his son, but Howard let the thing almost drop from his hand. Chad made an exasperated face and checked Howard’s response: his little eyes (Sharis’s eyes) glared back from under a thatch of hair. Howard’s hair didn’t so much grow from his head as sprout, reaching a critical height and then toppling over. The rest of his face was doughy and unformed, but his eyes gave some hope of intelligence.
Chad didn’t know how he’d ended up with two such different sons. Howard was as lumpy as Leon was spiky. Chad fretted about both of them. He could imagine Howard spending his life oozing from one chair to the next, and Leon having to be grabbed by someone to sit down for a moment.
“Look at the arm on that catcher,” Chad whistled.
Maybe he should talk to Howard about his weight, set up a schedule of exercises for the two of them together.
Howard said, “Can I get a hotdog?”
He was much too big. Little Leon’s body was ropy, while Howard’s body didn’t have a single muscle visible. I wasn’t that big as a child, Chad thought.
“If you’re truly hungry,” Chad said.
The hotdog did make Howard happier. “Leon can’t eat hotdogs,” he said in satisfaction, because Leon’s front two teeth were missing. Howard scored two innings himself, noting that the Dragons’ pitcher always seemed to get behind on the counts. “I’m impressed you noticed that, Howard,” Chad said. “Now, let’s see if you can tell me what he’s throwing.”
Chad was concentrating so hard on the pitches he didn’t notice the faint throbbing from the sky. Shadows were darkening the field before Chad looked up. “What the …” he said, and there they were, maybe twelve helicopters, painted shiny white and nearly silent, a dense formation over the field. Hot air stirred by the rotors, the smell of exhaust. A small American flag on each fender, like a tattooed side of a buttock. Chad glanced at the crowd around him: everyone was staring, mesmerized, into the air.
Chad would think later: the shadow of a dark wing over the field.
The pitcher stopped. He dropped his arms to his sides and craned his neck and looked up like everyone else. The baseball dribbled from his hand onto the mound, and although Chad thought fleetingly that the runners on second and third could legally break for home, no one on the field moved.
Not again, Chad thought, thinking of Sharis’s stories of the Gridding.
“Poison?” Chad had said. Sharis (fourteen-year-old Sharis!) was seated across the picnic table from him, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun, telling him about the Gridding. Chad’s brain had been blank, besotted, and then it was clicking as madly as a Geiger counter. “Your father mixed up poison for you?” Chad repeated, thinking he’d misheard.
“Char!” Howard was whispering. “Oh man, char! This is the charrest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“They’re army helicopters. Hopi Hellions,” Chad said.
“He always said the government was going to come for us,” Sharis told Chad. “That was his guaranteed way out.”
“Where are they going?” said a man in front of them, turning around. “The Base?”
The old air force base, which used to be a research facility, now housed troops from both the air force and the army. But the base was east, and these helicopters were pointed north. Chad said, “Maybe they’re headed up to the Grid?”
“It’s the soldiers, honey. Just like Daddy said.” Her mother woke her up by leaning over her bed and blowing a strand of hair off her daughter’s forehead.
“Am I dreaming?” Sharis (Cheryl) asked, but she knew she wasn’t because she was hungry. Except when she was sound asleep, she was always hungry.
“It’s the middle of the night. Just like Daddy said.” Her mother’s uncombed hair stuck up from the back of her head.
Sharis’s mother touched her cheek. “Just remember, honey, there’s never hunger in heaven.”
“Is Howie up?”
“Your father’s with him. Come on”—her mother coaxed Sharis to her feet.
“Let me get my shoes.”
“Cheryl Mae! You don’t need your shoes.”
“But she let you get them, right?” Chad said. “And your robe?”
Sharis walked into her closet, slipped on her shoes. She took her robe off the hanger. “They’re going house to house? The soldiers?”
“Just like he said.”
They would all sit on the sofa in the living room. They each would have a wineglass, although the parents in the family didn’t drink. A festive occasion. The best glasses.
The helicopters passed and still the pitcher stood frozen, the ball rolled to the edge of the pitching mound. The catcher walked up and talked to him, handed him the ball. The pitcher nodded. His next pitch hit the batter in the elbow. The batter fell to the ground writhing, holding up his elbow for the umpire. A lot of that was dramatics, but still.
Howie, small and blinking, was huddled against the arm of the sofa. Sharis’s father was still standing, waiting for his wife and daughter. He held out his arms. Bastard, Chad always called him in his mind. Murderer.
Through the chinks in the living room curtains Sharis could see lights; outside she heard the murmur of motors and voices. She’d imagined it noisier.
“Let’s sit down,” her mother said.
Her father sat next to Howie, then Sharis, then her mother. Her mother reached around and touched Howie’s hair with her fingers. “I love you, little buddy,” she said.
“I don’t want to drink it,” Howie said.
“Come on, Howie. It’s your favorite. Look at this”—the father sloshed the liquid—“grape.” The father stuck a finger in the liquid and held it out. “Lick it off my finger.”
Chad looked to the bullpen and made out the Dragons’ manager pointing at a scrawny kid. Apparently this guy was supposed to take over on the pitcher’s mound. “Who’s that, Daddy?” Howard asked.
Hard knocks at the front door. Sharis’s parents exchanged glances. “Hold him down,” her father said. Her mother lifted Howie from the cushion and placed him in her lap, her arms tight around him. Her father made a hole of Howie’s mouth and poured the purple liquid in.
Chad couldn’t find the new pitcher’s number on the roster. That was the minors: players came and went. “Good God,” he said, looking closer at the kid. “He looks like he’s about fourteen.”
“Come on, people,” a man’s voice said from the door. “All your neighbors are out here. We can’t wait forever.”
Her mother swallowed the last of her own drink and gave Sharis an anguished glance. “Pick up your glass, honey.”
“She didn’t say ‘Swallow it,’ did she?” Chad said to Sharis. “She planned for you to live.”
