Probably I would have enjoyed it then.
He farted — and began to urinate.
Well, at least Shit isn’t here. He would have felt obligated to take the psychotic bastard up on it — and I would have gone along and been bored out of my skull.
Who were these kids? Some traveling group marriage that keeps Ole around…kind of like we used to keep Uncle Tom or Dog Dog, I guess. Well, he is cute. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they get tired of him, now and then. I’m going to assume the baby’s safe and not worry.
The fact is, Uncle Tom got his share, but we probably kicked him out of bed more times than he wanted. And the old hound did love us.
These kids are interesting. They’ve been places. They done stuff — yeah, you could write about them. Stories have happened to them. They’ve been to Mars, they have a cause, and they are trying to make art and babies and live good lives. Again, why couldn’t I have met them twenty years ago, when it would have been fun to be friends with them, to watch their progress, rather than now when I’m numb not even with worry but simply the effort of getting Shit to the hospital and back.
They have stories. (I guess other people mostly do.) I just have a life…
As he turned over pages, he kept coming on articles about some place in Oklahoma called The Fields…
I have a life — and it’s mainly over. Yes, it’s been a good one. But what has it allowed me to do that’s worthwhile?
He looked at the newsletters beside him. With the Kyle Foundation to fight for us, we never had to fight for anything, really. Everything was arranged, from salary to security. It did a good job of taking care of us — and we all thought that was good. Did that allow us to be good or just…superfluous?
Eric fingered through more old issues to pull one free. Most had only the title on the cover — but this one mentioned a topic.
ROBERT KYLE THE THIRD DIES
Eric frowned. Yes, he’d known that — at age 101—Mr. Kyle had passed away. He looked at the date. He was there in the graveyard, though Shit and Eric had missed the service — if that’s what you called it. FEBRUARY 2071—no, certainly that couldn’t have been more than three years ago. Eric paged through the issue. “…with the death of Robert Kyle, the third, at age one hundred and one, in Columbus, Ohio, last week, some long contemplated changes in the working of the Kyle Foundation will finally be set in place…” Life spans of a hundred twenty-five were growing more common among the super rich — though ordinary folks, like Shit and Eric, lived into their eighties, their nineties — though many chose not to, since mental clarity rarely went along with it. The article said that forms would be going out to those covered by the Kyle Plan, and anyone with holdings they no longer wanted to make use of would be asked to fill them out and return the rights to land and goods to the Foundation, so that taxes could be adjusted…
Had he ever filled those things out? Really, Eric didn’t remember.
Shaking his head, he put the magazine down, took some toilet tissue and wiped his ass, even though he hadn’t done anything. (You know, if I had some lube, on the off chance that crazy Ole really wanted to fuck, I’d finger it in now…) Eric chuckled. Robert Kyle was another person who’d lived a life you could tell stories about — but Eric — Shit and Eric — the best we’ll ever be is elements in someone else’s.
Is that what good people — good Americans — were? Even ones like us, who take a hundred years to become anything else than marginal eccentricities?
Yes, help was what it was all about. But so much of it was needed, whether signaled by atrocities or just unthinking cruelties or simple annoyances, that when the vast hunger for help from Deus sivi Natura struck straight against the bridge of your nose, all you could do — whether you were Robert Kyle with his foundering Foundation or Eric Jeffers with his sandwiches and cookies because he no longer had energy for chili, or Deena Havers holding a wounded soldier on another world or sculpting in light on this one — was to rise and walk through the valley in tears…and think about the valley…
Eric stood up — the toilet flushed, as if it were some old fashioned public john. Eric buttoned his pants and stepped from the bathroom door.
The glass wall parted, but even before he stepped through the opening to the yard, he realized something had changed radically.
First, everyone was standing.
The fire and the fish — along with the benches — were gone.
Someone said — to him, Eric realized — “Come on, come on. Get out of there.”
One of the women — the one with the dreads — said irritably, “Will you let the old guy finish going to the bathroom for God’s sakes?”
A gaunt Asian, with a potbelly and a red and blue uniform, said, “Come on. Come on, you’re not supposed to be here. Yall get the fuck out of here. Get a move on. I’m not kidding.” With a billy club, he gave the glass wall a tap. Shatter lines zagged through it, though it did not crumble.
One of the youngest of the women — at least she looked very young to Eric — said, “You know, you’re not doing this alone. About a hundred seventy-five people are watching us right now. Maybe more, because of the Rally. And if you do anything really violent, a minute later three thousand people will see it — and see you doing it.”
The Asian turned abruptly. “That’s just more of that goddam science crap. Don’t you realize that stuff is weird — and unnatural?”
Eric was not even aware of recognizing the young patrolman — well, in his late fifties, early sixties. “Aim, what’s a matter?” Actually, it was a second after he said the name that he realized his identification was right. (It was Aim.) Behind the lines and loose ears, enough in the face recalled the teenaged garbage helper, staggering on his injured foot, before the Bottom’s edge, for recognition.
The Asian frowned at Eric — or, perhaps, Eric found himself thinking, he was frowning at the great wall of time between this and their first meeting.
Eric said, “That’s you, Aim — ain’t it? It’s Eric Jeffers. What’s the problem?”
“Mr. Jeffers — that was you in there?”
“What you givin’ them a hard time for?” Eric nodded toward dark, tall Deena. “That’s Al’s Haver’s granddaughter. Don’t you remember Al, when he worked at the Bottom? He was your boss for a while. Or did he retire, just before you started drivin’ there with Tad?”
“Well, that ain’t nothin’. The man was the daddy or the grand daddy of three-quarters of the black kids runnin’ around this county — at least for a while.”
Cuddling the child strapped to his naked belly, Ole said, “I’m just twenty-eight and I got two grandkids already.” He grinned through a beard that looked vaguely like Shit’s at that age; though it was the color he remembered on Jay. “That’s cause I’m nuts.”
“Come on, Aim. This kid’s just out the Navy — she been to Mars.”
“Well, then what the fuck is she doin’ with these deadbeats?” Aim turned back to them and roared, “Come on, now! Shut it the fuck down!”
It looked as though the two others walls of the house suddenly fell in. Where they hit the ground, they vanished. He could see through the glass that the roof and the stone floor were gone. Rock and leaves alone remained — the whole, Eric realized, some virtual construct.
Through trees at the far side of the clearing, light flickered from The Valley.
“Hey, cut it out, Aim,” Eric said. “They’re not messing anything up. You’re doin’ more damage — ” he looked at the shattered pane — “than they are.”