Hope: A Tragedy Read Free

mouse making the noise, and then perhaps he could at last get some sleep.
    Such is life, he thought as he unfolded the wooden attic stairs: you get to a point, one day, where you are hoping to find crap; where the best possible outcome of all possible outcomes would be the discovery, praise Jesus, of a pile of shit.
    Kugel climbed the creaky stairs as quietly as he could.
    Maybe it was a mouse.
    He reached the top of the stairs. The attic felt hot, hotter than the rest of the house. The tapping suddenly ceased.
    Hello? whispered Kugel.
    Probably just a mouse.
    Hello?
    And, hearing no reply, Kugel crawled into the dank, damnable darkness above.

3.
     
    THE RURAL VILLAGE OF STOCKTON, population twenty-four hundred, was famous for nothing. No one famous had lived there, no famous battles had been waged there, no famous movements arose there, no famous concerts had been held there. A popular local bumper sticker read: Nobody Slept Here. Birthplace of Nothing, read another. Recently, a local artist had placed mock historical markers around town; On This Spot, read one, the Framers of the Constitution of the United States of America Never Met. This Is Not the Place, read another, Where George Washington Battled the British; That Place Is Elsewhere.
    Stockton’s non-history was a matter of pride for the townspeople, and had, of late, begun to attract many former city dwellers, urban professional families, and young couples looking for a home unburdened by the past, unencumbered by history.
    Like many other newcomers, the Kugels had chosen Stockton because history had not. They purchased an old wooden farmhouse where no Founding Fathers had spent their childhood, on twenty pristine acres of land the Lord never promised to anyone, overlooking a rolling, non-famous valley where nobody had ever done anything of much consequence to anyone. The Kugels wanted a new start, for each other, for themselves, for Jonah. After the past year, they all needed one.
    Three years before, when Jonah was born, the midwife took him, wrapped him in a blanket, and handed him to Kugel. Kugel held the child in his arms, looked down into his big blue eyes, and whispered:
    I’m sorry.
    Lovely, Bree had said.
    Jonah was beautiful and innocent and pure, so Kugel felt terrible guilt for bringing him into this world. To father a child was a horribly selfish act, a felony, in fact—everyone here in this world is a kidnap victim from some better place, or from no place at all, and Jonah had been dragged here, by Kugel and Bree, against his will, without provocation, without consent, without any good goddamned reason whatsoever beyond their own selfish desires.
    Kugel looked down at the tiny person in his arms, pink and cold and furious, and shook his head.
    He oughta sue, said Kugel.
    It’s a joyous moment for us all, said Bree. I’ll tell him about it when he grows up.
    If, said Kugel.
If
he grows up.
    And then, last year, they’d almost lost him.
    Jonah had always been a sickly child; he was spiritually gorgeous and physically a mess. Kind and generous and giving, and sneezing and coughing and diarrheic. He was fair, like Bree, and slight, like Kugel. Kugel gave him multivitamins, extra C, chewable zinc, probiotics, antibiotics, and something called Liquid Garden, a vile powdered nutritional drink, every glass of which was a killing field filled with the tortured remains of thirty vegetables and “over seventeen fruits” (the lack of manufacturer’s specificity on this issue made Kugel concerned about giving it to Jonah—they should know exactly how many fruits, shouldn’t they?—but not as much as the idea of Jonah’s dying of malnutrition if he didn’t give it to him).
    Bree was not as hopeful as Kugel that these pricey pills and costly concoctions would have much positive effect.
    This child, she said, is going to have the most expensive pee in the Northeast.
    Despite all Kugel’s precautions, though, last winter, Jonah became terribly ill. One