I.
Mark placed another blueberry into Penny’s mouth. He’d worked on this process for several hours. It was now 4 am and the blue light of dawn tinged the corners of the trailer’s kitchen window. Penny was his second child. Named after an aunt from his childhood who had died when he was young. Too young for many memories. But those he retained still often flickered in his mind like old cellulose; thin and grainy.
At the far end of the trailer, his wife, Alice, stirred in the bedroom. Her alarm wouldn’t sound for another hour. He wanted her to have the rest. She’d taken charge of so many restless nights over the past year.
Did she know about the blueberries?
Penny fussed and brought a small hand down hard on the plastic tray that encased her in the highchair, a sign for Mark to select another blueberry from the carton and place it in her mouth. He obliged.
“How many of these things do you need, kiddo?”
The tub was almost empty. No other fruit was in the home. He knew she’d mind.
“You know, sweetheart, all these berries are so good for you, but we’re going to run out soon. So, what else do you feel like?”
Penny didn’t understand. How could she? Yet in her green eyes, Mark saw a depth that outweighed her infancy. There, in the emerald irises, were the spirits of lost relatives looking back into his life. Or at least the semblance of it he’d built. The trailer wasn’t much. The propane sometimes leaked and ran dry, the floors were crooked where the piers had shifted, but the land was theirs. Five acres that no one could take.
But they had tried.
He remembered when the first letters arrived, outlining construction. Ten thousand square feet of facility that would occupy the vacant farmland that bordered their own parcel. The offers to buy their lot came thick and heavy like overbearing perfume before the first excavator broke ground. But after that... they were on their own. They’d made their decision, and paid the price.
The bedroom door opened, and Alice’s soft footsteps padded down the short hallway that led from the bedroom to the open-plan kitchen-living room.
He turned in his chair. “Morning, beautiful. Sleep okay?”
Alice groaned and shuffled over to the stove to boil water for coffee. “You made any formula for her yet?”
“Nope, she’s been all about these blueberries this morning. Did you know how much she likes them?”
Alice turned sharply and stared at the now empty fruit carton in his lap. “Did you boil water to wash those first? Because you know the water from the tap isn’t...”
He raised a hand, which silenced her. “All taken care of, babe. I used some from our last gallon jug. I’ll go by the store today and stock up.”
Water had been an issue since construction wrapped and the facility had come online. Despite what they’d been told.
They first noticed something was wrong when Lucy got sick. It came at the same time that Mark and Alice had started to vomit each day, with no clear indication of the cause. At first, they suspected contaminated food; it seemed plausible with the constant recalls from the grocery store and concerned rumors circulating at the food banks.
Lucy had been their first daughter.
Despite what the board meetings they attended said, and all the reassurance they had been given, it turned out that water was the issue. But by the time they realized what had caused the long sicknesses, the dropped weight, and the subtle discoloration of the skin, it was too late.
They didn’t have the money to fight it. When the time came, the little savings they had left after the hospital visits were only just enough to cover the funeral.
Past their property line, the data center’s whine droned across the landscape, over the scattered homes and the water tower, drowning out the lives left behind.
In the kitchen, Mark looked into Alice’s eyes, rose from his chair, and crossed the room to embrace her.
“Don’t worry, babe. Penny’s okay. We’re all going to be okay.”
II.
Claire woke on the couch in the family room. Under the fluorescent lights, it could have been midday or midnight; without a window, it was impossible to tell. The room’s dull yellow made it look jaundiced, as though the building itself was sick. She listened to the distant murmur of staff moving in the ward’s reception area. Machines sounded their intermittent tones at the rise and fall of heart rates and blood oxygen counts. On the floor beside the couch stood a cold cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
Many nights had passed in this room. Life outside the walls was on hold. Everyone understood. When a parent is sick, all things must pause. Even here in the USA, where McCarthy had weaponized the Protestant work ethic. An ethic bearing down on generations to work for a better life. To work and show your peers you believed in the country and that you were a team player. Or else. Even that entrenched ethic gets put on hold when the person who raised you is hospitalized. Some things are more important.
Some still argue otherwise.
Dr. Nye swung into the room with the casualness she’d learned to endure. His informality had first grated on her; his inflection lacked the gravitas she expected from a medical professional under the circumstances. Though as the weeks stretched out, she’d come to find security in his tone.
“Good morning, Ms. Lawson. How’d you sleep?”
She rubbed at a knot in her shoulder. “About as well as you’d expect, doctor. And you, comfortable at home?”
Nye looked up from the chart in his hands. “Now, Claire. If you must know, I was on call all night. I haven’t slept.” He looked down at the cup on the floor. “A cold cup of coffee sounds wonderful right about now.”
This man was a mystery to her, entering and exiting her life like a fragmented memory. His dark skin reminded Claire of past summers. His complexion, eyes, and hair. The subtle half-moons of his nails. He was a stranger who carried an echo of some other time in her life.
“How’s my dad doing?”
Nye moved across the room to a small armchair next to the couch. As he passed, Claire felt a low wash of air pass over her. An intimate ghost, carrying the scent of his cologne. Something coastal; sea breeze and days on the beach. It contrasted with the sickly room and the grey city beyond the walls, where life and work waited for her to return.
He sat and removed his glasses. “Can I be frank, Claire?”
“When aren’t you? Of course.”
“It’s a matter of time. His vitals are stable, but his body doesn’t have the energy to fight anymore.” Nye placed his hand upon Claire’s. “I know we can keep him comfortable. That’s the best we can all do for him.”
Claire gazed down at the floor past their hands, to the stagnant iridescent surface of the old coffee. She breathed the air again—that scent, like Hawaiian Tropic melded with sea spray.
Her toes sink in the sand. Her dad walks up towards her from the surf. Back when he was strong. What had been the name of the beach? It was so long ago. Before college, before the city, before the job. Back when her father was her only world, and every moment with him was a memory bottled, waiting to be remembered someday like late summer wine.
III.
Larry felt the pain tighten across his chest in the last seconds of the game. It had fluctuated through this final quarter. Dull and inconsistent enough to ignore; the game was crucial, and he was the ref. The man governing the machinations of these small players.
The ball had been thrown long, all the way down court. He’d followed its arc through the air as it sailed down to the waiting hand of the team’s shooting guard. Its trajectory passed the scoreboard, where red seconds etched these final moments.
4, 3, 2…
As the guard scoops the ball, she pivots. Hooks the shot towards the hoop. Up, over the outstretched arms of two defenders.
The buzzer sounds as the ball drops through the net, and the pain in Larry’s body is finally too great that it buckles his legs from under him and takes him down to the ground.
He sees sunlight shining through the bourbon bottle on the kitchen table. It’s a scene from every recent morning in his home. A dawn beam that cuts low through the window, radiating through the kitchen like a hand reaching from heaven. It stretches over the dishes in the sink. Over the empty bottles on the counter. Over the tablecloth spotted with little purple flowers. Something his wife had picked out in the spring of ‘86. One of their first springs as a married couple. All those years ago.
Refereeing the games came much later. It found its place in the autumn of their life.
“Why’dou love reffin those kids so much?” she’d ask.
“Them kids’re our great hope. Makes me proud to see em run the court, muscle a shot. They’re what we need. Young kids that’ll put some fight into the world.”
“But you gotta take care’a youself, Larry. Ain’t no spring chicken no more.”
“I got plenty’a spring left in me. Don’t you worry bout that.”
The conversation was common in the season. A similar dialogue as he stepped into the kitchen in his stripes. Proud in black and white as he sat to drink coffee before heading to the school. The kitchen was where they shared the most time. Before the mornings there became a solitary ritual. When the bottle made an entrance. Joined the coffee. Stood right up there on the table within that wholesomeness and sunlight and said, “Hey, Larry! I’ll help you through; I’ll hold you up and get you out the door. Those kids are waiting!”
There wasn’t much for the town’s kids. Just a small population scattered across a few streets in rundown homes. Not much business in small children, so development had moved on. An old soda fountain used to be on the corner of one block. A relic from another time that stayed around long enough for some kids to enjoy ice cream and pizza there. For a while. But as the owner aged and the population dwindled, it eventually closed. Like most businesses. Not for anyone in town’s benefit, the property reopened as a vape shop. Never frequented, it shuttered within a few months.
All there was that last year was a bottle of bourbon to last each day and the games he had to get to in the season. That sweet medicine had been a cure-all for the grief. A resin to preserve the good memories that were left and smother the bad. It’d help get him through. That and the kids. Happy to see old Lar’ at their games. They had helped him get this far without her.
On the hardwood, the small players gather around Larry’s form as it lies on the court. They part like stalks of field corn as their parents’ arms push through them. They push through, trying to help Larry. But Larry’s light fades as his grip loosens from his jersey.
The end of the game. One for the books. Larry’s last breath in a place he finds peace. Below the scoreboard and the glitched buzzer that still sounds across the gymnasium like an angel’s trumpet calling him home.