Last Day of Seventeen

Terry Myell had spent years planning his last day of being seventeen years old.   He had it all figured out, hour by hour.   He hadn't made notes or lists, though.   Hadn't left any trace of his searches on the living room computer.   Hadn't packed, said goodbye to the neighbors, or altered his routine in any way.   He didn't know what his eighteen birthday was going to bring but the last day of seventeen was going to hold no surprises and go exactly as planned.

Daris ruined everything at breakfast.

"You're going up to the north forty this morning," he said around a mouthful of fried eggs and toast.   They were sitting in the new kitchen, which was just off the old kitchen, which was where their mother had hung herself seven years earlier.   "See if you can track down the fault in those fence sensors.   Damned alarm keeps going off every ten minutes."

Terry's gaze shifted toward the window.    Pre-dawn light out there, the farm quiet but for the roosters.   Slowly he sipped his coffee.   If he spent the day in the north forty he was going to miss the ten a.m. train, and might be miss the three p.m. as well.  

"I can troubleshoot it from here, if you give me the codes," he said.

Daris grunted.   He was scanning pieces of paper that bore the bank's crest. Another payment demand, no doubt.   They were always on the brink of foreclosure and bankruptcy.

"Don't be a lazy ass," Daris said.   "Pull the fucking nodes by hand and check each of them out.   Count how many we've got to replace once the money for the horses comes in."

They'd sold the last of the farm's horses a few days earlier.   Terry was going to miss Rosie Ann, his favorite.   She was a friendly old mare with a broad black stripe down her white coat.   First horse he'd ever ridden, back when his father was alive and still taking an interest in his children.

He tried a different tactic.   "Maybe I could ping them from -- "

Daris swung his hand out and backhanded him.   The blow caught Terry off-guard.   He rocked back in his chair and tasted blood in his mouth.

"Stop fucking arguing and just do it," Daris said, returning his attention to the papers.

Terry berated himself.   Stupid, stupid.   Now wasn't the time to provoke Daris's temper.   His older brother was always going to resort to violence, whether Terry was four years old or twelve or twenty.

Daris said, "Get your stuff.   I'll drop you off on my way into Pink Skunk. Goddamned moneylenders.   We're going to have a talk or two."

Alone in his room, Terry pulled the blankets up on his bed in a deliberately messy fashion.   He knew how to make squared corners, had been practicing, but didn't want to leave that kind of evidence behind.   He eyed the school trophies and awards on his dusty bureau.   Some were his, most were Colby's.   He hadn't even told Colby about his plans; better to make a clean break, to get away fast, than endure pep talks or another broken promise from Colby's dorm room at college.

Trophies, certificates, his favorite soccer ball.   All would stay behind.   He'd only put a few books and some clothing into his rucksack.   He hoped Team Space would let him keep them.   But he couldn't very well carry the bag through the kitchen without Daris noticing.

"Stop fucking around!" Daris yelled from the kitchen.   "Get a move on."

Terry stowed the rucksack under his bed.   He grabbed a hat, slapped on some sunscreen, grabbed a sandwich from the refrigerator and filled up a canteen.   Daris was already outside by the flit, fiddling under the hood.   He cuffed Terry on the head again.

"Fuel cell's running low," he said.   "You been joyriding?"

"No," Terry lied.   "You know it leaks."

Daris just grunted.

They drove north, the flat landscape stretching toward the horizon.   There was better, more fertile land on Baiame, and more populous counties with stronger support systems, but this was the homestead their father had won in a lottery.   Daris was eight years older than Terry and showed no aptitude for farming, but he'd kept the place running for years now out of nothing but spite and stubbornness.   And a lack of anything else for him to do on this, the last dirtball planet in the Seven Sisters.  

"I'll be back in a couple of hours," Daris said when they reached the north quadrant.   "Work your way east. I'll swing by when you reach the creek.   Tomorrow you can cover the west and south fields."

Terry watched him drive off.   Too late he realized he'd left the canteen and sandwiches in the back seat.

As soon as the flit was out of sight, he began walking.   It was just about an hour back to their farmhouse.   Long enough to work up a sweat in the summer heat and rue not having the canteen.   He watched his feet and tried to keep his mind blank, but too many worries crowded in.   Maybe he'd fail his medical exam for some genetic flaw that hadn't manifested yet.   Maybe they'd see that he hadn't done well in English last year, because the remote viewer was down more often than not and Daris didn't want him taking the flit to the school in town.   Maybe Team Space wasn't taking applicants this month, or the recruiter would perceive in him some inherent unsuitability that couldn't be fixed no matter how hard he worked, how hard he tried.

He reached home wanting only a tall glass of water, but when he rounded the barn he saw the flit by the front door and Daris's shape inside the house.

Terry retreated into the dim coolness of the barn.   Daris wasn't on his way to see the bankers at all.   He'd used the north forty as an excuse for getting Terry out of the house and out of his hair.   Or maybe, along more charitable lines of thought, he'd simply forgotten some piece of paper and was still looking for it.   Maybe the bankers had cancelled.   Or Daris had gotten one of his headaches, and gone home for some aspirin.

For several minutes Terry tried to figure out what to do next.   The safest thing to do was go back up to the fence line, get working on those nodes, and feign ignorance when Daris came to pick him up.   It wasn't as if he had to go and enlist exactly on his birthday.   The Team Space office would still be there the day after, and the day after that.  

But he'd been promising himself this for so long.   Eighteen years old, legal age to sign an enlistment contract.   His parents had made their escapes from Baiame through death.   Colby had gone to school. Just him and Daris these past two years now, and escape was so close he could barely breathe past the anxiety of it.

He kept to the barn, watching through slits in the old weathered boards, waiting for Daris to leave again.   At least it was cooler, out of the sunlight, and he drank enough water from the stored jugs to make him feel irrigated again.   No sounds or movement over in the main house.   No sign of what the hell Daris was doing.   Terry couldn't very well start walking down the road to Pink Skunk if Daris was going to rumble up behind him in the flit.

Just before noon, as his stomach was beginning to growl in earnest, an old buggy on rubber wheels turned down the lane and pulled up to the house.   Terry knew that buggy.   Old man Gunderson emerged with his hat tipped back on his head.   With him, bouncing on the end of a long leash, was an eager black puppy with a red ribbon around its neck.

Oh, no.

A puppy for Terry's birthday.

He couldn't remember asking for a pet of any kind, ever, certainly not for this birthday, not for any other.   They'd never really had any all the years he was growing up.   His father had always hated dogs and his mother had been allergic to cats.   There'd been some fish, once, little blue and green ones swimming in a tank Colby kept until the water turned cloudy and the denizens turned belly up.   There'd been a parakeet named Snake.   It had escaped its cage and flown straight into a wall.

Daris met Gunderson at the door.   There was a terse exchange that Terry couldn't hear.   Daris wasn't the friendly sort, and Gunderson didn't talk much even under the most social of circumstances.   After Gunderson drove off Daris took the puppy inside, came out again a few minutes later, and departed in the flit.

Terry waited a good ten minutes to make sure that Daris didn't turn back.   He let himself into the house quietly, hoping to avoid detection, but almost immediately the black puppy was jumping up and down and barking sticking its wet nose against Terry's leg.

"You're the last thing I need," Terry said, but he went to his knees anyway and squeezed the animal and let it lick his face. The ribbon around its neck, no doubt courtesy of Mrs. Gunderson, was so silly looking that he tugged it off.   A heart-shaped nametag was attached to the ribbon:   Scout.

"Scout," Terry said.   "Trouble is more like it."

Scout rolled over to have his tummy rubbed, and pounced on a dust bunny in the corner, and then chased his tail for a moment before falling into a heap.   Terry tried to remember what it was like to have that much energy and enthusiasm.   For anything.

"You would be the best dog ever," he said.   "But I'm not staying.   I'm sorry."

He grabbed his overnight bag and filled another rucksack under Scout's intense, tail-thumping observation.

"You have to stay here," Terry said, though the words left a sour taste in his mouth.   Daris couldn't take care of a puppy.   Not if it needed attention, affection or love.   He'd end up kicking or beating the dog, especially once he realized Terry was gone for good.   Scout would grow from an enthusiastic little guy into a bitter dog full of cowers and growls, all because he'd been left behind and without love.

"I can't take you into Team Space," Terry said, which was true.   No recruiter was going to let him take a dog to boot camp.

Scout thumped his tail again.

"Stupid animal," Terry said.   "Come on."

A few kilometers down the road, as they were passing the Gunderson's fence, he thought about simply returning Scout to the old couple.   He wouldn't tell them he was running off.   Did want sympathetic Mrs. Gunderson trying to talk him out of it, or either of them letting Daris know before the enlistment contract was signed.   Better that he lie, say that he didn't want a dog, didn't want the responsibility.   He'd never been very good at lying, but maybe this one time it would work.   Or maybe he could just tie it to the fence, let Mr. Gunderson find it later. A few hours in the sun wouldn't hurt it.   Hopefully no bigger dog or fox would wander by and attack it.

One look at the puppy's eager, friendly face and he was already dismissing the idea of leaving it abandoned and helpless.

Terry left his bag by the road and went up the long road toward the white farmhouse.   Mrs. Gunderson was sitting on the porch swing, shelling peanuts into a small bucket.

"Why, little Teren," she said.   She was one of the few people who used his full name. "And Scout!   You two already hitting it off?"

Scout jumped up the porch steps, sniffed at her ankles, and stuck his nose in the bucket.  

"He's a mighty fine dog,"   Terry said, before he could lose his nerve. "I can't keep him, though.   Can you take him back?"

"Can't keep this little guy?" Mrs. Gunderson gave him a piercing gaze.   "Well, why don't you come on inside and we'll talk about it."

He backed away a step or two.   "Honestly, ma'am, I can't stay."

"Just a moment or two," she insisted, and because his mother had taught him a few good things he followed her inside.

The Gunderson house was dim in the midday sun.   He hadn't been inside for a long time.   The furniture was real wood, hammered together in Mr. Gunderson's barn.   Mrs. Gunderson's lace tablecloths covered the end tables and her paintings covered the walls.   Watercolors, mostly.   Pastoral and serene, of watery lands from this corner of the world.   The tidy kitchen smelled like apples, with no dirty dishes in the sink or moldy smells from the corners.

Mrs. Gunderson bade him sit on a tall stool.   She poured him a tall glass of lemonade and said, "Your brother's okay with the dog?   It was his idea in the first place.   He came by after Lucy first had her litter and picked one out."

"He's okay with it," Terry said around the rim of his glass.

"Mr. G and I agreed it would be a good companion for you," she said. "Over there alone most of the time, that's hard."

He shrugged.

Mrs. Gunderson gave him another one of her appraising looks.   "Some lunch?   I've got these tomato and cheese sandwiches I made for when Mr. G gets up from his morning nap.   Going over to your brother's wore him out."

Terry had hoped his stomach wasn't grumbling loud enough that she could hear.   Embarrassing enough to show up and return a gift, but to show up starving as well was even worse.   "If you've got extra," he said.

She pulled a plate from the refrigerator.   "Help yourself."

He wolfed down two sandwiches, a bowl of garlic potato chips, and a healthy wedge of apple pie along with the lemonade and some icewater.   He hadn't realized how famished he really was.   Scout and his mom, Lucy, chased each other through the rooms while the Gunderson's cat, Brick, tiptoed across piano keys.   Mrs. Gunderson made herself scarce while Terry ate, but reappeared to start packing up some brownies in a paper bag.

"For you and Daris, for later," she said.   "Now, then, you going to tell me the real reason you can't keep Scout?   She's the sweetest thing, and she needs a good home."

He had been practicing what to say, but abandoned it all in the face of her friendly concern.

"I'm leaving," he blurted out, and felt his face warm.   "Going away."

"To school?"

"To Pink Skunk," he said.   "To join the military."

"Oh," she said, and her expression turned sad.

Terry added, "I know what happened to Orin. I know it's dangerous out there.   But it's all I've got."

She busied herself with the brownies. "You want to be a pilot, too?"

He shook his head.   He didn't have a love of speed or need for adrenaline.   Orin Gunderson had been born with his gaze on the stars, and had suffered eighteen years of gravity's dictates before he escaped to the Team Space academy and a fatal accident in flight school.   Terry had been young when it happened, and remembered Orin only for his big laugh and joy at chasing younger kids around at church picnics.

"I'll do anything they need me to do," he said. Maybe he'd be a mechanic. He was okay at fixing up bots and flits.   Computers, perhaps. He liked tinkering with hardware   and networks.   The Team Space brochures touted hundreds of occupational tracks, and he figured they'd have him take assessments or tests to figure out where he could best be useful.

"It's a big step, signing away years of your life," Mrs. Gunderson said without meeting his gaze.   "They tell you what to wear, how to act, what to do from sunup til sundown and beyond.   You get a bad boss, you have to listen to him anyway.   You don't like what they want you to do, you do it or end up in the brig."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"It's like a prison.   You want that?"

Living with Daris was like living in prison, he wanted to say.   Colby had escaped but hadn't left the barred doors open behind him.

"I want to go away," Terry   said.   "I need to."

She was quiet for a moment.   The dogs had settled down on the rug and were engaged in a game of staring at one another.   The cat had paused from her forays across the piano and was licking her paw in a sunlit windowsill.  

"You could come live here," she finally said. "You turn eighteen, you get to make your own decisions.   Stay here, help Mr. G out with the farm, and we'll help you get some schooling.   Daris won't bother you here."

"That's not true," he said.

Scout came to Mrs. Gunderson's chair and nuzzled her leg with a hopeful look.   Looking for a doggie treat, no doubt.   Mrs. Gunderson lifted her gaze, finally, and met Terry's gaze. "You're determined?"

"I am," he said, his mouth dry.   "And I have to make the four o'clock train.   If you love that dog you won't want him to be there when I'm gone."

"I don't want to be anywhere near your brother after you're gone," she admitted.   "He's like a blight on a good summer crop.   Even when he was younger.   Came out well enough, but then nothing but a headache to your poor mother.   You think this is what she'd want?   You leaving the home she tried to build for you?"

He was astounded that she'd used that kind of argument on him.   His shock must have shone on his face, because Mrs. Gunderson immediately waved her hand to take back the words.

"I'm sorry," she said.   "Let me go get Mr. G."

He sat there, watching the clock nervously, while Mrs. Gunderson woke Mr. Gunderson.   Their voices floated to him in the warm air but he couldn't make out the individual words.   He shouldn't have come. Should have left Scout to fend for himself.   But then Mr. Gunderson came out, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and his expression was anything but accusing.

"You're going away," he said, with genuine regret.

Terry nodded.

"Were you even going to say goodbye to folks?" Mr. Gunderson asked.

  "Thought it would be easier if I didn't," Terry said.

Mr. Gunderson scratched his head.   "We can't keep Scout here.   Your brother might come over and raise a fuss with the law, saying he paid for him fair and square.   Better that we find him a home somewhere far off, a good place."

"The further the better," Terry said.

"You going to walk to the train station?"

He shrugged.

"I'll take you," Mr. Gunderson said.   "Faster that way, if you want to make the train."

Terry didn't want to take Mrs. Gunderson's brownies, didn't know what would become of them, but she insisted.   "You give them to that recruiter in Pink Skunk.   Make sure he doesn't sign you up for a raw deal.   They do that, you know.   Talk a good deal, but the next morning you regret it."

He wondered if she was thinking about her son, lost among the stars.

"I'll be careful," he promised.

Mr. Gunderson's buggy had bad shook absorbers and made rattling noises, but as Terry sat in the front passenger seat he was happy for the worn-down cushions instead of long miles of road.   Lucy and Scout came along for the ride, ears alert and tongues hanging out of their mouths.   Ten minutes down the road, a glint appeared on the horizon.

"Better duck down," Mr. Gunderson said.

Terry immediately crouched under the dashboard. "What about Scout?"

"At this speed, all puppies look alike," Gunderson said.

Terry crouched even lower and clutched his bag so hard his arms began to ache. The cold air vent blew directly on the back of his neck, and he blamed that for a sudden bout of shivering.   He wished he had brought a kitchen knife or gotten hold of a gun, though the thought of using either one made him sick.   Daris wouldn't drag him home with Mr. Gunderson as a witness, would he?   Wouldn't throw him into his room, lock the door, nail shut the window, like the last time he'd tried to runaway --

The hum of a flit grew louder, and Mr. Gunderson raised a lazy hand in greeting.   A few moments later he said, "All clear," and Terry unfolded himself.

The train station was just another two miles away.   The depot was a small green shed with an automated ticket machine and a stretch of mag-lev rails stretching to the beige horizon.   The place had a forlorn feel to it, but for Terry it was the first stop on the way to freedom.

Mr. Gunderson parked in a mostly-empty lot.   He said, "Before you go, you should reconsider what Mrs. G told you.   You could stay with us, make a better home.   You don't have to sign your life away to Team Space."

Terry shook his head.   "I can't be on the same planet with him.   Not if I want to sleep at night."

Mr. Gunderson tipped back his cap. "Better you take your chances with the stars, then.   A hard-working kid like you will do fine out there.   But keep luck on your side, too.   Hard work doesn't mean anything without luck."

Mr. Gunderson stayed with him until the train came, and then shook his hand.   Scout and Lucy licked his fingers.   He climbed up the thin metal stairs into a half-full car with blue velour seats and settled in at the window.

Mr. Gunderson raised a hand.   Lucy and Scout gazed upward with wide expectant eyes and wagging tails. All the times he had pictured this moment, he'd never imagined having someone to wave to through the windows.

The train slid forward and picked up speed.   Terry kept his gaze on Mr. Gunderson until the old man was a just a blur and then gone altogether. He still had to get to Pink Skunk, find a place to sleep, and enlist in Team Space.   But maybe the hardest part was over.   Maybe he'd done it, succeeded, and he'd never see Daris again.

He ate one of Mrs. Gunderson's excellent brownies, and then he ate another.

The End

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