exterminate every single termite from the face of the earth. So no more termites would exist anywhere.”
“But. . . people. . .?”
“To a virulent tribalist, people of other tribes are the same as termites. Mere vermin, to be disposed of by any means at hand.”
“They all want to kill each other?”
“Yes.”
“In. . . these different places?”
“In other places too, Zoe. Kurds and Iraqis. Turks and Armenians. Serbs and Croats. Hausa and Ibo. The list is endless.”
“But not in America, right?”
“Child, what you must understand is that those thoughts are everywhere. In America too, certainly. Do you know anything about Adolf Hitler?”
“Yes. He was an evil man. He wanted to kill all the Jews.”
“That is correct. And there are people in America who still follow Hitler.”
“They want to kill all the Jews too?”
“Yes. And there are others who want to kill all the blacks. And blacks who want to kill all the whites. And—”
“Why?”
“The reasons are too complex to explain simply, Zoe. Some are mentally ill. Some are inadequates who can only feel superior by denigrating others. Some are profiteers, who make money from hatred. Some actually believe in a sort of manifest destiny—that God has designated them to rule the earth.”
“Will America be like that someday?”
“It is not impossible,” I told her. “With the technology for mass destruction so readily available that any moron can kill thousands all by himself, race war in America is not out of the question.”
“So where is it safe?”
“There’s no *place* that is safe, Zoe. Only people are safe.”
“I’m safe now, right?”
“Yes, you are perfectly safe here.”
“Do they kill children too?”
“Exterminators do not discriminate on the basis of age,” I explained.
She started to cry then. I was. . . confused by that reaction, especially as I had assured her of her own safety. Her immediate safety, in point of fact, and children have a more truncated view than adults—the “future” to them usually is not very much beyond the present. I had no wish for the child to be in distress, and vaguely understood that I could have responded to her inquiries in a way different from that which I had elected. Still, beyond the usual platitudes so beloved of adults, I was bereft of any actual comfort potential, and I sensed that Zoe would be impervious to hollow cliches. However, by the time I had reasoned all this through in what I acknowledge to be a laborious fashion, the child quieted down, utilizing some self-soothing inner mechanism I could not immediately detect.
“Aren’t we going to play checkers?” she asked me, rubbing her eyes as though to banish traces of her just-departed tears.
It induced no consternation that the child grasped the principle of checkers almost immediately. By that time, I had grown accustomed to her quickness. We played only three games—“practice games,” she termed them—with me showing her the consequences of each move as she proposed it, before she announced she was ready to play “for real.”
This proved problematic. Unlike Risk, checkers is a finite activity, with all probabilities susceptible to near-instantaneous calculation. Therefore, it was impossible for the child to defeat me. And having proposed the activity myself, it would be unseemly for me to dominate the contest. Fearing she might detect a deliberate miscue, I provided full disclosure: “You understand, Zoe, this game really isn’t for children.”
“Why not?” was the reply, as expected.
“Well, because it takes years to actually win a single game. Years of practice. And most children don’t have the patience for that.”
“I’m very patient,” she assured me.
“I am certain that you are. But, still, won’t you get bored playing if you never win?”
“It’s still playing,” the child said. “It’s just not winning.”
That comment seemed far too sagacious for a child of her age, but I allowed it to pass and we began to play “for real.”
Zoe lost every game for almost three hours without a word of complaint.
“Sleepy,” she finally said, her head lolling.
I did not think it proper to undress the child, so I simply opened the bed and placed her there, covering her against a possible chill.
############################################## “Would it work if we put something inside first?” the child asked me early the next morning.
