"He's got wires running from can to can, and it looks like three kinds of tape-silver duct, some sort of a black fiber, and what looks like regular old Scotch Magic. The cans appear to be attached by a white wire that ends in an outlet-I think he's done it with some sort of extension cord." The man pushes down Nate's socks with a pencil. "There's two sets of double-A batteries around the ankles."
"Check him for a timer." The squawk of the walkie-talkie.
"I hope they don't have to detonate him," an ambulance driver says. "In 'Nam, they medevaced a guy with a live grenade embedded in his head. It hit him and didn't detonate. The doc came out to the chopper pad, shot him full of morphine, and we set him off-like smashing pumpkins. Kaboom!"
"No timer."
"Go ahead and cut the wires."
The man from the Bomb Squad snips a wire, separating the spray starch from the Reddi Wip. Nothing happens. He reaches out and slowly pulls a piece of duct tape off Nate, peeling the cans away from Nate's skin.
Nate whines.
"Neutralized. Disarmed."
The chopper comes in over the hill. They hear it before they see it, thumping through the air.
Smoky red flares mark the spot.
It lands, kicking up a hot, dry wind.
"Stay with Mrs. Hansen," Paul yells at Daniel over the din.
The door slides open.
One, two, three, they lift Sammy off the ground. The medic holds the IV bags in his teeth, the oxygen tank under his arm. Whatever is not attached falls away, wrappers, scraps.
Sammy's head is swathed in an enormous wad of white gauze. There is a bandage over one eye. The other eye is open, pupil dilated, fixed as though it has seen something horrible.
"You did a good thing," Paul says, draping his jacket over Daniel's shoulders.
"Go," Daniel says.
Elaine is pulled into the helicopter after Sammy. She sits curled into the half seat by the door, the rivets of the low ceiling brushing her hair.
"It's all right," she tells Sammy. "You've had quite a hit in the head, but you're fine. Everything is fine."
The medic checks Sammy's vital signs. His helmet hides his face; he speaks into his headset. "Pulse one-twenty. Respiration shallow." He pumps the blood-pressure cuff.
Paul is last on board, crammed into a corner.
The door is slammed closed, locked. The whir is louder now, wings bladishly beating, a deafening metallic din.
The chopper takes off, thrusting up, hovering above foursquare, hopscotch, a diamond painted yellow.
Rising.
Pulling back on the scene.
"Chopper four, we are en route."
They are up and away, over the trees, clear of the wires, looking down on the familiar, a crooked cartography, houses, streets, the neighbors' yards, home. They are looking in on themselves from a peculiar perspective-everything in miniature, their lives made small.
Elaine is holding Sammy's hand; it is flaccid, unresponsive. He's getting whiter and whiter, and the gauze is staining red. When no one is looking, she pinches his finger, hard. Nothing happens.
"Pressure is falling," the medic says, pumping.
The sun glints off something metallic, a split second of shattering light.
Shiny, Elaine thinks.
They are into the blue.
Paul checks his watch-it beeps. Four forty-five.
Elaine looks at him. "It's over," she says.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For their enormous generosity of spirit, I would like to thank: Sarah Chalfant, Jill Ciment, Gregory Crewdson, Marc H. Glick, Amy Hempel, Erika Ineson, R. S. Jones, Randall Kenan, M. G. Lord, Rick Moody, Karen Murphy, Marie V. Sanford, Helen Schulman, Laurie Simmons, Andrew Solomon, Ben Taylor, Liza Walworth, Rob Weisbach, Karl Willers, and Andrew Wylie.
For a much needed and much appreciated grant given at just the right moment, I thank the Guggenheim Foundation, and for the great gift of time, the Corporation of Yaddo.
And always, my family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. M. Homes is the author of the novels The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collection The Safety of Objects and the artist's book Appendix A. Her fiction has been translated into eight languages, and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her fiction and nonfiction appear in magazines such as The New Yorker and Artforum, among others, and she is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Mirabella, Bomb, Blind Spot, and Story. She teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and The New School and lives in New York City.
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