It had been a good year at Mercy College. It should have been his graduation year, but he had a few more courses to take, due to some costly prevarication his freshman year, where he’d changed majors three times before settling on his final choice, political science. He had a couple more credits to earn—no biggie. One last semester, and he’d be free. Most of his friends had already graduated, and he figured that was just as well. He’d have more time to study and less time for the goofy adventures that always seemed to sidetrack them.
He shook his head, thinking of some of those adventures, which had involved near escapes, brushes with the law, even danger of death. Yes, it had been interesting, but he couldn’t expect the rest of his life to be quite as adventurous. At some point, he was going to have to settle down, get serious about life, maybe even cut his hair.
Naaah.
He checked his cell phone, wondering if Kateri was nearly home by now.
(She refused to talk on a cell phone while driving, even if it was legal in New Jersey, so he knew better than to try and call now.) They had said goodbye only an hour ago at dawn, at a rest stop, where the highway forked into north and east branches, just outside of Harrisburg. She was headed north; he was going east and south. Their paths had split. He missed her already.
He had promised to be a good boyfriend, send her presents, call her a lot.
She thanked him and wondered aloud if that meant she’d have to be a good girlfriend, and what did that mean?
“It means you love me, no matter what,” he had said, grinning.
She had only rolled her eyes and kissed him.
Then she had gotten into her own beat-up car, an old farm truck, gathered her long, wild black hair into a ponytail, waved a final goodbye, and driven off.
As he had watched her go, he felt the same wistful longing that he always regarded her with, but it was magnified by the circumstances. Kateri was cool, almost too cool for him. She was a slight, sturdy girl with a blockbuster personality. She always wore ripped jeans and wrapped thin braids in her hair with colored thread like a Native American. Lots of people thought she was Cherokee. But she was Asian—well, half Vietnamese.
And to Alex, she had about her the mystique of the Far East, even though her father was Polish-American. She had that aloofness, those dark, inscrutable eyes—and that hair! Long, black, wavy, tumbling down her back like a waterfall.
And she was—well, put together nicely. Since Alex himself was on the shorter side, he liked that she was so petite. For a long time he hadn’t been able to figure out if he just had a massive crush on her, or if this was true love, but now he decided he was willing to gamble that it was the real thing.
Back a few years ago when they had met at Mercy College, it had been a moment of no significance for either of them. Neither of them had cared much for the other. They ran in different circles, had different interests. Ironically, they only met when Alex had developed a slight crush on Kateri’s roommate.
Even after being formally introduced, they had spent most of their time arguing with each other. But in the course of several very colorful and fairly epic adventures, somehow he had swept Kateri off her feet—literally at one point—
and, he admitted, she had knocked him off his high horse as well.
So for the past year or so, they hadn’t been able to get enough of one another, and now, driving home, he was starting to wonder if that had ramifications for both of their futures.
For a person as organized and goal-oriented as she was, Kateri was fairly cagey on that point. He strongly suspected that her future plans had never included taking up with a sword-wielding martial artist from the suburbs like himself. She had just graduated—the Kovach family wasn’t rich, and she’d gotten her mental health degree as quickly and cheaply as possible. Last summer she and Alex had gone to the missions in South America together, which had been another set of adventures, but this summer she had indicated the time had come for serious plans.
Alex agreed, but he wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for the serious plans he was starting to think about now.
The problem was he didn’t want to be in the position of proposing marriage to a girl who was going to say no. And Kateri just might say no to him, whether she liked him or not.
He sighed as the song shuffle came to an end and briefly clicked his mp3 player to shift to a mix of adventure movie themes. He was coming into the suburbs of DC—home. A whole different adventure. His mom’s health was better these days—she had multiple sclerosis, but was surviving. Even though she could no longer walk, she had managed to keep going strong, even on crutches. His kid brothers were always in trouble, between sports, karate, and computer club. And he wondered what his dad had been up to. Most likely, Dad had figured out a new way to hack into the government computer database and reprogram their coffee makers. Or create software that would change every traffic light from yellow to purple, or something. Alex had better get home and find out.
In another hour, Alex turned off the highway and into one of the hundreds of neighborhoods that sprawled out from the DC beltway. He drove past green spaces and gated communities and gateless communities, condos and apartment buildings, tiny rows of little shops, boutique strip malls, and gargantuan big box stores separated by landscaped slabs of banked earth and color-coordinated flower beds.
He turned right and took a highway that shunted him through several miles of woods and towering, concrete sound barriers and slid off an exit into another older town of assorted stores that stood like islands on half-acres of concrete, past trees huddled like lost tourists in groups around drainage ditches, past overgrown woodland developments and developments built hurriedly on old farmland, vinyl split-levels and ranches with strings of spindly bushes and 1privacy fences dividing the lots. He pulled over to check out a neighborhood yard sale.
Then he took a bypass to avoid the shattered remnant of an old main street with one or two blocks of old-time buildings, which had survived just to sell postcards and antiques to Civil War pilgrims. He turned right into an even older development of small brick Cape Cods separated by lines of chain-link fences that were mostly hidden beneath piles of vines and embedded in hedges. This development had trees stuck at random in yards and sidewalks, some trees so old that their roots buckled the cement sidewalks with their branches spitefully dropping limbs during every storm.
Last year’s hurricane season had seen the demise of two octogenarians who hemmed in Alex’s parents’ house. During the tornado in the wake of Hurricane Zeno, the two trees had fallen upon each other viciously, as though motivated by a long-held grudge, and toppled into the yard, narrowly missing the roof but destroying the front porch and the chain-linked fence. Insurance and the town had paid for a new fence (green chain link) and sidewalk, and Alex’s mom said she had never liked the front porch anyway, which was too small to even put a lawn chair on. The facade of the house now had slightly pinker lines of bricks flanking the front door where the posts for the porch had been, and the ragged yard had a growing fishnet of crabgrass spreading over the eight-foot circles of clay that marked the trees’ graves.
Alex parked his car, levering himself into the five-foot curb space between a minivan and a compact with one practiced maneuver, and got out, grabbing several bags and his sword. With a karate yell, he leapt over the fence into the yard, instigating cries of “Alex is back!” Seconds later, the front screen door banged open to let loose two, sandy-haired boys who immediately threw themselves upon Alex with yells of their own. Alex thrust the sword into the turf, dropped his bags, and tackled his first assailant, dropping him to the ground. He flipped the ten-year-old over his back, and roared in dismay, “You guys haven’t been practicing!”
His brothers ignored him and went for his luggage instead. “Hey, did you get Drive Maniac III?” David said by way of greeting.
“No, I did not!” Alex swiped his backpack away from David. “Hey, leave that alone!” he said to Sam, who was swinging the swor
d around, decapitating tiger lilies. He yanked the weapon away and turning, grabbed a metal throwing star from David’s hand. “Barbarians!”
“Did you bring me a present? Are you home now for good? What did you bring home?”
“No, yes, wait and see.” Alex said, stepping inside and sliding the sword easily into the hooks by the door that marked its place. The staircase wall was filled with weapons both Eastern and Western, and Alex’s sword was positioned just between his dad’s Spanish rapier and David’s gladiator dagger. The messy room was decorated with bamboo scrolls and glass Japanese fishing weights that dangled in nets from the ceiling, souvenirs of his dad’s army years overseas. With careful aim, Alex tossed the throwing star, and it made a new jag in the trim over the mantelpiece, which had been its home ever since it had accidentally landed there many years before, making a gash which grew bigger by the years, and to which his mother had resigned herself.
He strode through the tiny living room past the blaring video game console with the cracked screen to the bedroom next to the kitchen, meeting his mom who had struggled to her crutches to greet him. Her blond hair was cut short, and she was wearing an oversized shirt in a cheerful pink print and jeans.
He kissed her. “Hi Mom! I’m back!”
Mom accepted his hug affectionately. “Did you have a good trip home?”
“Oh, yeah. I would have made it in three hours if I hadn’t stopped. Hey Dad!”
Dad was home from work—that was unusual. Maybe Mom had had a bad day? He was also intent on the bedroom computer—not unusual at all. Finishing a keystroke sequence, his dad tore his eyes from the screen and set them on his oldest son. “Alex! Glad to have you home!” His dad’s black beard and sideburns had a bit more gray in them, but the eyes behind his glasses twinkled and the laugh-lines were firmly fixed in place. Mom must not be doing too bad.
As if answering his thought, Mom said, “I had a doctor’s appointment today, so your dad stayed home to take me.”
“Everything okay?”
“All clear.”
Alex kissed his mom and dad. “Good! Hey, I’m going to run to the post office. Anyone need anything while I’m out?”
“Diet Coke,” his mom said. “And green tea for your dad. Can you go by the grocery and see what’s on sale in the meat section? I haven’t planned dinner for tonight yet.”
“How about I pick up Chinese? My treat.”
Mom grinned. She always looked cute when she smiled. “Sure! I’ll take you up on that.”
His dad had swiveled his chair inexorably back towards the computer, and dug into his pocket. “You said you were going to the post office? Here. Check the P.O. boxes for me.” He flipped the keys over his shoulder and started on the keyboard again.
Alex caught them with one hand. “No prob, Dad.”
Whistling, he went out to his car. His brothers were bringing in his luggage and belongings from the car and piling them on the front room carpet. “Hey, bring that stuff upstairs!” He snatched up something wrapped in a brown paper bag, grabbed the Sacred Heart picture, and propped it on top of an overstocked bookshelf near the rosary prayer table before heading out the door.
“Are you going out? Can we go with you?”
“Only if you behave!”
Without answering, the younger boys jumped into the car with him and settled themselves comfortably in the back and front seats. David grabbed the mp3 player and cranked up the loudest song.
“Turn that thing down,” Alex said, checking his mirrors while he reversed out of his parking spot. “So what’s been going on?”
“David’s grounded again from computer games but he’s still watching me.”
“Shut up!” David said. “Dad’s working on new tracking software.”
“How’s the MouseCatcher coming?”
“Dunno. He used to talk about it all the time, but he’s been quiet lately. Bet he’s working on something. So how’s the hot babe?”
Alex groaned. “David, let’s get this straight. Women and girls are ladies. Not chicks, not babes, not anything else. Okay? Show some respect, or Kateri’s going to slam you upside a wall when you’re least expecting it.”
“Is she coming down? Do we get to meet her?” Sam, the ten-year-old, cut in.
“I don’t know. All depends on whether she can afford it. Life’s hard when you’re a poor college graduate. I might go up and see her sometime.”
“Can you take us?”
“Yes. I’ll enslave you to Kateri’s younger siblings and you can work on the farm and learn some manners.”
“Pig manners.” That was David.
“You start acting like a pig, I’ll let them send you to the slaughterhouse.
Okay, stay here!” They had reached the Post Office. Alex grabbed the brown paper parcel and got out.
“What’s that?”
“Present for Kateri. Got to mail it.”
“What is it?”
“Something I found at a yard sale. Stay in the car, don’t fight. At least not to the death.” He strode through the glass doors to the lobby and joined the line.
While he was waiting, he picked out a box and two rolls of colored bubble wrap, and packaged the present. It was going to be expensive to send, but he couldn’t resist. He mailed the package, and recollecting himself, stopped by the line of post office boxes to check the mail for his dad.
His dad had a string of post office boxes, the result of several failed online business ventures, maintained now primarily for collecting junk mail and catalogs. After the hunt and peck of locating and emptying the boxes, Alex had an armful of junk mail. He figured he had better sort through it. No use bringing even more stuff into their crowded home.
Catalog, catalog, catalog. He kept one of each and threw out the duplicates.
Mom loved catalogs, and who knew what she was into these days? Restaurant supplies, gardening, skiing? Maybe the last catalog was David’s. Next he sifted out the credit card offers and tossed them. The fundraising solicitations were a bit harder to detect, but he trashed all the ones he could find. Now he had about fifteen envelopes left. Slipping into his typical role as Dad’s unofficial secretary, he started opening letters and checking them out.
Ah. Several of the “serious” letters were actually money-begging letters from political PACs. He tossed those and opened the remaining handful. That’s how he found the check.
It was printed, like a payroll check, from the Sundance Fun Foundation, but the memo said “Winnings.” Paid to “Cash” in the amount of $1,234,567.89.
“This isn’t real,” Alex said. He flipped to the back of the check, expecting to see “This is a sample” inscribed in red on the back. Nothing. “This isn’t real,” he said, looking for background printing, any sign that this was just a scam. “Nah.
This isn’t real.”
But the typed amount said one million, two hundred and thirty four thousand, five hundred and sixty seven dollars and 89/100.
Finally, not knowing what else to do, he folded the check, stuck it in his pocket, grabbed the rest of the remaining mail, and went to the car.
As he could have predicted, his brothers were fighting, but fortunately blood had not yet been shed.
“Where are we going now?” Sam demanded between yells and accusations of David.
“Bank.”
“What for?”
“Just going to try something. I’m curious.”
“CKTC!” David shouted.
“Hm?” Alex was turning on the motor.
“‘Curiosity killed the cat.’ Mom’s taken to using the acronym with Dad.
That’s how often she says it these days.”
“Interesting,” Alex murmured.
In the lobby of their family bank, Alex handed over the check to the teller, folded his arms, and leaned forward on the ledge. “Can you tell me if this is a real check?”
The teller did the same thing he had done. She looked it over, flipped it to the back, scanned it ag
ain. “Looks okay to me. Why?”
“I got it in one of those junk mail letters.”
She nodded with a knowing smile. “Want me to try to deposit it?”
“Sure, might as well.”
“With that kind of amount, they’ll probably put a hold on it. Maybe two to eleven business days.”
“That’s fine. No rush.”
It couldn’t hurt to try.
The girl sloshed through the muddy field in her barn boots and paused, looking out over the rooting animals to the hilly landscape and the silver clouds beyond. Part of her hoped that she wouldn’t get any response from the stack of resumes she had just sent out. Working in an office just wasn’t going to compare with farm work—even farm work with smelly pigs.
Absently she poked a stick at two of the younger hogs, who were squabbling over the same banana peel. “C’mon, settle down,” she said equitably.
Her attention was caught by the roar of a truck, and she looked over at the rundown little farmhouse where the remainder of her ten brothers and sisters lived with her parents. A white mail truck was cautiously backing up their winding gravel driveway.
Curious, she dumped the rest of the compost onto the grunting pigs, grabbed the bucket and the hose, and walked back towards the house, coiling up the hose as she went. Between the wet and the mud, the hose was dirty, which meant that by the time she reached the house, her hands and overalls were muddy as well. She deposited the coil of hose in its place by the cellar steps, stacked the compost bucket with the other empty plastic ones by the porch door, and walked to the truck, fully aware that she was a mess.
Wiping her hands on the wet grass helped a little. “Sorry,” she said to the driver as she took the stack of mail and bulky package. Walking back to the house, she glanced at the address on the box. It was from Alex. Kateri rolled her eyes and went inside to wash up.