Texas

"When we started sneaking out at night, one or two of us always stayed behind to keep watch on Dad. Two or three of us, we'd go running through the woods in starlight, not needing any path because we all just knew how to follow each other, knew each other's movements before we moved. It didn't feel like running in line; it felt like you were some kind of connected, legless snake flying through the air. We'd come to some new crest of a hill, and stand back-to-back, take in the view from all four directions all at once. It was like there was enough of us to see the whole world at once. You never had to worry about watching your back.

***

"I know you.

***

"Sorry for eavesdropping, child, but you know this is a small town. We've got to do what we can to keep ourselves entertained. Our paper don't have a Business section; it's got a None-of-Your-Business section!" 

She smiled merrily at her joke then silenced, cocking her head at Jake's shirt. In a quick, fluid motion at once motherly and punctilious, she whipped out Jake's chest pocket flap, buttoned and smoothed it.

"Thank you," he said. "So, how long you lived here? You ever hear anything about quadruplets being born?"

She took a drag and nodded, leaning against the sign beside him. "No." She exhaled and shook her head. She held the lipstick-smudged filter before her sunglasses for inspection. "I was born here," she said, "but I spent my younger days gallivanting all over the country. Didn't come back to New Garton regular until about ten years ago."

She pursed her lips. "But there are people I've known here since I was born. I know a whole lot of dirt. F'rinstance, I know there's other kinds of birth information in this town. Place to go looking for babies that you probably haven't checked. Babies that didn't get written down anywhere. Children that escaped record-keeping."

Jake stood up straight and turned to face her. "What are you talking about?"

She smiled. "Back years ago," she said, "we had here some folks doing things the natural way."

Jake shielded his eyes against the rays of the evening sun. They gilded him head-to-toe so that his carroty hair no longer stood out anomalous but blended into a unified whole, a solid orange-gold man of unified hue.

"Midwifery," she said. "Some local kids, when they came back from college, they set up sort of a secret clinic here. Herbal abortions and natural births. Snuck babies to the orphanage over in Esperanza. Helped all the ding-dong hippie girls, Junior Leaguers who hid secrets for months under baggy sweaters. It was two folks, a couple. The man, he'd been a med student. Everyone in town had high hopes--our first homegrown doctor. I think he'd made it to interning before he decided instead to go 'change the system'." She cackled.

"No kid they birthed was ever announced in the paper or anything. People just kept quiet about it. Most of them weren't from around here. And those that were, well, once the babies were here, they were so sweet no one had the heart to press charges. They had a friend at the courthouse who handled the birth certificates. Lots of secrets in small towns."  She smiled proudly.

"Are they still here?"

She tossed her butt across the lot. "Well, he's not. Polio took him down. Very strange, so late in life. Kinda funny, his almost being a doctor and all. But even a doctor can't do nothing about something like that."

***

Jake watched a scorpion scuttle across the phone booth's shelf. It was dark-yellow and plump, like a golden raisin. The stinger, arched up over its back, quivered. With the back of his hand, Jake flicked away the scorpion and squashed it under his boot.

Outside the phone booth, a dust storm was sweeping into town. Jake leaned against the booth's hot, cracked glass, which amplified the pings and snaps of sand and gravel bits hitting the booth. Through the thickening air, Jake could see horses drinking from the trough in front of the computer dealership, shaking their manes and snorting anxiously at the gusts of grit. The milk truck rattled past them, abandoning its route for now. Jacob kicked his boot impatiently against the side of the booth. Finally, his brother in New York clicked back on.

"Sorry about that," his brother said. "Reverse charges when we finish, OK? Or send me the bill. How much is this side trip costing you, anyway?"

"Don't worry about it. But there's a dust storm coming into town and-"

"Dust storm?" his brother laughed. "Tumbleweeds, too? OK, I'll get to the point. Ah, let's see if I've got this all so far. The people you've been schmoozing down there remember Dad. So he wasn't entirely insane. We really are from New Garton. So, if one of us is some kind of clone, then New Garton is where the secret laboratory should be hidden."

"You don't have to be a smartass. Yeah, they remember him. And they say he was pretty crazy." 

"Oh? Now, that's news. Is New Garton as awful as he used to say?"

"It's just Texas. Nothing special. Little bigger than most places we ever lived near. But it could've grown since then."

"OK. Right. So Dad lived there. And he did have a wife, who died during childbirth."

"Right."

"Did he really bury her behind the house?"

"Yeah, that's part of why he became sort of a bogeyman after leaving."

Jacob laughed. "And according to what Holly found, he did know this Ashley woman. Or at least kept clippings about her. And that photograph of us. Dad's starting to look like George Washington here. With a sentimental streak. Yes, well. They don't know the half of it, do they? So what else?"

Jake sighed. "Our mother--his wife--whatever, the lady did die in childbirth. But they were doing it at home, so it happened there. And they were doing it on their own. No one was there with them, so no one knows for sure how many kids there were. There's no records. Dad'd come into town for supplies, but never let anyone near the house. He left town a few months later."

"So you haven't found anything that disproves what we've always known. Maybe he just ran into this Brett lady somewhere down the road," Jacob mused. "Maybe they had a fling, although that I can't imagine. Or maybe he just found that clipping somewhere and became obsessed with her. Who knows? So why are you still poking around down there?"

"Because" Jake snapped defensively. "I've stumbled onto something. I didn't get anywhere with the medical records, but Jacob, listen: around the time we were born, here in New Garton there was this med-school dropout and his girlfriend. They used to run a sort of secret clinic here. Secret abortions and midwifing and stuff. We could've been part of this whole underground thing."

"The midwives or the abortions?"

Jake ignored his brother. "The med-school guy is gone, but there's this woman here; she's a waitress at a coffee shop. She was the midwife at this clinic. I met her; I just told her I was here to be looking up my family tree, and she was just real sweet. But when I told her we were quads, she got all bug-eyed and clammed up on me, like she knew something but didn't want to talk about it. Man, I think we were born here, and she knows something about it."

His brother digested this silently. Jake studied the shiny circles of the payphone's dial: "CRockett-6-7223," embossed across the reflection of his face.

"So are you going to talk to her again? Ask her if she knows this Brett Ashley person?"

"Yeah. This morning I finally got her to relax around me. I'm taking her out to dinner."

"You dog! Does your lovely girlfriend know about this?"

"Fuck off, she's old enough to be our mother."

"Maybe she is. Or maybe she's just yours. Kinky."

"Fuck you."

"You'll give me all the juicy details?"

"Look, are you still-"

"Yes, I've got my phone set on Transcribe. I'll fax carbons to the rest of us. Everyone will be up to date."

"Thanks."

"How much longer are you going to be down there?"

"Don't rightly know."

"Well, I talked to Holly out in Oregon. Apparently he's managed to convince our wilderness brother to leave the Alaskan tundra and come out here to New York. Imagine that. Can you get here in time to join them? We'll have a reunion," he added dryly.

"Yeah. I'll be there. We'll all be together."

"You aren't going to bring your girlfriend, are you?"

"No."

"Good. This is just for us. Band of brothers and all that. Don't drag anyone else into all the family madness just yet. And don't drag things out too long down there."

"I just reckon it'd be prudent to first get as many answers as we can, if we're gonna go busting in on this Ashley lady."

"I thought she was the one with all the answers."

"Aw, you heard how pissed she was on the phone! How you think she's gonna be with the four of us showing up on her doorstep like some long-lost scout troop? Maybe if we know some truth she'll trust us more. Or we'll know why she doesn't trust us."

Jacob sighed. "Yes, but we don't have forever to work on this. We've agreed on a time to meet; you can't be late."

"Aw, don't start with me like that-"

"Dal, do I need to remind you that I've got a life here? I'm in the middle of things; I've got things to do once we're done with all of this nonsense."

"Like what?"

"Well, there's this little hobby I've got about becoming a doctor." His brother paused. "And, once all of this family business is out of the way, I'm going to go ahead with converting. It requires a lot of preparation."

"What?"

"I'm going to go through with converting. To Judaism."

"You're really going to go ahead do that?  Like being Jewish Born Again?"

"Yes, that's right," Jacob snapped. " 'Jewish Born Again'."

"And everyone's going to have to keeping calling you Jacob?"

"It's my name now."

"Whatever. Even if you convert, you still won't be a real Jew. I don't care if you cut up your dick or what."

"It's not an issue of 'realness'."

"What does it mean if they'll let anyone convert?   How special is it if anyone can join?"

"Dallas. I've already been through this. With all of us. It's what I'm doing. I just wanted to let you know my plate's a little bit on the full side, so, if you don't mind, I'd like to we wrap up this little family reunion adventure ASAP."

"Fine. All right. Well, I won't dawdle around here. Wouldn't want finding out the truth of our family, our own mother for Christ sake, to get in the way of your precious Jew school."

"Dal-"

"Man, I'm really on to something here, OK?   I'm really close to something, I can feel it."

"What can you feel?" his brother asked dubiously. "Why are you feeling so much all the sudden?"

Jake scraped his boot along the phone booth's wooden floor. "I can feel her," he said. "I can feel her, like we feel each other."