Townsend

"How do you spell 'discipline'?"

         My head swirled for a moment as everything disappeared except the blackboard in my mind's eye. Eyes closed, I stumbled over a crack in the pavement, but before I fell, his heavy hand caught the back of my jacket and lifted me up again. As soon as I was half balanced, he let go and started off again, his giant strides leaving me behind. "The clock is still running,” he called, never looking back.

         "Discipline," I hollered as I took off after him. "D I S ... C ..." catching up, I grabbed ahold of his hand and closed my eyes again. It was always easier with your eyes closed. "I P ... L I N ..." I glanced up to his face, finding no clues there. Oh, well. "E,” I said. “Discipline."

         I looked up again. He was staring straight ahead, smiling. Praise was getting rarer, so I loved it all the more. "Very good."

         The letters poured out of me in a flood of giggles, "V E R Y G O O D."

         He abruptly stopped, and looked down on me for the first time in what seemed like hours. "Watsamata you? You some kind of comedian?" It was a funny voice. I loved his funny voices. Grinning, he smacked me lightly on the back of the head, and messed up my hair.

         He leaped away, then promptly turned around and jogged away from me backwards. "Bender," he began in mock seriousness. "Bender, I'm surprised at you. Can't you take a compliment?"

         He made me chase him till I was almost out of breath, before slowing to his normal walk. Then he let me take his right hand, and we continued on our way.

         We were in the old industrial section of the city now, surrounded by long dead factories that bristled with pipes and smokestacks. "They used to make automobiles in this one," gesturing around to the massive complex we were walking through. "Fords, I think. Yeah," he pointed. " There's a sign."

         The sign was old. What had once been blue and silver had faded to bare metal. The lettering was barely visible.

         "Gasoline cars," he mused, in the voice reserved for talking about the past. "When I was around your age, I used to come out here sometimes and watch these factories spit out smoke. It didn't smell as bad as you might think. It was actually kind of neat. I thought that was how they made clouds."

         "Was it better when you were a kid?"

         He paused for a long moment. "Different," he stated, flatly.

         "Before the Ascendants?" I asked.

         "Uh-huh," he nodded. "Before the Ascendants, before the Pure Darwinists, before ...." He sighed deeply. "The factories closed up at the beginning of the Last Depression."

         "Before the Sterility Plague, 2037." I injected.

         He didn't smile, or even look at me. "Bingo. You really have a knack for picking up history." I walked along quietly, building up my nerve.

         "Dan," I started. "How come you never talk about the Ascendants, or the Plague, or anything important?" As I let it out, I became more and more angry. "I mean, I like to hear about smoke changing into clouds and all, but why won't you ever talk to me about anything serious? I'm smaller than you but I have the right to know what's going on."

         He walked along silently, and I counted the seconds nervously: one-hundred-thirteen. When he spoke, I was shocked by his voice; it was the first and only time he ever cried in front of me.

         "Sam. You are the smartest kid I know." He laughed abruptly, "Hell, you're the only kid I know. But I think you'd be a smart kid, even if there were lots of other kids around. But you are still a child. And a child deserves a childhood, even a short one. So please, don't blame me for giving you the best I can."

         I wished to God I could take back everything I had said. I didn't mean any of it. I didn't want to make him cry; I didn't know he could. "I'm sorry," now I was crying too.

         He picked me up and hugged me to his chest. "Its okay." He was holding too tight, but I didn't tell him. I just let him hold me, and carry me down the road.

         I promised myself that I would be good from then on, and never ever make my daddy cry again. When I could speak, I began to make amends. "Say, Dan, do you know the definition of 'Eugenics'?"

         "I don't know, Bender," he answered as he set me down. "What _is_ the definition of 'eugenics' ?" he asked expectantly.

         "The science of some guy named Eugene."

         He was silent. He didn't even break his stride. He must have seen it coming, I thought. Maybe it just wasn't funny. I needed to work on the delivery. As I was making promises to do better next time, I suddenly found myself in his tickling arms.

         "You _are_ a comedian, aren't you?" he growled in a funny accent. "We don't like comedians in these parts, boy." And suddenly he was the old Dan again, my teacher, my father, and my best friend. After a moment he let me go, mussed up my hair, and took my hand. And then we were walking again to the church.

         The rest of the trek was quiet. Normally, he would have quizzed me on computers or physics, but not today. He seemed to have forgotten, and I didn't have the heart to remind him. By the time we arrived, the fog had cleared from the brisk April morning air. We stood before a plain blue building. The church. It was pretty short for this part of town, but it took up a full city block. Dan unlocked the double doors and we entered.

         I wandered around the sanctuary, while he went downstairs to the supply room. The church was my favorite place in the world. The church didn't look like much from the outside, but the inside was meticulously ornate. The ceiling was all arches and stained glass. Ever since I was his, Dan had brought me with him to work. When he wasn't teaching me, I would sit quietly in the second row on the right transept and stare at the picture windows.

         They weren't really windows, just plates lit up from behind by fluorescent lights. They probably weren't even glass, but the stories in the windows were fascinating. They told me of people with wings, and knights in battle, and all sorts of animals.

         There was this one window of a guy about to be eaten by this giant fish. Dan said the fish in the story was actually a whale. He said the whale didn't chew the guy up, just swallowed him whole, and then vomited him up alive a few days later. Like some of the other people in the windows, this guy had a big yellow circle growing out of his skull. Dan said that meant he was cool.

         My pew in the transept faced my favorite window. A big breasted woman in a long green dress stood there, a glowing sword in her left hand, and a bearded man's severed head in her right. Blood flowed from his wound onto the hem of her dress, but there was no blood on the sword. The man's eyes were rolled up into his head, and his greenish-grey tongue seemed to be falling from his mouth.

         I had asked Dan what the lady's name was, but he couldn't remember. "Maybe Jezebel," he had said. She was beautiful, and I was secretly afraid of her. Whenever I sat down, I always sat in the same pew where I could keep an eye on her.

         Jezebel was ten feet tall with blond hair and blue eyes that always turned red in my dreams. Her expression was haughty, and hungry, and her gaze seemed to follow me no matter where I moved.

         The hand on my shoulder made me cry out until I realized it was Dan. I hadn't heard him call for me. "You okay, Bender?" He asked. I glanced from him to Jezebel, and he followed my gaze. "If you don't like her, just quit staring at her," he grinned. His expression darkened once he realized I wasn’t smiling.

         Dan turned away from me and sauntered right up to Jezebel and crossed his arms. I seem to remember my father being tall and muscular, the strongest man around, but that could just be my memory taking poetic license. Standing before the towering monster woman, he looked tiny and weak. But defiant.

         "Listen up, bitch. You're not to frighten my boy any more. If you don't shape up . . . I'm going to come back here and kick your amazing technicolor ass! You hear me?!?" Dan stared her down with an intensity that didn't come out often. Jezebel didn’t say anything, but it was if her expression had changed. She didn’t look so scary anymore.

         "That's what I thought," Dan said. He turned around and swaggered back to me. "Yeah, I'm bad."

         "Thanks, Dan," I said. I was embarrassed about being such a baby, but I felt relieved.

         He mussed my hair again, "Any time, kemosabe. But now, we have got to go. There's a leak downstairs and we're out of spare piping. We've got to make a trip to Teague's."

         "But we just got here," I whined.

         He glanced at his watch. "We've been here over two hours," he answered. "I guess time flies when you're in Never Land with Little Miss Bloody-Dress, huh?" I just shrugged, and followed him out of the church.

         Teague's was a hardware store about six blocks east of the church, right in the middle of Townsend, the main residential district in the city. Dan and I lived thirty one blocks to the south. There weren't many children around, even within the district.

         Very few children had been born anywhere since the plague hit thirty four years earlier. Sure, the rich could always afford an artificial gestation, but rich people didn't live in Townsend; they lived five miles west in Bethlehem, on the far side of the wall. Children like me, born in the wild, were exceedingly rare.

         Dad had stopped living within Townsend when I was a baby. "Just a bunch of old fogies in that neighborhood," he would say. "Its fine place to work and shop, but you wouldn't want to live there." So we were buffered from civilization by thirty one blocks of mostly empty buildings. I say mostly, because here and there a hermit would claim a block for himself. There wasn't much of a housing problem in this city.

         Mr. Parcer ran the only gourmet bakery in Townsend, right across the street from Teague's. Whenever Dan went to the hardware store, I would wait outside and look into Pacer's window. His shop was where people from Bethlehem bought fancy desserts. He also catered parties and weddings.

         I used to walk by the door every time the delivery boy or a customer came or went, just to get a whiff of the delicacies inside. Dan was a pretty good cook, but he wasn't very good with sweets. The stuff in Parcer's smelled like Heaven.

         On that day in April, when I walked up to Parcer's, there was a young man in an expensive looking trench coat standing just outside the door. No older than twenty, his age and dress pegged him as rich. He was a hulk of a man, bigger even than Dan. As I walked up, he smiled down to me, "Well hello there, little man. Beautiful day, isn't it."

         "Yeah." I answered. "I like this better than the snow we had last month." Something about the rich man’s stance puzzled me. Keeping a safe distance from the him, I crept up to Parcer’s and looked through the window. I stood on my tiptoes to get a full view, and my breath promptly fogged up the glass in front of me. I shifted over to the left where the glass was still clear. This time I held my breath. I could see a lady giving her order to Mr. Parcer.

         She was trim and pretty, older than the rich man outside, but younger than Dan. She wore tight fitting clothes that looked as if they would be too thin for the cold weather (synthetic winter wear, very warm, very fashionable, and very expensive). Then I realized that the man beside me was this pretty woman's bodyguard. When rich people ventured into low class slums like this, they always brought protection.

         I needed to breathe again, so I tilted my head a little, curled my lips, and blew my breath behind me, away from Parcer's window. I never took my eyes off of the lady. In her green, one piece outfit, she reminded me of Jezebel, but her hair was red instead of blond.

         She turned and saw me staring at her. Her jaw dropped slowly, and she cast admiring eyes my way. There was something covetous in that gaze. The comparison with Jezebel was now complete. I took a step backwards, now I could only see her from the chest up.

         She darted to the door and was kneeling before me within seconds. Her eyes were level with mine, her hands on my shoulders. She drew me in like a tornado. "Hi, there, little one," she chimed. "What’s your name?"

         "I'm Ben," I responded. I couldn't breathe.

         "That's a beautiful name, Ben, and you are a beautiful little boy.” Her hands were now stroking my shoulders, up and down. “Do you know how special you are?" I couldn't speak, couldn't think of anything. I just sank deeper and deeper into her fire blue eyes.

         "How old are you, little Ben?" The tones flowed over me like a drug. I must have answered, because I heard her say "Six years old! That is so precious. Would you like to come home and live with me?"

         The last phrase startled me back to my senses. "No!" I said as I turned and ran. I made it five feet before I plowed blindly into my father's legs. He laid one heavy hand on my shoulder, and I buried my face in his shirt.

         "Thanks for the offer," Dan's bass voice buzzed pleasantly in my ears, and I wasn't afraid anymore. "But Bender isn't for sale."

         "I could give him a good life,” she said. “Much better than he could ever hope to have here.” The last word dripped with derision. “And besides,” she went on, “I could make you very wealthy. You could retire a rich man."

         "That's okay,” he said. “I like my job. And I love my boy."

         "Your loss," I heard her say, followed by the clip clip clip of her heels walking away.

         "I think not," Dan mumbled. When I finally looked around, the woman and her bodyguard were long gone. The windows in all the surrounding shops were filled with old faces. The show was over, but they would keep watching for a while, just to make sure.

         "Thank you, Dad," I said. My voice was small, and the world was bigger than I had thought.

         “No worries,” he said. "What are friends for?"