Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

He looked at the ledgers first. They were pretty easy. Stamped on the front were the words “Births & Deaths,” and inside were lists of names, set down by the year and the month and finally the day. They listed parents in some cases. Further along the page, there was sometimes another date—sometimes not. It wasn’t hard to figure it out: the first date was a birthday; the second, the date of dying. The earliest date for either, Jason saw, was 1844, which was, he suspected, the year that some fool settler had broken his wagon wheel and given the town its name. Subsequent years took up more pages, and as it moved on through boom and back to bust, far fewer. 1892 through ’95 all fit onto one page, with two or three lines to spare.

Jason couldn’t resist what came next: he flipped through to 1897, and the month of January. Sure enough, there was his name: Jason John Thistledown. Next to it: John & Ellen Thistledown. He thought seeing that would make him smile, but it turned out looking at his mama’s name written like that in some stranger’s hand had the opposite effect, so he closed the book.

He turned to Aunt Germaine’s box and those cards. On the front of it there was a simple gilded engraving:

ERO

And underneath that:

Cold Spring Harbor

Jason pulled out a card and squinted at the tiny handwritten notes on it.

The card was harder to figure than the ledger.

It had a name on it too—FLANNIGAN, Anne—and there was a number (1892) that might have been a birth date. There was a place name too: Indianapolis, Indiana. But the top of it was a line of nothing but numbers. Then there was a space, and a percentage:

43 %

Underneath that, there was a word that Jason had never seen before. He sounded it out in a whisper:

“E-pie-lep-see.”

Jason shrugged, and slipped the card back into the box.

A bundle of them after that came from Indianapolis. More names, more numbers. He saw that Epilepsy word after only a few of them. On other cards, new words replaced it: Consanguineous; Degenerate; Feebleminded. Then he was past the Indianapolis cards, and onto a new locale:

Ossining, New York—Sing Sing.

The numbers were the same length, but the names seemed to be all of men. And the words that came after were more recognizable:

Thief. Rapist. And Habitual Criminal.

“Murderer.”

Jason nearly knocked over the lamp, catching it and steadying it as he turned.

Aunt Germaine leaned on the counter, rifle laid across it. She was not wearing her glasses, and the lamplight made her eyes tiny pits of fury; her mouth worked like an air-drowned trout as she stammered, and finally, shouted:

“Murderer! You would kill me! Me!”

Jason swallowed and stood, and Aunt Germaine recoiled from him, as though he were some bandit. “Away!” she cried. “Away!” She pushed herself back against the bench where she’d been sleeping, and cowered like a child just woke from a nightmare.

And why shouldn’t she have nightmares? Jason’s mama would wake from them often enough, and she hadn’t seen half the horror that her sister had, here in this town… .

Jason stepped up to his side of the counter.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Germaine,” he said softly. “Calm yourself. I was lookin’ in your bag. Just started—having a look at those cards you got. I’m not aimin’ to kill you. Hush.”

Germaine drew a breath at that, and squinted at Jason. “You were looking at… the cards. From the top of the bag?”

“That’s right,” said Jason. “I’m sure sorry. I should have asked—”

“Yes, you should have.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Germaine,” he said. “I guess—”

“You were curious,” finished Germaine. She reached down and found her eyeglasses, and set them on her nose. She drew a deep breath. “That is only natural for a boy awake in the night in a place such as this. Curiosity. Better, I suppose, that you satisfy it going through my private things than rooting through the charnel house over in the saloon. Well, Jason, tell me: is everything clear to you now?”

Jason had to admit that nothing was any clearer now that he’d snooped through Aunt Germaine’s things, and said he was sorry once more.

“Perhaps,” she continued, “you have a question then? Something that you might have asked me earlier, as we ate the dinner I prepared for you? Drank the tea I brewed for you?” Jason felt his face flush with shame. Any questions he had, and there were more than a few, got buried in that shame. Aunt Germaine’s lips pursed, and she nodded as though he had confirmed something.

“Let me hazard a question for myself then. ‘What, oh dear Aunt Germaine, ever are you doing for the Eugenics Records Office?’”

Aunt Germaine didn’t say any more that night. She was clearly upset at her nephew for invading her things like that, so ordered Jason back to sleep while she carefully replaced the box into her bag, and moved it next to her.