In mid-July, five men met in a conference room in a secure facility on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Two of them were field agents for the Department of Homeland Security, one was an FBI liaison to DHS, and two were DHS supervisors. One of the supervisors, a small man who looked like a college professor, sat in the corner of the room making notes on a legal pad. Among any number of perceived security threats, they were discussing one and not a very important one. Their meeting resulted from a single act of ideological violence in which hindsight showed all the clues that were not regarded and all the portents that were not seen.
"Look," one supervisor said, "if that Nazi nut hadn't opened fire in the movie theater in Ohio last year, we wouldn't be here. This is like whale watching; we chase the latest threat no matter how random or how unlikely it is to recur because political appointees make our decisions."
The FBI liaison then explained the assignment. A year ago, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Portland, Oregon, had received a report on activity by a cell of the neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Movement, in Vancouver, Washington. A mid-level criminal had tried to negotiate a plea bargain on meth distribution and federal weapons charges by providing information on the small group's plan to attack a gathering of gay kids held annually in south-central Washington State.
For local law enforcement, the investigation was like grasping at smoke. Save for one local FBI agent assigned to the joint task force, no one had taken the threat seriously, and, after being entered in a national database, the report ended up in the pile of non-actionable and suspect intelligence. However, the report had resurfaced recently when a computer program at the much larger JTTF in Los Angeles had connected the report of the little Washington gathering with the name of a wunderkind at Caltech in whom people at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, took a decided interest. Apparently, the genius had developed some kind of computer program that could be used to detect very small differences in a large number of very similar events, and that had all sorts of defense applications.
Any threat on this man's life was a problem, and homegrown terrorism was back on everyone's radar again. It had been long on the back burner since Timothy McVeigh's murder of adults and children in the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had faded from memory and the Middle East came to be seen as the font of all significant terrorism.
The FBI liaison concluded, "It's taken almost two years for this shit to be pushed uphill, but if there's an incident, it will take about two seconds for it to roll downhill. We don't know how serious the threat is, but the intelligence is now considered actionable. We just want you to go out, brief the locals, and have a look. We could give a shit less about a bunch of gay kids from Portland, but the scientist is another matter. He's why you're going. If anything were to happen to this guy, all of our asses would be in a permanent sling."
The small man in the corner suddenly asked, "Do any of you know what the first act of domestic bioterrorism in the United States was and where it occurred?"
Silence took the room until he continued, "In 1984, the bacterium Salmonella enterica Typhimurium, was used by a religious sect, the disciples of the Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, against the citizens of The Dalles, Oregon, and resulted in the illness of over 750 people. You should give a shit about a bunch of kids from Oregon, gay or otherwise. If not, why the fuck are we doing all this? History teaches us always to think of the religious roots of terrorism. Do I make myself clear?"
Again, silence.
On the same day that Lucas, Jerry, and the teenagers left Pasadena, two men in dark suits showed their credentials to the TSA screeners and bypassed the screening equipment at Dulles International Airport near Washington, DC. They couldn't believe the short straw they'd drawn with this assignment. Sometimes joint task forces were a joke.
The younger agent defied the current trend among Homeland Security agents to shave their heads; instead he had a short but stylish haircut. He looked like a GQ model, but his experience belied his baby face; he was a seasoned intelligence agent. Both of these armed Homeland Security agents were Mormons, the younger agent raised in the faith of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints but no longer practicing because he had discovered something about himself on his yearlong mission to Brazil; the older was a devout LDS follower. Jeff Chertov knew that his older partner, Ted Kesh, had little use for gay people and would probably have refused to work with him if he knew that his younger partner was gay.
Still, he didn't think this use of DHS resources was particularly wise. These homegrown terrorist or hate groups rarely followed through on threats, and in some Podunk town like Goldendale, Washington, the possibility seemed absurd, especially since the gathering was really just a few kids spending a week at a farm.
So many of these wacko groups existed across the country that keeping track of them would be a full-time job for every Federal law-enforcement agency in the country. But in this case, the scientist, who was gay, might be considered a high-value target — though in this case only because of his orientation. The initial report had been coupled with subsequent information about vocal anti-gay activity by members of a local fundamentalist church in Goldendale. Jeff thought, This mathematician must be the second coming of Albert fucking Einstein to warrant sending us on this fool's errand.
The two agents had checked with TSA, and the air marshal on the flight was briefed on where they would be sitting in the 737. The air marshal notified the flight crew. As per protocol they didn't sit together. The flight from DC to Portland was direct and long; Jeff hated flights this long. After arriving, they would meet with local FBI agents at the field office near the airport to get an update and be assigned a couple of vehicles before driving to Goldendale. Jeff expected to investigate, find nothing, and head back to DC pronto. If they were lucky, no one in Goldendale except local cops would even know they had been there.
The 737 touched down at PDX, and the agents, clutching identical hard-sided cases, took a shuttle to one of the airport hotels.
#
As the jet was landing in Portland, Jerry was pulling the blue Prius into the hotel in Klamath Falls, Oregon, almost exactly at 7:00 PM. The Cimarron Inn was farther off US-97 than Lucas liked, but there wasn't much local charm available in accommodations anywhere close to the highway, and even this hotel was part of a small chain. In the back seat, Sam and Markie were flagging. Sam had known that Other Dad's question about seventeen hours in the car was a statistical trick. They would average almost nine-hour days, but the first day would be more like eleven hours and the second more like six, which meant they could sleep in a little tomorrow morning. He knew Other Dad wanted to end the day beyond the halfway point between Pasadena and Goldendale.
At the hotel desk, the clerk found their reservation for two rooms. Jerry had a slight 'oh-oh' moment when, thinking of what he had observed between Sam and Markie, he realized that the kids probably shouldn't share a room. The clerk was solicitous, but no other rooms were available. Lucas and Jerry were trying to parse the logistics, when, overhearing the conversation and now a little irritable with fatigue, Sam said, "For geniuses, you two are lame. Just get a rollaway, and I'll sleep in with you. Markie can have the other room."
The fathers looked at each other, shrugged, and looked back to the clerk. "That we can manage," he said.
Jerry asked Markie, "You okay with this arrangement?" She looked a little confused that she and Sam wouldn't be sharing a room but agreed.
The entrances to all the rooms were off the parking lot. They drove to a spot close to the rooms, parked, and unloaded their bags and Sam's guitar. The rooms were adjacent, and while Jerry and Sam got settled in one, Lucas took Markie to the other with its two Queen beds and suggested that she get settled before she joined them next door.
While Jerry and Sam waited for the other two, Jerry tried to soothe his son about the sleeping situation. "You do see why we had to arrange things this way?"
Sam frowned, and before he could protest that he had no idea, his fathers' implication dawned on him. He was at once sickened and offended. "What? You thought we'd do each other? She's my best friend, Dad."
Jerry could see that the boy saw no potential temptation in bunking with his best friend. "I know you don't think anything would happen, but …"
As Markie and Other Dad returned, Sam gave his dad a withering look. "You don't even know me."
The only food around the hotel was fast food, and they did the best they could, including even Markie who ate without obvious complaint. As they dined, Sam was quietly steaming at the presumption of his fathers, but the more he looked at Markie, the more he heard too much protest in his anger. By the time they were finished with the meal, he was less angry, though he wasn't going to let his dads off the hook just yet.
When they returned to their rooms, the rollaway bed was just inside the door to the larger room with the King bed. "Games or sleep? If we get a reasonable start, we can be there in the early afternoon."
Markie and Sam spoke at the same time: "Sleep." Jerry thought he detected a little less bile in his son's answer.
"Markie, you have to promise not to go out of your room once you're in for the night. Don't open the door unless you're sure one of us is on the other side. If you need something, call our room, okay? We'll give you a wake-up call in the morning."
Markie nodded to Lucas, who suggested to Sam, "Why don't you help Markie get settled over there?" Sam knew she was already as settled as she was going to be, but he did want to talk with her.
Markie and Sam walked next door, and as Sam sat on the end of one Queen bed, Markie got her toilet kit out of her bag atop the little folding luggage stand that hotels provide and took it into the bathroom. She then joined Sam on the end of the bed, and they both stared at the room door. "I guess we're not little kids anymore."
Sam thought a moment. "I don't want things to change between us."
"Things may change whether or not we want them to."
Sam chewed on that for a few seconds and then walked back to the other room. He felt heartsick and queasy. His fathers had placed the rollaway at the foot of their bed and were busy in the bathroom. He sat on the little bed and waited to brush his teeth and change. When his fathers returned in shorts and T-shirts, he took his turn, looking closely at the image in the mirror while he flossed and brushed. A teenager with the beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip and not a child stared back at him. I need to talk to them about shaving, I guess.
In bed before he plugged his earbuds in, he grudgingly informed the dads, "All right. I understand why you did it."
His exposure to music had been more indoctrination than accident. Arias, classical, and the music of the sixties and seventies all slid into the lock to his heart. His friends barely put up with his antiquarian tastes. Now, as he moved to hypnagogia, he listened to Bob Dylan singing "I Was Young When I Left Home." When he had first played it on his guitar and sung it for Markie, she had been overcome by sadness. He thought the song an affirmation of spirit and the value of home. He always thought of OD riding one of the horses in the fields behind their farm when he heard the verse:
Used to tell my ma sometimes
When I see them ridin' blind
Gonna make me a home out in the wind
In the wind, Lord, in the wind
Make me a home out in the wind.
As he drifted to sleep, half-listening to the song, he thought of the stories written by a dead grandfather that his fathers had read to him so many times in years past.
#
Sleep was a black pool into which he gradually walked. He was vaguely aware of holding a sphere while standing on the other side of a door that he couldn't locate when he looked around him. His skin tingled as if he were charged by static electricity, and a cool breeze in the violet air brought a sweet scent.
"What have you done to your hair, Kendall?"
"Kendall? I am not Kendall; I'm Sam. Who the hell are you?"
"Prithvi. Have you come to fulfill Kendall's pledge?"
#
After checking out of their hotel following an early morning meeting at the FBI field office near the airport, Jeff and his partner grabbed the keys to a couple of Dodge Caravans, one white and one black, that had been brought to the field office from the Federal motor pool in Portland, loaded their luggage and the cases with H&K UMP40s, submachine guns chambered in .40 S&W, into the cargo areas. To Jeff, bringing this much firepower was foolish, but they'd be a long way from help in the little town, and the nearest help would be local Barney Fifes and the Washington State Patrol.
The drive across I-84 and up US-97 was quiet once they got through rush hour on I-205. They had staggered their departures so they wouldn't look like a motorcade. Jeff would be staying at the Quality Inn in Goldendale, and Ted would stay at the Three Rivers Inn at Biggs Junction, 14 miles away on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.
They had a late morning meeting scheduled at the sheriff's office with the Klickitat County sheriff, the Goldendale police chief, and a supervisor for the State Patrol. Jeff laughed, thinking of what a pain in the ass this visit would be for the locals, and he wondered what they thought of the little gathering for gay kids in their community. He imagined that they wouldn't be very enthusiastic about it if not hostile.
#
After a fitful night, Sam awoke suddenly in the early morning darkness. His phone showed 4:30. He heard at least one of his fathers turning in their bed. He debated getting up and using the bathroom, as his bladder was complaining, but his penis was, of course, not relaxed enough to pee comfortably. He briefly wondered whether his Uncle Js, being doctors, could explain the relationship of morning bladder and erections. After a half-hour of gazing at the ceiling and listening to music, he stuck his head up and looked at the other bed to find Other Dad looking back with a smile. He was no longer pissed at them, so he smiled back. Lucas nodded toward the bathroom, and the boy left the bed with a slightly stooping posture, making his way to the bathroom. When he finished his shower and morning rituals (except the usual morning 'tension-relief' exercise), he walked out to see both of his fathers sitting up in bed with the end-table lights on. At least time had eliminated the need to stoop.
"We're going to shower and get dressed. Would you call Markie at six and ask her to get ready?"
He nodded and watched them both head for the bathroom. He shook his head gently, and seeing the gesture, Jerry explained: "Saving water, that's all."
Sam was already dressed when his fathers returned and began dressing. Both men looked at the boy. "Markie's getting ready, as far as I know," Sam smirked. "I asked her to call when she's ready."
Lucas said, "Good. We'll hit the road when she's ready. Will you help me pack the car?"
"Sure, OD." Sam pronounced the acronym like the name of the dog in Garfield, with the emphasis on the first letter.
As they worked on stowing their bags and Sam's guitar, Lucas told the boy, "We didn't mean to hurt your feelings, you know. We've just seen a little change in the way you relate to Markie lately."
"I know." An audible sigh filled a pause. "I can't figure out what's going on."
"You will. The process will not be painless."
Pushing his duffle into the corner of the cargo area, Sam asked OD, "Did you ever fall in love with a friend?"
"I like to think your dad is a friend."
"You know what I mean. When you were a kid."
"I didn't really have friends when I was your age. But hey, I was a kid when I met your dad. I was fourteen, and I had already been passingly in love with your Uncle Jason and your Uncle North, who is untouchably hetero; then I met your dad — now, that was interesting."
The word interesting, Sam knew, was Lucas's highest praise. Sam was shocked that OD had felt that way about his uncles. "No shit?"
"No shit. Your uncles were the first kids who treated me like I was worth something; I couldn't help but love them, and then I had naïve erotic feelings toward them. Fortunately, I met them before I met any of the horses. Well, now that I think about it, I guess I met one horse before I met North."
Sam recognized the attempt at humor. "Gross!"
As they were finishing, Markie came out of her room dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Sam could see her breasts moving under the shirt. Enough! he thought. He smelled her body wash and shampoo as he helped her get her bag stowed, and, after checking the rooms one more time, they set out toward the Columbia River and Goldendale, stopping at a mini-mart to get yogurt and granola bars before topping off the gas tank. In the back seat with Markie, Sam smiled as happiness overtook anxiety.
The route took them up US-97, skirting Upper Klamath Lake before running almost due north. "In that mountain up on the left is Crater Lake," Sam, acting the tour guide, announced to Markie. "That ridge is the remnants of Mt. Mazama, which exploded and left a huge, deep crater."
As Lucas employed his leaden foot, Markie and Sam played more Scrabble, alternating with games of Angry Birds, and Markie spent more time gazing at the countryside while listening to music. Taking one earbud out, she remarked to Sam, "Flying gives you no idea of how much ground you're covering."
Sam did the same. "I know. I like car trips. They make little time-doors that open slowly on where you're going."
"Time-doors?" the girl asked laughing.
"You know what I mean, smart ass."
By ten o'clock they had passed LaPine and skirted Bend. The landscape was becoming high desert — mostly barren except for sagebrush — as they continued just east of due north. They planned to stop for lunch near Madras where US-97 briefly joined US-26 until it broke off west toward Mt. Hood and Portland. Before lunch the Prius sped by Terrebonne, and Sam nudged Markie, directing her attention to Smith Rock to the east: "Aunt Annie will take us rock climbing there. You'll love it."
"That would be so cool." Sam wasn't in the least surprised at her enthusiasm.
Markie rejoiced when Jerry talked Lucas into stopping at Great Earth Natural Foods in Madras for lunch. Since the café was very close to the highway, Lucas didn't need much persuading. Markie ordered a salad and didn't flinch when Sam ordered a chipotle chicken wrap. The dads ate paninis. The space was cool and quiet, and the service was quick so that Sam was able to plead with the fathers to let Markie and him walk for a few minutes to banish the cabin fever of the long car trip.
They were back on the road by eleven-thirty, and the kids snoozed quietly as they approached Sherman County and the Columbia River. In the heat of late July, the east wind blew hot across the brownish desert highland. The car was cool inside, though, and travel was a kind of dream, disconnected from the realities of climate and ancient trials of survival.
At two, Jerry woke them. "Biggs Junction ahead, guys. Another 20 minutes to Goldendale."
Markie was instantly awake, looking ahead to the river and to Washington State on its far bank. Sam took a bit longer to focus, yawning two great gulping yawns before his head cleared. As they crossed the river, he could see the chop on its surface far below the bridge. The wind buffeted the car when it gusted, and Lucas dropped the windows, admitting a wave of heat and the smell of vegetation browning, leaving only the roots to hold any moisture. As they rose from the river gorge, Lucas looked east to see Sam Hill's re-creation of the Stonehenge circle where the poet Sam Marshall had changed a fourteen-year-old's life forever. Little did he know that the life of Sam would also be changed in his fourteenth summer.
Because of Sam Marshall, numbers became part of Lucas's story, along with horses and now a family.
Every time they visited, Lucas took the gay kids from the drop-in center in Portland on a walk through the monument, as he would on this visit. Sam found that visit boring now. What he cherished, though, was the time each year that Other Dad and he spent among the stones talking to each other, Lucas focusing the same passion on his son that he did on math problems or the horses. They always started with the latest theories on Stonehenge and then moved on to share their lives — what they were thinking, where they were going. In these private Stonehenge visits each year, the bond between father and son would strengthen, allowing Sam to more easily abide the natural distance that Lucas kept from the rest of the world.
These thoughts reminded Sam of the corresponding time he had with Jerry at the Maryhill Museum just a few miles away. His dad and he would leave for the museum in the morning and spend the better part of a day there. Touring the Rodin exhibit, Jerry would point out something new that he saw in the sketches, the plaster casts, the bronzes and the watercolors — art works that somehow landed in this museum in the middle of nowhere. They would always visit the current exhibitions, and they would end each trip by looking at the crown of the Queen of Romania, donated to the Museum in 1951 because of Queen Marie's connection with Sam Hill, who constructed the mansion above the river that eventually became the museum. Before they left, they would recite Dorothy Parker's poem:
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is something that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
And they would giggle as they left the building. For Sam, this year the poem might have a larger meaning.
Across the bridge, US-97 ran east, paralleling the Columbia for a short while before climbing a 7% grade to the junction with WA-14, Lucas put up the windows and turned the AC on again. They joined highway 14, riding west a short distance before heading north again on US-97, climbing 1000 feet in just under four miles to the Goldendale plateau. For Lucas and Jerry the final leg was homecoming; for Sam, it was a seasonal ritual, and for Markie, the beginning of something new. The girl leaned across Sam as Mt. Adams, rising on their left above its foothills, appeared across the broad basalt plain leading to the town. Sam looked at the back of her neck as she strained to see the mountain through the Prius's small rear window and resisted an urge to place his palm on her back.
"It's huge," she said in fascinated awe. As Markie sat back up, Sam tried to remember what he had felt when he first saw Klickitat, but he had no distinct memory of the first time; rather he recalled an assemblage of memories of infancy and early childhood.
"We'll get up there before we leave. I'll take you to our secret places." Sam held Markie's gaze this time, and she flushed a little.
"How far are the farms?"
"Not long now. The town's just ahead, and our places are almost directly east of the highway across from the town."
Markie stretched to look ahead around Jerry in the front passenger seat. Sam wondered how her presence would change the familiar interaction among the cousins. He thought that Vee would be happy to have another girl with whom to spend time even though Sam, Marshall, and JT tried to include her in their doings as much as reason permitted. Marshall was the natural leader among the three boys, something that had never bothered Sam before. Now, he wasn't so sure. While he was lost in thought, he felt the Prius turn right onto the paved road before turning north again on the packed dirt road connected to the long driveways to the farm houses.
His fathers and grandfather now owned most of the land east of US-97 between East Collins Drive to the south and the Goldendale-Bickleton Road to the north, stretching beyond Clyde Story Road to the east in places. The older generation of locals hadn't known what to make of North and his fathers when they had first arrived and were more uncertain as Lucas and Jerry had added to their property.
The fact that they hosted a small contingent of sexual-minority kids every summer wasn't lost on the local fundamentalist churches, either, although most of the younger Goldendale generations were content to live and let live. In fact, the little pockets of liberality, and a few existed, in the small town were emboldened and rejoiced at the changes.
When Lucas and Jerry had purchased property from Jason's mother, Violet, they had built Turing House on its north side. This house was almost all log and glass, not an easy partnership. The double-glazed modern casement windows, open in the summer, provided cross ventilation for almost all summer heat, but they had central air conditioning as well if needed. They had extended the driveway to the original home where Vi continued to live.
Skirting past Vi's place, Lucas pulled the Prius onto the south side of their cabin. "Home," Lucas said.
Markie saw a tall woman with dark hair mixed with silver walking from the older house to greet them, and a tall, younger Latino man was approaching from an outbuilding to the east of both houses.
The four unfolded themselves from the Prius and stretched. Sweat dampened Markie's brow in the oven-like heat. Vi reached Jerry first and embraced him before holding him away from her. She then turned to Markie. "Thank heavens for another female!" Then Markie received the motherly embrace. "You must be Markie. I'm Violet, Jason's mother; you call me Vi."
If Markie would describe her own mother as emotionally cool, she could feel Vi's warmth even in the heat of the afternoon. Sam and Lucas got the same treatment from the woman before Lucas turned his attention to the Latino man. "Rodrigo. Man, it's good to see you. You look great. How's everybody?" he asked hugging the taller man heartily.
The man replied with a rich accent, "They're all fine."
"I'll come out to see them in a bit, okay?"
Rodrigo looked at Lucas with a little chagrin, "They'll have smelled you by now, so you'd better. Let me help with your bags."
"When I saw you walking over, I thought for just a second that your Uncle Martin was here. I miss him every day. But you're a perfect substitute. Thanks, friend."
By the time they got the luggage into Turing House, a crowd of more family had appeared — everyone but Jim. Markie had met all of them in California but hadn't seen some of them in years. She remembered JT as a little boy when his physician fathers visited Southern California and Vee as a toddler, often in her mother's arms, when North and Annie came south. Now she saw them older but no less friendly.
The family gathered in Turing House's large dining area that was separated from the kitchen by an island of counter space. The house was cool because Rodrigo had turned the AC on the day before. Annie, doing her best to make sure that the crowd didn't overwhelm Markie, took her aside and talked to her about her life in California to allow the others some time to settle down. "Let them form their little organism for a bit, then we'll get you joined."
The generation of cousins seemed to be taking up from the point at which they had last parted, while their parents were trying to begin a process of reacquaintance that would continue for the whole month they would be together. Though Markie had met Annie only twice, she had always admired the woman: tall, slender, and blond. Her son, Marshall, had hair that was ashy white, and looking between Annie and her husband, she saw its source. She thought Marshall drop-dead beautiful, but she didn't feel toward him the same heart tug that she felt for Sam.
After a few minutes of hugging and smiling, Sam looked over at Markie standing on the edge of the scrum looking every bit the outsider. He hushed everyone. "I know you all remember Markie. She's part of the tribe now, right?"
They all nodded, their shouted welcomes layered one over another as they took turns hugging the very surprised girl. Sam noticed Markie's eyes close when Marshall gave her at best a perfunctory embrace and saw that she had inhaled deeply. When her eyes opened they found Sam's.
Sam looked for Other Dad who was not in the room. He knew where OD would be and grabbed Markie's hand, leading her from the air-conditioned house across the brittle grass stubble to a barn. In the barn, a row of stalls was on the left, and on the opposite wall were saddles and leather. Sam put his finger to his lips as they approached the side entrance. What they observed was a sacred ceremony between a man carrying a life-threatening disease and animals that instinctively understood him and the limitations of his disease.
From every stall, a horse's head stretched out to the center, every large equine eye regarding the small man who was greeting them one at a time. His hands, gloved in nitrile, stroked the heads and necks, and as he murmured to them through a mask, their heads lowered to take in the sounds. When the horses nuzzled his chest, Lucas fed them pieces of carrot.
As Sam and Markie slipped quietly away, Markie realized instinctively that what she had seen was a reunion no less important to Lucas than the reunion with his human family — that this place in southern Washington was a fount of life for a group of people who had emerged from the struggle of being different in a world that made being different more difficult than it should have been. Over the next month, Markie would realize that these acres and the mountains and monuments surrounding them defined this unusual group of people that she was now a part of. She had just witnessed the first manifestation of this fount of life.
#
Instead of walking back to the house, Sam took Markie on a diagonal path southward past the older house she knew must be Vi's and across a wide, recently harvested hayfield and eventually to a gate in a wood and wire fence. Up the lane, she could see another house a hundred yards ahead. When they reached the rear of the house, they were both sweating, but in the dry air, their sweat evaporated quickly, cooling them a little. Sam led them through the back door into the cooler darkness of the old house. Through the mudroom, in the large kitchen a tall, slim, gray-haired man, wearing cargo shorts and a light T-shirt was washing lunch dishes. He seemed much older than when she had last seen him, but he retained the natural authority that physicians seem to generate.
Sam interrupted her musing. "JG, how come you didn't come over to welcome us?"
The man turned and walked quickly to the boy, hugging him tightly, lifting him off his feet, and smiling the most genuine smile Markie could ever remember seeing. When the boy was on his feet again, Jim Underhill said, "Oh, I wanted you to myself for the first hello, and I knew where your father would be after he said hello to the human family. I'm happy you brought Markie with you. How are you?" he asked Markie. "I see you survived the first minutes with the pack."
"I think I'm now an honorary member, Doctor Underhill. This place is beautiful …" She started to say and very hot, but didn't.
"Call me Jim, okay? We like it for all its faults."
"How's work?" Sam asked.
"I'm cutting back quite a bit. Since Tom died, things have just been harder, and seeing people preparing to go through the loss that I went through is painful. The cures, though, especially for children, are very sweet."
Markie knew from Sam that Jim was an oncologist and that he had treated Sam's Uncle Jason's father when he was dying. She didn't think that she could manage to work with people who, even if they survived, would have to suffer a cure sometimes as painful as the disease.
"You look tired, Just Gramps."
"You're as tactful as your father, Sam. I'm fine, thank you. You look … tall. I have some fresh lemonade. You go on into the dining room, and I'll bring it."
The two kids walked into the dining room. Markie saw on one wall a doorway into what must have originally been a breakfast area with north-facing windows. She could see a desk and shelves full of books. Sam followed her gaze. "That's where Grampa used to write. You can go in if you want."
She tentatively stepped into the office, almost feeling the powerful personality that had once worked there. As she looked at the shelves, she saw mostly books of poetry, including a few by the man Sam was named for. She also saw copies of the volumes of the Gyres Chronicles. She wasn't fond of the fantasy/sci-fi genre, but many of her friends, mostly boys, had read them all and seen the movies based on them. She turned from the window over the desk to see, beyond Sam standing in the doorway, Jim setting a pitcher and glasses on the dining-room table. She felt as if she were intruding on a private space and walked quickly back to Sam.
At the table Markie saw a plate of cookies and some peeled baby carrots with a small dish of what looked like plain yogurt. "You look like you might prefer raw veggies."
"Thanks, Doctor …" She quickly corrected herself, "Jim." The man smiled at her as Sam scarfed two cookies in succession while she dipped a carrot in the yogurt. She heard the sound of the crunching carrot amplified through the bones of her skull and tried unsuccessfully to chew more quietly.
"Who is Prithvi?" Sam asked.
Jim looked up with a start. "Where did you hear that name?"
Sam, unlike Other Dad, did sometimes shade the truth if he thought doing so was a kindness. "I can't remember. I think maybe he's a character in one of Grampa's books."
Jim stared at his grandson quizzically. "I haven't heard that name in twenty years. A lot of stories Tom invented weren't included in the published versions of Gyres. One of the stories that didn't make it into the books was based on the Hindu notion of the five elements that make up everything. Tom was very fond of the story, but couldn't make it fit in any of the books. Prithvi is a character personifying the element, Earth. I can't imagine that you read Tom's notes about the story, and he died before he could have told you the story. I'm not even sure that your fathers know it."
Caught in the shading of truth, Sam extemporized, "I think maybe OD must have mentioned the name when I was little."
"If he did, he pronounced the name correctly, which is unusual for Americans. You pronounced the name like a Hindi speaker, Preet-we instead of Prith-vee. Maybe your Uncle North mentioned the name. He's the only one of your uncles that I know heard the story."
Looking at the table, Sam softly told his grandfather, "Probably. I always did have a good memory for names."
Jim relaxed a little and smiled at the youngsters, letting his thoughts drift to the evening years past in another dining room when Tom had decided that he would help a runaway, lost, thirteen-year-old, even though he hadn't met him: Lucas. "I wish that you had known Tom. He was the most generous person I've ever known."
The intimacy of shared loss between Sam and this man dawned on Markie. She saw the profound sadness as she listened to the exchange. She knew from Sam that his grandfather had died in a car crash, not of cancer, not of disease.
Thinking over the series of texts from JT prior to him leaving Seattle and Sam leaving California, Sam said, "I know you miss him, but you're okay, right?"
"Okay? Yes, I suppose I am." With a deep sigh, Jim changed the subject. "After I get the dishes cleared up, we should get back to Turing House. Your other dad should be through saying hello to the four-legged friends by now."
#
Before Jim donned a baseball cap, Sam looked at his hair, still full, though more gray than black now; the hairline hadn't receded. Sam wished he could age as well as Jim, but one of the curious circumstances of being adopted was that he didn't know what genetic deck he had been dealt from. He had no idea about the constraints his DNA might put on his life expectancy or his health, and he had never been tempted to ask whether his fathers knew the details. He knew that his birth mother had abandoned him, or so it seemed to him, and he had no desire to find her or know her — not even mild curiosity. He only vaguely remembered life before life with his fathers.
When he asked his fathers why they had chosen him, they told him that he, in fact, had chosen them — that of all the children they saw once they decided to adopt, he had been the only one not to shrink from them. To Lucas, he was an interesting boy. Jerry saw a boy that seemed to grasp them as he might a life preserver. Sam knew he had been fortunate, and although he wasn't as innately brilliant as Other Dad or as artistically blessed as Jerry, he was quick, intuitive, curious, loving, persistent, and intelligent in his own way. He was becoming a competent guitarist.
OD reminded him often of how much he valued the boy's curiosity, and he never asked the boy to live for anyone but himself. His fathers asked questions instead of imparting wisdom, and the boy's persistence in asking questions back was born of not getting away with facile answers. His parents allowed him many mistakes as he grew but none serious enough to permanently injure him, and he learned from them. Sam was also a good judge of people's natures, valuing what many did not and discounting what many valued. The boy was a lesson in what nurturing might produce in a child, who, unless worn down by conformity, generally rises to the expectations of those he loves.
Just as they cleared the back door, a delegation of three cousins, Marshall, JT, and, Vee, was approaching from the north. JT ran ahead to grab his grandfather's hand. "You should have come over when they got here! We missed you."
"Thank you, JT. I just wanted to spend a little quiet time with Sam as I did with you when you arrived. That's fair, isn't it?"
JT frowned, but agreed with an unenthusiastic nod. If there was such a thing as emotional intelligence, JT was brilliant. All the cousins loved him because he was acutely attuned to emotional changes in the people around him, and he was the best listener among them. In this sense, he took after his psychiatrist father instead of his pediatrician father. But remarkably, he wasn't afflicted by the desire to solve everyone else's problems, though he was helpful when help would do some good. He was the youngest of the cousins when adopted, but they all had birthdays, either known or established, within months of each other. When JT had texted Sam about his concerns for JG, Sam paid attention.
As they walked, JT was on JG's right, his hand in his grandfather's, and the man put his left arm over his other grandson's shoulders. Sam unconsciously reached out to take Markie's hand in his left and Vee's in his right. At Turing House, they found the rest of the crowd, including Lucas, telling stories about one another. Unfortunately for Lucas, his adopted brother North had the more embarrassing stories to tell, but he was a good sport and wasn't abashed at the reminders of the boy he once was.
Annie and North had taken lunch in charge, and everyone fell on the grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade potato salad, even Markie. Jason and Jonathan, the Js, took care of the dishes, reminding the kids that from now on they would share kitchen duty, making sure that their son, JT, understood the directive.
JT's fathers, had been together emotionally since the first time they had met in Portland, a meeting engineered by North or Annie depending on who was telling the story. Ultimately, they had finished undergraduate and medical schools together. Jason had specialized in psychiatry and Jonathan in pediatrics. They both worked now in the clinics of the University of Washington and were clinical professors in the medical school.
Jason's mother, Vi, was a tribal elder in the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. The generation of cousins had grown up regarding her as a shaman because she told them her People's creation stories and believed that mountains had spirits. She was an astute businesswoman with a powerful moral lodestone.
Eventually, the adults migrated to the living room and the young people to the larger family room. The tradition was that the male cousins would all sleep here on the first night everyone was present and would be responsible for breakfast in the morning. The family room had no television, nor for that matter did any room in the house. Since none of the children spent much time watching television at home, they had no sense of deprivation. While their parents talked about what the kids figured were boring adult matters, the kids brought the pack up to speed on their lives.
Dinner was an experience of communal preparation and dining. People took food from the island counter and wandered off in small groups of mixed age to eat. Sam wasn't particularly happy when Markie left the group he was in and wandered over to the group with Marshall. His blond cousin smiled and moved so that she could sit beside him. Sam decided that he would have a talk with Marshall, but he felt odd feeling the need to talk about Markie as if she were someone between them. On reflection, he thought that before he talked with Marshall, he should talk with Markie to see how she felt about his cousin and about him. He didn't want Marshall to be a rival.
At the end of the evening, as people were beginning to wander back to Jim's or Vi's, Sam grabbed Vee's hand. He had mentioned to Markie that he hoped she would get to know Vee better. "Hey, Vee, how'd you like to spend the night? You could bunk with Markie, as long as you don't tell her a bunch of secrets. We're going to the observatory tomorrow if you want to tag along."
Vee looked for Markie and when she found her, asked if she could sleep over. "I'd like that, Vee. We need to stick together among all these boys." The younger girl found her mom and dad and told them she was staying over. North thought how like her it was to tell them, not ask them. He looked at Annie, and they both nodded to the girl.
#
As the five young ones played a board game in the dining room before bed, a knock on the door rang through the place. Jerry opened the door to find Mark Morgan on the small porch. "Sheriff, everything all right?"
Sheriff Morgan shook hands with Jerry. "Well, I'm not sure. Do you and Lucas have time for a chat?"
"Sure. Come in and sit down. I'll find Luke."
Luke had been in his office thinking about topology and M Theory. The whiteboard in his home office held the same equations as the one in his office at the lab. He shook himself out of deep concentration when Jerry said that the sheriff was here. He'd never really been comfortable with cops, but he knew that the sheriff, when he had been the county's Chief Criminal Deputy, had been very helpful to Vi and Martin. In fact, his son Steve had gone to school with North and Jason, eventually helping Jason through his coming out.
The sheriff rose and shook Lucas's hand. While the children played, the adults sat in the living room, and the sheriff began to spin a strange tale. "I had a visit this morning from a couple of Feds… ." When he finished the story, Mark showed the two men a couple of photographs, asking if they had seen either of the men.
They both said no. Lucas looked especially perplexed. "You can't be serious. We're not a movement, and how the hell did DHS get involved?"
"The agents were a bit tight-lipped about that, but they did mention that some of your work has military applications. I had no idea what you did. I don't think they'd be here if their bosses thought no threat existed. They think we have our heads up our asses, but I'll tell you right now that we will take care of our own, and you and any visitors you have here are our own, period."
"Military applications? No damned way. I've never done anything for the military." Jerry could see his husband winding up. His voice rising, Lucas continued, "I need to talk to these guys."
Before things could get out of hand, Jerry interrupted to ask the sheriff, "What do you recommend?"
"Short of canceling your plans, I suggest you keep the kids close to the farm. The Feds are going to do some snooping around, and so will we. I'm not thinking this is a big deal, but I wanted you to know what's going on."
"Sheriff," Lucas reiterated, "I want to talk to the Homeland Security people."
"I'll pass your interest along, Lucas."
As Mark stood, Jerry thanked him. When he left, Lucas turned to Jerry. "What the fuck, Jer?"