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  Assuming he was changing, he'd either been affected by his contact with Mrs. Shepherd or the object. If it was Mrs. Shepherd, that would imply that whatever the object was emitting was contagious and therefore either microbiological or micro-technological in nature. The implications were staggering.

  "Nothing for the moment," said Kevin. "Do you want to play another game?"

  "No. I think I'll rest a bit. Can you help me into my bed?"

  "Sure."

  As Kevin lifted his friend from his wheelchair he was struck by a near-nauseating wave of pity. Only with the greatest effort did he keep his bearing and swing Terry onto the bed. He's so weak, and getting weaker. The unfairness of it burned through him like a hot sauce on his nausea. Terry was such a good guy, so intelligent. He could've had a great life instead of being sentenced to a wheelchair and a premature death.

  He had a strange flash to what his mom and dad had so often said about him. Kevin doesn't have personal feelings. Never to his face – just what he'd overheard. No wonder his dad had left and almost never visited any more.

  Who'd want to be around someone who lacked that basic humanity?

  TERRY MAYES was having a good dream.

  He woke up in the morning and could walk again. Not too fast – more of a shuffle – but to him it was like flying. It had been a long time since he'd had this kind of dream. When he was younger, just after his parents bought the wheelchair, he'd had them every night.

  But this dream was different. His bones were shifting, crackling – the sound the sparrow made that the time when his brother Thomas had laughingly crushed it under one big boot. He often thought of his body as that sparrow: a brittle network of bones in a narrow chest, splitting apart under the weight of an invisible heel. Yet this felt more like a benign reorganization, as though his body was reordering itself away from its Hieronymus Bosch grotesqueness back to its original form. But of course he would wake up, and as always it would just be a silly dream.

  "Terrence."

  His father's deep Baptist minister voice penetrated his dream. Terry opened his eyes, his breath coming in a shallow rasp.

  "Sorry to wake you," said his father, "but we were hoping to see your brother this morning, and thought you might want to join us, if you feel up to it. That way your grandmother and I could both go."

  Seeing Thomas was on Terry's shortlist of things he most did not want to do. His big brother had always scared him. His favorite morning greeting was getting his big brown eyes an inch from his and growling "Boo!" Like waking up to a nightmare.

  Terry tried to shift his body to face his father, and was surprised by how easily he rolled to his side. A further surprise – his right shoulder moved enough to dislodge his sheet. His father raised his thick eyebrows.

  "You're feeling better today?"

  "I guess." Terry was reluctant to admit anything that might compromise his refusal.

  "Your brother asked about you last time. Said he missed seeing you." His father had adopted the cadence of a preacher inveighing his congregation. Though he was a surgeon, some of his preacher father's dialect often emerged when he tried to be persuasive. "Thomas has been expressing regret about the way he treated you growing up. He'd like to tell you that personally."

  That was different. Thomas had never indicated that he felt regret. At least any indications he'd noticed. But then he did miss a lot of those kinds of things. He thought he would like to hear his brother say something good to him for once.

  "Okay. I guess I could go."

  Terry wriggled to the edge of the bed, and his father moved in to assist in a well-honed routine. But then Terry did something unexpected: he sat up. His father stopped in his tracks, staring at him in amazement.

  "I haven't seen you sit up for two years," he said.

  Kevin's off-hand remark popped in his head with eidetic clarity: "It may be something you'd want to catch." Kevin had never sacrificed a piece in any of their games, not in all the years they'd been playing, but yesterday he'd played like Mikhail Tal.

  And now I'm sitting up. What's going on here?

  With a wondering shake of his head his father eased Terry up and into the wheelchair with practiced ease.

  More surprises followed as his grandmother started the day with waffles, scrambled eggs, and bacon – and he cleaned his plate! His dad and grandma traded looks. A secret message? He wondered if they often looked at each other like that about him and he hadn't noticed. He had the disquieting sense that he was seeing them for the first time.

  Thomas was waiting for them in the James River Correctional Center main visiting room two hours later. Or as he preferred to be called these days: Thomas Anoud Zufar. Which his brother translated as "strong-willed and smart like a lion."

  But to Terry he looked like a black mamba. Deadly, sleek and dark, ready to strike. His colorful orange, red, and purple kufi cap did not soften his glittering dark eyes. He rose with a smile as they entered. He and their father were about the same height, around six-three, and shared the same broad-shoulders and large hands, but Thomas had added a coiling mass of vein-festooned muscle to his naturally powerful build. As he shook his hands with Thomas Senior ropes stood out in the younger man's forearms. Terry braced himself for the crunch of cartilage and his father dropping to his knees in pain, but they both smiled and slapped each other on the shoulders. Thomas embraced their grandmother, who wore the same tired but compassionate smile she always did when they visited him, and then turned to Terry.

  He strutted over and attempted to pull Terry into some exotic "soul-shake" which as always deteriorated into the handshake equivalent of a French air-kiss since Terry could never follow his brother's intricate moves. And as always, Thomas smiled dryly and chuckled at his younger brother's incompetence.

  "Hey, little man," he said. "Lookin' good. Glad to see you decided to visit your criminal brother."

  Terry's dad and grandma sat across from him, while he rolled to the end of the table between them.

  "How have you been, Thomas?" his father asked.

  "Can't complain." He grinned. "'Cept, of course, about the political persecution and prison-for-profit system that put me in here."

  "No one put you in here but yourself, son."

  "If you say so, Dad."

  "How's your art coming, baby?" asked Granny.

  "You're looking at it, Gran." Thomas tapped his cap. "Hand-stitched for ninety cents an hour."

  Terry's father clasped his hands with deliberate care and eyed the ceiling as if in search of heaven-sent patience.

  "It's beautiful, Thomas," said Grandma Mayes. "I'm proud of you doing something worthwhile with your time here."

  "Thanks, Gran. I see it as a test of Allah that will strengthen my spirit."

  "I know you don't believe all that Islamic nonsense, son," said Thomas Senior. "You were raised an upstanding Christian. I have to assume it was just a way to get you in with some people."

  "Oh, definitely, Dad. Look around at all the Black Muslims in positions of power." His expansive arms embraced the room, where most of the prisoners and their families were white, with a smattering of Native Americans.

  "But I know people from the local Nation of Islam have been visiting you."

  Thomas spread his big hands wide. "Just practicin' freedom of religion. It's a free country, ain't it? Except for little pockets of slavery in here and for people of color on the outside."

  "I'm a doctor and a 'person of color,'" his dad snorted. "I don't recall 'whitey' stopping me or any other person of color from doing what they wanted to do. The difference is that what I wanted to do was legal."

  "Wasn't legal for a black person to sit at the front of the bus or use a white bathroom or vote."

  "You're not making an analogy between the right to vote and the right to sell drugs, I hope."

  "Everyone has the right to put whatever they want in their body. Ain't no stronger right than that. And by some coincidence, guess who the 'drug war' puts in prison
mostly? I'll give you all a clue: they got a dark tan."

  "Will you two pipe down," said Granny Mayes, glancing around the room. One of the guards was giving their table a hard look. "You're old argument isn't going to lead anywhere except to us getting thrown out."

  Terry sneezed. He tried to get his hands up to his face in time, but his bone-locked limbs had no chance. Thomas leaned back in his chair, making a point of wiping his face with his sleeve.

  "Damn, boy, I hope you ain't bringin' your cold in for your big brother. Life be hard enough in here."

  Fear punched with a knife-point into Terry's bony chest. Maybe it was his meds, which tended to dry up his sinuses, but he couldn't recall sneezing for years. Yet right now his eyes were running.

  "He's fine," said his father. "It is allergy season, after all."

  Thomas leaned over the table and pushed Terry's cap further backward. "I was just foolin' with you, homey."

  "I'm not sure why you insist on talking like a ghetto gang-banger," said his father. "You were raised in the rural Midwest, for God's sake, and I know you got mostly A's in English class. Please do us all a favor and speak the King's English."

  "That's just it, Dad. I don't want no damn white king."

  Terry had never understood the point of these visits. All his brother and father did was argue. He recalled one of his classmates once mentioning "male bonding." He'd looked it up then, assuming it referred to some form of homosexual practice, but it turned out it was about forming an emotional connection – an idea that Terry had never been confident he understood. But now, for some reason, it made sense. The arguments were only on the surface; his parents came because they wanted a connection with their son. It didn't matter what they said or if they agreed. It was the connection – the bonding – they were after, even while it appeared they were breaking bonds.

  People sure are strange, Terry thought.

  "Wonder if I can talk to my brother for a minute," said Thomas.

  "Feel free," said his father.

  "I meant, talk to him alone."

  Their father and grandmother eyed each other for a moment before Thomas Senior shuffled to his feet and extended his hand to his mom. They left the visiting area with several concerned backward glances, as if they suspected something.

  Thomas Anoud Zufar Mayes laid out his Michelangelo forearms on the table and regarded his brother with dark eyes and a darker smile.

  "How's life treating you, Terry Bear?"

  "Terry Bear" was the nickname his brother had bestowed after using Terry's favorite stuffed bear for BB gun practice and then presenting its mangled corpse to him. Terry had only been four then, a short time before he began to change both physically and mentally, but the memory still made him wince. Today it was more like a bolt of pain.

  "It's okay," he said.

  Thomas stared at him, shaking his head with either mock or actual sadness. Terry wasn't sure.

  "Life sure done dealt you one fucked up hand, didn't it?"

  "You're just now noticing that?"

  A startled light lit up Thomas Junior's eyes. He leaned a bit closer, peering at him.

  "Did you just make an actual joke?"

  Terry frowned. He hadn't intended to. Jokes had never made much sense to him. But he saw the humor in what he'd blurted out.

  "It would appear so," he said.

  "'It would appear so.' Jesus." Thomas snickered and shook his head. "You wouldn't happen to be high on something, would you?"

  "No." He paused. "Certainly not life."

  Thomas laughed – hard enough to bend him over – while Terry puzzled over his latest unexpected remark.

  "I meant that, logically, my life would not qualify as a source of inebriated joy."

  Thomas sat up, wiping his eyes. "I got it."

  His older brother resumed staring at him, but now with a puzzled half-frown.

  "You seem different somehow," he said.

  "The joking?"

  "Yeah. Partly. But there's more to it. Even your face looks – I dunno – smoother."

  "Really?" Terry raised a hand without thinking and touched his cheek.

  "And you just lifted your hand!" Now lines stood out in Thomas's smooth-ebony forehead. "What's going on with you, bro'?"

  Terry ran his hand along his cheekbones and jaw. They did feel smoother. It was objective. He'd changed. And he knew his friend Kevin knew something about why. He needed to talk to him. But for now, he welcomed a small ray of hope into his life.

  "I'm not sure, Thomas," he said.

  His brother studied him for a while longer before leaning back in his chair with a stoic shrug.

  "Yeah, well, anyway, I wanted to tell you I'm sorry for the way I treated you, T. You didn't deserve that, on top of everything else life shit on you."

  "Uh, thanks."

  "Now I want to ask you a favor, and I need your word – your absolute word – that you won't say a thing about it to the folks. Do I have your word? I know you don't lie."

  "I have to give you my word before I know your question?"

  "Yep."

  "I don't think I want to do that."

  Thomas stared at him unblinkingly, his eyes - cold glittering black mamba eyes - drilling him for a long few seconds before he shrugged his bulging shoulders again and his gaze grew distant, disdainful.

  "Up to you, brother," he said. "I just thought that since we're bro's, you might want to back me up."

  Terry frowned and said nothing.

  "It's tough being in here, Terrence." Thomas adopted a melancholy expression. "It's dog eat dog. In order to survive you need an alternate source of income. You feel me?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "I can explain. But I need that promise."

  "Dad and Granny aren't going to like it, are they?"

  "Nope." He arched one eyebrow. "But then they don't know the score in here. I try to spare them the gory details. And you don't tell 'em everything anyway, right?"

  Terry looked away from his intense, striking-snake eyes to the table where a young man and woman were holding hands over the table.

  "What do you say, Terry? Are you willing to help a brother out?"

  "I don't know what I could do, but I won't tell Granny and Dad what you tell me."

  "Fair enough." Thomas leaned close. His breath smelled of cloves. "Here's the deal. I got a guy on the outside who has stuff I can use to make money in here, but delivery is difficult. They inspect the shit out of everyone and everything people bring in here." He leaned in even closer, until Terry could feel the gusts of air from his flared nostrils. He wanted to turn away, but his brother's mesmeric eyes held him. "Did they inspect your wheelchair?"

  "Not much." Terry had a sickly feeling as he understood clearly where this was going.

  "They didn't try to lift up the seat or nothin'?"

  Terry shook his head, the sickness in his stomach growing.

  "My friend is handy with mechanical stuff. He could rig something in your chair no one could find."

  "Drugs?"

  Thomas's eyes grew heavy-lidded. "Ain't nothing you need to worry about, little man."

  "What if they find it?"

  "Then you're all innocent, don't know nothin' about it. Not like they're gonna arrest you or anything."

  "Why wouldn't they? Just because I'm in a wheelchair?"

  Thomas shrugged. "Ain't gonna catch anything anyways."

  Terry knew there was absolutely no way he would let anyone mess with his wheelchair – even more absolutely no way when it came to drugs or whatever contraband Thomas wanted to deal in.

  He knew his answer, but Terry hesitated to state it bluntly. He couldn't imagine his brother attacking him, but you never knew with Thomas. Terry glanced at the nearby guards. He knew they'd intervene if Thomas did anything.

  "I'll think about it," he said.

  Thomas narrowed his eyes to harsh slits. Terry imagined fire coming from them.

  "You're saying no, right?"

&n
bsp; "I'm saying I need time to consider the consequences."

  "Bullshit," Thomas hissed. "I know you too well, little brother. You can't hide shit from me. You just shut it all down in your head."

  "I don't see the incentive."

  "Right. Not like you care about anyone but yourself."

  "Do you?"

  Thomas pushed back from the table, his chair screeching on the tile. One of the guards straightened up.

  "Say 'bye to the folks."

  His brother sauntered out of the room – ghetto-style, Terry suspected – pausing for one cold-as-death backward glance before he pushed through the door.

  Chapter 4

  A LOT OF PEOPLE had been asking Jamie how she felt, but five days after her cancer-free diagnosis, she found it hard to answer. The big question: What to do with the rest of her life?

  A call to her old friend and Grand Forks High Vice Principal, Marilyn Johnson, killed any hopes she had of a teaching position there. Marilyn was overjoyed about her recovery but pessimistic about job opportunities in either high school or junior high anywhere nearby Grand Forks. She was sure that an exceptional teacher such as Jamie could find an interested high school outside the area and would gladly provide stellar recommendations as needed.

  In the meantime, the Grand Forks Sheriff's Department had sent her a seven-day vacate notice. The property had been foreclosed on months ago, and the bank had finally performed its last pre-seizure rites.

  Jamie struggled to define how she felt physically these days. Good, yes, but not herself. Her body before the cancer had not returned. She felt lean and peculiarly dense, as if her molecules had been compressed. Heavy and yet light of foot. During an experimental jog it felt as if the ground was pulling away from her feet – or she from the ground. It was all a dizzying mix.

  Her father had the craziest moneymaking scheme to save her home he'd ever hatched – and that said something, considering his colorful entrepreneurial history included creating custom T-shirt and cap designs for sale on Ebay and a varmint elimination business. His plan: to tryout for the NBA and score a big enough contract to pay off the house. And that was going to happen within the week. Riiight.