Alison screamed. Dan recoiled, almost hitting himself on the face with the bat, as wood meeting mole resulted in a dull thwack.
Bill stepped to his brother’s side and watched with him as the dark ball disappeared over the neighbor’s house. Dan let the bat fall at his feet. Alison ran into the house. Robert quietly led his son away.
Bill scratched his chin. “There you go.”
Hear That Long Train Moan
“The world perhaps was laid out initially with some sort of temporal consistency, but that was soon gone. Out the window. Maybe there never was any kind of consistency. One can certainly imagine creation coming to certain parts of the globe before others, like the telephone or cable. Look around. Jets stretch their exhaust plumes across the skies over thatch huts, people whose main staple is rice watch napalm disintegrate their jungles, some people beat out conversations on hollow logs while the strata above them is filled with microwave signals.” Virgil Boyd re-lit his pipe and sank into his chair. “That’s why,” he told his friend, “I’ve no problem with the period inconsistency within my model.”
Morrison Long sipped his gimlet. “I wasn’t finding fault, but making an observation. Let me ask you something, Virgiclass="underline" Are you all right?”
“All right? Of course. Never better. Now that I’m retired I have time for my work.” He puffed at his pipe, but drew nothing. “Damn thing won’t stay lit.” Finding the box of matches on the table beside him empty, he patted his pockets and asked if Morrison had any. He did not and so Virgil called out, “Williston!”
An eight-year-old boy with a large head appeared at the study door. He stood erect and attended to his grandfather.
“Williston, be a good boy and find granddad some matches.”
The boy nodded and went away. Virgil Boyd watched him trot across the living room toward the kitchen, skipping over tracks in the foyer and before the hallway.
“The boy is a menace to my work,” Virgil Boyd said. “Doesn’t understand the seriousness of it all.”
“He’s a boy,” Morrison Long said.
“Nor do you appreciate what’s going on in this house.”
“Of course I do, Virgil. By the way, where is Frannie this evening?”
“I don’t know. And I care only to the extent that her absence has caused me to be left alone with that boy of hers.” Virgil Boyd went back to the door and looked. “He’s out there in the model now. Heaven knows what destruction he’s causing.” He looked at his cold pipe. “He’s not a bad boy. But he’s curious.”
“Not a bad thing for a boy to be.”
“Ha!”
“It’s an innocent fault.”
“Innocence will be the downfall of us all. Here he comes.” Virgil Boyd took the matches from Williston and sent him on. “I appreciate his curiosity, but there’s such a thing as discipline.”
Morrison Long stood and went to the empty fireplace to lean on the mantel and look at the moose’s head above. “Did your father really kill this animal?”
“So I was told. A crying shame, if you ask me.” Virgil Boyd got his pipe going, puffing clouds of blue smoke. “I’m sure he didn’t eat any of the beast. Killed for so-called sport. I keep it around as a reminder of crying shames.”
“Imagine the body that went with that head,” Morrison Long said.
“Do you really have to go back to Chicago so soon?”
“I’m afraid so. Unlike you, I still have work. Tell me, do you miss your practice?”
Virgil Boyd chewed the end of his pipe and considered the question. “No. I don’t miss the patients. They never wanted to be there anyway and saw clear of their own negligence to blame me for their pain and expense. I don’t miss being on my feet all day. I’m thankful, however. Dentistry was a good profession and it gave me the skills and patience I need for my detailed work now.”
“Well, it really is something,” Morrison Long’s eye followed the tracks which ran by his feet, across the hearth.
Virgil Boyd walked to the corner of the room where sprawled a replica of a small town with a central square, storefronts and houses with shrubs, trees and lawns.
“What town is that?” asked Morrison Long.
“Ashland, Kentucky.” Virgil Boyd walked to the town. “See, the oil refinery.” Flames sat atop stacks and little lights glowed on the rigging. “Some of the houses on this hill are my finest work. Such detail inside.”
“Let’s see.”
Virgil Boyd shook his head. “We mustn’t disturb the model.”
“Don’t you like to admire your work?”
“I do, but I can’t go around taking the roofs off of people’s houses.”
Morrison Long smiled. “Of course.”
Virgil went back to his chair and sat, took a deep draw on his pipe.
“Are you quite all right?” Morrison Long asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You were joking, weren’t you?”
Virgil Boyd just looked at his friend. “What do you mean?”
“I want to see in one of the houses.”
“No, I said.”
“Why not?”
“Would you want somebody taking the roof off your house and looking in?”
“I suppose not.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t. The model is very delicate. Everything is just so.”
Morrison Long looked at the sculpted hillsides in the corner beyond Ashland, at the tiny trees, at the gardens of the big house whose roof would not be removed.
“What are you thinking?” Virgil Boyd asked.
Morrison Long sat down. “Have you ever been to Ashland, Kentucky?”
“Yes.”
“The real one.”
“Yes.”
“I mean the one in Kentucky. The one the freeway goes through.”
“There’s no freeway through Ashland.”
Morrison Long’s left hand held his right in his lap. His fingers moved to his wrist and he toyed with his watchband. “Virgil,” he said, “do you know who lives in that big house?”
“Yes, of course I do.” Virgil Boyd adjusted himself in his chair and looked his friend in the eye. “Why do you ask?”
“Stop pulling my chain,” Morrison Long said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just stop it. This isn’t funny. Well, maybe it’s funny, but it’s gone too far. So, cut the act.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Viigil Boyd said. “Perhaps you haven’t paid close enough attention to the model. Come back down into the basement with me.” He led the way from the study and down the stairs. “I realize that there is an awful lot to take in, but you really must try.”
Morrison Long followed, saying nothing, looking again at the massive network of HO scale world around him. He looked at a town from America’s old West, a hog farm on its outskirts. He looked at glittering lights of modern Detroit in the far corner of the basement. “It’s more impressive each time I look at it.”
“I feel the same way.” Virgil Boyd took his seat behind the screen of the control terminal. “All the commands come from here.”
“The scheduling and all that.”
Virgil Boyd smiled. “Yes.”
“Perhaps you’ve spent too much time on your trains lately,” said Morrison Long.
“I wish it were only trains.”
“What do you mean?”
Virgil Boyd didn’t answer. He tapped away at the keyboard of his terminal. “I make it a habit to review the scheduling pretty frequently.” He leaned back and studied the screen. The smile faded.