Portal, an online novel: Chapter 29

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Chapter 28: Larry helps to bury Cassie, and in the little family graveyard he see his own grave. Afterward Mom tells the story of how she dies — shot by a New England soldier in the camp because she wouldn’t — couldn’t — follow orders. Larry has to lie about what’s been happening to him and why he’s in Glanbury. His mother says that he and Kevin and Stinky are welcome to stay, but Larry is beginning to realize how complicated this new situation is going to be.

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Chapter 29

Then for a few short weeks my life took on a new rhythm, as I hunted and fished and did chores, and later helped neighbors who had returned to homes that had been burned or ransacked. It was great to be with Mom and Matthew, but every moment was shadowed by thoughts of Cassie’s death and worries about the future. Was Dad all right? What was happening with the Canadians?

And where was the portal?

Kevin kept searching, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. And I was too busy. After a few days I think he started trying to get used to the idea that he was staying in this world, but it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. Maybe talking about it made it more real somehow, and he didn’t want to give up hope entirely. I guess I couldn’t blame him.

And there were lots of awkward moments. Like Mom asking me about my family and my future. “You really need to go back to the city and settle things, Larry. I’m sure your father had a will, and he may have named someone to be your guardian. We can find a lawyer to help you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “After the war we’ll figure it out. As soon as it’s safe.”

If she thought it wasn’t safe to go to Boston, she’d never let me go.

And then there was our clothes. She insisted on washing them–we must have stunk pretty badly. So Kevin and I peeled down to reveal that we were wearing another whole layer of strange clothes underneath our regular ones.

“Where in the world did you get those pants?” she asked.

“China,” I said. “My father knows a professor in China. He sent them to us. Did you notice this thing? It’s called a ‘zipper’. It’s really different.”

“But why do you wear the Chinese pants inside your regular pants?”

“We don’t like them all that much–we don’t want to look weird. But we didn’t want to leave them behind. They’re supposed to be valuable.”

I didn’t like lying to Mom, in either world. It was easy to get her to believe you, and that just sort of made it worse. When she found out about your lie she would tell you how disappointed she was, how much she had trusted you, and you ended up feeling like dirt.

“All these stories are pretty pointless,” Kevin said later. “Sooner or later Carmody is going to come looking for the portal–and us. And sooner or later you’re going to have to tell your mother the truth.”

“But I can’t tell her now,” I argued. “What if she thinks we’re demons? What if she throws us out?”

Kevin shrugged. “She’s not going to do that,” he said. “She’s crazy about you. Anyway, suit yourself.”

But I couldn’t do it. Not yet.

And then there was Stinky. He wasn’t especially annoying, except that he didn’t seem to want to leave, and after a while that made everyone feel sort of awkward. “No sense in going anywhere till Mister Kincaid’s back,” he said, talking about his master. But then we heard from a neighbor that Kincaid was back, and Stinky said, “I’ll just get a beating when I return, so there’s no sense in hurrying.” And so he stayed.

I tried to explain away Kevin’s story about the orphanage, but Stinky had his own explanation: “Your friend is insane,” he said. “I just stay away from him as much as I can.”

That was fine with Kevin.

The best times were when I went off visiting with Mom and Matthew. Stinky never went, because he was afraid of running into his master, and Kevin usually didn’t go because he just wasn’t interested. But I enjoyed hearing people talk about their lives, and the war, and the rumors. I enjoyed helping them rebuild their homes and barns; I turned out to be pretty good at carpentry, even though I never did much of it at home.

Everyone was really nice to me when they found out I was an orphan, but they would have been nice to me anyway. And they all had some hardship to deal with–and not just the wrecked homes and barns. A few of them had lost a family member; lots more had brothers and fathers and sons in the army, and there was no way of knowing if they were dead or alive.

More than once I ran into Sarah Lally.

Her father was a tailor, and the first time I saw her was outside his shop near the harbor. My heart started racing. “Hi,” I managed to say.

She looked really happy to see me. “How did you get here, Larry? Do you know about Cassie?”

I told her the story about my father dying, and of course she was sympathetic. She put her hand on my arm and gave it a squeeze. “How awful,” she murmured. “But how kind of you to come here to help.”

I felt guilty about lying to her, just the way I did with Mom. But I didn’t want her to take her hand away. “How are you doing?” I asked.

She gestured behind her at the shop. “There was much damage, but we’ll be all right.”

“If there’s anything you need, let me know,” I said.

“Thank you, Larry. Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you a question if I ever saw you again.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“That first time you saw me in the camp–you called me Nora Lally. But you never explained: how did you know my last name?”

I had forgotten about that. I had done pretty well answering my mother’s questions, and even making up something about the orphanage, but this was a tough one, especially with Sarah’s wide blue eyes gazing at me. “I guess–I don’t know, really.”

She looked puzzled, but not angry or anything. Then her father called to her from inside the shop. “Well, no matter,” she said. “Anyway—I’ll see you again, won’t I?”

“You can count on it.”

She smiled at me and rushed inside.

I did see her again, at neighbor’s houses and when we went to church–the same white church with the big steeple that overlooked the town common in my Glanbury. And she was always happy to see me and easy to talk to, and it was hard to believe how scared of her I was back in my world.

Meanwhile, the news that filtered down from Boston was pretty good, although as usual everyone who showed up in Glanbury had a slightly different version. We had defeated the Canadians, and they were retreating. They weren’t retreating, but were preparing for a counterattack. They had counterattacked but hadn’t been able to break through our defenses, which featured an amazing metal fence that killed anyone who touched it. The blockade had ended, and supply ships from England were landing in Boston Harbor. The blockade was still in place, but England had declared war on Portugal and it was only a matter of time . . .

It was pretty much all anyone could talk about, and every scrap of news was treated like it was a precious gem. But no one was going to really believe anything until they heard it from a returning soldier. And that was what everyone was waiting for.

I was there when the first one arrived. A bunch of us were working on the Wilsons’ barn when a red-jacketed man strode up the lane, a huge grin on his face. It was Mr. Wilson, coming home. Everyone got down from the ladders and came out of the house and crowded around. He spent a while hugging and kissing his family, and then he gave us all the news: “We beat them Canadians,” he said. “We fought ’em and fought ’em, and finally they retreated back north, and they’re not coming back.”

“Are you sure?” someone asked. “Is it official?”

“They’re working on the peace treaty now at Coolidge Palace,” he replied. “And the first thing they did was lift the blockade. I hear food supplies’ll be moving down the coast any day now.”

“The other soldiers–when are they coming back?”

“Hard to say. They’re letting the volunteers go, but not everyone at once. Don’t know how I got to be among the first, but I’m not complainin’.”

And then the questions really started coming. Have you seen my husband? What about my son–is he all right? There was good news and bad news for the people there. And for a few there was no news at all. Mom waited till the end. “Henry–have you seen Henry?” she asked.

Mr. Wilson shook his head. “Not lately, Emma. But that doesn’t mean anything. There were thousands of soldiers. He could’ve been anywhere along the front. I’m sure he’ll show up any day now.”

Mom forced a smile. “Of course. I understand. I’m sure you’re right.”

So some people left the Wilsons’ place happy that day, and some in tears, and some–like us–were just as worried as before.

Anyway, then things started to change.

For example, Stinky finally decided to leave. He knew it was only a matter of time before his master found out where he was, so he figured he didn’t have much choice. He looked very depressed when he told us his decision.

“You’ve been great, Julian,” I said. “We wouldn’t have survived without you.”

He turned red and looked down at the floor. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I’m just–I’m no saint, that’s all. Anyone would have done what I did.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I replied. It was hard to believe, but I knew I was going to miss him. I had almost stopped thinking of him as “Stinky.” I shook his hand, and then watched him as he said goodbye to the others. He looked like he was holding back tears. Even Kevin seemed sad to see him trudging down the lane away from the farmhouse. “Not one wet willie from him,” Kevin said afterwards, which was about as close as he could come to saying something nice about Stinky.

And then the food arrived, just like Mr. Wilson said. A ship showed up in Glanbury Harbor filled with emergency supplies, and we all went down to the docks to get our share. Beef, potatoes, flour–even sugar and molasses. People couldn’t believe their eyes. It was like a gift from heaven.

That was the day the town decided to have a victory celebration at the church hall. The date was set: December 24^th. Christmas Eve.

It was the first time I’d thought about Christmas. “They don’t celebrate it, do they, Kevin?” I asked.

Kevin shook his head. “Not in New England. It’s just another day here. I read about it at Professor Palmer’s. The Portuguese do all sorts of things for Christmas, but New Englanders say it’s just a pagan tradition. Can you imagine, no Christmas?”

One more reason for Kevin to feel homesick. Me too. I remembered how excited Matthew got, so he could barely sleep a wink the night before, and he kept me awake too, of course, the two of us finally sneaking downstairs early to see the presents, Cassie coming down later and complaining about everything she got . . . “Doesn’t seem right,” I said.

“It’s a different world, Larry. It’ll never be your world, no matter how much you think you can make it yours.”

“Okay, okay,” I grumbled.

The end of the war had started Kevin looking for the portal again in earnest. “Now there’s nothing stopping Lieutenant Carmody from coming down here and finding out what happened to us,” he pointed out. And he was pretty upset that I wasn’t interested in helping him, so he didn’t pass up any chance to let me know how stupid I was being.

I saw his point, but walking around in the woods looking for an invisible needle in the haystack just didn’t seem all that useful to me, when I had so much to do helping Mom and Matthew and the rest of folks in Glanbury.

And, to tell the truth, I was worried about what would happen if my father didn’t return from the war. The days went by, and more and more soldiers returned home, but no Henry Barnes. And no news of him either. None of the returning soldiers remembered seeing him shot or bayoneted or captured, which was good, but none could say for sure he was alive, either, and by now we were desperate for some news. Matthew looked out the window during the day, and after dark he listened for footsteps in the lane. “He’s coming home soon, Mama, isn’t he?” he asked. “He’ll be here for the celebration on Christmas Eve, won’t he?”

“I’m sure of it, Matthew,” she replied.

But her eyes were anxious, and I knew she was as worried as any of us.

“You could go in the wagon to Boston,” I suggested to her finally. “Ask for him at army headquarters. They must have lists and stuff. You’ll probably find out, one way or the other.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” she said. Then she brightened. “And we could see a lawyer and start getting matters resolved about your father.”

Oops, that wasn’t what I had in mind. “Well–” I began.

“Don’t argue with me, Larry,” she interrupted. “It’s time, and you know it. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. Tomorrow’s the celebration.”

“We’ll get an early start. If we miss the celebration, that’s fine–I don’t really feel like celebrating.”

Of course I got no sympathy from Kevin when I told him. “Just tell her the truth,” he said. “Get it over with.”

I couldn’t see any way out. “All right,” I said. “Tomorrow, for sure.”

I must not have sounded all that convincing, because Kevin started in on me again. “You’re still dreaming, Larry. But it’s time to wake up. You can’t just be this substitute kid for them. And you can’t live in a substitute world. It’s not going to work.”

“Shut up, Kevin,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

At supper Mom told Matthew about how we were all going to Boston, and we might not make it to the celebration, and that got him depressed. And he finally understood that Kevin and I might not be staying forever, and that got him really depressed.

And that got me really depressed.

If I told Mom the truth, what would happen?

After supper I went outside to think about it. It was a clear, moonlit night, the kind where you don’t seem to mind the cold. So I stood there, listening to the silence. Was Kevin right? Was I dreaming? Probably. But he was dreaming too, wasn’t he? Dreaming that there was a way back home, when by now it was clear that there wasn’t, that the portal was gone and we were stuck here for the rest of our lives. We were both entitled to our dreams.

Then I heard something–footsteps in the snow. Too loud for an animal. I looked up, and saw a man in a dark coat walking up the path towards the house. He was carrying a rifle and a satchel. His coat was red, I realized. A uniform.

“Dad!” I cried, and I ran to him.

He stopped, and then I stopped too, realizing what I’d said. We stared at each other.

“Larry?” he asked, staring at me with a puzzled expression. “Larry Palmer?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m just, you know, helping out. You’re family’s inside. They’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”

“I expect they have,” he said, breaking into a grin.

That grin hit me like a blow. I couldn’t think of what to say, so I just stepped aside. He patted me uncertainly on the shoulder. “Well, then, we’ll talk,” he said. Then he walked past me and went into his house.

And I stayed out there in the cold as he greeted Mom and Matthew and learned the awful news that awaited him.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 28

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Chapter 27: Well, that was a bummer. Kevin, Larry, and Stinky Glover make it back to Glanbury and move into the Barnes farmhouse. Kevin and Larry look for the portal without success. In a snowstorm they run into Larry’s Mom and brother coming home from Boston in their cart. And in the back of the cart is his sister Cassie’s dead body.

Why do writers think they can get away with killing characters off like this? Have they no human decency?

We’re not far from the end now, so I may ramp up the posting of these chapters. The suspense is killing me.

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Chapter 28

Kevin and I walked alongside the wagon as Mom made her way through the snow back to the farmhouse. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t ask who Kevin was or why we were there in Glanbury. Even Matthew was quiet, except to complain about how hungry he was.

“We have food,” I said. “We’ll take care of you.”

Stinky saw the wagon drive up the lane and came out to meet us. “Julian?” Mom asked, with a puzzled look on her face.

“Just staying with Lawrence, ma’am,” Stinky replied. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She didn’t respond. She and Matthew got down from the wagon, and we took them inside and had them sit in front of the fire. In the kitchen, I explained to Stinky about Cassie. “Terrible,” he said. “To live through it all, and then at the very end . . . ”

I nodded. “They’re going to need all the help we can give them.”

Stinky had already cooked the turkey I had shot yesterday. We carved it up in the kitchen and brought some out to them. Mom looked like she didn’t want to eat, but she was too hungry to resist. Matthew wolfed his food down. “We’ve had almost nothing to eat for two days,” he said between bites. “And we don’t know where Papa is or if he’s alive, and Gretel got lame and we thought we might not even make it home, and it’s been terrible, just terrible.”

Mom put her hand on his arm. “We’re all right now, Matthew,” she murmured. “Try not to eat to much. It might make you ill.”

He leaned back against her, but kept eating.

Mom stood up when she had finished. “We can’t leave her out there,” she said.

Did she want to bring Cassie’s body inside? I thought stupidly. No, she headed out the back door to the barn. I followed her. Inside, she found a pick and a shovel. “Three days she’s awaited a proper burial,” Mom murmured. “She can’t wait any longer.”

“I’ll help,” I said. “We’ll all help.”

She stopped and gazed at me the way she had in the camp–puzzled, like she was on the brink of understanding who I really was. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Larry. Finding you here is–is the only good thing that’s happened to us in a long time.”

I took the pick and shovel and followed her back out front. I set the tools down by the wagon and went inside to get Kevin, Stinky, and Matthew. Then we all followed behind the wagon as Mom drove it around the farmhouse to the edge of a little patch of woods beyond the barn. Matthew was sobbing. Kevin glanced at me a couple of times, but he didn’t say anything.

Mom got down from the wagon and led us into the woods. We came to a small clearing after a while, and in the middle of the clearing a few crosses stuck up through the snow. My head started spinning as I stared at those crosses. Kevin gripped my arm. Mom pointed to a spot in the snow. “Cassie needs to go here,” she said. “Beside her brother.”

I looked at the cross next to where she was pointing. Two words were crudely carved on it:

Lawrence Barnes

I was staring at my own grave.

“That’s the boy who would have been just about your age,” my mother was saying to me. “My baby.”

I think maybe I forgot to breathe for a while. “It’s okay, Larry,” Kevin whispered to me. “Take it easy.”

Kevin and I’d had talked about what would happen if we ran into our other selves in this world. Would we both explode, or destroy the fabric of the space-time continuum or something? Stupid. We never talked about this.

Nothing happened, of course, except that I was as spooked as I could possibly be. But I didn’t do anything. I just stood there in the snow. I was alive, the earth kept spinning, and that other me–the baby who didn’t make it–was still at rest in the cold ground.

And now we had to lay his sister–my sister–to rest, too.

We took turns using the pick and shovel to dig the hole in the frozen, rocky soil. I did most of the work, though–Kevin still didn’t have all his strength back, and it wasn’t the sort of task Stinky enjoyed. It seemed to take forever. It grew dark, and my muscles were screaming with pain after a while–the most digging I’d ever done was a little bit of snow shoveling, and I’d usually complain about having to do that. But we kept at it, and at last the time had come. We lifted Cassie’s body out of the wagon, then slid her down into the ground and covered her up. After that we stood around the grave as darkness fell and said some prayers, while I felt sorry for every mean thing I’d said to her in every conceivable universe.

“Thank you all,” my mother said at the end. “God bless you.”

And then we made our way slowly back to the farmhouse. Stinky took care of Gretel, and Kevin and I hauled in the few possessions Mom and Matthew had brought home in the wagon.

With her duty done, Mom seemed to relax a little. She looked even older, more worn down than she had in the camp. But she didn’t cry much, just a few tears. Mom wasn’t a crier; she was the one who gave comfort, not the one who needed comforting. She put Matthew to bed–she let him sleep in the downstairs bedroom with her–and then came out to join us in front of the fireplace.

And she asked the questions I knew were coming: “Larry, what happened? How did you get here?”

As usual I hadn’t thought through my answer, so I just blurted something out. “My father died, and I had nowhere else to go.”

“Oh no, Larry, what happened?”

What happened? “He was–he was working with the army. He had invented this electric fence that would, like, give the enemy soldiers a shock when they tried to climb over it. He was operating it at the battle with the Portuguese. And it worked great but–but they shot him. He died instantly.” I remembered Professor Foster dropping to the ground, killed in his moment of triumph.

“Oh my poor sweet boy. Is there no end to these horrors?”

“I didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so I came here,” I continued. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind? Of course not. Stay as long as you want. And your friend–”

“Kevin. He’s, uh, an orphan. He lived with us. And Julian–we met him at the army camp, and he helped us get here. We couldn’t have done it without him.”

I glanced at Stinky. He didn’t say anything about how a couple of days ago Kevin had told him we lived in an orphanage. Did he remember? Of course he did.

“You’re all welcome to our home,” Mom said. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Stinky threw another log on the fire.

“Can you–can you tell us what happened to Cassie?” I asked.

“Perhaps another time,” she said wearily.

“Sure. I understand.”

But after a moment she said, “I suppose it might help. There’s been no one to talk to–just Matthew . . . ” She paused again, and then began. “You were there in the camp that last day, Larry. You saw how wild things were becoming.”

I nodded. “I barely got out. Soldiers were firing at people by the main gate.”

“Yes. We’d endured for so long in the camp, but then–we knew it was ending soon, and it seemed to drive some people mad.”

“Cassie wouldn’t come out of the tent,” I recalled. “She wouldn’t listen to anyone.”

“Yes, that was Cassie.” Mom’s eyes got a faraway look, and I imagined she was thinking about all the ways in which Cassie had caused them problems. Or maybe it was just the opposite. What do I know? “Cassie just couldn’t stand it anymore,” she went on. “Not another day, not another minute. We all heard the shots by the main gate. We weren’t sure what had happened. Twenty people dead, someone said; someone else said a hundred. And there were other rumors: the gates had been stormed and the guards had fled. The Canadians were already in the city. There was a drikana outbreak in the camp. The wildest things. Cassie begged me to leave. But even if I had wanted to, there was no way we could get out of the camp in that madness with a horse and wagon and all our possessions. ‘Leave them behind,’ she insisted. ‘It’s all worthless anyway.’

“But I wouldn’t do it. ‘Let’s wait for the morning,’ I said. ‘Everyone says the soldiers will be gone by then.’

“She wouldn’t listen to me, though. She was never–she was never easy. Not bad, no, but . . . she knew her own mind. Perhaps if I had tried harder to understand . . . ”

Mom paused then, as if she were thinking about how she could blame herself for Cassie’s death. “Then what happened?” I asked softly.

“She ran away,” Mom answered. “She didn’t argue, she just ran, as if she couldn’t stand it another moment. I told Matthew to go stay with the Lallys and I went after her, but it was so difficult. It was dark, and all the paths were crowded with people and wagons, and no one would get out of the way. She didn’t head toward the main gate. She went to the water station. I don’t know why–perhaps she thought it wouldn’t be guarded at night. Perhaps she’d heard that the fence had been torn down, and there was just that little stream to cross. Or perhaps she had met the guards there and flirted with them, and she thought they would let her pass.

“I almost reached her. I called out to her, but she just kept going. I was near a soldier, and he was very young, and I could tell he didn’t know what to do. Someone else called out ‘Halt!’ She was in the middle of the stream by now. She paused and looked back. She saw me, and I called out to her again. But then she turned and kept going. And then I heard the shot.”

Mom paused again and stared into the fire. I wasn’t going to say anything this time. If she wanted to talk about it, she’d do it when she was ready.

“Cassie went down,” Mom continued at last. “I kept going after her, through the stream and onto the other side where she was lying. So why didn’t they shoot me, too?”

I thought she wanted an answer, but I couldn’t think of one. I guess she was just asking herself, though, because she repeated the question softly, and then went on. “I held her in my arms, but there was no bringing her back, no bringing her back. I noticed that the young soldier was standing next to me after a while, and he was crying and saying, ‘Didn’t she understand? All she had to do was stop. Why wouldn’t she stop?’

“Because she’s Cassie, I thought. Don’t you see? She didn’t think she had to stop for anyone.

“I didn’t want to move, but I couldn’t stay there. The soldier helped me carry the body back to our wagon. And then I had to get Matthew and tell him what had happened. And then . . . ”

Mom put her hands to her face. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought, making her relive all this stuff.

“If she could have just waited a few more hours,” she said. “A few hours later, all the guards were gone, heading off to the battle. It must have been midnight when I heard that, and it wasn’t a rumor this time. The gates were open, the guards had disappeared, and people were pouring out into the city. Not that they had anywhere to go in the city. Not that I cared. Some of our friends were sitting with me, helping me grieve. They wanted me to leave with them, but what was the point? This was where Cassie had died. Why should I go anywhere else?

“They couldn’t wait finally. Everyone was leaving. The camp was emptying out. But then near dawn Matthew awoke–despite everything, he had finally fallen asleep–and I knew that I had to leave too, I had to get him home if I possibly could. So I packed the wagon and hitched up Gretel, and we left.”

“Kevin and I were in the camp a little after dawn that day, looking for you,” I said. “It was pretty empty.”

Mom nodded. “It was a dismal place, and we were all so tired of it. People looted the army buildings during the night, then set fire to them. I think they might have shot the guards if they had found any of them.

“But the city streets were no better–worse, really, because the other Glanbury families were gone, and I had no one to talk to, no one to help me. That first day I stopped at a church, and the minister took pity on us and gave us a little food. He offered to bury Cassie in the church’s graveyard, but I couldn’t leave her there–she had to go home too. Then I tried to get out of the city, but Gretel went lame–poor girl, she’d had no exercise for months. It’s a wonder she’s still alive. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t recovered. Matthew was frantic. He wanted us to go find his father, but Henry was fighting the Canadians, and we have no idea where he was, or if he was even alive.

“Finally at dawn this morning we started out, praying that Gretel would make it. She did, thank the Lord. And now we’re home. Now we’re home.”

I reached over and put my hand on her arm, the way she liked to do. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said. “But under such awful circumstances . . . ”

“I’ll help you,” I said. “We’ll all help you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and fell silent.

Mom went and joined Matthew in bed a little later. Stinky fell asleep by the fire. I was still wide awake.

“That was weird,” Kevin remarked.

“What? The graveyard?” I said.

“Yeah. I thought you were going to faint.”

“It did make me a little dizzy,” I admitted. “But in a way, it’s weirder thinking about Cassie.”

“Sounds like she was kind of–you know–the same in both worlds.” Kevin said.

“A pain, you mean. ‘Difficult,’ my dad says.”

“Yeah, I guess. Not that she deserved to die.”

“For going nuts in that camp?” I said. “No, she didn’t deserve to die for that.”

“Your mom and Matthew–that’s weird, too. They look just like, you know . . . ”

“You see what I mean?” I pressed him. “They aren’t different people. They are my family. They’re just . . . here.”

Kevin stared at the fire. Thinking about the portal and getting home, I supposed. Thinking about how he had no one here, no Albright family to welcome him.

“We can keep looking for the portal,” I said. “It’s gotta be out there somewhere.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.” Then he lay down and wrapped the blanket around him. “Let’s just get some sleep.”

And then there was just me awake in the silent farmhouse. I had found my family again, but things hadn’t exactly turned out the way I’d wanted them to. Poor Cassie. I know she can be difficult, Dad had said to me once, but she’s family. And that’s the most important thing. Someday you’ll realize that you love her.

I didn’t know about that. But I couldn’t help thinking about Cassie. And, difficult as she was, I couldn’t help wishing she was still alive and giving us all a hard time. No, she didn’t deserve to die. And my mom sure didn’t deserve the heartache her death had brought.

I didn’t want to bring her any more heartache.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 27

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Chapter 26: Larry, Kevin, and Stinky meet up with Mrs. Gradger and her daughter as they make their way south towards Glanbury. They spend the night with at the Gradgers’ house in Weymouth, but Kevin is desperate to keep going and reach Glanbury. Stinky surprisingly turns down an offer to stay with the Gradgers and continues to accompany the boys on their journey home.

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Chapter 27

Home. Sort of. Certainly not for Kevin–he wasn’t interested in this Glanbury. And it didn’t look at all familiar to me. The North River was in our Glanbury, too, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it. It wasn’t a very big river. At least its bridge hadn’t been destroyed.

We crossed the bridge. Glanbury didn’t look any different from what we had already passed by along the Post Road. A few shops and houses, but mostly just woods and farmland, and occasionally a road leading off to the east or west. Just another little town. I wasn’t surprised that President Gardner hadn’t thought much of it.

Kevin looked around intently, trying to spot the place where we had burst out of the woods with the Portuguese soldiers shooting at us. It would be on our left–I recalled that much. But that was about all I remembered. And if Kevin insisted it was on our right, I’m not sure how strongly I could have argued the point. Nothing looked familiar to me. Kevin hesitated once in a while, but he didn’t run off into the woods. I could sense him getting worried as we walked.

“How far to the Barnes place?” I asked Stinky.

“Another mile or two, I expect.”

I wondered if the farmhouse was where my house was in the other world. Was that how things worked in these alternate universes? That would make it easier for us to find the portal–just look in the woods behind the backyard. But I remembered how confusing the geography of the Burger Queen world had been, and I figured we weren’t going to be that lucky.

I was tired and hungry by now. Kevin was starting to look pretty worn-out too. I knew he wanted to keep searching until he found the portal. But he only had so much energy; it would only be daylight for so long. It would be tough.

“We turn here,” Stinky said finally, pointing to a road up ahead on the right. “Go left and the road’ll take us to town and the harbor, go right to the Barnes farm. It’s a nice little place.”

I looked at Kevin. He shrugged. “Let’s go to the farm,” he said.

So we turned off the Post Road, and then took another turn after a while, onto a small lane lined with hedges. “There it is,” Stinky said. “Lucky thing, looks like the Portuguese left it alone. Probably didn’t bother coming this far off the main road.”

The house was small, far less imposing than the Gradgers’, or Professor Palmer’s house in Cambridge. The red barn behind the house was bigger than house itself was. Both seemed to be in good shape. We walked up the lane to the front door. I knocked. There was no answer.

“What do you want to do?” Stinky asked.

“Go inside,” I said. “Start a fire. Get the place ready for them.”

“You mean just . . . move in?”

I nodded.

“If you say so.”

The door wasn’t locked, so we walked inside.

We found ourselves in a small entryway. On the left was a long, dark, low-ceilinged room dominated by a big fireplace, with heavy black pots and pans hung next to it. On the right was a smaller, brighter room with nothing in it but a table and chairs. We walked into the room with the fireplace. It led into the kitchen, where there was another table and chairs, and some shelves with pewter plates and cups on them. Next to the fireplace was a small storage area. In a corner of the living room was a spinning wheel. “Home Sweet Home” said a piece of embroidery hung on the wall to our right.

Home.

Strangely–or maybe not so strangely–it did feel like home.

Everything was where it should be, where I wanted it to be. Beyond the room on the right was a bedroom, with a Bible on the nightstand next to the bed. From there you climbed up a wooden ladder-like set of stairs to an attic, where there were a couple more beds with a curtain between them. On the floor I saw some wooden toys that probably belonged to Matthew. I wondered how Cassie put up with Matthew chattering away on the other side of that curtain at bedtime. In this world, she didn’t have a choice.

We checked out back. Firewood was stacked neatly by the door. Beyond it was the well, and on the other side of the yard was the privy. Everything was simple but solid and clean. I thought about how my mother always insisted that we keep our rooms tidy. When we’d whine that the mess didn’t bother us, she’d say, “There’s no excuse for being a slob.” There wasn’t, really. I had a lump in my throat when I went back inside.

“Must be pretty weird for you, huh?” Kevin murmured while Stinky brought in firewood.

“It seems so . . . familiar. How are you doing?”

“All right, I guess. Pretty wiped. Do you think the portal’s further south along the main road?”

“Probably. I haven’t seen anything that looked familiar so far. But then again, it was so foggy, and we were running for our lives, and–”

“I know. I remember a bunch of pine trees across the road when we came out of the woods–but there are pine trees all over the place. Anyway, it can’t be far. Glanbury’s not that big a town.”

Unless the portal had disappeared back where it came from. Unless it had moved. Unless, unless . . . “It can’t be far,” I agreed. Kevin didn’t want to hear anything else.

We went and helped Stinky get the fire started. Then it was time to go hunting for our supper. Kevin stayed behind again. He was tired, and besides, he didn’t care about hunting; it wasn’t something he was going to do once he got back home.

So Stinky and I went out with my rifle and his pistol. We had to tramp through fields where cornstalks drooped, then climb over a long stone wall. We passed by a small body of water that Stinky was familiar with. “Amity Pond,” he said. “Good fishing. We may be able to catch some trout there.” And then we headed into the woods past the pond.

This time when we spotted a turkey, Stinky motioned to me to take the shot. It was a lot different from aiming at an empty Coke can with a BB gun. Sorry, bird, I thought. And I pulled the trigger.

The turkey squawked and keeled over. Stinky clapped me on the back. “Terrific,” he said.

All I could think of was the soldier with the wispy mustache. Still, I had gotten us dinner.

We trudged back to the farmhouse, and this time all three of us helped prepare the turkey. It was gross, but it had to be done. Another skill worth learning in this world. Then we cooked and ate it the way we did the night before; it tasted fine, but I could tell I was going to get sick of turkey pretty soon, if that’s all we could find to eat. Better than going hungry, though.

We found some blankets in the storage area and slept in front of the fire in the living room, like we had at the Gradgers; using the beds didn’t seem right. We figured we were safe here, so we didn’t stand watches. And in the morning the sun was shining, the fire had died down, and we had to figure out what to do next.

I assumed Stinky would want to leave, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry. “Oh, I’ll find old man Kincaid when the time comes, and we’ll work things out,” he said, talking about his master. “In the meantime, there’s plenty to be done here. Chopping wood, hunting, fishing . . . We can cart ice back from Amity Pond to preserve the meat. There should be a root cellar somewhere around. We can search for seed corn and make sure it’s protected. That’ll be important come next spring.”

Kevin wasn’t interested in doing chores. “What’s the point?” he demanded when Stinky was paying a visit to the privy. “Let’s just find the portal and go home. Now.”

He was right, of course. We had done it. We had gotten back to Glanbury, and there was no one to stop us from going home. Still . . .

I wanted to find out what had happened to my family on this world. I wanted to make sure they were okay. And I didn’t want to have them wonder what happened to Larry Palmer. Did he die in the battle? Why did he never come to see us like he promised?

But I couldn’t say that to Kevin; he would’ve gone nuts. He was already staring at me suspiciously. “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“I’m just a little–I don’t know,” I said. “What if the portal doesn’t take us home? We could step out into a black hole or something.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s a risk. We know that. But we’ve gotta take it, Larry. We can’t stay here for the rest of our lives if we have a chance to make it home.”

“Sure, but, you know, what if you bring those drikana germs back with you? We don’t want to start a plague or something.”

“I’m not contagious. This world doesn’t know how to cure drikana, but they know when people are contagious. I’m out of claustration. I feel fine. Now let’s go.”

Stinky came back in. “What shall we do now?”

Kevin looked at me.

“Kevin and I are going hunting,” I said. “We’ll be back in a while.”

“I’ll come too,” he replied. “If you shoot a deer, we might need the three of us to bring it back.”

“No, uh, why don’t you stay here, Julian. We’ll be all right.”

He looked puzzled and disappointed, but he didn’t argue. He also didn’t say anything when we went down the lane to the road, rather than back into the woods beyond Amity Pond.

I might never see him again, I thought.

Kevin couldn’t have cared less. He practically raced back to the Post Road. When we reached it, we turned right and started heading south. “Give a shout if you spot anything that looks familiar,” he said.

“Sure.”

But it all looked more or less familiar. Or more or less unfamiliar. I peered into the woods on the left and tried to remember any details from those few frantic moments when we raced out of the woods and into the road. “Maybe there?” I suggested at one point, although I couldn’t say why.

But Kevin got excited, and we tramped into the woods and wandered around for a while, waving our hands in front of us. We didn’t find anything, although I spotted a deer staring at us like we were crazy. “Why did you think it was here?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. Just a guess. I can’t really remember anything, Kevin. But I’m trying.”

“All right,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

We went back to the road and continued heading south. We stopped a couple of times more when Kevin thought he spotted something he recognized, and we went through the same routine, walking around in the woods, hoping we stumbled onto the portal. We weren’t just looking for a needle in a haystack, I thought. We were looking for an invisible needle, and we didn’t even know which haystack it was in.

But I wasn’t going to say that to Kevin.

Finally we reached a deserted building called the Wompatuck Inn. I didn’t remember the inn, but Wompatuck was the town just south of Glanbury. We looked at each other. Kevin sat down on a hitching post. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I thought . . . I thought I’d spot something. I thought we’d get lucky for once.”

“We can keep looking, Kevin. We’ve got time.”

“Until Lieutenant Carmody tracks us down. He knows we’re here looking for the portal.”

“He’ll think we’re gone.”

“He won’t be sure. He’ll check. You know he will.”

“Well, it’s got to be here somewhere.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he replied in a tired tone. “We don’t know anything about it–where it came from, how it works. We’re just a couple of stupid kids who did a really stupid thing. And now . . . ”

I didn’t know what to say. Finally Kevin stood up, and we started walking back. He didn’t suggest looking in the woods. “We should do some hunting,” I said after a while.

He just shrugged. We had seen plenty of game besides the deer. When we got near the farm I went back into the woods; Kevin didn’t join me. Within a few minutes I had shot another turkey.

“I’m sick of turkey,” he muttered when I brought it out of the woods with me.

He was not going to be great company, I decided. “Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll search again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he replied. “Whatever.”

When we got back to the farmhouse, Stinky was cooking up fish that he’d caught. If he was curious about why we’d taken so long just to shoot one turkey, he didn’t say so. It wasn’t hard to tell that something was wrong, but he didn’t ask what it was.

So it was a quiet night. Kevin just stared into the fire; he barely touched his supper. I ate enough for two, even though I didn’t like fish. Stinky talked about all the chores he had done, and it made me feel guilty. We went to sleep early, huddled in front of the fire.

I thought about my family–my “real” family–and how annoying they all could be, how rotten my life had been, with the “real” Stinky bugging me and Nora Lally ignoring me and my stupid teachers at The Gross boring me to death. What if I didn’t have a choice–what if we couldn’t find the portal and I had to stay here? No toilets or computers or TV, sure, but I was already used to not having that stuff.

What if I had to stay?

I fell asleep with that thought in my mind.

The next day was cold and raw. Stinky and I did some chores while Kevin moped. “What’s the matter with your friend?” Stinky finally asked me while we were in the barn.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think the battle bothered him. He saw a lot of suffering.”

“We’ve all seen a lot the last few months,” was all he replied.

Eventually I got Kevin to go searching again. Stinky didn’t offer to come with us this time. I think Kevin was really starting to bother him.

We had only seen a couple of travelers yesterday. Today there were a lot of people on the road, all making their way south. We found out from them that no one was being stopped from leaving the city now; in fact, the army was encouraging it. The travelers had the usual variety of rumors about what was happening with the Canadians, but no one said they had defeated us, and that was a good sign.

This time we headed north, back towards Weymouth. We spent most of our time in the woods. What was the point of walking along the road if we had no clue where to look?

After a while it started to snow. “Great,” Kevin muttered. “Now we won’t be able to recognize anything.”

But it wasn’t like we were recognizing anything to begin with.

We made it all the way back to the North River. We watched the snow flecking the gray water for a while in silence, and then Kevin said, “Let’s go back before we freeze to death out here.”

“I’m sorry, Kev.”

He shrugged. “Let’s just go.”

We turned back. The snow was heavier now, and there were fewer people on the road. We trudged along in silence, with our hands jammed into our pockets. The snow was light and fluffy–not good snowball snow, but we were in no mood to throw snowballs. For once I wished I was wearing those big old shoes from this world instead of my sneakers.

After a while I started looking for where we turned off the Post Road. Visibility wasn’t that great anymore, and I sure didn’t want to miss the turn and keep on walking in the snowstorm. Kevin didn’t look like he was going to be much help. Up ahead I could make out a wagon, moving slowly along the road. We got closer. Suddenly the squeaking of the wheels stopped, and I heard a voice. “This is Town Road, I think.”

It was my mother.

I started grinning and ran up to the wagon. “Mrs. Barnes?” I said. “It’s me–Larry Palmer!”

She was sitting on the bench with the reins in her hand. Matthew sat next to her. “Larry?” she whispered. “Sweet Lord, it is.”

There was something about the way she said it. There was none of the excitement and surprise I had expected; it was as if she could barely bring herself to speak. I looked at Matthew; his eyes were red with tears. “Larry, Cassie’s dead,” he said. “Our own soldiers shot her, damn their eyes.”

I stared at my mother, and I knew that it was true. A tear leaked out of her eye and fell down her cheek, mixing with the snowflakes. I came closer and looked in the back of the wagon. There, in the middle of all their snow-covered possessions, wrapped in a sheet, was the outline of a body.

“Oh, no,” I cried. “Oh please, no.”

Mom reached down and touched me on the arm as I, too, started to weep.

A great article about self-publishing ebooks

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Hadn’t heard about Hugh Howey until last week, when Jeff Carver mentioned his success as a self-publisher of speculative fiction. Now he’s written this piece for Salon, which encapsulates a lot of what I think about self-publishing in the ebook world.

With self-publishing, you learn your craft while producing material. You win over your fans directly. You own all of your rights, and your works stay fresh and available for your lifetime (and beyond). Nothing goes out of print. I think this advantage is difficult to fully appreciate. My bestselling work was my eighth or ninth title. As soon as it took off, the rest of my material took off with it. To the reader, it was all brand-new. To those being born today who will become avid readers 15 years from now, those works will still be brand-new. My entire oeuvre will always be in print and always earning me something. Nothing is pulled and returned from the digital bookshelf.

For me, one of the main motivations for entering the ebook world was getting my previously published novels, long out of print, back out onto the market. But even if you haven’t been in print before, self-publishing ebooks really does seem to be the way to go. You may not be successful, but most print authors aren’t successful — I can’t say that I have been particularly successful. At least the books are out there, available to anyone and everyone. And you have a chance of finding an audience, the way Hugh Howey did. And even if you don’t become rich, you’re likely to get more feedback from your readers than most print authors ever get. Here’s a sample of reader reviews of my books in the past few weeks:

On Summit (four stars)

The beginning is a bit confusing but it becomes clear as you go along. I enjoyed this piece of fiction. Valentina and Daniel made very good heroes.

On Dover Beach (five stars):

One of the best scifi books I’ve read in a long time. . . . you’re right there, experiencing everything along with the characters and can’t wait to see what happens next… more please!!

On Senator (five stars):

Kept you guessing til end, lots of twist and turns. Better yet was the way he writes about politics in Washington, where lies are told til they believe they are the truth.

Praise like that is better than money. And I like money!

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.

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.

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.

Portal, an online novel: Chapter 24

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Richard Bowker

Chapter 23: Larry and Kevin make their way through the chaotic city, hoping to reach Glanbury and the portal. But then Larry decides they should help with the imminent battle against the New Portuguese army; they owe it to the place that has been their home for months now. They are separated, and Larry ends up bringing ammunition to the front line. Then he himself becomes part of the battle as the Portuguese army storms over the fortifications; he ends up killing a soldier not that much older than he is. New England wins the battle. But has Kevin survived?

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

Chapter 24

Kevin wasn’t at the ammunition depot when I arrived. Sergeant Dryerson said he’d been sent to Sector 14. “Hard fighting there, I’ve heard. But don’t worry, he’ll be back. Meanwhile, you look like you’ve been through it. How’d you end up with that?” he asked, gesturing at the rifle.

I told him about getting caught in the battle.

The sergeant was impressed. “Hold onto the rifle, lad. It might come in handy. Grab some bullets for it, as long as you’re here.”

“Have you heard anything about the battle with the Canadians?” I thought to ask.

He shook his head. “But it looks like we’ve won half the war–unless the Portuguese decide to regroup and attack again tomorrow. That’s better than some of us thought we’d do.”

What good was it to win half the war, I wondered. I hung around the depot, taking care of the horse and helping to clean up. Outside, the camp was just as busy as before the battle, with wagons clattering over the dirt path and messengers on horseback galloping past them and soldiers trudging back from the fortifications. I kept looking for Kevin’s caisson, but it didn’t show up, and I became more and more nervous. It was getting dark out. What would I do if he didn’t show up?

“Come to the mess with us, lad,” Sergeant Dryerson said to me. “You need a good meal.”

“Thanks, but I guess I’ll stay here and wait for my friend.”

This time he didn’t say anything reassuring. “Do you need a place to stay the night?” he asked gently. “The barracks won’t be full, I fear.”

I just shrugged. I couldn’t think about that right now. The sergeant went off with the other soldiers, and I sat down outside the depot, shivering in the cold, with the rifle by my side. It was starting to get dark. I wondered if my father was all right. And poor fat Benjamin, who had looked so unhappy when Corporal Hennessy told him to report to Sergeant Hornbeam. And Chester, who had saved my life, even if I was a boy. And all the other soldiers I had met. How many people died today that I knew?

Don’t be dead, Kevin, I thought. It had been my idea to volunteer for the battle. He just wanted to go home. So if he died, it was my fault.

“Am I glad to see you,” a voice said.

I looked up and saw a Red Sox cap heading towards me.

For the second day in a row, I was so relieved to see Kevin I thought I’d cry. I was so relieved I didn’t have the energy to tell him how relieved I was. I just kind of waved. He sat down next to me. “It’s cold,” he said.

“Sure is.”

“Think we can get something to eat?”

“They’ll feed us over at the mess.”

We didn’t move, though. We were silent for a while. “My driver was shot,” Kevin said finally. “Killed.”

“Mine too.”

“The caisson got wrecked during the battle, so I had to walk back. Then on the way they asked me to help out on one of the ambulances, take people to the field hospital. Surgery, they call it. What a nasty place. They don’t have, you know, what’s the word?”

I thought. “Anesthesia?”

“Anesthesia. Yeah. They could sure use anesthesia.”

I shivered, thinking about it. “I killed someone, Kevin,” I said. “I got caught in the battle, and I had this rifle, and I shot a Portuguese soldier. In the chest. He wasn’t much older than us.”

“Geez,” Kevin whispered. “You okay?”

“I guess so. I keep telling myself that I didn’t have any choice. Kill or be killed, right? Still.”

“It’s a war,” Kevin said.

“Still.” We were silent some more. Finally I said, “So why don’t we go get some food?”

Kevin didn’t respond. I looked over at him, and tears were streaming down his face. “I want to go home, Larry,” he said. “I want to go home so bad.”

I put my arm around him, and we huddled together in the cold and the dark. In the distance, I thought I could hear screams from the surgery.

Finally it got too cold to just sit there, so we got up and found our way to the mess–a long, low-ceilinged, smoky building with a big fire burning in a fireplace at one end. It was crowded but quiet, despite the victory. We didn’t see Sergeant Dryerson, but we did spot Caleb and Fred, who were happy to have us join them. “You lads turn up everywhere,” Caleb said. “Aren’t you supposed to be back at headquarters?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but everyone had to help out today.”

“That’s surely true. Interesting hat, mate,” he said to Kevin. “‘B’ for Boston?”

“That’s right,” Kevin replied.

“Wish I had me one of those.”

I noticed Sergeant Hornbeam looking at us from another table, but he didn’t come over.

Caleb and Fred told us the latest war news while we ate some cold mutton and hard rolls. We had held the Canadians off for today, but everyone expected another assault; that battle had been nowhere near as decisive as this one seemed to have been. Caleb thought that some troops would be left here to defend the fortifications, but others would be shifted over to reinforce the soldiers fighting the Canadians to the north.

“Maybe the Portuguese will swing around the city and join them,” Fred suggested.

“More likely they got such a licking today that they won’t stop running till they’re back in New Portugal,” Caleb countered.

All the other soldiers at the table got into the discussion about what would happen next. Most agreed with Caleb that the Portuguese were done fighting. “That fence was enough to scare them away,” one said.

“What did that fence do, exactly?” another soldier asked.

“Don’t know, but whatever it was, they surely didn’t like it.”

Kevin didn’t seem interested in any of this discussion. Once he was finished eating, he immediately started asking where we could find a bed for the night.

“Not going back to headquarters?” Caleb asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“By the way, where is that ciphering machine of yours?” Fred asked. “Fellows, you should have seen that machine. It was the darnedest thing . . .”

But Kevin didn’t stick around to listen to them talk about his watch. Instead he got up and left the mess.

“He’s pretty tired,” I explained.

“Don’t blame him,” Caleb said. “We’re in Barracks B, across the way. Tell the orderly to find you lads a spot. Shouldn’t be hard, I’m afraid.”

I thanked Caleb, grabbed my rifle, and went to catch up with Kevin. He was outside the mess. “What’s up?” I asked. “I was going to ask them about who died in the battle. Did I tell you about Professor Foster? He got shot.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kevin said. “We’ve got to get some sleep and head for Glanbury first thing in the morning. Otherwise Lieutenant Carmody is going to find out we’re here and grab us. Everyone in camp is gonna know about the kids with the ciphering machine before long. You think that won’t get back to headquarters?”

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. Do you think we can make it to Glanbury? For all we know, the Portuguese army is still out there.”

“We have a better shot than we did yesterday, Larry. And we can’t stay here. We can’t be in any more battles.”

He was shaking with emotion. He’d had enough. More than enough. “Fine,” I said. I motioned towards the building with the big letter B painted on it. “Let’s go over there and see if we can find a couple of beds. In the morning we’ll figure it out.”

Inside Barracks B a gloomy young soldier sat behind a desk. He must’ve been the orderly. He shook his head when we explained what we wanted. “That’s not procedures,” he said. “If you’re not assigned here, you need an order signed by a colonel.”

“Look,” I said. “We’ve been fighting the Portuguese all day. Now we just want someplace to sleep. We’re too tired to go looking for a colonel.”

“That’s the procedures,” he explained again, as if we were a little slow in understanding. “You’re not even soldiers,” he pointed out. “The rules say you shouldn’t even be in this building.”

“Let them have a bed, you imbecile!” a voice demanded from behind us.

It was Sergeant Hornbeam, his red mustache bristling.

The orderly looked offended. “They need an order signed–”

The sergeant was right in front of him now. “Give them a bed!” he shouted. “Do you have a casualty list?”

“Well, yes, but it’s very preliminary.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s preliminary, now does it?” the sergeant pointed out. “If someone is listed as dead, he’s not coming back to life, is he?”

“Not procedures,” the orderly mumbled. “Highly irregular.”

“These are highly irregular times. Now do it!”

The orderly studied a piece of paper for a second, and then stood up. “Come along then,” he said, without looking at us.

“Thanks, Sergeant,” I said to Sergeant Hornbeam.

He dismissed us with a wave. “Get some sleep,” he said. “There are far too many imbeciles in this army,” he muttered as he walked out the door.

We followed the orderly into a large hall where cots were laid out in long rows. A few soldiers were snoring away, but most of the cots were empty. “There and there,” the orderly said, pointing out a couple of cots near the back.

“Thank you,” I said.

He shook his head. “It’s not right,” he replied. I felt like we had ruined his day.

Kevin slumped down onto one of the cots. “I thought an orderly was, like, someone who mopped floors,” he said.

I shrugged. “In another world,” I murmured. I put my rifle down, flopped onto the cot next to him, and pulled the thin blanket over me. “The guys who slept here last night are dead now,” I said, staring up at the ceiling, which flickered in the lamplight. “Kinda creeps me out.”

“Everything here is creeping me out,” Kevin said. And then after a pause he added: “I wonder why Sergeant Hornbeam was following us.”

“What makes you think he was following us?” I asked. “Maybe he just happened to see us come in here and wanted to do us a favor.”

“Whatever,” he said. “Tomorrow morning we head home.”

I didn’t reply. Too tired. I closed my eyes and thought about the soldier who had lain on this cot last night. Scared. Excited. Maybe too excited to fall asleep. Maybe he wasn’t a whole lot older than me. Maybe he thought he was going to be a hero. And now he was just . . . gone. Lying in the morgue. Probably be buried in the morning, in one of those big holes people like Chester dug. I shuddered and tried to stop thinking about him.

And instead I thought about that other soldier, with the wispy mustache, looking kind of scared as he rushed towards me, his sword gleaming. Where had he slept last night? What had he thought about?

I wondered what happened to the enemy dead–how did they get buried?

It had been a tough day. I just had to stop thinking.

Eventually my body must have agreed, because the next thing I knew I was riding in a wagon at top speed. The road was bumpy and I was being tossed all over the place, but I couldn’t slow down. I didn’t know why at first, and then I realized that Portuguese soldiers were chasing me on horseback. I turned to look at them, and one was the short bearded guy that Chester had killed, and the other was the kid with the wispy mustache, and I tried to shout to them that it was war, kill or be killed, nothing personal, but they didn’t understand or didn’t care, and they were closing in on my wagon, so I had to go faster, faster . . .

I opened my eyes. Kevin was shaking me. “Wake up,” he whispered. “Time to go.”

Groggily I got to my feet. There weren’t any windows, I noticed. Thin gray light came in through chinks in the boards. The soldiers snored and mumbled in their cots. Had I really slept all night? We made our way through the cots and into the outer room. The same orderly was still there. He was half-asleep, but he glared at us as we walked by like we had ruined the war for him. Then we were outside. It was bitter cold. For some reason I thought about the arguments I’d had with my mom about putting on my gloves for the short walk to the bus stop. Wouldn’t it be great if I had gloves?

“Now what?” I said.

“Now we go,” Kevin replied.

“How far is it?” I asked. “Ten miles? Twenty?” I really had no idea how far Glanbury was from Boston. “Think we’ll make it?”

“Yeah, we’ll make it.” He sounded like nothing in this world was going to keep him from making it.

“Well, how do we get past the guards at the fortifications?”

“I dunno. Why should they care? They’re supposed to keep the Portuguese out, not us in. Let’s go down back to the main road and see what’s going on.”

We hadn’t gone twenty feet, though, when I heard a voice behind me. “Hey Lawrence, what are you doing here?”

I turned around and saw Stinky Glover hurrying towards us.

Coincidence? I think not.

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Richard Bowker

This American Life has a podcast called “No Coincidence, No Story,” in which they interview various people about amazing coincidences that happened to them. This American Life is a popular program, so when they asked people to send in their stories, they got well over a thousand responses. That means the ones that actually made it into the program were bound to be pretty amazing. And they were.

The one I liked best was the man who was going to ask his girlfriend to move in with him. On the way he stops at a store to buy something, and he notices that one of the dollar bills he was going to use to has the name of his girlfriend, Esther, printed on it. He thinks this is a charming coincidence, so he holds onto the dollar, puts it in a frame, and gives it to his girlfriend. It turns out that years before, the girlfriend, fed up with her bad relationships with men, impulsively decided to write her name on some dollar bills and put them into circulation. Her idea was that the man who would present her with one of those dollar bills would be her true love. They are now happily married. Sweet!

“No coincidence, no story” is apparently a Chinese proverb. But it doesn’t really apply to modern fiction. I remember reading somewhere that a writer can get away with one coincidence per novel. But even that seems like one too many for plot-driven novels of the sort I like to write. This approaches being a law of fiction, like Chekhov’s Gun. Everything needs to be motivated; events that seem random and improbable need to have a “real” explanation.

But this is not to say that coincidences have no place in storytelling. For example:

Writer like Murakami, Pynchon, and Vonnegut create their own reality. Don’t be surprised if weird things happen in that reality.
Seems to me that there’s no problem with a coincidence starting a plot. That incident with the girl’s name on the dollar bill could motivate a romantic comedy, or even something darker.
Comedies in general can employ coincidences. I’m not a big fan of the movie Love, Actually, but I don’t mind the absurd coincidences that litter the screenplay. For example, the prime minister goes looking for his girlfriend on Christmas Eve (he apparently doesn’t have people who can do this for him). It turns out she lives next door to the secretary who is trying to have an affair with the prime minister’s sister’s husband. Everyone ends up at the big Christmas Eve concert at a nearby school, where most of the rest of the characters in the movie are also in attendance for various random reasons. OK with me.
Thrillers can get away with some coincidences because the reader/viewer isn’t necessarily trying to follow every twist and turn of the plot. Relying on coincidences isn’t exactly a virtue, but it doesn’t necessarily detract from your enjoyment. I watched Rome: Open City for the first time the other night, and I was surprised to discover that it is basically a thriller (the screenplay, oddly, was co-written by Federico Fellini). The plotting is pretty crude, and a coincidence plays a totally unnecessary role in the proceedings. But I realized this only after the movie was over.