Fallen Land Read Online Free Page A

not: there is nothing natural about the drone.
    The house is just off the extension of Poplar Road, the main east–west thoroughfare through the city and a forty-minute drive to the old downtown that has been regenerated in phases over the last decade, the warehouses turned into lofts, derelict buildings razed and replaced with parks. Nonetheless, some neighborhoods that were genteel a decade earlier have seen their houses turned into rental properties, the porches sagging and gutters filling up with leaves that are never cleared to make way for the snowmelt in spring and the torrents of rain that come at unpredictable intervals in the warm months. Out here, on the western fringe of the city, everything remains new. Anything that ages is torn down to make way for shiny replacements.
    Downstairs the lights are off, curtains closed, the windows dark and reflective. On the second and third floors there is light and movement; the curtains are open, the people who live inside forgetting that someone might be watching. She pulls the car into the driveway, gets out, and shuts the door without making a noise.
    It is nearly nine o’clock and the neighboring houses are dark except for the small red pulse of light on each of their alarm boxes. She looks through the window in the front door and sees light seeping down the stairs from the second floor, shadows moving, someone standing still and then in motion again. Feet come down the stairs. Louise ducks behind one of the half-dozen plantation rocking chairs on the porch, listening as the body inside approaches the door. She edges into deeper shadow as the door opens for an instant and then slams shut. Somewhere a window is open.
    “It wasn’t locked! You said you locked it!”
    “I said I couldn’t remember.”
    “Anyone could have come in. This isn’t the 1950s!”
    This is the place she has brought herself at last, the place where she now must remain. She sits in one of the rocking chairs, looking out at the other houses, blurring her vision so the structures begin to dissolve, giving way to the black mass of trees in the distance, the dim western glow as the earth spins itself again into darkness.

Past

    All felled, felled, are all felled . . . not spared, not one.
    GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

PART I
    SHELTER

T he helicopter has been hovering overhead for the last twenty minutes. He knows he can hear the rapid thwacking buzz of a flying lawnmower cutting down clouds, and if he can’t hear it through the lead lining of the bunker then he is sure he can feel the vibration of rotors churning the air, buffeting the earth above his head, stirring up the atmosphere, designed to stir him up too.
    When people asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, Paul Krovik did not say he was going to be a fireman or soldier or pilot, as some boys will before they know the kind of drudgery and danger such jobs entail. He did not want to be an actor or rock star or astronaut, nor did he harbor secret desires to dance, design clothes, or write poetry—the kinds of dreams most in his world would have regarded as evidence that his parents had failed to raise a true man, whatever that might mean.
    He always wanted to build houses.
    And now they are trying to take away the only house that belonged to him. He is not about to give up the one thing he ever wanted.
    At first when he heard it he thought the helicopter must be circling the general area, filming rush-hour traffic to transmit to one of the local news affiliates, the shellacked Channel 7 anchors in rictus masks reporting snarl-ups and accidents and slow-motion car chases, transmitting live from a breaking story with innocents sobbing in the background or bystanders weighing in with nonsensical sound bites about the shiftiness of a suspected killer or the long-observed weirdness of a family that has taken itself hostage in a broken-down motor home none of the neighbors have seen move from the driveway in a decade. Paul remembers that