The brunch meeting went well. I saw Caleb talking shop with Sam [240] Sinclair, and Salty sought out me and Dak and questioned us about the work we’d done so far, mapping out the electrical system. I gradually realized he was a lot more than an electrician, he was an electrical engineer, with a degree from LSU. And Dak and I were about to become apprentice electricians, in a big hurry.

The only worry was when I saw Travis take my mother to the other end of the parking lot. They talked for a long time, mostly with my mother shaking her head in that dogged way she can do better than anyone else. You don’t have a chance, Travis, I thought. No matter what you’re trying to sell her.

It turned out he was selling her some free help… and he sold it, which was a first in my memory. Not long after that she pulled me aside.

“Grace and Billy are moving in for the duration,” she said, not making eye contact with me. What was she worrying about, that I’d think less of her for accepting help? “It was either that, or pack it in. Shut the doors and let the sheriff put all the furniture out on the street. I almost wish I’d done that, too.”

“I’ll support you either way, I hope you know that.”

She put an arm around me as we walked, and she hugged me close.

“I do. The only reason I’ve kept at it so long is… it was your father’s dream. And it wasn’t even really a dream, I guess, I think it was more of an obsession.”

“You don’t need to let it be your obsession, too.”

“But I did. You’re right. Your father was determined to make it work, he wanted to show his parents… and even more, my parents, the white folks who never said a racist word to him but always managed to let him know he was their social inferior, right up to the day we married.

“He wanted to make it work so bad… that he got a little stupid. Just once. He did something he’d never have done if he hadn’t wanted this so bad, for you, and for me.”

And what was the stupid thing? What would be the worst possible way for him to die to perfectly satisfy my mom’s parents’ expectations? Why, a drug deal, of course.

[241] Just this once, it was going to be. He lived long enough to tell Mom that, as he lay dying in the hospital. I remember Mom was crying, not much else.

It wasn’t even a very big drug deal, certainly not by Florida standards. Just two Cubans and three Colombians and half a kilo of cocaine. But one of the Colombians was flying high, and he got mad, pulled out his gun, started shooting. None of the others could even recall what the fight was about. None of the others were hurt; the Colombian was too stoned to shoot very well, except for that first shot at point-blank range.

They left my father there, all four of them, to bleed almost to death in a deserted parking lot and die of septic infection the next day. All of them are out of prison now except the one who was killed inside. I know their names. Maybe one day I’ll do something about that. Or maybe it’s better to just bury that kind of hatred.

“Travis made a lot of sense, Manny,” Mom went on. “He asked why I hang on here. Why work so hard to keep this goddam place running when I know, when everybody knows, that one day it’s all going to come together at the same time, all the bad things, no customers, a big lawsuit, a hurricane, and the only thing different than if we’d gone belly up ten years ago would be ten years less of heartbreak.

“When I think of selling it, it just hurts that after all our hard work it’s come to nothing. I think about getting another loan, someplace, do some renovation, make it nice, like your father wanted it. But this place is Old Florida, and it always will be, until some New Florida outfit comes along and puts up a shopping mall.

“Well, I’m tired of being Old Florida. So I’m going to accept Grace and Billy’s help while you’re working on this thing you’re working on. Travis is right, you’re going to work yourself to death trying to do both things at once, you’re too good a son to let me and Maria handle it by ourselves, even though I’ve already told you to. You’re your father’s son, that way… and I’m proud of you.

“But I’m telling you right now, Manuel. Whether you go or not, whether you come back or not… I’m through here.”

“I’m glad, Mom.”

[242] “When you… when you get back, we’re getting out of this life.” She shook her head and looked up at me. “You’re already out of it, Manuel, and I can’t tell you how glad that makes me. And, yes, I thank Travis for that… even though I’ll kill him if he harms one-”

“I’m coming back, Mom. And we’ll be rich and famous.”

She squinted at me, looking too old and too tired in the merciless sunshine.

“Is that what you want, Manuel?”

“Famous? Not really. But we probably will be. I only want to be rich enough not to have to worry about every dime, all the time. Have enough money to pay for college, maybe have a few nice things. Not have to… to worry all the time that I can’t get Kelly the things she’s used to.”

“Well, you know I like her. Even though she’s rich.” We both laughed at that. “And if you don’t want to be famous, you’d better have a talk with her. She’s figuring on cashing in on this thing right from the git-go. She’s been talking to Maria and me about it. The lady has big plans.”

“What do you mean?”

“Talk to her. And you go with Travis, and you come back.” She kissed me on the cheek, hugged me very tight, and we rejoined the people around the picnic tables.

Big plans, huh? First I’d heard of it.

SIXTY DAYS.

That’s how much time we had if we were going to beat the Chinese to Mars. We put up a big calendar on a wall of the warehouse and Kelly marked off each day at midnight, when we were supposed to have been in bed for an hour, per Travis’s instructions. We were supposed to get up at six and run, having theoretically gotten seven hours of sleep. Instead, we were always up at four or five, unable to sleep.

But… run?

Mom got a big laugh at that, when she heard. And nobody could have been more surprised than me. I know I should exercise, get into [243] the habit of it since I didn’t plan to be a lumberjack or a rodeo rider, or anything else strenuous. Astronaut? In truth it’s a very sedentary occupation, especially in the free-falling space stations. They have to put in one or two hours’ exercise every day just to keep themselves from losing too much muscle mass and bone density.

But running around and around a track always struck me as a stupifyingly boring waste of time. Running on the street was only slightly better.

“That’s gotta change,” Travis told us, early on. “I want all of you to be in tip-top shape when we leave, not shriveled up from staring at a computer screen twenty hours a day. A strong mind in a strong body, that’s what I want.”

I was going to ask Travis how much running he’d gotten in during the last four or five years of steady alcoholism… but then I saw how much one hour of jogging was costing him, the first time we all went out together, with the sun just coming up and dew sparkling on the leaves. But he was out there again the next morning. Neither Dak nor I could let an old ex-alky outrun us, of course, so we really pushed ourselves.

And the girls? It was easy for them. They’d both been doing it since high school.

“You think this gorgeous body comes for free?” Kelly had chided me, puttering along at half her normal speed as I huffed and puffed beside her.

“Hell, no. I paid ten dollars for that body.”

“Which you still owe me, come to think of it.”

It took a week of torture, and a considerable amount of denial, for me to admit that after the morning runs I felt more rested and alert than at any other time of the day. After that I relaxed to the inevitable. After two weeks even Travis was getting back into shape. Jubal… well, Jubal was exempt, because nobody made Jubal do anything. Most of the time he was too engrossed in his calculations to drag himself away from the computer. But then one morning he did run with us, and he held his own. I’d forgotten about the midnight rowing trips on the lake.