How to Increase the Volume of the Sea Without Water

How to Increase the Volume of the Sea Without Water

Published by E A St Amant at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition January 2012

Verses and poems within, by author

Web and Cover design, Edward Oliver Zucca

Web Developed, Adam D’Alessandro

Copyrighted by E A St Amant May 2006

e-Impressions Toronto

Author Contact: ted@eastamant.com

E A St Amant.com Publishers

www.eastamant.com

All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, emailing, ebooking, by voice recordings, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author or his agent. How to Increase the Volume of the Sea Without Water. ISBN -13: 978-0-9780118-0-2: Digital ISBN: 978-1-4523-0273-7. Thanks to the many people who did editorial work on this project and offered their many kind suggestions, including Val Gee, Laurie Murray, Litsa Kourbetis, Lisa D’Alessandro and Robyn Lori Stephenson. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, companies, product-chronological-histories, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances whatsoever to any real actual events, or locales to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. This book does not claim to accurately chronicle the history of the abortion pill or any abortifacient. This is the 2015 Edition.

By Edward St Amant

Dancing in the Costa Rican Rain

Stealing Flowers

Spiritual Apathy

Restrictions

Black Sand

Book of Mirrors

Perfect Zen

Five Days of Eternity

Five Years After

Five Hundred Years Without Faith

Fog Walker

Murder at Summerset

This Is Not a Reflection of You

The Theory of Black Holes (Collected Poems)

The Circle Cluster, Book I, The Great Betrayer,

The Circle Cluster, Book II, The Soul Slayer,

The Circle Cluster, Book III, The Heart Harrower,

The Circle Cluster, Book IV, The Aristes,

The Circle Cluster, Book V, CentreRule,

The Circle Cluster, Book VI, The Beginning One

Non-Fiction

Atheism, Scepticism and Philosophy

Articles In Dissident Philosophy

The New Ancien Régime

By E O Zucca and E A St Amant

Molecular Structures of Jade

Instant Sober

ToC

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

I was staring from Mom to the blackened, charred face of my eighth grade teacher, Kelly Williams. She had been reported missing four days ago. I rubbed the back of my head and crushed a mosquito caught in the long mane of my hair, sensing that others would rush to take its place, but I didn’t move. I was thunderstruck by the image before me. The fog of mosquitoes melded with the early-evening darkness that was creeping into the ravine and softening the greens of the forest on both sides of the steep drop-off. I was thankful that I’d worn a long-sleeved shirt and jeans.

I could see tall cattails directly behind Mrs. Williams’ burned-out 1978 red Chevy Malibu. The broken branches of large pines, caused by the fall of the car, had made a sort of path downward. My mother was pointing it out to Uncle Gordon, the Chief of Police in Vesey and my dad’s sister’s husband. My glance flickered to three or four small yellow birds, flitting in and out of the shadows, feeding on the mosquitoes–it was still too early, too light, for bats.

Mrs. Williams had been a strict teacher, but nice as well–I’d liked her, and she’d liked me. I’m what they call brainy, a know-it-all, a brownie, a bookworm, a she-nerd–I think I’ve heard them all, many of them said to my face. I don’t have many friends, except for my younger sister and her friends. Mrs. Williams told my mom once that I was the nearest thing she’d ever seen to a perfect student. So, imagine: to my classmates, I might as well have been bacteria–but I must say, I didn’t really care.

I slapped at a mosquito that was trying to fly into my ear. Mrs. Williams sat in the driver’s seat all alone. The car was partly crushed, and pretty smashed-up too–indented here and there. I had an urge to step up to it and touch her. She smelled awful, and had lost all her hair due to the fire. Her mouth was stretched open as if to scream, and I couldn’t really recognize her, but I wanted to whisper in her ear that she’d been my favorite teacher.

She was pretty barbequed, just like in the movies, but it didn’t gross me out, or anything like that. Some fourteen-year-old girls might even faint in situations like that, but I had what’s referred to as a cast-iron stomach. I’ll tell you why. Mom is a state coroner in Minnesota, and she has dragged me all over St. Louis County over the years. I have seen lots of dead bodies–burned, frozen, drowned, crushed, severed, or otherwise disposed of. A bloody mess is nothing to me. I don’t know what happens to the soul when you die. I don’t know whether Mom, Dad, or Mom’s mom, Jessie, are right about this–they all have different views–but when someone’s dead, the idea of dignity appears a bit stupid to me.

Jessie would say the same thing. Jessie and I thought alike. Everybody said so, and it was true, but I always denied it. Nobody in my family really liked Jessie, and they were afraid I’d become like her. Lying about my feelings for Jessie was camouflage, and I’d been doing it since I was ten years old.

Without warning, I sneezed. Sorry, I said in a low, apologetic voice, not really loud enough for anyone to hear. The number one rule on a death-outing with mom was: Don’t bring attention to yourself! Just watch! I’d learned this long ago; breaking the rule meant hours, if not days, of verbal torture.

Ingrid, my eleven-year-old sister, refused to come out for this reason. She had been tortured once too often–her words.

It’s true. Mom could go on and on in a shrill voice about how Ingrid and I had all the advantages, and how we were spoiled ingrates who couldn’t follow the simplest rules, and so forth. Plus, there’s the fact that Ingrid didn’t like dead bodies. Who does? However, the point is, when mom did obstetrics, I saw her aid in several live deliveries. That didn’t gross me out either, but if I had my choice I’d have taken dead bodies over that–at least until the baby’s cleaned up and quiet. Babies were the most beautiful creatures, no matter what Jessie said, but they came into the world covered in slime and blood. One thing was for sure, all the women I’d seen giving birth screamed in pain, and their babies wailed to return back inside their mom. At least the ravine was quiet, except for the buzz of the mosquitoes.

Kelly Williams wasn’t just my grade eight teacher, she is–was–also the mother of John and Paul Williams: two cool teenaged boys, older than me to be sure, but whom I certainly would have liked to know outside of school. They were polite boys, and I knew that Dad liked them. With me being so young and a bookworm, of course they weren’t interested in me, even though Dad said I was pretty and the boys were starting to look.

Officer Sam Ellis came by and threw a jacket over my shoulders. He was Uncle Gordon’s assistant, about thirty years old, with blonde hair. He was a widower. I really liked him, and so did a lot of other girls in Vesey.

My mom gave me a look that signaled for me to focus. She was nearing the point where she had seen what she wanted, and would have something to say. She walked around the car once more.

I noticed two things, she said in her clear, untroubled voice– she was a powerhouse when she talked, not as potent as Jessie, but still good. The tires are inflated, and the car landed almost directly below, though slightly to the right, of the place where it left the embankment.

Uncle Gordon grunted, as he always did at Mom’s remarks, and radioed up for a pressure valve. The car was slightly hoisted on broken branches, so a flat tire wasn’t obvious. Sam came down with the valve a moment later, balancing his descent on winch-wires attached to the car, and passed it to Uncle Gordon.

The husband and the mother are here, he said, rather grim-faced.

Back up there you go, then, Uncle Gordon said gruffly. Keep them at bay. He checked the pressure of the tires. Right you are, Doctor. It wasn’t a blowout.

I gathered the jacket around my shoulders. Why did she turn sharply off the road, though? Mom said. Maybe someone drove on the wrong side of the road and forced her off the embankment.

I’m working with a genius, Uncle Gordon said without smiling, slapping at a mosquito. He often teased mom that way.

Look at the front tires, Mom said. She reached into the car through the large hole that had been smashed into the driver’s side window. She tried to turn the steering wheel further to the right, but couldn’t. If you turn it this way, it’s locked. Uncle Gordon checked for himself, then turned the steering wheel the other way. It worked.

That doesn’t mean anything, though, he said, and slapped another bug. He sprayed insect repellent on his hands then rubbed his arms and face, passing the can to my mom, who did likewise then passed it to me. The light is going fast, he continued. This is supposed to be an open-shut accident scene, five minutes tops. Is there anything else?

Look inside, here. Mom pointed to the headlight button. Kelly’s lights are on. I’ll bet she was driving at night, not in the afternoon when she was alleged to be on the road. Also, after the impact, she was alive–she burned to death.

He grunted again. I shouldn’t have asked if there was anything else. He looked more closely at the console. How do you know?

By the position of her arms. She tried to get out. In addition, there’s no windshield damage where her head would have hit. The flip slowed the car. All those broken tree-branches prevented the roof from being crushed. Look inside. She pointed to the seat belt. Do you see it?

He reached in and pulled it outward from its housing with a gentle tug. Not really.

It wasn’t done up at the time of the fire, she said, yet she must have worn it at the time of the accident. If not, she’d have been thrown clear out of the car, or left some imprint. Uncle Gordon tried the driver’s door, but it was jammed. He looked at Mom, but didn’t let out a grunt. Also, this fire wasn’t from the gas tank, she continued. The tank’s still intact. It was a propane fire.

What does that mean?

I’m not quite certain. She looked over. Let’s leave everything here until tomorrow morning. We’ll take a fresh look. Secure the road. Close it up before the emergency vehicles and onlookers bury what happened up there.

The family will throw a fit.

She looked up the gorge and back at Uncle Gordon. It’s your call. We should get pictures and samples. If someone knocked her unconscious beforehand and then wheeled the car off the embankment, we’ve got a murder investigation.

Uncle Gordon grunted for the third time. Are you bored?

I’ve got a nose for this kind of thing, Mom said. Something here doesn’t add up, and I’d be leery of signing off on it without another look.

This is what I’ll do. I’ll post a guard and I’ll close the road, but the body has to be moved. Mom ran a hand through her wavy blonde hair, and at the same time killed a mosquito on her leg with the other hand. She nodded.

It’s an accident, Uncle Gordon said. Don’t make work for us.

You know it wasn’t, Mom returned, her intelligent blue eyes shining with what I took to be glee. She took my hand and we made our way up the gorge, holding on to the winch line.

When we were on our way, I chanced a question. Do you think she was murdered?

Shush, she said. I need to think a while.

As we left the dark cliff side, I looked back at the police cruiser, tow truck, fire truck, and ambulance. A small crowd had gathered, and I saw Dave Zacroix, the town reporter for the Vesey Review, nosing around. On my right side, the bluff plummeted straight down some fifty feet into a rocky, forested embankment.

We passed some large warning signs, and the car swerved slightly as mom turned down the sharp decline. I looked ahead and tried to remain silent, but my excitement at the thought that Mrs. Williams had been murdered was too much.

Are you done thinking? I asked. Mom held up her hand for me to stay quiet. It was close to seven o’clock, with an hour of light left, maybe more. The sun floated above the horizon in an almost red fireball. I had seldom ever been up this way. We passed the largest sign, which faced the other way: DRIVE AT YOUR OWN RISK. Again, I glanced down into the gorge. The road seemed downright hazardous with its turns and bumps. Then another sign came up on the other side: DANGER! ROUGH ROAD FOR 2 MILES.

I spit on my fingers and rubbed it onto my mosquito bites. Only reckless people would come this way, so why would Mrs. Williams be driving up here?

Kelly went missing Tuesday on her way home from Ely, mom said at length in a methodical voice–her work voice–where she visited her mother. Kelly is–was– forty years old, and an associate at the town hall, among other things. An exemplary woman and, as you know, an excellent teacher. She leaves behind two teenage sons and a husband. She was a volunteer as well. She even helped your dad at the Sally Ann on occasion.

Who would want to kill her?

It’s too soon to ask that sort of question. Before deduction, inference; before that, induction; before that, facts; before that, more facts. Sam found her at the bottom of a gorge off Ridgeway in her burnt-out Malibu three hours ago. Her mother reported her missing four days ago. Her husband was attending a Minneapolis-St. Paul business conference at the time; however, after he returned, Gordon says he nearly lived at the shop. He wouldn’t leave.

You have to feel sorry for him, I said hopefully.

Yes, too bad, but if you empathize, you can’t be objective. I’ve wondered often what I would do without your father. I don’t think that, in ten years of marriage, we’ve said so much as a harsh word to one another–but if you’re going to stand in judgment of the facts, you have to learn not to be empathetic towards the victims.

Why would anyone go this way? It’s so spooky. You’d have to be brave to come out along here in the dark.

You say the damnedest things–you always have. People come this way, I suppose, because it saves a few minutes. I wonder if it rained Tuesday?

It was a day like today, I think. It rained Monday, but there wasn’t a star in the sky Tuesday night. I know because Ingrid and I tried the telescope and got nowhere.

I think she came up this way later than her mother said. She had to be going home. Maybe she stopped off someplace for drinks.

I don’t think she drank.

She’s a parent and teacher with two teenage boys of her own; of course she drank. You’re cute, though.

Dad doesn’t drink.

He doesn’t have teenage boys.

I had no retort for that. Jessie said my mom’s explanations of things often make no sense, but are just meant to be banter. What time did she leave her mother’s? I asked.

Uncle Gordon said Kelly’s mother wasn’t positive. She thinks three o’clock. There’s… what? Around sixty or seventy miles from Vesey to Ely? If she left at three o’clock, she’d be home at four or so.

Before you went down to the accident, you thought she had a blowout and spun out over the edge, right?

Something like that. Clever of you, Nat. It’s getting dark now. I have to stop for a moment at the station. Do you want to come? Or I’ll drop you off.

I’ll come.

I walked behind my mom when we arrived, but didn’t go to her office. I’m not shy, just quiet and careful. I sat in the reception area of the police station and read a five-day-old copy of the Chicago Tribune, dated May 19, 1979. The front page had been ripped out. The second page carried a story about a hurricane on the southeast coast of India, which killed six hundred people.

I remember a boy in my eighth grade class standing up and saying that we should nuke India to solve the overpopulation of the world. Miss Williams was shocked that anybody would think such a thing, but I wasn’t. Jessie had already warned me that most men are ignorant.

The Indian story was followed by a story about the Red River receding in the Northern USA and Canada from its flood high-line of April 30. I hadn’t heard of either of these events.

Another story recounted the aftermath of an anti-nuclear rally lead by Jane Fonda, Ralph Nader, and California Governor Gerry Brown. The march, in Washington, D.C., drew a crowd of sixty-five thousand demonstrators. My dad admired Ralph Nader, my Mom called him media-greedy, and Jessie called him dangerous.

The rest of the page consisted of a picture of the famous cooling towers at the Three-Mile Island nuclear station with the caption An Analysis of the Nuclear Accident, and a picture of President Carter in protective gear visiting the plant after the crisis ended. This story I’d heard about. I rolled up the paper and swatted a fly that had landed on the leather-covered bench across from me.

Two of the uniformed police officers standing at the counter clapped. They had been watching me all the while. Jessie said adults did that all the time with me. She never explained why. One officer was a desk sergeant, a heavyset man named Darwin MacLean, who worked on the precinct police log as though he was searching in earnest for something. Officer Pat Wilson was a tall, gentle man, and he and my dad were good friends. He was Vesey’s only police officer who came from a big city, Minneapolis-St. Paul.

It was unusual to find them there at all, let alone in the evening. They were both nice, but they were too old for me to marry. Mom said that’s the way to look at men: not whether they’re young, sexy, rich, or brilliant, but whether they can provide for a family in the overall sense. She meant I should look for a man like Dad, who is gentle, nice, hard-working, and faithful. Jessie said my mother was prone to flights of fancy. At first, Jessie didn’t approve of mom’s choice of a husband, although she came to like Dad later. In Mom’s defense, they were happy, and never fought. It just went to show that you shouldn’t let your mother pick out your husband; I wasn’t going to.

I could see the framed police codes on the sandy white walls that ran down to the end of the reception-counter. Uncle Gordon arrived and winked at me. He had an elongated, clean-shaven face set off by large glasses, which, by habit, he always pushed in tight to his brow. He was in his late thirties and still had curly black hair, but his hairline was receding. Jessie said he was daffy.

I’m surprised the Commander lets you out of the house this late, he said, teasing. That’s Uncle Gordon’s name for Dad. Dad’s the fire chief in Vesey, but that’s not why he calls him the Commander. Uncle Gordon always said, as a joke, that everybody in Vesey knew that the marriage between the Basle and Ruckert families brought about the merger between God and Satan.

When Ingrid first heard that, she cried.

I tried to explain that it was just a joke, but she looked me in the eyes and said with great sincerity–I’ll never forget her words–It’s not a joke. Everyone knows the Ruckerts are saints and that Jessie is a witch.

My dad was a Commander in the Salvation Army, and Jessie thought that people who believed in God were irrational. I didn’t think that made him a real Commander, or her a real witch. Mom said he wasn’t a Commander, but a horn-tooter, and that grandma wasn’t a witch, but a bitch, and even worse, a rich, powerful bitch.

On the short drive home, Mom and Uncle Gordon had a discussion out of my earshot. I yawned several times. We lived on Laird Street, in what was called the old Ruckert Mansion. When I got in, I told dad about poor Mrs. Williams.

Have you eaten, pumpkin? he asked when I was finished.

I had pizza. I’m glad I didn’t have ribs.

He laughed, as he did with almost all of my jokes.

Dad had the softest blue eyes, a red, nicely shaved beard, and wavy, sandy-red hair. Mom called him Red sometimes. He was the kindest man I’d ever met.

For a moment I snuggled up with him; it’s where I felt the safest. Ingrid came up from downstairs with a friend who was staying over for the weekend. Ingrid had long blonde hair, but not as long or as straight as mine. It was wavy and light blonde. Also, she wasn’t thin like me, but she was prettier. She already had boobs, even though she was only eleven. I was as flat as a prairie field, as Uncle Gordon might have said.

Ingrid’s friend that weekend was Elena. She was a tall, thin girl like me, with blue eyes and long, straight brown hair. She was pretty as well, but she was shy with me and I knew why. She sensed that I was an adult, and to be honest, it was true. I didn’t ever remember being a child. Just after I was born, Mom took the medical specialty of obstetrics, traveling back and forth to the University of Minnesota. Dad had just gotten his position with the Vesey Fire Department, so I was dropped off almost every day by Mom to Basle and Ruckerts in Duluth, where Jessie built a playroom-bedroom off of her office for me. In some sense or another, I’d been in her hands ever since.

Jessie inherited a company run brilliantly by her late father, as I learned over the years. When he passed on at the same time as her divorce from Grandpa, the company became one of the giants in American medical research. Jessie was a business genius, among other things. However, about looking after me as a baby and toddler, Jessie always maintained that I was no trouble and, really, I agreed. I didn’t ever remember being much trouble–at that point, not even as a teenager.

I had become interested in boys, but so far they had shown no interest in me. I didn’t do anything bad, nor did I care to. I didn’t want to smoke or do drugs. What I wanted to do was gain my business degree to one day help run Jessie’s company, and to find a man like Dad to marry.

Jessie and I had already made a pact that if I learned the business, I could become her partner soon after I graduated from university. I read a lot. I dove well, played the piano okay, and I was a figure skater; Mom taught me those three things. She was talented in many things, whereas Dad and Jessie were focused on goals and were only happy on the job–well, for Dad, that included being with the band as well as being a firefighter. I got that account mostly from Mom. The most important thing was, I was a happy person. Jessie said it was because I was as thick as a brick.

Do you want to play tents? Ingrid asked, after she and Elena found some snacks from the kitchen. I looked at what they were eating. It was sugar-coated junk. I shook my head.

It was Friday, and I intended to spend the rest of the weekend with Jessie. I almost always did. I wanted to pack, and then go to bed. I also wanted to return to the accident scene in the morning– but as Jessie never tired of saying, You can’t have everything.

After Mom showered, she played a soft pop melody upstairs on her record player.

Soon Dad would wander up. I knew their routine well. I kissed and hugged Dad, and said good night to Ingrid and Elena. We lived in a great big old house, airy and creaky, full of fun places to play. My dad wasn’t much of a handy man, and Grandpa had to do the fixing. Mom said that it would be creepy to live in the same house your whole life, even after you had married, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.

I watched Mom as she stood at her bedroom door until she noticed me. She had a bathrobe on, but underneath she also wore a negligee. She hid that from me. I didn’t know why; perhaps it was modesty. She must have known that Jessie had already explained how everything worked between men and women, just as she did to Mom when Mom was ten years old.

Mom had a hourglass body, what’s called voluptuous. She had large breasts, a slim waist, and large hips; she weighed maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. Ingrid would have that body type too. I had seen Mom naked many times, but recently she had become shy around me. I think that she sensed that I was a child-adult. I realized some time ago that she’d become bitter against Jessie over it, and I didn’t really understand that either.

Are you packed for tomorrow? she asked gently.

I shook my head and kissed her goodnight. I packed quickly; I’d done it many times. Before I turned out the lights, I read a half a chapter of Creative Mythology by Joseph Campbell: the chapter was called The Death-Love. Jessie had given the book to me for Christmas. True love never comes to a false heart; I believed it. I fell asleep, dreaming of Gottfried’s Tristan und Isolde.

Jessie picked me up at eight o’clock in the morning in her grey year-old Mercedes Benz. I could see that it was going to be a sunny day. The air seemed clear, and the atmosphere in the car was one of surprise. Jessie wore an expensive black business suit. On her lapel, she had pinned a large silver pendant, the trademark of the company: a swan and a cygnet floating side by side, and encircled by a looping B. She wore her gray hair tied tightly back with silver clips, and her narrow features looked severe.

Mom came out and saw us off, but she and Jessie said little to each other except small talk, which was fine with me. They fought far too often, and I hated it.

You have a meeting today? I asked when we were on our way, hiding my disappointment.

She nodded. But not until noon. Her voice, too, often seemed hard. Shall we eat breakfast at the Pickle?

I nodded, at once cheering up. The Pickle Brine was where we often ate in the morning, and I really liked it. Diane Walker was driving that day. She was Jessie’s thirty-year-old personal secretary and confidante. She looked at me with her dark brown eyes via the rear-view mirror, and waved. Diane was a graduate of the University of Chicago Business School, which I was expected to attend after high school. She was two decades younger than Jessie, and one and a half decades older than me. She weighed not much less than Jessie, and not much more than me. Her short, almost boyish jet-black hair and flamboyant makeup drew attention to her wherever we traveled. It often made her face appear thin. To me, her bluntness in conversation seemed to exceed Jessie’s, but that was for the best. Nothing worked with Jessie except for unadorned, downright directness.

I told them the story of Mrs. Williams.

Mom thinks it was murder, I said when I was finished.

Her husband did it, Jessie said.

Even though you had to be careful around Jessie–she was touchy about her biases–Diane and I both laughed.

What? Jessie asked.

I think he has an alibi, I said.

We have an exciting weekend planned, Diane said, heading off disaster.

We’re going bowling before supper, Jessie said. We’re eating at Barklist’s and then it’s off to see the wizard, the wonderful Woody Allen.

This was music to my ears. Bowling was one of my favorite things to do with Jessie and Diane. They were funny when they bowled; not very skilled, just lively. It was an outlet for them, I guessed. We bowled at Holcomb Lanes, and sometimes we used glow-in-the-dark balls and giggled like school-girls–well, I was a schoolgirl, but that wasn’t the point. I had dreamt about those glow-in-the-dark bowling balls all year long. They would light up my Christmas tree, becoming balloons and taking the tree away into the heavens. Underneath the tree remained a herd of porcelain gazelles, who came alive under my touch and followed me around in the backyard of the old Ruckert Mansion as I quoted St. Francis of Assisi’s Sermon to the Birds.

Barklist’s was a restaurant where everyone knew our names, and they would make anything we ordered. A beautiful woman played a violin and her friend played the piano; the music was great. As for Woody Allen, his new movie was Manhattan. I had really liked Annie Hall, and had tried to dress like the title character for a few weeks. I had the hair for it, and similar facial features. The problem was, so Jessie said, I wasn’t neurotic, and that wasn’t something you could fake with any success around her. She wouldn’t have let me get away with it for a second if I’d even tried. Above everything else, she hated phoniness–even more than organized religion, which she called unionized superstition.

The city of Duluth, Saint Louis County, lay low at the western end of Lake Superior on the mouth of the St. Louis River. It had a population of ninety thousand people. It shared a lake port with Superior, a smaller neighbor in Douglas County, Wisconsin. They were called the westernmost gateway to the Great Lakes, and were linked to the Atlantic Ocean by the Soo Locks and the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

As Jessie often said, it was an inexpensive place for business distributors of iron ore, grain, coal, oil, and lumber, as long as they got everything done in the spring and summer; the port was closed by ice during the winter months. This didn’t affect Basle and Ruckerts, known in Duluth as B&R; they did little shipping by water.

Duluth had a ballet company, a playhouse, and an orchestra, all of which I’d seen several times with Jessie and Diane. The Pickle Brine, the Basle Building, the Onton Theater, and Holcomb’s Bowlarama were all within reach of the harbor district, but Jessie’s low-rise condominium, the Grenada Complex, was perched in the tourist area on rocky bluffs five hundred feet above the lake. It had splendid views from her balcony of both the city and the lake. I liked Duluth, even though it was a little dull in winter–but of course, not as dull as Vesey.

Jessie’s condo had a nice pool, a billiard-games room, a sauna, and a weight room with a small jogging track around it. The people dressed fashionably in Duluth. Jessie said they were most affected by opinion and business in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, and Detroit. The St. Louis River was enormous, wide, and went on for miles. You could take a tour–it was cheap and lots of fun, especially with Jessie and Diane. They were very funny.

At the Pickle, I ordered pancakes with blueberry syrup. Jessie ordered coffee and toast, and Diane just tea. I saw that they had come here for my sake. That meant they had office work to do. I’d been fooled: it was going to be a boring morning. I had little schoolwork to do. I’d brought a famous novel with me, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, but was having trouble getting into it. I hadn’t brought Creative Mythology–that was for bedtime reading in Vesey–but Jessie’s office held many books that I hadn’t read.

As we were making our way to the side garage door to the Basle Building, several men dressed in ski-masks ran at the car from both sides and egged it with maybe a dozen eggs. It was frightening and I almost cried, but Jessie didn’t look uneasy at all.

So much for freedom of speech, she said wryly, and reached over and squeezed my arm. If they’re so concerned about fertilized embryos, they should find another symbol besides eggs.

You’re not going to be happy until they pick up guns against us, Diane said harshly from the driver’s seat. I don’t think you realize how many crackpots there are out there. You have to stop provoking them.

What happened? I asked, alarmed.

I told a local paper that I’d fund a free abortion clinic, Jessie said, if the general hospital turned away any more women who wanted an abortion.

This is what scared me most about Jessie. She was willing to stand up for her beliefs, even if it brought her into danger. It was as though she didn’t love me as much as I loved her. She was the most important person in my life, and I expected that I