Lucas’s complaint in the Big Fight proved prophetic: to AJ’s surprise, he arrived home from work a week later and announced that they were moving to Texas. But how could I forget, AJ reminded himself, as he listened to Norma asking precisely where in Texas they were going. Lucas worked for an electronics company that built inertial guidance systems for the Defense Department, and AJ remembered that his BeforeTime childhood had consisted of moving from one Air Force base to another, usually in March.

Moving was a two-stage process. First came the packing and organizing, which AJ watched with bemused detachment. He wandered through the apartment as Norma and Lucas stuffed things into boxes — Lucas cursing and shouting about something that wouldn’t fit, while Norma just sighed and shook her head. It took less than an hour for AJ to pack his belongings into three boxes: one for clothes, one for toys, and one for such miscellaneous odds and ends as the notebook full of star drawings. If I tried really hard, I could probably get my entire life into one suitcase, he thought. Just like a business trip in BeforeTime.

The moving truck arrived early the next morning, while AJ was still eating breakfast, and loaded up their furniture and boxes with swift, quiet efficiency. The moving men were gone by mid-morning, leaving them in an empty apartment, dustballs lying on the floor where the furniture had been. Norma shrugged, wondering whether to make a last pass with broom and dustmop, and eventually decided that it was the proper thing to do; AJ smiled as he realized it would set a standard for all future moves. The final cleaning of the house was a way of saying good-bye to each of the cities they inhabited, before moving on to greener pastures.

We could use some greener pastures, AJ thought. It’s been pretty gloomy around here lately. The news during their tenure in New York had continued to be dominated by the Korean War. In mid-October, barely a month after AJ arrived in NowTime, Lucas had reported at dinner that American troops had crossed the 38th parallel and captured the North Korean capital of Pyongyang; MacArthur’s strategy was to conquer North Korea and unify the two Koreas under a pro-western government. According to MacArthur’s assessment in October, his UN forces would subdue North Korea by Thanksgiving, and most American forces would be withdrawn to Japan by Christmas. When asked by Harry Truman about the likelihood of direct Chinese or Soviet intervention, MacArthur simply replied "Very little." AJ sighed as he listened to the pronouncement, and grimly attacked the lima beans on his plate.

Lucas’s political observations also included some strange inconsistencies in the official reports on the war. There was the AP report from Moscow on September 29th, for example, that "the Soviet Union, which, like Communist China, borders on North Korea, would unquestionably take a grave view of any effort by United States or Allied forces to push up beyond the 38th parallel." And as MacArthur’s troops rolled past that invisible line across the country at the beginning of October, Lucas reminded them at dinner that the New York Times of October 2nd reported that Chou En-lai had warned that China would not "supinely tolerate" an invasion of North Korea. But the Washington politicians accepted MacArthur’s assessment that China would not risk being chopped up by UN forces under his command. Lucas wasn’t convinced.

Sometimes Norma disagreed with his assessments, but it usually led to such a torrent of withering scorn that she generally kept quiet. So did AJ; he didn’t remember any of these details from BeforeTime, and he wasn’t about to take Lucas on. But Norma’s reaction was not one of intellectual debate; she merely shook her head from time to time, with the same sad smile. As for Lucas’s assessment of China’s intentions, she shrugged and said, "But what if you were right? What would you do about it?"

AJ silently agreed as he listened to their conversation. What’s the point of telling him anything? he thought. Whatever is going to happen will happen anyway.

As it turned out, Lucas was right: Thanksgiving marked China’s deployment of 500,000 soldiers across the Yalu River into North Korea. Tokyo Headquarters reported that American and South Korean troops were suffering heavy losses and were forced to effect a fighting retreat from the Chosin Reservoir. MacArthur acknowledged that "we face an entirely new war."

By mid-December, Truman had threatened to use the atomic bomb on China. He declared a state of national emergency, and argued the need for extraordinary executive powers to overcome the crisis now facing the country. Pretty gloomy stuff, AJ thought, listening to the news on the car radio, as the Halifaxes left Glen Oaks behind, crossed over the George Washington Bridge and headed south. The New Jersey Turnpike had just been inaugurated, and Lucas decided that it was a good way to make some rapid progress at the beginning of the trip.

Near Philadelphia, Lucas switched to U.S. 1 heading for Washington; he and Norma had decided to spend the first night at Grandma’s house, and it was well after dinner-time when they arrived. The next morning, their farewells to Grandma were polite and restrained as they climbed back into the car. AJ noticed Grandma grimace behind Lucas’s back as she hugged Norma, and he watched her grim-faced figure as they pulled away. She’s not even waving good-bye, he thought.

Maybe she disapproves of Dad's rough-and-tumble Utah pedigree, AJ thought, and feels it wasn't proper for her blue-blood daughter to have married a miner's son. Norma's family traced its heritage back through the Civil War, when some great-great-whatever was Daniel Webster's personal secretary— and from there, all the way back to the Revolution, when another ancestor signed the Declaration of Independence and fought in Washington's army. AJ could feel the sense of history in Grandma's house, but he could see that Norma had shrugged it off. Her face was flushed with excitement as she told Grandma that the future of America is out West — out where she and Lucas were heading. To celebrate, she had changed from her dress into a pair of formless denim jeans; AJ had a feeling that the dresses would reappear in another day or two, and that this was more an act of rebellion than anything else.

Texas and the American west may be the future, AJ mused, as they headed into Virginia, driving toward Lynchburg and Roanoke at the southeastern end of the state, but it's hard to forget the past. Crossing the Potomac at the Memorial Bridge, they passed the Pentagon and began navigating toward Manassas. It was a gray, gloomy day in Washington; thick, dark, ugly clouds hung over the city, and a drizzle began as they headed into the countryside.

Manassas, mentioned casually by Norma as she checked the map for Lucas, brought back some powerful memories to AJ: he knew from BeforeTime that Norma would dredge up several old family letters a few years from now, and that a great deal of Civil War history would find its way into his hands. One of the letters was from his great-great- grandfather, written when he was an 18 year old medical intern in Washington, DC., to a fiancee named Emily in the wilderness territory of Wisconsin. It had affected AJ so strongly in his BeforeTime world that he had memorized it, and he could recall every word now, as they approached Manassas Junction; though it had been written ninety years earlier, AJ could hear Grandpa's words speaking softly in his ear from the fields where the Battle of Bull Run was fought:

 

 

In the middle of town, Norma noticed a sign pointing to the Manassas Museum and asked Lucas if he would be consider stopping. Lucas snorted and continued on; he had no interest in Civil War memorabilia, especially at the beginning of the trip. It soon beame clear that he had no interest in stopping for anything along the way — not for the historical sights, the tourist attractions, the scenic overlooks, or any of the distractions offered by the hundreds of towns and hamlets between Washington and Fort Worth. He had a timetable, and it allowed no interruptions. He sometimes hummed or whistled a tune, but he rarely spoke; most of the time, he was either lost in his own thoughts or focused intently on the road in front of him. Norma made a few attempts to start a conversation, but eventually gave up and alternated between reading the map and a detective novel she had picked up in Grandma's house.

Past Manassas, they were back on the smaller roads again, following Route 28 through towns like Nokesville, Calverton, and Brandy Station in the Shenandoah Mountains. The trip proceeded at speeds of forty miles per hour, slow enough to actually see the surrounding countryside. And there was much to see, AJ realized: unlike the future interstates, built far from inhabited areas so they could blast through mountains and valleys in a perfect straight line, these roads wound and curved, meandered and wiggled, up and down, in and out, through tiny hamlets, past farmstands, gas stations, general stores, factories, auto junkyards, and motels.

Lucas drove in the black 1947 Chevy he had acquired during his college days in Denver; though four years old, it was still one of the newer cars on the road. AJ was amused to see that it had no seat belts, no turn signals, no air conditioning unit, no stereo speakers, no cruise control, no illuminated digital clock to mark the passage of time. Norma turned on the radio from time to time, though Lucas preferred driving in silence; south of Washington, the stations played country music mixed with gospel and religious sermons.

A soft, steady rain had begun, tempting a few precocious sprigs of green to peek out from the soggy brown meadows. AJ could feel a gentle, rolling undulation to the land; the meadows were interspersed with plowed farmland, then pine forests, an occasional stubbled corn field, then horse farms with rail fences, then herds of cattle grazing mournfully in the rain, huddled in the corners of pastures. Though they were barely 40 miles from Washington, there was no commerce — not even any gas stations. The road was only two lanes wide; there was little traffic, with only a few cars heading toward them. Nor were there many cars behind them, and Lucas never bothered looking in the rear-view mirror to see if anyone was waiting to pass. But looking out the back window to catch some sights that went by too quickly, AJ noticed an old green De Soto, a little darker than the color of the lima-beans he detested, following in their tracks, keeping pace with them about a mile back. It disappeared from view on the curves and in the peaks and valleys of the rolling hills; but then a few minutes later, it reappeared and took its place. Maybe I should tell Dad we’re being followed, AJ thought, but then dismissed the idea as silly.

Somewhere near Amherst, as Highway 29 crossed the Buffalo River and meandered towards Lynchburg, Norma and Lucas began an argument that AJ had come to call a Traveling Fight. He could tell that it was constrained by their knowledge that AJ could hear every word from the back seat. He smothered a chuckle — it was the same trick he used in his BeforeTime arguments with Ann. Here, too, Norma and Lucas relied on Big Words to keep the silent observer in the back seat ignorant of the proceedings.

Sweet Briar College had passed behind them, and they had crossed the James River into Lynchburg when the atmosphere changed. AJ could tell that Lucas was in a foul mood, for they had been stuck in crawling traffic in a thundering downpour in the middle of town, and he had missed the turnoff to Route 221 for Roanoke. After three miles in the wrong direction, past rows of seedy two-story wooden homes, he finally managed to turn around, but the sheets of rain beating against the windshield made it hard to follow the signs as their route wound through the town.

Lucas blared his horn at the world and continued, "None of this ... this geographical disorientation would be so goddamned imperative if you hadn’t given the homo sapiens in question some kind of signal that things weren’t entirely terminated between you." He made a quick turn on Wythe Street, but four blocks went by before he saw another highway sign confirming that he was still on the right track; this made him even more furious. He didn’t look at Norma while he yelled; he was staring straight ahead, his back and neck muscles tense and rigid.

AJ kept his face impassive, and shrank into the corner so Lucas couldn’t even see him in the rear view mirror. Norma was crying. "That’s not true, it’s just not true. I burned every bridge behind me. I abandoned everything, everything. I can’t help what’s happening." The car in front of them hit a deep rut in the road, spraying a wall of water on both sides, and Lucas swerved to miss it. They had already passed several stalled cars in the road, and AJ could tell that he was worried the water would render the brakes inoperable and possibly even stall the car.

AJ was frustrated. I hear the words, he thought, but I can’t figure out what they mean. But then it hit him: Lucas was consumed with jealousy. He remembered that much from BeforeTime, though the truly awful scenes, when guns appeared and death threats were hurled through the air, didn’t come until much later. But it must have started now, he thought, or even before now.

It explains yesterday’s Traveling Fight, he mused. In an earlier argument, near Baltimore, Lucas had shouted at Norma, "None of this would have started if you hadn’t gone to Florida!"

Without thinking, AJ had inserted himself in the discussion from the back seat. "Yeah, but if she hadn’t gone to Florida and run into you, I would never have been born."

Lucas had turned his head sharply at that remark, so quickly that AJ thought he was reaching back to smack him. He flinched instinctively, but Lucas’s hands stayed on the wheel, and he had only a moment before he had to turn his attention back to the road. "Washington, sport. Don’t ever forget that: life started in Washington."
AJ had opened his mouth to respond, but Norma turned and shushed him. "AJ, don’t argue about this. Washington is where we lived. Remember? We lived at Grandma’s house on Porter Street."

That’s not what I remember from BeforeTime, he thought. He had a sense that Lucas was angry over something that had happened in Florida, something that involved Norma, and that he now wanted to pretend that the entire state simply didn’t exist.

In today’s Traveling Fight in the Virginia rainstorm, as they passed by Lynchburg College at the edge of town, Norma’s next comment startled AJ, though the noise from the rain was so deafening that he could barely hear her. "I don’t even care about me. I’m just terrified that they’re going to spirit away the subject of our arguments. I would just die if they did that."

Before Lucas could answer, and before AJ could figure out what she was talking about, a jagged streak of lightning appeared from the sky, bam!, hitting dead center on the hood of the car. Norma let out a blood-curdling scream, AJ jumped so high his head banged on the roof, and Lucas simply bellowed "Jee-sus!!" at the top of his lungs. The car stalled, and they coasted to the side of the road in silence, sitting like columns of stone while the rain continued pummeling them.

Lucas muttered a curse under his breath, jumped out into the downpour, and opened the hood to see how much damage had been done. Norma sighed and announced that this was as good a place as any for lunch; she had made sandwiches at Grandma’s house, intending that they would eat them on the road. AJ could tell that she was still recovering from the emotion of the argument, dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose on a wadded up tissue. This must be why I gave Ann such a hard time about the wadded up tissues she left all over the house, back in BeforeTime, he thought sadly. It reminded me of Mom’s crying.

Lucas stomped back into the car, sopping wet, muttering that he didn’t understand why they weren’t all killed. Norma wordlessly handed him a cheese sandwich, and reached back to give AJ the standard peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly that he had accepted eagerly in BeforeTime and grudgingly in NowTime. They munched their sandwiches in silence, looking out over soggy fields and a string of Barbisol highway signs that stretched off into the blur of rain up the road. A small, forlorn sign next to the car was leaning over, almost touching the ground; it said "Shoe Repair Machines for Sale." Somewhere nearby, AJ thought, there must be a farmhouse filled with such machines, its owner desperately hoping that a shoeless nation will beat a path to his door.

After lunch, they headed further south, crossing the Little Otter River into Bedford. Stately old houses, surrounded by huge oak trees, appeared in the gloom every mile or two; set back half a mile from the road, some were wood, others were solid red brick. Sometimes the downpour let up for a while, slackening off to the level of an ordinary rainstorm — and then, suddenly, wham! a wall of water slammed against the windshield and the full fury of the storm was back again.

Every time Lucas tried to pass someone, the spray kicked up by the other car completely obliterated the view. It’s no wonder that he’s so tense and irritable, AJ thought. Watching his angry driving habits was a shock, for it made him realize that he had inherited the same behavior in BeforeTime. He remembered Ann once telling him that her father was the same way, shrieking curses at a cowering family as he drove madly from one city to the next. Is this some kind of American macho thing? AJ wondered. Will my children inherit it too?

Norma suggested quietly that perhaps they should call it a day, and find a motel to get out of the rain. But Lucas refused: by God, he was going to make it to Knoxville, despite the weather. So Norma shrugged, and on they went, through Pulaski, into Rural Retreat and Atkins, past trailer parks, ticky-tacky wooden barns going to seed. At Marion, they stopped for gas at the Blue Flash gas station, which promised "gas for less."

AJ noticed that the gas stations along the way were one-room cinder-block buildings, with only one or two pumps outside; they were only a small part of the vast infrastructure supporting America’s intense love affair with the automobile. He had lost count of the categories of auto service establishments: There had been general-purpose auto repair businesses; transmission shops; engine overhaul, tuning, and analysis companies; wrecking, towing, and hauling enterprises; radiator repair shops; muffler, shock absorber, and brake outfits; wheel alignment and balancing outlets; upholstery showrooms; generator, and starter service stores; glass, windshield, and window outlets; spare parts houses; battery shops; paint and body firms; welding concerns; and massive auto junkyards for those vehicles beyond all hope of redemption. The cumulative impact was staggering. Either the 1950s is a generation that drives madly about smashing its cars into smithereens at every opportunity, he thought, or Detroit is building cars that fall apart as quickly as people can buy them.

By 8:15, even Lucas had had enough. They had reached Morristown, still some 40 miles from Knoxville, and he agreed that they should stop for the night at Johnson’s Motel; the sign said that it was AAA-rated; that was good enough for Lucas. Fastidious about his car, he insisted that they clean out all of Norma’s wadded up tissues and every other can, bottle, and scrap of paper before they turned in for the night. AJ realized it was another habit he would carry into his own adult life. At the tender age of six, he thought, I’m already being programmed to hate people whose cars look like the town dump after a hurricane.

They got an early start the next morning at 6:30, with faint light in a dark blue eastern sky, but no sun visible. A half-moon hovered above them; it was cool outside, but not uncomfortable as they climbed into the car for the onward journey. Norma wore a sweater over her jeans and blouse, and she dressed AJ in the same pants and shirt that he had worn the day before, on the theory that he had had no chance to get anything dirty.

A few miles before they reached Knoxville, Lucas decided to stop at Hellman’s Restaurant for breakfast. The sound of the radio by the cash register drowned the quiet conversations among the few people scattered among the booths and tables. AJ saw Lucas frowning as the radio announcer reported that General Matthew Ridgway’s force of nine divisions had just retaken Seoul; its capture marked the fourth time the city had changed hands in the past nine months. The assault had begun with three days of bitter fighting against enemy positions on the Han River, 20 miles east of Seoul. When the UN troops finally arrived in Seoul, they found that virtually all the Chinese and North Korean troops had been pulled out. Army officials apparently believed that the evacuation was a ploy designed to draw the UN troops further north, toward the 38th parallel, where the Communist troops could then launch a counterattack. But AJ was startled by Lucas’s opinion: "They’re lying through their teeth," he said grimly to Norma, as they ordered their breakfast. "Don’t you believe a word of it: the government lies about everything, and especially about this damn war."

"This story," he continued, "is a good example of bullshit reporting. The Eighth Army Headquarters claims they killed or wounded 69,500 of the Commies from January 25th to February 9th. Well, that works out to 4,600 men, or almost a full army division, per day. Now, by comparison, the Germans lost a little over 43 divisions between February and July of 1916 in the Battle of Verdun; that works out to ten divisions a month, in one of the bloodiest battles in history. But General Ridgway’s figures are the equivalent of thirty divisions a month. Like they would say in New York, something’s not kosher here."

Where does he come up with all this stuff? AJ wondered. Why don’t I remember this from BeforeTime? Are kids really so oblivious? But a higher priority interrupted his musings: he had to go to the bathroom. He excused himself from the table as Lucas continued his monologue, and wandered toward the back of the restaurant, looking for the men’s room. This part of being a kid is a pain in the ass, he thought. Or a pain in the bladder ...

The men’s room was small: a urinal that AJ could barely reach, and a battered toilet stall. It was quiet, and he could hear the sound of the radio in the main part of the diner. He stood on his tip-toes and did his best to aim at the urinal. I shoulda used the toilet, he thought.

Just as he was zipping up his pants, the stall door opened and an elderly man emerged. AJ noticed that he was wearing a plaid shirt and tan slacks with a sharp crease. This guy’s no local farmer, he thought.

"Hello, AJ," the man said, bending down to bring his face near AJ’s level. He had a white beard, neatly trimmed, and a handlebar mustache. He peered at AJ from behind gold-rimmed glasses and a bushy head of white hair.

Who the hell are you? AJ thought. Good grief — don’t tell me I’m gonna have to worry about dirty old men this time around! He avoided eye contact with the man, and moved quickly to the door of the men’s room.

"Don’t you remember me?" the man asked, plaintively.

AJ scuttled through the door thinking, Did this happen to me in BeforeTime? Did I get molested and then repress it? He shuddered as he began walking briskly down the aisle to reach the booth where his parents sat. What now? he wondered. Do I tell the grownups and let them raise a stink about it?

He was just sitting down when it hit him: He knew my name! He paused, looking up at Norma with his mouth open, while trying to remember all of the conversation that had taken place since they entered the restaurant. Did that old geezer hear them calling me AJ? he wondered. I used to pull that trick on kids when I was a grownup. Maybe the guy was just trying to be friendly.

"Are you okay, AJ?" Norma asked, peering at him with a smile on her face. "Do you want anything more to eat?"

The old man had not emerged from the men’s room, and it occurred to AJ that he had no proof — of anything. He looked at Lucas, who had finished his monologue, but was still scowling as the radio news report continued. Not worth the fuss, he decided.

"No, Mom," he sighed. "I’m full. Let’s go."

Back in the car again, they passed over the Holsten River behind a pickup truck with two huge, starry cracks in the windshield before finally reaching Knoxville; AJ idly wondered if someone had fired a rifle at the driver and his passenger, but they turned off on a side road before AJ could get a good look at them. Spread out over a large area, the city skyline was low: few of the buildings were more than three stories high. The road took them past an attractive campus at the University of Tennessee in the middle of town, but overall, AJ found it was a gray, ugly city. Perhaps the gloom came from the weather: clouds had come back into the sky, and Norma worried aloud that they might have another day like the one before.

It wasn’t until they reached White Bluffs that Lucas found a restaurant, the Perfect Pig, where he was willing to stop. After lunch, they continued heading south-west on Highway 70 toward Memphis. Through Dixon and Tennessee City they went, across Hurricane Creek to McEwen and Gorman, Trace Creek and Waverly. They crossed an enormous bridge over the swollen Tennessee River at New Johnsonville, and Norma remarked that they were just south of a local town named Denver. Lucas pointed out that the Tennessee folks were even more creative when they named some of their other cities Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Athens. But AJ liked the small towns they had driven past, with the names nobody remembered: the Brucetons and Brownsvilles, the Hollow Rocks and Huntingdons, the Gibsons and Gadsdens, the Bradens and Bartletts.

Lucas was determined to get to Memphis before the height of the evening rush hour. The city finally appeared at 5:30, and unlike Knoxville, Highway 70 led straight through town. They reached the top of a hill at Front Street and there, suddenly in front of them, was the vast, awesome expanse of the Mississippi River. AJ tried to whistle in appreciation of the spectacle, but found that his mouth and tongue didn’t know how to make the sound. He blew a few tuneless gasps as they navigated down the hill to Riverside Drive, onto the bridge, across the muddy brown waters, and into the "Natural State" of Arkansas.

By 6:00, they were racing across the flat delta country of eastern Arkansas. The land was tilled along both sides of the road; the earth was rich and black, with long, swirling ridges that looked to AJ like monster earthworms or giant-sized prairie dogs burrowing beneath the surface. The road was in much worse condition than anything they had seen in Tennessee: the two narrow lanes were patched so heavily with tar that they could feel the bumps. A road sign indicated they were 120 miles from Little Rock, and AJ calculated that it would take two more hours to get there. Norma asked if there might be someplace before Little Rock they could stop, for they had already been on the road for twelve hours. But Lucas shook his head. "The boy can sleep in the back seat if he’s tired; you can sleep, too, if you want."

Shortly after eight o’clock, as they approached North Little Rock, Lucas suddenly cursed and AJ heard a thump on the right side of the car. They had hit a rabbit that froze in its tracks while crossing the road, mesmerized by the headlights. If it were a cow or a deer, they would have been in big trouble — but Lucas assumed that a rabbit would leave no trace, aside from a possible splash of blood on the tire. But the thump! slowed him down and broke his obsession with barreling through the Arkansas night; a few miles further along, he found an Economy Motel next to a gas station and auto repair shop. He checked them into the motel, where they collapsed into bed.

On the third day out of Washington, Lucas drove like a man possessed, determined to reach Fort Worth by dinnertime. Neither grownup in the front seat seemed interested in talking; AJ wished he had a brother or a sister to communicate with. A brother probably wouldn’t be much good, he thought, because boys this age only want to talk about guns, cowboys, and Indians. A sister, though, would be a great companion; the concept gave him a warm feeling, and he dozed off for an hour while they rolled through southern Arkansas.

Once or twice during the morning, AJ caught a glimpse of a green car a mile behind them, reminding him of the De Soto that he had seen in the northern Virginia countryside. But then it disappeared; he assumed it was coincidence. South of Prescott, the land was uninhabited once again. Marsh and woodland still predominated, and there were also uncultivated meadows — but an absence of houses, people, and signs of life. Crossing the Red River, they saw a prison work crew, composed entirely of black men wearing immaculate white uniforms and white hats, chopping away at underbrush; they looked up, and AJ stared at them as the car went past. Fifteen minutes later, they rolled through Texarkana on the border of Texas and Arkansas.

After lunch, they crossed State Highway 8, which pointed to both New Boston and Old Boston. The land was flat, with herds of grazing cattle on meadows interspersed with pine forests. Occasionally AJ spotted a lonely car or a rusted truck abandoned out in the middle of huge fields that stretched off into the distance — as if the owner had gotten disgusted with the vehicle in the middle of an afternoon drive, and left it to rot under the vast, empty sky. The highway was completely empty once again, as they crossed the Salter River and zoomed into Omaha. The population of this tiny town was a mere 618, according to a highway sign; AJ smiled and decided there was little chance that it would ever compete with its sister city in Nebraska.

Winfield, Mt. Vernon, and Saltillo were the next towns to greet them; they were now only a hundred miles from Dallas. They barreled through Sulphur Springs, Cumby, Campbell, and Greenville, before crossing the Sabine River at two o’clock. They were in the midst of farmland now, with plowed fields and a feeling of approaching civilization. Royce City, Fate, and Rockwall slowed them down briefly as they passed through; and then, a little after three o’clock, they came up over a ridge and saw the skyline of Dallas twenty miles in the distance. Norma let out a long sigh; the end was in sight.

A week later, they settled into a small two-bedroom house with an attached garage on Malvey Avenue, on a tree-lined street in Fort Worth that looked to AJ like a million other suburban streets across America. The house was barely larger than their New York apartment, and the plot on which it sat was a mere quarter-acre. The yard was tiny, but it had a small, artificial fish pond in the back; the former inhabitants had left behind a few nondescript carp, and AJ was instructed to feed them each morning. He smiled at the shadows beneath the water’s surface. You guys are in for a rough time, he thought.

Norma and Lucas introduced themselves to the neighbors, and AJ was introduced to their children. One of them, a squat little redhead named Sammy Lewis, was terribly involved in rigging up fancy contraptions using electrical wire and cereal boxes; AJ had visions of him as a future mad scientist. Another, Deke Burlton, proudly showed him a well that he had begun digging in his back yard; by the end of the year, he said, he would dig all the way to China. Most of them, though, were involved in outdoor activities: kite-flying, baseball, riding their bicycle, shooting a bow and arrow at targets of all kinds.

Soon after they settled in, AJ’s seventh birthday arrived. Lucas decided that he was ready for his first bicycle, and AJ found the process of learning to ride it incredibly frustrating the second time around. Everyone says that once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget, he thought. Maybe that’s true for the average Joe, but not for someone in my position: my brain remembers, but my body doesn’t. Balancing on two wheels was all instinct, he found, with virtually no participation from the left brain or the right brain. Consequently, it took several attempts, with Lucas running along behind in that excruciating bent-over position that fathers everywhere suffer in support of their sons and daughters. He was patient, not even raising his voice as AJ fell to one side and then the other.

All in all, it took only a day before he was reasonably steady. Pretty damn good, he thought. I’ll ride it to school every day. But Norma nixed the idea: since the school bus stopped a mere fifty feet from the front door, right at the corner, she decreed that he would take the bus to school each morning.

School was a sprawling, two-story structure, surrounded by acres of playgrounds. The first day of school was much like the first day in Glen Oaks — but this time, instead of skipping AJ forward a grade, the school authorities tried everything in their power to move him back a grade, back to where he belonged for his age. Norma, to his surprise, was adamant; she had apparently become accustomed to his second-grade status. The school principal was called in, but he was preoccupied with other problems; after and enduring more arguments from Norma, he shrugged and announced that AJ could stay in second grade until the teachers decided whether he could keep up with the work.

AJ smiled smugly as he listened to the challenge. The teachers in Fort Worth, he figured, would be much like the ones he had already experienced in New York, and essentially the same as the teachers he would see all through the country in the coming years. He had already seen the routine: the teachers read to the children, the children read to the teachers; the teachers asked the children dumb questions, and the children regurgitated the answers that had been drilled into them.

One of the teachers — an awful man named Henderson assigned to teach the rudiments of arithmetic — so infuriated AJ that he caused a problem he had managed to avoid in New York. This was second grade, and most of the children were seven or eight; AJ knew that, they were supposed to know how to add two simple numbers by now. But most of them couldn’t, and AJ gradually realized that Awful Henderson wasn’t about to give them a clue as to how they might learn this relatively useful concept.

"Practice!" he bellowed, "that’s what it takes! Practice, practice, and more practice!" Practicing something you don’t understand struck AJ as pointless, but doggedly the children tried escape the wrath of Mr. Henderson, by making random and futile attempts to add 179 and 971. Carrying digits from one column to the next, AJ thought, is like asking these Texan lads and lassies to drag a dead cow across the school-yard.

One day, in an apparent fit of exasperation, Awful Henderson unleashed a terrible punishment upon the miserable gaggle of silent sheep before him. "I want you to add all the numbers from one to a hundred," he thundered from his height of five and a half feet. "And if you can’t get it done by the end of class, then you’ll have to finish it for homework."

"Whaddya mean?" asked one boy, Daryl Trent, who thus far had been unable to add anything larger than single-digit numbers. AJ could see that he was stunned by the assignment.

"I mean that you should add one plus two plus three, plus four and five and six, and keep on going until you add one hundred. And then tell me what the total sum is."

The children seemed utterly demoralized. Henderson had discouraged them more than usual: the task was not only horribly difficult, but endless; AJ sensed that they had visions of spending the rest of the year calculating a number that could be in the millions or billions. But the curious thing, he thought, is that most of them, if forced, actually would spend a year engaged in this mindless effort. He had noticed that there was a strong tendency towards perseverance among the seven year olds: beginnings of any project were difficult, but once started, they would go on and on and on, until they had finished the task or somebody stopped them.

AJ thought desperately for a moment, trying to remember the formula for series additions; it was buried in BeforeTime memory, having lain dormant for decades. It was annoying, for he didn’t like to be reminded of how much he had once learned, then forgotten, and would now have to re-learn again. Aha! he thought. The formula came back to him, and he quickly raised his hand.

"Yes, Halifax, what was it?" Henderson growled. "Are you as thick-headed as Trent? How many times do I have to explain this?"

"Well, I was going to ask if we could make it a contest," AJ suggested humbly.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if we take three guesses at the answer to your question, and get it right, could we all be excused from having to do this stupid exercise?"

Henderson looked annoyed. "Three guesses? You couldn’t get it if I gave you a thousand guesses! Don’t waste my time!"

"Well, how about one guess?" AJ asked, not wanting to lose the chance.

"Okay, okay. Tell me your guess and then start adding."

"5,050," AJ told him without a moment’s hesitation.

"5,050? That can’t possibly be right. Now will you please shut up? Or do I have to send you to the Principal’s office?"

"It is right," AJ insisted. "Can I show you on the board?"

He was sure that Henderson wanted to refuse, but that he had never seen any of his students volunteer to write anything, ever, on the blackboard. Sure enough, Awful Henderson scowled at AJ, paused, and then relented.
AJ walked up to the blackboard and grabbed the chalk. He was still so short he could barely reach more than two feet of drawing space, so he talked his way through most of the procedure.

"Look, it’s real simple," he said. "I’ll write the first few numbers: 1, 2, 3, and 4 ... and then the last few numbers: 97, 98, 99, and 100." He wrote them quickly on the board, with a series of dots to represent all of the numbers in the middle.

"So?" Henderson asked. Meanwhile, the children were quiet, their pencils poised above their scraps of paper. AJ could imagine what was going through their minds. Why would anyone would challenge Awful Henderson?

"So we start forming pairs: the first number and the last number in the sequence can be added together, 1+100, to give 101. The second number and the second-to-last number can be added, 2+99, which also gives 101. And so can all the other pairs. There are fifty pairs, the last of which is 50+51. Altogether 50 pairs of 101’s, which means that the answer to your question is 50 times 101, or 5050." Having written the answer in large numerals, AJ dropped the chalk in the tray and marched back to his desk.

The children squealed with delight; Daryl Trent tore his paper into tiny pieces and threw it into the air, forming a momentary blizzard above his head.

"What made you think up that trick?" Henderson roared.

"I didn’t. The first person to think it up was Carl Friedrich Gauss — when he was five years old."

"Carl who?"

"Gauss. He was a mathematician, one of the greatest of the 18th century, maybe the greatest ever. I was born on his birthday."

"I don’t give a fig who this Fred Gauss fellow is," Henderson roared, as he smacked his ruler on his desk, whap! smack! bam! to restore order. The children were told to carry out the task the hard way, and AJ was sent to the Principal’s office for insubordination. The Principal called Norma, and AJ ended up backpedaling, claiming that he had stumbled upon a description of the formula in a library textbook. At dinner, Lucas spent an hour yelling at him instead of the government politicians who normally occupied his attention, telling him that he was damned if any kid in his house was going to talk back to the teacher. Asshole! thought AJ grumpily, but he kept his mouth shut.

The next day, Daryl came up to him in the playground and after checking carefully to see that no teachers were watching, whispered to AJ, "That was really neat, what you did yesterday in Awful Henderson’s class. The whole school heard about it."

"He’s an asshole," AJ muttered. He still hadn’t gotten over the tongue-lashing from a series of adults, though he was pleased that he had made some impression on the class.

"Well, you better not let him hear you say that, or you’ll really be in trouble," Trent confided. His eyes darted back and forth to see if anyone might be listening.

"No kidding."

"Some of the kids say you’re just a smart-aleck from New York," Trent continued belligerently. "Timmy says he’s going to fight you and beat you up. Then you’ll have blood all over you, and you’ll bleed to death!"

AJ found the prospect — as well as the second-grade preoccupation with gore and blood — amusing, and his laughter brought a new retort from Trent. "Timmy says you’re a Communist, because your family doesn’t even have a television."

But AJ had already learned that his schoolmates had a short attention span; Timmy had probably already forgotten his threat, and could be easily distracted if he came wandering by. But they were all prone to tantrums; some took enormous pleasure in bullying anyone smaller, and AJ’s second-grade cohorts had learned to steer clear of the enormous fifth-graders. AJ occasionally noticed a small girl at the edge of the playground, watching carefully as older children prowled like wolves circling the herd; she never interfered, but seemed to be standing alert to any harm that might befall them.

A week after arriving in the new school, a star drawing appeared on AJ’s desk one morning when he arrived in his classroom. Colored like all the rest, it had a slightly different pattern than the others he had collected:

 

 

A few days later, another drawing appeared; this one, too, was compact, with only a handful of distinct star shapes:

 

 

And then a week later, yet another piece of paper was lying on his desk in the morning:

 

 

By now, AJ had accepted the drawings as gifts from a mysterious tooth fairy. His classmates were ignorant of the origin of the drawings, just as the children were in New York. But he assumed they were the work of a child, for no adult would spend the time and effort to color so meticulously