“Like to scare me to death.”
“You saw us? You never stopped us.”
“Paxton, you may think my sole job as your father was to stamp out every joy in your life—”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Pax started to reply, then stopped himself. He wasn’t here to fight. He took a breath, exhaled.
His right hand was trembling again. He moved his hands to his lap, left hand over the right. The tremor had shown up a couple days ago, coming and going at random. He felt as if he were losing ownership of his body. Nerves fired without permission, muscles twitched in response—a thousand conversations he wasn’t privy to.
“So you went to the funeral,” his father said. “A lot of people?”
“The whole town showed up,” Pax said. “So many people didn’t get in that they’re going to have an additional viewing tonight. The burial’s tomorrow morning. It was a good service, though. You would have liked it. A lot of people stood up to speak.”
“Did Elsa Hooke do a good job? What did she preach on?”
“She didn’t really preach.” His father frowned. He couldn’t understand why pastors would pass up the chance to bring the salvation message, especially at the golden opportunity of a funeral, where the unsaved were both in church and in a mood to contemplate the disposition of their souls. “Too many people wanted to speak,” Pax explained. “It was really Rhonda that delivered the sermon. People got pretty worked up. Afterward, folks were talking about a protest.”
“What kind of protest?” Harlan asked.
“I don’t think they know yet. Something after the burial.”
“Rhonda’s going to get more people shot,” he said.
“If we don’t stay visible, Dad, they’ll make us disappear.”
Harlan peered at him. “Who came up with that one?”
Pax looked away, annoyed. Was it so impossible that he could have thought of that on his own? After a moment he said, “It was on Rhonda’s blog.”
“Her what?”
“Her videos? She posts one every day.” With the cable and phone lines intact, Rhonda had been able to hold regular press conferences via phone, and she’d expanded her Helping Hands website to include a daily video message from Switchcreek. Harlan didn’t say anything. “Her website, Dad. Have you ever gone on the web?”
“Yes, I’ve gone on the web,” he said disdainfully.
Pax doubted if he had. “We should order high-speed Internet for the house—we already have cable.”
“We don’t need the Internet.”
“And fix up the living room. I’ve already started pulling up the carpets.”
“What?”
“Dad, they’re thirty years old and they stink. The floors are hardwood, so since we can’t get new carpets until after the quarantine I thought I’d refinish them.”
“Paxton …,” Harlan said quietly.
“I’ve never done it before, but I can ask people. I bet some of the argos at Alpha Furniture would know how.”
“Paxton, she’s not going to let me go home, no matter how clean or fixed up the house is.”
Pax glanced around. Rhonda’s office door was closed—he knew she wasn’t at the Home, but he still had to check—and no one else was in the atrium. “I’m going to force her,” he said.
Harlan pursed his lips, somehow expressing both pity and frank disbelief.
“Deke knew it,” Pax said, his voice low. “Jo knew it. She had proof Rhonda was ripping off the town. I’ll find it, and then I can—”
“Stop it, Paxton.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want out of here? Look what happened this morning, Dad. They’re not taking care of you. Things are falling apart.”
“That’s the first time that’s happened. I’ll get by.”
“You hate it here. I’ve felt what it’s like—” He almost said, Felt what it’s like to be you. “I know you’re dying to get out of here. I’ve been dreaming about it.”
“Your dreams told you this,” he said skeptically.
“You know what I mean,” Pax said. “Not dreams, exactly.” Some nights when he took the vintage, distances collapsed, the lines between self and not-self disappeared. He’d lie in the dark not knowing which bed, which body he inhabited. His father’s despair became his own.
“Oh, Paxton,” his father said. He looked disappointed—that particular frown that could wound Pax so effortlessly. “Every drunk thinks he’s found truth in a bottle.” He held up a big hand before Paxton could object. “Look at yourself, Son. You’re half-starved.”
“I’m fine. I admit I’m not eating all the fried crap I used to eat, but—”
“I want you to stop coming,” his father said. “Starting now. And when the quarantine is over, or whenever you can, I want you to go back home to Chicago.”
“You’re not doing this to me again,” Pax said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on.” He couldn’t stand it when Harlan played dumb. “You sent me away once. I’m not going to let you do it again.”
“I did that for your own good—I’m doing this for your own good.”
“You did it for yourself, Dad. You were petrified people would talk and you’d lose your church. You were ashamed.”
Harlan’s face reddened. “That didn’t have a damn thing to do with it. Do you even remember what you were like? You were the one who was—where are you going?”
“This isn’t happening,” Pax said, meaning the day’s vintage. He picked up his shirt that he’d laid over the chair back. “I’ll come back in the morning.”
“Sit your ass down.”
His father never swore, and he’d done it twice in ten seconds. Paxton put his hands in pockets but didn’t sit. He kept his face neutral and waited.
“Please,” Harlan said.
Pax breathed for a moment, thinking, and then pulled the chair over a few feet so that they could sit opposite each other.
“You were special,” his father said. The sun was in his face; he squinted and looked at the floor next to Paxton’s feet. “You’d been passed over. God had plans for you beyond this town. Nobody knew if the Changes would start again, or if they’d quarantine us again. Either way, if you didn’t leave here you’d be trapped.
“I was trying to save your life, Paxton. Your mother wanted you to go to college, get married to a nice girl, have children. You couldn’t have any of that here. And if the Changes came back and killed you, or turned you into something …”
Harlan shook his head, and looked up. Tears glittered in his eyes. Paxton sighed.
Somehow his father had recast everything from that year. It wasn’t his anger at Jo Lynn’s pregnancy, or his fear that his only son might be some kind of triple pervert who was fucking both Jo and Deke, or his dread that the whole town would find out and drive him out of his church … No, it was purely for the love of his son.
“I was only trying to spare you,” his father said. “All this … disease. This death.”
Pax leaned back. “Well,” he said quietly. “That didn’t quite work, did it?”
Jo had died anyway. Deke had died anyway. It didn’t matter if Pax was in Switchcreek or Chicago or halfway around the planet. His presence couldn’t protect them, and distance couldn’t protect him.
He was alone. The sole surviving member of the Switchcreek Orphan Society. Hell, he was the fucking president.
“You have to understand,” his father said, the words slurring. “Nobody knew. I was only trying, trying to …” The smell of vintage charged the air.
“I know, Dad,” Pax said. He stood and walked to retrieve the extraction kit.
When he finally heard the banging at the front door he thought the soldiers had returned. It was 9:30, a half hour past the official curfew. Pax put down the mallet and scraper and turned off the radio. The hallway was a mess; the carpet had come up cleanly enough, but the ancient rubber backing had disintegrated into something like tar and had glued itself to the wood. It had taken him hours to scrape the living room, chipping away at piece after piece. He’d slowed as he tired, and so the hallway was taking as long as the front room.