With the sound down low we couldn't hear what she was saying. But no one bothered to adjust the volume. It was the picture that mattered, the face in black and white, animated but also flat, distanced, sealed off, timeless. It was but wasn't her. Once again I began to think Murray might be on to something. Waves and radiation. Something leaked through the mesh. She was shining a light on us, she was coming into being, endlessly being formed and reformed as the muscles in her face worked at smiling and speaking, as the electronic dots swarmed.

We were being shot through with Babette. Her image was projected on our bodies, swam in us and through us. Babette of electrons and photons, of whatever forces produced that gray light we took to be her face.

The kids were flushed with excitement but I felt a certain disquiet. I tried to tell myself it was only television-whatever that was, however it worked-and not some journey out of life or death, not some mysterious separation. Murray looked up at me, smiling in his sneaky way.

Only Wilder remained calm. He watched his mother, spoke to her in half-words, sensible-sounding fragments that were mainly fabricated. As the camera pulled back to allow Babette to demonstrate some fine point of standing or walking, Wilder approached the set and touched her body, leaving a handprint on the dusty surface of the screen.

Then Denise crawled up to the set and turned the volume dial. Nothing happened. There was no sound, no voice, nothing. She turned to look at me, a moment of renewed confusion. Heinrich advanced, fiddled with the dial, stuck his hand behind the set to adjust the recessed knobs. When he tried another channel, the sound boomed out, raw and fuzzy. Back at the cable station, he couldn't raise a buzz and as we watched Babette finish the lesson, we were in a mood of odd misgiving. But as soon as the program ended, the two girls got excited again and went downstairs to wait for Babette at the door and surprise her with news of what they'd seen.

The small boy remained at the TV set, within inches of the dark screen, crying softly, uncertainly, in low heaves and swells, as Murray took notes.

II The Airborne Toxic Event

21

After a night of dream-lit snows the air turned clear and still. There was a taut blue quality in the January light, a hardness and confidence. The sound of boots on packed snow, the contrails streaked cleanly in the high sky. Weather was very much the point, although I didn't know it at first.

I turned into our street and walked past men bent over shovels in their driveways, breathing vapor. A squirrel moved along a limb in a flowing motion, a passage so continuous it seemed to be its own physical law, different from the ones we've learned to trust. When I was halfway down the street I saw Heinrich crouched on a small ledge outside our attic window. He wore his camouflage jacket and cap, an outfit with complex meaning for him, at fourteen, struggling to grow and to escape notice simultaneously, his secrets known to us all. He looked east through binoculars.

I went around back to the kitchen. In the entranceway the washer and dryer were vibrating nicely. I could tell from Babette's voice that the person she was talking to on the phone was her father. An impatience mixed with guilt and apprehension. I stood behind her, put my cold hands to her cheeks. A little thing I liked to do. She hung up the phone.

"Why is he on the roof?"

"Heinrich? Something about the train yards," she said. "It was on the radio."

"Shouldn't I get him down?"

"Why?"

"He could fall."

"Don't tell him that."

"Why not?"

"He thinks you underestimate him."

"He's on a ledge," I said. 'There must be something I should be doing."

'The more you show concern, the closer he'll go to the edge."

"I know that but I still have to get him down."

"Coax him back in," she said. "Be sensitive and caring. Get him to talk about himself. Don't make sudden movements."

When I got to the attic he was already back inside, standing by the open window, still looking through the glasses. Abandoned possessions were everywhere, oppressive and soul-worrying, creating a weather of their own among the exposed beams and posts, the fiberglass insulation pads.

"What happened?"

'The radio said a tank car derailed. But I don't think it derailed from what I could see. I think it got rammed and something punched a hole in it. There's a lot of smoke and I don't like the looks of it."

"What does it look like?"

He handed me the binoculars and stepped aside. Without climbing onto the ledge I couldn't see the switching yard and the car or cars in question. But the smoke was plainly visible, a heavy black mass hanging in the air beyond the river, more or less shapeless.

"Did you see fire engines?"

"They're all over the place," he said. "But it looks to me like they're not getting too close. It must be pretty toxic or pretty explosive stuff, or both."

"It won't come this way."

"How do you know?"

"It just won't. The point is you shouldn't be standing on icy ledges. It worries Baba."

"You think if you tell me it worries her, I'll feel guilty and not do it. But if you tell me it worries you, I'll do it all the time."

"Shut the window," I told him.

We went down to the kitchen. Steffie was looking through the brightly colored mail for coupons, lotteries and contests. This was the last day of the holiday break for the grade school and high school. Classes on the Hill would resume in a week. I sent Heinrich outside to clear snow from the walk. I watched him stand out there, utterly still, his head turned slightly, a honed awareness in his stance. It took me a while to realize he was listening to the sirens beyond the river.

An hour later he was back in the attic, this time with a radio and highway map. I climbed the narrow stairs, borrowed the glasses and looked again. It was still there, a slightly larger accumulation, a towering mass in fact, maybe a little blacker now.

"The radio calls it a feathery plume," he said. "But it's not a plume."

"What is it?"

"Like a shapeless growing thing. A dark black breathing thing of smoke. Why do they call it a plume?"

"Air time is valuable. They can't go into long tortured descriptions. Have they said what kind of chemical it is?"

"It's called Nyodene Derivative or Nyodene D. It was in a movie we saw in school on toxic wastes. These videotaped rats."

"What does it cause?"

'The movie wasn't sure what it does to humans. Mainly it was rats growing urgent lumps."

"That's what the movie said. What does the radio say?"

"At first they said skin irritation and sweaty palms. But now they say nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath."

"This is human nausea we're talking about. Not rats."

"Not rats," he said.

I gave him the binoculars.

"Well it won't come this way."

"How do you know?" he said.

"I just know. It's perfectly calm and still today. And when there's a wind at this time of year, it blows that way, not this way."

"What if it blows this way?"

"It won't."

"Just this one time."

"It won't. Why should it?"

He paused a beat and said in a flat tone, 'They just closed part of the interstate."

'They would want to do that, of course."

"Why?"

'They just would. A sensible precaution. A way to facilitate movement of service vehicles and such. Any number of reasons that have nothing to do with wind or wind direction."

Babette's head appeared at the top of the stairway. She said a neighbor had told her the spill from the tank car was thirty-five thousand gallons. People were being told to stay out of the area. A feathery plume hung over the site. She also said the girls were complaining of sweaty palms.