Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

Tiffany gave Maggie her cheerleader smile and accompanied her to where the bicycle was tipped over beside the reflecting pool. “This is just between us,” she said. “Not that the pastor wouldn’t fully support everything we’re doing, but he has a lot on his mind right now. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” said Maggie with some of her old fire. “But of course, my lips are sealed.”

“If he has a problem with it, I’ll just tell him it’s my one crazy thing.” When Tiffany laughed, Maggie felt a burst of joy, and better than joy, she felt hope — for herself, for the prisoners, and for the world. Where would she go if she could go anywhere? She’d stay right there in Red Bud, of course, but life was a narrowing down as much as an opening out, and for now Red Bud was the one place on earth she couldn’t be.

She wheeled the bicycle to the top of a low rise and looked around her at the green fields of wheat waving gracefully in the breeze. Please take care of Will, she thought again, but this time it wasn’t so much a prayer to God as to the other people out there, people who might lend a hand to a stranger in time of need.

In the distance, a straight ribbon of highway stretched all the way to California. On either side of it, a flock of oil derricks bowed and preyed on the rich Carboniferous sludge deposited millions of years before, when Oklahoma was a steamy and suppurating swamp. Behind her, the double-domed Church of the New Incarnation had doubled again — it was sprawled on its back giving comfort to the sky and it was also flipped upside down, drowning in the reflecting pool. As she surveyed the familiar landscape, she wondered again if she had done any good at all, and if she had, had she done right? When she had started down this path all those months ago, she had assumed that things would be clearer than they were and that she would be able to look back on her choices and accomplishments with certainty and satisfaction. Partial knowledge, she thought. It was all anybody had. Overhead, a plane tipped its wings at her, filled with people who had other problems and other destinies awaiting them. As she watched it disappear into the distance, a hawk plummeted from the heavens and rocketed up again with a field mouse in its talons. She was sorry for the little creature, but there was nothing she could do for it. Even she knew that saving too many mice would doom the hawk. The world was paradoxical, and if there was a solution to the paradox, it wasn’t for her to know.

13.1 Will

The morning was still and hot, giving the desert a timeless, lacquered look. Will took out the controller and attached the joystick before lifting the Parakeet he called Polly out of its case. It weighed six ounces and only resembled a bird in the rounded fatness of its body and the beaklike sensors attached to its head. Instead of wings, it had four rigid appendages topped with rotors for vertical lift and a stabilizing rotor in the middle of its back. The payload port on its belly was fitted with a camera that relayed signals to the computer pack that Nate carried over his shoulder.

“I kinda wish I’d been issued one of those Groundhogs,” said Nate, nodding to where third team was climbing into the Humvee that would follow behind a robot that resembled a mini tank. “Those things are awesome.”

“I don’t know,” said Will. “I think the Parakeet is cool.”

“It doesn’t have a gun,” countered Nate. “That’s a major negative right there.”

“But the Groundhog can’t fly. Anyway, UAVs are where it’s at if we want good jobs when we get home.”

Will’s platoon had been training an incoming unit to take its place — first the training exercises of two days before and now the mission to find a downed helicopter — and then he’d be leaving Polly with Nate and going home. Not that going home was without its complications.

Nate hoisted the computer pack and strapped it on while Will flipped a switch to activate the camera, which he could toggle between wide-angle and high-resolution zoom. When Nate said he was ready, Will tossed the Parakeet into the air as Nate manipulated the joystick and nudged the throttle with his thumb. The bird took off and the two men watched until it was only a tiny, glittering speck.

“Let’s roll,” said Will, climbing into a Humvee with the rest of his team.

He patted his thigh pocket. Through the heavy canvas fabric he could feel the flat photographs he carried with him along with a small jumble of other things. He had given the magnifying glass and Transformers robots to some local children, but he still had the razor blade in its paper wrapping. He still had the twist of sturdy wire, the extra paracord, and a tiny pair of pliers he had won off another soldier in a poker game.

“The girlfriends?” asked Nate.

Will smiled and said, “Yeah, man. They’re my COG.” But now that he was going home, his center of gravity didn’t feel quite so centered. For one thing, his parents had moved to California, and for another, he was feeling a little guilty about leading both Dylan and Tula on.

“I can’t believe you have two,” said Nate. “Anyone with two should be required to share.”

“Very funny,” said Will. “But I’ll let you look at the pictures later if you’re good.”

As they drove, Nate told a story about a soldier whose girlfriend had dumped him and asked him to send her picture back. “He didn’t want her to know how badly his feelings were hurt, so he collected all the pictures of women he could get his hands on from his friends — pictures of their girlfriends, of their wives and aunts and sisters — over fifty in all — and he sent them to his ex with a note that said, ‘I can’t remember which one you are, so please take your picture out and send the rest back.’”

“Ha, ha,” said Will. And then he said, “You can see the pictures, but you can’t have them.”

“My girlfriend didn’t dump me,” said Nate.

“That’s because you don’t have one.”

“Technicality,” said Nate. “Anyway, I’ve got Polly now.”

Will focused his binoculars. “The wind’s coming up,” he said. “That’s one of the things you’ve got to be careful about.” As soon as he said it, the Parakeet was dive-bombed by a giant hawk. They watched helplessly for a few seconds, and then the hawk flew off. “Hawks are another thing,” said Will.

“That was a close call,” said Nate. He allowed the Parakeet to fly ahead while Will scanned the sky with his field glasses and took readings on the wind. Their search sector extended west to a series of low hills, and beyond the hills to a road. Early that morning a helicopter had gone down, and the mission was to find it. What looked like a stretch of flat terrain could be seen on the portable monitor to be riddled with rocks and fissures, making the going too tough for the Groundhog, which would drive around and enter the search area from the north. Twenty minutes in, the screen showed a one-lane track winding between some boulders, so they steered along that until Nate zoomed in on what appeared to be a vehicle that had fallen into a shallow fissure.