“Joey belongs in an institution, Ms Traub,” said Doctor Houseplant.
Chelle cringed. She had heard the recommendation before, from three other physicians, and had balked. She balked again. Houseplant—his real name was Houseman—reminded her of a philodendron out of the sunlight for too long: wilted, and brown around the edges, and tilting toward retirement. He had no children; he could not possibly understand.
“How would placing him in an institution cure his headaches?” she asked.
She did not expect a sensible answer, for the question bordered on the rhetorical. But it did serve to redirect him toward the purpose of their visit. She glanced at Joey. Now almost eleven years old, he could just about feed himself without undue mess. He had dressed himself, after a fashion, with the zipper halfway up on his jeans, the belt notched one hole too loose, so that the jeans hung about his hips. One sock inside-out. She had bought shoes with Velcro fasteners because tying laces was beyond him. The tee-shirt—blue, his favorite color of the day—was on backwards; at least it wasn’t like the sock.
She had not adjusted his clothing; he needed a sense of accomplishment.
“Hurts,” he said, hands over his ears. “Not a fish.”
The headaches had started last week, and to judge by the increasing force of Joey’s complaint, had grown in intensity, to the point that he whimpered in his sleep. In a way, Chelle thought, autistic children were like pets: when they hurt, you had to do something about it, even if you didn’t know what it was. The problem was that Doctor Houseplant didn’t know, either.
“There is a facility right here in Southhaven,” he was saying, as he pulled a business card from his pocket. “The Mueller Institute. They’re new, but good.” He handed her the card. “You can at least hear what they have to say,” he went on. “They can develop programs that cater to individual needs—”
Chelle got to her feet. “Thank you, Doctor, but that’s not a solution for us.” She held out her hand for Joey. He ignored it.
“It will free you up to get a job,” Houseman pointed out—the advice unsolicited. “To support yourself better.”
The remark infuriated her, but she kept her composure. Her hand passed in front of Joey’s face, and he took it. Gently she pulled him up. He was so light, and yet so strong.
“Your prescription has been called into the pharmacy,” he went on, and watched while they departed, she striding in short steps, he shuffling along. She halfway expected to hear Houseman call out, “Next!”
Just before they reached the sliding glass doors, Joey aimed the first two fingers of his right hand and swept them to the right. The doors opened immediately. “Jedi fish,” he said.
On the way to the car, Chelle asked, “Joey, what day was August 13, 1809?”
“Sunday.”
She would confirm that when she got back to the apartment. But as with perhaps a hundred different dates before, he had never been wrong. It occurred to her that if he could be rewired, so that the neurons could connect at will, he would have invented a cure for everything within a year. But up to now he had demonstrated just the one talent. The quirky ability might get him on a late-night television show as a curiosity, but it was otherwise of little value.
Still, they could use the money. She hated welfare. She hated food stamps. No, that was not quite accurate. She hated having to beg for welfare and food stamps by filling out form after form after form. She wished she could find a job, one that had hours that fit in with Joey’s needs, or a day care for autistic children. She had searched. She had tried. But only institutionalization would free her. And she did not want that sort of emancipation. Joey was her son.
Joey almost ran into the car door. Chelle caught him in time. She got it open, got him into the seat belt, and he clapped his hands to his ears and began rocking back and forth. She wanted to cry.
Let’s just get home, she thought.
Making the choice between eating and medication, Chelle did not stop by the pharmacy for the Imitrex. Its cost was not covered by TennCare; so she had been told. She had thought otherwise, but apparently autism was regarded as a pre-existing condition. She had filed a protest three months ago, and was waiting. Waiting. The institute in Southhaven was not an option: being a resident of Tennessee, she did not qualify for Medicaid in Mississippi. Possibly Doctor Houseplant’s geography training was insufficient.
Joey whimpered. “Hurts. Not a fish.”
“I know, baby,” she sighed. “I know.”
Chelle had done the research. There were support groups. One even stood out…but it was for ages nine months to three years. Joey would turn eleven in another month. Another sounded interesting, and she had called them, only to find that there were forms to fill out and a long waiting list. A third already had over fifty in the group, and Chelle feared that Joey’s voice and hers would be lost in the crowd. But there was one group with an off-beat title: Grow with Jamie & Friends. She had phoned them as well. They met on Friday evenings at seven, and had extended an invitation. Today was Friday. Somewhere on or near Jefferson, she thought…she almost missed a stop sign, and managed to brake without disturbing Joey.
Tonight, she thought, breathing deeply. Tonight.
A horn from behind urged her on.
The migraine had passed by the time they reached the apartment. Once inside, Joey went to his crayons and paper and sat on the sun-faded carpet, outlining things only he could see. Chelle assembled a light dinner of mac-n-cheese with bits of ham, to be washed down with generic milk. The living room window gave onto a view of the playground two floors below, and as she passed it, carrying a tray for Joey, she saw children playing outside, and for just a moment she allowed herself to break down.
Joey shuffled, almost pigeon-toed, while others ran and darted. Some threw balls; Joey tossed a fork now and then, not meaning to. He had no friends; he had no idea how to be a friend, or even that he could be one. He did not fit.
Except perhaps in an institution, he did not fit.
These were the moments when she was weakest. When her resolve threatened to flag. So easy it would be to free herself, to find her own life. Didn’t she deserve that? No more interrupted sleep at night. Better food, better furniture. Better life. If only the sonogram had detected Joey’s defect, she might even have…
Chelle made a fist and banged it on the windowsill. The hell you would have, she yelled silently at herself. It’s not Joey’s fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t even God’s fault. It just was. How long, oh Lord, cried Israel. Wasn’t that in the Bible somewhere? If not, it should be.
While Chelle saw to the early dinner, Joey dumped his lettered blocks on the living room carpet and began to assemble them. Trying without success to fit a block between two others, he began to hammer one of those blocks with the one in his hand. Chelle, ears keened to him as always, came to the counter that separated the two rooms and sang, to the tune of My Grandfather’s Clock.
“The blocks will fit smart if you move them apart.”
Joey began to rock. His words came clear, as did the tune. “The blocks will fit smart if you move them apart.” He separated the two blocks on the carpet just a little more, and placed the third block between them. Presently he had constructed a wall two blocks high. What struck Chelle was that the letters in the top row read NOTAFISH. She had no idea whether he was aware of this, nor did she know what questions to ask in order to draw the answer from him. Perhaps, she thought, a song. She attempted to compose one while she watched over the frying wieners. The difficulty lay in finding words that Joey could associate with his objects and his actions, and yet had a cadence to them that allowed rhyming. After a while, she gave up. The words would come to her at another time.
“Hurts,” said Joey, and began rocking back and forth. “Not a fish.”
The gathering of Grow With Jamie & Friends began at around seven that evening, an hour before sunset. Chelle had a few preconceived notions of what would occur at the gathering, based on that brief phone call she had made to the facility—which proved to be a back room in a Baptist church. She kept her hopes on tenterhooks as she led Joey inside.
They were met in the vestibule by a woman in pre-torn jeans and a black jersey. “I’m Leann,” she said. “Welcome.” She pointed. “The gathering room is just beyond the pulpit and to your left. Facilities are just beyond that.”
“Joey,” said Chelle, and gave her first name. The two women shook hands, after which Chelle and Joey moved on, to make way for the next arrival.
They found the gathering room already occupied by mothers and fathers and children, to the extent that only a few metal folding chairs were still empty. Most of the children were playing on the floor with various toys and other items, all of plastic or wood. There was even a set of lettered blocks like the one Joey had at home, and he staggered directly for it and sat down, the circle of his arms dragging most of the blocks to him.
Chelle made herself comfortable, and flashed smiles at those people who looked at her. She herself felt uncertain, not for the group, but about her relationship to it and in it. At the moment, despite being the mother of an autistic child, she was still an outsider. She shifted position on the chair, and uncrossed and crossed her legs, and kept looking away whenever her eyes met someone else’s. Other people talked with one another, or simply kept silent as they waited. All of them, except her, were wearing name badges.
A woman in a blue and gray skirt and black leggings cleared her throat for attention. She wore a name badge that read DIANE. “We have a new visitor this evening,” she began. “Joey Traub, playing with alphabet blocks, and his mother, Michelle.”
“Chelle,” she said, automatically.
She heard words of greeting, and saw a few nods.
Diane said, “Why don’t we begin with expectations, Chelle. What are you looking for with Grow With Jamie & Friends?”
Chelle drew a deep breath. It didn’t help. Responding, her voice trembled. “I…don’t know. I wish I knew, I really do. I need…something. Joey is my treasure. But I worry that I’m not doing as much as I could for him. Yet I don’t know what else I could do.”
“We’ve all been there,” said Mark.
“Still there,” added Trudy.
“Is there anything in particular that you’d like to address with us?” asked Diane.
“Well…yes, it’s his—”
A little girl cried out, her hands to her ears. Sitting on the floor, she kicked her heels on the linoleum. One heel hit a plastic car, which broke it and cut her skin. She seemed not to notice as she continued in her agony.
Joey’s hands also went to his ears. “Hurts,” he said. “Not a fish.”
“Migraines,” finished Chelle.
Martine nodded. “With you there,” she said. “Annette’s been having them for a few weeks now.” She looked around the group. “Several of us have been encountering the same issue. My Seelie has been getting them.”
Chelle got up and went to Joey. He had already lowered his hands, and resumed playing with his blocks. Evidently the migraine had passed.
“But I don’t understand,” she said, returning to her chair somewhat relieved. “Migraines aren’t necessarily a symptom of autism. Are they?”
Diane looked to the man seated beside her. Doctor Watson, a burly black man who might have had a career in professional football, responded.
“Not usually, no,” he told them. “They cropped up some three weeks ago, and I’ve had to do some research. There are instances of periodic and frequent migraines among the autistic. As many as three percent suffer from them. Another ten percent or so suffer from them intermittently, averaging one or two a year. I think it is safe to say that what the children in this group are experiencing is unusual. It is almost as if there is a migraine…bug, let’s call it, for lack of a better term, that is going around. However, in these instances the migraines pass very quickly, which is highly unusual for migraines. What is also unusual, Chelle, is your Joey, who has had no previous contact with any of the children or adults here.”
“So what, in your opinion, Doctor, is causing them?” asked Roberta.
“I have no idea. I’m sorry. I wish I had a better answer for you. But I have no idea.”
Chelle hung her head. At least she had found out one thing: other autistic children were getting migraines. Hard, painful headaches. Yet, aside from autism and membership in the group, they had no points of intersection, of commonality. Slowly she raised her head again, and spoke directly to Watson.
“Have any other groups associated with autism reported any incidents of migraines?” she asked. “Particularly recently.”
Watson’s face grew thoughtful, serious. “I’ll have an answer to that for you next week, Chelle.”
The sing-song voice was a child’s, behind her. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh,” said the girl. Her finger shook as she stood up and pointed. “Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.”
Belatedly Chelle realized the girl was pointing in Joey’s direction. He had wet his pants and the floor.
After midnight, when Chelle finally had a moment to herself, she sprawled on the old stuffed chair that she and a friend had rescued from an easement. Eyes softly closed, she let her breathing and her thoughts drift. Such moments seemed to come to her less often these days, with Joey growing older but scarcely better. She wondered if she might be rethinking her refusal to place the boy in an institution. He was all she had. There was no one else in her world. But there could be no one else in her world as long as Joey was with her. The conflict grated on her like cold stone on raw bone. There was no way out. There was no way in.
She dozed off, fitfully, blinking herself awake with each odd sound, only to find that it had been a spring in the chair, or a dish finally toppling into the sink, or the apartment complex settling, as all buildings do. A jetliner thrummed overhead on its way to the Memphis International Airport. The usual sounds of life.
And Joey called from their bedroom. “Hurts. Not a fish.”
Sighing, Chelle got up and went in to see him. He was sitting up in bed, hands pressed to his ears, and crying. This was a bad one, she thought. She tried to embrace him, to hold and reassure him, but he shoved himself away from her.
“Not a fish,” he repeated.
A heavy truck passed by. Unusual at that time of night, but still, it did happen now and then. The apartment building shook, and the windows rattled. Soon enough it went past the next apartments to disturb others. She reached for Joey again, and he dropped his hands and scooted into her arms. The migraine had passed. It was all right.
She waited until he fell asleep, then took a shower and went to bed.
Morning arrived immediately. Chelle had no memory of having slept. But Joey was quiet, perhaps too quiet. Heart pounding, she rolled in that direction and sat up, only to find him playing with a mobile that had fallen. It might have been shaken loose by another truck. She shrugged lightly; she could have slept through an earthquake, so fatigued had she been.
She got up, and lifted Joey from the bed that was specially made so that he could not fall out of it, or go wandering about the house or worse while she slept. He needed a bath and fresh clothing. She set the coffee pot to reheat, and addressed the needs of hygiene for both of them.
Another day.
Outside the window by the table, children were already playing in the fenced ground that ran along the street. Joey watched them—she had wondered about his eyesight, but getting him to respond clearly to an optometrist’s question of “Which is better? This? Or this?” was beyond him. Still, she had no reason to suspect his vision. He could reach for his glass of milk without knocking it over, and drink it. He recognized her. And his eyes seemed to follow the children as they played. She wondered what he was thinking; whether he wished he could be out there with them, whatever they were doing. Wondering depressed her. She took a sip of coffee.
Suddenly Joey cried out, and pressed his hands to his ears. “Hurt,” he whimpered. But he did not add the “fish” tag this time. Chelle realized he was in unusual distress. Tears welled in his eyes. Moments later, outside across the street, a flock of sparrows took off. A few of the children stopped playing. A ball bounced unchased. A couple of dogs barked. The apartment trembled as a cement truck rolled past. Joey repeated his complaint, still without “fish.” She could but hold him and hope the comfort eased his pain.
Gradually Joey went slack in her arms, and clung to her, his hands no longer over his ears. The migraine had subsided, at least to the point where it did not affect him. Chelle sat him back down and helped him finish his scrambled eggs.
With the sun warming the playground, Chelle decided to take Joey outside and let him breathe some fresh air. Slowly they negotiated the stairs. When they reached the landing at the front door, Art Pollock happened to emerge from his first-floor apartment with a full trash bag in his hand. He was somewhere in his fifties, divorced, a mechanic who helped Chelle with her car now and then. His nails, as usual, retained some of the grime from his work.
Seeing them, he paused. “Did you feel that?” he asked.
Chelle eyed him uncertainly.
“The earthquakes,” he explained. “One last night, about four point two, they said, and another one just a few moments ago. It was just on the news.”
“Earthquakes?” said Chelle. “In Tennessee?”
He preceded them down the steps, the better to help Joey if needed. “Oh, yeah, yeah. There’s a fault zone up near New Madrid that supposed to be one of the most dangerous in the U.S. Back in 1812, a quake actually changed the course of the Missippi.” He chuckled as they reached the bottom steps. “Good thing there wasn’t nobody living around here back then. They been saying for a century and more the fault’s gonna go off again, but it never does.” He lifted the lid to the dumpster and slung the bag into it. “Me, I thought it was a truck passing by.”
Joey was paying unusual attention to a small stain of motor oil on the pavement. He was about to step on it when she gently redirected him toward the grass. “That’s what I thought, too,” she told Pollock.
He was looking up at the sky. “They say animals know the signs of a coming quake,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure whether he believed it. “It’s like the sides of the fault grind against each other so hard that they make sounds so high that only the animals can hear it. It upsets them. The gummint did a study on it. Waste of taxpayer money, you ask me. They been looking all over the world for years for ways to get early quake warnings, but they ain’t done nothing yet. If another big one in New Madrid should hit, Memphis could be destroyed. Few of these buildings can ride out a strong quake. Maybe none of them.” Suddenly he gave her a contrite look. “I’m so sorry. Joey…how’s Joey doing?”
Chelle sighed. Everyone asked that. Pollock was one of the few who actually meant it. “Same as always, Mr. Pollock. He doesn’t change much.”
“I got some oatmeal cookies in the house,” he told her. “Knock on the door, you want some.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that. Joey, don’t eat the grass.”
After Pollock went back inside, Chelle and Joey moved to a white wooden bench on the grass. Joey plucked at dandelions, eating one or two, while Chelle sat and watched and wondered whether to intervene in his snack. Structure might be important, but it was difficult to impose on someone who did not understand the need for it. At least he was putting something in his mouth that was edible.
Mr. Pollock’s lesson in geological history began to sink in. When Joey was younger, he had often said, “I can’t hear you,” when she talked with him. Naturally, she talked a little louder. The complaint remained. Only when she realized that he communicated better with her when she spoke softly did she come to understand that he had sensitive hearing, and that what to her was a whisper might be a yell to him. For this reason she also kept the volume on the television down to just above threshold, as she did the radio music in the car.
The question of whom to see locally about earthquakes arose. Surely the University of Memphis had a geological department. But that was not quite the right science, she thought. She was looking for one of those people with that graph that looked like polygraph in the movies. She was looking for a…yes, that was it. Seismologist. Probably it would not be listed in the Yellow Pages. She might find something online.
Joey rose, staggering, and walked toward the bench. She reached out to lift him, but he insisted on seating himself, and crawled up. He had just made himself comfortable when he pressed his hands to his ears. “Hurts,” he cried. “I can’t hear you.”
She hoped the autocorrect was turned on when she typed “seismologist.”
At mid-afternoon, with Joey down for his nap, Chelle got online and did her search. For “Seismology Memphis” the top entry was something called CERI, at the University of Memphis. A click earned her a site titled Center for Earthquake Research and Information. It showed a map of the central United States and a lot of little circles, mostly yellow, a few orange. The legend indicated that these were earthquakes. Yellow signified those earthquakes that occurred in the past six months, orange in the past week, and red in the past day. She saw red two circles north of Memphis, in that hook of Missouri that poked down into northeastern Arkansas.
Not all the circles were the same size. Another legend said the size depended on the strength of the earthquake. She moved the cursor around—it showed up as a little hand that became a pointer finger when it was placed over the circle in question—and found that numbers came up in a little window. This circle said M 2.2, that one M 2.38. The red ones were M 4.4 and M 4.7. She had no idea what they meant, but the higher numbers probably were not good.
There was also a “Contact Us” link, and it gave her a phone number. She called it, but hung up before anyone answered—it having occurred to her that she had no idea what to ask.
Joey continued to sleep. In the bed, his face looked peaceful, so tranquil that it broke her heart thinking of the pain he had to endure every so often. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t. She watched a tear plummet off the tip of her nose and land on the pillow next to his face. It seemed to say, I’m right here. I’m here.
She laid herself down on her bed, and slept, too.
Chelle awoke to screams. Joey was sitting up in bed, hands once again to his head, and kicking his legs against the quilt. Immediately she was on her feet and taking the two steps to the bed. She threw her arms around the boy and spoke softly to him, but he struggled himself away from her with screams of, “Hurt, hurt!” He did not say, “Not fish,” his words for whatever he thought was bad. This told her his agony was worse than usual.
Helplessness and frustration set in. Chelle stood up, and brushed hair from her eyes, along with a few tears. Why, why, why? She made fists, and slammed them against her thighs. Joey continued to wail. Her tears continued to fall. It was tempting just to walk out of the room and close the door, and hope that he would recover soon. Tempting, and utterly impossible.
“Oh, Joey,” she sobbed.
Time counted, and still she stood there, touching him now and then only to have him shrug her hand away. But gradually the kicking subsided, and the wailing dulled to crying and then to no sound at all. He looked up at her, and held out his arms to her, and she wept as she picked him up and hugged him.
This has to stop, she thought. Somehow, it just has to.
By half past three the latest migraine was over. Joey was playing with his blocks, using them to surround a stuffed hippopotamus. Chelle sat at her desk, the phone at her fingers, drumming her fingertips on the desktop. To call or not to call. At least she had a moment of peace. She raised the number, and got a formal medium-range voice in return.
“Center for Earthquake Research and Information, Mark Lacey. How may I help you?”
Chelle introduced herself, and came right to the point. “Can earthquakes cause migraines?”
Lacey smothered a laugh. “They’re not known to, Ms Traub. But I’m curious: why do you ask?”
Why do I ask, she thought, gazing down at her blurred reflection in the varnished wood. She cleared her throat. “My son, who is autistic, has been getting what’s been diagnosed as migraines,” she told Lacey. “They are of short duration. Last night, just before the earthquake, he had one. This morning, just before that quake, he had another. That is why I’m asking. Is it possible that he is hearing, I don’t know, the sounds of stress in the fault, or something?”
She had the impression that Lacey was trying to control his reaction.
“Well, Ms Traub…it is true that wild animals have been known to scatter or fly away just prior to a quake,” he told her. “We don’t know why. But they often have a much higher range of hearing than humans. I suppose it’s possible that they can hear sounds that we cannot. Now, what we would like to find is some sort of early warning system that allows us time to evacuate an area, and take some protective measures, to minimize the damage and the loss of life when the quake does hit. A flock of birds flying away occurs just minutes, seconds even, just before a quake. That’s not nearly enough time.”
“No, I suppose not. But has anyone…I mean, is there research…studies of the relationship between the hearing of autistic children…I don’t know what I’m asking here, but…”
“I’m afraid there’s no relationship between earthquakes and your son’s migraines, Ms. Traub,” Lacey said gently. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you something better, but unfortunately I cannot.”
“But…but…”
“I’m truly sorry, Ms. Traub,” he said again. This time his tone was dismissive.
She fought back the urge to yell at him. Damn it, she was not a crank caller. This was serious! Her shoulders lifted with the huge breath she took to calm herself. Biting her tongue, she thanked him, and broke the connection. Not given to swearing, she banged the desk top with her fist, and rattled her laptop.
On a hopeful impulse, Chelle dug out the card Dr. Watson had given her at the Jamie meeting, and pecked the number on it. Rather to her surprise, he answered on the third ring. Mentally unprepared to talk so quickly, she had to clear her throat and swallow. After perfunctory greetings, she said, “Joey had a migraine last night, and again this morning. Dr. Watson, is it possible that these are related in some way to earthquakes? Because his migraines began a few minutes before the quakes. I thought the buildings were shaking just because of the trucks passing by, but…”
The silence which greeted Chelle was almost frightening. She wondered whether she had struck a nerve.
“That,” he said at last, “is a very interesting question. Let me ask around to the other members, and check out some websites on the Internet. I’ll call you back later this afternoon.”
“Oh, thank you,” she breathed. “Maybe I’m not crazy.”
His light laugh soothed her. “No, Chelle, I don’t think you are.”
The rest of the morning and early afternoon passed with the speed of a tectonic plate. A millimeter here, a millimeter there, and soon enough there would be a collision. In the interim, entire species would evolve and become extinct. She puttered around the apartment, with periodic checks on Joey, who was engrossed with his blocks. He seemed to be constructing a cylinder of them around himself—something he had not done before. But at least he was not suffering any more migraines. She crossed her fingers with the hope that he would remain pain-free.
The puttering complete, she reputtered. The two magazines on the rickety end table were not aligned properly. A salad fork had gotten into the slot with the dinner forks. The milk was a day past its sell-by. She sniffed it; it seemed okay. A truck rumbled by outside, and the muscles of her shoulders momentarily turned to stone. But nothing else happened. The apartment complex scarcely noticed, nor did Joey cry out in agony.
What if, last night, it wasn’t a truck? And again this morning.
She went back to her lappie and called up the geological map of quakes in the Midwest. The focus of the little yellow circles was the area of the Mississippi River from just south of St. Louis to just south of Memphis. Now she placed the little finger of the cursor on each circle, and noticed the date the quake had occurred. They seemed to follow an irregular pattern of four or five a month, for as far back as they went, which was the beginning of the year. In effect, they happened all the time. There was nothing to worry about.
So what caused Joey’s migraines?
Chelle felt as if she were caught inside a movie script that would never know a camera, because nothing actually happened.
The phone rang. She snatched it up before it could sound again. She said hello three times. After the third, a mechanical voice spoke. Something about the warranty on her vehicle. Angrily she stabbed a finger at the red Off circle on the phone screen, forgetting that no matter how hard you shut the phone down, it only goes click at the other end.
Another check on Joey. This time the cylinder wall within which he was sitting reached up to the beltline of his jeans. He smiled up at her.
“I’m a fish,” he said.
“Yes, you are. That’s a nice…well, what is that, Joey?”
He touched his hands to his ears. “Hurt no more,” he told her.
If only, she thought, backing out of the bedroom. If only.
Again the phone rang. This time the face of Dr. Watson appeared. She had not noticed it before, but he had kind eyes. His voice dipped below suave to gentle.
“Ah, there you are, Ms Traub. How’s Joey?”
“It’s been a quiet afternoon, Doctor.”
“That’s good. Ah, Chelle, I don’t have the answers you’re looking for yet. As far as I can tell, no one has tried to find a correlation between seismic activity and headaches caused by high-pitched sounds. The closest anyone has come to this seems to be a research group over in China that was particularly interested in the area of the Three Gorges Dam, which is prone to quakes. They dealt with startled animals—birds, cattle, dogs, and deer among them. There were some indications, but nothing even close to conclusive enough to enable firm predictions.”
Chelle tried to hide her disappointment. “I see.”
“What I would like to do is have you and Joey, and the others in Jamie & Friends who are experiencing these headaches to come with me to CERI, at the University of Memphis. That’s the Center for Earthquake Research and Information. The experiments I have in mind are in no way intrusive. The children will not be hooked up to any kind of machines; they’ll simply play. I and one of the geology professors will monitor the seismographs, just to see if we can establish the basis for a correlation between seismic activity and these headaches. At least it would give us a theoretical starting point.”
Briefly Chelle considered. “What do you think about all this?” she asked.
“Personally? I think there may be something to this. But there’s so much that we just don’t understand, yet. Joey and the others may unlock a door or two for us. You and I are ordinary people, Ms Traub. We can’t hear the things that Joey and the others hear.”
“If it’s this seismic thing, I think I’d rather take Joey and move far away.”
“Believe me, I understand that.”
She hesitated, and found a measure of resolve. “Where do I have to go tomorrow?” she asked.
Watson gave her directions and the time to be there, and rang off. Chelle found herself torn between hope for Joey and anxiety about failure. Knowing was not the same as fixing. She sat down on the stuffed chair and began to consider what she ought to do in the event that seismic activity was causing Joey’s headaches. Already she was starting to think of them as severe headaches, rather than migraines—the term having been introduced by Dr. Watson. Of short but intense and painful duration, they had to be avoided. But the fault lines that caused them were not about to move; therefore, she and Joey had to. As much she had made clear to Dr. Watson.
Chelle processed two cups of coffee and more thought before dinner. It was another inexpensive meal: fried chicken wings, which Joey liked, and rice with gravy, and corn niblets. He ate sparingly, but managed to finish most of everything. She, on the other hand, had no appetite, and was forced to eat methodically and with hardly any joy at all. Moving! Now that the word had re-entered her vocabulary, she had to consider location and expense. There was no question of hiring movers. She would have to pack what she could in boxes, and cram them into the eight-year-old Chevy Cruze and hope the car would make it to whatever destination she set.
She looked up after the last bite, to find Joey gone. She found him still building the cylinder of blocks, intent and quiet.
In the middle of the night Chelle came abruptly awake, wide-eyed. Her senses searched the apartment for sounds, smells, anything. Had someone broken in? Joey…? But Joey would have already raised a fuss…unless someone had drugged him and taken him while he was unconscious. She shot out of bed and dashed to his room.
He was sleeping peacefully.
Chelle went to the kitchen table and sat down, fighting to catch her breath after the adrenalin rush began to fade. She wanted a coffee, but had no strength to get back up, pour a cup, and nuke it. Chin resting on her hands, elbows on the table, she started to brood.
What was important to her? Three, four times she asked herself this. It was a long-standing question, but with a simple and constant answer. Joey was her life. His safety and well-being were her priority. Anything she wanted, came twelfth. But now other questions began to filter into her consciousness, doubtless driven, even herded, by the possible implications of Joey’s…headaches. What was the meaning, to Joey, of the cylinder wall he had erected around himself? It could not protect him—but it could provide a symbolic protection. And the only thing he needed protection from was his headaches…no, from the cause of his headaches.
Even as that thought occurred to her, Joey began to scream.
Chelle dashed to the bedroom. There squirmed Joey, hands pressed over his ears as he rolled back and forth and kicked. Her heart, already cracked, finally shattered. She hugged herself in an attempt to hold it together as she shot to the closet and began to dump Joey’s clothes and some of his toys into a laundry bag. His screaming goaded her. Gone was the plan to pack the necessities in small boxes. Now packing had devolved into scooping up a few essentials.
She wanted to pick Joey up, to comfort him, but the best she could do for him was get him away, far away, as soon as humanly possible. Tonight. Now.
She moved her packing operations to her own closet. What did she really need? A few clothes, some toiletries. A couple blankets and pillows and the quilt. Everything went into two more bags.
“Joey,” Chelle called. “I’m right here, Joey.”
His screaming did not abate. If anything, it grew more intense. Chelle fought against panic; she needed a clearer head now more than ever before. The bags went over her shoulders, her feet stomped her down the stairs, she stumbled outside into the night and threw the bags into the Chevy. A mad dash back up the stairs followed. At the landing, she found a disheveled Art Pollock staring at her in wonder and confusion. She had scant time for him, but she owed him.
“Don’t ask,” she said. “I don’t know. But gather up a few valuables and get in your car and drive. East, as far as you can.”
“But what’s—?”
She ran into her apartment, throwing her response over her shoulder. “I told you, Art. I told you.” Her focus returned absolutely to Joey.
With no time to see to the boy’s comfort, she bundled him into a blanket and carried him down the steps. She did not bother to lock, or even close, the apartment door. After settling him into the front seat, still screaming and with his hands pressed over his ears, she did his seat belt, and started the Chevy, mental fingers crossed that it would start. With her foot already on the accelerated, the engine erupted into a roar.
“Careful!” she snapped, at herself. An accident could be fatal, one way or the other. She switched the headlights on, and backed out cautiously. Seeing the way clear to the intersection, she sped through the parking lot. Only two vehicles were in the street when she reached it. A quick gunning of the accelerator put her into the center lane, while behind her she heard tires squeal with the emergency braking of the car she had cut off. The street ahead was clear to the stop light, two blocks away. As a precaution, she slowed to ten miles an hour above the speed limit, gave a quick glance in either direction, and sped through the red light.
Two more blocks, and she was approaching Poplar Avenue and U.S. 72. Beside her, Joey was still screaming, but it seemed to her that it was not quite as loud as it had been. She took the turn smoothly into the left-hand lane, and sped past Interstate 240 and on out of Memphis toward Collierville. She would have preferred to take the Interstate and drive to Jackson, but U.S. 72 got her away much more quickly.
As she approached the Mississippi state line, she slowed to the speed limit, which gradually lowered as she came to the stop light. In the dark, she had no way of knowing whether there was a speed trap ahead. When the light changed, she drove on into the darkness.
Joey abruptly stopped screaming. She had no idea what that meant.
Just inside Mississippi, the road rocked, and the Chevy swayed with it. It was too dangerous to continue driving under those conditions. She pulled the car into an abandoned fast-food parking lot, parked facing Memphis and the west, and held her breath.
In the dark there was not much to see of the city. A moment later, the residual glow above the city faded to black. The lights had gone out in Memphis. She rolled down the window and leaned her head toward the opening. The air was laden with a dull roar. It might have been caused by an earthquake. It might have the sound of the collapse of the city.
Presently the Chevy stopped shaking. But the dull roar continued, with a few louder sounds interspersed. She wondered whether the highway bridges had collapsed. No matter; Joey was safe, and he no longer screamed. That had to mean something. Beyond that, salvation from the catastrophe awaited them further to the east.
“Are we going for a ride fish?” asked Joey.
“That’s right, baby. We’re going for a ride.”
“Where are we going fish?”
She knew the answer immediately, the only one that counted. “Somewhere quiet,” she told him.
The author is a retired U.S. Army translator with several novels, novellas, and short stories published. He writes the Yoelin Thibbony SF child rescue series for Hiraeth Publishing. He lives in New Mexico with two huskies who keep him in shape.