“Dad, can you fix this?” Murph asked Cooper.
Cooper came over to the table and reached for the pieces of plastic she had pinched between her fingertips, a frown presenting on his lean face. Donald saw now what it was—the broken model of an Apollo lunar lander.
“What’d you do to my lander?” Cooper asked.
“Wasn’t me,” Murph said.
“Lemme guess,” Tom sneered, through a mouthful of grits. “Your ghost?”
Murph appeared not to hear Tom. She had lately seemed to discover that ignoring him irritated him far more than any rejoinder she might come up with.
“It knocked it off my shelf,” she said to her father, quite matter-of-factly. “It keeps knocking books off.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, dumb-ass,” Tom said.
“Hey!” Cooper said, sending him a hard look. Tom just shrugged and looked unrepentant.
But Murph wouldn’t let go.
“I looked it up,” she said. “It’s called a poltergeist.”
“Dad, tell her,” Tom pleaded.
“Murph,” Cooper said, “you know that’s not scientific.” But his daughter stared at him stubbornly.
“You say science is about admitting what we don’t know,” she said.
“She’s got you there,” Donald said.
Cooper handed Murph back the pieces.
“Start looking after our stuff,” he said.
Donald caught Cooper’s eye.
“Coop,” he admonished.
Cooper shrugged. Donald was right. Murph was smart, but she needed a little guidance.
“Fine,” he said. “Murph, you wanna talk science, don’t just tell me you’re scared of some ghost. Record the facts, analyze—present your conclusions.”
“Sure,” Murph said, and her expression said that the wheels were turning already.
Cooper seemed to think that settled things. He grabbed his keys and stood up.
“Hold up,” Donald said. “Parent–teacher conferences. Parent… not grandparent.”
Donald meant well, but Cooper was still feeling the sting of his comment as the kids climbed into the battered old pickup truck, knocking the night’s layer of dust off of the seats. The old pickup showed almost as much rust as it did the original blue paint job, and enough dents and scratches to prove what a workhorse it had been.
Sure, he’d missed a few of these school things, now and then—he was busy. He was a single father. Was it so bad to ask Donald to pick up a little of the slack? It wasn’t like Cooper didn’t spend time with the kids. Quality time.
But that didn’t mean jumping through whatever hoops the school demanded of him. He had better things to do.
As he opened the driver’s-side door, he took another sip of his coffee, peering at the black cloud rising in the distance, trying to gauge it, estimate how far away it was. Whose fields were there? Which way was it moving?
“Dust storm?” he wondered aloud.
Donald shook his head.
“Nelson’s torching his whole crop.”
“Blight?” Cooper asked.
“They’re saying it’s the last harvest for okra,” Donald replied. “Ever.”
Cooper watched the black smoke, wondering if that could be right, knowing in the pit of his gut it probably was. But what good was okra, anyway? Slimy stuff, unless you fried it. Used to thicken soup. A luxury, not a staple. It was an insignificant loss.
“Shoulda planted corn like the rest of us,” he said as he got into the truck. Nelson had always had more nerve than sense.
“Be nice to Miss Hanley,” Donald said. “She’s single.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cooper snapped, knowing full well what the old man was getting at.
“Repopulating the Earth,” Donald clarified. “Start pulling your weight.”
He seemed to get nosier every day. Cooper wasn’t sure where the line was, but he thought the old man had crossed it a while back, and was now just sort of camping out smack in the middle of his private concerns.
“Start minding your business,” Cooper shot back. But he knew the old man meant well.
Moments later they were wheeling down the dirt road. Cooper gripped the steering wheel with one hand and his coffee with the other. Murph was sandwiched between him and Tom.
“Okay,” he said to her as first gear began to wind out. He stepped on the clutch. “Gimme second.”
Murph wrestled the long shifter into second gear as Cooper took another sip of coffee and let the pedal up.
“Now third,” he said after a few seconds, as the truck picked up speed. He pushed down again, and Murph struggled with the stick. He heard the transmission grind in protest as she failed to locate third.
“Find a gear, dumb-ass,” Tom rebuked.
“Shut up, Tom!” Cooper scolded his son.
His reprimand was punctuated by a loud bang, followed by an abrupt roughening of the ride.
“What’d you do, Murph?” Tom demanded.
“She didn’t do anything,” Cooper said. “We lost a tire, is all.” He pulled over—not that anyone was likely to come along.
“Murphy’s Law,” Tom said, a little too gleefully. He made a little “ouch!” face at her.
“Shut up, Tom,” Murph said, and she shot him a withering look.
Cooper pushed open the door, climbed out, looked at the tire, and saw that yeah, it was pretty damn flat. He turned to Tom.
“Grab the spare,” he said.
“That is the spare,” Tom replied, opening his door and joining his father.
“Okay,” Cooper said. “Patch kit.”
“How am I supposed to patch it out here?” Tom protested.
“Figure it out,” he told his son. “I’m not always going to be here to help you.” Then he went around the back and to the other side of the truck. He found Murph leaning there, still fuming a little.
“Why’d you and Mom name me after something bad?” she demanded.
“We didn’t,” he told her.
“Murphy’s Law?” she asked, equal parts dubious and indignant.
Cooper studied his daughter’s earnest expression. He remembered the young man and woman who had named her.
“Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean bad stuff will happen,” he explained gently, really wanting her to understand. “It means ‘whatever can happen… will happen.’ And that sounded just fine to us.”
Murph frowned, and at first he thought she was about to protest further, but then he realized she wasn’t really paying attention to him anymore. Her eyes were far away, as if she had suddenly tuned into a frequency he couldn’t receive.
“What?” he asked. But then he heard it too, a long, low rumble, rising in pitch due to the Doppler effect. Something was coming toward them—no, flying toward them—and he was sure he recognized the noise it was making. But it had been so long, it was a little hard to believe his ears.
He grabbed Murph and pushed her back toward her seat in the truck, just as a projectile blew past overhead—a missile-shaped object with long, narrow, tapered wings jutting out at right angles.
“Come on!” he shouted. He leapt into the truck, fumbling for the laptop computer and the antenna that was connected to it. He quickly passed them to Murph, then yelled at Tom, who had the jack in his hand and was looking up from the flat tire.
“Get in!”
“What about the tire?” the boy asked.