Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

It was a funny thing: now that he’d seen what happened to Mr. Dempsey, the fear that’d possessed him evaporated, and he was just sad. Looking at Mr. Dempsey like this made him compare with the memories he’d had of him alive. And because all those memories included his mama, it made Jason think of her again. He wondered how it could be, that folks like his mama and Mr. Dempsey could be taken down by something so little like a germ. Aunt Germaine seemed to think she had the answers to that in her little file box—those eleven numbers and the percentage of how fit they were.

Jason could see how a fellow like Lionel Dempsey might fall based upon those numbers. He was always skinny and pale, and his chin didn’t come out more than halfway as far as his top teeth. And he was getting on past forty and hadn’t lifted much beyond his stock of cans and foodstuff and hardware in many years, and probably he drank too much over at the saloon which made him weaker still. But Jason Thistledown’s mama was strong and fit and beautiful. And she did beget Jason, who was strong enough to not be bothered a bit by the germ that came across the land. That had to count for something in Aunt Germaine’s eugenical numbers. It should have meant Jason’s mama could stand up to anything, at least as much as Jason could.

And yet, the only difference between her and slow old Mr. Dempsey now was a lick of flame.

Jason shook his head. Before he could upchuck again, he went to the ammunition shelf and got what he came for: plenty of bullets and a good knife besides.

§

Outside, Germaine was nowhere to be seen. The only sign she’d been there was a couple of steaming tubs of water, set out next to one another on the wooden sidewalk.

She reappeared when Jason was in the bigger one, dutifully scrubbing the germy dirt off his winter-white skin.

“Take your time,” she said. “We won’t leave for Helena ’til morning.”

“Where we goin’ then, Aunt? Somewhere by train?”

She looked to the west, shading her eyes with her hands and peering hard, as though looking at some distant oceanic horizon.

“Idaho,” she said. “The mill town of Eliada, at the very north end of the State of Idaho. We… I’ve an appointment there, one of which I am well overdue in the keeping.”

“We going to set a fire on the way out?”

Aunt Germaine looked at him. The sun reflected from her glasses and made it hard for him to look back.

“To clean the place up,” said Jason when she didn’t answer him. “Get rid of all the germs. Like we did the homestead.”

“Nephew,” she said, “they hang arsonists.”

Jason opened his mouth to argue. He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t thought of that when they cremated his mama and everything she’d made, just to start. But he recalled his aunt’s madness that first night; something in the set of her mouth this day told him not to bother.

“Eliada it is, then,” was all he said.