

Dolly’s mother wasn’t much better. “It’s a terrible time to bring a baby into the world,” she said. “So much uncertainty. Why, just the other day my friend Mabel was let go from her job, and the O’Haras are losing their home to foreclosure, and Selma Drew’s husband dropped dead of a heart attack — and you remember Hattie Lane? Three hundred pounds and diabetic…no wonder she’s losing her eyesight! To say nothing of all those Middle Easterners trying to blow each other up. Still, it’s important to think happy thoughts so the baby can have a normal life. Not that he’ll have a normal father, but I suppose it’s a little late to think of that.”

Her mother dragged her off to church on Sunday. “You’re praying for two now,” she said.

“Why are we driving all the way to Red Bud?” asked Dolly.

“I’ve been going there for nearly a year,” said her mother. “Pastor Price is really good.”

After the service the pastor said that even an out-of-wedlock baby was part of God’s plan for Dolly, a comment that served as a springboard for sharing the story of how, way back when, his eyes had been opened to his own life plan.

“There I was, walking home from my job at an insurance agency and minding my own business — at least as much as I usually mind it — when a pure white cat crossed the path in front of me. Pure white, mind you. I didn’t think anything of it, but the next day the same thing happened, and it happened again the day after that. On the fourth day, a woman who had lost everything in a tornado came into the office. I told her that the policy she had in her hands had been issued by another insurance company. ‘No, you are the one,’ she said. If she had said anything else, I would still be an insurance agent, but she poked me in the chest and said, ‘You are the one.’ I know what you’re going to say — that I should have known that the three pure white cats were the Holy Trinity even before the woman drove home the point in such an obvious way. But I was a numbskull back then, too thick to see it until I was driving home a few nights later and passed that sign to the Choctaw Casino — the one that says TURN HERE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE. So I slammed on the brakes and bless me if I didn’t make the turn and stay there half the night — first losing my money and then making it back and then losing it again — so that when I finally went home, I was flat-out broke. I thought a lot about that casino sign, and I have to admit that at first I was bitter. ‘It changed my life, all right,’ I said when my own pastor pried the story out of me and proceeded to show me how everything fit perfectly together and how the Lord wasn’t just calling me, he was grabbing me by the hair. And my life kept right on changing. Eventually I became a pastor myself, and that never would have happened if all of those other things hadn’t happened first.”

“What happened to the lady?” asked Dolly.

“What lady?”

“The one who lost everything in the tornado.”

“I’ve often wondered that myself,” said the pastor. “I’m guessing she went on down the street to the State Farm office and got things sorted out with them, but I suspect she has her own story to tell. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if it included me! By all rights, though, we never should have met. She was in the wrong darn place. The wrong place for her, that is, but exactly the right place for me. That’s what you have to do, Dolly. God puts people into your life for a reason. Making sense of it is up to you.”

“I’ve been getting signs now too,” said Dolly. She told the pastor about the damaged babies and how she had felt called on to help them if she could. “Not that I can help those particular babies, but I want to do something to prevent other babies from suffering a similar fate.”

“Don’t you wait another minute,” said the pastor. “Those damaged babies are signs from God.”

Dolly’s sister was the worst of all — she was genuinely happy about the baby, which was so unexpected that it plunged Dolly into a cycle of guilt and self-recrimination. How was having a baby anything but selfish, particularly when she hadn’t provided it with the most basic of requirements, like a stable family and genetic health? How had it happened? But she knew how it had happened. Danny’s homecoming, the lapse of a single night, the burst of love and optimism and indiscretion. She tried to remember the optimism — and then she did remember it. She remembered the love too, but the love came wrapped around a bundle of sorrow and inside the sorrow was the unavoidable fact that the Danny who had come home was not the Danny who had left, which caused her teetering high spirits to plummet into yet another chasm of despair until she thought, A baby! A baby of my very own!

The next week the doctor handed Dolly an envelope. And there, tucked inside, were the two scientific reports. “Here you are then,” he said. “Let me know if you need more help.”

Dolly remembered the story the pastor had told her, and her scalp tingled to think that God was pulling her by the hair too. She had the information she wanted. Now she just had to decide what to do with it.