And maybe, if only in retrospect, we felt that way, too, whenever we saw Reg and Fan riding their electric scooters side by side, often close enough to hold hands (Reg having no balance issues here), their easeful gliding down the long alleys of these streets a demonstration of our good order. For no matter the shadows of an age, the picture of a young couple in love, we are told, speaks most luminously of the future, as the span of that passion makes us believe we can overleap any walls, obliterate whatever obstacles.
In the days between when Reg went absent and the accident with the boys, we would be hoping to see Fan doing okay on her own. As we’ve already noted, she didn’t seem overly concerned, she was quietly biding the time, doing the appropriate things in terms of asking questions and pursuing available avenues, and yet in the mall or at the facility one could see she seemed, ironically, even smaller than before, for not being always next to Reg. He sized her, if this can be said, the way a planet does its moon, the two bodies perhaps much differing within their scale but nothing like they would be once adrift in the profound vastness of space.
Though plenty cozy, B-Mor can be a lonesome place.
And when Reg’s young friend, Joseph, was suddenly lost in that last big storm, one could see how it was a lot to take. Here is what happened: Joseph was watching his brother and his brother’s friend that afternoon, both sets of parents at work in the grow house, but the Wi-Fi had gone out because of the heavy rains and so they had been stuck inside all day without any gaming or vids; but then there was a sudden break in the cloud cover — it was one of those swirling weather systems that are rapidly changeable — and the younger boys begged to go out. Joseph agreed, and when they got to the park, it started to rain lightly but in a brilliant sun shower and rainbow. When it turned into a full-blown downpour, they decided what the heck, let’s have some fun, happily getting soaked to the bone as they played.
Then they apparently came upon a shallow, newly formed pond in a low-lying area near the entrance of the park, the muddied water running off from a nearby swollen stream, and to their glee there were what seemed a thousand fish bristling about the surface. As any boys might, they decided to try to catch some, Joseph wielding a few downed leafy branches to corral them, while his brother and friend tried to snatch them with their bare hands. Of course, they weren’t catching them to eat — these were our fish, but released for an ornamental life in the ponds (only counties people would ever eat wild fish, plus we have the benefit of purchasing our own prized fish at a significant discount from what Charters have to pay) — the three boys just having a blast like boys have since the beginning of time, shouting in triumph whenever one actually caught a fish, the rain coming down in sheets but unable to dampen any part of them.
And they were frolicking like that, without a care, because what dangers could Joseph have anticipated in the thigh-deep water, which was very slowly rising, other than maybe a jab from the pointy ends of a dorsal fin? Though even that was not a concern because of the training all B-Mor children receive, including units in piscine biology, hatchery operations, and free-diving techniques, this last area mostly meant to identify future divers. Joseph had, in fact, dived with Fan on several occasions, as she sometimes demonstrated her techniques for those classes. Joseph might have become a diver, as he was a superbly athletic boy with tangles of orange hair (his line no doubt including some blood from the first European settlers in the area) and the captain of the only Junior Bs soccer team that ever made it to the regional quarterfinals, nearly defeating a Charter squad that ultimately won the championship. In fact, school sporting contests are the only real extended contacts we have with Charters and the few better-organized counties areas, as otherwise there would be a sore lack of new playoff competition. Joseph, in this regard, was something of our champion, and Reg and Fan would watch him play matches whenever they could, this boy who had that special ability to configure himself, dynamically and instantly, to whatever was at hand.
This was likely his doom, for another boy might not have had the instinctive confidence to do what Joseph did when the water started to recede in that impromptu pond. Despite the torrents of rain, the level was going down, which would have seemed strange if the boys had even noticed, and they kept on wading after the fish, the schools of which seemed to be heading toward one end of the pond. The younger boys were in the lead, hurdling with slowed strides through the water, when for some reason the fish were turning around and swimming back through their legs, which delighted them. But Joseph could see why the fish were turning back: a hidden drainage pipe that ran beneath the entrance road had opened up. It had likely been dammed by some branches but it was now free and making a horrible gulping sound that you could hear even above the threshing rain.
The boys tried to run against the suddenly fierce current but the friend slipped and fell beneath the surface. And then he was gone. Sucked into the pipe. Joseph tugged his brother to the shallows and then without saying another word dove in, letting the strong flow of the brown water take him.
He can’t have known, none of us could, that his brother’s friend had already been shot out the other end of the pipe, to the far side of the embanked road, coughing and frightened and with a belly full of dirty water but otherwise fine. But Joseph, three years older, just that bit wider, got stuck three-quarters of the way through, and though fighting as he must have to push himself back out, the force of the water held him in place.
After an hour, emergency services was finally able to extract him, almost losing one of their own men in the process. Despite the duration, they attempted to revive him, but it was no use. When they brought Joseph back to his household, they say, he was the most startling shade of blue, transparent but still darkened, as if he’d been dyed by the cold evening sky.
Oh, the lament on the blocks! The outpouring! As mentioned, there were others who died during the storm: a couple who drowned in their vehicle when they tried to ford a submerged intersection; a man who was electrocuted as he attempted to pump out his flooded basement with a self-modified vacuum cleaner; some people who were inexplicably rowboating in the harbor and whose vessel immediately sank. The observances for these people were suitably somber and modest (and perhaps especially subdued, for the faintly embarrassing circumstances of their deaths), but for Joseph it seemed that every row house in B-Mor emptied onto the streets for his ceremony, all of us gathering outside his family’s row house in an awesome silence, the only sound the shushing of hundreds and hundreds of rubber-slipper-shod feet as we waited our turn to view his body.
Fan had a place in the line along with most of her clan, listening to them talk about Joseph’s wasted future. Usually this sort of chatter is merely just that, the idle blather of pipe dreams, but it was agreed Joseph really could have been one of those few who end up making a life as a Charter. For there are rare instances of B-Mors being recruited by Charter talent scouts for looks or athletic prowess — Joseph’s parents had been contacted after his stellar performance in the soccer playoffs — to be models or actors or professional athletes. The only other way was, of course, to do extremely well on the yearly aptitude Exam that the Charters let our children take at the age of twelve, then allowing those who place in the top 2 percent of Charter scores to be eligible for promotion and adoption by a Charter family. Such performance on the test was even rarer, though members of Fan’s clan could brag — and often did — that one of theirs had been promoted, if years ago; a sibling of Fan’s, in fact, a boy named Liwei, whom she had never known because of the difference in their ages.