The Bewildered - Peter Rock

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above, the stars were becoming visible.

      “Is this smart?”

      “Not really.”

      The three hurried across the highway, into the tall grass. They continued their preparations, watchful for headlights, their voices low. They only understood some of the equipment; Natalie had given it to them in a bag that said Qwest on it, so it was clear that she’d stolen it from the phone company. They admired that.

      “I could do the next one,” Chris said, “or the one after that.”

      “We’ll see if I get tired,” Leon said. His feet were the biggest, so the spikes fit him best. He liked to be the one to climb the poles; once he got up there, he’d start to boss them around.

      The spikes were hard to walk in, like having long knives attached to your ankles, stabbing into the ground with each step. Chris and Kayla helped Leon to his feet, then to the pole; they got the thick canvas belt around it, then through the harness, and boosted him up. Spikes dug into the wood, Leon slid the belt up, leaned back, dug a little higher. Slowly, he ascended, pausing to pull splinters from his palms. He had forgotten the gloves. Below, Chris and Kayla set to hiding the trombone case, the things they wouldn’t need, and then they returned, ready.

      “Only the neutrals!” Kayla shouted, hands belled around her mouth, “don’t touch the live wires with the cutter.”

      “Right, right, right.” Leon’s whispered voice hardly reached them. “The air is hotter up here.”

      “What?”

      “Forget it.” He put his small, metal flashlight in his mouth, so he could get to work.

      The first time, Natalie had explained it so fast that it was surprising they hadn’t killed themselves. Each time they knew a little more, and Kayla read about it, so they were a little better at what they had to do.

      Leon cut the neutral, the grounding wire that ran with the live ones; it went with a snap and the pole swayed, settled, that tension gone; the heavy copper wire came down like a whip, cracking up and out, winding and unwinding around the other wires and back upon itself, stiff and slackening, coming down.

      Kayla and Chris ran after it, racing each other to get the very end. Then, as Leon descended behind them, they began to bend the wire, to roll it into a ball, larger and larger. Chris balled it up, and Kayla lifted the wire from the tall grass, to keep it clear.

      When these skeins of wire grew more than a foot in diameter, they became heavy, more difficult to carry. By that time, Leon would have climbed down behind them, taken off the spikes, and caught up with the clipper. He cut the wire, and they set the heavy skein aside and began to roll another, all the way to the next pole, which Leon would climb so they could finish this stretch and begin the next. Now, they kept an eye out for headlights; this highway was not heavily traveled. The night was still, the air close. A cow, grazing nearby, moaned low. It lifted its black and white head and blankly stared at Chris and Kayla.

      “Dude’s watching us.”

      “Concentrate on what you’re doing,” Kayla said.

      “She could help us,” he said. “Natalie. She could at least stick around.”

      “Too risky. Besides, she’s an adult. What do you expect?”

      “I wonder where she goes.”

      Natalie sat in a booth, in a roadside diner, watching the trucks pass on the highway, wondering how her kids were doing out there. Before she had entered the diner, she had gotten out of her coveralls. She wore a silk, flowered blouse and sandals with blue straps, an outfit that owed something to Whitney Kaine, Miss September, 1976.

      “Are you ready to order?”

      Natalie looked up at the waitress, who wore a hemp necklace, a tattooed ring on her finger.

      “Strange weather,” the girl said, eager to fill any silence. “Are you visiting the vineyards? Passing through?”

      “Business,” Natalie said.

      “What do you do?”

      “Maybe I’ll have a steak. Do you have any vegetables that came in tin cans?”

      “Only fresh vegetables; we’re an organic restaurant.”

      Natalie could not remember the last time she ate a fresh piece of fruit, or a vegetable; she liked the hint of metal in the canned versions, but even they were not a major part of her diet.

      “And we don’t serve any meat,” the waitress said.

      “Just give me anything. The first thing on the menu.”

      “Pardon me?”

      “I’m not hungry.”

      “You don’t really have to order anything.”

      “Yes, but I’d like to sit here, I’d like to pay you for the time and space. Does that strike you as suspicious?”

      “Do you like things that are hot, spicy?” the waitress said, trying.

      “I used to,” Natalie said.

      “I’ll bring you the special,” the waitress said. “It’s egg-plant, but I bet you’ll like it.”

      Natalie turned away, back to the window. She had no time, no patience for chatter, weather talk, petty divulgements of opinions or vocation. What did she do? How did she come to her current employment? Is that what it was, when she gave away all the earnings to the children, her workers? Number Six hard-drawn copper was running sixty cents a pound, two hundred and forty dollars a mile, at worst. All that mystery she worked on the kids, all that drama and commando bullshit wasn’t really necessary, but she knew exactly how to play them, and didn’t mind feeding their attitude, their sense of superiority. She liked their serious, dependable way, how they acted like miniature experts, how little respect they actually showed her.

      She checked the clock on the wall. Forty-five minutes left. A school night, they said, they had to get home and get their sleep to be sharp for school, for classes. Sleep. She used to need more of it. She wasn’t tired now; she felt the same, plenty of energy, even too much. She’d go days without sleeping, even thinking about it. And then she’d sleep for forty, fifty hours straight, and be up for a week. Scientists admitted they didn’t know why people needed it. Dolphins slept half of their brain at a time, otherwise they’d drown; perhaps that was how she was doing it—never all the way asleep or awake.

      Alone in the diner, she felt the pressure rising, a faint hot wind from the faces of the electrical outlets, invisible and silent sparks, all closing down, rushing in, a surge snaking toward her. Snarled, forked, bristling and gone slack. In came a snapping hiss at all the switches and light fixtures, and she heard the cook drop something in the kitchen. She heard his cursing voice as all the lights went out.

      There was no rising, sizzling wind, no spark, no ball of flame. Just a sudden loud pop and Leon jerking there like all the bones gone from his body, so high above the ground. His arms wildly slapped and his legs kicked the pole, gouging the wood, raining splinters into their squinting eyes. It went on and on; it would not set him loose. The heavy clipper was clenched in his hand still, shattering porcelain insulators, knocking crossbeams loose. The cut copper wire came slicing down.

      Kayla screamed. She collided into Chris; they both looked upward, necks bent back as at last Leon came loose. His spikes kicked in, he slid in the harness, twisting in the canvas belt, forty feet overhead. He slid five feet, snagged, slid a little more. His eyes wide open, not seeing a thing, facedown and slithering closer, right at them, headfirst and tangled, finally hung up four feet from the ground.

      They both held back; neither wanted to touch him, his pale face with all the skin twitching,

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