Goodhouse (37 page)

Swann Industries issued a series of statements denouncing terrorism, renewing their commitment to working closely with law enforcement, and stressing their dedication to service and excellence. Four months after Founders' Day the company announced that it was excited to seek FDA approval on a new drug to treat battle fatigue and post-traumatic stress. It was already under government contract. Again and again I saw interviews with members of the Holy Redeemer's Church of Purity. They looked sincere as they condemned the Ione attack as the work of radicals. They were saddened, but ultimately unsurprised, to learn that Goodhouse boys had participated in the planning, motivated by the love of power, by the brutal joy of killing. They said it hardly mattered why. The boys were irredeemable. What more proof did we need?

*   *   *

Bethany and I took the bus north. It was almost midnight by the time we reached the outskirts of Porthill, Idaho. We didn't go into the city but got off the bus at Bass Lake, a small outpost two miles from the Canadian border. To the east of us, the Selkirk Mountain Range jutted into the clouds. To the west, the Kootenai River cut a deep ribbon through the land. On the American side, a military base had been built on the ruins of an old airport. Overhead, fighter jets banked steeply and filled the air with the roar of their engines. We hiked through the darkness, staying near the road but inside the treeline.

My mother still lived in Porthill. We had her address, but there was no safe way to contact her. I wanted to see the neighborhood, to see where I'd grown up, but getting that close was too risky. So this was our compromise—in the morning we'd go around the city, skirting the edges, close enough to see everything at a distance. Then we'd ascend Hall Mountain, get above the border patrols, and cross over on foot. The oxygen would be thin and the terrain rough. Even though Bethany still had a few of her pills, I was worried.

After an hour of walking we moved more deeply into the forest and found a flat patch of land with enough space for our tent.

“We can put it here,” Bethany said. She was trying to catch her breath, leaning against the trunk of a large pine tree.

“Sit down,” I said. I handed her a little tube that had three or four breaths of pure oxygen inside. She pushed it away.

“I'm fine,” she said. “You're hovering.”

I slipped the backpack off my shoulder. It took only seconds to pitch the tent. I programmed it for a snow setting and it launched several long cords into the ground. Within minutes we were inside. Bethany immediately lay down on the floor, too exhausted to move. She'd cut and lightened her hair, and it made her look older. It made her eyes bigger and her features sharper.

I unpacked our things. I checked the seal on our medical kit. I took off my jacket for the first time all day. Then I zipped together two sleeping bags that were made of such thin material that I felt constantly astonished they worked at all. I opened the tent flap and scooped snow into the mouth of a metal canteen that would melt and purify it.

“I like watching you work,” Bethany said.

“You and every other civilian,” I said. I pulled the tent flap closed. I spread out the sleeping bag and lay beside her. This was the part of the day I looked forward to most, the part where we felt the freest—inside our tent, our little bubble of nowhere in particular.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “if we get caught—”

“They will shoot you,” Bethany said. She pressed her body against mine. “On sight,” she added.

“Only if they recognize me,” I said.

“I will shoot you,” she said, “if you do anything stupid.”

I looked at her. “Shoot me with what?” I said.

“You won't see it coming,” she said. “So you don't need to know.”

I slipped my hand into the hood of her jacket, feeling the tendrils of her hair, which were stiff with frost. I thought, then, of that very first crime, of her barrette concealed in my pocket. “If something happens,” I continued, “I want you to denounce me.”

“James,” Bethany murmured, “that's not even the right word.”

“You know what I mean,” I said. “You have to convince the police that I kidnapped you.”

“But,” she said, “it was the other way around.”

Bethany tucked her cold fingers under the cuff of my sleeve. The solar bulb in the roof had not fully charged. It flickered and dimmed, casting a diminishing light over us. I felt her body twitch with exhaustion, drifting on the margins of consciousness. When I thought of the places that were waiting for us if we were caught, I was most afraid for her.

“Do you think that we can get used to anything?” I said. “That there's no limit?”

I waited for her answer. But Bethany made a small, murmuring noise. The wind blew and the walls of the tent shook. She was already asleep.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On June 2, 2011, the state of California shuttered the Preston Youth Correctional Facility—formerly the Preston School of Industry—a juvenile rehabilitation center located in Ione, California, roughly fifty miles outside of Sacramento. In its 117 years of operation, Preston helped rebuild—and destroy—many thousands of lives.
Goodhouse
owes a significant debt to the memoirs of the men who lived in Preston as wards of the state. Without Dwight Edgar Abbott's
I Cried, You Didn't Listen
, Ernest Booth's
Stealing through Life
, Edward Bunker's
Education of a Felon
, Ray D. Johnson's
Too Dangerous to Be At Large
, Ernie López's
To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back,
and Bill Sands's
My Shadow Ran Fast,
I would not have been able to write this novel.

I would like to thank my agent, Jennifer Walsh, for believing in this project, and for offering invaluable feedback and enthusiasm.

Many thanks to everyone at FSG: Jeff Seroy, Katie Kurtzman, and my editors, Sean MacDonald, Emily Bell, and Courtney Hodell, who is a close and careful reader.

To everyone else at William Morris Endeavor—Laura Bonner, Kathleen Nishimoto, Maggie Shapiro, Ashley Fox—many thanks.

Thanks, also, to my parents, for their unflagging support over the years—as I crept off to coffeehouses to eat muffins and give serious thought to the problems of imaginary people in invented situations.

And to my intrepid readers, Chelsey Johnson, Malena Watrous, Robin Romm, Erika Recordon, Xeni Fragakis, Donal Mosher, Ismet Prcic, Ruta and Joseph Toutonghi, and Mike Palmieri—and my teacher Ethan Canin, who offered help and advice when it was needed, thank you.

I especially want to thank Gill Dennis and Stephanie Allderdice, who gave me the gift of their time, as well as the benefit of their rich and fearsome imaginations. Without them, the book would not be what it is.

Thank you, Alex Hebler, for the hours and hours with Beatrix and Phineas.

And finally, I owe a very special debt of gratitude to my husband, the writer Pauls Toutonghi, without whom this project would never have been completed. Thank you for allowing this world to move into our house, invade our personal landscape, and become real after all.

 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2014 by Peyton Marshall

All rights reserved

First edition, 2014

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marshall, Peyton, 1972–

    Goodhouse / Peyton Marshall. — First edition.

        pages  cm

    ISBN 978-0-374-16562-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71015-6 (e-book)

    1.  Boys—Fiction.   2.  Eugenics—Fiction.   I.  Title.

  PS3613.A7756 G66 2014

  813'.6—dc23

2014008671

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