Free Wichita (9781609458904) by Thad Ziolkowsky Page A

“Don’t get one.”
    â€œOkay,” Seth says, nodding thoughtfully. “Thank you.”
    â€œYou’re welcome.”
    With that, he takes Donald by the arm and leads him back through the house to Abby’s room.
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8
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    I n the morning, too groggy to deal with figuring out the new espresso machine, Lewis searches in the cabinets until he finds a familiar old Braun coffee maker. No one else seems to be up. Like evidence of something that might have been a dream, a blue sponge trails a smear of fake butter on the counter by his elbow.
    When the coffee is brewed, he pours a cup and goes out through the sliding glass door of the breakfast nook and sits on the back stoop. The sky is a clear cornflower blue fading to a paler band toward the horizon, the sun already intense. At the bottom of a tumbler left outside by someone, sugar ants swarm over orange juice dregs.
    The backyard has gone dramatically to the weeds, golden­rod, Queen Anne’s lace, a tall, tobacco-like plant with floppy dark-green leaves. Ivy cascades over the patch where Abby made an attempt at a small Zen garden; over the mound where there was a compost heap during her Alice Waters/organic garden moment; over the collapsed remains of a plywood skate ramp built by Seth and Cody; up and over the fence into the yard of the neighbor, lawn-proud Baptist minister Oren, who can’t be too pleased with that.
    A vine with heart-shaped leaves winds up the rust-speckled legs of a white outdoor chair and over an electrical outlet with hinged caps. An orange extension cord is plugged into one of the outlets. It disappears at an angle into the underbrush like a snake.
    Sipping his coffee, Lewis idly follows it around the corner of house, dandelion spores twinkling in the air, a grasshopper launching into a side-slipping arc.
    The cord vanishes under the side of a yellow and purple tent made of light silky material. A clothesline runs from the center pole of the tent to a drainpipe on the side of the house and fastened to it with large black paperclips are half a dozen Tibetan prayer flags, a beach towel, a pair of yellowing cream boxer shorts and two small aluminum signs. One says, SLOW NO WAKE ZONE; the other, Gone Phishing.
    The weeds have been trampled into footpaths leading to the spigot and hose alongside the house and to a moped on a kickstand, an Army-surplus helmet hanging by its strap from the handlebar. There’s a green hammock on a metal frame drawn up close to the house in the shade of the roof.
    As Lewis gets closer, the tent quivers and he hears a voice. Wondering with quiet dread whether some homeless person or persons from Inter-Faith Ministries has set up camp here with Abby’s consent, Lewis puts his cup of coffee on the ground and stands by the flap and says, “Hello in there!”
    The tent shudders again and a tousled white-haired head with white beard emerges in profile from the entrance flap and looks squintingly around—Bishop. He has a sun/windburn and a mosquito bite on his cheek. He withdraws into the tent like a tortoise and Lewis hears him say, in a slightly panicky tone, “How’d you calculate that?”
    Now he crawls out of the opening and gets creakily to his feet, still without noticing Lewis, who’s standing about four feet away. How old is Bishop, sixty? Quietly, so as not to startle him, Lewis says, “Hi.”
    Bishop remains impervious, head bowed. He’s wearing jogging shorts, Tevas, and a T-shirt. He puts his hands on his hips and arches backward then does a slow twist, at which point he sees Lewis and flinches in surprise but quickly recovers, his face lighting up.
    â€œThere he is!” Bishop says. The T-shirt says REALITY above a check-marked box.
    Lewis has his hand out to shake but Bishop won’t hear of such “back East” standoffishness and envelops him in a tight Deadhead/Burning Man hug. He smells of bug repellent, Dr. Bronner’s