Read Online The Fearsome Particles by Trevor Cole - Free Book Online

him.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Why is it just sitting there?”
    “What did you want it to do?”
    Gerald stared at the man for a moment, reassessing, then reached into the breast pocket of his suit, pulled out his wallet and from his wallet a business card.
    “My name is Gerald Woodlore,” he said, showing his card. “My son is supposed to be on that plane.”
    “If he’s s’posed to be then he probably is.”
    “Oh?”
    “That’s generally the way it works.”
    “But he’s not getting off,” said Gerald, pointing again. “No one is.” He backed up and out of the way so that the man could go and see for himself. When the man failed to move Gerald made an usher-like motion with his hand.
This way to the inanimate plane
. Still the man stayed at his counter. His counter was his protection against the intrusions of the outside world’s needs for service, and he was not about to let go.
    Gerald straightened. “Is there anyone else who could help me?”
    The man shrugged. “We’re short-staffed at the moment.”
    “Are you?”
    “Unfortunately.”
    Gerald nodded.
    He returned to the window.
    One evening nine months before, as Kyle was packing to leave, Gerald had tapped on his bedroom door. Given permission to enter, he’d sat at the end of Kyle’s bed and watched as his son stuffed his two bags. The military had e-mailed a list of the things COF-AP employees were advised to bring, among them a certificate of vaccination, a wide-brimmed hat for sun, a warm hat and gloves for winter, sturdy walking boots, hiking socks, shower sandals, ear plugs, sunglasses. Gerald drew his thumb down the list of protective barriers looking for anything the military might have missed. He didn’t see any mention of bulletproof gear. Bulletproof gear, presumably, was supplied as a matter of course, like a bed, but he would have preferred to see at least some reference to it. He was the father of a boy who liked watching complicated movies and subtle chemical reactions,whose chief threat should have been some unnatural resurgence in the career of David Spade, and he was worrying about whether his son would, in two days, be supplied with armour. “Sunblock,” he’d eventually said, looking up at his son. “Did you pack sunblock?” Kyle said yes, he’d packed some SPF -30. And when he sighed as if he were impatient for Gerald to leave, Gerald had pushed himself off the bed and toward the hallway, moving through a sense of something-left-undone that hampered his feet like snowdrifts.
    At the door, he did the only thing he could think of. He handed Kyle a business card with his office number and asked him to put it in his wallet. The inadequacy of this effort made him sick.
    In the first days after Kyle had told them about his plan to spend a year as a water treatment technician at a Canadian Forces base camp in Afghanistan, and then in the months after Kyle had left, Gerald’s main concern, after his concern for Kyle, had been for Vicki. He sensed, though there was no way of knowing, that a mother’s attachment to her son rendered her somehow fragile and therefore vulnerable in the event of some all-too-imaginable misfortune. And he was worried about that for her sake, and for his own. Because after twenty-one years of marriage and a quarter century in the workforce, Gerald was becoming attuned to the limits of what he knew to be his character; it was obvious to him that he was a man incapable of dealing effectively with calamity or any of its serious repercussions. And so there was a moment, after he’d received the news of the “off-camp event,” when he had considered its implications. And one of them had to do with Vicki, and whether he’dbe up to managing whatever there would be to manage, re: her.
    “Mr. Woodlore?”
    Gerald looked away from the window and the motionless plane to see that the man from the departures area had left his counter and was headed toward him.
    “Excuse me, sir. You’re Kyle Woodlore’s