Lost Boys

9: June Bugs

This is what Stevie got for his eighth birthday, on June 3, 1983: his first wristwatch; a large Lego set which could be made into a castle; four pairs of shorts and four tank tops; his first dress slacks, white shirt, and kid-size tie for Sunday; and a computer game called Lode Runner for the Atari. It was a decent number of presents, despite their financial situation, but Step and DeAnne suspected that the present he liked best was that when school was dismissed at noon on his birthday, he was through with second grade, through with that school, through with those kids, and home at last for the summer.

In fact, that was what Step wrote to Stevie on the inside of his birthday card: "You made it, school's out, you were brave and strong and we're proud of you." Stevie read the card silently, looked up at his father without a sign of emotion on his face, and said, "Thanks."

That Sunday at church Stevie wore his new Sunday clothes for the first time, and when the bishop called him up to the stand to announce that he was going to be baptized that afternoon, it almost broke Step's heart to see how small he was, and yet how much he had grown; how young and how old their eldest had become.

After sacrament meeting, DeAnne took the kids and led them off to Primary. While Step was still gathering up his notebook and scriptures to head for gospel doctrine class, Lee Weeks came up to him, obviously bursting with excitement about something.

"Your son's getting baptized!" said Lee.

"That's right," said Step.

"Well I'm a priest," said Lee. "They ordained me a priest right after I was baptized myself."

"That's right," said Step. He knew what was coming next, but he could hardly believe that anyone would have the gall to intrude so badly into someone else's family.

"Well I can baptize your boy!" said Lee.

Brother Freebody happened to be standing nearby, talking to somebody else, but Step saw that he heard what Lee had said, and Brother Freebody rolled his eyes in sympathy.

"You have the authority to baptize," said Step. "But we have the custom in the Church that if a father is a worthy priesthood holder, he baptizes his own children."

"Sure," said Lee. "But I've never baptized anybody. This is my first chance. You've baptized a lot of people. On your mission, right?"

"You're nineteen," said Step. "Prepare yourself and in a year you can be ordained an elder and go on a mission yourself and baptize everybody who receives the gospel from you."

"But why should I wait?" asked Lee.

"Because Stevie is my son," said Step.

"All the more reason," said Lee. He lowered his voice a little. "I told you, God is with me. I'd give him a real baptism. Like John the Baptist gave Jesus."

"Lee, I have the same priesthood you have, when it comes to baptizing. He'll be just as baptized when I do it as he would be if anybody else with that same authority did it. And now I have to get to class."

Lee looked ... not hurt, really, but ... what? Angry. Yes, angry, thought Step as he slipped along the space between benches and emerged into the aisle of the chapel. Great, Step, great, you've offended a new convert who was given to you as a home teaching companion specifically so you could strengthen him in the gospel.

But no way in hell is anybody but me going to baptize my old est son.

Later, in priesthood meeting, Lee seemed to have forgotten all about it- he was talking and laughing with the other men and boys, and a few times with Step himself. Things were fine.

That afternoon, though, at the baptism, it became clear tha t Lee had not understood anything at all. It was a simple service. DeAnne played the piano and Step led the music; the bishop spoke for a minute, and then Sister Cowper gave a talk about the meaning of baptism. At that point Step led Stevie out of the Primary room, heading for the font entrance by way of the dressing room where they had earlier changed into the white baptismal clothes.

Lee was in the hall with his mother, waiting. Already behind them the bishop and Brother Cowper were opening the folding doors between the Primary room and the corridor, and people were coming out, and there was Lee, dressed in white clothes, right down to white athletic shoes. "Are sneakers OK?" asked Lee. "We couldn't find any white dress shoes."

"Lee," said Step, trying not to embarrass him too much in front of his mother, "only the person getting baptized and the person doing the baptizing wear white clothes. I'm so sorry that you misunderstood." He turned to Dr. Weeks. "I hope that it wasn't too much trouble, coming up with all these white clothes."

"But isn't Lee performing the baptism?" asked Dr. Weeks.

Lee was smiling as if nothing at all was wrong. He clearly intended Step to stand aside and let him perform the baptism. But that was not going to happen unless Step dropped dead in the next few minutes. "No, Dr.

Weeks. I told Lee this morning when he offered to do it that in the Mormon Church, whenever it's possible a father baptizes his own children."

Dr. Weeks's expression hardened. "Then this is an inappropriate behavior?" she asked.

"I don't know how Lee could have misunderstood," said Step.

"But you said I could do it," said Lee. His voice was quite loud, to get the maximum sympathy from the onlookers. Step could sense DeAnne coming up beside him, standing with him.

"No, Lee," said Step, also loudly. "I clearly told you that you would have chances to baptize if you seine a mission, but that I would baptize my firstborn child today. I'm sure you realize that there is no chance that I would ever have said otherwise under any circumstances."

"Come along, Lee," said Dr. Weeks icily. Step couldn't guess whether she was angry at him or at Lee or-worst of all-at the Church.

DeAnne touched Dr. Weeks on the arm. "I hope you understand," she said softly. "No one meant to embarrass your son. It was just a misunderstanding."

"Oh, I'm sure Lee understood perfectly all along," said Dr. Weeks, also softly, and with a slightly pained smile. "He simply has a way of adjusting reality to fit his desires and then expecting others to go along. I hope you will overlook this."

"Of course," said Step. He was relieved-she knew where the blame for this belonged.

"You've embarrassed me, Mother," said Lee.

"It's time to go home," said Dr. Weeks.

"Why not stay and see the baptism?" said DeAnne.

"I saw Lee's baptism," said Dr. Weeks. "I imagine this will be much the same."

"I want to stay" said Lee.

"Come home now, Lee," said Dr. Weeks.

There was a moment's silence between them, and then Lee turned to Step and, with a cheerful smile, said,

"You really should have let me baptize him. That would have been the best thing." Then he turned and walked with his mother down the corridor toward the southeast door of the meetinghouse.

DeAnne squeezed his arm. "They're leaving, and everybody else is waiting," she said.

"Yes," said Step. "Sorry." He looked down at Stevie and smiled. "What do you say we go through with this?"

Stevie nodded.

Inside the dressing room, where their Sunday clothes were hanging up on hooks, Step paused for just a moment, feeling a need to explain. "Lee Weeks is just excited about being a priesthood holder," he said. "He misunderstood, that's all."

Stevie looked up into Step's eyes and said, "I think he's crazy as a loon, Dad."

And I think you're as sane as I am, thought Step. But you've got to go to a psychiatrist, while Lee only goes home teaching.

"I love you, Stevie," said Step.

"I love you too, Dad," said Stevie. But it was perfunctory, the obligatory answer.

They went to the door that led from the dressing room into the font itself. The water was just above the second step from the top. The water bent the light to make the font seem no deeper than a child's wading pool, but as Stevie stepped down into it, it seemed to swallow him up, bending him at the legs and then at the hips until he was so short that this shallow water came up to his shoulders. Step followed him. The water was cold, but he got used to it quickly. It came up only to his hips. Stevie is so small, he thought. He's too young to take on himself the consequences of all his future choices.

Then he thought, Stevie's been making his own choices, taking responsibility for himself ever since he was old enough to walk. For Stevie, baptism is probably years overdue. The Lord just picked eight years old as a convenient middle ground, that's all. Some children are ready for it as toddlers, and some aren't ready until well past their teens. Stevie was born with wisdom and goodness in him, like the high priest Samuel, like Solomon, like Joseph who was sold into Egypt, like Jesus.

Step took Stevie's right wrist in his left hand. "Hold on to my arm," he whispered. "Just like we practiced."

Stevie reached up his left hand and took hold of Step's left wrist. His hand was so small, his grip so tight and yet so feeble.

Stevie tried to move his right hand up to plug his nose.

"Not yet," Step whispered. "After the words."

Stevie waited as Step raised his right hand to the square and spoke loudly, so the official witnesses could hear and make sure he said it right: "Stephen Bolivar Fletcher, having been commis sioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

"Amen," murmured the crowd.

"Amen," whispered Stevie.

Step lifted Stevie's right hand toward his face, and Stevie took hold of his nose to pinch it closed. "Bend at the knees," Step whis pered. Stevie closed his eyes and Step pushed him backward into the water, then shoved him down. The water resisted as it always did, but Step pushed Stevie downward, downward, burying him under the water until he was completely immersed. Only then did he let the water have its way, float him back up; and when Stevie reached the surface, gripping tightly to Step's arm, Step pulled him back up to a standing position. Stevie gasped, let go of Step's arm, wiped at his eyes.

Some of the onlookers chuckled affectionately. They had all been through this. They knew how it felt to come out of the water. The disorientation. The hunger for breath. Like being born, gasping for air. The body's instinct for survival in control of you, so all you can think about is, live. Breathe. Then you think, I'm cold. Can they see through the white clothes? Did I look stupid? Did everything go right? Did some part of me stick up out of the water so they'll have to dunk me again?

Step looked from the bishop to Brother Cowper, who were serving as the official witnesses. They both nodded.

"We're OK," said Step. "Got it right the first time."

Stevie nodded gravely.

The bishop and Brother Cowper closed the sliding doors between the font and the corridor. Everybody else went back into the Primary room to wait. Step and Stevie climbed up out of the water, their clothes heavy, dripping, cold.

In the dressing room they dried off and changed back into their street clothes. Stevie was very shy about his body, asking Step not to look and making sure that his back was always turned to his father while he dressed. A

far cry from the days when he used to run stark naked into the living room with company there, shouting

"Teebee go toe-let now! Hurry-up Daddy!"

Step wrung out the wet clothes and then they returned to the Primary room, where some of the younger children-all Cowpers, by Step's rough census-were running around hooting and screeching. They soon got things quieted down, Brother Cowper gave a short talk about the meaning of confirmation and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then Stevie came forward, sat in a chair facing the small congregation, and Step laid his hands on his son's head. The other priesthood holders there-the bishop, Brother Cowper, and the Primary president's husband-then laid their hands lightly on his, with perhaps a finger also touching Stevie's head. And Step began the confirmation as he had done so many times on his mission in Sao Paulo-except in English, not in Portuguese. He confirmed Stevie a member of the Church, and then commanded him to receive the Holy Ghost.

Technically that was all that was needed, and Step could have stopped there-but that would have caused talk, a lot of gossip, because the custom was to add a few minutes of blessing and admonition, and the omission of that blessing would have been shocking.

Yet as Step stood there, ready to speak the words of blessing, nothing came to mind. It was not that he had given it no thought. In fact, for days he had been replaying in his mind the ways he might obliquely address the problems Stevie had been having. He couldn't say I bless you that your imaginary friends will go away without your having to bother going to a psychiatrist, but there were ways of phrasing the same idea, such as, I promise you healing, and that all your visions will be true ones-things like that, which would sound ordinary enough to people who knew nothing about Stevie's problems, but whose true meaning DeAnne and Step and God would understand.

Now, though, Step could not remember a single thing that he had planned to say. He stood there in long silence. This was not unusual. Many men took a moment or two to gather their thoughts. But this time the moment became longer and longer, and one of the men in the circle around Stevie shifted his weight, and a woman in the congregation cleared her throat.

Is there nothing I can say to my son? Is his life as bleak as that? Or is it me? Am I unworthy to give any kind of blessing to this good boy, who needs blessing so much?

Suddenly there were words in his mind; and he spoke them almost before he thought of them. "The Lord knows your heart, Stephen, and he trusts you. He brought you into this world to perform works of love, and I promise you that if you listen to the Holy Ghost and make your choices as the Spirit of God directs you, then you will bring joy and peace into the lives of everyone who loves you, both your family and your friends."

As quickly as the rush of words had come, it was gone. "Amen."

The men in the circle immediately turned their attention to Stevie, shaking his hand. Solemnly Stevie shook hands with each man, but without looking them in the eye. And as Stevie headed back to his seat, Spike Cowper glanced at Step a bit quizzically, as if to ask, What was going on there during the confirmation? The bishop put his hand on Step's shoulder and squeezed. Meaning what? thought Step. Encouragement? Consolation? Sorry you couldn't give your own son a real blessing at the time of confirmation.

Yet it had been a real blessing, Step was sure of it, or at least he was pretty sure that he was sure. It had happened a couple of times before, on his mission in Brazil, the words just flowing into his mind like that. It meant something.

On the way out to the car, after the closing song and the prayer, DeAnne hung back from the kids and asked Step about it. "Was that really all? I mean, you didn't even mention him getting married in the temple or anything."

"This was his confirmation, not a patriarchal blessing," said Step.

"Yes, but Step..."

"I said what I was given to say," he answered, a bit uncertainly. That's the problem with spiritual things, thought Step. You knew what was going on, and yet you also didn't know. Because if you really knew, then it wouldn't take faith anymore, would it? And yet you had to live in perfect trust, as if you did know for sure when God had spoken in your heart. Only later, looking back, could you see with any kind of certainty whether there seemed to be meaning in what had happened, whether there was some purpose or plan in things.

On the drive home, it happened that there was one long silence that for some reason made Step uncomfortable, and he filled it with the first thing that came to mind. "Well, Door Man, feel any different now?"

As soon as he said it, Step regretted it. It was exactly the sort of stupid question adults were always asking children. Now Stevie would think, Am I supposed to feel different? Uh-oh, I don't feel different, except maybe still a little damp, and so now what do I say? If I don't say I feel different, Dad will think that he failed. Or that 1 failed. But if I do say I feel different, then that will be a lie. My first lie after baptism. All my sins washed away, and now this is my first sin and so the baptism was only good for about half an hour. At least, that was what had gone through Step's mind when he was eight years old and his father baptized him.

From the back seat, Stevie answered quietly, "Yes, Dad."

He had opted for the white lie.

"Son," he said, "actually most people don't feel all that different, really. It's OK if you don't."

"I do, though," said Stevie. He didn't sound insistent. Just reporting a fact.

"Oh really?" asked Step. "What does it feel like?"

Stevie seemed to think about this for a moment. "Like the Holy Ghost is in me."

For a moment it seemed like the perfect response. For a moment Step thought, Of course Stevie feels the gift of the Holy Ghost, though I never did as a child, because he has always been sensitive to spiritual things, and I never was.

Step thought then of how much Stevie sounded like Lee Weeks just before Sunday school today. God is in me. God is speaking inside me. Whatever it was that Lee had said. Stevie might be spiritually sensitive, or he might be deluded.

Step realized that he was seeing him through the psychiatrist's eyes. How easy would it be for a psychiatrist to distinguish between Stevie's simple language of faith and Lee Weeks's weird certainty that God had chosen him? Probably it wasn't a problem- Lee might be strange, but he wasn't certifiable or anything. And of all people Dr. Weeks would certainly take Stevie's pure faith in the religion of his parents in stride.

Certainly DeAnne was taking Stevie's answer without any kind of skepticism. She reached over and cupped her hand over Step's right hand where it rested on the gear shift. Our son is so pure in heart, she seemed to be saying, that he can sense the Spirit of God when it enters him.

"What did you think when your father was confirming you?" asked DeAnne.

"I don't know," said Stevie.

"I mean, what did you think of the blessing he gave you?"

"Fine," said Stevie.

"Let's not quiz him," said Step to DeAnne. But what he was really thinking was, Do you have to remind him of how inadequate my blessing was?

"Sorry," said DeAnne, her feelings hurt a little.

"Nothing to be sorry about," he said.

Stevie spoke up from the back seat. "Dad?"

"Yes, Door Man?"

"You said that I'd bring joy and peace to my friends."

"And family," said Step.

"Well I don't know how," said Stevie.

"But that's what the gift of the Holy Ghost is for," said Step. "To show you how."

"But what if the Holy Ghost doesn't tell me?"

"Then maybe it isn't time for you to do anything about it yet. Or maybe you just haven't learned how to hear what the Spirit of God is saying. Or maybe you aren't supposed to do anything yet."

"Oh," said Stevie. A moment passed. Stevie said, "I'd really like to."

"Like to what?" asked DeAnne.

"Make them happy."

"Make who happy?" asked DeAnne.

You know who he means! Step wanted to shout.

"Jack and Scotty and David," said Stevie. The imaginary friends. Only now there were three.

"Stevie," said DeAnne. "Who is David?"

"Just another kid we play with," said Stevie. "Me and Scotty and Jack."

Stevie might have been confirmed, and the Lord may or may not have given Step words to speak in his confirmation, but the fact remained that Stevie was still living in a world where invisible friends came to play with him. And today he had added another. Or was it today?

DeAnne asked, "Did David just ... move in or something? I don't remember you talking about him before."

Move in, yes, that's a good one, thought Step. Let's pretend that these friends actually live in the neighborhood and have families and new ones just "move in" from time to time.

"He's been around for a while," said Stevie. "I think he was born in Steuben cause he talks southern and I can't understand him all that well yet. I mean I can, but I have to listen slower."

All right, DeAnne, thought Step. You were right. He needs to see a psychiatrist or somebody, anyway. I've never heard him talk about his imaginary friends this way. As if they had real lives. He must be spinning out their biographies faster than Step was coming up with code for Hacker Snack on the 64. You knew this, DeAnne. You've heard this sort of thing before. No wonder you were so upset. No wonder you insisted. This is too much for us alone.

When they pulled into the driveway Bappy's pickup truck was out front. "On Sunday?" asked Step.

As if he had heard the question, Bappy came around from the back yard. "Y'all at church?" he asked. "I come by at about four thinking you was bound to be back from church but nobody was here."

"We had a special meeting," said Deanne. "Stevie got baptized today."

"Well that's something," said Bappy "That's really something. So y'all don't baptize babies either, eh?"

"Are you Baptist?" asked Step.

"Well, my daddy was a Pentecostal minister, and he was a real dunker, he put 'em all the way under and held 'em down till the sins were all drownded and so were the ones who found Jesus, I'll tell you. Why, some of

'em came up with a mouthful of mud, he pushed 'em down so far!" DeAnne and Step joined in Bappy's laughter, but Step was thinking, I don't like making light of baptism, not today, not in front of the kids.

"Well," said Step, "anyway I'm sorry we weren't here. Have you waited long?"

"Oh, I didn't wait at all," said Bappy. "I figured, I know I oughta ask 'em first, but here I am and there's the tent flies in the back yard and I gotta do something about 'em, and it's not like I'm gonna make a mess that I don't clean right up."

"Is that what those cobwebby things on the trees are?" asked DeAnne. "Tent flies?"

"Them eggs hatch and the worms can eat every leaf right off the tree," said Bappy. "So I bag 'em up and prune 'em off. Got my truck mostly filled now, and you won't have any more of them wormy things dropping off on your kids under the trees."

"Yay!" shouted Robbie. "Those are really icky!" He charged around back, Betsy hard on his heels.

"Well I got 'em all," said Bappy. "Or almost. I will have 'em all by the time the day's over."

Step wasn't comfortable having Bappy doing yardwork on the Sabbath. But he knew that it really wasn't his business. Bappy wasn't his employee, he was the landlord's father, and if he chose to do yardwork on Sundays, well, it wasn't Step's job to control it.

"Step, would you go round the kids up out of the back yard?" DeAnne asked.

Step headed into the back yard and found Robbie and Betsy circling the tree like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, though they would never know the reference because somewhere between Step's childhood and his children's, that story had been discovered to be a monstrously poisonous thing that would turn otherwise innocent children into bigots. I guess there's no hope for me, thought Step. I see kids running around in circles, I think of tiger butter.

Bravely Step stuck a hand into the circle of children and emerged with a child attached to it; then the other hand, and the other child. "Come on into the house," he said, "if you want supper."

"He got the webs!" shouted Robbie.

It was true. The tree had been pruned back, and now was missing all but two of the branches that had been covered with a mass of white web; even those were now wrapped in large plastic garbage bags, waiting to be cut off and disposed of. It wasn't hard to imagine Bappy's wiry body climbing around in the trees. He's in better shape than I am, thought Step. But then, he doesn't have to work around the corner from a candy machine.

When Step got the kids into the kitchen and DeAnne had sent them off to change out of their Sunday clothes, she asked him, "Where's Stevie?"

"He wasn't in the back yard," said Step. "I thought he came in with you."

"I thought he took off when the other kids did."

"He's in here somewhere."

"No he's not, Step. I unlocked the back door, and he'd have to come in past me, and I know for a fact that he didn't. So he's still outside, and I don't like it that you didn't see him with the other kids."

She had good reason to be worried. This morning's paper had told of another kid who had turned up missing last night at a Weavers baseball game. It was a minor league team, of course, but there were a lot of loyal fans in Steuben and so the games were crowded. Kid just disappeared. Scary times. He'd be on a milk carton soon, no doubt. Or turn up at a neighbor's house. Or dead. Where was Stevie?

Step went out into the back yard again. Bappy was up in the tree, sawing away at one of the limbs wrapped in plastic. He waved, and Step waved back. "You seen my oldest boy?" asked Step.

"No sir!" shouted Bappy. "You lost him?"

"Oh, he's around here somewhere," said Step.

"Keep your eyes on your kids, young man!" shouted Bappy. "It ain't safe these days. The devil is loose in the world!"

"Oh, I have no doubt of it!" Step called back.

Stevie was around in the front of the house, sitting on the doorstep.

"Stevie, we've been looking for you," said Step. "Your mom and I were worried, we didn't know where you were."

"Sorry," said Stevie. He got up.

"You can't go running off without saying anything."

Stevie frowned. "I was right here, Dad."

"You weren't in the house, and you weren't where we could see you, and so we were scared. That's just the way it is with parents, and you have to humor us and make sure we know where you are all the time or we'll end up putting you on a leash or locking you in the house or something, and you won't be very happy with that."

"Sorry," said Stevie again.

This wasn't how it should be on the day a kid was baptized. Off by himself, and then having to apologize for it. "What were you doing here in the front yard, anyway?" What were you thinking about? What was going through your mind?

"Sitting," said Stevie.

Step knew when he was defeated. "Well, come on in, it's time for supper."

Dutifully, Stevie followed him inside.

The next morning should have been the first weekday of summer. Stevie out of school, a chance for DeAnne to get a little more sleep in the morning, get things moving a little later. But DeAnne woke up before her alarm anyway, and not just because the baby was pressing so hard on her bladder that it held about a half an ounce these days. She lay there for a moment and then knew why her stomach felt like it was tied in a knot. She was taking Stevie to Dr. Weeks at ten.

DeAnne and Step had decided not to tell Stevie about the psychiatrist until the morning of his appointment.

Why have him worry unnecessarily for days in advance? Why spoil his birthday and his baptism?

Stevie wasn't so young that they could play the "this is just a different kind of doctor" game that might have worked with Robbie. Stevie knew that there were crazy people in the world, and doctors who treated them, and places where they were shut away from everybody else. It was the child's version of mental illnessall the old prejudices about madness survived in the subculture of children, passed from nine- year-olds to eight-year-olds, year after year. The loony bin. The nuthouse. Shameful, terrifying. Somehow Step and DeAnne had to make Stevie understand that that was not what was happening here. It would be especially difficult because DeAnne was afraid, deep inside, that that was exactly what was going to happen somewhere down the road.

DeAnne showered. Step had installed a handheld showerhead, which was a lifesaver when she was pregnant-not so much bending and reaching while standing on a slick, wet surface. It felt good to be clean.

There were times, late in her pregnancies, when she felt like she was permanently ugly and vile; her hair seemed to get oily faster during pregnancy and it matted to her head, and she felt awkward and bumptious and her back hurt, and her legs, and she got charley horses and she was tired all the time, too tired to want to clean herself up, and there was always this belly between herself and anything she was trying to do, and there were times when she just didn't want to go through the bother of getting out of bed. Yet if she just stripped off her clothes-a lot of trouble right there, of course-and washed herself, letting the water beat on her body, scour her all over, then she felt better, invigorated. She felt like maybe it was worth dragging herself around for another day.

Step staggered out of bed and into the shower as soon as she got out of the bathroom. Twenty minutes before his usual gettingup time. He had remembered, too. She watched him as he stripped off his nightclothes and pitched them into the plastic laundry basket in the closet. His body was definitely going to seed at this job.

His old regimen of bike-riding back in Vigor, along with some serious attention to what he ate, had kept him trim for the past few years, but the belly was coming back again, the thickness in the buttocks, the softness in the face. He had been pasty and overweight when she fell in love with him, of course; she hadn't really minded, but he minded so much that she knew he wasn't happy with his body that way. So when he got himself under control a few years back and shed the weight and built up his strength in a way he had never done in high school or college, she loved it mostly because he was so much happier, so much more confident. Looking at him now, she thought: Eight Bits Inc. has been destroying him in every way it could.

She wanted to say Quit your job today, Step. Get back on the bicycle. Join a health club. Get away from the candy machine.

If only we hadn't moved to Steuben.

It had felt like the right thing to do at the time. Even though she was already pregnant before Step even thought of applying for jobs, it felt right. Almost inevitable. We just have wandering feet, she supposed. We can't stay rooted anywhere for long. Pioneer spirit. It was built into Mormon culture, to be ready to pick up and move to a new land every couple of years. And maybe there was some genetic component to it. People who were born to be nomads.

Then she thought of chopping down trees and building log cabins and sweeping a dirt floor and cooking at a hearthfire and never being able to bathe and having to use an outdoor latrine and giving birth alone in the dark, squatting over the straw, and she decided that she had no desire to be a pioneer. Wanderlust was fine, as long as you could wander from one place with flush toilets, electricity, and a good local hospital to another.

She headed for the kitchen to fix herself a bowl of raisin bran, but when she had the fridge open, getting out the milk, it occurred to her that it was awfully dark. Most mornings the sunlight streamed into the east-facing kitchen window.

The plastic gallon jug of milk in hand, she turned around and glanced toward the window to see what the weather was. Weather had nothing to do with the darkness of the room. Most of the gap between the window and the screen, up to about six inches from the top, was filled with June bugs, their translucent bodies glowing a ruddy brown as the bright sunlight tried to get through into the room.

It was so startling, so repulsive, all those bugs tumbled onto each other, that DeAnne screamed. Then she felt something cold spatter on her legs, and she screamed again. Only then did she realize that she had dropped the milk jug and the cap had burst off, spattering milk everywhere. Now it was lying on its side, gur gling out the remaining milk. She squatted down as quickly as she could to pick it up before it all poured out, but she moved so slowly that before she could get it the flow had reduced to a trickle. About a third of the milk remained inside, but most of the nearly full jug was all over the floor.

I can't deal with this, she thought. This horrible house. The bugs in this place, the milk all over the floor, the cupboard that still smells like coffee after all these months, I hate this place.

She struggled to her feet and used paper towels to wipe the milk off her legs and her bare feet, and then she went back to the linen closet in the hall and got out the old towels, which she then dropped onto the milk to soak it up. Then she laboriously squatted again to pick them up, dripping with milk. "Damn, damn, damn," she said.

"And good morning to you," said Step. He stood in the kitchen doorway.

"I dropped the milk," said DeAnne.

"What a relief. I thought maybe you had poured it out. The world's largest bowl of Grape-Nuts Flakes."

"I was going to have raisin bran this morning."

"Well that explains everything."

She hated it that he was joking when she felt so awful, but then he helped her stand up again, saying, "You shouldn't be doing that, Fish Lady" and she was able to sit down by the table and watch as he picked up the towels and rushed them into the laundry room. While he was gone, she dared to look back at the window, hoping that she had exaggerated the quantity of June bugs. She hadn't.

Step came back, heading for the paper towels to finish wiping up the milk, when he finally noticed the window.

"Oh," he said. "Now I know what you meant by damn damn damn."

"Damn damn damn was for the milk and being pregnant," said DeAnne. "For the bugs in the window I screamed, only you must have been in the shower so you didn't hear me."

"Too bad, it must have been a doozie." Step leaned over the sink to look closely at the bugs. "How did they get in there?"

"I don't know," said DeAnne. "Maybe some bug entrepreneur sold tickets." He laughed, and she laughed too, though it wasn't that funny.

"They're all dead," said Step. "Not one of them even twitching. Weird, isn't it? Like all the June bugs who knew their number was up came here last night to die."

"So we have the world's largest bug collection, only it's all one species."

"Well," said Step, "good thing we woke up early today. This roll of paper towels is nearly out, do we have any more?"

"Yes, but we still ha ve to speak with Stevie," said DeAnne. "I want it to be when you're still here. I can mop the floor later."

"It'll only take me a minute to finish wiping it up," said Step.

"You can't just mop up milk," said DeAnne. "I have to scrub the floor."

"Pregnant?"

"I've done it before, you know," she said. "That's what Bendectin is for. To allow pregnant women to keep scrubbing floors while their men watch mud-wrestling on ESPN."

He looked at her, his eyes narrowed in a mockery of a glare. "Feminist bitch," he said.

She pretended to glare back. "Male chauvinist pig."

"Let me guess," he said, looking at the window again. "You don't want these guys to be up here all day."

"It's more important to talk to Stevie."

"He's not in here yet." Step went to the laundry room and got out a green plastic garbage bag. "This time it's your turn to hold the bag," he said.

"Oh, Step," she said, shuddering.

"It's either that or you climb up on the counter to open the window."

"Can't you do it outside?" asked DeAnne. It made her sick to think of those bugs inside her kitchen.

"I don't have a ladder," he said, "and I don't want to fuss with unscrewing the whole screen when I can just slide this window up. It's not like I have time for a half- hour job this morning."

"I can call Bappy," said DeAnne.

"And have him spray again?" asked Step. "I can do it, and I don't like Bappy doing jobs that I can do. That we can do, if you'll just help me."

She was already up. Step had anchored the bottom corners of the bag on the windowsill using the big red salt and pepper shakers from beside the stove. "Don't use those," she said. "If they get bugs all over them I could never stand to use them again."

"Well, unless you have four hands, Fish Lady, we've got to anchor them with something."

She squatted awkwardly to reach inside the cupboard under the sink and came up with two large wrapped bars of hand soap.

"Excellent work, my beloved assistant," he said. "That's what I keep you around for, your extraordinary resourcefulness."

Now, with the bottom corners anchored, DeAnne held the bag open against the window as Step slowly opened it. The bug bodies rattled out of the bottom of the window, tumbling into the bag like popcorn. The sound of it, the vibration of the bag, knowing what was falling into it, it was all too much for DeAnne. A

bug- loathing instinct far deeper and more powerful than her common sense took over, and for a moment she lost control. She moaned, her body was racked with a huge, irresistible shudder, and she let go of the bag.

At once the top of the bag dropped down below the opening in the window and the bugs started spilling out on top of the bag instead of inside it. "Shit!" said Step. "Can't you-"

He didn't finish the sentence, as he reached down and lifted up the corners of the bag again, so the bugs went back to falling inside it. Of course, the ones that had already spilled onto the outside of the bag now slipped off onto the counter and into the sink and onto the floor, still damp with spilled milk.

"Can't you do anything right," said DeAnne, finishing his sentence for him.

"That's not what I was going to say," said Step.

"Yes it was," said DeAnne.

"I was going to say can't you at least hold it open again, and then I realized that you couldn't, and so I did it.

Don't put words in my mouth, especially when they're mean and nasty words that I didn't even think of saying."

"Now you're supplying the mean and nasty words just fine by yourself," she said.

"Just get out of the kitchen until I get this cleaned up, will you?" said Step. "Do you think 1 enjoy handling dead June bugs? Do you think it makes it any easier to have you standing there not helping at all and trying to pick a fight with me in the meantime?"

Struggling against tears of anger, biting off the retorts she thought of, DeAnne fled the kitchen. Had any of the bugs touched her hands? She rushed into the kids' bathroom and washed with Lava soap, gritty and rough, trying to get them clean. Only it wasn't bug-touches she was washing away, it was the pointless argument.

She rinsed and dried her hands and then went in to waken Stevie. During the school year she had started the custom of waking him by rubbing his back as he lay asleep. Usually at some point his eyes would suddenly fly open and he'd say, "Morning." Today, though, his eyes stayed closed and he murmured, "No school."

"I know there's no school, honey," she said softly. "But your father and I want to talk to you about something this morning before he goes to work."

Now his eyes flew open. "OK," he said.

She knew now that he would quietly climb down from the upper bunk and get dressed without waking Robbie. She headed back for the kitchen.

Step was using a paper towel to pick up dead bug bodies from the kitchen counter and put them in the garbage bag. In the meantime, water was running in the sink and the disposal was on. She imagined him hosing dead bugs into the drain and then the garbage disposal blades chopping them into tiny bits. It made her shudder again, and she felt her empty stomach churn with nausea. "Thank you for taking care of that," she said.

"You might want to wipe off the milk carton and put it back in the fridge," he said coldly.

Well, she deserved to have him speak coldly to her. She had let her revulsion about the bugs turn into sniping at him, and he hadn't deserved it. Still, she had to eat something to settle her stomach, and she couldn't eat it in the kitchen, not till all the bugs were gone. "Step, I'm sorry," she said.

"Fine," he said.

She knew that when he was angry with her, it was better not to try to force a conversation. Better to wait, to let him calm down, and then he'd be gentle with her and they'd apologize to each other and he'd insist it was his fault and that would be fine. But sometimes she just couldn't stand to do it that way because while he needed to be alone after a quarrel, she couldn't bear to be alone, she felt the separation as sharply as if he had struck her and so she had to speak to him, had to explain herself, had to get his reassurance that he didn't hate her, that he still loved her and wanted her with him. It was completely irrational, she knew. But then so was his need to be alone after a fight.

"Step, I'm sorry," she said.

"And I said fine." His tone said it was not fine.

"I mean I'm sorry but I have to say this."

"So say it," he said impatiently, not looking at her.

"I need you to wash the counter. Everywhere that the bugs touched. I know it makes no sense at all but I don't think I can stand to do anything in the kitchen today if you don't wash it for me first. Please."

"I was already planning on it," said Step. He tossed his paper towel into the bag after the last June bug corpse. Then he gathered the top of the bag together, held it up in one hand, and spun the bag so that there was a hard twist right under his hand. He pulled the plastic tie tight around the twist. He was so deft about it, thought DeAnne. As if he had everything down to a science. As if his hands already knew all the secrets about how to do things, to make things happen. She wondered how it felt, to know that you could just think of doing something and your hands would know how to do it.

He carried the garbage bag outside, and while he was gone she dared to go into the kitchen and it wasn't hard after all, as long as she didn't go near the sink, didn't go near the window which was still partly open. She could hear him outside, lifting the lid of the garbage can to put the bag inside. She wiped down the milk bottle and got out a bowl and a spoon and poured the raisin bran and the milk and put the milk back into the fridge and then she knew that she couldn't stay in the kitchen another minute. She fled into the family room.

Stevie was there, playing a computer game. It must be the new one Step bought for Stevie's birthday, she thought, even though it cost fifty dollars that they could ill afford. There was a pirate ship in full sail, and not far off there was another ship, and they were maneuvering to fire broadsides at each other. It reminded her of the movie Captain Blood, which she had never seen before she got married, but Step had seen it as a boy, he had read the book and loved it, and when it came on cable he had taped it and made the whole family watch and it was a good movie, wonderful dumb fun. Errol Flynn, a real swashbuckler. This game was like that. She ate spoonfuls of cereal that got steadily soggier, and she watched from the couc h as Stevie played.

"Come on," Stevie said softly. "You can do it."

He spoke with an intensity DeAnne hadn't heard from him since they moved here.

"Come on, Roddy."

Had he even named the tiny people in the computer games?

"That's right, help him out, Scotty. You can do it."

He was pretending that his imaginary friends were part of the computer game. Well, that's all right, thought DeAnne. At least in the computer game they were really up there on the screen, you could see them. Maybe by playing this Lode Runner game Stevie would move his imaginary friends out of the back yard and up on the screen, where they'd just go away whenever he switched the computer off. Maybe this was a problem that would heal itself and they wouldn't have to take him to a psychiatrist after all, or at least maybe they wouldn't have to take him for very long.

"Hurry up, Jack! Roddy's in trouble and Scotty can't-that's it! Smooth! Got him!"

And with that the two ships swept each other with broadsides and then grappling hooks flew through the air. DeAnne was very impressed. It was almost like a movie, there was so much realistic movement on the screen. Not so ... so limited-seeming, like all the other computer games she'd seen. Like Hacker Snack, for that matter. If this was the competition, Step was going to have to do some superb programming to match it.

"Well if you'd get into it instead of just standing there, David, you'd have more fun," said Stevie.

Her heart chilled. He was talking to the computer figures as if they were alive. As if they could hear him.

Not just the "come on, come on" stuff that people said while watching football or basketball games on TV, but a full conversation, as if the screen were talking back. Stevie wasn't getting any better, and the computer game wasn't any help.

She thought back over the names. The regulars, Jack and Scotty, and the new one he had mentioned yesterday, David, and now a fourth. Roddy. It was getting worse.

She could hear Step turning off the water in the kitchen and she was finished with the raisin bran and it was almost time for Step to leave for work. "Stevie, maybe you better pause the game for a minute so your Dad and I can..."

Before she finished the sentence, Stevie had reached behind the Atari and switched it off. Just like that.

"Honey, you could have saved your game," she said. "You didn't have to switch it off."

"It's fine," he said.

Step came into the family room. "Hi, Stevie," he said. "Sorry you had to get up early on your first day of summer, but your Mom and I wanted to tell you what's going to happen today."

Stevie waited. Not even curious, it seemed.

Step looked at DeAnne.

Oh, is it suddenly my turn? Well, she supposed that was fair. "Stevie, we've been worried about you ever since we got to Steuben. You've been so sad and quiet all the time."

"I'm OK," he said.

"The problems in school that we didn't even know about-the Stevie that we knew last fall in Vigor would have told us if a teacher was acting like Mrs. Jones did."

"She's gone," he said.

"We know she's gone," said DeAnne. She could hear herself starting to sound impatient. It was so hard dealing with Stevie, with the way he deflected questions. "But even after she left, you didn't seem to get any happier."

"I'm fine," said Stevie.

Step came to her rescue, for the moment at least. "It's not just the way you've become so sad and quiet, Door Man. It's the way you don't play with Robbie and Betsy anymore."

Stevie looked down at his hands.

"And your friends," said Step. "It worries us that you play all the time with imaginary friends."

Stevie seemed to bristle.

"Don't get mad at me, Stevie, help me here," said Step. "You've been talking about Jack and Scotty for months, and yet when we watch you playing, there's nobody there."

"I'm not lying," said Stevie.

"Well what are we to think, honey?" asked DeAnne.

"I never lie," said Stevie.

"We're not saying that you're lying," said Step. "This isn't about lying. It isn't about right and wrong or anything like that. We just want to take you to a doctor."

"You think I'm crazy," said Stevie. He seemed even angrier, but he wasn't looking at either of them. He was looking into the gap between them.

"Stevie, no way," said Step. "We do not think you're crazy. We just think you're having a hard time dealing with things and we want you to get help from somebody who knows about hard times. An expert. A doctor."

Stevie said nothing.

"Her name is Dr. Weeks," said DeAnne. "Her son is a member of the ward, so she's not even a stranger, really."

"She's not a Mormon herself, though," Step said.

"That's right," said DeAnne. "But your father has met her and she's a really nice lady. She'll just want you to talk to her. Nothing more. Can you do that?"

Stevie nodded.

"Will you speak honestly and openly to her?" DeAnne asked.

Now his angry glare was turned directly on her. "I always tell the truth," he said.

"I know," said DeAnne. "I didn't mean that I thought you'd lie, I just want you to talk to her. To tell her what's happening in your life. How things seem to you. You don't talk very much to your father and me, so we thought maybe somebody else, you could talk to somebody else, outside the family."

Stevie just sat there, looking into the space between them again.

"Can I come home sometimes?" he asked.

"Oh, Stevie, it's not like that! I'm just going to take you for a ten o'clock appointment. You'll go in and meet her and talk to her and then we'll come home. It's just once a week, and you won't even be there a whole hour.

We wouldn't send you away from home, Stevie!"

Because Step wasn't pregnant he was able to get off the couch and kneel beside Stevie and put his arm around the boy For once, Stevie responded, turning his face toward his father's shoulder.

"Stevie," said Step. "Stephen, my son, you are the brightest star in the darkest night, do you think we'd ever ever let you go? You belong with us until you want to go, and I hope that doesn't happen until you're old enough to go on a mission and then get married. Years from now. We will never send you away, no matter what."

But you mustn't say that, thought DeAnne. What if he needed to be hospitalized? What then? That would make a liar out of you, Step. Unless you really mean it, and even if he needed treatment like that you wouldn't let him go. Some love that would be!

Then she thought, I wouldn't let him go, either.

"Stevie, if you tell us you won't go to this doctor," said Step, "then we won't make you go. It's up to you.

We don't think you're crazy or anything like that, but we think you're having a hard time and we think that maybe Dr. Weeks can help make things better for you, help you find a way to solve things for yourself. That's all. We'd really like you to try, but if you say no, we won't make you go.„

How can you say that! cried DeAnne silently. Leaving it up to him-that's like asking a little kid whether he wants his tetanus booster! What if Stevie says no, what then, Step, what about your promise to me that you'd take him?

"I don't want to," said Stevie.

And there it was. Thanks a lot, Step!

But Stevie hadn't reached his decision yet. "Can she really help people solve hard problems?" he asked.

"Sometimes," said Step.

"Then I'll go," said Stevie. He didn't seem angry anymore.

"Thanks, Door Man," said Step. "And if it doesn't work out, or if you don't like her, then we won't make you go to her anymore, OK? This isn't like school, there isn't a law that says you have to go. Got it?"

Stevie nodded. Then he got up and left the room. DeAnne wanted to ho ld him, comfort him. But if he had wanted her right then, he could have stayed. He wanted to be alone, and that was his right.

Step sat back down beside her on the couch and put his arm around her. "It went pretty well, I'd say" he said.

She said nothing.

"I know what you're thinking," said Step, "and it isn't true."

"What am I thinking, smart guy?" she asked.

"You're thinking that you're the worst wife and mother who ever lived on the face of the earth and I'm telling you, that's just the pregnancy talking."

"No it's not," she said.

"I know you hate it when I point out things like this, but you've always spent the last couple of months of every pregnancy in the slough of despond. The worst mother, the baby would be luckier if it was stillborn-"

"I've never said such an awful thing!"

"You said it about Stevie and you said it about Betsy."

"So I'm just a machine that hormones use to accomplish their evil purposes in the world," she said.

"I'm not saying that the feelings you have aren't real, Fish Lady," said Step. "I'm just saying that you can't believe the things they make you think. You're a wonderful wife, and I wouldn't have any other."

"Oh yeah? Well what have I done this morning that was so wonderful?" asked DeAnne.

"For one thing, you've kept my fourth child alive for another day, and that's a fulltime job all by itself. And you didn't tell me to stop when you thought I was letting Stevie decide not to go to the shrink."

"What, have you suddenly decided that you're a mind reader?"

"You sat on the edge of that couch like it was all you could do to keep from leaping at me and stapling my mouth shut," said Step. "I don't have to read minds. But you didn't do it. You trusted me, and it worked out. I'd say that gives you the hero-of-the-morning medal."

"No it doesn't," said DeAnne. "Not after the way I talked to you in the kitchen."

"Nothing that anybody says on the same day they find five hundred thousand June bugs staring at them through the kitchen windows is allowed to count against them," said Step. "Now give me a kiss before I go to work because my ride is outside."

She kissed him. Then: "You didn't get any breakfast," she said.

"Why do I need breakfast," he answered, "in a world with candy machines?"

Then he got up and left.

Taking Stevie to Dr. Weeks was almost an anticlimax. She piled the kids into the car. Stevie was silent on the way to the doctor's office, but then he was usually silent, and there was no waiting when they got there, the receptionist just greeted Stevie with a smile and told him that his mother and brother and sister would be waiting for him when he got through and why not come in right now and meet Dr. Weeks? Stevie didn't even give DeAnne a backward glance. He just let the receptionist usher him into the office like a soldier letting the sergeant herd him into battle.

This has to work, thought DeAnne as she told stories to Robbie and Betsy in the waiting room. Please, Lord, let Dr. Weeks find a way for us to help get Stevie back to his old self.

Then the hour was up and Stevie came out. DeAnne raised a questioning eyebrow to Dr. Weeks, but the psychiatrist was not going to confide anything in front of Stevie. She just smiled and shook DeAnne's hand and then graciously shook hands with Robbie, who asked if he could come in and talk to her sometime, too, because he was really good at talking to people and he liked to do it a lot more than Stevie did. Dr. Weeks laughed and said, "Maybe someday you will, Robbie, but not for now."

On the way home, DeAnne wanted to ask Stevie about what happened, but she resisted the impulse. He couldn't be free to speak openly to Dr. Weeks if he knew he would face an inquisition as soon as he got into the car. So she confined her questions to one: "How was it?"

"Fine," he said.

The next morning, alone in the kitchen at 8:30, she called Dr. Weeks at home, hoping to catch her before she went to work. A man answered; it must be Lee, DeAnn realized. "May I speak to Dr. Weeks?" she asked.

"Who may I say is calling?" asked Lee.

"This is DeAnne Fletcher."

A pause.

"What's this about?" asked Lee.

"Is she not at home?" asked DeAnne.

She wasn't about to confide in this young man, not after his display at the baptism.

"I need to tell her what it's about," said Lee.

"Then I'll call back later."

As she spoke, however, there was a click on the line. "Hello?" It was Dr. Weeks.

"Dr. Weeks, I'm so sorry to bother you at home, but I wanted to speak to you before you had other patients in the office and while the kids were still asleep."

"That's fine," said Dr. Weeks. "And who is this?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought Lee had told you. This is DeAnne Fletcher, Stevie's mother."

"Lee was on the phone with you?"

"Yes, he answered the-"

"Lee, hang up the extension right now."

A long silence.

"He must already have hung up," said DeAnne.

"Lee, hang it up now. This conversation will not continue until you hang up the phone."

Another silence. And then a click.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Fletcher. Sometimes it's like living with an oversized four- year-old."

"Yes, I understand," said DeAnne. But she did not actually understand.

"You wanted ...?"

"I just-I needed to know if you- if there's anything I can help you with. Information or whatever. After your first visit with Stevie yesterday."

"Not really," said Dr. Weeks. "You already gave me the basic information before. Oh, I would appreciate it if you would make a list of all the names of his imaginary friends and mail it to me at the office."

"I could tell you all the names right now," said DeAnne.

"At the office, please," said Dr. Weeks. "That is how I maintain things in the strictest confidence."

"All right," said DeAnne. "Thanks. And I won't bother you at home again, I promise."

"That would be best," said Dr. Weeks. "Good morning." Then she hung up.

In the moment before DeAnne hung up, she heard a second click.

Lee had not hung up before. He must have listened to the whole thing.

No wonder Dr. Weeks was having her mail the list to the office. No wonder she said "That would be best."

It wasn't rudeness, it was simple recognition of reality. Lee was spying on his mother every chance he got. Lee was out of control at home.

DeAnne sat down at the table at once and wrote down the names she could remember. Jack and Scotty, of course. But yesterday morning while Stevie was playing Lode Runner ... what were the names? Roddy. And David was the one Stevie had mentioned after the baptism. Four now. Jack, Scotty, Roddy, and David.

Then she set that paper aside and wrote another: Names of Stevie's frie nds in the order we heard them: Scotty Jack David Roddy She sat there for a while, looking at the list. Imagining those imaginary friends herself. Four boys, Stevie's age. Maybe Scotty was a redhead like that child actor Johnny Whitaker, and Jack was a freckled round- faced brown-haired boy like Artful Dodger in Oliver!, and David was quiet, shy, holding back, perhaps a medium blond. And Roddy, bold as brass and inclined to get himself in trouble from which others had to rescue him. All hanging around the house here, always coming into the kitchen and she had to keep shooing them away from the fridge or there'd never be anything left for dinner, but then they'd come in and tell her all about the game they were playing in the back yard, and they'd be sweaty from running and have that acrid little-boy smell that DeAnne remembered from her brother, probably the worst smell in the world she had thought then, but now she thought that she would love to smell it on Stevie, on his friends, the stink of sweat from hours of hot play in the afternoon as the summer vacation got under way and the still- lengthening days left them with so much time, so much time in the evening, the lightning bugs like tiny meteor showers on the lawn as the children ran and ran, and they would never stop until at last she called them in and said, "Time for you boys to go home, don't you think? But first here's some milk and I made these cookies after supper, Stevie remember to let your friends choose first, one to a customer please, and maybe if you washed your hands you wouldn't catch a vile disease. I suppose I'll have to teach you how to work the faucet, from the look of you none of you boys has ever turned on a watertap in your lives. The square thing by the sink is a bar of soap." And they would laugh and protest and Stevie would say, "Mo-om," and then they'd eat the cookies and flecks of chocolate would cling to the corners of their mouths.

Oh God, why can't Stevie have real friends? Why can't I hear my son's voice crying Ollie ollie oxen free in the front yard as dusk settles over the street?

She folded up the list and put it in an envelope and addressed it to Dr. Weeks's office and then took it out front and put it in the mailbox at the curb.

When she got back into the kitchen, Robbie was kneeling on a chair, sounding out the names on the first list DeAnne had written.

"You forgot Peter," said Robbie.

"What?" asked DeAnne.

"Peter," said Robbie. "He won't come out and play though. He just watches."

"Do you know what this list is?" asked DeAnne.

"Stevie's friends," said Robbie. "He won't ever let me meet them, though."

"No, I don't guess he would," said DeAnne.

"What you writing them down for, Mommy? Is Stevie having them come over?"

"Don't worry about it," said DeAnne. She put the list up on top of the serving dishes in the top cupboard. "I was just writing names. What do you want for breakfast?"

"Cream of Wheat!" cried Robbie.

DeAnne let him help make the mush, and within moments the list was forgotten.

Dicky came into Step's office on Tuesday afternoon. "Good news," said Dicky.

"Oh, really?" Step immediately felt a thrill of dread: Ray had decided to support the PC after all.

"Ray has decided to publish a Commodore 64 version of Hacker Snack."

How ludicrous! thought Step. No one had ever spoken to him about Hacker Snack, not even after he walked in on the programmers working on it as a secret project just before the San Francisco trip. He had assumed that the programmers told Dicky and Dicky told Ray and they just dropped the whole thing. But no, apparently it was still alive and now Dicky had the gall to walk in here and say that Ray had decided to publish a game that didn't belong to him.

"Oh, that's a shame," said Step.

"What do you mean?" asked Dicky.

"I already sold it to another publisher."

Dicky sat there in stunned silence as the blood flowed into his face, turning it red. "You sold Hacker Snack to a competitor?"

"No one here made me an offer for it. It's not as if I was hard to find. So I figured you weren't interested."

"Don't give me that bullshit," said Dicky. "I know perfectly well that you've been aware of our interest in Hacker Snack for months."

"On the contrary," said Step. "I knew that Glass had disassembled my code and that the programmers had been goofing around with it, but since I had not sold the rights to anybody and no one at Eight Bits Inc. had ever so much as whispered the name of Hacker Snack to me, it never occurred to me that there was any official interest in it at all."

"Well, now I'm telling you tha t Ray has decided to publish Hacker Snack."

"And I'm telling you that I've signed a contract selling those rights to someone else."

"You had no right to sign such a contract," said Dicky. "Your employment agreement specifically gives the rights to any and all—"

"My employment agreement specifically excludes all games I published before coming to Eight Bits Inc., Dicky. Before you go quoting people's employment agreements, you ought to read them. They aren't all the same."

Dicky looked as though his face was going to explode. "You ungrateful little shit."

"Grateful for what?" asked Step. "I've worked here for more than four months, and not once did anyone make any kind of offer about Hacker Snack. You even forbade me to do any programming, remember? It has been crystal clear to me all along that Eight Bits Inc. valued me only for my manual writing. Or am I mistaken in that? Should I have thought of myself as a gamewright all along?"

"Do you realize what you've just done?"

"I've done nothing," said Step. "You're the ones who went behind my back and invested time in developing a product for which you hadn't the decency even to ask about the rights. Is that my fault? All I did was sell what was mine to a company that expressed an interest in it."

"Who! Who did you sell it to!"

"There is nothing in my employment agreement that obligates me to tell you what I do with my property, Dicky."

"We're going to sue their asses off!"

"Which is precisely why I have no intention of telling you."

"Ray will fire you for this."

"He'll fire me?" asked Step. Actually, he thought this was quite likely. But to Step being fired wasn't that bad a prospect. DeAnne could hardly blame him for leaving his job if he got fired, could she? So he even found himself enjoying this confrontation. There was nothing Step valued that Dicky could take away from him. "I don't think I'm the one whose job is on the line. I think the person whose job is on the line is the one who suggested developing an adaptation of my game behind my back. The one who didn't even bother to find out that my employment agreement is different before committing Eight Bits Inc.'s resources to a game that you didn't own."

"You fool," said Dicky. "That was Ray himself who did all that."

"Oh?" asked Step. "And is that the way Ray will remember it? Will he remember all the times you advised him against such a dangerous course of action?"

Dicky looked at him in livid silence.

"Dicky, now's a good time for you to lift your fat cheeks out of that chair and carry them through that door.

If Ray's going to fire me, then have him send me a memo to that effect and I'll be out of here collecting unemployment in a hot second. And if he's not going to fire me, then I've got work to do and you are in my way."

Step turned back to the page proofs he was checking.

After a while he heard Dicky get up out of his chair and leave the room. Softly, softly, on little cat feet.

When Dicky was gone, Step got up on shaking legs and gently closed the door. Then he leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. He felt so light- headed. Is this how a soldier feels when he has leapt from the trench and run toward the enemy lines and reached them and discovered that not one bullet touched him? Step had missed Vietnam with a draft lottery number of 225-a number that sounded as magical to him now as 7 or 3 or

12 or 40 sounded to other people. He had no experience of war, of real courage, of struggle between man and man. But this might just have been a taste, he thought. Dicky came in here prepared to bestow some pittance on me as if it were a great gift from Eight Bits Inc., and I laughed in his face and dared him to do his worst. I don't know how I did it without wetting my pants.

He went about his business as best he could, considering that he expected at any moment to have Dicky come in with his pink slip. At the end of the day he hadn't seen Dicky again at all, and he hadn't been fired. It was almost a disappointment.

The Cowpers moved on the tenth of June. "I wish you could have waited till Saturday," DeAnne told Jenny.

"Step wanted to help load up the truck. You've been so good to us, and we've never been able to give anything back."

"Nonsense," said Jenny. "I've had a wonderful time since you got here. In fact, if you had been living here when Spike accepted the transfer, I don't know if we would have taken it. But that's the way it goes, don't you know? We were each other's best friends--except for our husbands-I had to say that real quick to get it in before you said it, I know-anyway we were best friends, as long as it lasted, and I'll never forget you. But don't bother promising to write, you know we won't. Except Christmas cards every year., I'll never be bored reading your year-end family newsletter, you hear?"

"Can't I write if I want to?"

"Phone me. I'm not a writer. If you're broke, phone me collect."

"And vice versa," said DeAnne. "You're the one who knows my phone number, so you have to call first."

"Of course," said Jenny. "How else will you know where to send the five hundred dollars for the Datsun?"

"Eight hundred dollars," said DeAnne.

"Make it ten thousand if you want," said Jenny. "But we think the price was five hundred dollars and we don't really care if you never pay that. Think of it as a law-of-consecration car, a churchservice car. Take it out visiting teaching and take teenagers to youth activities in it. And whenever you do, think of us."

"I'll think of you more than you know," said DeAnne. "And I'll miss you more than you know."

"You'll make a new best friend within a month," said Jenny.

"Someone else can be my best friend," said DeAnne, "without ever being half as good a friend as you."

"Are you just trying to make me cry so I can't drive straight and I run us into a bridge abutment or something?" asked Jenny. "Now make sure none of your kids is standing behind the U-Haul or the car when we drive out." Jenny looked at the U-Haul in disgust. "They're a big enough company to transfer our family across the country and buy our stupid house, but they're not big enough that they can afford to pay for a real moving company. Tell Step to quit his lousy job, they're all thieves." Then Jenny kissed DeAnne on the cheek and they hugged each other and then Spike finally locked the house and got into the cab of the U-Haul with two of the kids as Jenny go t into their nice car with the rest of the kids. DeAnne made sure that Stevie and Robbie and Elizabeth were in plain sight and nowhere near the cars, and then she waved and the Cowpers pulled out into the road.

She watched them out of sight and then felt the baby inside her do his stretching thing, pushing against her ribs until it hurt, until she thought she couldn't stand it anymore. She wanted to swat the baby, to yell at it, to demand that it stop hurting her, that it just leave her alone for a minute.

The baby pushed all the harder. He was probably responding to the grief hormones flowing through her body, the chemical anguish.

At last the pressure subsided and she could think of walking again. "Come on, kids. This isn't the Cowpers'

house anymore, so we better go on home."

When she got home, there was the Cowpers' old beat-up Datsun B-210. The car that made her and Step a two-car family for the first time in their marriage. She walked up and touched it, examined it, the paint pitted and faded, the doors rusted through at running-board height. She caressed the car as if it were a horse that no one had been able to tame but her. Thank you for Jenny, she said. But why did you have to take her away from me so soon?

She stopped herself from thinking that way, and said, very clearly and definitely inside her mind, Thank you for Jenny. And then she forced herself to leave it at that, to go inside and concentrate on fixing lunch, which was long overdue.

There was a substitute mailman, so the mail didn't arrive till almost four o'clock. There was an envelope from Agamemnon, and inside was the check. The money that would catch them up on their payments on the house in Indiana. If the regular mailman hadn't been on vacation, she could have paid the Cowpers for the car before they left.

Oh, well. She'd make out the checks tomorrow and everything would be fine. Most of the money would be gone immediately, they were so far behind-and none of it could go to the IRS for their back taxes, so that still hung over their heads. Still, freedom was in sight.

But the next day when she sat down to write out the checks, she just couldn't bring herself to do it. It made her feel so stupid, to find it emotionally impossible to write the checks. Hadn't she and Step decided last night that they would definitely go ahead and pay the mortgage up to date?

Finally she wrote out a check for the amount of the oldest overdue mortgage payment, along with all the late fees that had accrued on that one payment. She put it in an envelope, piled the kids into the car, drove to the post office, and slipped the envelope into the box.

A month. That's all I'm doing, just paying for one month's delay before they foreclose. Why? It's stupid and dangerous they'll probably still call the note; this one payment won't do anything at all. But I can't wipe out that five thousand dollars sitting in the bank. I can't bring it down to nothing because who knows when the next check will come?