Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

Which is, of course, what Fan took for granted when she happened to glance over at Quig, who to her shock was not facing the road but focusing on her instead, his hands mirroring hers. The sight caused her to jerk involuntarily to the side, which Quig couldn’t help but follow, and the high-riding car swerved, tires in full wail, until he fought the nasty, scary snaking and steadied it, and they were once again rolling calmly down the road. It was a good thing there was no other traffic. Loreen had been roused awake, crying out when one of the knitting needles poked her in the chin, drawing a trickle of blood.

What the hell happened?

Big rock in the road, Quig mumbled, like it was any fact of nature.

And you didn’t see it? she complained, dabbing at the blood with her shirtsleeve.

Nope.

Fan saw Loreen looking back over her shoulder, dubiousness crimping the corner of her mouth, and although Quig didn’t meet Fan’s gaze and was driving again, she was sure he winked at her. She wondered about him, the person he might have been when his wife and daughter were alive. Fan had heard more about them from Penelope, who mentioned once after a meal that Quig’s daughter had been, in fact, very pretty, beautiful in that way girls can sometimes be when bearing certain of their father’s features (even if, like Quig, he was nothing special to look at), this from when she’d caught sight of some pix in his albums while he scrolled through his handscreen. He didn’t try to hide it from her, but otherwise he never talked about his daughter, and if a visitor asked innocently after his family or children, he would simply stop whatever he was doing and leave, even in the midst of cutting into someone or stitching them up. The compound knew better and Fan did, too, but she pressed Penelope for more about his past Charter life, details that between her and Loreen and a few others who’d been at the compound from early on could be gathered into an unofficial history of what had happened, and how he came to make a life in the Smokes.

Quig, we now know, had enjoyed the life of most any other Charter citizen. He was born and raised in a Charter village down south and was educated in the customary fashion, attending school for many more years than a B-Mor ever would and then enrolling in a Charter university for a specialized degree in veterinary medicine. His wife was a trained veterinarian as well, and after their internships, they opened a practice in a village where they would live for nearly twenty years, before having to leave. After the first few years, his wife quit working to have their child and Quig combined with two other vets to run a busy, successful practice, the largest in the area. People from other Charters were soon bringing their pets to the practice, and so he and his partners came up with the idea of servicing the area in call-vans, charging high fees to treat and groom the many pets and animals a typical Charter family owned.

Given the exorbitant costs of living and schooling and health care, Charters usually had one or at most two children, as well as because of the frankly limited opportunities for having a full-on Charter life. There was fierce competition for whatever one might do, at every level, whether it was playing the trombone or being on the swim team and, of course, succeeding in the classroom, where everyone was routinely tested and ranked in all subjects. In fact, there were rankings as well on the teams and orchestras and even in the special-interest clubs, where if it was difficult to gauge talent, then enthusiasm and leadership were appraised. It went on from there through university and professional school, and then careers, the weekly Power List of who was at the head spurring ever-accelerating achievement but also in certain cases a kind of malaise that B-Mors and counties people never really suffered, that empty-lunged feeling that can come from being measured, unceasingly, from the moment of birth.

Pets were simpler to raise, in every way, plus they couldn’t disappoint the family or themselves and naturally offered and received affection unconditionally, which in this world is rare, all of which accounted for why the Charters loved them dearly, and insisted on menageries of them, outfitting the expansive-by-design balconies of their condos or their backyards with romper equipment and kenneling for their squads of cats and dogs but also the toy swine and hens and even goats a growing number of enthusiasts raised for healthful meat and eggs and milk. Quig and his partners did very well for themselves, and while they weren’t as rich as the people-doctors or business executives, they were as secure as any of their Charter neighbors in what they expected from their lives, content with the kind of condo they inhabited, the vehicles they drove, how many helpers (just one, for Quig’s family) they employed, where and how frequently they dined out, all the vital metrics, as Charters would say, duly aligned. Quig and his wife and daughter were in this sense happily unexceptional. Trish was talkative and bubbly and a tad plumpish, with loose chestnut brown curls just like her mother’s, and she was a brainy girl, too, always high in the rankings from preschool onward, her parents probably thinking that she had a good chance to be an engineer or executive or maybe even a C-specialist. They also entered her in the Charter Association beauty pageants, and though Trish was not the most fit-looking entrant in the preteen category, her gifted viola playing and her astounding retention of arcane historical facts in the knowledge rounds made up for somewhat lower scores in the yoga demonstration and evening-gown promenade. She could also look stunning; her last competition gown, Penelope said, was made from a brilliant copper silk taffeta that stunningly set off her tresses. Plus, she had that electric smile you saw in nearly every page of Quig’s albums, the wide, free grin that to the judges seemed to express the most genuine, deep-seated glee, and reflected not just the glowing inner girl but the wider Charter clime that shone just as bright. She was twice a regional finalist and was preparing for a third attempt at the nationals, practicing her yoga positions and musical pieces for many hours each week when the first animal plagues struck out west.

No one, Quig included, could have predicted how quickly things would change. Initially the cats got sick, and then the dogs, followed by the hobby livestock, but then a small percentage of the human population became infected, which wouldn’t have been so catastrophic had not nearly all of those unfortunate people died. The affected villages were immediately locked down, Charter epidemiologists flown in from around the world to determine what was causing the sickness (expressed in a catastrophic hemorrhagic fever) and how it had crossed multiple species barriers; while they were working, all pets and animals in the affected villages were ordered destroyed, whether sick or not, including, as has been noted, the fish in home aquariums. Families who tried to hide and save their pets were made examples of and banished to the open counties; soon enough every last animal was tendered. Naturally, panic spread around the Association (we B-Mors heard nothing about it until much later) and it wasn’t long before every Charter village in the country and many abroad decreed the same, banning all animals indefinitely.

Which then became forever.

So what happens to someone when his livelihood disappears literally overnight? It’s not the same as losing one’s job and having trouble finding another like it. The entire reason is gone, like the old-time writers who at some point found that very few people, if any, actually practiced reading anymore. But at least those writers had time, the change happening over many decades, until readers became rare enough that they were believed to be nearly extinct, like some twitchy, sensitive creatures who lingered in the twilight brush. But for Quig, it was as swift as awaking one morning to see that every appointment for a procedure or examination to come was gone, the entire calendar voided. He and his wife had some savings, plus partial equity in their condo, but his veterinary group had borrowed heavily to finance recent expansions of their staff and the call-van fleet and major office renovations. With no income and huge debts, Quig’s family had to sell their condo and move into the rental dorms normally reserved for service people, the nannies and landscapers and teachers and security/emergency workers et cetera who could never afford to own Charter real estate but wanted for obvious reasons to live inside the village. The idea was for Quig and his wife to take on whatever work could sustain them until he could figure out another sufficiently profitable line of business, and so they did, she cleaning office suites at night and he in charge of linens and towels at a health club. They borrowed money from friends for Trish’s school and music lesson fees. He applied to all of the industrial livestock corporations but got nowhere, as there was a taint upon not only veterinarians but also breeders and pet store owners, as if they had somehow allowed or even caused the outbreak.