About Richard Bowker

Author of the Portal series, the Last P.I. series, and other novels

America has run out of miracles, and we know who to blame

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Richard Bowker

When Harvard’s basketball team unexpectedly won its first-round game in the NCAA tournament, the Harvard Lampoon sent out this apologetic tweet:

America, we are sorry for messing up your brackets and also your financial system and everything else.

— Harvard Lampoon (@harvardlampoon) March 22, 2013

“Everything else” apparently includes the lack of miracles in modern America. Here is Pat Robertson:

Why do miracles “happen with great frequency in Africa, and not here in the USA?” asked a 700 Club patron Ken. “People overseas didn’t go to Ivy League schools,” Robertson replied with a chuckle.

“We are so sophisticated, we think we’ve got everything figured out,” the Christian Broadcasting Network chairman continued. “We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn’t real, we know about all this stuff.”

According to Robertson, it’s the “skepticism and secularism” that is being taught at “the most advanced schools” around the country that is keeping God’s miracles at bay.

Meanwhile, Africans are “simple” and “humble.” “You tell ‘em God loves ‘em and they say, ‘Okay, he loves me’,” said Robertson. “You say God will do miracles and they say, ‘Okay, we believe him’.”

If Harvard and those other snooty places had only disappeared, maybe we’d be seeing Florida Gulf Coast in the Final Four.

Henry Hitchings gifts us with a fun read

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The last time we encountered Henry Hitchings, he was getting flak from the New Yorker for his book The Language Wars. Now he has written an entertaining column for the New York Times about nouns that are repurposed as verbs — for example, “an epic fail.” The process is apparently called nominalization. As in The Language Wars, he is not inclined to be judgmental about the way language changes:

Some regard unwieldy nominalizations as alarming evidence of the depraved zeitgeist. But the phenomenon itself is hardly new. For instance, “solve” as a noun is found in the 18th century, and the noun “fail” is older than “failure” (which effectively supplanted it).

“Reveal” has been used as a noun since the 16th century. Even in its narrow broadcasting context, as a term for the final revelation at the end of a show, it has been around since the 1950s.

“Ask” has been used as a noun for a thousand years — though the way we most often encounter it today, with a modifier (“a big ask”), is a 1980s development.

Some grammarians are still complaining about the converse trend — nouns used as verbs, as in “He chaired the meeting” or “He gifts us” in the title of my post. Nouns also show up as adjective, as with the “fun” in my title. Neither trend seems terrible to me, although I wouldn’t use those particular examples in formal prose; they need to marinate a bit more.

At work, my cold-eyed editors forbid the use of install as a noun, as in “During the install you may see various messages…” But of course lots of computer terms double as both verb and noun: “After the reboot…”, “The download may take a few minutes…”, “If the compile fails…”. Some of those usages sound better to my ears than others. But none of them are wrong, exactly; they are just language in the process of evolving.

The Red Sox season starts tomorrow — should I care?

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The 2012 was a debacle and an atrocity, topped in recent times only by the debacle and atrocity that was the 2011 season. The 2013 season has got to be better, if only because we won’t have to put up with Carl Crawford swinging and missing at pitches down around his ankles, with Dice-K nibbling at the corners and reaching 100 pitches by the fourth inning, with Adrian Gonzalez failing to deliver in clutch situations… And there’s every hope that Jon Lester will quit being such a grouch, and Ellsbury will quit being injured, and Stephen Drew will turn out to have a little more life in him than his older brother…

Still, there’s precious little reason to think the Red Sox are going to create much excitement this season. Mike Napoli and Ryan Dempster and Jonny Gomes may be good players and good guys in the locker room, but they aren’t going to sell tickets and make you turn on NESN.

Here’s the guy who is going to sell tickets:

That would be Jackie Bradley Jr. Is it too much to hope that he will give us reason to hope? Probably. Still, I’ve changed my header image, at least till the home opener. It happens every spring.

The pope washes women’s feet — should I care?

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Pope Francis keeps breaking with tradition, and that makes the conservatives unhappy. Should liberals therefore be happy? Don’t see why. By their fruits shall ye know them, as someone famous once said. Not by their symbolic gestures.

Meanwhile Boston College has stopped students from distributing free condoms on campus, and other Catholic colleges say they’d do the same thing.

“One of the teachings of our faith is that contraception is morally unacceptable,” said Victor Nakas, a spokesman for Catholic University. “Since condoms are a form of contraception, we do not permit their distribution on campus.”

If Pope Francis were to say, “Hey, let the kids distribute condoms if they want. It’s a free country,” now that would be interesting. But don’t hold your breath.

Hope everyone has a happy Holy Saturday!

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 26

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Chapter 25: Larry, Kevin, and Stinky Glover make their way out of Boston, south towards Glanbury. Guards in watchtowers shoot at them; Kevin trades his Red Sox cap for a trip across the river; they see evidence of a headlong Portuguese retreat; they meet up with a weary mother and child heading home. Is the war over? Will they make it back to Glanbury?

*********

Chapter 26

A few minutes later we were there.

The Gradger house hadn’t been burned. It was bigger than most of the houses I’d seen in Cambridge, with a fancy black iron fence out front and a wide brick drive leading up to an entranceway supported by large white pillars. “We’re home, Mother!” Cecilia shouted. “Home!”

But things didn’t look right. The front door was open. All the windows were smashed. Staring at them, Mrs. Gradger looked like she wanted to kill someone else. We walked quickly up the drive, rifles at the ready. For a moment we stood by the door, listening, and then Mrs. Gradger strode inside, with the rest of us following.

The place had been trashed. Broken glass and dishes littered the floor. Furniture was overturned. Paintings had been taken down from the wall and ripped in half. We went from room to room–and there were a lot of them–and they were all wrecked. We headed upstairs, and it was the same there. Everything that could be destroyed had been. It was awful.

Cecilia started crying again. Mrs. Gradger didn’t say a word. “I’m really sorry,” I said to her. She just shook her head.

We went through the entire place to make sure it was empty, then came back downstairs. Kevin, Stinky, and I didn’t have to say anything to each other; we all knew we had to pitch in. “I’ll start a fire,” Kevin volunteered.

“I’ll unpack Barney,” I said.

“I’ll help,” Stinky added.

We went outside. “Quite a mess,” Stinky remarked as we unloaded the mule.

“Think the Portuguese did it?”

“Don’t see why they’d do this much damage,” Stinky said. “Same for thieves. Maybe it was servants or townspeople, settling old scores. They finally got a chance to show what they thought of the Gradgers. I bet they weren’t so fond of Mrs. Gradger.”

“She’s not so bad.”

Stinky shrugged. “Tell that to the person she shot. Let’s get this stuff inside and see if we can find some food.”

We talked to Kevin and decided that he would stay behind with the Gradgers while we went out hunting. Mrs. Gradger was starting to clean up the big living room, and Cecilia had lain down on a rug in the corner. Stinky and I headed out into the late afternoon.

“Shouldn’t be hard to find game,” Stinky said. “With no people around for months, the animals are probably nearabouts.”

“Whatever we do, let’s not get lost,” I replied.

We were in a residential neighborhood. None of the houses were as grand as Mrs. Gradger’s, but they were still pretty nice. We didn’t see anyone else, so it was like walking through a ghost town. It took us a little while before we found a patch of woods behind a church. “This’ll do, I expect,” Stinky said.

We went into the woods. Stinky motioned for me to be silent. Once again I noticed how quiet it could be in this world, without traffic or radios or airplanes. We walked deeper into the woods, and then stopped again. I could hear the sound of Stinky’s heavy breathing, the breeze moving the branches above us. It was getting dark; I hoped this wouldn’t take long. And then I saw Stinky slowly raise the pistol he had taken from the dead Portuguese soldier.

I looked where he was aiming. There was a large, strange-looking bird waddling along the ground. Could we eat that? Stinky fired, and the sound was deafening. The bird collapsed, squawking, and then there was silence again. “Got ‘im,” Stinky said.

We walked over to it. “What is it?” I asked.

Stinky looked at me with a puzzled expression. “A turkey, of course,” he said. “Don’t they ever feed you turkey in the orphanage?”

“Yeah, of course. I love turkey. But to be honest, I’m about ready to eat tree bark.”

Stinky picked up the bird and handed it to me, and we made our way out of the woods. “A lot of turkeys’ll be shot before this winter’s over,” he said.

The dead bird was heavy, and it dripped blood as we walked. Nasty. But I wasn’t going to complain. We made our way back to the Gradgers’ house without a problem, although night was falling fast. Inside, the fire was roaring. Mrs. Gradger was hanging sheets in front of the windows to keep out the cold air. Kevin was sweeping up the broken glass; he looked relieved to see us return. Cecilia was fast asleep on some cushions by the fire.

“Ma’am, if you’ll pluck this turkey, we can have some supper,” Stinky said.

Mrs. Gradger didn’t look happy about handling the turkey; that was probably something the servants did. But she stopped what she was doing and went out with us to the kitchen. Getting the turkey ready to eat turned out to be hard, disgusting work–chopping off the head, plucking the feathers, cleaning out the insides . . . Rather than get involved with that, I started a fire in the kitchen fireplace, then pumped some water out back. When the turkey had been prepared, she put it on a spit in the fireplace, and then we just had to wait for it to cook, while the aroma made our mouths water and our stomachs rumble.

The table and chairs had been destroyed, so we had to eat on the floor in the living room. Mrs. Gradger found pewter plates that hadn’t been smashed and some old silverware, while the three of us did more cleanup. Finally we took the turkey off the spit, carved it, roused Cecilia, and ate. The turkey was burned on the outside, then too dry, then barely cooked next to the bone. But it was probably the best food I’ve ever tasted.

Mrs. Gradger ate with her fork, I noticed. It was the first time I had seen anyone do that since I’d been to Coolidge Palace. She looked stiff and uncomfortable eating on the floor, but as usual she didn’t say anything.

There was a piano in a corner of the living room that had been too big to destroy. After we had finished I went over to play it. It was a good piano–better than Professor Palmer’s–but a little out of tune. I played the song the professor like so much:

Wanly I wandered

Through the world far and wide

Seeking some solace

For dreams that had died …

When I finished, everyone was silent. Mrs. Gradger’s face was wet with tears. Cecilia was sitting on her lap, asleep again, and Mrs. Gradger absently stroked her hair as she stared off into the distance. Kevin got up and added a log to the fire. “We should all go to sleep,” he said quietly. “We’ll want to get started early.”

“Maybe we should stand watches,” Stinky suggested. “Just in case.”

“I’ll take the first watch,” I offered.

“Wake me for one too,” Mrs. Gradger said.

We arranged more cushions, and people visited the privy, and then everyone but me settled down to sleep in front of the fire. I sat next to a window, rifle by my side, and listened to the crackling of the fire and the regular breathing. Despite all that had happened that day, I wasn’t very sleepy.

Wanly I wandered …

I thought about Kevin and how determined he was to get to the portal. It looked like we were actually going to make it back to Glanbury, and that was more than I had expected a couple of days ago. So maybe we’d find it; maybe we’d have our chance to step into it and see where we’d end up. I remembered the faint hope we’d had when we first came here that rescuers would follow us through the portal. So many dreams had died. But here we were, still alive, still struggling.

Long had I lingered/In an alien land . . .

I thought of my mother and father, and wondered if they were safe. Which mother and father? Both. Kevin would scoff, but I didn’t think I could stand it if anything happened to the ones in this world. And I worried about Professor Palmer, who had probably been operating the electric fence against the Canadians. Would he be shot like Professor Foster? I worried about Caleb and Benjamin and Chester and Corporal Hennessy. This world, and the people in it, mattered to me now. It wasn’t a dream, they weren’t a dream.

I might be part of this world for the rest of my life.

It is only by setting out that we can finally return home, the strange preacher had said. But where was home?

I sat there for a couple of hours, just thinking. Outside it was utterly quiet. I got up once or twice to put another log onto the fire. Finally I started to get sleepy, so I roused Stinky, who groggily took my place. I lay down on the cushions and immediately fell into the best sleep I’d had in days. No dreams.

When I awoke it was daylight, and everyone except Cecilia was already up. Stinky was out shooting more game for breakfast. Mrs. Gradger had found clean clothes upstairs and was laying them out for Cecilia. And Kevin was waiting for me. “Let’s go,” he said.

“We can wait for Stinky,” I replied. “We can wait for breakfast.”

“Why?”

“Come on, Kevin. Relax.”

Kevin brooded. I wondered if he was thinking of leaving by himself. He certainly wasn’t happy with me.

We heard some shots, and a few minutes later Stinky arrived with a couple of dead rabbits. “Thought I spotted a deer,” he informed us. “That’s what you’ll need to lay in a good supply of meat.”

Mrs. Gradger looked thoughtful. Stinky skinned the rabbits for her, and then she roasted them in the kitchen. We woke Cecilia and again ate sitting on the living-room floor. “Mother,” Cecilia asked as we ate, “when will Father be home?”

“Father is still fighting for our country,” Mrs. Gradger said. “Along with Gabriel and Elijah.”

“But we need them here.”

Mrs. Gradger didn’t reply. When we were finished eating, she sent Cecilia off to change. Kevin stood up to leave.

Mrs. Gradger raised a hand to stop him, and the rest of us. “Please,” she said. “Don’t go. Stay here with Cecelia and me. Just until my husband returns. I can pay you well.”

Kevin shook his head. “No, thanks. We’ve got to get to Glanbury.”

“But what’s so important about going to Glanbury?” she persisted. “I can pay you very well. And my husband is an important man. He can–he can find you work, give you opportunities. You’re good lads. You wouldn’t regret it.”

“Maybe St–maybe Julian would do it,” Kevin suggested. “Larry and I have to go, but he doesn’t. What about it, Julian?”

Everyone looked at Stinky. “You wouldn’t regret it,” Mrs. Gradger repeated. “We’re all alone here. Think of my daughter. We need help.”

It was hard for her to beg, I could tell. And that only made the begging harder to resist. Stinky looked pretty unhappy. But he too shook his head finally. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to stay with my friends,” he said. “We were glad to help, but now it’s time to leave.”

That was a little surprising. Why not stay? Was Stinky still grateful to me for helping him with those kids in the camp? Was he worried about his master beating him or something? Or was it just that he liked us? Anyway, Mrs. Gradger looked like she didn’t know whether to yell at us or burst into tears. Finally she got control of herself and said, “Very well. In any case, I’m grateful to all of you and wish you godspeed.”

We said our fare-you-wells. Cecilia came back in her new dress, cleaned up and cute. She cried when she found out we were going. “Mother, can’t they stay? Please?”

Mrs. Gradger shook her head. “We’ll be fine, Cecilia,” she said. “Don’t wipe your face on your sleeve.”

It was tough, but a few minutes later we were headed back to the Post Road.

“How come you didn’t stay with them?” Kevin asked Stinky.

Stinky looked puzzled. “What do you mean, ‘how come’?”

It was one of those phrases they didn’t quite get in this world. “How come?” Kevin repeated. “Why?”

“Oh.” Stinky shrugged. “Don’t know, exactly. But don’t you think she’d be hard to deal with, once things got back to normal? She’s nice enough now, but there’s a reason people destroyed her home. And who knows what her money’ll be worth–if anything? Remember what that fellow on the river said. She could pay me five pounds a week, but if a loaf of bread costs five pounds, that’s still poor wages, right?”

Seemed reasonable to me. We didn’t say anything more about the Gradgers. We all felt pretty bad, I think–probably even Kevin. There were going to be a lot of people in the same situation, I knew, and many worse off than the Gradgers, but that didn’t make it any better.

The day was clear but cold, like yesterday. It didn’t take us long to get back on the Post Road. Unlike yesterday, there were other people on it now–families in wagons pulled by half-dead horses, old men and women leaning on sticks, and a few scruffy-looking characters that Mrs. Gardner probably would have called “brigands”.

We got the latest news from them. There were few guards left at the fortifications, so people were starting to stream out of the city, whether or not this was officially allowed yet. A makeshift bridge was in place. No one was sure how things were going against the Canadians–or rather, everyone was sure, but they all had different stories to tell. We had lost. We had won. We were still fighting. Reinforcements from the Portuguese front had turned the battle around. They had arrived too late. They had been sent to the wrong place and never arrived.

But people were unanimous about the Portuguese. If we were still seeing their discarded stuff on the road this far south of the city, they weren’t likely to be regrouping for another attack. They must have been heading out of New England as fast as they could travel. And that was good news.

“More than halfway to Glanbury, mates,” Stinky said.

A long distance in the cold, but our bellies were full and we’d had a good night’s sleep and no one was shooting at us, so it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Kevin was almost twitching with excitement.

After a couple of hours walking he began to look more tired than excited, but by then it seemed like Glanbury must be just around the next bend in the road. “Not far now, I think,” Stinky said. “There’s Lantham’s Stables.” Then, a few minutes later, “And there’s the Weymouth Inn, burned to the ground. That’s a shame.” We walked a little faster.

And then, finally, Stinky gestured up ahead. “See the river?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“That’s the North River. Glanbury’s on t’other side.”

Kevin and I looked at each other. There were tears in his eyes. Glanbury. Home. At last.

Amazon buys Goodreads — should I care?

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Richard Bowker

I have never paid much attention to Goodreads, but it seems like a fine idea for a web site — a place where readers can go to rate books, swap recommendations, discover what their friends are reading, and so on. So now Amazon has scooped it up, and the Authors Guild isn’t happy. Here‘s Scott Turow, the Guild president:

“Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads is a textbook example of how modern Internet monopolies can be built,” said Scott Turow, Authors Guild president. “The key is to eliminate or absorb competitors before they pose a serious threat. With its 16 million subscribers, Goodreads could easily have become a competing on-line bookseller, or played a role in directing buyers to a site other than Amazon. Instead, Amazon has scuttled that potential and also squelched what was fast becoming the go-to venue for on-line reviews, attracting far more attention than Amazon for those seeking independent assessment and discussion of books. As those in advertising have long known, the key to driving sales is controlling information.

This seems pretty odd. In what sense did Amazon scuttle the potential for Goodreads to become an online vendor? This was Goodreads’ decision, not Amazon’s. If that wasn’t the direction they wanted to take their business, well, frankly I think they’re pretty smart.

Should we be worried that Amazon will “squelch” Goodreads’ reviews and online community? That would be insane — that’s what Amazon is buying. The more people who go there and talk about books, the more books Amazon will sell.

What Amazon will presumably squelch are links from Goodreads to other booksellers. Goodreads has a “Get a copy” feature that links out to different online vendors, allowing you to go directly from the Goodreads page for a book to the bookseller of your choice. I assume this feature will go away, and you will only be directed to Amazon (as is the case with IMDb, another Amazon subsidiary). How important is that to the Goodreads community? I guess we’ll find out. But if it’s really important, someone will start a new online community; it’s not like the barriers to entry are particularly high. And it’s not like the lack of a link to Barnes & Noble, say, will make it a lot more difficult for a Goodreads user to buy a book from them instead of Amazon. We’re talking about about a couple additional mouseclicks here.

The Authors Guild seems to have a deep fear of Amazon’s potential monopolistic power; they also came out against the Justice Department’s suit against Apple and the major book publishers for (essentially) price fixing. The Guild was arguing that readers should pay higher prices for ebooks to guard against the potential of an Amazon ebook monopoly. I’m not convinced Amazon is the threat the Guild thinks it is. I have no doubt that Amazon would like to corner as much of the online bookselling market as they can; I just don’t see how they can keep other smart, nimble vendors out of that same market.

Deconversion and Reconversion

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Richard Bowker

The latest Radiolab podcast has an odd story called “Rocked by Doubt.” It’s about a geologist who is having a crisis of faith. Here’s the description:

In 2010, Lulu Miller was biking across the country, taking some time to clear her head for a new phase of life. And somewhere in Nevada, she ran into a guy named Jeff Viniard who was on a similar journey. They shared the road for two weeks, pedaling hundreds of miles together until Utah. Along the way, they got to be pretty close, and Jeff, a geologist by training, rekindled Lulu’s long-lost love of rocks. But it turns out the ground beneath his own feet was shifting that summer… and he found himself desperately searching for some rock-solid evidence to help him figure out his future.

Jeff, it turns out, was engaged to a nice religious girl, but then one night he’d had a “deconversion” experience–a strong feeling behind his sternum that there was no God. His girlfriend doesn’t want to marry someone who doesn’t share her religious beliefs, so he goes on a long bike trip looking for a sign telling him what to believe. He doesn’t find it on the trip. But then, a year later, he gets another feeling behind his sternum that God exists, so he and his girlfriend get married.

And that’s the story. Sorry for the spoilers.

Jeff in Utah

The story is told in the usual entertaining Radiolab way, and Jeff seems like a very likeable, earnest young man. But geez. Is the most important decision in his life based on nothing but feelings behind his sternum and signs from above? (A ceiling tile falling onto Jeff’s sandwich at an Arby’s also figures in the story.) Jeff is an educated guy, but nowhere in the story do we hear of him reading any philosophy or theology or history or neuroscience. He never seems to think about what he has experienced and how it could be explained.

As someone who has never had a religious feeling of any sort behind his sternum, I find this depressing. Because of course all the logic and science and reasoned argument in the world are not going to be able to overcome that feeling. People are going to believe what they are going to believe. Unless maybe a falling ceiling tile intervenes.

A few thoughts about “Telegraph Avenue”

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Telegraph Avenue is Michael Chabon’s latest novel. I’ve read two others by him: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and the entertaining but less interesting serial novel Gentlemen of the Road. He is an astonishing writer. Quit reading this stupid post and download one of his books.

That said, I didn’t like Telegraph Avenue as much as The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which I thought was utterly brilliant. It’s about black and Jewish folks just getting by in the Oakland of 2004. Two men run a marginally profitable used record store threatened by a superstore that may be built nearby. Their wives are midwives struggling to keep their practice going in the face of opposition from hospitals who don’t want them doing home births. All the characters are wonderfully comic and sympathetic. Their lives are described in rich detail. I don’t know how Chabon does it.

Still, at 465 pages the book feels overstuffed and somewhat exhausting. While I willingly gave myself up to the strange alternate universe of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, I wasn’t especially interested in the extensive, loving descriptions of 70s black music and films that is central to the book. Your mileage may vary.

A couple of other points:

Telegraph Avenue is best read on an ebook reader with a built-in dictionary. If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself looking up a lot of words — Chabon’s range of vocabulary is spectacular. I’m not a foodie, so I don’t feel too bad not knowing lavash and turmeric. But I figure I should have known a lot of his other words — clabber and selvage, for example. I know ’em now.

Finally this was the first book I’ve come across where the author credited the hardware and software used to create it: “This novel was written using Scrivener on Macintosh computers.” Modern times.

Provincetown, offseason

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Provincetown is quiet in March. Most of the shops and art galleries don’t open till May, and many of the hotels are closed, as well. Why go there?

My lovely wife and I go there because that’s where we spent our honeymoon, back in the McKinley administration, or maybe it was the Garfield administration; it’s hard to keep administrations straight after a while. We were broke, and Provincetown in March was about all we could afford. So for us, a visit there is about memory as much as it is about sightseeing.

Here is the Provincetown War Memorial, with the Pilgrim Monument in the background:

The Pilgrims stopped at Provincetown before making their way to Plymouth. It was here they wrote the Mayflower Compact. So, in a sense, the idea of America was born in Provincetown. I’m pretty sure the Pilgrims wouldn’t have approved of many of the denizens of modern P’town; but then, I wouldn’t have approved of the Pilgrims.

Here’s Commercial Street, which will be so crowded in July you won’t be able to breathe. March is the time to get the streets and sidewalks repaved:

Here is the Town Landing, with one wrecked little boat lying in the sand:

And here is the scene at Herring Cove Beach, look off towards Race Point Light (I think).

We pretty much had the place to ourselves. Which was fine by us.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 25

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Chapter 24: Kevin and Larry are reunited after the battle with the New Portuguese. Kevin is desperate to get back to Glanbury and find the portal. They spend the night in the barracks, where Larry can’t stop thinking about the boy he killed. They get up early, determined to find their way out of the city, and almost immediately they run into Stinky Glover.

*********************

Chapter 25

Stinky came up to us. “G’morning, Lawrence,” he said. “What brings you here?”

“Hi, uh, Julian. This is my friend Kevin.”

“Hello, mate.” Stinky glanced at Kevin’s cap, but didn’t say anything.

They shook hands. Kevin didn’t look happy to see him. In our world, he hated Stinky Glover as much as I did. Stinky liked to give him purple nurples; Kevin hated purple nurples–who doesn’t? But this world was different. With all the things that had been happening, had I told Kevin about Stinky saving me from those kids in Cheapside?

“We’re heading to Glanbury,” I said.

Stinky looked puzzled. “Now?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“We want to help the Barnes family,” I said. “Get things ready for when they come home.”

Not a very good answer, but I couldn’t come up with a better one. “Didn’t you tell me you were related to them?” Stinky asked.

“That’s right. And I got to know them pretty well in the camp,” I explained. “Mr. Barnes is in the army, so I figured they might need some help.”

“But why now?” Stinky persisted. “The Portuguese are still out there north of Glanbury, I expect, even if they’re in full retreat. And anyway–”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kevin interrupted. “We’re going. Come on, Larry.” He started to walk away.

I hesitated, and then said, “Well, see you, Julian,” and turned to go with Kevin.

“Wait a moment!” Stinky called out. “I’ll join you!”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “No way,” he muttered to me.

But we paused, and Stinky came up to us again. “Do you know where the Barnes farm is located?” he asked.

“Well, no,” I admitted.

“I can show you. Besides, three’ll be better than two if there are dangers on the road–and I’m sure there will be.”

“Why do you want to help us?” Kevin demanded.

Stinky grimaced. “I’ve worn out my welcome here, I fear,” he replied. “I try to make myself useful, but it’s been hard. Lots of folks just take a dislike to me. I don’t know why. Now that the battle’s over, I expect the soldiers’ll throw me out of the camp rather than keep on feeding me. I’ll have to return to Glanbury sooner or later and see if my master will take me back. Might as well do it now.”

Made sense to me. Kevin looked suspicious, but he didn’t say anything. “All right,” I said. “Let’s go, then.”

Stinky’s grimace turned into a big smile. “Let’s go,” he repeated.

We headed back to the main road, which Stinky said was called the Post Road. When we finally got there, I was surprised to see that nothing had really changed since yesterday: there were still guards posted, and people were arguing with them to be let through, even though it was barely dawn. “We’ve no food,” one man was saying to a guard. “We’ve no shelter. We’ll die if you don’t let us go home.”

“We have our orders,” the soldier explained with a weary shrug, as if he’d explained it a million times already. “It’s not safe out there. Besides, the Portuguese fired the bridge over the Neponset. How are you going to cross the river?”

“We’ll take our chances!” the man shouted. “Would you rather we drop dead here in front of you?”

We had one big advantage over those people: we were on the other side of the guards. “The army’ll surely change their minds today,” Stinky noted. “That fellow is right–better to let people risk the journey home if they have a mind to try it. There’s nothing left for them here. But this is still dangerous—we risk having the New Englanders shoot at us as well as the Portuguese. Why don’t we just wait and see what happens?”

Kevin shook his head. “You wait if you want to,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

Stinky looked at me, as if to ask where I’d found this strange kid with the strange hat. But I wasn’t going to let Kevin leave by himself. “We really want to get to Glanbury,” I said.

Stinky considered. “All right, then,” he said reluctantly. “Let’s keep going. I think I know a way past the fortifications, although it’s awfully roundabout. And then we still have to find a way across the river.”

So we kept walking. The sun rose ahead of us in the east, but it didn’t make us any warmer. Soldiers were up and about; none of them paid any attention to us. After a while the camp and the fortifications petered out, with only a couple of observation towers looking out over marshland that stretched towards the ocean. “They figured the Portuguese weren’t going to attack over the marshes,” Stinky said. “Too hard to maneuver, too exposed. So they just put up these towers. We have to cross the marsh, and then work our way back towards the Post Road. And find a boat or a raft or something to cross the river.”

“The marsh doesn’t look too hard,” Kevin said.

“Unless the soldiers in the watchtowers see us,” I pointed out. “And decide to shoot.”

That didn’t faze Kevin. “Let’s go,” he said.

Stinky glanced at me again. “Coming, Julian?” I asked him.

He didn’t seem too happy about it, but he nodded. “Keep to the left,” he said. “If the watchtowers are still manned, the soldiers’ll be looking south. We can circle around when we’re out of range of their rifles.”

“All right” I said. “Sounds good.”

Kevin started off without saying a word. We hurried after him.

There was a bitter wind blowing over the marsh, and my eyes started watering. The metal of my rifle was so cold it stung. Frostbite, I thought. Stay out here too long and we’ll get frostbite.

The long brown marshgrass was harder to walk across than I had expected. Every step we took, we broke through a crust of frost. And it looked like we had a ways to go to get beyond the marsh. Suddenly I felt dizzy from cold and hunger.

And then we heard the shots. “Run!” Stinky shouted.

I took a quick look back. There were soldiers in the watchtowers with their rifles aimed at us.

I started running. Kevin stumbled, and I had to drag him back to his feet. He was usually way faster than me, but the drikana must have slowed him down; even carrying the rifle I was faster now. Stinky was the slowest. He was gasping for breath right away and struggled to keep up with us. But we couldn’t slow down–I could hear the bullets whistle past us, so I knew we were still in range. “C’mon, let’s go!” I called out to them. I sloshed through some water and hurdled a little stream that cut through the marsh. My lungs were bursting, but I kept going, expecting any second that a bullet would rip into me.

But none did. Eventually I realized there weren’t any more shots. I looked back. Kevin and Stinky were still running, but they had slowed down a lot. I could make out the soldiers in the watchtowers, but I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Didn’t matter, as long as they weren’t shooting at us anymore.

“Think we’re . . . out of . . . range,” Stinky gasped when he reached me. Kevin just flopped down on the grass.

“Will they come after us?” I asked.

“Who knows? Don’t even know why they bothered shooting at us.”

“Maybe they’re just bored,” Kevin said.

“You all right?” I asked him. He was still trying to catch his breath.

“I think so.”

I sat down next to him. My sneakers were soaked. My feet felt numb. Frostbite, I thought again.

“Got to keep going,” Stinky said. “If we stay here, I wager they’ll come out to get us.”

“If we stay here, we’ll be dead before long anyway,” I said. I got up. “Can you make it?” I asked Kevin.

He nodded. “Just needed a breather,” he muttered. I held out my hand, and he took it. I pulled him up, and we started off again.

It wasn’t long before we came to the river. We stopped and stared at it, flowing peacefully out to the ocean. It wasn’t a very big river, but we sure didn’t have a way to cross it. I looked at Stinky. He shrugged. “Let’s head upriver,” he said. “We’ll need to go that way eventually. Maybe we’ll find a boat somewhere.”

Kevin and I didn’t have any better ideas, so that’s what we did.

We started walking inland, with the river on our left. The path we were on twisted towards the river, then away from it. We didn’t spot any bridges, or any boats we could borrow to get us across. It was frustrating, and I could see that Kevin was getting upset. Well, he’d been warned.

“Look down there,” Stinky said.

We saw smoke coming out of the chimney of a shack by the river. Beyond the shack was a boat tied up at a little dock.

“Somebody’s home,” Kevin said. “Let’s ask for a ride.”

“Could be dangerous,” Stinky pointed out. “If they’ve been living out here all through the siege, they won’t be the sort who like company.”

“Worth a try,” Kevin said, and he started down the path to the shack. “Hello?” he called out. “Can you help us? We need to get across the river.”

There was no response.

“Hello?” he repeated. Stinky and I came up behind him. There was all kinds of junk next to the house–broken barrels, wine bottles, a lobster pot–and a ton of firewood neatly stacked by the door. I could smell fish frying. I hated fish, but the smell made my stomach growl.

We saw the barrel of a rifle point out from a window. “Who are ye?” a gruff, cracked voice said.

“We’re New Englanders,” Kevin said. “Just trying to get home after the battle.”

“Put down the rifle.”

He was talking to me. I laid my weapon down on the ground.

The rifle barrel disappeared from the window, and a moment later a gnarled old man wearing a woolen cap appeared, aiming the rifle at us. “Ye’re children,” he said. “Where are your parents?”

“We were separated from our parents in the battle,” Stinky lied. “We’re trying to get home to Glanbury. Can you help us?”

“Who won the battle?” he demanded. His accent was different from anyone else I’d heard in this world–not English, exactly, just sort of old-fashioned. I got the impression that he didn’t talk very much.

“New England did,” Stinky said. “Have you seen any Portuguese retreating?”

He shook his head. “Saw ’em before, though, foragin’ along the river. Nasty brutes. Killed a couple.”

“How’d you stay away from them?”

“I know more about these parts’n they do. Take more than the Portuguese to get hold of old Bart Willoughby.”

“So, can you row us across the river?” Kevin asked.

The old man peered at him. “What can you pay me?” he demanded.

We looked at each other. “I have, like, six shillings,” I said. Professor Palmer had given me some money once, but there really hadn’t been anything to spend it on.

The old man shook his head. “Six shilling’s won’t even buy a loaf of bread in these times,” he said. Then he peered at Kevin. “That’s an interesting hat,” he said. “I’ll take you across the river for that hat.”

Kevin blinked. He loved his Red Sox cap. But he took it off and handed it to the man. “All right,” he muttered. “Fine.”

The old man grinned. He only had a couple of teeth. He took his woolen cap off right away and replaced it with the Red Sox cap. It made him look crazy. “All right, lads,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I picked up my rifle. The old man led us down to the boat, and we all climbed in. It was a little rowboat, and our weight made it ride low in the water. But the old man was strong, and with a few powerful strokes he had us gliding out towards the middle of the river. “Bad times in the city, I heard,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “Too many people, not enough food.”

He shook his head. “Too many people there in the best of times. They tried to get me to go to one of them camps, but I wanted no part of it.”

“You weren’t afraid to be here by yourself?”

“Lad, I’ve lived too long to be afraid of anything.”

I thought of the old man in the camp standing by the gate and begging me for help. And the corpse Kevin and I had seen there yesterday morning, its gray hair blowing in the wind. Maybe this guy had the right idea.

We pulled up to the opposite shore. “Thank you, sir,” Stinky said as we got out.

“Call me Bart,” he replied. Then he pointed to the cap and started to cackle. “See, lad? ‘B’ for Bart! Fare ye well.” He maneuvered the boat around and started rowing back across the river.

“Let’s go,” Kevin said without even glancing back.

We found a path and headed towards the Post Road. After a while we came upon a small settlement–a few houses, a horse barn, a church. Everything looked empty, abandoned. “Do you think we can stop here?” I asked. “Maybe start a fire in one of these houses? I need to warm up.”

“I’m not tired,” Kevin said. But he was lying, I knew.

“It’s not about being tired,” I replied. “My feet are freezing. I’m worried about frostbite.”

“Whatever,” Kevin said with a shrug. I think he wanted to take a break, but didn’t want to be the one to suggest it.

None of the houses were locked. We went into the biggest one; even it had just one large room containing a few chairs, a bed with a straw mattress, and a small table. On the wall was a shelf with an old bible on it and a bad painting of President Coolidge. We found some tinder and a flint on the fireplace mantel. Stinky and I gathered some scraps of wood outside, and within a few minutes we had a smoky fire going.

We all took off our shoes and socks to dry them. Stinky glanced at the Adidas shoes Kevin and I set by the fire but didn’t say anything. And he hadn’t said anything about Kevin’s cap. He didn’t seem like a very curious kid. How different was he from the Stinky we knew in our world? He didn’t seem mean–just sort of, I don’t know, pitiful. And he had sure helped me out so far.

We all lay down in front of the fire to rest and warm up. It wasn’t very comfortable, but I shut my eyes, and I must have fallen asleep right away. When I opened them, the fire had died out and Kevin was putting his sneakers back on. Stinky was still asleep. “Let’s go,” Kevin whispered. “We can leave him here.”

“C’mon, Kevin. Stinky can help. Remember? He knows where the Barnes farm is.”

“I don’t care about the Barnes farm, Larry. I care about the portal, and he’s not going to help us find that.”

“Well, I care about both,” I said. “And what about food? I’m starving already, and we still have a lot of miles to cover. We’re going to have to either beg for food, if there’s anyone around to beg it from, or go hunting. I’ve got this rifle, but I don’t really know how to load it or anything. And neither do you.”

Kevin shrugged. “I just don’t trust him. If you’re a jerk in one world, you’re probably a jerk in every other world.”

Stinky stirred then. I reached for my sneakers and started to put them on. “That’s better,” he said, sitting up and stretching. “Probably been here a couple of hours,” he added, gesturing at the ashes of the fire.

“Think we can make it to Glanbury today?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s a bit of a trek,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to be traveling after dark.”

“Well, let’s see how far we get,” Kevin said. “We can always break into another house and stay the night.”

“True enough.” Stinky gave Kevin another what’s-your-hurry look, but he didn’t say anything more. We finished putting our shoes and socks back on and headed outside. The sun was bright, and the wind had died down now that we were off the marsh, so we weren’t as cold as we’d been before. We pressed on towards the Post Road, feeling a little better.

We had only a vague idea how far away the road was. We followed a rutted, curvy path that was headed inland. There was no one else around, and that started to feel kind of spooky, after being stuck in the crowded city for so long. It reminded me of being in Cambridge with Professor Palmer, and thinking of him made me sad. He wouldn’t have any idea where we were, if we were dead or alive. I sure wished I’d had a chance to say goodbye to him.

Stinky tried to make conversation as we trudged along. He had enough curiosity to want a better explanation of why we were headed to Glanbury. Did we have parents? Did they know what we were doing?

“We’re orphans,” Kevin said. “Just like you.” Why did he say that? I tried to remember if I’d told Stinky the lie about Professor Palmer being my father.

“Then how’ve you been living?” Stinky asked. “Where?”

“In an orphanage,” Kevin said. “Where else?”

“But you’re my age, looks like. Wouldn’t you be ‘prenticed by now?”

“Well, we’re not.”

After a while Stinky sort of gave up. And a while after that we reached the Post Road, smooth and wide compared to the path we’d been on, but just as empty. Behind us was the wreckage of the bridge over the river.

“Look,” Kevin said, pointing to the other side of the road. A wagon with a broken wheel lay on its side in a ditch. We went over to examine it. It was empty except for a few pots. “Portuguese,” Stinky said, studying the lettering on the back. “Says something about cooking. The wagon’s pointing south. They probably abandoned it during the retreat.”

We started heading south on the Post Road. Everywhere there was stuff that the Portuguese had dropped or left behind–clothing and utensils and empty bottles, even a cannon. And then we saw a blue-jacketed corpse, face-down by the side of the road. Stinky went over to it. He came back with the dead man’s pistol. “Looks like a mighty disorganized retreat,” he said, “if they didn’t even stop to bury their dead.”

In the distance we heard some shots. People hunting? Fighting? “Julian, could you show me how to load this rifle?” I said. “I’ve got plenty of bullets.”

He gave me another look, as if to ask: who wouldn’t know how to load a rifle? But he shrugged and demonstrated how to load the cartridges and cock it. “Simple enough,” he said. “And we’ll be needing this rifle before long, if we’re to eat anything today.”

We walked along. The shooting stopped. After the roar of the battle yesterday, things seemed awfully quiet–there was no noise except the crunching of our feet on the road. Some of the houses and shops and inns we passed looked like they hadn’t been touched; others had been burned to the ground. None of the fires looked recent, though. The Portuguese were probably in too much of a hurry to do any more damage.

And then we saw people up ahead. “Not soldiers,” Stinky said. “One of them’s a woman, I’d say, from the shape of that bonnet.” We quickened our pace to catch up with them. There was a woman, a child, and a mule, weighed down with baggage. “Good day to you!” Stinky called out when we were close enough.

The woman whirled around and aimed a rifle at us. “Come no closer,” she shouted back, “or I’ll shoot you all.”

The woman was middle-aged, and had an upper-crust, almost-English accent. Stinky raised his hands. “We’re New Englanders. We mean you no harm.”

The child was about six, and she clung sobbing to the woman, who lowered her rifle but still stared at us suspiciously. “We’ve been set upon already,” she said. “There are evil people about, both New Englander and Portuguese. One of them has a bullet in his chest for his troubles.”

“I believe it, but I assure you we aren’t evil,” Stinky said.

“How did you get past the fortifications?” I asked. “Are they open yet?”

“No, but this morning they removed most of the guards to go fight the Canadians. If you’ve a mind to get out and have a few pounds to spare for bribes, you can leave.”

“How’d you get across the river?”

“Some men have rafts down there now,” she replied. “Making quite a good day’s wages, too.”

“We’re headed home to Glanbury. Where are you going?”

“Braintree, God willing, and no more brigands attack us.”

Braintree was maybe halfway to Glanbury. “Why don’t we travel together?” I suggested. “Safety in numbers.”

The woman continued to eye us suspiciously, but after thinking about it she said, “Very well. You’re likely-looking lads.”

So we joined them. The woman’s name was Mrs. Gradger; her daughter was named Cecilia. Their story was familiar: They’d been stuck in the Fens camp during the siege. Mrs. Gradger’s husband and two older sons were in the army, and she didn’t know if they were dead or alive. Mr. Gradger was a lawyer, and the family had been well-off before the war, so for a while she’d been able to buy extra provisions in the camp. But then food became scarce and money became pretty much worthless, and now the family was just like everyone else.

Mrs. Gradger, though, was a tough woman. She had already killed one man today, and she sure seemed ready to shoot anyone else who tried to mess with her or her daughter.

Cecilia was another story, however. She was so tired she was barely able to walk, and she kept complaining about how hungry she was. She wiped her tears on her sleeve as she tried to keep up. Mrs. Gradger didn’t seem especially sympathetic. “Barney can’t carry any more weight,” she kept repeating, as if the amount of stuff on the mule settled matters.

“C’mon, Cecilia,” I said finally. “I’ll carry you for a while.” I handed the rifle to Kevin and squatted down so Cecilia could climb onto my shoulders. She was pretty light. “Thank you, sir,” she said, wiping her face clean yet again.

“Cecilia, don’t dirty your sleeve,” Mrs. Gradger said. But she didn’t object to my carrying her daughter.

We walked like that for a long time. It was good to have company, even if Mrs. Gradger reminded me a lot of Ms. Pouch, my sixth-grade math teacher, who everyone called Ms. Grouch. She spent most of the time complaining about the how badly the camp had been run and how completely President Gardner had screwed up the war and how uncivilized the Portuguese were. I think she was happy to finally get a chance to kill someone.

We didn’t run into anyone else, although off and on we heard more shots, which always scared Cecilia. “No more bad men,” she said. “I don’t want any more bad men.” Once we spotted a skinny dog, who stared at us for a long time before slinking off down a side street. And that somehow reminded Cecilia of how hungry she was. “Please, Mother,” she said from my shoulders, “please can’t we eat?”

I looked at Mrs. Gradger. Her face was hard, but there were tears in her eyes. “We’ll be home soon,” she said. “Now don’t talk about food. It just makes things worse.”

Stinky came over to me. “Have to do some hunting, mate,” he murmured. “Before we lose the daylight.”

The sun was low in the sky. It was starting to get colder. Miles to go before I sleep. I remembered that line from a poem we studied in English class. And then we were at a crossroads. Mrs. Gradger stopped and closed her eyes in relief for a moment. Then she snapped back into character. “Our house is along this road to the right,” she said. “Cecilia, please get down. Thank you, lads, for the company.”

I stooped to let Cecilia off. My shoulders were stiff, but it had been sort of fun carrying her. Then we all stood there. I looked at Kevin. I could tell he was all for pushing on to Glanbury. Not me. It was Stinky who made the suggestion. “Ma’am, might you consider letting us spend the night? In return we’ll go out and shoot you some supper.”

Mrs. Gradger said, “Oh no, we’ll be fine, no need.” And Cecilia started wailing.

“It’d be a favor to us, ma’am,” Stinky pointed out. “We could use the shelter.”

That was pretty clever of Stinky, I thought. Mrs. Gradger would rather grant a favor than have anyone think she needed one. “Very well,” she agreed. “That’s a reasonable suggestion. Come along.”

Kevin looked disgusted. I shrugged. “Just one more day,” I muttered to him. “It won’t kill us.”

“How do you know?”

But he didn’t argue, and we all followed Mrs. Gradger down the road to Braintree.