D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“So, are they here yet?” Sarah asked in a more somber tone as she glanced at the house.

“They?” Camilla asked.

“The investors.”

Camilla glanced at the house and said, “I haven’t been able to tell you anything until now, Sarah. I wanted to but couldn’t. He wouldn’t let me. There’s so much you don’t know.”

“He?”

Camilla opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. “You’ll see,” she replied as she led Sarah inside.

They wound through the lavishly decorated house – every nook occupied by an eclectic mix of art, furniture and mementos from Camilla’s frequent world travels – emerging in an expansive great room. A lone man stood with his back to them in front of the glass west-wall – silhouetted against the living Pacific mural. Camilla rested a hand on Sarah’s forearm, stopping her from walking further. The old man didn’t turn around for a moment and when he did, Sarah instantly recognized him.

Chris tapped his fingers on his bouncing knee for a minute and then shook his head as he said, “I don’t know. It sounded like it was a place – a place where they were experimenting with this virus. You don’t know anything about this group of people up in Aroostook County?”

“Not to be accusatory but that’s why I have a hard time buying your story. If something like this was going on, you’d think that we’d have heard something about it. Everything that’s worth looking into from here to Canada comes through this office. If some weird cult had set up a lab and planned to change the world, I’d think that I would have heard something. Maybe not the details, but at least a rumor or something – anything.”

“I can’t explain it, all I know is that it happened,” Chris said shaking his head. A thought occurred to him. “The plane!”

“What?”

“The plane’s got to be there. Let’s go up there and see it. Then at least you can see that I’m telling the truth about that. It’s all shot up.”

“Yeah, we could do that, but I want to get some more details before we do anything.”

The computer screen went blank. Then a form came up and information about Chris filled in the blanks. Watching as his personal history appeared on the computer screen from an even larger computer that was lurking elsewhere in the country, gobbling up information about people and storing it for later regurgitation on request to some bureaucrat, gave him the creeps.

He leaned closer so that he could see the information but Pell spun the screen away from him.

“What’s your social security number again?” He asked.

Chris repeated it and he nodded.

“Address?”

Chris told him and he confirmed it.

“What’s your ex-wife’s name?”

This question caught him off guard. Why would they have that in there? He’d been married for six months, ten years ago.

“Jessie, why?”

“I’m just confirming that you’re really who you said you are, Chris.”

“What else is in there?” Chris asked as he stood up. Privacy in the twenty-first century was impossible.

“Sit down,” Pell said with surprising force. “This is confidential information.”

“Yeah, it’s confidential to me.”

“Don’t let it bother you. We know about everybody. You should know that – being in the information business that is.”

Chris dropped back down into his chair and began gnawing on his vacation-regrown thumbnail.

“So you were arrested for selling pot, huh?” Pell said matter-of-factly.

“When I was nineteen.”

“Why were you dealing?”

“I was a confused kid. It was something to do,” Chris said.

“You smoke it too?”

“No, never,” Chris replied sarcastically. “Of course, it was one of the perks.”

“Jesus Christ, sorry about your family,” Pell said as he scrolled down the screen. “A natural gas explosion?”

Chris nodded and managed a simple, “Yeah.” Time had helped but little things, like the smell in the diner this morning, brought it back – sometimes worse than others. It wasn’t a question of did it hurt, it was how much did it hurt today.

“What happened?”

He didn’t want to talk about it. He had learned on that beautiful autumn Sunday in 1991, or really over the weeks, months and years that followed, to let things go – the past was only trouble, no good could come from dwelling there.

He and his family had lived on L Street in South Boston – Southie, a triple decker. They were squeezed into the top two floors with his grandparents on the street level. It was Sunday morning and Mom needed eggs. When he went to get them he walked right by the city crew working on a busted water main. It looked like they were taking their sweet ass double-time time. The store was busy and he waited in line to pay when a massive explosion blew in the windows, knocking everyone and most of the merchandise onto the floor with an incomprehensible, ground-shaking roar.

Chaos followed, people moaning and screaming. The woman lying in the debris next to him had blood gushing from a gash in her neck. He should have stayed, helped but he was confused and scared. He ran out of the store. The street was filled with smoke and people – some dazed, others moving with purpose. He saw a woman on her knees tearing at her long blonde hair as she pulled her head back and screamed, a small child dressed in his Sunday best lay lifeless in front of her. His ruptured eardrums thankfully muted her pain-filled wails. He ran down the street toward his house but it was gone. All that remained was a smoking mound of rubble. The piece of the heavy equipment that had been working on the water main was tossed onto the smoldering mound as if a giant spoiled child had thrown a fit, destroying his playhouse with his Tonka toy.

The rest was a fog – eighteen dead, thirty-four seriously injured, countless bruised, battered and shaken. Three generations of his family tree had been culled in one instant. He was all that was left. Fifteen and alone in the world. Coping was something he had been forced to learn, and to cope he moved on. Today and tomorrow mattered – not yesterday.

“You know Southie?” Chris told the painful story.

“I’m sorry,” Pell said.

Chris shrugged.

“Well, I guess you are Chris Foster,” Pell said matter-of-factly.

“I told you that an hour ago. I’m not the problem here. I’m just the unlucky bastard who happened to have his long-awaited and well-deserved vacation shot to hell because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know why you’re treating me like I’m some kind of whacko.”

“You need to calm down, right now,” Pell said.

“I don’t care! I know that there is one way for sure that we can find out whether or not I’m lying. Let’s take a ride up to the St. Croix River, and you can see the plane for yourself.”

“Don’t get yourself all worked up,” Pell said in a calm, professional voice. “I’ll tell you what I can do. Let me make a few calls. Hopefully, I can scrounge up a chopper, and we’ll send someone up there to take a look.”

He patted Chris on the shoulder and took on a more sympathetic tone as he said, “Wait here. I’ll be back in a few.”

Chris realized he had yet to speak to Karen about any of this. He reached for his mobile phone but remembered it was still in his room at the Wild Bear. Damn. “Can I use the phone?” He called to Pell. “I need to call my wife.”

“Help yourself.”

He picked up the receiver and dialed home. When Karen answered, he hung up. For reasons he didn’t quite understand, he decided that maybe she didn’t need to know about this after all. Hell, he was supposed to be up on the river for five more days. No need to worry her about this and besides, it would be nice to surprise her when he got home early. Maybe they could spend a few days alone together.