These days I chase after a little boy reminding him to be careful when climbing on the tippy ottoman. Or the big steps that lead to our front door. Or the strangely busy residential road where we live. I was picking smashed raisins out of the one tiny carpet we own at some point last week when a wave of giggles hit me. This is full circle. I’m sure my mother had to pull all kinds of detritus out of the flooring when I stamped it on the linoleum, or shag-covered stairwell, and so on. 

Where does fatherhood end, and parenting begin? Sometimes I wonder if I’m really a “father” or just a parental figure with chin stubble. When I’m rocking him to sleep, or reading with him, or telling him to say “please” when asking for yet more blueberries, does my own gender identity matter? He’s safe, he’s happy, he’s curious and engaged with the world around him. No, I tell myself, I’m not some uber-butchified mother. I’m me, and he’s whoever he is becoming. Besides, it’s hard to think about oneself when one is trying to catch a baby’s vomit, or fix a boo-boo, or keep the shampoo out of a kid’s eyes.

I don’t think I know what fatherhood is, even. There’s the tired image of a dad and son throwing a ball to each other in the front yard, never missing, even while waving to the neighbors. That’s not parenting so much as playing. Parenting feels more like an investment in another person on a very long-term basis, and at frequent intervals, and near the top of one’s capability in making that investment. Surely Emile was no accident, as we made every effort to conceive him, through sperm banks and reproductive centers, ultrasound appointments and required counseling. But even if he’d just come along, the proverbial “accident,” I think I’ve been ready to parent for a long time now. I’m a little on the late side perhaps, but there are benefits—I am really super mellow now. There have been at least a few moments when it’s occurred to me that if the wee one had pulled this stunt or that in front of my 20-year-younger self, I’d probably have slapped him, or yelled at him, or intimidated him in some way. Maybe I just wound up holding off until my best parenting self was ready. This way I don’t have to hate myself for my rash judgments.

We’re at the cusp of the terrible twos. But my child is still such a dream, when he has a tantrum he stomps his feet in the most adorable manner possible, and it’s all Susanne and I can do to keep from laughing at how cute he is. Instead I take him seriously, ask him to tell me what he’s feeling and why he seems so angry. It stops him in his tracks—so far, anyway—because thinking about what he’s feeling and then naming it can’t happen at the same time as the stomping and screaming. I’m not sure if I’d call it fatherhood when I scoop him up and put him upside-down, eliciting giggles, and helping him forget about his frustrations. I would rather call it being his advocate and friend. But yes, I get a warm feeling inside when he squeals “Daddy” when I come home after work, or when he runs to me for comfort, or when he buries his head in my neck out of sudden shyness. He is mine, marked as part of my pack, and he knows my voice even when I’m whispering three rooms over.

Of course, he hears the sound of plastic crinkling and dashes over looking for a treat with at least as much enthusiasm, so there’s that.

“Did you see his face,” asked one juror, meaning the defendant.

“He looked like the weight of the world came off his shoulders,” answered a juror. Kiffen was her name.

The mason grumbled. “He looks like he dodged a bullet.”

Soon thereafter the judge came into our room. He’d said he had a quick question for us, but we peppered him with ours first. They came out all in a barrage—why didn’t we hear from Grumpy and Stretch? why isn’t Officer Tony’s dashboard camera working? why was the testimony so vague? Did we just let a guilty man go free? What did you think about his guilt or innocence?

He tried to answer them in turn. He looked much smaller standing in front of us instead of occupying his perch above us, and his robes looked like they could smother him.

“Nobody can find Joaquim (Grumpy) or Stretch,” he said, looking like he was trying not to sound dismissive. “If we could have located them, we would have brought them in for questioning.”

Juror number 4—the woman who had sat in front of me the whole trial—asked why Stephanie wasn’t coached to be more assertive on the stand.

“Ms. Adele was brought here by officers, as a material witness. The prosecutor had to put out a warrant to get her here, and she stayed at a motel with a guard so that she would testify.”

Well, that explained the very large bailiff who’d accompanied her to the court.It also explained her reticence on the stand, her disinterest in giving specific answers, and April King’s manner of questioning. And yes, it cleared up her odd statement to the state that, “Hey, I don’t know where I am now.” If she’d been driven to the court house, then she may not know where she was. Even if ahem, the court house is smack in the middle of Walla Walla.

The mason asked again, how do we handle the possibility that we let someone who committed a crime go free?

The judge thought for a moment and then looked directly at him, even though his point was for all of us.

“When I was a prosecutor and I lost a case I believed in—and I believed in them all—I just told myself that this individual is going to come across my desk again. I’ll get him then.”

We were quiet, mulling what was at once reassuring and troubling.

“But I had a question for all of you,” he said. He already had our attention so he didn’t need to pause long to ask it.

“Were there enough stretch breaks?”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Yes, we said. The stretch breaks were perfect in every conceivable way.

I got back in my boiling car and drove to the office because I’d missed a day and a half and I had a brand new case manager to train. (That’s another story.) The names and facts of the case continued to swirl in my brain, not entirely unlike the mini-cesspool created in a plugged toilet. I had to find a way to purge the details, but first, free to finally do some research, I could go online and search to my heart’s content. I swerved away from my workplace, and sat down in a coffee shop with my laptop.

It didn’t make me feel any better.

Not only had Skyler Glasby plead guilty to three prior crimes, but the forgery was actually a $20 bill counterfeiting attempt, and he’d also been in a 21-hour standoff with Walla Walla Police in November 2011 as they attempted to arrest him for the counterfeiting. He’d also been charged with sexual assault but not convicted. A couple of online bulletin boards (yes, those still exist) named him as a well known white supremacist. Brilliant. My first thought was: “Downtown Julie Brown sure knows how to get shit excluded from a trial!”

My second thought left me worried—why was a young man who had a violent past out of jail by the time January 2013 rolled around?

Let me say clearly: I am not a fan of the police state. I worry that lack of transparency leads to systematic abuses by law enforcement officers against the most vulnerable among us. I would never vote guilty in a capitol case. I am completely opposed to the death penalty, I think laws are often enforced from a biased understanding of who looks suspicious and who does not. I question why the rates of people imprisoned looks nothing like the demographic proportion of the people living in the United States. I find immense fault with the “shoot first, ask questions later” sensibility of police academy training, with the way in which sexual assault cases are carried out, and with the open harassment that police carry out against racial and sexual minorities.

That said, I don’t think this society can work without laws. If there is a space between the ideal and the current implementation of justice, I am not so much against the concept as I am the manner in which we identify suspects and mete out judgments. I don’t want to see violent offenders walking around able to commit new crimes, either. Although we could have a discussion about what the consequences of breaking the law could look like.

I tried to find the hearings docket for the county. Was there a paper trail of when these earlier crimes were excluded? There must have been hearings and motions and the like. And then I saw this:

The same exact charges, plus two counts of violation of the Controlled Substances Act, and two counts of driving a stolen vehicle, against a “Jessica Lee Glasby.” Was this Skyler’s mother? Sister? Why file these charges against someone not named to be in the vehicle? I looked at the date of the filing, January 13. This was three days after the alleged incident. It was for a plea, not a change of plea. So 72 hours after Judy Cushman’s mailbox went to the great post receptacle in the sky, the state sought out  Jessica Lee Glasby to say if she was pleading guilty or not guilty to the charges of eluding police, driving on a suspended or revoked license, hit-and-run, and drug possession. And on March 28 they scheduled her to make a plea in court.

Why?

Does the county file charges against relatives to bring in the actual suspect as a matter of course?

By May 2013, the court docket read a little differently:

This was a change of plea. What had she plead originally? When did Skyler make an appearance in these proceedings? And on what basis did anyone charge Jessica Lee with the stolen vehicle or the drug possession?

Was her plea deal to sell out Skyler in some way? In a town as small as Walla Walla, there are no news reports, no blogs about criminal jurisprudence, although there is a Facebook page managed by people who listen to the police scanner. I’ve thought more than once to myself in the last week and a half, about trying to find Lisa Simpson’s Human Counterpart to ask her about the history, now that all is said and done, but I’m pretty sure she’s up to her elbows in new prosecutions.

As a final note, I noticed when we walked out of the jury room for the last time, a few minutes after the drama of the verdict reading, after our short ex parte with Judge White, there weren’t many people left in the room. The clerk was typing up something official. The bailiff was organizing a short stack of paper. The prosecutor was long gone, as was Skyler. But his mother was there, still in the gallery, crying into a tissue, and Downtown Julie Brown was talking to her quietly. Maybe that was Jessica Lee. I didn’t know her name then, since I hadn’t had a chance to look online for the people in this case.

Julie caught my eye as I walked past. We exchanged something, but I’m not sure what it was. Did she think her client was innocent? Did she enjoy the win?

I think I have to get good with not knowing. But I admit I scour the newspaper every day for the name Skyler Glasby.

One of the constraints we faced in this trial was that we were not privy to any of the pretrial motions—by definition if an attorney is seeking to exclude evidence on the grounds it would predispose the jury to one side or the other, we cannot know the motion occurred. I suppose in a more metropolitan or populated area ducking the coverage of a trial would be more of a challenge, but in Walla Walla, there has been scarcely a peep about Skyler Glasby or Stephanie Adele leading up to or during the two-day trial. With only the evidence from people’s testimony and four exhibits from the trial in front of us, we looked to the closing arguments for some new revelation that would help us decide who was driving the car during a hit and run earlier this year.

No such revelations came to us.

First April King, the woman who looks like Lisa Simpson’s Human Counterpart, stood in front of us and asked us who the “real” liar in the courtroom was. Was it the convicted forger, Mr. Glasby, or was it the scared 19-year-old, Ms. Adele? LSHC looked right at the jury box and said, “Stephanie Adele doesn’t have the chops to lie to you. She could barely speak above a whisper. She couldn’t even lie to the Milton-Freewater police for two minutes. Stephanie Adele doesn’t have the chops to drive 90mph through residential streets in College Place.”

LSHC said “have the chops” so many times I literally started thinking about pork chops and lamb chops. And then I thought about rosemary and mint jelly. I needed a Judge White stretch before my stomach started grumbling. Refocus, refocus, Maroon, I told myself. But seriously, is there a more Walla Walla version of “balls” than this? It was like watching the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. Gosh, Spot, I’m not sure this young lady has the chops to drive like that. LSHC went on to say that it wasn’t Ms. Adele who had the motive to flee the police that evening, it was Skyler, the man with two warrants. She didn’t have motive, and she didn’t have THOSE FREAKING CHOPS, PEOPLE.

It was the defense’s turn next. Skyler wore the same mis-sized shirt and tie as the day before, but everyone else had changed outfits. True to form, Downtown Julie Brown argued that the state hadn’t proved its case that he was the driver that night. We didn’t have the video evidence, which her client really wished we had. (Which made me think of that line in The Shawshank Redemption when Tim Robbins tells the judge no, it’s really inconvenient that they didn’t find the “real” man who murdered his wife.) This was super inconvenient, too. There was no evidence in the car, DJB continued, to point to the defendant as the driver. It was his word against Stephanie’s. And by the way, Stephanie definitely had the chops to drive the car and elude police. We don’t need to know why she was scared, we shouldn’t assume she had no motive. Regardless, there is plenty of reasonable doubt here in this case, and we should vote not guilty on all three counts against Skyler Glasby. And then she sat down, satisfied. And we never even got any accordion music. I thought that accordion music was Downtown Julie Brown’s thang.

The judge turned to us and gave us another stretch break. I didn’t want to stretch. I wanted to know more about the darn case. I couldn’t believe that was the sum of it. It was like the state was using tax money to settle a teenager’s argument. With all of the posturing over state and county budgets—they are next to sending out memos in the county building where I work to ask us to use less toilet paper—we were supposed to take time and money to decided this case? Over a mailbox? If Grumpy was the one with a gun, where was he? Who was Stretch? I had a million questions, but soon enough our muscle stretching time was over. It was time to hear the instructions from the judge. There were twenty of them. I wrote them all down but I wasn’t allowed to keep my notes, so here are the broad strokes:

• Reasonable doubt was defined for us
• The elements of the crime for each charge were laid out for us (eluding police, driving with a suspended/revoked license, hit-and-run)
• Someone doesn’t need to know a particular activity is illegal for them to be charged with a crime (“I thought 25mph was just a suggestion!”)
• We may only consider evidence entered into trial via testimony or exhibits that were admitted
• May not consider the potential sentencing into our decision, except to remind ourselves that our decision is important
• If we find the defendant guilty of the first charge, we also must decide on a special verdict of threatening an individual, but if we find him not guilty, we can skip the special verdict
• We must elect a presiding juror to sign the verdict sheet and manage the deliberation

The judge turned to Barb, the alternate juror, who had watched the whole trial along with us.

“You are free to go,” he said to her. “You may not speak about this trial nor how you would vote, until the verdict is read to the court.”

Barb was a small woman, older, with stylish but thick glasses and a well-loved flower print purse always at arm’s reach. She frowned, and I knew from earlier conversations during breaks with her that she really really wanted to deliberate with us. She wasn’t going to give up the ghost happily.

“Your Honor, may I stay in the gallery?”

“Well, yes.”

“I want to know the verdict!”

He flashed her a quick smile, making the corners of his goatee reach into his cheeks a little.

“They may be in there for ten minutes or ten hours. You could be waiting a while.”

“I know.” I was pretty sure Barb had a way of making things go her way most of the time. She moved five feet over to the front row in the gallery. Both attorneys sat with their papers bundled up in front of them. There was nothing left for them to do.

After that we were herded into the small jury room. It was difficult to get all of the chairs up to the table, which was a walnut-stained oversized kitchen table, from the look of it. In the room was free soda, coffee, and tea—comfort drinks but nothing that implied we would be here for a long time. We were not sequestered. We weren’t at the table for half a minute when one of the young professional women said to the room, “I think Everett should be foreman.”

Two or three other people nodded in agreement.

“Well, maybe somebody here has their heart set on it,” I said, quickly realizing I had no clue what to do as foreman. Left to my own devices I would have spent five minutes planning how to have the deliberation discussion—should we talk about the elements of the charges? the questions we had about testimony? whether we believed which witness?—but they were moving far more quickly than my brain processors were.

“Everett it is,” said Kiffin, an impish woman, maybe early 30s, with a pageboy cut and the most styling outfit in the room. Travis, a man as large as me who had said next to nothing for a day and a half, opened his mouth.

“Yeah, Everett should do it.”

And so it was that on my first jury trial I was made foreman. I kept my misgivings and my chuckles to myself and really, when does that ever happen?

I asked everyone to make a table tent with their name on it so we could see who we were talking to. I don’t know why, it just seemed to be more human or something. Folks obliged. I learned most of their names for the first time right then.

We all had a copy of the 20 instructions—so much for my note taking. I flipped through my steno pad; I had marked my big questions and worries during the trial with fat stars. I asked if anyone else had big questions about the case.

Yes! said several of them.

Juror Number 2 said, “Where are Grumpy and Stretch?” More head nodding. We were Twelve Nodding Jurors.

We talked very briefly about what evidence to use in our decision.

“Look,” I said, which frankly I’d rather have said not as the presiding juror, but hey, I had to let it out. “A lot of this evidence is meaningless. So what if the driver’s seat was pulled forward? We don’t know if Stephanie did it or if the College Place police did it.”

Nod nod nod. Juror Number 8, a mason, agreed. “I really am sad that the police force in College Place doesn’t have working cameras or cops who know how to process evidence. We may have to let this guy off because the state couldn’t prove its case.” We quickly played with the idea of all contributing $10 to the chief of police in College Place so they could fix poor Officer Tony’s dashboard camera.

Small eruptions of conversation had to be tamped down into one thread. We didn’t dwell too long on any one issue, but we parsed through the information in front of us, most of which could be interpreted in multiple ways:

• Was the placement of the driver’s seat a sign Stephanie was driving or that the officers looked under the seat for evidence?
• Was the fact that the keys were left on the passenger seat evidence that Skyler drove or that Stephanie was covering up her role in the hit and run?
• Was the fact that Stephanie lied to the Milton-Freewater police a sign that she was scared or that she was manipulative?
• Did the fact that Skyler wasn’t pleading out on these charges like he had on all of his other previous charges a sign he knew he was innocent or that he thought he could beat the system?
• Did Stephanie saying he “floored it” mean she could see his foot or was she referring to how she drove the car, or did it mean nothing at all?
• Did it matter if she said “it was all a blur” and Skyler said specific things about where they went?
• Was anything said at all that put either one of them in the driver’s seat?

We also hated the gaps in the trial:

• No testimony from Grumpy or Stretch
• No video
• No complete report from the officers who processed the car
• No complete report from the investigator
• No eyewitness testimony from the owner of the damaged property
• No other eyewitnesses
• No physical evidence from the car

We looked again at the criteria for the charges. All three of them were predicated, first and foremost, on there being evidence that the defendant drove the vehicle on the night in question. We shook our heads over that. Some of us in the room thought Skyler was driving, and some of us thought Stephanie had driven. But all of us agreed that the state did not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I asked people to raise their hands if they wanted to vote to acquit on the first charge—I figured we were leaning that way, so I wanted to see people do something affirmative to signal their vote—and I stared back at eleven raised hands. My own was in the air. In fifteen minutes, we had come to agreement.

Not being able to definitively say that Skyler was driving meant that we would also vote not guilty on counts 2 and 3, but I asked for votes anyway because I figured we would either be polled or would need to say we voted on each count. There were several sighs around the room, especially from those of us who were concerned we were letting someone off the hook.

I signed the paperwork on each line, ignoring the special vote, which didn’t make any sense to me anyway, because there was zero evidence that Skyler had threatened Stephanie in any way. According to her testimony, it was the absent Grumpy with the gun and the threats. I stood up and opened the jury door. In the courtroom, the bailiffs were talking quietly to each other, and Barb, the alternate, was sitting where we’d left her, in the front of the gallery. Skyler’s relatives who had sat through the whole trial were there, too, but the rest of the room was empty.

“I have the verdict,” I said. April King would probably realize this was a not guilty vote, coming back so quickly. I think the acquittals are like that, in general.

The bailiff told me to hold onto the paperwork until she called us all back inside.

I stood when the judge asked the foreman to render the verdict. I handed the papers over again and wasn’t sure when I could sit down. The clerk stood and read out the first not guilty decision. Skyler let out a long exhale and Downtown Julie Brown looked like she’d caught a mouse. Lisa Simpson’s Human Counterpart blinked a lot for 30 seconds. Charges two and three, not guilty. Skyler’s mother sobbed. Barb nodded at me. She would have voted with us, I’m sure. We were polled individually—was this our independent vote? was this the true vote of the jury? Yes. Yes. Twelve times. The judge asked us to convene one last time in the jury room, just for a minute.

We filed back in the tiny kitchen, peppering him with questions. Stephanie had been held as a material witness, under guard at a hotel to ensure she would testify. No wonder she didn’t know where she was. Grumpy and Stretch were on the run and couldn’t be found. So we got those answers. The mason asked the judge how he deals with perpetrators who get to go free?

“When I was a prosecutor,” said Judge White, “I just knew that the folks who didn’t turn their lives around would come across my desk again, and we’d get them next time.” It was some consolation from the look on the mason’s face.

But the judge really wanted to know something from us: Were there enough stretch breaks?

We laughed. Yes, you made us stretch enough.

I practically jogged back to my car, because now I was free to talk or write about the case, but more importantly, I could google the people involved. And that is when I got really concerned.

(Part 5 aftermath next)

Stephanie was something of a lightning rod for the case. She was, after all, the owner of the runaway vehicle, and the individual asserting that Skyler Glasby was all to blame for the litany of crimes that took place that cold January evening in College Place. April King—I mean, Lisa Simpson’s Human Counterpart—walked us through Stephanie’s experience in the car and afterward, but it looked like the tooth-pulling experience that many parents have with their teenage daughters who answer everything with, “I dunno.” Many of Stephanie’s responses on direct were vague, spoken through clenched teeth, or told with a shrug. LSHC asked for more details, but they didn’t come. On cross examination from Downtown Julie Brown, Ms. Adele remained circumspect. According to her Skyler knew where he was going, ending up at some purpose at the old landfill site.

After the cross-examination, LSHC called her back to the stand.

LSHC: Can you tell us, after Grumpy threatened you with the gun, why did you get in another car with him and Stretch? Why did you walk away from your car with them?

SA: I don’t know.

LSHC: But you handed him your phone? And the defendant had your car keys?

SA: Yeah.

LSHC: What did you think would happen after you left with them?

SA: I don’t know.

She said she just wanted to get out of there. For her end, she also just wanted to get out of the courtroom, at least from her body language. She told us that the next day, she hid out in her boyfriend’s house and didn’t leave for two weeks, because she was so afraid.

LSHC brought up that SA had a conviction from the Milton-Freewater prosecutor’s office, and I don’t remember anymore if it was discussed in advance of the cross-examination, or on redirect. Probably before DJB could bring it up. At any rate, Stephanie relayed to us the sad story of the thieving ex-boyfriend who took her rent money to buy drugs and alcohol. As revenge, slash making her rent, she had stolen his PS3 and sold it. Turns out, she says, the game console wasn’t his. Well, that’s a tough lesson for a teenager. What I picked up from this story was that she wasn’t a great decision-maker, she had at least one scuzzy boyfriend, and she was living on her own with little or no financial support from her parents at the ripe old age of 18 (at the time of the arrest). And all of that made me sad. It was also interesting to see the prosecuting attorney grant a large deposit of sympathy for criminal behavior on a person, especially since she was so fired up about the defendant allegedly running over a mailbox. But I digress.

When Stephanie Adele left, the large bailiff who’d come in with her left the room, and we didn’t see him again.

I wasn’t sure what to make of her testimony, but I reminded myself not to worry about what looked like red flags until I saw what else the prosecution and defense had to say on the matter. But just then LSHC rose and told the judge that the state was resting its case.

I was agog, but I tried not to show it. That was it? That was all of it? Nobody saw anything, nobody found evidence, even the lady whose mailbox had taken it on the chin couldn’t bother to look out her window to see a car barreling away? And that was it? Seriously?

The judge asked us to stand for a moment and stretch. He did this periodically. I don’t know if he saw one of the jurors nodding off, or he wanted to give himself a moment to break his own sleepiness. We stood, all of us except the people in the gallery. And then we sat back down.

DJB stood up and gave us her opening argument. It was not Skyler driving the car, it was Stephanie Adele herself. Please remember, she appealed to us, that there is absolutely no direct evidence in this case putting Mr. Glasby in the driver’s seat. In order for us to find him guilty of any of these charges we will have to decide that he was the driver on January 10, 2013, and that is simply not in evidence. Of course Ms. Adele says Skyler was driving, because she does not want to admit that in fact she was behind the wheel that evening. And why would she lie? It does not matter. What matters is that there is certainly reasonable doubt regarding who drove the Dodge Intrepid on the night in question.

There was more but those were the key points. And with that, Skyler Glasby took the stand in his own defense. His shirt was too large for him. The neon stripes on his tie clashed horribly with the primary color and checks of his shirt. He leaned forward in the witness chair, enunciating without any hint of an accent or affect. He had the look of a man extremely ready to speak. My notes drizzled sideways on my steno paper because I was looking at him while I was writing.

He told us that he had been dropped off at a party in Oregon by his longtime friend Grumpy, who said would be right back in a few minutes. Instead it was four or five hours before he showed up, and Ms. Adele was with him. DJB asked if he noticed anything about the way they acted toward each other.

“Objection, Your Honor, honestly. Calls for speculation,” said LSHC.

DJB countered with her own sighing eye roll.

“It’s what he directly witnessed, Your Honor.”

In hindsight, I seriously think Judge White hates being called Your Honor.

“How about if you rephrase,” he asked Downtown Julie Brown.

But for some reason, she let it go. I got the distinct impression that she was pushing Skyler to say that they were affectionate or flirty with each other, making the idea that Grumpy would pull a gun on Stephanie a stranger, more complicated action, potentially casting doubt on her story. But instead, it disappeared like a bad smell on a breeze. Maybe DJB just wanted to hint at us and didn’t care about having it stated more clearly. But at least we had agreement on one thing in this trial: Before January 10, 2013, Skyler Glasby and Stephanie Adele had never met each other, even if they both knew Grumpy.

According to Skyler, he was frustrated with Grumpy for not getting back to him for several hours. He asked Grumpy to take him  to his girlfriend’s house in College Place, Washington, across the state line. He told us how they drove there, by heading up Rte. 125, turning left just before the Walmart, and then making a right to wind up on S. College Avenue. He put himself in the back seat, behind the driver. And the driver, he said, was Stephanie. There was no mention of him showing her how a “real man” drove, no mention of his wanted man status, be it in Walla Walla, or the entire state of Washington. Not that I would expect him to talk about such bravado while he was trying to show us his grownup side.

DJB: What happened next?

SG: A cop put his lights on and pulled us over, right before Andy’s.

DJB: So Stephanie pulled over?

SG: Yes. Just for a moment. And then she sped away, and she and Grumpy were arguing.

Skyler also said (another area of agreement between them) that Stephanie didn’t know where to go. In his version of the story, Grumpy directed her to turn here and there. He seemed a little incredulous that she seemed to lose the cop. He recalled running over the mailbox, and he said there were a lot of cut corners, running over curbs, and so on. They turned down Evans, hit the post holding up the mailbox, made another turn, and wound up at the abandoned landfill. Stephanie was upset, Grumpy was trying to calm her down. There was no mention of a gun in this retelling. Grumpy asked for her phone to call Stretch.

Skyler was done with Grumpy at this point. He had another friend, John, in close proximity to where they were now, so Stretch dropped him off there, and he doesn’t know what happened to them afterward.

On cross-examination, LSHC asked him if he called the police to tell them about the mailbox. He said he hadn’t. She asked if he tried to contact Judy Cushman to tell her about her mailbox. He said he hadn’t. She said, “Well, why do you care, right? It’s not your car.”

“Objection, Your Honor, she is speculating.”

“I’ll withdraw it.”

I think this was the state’s attempt to paint him as callous or self-interested. I wouldn’t have tried to contact Judy Cushman either, if it were me, and maybe that makes me a Bad Person. But I didn’t find this factoid damning of him in any real way.

DJB went over his earlier convictions. There were three admitted into evidence. Nonpayment on a moving violation had led to his license suspension. But there was one for forgery. What did that mean? That’s not a “I didn’t know it was his PS3″ kind of accident. In fact there was far more to the charge than we realized, and I don’t know if that was the fault of the prosecuting attorney or the talent of DJB. But in any case these charges were played off by the defense as stupid reckless youth stuff.

To my shock, the defense rested its case. I blinked. Where the heck were Grumpy and Stretch? After being such a part of the evening, were they really not going to be put before us? It was like a bad Mamet play.

The clock read 4:20. The judge gave us another tilted head look and said he was going to adjourn us for the day. We would hear closing arguments in the morning. We were not to talk about the case, not search online the names of the parties involved, not drive by the scene, not conduct our own research. We were also not supposed to read the paper, although I suspected it wouldn’t have anything about this case in it, given that I didn’t see any reporters in the court room all day. I went to the patisserie and I drank a coffee until it was time to end the nanny’s shift for the afternoon. And I tried not to think about the questions rolling around in my head. Maybe there would be something in the closing arguments that would shift the entire trial for the jury.

Or maybe this was all there was to it.

(Part 4 next)

He gave us a look, tilted his head to one side, and then told us we would be breaking for lunch.

“The trial will begin with opening arguments,” he said, and it was clear he’d said this hundreds of times before. “We will begin at 1:30, so be back in the jury room at 1:15. My standard is that if you are here fifteen minutes early, then you are on time.”

Okay, tight ship there, bucko, I thought. This made him my people, this little insistence on punctuality. This is my cloth, and I wear it well.

We stood in the jury room for a couple of minutes, waiting for the bailiff to let us out.

“So how many children do you have,” Juror Number 3 asked the woman in purple paisley. The defense attorney had asked her a question during voir dire as if she had 18 kids at home. I admit, I was curious.

“Five,” she said.

We laughed. Five is a lot of kids, of course, but not outside the bounds in the way Downtown Julie Brown had made it seem.

I texted Susanne and told her I’d been put on the jury, asking if she wanted to have lunch. I texted her only once my phone cooled down enough, since I’d had to leave it in the car, which was now approximately the temperature of molten rock. We met up and I went over the voir dire. I knew I couldn’t talk about the trial, so instead we tried to figure out the childcare for the next couple of days, since I usually watch Emile for a few hours before the nanny comes in the afternoon.

Back to the car, stick the jury notice on the dash so the car was excepted from the parking limit, tuck the phone in the glove box to heat up again, then up the three flights of tall stairs that would never pass building code in today’s construction market. We waited for the other jurors to arrive. I pretended not to notice the attorneys or defendant as I walked past them and into the jury room.

Lisa Simpson’s Human Counterpart began with her opening statement. The state will show that Skyler Glasby, on January 10, 2013, while driving a vehicle, eluded a police officer, drove recklessly, on a suspended license, and caused property damage without notifying the owners. We will hear testimony, she said, from the vehicle’s owners, as well as the officer involved and the detective on the case. And we need to convict Mr. Glasby for his terrible actions. It took longer than that, dwelling on eyewitness testimony, and again, what reasonable doubt means. I wanted to make a note, something to the effect of: SHE SURE IS WORRIED ABOUT US HAVING DOUBTS but I reserved judgment. You know, since everyone kept asking us to reserve judgment. And this is actually harder than it looks, given the human’s impulse to find patterns and draw conclusions and such. But okay, reserving judgment. The judge offered the defense a chance to make her opening argument, and DJB declined; she would save it for later.

The first witness in the state’s case took the stand, raising his right hand to swear an oath, sans bible. I wondered what the God’s Law guy would have thought of this. He sat down, looking younger than when I’d first glanced at him. His name was Officer Alan Tony.

He testified that he saw a Dodge Intrepid with a broken tail light, at about 20:10 on January 10, 2013, a little south of Andy’s Market on S. College Avenue in College Place (this is a little town south-southwest of Walla Walla, the very next town over, home to Walla Walla University). (PLEASE NOTE: The following testimony is my recollection, not from a transcript.)

It started with a perforated postcard in the mail, back in early April, saying I was on the docket for June 2013. Walla Walla’s Superior Court uses a system in which jurors need to be on call to make an appearance on any given date during the month. Opening up the sealed card, one will find a short questionnaire which is supposed to be mailed back to the court right away. It tells the court if there are dates one can’t serve (I said I’d be out of town after a certain date in June), if one is or is not a United States citizen (Susanne gets out of all her jury duty for being Canadian), a resident of the county, and older than 18. It asks if one can read, speak, and write in English (illiterates need not apply?), and asks things about whether one is currently employed, and if so, what kind of work it is. There were other things on there, but I’ve forgotten them.

We assembled in the hall outside the courtroom on the 3rd floor of the courthouse, a grand building from shortly before The Territory of Washington became the 42nd State in America, back when Walla Walla was still the capitol. Gray marble does a fantastic job of making people look sombre, even if any given person is wearing cowboy boots and a 10-gallon hat. I took a seat on an old church pew in the corner and started reading my book. Carter Sickles’s The Evening Hour, which I’d skimmed through so fast a couple of months ago that I’ve felt guilty ever since. Good thing I started it again, because his use of language deserves a slow mulling. By the middle of the second chapter the woman next to me decided to strike up a conversation. Of the forty or so people called as part of the jury pool, she had three things in common with me—she’d taken a cruise to Alaska for her honeymoon, she was originally from New Jersey, and she had just gone to Hawaii for the first time in her life in the last six months. Not enough to call it a conspiracy, but interesting enough for small talk before the bailiff called us into the courtroom.

We were all given numbers. I was 24. We sat in our seats—the first twelve taking places in the actual jury box next to the judge, the rest of us in the gallery. I read the juror’s pamphlet that explained the types of trials, and looked around at the people who were supposed to represent the defendant’s peers. The tall cowboy in front of me with a gravity-defying moustache that stretched out so far on either side of his face that they were more like cat whiskers. The carefully groomed man who’d brought a small bible along with him. The two older women wearing fluffed white hair and purple paisley shirts, sitting in spots #11 and #12 in the box. Several 30-something white women all looking professional, but whom I’ve never seen around town. In fact in the room of 50 people, I didn’t know a single person. This almost never happens in a town the size of Wallyworld.

We stood as the judge entered the room. We stayed standing to take an oath to provide true answers to the judge, prosecuting attorney, and defense attorney, who would look for reasons to remove us as potential jurors. There are three ways to remove a potential juror from the final jury:

1. Show cause—There is a specific reason we may not be able to be impartial on this trial. We may know one of the court’s officers, the defendant, or have a deal of knowledge about the circumstances of the crime (e.g., that was my neighbor’s mailbox that got run over).
2. Peremptory challenge—Each side in the case is allowed to reject potential jurors without giving a reason whatsoever. They may not want us on the jury if we’ve experienced something similar to what the case is about. I thought for sure that if I mentioned I’d been an assault survivor and been my own witness, that the defense would toss me, but well, it’s up to each attorney. There may have been even “worse” candidates in the jury box that day.
3. Be one of the individuals in the jury pool who are not needed once each side is satisfied with the jury and/or has used all of their challenges. Anyone in the pool #27 or higher didn’t get picked and were allowed to go home.

The judge asked us the same questions we’d answered on the postcard some weeks ago, looking for any raised hands that would disqualify us as jurors. Then he asked which of us had any connections to law enforcement. Cowboy raised his hand, saying he was a retired peace officer from California. Half a dozen people knew folks or themselves worked in the state penitentiary here in town (Walla Walla has one dry cleaners, and one death row). Another six or seven people knew police officers, lawyers, were retired from law enforcement. None of these people were challenged or told they could not serve, but I’ll note that none of them made it to the final jury, either.

The prosecuting attorney, who happened to have the same name as my office’s bookkeeper, stood up and addressed us. It was time for her to get to interact with us. Instead of asking us one at a time questions related to our postcard questionnaires, she asked most of her questions to us more generally, expecting we would pipe up if we felt the need to answer. I wondered how people’s tendencies toward introversion or extroversion or morality (like, will they feel an ethical or moral impulse to answer if they are implicated in a question) would intersect this format of questioning. The prosecuting attorney was tiny, maybe five-one, with flyaway blonde hair, thick glasses, and a haphazardly buttoned shirt. I had the distinct impression that Lisa Simpson had tired of having her own television show and was ready to tackle a career in the law, and here she was, far far from Springfield.

She dropped her pen on the floor, and asked the woman sitting in spot #6 if she saw it happen. Number 6 said yes.

“But that is not direct evidence,” said the prosecutor. “That is your eyewitness experience.” Another nod.

“Yet you are certain about what you saw,” asked the prosecutor. Number 6 agreed. She was certain.

Okay, I thought, so this case is weak on direct evidence, and more about eyewitness testimony.

“Would you be able to decide this case only on eyewitness testimony if it came to that,” asked Lisa Simpson’s Human Counterpart.

“Yes.”

Next came a question about how the state needs to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. She spoke with the man in spot #5.

“I would need it to be beyond a shadow of a doubt,” he said.

“Well, but do you understand that the law only requires it to be beyond a reasonable doubt. A doubt that a reasonable person would have.”

“Yes, but I think it needs to be stronger than that,” he said, his reading glasses perched on the top of his bald head. Juror #5 was the first person removed from the jury pool once the peremptory challenges began.

Next up was the defense attorney—a taller woman with the enjoyable name of Julie Brown. Downtown Julie Brown began by talking about her time in law school when she was in China, evaluating their legal system. The system in the United States is better, she argued, because of our presumption of innocence. One juror toward the back of the gallery raised his hand.

“I don’t understand why you’re talking about this,” he said, apparently frustrated. “Why do we care about any other country’s laws?”

There’s a lot one could say about his statement, I suppose. But Downtown Julie Brown countered with this.

“You’ve just made my point. In this country, the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.”

She moved on by asking the purple paisley woman in spot #11, the following:

“I saw from your questionnaire that you have a lot of children. Did any of them ever lie to you?”

Number 11 nodded.

“Did they ever come to you with two different stories about something? And you had to figure out which one was telling the truth?”

“Sure.” I tried to picture this woman with her dozen kids, all fighting over who ate the last Ho Ho.

“Like multiple times a day, right?” Okay, Downtown Julie Brown, don’t go insinuating it’s a prolific house of liars or anything! Settle down!

Number 11 graciously nodded with a bit of a shoulder shrug.

“So how did you determine who was telling the truth and who was lying,” asked Downtown Julie Brown.

“I just. . . I just listened to them and asked them more questions until we figured it out.”

It’s very challenging for me to write about this in hindsight, because I know so much more now than I did during these exchanges. But at the time I became increasingly concerned that the trial had only eyewitness testimony and that the jury would only get information from people who had potentially good reasons to lie in the case. Judging from the defendant in front of me—early 20s, rail-thin, a hard look on his face, close-cropped orange hair and an unflattering goatee that made his chin look like a hatchet—we were going to see some credibility issues on both sides of the table.

More questions bounced around the room. Could people be impartial if this, if that. The man with the personal bible remarked that he visits prisoners every Sunday, and later in the conversation admitted that he believed in God’s law over man’s law, and could not necessarily follow man’s law if he thought it contradicted God’s law. (I really want to find this guy again and ask if he’s against the death penalty, because I am fascinated by him.) Another woman questioned the prosecutor about what counted as “motive.” I raised my hand when we were asked if we had ever testified in a case. And I realize now that to this day, I feel icky inside when I think about the 60-second beating I took over my then brand-new Gary Fisher bicycle. I tried not to let it show.

The balloting process began. First Lisa Simpson’s Human Counterpart would write down the name of someone to remove from the jury, and then the bailiff brought it to Downtown Julie Brown, who would add her own name. The clerk read the paper, typing in the juror spots to be removed, and then the judge would send the paper back to the attorneys. The bailiff called out the spots:

“Juror number 2, please step down. Juror number 13, please take their place.” Each round it went like that, two jurors getting pulled, some the round after they’d been seated. God’s law, the cowboy, the shadow of a doubt guy, and the woman who argued about eyewitness testimony all were rejected. They crept up toward the high teens, and I counted how many peremptory challenges remained. I could actually be selected, either because no one saw fit to reject me, or because they’d be out of challenges by the time they got to me. And then sure enough, a man whose ex worked at the penitentiary and who had said nothing else during the whole morning, was excused. He had been in spot #10.

“Juror number 24, please take his place.”

And that is how I got on my first jury.

So perhaps patience has been an issue of mine, in that like, I have little of it. At least my expectations for most everything else have drifted toward the realistic. I can’t know everything. I can in fact only know the tiniest shavings of a thing, and my ability to understand those droplets is fallible, mutable, susceptible to the flaws of memory and time and that foundational perspective. Yet in this knowing about knowing I can at least scrape together a little honesty. It is something of a conduit to my own humility, and in great contrast to my previous certainly about my intellectual prowess. So thank you, meta-knowing.

Part of what keeps me honest is all of the chasing after Emile, trying to see the world through his very young eyes. Taking a walk down the block runs us close to an hour, and trust me, there are not a lot o things between our front door and the telephone pole at the edge of the street. Pine cones, twigs, small batches of annuals, driveway gravel, these are all full of endless possibilities for exploration. Emile is in heaven as soon as his sandals hit the cement.

I admit it—I don’t know much at all. But here is some stuff that rattles around in my brain and that has helped me over the years:

1. Very few things are actually black & white. One should get suspicious if someone insists on an either/or, all/none, good/evil approach, solution, or argument.
2. Letting go is hard but it gets easier with practice.
3. It is, most of the time, not about you.
4. Pine cones are usually worth picking up, especially if it makes you pause on your walk.
5. History looks a lot different when you talk to someone who was there or who is directly affected by it.
6. Licking a steak knife is a great example of risk vs. reward.
7. Be an active listener at least twice every day.
8. You can generally find someone smarter than you and someone not as smart as you, taller than you, and shorter than you, more loved than you, and less loved than you. And the reason to note these distinctions is to help you remember to have interest, sympathy, concern, and kindness for the people around you.
9. Always leave open the possibility that one little new detail could change all of your presumptions in a nanosecond.
10. It’s hard to get anywhere if you have to continually justify your position or existence.
11. The quietest people in the room are often the ones with the most carefully thought out opinions.
12. There is nothing wrong with a cup of coffee to get charged up.
13. Offering sympathy to someone and setting boundaries from them are not mutually exclusive actions.
14. Make time for candy, poems, and phone calls.
15. An often-used library card is a wonderful thing.
16. Having a plan for making donations to worthy causes is energy well spent. And donations doesn’t only mean money.
17. Keep a journal of some kind, and make a point to reread it from time to time.
18. Mentoring a child can really make a difference in their life.
19. Treat strangers as if they know you, and make friends your chosen family.
20. A list is a nice way to reflect on your priorities.

Forgive me for my attempts to be pithy. These are actual thoughts that pervade my thinking. And like my list would demonstrate, I’m sure others have their own incredibly helpful ideas about navigating through the world. They might not think of them as lists, but that’s my inclination. I’m the guy who makes a to-do list with one or two items that I’ve already accomplished, so I can cross them out immediately and feel a modicum of momentum. I’m two days into my 43rd year, and I finally am not in a rush to get anywhere. These slow walks with Emile and his pine cones are small spots of perfection in my week. And it is a genuine wish of mine that we all get to have peace and time to regroup. How genuine? Well, I’ll make a certificate of authenticity if it helps.

Marta has tried in full earnestness mode to find her place, even if her choices began with an intense need to leave her home country, Gideon, on the gravity-heavy planet Nea. It’s almost as if it took so much energy to get distance from her preacher father and smothering family that Marta doesn’t have much left for self-confidence. And yet it’s that very sense of self that Marta needs to make a difference in the war between Nea and Adastre. And maybe conversely, it’s the painfulness of coming from a closed family in a closed country on a less-than planet that fuels Marta’s drive. Bigelow does a great job of layering on the sadness and strife that come with the legacy of paternal choices made for an entire people.

Marta finds herself commanded to join her planet’s forces in the war effort, and her little sister Beth worms her way in as an enlistee. Beth is a great foil for Marta: we’re not sure of her intentions for a good long while, and although she’s certainly from the same building blocks as Marta, she seems to be making different choices than her big sister has. There are a few warning flags as they find their way out of Gideon, but Marta is so excited to be back in her element that she overlooks them. Bigelow gives us just enough in the way of tone and word choice that we should be worried for the sisters, because of course outer space during war is not the same as piloting a trade ship in peacetime. Soon enough Marta’s ship is destroyed and she finds herself a captive on a space station, a clear prisoner of the crew there. And now the alien Abrax who were responsible for the Earth’s demise and who have been unseen for hundreds of years, make their reappearance. Bigelow does a great job of touching these presumably distant points back together—what does one young woman’s legacy, one man’s decision made once upon a time, one family’s grip on a made-up tradition all have in common?

Read the book and find out. Highly recommended. The Daughter Star will stick around in my head for a long while.

Alex, Baltimore, 2004

Enough moisture collects at my temples that it streaks down the sides of my face, but I can’t stop running or break form to wipe my head. I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll remember my bandana. Now I’m four miles from home and have one more to go before it’s time to turn around. The sun has hit that angry angle after daybreak and I squint to block it out even a little. I’ve probably got about 90 minutes left before my shift at the pier. For the sake of predictability I take the same route six days a week: out the back door of my crappy apartment at the edge of a mostly empty commercial district, past sloping colonial-era pavers and a junkyard, down toward the revitalized harbor, then back again. As far and as fast as I can run, and even though it’s always quiet behind me when I turn around, I always have the sense I’m being chased.

Nobody can find out I wasn’t born male.

To keep my secret, I stay as thin as I can. Hence the hellacious running routine. Jogging hates me, and the feeling is mutual.

I grab the key to the back door from where I stashed it—this week it’s under a small planter because last week an alley cat overturned and busted the birdhouse that was its old hideout. Standing in my kitchen waiting for me is Leroy, a pit bull mix I found wandering around a 20-foot pile of garbage last year when the city sanitation was on strike. As usual he shows his excitement to see me by panting and drooling and wagging his entire rear end. It would be great if he could run with me, but one of his legs was so mangled when I found him that the vet had to amputate it. Leroy doesn’t seem to care or notice.

“Hey buddy, want some breakfast?” I already know the answer. He puts his one front paw on my foot and rolls his head to the side, creating a single line of saliva waterfall to the linoleum.

After filling his dish I crank the faucet handle to the shower and unwrap the bandage I’ve tightened around my chest, leaving a mountain range of red and white strips on my skin from the pressure of binding everything down. I step into the shower and make the water as hot as I can stand it. The pipes rattle behind the light blue tiles that look like they were grafted to the wall 50 years ago. Water spits out at me and I stand underneath, letting it calm down my tired muscles. At some point I’ll look like a boiled lobster, and at that point I’ll be done trying to feel clean.

My soapy hands find my abdomen and feel around on their own, as if I’m not in charge of them.

It’s only a matter of time before my pregnancy begins to show.

#

Eve, Pittsburgh, 2000

She sipped the coffee without enthusiasm. It was a necessary evil to combat fatigue from working three jobs, but it tasted like shit.

“Morning, hon,” said Burke, the carpenter who was her first customer nearly every day. Eve glanced at the grease-covered clock, high on the wall over the service counter. 6:45, right on time for Burke. His red-lidded eyes were evidence that his partying had lasted longer than usual last night. She gave him a fleeting smile.

“Your regular?”

She smoothed the wrinkles on her half-apron while she waited for him to nod. Burke heaved his large frame onto a stool and without words waited for her to get cooking. His construction boots didn’t have a scratch on them.

She cracked three eggs onto the grill, and they slid over a few inches, almost levitating above the boiling butter. Four slices of bacon, pulled from their warming tray, moved by Eve with a flick of the spatula onto a warmer section of the cooking surface so they’d re-crisp. In one fluid move she dropped a fresh English muffin into the toaster.

Burke loved watching her work, and he preferred to be alone while she made him his meal. She certainly was good motivation to get up this early. Her uniform was a size too small, which showed off her firm ass. He’d never worked up the courage to ask her out, and frankly, he wasn’t sure what he’d tell his buddies if they ever saw him out with a chocolate she-man.

Eve felt his eyes burning into her. She was practiced at pretending not to notice, but some days, like today, when she was especially weary, it was harder to forgive.

Flip the eggs for over easy, sprinkle the salt and pepper, slip it all onto a plate with a wedge of orange, she finished up his order and passed the dish to him, then refilled his coffee. He asked if she’d poured from his special pot.

“Of course, honey,” she said with a smile.

He had no idea she regularly added her own urine to his special pot.

#

Diamond, Washington, DC, 1998

The first punch felt like getting whacked by a stocking full of thistle; instead of one solid point of impact it was a hundred needles of pain, arguing amongst themselves about which pin pricks should get attention first from Diamond’s nervous system, which was of course capable of feeling it all in perfect synchronicity. Ze might not have been expecting the assault before it happened, but now synapses were exploding with ideas about potential and immediate strategies for response. Hit back. Run. Scream.

Screaming was a great option, and not incompatible with other options. The sound Diamond made was loud, urgent, and seemed to come from far away. Ze was certainly used to feeling outside hir own body, but this was a new kind of disconnect.

“Shut up!” He gave her an expression that looked like fear, which was funny to Diamond. Hir screaming should frighten him? Diamond was the one with the bruises and lacerations. His stupid jacket, fresh out of a 1980s music video with patches of red leather and too many zippers, looked ridiculous. She responded by laughing.

Ze hunched up the brick wall in the alley, moving from one shoulder blade to the other. Turned out ze was the same height as the attacker. The dumb punk raised his arms again, in defense, as if he hadn’t begun this altercation himself.

Diamond’s ribs were on fire; with each breath they ignited again. Ze pulled hir arms forward in an attempt to protect the painful parts of hir torso. A clot of blood sat at the back of hir tongue. Ze spit it into the young man’s face, without thinking about the consequences of such an action.

He lunged into Diamond, pressing hir into the wall and slamming his fists into whatever flesh he could find. Then he grabbed for hir wallet and took off running down the alley, skittering around the corner into the weak light from the street lamps. Diamond slumped back down to the ground, holding hir freshest wounds.

The stage door across the alley opened, and the club manager saw her star performer crumpled in the storm drain runoff.

“Diamond, what the hell?” Lou’s fat arms scooped hir up and she urged Diamond to lean on her.

“I guess when someone wants your wallet, you should just give it to them,” ze said. Diamond probed a wound in hir mouth with her tongue. “I think I swallowed a tooth.”

“Holy shit, Di.” Lou glanced around to make sure they were alone. “Come on inside.”

“Ow. Not so rough, boss.”

“Poor baby. Let’s take a look at you in the light.” They passed each step to the door gingerly. “I really wish this neighborhood would gentrify already.”

Diamond frowned, hir costume for the drag show ripped and mangled, hir face swollen all along hir right jawline. “Gentrification bad,” said Diamond.

If Diamond was making jokes, ze was okay, Louise figured.

#

Terry, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1980

The wind picks up and I can’t shut my eyes fast enough before the dirt has infested me. I’m sure I’ll scratch my cornea like I did five years ago. Yanking my hat down lower to deflect the dust storm from my face, I look like a real cowboy, at least from a distance. Cream-toned straw, woven tightly, it’s held in shape by a thin leather strap I dyed myself some summer in my childhood.

By the time I cross the field and pound up the front steps to our house, my boots are caked in any light brown dust that couldn’t hold onto being part of a larger dirt clod. This was once fertile, dark soil, and now it seems like a dream that we farmed thick crops here, mostly sorghum. The sunflowers were my favorite, long rows of joyous yellow, but it’s been nearly forever since they’ve graced our land. They used to make the whitewashed walls of the house glow.

I walk up to the house still expecting to see Sally Jessup’s fresh milk on the stoop, but of course she hasn’t had a milking cow for six years.

Not much farming goes on out here anymore. Two of the oldest farming families in town sold off their land for pennies per acre, just to get out of the business altogether. Father is wondering if he should do the same, but he doesn’t dare breathe a word of it to Ma because she would have his hide. This is her grandfather’s land, and she could leave here like she could leave her body behind on a walk into town. But maybe the place is a ghost already.

I stamp my feet onto the sagging porch boards and pull open the screen door, waiting for my eyes to adjust from the bright morning outside. My sister Helen is standing at the threshold of the kitchen in the back of the house. She twirls the end of the green belt that cinches her flowery house dress tight across her small waist. While I scratch my head wondering if I knew she’d be visiting today, a sinking feeling moves into my stomach—her cheeks are wet with tears. I walk forward quietly, but the bang of the screen door behind me makes my family turn around to look at me. Their faces look collapsed. I walk up to my parents, my sister, and my brother-in-law, Charles, who leans against the far counter, running his fingers over his ridiculous moustache.

“Terry,” says my father, his voice sounding as dry as the dirt out back, “Helen is sick.” A pause. “Cancer.” Direct talk for a quiet man.

Helen mumbles that she only has a few months to live and then she bursts into tears, cupping her hands over her face. Ma squashes her in a hug, doing her best not to add her own crying.

I come into the room and hug my sister, wondering if I can feel for signs of cancer in Helen’s body. We are twins, but our closeness has never been about a genetic bond. I’m the mutant, and Helen is the good girl. I should be the one with cells in revolt.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, and then I want to take it back. I just made it real.

Helen slips her arms under mine, still crying into my shoulder.

Finally we pull apart. I look at her face that looks so like mine, but better in all of her features.

“So you fight it. We’re here for you, Butter Bear.”

“Honey Bear,” she says to me, “the doctors, the doctors found it too late.”

“Come on. Maybe you need better doctors.”

Charles pipes up. He’s worn some fresh wrinkles into his forehead since the last time I’ve seen him. Which I guess is not surprising.

“Terry, we went to Kansas City, to a cancer clinic, one of the best in the country.”

Every breath feels like acid in my lungs.

The first sun isn’t quite over the ridge yet, but Hax is ready for it, or more accurately, he’s tired of squinting in the pre-dawn light. He and his coworker Marnie will have three solid hours of planting before the second sunrise, and then they’ll need to take cover because radiation from two stars is harsh on human skin. Like, third-degree burns harsh. So many people have died trying to make Valus habitable that Hax and Marnie have lost faith in the capabilities of the Health Service.

Schuuk. Marnie tamps down the moist dirt with her boot, just enough for the seedling to stay put but not break stride. She and Hax have an ongoing bet about who can get more trees in the ground in a day, a week, a mountaintop. So far for the week she’s ahead by 327. It’s too close a margin, in her opinion.

On the next peak ahead they can see the soil-laying machine, like a gigantic bulldozer working in reverse. It’s as close to Earth soil compositions as anyone out here can create. But it stinks like rotten broccoli and after a day of seeding the mountain, they get back to base reeking of it. The smell is so bad Marnie is grateful for her oxygen mask.

They need the trees to make enough oxygen to support everyone. There are a lot more mountainsides to go on Valus.

“I didn’t see you at Woulf’s last night,” says Marnie, her voice muffled by the mask.

“Yeah, I didn’t go. I just wanted a quiet evening.” Schuuuk. 187 Schuuuk. 188.

“Okay. So what did you wind up doing?”

She’s in one of her chatty moods, he thinks, pulling a seedling from his bag. All of their equipment is painted some shade of green. As if who knows, maybe they’ll forget they’re from Forestry Service.

“I just played video games, I guess.” With a couple pints of homebrew at his side, but he doesn’t want to tell her that or she’ll come over and drink everything he has.

Marnie holds back a snort. Hax is lazy, often a complainer. And defensive about both.

“Well, you know we’d love to see you. Jance is not a great tournament partner.”

“Jance can’t play his way out of a wet paper bag.”

Neither of them knows what the hell a wet paper bag is, but they reckon it’s a terrible insult so it gets used in conversation often.

“Eh, it’ll make you a better player,” says Hax. Condensation from his breath has started collecting in his mask, making his thin beard scruff damp in a really annoying and disgusting way.

Schuuk. 235.

“Well, I did okay without you, I guess,” she says, taking a peek behind them. She needs a glimpse of their progress every so often. Hax never turns around. Not knowing would drive her nuts. He’s so sure of himself. But then why does he hide out in his unit almost every time they get R&R?

Up ahead the brown earth stretches out, curving away on a gentle slope. Maybe someday Valus will be beautiful like Earth was. Or rather, like they’ve heard it was.

“So who lost,” asks Hax, as if he’s disinterested. But the act of asking, well, she can see past his pretense.

“Kenlee lost,” says Marnie. It’s too bad. She liked Kenlee.

“Damn, I thought Kenlee would get to the finals.” Between both of them, five more tiny trees stick out of the ground.

“I know, right? Meanwhile that slime ball what’s his name is still in the running.”

“Slime ball, slime ball, there are so many to choose from, so who could you mean? Do you mean Deeble?”

“Yes, that’s his name. I always forget.” Schuuuk. Schuuk. “I repress it. I swear he cheats but I can’t figure out how.”

“A lot of them cheat. Why wouldn’t they, since the stakes are so high?”

“But it ruins the competition.”

“Maybe the competition is bigger than just the tournament.”

Marnie pauses for a moment. Hax takes the opportunity to install three more seedlings, all in a row. Damn him.

“I get what you’re saying, Hax,” she says, double loading and plunging trees into the soil in a few seconds. They aren’t supposed to do this. Forestry Service has calculated growing efficiency and the babies have to be a certain distance apart. But she’s not thinking about her seedlings just at the moment.

“Then admit that competing is more than just within the tournament. We’re all in a grand contest, really.” Hax snarls without meaning to.

“I will admit no such thing,” says Marnie. “We’re here for the common good. The tournament is about getting us all to step up and be our best selves.”

He snorts, making his oxygen mask get almost unbearably greasy inside.

“Damn it,” says Hax, taking a big gulp and ripping the mask off.

“What are you doing,” asks Marnie, her eyes as big as the second sun. “You can’t breathe the air!”

Hax rubs his shirt tail in the mask in two, three strokes, and without inspecting his work slams the mask back over his nose and mouth. They have completely stopped planting seedlings for the moment, despite the risk. Those happy green tubes will summon Police Service if they’re idle for too long and it’s not an authorized break time. Hax’s tube flashes a warning signal. He grabs a seedling and loads it.

“I just couldn’t stand it anymore,” he says, and they get back to their usual pace. Schuuk, schuuuk. Marnie has lost track of how many she’s planted. The pole meter will tell her at the end of their shift.

Across the meandering valley, the sky looks almost blue, like in the pictures they’ve seen at the Library and History Service Building. This is all worth it, Marnie tells herself.

Finally it’s only about fifteen minutes until lunchtime and the second sunrise, when they’ll meet up with the shuttle and head into their bunker. Hax will miss being outside.

“I shouldn’t have picked testosterone,” he says, almost to himself.

“What?”

“I should have picked the other.”

“Estrogen? Why? I thought you wanted to go masc.”

“I did, I guess. I mean, I don’t know. What if I feel kind of in between? Testosterone makes everything so greasy and gross.”

“Well, estrogen isn’t all cheesy breezy, either. You went to the Health Service presentations. They said we had to pick one or the other, to become more like we used to be.”

“I don’t buy it. I think we should just be us as we are.”

Maybe he’s not lazy, she wonders. Maybe he’s depressed or crazy or something.

“Talk to Health Service. Maybe they can switch you.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Marnie, are you stupid or something? Jerrent did that last year, and do you know what happened to him?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Okay, but do you know what happened?”

“I’m not talking to you anymore until you admit I’m not stupid.” She walks away from him, casting new trees into the ground as if they didn’t always agree to walk together. Schuuk.

“You’re not stupid, you’re not stupid, Marnie, come on.” Hax trots off after her.

She stops, turns around, still planting in a new line back to her original trajectory.

“You think pelvis expansion is a cakewalk?”

“No.” Hax has never used the word chagrined in a conversation, but he is at this moment.

“For puck’s sake, they’re just hormones. It’s for the common good, remember?”

He sighs. They are in this together. Maybe he should go to the tournament one of these weeks, see if he can qualify for a larger home unit. Or a one-way trip to Balta, the luxury planet in the sector.

“It’s just different and I don’t like change,” Hax admits. Schuuuk.

“Look,” says Marnie, in a whisper. Rumors pop up from time to time that their Forestry Service gear has listening devices embedded in the paint. That innocent fucking green paint.

“It’s hard for everyone, but at least we’re not in the coolers down below waiting for the planet to be ready, too frozen to even hope that we survive the thaw. Would you prefer that?”

Hax shakes his head.

“So keep planting trees, and stop complaining, and shut up about Jerrent. Jerrent had a lot of issues.”

Yeah, thinks Hax. Like Jerrent didn’t want to be masc. And I don’t, either. And now I know I can’t talk to anyone about this, not even my best friend.

Schuuk. Schuuuuk. The row of seedlings stands behind them, ready for the second sunrise, eager to soak up as much radiation the light beams can carry.

THE END