“Then why would we do this?” Boccicelli snapped.
“Because Third Cousin Kenuda thought it would be a good experiment.”
“Experiment?” Fisher paled. “Meaning sometimes an experiment doesn’t work.”
“Yes sir.” Frecklie lowered his eyes.“That’s why I think we should be careful.”
They muttered the obviousness of that.
“If we allow a Reg business to do this, they’ll have to market the product according to law. But a DV business is given more flexibility since there’s no expectation they’ll survive.”
The owners waved him on as if they understood what he was talking about.
“I have an option.”
Morons, Frecklie smiled unpleasantly as he hurried into High School 44 barely in time for the third period math class. He didn’t pay much attention. Thanks to Dale, he was almost a whiz. When the DVs had first been set up, the educational standards were too high; almost no one passed. After the Surrender, The Family had gone the opposite way and simplified the curriculum to make sure that more DVs climbed out. Otherwise it looked as if they were trapped in a permanent cycle of failure. That led to an increase of subtle prejudices when the next generation clearly couldn’t keep up.
In 2076, Grandma announced the One Class initiative, which ignored any distinctions between DVs and Regs. One Class, One Country was the slogan. You kept up like everyone else, no excuses for where you lived or your families or your culture or anything that was once thought of an excuse.
Your mind is yours. Take care of it, said Grandma’s Nineteenth Insight.
Frecklie rushed through the school day, seeing little in any of the seven classes that would prepare him for his career as a baseball architect. By the time he finished homework and sex with Dale, it was after seven, sending him on a frantic dash to the grocery store; he barely got home before his mother.
Beth walked into the kitchen and sniffed. Something unfamiliar smoked slightly from the oven while seemingly every dish they owned was stacked in the sink. Puffs of white flour spotted her immaculate floor and a reddish ingredient clung to her blue-striped kitchen curtains.
But she had to smile at the flickering candles on the table flanked by the correct place settings. She wearily dropped her heavy bag of sewing to the floor. Frecklie whisked it away and gave her a big kiss on the cheek.
What had he done?
“Smells interesting,” she said.
“Greens and sea life casserole,” he said proudly.
“And wine?” Beth lifted up the half full glass.
“From Pittsburgh.”
“I hear they’re making good stuff.”
“Yeah. Sit, sit.” Frecklie pulled the chair out and she sat, hands clasped. “How was your day?” He refilled her glass.
“The usual. Yours?”
“Productive.”
“Yes?”
“School.”
“What’d you learn?”
“So much I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Work?”
“Great. Everyone loved the uniforms.”
Beth nodded; Puppy had left her a squared note of thanks.
“You’re in the Hall of Fame for uniform making. Thank you. They even fit.”
“That’s helpful.”
“You’re the expert. Best tailor in the Bronx. Maybe America. Now you have a chance to really show what you can do.”
Beth took a long sip and waited.
“Grandma’s Forgiveness.”
She darkened. “What about it?”
“Well, we want to promote it.”
“Who’s we?”
“Puppy has nothing to do with this. It’s my idea.”
She made a doubtful face.
“We want to sell t-shirts at the stadium. I need you to design them.”
Beth squeezed the stem of the glass. “You want me to participate in this charade?”
“What does charade mean?”
“I guess Dale isn’t doing your English homework too. Farce. Game.” She slammed down the glass and turned off the food before they were overcome by the smoke curling around the stove like a tornado. “I won’t have anything to do with it. And neither should you.”
“I already do.”
Beth flushed. “Grandma’s selling us out again.”
“She’s finally saying baseball is good.”
“So we don’t see what she’s doing. It’s a distraction. Like her Story, saying we killed refugees who wouldn’t have been refugees if the Allahs hadn’t thrown them out. We were trying to save those poor people. Now this bullshit about forgiveness. Accept wrongs on all sides. As if they’re all equal. They nuke our cities and it’s our fault because we fight back? What crap, oh, the world will be better if we turn hate to love. There’s going to be another Surrender, Ruben. A worse one, where we’ll all live under sharia, tyranny, as slaves, and I won’t let you stain the memory of brave men and women…”
“I know all that. I’ve seen them,” he shouted.
“Who?”
“The skeletons. The Miners underneath the stadium. They were trapped and gassed. Children, too. All over the balllpark. I’ve seen them. I know what the BTs did. So don’t tell me I don’t know like I’m a damn child.”
Beth controlled her trembling and took his hand. “Tell me what you saw.”
Frecklie described the ten storage rooms below the stands.
“Who else did you tell?”
“No one.” His eyes narrowed. “Neither can you. It’d get the government angry.”
She sighed. “Yes it would.” Exposing the lies of 10/12. The brave BTs gassing children and slaughtering prisoners. Who knows what other lies would come out about that day? Why’d Hazel want to see all the hiding places?”
Frecklie shrugged. “Who cares? He loves baseball and helped us.” He teared up. “Everyone thinks there’ll be another season now that Puppy and Dara are going to be role models for Forgiveness. I can really be a baseball architect, Ma. A second season means a third and a fourth and you’ll see, Grandma will have to build more parks.”
She doesn’t have to do anything, you stupid little child.
“Please.” Frecklie squeezed her hand in a pleading, needy way he hadn’t shown since he was ten. “Design the t-shirts.” Like a tender grown-up, he cupped Beth’s chin as she turned away.
• • • •
AT LEAST TEN thousand people waited by the podium on a brisk day outside the ruins of Phillies Stadium. Kenuda bored them very quickly by droning about the love behind Grandma’s new Thirty-Third
