The Plans

Like many people, my friend Herb had his demons, but what set him apart was that he kept them in a pen in his back yard. One night after dinner when we'd finished dessert and everyone at the table leaned back and felt the meal settle, he invited us to come out and take a look.

"Oh, they're not interested," his wife Marjorie told him. She smiled at Nancy and me. "Are you sure you don't want some more apple crumble?"

We shook our heads.

"Stuffed," I protested.

"They might want to see them," said Herb. "Not that I'm insisting. I constructed the pen myself. It's my own design. What do you think?"

"Oh, we could ..." said Nancy. She eyed me across the table. I knew that she wasn't keen on the idea because she started work early the next morning. We had a long drive ahead of us back to North Platte. But I was intrigued. "Sure, why not?" I told them.

So, with a scraping of chairs, we got up from the table. Dicky, a skinny boy with butterscotch hair, trotted in from the living room. He'd been excused from his supper long ago in order to listen to "The Shadow." Now he seemed excited. "You're going to see them? I'm coming too." He ran ahead and flung open the screen door.

Outside it was dusk, daylight was dwindling, and the only sound was a low thruhum thruhum of cicadas. The air felt cool and smelled of growing green. As we moved across their patio and onto the grass, stars were beginning to appear above trees and the lip of the horizon. Dicky reached the pen first, his fingers curling in the chainlink.

In this light you could still see them scrabble and dart across packed dirt. They were very quick. Approaching the pen, Nancy took my arm and giggled. She was nervous, I could tell. Suddenly, so was I — yet at the same time I wanted to press closer and get a better look.

"Crazy, eh?" said Dicky, and shook the wires, rattling as much as he could.

"I don't know what he sees in them," said Marjorie, folding her arms in front of her. "I would never keep mine that way."

Herb had fallen back from the rest of us and now approached with his hands in his pockets. On the way he noticed a baseball in the grass, and paused to kick it toward the hedge where no one would trip on it.

"Come on, Dad," Dicky urged, "show them. Go ahead!"

The boy stepped aside for his father. Herb cleared his throat, then bent forward and spoke in a low, steady voice. "This is where you end up," he murmured, and activity in the pen increased, there was more scuffling. "This is as far as you go. We're safe now, aren't we?"

The scuffling intensified, and there was something plaintive in Herb's question, a pleading note, unlike anything I'd heard over dinner. Maybe it was the way he said "we." Earlier this evening, "we" had referred to everyone at the table as we'd passed around plates of food and spoken of property prices and promotions for soil conservation agents. Herb and I worked in the same field and had roomed together in college. We went way back.

"This is a good place to raise a family," he and Marjorie had agreed. "Dicky likes it here, too. Did he show you his ant farm?" Now Herb spoke toward the wire, "Do you miss me? Do you?"

He was answered with a shriek. This startled me, and I reeled back. Nancy recoiled, too. In the pen they ran faster and faster till they were just gray flickers, and Herb's beseeching voice was drowned out by little screams rising into the night sky.

Dicky ran alongside the wires, his feet moving in a jerky dance. Marjorie shook her head and clapped her hands over her ears. She mouthed words but it was impossible to make out what she was saying: it was like speaking into a wind. I nodded and pretended to understand while Nancy pulled at my arm. She wanted to leave. I think we were both unnerved.

Now Herb moved away from the wire and the noise level went down instantly. He turned to us with a sad, twisted smile. "So. There we go."

"Well, Herb," I replied. "That sure is, uh — something!" I didn't know whether to comfort or congratulate him.

The fighting in the pen slackened and Herb called over his shoulder: "I'm leaving you now."

This stirred them up again — in fact, it seemed to provoke and madden them. Once more it was impossible to speak, such was the vociferation. Dicky dropped to his knees beside the pen, laughing, while on the other side of the wire they whirled and screamed. Dicky picked up a stick and began to poke it into the cage.

When Herb saw this, he swiftly stepped forward and grabbed the boy by the arm and jerked him to his feet, gave him a shake. He pulled him away toward the house. He scolded, "What's the big idea? That's not nice."

"I was only playing. It didn't hurt anything."

"Son, you shouldn't tease them," Herb said, patting him on the shoulder. "You'll see. You'll have your own someday."

Nancy and Marjorie hurried across the patio. Suddenly, all was silent again, except for the thruhum thruhum of cicadas. Herb released Dicky, and then leaned in close to me, and said softly: "If you want, I can send you the plans."

Quality Time

Behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus ... Him would Paul have to go forth with him; and took and circumcised him ...

Acts 16: 1, 3

He couldn't block the sound. Sctick, sctick, sctick. Yesterday was the first time he'd heard the copper edge on silica stone. Paul surely knew that he was listening. Perhaps it was a test.

Last night, lying on his mat, he was awakened by the same sound. He kicked and gasped and opened his eyes in the darkness, his heart pounding.

But no.

The room was still. There was no sound. Wait — he detected a faint, shallow wheeze from the nearby mat where Paul lay.

His teacher slept.

* * *

Morning came.

* * *

Sctick, sctick, sctick. This time it wasn't a dream. Timothy looked up from his text, unable to concentrate.

He pictured Paul in the next room, his bald head shiny as if oiled by the sunlight streaming in the window. Bent over his task, immersed.

* * *

Should he be grateful? Only a week ago, they'd paused under a laurel tree and spoken of the journey before them. (Two more hours of light? Three?) They drank cool swallows of water and inspected the horizon. While resting, Paul shifted the subject to Zipporah, wife of Moses, daughter of Jethro, who had used only a sharp stone to circumcise her son.

"She did what she had to do. She was no fool."

A smile played upon his lips. It was almost teasing. A joke? Yes, Timothy knew the text, too. It could not be unwritten. It was.

But for Paul the law also foresaw a personal solicitude. He wanted to reassure Timothy. It would be easier in his hands.

Use a stone? Of...