Chapter 11

DEKE KNOCKED ON the back door of the clinic, waited half a minute, knocked again. The door opened and he said, “Hey, Marla.”

“We’re closed on Sundays,” Dr. Fraelich said.

“I saw your car,” he said.

He stooped to get under the doorway, then followed Marla to her office. “So did you look at them?” he asked.

She sat at her desk and opened one of the drawers. She took out the plastic bag he’d given her when he picked up Paxton. “There’s nothing here I didn’t prescribe for her,” she said. “None of them have been switched.”

“I had to check,” he said. He’d pulled the bottles from Jo Lynn’s medicine cabinet the first day he’d searched her house. The dates on the bottles were months old, and most of them were more than half-full. “It didn’t look like she was using them anyway.”

“That’s because they weren’t working. She kept getting resistant to them. Betas have an amazing immune system.”

“So if she wasn’t taking antidepressants, was she still depressed?”

“I don’t think so,” Marla said. “She got over that too. She seemed fine whenever I talked to her.”

Deke sighed. “Yeah. Me too.” He reached into his breast pocket and handed her two folded pieces of paper. “I want you to read something.” He sat down on the floor, which put him at eye level with her.

She unfolded the pages, then read the top of the first page. “Who are these people?”

“Brother Bewlay’s a screen name Jo was using,” he said. “Weygand is some guy she met online.” Marla looked surprised. “They wrote to each other for almost a year.”

“She never told me that,” Marla said.

Deke frowned. “I was hoping she had.”

When Marla finished reading she said, “How did you get this?”

He told her about Weygand driving down and breaking into Jo’s house. He left out the part about smashing Weygand’s windshield and threatening the man. “Most of it’s trading conspiracy theories about the Changes,” he said. “But this stuff about the young beta women …”

“The white-scarf girls, obviously. She’s making it sound all hypothetical, but it’s them. Weygand seems clueless. Did he even know that she was a beta?”

“He said he suspected it,” Deke said. “Though he didn’t know until after the funeral.”

“So they weren’t that close,” Marla said.

Deke almost smiled. “No, not that close.” Donna had told him that Marla was in love with Jo Lynn, and he hadn’t believed it, until now. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Everyone fell in love with Jo.

Deke said, “So the white-scarf girls, the talk about stoning. I can’t tell if Jo was really afraid of them, or—”

“Not afraid,” Marla said. “She just knew what they were capable of.”

“Are you talking about the effigy?” Deke asked. “Come on, Marla. A fire’s one thing, but murder—”

“You don’t think they wanted me dead?” Marla said. “They tried to torch my house while I was asleep.”

He felt his phone vibrate in his pants pocket but ignored it. Had to be Rhonda again. She’d called him twice already this morning.

“They’re kids,” Deke said. “They got carried away. They weren’t trying to burn down the house.” A straw figure—dressed in a white doctor’s coat with a wooden knife taped to its hand—had been lit and thrown against the wall of Marla’s house. The flames had scorched the paint, little more, before Deke and some of the boys arrived to put the fire out. After Marla threatened to bring in the police, three teenage beta girls, white scarves in place, presented themselves to the reverend. The reverend promised to punish them, and Deke talked Marla into not pressing charges. She’d held that against him ever since.

“It’s one step from bombing a clinic, Deke. You don’t understand these girls. They’re different.”

“Because they don’t have sex? Do you believe this separate species stuff too—the teleportation stuff, the parallel universes, all that?”

“It’s one theory.”

“Jo’s theory,” he said. “That she got from real scientists, right?”

“Yes, there are reputable people who think quantum calculation could explain what happened,” Marla said. “Most of the evidence is circumstantial, though. Statistical. TDS changed the chromosome so completely that they say it’s impossible to see how the new order could arise from the old. It’s like running a dictionary through a leaf shredder and spraying out Hamlet on your front lawn.”

“You’re talking about introns.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been reading up.”

“I got it from Weygand. Didn’t make any sense to me.”

“Introns are the part of DNA that don’t code for proteins. Because they’re not needed, they can mutate faster than other parts of the DNA where a change in the protein could kill the creature. You can look at intron sequences within proteins to tell small differences between related species, like the differences between humans and chimps. Both may produce the same hemoglobin protein, and their DNA is mostly the same, but the introns are very different. Between the clades, we’ve found differences in every protein sequence we’ve looked at: hemoglobin chains, cytochromes, histones …”

“Really,” Deke said. She wasn’t looking at him, and hadn’t heard the smile in his voice.

“So while the sequences are a mystery, there’s no need to invoke quantum weirdness. Most people are looking for a more realistic, testable mechanism that would cause those changes—a retrovirus, maybe, something small we’ve overlooked. My bet is that it’ll be a variant of something we already know about, maybe a bacterial plasmid we’ve been carrying around dormant for thousands of years—something that’s been unable till now to inject its own set of genetic instructions. See, plasmids can’t usually get out of the cell they’re trapped in, so they require—why are you laughing?”

Deke shook his head, still smiling. “This is what I felt like when I talked to Jo. You guys are just—” He fanned the top of his head. “Whoosh.” He got to his feet.

“You asked,” she said.

Not for all that, he thought, but let it pass.

Marla handed back the bag of bottles and the papers. “How’s Donna doing?” she asked. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” he said. Then shrugged. “The waiting is hard.”

“Jo Lynn was right about one thing,” Marla said. “Asexual reproduction would be a lot simpler.”

“Amen,” he said.

Rhonda’s Cadillac was parked in front of his shop. He sighed heavily, then pulled in beside the car.

Rhonda stepped out from the passenger side. Everett, behind the wheel, lifted a hand in hello. “I didn’t see you in church,” Rhonda said. “Donna said you were working. I called, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

“I was doing some errands,” Deke said. He unlocked the bay door and pushed it open. “Come on inside.”

He flipped on the main lights and led Rhonda across the shop floor toward his plastic-draped office area. He planned to put up real walls, but he’d hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

Rhonda stopped at the first row of pews. “When you get these done you’ll have no excuse for backsliding,” she said. She rubbed the glossy back of one of the finished pews. “You do beautiful work, Deke. All your boys do.” She looked up at him. “Do you know who the Shakers were?”

“Like Shaker furniture?”

“Your work reminds me of theirs. Do you know why there aren’t any Shakers anymore?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t know they were gone.”

“They didn’t believe in sex,” she said. “Not just premarital sex—any kind. That was kind of shortsighted, don’t you think? And they weren’t much good at evangelizing either. So when they started to get old and die off, that was it for the whole religion.” She smiled. “Left behind some beautiful furniture, though.”

“So. You think argos should evangelize.”

“Ha! I wish you could. Just do some preaching and have people start growing. You remember Ernest Angley? TV healer. He’d slap people’s foreheads—whap!—and they’d flop over, quivering like fish.” She hooted in laughter. “I used to love watching him. It was like professional wrestling for Baptists.” She wiped at an eye, still chuckling. “Oh law. Is this sturdy?” She touched a bookcase turned onto its side, one of the few things in the shop low enough for her to sit on.

“Go ahead,” Deke said.

He thought they’d talk in his office, but if Rhonda wanted to talk out here, then fine. He took a seat opposite her on one of the unfinished pews. “You said you wanted to talk about the school?”

“The reverend’s on me again about her Co-op school. She wants to use part of the loan for the high school for it. She called it a ‘branch campus’ of the high school, so it wouldn’t be considered a separate expenditure.”

“Is that legal? The grant’s for one school: the loan’s for one school …”

“Oh, it may be unusual, but I looked into it and it’s legal. I found some other high schools that do it. Usually they’re for tech-ed programs or special ed, but there are also these ‘alternative schools’—for problem students, nontraditional learners. I think the betas would qualify as nontraditional.”

“The whole town qualifies,” Deke said.

“And if we think it will cause problems with the grant, we use the grant for the main school, and part of the loan for the Co-op school. Of course the town council would have to vote on it.”

“Two separate schools,” Deke said evenly. “One for charlies, one for betas.”

“I know, I know,” Rhonda said. “I told the reverend, it’s like a slap in the face to the argos. We’ve been telling everybody that the school is for everyone, that someday the argos are going to have children. But this way it looks too much like two clades grabbing all the money and telling the argos to go hang—and that’s not the way it’s intended. Still, you know how people are. I don’t like what that would do to the town. If I were you, I wouldn’t vote for it.”

Deke leaned back in the pew. Whenever Rhonda told him what he shouldn’t do, he started checking the locks.

“What would make me vote for it, Aunt Rhonda?”

She smiled. “If I were you, I’d want some of that high school money to set up a fund, a fertility assistance fund. Just for argos.”

“Really.”

“If argos don’t have children, why should they pay for a school? I don’t blame them. That’s why every argo couple who wants to ought to be able to go to the fertility clinic at the university.”

“Some of us are already doing that,” Deke said.

Rhonda didn’t pretend ignorance. “And it’s expensive, isn’t it? I don’t have all the numbers, but I figure you’re spending twenty, thirty thousand every time you try to fertilize an egg, none of it covered by insurance. Is that right?”

“You’re in the ballpark.”

“We’re a poor little town,” Rhonda said. “That’s a lot of money even for someone with their own business, and most of your people aren’t even working. Tell them they have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars, you might as well tell them to build a rocket ship while they’re at it. No, they need assistance.”

“This fund. Now that is illegal.”

“Well, it wouldn’t hold up to an audit, that’s for sure. It would have to be unofficial. When we build the school, we’d go through Alpha Furniture for part of the construction, on account of you’re a local, minority-owned business, then we’d—”

“We’re not minorities, Rhonda.”

“Handicapped, then.” She grinned. “Certainly a class of people oppressed by prejudice and bias—whatever the government wants to hear. Work with me, hon.”

Deke laughed. “Jesus, Rhonda …”

“That money goes to Alpha, but a significant amount is for the fertility fund. I can show you how to set this up. The important thing is that you are the administrator of the fund. People trust you, Deke. You’re the Chief. They know you’ll divide up the money fair and square.”

“I know what embezzlement is, Rhonda. And fraud.”

“Pah! We’re talking about a higher law. I’m only suggesting this—and the only way the reverend would go along with it—because you’re an honest man. That’s the only way this would work. We trust you to do the right thing, especially for your people.” She held out a hand. “Now, pull me up.”

Deke helped her to her feet and walked her to the front door. “I’ll come back around to hear your decision,” she said.

“You can hear it now,” Deke said, and Rhonda held up a hand.

“No,” she said. “You go home and think about it. Talk to Donna.” Everett hopped out to open the car door for her. “Oh, one more thing,” Rhonda said. “Paxton tried to climb over the wall to the Home last night.”

“Come again?”

“One of my boys almost shot him. They had to pull him down, and he went wild. Clete had to knock him down a peg.”

“Jesus, Rhonda, Clete?” The boy was a moron and a thug. “What did he do to him?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Paxton’s a little roughed up, but he’s fine.”

“I told you last week,” Deke said. “You can take care of Harlan, God knows he needs it, but Paxton is off limits.”

“Paxton put himself on limits when he tried to break into the Home. I chewed Clete out when I heard what happened. But honestly, Paxton’s acting like a drug addict. Next time he tries something like that they’ll shoot him dead. Besides, there’s no reason for him to break in.” She opened the car door. “His daddy’s gone dry again.”

“Really.”

“Hasn’t produced a drop since we brought him home from the church.”

“Maybe he’s recharging. He was sure gushing that night.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I think it’s something else. Something between fathers and sons. You know how ugly that can get.”

His gut tightened as if she’d jabbed a two-by-four under his ribs. Goddamn her. She was talking about Willie and Donald Flint. As if he could ever forget what happened, what she held over him.

She tapped the top of the car. “You think about that fund, Deke. While you make your beautiful furniture.”

There were four of them who found Willie that day, but it was Deke who’d led the way into the house, an ancient cabin that didn’t even have an indoor toilet. He practically knocked down the door getting in. Rhonda came in behind him, followed by Barron Truckle and Jo Lynn.

It was Jo who’d come to Deke with the news of the charlie parties, the rumors of a new drug and bad things happening up in the woods. She’d convinced him they had to do something about it, and not only that, but since Willie and Donald were charlies, they had to bring Aunt Rhonda with them. Rhonda wasn’t mayor then, but Jo said she was the leader of her clade. It was the first time he’d heard that word.

Donald Flint, Willie’s youngest son, was in the front room, sitting on the couch with a half-naked charlie girl on his lap, facing him. Another charlie girl lay on a pile of blankets on the floor; she’d been jolted awake by the sudden noise. The place was a sty, beer cans everywhere.

Donald looked at them stupidly, then decided he should be offended. He pushed the girl off him and started to get up. Deke yelled something—he didn’t remember what—but it made Donald stick to his spot on the couch.

Rhonda kicked the girl on the floor, told both of them to get home. She knew their families, and they knew she knew them. The girls scrambled for shirts and jeans and hustled out. Half a minute later they’d started up one of the six cars in the gravel driveway and peeled out.

Deke told Barron to watch Donald, and then he followed Jo down the hallway. She marched straight to Willie’s bedroom as if she’d been there before. Or perhaps she was only following the smell. When that back bedroom door opened the stench rolled out in a wave: shit and rot and a strange sickly-sweet odor he didn’t recognize. It would be months before Deke would be able to name it as the smell of stale vintage.

The old man’s corpse lay sprawled sideways across a pair of double beds that had been pushed together. He was wider than any human being he’d seen to that point. Willie’s body seemed to have collapsed in on itself like a rotted pumpkin, and his skin was pocked and cratered by infection and his son Donald’s inept needlework.

Someone gasped, and Deke looked down and behind him. Rhonda had come into the room and burst into tears. He’d always thought that was just a phrase, but the tears were coming out of her like a cloudburst, a flood, making her cheeks gleam.

Then just as suddenly the tears stopped. Her face went rigid and somehow she willed herself to regain control of her body. Later, Deke thought that this was the moment she became mayor of Switchcreek.

I see now, Rhonda said. Or at least that’s what he thought she said. I see now.

Rhonda turned and strode back down the hallway. Deke hurried after her, shoulders scraping the ceiling.

In the living room, Donald was off the couch and barking into Barron’s face like a furious child. The boy was naked except for a pair of sweatpants hanging low on his hips. Two years before he’d been a skinny kid, and then the Changes had made him into a plump, round-faced charlie. Over the past few months, however, he’d transformed again, turning into a cartoonish mass of muscles: biceps too big for sleeves, shoulders swallowing his neck. A bodybuilder who’d been eating other bodybuilders.

Rhonda reached the boy in two strides and turned his head sideways with a slap.

Donald blinked, touched his cheek. Rhonda shouted something—Deke thought it was something dramatic like, You killed him, but perhaps it was only a string of curse words—and then she hit him again, this time with her closed fist.

Donald frowned, shook his head. Then he leaped on her.

Rhonda fell to the floor, Donald on top of her, his hands locked around her throat. Donald was fast, and strong. But still no argo.

Deke’s memories of the next few minutes were disjointed, a collection of snapshots. He remembered his arm swinging down like a wrecking ball. He remembered Donald suddenly on the other side of the room, sprawled on the floor. An armchair and a lamp between them had been knocked over.

Then suddenly Donald threw himself toward the couch, reaching under it. Was there a gun? Deke couldn’t remember if there was a gun.

The next moment Deke was across the room and Donald was tumbling through the open door like a rag doll. There was a sickening whump as he struck something outside—a car, as it turned out.

Deke wanted to destroy the man. It was that simple. And he got what he wanted.

Outside, Donald lay half sitting up against the crumpled front fender of Willie’s Ford pickup, his head bent at a too-steep angle, as if he were trying to look inside his own chest.

Rhonda, Barron, and Jo came out sometime later. Maybe it was only a few seconds. “I fucked up,” Deke remembered telling Jo. “I fucked up.” Jo leaned over him and circled her arms around his gray neck.

A little later Jo and Rhonda would work out where Barron would take the body, who would call the authorities, what mix of manufactured and true facts they could agree upon—the standard bookkeeping of conspiracy. Rhonda would take care of the charlie girls who’d fled from the house. It would turn out to be almost comically easy to convince them that now that Donald had run off, and who knew if the police would ever find him, the only way they could avoid being charged with Willie’s murder—accessories, at least—was to follow Rhonda’s instructions to the letter. Rhonda told him that by the end they were thanking her, tears in their eyes, for protecting them.

But before all that, they waited for Deke. He took a long time to get to his feet. When he stood, Barron looked at him like he was a monster.

But not Jo, and not Aunt Rhonda. “You saved my life,” Rhonda told him. “And this thing here?” She jerked her head toward Donald Flint’s body. “You will not spend one second regretting the day you took this evil piece of shit out of the world. I’m only sorry you beat me to it.”

Words.

He thought about Donald every day.

He walked downtown to Donna’s Sewing Room—a too-quaint name for such a noisy workshop. He stepped through the back door and into a big room loud with the growls of industrial sewing machines, the blare of country radio, and the deep-voiced chatter of half a dozen argo women. Donna stood at the end of a row of machines, a huge bolt of cloth on her shoulder, explaining to her youngest employee how to clear a jam in her machine. The girl, Mandy Sparks, was only seventeen, and the bulky, secondhand JUKI sewing machine was older than she was. All the machines were secondhand and prone to breakdowns. Donna spent half her time playing mechanic.

She frowned to see him there—they usually didn’t bother each other during the day. He said, “You got a second?”

Donna told the girl to cut the cloth and start over—“But slow down, for goodness’ sake. Slow is steady and steady is fast”—and set the bolt of cloth down against one wall. She led him out to the smaller showroom, which was empty of customers.

“What is it?” she asked.

He slipped his arms around her waist and looked up at her. She was nearly a foot taller than him, but both of them were still growing. No one knew how long argos could live. Some days he felt in his bones that they had decades in them, maybe centuries. Years of slow growth, their bodies stretching up and out and into each other like trees. And some days he felt the future coming at them like an axe.

“Come on, Deke, I have to get back to work.”

He wanted to make something better than him. Something as beautiful as she was.

“I’ve got some good news,” he said.