Free The Oregon Experiment by Keith Scribner Page B

Jesus State if you don’t buckle down.”
    Except for Sam’s breathing, the line was quiet, and Scanlon gazed out the window at a tree with the biggest leaves he’d ever seen. Beyond it, students played soccer and Frisbee and jogged around a track. Beside the field, a fenced patio was connected by sliding glass doors to the swimming pool. It was so far off that when he saw Naomi in her black one-piece—gently padding across the white concrete—at first he didn’t recognize her.
    He’d never told Naomi or Sam about the strange e-mail he got in the spring—“just checking in,” Fenton had said, confirming that Scanlon still wanted to move “all the way across the country,” reminding him of the “onerous teaching load, the dearth of research funds, the high expectations for publishing.” And he wouldn’t tell them about the threat Fenton made today, either.
    Scanlon gazed at his wife in the distance. He knew he’d presented her—and Sam, too—with an optimistic scenario, full of bravado for instant success and a prestigious offer back east. He couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing either one of them.
    When he finally said “I know,” his voice cracked. “Of course you’re right, Sam. Take care of yourself, and I’ll call soon.”
    He raised the window and leaned out on his elbows. Standing beside a chaise longue, Naomi was stretching her back and rolling her neck. She bent down for a towel and pressed it to her face, turning toward the sun. And there was the shape of her: long tan legs, her huge round belly and full breasts. How was it possible she still had a month to go? How could her belly grow any bigger? Although Scanlon was excited for the baby, part of him wanted to keep Naomi exactly like this forever.
    She dropped the towel and lowered herself onto the chaise. She drank from her water bottle and screwed on the cap. He hoped he told her often enough how beautiful her hands were, how they moved like music, and how much he loved to follow the ridge of her collarbone from her shoulder to her throat, to breathe in the cinnamon-pepper smell of her ears.
    She’d settle in soon enough. She’d be herself again, and it was about time; since they’d arrived in Douglas, not once had she wanted to make love. He turned from the window, smoothed his hand over the top of his oak desk, and switched on his computer.
    Ideals, hopelessness, and cynicism
, he would have reminded Sam if he hadn’t been struck dumb by the scolding. Yes, it was naive to think that secession of any scale would be granted without a struggle, but it was equally naive to believe that restoring morality to the U.S. government—its treatment of the poor, its support of dictators, its focus on profit over humanity—was any more plausible. Equally idealistic, equally hopeless.
    When he heard the Microsoft chimes and his computer screen popped on, he looked back toward the pool, but Naomi was gone.
    As she lowered herself down the ladder, her wedding band clanked on the stainless steel and the baby tugged hard against her spine; her hips ached, and she tried not to consider the mechanics of her bones literally being pried apart. She let go and bobbed in the chest-deep water. Graceful. Light.
    She pushed off the pool wall, gliding for a moment, then doing the breaststroke down the slow lane. She frog-kicked and pulled her fingers through the warm water, imagining her baby doing the same thing inside her. Last night, Scanlon had read aloud from the
Pregnancy Journal. Day 219: If your baby is born today, it might have a callous on its thumb from sucking in the womb
. A hardworking baby, he’d said, his hand on the southern slope of her belly, a place she no longer could see.
    Naomi would revel in the baby, skin to skin, day and night, lapping up every flutter of his eyelids, every flail of his chubby arms and legs, and with her nose back she’d be able to smush her face into his rolls of fat and take in his smell as he, with a