26/5/1975

Today I woke up to the smell of dad getting his bacon-cooking skills back. Thinking about yesterday over one of the best breakfasts I had in weeks, I decided to maybe reframe the whole chasing-some-random-artisan thing as a way to spend more time with Janet before she’s off. Despite the whole writing-in-my-diary thing. De Santis oughta be proud of me. I mean, he really should be, even if I hadn’t come to such a conclusion. Especially considering how much we pay him. And no, Janet. He isn’t covered by our CL&M healthcare insurance.

Anyway, that was the extent of the good news. I had a hunch things were going south the moment I stepped into the yard and saw Green & Mean slowly chewing on the last of what I am pretty sure was a pound of fresh lettuce. From yesterday. Damn beast tracked me like a camera when I went out to school.

There, I learned that Mrs. Hopkins’ baby had decided to come a few weeks early, and so what was going to be a math lesson turned into a lecture about drugs. The Principal called in this tall broad in her mid-40s, brownish hair done in a ponytail, purple tracksuit. Taut smile, teeth pearlier than the heavenly gates, grey eyes scything through us. Separating the chaff from the fecund.

She had CL&M Middle-Upper Management stamped all over her admittedly wrinkle-free. One look at dear Tara, and it was all but confirmed. She’d turned stormy, as if someone had walked over her desk and took a steaming dump all over it. Which Judith- Or Judy, as she insisted we’d call her- Pretty much did. Verbally. Don’t think we’re quite there yet in terms of degradation.

But it was Tara and Tara only who had her war-face on. For the rest of us? For a while it was just the usual you-don’t-need-drugs-to-succeed-in-life, coming from a woman whose haircut alone was probably upper double digits. I bet from one of these fancy haute-couture hairdressers with top of the line space-age scissors and razors and these hypodermal treatments that make you shed a decade. Yes, Judith, I can spell haute couture. Having studied abroad doesn’t make you special, dolt.

Tara was, unsurprisingly, of the same opinion. What was surprising is that she outright told me so, coming over to my corner during recess. “What a total skank”, she groused quietly. Knowing that it was pretty much T’s opinion on every member of the female sex that wasn’t her- Or Hannah, God bless her innocent soul- Or of hers, I sort of nodded along. “Someone you know from church?”

That turned out to be the right choice of words. She made a thoroughly disgusted face. “Hah, no. Some random cheapskate from upriver, from Dr. Cobb’s congregation.” Oh la la, sectarianism. Then Tara frowned. “..But dad likes her.” So I have to put up with her. Poor girl.

“She doesn’t look so cheap”, I found myself telling her. To which she agreed sullenly. “She’s one of these regional managers for CL&M, I think. “So what was she doing here? Tara must’ve had the same thought, because she looked at me expectantly. As I’d know, somehow. Cue the embarrassed silence. Eventually we sort of just split off, and the day continued as usual.

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Wowee, dodged a bullet, it seems. Carl was home, talking to dad in hushed tones. I snuck up to them, in the kitchen. The gist of what they were nattering about was that Carl’s crazy cat lady friend had been finding herself short a cat or two every four, or five days. It wouldn’t have been a problem, ‘tilll the carcasses turned up on one of the trails near her home.

Which, coincidentally, happened to be not so far from one of the woodland churches. Not two minutes of walking away. A third of that, if you’re hightailing out of it. Or if you are some predatory quadruped playing with the local stray population. Timmy used to tail these trails, before meeting Old Biter. Billy too. Heck, I think Derek jogs there regularly.

Too close to home. And we didn’t even have a wire mesh fence. And that, that seemed to be the objective of Carl’s pep-talk to dad. He was sort of shuffling with his hands in his pockets, talking about fences and their pricing while dad nodded along. You could scarcely believe they were brothers, with lanky, lean Carl and my stout, portly man of a dad. Even as I hurried around the kitchen, they didn’t as much as glance at me. “You know, there’s-” Carl drew the image with his fingers in the air. “These thick ones that use metal poles, PVC inserts and-” Dad nod-nodded. “Yeah, yeah, sure, these.”

They both looked like they didn’t have a good night of full sleep in a long while. Unsure how to voice my worry, I scurried back to the living room. Just in time for the girls to ring up. Hannah was carrying enough books to fuel a small furnace, Janet twice as that. What was more impressive was that these were thin notebooks as much as thick, leather bound tomes and cardboard containers. We convened over the table in the dining room, and even as we started our work, thoughts of Timmy getting a leg bitten off by some critter skulking in the forest swam around in my head. Right as I needed a clear mind the most. You go, Lauren.

Thankfully, what Janet called “The first pass” consisted largely of checking the logs for the, ahem, the Vandermeere & Affiliates Logging & Refining Company. A dozen or so notebooks, thin and leatherbound.

It took me a few minutes to make connections. There were names, surnames belonging to great-grandparents, to the lost aunts and uncles of people I’d sit at launch with, people my parents regularly worked with. Considering the oldest one Janet could get her hands on was from 1904 it wouldn’t surprise me if some of our classmates’ grandparents actually met or worked with this mysterious HW.

Who turned out to be someone called “Horace Wells”, listed in a few workshops’ logbooks. A chap who apparently spent a lot of time taking commission work. Nothing surprising there.

What was slightly surprising was the lack of any personal info. There were more photographs of his handiwork than references to his past, to any relatives, to his eventual future.

There we had the work of a man, thirty years of his carvings, and not a single other thing. There were cabinets, outdoor decorations on porches and facades. Some of them sporting the rough-hewed look of the statue of the Virgin we’d found, others far more delicate. It’s the latter that tugged at my memory, just a bit. THink I’d seen them- Or at least very convincing copies- Around the town hall, others in the principal’s office and around mom’s offices, that time we visited the place back in elementary school. Even some in Mrs. Dartmouth’s house.

Simple yet austere designs, oak polished to a near shine, hints of a geography carved into the wood with gentle lines. Did kind of remind me that yes, our furniture isn’t this good. But hey, these things probably would cost us a good thousand or so bucks.

Which is a thought I voiced to Janet, there and then. She lifted her head from some notebook and raised an eyebrow, interested. Would it be possible, I theorized, for some pieces to be left around, circulating in the second-hand furniture market? She nodded. “Food for thought:” Laconic. Cryptic. As always. Still, there I had the feeling we’d head Downtown soon.

27/5/1975

There were a lot of busy people around the center today. Mostly veterans getting treated for Saigon Syndrome, judging by how many of them were shirtless or sleeveless. Sat next to one while I waited for De Santis. I think he was 21, 22 tops, must’ve been in some pretty bad accident ‘cause he had a replacement for his left arm up to his shoulder. Had a nasty diagonal scar across his check, the blonde buzzcut telling me that he’d come home only recently. Asked him if it was one of the new grafts from Mt. Paracelsus.

That snapped him out of his reverie. He’d been clenching his hand, all black rubbery fingerpads and some silvery smooth shell. Looking at his fingers go. His movements were slow, almost languid. Must’ve gotten it early on.

Frank, his name is, was seemingly weirded out by the idea of a teenager girl wanting to talk, and even touch his prosthetic. Told him I didn’t mind this stuff. Told him that my dad had exosurgery done as well. That seemed to get him to open up a bit. Smile a bit. It also made his eyes light up. “Oh, you’re David’s kid, aren’tcha?” Man, we’ve got like five years of difference between us. But yes, I am his kid. Turns out Frank’s dad used to work with my own, same team. He moved to a surface squad before the incident, and by then, Frank was already enlisted. Wouldn’t even be home if it hadn’t been for a faulty steel cable.

We were going to talk about his graft when De Santis pushed open the doors of the waiting hall with his casual grand gesture, striding forth in all of his confident long-haired glory. He smiled as he saw the two of us. Third most genuine smile he’d given me this month and a half, I reckon. Frank was happy to see him as well, all grinning like a good ol’ American boy.

So was I, but for completely different reasons. As De Santis shepherded me towards his office, I ended up spotting a little wooden cabinet in one of the offices, covered in wavelike carvings. A similar one was sitting in a closet in the doc’s office, and when asked about it, he told me he’d bought it off an auction Downtown. Sensing my interest, we’d ended up talking about the research. We spent a good portion of the hour over it. Managed to weave in my worries for Timmy as well.

It felt like the hardest part to tackle. As I talked, it occured me that Tim had no uncle Carl to teach him the alphabet with animals, or no aunt Francis to babysit when mom was busy fixing bugs in some data center, just to use some anecdotes dad likes to tell again and again. De Santis was blunt: It was part of my shared duty. It was as much a burden as a privilege to be able to shape such a young mind, to sum it up. Told him that I’d be plenty happy with just Timmy settling down a moment, smelling the roses, not going around trying to re-house bee hives. With his bare hands.

He took this as a sign of “Inner emotional unrest”, so he gave me a sealed copy of one of those E-Motive tests. Hopefully, that’d allow him to suss out if there is something wrong with him. Beyond his Timmyness, that is. And since taking Tim to the center again would probably be too stressful, I have to find a way to convince him to take this damn thing. Or more specifically, to not wander off while doing it. On the bright side: It does look like something NASA’d put out, and De Santis told me a variant gets used to screen airforce pilots. So at least visually it will probably grab his interest.

And it’s going to be a good addition to the diary. De Santis OK’d my idea of continuing it until the new school year. Going to need it, once we’re done with the research and I end up all alone, with my thoughts. And family. And duties.

Note to Self: Look into this whole “SPA: Beauty & Relaxation” offer that’s been making the rounds. At this rate- And with this brand of hair sprays- I am going to end up going bald in my twenties.