Sister Theresa, who’d earned a doctorate in psychology and who counseled many children and adults through times of crisis, was not able to reach me with the tools of psychology or the tenets of her theology. Although unfailingly patient, she was often frustrated with me. Her beautiful mahogany skin, so in contrast with her white habit, mostly hid a flush of annoyance, but I still saw it.
After a few weeks, when I came to her office at the appointed time, I found that she had acquired an ant colony: a two-foot-tall, four-foot-long box with glass walls through which we could watch the tiny residents conduct their affairs. She also had a DVD documentary about ants as well as several books about them.
“We’re going to study ants for the next week, nothing but ants, hours and hours every day. You and me together, but also you alone.”
“Why?” I asked.
“That is for you to figure out, Quinn. You’re a smart boy, more learned than most eleven-year-old boys. I’m confident that you’ll have an aha moment sooner than later.”
“They’re just ants,” I said with a note of indifference.
“And to an ant, you’re just a foot.”
I frowned. “A foot?”
“That’s all they see of you, if they see even that when you step on them. But there’s more to you than a foot, isn’t there?”
We studied several varieties of the family Formicidae: the architecture and organization of their colonies, the classes into which they are divided, the tasks each class is given. The winged queen. The wingless female workers. The male drones that exist only to breed and die. Those that cultivate food sources. The warriors.
Perhaps beginning with ants, I came to realize that everything in the world, regardless of how humble it might seem to be, is more complex and fascinating than it at first appears.
Yet nothing I had learned about ants could cure my depression. When I wasn’t studying bugs, I was doing little else than sleeping the sleep of despondency, twelve and more hours each day.
When Sister Theresa deemed that we’d studied ants to the point of diminishing returns, she asked me if I would want to be an ant.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“They don’t do anything but work.”
“That’s the sum of it?” she asked. “You don’t want to be an ant because they work too much?”
“Yeah. And I’d always be scared some kid would step on me.”
Sister Theresa sighed. “All right, then. You’re a hard nut, Quinn Quicksilver, but we’ll crack you. Next we’ll study birds.”
PART 2
DIRTY MONEY, ATTACK DOGS AND SPURTLES
|?11?|
Remaining strictly under the speed limit, we were southbound on I-10 when I sat up in the back seat and stared at traffic speeding past us and at the traffic racing north, at the scattering of lights in the darkness of the Gila River Bapchule Indian Reservation, at a sign announcing the distance to Casa Grande and Eloy and Tucson. As both a proud resident of the Grand Canyon State and a former writer for Arizona! magazine, I would once have found all that as familiar as my own face in a mirror. On this occasion, however, nature’s realm and that of humankind were laced with mystery. Once, I might have idly wondered who occupied all those passing vehicles. Now I brooded instead about what infernal creatures might be traveling the night, what destinations they had in mind, and what outrages they intended to commit.
Bridget retrieved a box of ammunition from under her seat. She began reloading her pistol and the one her grandfather had used.
We cruised in silence for a while. I guess she and Sparky were thinking about how the scene in the restaurant could have played out less advantageously, with the three of us lying dead among scores of other victims. That was for damn sure a consideration that plagued me mile after mile.
Eventually I said, “They must have security cameras. There’ll be video of us.”
“If the quality’s any good,” Sparky said, “we’ll have the ISA on our tail again in a few hours.”
“What about the car?” I asked. “Maybe they’ve got video of us making for the Buick.”
“We’ll have to ditch the car,” Bridget said. “Grandpa, I think I better load two spare magazines.”
“Four,” he said. “We can’t abandon the Buick until we have new wheels, and we’re not likely to find those until we’re in livelier territory. Tucson’s maybe an hour and a half. Once we get in the vicinity, you or Quinn can get behind the wheel, and we’ll see what psychic attraction can do for us.” He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “We say ‘psychic attraction,’ and you say ‘strange magnetism.’ Po-tay-toes, po-tah-toes; to-may-toes, to-mah-toes.”