WE ALL LIVE IN BURNING HOUSES, WE ALL RIDE ON RUNAWAY HORSES

Marvin could not stop grinning. Then again, he felt he had every right to grin. None of his brothers or sisters, not one of his cousins, nobody in his family had ever had twins. Twin boys. And so late in life. Fifty years old and the father of twins. Marvin could not stop grinning.

Melba lay on the hospital bed, the babies nestled on either side of her. She hugged them to her stout body. Ten years younger than her husband, she felt invincible, as if she were queen of the world. As if she were mother to nations. She squeezed the boys tighter. She felt invincible.

Marvin leaned over the bed and tickled the chin of the baby nearest him. The boy waved tiny, red fists above his tiny, red face. Marvin lifted the small bundle. The boy weighed little more than a peep, a fluffy chick, but his tiny, red body felt solid, more real than Marvin’s own heart.

“Ah, Donny, my boy,” Marvin said to the son he held aloft, “you’re going to be a great farmer.”

“That’s Lonny,” Melba said, her smile understandably a bit dazed.

Marvin squinted at the baby. “Are you sure?”

Melba nodded. “Lonny has the blue ribbon on his wrist. Donny has the pink.”

“Pink?” Marvin frowned. “No son of mine is going to wear pink.” Still clutching Lonny, he turned toward the open door and shouted, “Nurse!”

*

At home a couple of weeks later, Melba, with a baby in each arm, wandered into the room she and Marvin had decided would make the best nursery. Just the day before, Marvin had finally found time to paint the room a light yellow, complementing the two cribs they had gotten at the Dollar General Store – a green bed for Lonny, a red one for Donny. The heady smell of paint still lingered in the room, even though they had left the window open all night.

Marvin had hung mobiles above each crib, bright pieces of fat, colorful plastic shaped like ducks and bears and camels that circled and bobbed and played melodies. Now he stood on the stepladder, hammer in one hand, tacks between his lips. “Hm?” he asked.

The prints Marvin was in the process of hanging featured scenes by Maxfield Parrish, Melba’s favorite artist. She liked the dreamy quality they gave to the room. The dreamy, fairy-tale feeling.

“Nice,” Melba agreed, nodding. The boys cooed.

*

Melba’s pregnancy had interrupted her career as high school civics teacher, and she missed the thrill of explaining the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation. At feeding time, though, when she held each baby in her arms, contentment flooded over her. When she fed the babies, if Marvin were in the house, he stopped whatever he was doing and stood gazing at the three of them. Melba laughed her dimpled laugh at Marvin because he so liked to watch his boys eat.

*

The setting sun painted the horizon a scarlet unusually livid for Arkansas. Marvin and Melba stood at the wooden fence of their back yard, looking beyond their small garden, out to the acres of pasture spreading away from them, dotted here and there with cows ambling back toward the barn. The farm sat at the base of Crowley’s Ridge, looking out over rolling meadows and fields of crops.

“Someday,” Marvin said to the baby he held in his arms, “this will all be yours.”

Melba laughed, jiggling the other baby on her hip. “You sound just like a proud daddy,” she teased.

“I am,” replied Marvin. “I am a very proud father.”

*

On the twins’ fifth birthday, Marvin threw a party. He invited children from up and down the gravel road on which he and Melba lived. He invited children from the small Southern Baptist church he and Melba attended. He invited children of his fellow members of the Chamber of Commerce. He invited children of strangers he met on the street downtown.

In the sunlight on the lawn and in the shade under the trees which gave Oak Farms its name, children ran and yelled and laughed. The ones who cried or threw tantrums were pacified quickly, either by bribes of candy or a swat on the bottom. Everyone ate ice cream and cake, and drank colas or lemonade or Kool-ade. Men discussed weather and crops. Women watched children play crack-the-whip and Red Rover.

When it was time for presents, Marvin made sure all the gifts that had been brought by other children were presented and opened, examined and laid aside before he brought out his wrapped boxes. He handed one to Lonny and one to Donny. “Go ahead,” he urged. “Open them.”

When the paper had been ripped away, and the boxes torn opened, inside each box each boy found a cowboy hat. Identical white cowboy hats. Large brimmed. Tall crowned. Cowboy hats with beaded bands.

Marvin handed another box to Donny and another to Lonny. This time they discovered identical leather cowboy boots with hand-tooled designs. Each boy jerked off his tennis shoes, slipped his boots on his feet, and strutted around the yard under the admiring gaze of friends and family.

Two more boxes held identical Roy Rogers cap-gun pistols, and holsters with tassels.        And another two boxes. Western vests made of felt: red for Donny; green for Lonny. Rhinestones studded the breasts of each, and tassels fringed the bottoms.

After each boy had donned hat and vest, pistols and boots, Marvin had them stand at the end of the picnic table. “One more surprise,” he said. “I’ve saved the best for last. Wait here,” he told them, as if their jubilant energy might send them soaring like bottle rockets above the other children. He ducked around the corner of the house. Snickers and murmurs flowed from one side of the crowd of children to the other. Girls tittered. Boys whispered.

Melba stood between the twins, a hand on the back of each, laughing, bending to whisper first to one, then the other, stoking the anticipation, kindling the exhilaration.

Finally, Marvin came back around the house, leading two Shetland ponies, the reins of a bridle in each hand. All the children erupted with shrill excitement.

Each small horse had a saddle with short stirrups. Each mane had been combed and plaited, one with a red bow between its ears, the other with a green bow.

With a shout of delight, Donny raced forward, throwing his arms around the neck of the pony with the green ribbon. The horse rolled its wide eyes and shied away, but the boy clasp it firmly and bent its head toward him. He kissed its forehead, then laid his cheek against its jaw, breathing deeply of the horsey smell.

Lonny hesitated a moment, watching, then ran toward the other pony, repeating his brother’s actions.

“Come on, boys,” Marvin urged. “Let’s get y’all saddled up.”

Marvin hoisted Donny up onto his pony and handed him the reins. The crowd of children surged toward the animals, petting and cooing. Melba helped Lonny clamber onto his horse. As soon as Lonny sat in the saddle, one of the older boys, with a snide chuckle, slapped the pony on the rump. Startled, the horse jerked. Lonny cried out. A girl squealed. The horse turned about, trying to get away from the crowd. Boys and girls fell back, awed by the weight and energy of the animal. The pony bolted toward the open road.

Lonny screamed and grabbed a hank of the horse’s mane. Melba shrieked. Marvin ran after Lonny, waving his arms and calling, “Pull up on the reins, son! Pull up on the reins!”

The reins, though, dangled far out of Lonny’s reach, even if he could have heard and understood his father’s command. The pony, chased by the yelling, arm-waving Marvin, sped faster down the road. Lonny’s hat flew off the boy’s head and landed in the ditch on the side of the road.

Donny, sitting astride his own horse, watched and laughed merrily, not that he enjoyed seeing Lonny in trouble; it just didn’t occur to him that his brother might be in trouble.

Growing winded, Marvin realized he needed some different strategy. A new tactic. He slowed and stopped, standing in the middle of the road, huffing, trying to catch his breath.

When Marvin stopped running and yelling, the pony slowed from a gallop to a canter, from a canter to a trot, from a trot to a standstill. Its sides heaving, its nostrils flaring, it turned its head and looked back at Marvin. Lonny sat clutching the horse’s mane, still screaming.

Marvin realized the pony felt as winded as he. With utmost caution, he inched forward.

The pony watched Marvin closely, its sides heaving like bellows. It flicked its ears. It twitched its tail. Marvin spoke soothingly as he crept closer. Lonny’s sobs tapered off, though they didn’t stop completely.

When Marvin was reasonably sure the horse wouldn’t bolt again, he moved more quickly. He took the dangling reins and led the now-docile pony and the still-whimpering boy back toward the house where the guests stood watching down the road. At sight of the returning adventurers, the children cheered, and the adults applauded. When Melba ran forward, the pony pulled back, but Marvin tightened his grip on the bridle. Melba gave her husband a peck on the cheek, then lifted her son off the horse. Her actions released the pent-up anxiety of the crowd which cheered, hailing both father and son as returning heroes.

*

In the middle of his junior year at the State University, Lonny came home for his father’s funeral. He sat on the front pew of the small church, his mother between him and Donny. She wore a black dress; a black veil hid her eyes. Black gloves sheathed her hands. Black pumps covered her feet. She dabbed at her red nose with a small white handkerchief. Lonny put his arm around her. She leaned against him and laid her head on his shoulder. The sweet smell of the yellow roses wafted through the sanctuary.

After the service at the church, Marvin was laid to rest in the cold, windblown cemetery. At home after relatives and friends had cried and consoled Melba, everyone reminisced and ate the food brought by church members and neighbors. When the visitors and well-wishers had all gone back to their own warm homes, Lonny and Donny stood at the wooden fence in the back yard, looking out at the small garden, dry and brown and clattering in the weak sunlight of the winter afternoon.

“Those high clouds mean warm weather’s moving in.” Donny’s soft voice barely made a ripple in the quiet.

Lonny’s suit jacket did little to keep out the cold. He pushed his hands deeper into the pockets of his dress pants. “Good,” he said in a loud voice. “I haven’t been warm since I got back.”

Donny looked toward the horizon. He said nothing.

Where Lonny’s suit was a dark blue, Donny’s was a medium brown. Lonny wore a somber tie of paisley indigo; Donny had on a bola string tie with a silver-and-turquoise clasp. Lonny wore glossy black dress shoes; Donny had on his best pair of cowboy boots.

“So,” said Lonny. “What do we do now?”

Donny lifted his shoulders and let them fall. Lonny recognized the movement as one he himself made when he had no idea what to say. They had both inherited it from their father.

“Mom and me,” Donny finally answered, “will stay on here. Dad would want us to keep the farm. He never thought anything different but that I’d run it after him. No.” The way Donny shook his head reminded Lonny of the Angus bull Dad used to keep, back in the days when he bred cattle. “That ain’t true,” Donny corrected himself. “Dad never thought about it at all. He never imagined a time he wouldn’t be here to do it himself. It just didn’t occur to him.”

The massive heart attack had caught everyone by surprise, no one more so than Marvin himself. Though close to seventy years old, he had never thought of himself as mortal. As Donny said, he just never thought about it at all. He had a life insurance policy only because Melba had insisted on it. She feared some fatal accident or force of nature, never imagining the betrayal of Marvin’s own body.

Donny went on. “With the scholarship paying your tuition, there ain’t no reason you shouldn’t keep on at school till you finish. Especially since you’re so close. Then you can get yourself hired by some big Wall Street firm.”

Several minutes passed before Lonny asked the obvious question. “Think you can handle the farm by yourself?”

Donny looked around at his brother slowly. Unlike Lonny’s pale, well-groomed appearance, Donny’s face was raw and sunburned, his dark hair unruly. He didn’t smile, but the tightness around his mouth lessened. “Sure,” he said. “Dad taught me everything he knew about farming.” He shrugged again. “As much as he could get through my thick skull, anyway. Besides. Mom will be here.” He looked away again. “You remember Retha Lockhart?”

Lonny nodded. “Sure. Pretty girl. Dark hair. Kind of short.”

“I ain’t asked her yet, and I guess I ought to wait a while now. But I’m going to. If she’ll marry me.” He loosened his bola and undid the top button of his shirt. “It’ll help to have another woman around the house. Take some of the load off Mom.”

A car passed on the road. A cloud of dust, yellow in the dim light of the late afternoon, followed it around the turn.

Lonny removed his own necktie, folded it, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket. “Look, Donny. Dad tried to hide how tight things have been lately, but it got to the point where it was obvious. Are you sure you can make it?”

Donny cleared his throat and spit. “That misbegotten son of a sow Reagan ain’t making it easy. Him and his tax cuts for his rich buddies. Trickle-down economics, my foot. Ain’t nothing trickling down around here except sweat off my face.” He took a deep breath; when he spoke again, he spoke more calmly. “With Dad’s life insurance,” he said, “things will be okay.”

Lonny tried again. “Look. I can stay here. I can get a job in town. I could help you here on the farm.” At Donny’s skeptical glance, Lonny insisted. “I can. I can learn. I will. You need someone to help you. You need me.”

Donny picked at the dirt under his fingernails. “You ain’t no farmer,” he said. “Never have been.” He scratched his jaw. “You’re my brother, but you ain’t no farmer.” He leaned on his crossed arms on the fence post. “I ain’t no professor. You ain’t no farmer. I got the muscles. You got the brains.”

Lonny spread his arms as if he would sweep his brother into a hug. “No,” he said. “We’ve got the same muscles. The same brains. We have the same blood.”

A small breeze brushed around them. Lonny shivered. Donny stared out over the rattling garden. “We share the same bloodline,” Donny said, “but we ain’t shared the same blood since before we were borned. We had one blood then. One blood moving between Mom and you and me. But it ain’t like that no more. We’re two different people. Two very different different people. We ain’t never going to be one person again.”

A screech owl flew over their heads, its voice harsh in the twilight. Donny ambled back toward the house. Lonny stood looking out over the garden. He shivered in the breeze.

*

After Lonny graduated, he took a job with a real estate firm in Atlanta. When he decided to marry a couple of years later, Donny and Retha brought Melba to Atlanta a week before the wedding. The gray in Melba’s hair surprised Lonny, but he said nothing about it. He smiled and nodded and hugged his mother as if nothing had changed.

Lonny rented a suite for his family in the same apartment building where he lived so they could all be together. Lonny and his fiancée Janey, a tall, blonde girl from Chicago, took their visitors to an older, established neighborhood in Buckhead where Lonny proudly showed them around the three-bedroom house with a two-car garage he and Janey planned to buy.

“Nice,” Melba said as she wandered through the kitchen into the echoing dining room.

She trailed her hand along the chair rail.

“You must be making good money,” said Retha.

Lonny shrugged. “Good enough for now. Real estate is going to take off in Atlanta soon. All those Yankees coming down here to get away from the cold weather.” He put his arm around Janey and grinned at her. “Like this one.” She smiled at him. “That’s when I’ll really start making money.”

Donny stood looking out one of the front windows. “Mom tells me you’ve joined the Republicans,” he said off-handedly. “That you’re working to get Reagan re-elected.”

“That’s right,” Lonny said.

Donny shook his head. “I don’t think Dad would have been happy with you going over to the other side.”

Melba jabbed her bony elbow into her son’s ribs hard enough to make him gasp. “Hush,” she scolded. “We aren’t here to talk politics. We’re here to get your brother married.” She stepped around Donny so she could look out the window herself. “What a pretty neighborhood,” she said. “All these trees. You’d never guess you were in the middle of the city.”

“It’s a good place to start a family,” Janey agreed.

Melba laced her fingers in Lonny’s. “I’m so proud of you, son,” she said. “Your father would be, too.”

The group moved on through the rest of the house, the heels of Donny’s cowboy boots striking sharp notes on the hardwood floor.

*

The day was going badly enough for Lonny when the receptionist patched the call through to him. He reached for the phone, hoping it wasn’t Mrs. Ferguson again. His newest client, she had already called twice, even though it was only 9:30 in the morning.

“This is Lonny,” he said into the receiver, as cheerfully as he could. “How may I help you?”

“Lonny? It’s awful. I don’t know what we’ll do.”

It took him a moment to recognize the choking voice. “Mom?” He had never heard his mother so distraught. “Mom, what is it? What’s happened? Are you all right? Is Donny okay? What is it?”

“The house.” Melba’s voice cracked. “It burned. Completely.”

He sat for several seconds listening to her sobs before he asked. “What house?”

“Our house,” she said. “The farmhouse.”

He had known which house before he asked, of course. The house he had been brought up in. The place that still came to mind whenever he heard the word ‘home.’

“When can you get here?” His mother seemed to steady herself. “How soon can you come?”

He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. It had to be a mistake. He must have heard wrong. It must be a bad connection. “Let me think,” he said. “Let me think. The broker’s out of town and won’t be back until tomorrow morning. I can’t leave the office. I have to be here. In case an emergency comes up.”

His mother wailed. “What do you think this is?”

“Is anyone hurt?” he asked.

She sniffled. “No. We all got out safe. Everyone’s okay. No. Not okay. Everyone’s safe. No one was hurt, but we aren’t okay.”

“I’ll call the airport and make reservations for the first flight out tomorrow morning. I’ll do it right away. As soon as we hang up. But I’ll have to come back as soon as I can. I can’t do anything else. That’s the best I can do.”

It was. It was the best he could do.

*

“Mom says the fire was a blessing in disguise,” Donny admitted.

Lonny pushed the toe of his loafer against a charred stick of wood. “I’m glad she’s taking that attitude,” he said, “though it seems like a strange blessing to me.”

The two men ambled through the ruins of the burned-out farmhouse. Thin smoky steam drifted up from the cinders. The smells of burned wood and seared brick hung in the spring air. Out of the foundation jutted a few scorched two-by-fours and pipes leading nowhere.

Lonny had hesitated leaving Janey on such short notice, but she insisted her morning sickness would keep her from being of any help in the situation. When he had still protested, she assured him she would be fine: the baby wasn’t due for another five months.

So Lonny had flown into Memphis; he rented a car and drove across the Mississippi Bridge into Arkansas. He found their mother staying with her sister and brother-in-law. He tried to console her. Though Melba seemed to accept the circumstances with calm grace, Lonny could still detect a bitter edge to her voice when she refused to drive out to the farm with him. Now, as the brothers moved through the ashes of childhood memories, Lonny spotted a half-familiar shape. He stooped. Thinking the metal might still be hot enough to burn his fingers, he picked it up carefully. Of course, it felt cool to his touch.

His Roy Rogers cap-pistol. Its shiny metal had been tarnished by the flames, and the plastic shell on the grip had melted away, but the shape was unmistakable. “Look at this,” he said.

Donny glanced over to see what his brother had found, then turned back to poking around the ruins of the living room.

Lonny stood in what had been his bedroom. It felt strange that no walls separated him from his brother. Lonny wondered if this was how Superman saw things with his X-ray vision.

“Donny?” Had Lonny been looking at his brother from this same spot only three days earlier, he couldn’t have seen him. Now he watched as Donny paused again and looked in his direction. “How much,” asked Lonny, “did the insurance company give you?”

Donny turned back to his own reconnoitering. Neither of the brothers was actually looking for anything; they expected to find nothing. The fire had been too complete. Curiosity, not hope, made them search through the rubble.

“They didn’t give me anything,” Donny said. “We’ve been paying premiums long enough that they still made money off us. But they did let me have enough to rebuild the house. Barely. One story. Not two.” His voice rang bitter in the smoky desolation.

“They have to make a profit, you know.” Lonny spoke without thought, merely replied to Donny’s statement. “They have shareholders to report to.”

“Yeah,” grumbled Donny. “But do they have to do it on my back?”

His brother’s sullen attitude confused Lonny. “They aren’t doing it on your back. It’s the way things work. You get what you pay for. Simple economics.”

Donny continued his listless scavenging. He muttered, “It’s too complicated for me. I ain’t nothing but an Arkansas farmer.”

The midday sun, blazing in a faultless blue sky, made Lonny squint. The gentle movement of air felt good on his face. He watched his brother for a moment. Then for another moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. “Donny. Don’t get me wrong. And I won’t tell anyone what you tell me.” He paused. “This fire. Do you have any idea how it started?” His voice was softer than the breeze.

Donny looked up. He glared at his brother. “How can you ask that?” He looked away, sweeping his gaze out beyond the garden, out further than the farm, out over the world. “How can you ask a blame fool question like that?” he said. “How can you even think that?”

“I don’t know,” Lonny admitted, as if that were a defense. He shrugged. “You just don’t seem as distraught as I thought you’d be.”

Donny seemed to swell, to expand, to balloon larger. His gaze returned to focus on Lonny, and it was a scowl, red and thunderous. “Maybe,” Donny said with acid in his voice, “you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

The skin on Lonny’s face flushed, hotter than sunlight. He realized he was frowning, and willed his muscles to relax. “Maybe I don’t.”

At Lonny’s softening, Donny took a deep breath. He turned away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t yelling at you. I was just yelling.”

“No.” Lonny dropped the ruined cap gun and stepped toward his brother. “You were yelling at me. And that’s all right. I deserved it. Look. I’ve got a little extra cash. I can give you some. And I can borrow more. How much do you need?”

“Give?” asked Donny. “I didn’t think that word was in the Republican vocabulary. You mean ‘loan,’ don’t you?”

Lonny’s voice iced over. “I said ‘give.’ This was my home, too.”

“Where would you get more money? Which of your fat-cat friends would be willing to invest in a small family farm?”

“Not all of my friends are fat cats.” Lonny tried to keep his voice as neutral as possible. “Most of them are just as middle-class as I am.”

“Oh,” Donny sneered. “You mean up-and-coming fat cats. Soon-to-be-fat cats. Baby fat cats. Fat-cat calves.”

Lonny’s voice came loud in the afternoon sun. “Do you want the money or don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Donny yelled, his hands bunched into fists at his side. “Yeah, I’ll take your money. But only because this is your home, too. You have a responsibility to it, too. So, yeah, I’ll take your money.”

“Good,” Lonny bellowed. “How much? How much of my money do you want?”

Without hesitation, without blinking, Donny shouted, “Ten thousand dollars.” He stopped, as if startled by his own presumption. “No,” he said. “Twenty. Twenty thousand.”

“Fine. You’ll have it by tomorrow.” Lonny stomped toward his car, kicking aside ashes and pieces of wood. He jerked open the door, climbed in, and slammed the door. He rolled down the window. “Tomorrow,” he yelled. “You’ll have it tomorrow, and you better turn a profit on this place, or so help me, I’ll come back and run it myself.”

He cranked the engine, slammed the car into reverse, and backed down the driveway. Before he got to the road, though, he mashed on the brakes. He stuck his head out the window again. “And tell our mother.” He stopped. “Tell my mother I love her very much.” He drove away without stopping again.

*

When the builders finished, Lonny brought his family for the open-house celebration. Neighbors and friends had been invited and were feted; hands had been shaken and hugs were exchanged. Everyone congratulated Melba and the boys on the new two-story farmhouse with its basement apartment where Melba would live.

After the visitors all left, with the early-November wind whistling outside, the family relaxed in the living room, watching the national news on their brand-new color television. The piney smell of fresh wood wafted around the room.

The last time Melba could remember the whole family gathering in front of their old black-and-white TV had been twenty years earlier to watch Armstrong and Aldrin cavort on the moon. The twins, six years old then, had sprawled on the floor, mesmerized by the view of an alien world.

Now the brothers sat on the sofa, hypnotized again by the view of another world – not Luna this time, but Germany – with their mother seated between them. Their wives sat on either end of the group, Janey with one of her twin girls in her arms, Retha cuddling the other. They all stared at the television showing images of people celebrating at the Berlin Wall. Men and women, teenagers and old people, all danced through the checkpoints, whirling past grim-faced guards who did nothing but stand and watch. People scrambled onto the top of the Wall, hugging each other and frolicking. In the streets, they danced from one side of the Wall to the other, from one side of the world to the other, from one side of history to the other. Youths swung sledgehammers, breaking great gaps in the barrier that had divided East and West for 28 years.

“I sure wish,” said Lonny, “I could be there swinging a hammer myself.”

“I suppose,” Donny said, “that president of yours will take full, personal credit for this.”

Lonny shrugged. “And well he ought. A couple of years ago, he challenged Gorbachev to tear it down.”

“But what about Gorbachev himself?” asked Melba. “Shouldn’t he get some of the credit, too? It couldn’t have happened without him. And the East German Chancellor. Whatever his name is. Honecker. Honecker, I think.”

“No,” said Donny. “No one man made this happen.”

“True,” Lonny conceded. “It was the people’s doing that made it possible.”

“It’s the end,” said Janey, “of Communism.”

“No,” Retha reminded them. “There’s still China and Cuba. And North Korea.”

“At any rate,” Melba put in, “it’s a start.”

Lonny stretched out his legs and leaned back. “I hope they realize what they’re doing. The German people. What they’ve started. And that they have the wherewithal to follow through with it. Freedom’s a tricky slope once you get started on it. They’ve got to be careful not to slide into anarchy.”

Donny leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms. “Equality’s worth the risk, though. No dictators. No one with any more power than anyone else. Everyone with the same say.”

Melba sat up straight. The crows-feet at the corners of her eyes were deep, but her irises shone with an icy green radiance. She looked at one son, then at the other. “That can’t happen,” she said. “Freedom and equality. You can’t have both.”

Donny looked at her. He looked at Lonny. Lonny looked at his brother, then at their mother. “What are you talking about, Mom?” he asked.

“I learned long ago with you two,” Melba said, “you can’t have freedom and equality. It’s one or the other. If you’ve got the freedom to become whatever you want to be, cream rises to the top. When that happens, someone is going to have something someone else doesn’t, and equality goes out the window. When you two were born, you were both the same. You were both equal. One had a blue ribbon. One had a pink. Other than that, you were so much alike, your own father couldn’t tell you apart. When you grew up, though, things changed. Donny is the better farmer, and as long as you stayed here, he was head honcho. Lonny is the better businessman, though, and when he got out into the world, he got to the top of the heap. So it comes down to how you define cream. As what’s best for you? As what you want most? Is it better to be a great farmer or a great businessman? Equal opportunity does not equal equality.”

“Mom,” protested Lonny. “This country was founded on the principles of liberty and equality. That’s what makes our system great.”

Melba shook her head. “It was founded by men. Men who had their own self-interest to watch out for. What else could you expect?”

Donny asked, “What about democracy and freedom and death to tyrants?”

“That’s fine from a philosophical point of view,” Melba agreed. “I’m talking economics, though. If all men are to be equal, government has to intervene. That’s what government is for. Redistribution of resources. Politics is about who gets how much. That’s all. If people are equal, then everyone gets the same size share of the pie. If people are free, the biggest piece goes to the one who can grab it and hang on to it long enough to stuff it in his mouth.”

She smiled. It had been years since she had taught a class in civics. She had forgotten what a feeling of exuberance it gave her to explain things, what a rushing sense of skating on the slicing edge of socialization, of indoctrinating new citizens. She felt enormously pleased. Or satisfied. Or vindicated. Or something. Maybe just older.

Donny looked at his brother. He grinned and said, “I never realized that our father married a Communist.”

Melba laughed. “Lordy, son. You have got that so wrong.”

Lonny winked at his brother. “I never realized,” he said, “just what a cagey old gal our mother is.”

Melba laughed again. “Okay,” she said. “That I’ll take.”

* * *