The gate swung open. Everett drove up the hill and around a curve, where the drive ended in front of a one- story brick building like an elementary school. White cement columns supported a broad porch and entranceway. The bottoms of the columns were smudged with red clay, but otherwise the place looked almost brand-new.
They got out of the car, and Everett retrieved the Styrofoam cooler from the Cadillac’s trunk. Pax knew there’d come a point when he’d have to ask Aunt Rhonda what she was going to do with those vials-and then all this polite chitchat would be over.
A charlie man in a brown security uniform came out of the building to meet them. He was in his forties, looking more fat than muscular. His hairline had retreated to high ground. “How you doing today, Aunt Rhonda?” he said.
“Just fine, Barron. This is Paxton Martin, the Reverend Martin’s boy.”
They shook hands and Barron said, “Welcome to the Home.”
The guard led them up the ramps to the building and opened the door for them. The foyer was tiled in pale green slate, the air glowing with sunlight pouring through a row of high windows. A man older and more immense than Pax’s father napped on a huge, sturdy couch.
“We have thirteen men living here now,” Rhonda said. “We take care of them because their families just can’t. You’ve seen how hard it is. Come on, I’ll show you around the place.”
Rhonda led Pax toward a set of double doors. Barron started to follow, but at a look from Rhonda he stopped at the edge of the lobby. Everett had already disappeared in the other direction, carrying the cooler.
Rhonda pressed a button on the wall, and the doors glided open to reveal a small space before another set of doors. She gestured Pax inside, and when the doors closed behind him, a vent in the ceiling jetted warm air at them. Five seconds later the next set of doors swung open. Pax thought, Air lock?
The area beyond was a hallway and a row of serious-looking doors. She opened the first of them and showed him an empty apartment: bedroom, sitting room, bathroom, and kitchenette, all laid out wide for charlie bodies. The tubs and toilets were enormous.
“You certainly seem to be well equipped,” Pax said. “I suppose that was you who set my father up with that big new toilet?”
“Hon, fixing up that bathroom was the least we could do. He didn’t want to come live here at the Home, but there are certain needs for people our size. Our old houses just aren’t built for our new bodies.” She laughed and patted one of her big hips.
She took him to the next apartment. A man sat propped up in a queen-sized hospital bed, watching a game show on a huge flat-screen TV. The room seemed to be at least partly furnished with his own belongings: homemade quilts, lamps that didn’t match, picture frames and knickknacks on the shelves. The man watched the screen intently, his mouth moving as if he was chewing on the inside of his cheek. His exposed skin was splotched with a white substance like dried sunblock.
“How you doing today, Elwyn?” Aunt Rhonda said, raising her voice over the sound of the TV. Elwyn’s jaw hung slack for a moment, and then he resumed his chewing. He never looked away from the screen.
“Every room has a big-screen TV and five hundred satellite channels,” Rhonda said. “Our boys like the TV.”
She showed him two more rooms. Both occupants were about the age of Pax’s father, and they looked much more alert than Elwyn. The men made small talk, and seemed happy enough to see Rhonda. Both were patched by white ointment-jalopies primed for a new paint job.
Rhonda said, “We’ve got three women who do all the cooking down at a kitchen I set up downtown, and we bring it in fresh every day. Nothing fancy-most of our men like their food home-style. We go through five pans of cornbread every meal.” She glanced up at Pax. “So how’s your father eating these days?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s kind of, uh, hit-and-miss.”
She nodded understandingly. She was trying to score points, and she knew that he knew it.
“Who’s paying for all this?” he asked.
“The whole clade,” Rhonda said. “Every charlie pitches in.”
“Really?”
“Oh, sometimes family members donate, the skips or people from other clades whose daddy starts producing. But mostly it comes from our own people. That’s because we all know that we have to take care of our own. The blanks won’t help; the argos won’t help. And we aren’t getting a thing from the government.” She patted Paxton to point him back toward the double doors. She kept touching him, Pax noticed, but hadn’t touched any of the residents. In fact, she hadn’t gotten within five feet of them.
“Deke told me my father was dry,” Pax said.
“Not completely,” Rhonda said. “We checked on him every so often, but he wasn’t producing more than a trickle, not like the other men his age.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? Oh, hon, nobody knows for sure how all this is supposed to work- it’s not like there’s a lot of medical history on our people! Some of our older men are as regular as, well, it just comes flowing out of them. But your dad, he was like a rusty faucet. Dribs and drabs.”
“Until yesterday.”
She patted his arm. “That’s right. Isn’t that something?”
He smiled, feeling nervous. “Those vials you took from my father. Where’d Everett take them?”
“Why, down to the freezer,” she said, as if that were obvious.
Pax rubbed at the back of his neck. “Okay, and then what?”
Rhonda didn’t answer. She waited until the air had washed over them again and they were out into the lobby, and then she said, “Everett told me he found you laying in the grass at your father’s, waving your arms.”
Paxton felt his face heat. “All I did was get some on me. That stuff hit me like a Mack truck.”
Rhonda shook her head. “I’m sorry about that, Paxton. Nobody ever thought it would have that kind of effect on you. Even so, I would have warned you if I thought your father was producing even a little bit.” The guard, Barron, glanced in their direction, then looked away. The old charlie man on the couch snored heavily. “But in a way it’s a good thing it happened.” She gestured toward a door marked OFFICE. “Sit down, let me tell you a story.”
Rhonda situated herself behind a big desk piled with paper, a PC on the oak return behind her. Her seat was raised; she was as tall sitting as standing. Pax took one of the leather guest chairs.
“Willie Flint was the first,” Rhonda said. “He started producing a couple years after you left. His son, Donald-he was a bit older than you?-he turned charlie too.” Pax remembered Donny Flint. Dumb as a box of rocks. “Well, Donald found out what it could do. It didn’t take long for the vintage parties to start. He started selling the stuff to other charlies. Boys were using too much, girls were going crazy, boys and girls alike were starting fights. A couple kids ended up in the hospital. Donald had it too strong, and it was going to kill someone.”
Pax nodded, even though he didn’t understand most of what she was talking about. Going crazy how?
“Well,” Rhonda said. “Nobody knew at first what this stuff was, or how he was getting it. They thought he was cooking it up at home, like that crystal meth? But Donald, he couldn’t stop himself from talking about it. Word got around. The next thing we knew, Donald’s disappeared, probably killed, and his so-called friends have decided to set up business for themselves.”
“What do you mean-they started selling it?”
“Not just selling it. They were doing their own extractions. I wasn’t mayor then, but I was with the group that found old Willie.” Her voice had grown hard. “They’d made him a prisoner in his own house. They’d barely been feeding him, poking at him with the same needle over and over. His skin was all infected…” She took a breath. “He was already dead when we found him, Paxton. They’d killed him. You wouldn’t of treated a dog like that.”
Rhonda opened a file drawer in the desk, drew out a manila folder. “A couple weeks later one of our other men started blistering, then another. I knew if we didn’t do something, it was going to happen all over again. Some stupid charlie boy with more muscles than sense would grab the next one, and the next one.
“You’re involved now, Paxton. Your father’s producing, so you should know what we’re doing with the vintage. First and foremost, we’re keeping it away from people who would abuse it. If we have it locked up here, then it’s not on the streets.”
“Then why not just destroy it?”
“Paxton, you don’t understand how much the young charlies want the vintage. If we cut off the supply completely, they’d just get desperate, and desperate people do stupid, dangerous things. Better to let it out in dribs
