The Things That Keep Us Here Read online

  “I need to take water samples.” Peter made his voice mild and nonthreatening, the sound of the professor, not the hunter.

  The son scowled at the horizon. The rising sun was beginning to thin the fog and cast a general yellow glow over the marsh. The father busied himself in the boat.

  “We don’t find the cause, the whole season could be like this.” Peter indicated the ducks lying on the pier.

  A quick glance from the father.

  “You try that ointment I recommended?” Peter said. “For Gus?” He hoped he’d remembered the Lab’s name.

  The son said, “Yeah. His rash is getting better.”

  Peter nodded. “He should be able to get in the water in another week.”

  Father and son looked at each other. The father rubbed his chin and then shrugged. “Come on, then. It’s a piss-poor spot, anyway.”

  THEY MOTORED THROUGH THE REEDY WATER. PETER SAT IN the middle, the father at the stern, steering. The son knelt in the prow. Once they were out on open water, the father revved the engine and they bounced across the polished silver surface.

  Cold wind buffeted Peter’s hair. Spray whipped across his face. The shoreline opened up on both sides, lined by sycamores and red maples blooming gold and crimson and reflected between sky and water. Spangles of sunlight below, bright sky and a wisp of cloud above. Flapping geese lifted themselves from hiding, sounding mournful echoing honks. It was nice to be out here. Uncomplicated.

  The son shouted something to his father, stretched out his arm and pointed. The father yelled something unintelligible back.

  Peter turned his head and saw a distant dark shape. Another boat trolling these same hunting grounds. The father made a wide loop, watching the other boat as it chopped past, then opened up and headed north.

  After a while the engine shifted into a lower gear, and their boat, turning, cut through the waves, rolling in its own wake. The engine slowed even further, thrummed. Around another curve, and there was the duck blind. Wooden poles rose from the water, their tops shrouded with branches, to form an unlikely tree house in the middle of the lake. The two men had taken care constructing it, weaving the branches in a dense mesh, leaving a space high enough to allow them to slide their boat inside.

  They slowly circled the structure.

  “See?” the son said. “Nothing.”

  Peter unstoppered a tube and leaned over the side to dip it into the icy water.

  “How’s it look?” the father said.

  “I won’t know anything until I get back to the lab.” But the tea-colored water appeared clean enough. No scum or creeping algae that would indicate bacterial overgrowth, no white froth or oily bubbles that would suggest a chemical spill. Peter pressed the stopper on top, looked around. It was a peaceful, beautiful morning. Despite it, he felt a growing unease. “Where were the ducks when you found them?”

  The son turned around in his seat. “Over there.” He pointed to where the shoreline bulged out into the water.

  “Waited for two hours,” the father said. “And then those four showed.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Peter said.

  “It’s all the same lake,” the father said.

  “There could be something over there, though, that’s not over here.”

  “Like a dead animal?”

  Peter shook his head. “Teal don’t feed on carrion, but maybe it’s a localized contamination, someone dumping something where they shouldn’t.” That’d be a welcome sight—a big old rusted barrel sticking out of the water and disrupting the delicate harmony between bird and environment. Even a discarded paint can would do.

  The father brought the boat around and sliced through the marshy water.

  “Fish look okay,” the son said, staring down into the water. “There’d be floaters otherwise, right?”

  “Some things can affect one species and do nothing to another,” Peter answered. “There are plenty of diseases that are fatal to birds that pass right through fish. And vice versa.”

  “Where again?” the father said.

  “Around there,” the son said. “Careful. Water’s getting shallow.”

  The engine dropped to a slow chug. Another tight turn. The engine stuttered, then stopped. All three men stared at the sight before them.

  On the clear water, surrounded by golden reeds, bobbed a legion of blue-winged teal, hundreds of them, mottled brown and cream, every one of them silent and turned the wrong way up.

  TWO

  THE BIRD TUMBLED IN FREE FALL, ITS WINGS OUTSTRETCHED, its yellow beak gaping wide. A cat waited below, a wide grin splitting its whiskered face.

  Ann tilted the painting toward her. “Wow, Hannah. This is some story.”

  “Her kitten caught a bird yesterday,” Maddie said. She and Hannah sat close together, their chairs practically touching. “And killed it.” She shuddered.

  Hannah nodded, a little ruefully, Ann thought. “My mom says Furball is a real hunter.”

  Across the table, Jodi sniggered. Her sheet of paper lay before her, untouched. “With a name like that, he’d better be.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Maddie said. “You just wish you had a new kitten.”

  So did Maddie. But that would never happen.

  “It looks like you’re having trouble getting started, Jodi,” Ann said. “Why don’t you go through the book on my desk for ideas?”

  “I know what I want to do.” Jodi narrowed her eyes and stuck out her lip. “I want to make a story about an airplane, but you said the Aborigines don’t have planes.”

  So Jodi had been paying attention. Good for her. Sometimes Ann wondered if Jodi had some sort of attention disorder. Next time she saw Jodi’s mom at the mailbox, she’d find a polite way to ask. Ann barely knew Sue Guarnieri, so no telling how she’d react, even if Ann was the child’s teacher. “Well, this is your story, Jodi, not an Aborigine’s. You can paint an airplane if you like. Maybe you could paint a story about a trip you’re planning on taking with your parents.”

  The corners of Jodi’s mouth turned down. “My mom and dad don’t take me on their trips. They say I’m too young. They make me stay home with Nana and Poppa. And Nana makes me wear stupid dresses and Poppa won’t let me drink pop at dinner.”

  Until she started teaching, Ann had no idea how much personal stuff children revealed in the classroom. She could just imagine what Kate and Maddie had been saying this past year. “Well, you can make a picture about the trips you’d like to take when you’re old enough.”

  A heavy sigh, then Jodi dragged the paper toward herself. “I guess.”

  Beside Jodi, Heyjin worked on, seemingly oblivious to the chatter around her. Maybe she couldn’t follow it. The principal had assured her that Heyjin spoke English, but the girl had hardly spoken a word since appearing in Ann’s class two weeks ago. Instead, she usually just sat and nibbled on her fingernails, watching everyone out of the corners of her eyes.

  But today she was really digging in. Perhaps Heyjin had finally caught on. Or maybe there was something about this particular art style that spoke to her.

  “Heyjin?” Ann said. “How’s your painting coming?”

  At the sound of her name, the little girl glanced up, her dark eyes sober behind the round lenses of her glasses, her black hair parted precisely down the middle and tied into tight pigtails. She lowered her head and went back to work.

  So maybe she didn’t understand English.

  Ann observed the child for a moment. Heyjin certainly seemed to have grasped the process. She dipped the cotton swab into the paint and coated the tip with just the right amount of paint, exactly as Ann had demonstrated, before carefully carrying it to the paper and pressing firmly to form a tidy dot. But when Ann looked to the paper itself, she realized that the concept might have eluded Heyjin: the entire sheet was peppered with uniform brown dots, every one of them barely perceptible against the black surface. No story there at all.

  Ann could suggest that Heyjin try a diffe
rent color. But the girl seemed so content. Ann decided to let her be. Art was all about self-expression. Heyjin certainly seemed to be expressing something. Ann just didn’t know what it was.

  She glanced up and found Maddie watching her. “What’s your story about, honey?”

  Maddie curled her arm protectively around her work. “Don’t look until I’m done.”

  But Ann had already glimpsed enough to guess: happy family. The symbols for father, mother, and two children marched down the middle of the page. A big arc soared over their heads. Was that what Maddie imagined would happen to them, that after the storms of this past year, a rainbow would climb into the sky? But not every story had a happy ending.

  “Mrs. Brooks?” Jimmy had his hand up. “I forgot what you do for a campfire.”

  Ann forced down the knot of sadness lodged in her throat and turned to her class. “Does anyone else remember?”

  Hannah waved her arm. “It’s a circle with a dot in the middle.”

  “Very good, Hannah.” Walking to the board, Ann picked up a stick of chalk and drew the dashes for rain, the wavy lines for river, the oblong man and semicircular woman. “Don’t forget how important color is. The Aborigines use color to express mood.” Now she made the honey ant and the kangaroo. “Red for happy—”

  A siren shrieked, shattering the calm. Puzzled, Ann turned from the board. A fire drill wasn’t on the schedule, not so far as she knew.

  A few children were standing and scraping their chairs back. Others groaned and pretended not to hear, still bent over their drawings.

  “Come on, everybody.” Ann clapped her hands. “Who’s my line leader?”

  Steven waved. “Me!”

  “You come right here and stand by the door. Everyone line up behind Steven.”

  “But I’m not done,” Jodi said. “Just leave it, honey. Come on.”

  “I only have to do this one part.”

  “It’s okay. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Jodi pushed back her chair and dragged herself over to where the other children lined up by the door. But Heyjin was still in her seat, looking around with wide eyes. Had she any idea what was going on?

  “It’s all right, Heyjin. It’s the fire alarm.” Ann held out her hand. Even if the child didn’t understand the language, she could follow gestures. “We have to go.”

  Heyjin allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.

  “Follow Maddie, okay?” Ann guided her into line. She strode to the front of the room. “All right, Steven. Let’s go.”

  They burst through the heavy door onto the playground. Groups of children stood clustered here and there, chattering excitedly as more children streamed from the building. A little girl stumbled, and Ann helped her up, leading her class to a spot by the swings.

  “It’s freezing,” Jodi said. “I need my coat.”

  Which was back in her homeroom, hanging from its hook. “Stamp your feet,” Ann said. “Think warm thoughts.” She went down the straggly line of shivering children, counting.

  Another teacher was going down her line. “It’s the real thing,” she said in a low voice.

  Ann glanced at her. “What happened?”

  The woman rolled her eyes. “One of the parents was showing the fourth-graders how a volcano works and blew up the science lab.”

  “Omigod,” Jodi wailed. “We’re going to be out here forever.”

  “Oh, it won’t be that long.” Ann absently patted Jodi’s shoulder. She’d counted nineteen children. That wasn’t right. There were twenty in Maddie’s class. She began counting again.

  “I want to go back inside.”

  “Can I play on the playground while we wait?”

  Maddie, Hannah, Jodi …

  “Is that smoke?”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, right there. See? Coming out of that window.”

  Kristen, Michael, Foster, Stephanie … Wait a minute. Where was Heyjin? Ann spun in a circle, scanning the playground for a petite child in a bright red sweatshirt. “Does anybody see Heyjin?”

  Maddie shook her head as Jodi said, “She’s inside.”

  That couldn’t be. Ann herself had placed her in line.

  Jodi shrugged. “She doesn’t ever go outside.”

  “It’s true, Mom,” Maddie said. “Heyjin doesn’t like the playground.”

  Ann stared at Maddie, then wheeled around to the other teacher. “Would you keep an eye on my class?”

  No way back into the building but through the main entrance, the black double doors standing wide open. The unrelenting alarm wailed as red warning lights pulsed along the ceiling. No one stood in the hall. The front-office staff was gone, and classroom after classroom stood empty.

  A gray haze drifted down the far corridor. Ann wheeled in the opposite direction, almost running toward the art room, and yanked open the door. Everything was as they’d left it, papers strewn across the tables, chairs akimbo. No sign of Heyjin anywhere. Could Jodi have been mistaken? No. Maddie had nodded in agreement.

  The supply closet. There Heyjin crouched, her arms around her bent knees, a pigtail undone and hanging in glossy tendrils.

  Relief rushed through Ann, cold and filling. “Oh, thank God, Heyjin!” She held out her hand. “Come on. We have to go.”

  Heyjin shook her head hard enough to dislodge another plait of her hair.

  A fire truck wailed in the distance. “I’ll carry you.”

  The girl pressed herself deeper into the corner. “I not going.”

  So she did speak English. The siren grew louder. Colored lights sliced across the ceiling. She bent and gripped the child beneath her armpits, pulled her out of her hiding place.

  Heyjin wriggled and twisted, trying to get free. “No, no.”

  “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.” Ann pressed her to her shoulder and ran down the smoky hall, Heyjin’s small hands flat against her and pushing.

  Maddie would be panicked, seeing the emergency vehicles and knowing her mother was still inside.

  The doors were just ahead. The siren shrieked overhead in great pulsing bursts, and Heyjin writhed in Ann’s arms. The bulky shapes of the firefighters appeared in the doorway, dragging the long fire hose. Their masked faces turned toward her as she pushed past them.

  Outside, she sank, sweating and breathless, onto a bench. Heyjin scrambled out of her arms and onto the bench beside her. Ann wanted to shake the child. What on earth had prompted her to behave in such a way? “Heyjin, what is the matter?”

  Heyjin looked around at the people massing on the grassy slope, and the fire trucks lining the curb. She shrank back, turning her head and burying her face against Ann’s shoulder. She grew almost limp. Ann slid an arm around her and drew her close. She felt the hard beating of the child’s racing heart, the dampness of the little girl’s tears seeping through her blouse. “Heyjin?”

  “My daddy die. My daddy did.” The words came out muffled.

  Ann held her breath. She’d had no idea. Why wasn’t this in the child’s file? Why on earth hadn’t anyone told her about Heyjin’s problems? “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

  Heyjin lifted her chin and looked at Ann. Her cheeks were pink and the lenses of her glasses smeared with tears. She held her gaze for a long moment. It was as though she was searching for something. Then she spoke. “First the chickens get sick. Then Daddy did.”

  There were no poultry farms in this school district. Then Ann understood. “In Korea?”

  Heyjin nodded.

  Korea was dangerous. There had been several barely contained flu outbreaks there. Millions of chickens had been slaughtered. A hundred people had died. One of them must have been this child’s father. Ann pulled the child into her embrace. “You’re safe now, honey. I promise. You’re safe.”

  After a moment, she felt the girl’s arms come up and circle her neck. Ann held her close, the child’s hair soft against her cheek, and rocked her. She couldn’t imagine what Heyjin had witnessed back in Korea. It was a mir
acle she’d escaped unharmed.

  It was a miracle they’d let her into the country.

  Heyjin cuddled closer and spoke softly into Ann’s ear. Ann had to bend to hear the child’s whispered words. “It coming here.”

  THREE

  PETER LIFTED A HAND TO LEWIS AS HE HURRIED DOWN the corridor. He owed the guy a draft of the grant they were working on, but it’d have to wait.

  He sliced his keycard through the reader. The lock sprang open and he stepped into the carpeted veterinary science suite of labs and offices. Pushing open the door to his lab, he saw Shazia working at the bench along one side of the room. Another student worked the microcentrifuge beside her.

  Peter frowned at him. “You chewing gum?”

  “Sorry.” The boy shot upright and looked around. Peter pointed to the trash can. The kid had probably been chewing it when he’d entered the room. A common mistake but one that needed correcting. With all the pathogens in here, they could never relax their guard.

  Shazia scraped back her stool. “Peter?”

  “Hold on.” Peter reached for the phone on the counter. “Dan,” he said when the fellow answered. “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

  “What’s up?” echoed Dan’s voice.

  Peter set down his cooler. “We’ve got a die-off.”

  A rustle of paper over the phone. “Where?”

  “Sparrow Lake. Northwest tip.”

  “How bad?”

  “Two, three hundred. All of them teal.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Looks viral to me.”

  “Shit.” A pause. “You think we’ve got Qinghai Lake on our hands?”

  “I don’t know.” Peter had pored over the photographs from that massive die-off in China a number of years before, when avian influenza had killed more than five thousand migratory birds. It was too early to know what was going on here, but Dan had given voice to Peter’s greatest fear. What if H5N1 had landed here, right in Peter’s backyard?

  “When will you get back to me?”

  Dan knew as well as anyone that running the initial tests was a full-day process. It was impossible to make it go any faster. “First thing in the morning. Tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”