LITMIR.BIZ

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“It was their choice,” Chad said firmly, as if there were no reason to question it. He didn’t want Howard asking more questions. Sharis, years before, had said they should never tell the boys. “And, okay, so now we’re now and the Grid is great, it works, we eat, so everybody wants it.” Under the map, Chad drew a circle and divided it with several diagonals. “That’s a pie, see? The rest of the world wants a piece of that pie. Because they have their own Short Times now.”

      Leon briefly examined the scab sitting on his finger, then popped it in his mouth. Chad decided to ignore this.

      Howard said, “Atunde said the rest of the world is against us.”

      “Not the whole world. Mexico’s on our side. And lots of countries are neutral. Europe, China, Australia. Look.” Chad turned the paper over and drew a big circle. He made some shapes for North and South America on the left and Europe and Africa on the right, letting Asia and Australia disappear over the globe’s right edge. “These places are against us.” He made big scowling faces out of South America and Africa. “They call themselves the Alliance.”

      “Bye,” Leon said, jumping from his chair and heading out the back door.

      The previous week, Chad and Sharis had attended a party at their neighbors’. People had been drinking and there was lots of loud conversation.

      —For graduation! Sending them to Alabama for graduation! Like it’s just a trip.

      —And normally she’s very organized, but after her office closed she …

      —And the Calmadol! Ten doses a day at least, and now that you can’t get it on your health card, he …”

      Sharis’s voice, in Chad’s mind, had been the only clear one. “I’m not going to teach my kids to flee. Dayton is our home and we’re staying.”

      —You should hear our neighbor who’s in air force intelligence. There’s a lot of dissention in the Alliance we don’t hear about. He says the Africans hate the Suds.

      —You want to be ruled by fear? Wumba Bumba to that African music!

      “They aren’t Africans,” Sharis had said. “They’re regular Americans.”

      Walking home with Chad, Sharis had spoken again about the Melano custodian in the church in downtown Dayton where she’d stayed the night after the Gridding. “Are you the light man?” she’d asked, and she saw again the worried concern on his face.

      The door slammed behind Leon. Chad tried not to wince. “And then,” Chad said to Howard, “and this really, really upset people, Canada went against us. Canada, our neighbor to the north. “Here’s us”—Chad made a rough rectangle—“and here’s Canada.” He filled this in with angry crosshatches. “So that’s how the Alliance can get into Cleveland and threaten to capture the Grid. There’s Lake Erie up here”—this part of the drawing was getting crowded, so Chad did no more than tap the area—“and Cleveland’s on the south side of the lake and Canada is right across the water. So it’s handy for the Alliance to have Canada helping them. You know if our enemies got the Grid it would really change things.” Chad hesitated. “People can’t believe it about Canada,” he said.

      Now Howard was looking bored, so Chad sketched another animal to the right of the globe.

      “Is that a cow?” Howard said.

      “No, no, no,” Chad said. He added a stick figure in a big hat to the back of his animal. “That’s a Canadian Mountie. A policeman on a horse. When I was a kid, my favorite movie was about Mounties.”

      “Okay.” Howard bent over and pulled on his shoes, his broad back and wide buttocks facing Chad. Howard’s weight was a comfort to Chad: it would take Howard a long time to starve.

      “The Alliance won’t capture the Grid, though, don’t worry,” Chad said. “It’s really well defended. Bristling with missiles.” To the left of the globe, Chad drew some fat arrows pointing upward. He considered these a moment, then found himself doodling wiggly curls all over the paper. What in the world was he drawing? Worms.

      Howard stood. “I’m going outside now? I’ve got to help Leon with his fort.” Leon was the brother with ideas. He was also way too skinny.

      “Sure.” Chad crumpled the paper. “You’ll need to pick something else, though. As a natural wonder. There’s a reason they call the Grid communities intentional villages. Because the Grid’s not … ”

      “I’ll ask Miss Bishop,” Howard said, disappearing out the door.

      tuuro and the boy

      AT WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN, the church in downtown Dayton where Tuuro worked, the new (five years) pastor liked to call him Our Director, using a hearty, booming voice that made Tuuro squirm inside. Tuuro was in maintenance. Aunt Stella, not Tuuro’s real relative but his godmother or whatever she was, liked to say people could have all the automation and lifestyle control they wanted, but somebody had to sweep the floors. Tuuro swept the floors. He liked his job, the piles of crumbs and lint and plastic children’s rings and bits of straw (straw! where did that come from?) he accumulated at the end of a Sunday. The detritus of the world consoled him with its humble dailiness, and Tuuro enjoyed disposing of it handily, lifting a burden and tossing it away. Once he wrote a ditty about it:

       The dust is flying in the air the lint is going too. If you think clean is Godly I sure have the church for you.

      Irreverent, really. Maybe slightly hostile. Not a poem he would have recited to the pastor. Tuuro knew what he could say to people or not. He had a daughter, Lanita, who lived with her mother outside Chattanooga. Tuuro had lived with Lanita’s mother, Naomi, for almost seven years, and the relationship had split up, not, Tuuro had come to realize, over his lack of ambition, as Naomi had told him at the time, but because of the way Naomi had come to picture Tuuro. He knew how he looked: tall, darker than mahogany, dignified, with a face something like a cat’s, high cheekbones and alert eyes. On the street mothers jabbed their daughters to take a look. But the Tuuro Naomi saw looked nothing like this man: her Tuuro was smaller, and he was cringing. He looked to Naomi, Tuuro realized, the way he looked to himself.

      Not that he wasn’t a good man, as Naomi liked to say, but Naomi wanted something more. No, she wanted something other: lust, scenes in front of the neighbors, a man who would twist her against the wall and say, Shut up, woman. She found that man. She and the wild man fled Ohio, landing in Chattanooga when a wire burned out in their car. Then something happened, Tuuro was never clear what. The original wild man was now in prison, and a new, slightly less wild man lived with Naomi. Tuuro was under no obligation to do so—the court had sided with him—but he deposited money in Naomi’s account monthly to help cover Lanita’s expenses. He lived for the rare days he saw his daughter. She was six.

      “Can’t she stay with me when you’re back in Ohio?”

      Naomi’s sigh seared through the phone. Naomi was coming to visit her sister in Columbus.

      “I send you money every month, Naomi,” Tuuro said. “What more do you want?”

      “Oh, I know, Tuuro. You’re so good.”

      Tuuro bit his lip. “Why can’t Lanita stay here with me while you’re at your sister’s?”

      “Is it safe?”

      “Of course it’s safe. It’s fine here. It’s normal.” Safer than Columbus, he was thinking. The quickest way from Dayton to Columbus was driving through the Grid, on one of the walled-off interstates.

      “It is not normal.”

      “Naomi. Cleveland is far away.”

      Naomi gave another heavy sigh. “All right, she can stay with you. I’ll bring her by Thursday late and pick her up Sunday. But don’t you be feeding her a lot of sweets. I’ve got her off sweets.”

      “Did

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