Free Music Makers by Kate Wilhelm Page B

mostly empty lots with only three complete houses. Two on the far end, and ours. Apparently the developer ran out of money, couldn’t get credit, lost interest or something and Dad was able to get a good deal on a lease for this house.
    Across the street from our house is a park with a clubhouse, a large children’s playground, a wading pool, and a covered pavilion. In our own fenced back yard we have a whole playground, swing, sliding board, a jungle gym to climb, and a sandbox.
    Jason is enraptured by trucks, and has a fleet of ten or twelve that he plays with in the kitchen when I’m busy there. If there’s a pause in the roars, the whooshes and crashing sounds, I’m quick to glance around and say the magic words if necessary. “We don’t have an upstairs.” The roars and whooshes and crashes resume and all is well.
    My ordinary days might strike others as extraordinary, but I’ve found that anything that you get used to takes on the cloak of ordinariness rather quickly.
    We all share household chores, and Dad’s available as a babysitter when he’s at our house. Vernon and I go to the movies, have dinner out now and then, and there’s bus service nearby to a big mall and also to downtown Roanoke. I know why both Vernon and Dad want to make my life as easy as possible. Vernon’s mother abandoned them when he was four, and Vernon’s desperately afraid I might decide to go back to my old job in New York. Not a chance. I worked for a soulless insurance company. Besides, I love him too much to think of leaving. I think his mother was a twit who probably ran off with the UPS man.
    Most mornings Jason and I go to the park and playground where I read or chat with other adults and Jason romps and plays with other children. We get back to the house in time for lunch and then a nap for Jason.
    The day everything changed we arrived back home and saw two men talking to Dad in the living room. They were both wearing dark suits, and my first thought was missionaries.
    That day, with the strangers in the house, I hurried Jason past the open arch to the living room and on to the kitchen. I was fixing his lunch when Dad entered.
    “Insurance salesmen,” I said. “Missionaries.”
    “Nope. Researchers. They’re studying memory loss and drafted me to be one of their subjects.”
    I stopped cutting up an apple. “What do you mean, drafted you?”
    “It seems,” he said, “they’re into a study of a new drug to arrest memory loss. It starts at an early age, but after about sixty it speeds up. They want people from sixty to sixty-five to participate in a fifteen-year study to see if the stuff works. They enrolled a couple of guys at the clubhouse, and someone mentioned that I was sixty-two, and they came after me to add to the study. They give tests now and then to see what’s going on. They’ll be back the day after tomorrow to give me the first test before the stuff has had time to take effect.”
    “Dad, please don’t tell me you’ve agreed, that you let two strangers give you a drug without checking them out thoroughly first. Please tell me you didn’t do that.”
    “April,” he said, “they showed me their credentials. They’re medical researchers.”
    I called Vernon out from his study. “Tell him what you just told me,” I said to Dad.
    “Well,” he said in a very deliberate way, after he retold it, “I said they gave me the drug, but I didn’t say I swallowed it. Now did I? See?” He fished in his pocket and came up with a little white pill.
    “We don’t have an upstairs,” Vernon said in a loud voice then, and I didn’t even bother to turn to see the staircase before it vanished.
    “Brain drain dudes,” Jason said. “Brain drain dudes.”
    Vernon rolled his eyes and I said helplessly, “Some of the older kids at the playground. He’s picking up a lot of words there.”
    Dad held the pill in the palm of his hand and regarded it thoughtfully. “Funny thing,” he said. “I’m sure I