“We’ve got to help him,” Perion said again, and burst into tears.

Glen touched Mark’s belly and Mark’s eyes, which had been half-lidded and glazed, opened wide. He screamed. Glen jerked his hand away as if he had put it on a hot stove and looked from Stu to Harold and then back to Stu again with barely concealed panic. “What would you two gentlemen suggest?”

Harold stood with his throat working convulsively, as if something was stuck in there, and choking him. At last he blurted, “Give him some aspirin.”

Perion, who had been gazing down at Mark through her tears, now whirled to look at Harold. “Aspirin?” she asked. Her tone was one of furious astonishment. “Aspirin? ” This time she shrieked it. “Is that the best you can do with all your big-talk smartassery? Aspirin? ”

Harold stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked at her miserably, accepting the rebuke.

Stu said very quietly, “But Harold’s right, Perion. For now, aspirin’s just about the best we can do. What time is it?”

“You don’t know what to do!” she screamed at them. “Why don’t you just admit it?”

“It’s quarter of three,” Frannie said.

“What if he dies?” Peri pushed a sheaf of dark auburn hair away from her face, which was puffed from crying.

“Leave them alone, Peri,” Mark said in a dull, tired voice. It startled them all. “They’ll do what they can. If it goes on hurting as bad as this, I think I’d father be dead anyway. Give me some aspirin. Anything.”

“I’ll get it,” Harold said, eager to be away. “There’s some in my knapsack. Extra Strength Excedrin,” he added, as if hoping for their approval, and then he went for it nearly scuttling in his hurry.

“We’ve got to help him,” Perion said, returning to her old scripture.

Stu drew Glen and Frannie off to one side.

“Any ideas on what to do about this?” he asked them quietly. “I don’t have any, I can tell you. She was mad at Harold, but his aspirin idea was just about twice as good as any I’ve had.”

“She’s upset, that’s all,” Fran said.

Glen sighed. “Maybe it’s just his bowels. Too much roughage. Maybe he’ll have a good movement and it’ll clear up.”

Frannie was shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s it. He wouldn’t be running a fever if it was his bowels. And I don’t think his belly would have swelled up that way, either.” It had almost looked as if a tumor had swelled up there overnight. It made her feel ill to think about it. She could not remember when (except for when she was dreaming the dreams) she had been so badly frightened. What was it Harold had said? There’s no doctor in the house. How true it was. How horribly true. God, it was all coming at her at once, crashing down all around her. How horribly alone they were. How horribly far out on the wire they were, and somebody had forgotten the safety net. She looked from Glen’s strained face to Stu’s. She saw deep concern in both of them, but no answers in either of them.

Behind them, Mark screamed again, and Perion echoed his cry as if she felt his pain. In a way, Frannie supposed that she did.

“What are we going to do?” Frannie asked helplessly.

She was thinking of the baby, and over and over again the question which dinned its way into her mind was: What if it has to be cesarean? What if it has to be cesarean? What if —

Behind her, Mark screamed again like some horrible prophet, and she hated him.

They looked at each other in the trembling dark.

From Fran Goldsmith’s Diary

July 6, 1990

After some persuasion Mr. Bateman has agreed to come along with us. He sez that after all his articles (“I write them in big words so no one will really know how simpleminded they are,” he sez) and boring twenty years of students to death in SY-1 and SY-2, not to mention the Sociology of Deviant Behavior and Rural Sociology, he has decided he can’t afford to turn down this opportunity.

Stu wanted to know what opportunity he meant.

“I should think that would be clear,” sez Harold in that INSUFFERABLY SNOTTY way of his (sometimes Harold can be a dear but he can also be a real boogersnot and tonight he was being the latter). “Mr. Bateman—”

“Please call me Glen,” sez he, very quietly, but the way Harold glared at him, you would have thought he had accused Harold of having some social disease.

“Glen, as a sociologist, sees the opportunity to study the formation of a society first-hand, I believe. He wants to see how fact compares with theory.”

Well, to make a long story short, Glen (which I will call him from now on, since that’s what he likes) agreed that was mostly it but added: “I also have certain theories which I’ve written down and hope to prove or disprove. I don’t believe that man arising from the ashes of the superflu is going to be anything like man arising from the cradle of the Nile with a bone in his nose and a woman by the hair. That’s one of the theories.”

Stu said, in that quiet way he has, “Because everything is lying around, waiting to be picked up again.” He looked so grim when he said it that I was surprised, and even Harold looked at him sort of funny.

But Glen just nodded and said, “That’s right. The technological society has walked off the court, so to speak, but they’ve left all the basketballs behind. Someone will come along who remembers the game and teach it to the rest again. That’s rather neat, isn’t it? I ought to write it down later.”

note 6

So then Harold sez, “You sound as if you believe the whole thing will start up again—the arms race, the pollution, and so on. Is that another of your theories? Or a corollary to the first one?”

“Not exactly,” Glen started to say, but before he could go any further, Harold burst in with his own chicken-bone to pick. I can’t put it down word for word, because when he gets excited Harold talks fast, but what he said amounted to how, even though he had a pretty low opinion of people in general, he didn’t think they could be that stupid. He said he thought that this time around, certain laws would be made. One would be no fiddling around with badass stuff like nuclear fission and fleurocarbon (probably spelled that one wrong, oh well) sprays and stuff like that. I do remember one thing he said, because it was a very vivid image. “Just because the Gordian knot has been cut for us is no reason for us to go to work and tie it back up.”

I could see he was just spoiling for an argument—one of the things that makes Harold hard to like is how eager he is to show off how much he knows (and he sure does know a lot, I can’t take that away from him, Harold is superbright)—but all Glen said was, “Time will tell, won’t it?”

That all finished up about an hour ago, and now I am in an upstairs bedroom with Kojak lying on the floor beside me. Good dog! It is all rawther cozy, reminds me of home, but I am trying not to think about home too much because it makes me weepy. I know this must sound awful but I really wish I had someone to help me warm this bed. I even have a candidate in mind.

Put it out of your mind, Frannie!

So tomorrow we’re off for Stovington and I know Stu doesn’t like the idea much. He’s scared of that place. I like Stu very much, only wish Harold liked him more. Harold is making everything very hard, but I suppose he can’t help his nature.

Glen has decided to leave Kojak behind. He is sorry to have to do that, even though Kojak will have no trouble finding forage. Still there is nothing else for it unless we could find a motorcycle with a sidecar, and even then poor Kojak might get scared and jump out. Hurt or kill himself.

Anyway tomorrow we’ll be going.

Things to Remember: The Texas Rangers (baseball team) had a pitcher named Nolan Ryan who pitched all kinds of no-hitters and things with his famous fastball, and a no-hitter is very good. There were TV comedies with laugh-tracks, and a laugh-track was people on tape laughing at the funny parts, and they were supposed to make you have a better time watching. You used to be able to get frozen cakes and pies at the supermarket and just thaw them out and eat them. Sara Lee strawberry cheesecake was my personal favorite.