Cat-born Parasites

Hey, been a while. I have fifteen minutes before I go to my new doctor, perfect time to post something. My old and revered doctor left suddenly and with no forwarding address. It must have been the scabies and ringworm from last summer's invasion of the alien skin-sucking cat-born hell parasites. He probably thought it would only get worse, and he was right about that. So I'm entertaining a fearless new doctor today.

But with Jupiter and some other heavenly body conjuncting, this is supposed to be an awesome month for me. New short stories are cooking in the brain pan, Madison is out toddling into the mailboxes of busy, busy agents. Question: I always hear other writers in the forums at Absolute Write talk about how they get these nearly instantaneous responses to their e-mail queries. What gives? I am haunting the inbox a little obsessively as I wait.

Rewrites on the novel were very consuming. I spent nearly all my free time napping with a pillow over my head trying to avoid opening the file. Once I got going, I only had one rule: rip the stupid out. I'll post a revised first chapter later and you can see whether I succeeded. There are still issues with the manuscript, as of course there will be until the end of time, but I am reasonably confident that it is as done as three long years can make it.

This week's short story stats:
0 submissions / 0 responses / 2 submissions out there
2 stories accepted but not live / 8 accepted and live

Miscellany:
1 not done yet--biographical essay
2 short story starts
2 short story rewrites in progress
3 ideas for new novel (whoa, Nellie!)

More rewrites. And more and more

Here it is, January already, and the calendar has ticked over, reminding me to create a new folder and start dropping my weekly Madison rewrites into a sector that has a new year. Shall we call it draft three?

This is what I like about my rewrites:
-- Ctrl X all those dumb bits that make me cringe.
-- Ctrl V all those wait-a-minute bits from earlier drafts that made a lot more sense than I remembered.

This is what I dislike:
-- My life, novel writing for the ages.
-- Will it never end, dear god?
-- I've lost track.
-- I'm slashing plot points now.
-- Yoo hoo! Mr. Scrap Man! Want a novel?

From 310 pages, I'm down to 283. As diets go, I'm not going to impress anyone with an 8% loss. But there is a lot of clutter gone, all the junk I threw in the sink and hid in the closets. I thought I might need those old thrift store golf clubs and a third coffee grinder with a cracked lid. Turns out it was just there to make me cringe.

You know how with short stories, you write everything like a crow gathering shiny bits. Then you reread it and pick your battle. It's a short story, dude, not opera. Once the excess is gone, you might (sometimes in a blue moon, doesn't happen often) see that the 100 words left behind really do represent everything you meant to say back when you were using 1000 words to say it.

On a bloated, ocean liner scale, novel rewrites might function the same way. I've just never spent so long rewriting a novel before. Heavenly days, it's been a long time.

In the furthermore department, it isn't raining. At the moment. I'm off my bike for…I'm not sure how long. Until I miss it again. I love the bike. Her name is Argenta, she's two years old. I bought her with the proceeds of an ill-advised art sale, a very nice abstract painting from 1958, one of Lee's I rescued from the dustbin of history. I shouldn't have parted with it. But the bike has been nice.

Except I'm a bored with biking. It has all the stress of driving and none of the mindlessness of walking. Fall down, you break something, get hit, you die. Also, I never have any sense of improving on the hills. Someone passed me on the Linn Avenue hill once going oh, eight miles an hour, and she said, "It never gets any easier, you just go faster." Now that's a real philosophical statement, one that gives a girl pause. It NEVER gets any easier? Who cares about going faster? That's what downhill is for.

So I'm walking again.

The meme of Evan Lewis

I have no idea what memed is, Evan Lewis, you sneaky reprobate. Memed can't be a word one would toss onto a Scrabble board. But there it is and here I am.

So what have I been doing until the moment Dave, er, Evan, memed me? I haven't been posting here, so I must have been doing something, right?

1) Basically, I've been dodging the whole Facebook question for the last month. A lot of people have tried to friend me and I've belayed their friendliness until I come up with a position statement about Facebook. As in, How Facebook Fits into My Life.

2) I went to a party where there was dancing. Much fun was had by me. In fact it was an awesome, sweaty, inebriated time, the likes of which I haven't had in at least three years.

3) Going to Nepal in November. Much planning and salting away of funds. I bought a pair of very lovely Asolo boots for the adventure. And I hope to experience more awesome, sweaty, inebriated times while wearing these pretty little things.

4) Research on Civil War-era gunshot wounds.

5) Dealing with pets, dealing with ringworm and pets, dealing with the skin and fur of several mammal species including humans, all of whom had various itchy things afflicting them. Dealing with pet therapy, pet accomodations, pet birth control, pet loss, pet gain. Talking to the Humane Society about Cat #701.

In a nutshell, that's what I've been doing until this meming thing happened to me. Why, Evan, why?

Q&A
Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Saltines in bed. Or saltines in the bath when reading critique partners' work.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I hate reading my old comments later, like my college text of Aeschylus. As if I had an opinion at eighteen. Or more likely, as if I could have a better opinion now. In addition, I'm unlikely to do volunteer proofreading; I do enough of that already for my critique partners.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?
Dog-ear, baby. I want the book to know I'm there.

Laying the book flat open?
I have two library books lying just so right now. I know it's bad. In library materials, however, an unmolested book is an unloved book. I like opening a book that has a hint of an old lady's perfume clinging to the pages. Once I checked out a copy of Dracula that had tiny smears of bitter chocolate in the margins of the pages. Children's book should be battered from repeated readings, pages bleary, the spines utterly broken. I can't imagine a greater compliment to an author than to autograph a well-loved, much read book. For my own materials, I have reader copies and shelf copies. I'm not to be trusted with a book I like.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
There's a difference?

Hard copy or audiobooks?
All of it. In both ears and the eyes as well.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
I have to stop on a dime. I have kids and cats.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
There are no unfamiliar words. I've heard them all.

What are you currently reading?
House of Lost Souls by F.G. Cottam (excellent first novel), Muddy Tracks by some new age guy (not recommending this much), Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller (awesomeness, complete brilliance). On tape: Kate Wilhelm. I have a Tanith Lee at the top of the pile but the premise reminds me of a particular first season episode of Star Trek TNG. My life will be more pleasant if I never have to see the episode again, or think those thoughts. So maybe not this Tanith Lee.

What is the last book you bought?
I think it was a cookbook by Ferran Adria. Obviously not for me.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
Usually two by the bed, an audio book at work and another in the kitchen. Don't want to miss anything.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
I love to read in bed and sadly that means nighttime reading. If I could, I'd be there all day long.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Geez, don't get me started. I mean it, don't ask me about series books. I might give my opinion about the waste of paper and breath and time and all those dead trees and why no one edits anymore and the hours I'll never get back trying to remember what happened in volume three and the erosion of my intellect when I realize how many brain cells got burned when I read volume four. If you can't say it one book, why, god, why write sixteen? The only exception is Dorothy L. Sayers. Rebus. That chick in the UK.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
They are ALL beautiful to me. Jane Eyre, The Things They Carried, Sherlock Holmes (series, K. Shut up!), Jane Austen, The Haunting of Hill House, Snowcrash, Red Square and Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, The Day of the Triffids, Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale, anything Ron Carlson. Howl's Moving Castle, Harry Potter, LOTR, Dracula. All James M. Cain, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Michael Chabon, David Mitchell. Don't forget Joss Whedon, Francis Ford Coppola. Pick it up, read it, pass it on.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
They are alpha by author right now (not my idea). I used to have them by color.

Happy now, Dave, er, Evan? I need a new box of saltines and a chapter of Davy, please.

Passionate and Dangerous

Whaddaweekend here at Madison World. First, I'm going to pass over Saturday completely, except to say I had a glass of wine at the Big Pond with R and that made everything all right again. Finally finished book two in the wasted space trilogy. It's a blessing I can't remember dude's name or where he lives because oh my god, one volume would have been enough already! How many trees, dude? How many hours will I never get back—at my age, they are numbered and I have to be careful with them. But that's Saturday again and I said I wasn't going to talk about Saturday. Started an encyclopedic compendium of vampire literature wherein I learn that Madame Blavatsky was a better writer than John Polidori. Despite this injustice, one might wish that Madame had died at age twenty-six and John gone on to an illustrious career of table-rapping. I have a little thing for the passionate deaths of the tumble-locked boys of the Romantic pen. Check out the death section of Shelley's bio in Wikipedia. They say John offed himself with prussic acid, which Wiki tells me is the shmancy name for hydrogen cyanide. That would have looked good on Madame.

So I don't know if I'm going to get through the vampire bookie thingie. I used to love the undead creatures of the night, back in the day when they were the maligned and forgotten denizens of late night television, i.e. The Night Stalker. They are just too too everywhere you want to be right now, and little girls want to play with them, and we're back to dangerous and forbidden sex—what is this, the 1950's? As a mom, I am all about dangerous sex. As a lady of mature years (and by mature, I mean fit, nowhere near fifty, and popping with new ideas) I am even more all about dangerous sex. That is, one might say (by one I mean I) the motto of my life. But still, guys, you think the glittery-skinned, vegetarian saltpeter Tweelight is actually going to tamp those unruly passions? See death of Shelley above.

I've got the Dennis Lehane historical going on the cd player. (Almost said "toaster" but that term is dead to me now.) The reader does good accents, but he has a kind of happy, storybook voice that makes the book sound like a bible story. Note to Lehane: don't DO that. Speaking of audio, what about that Jonathan Davis? He read Snowcrash and mmmm, I like to visit the audiobook once a year or so just to hear him say "Hiro Protagonist". He may also have done the voice mail system for DHL. What would you call a woman who sent all her old toner cartridges back to Xerox via DHL just to hear that guy's voice? Target audience.

Revision or Why I Keep So Many Drafts

Revision.
Everyone has ideas, but good ones…oh, they come from the source. Like most writers, I have ideas that exist in all their platonic beauty on the upper shelf, where I can't quite reach them. We love to talk about where ideas come from, but it's harder to talk about how and why the final object comes out looking so plain when the idea is still sitting on the shelf glowing. I have short stories that take years to complete. Maybe I'm waiting for the moment the idea loses its power over me so that I can focus on what's good enough about the story.

Anyway, we're not going to talk about the idea triumvirate—getting them, keeping them, letting them go. What I'd like to resolve for myself is how revision can support a good idea or kill it. Also known as Why I Keep So Many Drafts.

I'm going to use the first paragraphs of Madison as an example. As I've said before, I wrote this novel in a white heat last summer. It shows.

From June 28, 2008:
Cooksey wasn't memorable except for the fact he could read. The first time I noticed him we were all on lunch break and he had a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire open on his lap.

I walked over. "Do you think it's an apt comparison?"

He looked up at me, one more stringy-haired, beat stranger who'd come to the valley to work for my dad. "Have you read it?"

"Saw the movie."

"Madison!" yelled Dad. He never liked us talking to the migrants.

What did I know, as the author that you can't see in the text? This is a PA world and there are no movies. Madison is the most popular baby name for 2008. Madison is a girl. At this point I didn't know who Cooksey was or why Dad was so grouchy about migrants. What was the most important thing about this for me? Madison is curious, mouthy, a little rebellious. I was working on her voice.

-----------------
From September 1, 2008, the first time my critique group saw it:

In a world with no television, people ought to be reading. That was my opinion. Yet I never saw anyone do it until a migrant named Tierney pulled out a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and started to read it during lunch break.

I carried the water bucket over to him. "Do you think it's an apt comparison?"

He looked up, one more stringy-haired, beat stranger who'd come to the valley to work for Dad. "Have you read it?"

"Saw the movie."

"Madison!" yelled Dad. He never liked us talking to the migrants.

The lead male has a new name. I use Cooksey for another character in the book so it's not lost. Still love the name. And honestly? Even now I'm not sure I like Tierney. It has an ambiguous pronunciation and it's Irish which seems like overkill since my last name is too. I just don't know.

I'm still married to the book in this version. What did I like about it? I had in mind an old Everyman edition, cloth cover, red, with gold lettering. Foxed pages. In my childhood home the Everymans were on the highest, dustiest shelf. It would probably be among the last books you'd burn if you were freezing to death. Also, it reminded me of my father, a little personal Easter egg for him so he'd know I'd been paying attention as a child.

The movie thing—well, I knew it was going to be a joke later on when readers understood there hadn't been a film industry in ten years. What I liked about it was Madison's punchy, ironic yet juvenile response. That was the essence I wanted when I wrote the line and the reason I kept it through two drafts (that or laziness).

Beat is still here, beat in the original beatnik sense, which I imagined might make a comeback in a PA world. And if it didn't, I was going to make it come back by using it 500 times throughout the novel. I was riding that dead horse but good.

What's good? "I carried the water bucket over to him." This action raises a lot of questions. It's the first tool we see in the book. And M. is doing something besides running her mouth.

What's bad? "That was my opinion." If there's one thing you don't need in a first person narrative, that would be it. But I'm still voice building so I forgive myself. Notice I kept the equally pedantic line about an apt comparison. I'm in love with my PA world and I'm writing too much. But M's smart and that's important to me—and her. The line is a place-holder for the perfect smart question that will arrive as if by magic from my crit partners.

--------------
From January 31, 2009:

The first time I saw anyone read a book on the farm was when a man named Tierney pulled out a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire during lunch break.

When Dad wasn't looking, I carried the water bucket over to him. "Do you know how to read?"

He wasn't much, just one more stringy-haired stranger who'd come to the valley looking for work. "Do you?"

"Madison!" yelled Dad. He never liked me talking to men.

"I learned." I ladled water into Tierney's bowl and went to the next person.

This is very close to a final version. I've still got the Everyman in the first para, but I've removed the preachy opening line, the movie reference, and beat. I feel like M is responding to something she might actually see in her life—a guy a reading—and she's asking a question she might really want to know the answer to.

By now, I have finished writing the novel and I don't feel like I have to prove anything on the first page. Just tell the story.

Also, I switched out the word migrant. I hit that word hard in the next para, so I don't care about making a point here. What's important to me is M's tiny act of rebellion—she says something to Tierney after dad calls her off.

-------------

From April or May 2009:

The first time I saw anyone read on the farm was when a man named Tierney pulled a book from his back pocket during lunch break.

When Dad wasn't looking, I carried the water bucket over to him. "Do you know how to read?"

He wasn't much to look at, another stranger who'd come to the valley looking for work. But I liked his eyes. Blue. "Do you?"

Dad came back from the barn. "Madison!" He didn't like me talking to the help, especially men.

"I learned how." I ladled water into Tierney's bowl. "What's the book called?"

He uncurled the paper cover. "It's a dictionary."

"Madison, what does it take?" yelled Dad. "An engraved invitation?"

Dictionary. I carried the bucket to the next person. I'd never seen one of those.

The Everyman is gone. No one cares but me anyway. Even my father probably won't care—he'll be too busy wondering why Dad in my book is such a loudmouth.

Blue eyes, no stringy hair. He's the romantic lead, okay? Other people have to fall in love with him too, especially the author. When I made this change, I built up the romance in the rest of the book. Maybe I was swallowing a bitter pill, but there have to be BIG motivations for these people.

Now we see that Dad was away and has just come back—when the cat's away the mice will play. Tierney has a bowl for his water, not a cup. What kind of place is this? And the big change—a dictionary. I still may be a little enamored of this idea so don't be surprised if I cut it later. Books are rare in this world, reading isn't taught. For an educated man like Tierney, a dictionary might be a precious object. Words themselves might be precious. And how many times have we all tossed aside some battered paperback Websters in this world? Think about paperbacks and plastic water bottles and Styrofoam takeout containers. Might they have value in a PA world?

And over all, this little scene has two more lines of dialogue. It's more of a conversation now and it lasts a tiny bit longer. I am trusting these people to do and say what they want to advance the story.

Have I preserved the idea through all these rewrites? Yes and no. Madison is not exactly a mouthy smartass in this last iteration. I haven't rung any PA bells. Instead, I've established a few key elements that I hope will grow in the rest of the story:

• There is something off about this reality.
• Tierney is attractive.
• Madison is curious and bold.
• Dad gets angry a little too quickly.
• It's a farm.

One idea is started and completed: That's a book. Do you read? Yes, I learned how.

Lesson over. What am I reading? I finished The Sparrow. What a book! I highly recommend it. I'm now reading the third Moe Prager. It's just, yeah. I love Reed Farrell Coleman. I love the idea of RFC. I adore Moe. But, hmm.

Done and Doneness

Another week of checking the inbox 50 times a day. I'm beginning to train myself off the blogs and back to the NYT site. Yesterday I scrolled through the book section and read the BEA article. Small steps, right?

I added another five submissions to the seven that were already out. Since they were all on my list, not spontaneous screams in the wilderness, I feel a restful sense of accomplishment. I've gotten three rejections, two extremely timely and the other within the limits posted on the web site.

In re: Madison. Don't get me wrong, I may be temporarily finished with revision but it still needs attention. Because I'm so invested in it, the world, the characters, the direction of the novel, I find that revision is like peeling an onion. The more I revise, the more is revealed. I had a moment when I realized something I wrote six months ago is a great idea that could—without much tweaking—change the entire novel into exactly what I wanted it to be. It's so cool. Since I can't remember what I thought I was saying when I originally wrote it, I don't know if I was trying for this, or if my subconscious snuck one in.

Met with the Yolas on Saturday and they pointed out some motivational issues. Now that's the kind of thing I should have caught before I decided the novel was done! Madison is not complicated structurally, but it does seem like a hydra. Or Whac-a-Mole. Nail one thing down, another pops up. Put like this I don't know if it will ever be done done.

So let's talk about doneness.

Every writing/editing/agenting site rails on about not submitting until a project is done. Although this is very good advice, and not always easy to follow, I struggle with the definition:

Done is what, exactly? Is it two complete drafts and a polish? After the last read, the novel stands? Okay, I know the answer to this question, but it's important to note that done is a relative thing, shifting its definition from day to day. Even a first draft can be a done thing when it demonstrates the scope and depth of an idea. Not a done novel, but certainly a done idea.

Then there are times when everything looks like crap and the concept of a finished product is as alien as fish on the moon.

Finally there's trust. You simply have to get up one morning and decide that the only person you are going to trust with the big stuff is yourself. Am I a good enough writer? Does this novel do what I want? You are the only one who can—or should—answer these questions. Done is when you say it's done.

I can go back and forth about it. Because writers need readers. Too much critiquing from your worthy writing partners can suck the life out of almost anything. If it can be killed, they'll kill it. Maybe someone suggests you have zombies on the first page which is not a bad idea, all books should. Just not YOUR book. Maybe you see the confusion on their little faces and realize you have been writing in Sanskrit this whole time. But a good group will engage at both the idea level and the grammatical level. Hence the notes about Madison and motivation, a kickable offense but not one that's hard to fix.

So, is Madison done? Two drafts, a polish and a read by others would indicate that by most standards it's sort of done. But I still have an uneasy feeling about it, like I left the stove on. Maybe because I did a very (for me) risky thing. I left a lot of questions unanswered. I didn't hang an HEA on it. Not that the characters haven't earned it. Maybe it's the unfinished nature of the world, or the fact that so many people die. I just don't think an HEA is a fair summation of the experience. For me or them. (By the way, I'm not saying the main characters don't get what they want in the end. They do, all of them.)

Still, I don't entirely trust my judgment about the ending. Maybe I will someday. This is where I say Madison is done as far as everyone else is concerned, but not for me. Not yet.

What am I reading? I made it to page 160 of The Sparrow. It's the kind of book where a lot is happening but when I look at the page number, I realize I've barely cracked it. Maybe I'm getting a little crush on Emilio Sandoz. He's real cute. Love is a beautiful thing.

5. What's an Exclusionary Unit?

This has been such a long week. . . lots of domestic disturbances. . . no bike riding. So here is another chapter full of my Frankenstein attempts to create action. It's funny how leaden and lumbering language gets when you are trying to talk about things happening quickly. Amid magazine rejections (oh, there were some!)I managed to get almost done with a short story. I've reworked this chapter a lot because there are some historical reveals and that made me crazy during first draft. I honestly didn't know what happened to Madison's world, but I didn't want to break stride to do world-building. I could pretend that she simply didn't know, and that worked well enough until I started asking people to read later drafts. I confess, I don't do outlines. Nothing kills desire like boredom, right? Besides, what was important to me was the tone and voice of the novel. More stuff to do: Yes, in my spare time, I need to promote this blog. But feel me on the rejections. Ouch! Who wouldn't shut the door for a few days?

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Chapter Five

The next morning, I crawled out of the hay and folded my coats. I was alone in the loft. Tierney's bed had been kicked apart and his coats were gone. I hobbled to the old house, barefoot, looking for Tierney. Wherever he was, he had my damn shoes.

The wringer-washer was in a corner of the back porch, and I took a moment to turn the crank and examine the old split rollers. It was dusty but seemed to work. A thing like this was worth, oh, it might be worth two suckling pigs, or a portion of slaughtered hog. A woman might trade a half-pound of coffee for it. It certainly would earn its worth many times over in time saved. I couldn't let it sit by for someone else to find.

I carried it to the truck and loaded it carefully. After that, I went out into the weeds far from the truck to do my business. No toothbrush, no soap, no water, no paper scraps. And I was barefoot. By the time I hobbled to the truck again, I was in a sour mood and Tierney was heaving the wringer-washer off the side of the truck.

"Are you crazy? Stop that!"

"It's not coming." He stood on the truck bed next to the gun with its fat belt of ammo. A tendon bunched in his jaw like a horse that had set his teeth against a bit.

"Do you have any idea what a thing like this is worth?" I walked around the truck and found the washer. The top had come off. I bent down and looked at the two parts, touching a spot of fresh metal. "You broke it!"

"Good." Tierney jumped off the truck. "You won't be doing any laundry where you're going."

"You're an idiot, Tierney."

"Need some shoes?" He reached into the back of the truck and held up my wingtips, tied together by their laces. I reached for them but he yanked them away and tossed them on the truck's front seat.

"It was worth a ham, Tierney." I got in the truck. "Think about that. Maybe two hams."

###

Slow going. The pavement was buckled and frost-heaved as we made our way north. The last people who drove these roads were probably the looters who had cleaned out the house, and that was a very a long time ago. In low spots, streams ran over the road and Tierney paused to estimate the depth before bouncing through the water. He took a road that lead us down the far side of the ridge, and it meandered through a housing development. The yards and streets were crowded with wrecked furniture and fallen trees, but only two or three places had burned. Tierney drove through the neighborhood once and circled back.

"What are we doing?"

No answer. He stopped the truck next to a tangle of brush and vines that had once been someone's yard. I saw a moss-covered skull under a branch, the jaw crushed. We got out of the truck and he gave me a handful of rags.

"Stuff these in your shoes."

"How generous." I jammed the rags in the toes and put them on. They still didn't fit. I followed him around the first house and in the back door. While he rummaged through the kitchen, I searched the rest of the place, pretending I was an archaeologist who had just opened an ancient site. What happened to the family who lived here? It was hard to tell because successive groups of people had come later, making a fire in the living room and using the bathroom floor and the hallway leading to the bathroom as a toilet. The stench was blistering. The family must have owned a lot of pink toilet paper because bunches of it peeped through the excrement, still vividly pink. For once, I didn't want to go upstairs.

Tierney scored a package of pasta. We went on to the next house.

All together we searched ten houses. In some ways they were all the same, furred and peeling walls, mushrooms sprouting from the swampy carpets, utterly destroyed furniture. But Tierney found something in every house. He looked behind stoves and on top of cupboards. He removed drawers and searched inside for things that got pushed to the back. In one place he found three ramen noodle packages.

I looked for shoes and books with no luck. Books were popular for starting fires with the waves of squatters who came after. Or maybe the family themselves had burned the books in the first long winter, trying to keep warm. And shoes were gold anyway. You never saw a corpse with shoes.

In one place we found five bodies all laying on a bed, the covers pulled up to their jawbones. The mother lay on her side, facing two smaller bodies, and the dad's mummified fingers cupped a handgun. All had small holes in their skulls. They had been dead a long time, but not ten years. I looked around the room and saw an oil lamp with a rag wick and soot stains flaring up the side of the wall. The window was sealed with carpeting. This family had lived for some time in the world as it is now, but had decided not to anymore.

Tierney tucked the gun into his belt and closed the door softly. At the front door, he picked up a shard of pottery from the yard and carved a number 5 into the door wood.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"It's a sign to others there are dead in this house."

"There are dead in all the houses. You didn't mark the doors."

"These people were from our time. They were survivors."

In a way I understood. It's not that the other dead, the Demented and the people killed right after, weren't important. They were the ones who built the houses, made deevees, wrote books. May they rest in peace. But they'd gotten off easy—no First Winter for them. They hadn't spent the last ten years hoping that it would stop raining so the beans would grow. Anyway, I was sad about the family in the last house. I couldn't shake the memory of our winters, and wondered if Dad had ever thought about finishing things that way.

Tierney went to the next house, and I sat on the curb near the truck. He came out with a frying pan and an empty plastic jug. I gathered firewood while he carried the jug down the hill and into the woods. I watched him go, thinking I had the wingtips, he'd left the keys in the truck, and all the junk he'd just gathered was sitting three feet away.

I thought about it too long. He came back with a jug of mossy water and set it down next to the wood I'd gathered. "There's a lot of water in your country."

"Too much. This wood's not going to light."

He had a lighter in his pocket and with a few pieces of paper, he managed to get the smallest twigs to smoke, then flame. "I've seen places that haven't had rain in ten years. The rivers are dry and the groundwater is used up. Everything is dead."

"How do the people live?"

"They don't."

He blew on the flame and added more twigs. When he got a good fire going, he nestled the pan in the coals and heated water for soup. We ate two packages of ramen noodles and drank the salty pan water. Neither of us spoke.

We drove through the remainder of the afternoon, weaving around dead cars and fallen trees. Sometimes I had to drag branches out of the way, sometimes it was armchairs. Once it was a busted-up merry-go-round with all the animals gray and peeled lying in the road as if they'd been shot.

We came to a wide, long road, a highway. Tierney stopped before driving out on to it. It was dense with cars. If I narrowed my eyes I could almost pretend I was looking at a moving highway from a movie. With open eyes I saw piles of rags and bits of broken stuff and nothing moved but the wind.

"You want to drive on that?"

Tierney tapped the gas gauge. From where I sat it looked like we were down to a quarter of tank. "I'm tired of driving in the trees."

"And this is so much better."

"Maybe we can find some fuel."

I sighed and he put the truck in gear. Traveling with Tierney was like not going anywhere; all he did was look for more stuff. But we did travel a little faster on the highway. From time to time he ran over bones, and after the first time I felt them pop under the tires I didn't mind so much.

Late in the afternoon, the sun came out, casting weak spears of light from the clouds. The cars looked rusty and derelict in the sun. As we got closer to Portland, there were more obstacles, and Tierney had to stop and back track around them. I started seeing signs over the old green interstate signs, hand-painted in black. "Canterbury."

"What's Canterbury?"

Tierney eased around a three-car pileup. "Probably a refugee camp."

"Can we go?"

"No."

Toward dusk, Tierney pulled off the highway, turned left and drove onto an overpass. At the top, he stopped, got out and walked the length of the overpass, checking each car and truck. Same thing I'd seen him do all day in the houses. Now it was cars. I sat and watched him, wishing I had something to read.

He stopped to look at one car, opening the driver's side door and leaning inside. He walked to the passenger door and then the back doors, opening each. Finally he waved to me. It was a rusty, nasty old thing on the outside, but inside the upholstery was dry and smelled like plastic. There were no bones.

"German engineering," said Tierney.

"Whatever that means." It was almost better when Tierney didn't talk.

We bedded down for the night in the car, me in the far back curled up under my wool jacket, and Tierney in front. Before we settled in, Tierney took the wingtips, tied their laces together and looped them through his belt. I lay awake wondering how far I'd get out there, barefoot with all the broken glass and old bones. I could have gone any time, but I lay there thinking about it instead.

The next morning I had to do my personal business behind a stalled truck on the overpass. Again in my bare feet. Tierney could do it over the side, another injustice of the world. I walked back to our truck, cold and angry. Day two had begun.

"Where are we going today?"

"Portland."

"Same as yesterday." I climbed into the truck. "But we never seem to get there."

Tierney gave me the wingtips and I rearranged the rags inside before putting them on. Having shoes made a difference. If I had a shot at escaping today, I'd take it.

We drove down into the highway graveyard again, circling and back-tracking and pushing between cars. Occasionally I got out to shift a small object that we couldn't drive over. Sometimes we both had to get out. The closer we got to Portland, the more panic I saw in the arrangement of the derelict cars. People had been ramming each other, driving over the highway dividers and coming down on top of other traffic. A lot of bodies were in these cars.

Once I saw a small sedan with all the windows rolled up tight. A slight steaminess framed two people in the back seat, who were turned around and looking out the window. Their skin, though desiccated as old apples, was still in place. Even their dark prune eyes were open and staring. One of them had a string of pearls. Their skeletonized finger bones still rested on the back of the seat. Although the car's gas flap was open, the car hadn't been looted, not even for shoes.

Tierney honked the horn. What were two more dead bodies? I did my job and we moved on.

Tierney stopped often to look for fuel. Whenever he saw a gas flap that wasn't open, he'd thread a piece of tubing into the tank. Sometimes he would get a few drops of rusty looking fluid in his water jug which he would distill into another jar. I would sit and watch him as the day went on.

"You aren't going to find much," I told him. "And what you find won't be any good."

"Did I ask for your opinion?"

"No, but you could certainly use it."

He made some irritating sound. Good to know he hated me as much as I hated him.

In the afternoon he found one untouched gas flap in the middle of a massive accident. Other scavengers had missed it because you couldn't tell one jumble of steel from the next. Tierney threaded his tube into the tank, sucked on the other end and quickly dunked it into the jug as bright pink fluid began to flow.

Tierney waved me out of the truck. "Look for more containers, Madison. Clean ones."

I grabbed up all the water bottles I could find in the road, carried them back. The gasoline was flowing quickly. "More. Bigger."

"Only two hands!" Even when he had what he wanted he was still rude.

We were close to an on-ramp, so I wandered between the oncoming vehicles, looking inside. Almost every car had coffee cups with lids or water bottles, but I never got used to opening the cars and reaching over dead bodies. The smell after all this time was faint, organic but not altogether unpleasant. Sometimes the act of opening a car door was enough to make a skeleton disarticulate itself all over the road.

I reached for one water bottle and came away with a bony hand still attached. I screamed and threw it away, then stood for a moment catching my breath. That's when I saw buildings on the other side of the ramp, behind a parking lot circled in razor wire. I could just read the lettering on a billboard-sized sign:

"Canterbury Exclusion Unit #0493."

This was it. Although it was cobbled together from a shopping mall, it had an official look. Refugees could be inside, or some form of government. Maybe someone could help me get home.

Tierney was many car lengths back, still hunched over his tube. I started walking quickly. Once off the ramp, I broke into a shuffling run, keeping cars, trees and utility poles between me and Tierney, in case he happened to look up. There was no entrance in the front. Razor wire enclosed a parking lot and nothing moved inside but leaves and bits of paper.

Now that I was closer I saw shacks on the roof of the largest building. Too small for houses, possibly guard towers where soldiers waited all day for people to shoot at. I watched the shacks for a moment, wondering which bothered me more—Tierney catching up with me or the possibility of getting shot. After a few seconds, I hurried on.

The entrance to the place was on the far side of the complex. I was relieved to put the width of the building between myself and Tierney. The doors were steel reinforced and tightly closed. I tried the buzzer first, leaning on it a couple of times and feeling a faint vibration on the other side of the door. After a few seconds, I tried the door knob and it opened with a dry squeak.

Inside was illuminated by a green-tinged glow coming from boxes high on the walls, very faint but enough to cast light in the place. Weak solar was still working, somewhere. The second thing was the shivering scent of old, old decay, as though I'd just opened an abandoned refrigerator.

"Hello?" I called out and was immediately sorry. My voice echoed and swelled, coming back louder than before.

Something, somewhere, slid across the concrete floor.

I froze, fighting the blind impulse to run for the door. Instead I held my breath and listened. After a moment I breathed again, and went forward. I was in some kind of waiting area. Two plastic chairs stood outside a glass-framed office. Inside the office, I saw filing cabinets, a desk of papers, a soda machine that looked--amazingly--plugged in and lit up.

Beyond the office was a long wall bisected with another door, locked from this side with a complicated bolt system. The organic smell was worse close to this door. Undisturbed.

As I turned toward the office, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and heard the dragging sound again.

A person lurched into view, wild-haired, tall but without a beard. He or she—it—dragged one leg as it shambled out of the gloom, arms out stretched. It wore the remnants of a uniform with a bit of needlework over the breast pocket.

"They're all here." The voice was cracked and hazed, but still feminine. "Check the records."

"Who's here?" I asked.

The woman stopped a few feet away from me, but her smell made the rest of the trip. She reeked of death and mildew, something like a dead cow I once found floating in the creek, long dead and stewed in water. I stepped backwards, my body knowing before my brain that no one could smell like that and be sane.

"Want to see?" she asked and began to laugh.

I turned to the door I'd come in, but lost a shoe and stumbled. Like an animal, the woman was on me, reaching for my neck. I wrenched away, pushing her off balance, and ran to the office, locking the door with her on the other side. She raised fists crenellated with yellow fingernails and pounded against the glass.

The glass shivered with each blow and wouldn't hold long. I searched the room for a weapon, turning out desk drawers and going through cabinets. There was nothing but dust and old papers, and one small thing made of plastic and metal. It fit in the palm of my hand, a thing with four opposing teeth encased in a rigid plastic grip, like the mouth of a snake. When I squeezed it, the teeth came together, making a small clacking sound. I didn't know what it was supposed to do, and it wasn't much use now, but at that moment it was all I had.

The creature hurled a chair through the window, and the glass exploded into the room, sending shards flying across the desk. The woman climbed through the window, over the spears of glass still jutting from the window frame. Her thigh hooked a shard and the tip plunged into her. She kicked herself free and came on. I pushed the chair between us, she swept it aside. I grabbed an old keyboard and thwacked the side of her head. As she reeled, I caught her lower lip between the teeth of the little tool I'd found.

The creature howled from the pain and shook her head, shaking me with it. I felt blood and warm breath on my hand. Was she Demented? Or just crazy? I squeezed harder, released the tool and took another bite on the creature's cheek. She grabbed for my neck, nails tangling in my hair.

And then a gunshot rang out. The creature exhaled once and dropped to the floor, my tool still in her flesh. Tierney stood in the other side of the window, holding Dad's gun.

"Did she bite you?"

"I bit her." I bent down and retrieved my little tool, which I was now oddly fond of. "She was crazy, not Demented. You didn't have to blast her."

"Let me see that." He took my tool. "A staple remover. I will say this, you have your moments."

In the faint glow, I could read the name on her breast pocket. Denise. She wore a pair of decent-looking boots.

"My size." I removed the boots, gagging at the warm, gassy odor. Tierney reached for them but I held on, knotting the laces together. "Oh, no, you don't. These are mine. I earned them. What is this place?"

"What the sign says. An exclusionary unit. Want to see?" He went to the inner door I'd seen earlier. He shifted the bolts and pulled it wide, spilling a little of our green light into the darkness. He propped open the door with a little metal foot attached to the lower edge of the door. "Take a good look, Madison."

I got up reluctantly and walked over. The first thing I saw was metal prison bars reaching from the floor up into the darkness above. On the other side of the bars, where the light barely reached, I saw bones. I had to look for a long time to be certain of what I was seeing. I'd seen bones before but never had I seen so many. It was a sea of bones and tangled cloth, four or five feet thick and crowded against the bars. I saw hundreds of skulls, some still covered with tufts of hair, and I saw long bones and rib cages, thousands and thousands of them. At our feet, millions of tiny bones were scattered on the floor like broken beads, as though these people had died reaching through the bars.

"Demented," said Tierney. "There are thousands of units like this all over the country. Every city had them. There were so many infected that managing the disease overwhelmed the hospitals, and this was all we could do. Forty percent of the population was symptomatic in the first year. Who knows how many since? We no longer have any way of tracking it."

I pictured the Demented crushed in here, trampled underfoot, all of them finally dying as close to the door as possible. Was it any more or less humane than shooting them on sight or wrapping them in concertina wire until they cut themselves to bits?

"I don't remember much about Before," I said. "No one talks about it."

"Can you see why?" He let the door fall shut. "It's enough to dream about it every night."

Tierney went to search the office, stepping over Denise like so much trash. I went outside where it was cool and smelled of rain. June 23rd by my reckoning. Summer was still a month away. I looked at gray buildings with broken signs, loot spilled out the doors and left to blow away. In a few minutes I got my breathing under control, a few minutes after that the shaking stopped.

When he came out, Tierney handed me a can of soda. I took it and felt the tension in the metal sides. It was still cold. I couldn't remember the last time I had one. Tierney worked the ring for me and the can popped, releasing a mist of sparkles. I drank until the fizz hurt my mouth.

"It's wonderful." I passed him the can.

"The taste that beats the others cold." He took a small sip and passed it back. "Might be the last one in the world."

1.5 The rest of chapter one

I'm going out of town for a few days and decided to post this ahead of schedule. Chapter One has now been rewritten about three times: once for my critique group, once for an agent submission, and again for this post. I'm always amazed by the gap between what I see in my mind and what is readable on the page. Letting text rest for a few months is the only way to rewrite. I can't tell you how many clever lines I scrubbed during this last rewrite. And there are still a few left that should come out.

When the novel first appeared to me, I was so obsessed with Madison's voice that I had to play it big. I used to say amen every day for her voice. Now of course it annoys me, all her opinions and judgments. I'm hoping her voice carries through the edits, despite my need as the author to construct a narrative that I can live with. We both live here, Madison and I.

That's all I've got today! Here's the text:



Chapter One, Part Two

I washed the dishes and made the bread dough and then went up to my room to find a book.

Our house used to be full of books when Mom was alive. Dad's law books, Mom's art books, all my grandparents' books. Our library survived First Winter when everyone else we knew burned their books for heat. It wasn't until Aunt Margo moved in that Dad developed his lunatic hatred of learning. I hid as many books as I could in my closet and watched Margot spend the first few days of her honeymoon hauling the rest out to the woodpile for the migrants to burn on their cooking fires.

I continued to learn on my own even after the book purge. I taught myself French, including the talking part. Every summer I set myself to learn two Shakespeare plays. I also tried to teach my two brothers to read. Chris and Riley were born After, so they never went to school. By the time they were old enough, Dad had ruled on the subject of education and they never had a chance.

I had some success with Riley. He learned the alphabet and could write his own name, but Chris was far too wiggly to sit still that long. Neither of them displayed the least curiosity about what was inside a book. Since I was kind of foggy about math, I never gave that a try. Maybe one of them had scientific aptitude, but no one will ever know. Thanks, Dad.

Because we moved to the farm while I was still a baby, we were better prepared than most when the lights went out and diseases began to kill so many people. We were far from the city in a part of the world where we got more rain rather than less. Soon we were feeding a dozen other families. One of the first guys who turned up for work was George, an electrician who built solar panels in the old days. In a very little time he married my older sister, Jayden, and installed solar on almost every house in the valley.

Solar wasn't a lot of electricity—usually only enough to run the refrigerator for a few hours a day—but my brothers were constantly plugging in old things, appliances and electric toothbrushes to see what they did. One day they tried a deevee machine in a computer laptop and it worked. Until Dad found out, we watched deevees every day, whenever we could sneak away from work. We watched Star Wars and The Simpsons, and my brothers did good barter with other valley kids for disks. Because they didn't burn, everyone had stacks of them in their houses.

We took all kinds of things in trade for viewing time. Toys, books, food, if someone's mother happened to be a good cook. I wanted to trade for clothes, but if you were caught wearing something that wasn't yours, the adults would know immediately there was an alternative economy going on somewhere. The whole thing depended on silence.

Sometimes when we were watching deevees, my brothers asked me what it was like in the old days. Were there yellow people like Homer Simpson? Was Darth Vader real? What was it like to fly in a space ship? To my brothers there was no difference between cars, airplanes and space ships. In the seven years between when I was born and when they were born, the world had changed so much that all Before stuff looked like magic.

On less charitable days, I suspected my brothers were like dogs, color-blind and unable to recognize themselves in the mirror. Maybe I was getting like that myself.

###

I took my book outside to Mom's Lexus. It was parked between the trailers and the chicken shed, hidden from the strawberry field or other places Margot was likely to go. But to get there, I had to walk past three of Pinkus's men, including his nephew, Gant. They were cleaning their firearms on a picnic table, lunching on hooch and deer sausage while they worked. I said hey on my way to the car but Gant stared at me, saying nothing.

The Lexus had been parked since it ran out of fuel. The tires were gone but almost everything else was still intact, including Mom's purse which sat on the floor next to the driver's seat, full of her pictures and credit cards.

It was a nice place to sit and read. I stretched out in the back seat and propped the book on my chest. It was an encyclopedia and I was trying to read carefully, so when the door flew open and Gant leaned into the car, I was caught off guard.

"The boss's daughter, all by herself." Gant propped one heavy black boot on the floor of the Lexus. He wore a black leather vest and long shredded blue jeans. His biceps were puckered with scars.

Gant was in charge of all the soldiers that Pinkus had stationed on our farm. His father was the guy Dad got out of jail all those years ago, but like his uncle, Gant wasn't grateful for past good deeds. Staying out of jail hadn't kept Gant's father alive anyway; he'd died of blood poisoning during the first winter. Since Pinkus had no children of his own, Gant was Pinkus's heir, though it didn't mean they had any love for another. Dad didn't have to tell me to stay out of Gant's way.

I sat up, closing the encyclopedia. "Shove off, Gant."

"Mind if I sit down? Thanks." He climbed in, bringing the reek of hooch with him. He had a narrow, beaky face and close-cropped hair.

"What do you want?"

"To talk to you, Madison. That's all."

"My father won't like it. I'm not kidding, Gant."

Gant laughed and walked his fingers across the upholstery to my leg. His fingers climbed up my thigh and kept walking. "It doesn't matter if your father likes it or not. I like it."

I twisted away from him but he slid across the seat, forcing me against the door. "I'll scream. Swear to god."

"Go ahead. If you don't make me happy, Uncle Pinkus will hear about it. Do you want your dad to swing on the end of a rope? Think about it."

"Guess I'd better make you-" I swung my book at his face. "-happy."

It connected with his jaw and he snarled as he pawed it away. I reached for the door handle and he caught me by the arm, yanking me close. His lips crawled over my neck and when I looked in his eyes, I saw a black mark on his iris as though someone had taken a tiny slice out of his eye.

"That's better," he said and touched my boob.

Suddenly the door on my side flew open, and the book-reading migrant, Tierney, looked inside.

"Your dad's asking for you, girl."

For a moment, Gant's grip on my boob got tighter, then he pushed me toward Tierney. I climbed out, shaking.

"Go to your dad," said Tierney. "And don't look back."

Dad stood at the corner of the chicken shed, his face so white it was almost green.

Behind me, windshield glass shattered.

###

Of all of us kids, I was the one who had expectations. If the world hadn't gone to hell, I'd be in college, preferably some place far from here. Both my parents went to school, Mom in New York and Dad in California. Those were just names now, places I would be as unlikely to see as fly to the moon.

What was much more likely, in fact inevitable, was that I would get married very soon.

My sister, Jayden, had married well. I remembered a lot of back-slapping between George and Dad the night they worked out the deal for Jayden. Their marriage kept George in Oregon City where he could maintain everyone's solar, and in exchange my sister was the best-dressed woman in town. She worried all the time about George getting kidnapped by Pinkus or someone like him, but Oregon City had a militia and so far even Pinkus would rather barter for George's services than kidnap him. Thanks to George, Oregon City had electric streetlights, but of course they could never use them, or bad people would know they had them. That's new world logic for you, right there.

George had a brother, Travis. He was about thirty and acted like he was sitting on a tack whenever we were alone together. Dad talked about me marrying Travis, but I couldn't seriously consider spending the rest of my life with a man whose great passion was copper wiring.

I wondered how much longer I could hold off marriage. Sometimes I'd catch Dad looking at me as though weighing barter credits in his mind. Like I was pumpkin on the vine and he needed the field for something else.

###

Dad didn't come home for dinner but we had a houseful of people just the same. Aunt Margo, Aunt Gayle and Uncle Edward, their two kids, Sue-Lynn and her kids, Christine and her grandbaby, James. I was run off my feet dealing with all the children so I didn't notice until almost dark how weird the adults were acting.

They were all sitting around the dining room table when I brought four-year old Kayla in to her mom, Sue-Lynn. She was spitting mad she couldn't keep up with the big kids who were playing hide and seek. She was so tired from trying she could barely keep her eyes open.

All the adults shut up as we walked in.

"What?" I asked.

Aunt Margo looked like she'd been crying and Gayle was patting her hand.

"Your skirt, Madison," said Gayle. "It's not decent."

I 'd hitched it up to my knees to chase kids. "You'd think you all never saw legs before." I poured myself a glass of water from the pitcher on the sideboard. "What happened to that pig Gant? Dad send him back to Pinkus?"

No answer. Margo had her lips folded so tight they looked like cracked cement. Uncle Edward tapped his cane on the floor. Sue-Lynn kissed the top of Kayla's head and didn't look at me. Gayle gave me a flat, unblinking stare.

"What? Somebody die?"

"Go bring the children inside now, Madison," said Aunt Margo. "Now."

I stomped out and slammed the door. A year ago I would have said, "You can't order me around! You aren't my mother!" Not anymore. I guess that's what being eighteen has taught me—they can order me around. Mom had been dead for three years, the aunts have taken over and there's no use fighting it.

I wasn't in any hurry to get back in the house after that. The kids were still playing hide and seek, so I played It until I found them all, and by then it was full dark and Dad was home.

Twelve families lived in the valley, plus single people like Misch and Mrs. Hammett and Jorge. At any time, there were ten to twenty migrants living in the various barns, working in the fields by day and cooking dinner over campfires by night. So even though the valley was a big place, no one was ever more than a few minutes away from another person. For kids, it was great. You were never alone and almost never bored.

When there was trouble, all the families and migrants would hunker down at our farm. It didn't happen so much now that most of the Demented were dead, but every once in a while there'd be some reason we needed to pull together. Dad said we were only doing as well as we were because of geography. Directly north of us was Oregon City and south was Independent Canby, Pinkus's country. Pinkus owned the river between Oregon City and Salem, and even though that was sixty miles of territory, there was hardly anyone left alive. He controlled it with his army of men like Gant.

I wasn't sure why the families were gathering tonight. There hadn't been any infected around the valley in weeks. The migrants we had were decent enough. I couldn't think of any reason for Dad to come home with Sue-Lynn's husband, Cal, and Christine's husband, Pete, and all of them go in the dining room and close the door.

Finally, we located Riley and I shooed them toward the house, game over.

"It's better in the dark!" said Chris. "Five more minutes?"

"You don't even know what a minute is," I said. "Get in the house."

"A minute is sixty hours," said Riley. "Am I right?"

"When I'm playing hide and seek with you, it certainly feels like it."

They ran inside and I saw a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. Something shifted in the shadows next to the pump house.

"Hello?" I called. No answer. I heard gravel scraping against a boot and then silence. At the back door, I saw a big square thing lying by the doormat. My encyclopedia.

1. Madison, After chapter one

I started Madison, After in June 2008 and finished the first draft in November, not bad for a 300 page novel. Writing about a post-apocalyptic world is very seductive and this novel was one of the most absorbing things I've ever done. Anyone with writer's block should try it. Read (or re-read) The Stand by Stephen King, then just imagine yourself dealing with food and water at a most basic level. I'll post a list of books I read during the first draft, things as old and diverse as Earth Abides by George R. Stewart and Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham to the non-fiction collection The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. I would also like to know what other people read in this strange little sub-genre.

You won't see it except in very general plot terms, but the inspiration for this novel was NOT the end of the world. It was a Victoria Holt novel called On the Night of the Seventh Moon. If you are under 40, there's no reason you've seen this book. It's an entirely wacked gothic romance from the 1960's with an underaged heroine, a dangerous man, and a mysterious setting. I loved this book when I was a kid, and when I came across a copy a few years ago, I found I still loved it. But for such different reasons! A friend and I kicked around the notion of rewriting it for a modern audience, but the story couldn't work without the virginal, trusting 18 year old narrator. For reasons of my own (being the mother of one) I was more comfortable writing it as a young adult/crossover novel. If anyone reads this genre, you know the label is anything but a limitation. And the end of the world stuff? It just seemed like a really good idea.

I'll try to post a chapter a week as I rewrite. Comment freely--or rather, with some tact. Mindful of the fact that the author is a complete wuss. Here goes---

Chapter One

The first time I saw anyone read a book on the farm was when a man named Tierney pulled out a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire during lunch break.

When Dad wasn't looking, I carried the water bucket over to him. "Do you know how to read?"

He wasn't much, just one more stringy-haired stranger who'd come to the valley looking for work. "Do you?"

"Madison!" yelled Dad. He never liked me talking to men.

"I learned." I ladled water into Tierney's bowl and went to the next person.

Our farm workers came from all over. Migrants. Pinkus sent men from Independent Canby, but all they did was sit in their trailers, eat our food and watch us work. During harvest, when we could certainly use more help, we had as many as five of Pinkus's guys on site, making Dad crazier than usual. What did Pinkus think we were going to do with our crop of green beans? Sneak off in the night without paying tribute?


The migrants who actually did a job of work came from wherever the wind blew them. Refugee camps, cities, other farms. They'd all had other jobs Before—stockbrokers, salesmen and housewives. Once we even had an airline pilot. They came and went, blown away by the same vague wind after a day, a week, a month. I got used to not learning their names.

Except for this guy. The next time I saw him, he had a book of poems. It was a battered old thing, curved from being carried in his back pocket. The rest of the crew was playing cards, whittling, napping. At the end of lunch break, Tierney stuffed the book into his pocket, and Dad frowned. Tierney reading on his breaks was probably enough for Dad to think about firing him. Dad had a poor view of learning, even though he had once been a lawyer and you had to have a lot of college for that job.

Dad saw me staring at Tierney. "Are you planning to eat next year, Madison?"

"I don't know. What are we having?" I smiled and he glared. That was Dad, always angry about something. He used to scare me but at age eighteen, there wasn't much he could do to me.

"Quit daydreaming and help your mother."

"Stepmother."

"Mother."

"She's not my mother."

Dad humphed and stomped off. I could do that forever and he knew it. Mother, stepmother, mother, she's not my mother, yes she is. No, yes, no, yes. No.

The workers went back to the fields and I carried the water jug and ladle to the house. It was June, a time of intense worry for Dad. The new plants were up but the weather was still cool and rainy. A lot of people depended on Dad growing food and for keeping our community on the good side of Pinkus. When Dad was a lawyer and there was still a government, he got Pinkus's brother out of jail. No one ever forgot a good turn, but Dad said there was a time limit on returned favors.

My stepmother, Margo, and her sister Gayle were in the kitchen. They both looked up as I walked in, identical sour-puss expressions on their faces.

"Were you talking to that migrant again?" asked Aunt Margo. "You know how your father feels."

"He made it very clear." I put the ladle in the sink. There was no point arguing; she would only repeat everything I said to Dad.

"I think someone has a little too much free time," said Gayle. She used to be the family disappointment: she'd been a hairdresser Before. But since they weren't training any more beauticians and people still needed their hair cut, the tables turned for Aunt Gayle. She now had the barterable skill and Margo's only skill had been to marry Dad a week after my mom died.

"Wash up the lunch dishes, please," said Margo. "Then feed the sourdough and make the batter. After that you can join us at the strawberry field. No reading, Madison."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

As soon as they were out the door, I sneaked a glass of apple brandy. Times like these, I reflected on how being a slave was not on my top ten list of things I wanted to do when I grew up. Every kid had those lists, right? Being a farmer wasn't on my list either. What I wanted was to be an archaeologist with a specialty in Egyptology. In light of what happened in the last ten years, however, I would focus on the late American epoch.

A couple of years ago, I organized a dig at the old Chandler house with some of the other valley kids. Mrs. Chandler and her children had been the first in the valley to get infected, before anyone really knew what it was. The house had been vacant ever since.

I had my crew working in grids, collecting artifacts. We set up a sifter to catch bone chips and pottery shards and had a methodology for recording our finds. Most of the furniture, dishes and useful stuff had been taken by other valley families, but there were lots of clues about what the last days of the Chandler family had been like. Shopping receipts, medicine bottles, toys. We dated our findings by strata. The top layer was leaves, dirt and animal droppings deposited after the looters did their business, and it was by far the deepest layer. The next was detritus of broken furniture and dishes, stuff the looters dropped. Below that we got to items the Chandlers had used. My friend Andrew found a diamond earring.

We did this for almost a week before Dad discovered us and made us stop. Well, there was more to it than that. Dad was tracking an infected person, a Demented, up our road. It was headed for the Chandler house as if it knew exactly where it was going. Before Dad could stop it, the Demented came through the front door, naked, bloody, mostly starved, scaring all of us. It had been almost a year since we'd had one in the valley. The Demented are not dangerous unless you touch their blood, so what does Dad do? Shot it through the head, right in front of us. The blood flew everywhere.

The valley council had a big meeting and decided to burn the Chandler house. All of us kids were grounded to our home farms, but I got it the worst. Dad made it very plain that I wasn't going anywhere, ever. He stopped home-schooling me and gave my bike to my brother Chris. Whenever I was allowed off the farm, I went to my sister Jayden's house in Oregon City which was worse than prison. Everyone watched me after that. I couldn't walk to the end of the driveway, either at home or at Jayden's, without some neighbor asking what I thought I was doing, did my father know where I was?

I asked Dad, after I got over being so pissed off, why the Demented had gone directly to the Chandler house, almost as though it had purpose. It didn't fit what we knew about the infection. Naturally Dad got angry and wouldn't answer.

But I thought about this for a long time. The Demented don't eat, care for themselves, or communicate. They don't appear to think at all. They stumble around until they starve to death, or some jerk like Dad shoots them. Everyone says the Dims don't remember their past and or care about sheltering themselves. But this one came directly to the Chandler house, walked right through the front door.

I had two theories on the subject. One was that the guy wasn't Demented; he was just an ordinary crazy human being who wanted a place to hide. Plenty of people went crazy without being Demented. The other theory was that Dims have a shred of memory left in their destroyed brains. This man had a tiny thought that had guided him to the house. He was Mr. Chandler, returning home after all this time.

In either case, the creature should not have been shot. I vowed not to kill any Demented unless I had to, and to protect them from people like Dad if I could.