I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Five

With clenched teeth, he inhaled against the fierce pain coursing through his nerves. It was the searing burn of his muscles pulled tautly around his abdomen, like harp strings tuned so tightly one pluck and they were sure to snap apart. Wyatt endured it though. He did this every night he could, pushing his body to its breaking point. He did this more than he slept. It wasn’t that he was obsessed with exercising or staying in shape. Wyatt cared little for the shape of his body. No, he worked his crying muscles, his tingling nerves, his boiling veins for a much deeper reason. In a world where so many around him seemed numb, Wyatt Douglass sought to feel alive.

Halfway through another sit up, a knock at the door made him jump. It broke his concentration, though he wasn’t keeping a count. Wyatt sat all the way up, his knees pressing against his bare chest. Beads of sweat glistened slightly across his neck and shoulders in the glow of the nearby television. A salesman in a blue T-shirt was pitching some useless product to the sleepless masses. Another man in a purple T-shirt nodded with rehearsed movement beside the first. Wyatt wasn’t listening, the volume was almost all the way down. It was just loud enough to make noise. That was all he had intended.

The door rattled again, a little louder this time and a little more urgently. Wyatt watched it for another moment before finally getting to his feet. He grabbed a shirt balled up on the corner of the bed as he padded calmly across the soft carpet. The dry threads of the thin shirt clung to the sparse layer of sweat on his torso as he slipped it on. With a casual, unassuming rhythm, Wyatt unlocked and pulled open the thick, hotel room door.

A fist of bitter cold air was the first thing to greet him. This hiss of heavy sleet cascading in dense sheets against everything beyond the balcony outside his door reminded Wyatt for the first time in hours a storm had moved into the area. He figured it’d probably start snowing soon, too. While the sound of the winter storm filled his ears, it was the wet, shivering figure in front of him that consumed his vision. It was the cashier from the restaurant. He wasn’t surprised to see her.

He started to open his mouth, to ask a question. But she was already answering. It was probably an obvious question anyway. She had known he would ask and she had known it would be the first question. “I have a friend that works here. He told me you were here. He gave me your room number.”

She stood there waiting for Wyatt to say something. He didn’t. He just stood there, one hand holding the door and the other hanging loosely at his side. His eyes even seemed frozen, a nearby light glowing dimly sparkled like a pair of faint, distant starts in the black voids of his pupils. He was watching her, trying to study her. Mostly frozen drops of water clung to the brim of a loose, nylon hood she clasped tightly with both hands. Her brown eyes were partly hidden under the shadow of her hood. Her hair seemed darker, especially the wet strands plastered to her clammy, white brow. She was still trembling, partly from the wicked cold and partly from his looming presence.

She swallowed nervously. The silence stretched between them until she broke it uncertainly. Despite her best effort, she could not keep her voice steady. “Sh...She wants to meet you. I...told her what you said. I told her about you and...and she...ww...wants to meet you.”

“Where?”

The cashier seemed startled at the sound of his voice. She straightened noticeably, taken aback by the mysterious man in the doorway. “Ss...Someplace else. Away ffr...from here.”

Wyatt blinked, then said evenly, “Okay.”

She didn’t move or step closer to the open doorway when Wyatt retreated into the shadows of the room beyond the bright ambiance of the dresser-mounted television. She waited patiently, still shivering against the cold while Wyatt quickly gathered his keys and wallet before pulling on his socks and shoes. The TV suddenly winked out, the heavy darkness leaping from the fringes of the hotel room to envelop the quiet space. Wyatt emerged a moment later, adjusting the collar of his jacket.

As the door she had struggled to convince herself to knock upon clicked loudly shut, the trembling young woman felt the agent’s arm lightly encircle her shoulders. “It’s okay,” he whispered against her ear. Wyatt glanced over their shoulders to catch sight of Gordon Parks watching them through a thin gap in the curtains of his own room. Wyatt knew he would be there, that he had probably been watching since she first came to Wyatt’s door.

Gordon’s eyebrows bounced playfully and he smiled with a devious, almost congratulatory look upon his youthful face. Wyatt only responded by turning his head forward, already guiding the young woman toward a nearby flight of stairs.

Her name was Eleanor and she only stopped shaking when she had taken a second, long drag off the cigarette held tightly between her pale lips. She didn’t speak except to laugh at herself. “It’s sad, I think. Ya’ know? I spend more money on these things...” She held up her cigarette, the smoldering butt glowing brightly in the darkness between them in the front of her car. She let it touch her lips again and drew another stream of the hot smoke into her mouth. Then she chuckled. “...I spend more money on them than I do for food. It’s the taxes, though. Everything’s expensive. You have to make your choices.”

Eleanor just drove after that. Wyatt just sat and watched the sleet fall through the beam of the headlights. He didn’t know where they were going. It didn’t matter. A few minutes later she parked the car against a curb in a neighborhood that looked like almost any other random neighborhood in the country. “We’re here,” she said, opening her door.

Wyatt followed her up a narrow, concrete walkway to a warped, wooden door. Most of the paint was missing and what was left looked like the cracked, parched floor of some Godforsaken desert. She opened the door quickly, the hinges creaking wildly, alerting anyone inside the small, two-story house. Eleanor crossed the threshold and stepped hurriedly aside, letting Wyatt walk calmly in behind her.

The agent quickly scanned the unfamiliar setting. A man with tangled, greasy black hair pushed up on one side, stumbled sleepily off a worn down sofa and onto his feet. He stood defensively, a weary animal ready to pounce at the slightest hint of a threat. “Is this him,” the stranger asked Eleanor. He looked to be in his early twenties. His voice was ragged, like the day’s worth of stubble on his face. He might have been fighting a cold on top of trying to keep watch with hardly any sleep. He blinked frantically, his body still orienting itself. He’d been caught off guard, dozing on the only job he had right now.

“Yeah,” Eleanor said, walking around Wyatt who was still in the entryway.

“Do you have a gun?”

Wyatt shifted his eyes from Eleanor to the younger stranger. He shook his head, saying evenly, “No.”

“Aren’t you some kind of government agent?” He clenched his fists, tensing the muscles in his arms to make them bulge.

Wyatt nodded, looking at him unimpressed. “Yes. But I still don’t have a gun.” Wyatt looked the stranger dead in the eyes, his gaze seemingly unchanged but for a fierceness the stranger obviously felt as he straightened his back. “Do I need one,” Wyatt asked.

Someone else answered the question. “No, you don’t.”

Wyatt looked up the narrow steps to a dark haired girl with cold, distant eyes. She was staring at him but spoke to the stranger at the couch. “You can stand down now, Jonah. He’s not going to hurt us.”

“What about his friends?” The boyish looking Jonah turned his beady eyes toward Eleanor. She had plopped down in a torn, leather easy chair. Her wet jacket was hanging off the soft back, icy droplets tapping against the thick, tan carpeting. “Were you followed?”

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t think to look out of people following them.

“I have no control over anyone else,” Wyatt said with little emotion in his voice. He was simply stating a fact.

The girl at the top of the steps had begun to descend the rickety planks one at a time. “I’m going to get some water. Would you like some water, Agent Douglass?”

She walked past him as she said his name. It surprised Wyatt but he didn’t let it show. Of course she knows my name, he thought to himself. She probably saw my business card.

“The kitchen is this way,” the girl said, already halfway across the living room. Wyatt proceeded to follow her, watching Jonah watch him with every step he took. “Don’t let Jonah get to you. He’s more scared than he looks,” the girl said with a slow sigh when Wyatt had rounded the corner leading into the kitchen.

Wyatt let himself smirk at her comment. “If you say so.”

“What did you want to talk to me about, Agent Douglass?” She didn’t face him as she spoke. The hinges on a cabinet door above a lemon yellow, linoleum counter top squeaked softly. She pulled two stout glasses from the front of an assortment. “You wanted to see me. Well, here I am.”

“I wanted to ask you about your parents,” Wyatt said. He took another step into the kitchen. “I wanted to ask you about what happened on that farm...your farm.”

Wyatt watched her fill the glasses with tap water. He saw her shoulders rise and sag with the heavy, pained breath she took at the mention of the farm. Finally, the girl turned to face the strange man who had once been only two things: first, an idea of something terrible, an avatar of an evil arm soaked in the blood of her family; and second, a name on a business card her best friend had put in her hand just a few hours earlier.

Wyatt took in the sight of the sun-kissed emerald of her eyes, the way they were almost like summer sunlight on a blade of grass. She had been crying, but that had been hours ago. Her eyelids were puffy and sagging. The whites of her eyes were hidden under the swollen and dry red veins. Yet, he still could take his gaze away from the color of her eyes. He thought of a blade of grass again.

“Here, unless you’re not going to drink it.”

Wyatt looked down at the proffered glass. He felt himself smirking again. A Texas flag was painted around the center. He looked at the glass in her other had, recognizing the Oklahoma colors between her fingers. He nodded appreciatively, taking the Texas glass into his fingers.

“Since I’ve got a man from the EPA here, is there anything I should know about this water?”

Wyatt lightly rubbed the painted lone star under his thumb. He lifted his eyes to hers. He shrugged his shoulders before touching the rim of the glass to his lips. Lukewarm water traced its way over his tongue and down his throat. He swallowed the small sip then answered, “I don’t know.” 

The girl snickered once, shaking her head. “Funny.”

“I’m not what you think I am. I’m not a scientist. I don’t investigate pollutants...just polluters.”

The brief glimpse of something barely resembling a smile had completely vanished from her face. “Is that what your friends were doing at my father’s farm? Investigating?”

Wyatt looked down at the glass in his hands again. He was cradling it like some kind of precious element, like it were a lifeline or an anchor he absolutely could no longer let go. The thumb of his right hand was still caressing the roughly painted surface of the Texas banner. “I don’t know what happened,” Wyatt said. “That’s why I’m here. I want to know what you know.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the wall behind Wyatt. He turned, his back straightening. Every muscle in his body tightened at once. Suddenly, he was sympathizing with Jonah at his entrance into the house. It was Jonah’s head that poked around the corner. He glanced at Wyatt then quickly looked past him. “Somebody’s here. Well, they’re across the street.”

“What? Who,” the girl asked. “Do you know who it is?

“No. It’s a nice car though. They came up the street, did a U-turn, and then parked up near old Mrs. Handers’ house.” Jonah stepped further into view. “They’ve been there for like...a few minutes.”

“Don’t be too detailed,” Eleanor shouted from the living room.

“I’m doing my best!” Jonah looked at the pair in front of him. “I couldn’t think of a number.”

“I think I know who it is,” Wyatt said. “Idiot,” he mumbled under his breath, turning around to gently place the Texas glass on the linoleum counter top. He was thinking of the idiot in the car. It could only be the young, brown-nosing Gordon Parks.

Wyatt turned to look at the girl. “We need to go. We still need to talk. Is there a back door we can use?”

Jonah and the girl tilted their heads slightly, directing attention toward the locked door just a few feet to their right.

“Ahh,” Wyatt said. “Good.”

Jonah leaned close to the girl. “He’s not supposed to be some kind of detective, is he?”

She shrugged her shoulders. It was the best sign of hope she had received from the stranger so far.

“Get your stuff,” Wyatt said. There was authority in his voice. He was quickly trying to move past an obviously embarrassing moment. “We need to go before he gets impatient.”

“Who,” Jonah asked as the girl began to turn and walk out of the kitchen. Wyatt stayed a few steps behind her. Jonah grabbed his arm. “Is he going to kills us?”

Wyatt looked at the soft fingers gripping his biceps. “Worse.” He looked up into the puppy-dog eyes of the younger man. “He’s going to tattle on us.”

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Four

Wyatt Douglass had never really experienced life with a pet, at least of the dog or cat variety. He’d taken care of a series of goldfish that passed, over a period of months, between a small, clear, glass bowl which sat upon a shelf in his room, to a much larger porcelain bowl in a small, white and blue-tiled room down the upstairs hallway of his childhood home. He could easily recall friends who traipsed around on Sunday afternoons, a panting K-9 steadily in tow. Then there were peers at school who walked with squared shoulders and egos floating like loosely anchored hot-air balloons above their heads overshadowing potentially interesting personalities. Behind them would always be a wake of other members of Wyatt’s generation, the starry eyed youth whose gazes were unexplainably fixated on the popular human lumps trolling up and down the hallways. Wyatt imagined those numbed, drooling masses to be like pets. He couldn’t remember being one of those panting fools salivating for any opportunity to please the “cool kid” at the head of the rabble.

Wyatt could never recall truly experiencing that feeling of being followed and admired by someone or something that unabashedly displayed its self worth as somehow being lower. He could not wrap his mind around how they seemed to believe they didn’t deserve to be at the front of the line. He had observed that their scattered internal workings appeared to indefinitely prescribe them to be lead, blindly if necessary. Suddenly, however, Wyatt Douglass found himself strangely elevated to the position of “cool kid” and his shadow enveloping the talkative Gordon Parks.

The din of the restaurant Gordon had followed Wyatt into from their hotel a block up the road barely muted the words jumping off the younger man’s tongue. Wyatt had hoped to spend the rest of the evening alone. He had tried to sneak out of his hotel room. Gordon Parks was staying in a room one door down but was already standing attentively outside Wyatt’s door when he stepped out.

“So what do you think?”

Wyatt blinked, the silence at their table suddenly louder than the chatter reverberating off the walls under the mellow music flowing between the waves of words and phrases all around him. He had heard Gordon’s voice, knew he had been discussing something relative to the two of them. But, his lack of any real care for what the younger man had to say had caused Wyatt to ignore Gordon’s words completely.

“I think,” Wyatt said with a mild stretch of his back, “...that it’s time to call it a night.”

“So soon? Well, I guess it has been a long day,” said Gordon Parks. Wyatt couldn’t tell if he was talking to him or announcing it to himself. Gordon stood up a second behind Wyatt. He was reaching for his wallet when he asked, “Do you want me to pay?”

Wyatt put his hand out to stop him, shaking his head at Gordon before turning away from the table.

“I’m just going to use the restroom,” Gordon said. It sounded more like he was asking for Wyatt’s permission. Wyatt shrugged his shoulders and waved him away.

At the front of the restaurant, the mustard yellow of street lights outside reached through the dirt and rain-stained windows, throwing off-color bands unevenly across the flat, sky-blue walls. The hostess smiled pleasantly at Wyatt as he approached her counter. He placed the meal ticket on the laminated wood surface between them. Her hair was a rich brunette color. Her face was narrow and tan. Her brown eyes were soft, unable to hid her weariness. Foodservice, like government work, Wyatt figured, would do that to a person.

“Did you enjoy your meal?” Her voice was warm. She sounded sincerely concerned, his satisfaction either about to be the high or low point of her evening.

Wyatt nodded, barely glancing at her as she spoke. “Yes. It was very nice.” He didn’t say it coldly or impatiently. He sounded tired.

He kept his eyes moving as she busied herself at the cash register, only to find himself staring past the girl with long, flat hair in front of him. There was a plaque on the wall. Wyatt couldn’t take his eyes off of it. It sent his brain into a spin. He had seen it before, or one exactly like it. Except, here there was one small difference. The engraved plate near its base was still intact, displaying the trophy’s purpose and year of award. The copy he had seen on a bedroom wall in the Parrish farm house hours before was absent of that very feature.

“Sir,” the cashier said, his change in her hand.

He looked down at her for a moment then back up at the wall behind her. There were several of the plaques, each branded with a different year. There were framed pictures surrounding the mounted awards. In each one were the proud and smiling faces of each year’s winners. There were fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and whole families beaming with a wholesome pride into a camera flash. Wyatt’s gaze focused onto one family in particular.

The cashier noticed the look on Wyatt’s tired face. She turned slightly to follow his gaze. He heard her inhale sharply yet still softly. He was looking directly at her, waiting for her brown eyes-now wider and more alert above her defined cheek bones-when she turned back to face him.

“You know who she is,” Wyatt asked, his words direct. He could tell by the look in her eyes there was no need to delay the point he was after. He waited for her to answer. He watched her try to form the words of a reply. He didn’t wait very long. “Where is she?”

Again, the cashier started to speak then stopped abruptly. Her eyes shifted, her attention caught by someone else quickly approaching. “Ready to go?” The voice of Gordon Parks seemed to boom over Wyatt’s left shoulder. His jovial trek to Wyatt’s side came to a quick halt when Wyatt looked sharply at him. Gordon watched the twenty-nine year-old for a moment, then noticed the cashier for the first time. Her appearance was striking in a small town sort of way. To Gordon, who looked her torso up and down without any subtlety, the girl would have been worth spending the night with. But there was the intent way Wyatt was peering at him, and the other man’s near proximity to the counter.

Gordon’s eyebrows arched knowingly. “Oh,” he said and began to smile. “I see, Agent Douglass. Good call, man. Good call. I’ll uhh...let you finish making your plans and meet you outside.”

It took Wyatt a moment to understand what the young fool was trying to say. He glanced sidelong at the cashier. Suddenly, it dawned on him. “Umm...right.”

Gordon Parks nodded, his smile beaming and sickening to Wyatt who waited until his counterpart was out the front door before turning back to the woman behind the counter. “I need to speak with her. Please, it’s important.”

“I...I don’t know where she is. Maybe...maybe she’s dead.” Her voice was shaking, ruining her attempt to sound confident.

Wyatt shook his head, pulling a business card out of a pocket in his wallet. Using a pen sitting on the laminated countertop, he quickly jotted his hotel information on the empty back of the card. “Please, give this to her,” he said, ignoring her last remark. “It’s only a matter of time before the others figure this place out, too. I can’t make her, or you, trust me. That’s okay. Just give that card to her. Tell her I only want to know what really happened out there.”

The cashier barely nodded, staring at the card on the countertop in front of her. She didn’t watch him leave. She stared at the card and the thin, black ink drying on its surface, uncertain of what to do next.

* * * * * * *
A chorus of telephones rang incessantly somewhere down the long, arched hallway to Mark’s left. He sat nervously in a small, stale-smelling lobby on the third floor of a run down office building in the heart of downtown D.C.. Mark glanced quickly toward the distant end of the noisy, but empty, corridor. He spotted shadows stretched across the thresholds of glass offices, each moving swiftly across the dirt-stained linoleum. His eyes followed the long, web-like cracks in the thin, grime encrusted tiles back to the lip of the carpet a few feet away. The short, dusty threads covered almost the entire floor of the waiting area and almost muted the uneven tapping of his foot against the small, stiff fibers under his chair.

“Mr. Levine?”

Mark looked up sharply when the squeaky, nasal voice of one of the seven receptionists on the other side of a tall, cherry-stained plywood partition called his name. He craned his neck to see her peering over the flat surface of the chest-high wall. “Ye-”

“You forgot to fill out a section of the form you were given downstairs,” she said, rolling over his response as if had said nothing at all.

Mark approached the square space carved out of the thin, wooden barrier. His tired eyes glanced quickly down the half empty form. “Umm, no...I didn’t.”

The receptionist leered at the man in front of her. She was mentally preparing herself to deal with yet another simpleton who lacked the ability, it would appear, to follow even the most simple of instructions. “Well, Mr. Levine, how can we know what union to try to place you in if you don’t state your preference.” It wasn’t a question, more like a warning to make a decision.

“But I don’t have a preference. I don’t want to join a union.”

Mark watched the woman with murky, hazel eyes unnaturally enlarged by the thick lenses of her circular-framed glasses. The black plastic clung to the bridge of her thin, pale nose. Her black hair was pulled tightly back into a short, knotted bun. The softly humming fluorescent lights made the greased-down ebony strands shimmer as she shifted in her chair. Her annoyance was growing and her wiry face did not hide this.

“Then why are you here,” she asked. “Why are you wasting everyone’s time?”

Mark blinked. He turned his head, first to the left and then to the right, taking in the full scene of the empty lobby behind him.

“Us! Back here, Mr. Levine,” the receptionist gestured to the women behind her. A few looked up in their direction, but only for a moment before returning to whatever it was they were sleepily busying themselves with. “We all have work to do, too.”

“As do I,” Mark said bitterly. He hadn’t raised his voice yet. He wanted to. His nerves were still shaky. He took a deep breath, steadying himself. “But it’s hard to do that when your business has been smashed up by union thugs.”

The receptionist sat up straighter in her chair. “That is a very strong accusation, Mr. Levine.”

“And one I can back up,” Mark said with a sneer, leaning closer into the narrow opening. “Come down to my bakery. My partner and I will be happy to point out the evidence.”

A quiver in her flat, painted lips betrayed the snarl the receptionist was trying to hide. “It’s too outrageous to believe. Are you here to file a grievance, then?”

“No, I’m admiring the curtains and the furniture arrangement,” Mark snapped sarcastically. The volume of his voice was edging toward yelling. “Of course I’m here to file a grievance.”

The receptionist stared wordlessly at Mark across the smooth, stained partition. He was an alien from another world to her, visible through the small, square space of open air. He suddenly seemed more tolerable to her now that she felt a sense of superiority over the lost little lamb fully return. She leaned back confidently in her chair. The aged springs under the seat, desperate for repair, wretched noisily. She crossed her arms, never breaking eye contact with him.

At last, with a cold smile, the receptionist said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Levine. There’s nothing I can do here. You’re on the wrong floor.”

“What?”

“Exactly as I said. The offices here are for applying and processing only, not the filing of grievances or petitions.” Her words were punctual and matter-of-fact without losing the razor-sharp condescension she had obviously intended on sending across the partition.

“First of all, it’s LeVine...not Levine. Annunciate the syllables in my name!” Mark stood back, composing himself for the briefest of moments. He didn’t dare take too deep a breath. He hardly wanted to breathe in the stale dust permeating the air. “And secondly, I was told yesterday that the heads of each chapter for each union had offices here! And, this was the place to go! This building and this floor!”

The receptionist blinked once. She leaned forward just slightly, as if just enough to straighten a muscle cramping in her back. “Who, Mr. Le...Vine? Who told you that?”

The name of the store had been Handy Crafts. It was a mom and pop store, or at least it had been once. It sat quietly at the far end of the dilapidated shopping center. It had been there when Mark and Zach signed the lease on the space that would become their bakery. They went in once, just before the grand opening of Heart and Soul. Mom and Pop were a week away from retiring. The keys of their small trinket and repair store were being handed to their nephew in exchange for those of a comfortable condo in Florida.

The first time Mark even stood at the door of the old store since that first meeting years before was the afternoon of the bakery’s ransacking. He wasn’t sure what to expect. There were two visions in Mark’s mind. One, that it would look almost identical to his memory of that first visit; or two, it would be in shambles, forgotten by time and the nephew left to run it. Mark stared at the faded lettering remaining on the smudged glass door.

Beyond the warped threshold, Mark beheld a stuffy, dingy gallery of junk cluttered shelves and fraying rugs on the floor. The yellowing plaster, once white, reeked of mold and tobacco and resembled the type of dry, doughy maps of the United States he and his friends once made in grade school. Mark had been hoping for his former vision, but was less than surprised to discover the latter. He felt sick at the sight of the two men running the place. A pair of slobs like Mark had never seen before. They were archetypes of so many things gone wrong and stereotypes for the kind of people that had walked the insufferable sense of gloom, hand in hand, into the rest of society. Bits of food clung to the sandpaper stubble coating the bloated cheeks of one standing behind a smoke-tinged glass counter. Dull eyes peered at Mark from the thinner, balding patron at the back of the store. Mark couldn’t shake the feeling he was the only one amongst them that hadn’t sold his soul.

“Do much business,” he had asked, trying to sound casual.

The two human sloths smiled at each other. If this was middle America, what were Mark and Zach? “Not really,” the skinny one at the back of the store answered.

“But business got to stay open. Wouldn’t be right just to close this place down,” added the chubbier man. Greasy curls of chest hair poked above a loose, egg-white shirt.

“What happened to the owner...the original owner?”

“Sold it to the union,” said the chubby one.

“For the good of the Nation,” said the second one.

The chubby man behind the counter let his smile widen. “A fine patriot. Felt the union could run the store best. Help keep everything fair and just. The way it all should be.”

Mark let his gaze shift between the two figures. He suddenly felt as if he were standing at the steps of an entrance into hell. Before him were the gatekeepers, flag bearers of a banner Mark could not recognize. “I want to talk about the unions,” he said after a long, hesitant moment.

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Three

Agent Wyatt Douglass of the Environmental Protection Authority sighed as he listened to the voice coming through the receiver of his cellular phone. It was his most immediate superior. The man had long earned Wyatt’s respect. But at the moment, he was grating on Wyatt’s last nerve. A moment to speak at last presented itself. “Too many questions? What was the point in me coming here if I can’t ask questions?”

Wyatt paced in front of the farm house. He was mostly alone here, the majority of the other agents and investigators were either still inside or gathered near the back door. Wyatt squinted into the late afternoon sunlight angrily. “The right questions? How do I know which ones are the right questions without asking as many questions as I can?...Well, who are these guys?...Why do they have the...Oh. Well, that’s a bunch of crap, isn’t it? So why am I here?...Public relations, basically, right? Wow. How embarrassing for me...Huh? No, I haven’t found anything yet.”

That was a lie. While the man on the other end of the call had Wyatt’s respect, he did not have his trust. No one had that. There didn’t seem to be anyone truly left in the world to give that away to or allow to have. Wyatt ended the call, thinking of things he had found today. A picture of what had taken place on the old farm was forming in his mind. Wyatt had read the report taken by the first responders who had arrived on the scene apparently minutes after shooting erupted in the farm house centered in Wyatt’s gaze.

According to those initial statements, now being treated as holy writ to avoid any kind of real investigating, the agents representing the Environmental Protection Authority-along with their two escorts from the local sheriff’s office-fell under attack almost as soon as they arrived on the property. The surviving deputy moaned and groaned his emotional trauma as he had been carried by stretcher into an awaiting ambulance. “They led us...into...a trap...They...had it all set up...Oh, God! Why were they so...crazy?!”

Wyatt stared at the vehicle driven by his fallen peers. It sat silent and useless at one corner of the long gravel driveway. Twenty yards ahead of the bullet-scarred hood was the side of the farm house. The back door Wyatt had first entered was at too awkward an angle to cause the damage tattooed over the grill and fiberglass. Wyatt’s foot glanced off the deflated rubber of the left front tire.

Wyatt shook his head. It was not sitting right with him.

Inside the farm house, it was the small things that caught his attention. It was the things in his mind he imagined should have been one way in a place like the old house on the flat plains of the geographically centered state. Where were the family pictures? They seemed to be missing or scarce in number while antique store and flea market prints of various paintings and wall hangings still held to their nails in an unassuming decorative style. In the bedrooms, name plates were missing from trophies. Book bags were light and empty except for the forgotten loose change, the small bits of lunch money never to be used or taken again. The homework and school papers, report cards and permission slips to be signed by mom and dad were all missing.

Wyatt considered the crumbling barn outside, still smoldering and breathing out a gradually thinning column of charcoal gray smoke. He was staring at the red embers, feeling the sharp waves of heat radiating upward into the cold, winter air when he heard the anxious steps of Gordon Parks approach behind him.

“They’re just about ready to close up the scene, sir,” the bureaucratic wet-nurse said after clearing his throat.

“What about this barn?”

Gordon blinked as if noticing the collapsed remains of the charred structure for the first time. “Someone will be posted here...from the sheriff’s office, that is, all night. I’m sure it will be fine.”

Wyatt didn’t say anything. He didn’t turn around or make any motion to leave the spot he was standing on. Gordon Parks either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Where are you staying tonight?”

“Ardmore,” Wyatt said simply, staring into a red hot coal that had once been a support beam.

“Oh. Good.”

A long, awkward moment persisted when Wyatt made no sign of movement. He could feel Gordon Parks’ eyes staring at him, into him, trying to figure Wyatt out. “Umm...Agent Douglass?”

Wyatt noticed the sky, slowly beginning to darken above the crisp orange and crimson bands surrounding the setting sun. “All right, Mr. Parks. Lead the way,” he said with a sigh, stepping in hesitant time behind the younger man already walking with relieved glee toward their cars.

* * * * * * * * *

Mark LeVine stared at the empty blue sky hanging above him and the mostly empty parking lot surrounding him, spread out as if it were nothing more than a gray, lifeless plain. The afternoon sun had already begun to warn the hood of their beat-up sedan, warn down by the merciless miles of neglected road ways. The red paint was once glossy but now could barely hold a sheen on the best of days. It was dirt stained with random patterns of grease that had long ago bonded under many passing seasons to the faded detailing. The headlights were cracked and the tires were out of alignment. Mark took a deep breath, feeling the rough layer of dried-out paint underneath his fingertips. He did love that car, though. All things considered, Mark had little doubt it would be the last car he ever owned.

“Are you just going to lay there the rest of the day?”

Mark shifted his eyes, startled by the surprising sound of Zach’s sweet voice. It was even and casual, off-putting and disarming all at once. There was no hint of the stress simmering just under the calm demeanor of the twenty-nine year old blonde-haired man from rural Virginia. He was smiling at Mark, the subtle dimples on his cheeks more prominent in the cold sunlight. His green eyes stared up toward Mark’s, mercilessly locking onto his gaze. Zach was waiting for an answer.

Mark grinned. It was the only thing he could do under the weight of his boyfriend’s eyes, the glow of the lightly freckled face, and the embrace his presence alone provided. “No.”

Zach leaned forward against the car. He was tying to look extra cute. He had no doubt just by watching Mark he was succeeding. “Is there room for one more up there?”

Mark glanced down the length of the hood and pretended to sigh. “Oh, I think we could squeeze you in.”

Zach waited until he was laying comfortably beside Mark to ask, “What are you thinking about?”

Mark looked over at Zach. He felt his grin become a smile when Zach laid his head against Mark’s outstretched arm, the back of his neck snuggling Mark’s right biceps. “I’m just...trying to figure all of this out, I guess. I want to know why it happened. I want to know what we did.”

Zach shrugged his shoulders. “We’re not part of a union.”

“But we’ve never been part of one. The bakery’s been open for almost six years. Why, now, do we suddenly get...ransacked?”

Zach had no answer, no words he could think of to calm Mark’s racing thoughts. He squinted through the sunlight radiating down onto them. A woman was pushing a covered stroller up the cracked, barren sidewalk hugging the outside walls of the quiet shopping center. He watched her, suddenly thinking back to a recent event in the boys’ lives. “What about the adoption application?”

“What about it? And which one?”

A month before, Mark and Zach took the first bold step on a journey they had hoped would eventually lead them toward starting a family. There were at least two primary sets of forms they had to submit in order to just determine their eligibility to adopt a child and expand their household. New local equality directives required a couple to first report to the office of their local district Housing and Community Bureau. There, they would learn if there was room in their residential district for their family to expand. The availability of resources had to be accounted for and confirmed. The livelihood of everyone around them was at stake, after-all. At least, that was what had been taught to the public over the last two years. The first application was four pages and was to be followed by no less than a six week waiting period. The boys had gotten lucky. An elderly couple two blocks from their house had died the week their application came up for review.

“Either one,” Zach replied. “Both.” He turned his head, his eyes finding Mark’s. “Was there a question about union affiliation on either one?”

Mark quickly searched back into his mind, recalling the endless lines of questions. He sat up as he remembered, barely feeling Zach’s head lift away to free his arm. He answered, softly, his voice a coarse inflection of the sudden wave of fear and anger rolling through him. “Yes.”

Mark could see the question, the wording almost identical on the two different documents. He remembered his answer on both, his wording a perfect match. NO.

Zach turned his head away again, staring across the deserted parking lot. At the far end of the asphalt field, past the uneven and faded lines of parking spaces, two vehicles sat alone amongst the emptiness. He shifted his gaze for a moment, taking in the scene in front of their bakery. Even with the glass of the window and door smashed in, the interior of their store wrecked and marred by the spiteful, juvenile bitterness, a line of five vehicles were parked closely together. He could just barely make out the forms of the drivers standing in line for the few items available to buy.

“I wonder how they stay in business,” Zach asked, turning his attention back toward the far side of the plaza. “Are they in a union?”

Mark didn’t answer him, not at first. When he did, it was without words. Zach felt Mark’s weight shift and then heard his feet on the pavement. Zach looked at him cross his field of vision and asked, “Where are you going?”

Mark was already several steps away when he replied over his shoulder, “To find out.”

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part Two

The air around the old farm house had Wyatt Douglass feeling very uneasy. It had nothing to do with the amounts of nitrogen, oxygen, or carbon dioxide stirring in the chilly breezes of the wintery afternoon. It had nothing to do with any kind of barometric pressure or anomaly within the local climate. It was nothing physically or chemically tangible. What Wyatt found disturbing was the looks on the faces of those around him. As he approached an open doorway on the side of the damaged home, the sparse collection of federal personnel and local authorities began to condense and swell into a sea of people. He caught pieces of idle chatter near the doorway. It was a group of strangers, their hands stuffed tightly in their pockets as they tried to keep warm. Their faces were like billboards for the boredom they should have at least been trying to hide.

The flash of a camera from inside the scarred home caught Wyatt’s attention, suddenly tearing his gaze away from the disinterested and jaded faces. He noticed the star field of bullet holes covering the cracked wall directly in front of him. He quickly took note of the broken windows, the glass completely absent from the seared and splintered sills. He saw more bullet holes that had pierced the think planks of the door standing ajar and slightly off its hinges. There was blood here, too. It was dry, the color darkened to a sickly crimson brown and smeared by fingers belonging to a body that had slumped lifelessly to the ground. Above the smear, a the dried stain lightly dotted the battle-damaged entry way. It was caked into a few of the dozens of small holes spread over part of the door and doorframe. Wyatt knew instantly it was the spray from the farmer’s shot gun.

“Where’s the body that fell here,” Wyatt asked to no one specific. His voice suddenly boomed above the even, idle din of the meandering conversations. “According to the report, one of the agents fell right here.”

“It’s already been taken away,” answered Gordon Parks hurriedly. He glanced at the narrowed stares pointed in their direction.

“Why,” questioned Wyatt with loud annoyance. “The investigation at this crime scene has not been concluded.” He wasn’t talking to Gordon Parks alone and both of them knew it. The chit chat around the scene had begun to taper off. “I’d like to know why a body-this body-was removed from the scene!”

“Sir, who are you,” asked a gruff, slightly drawled voice behind Wyatt.

Wyatt spun around to find himself face to face to face with two similar looking men. One was wearing the uniform of the local sheriff’s department. The other was dressed in a suit and tie under a heavy, black pea coat, much like many of the other figures collected in and around the house. “Wyatt Douglass,” he answered promptly, adding, “from the EPA. These were our agents that were gunned down here.”

Wyatt watched the two men. Their golden brown eyes shifted, glancing quickly at one another before looking back at the younger man standing before them. “Of course,” said the sheriff’s officer.

The second man put his hands on his hips, stepping a little closer to Wyatt before he spoke. “Agent...Douglass, we’re going to need you to try to keep your calm.”

Wyatt blinked, trying for a moment to figure out if any of this were read or if it was just some kind of dream. “I don’t believe I’ve lost my clam,” Wyatt finally said, his voice mostly even. As if my calm was a cereal box prize I’d set down somewhere, he thought to himself.

The two men with round, fatty cheeks and bushy, chestnut and tobacco-colored mustaches glanced at each other again. “We disagree,” the federal half of the two-man authority band said.

“The body was well documented and photographed per procedures, sir,” the second man said. His brown eyes remained locked on Wyatt’s face. “It was removed, along with the others, to a secure morgue in Ardmore.”

“Others? What others?” Wyatt tried to move past them. He managed to squeeze by, but only just barely and not without effort. He saw a covered corpse in the living room beyond the kitchen where they were standing. Bits of furniture were turned over or blasted by gunfire. Wyatt looked back at the two men. He surmised they were brothers. They have to be, he thought. How strangely lucky to get assigned to the same case. “What bodies were removed?”

The federal brother stepped toward him, his head cocking to one side. Whatever he was about to say, Wyatt knew it was going to be tinged with dripping condescension. “Didn’t you receive a report or briefing of some kind on your way here?”

“Yes,” Wyatt said simply. He looked back and forth at the two brothers. They stood motionless, like chubby rocks in a dried riverbed. The sheriff’s officer was a blank slate, his small eyes hardly blinking, his sun-reddened face showing no emotion. His brother, only two feet away from Wyatt, seemed strangely expectant, as if he doubted Wyatt’s claim of having read a report on the matter.

“Four EPA Enforcement agents, along with one of the two local sheriff’s deputies serving as escorts, were killed while attempting to arrest Walker Parrish and his wife for a slew of federal environmental violations pertaining to Interior Directive 101.” Wyatt stared deep into the apathetic eyes of his opponent. For a moment there had been a flicker of hope in the man’s eyes. He had thought, if just for a fleeting moment, that he had the advantage over Wyatt. Wyatt Douglass had a habit of stomping on his opponents in just such a way. “So where are the other bodies? How many were moved? And, why were they moved?”

There came no immediate answer from either man. Wyatt glanced over his shoulder, spotting the bewildered looking figure of Gordon Parks. Wyatt let himself grin as he turned his head to face the twins again. They continued to stare back at him, unmoved by his aggressive and authoritative tone or the glare of his eyes. Wyatt took a deep breath. They were going to answer. And if they wouldn’t, someone on that farm was. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

* * * * * * * * * *

“At least they left the coffee machines alone,” Zach Goyer had said when they were examining the smashed and vandalized remains of the inside of their bakery. Mark LeVine had barely managed a smirk and even that was forced.

They spent the next few hours moving about their tattered business, sweeping and cleaning away the surprising volume of debris. The smell of hot coffee near the end of its brew cycle permeated the air. Outside, the first hints of a crisp, clear dawn were breaking over the trees and rooftops of the small suburban city. Mark didn’t realize he was staring into the golden band of sunlight piercing the soft purple and vivid crimson of the early morning sky until it was suddenly eclipsed. He blinked, taking in the silhouetted form of their first customer of the day.

It was his voice that broke the hours-long vacuum of conversation. “Are you guys open-Whoa! What happened?”

Zach appeared from around a corner behind the long counter and display case. His green eyes took in the thin figure in the bright, clean sunlight expanding gradually in the open cavity of the smashed window. After a moment, the man’s questions lingering in the air without an answer, Zach glanced at Mark. His partner looked strangely stunned. For a man filled with to the brim with an infinite repertoire of wit and charm, Mark appeared strangely and disconcertingly speechless.

Zach smiled warmly at the silhouetted man. “Yes, we’re open.” He walked past the counter toward the door. As he turned the knob of the thick deadbolt, freeing the metal frame from the wall, Zach suddenly felt a little silly. It wasn’t as if the man couldn’t just walk through the open space where a dense glass pane had been only the night before.

The customer took a cautious look around as he stepped over the threshold. The bakery was a familiar stop in his daily routine. Today, however, it was depressingly alien to him, a dying world that had violently collapsed on top of the sweet smelling shop he once brought his recently deceased daughter into. He looked at the motionless Mark, a man obviously wracked with pain and anxiety, to the bright face of Zach. There was pain in the gentle, emerald eyes beaming pleasantly at him. Zach was simply doing the only thing he knew how to do: keep going.

“What’s on the menu today?”

The blackboard on the wall behind the counter had not yet been wiped clean of the filth written and scraped across the columns and rows of the bakery’s various goods and specials. Zach gasped, realizing they hadn’t fixed it yet. “Umm...sorry,” he said, embarrassed.

The customer shook his head reassuringly. “It’s all right. It smells like the coffee is ready.”

“Yes,” Zach smiled. “We do have coffee.”

“I’ll take some,” the customer said cheerfully. “Make it two, in fact.”

Mark watched the customer shuffle past as Zach led him toward the broken display cases. He stared wordlessly, his body numb and his mind reeling. The anger and the fear he had felt like a massive, earthshaking tidal surge hours before had burned away the feelings inside of himself. It was like his heart had exploded in an emotional supernova only to collapse in on itself. Nothing, except the dead mass of his anxiety, a black hole inside his chest, remained.

Mark blinked, suddenly taking his weary eyes away from Zach and the man at the counter to a sound of glass crunching under footsteps outside. Two more customers stood uneasily near the door. They weren’t sure what to do. A terrible thought struck Mark all at once, almost taking the wind out of him. The two women beyond the wounded window and door looked so helpless. All of a sudden, they were lost and the true power and impact of the attack on the bakery was revealed.

“You can come in,” Mark heard himself say. His voice was flat and not far from a course whisper. “It’s okay,” he added, speaking a little louder. He watched the two women look cautiously at one another and then back at the shop. The taller of the two ladies smiled at length as she reached for the door handle. Even they did not seem to think of just walking through the open cavity between the thick aluminum frame.

“Are you all right,” the second woman asked when she entered the store. She stood just below Mark’s shoulder. She was grinning warmly, grandmother-like.

Mark swallowed. He glanced up as the first customer moved out of the way of another walking into the store. The man nodded at him before walking through the open doorway, the hollowed door rattling as it shut behind him. “Yes,” Mark said to the older woman. “Yes.”

I. "A Sense of Insufferable Gloom"

Part One

The grass always looks greener on the other side...
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones...
You can lead a horse to water...
The truth shall set you free...

Ahh, now that was the one Wyatt Douglass could wrap his mind around. Father Milton seemed to be saying it all the time. In the face of the toughest quandaries laid before him, his answer to the troubled world of a boy who, maybe, could never truly escape adolescence was, “The truth shall set you free.”

Wyatt blinked against the pale sunlight shining through the unbroken blue sky. He was lost in a maze of circling thoughts, barely noticing the sleepy cow grazing idly a few feet away. The grass always looks greener on the other side, Wyatt repeated in his head. I don’t know, he thought doubtfully, straining his gaze to focus on the horizon. The Oklahoma state line was only a few miles from where he stood. Beyond the boundary, once only marked by lines on a map and the meandering Red River, the open plains of North Texas sat stretching across the quiet landscape. It looks pretty much the same from here.

There was a strange and sudden flicker of something inside of him. It was a feeling that passed through his heart like the briefest of electrical shocks. Was it longing? Wyatt could not name it precisely. He couldn’t even discuss it with anyone, nor would he.

Suddenly, and without any real thought, Wyatt caught himself looking sidelong at the grazing cow standing amongst the long, untended grass of the quiet field. A soft, winter breeze teased the swaying blades that gently brushed against his arms left bare by the rolled-up sleeves of his white dress shirt. It was a cold day, but he didn’t really care. He watched the heavy animal chew a mouthful of grass for a long moment. “How does it taste,” Wyatt heard himself ask the cow. Its eyes looked up at him slowly. Its expression didn’t hide its disinterest in his question.

Wyatt blinked, then asked another question. “Does it taste the same over there?” He gestured with a nod of his head toward the direction of Texas.

The cow paused, perhaps considering an answer. It blinked away a few flies that had landed too close on its brown and white-spotted face. Its nostrils, porous and slightly damp, flared. Its tail swished, more flies, buzzing excitedly, were teasing the end of the placid animal they preferred. Then, as if finding strength that had been lost for a moment, as if its thick bones had somehow become jammed and its brain had worked out how to unhinge the faulty mechanism in its jaw, the cow began to chew the curd noisily between its teeth.

Wyatt sighed and looked back toward the horizon. “I guess the grass is the same.”

“Agent Douglass?”

The winter wind pushed across the field again. It carried a whiff of the choking, gray smoke rolling out of a slowly crumbling barn and silo. Both were still on fire near the broken farm house several hundred yards behind the spot where Wyatt stood. He turned around slowly to watch the young, blonde-haired man trudge with annoyance through the tall grass. He was barely in his twenties, as Wyatt understood. He didn’t inquire to find out for certain. He didn’t care. The kid was a policy jockey. His only job was to stand around amongst those actually working, making sure the strings and bridles of the latest bureaucracy were tightly woven and tangled around limb and tongue so they could be manipulated and nudged like the marionettes they were. Wyatt and those like him were simply the arms and legs of the latest whim for those in power. Wyatt watched the loyal eyes and ears of some Administration lap dog sitting somewhere in Washington D.C. stop with an exasperated sigh.

“Agent Douglass,” the boyish man asked again, a sharp irritation edging his voice. “...You’ve been here almost ten minutes, sir. I think you came a long way from Washington just to stand in a field.”

Was that a threat, Wyatt pondered briefly, listening to the young man’s words. He didn’t really look at him. The sight of the ravaged buildings, the wrecked core of this small, family farm Wyatt was standing at the edge of, was too distracting. Wyatt didn’t say anything for a long moment, drawing out the awkwardness of the breezy silence. He watched the youthful figure only in the periphery of his vision, easily noticing the way he began to fidget nervously the longer Wyatt didn’t comment.

“Thank you, Mr...” Wyatt said at last, the tone of his voice even in the chill of the air separating the two government employees.

“Parks,” the blonde-haired young man said quickly. “Gordon Parks, sir.”

Wyatt acknowledged his young man’s name dismissively. “Right. Mr. Parks.” He took a deep breath, considering his next words for a moment. “I appreciate your obvious concern for my time.”

“Yes...sir. It’s just that...the others in the house...Well, the local authorities would like to go ahead and close up the scene, sir.”

There was something in the way he said the word “sir” that bothered Wyatt. He couldn’t say how or why specifically. But the air seemed to snap around the young man’s soft, glossy-looking lips whenever he said it.

“And since you are the lead representative for the slain agents, sir,” Gordon Parks added after the briefest of pauses. Wyatt detected the smugness in his young voice. There was an ego within his slender frame not very well veiled.

“Then I suppose we should be on our way,” Wyatt said, slipping his hands into his pants pockets. It was both a casual and disarming move, he knew. He caught the subtle change of expression on the narrow, fair-skinned face of the boyish Gordon Parks.

“Do you mind if I ask what you were doing out here, Agent Douglass?”

Wyatt turned around one last time. He spotted the distant horizon again. He tried to focus in on the stretch of land and water marking the edge of what to him felt like light and darkness. The sun shone evenly on both sides. Yet, the air felt heavier here. The acrid smell of smoke seemed to persist everywhere on this side at once. The grass may be the same on the other side, Wyatt thought again. But everything else is better. He turned away from the softly billowing fields and looked at the blonde hair of Gordon Parks; and then the crumbling, burning buildings near a home shot-out and ravaged. It has to be better.

“I was just admiring the view,” Wyatt said as he walked past Gordon Parks. “I work for the EPA. It’s part of my job.”

“Oh,” replied Gordon Parks, uncertainly. “Of course.”

* * *

For Mark LeVine and Zach Goyer, life was never going to be the same again. They didn’t know it when their alarm clock began to whine its blaring call across their darkened bedroom. They didn’t know it as they shuffled groggily about their small, ranch style house in the small, suburban city of Springfield, Virginia. There was no sign or feelings of omens in the predawn hour. There was no hint of concern, no thought of possible dread in the light, half-mumbled and sleepy conversation the couple exchanged as they made coffee and readied to head out the door. It was to be another long, average workday-not that they minded. It was life. It was their life.

HEART AND SOUL was the name of the modest bakery they owned and managed together. Besides themselves, they had two other employees. The shop of white plaster and gray stucco walls sat nestled on the corner of a mostly vacant shopping center. It was disheartening to see the once bustling plaza become even more ghostlike with each new day. The facade was slowly giving in to time’s relentless push. The sidewalk was a myriad of cracks spread out across the concrete planks like threads of a spider web. The bakery was the last private enterprise on the entire block. In the conspicuous, stale shadow of the distant capital, prosperity seemed to be packing its bags and heading for greener pastures faster than ever.

It wasn’t until they had parked their chugging and sputtering sedan in the empty parking lot that Mark and Zach became aware that this day was going to be very different from every other that came before it. With the headlights still on and shining across the weed-freckled asphalt to spill over the sidewalk and storefront, the men’s eyes beheld with unblinking awe the open cavities that had once been the doors and windows of their business.

“Oh my, God...” Zach whispered in shock, standing beside their car. He hadn’t even completely gotten out yet.

Mark was opening the trunk, digging an old baseball bat out from under a sparse layer of old coats and tool pouches littering the dark compartment. At the same time, Zach was searching his pockets for his cell phone. “I’ll call the police,” he said over the sound of Mark closing the lid of the trunk.

Mark simply nodded in response, walking toward the entrance of the bakery with trembling hands and a racing pulse. It wasn’t until his feet touched the curb that Mark became the first of the two men to grasp the new idea of the change their lives were suddenly and involuntarily taking. It was as his wide, brown eyes scanned over the shards of glass on the sidewalk, gleaming slightly in the dim headlights, and the twisted pieces of the thin, metal door frame that Mark began to question the world. Why did this happen? Who would have done this? What did they want? Why would anyone let this happen? It was then he began to lift his gaze from the glass-littered stoop to the shop’s facade that Mark felt his nerve-wracking fear suddenly becoming a blood-boiling rage.

His trembling hands had become stiff, the muscles and ligaments almost painfully tight. The war tempo drum beat of his pulse was no longer weary of some impending attacker leaping out of their vandalized property, but was spurred by a surge of adrenaline feeding unstoppable anger.

“...I’m not sure. Hold on, I’ll find out,” came Zach’s voice from somewhere behind Mark. “Is there anyone in there? Can you see anyone?”

Mark turned to look back through the glare of the headlights toward the idling sedan. He shook his head before looking toward the damaged entrance again. His eyes remained fixed, frozen madly on the letters spray painted across the stucco: UNION.