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Joe clearly needed something to keep him out of trouble."
Bill said, "This will keep him out of trouble?"
Orville leaned against the cart's bumper, pulled out a pipe, stuffed it
and lit it. He puffed at it, and watched the smoke wisp away in the
swamp breezes. "I think that Joe's going to really like life with the
Imagineers. They're Management's precious darlings who can do no
wrong. Anything they ask for, they get. There won't be any more
discipline problems."
Bill said, "Why not?"
Orville grinned without showing his teeth. "Where there's no discipline,
there're no discipline problems. He can work whatever hours he wants.
He'll have access to anything he needs: budget, staff, an office,
whatever. It's his dream job."
Bill said, "I don't like this."
George wondered why not. It sounded pretty good to him.
Orville puffed at his pipe. "Like it or not, I think you'll have a hard time
convincing Joe not to do it. He's sold."
Bill went back into the cabin and closed the door.
"He took that well, don't you think?" Orville asked.
George said, "I suppose so."

Orville said, "Is everything working out all right for you? Shifts OK?
Co-workers?"
George said, "Everything's fine. Thank you."
Orville tapped his pipe out on the bumper, then got back into the cart.
"All right then. Good night, George."
#
George started cooking dinner for two. More and more, Joe spent the
night in a suite at one of the hotels, "working late." George didn't know
what sort of work he was doing, but he sure seemed to enjoy it. He
hardly came back to the cabin at all. The first time he'd stayed out all
night, Bill had gone back to the Island and gotten Orville out of bed to
help him search. After that, Joe started sending out a runner, usually
some poor Ops trainee, to tell them he wasn't coming back for dinner.
Eventually, he stopped bothering, and Bill stopped worrying.
One night, a month after Orville had come out to the cabin, George
slathered a muskrat's carcass with mayonnaise and lemon and
dragonfly eggs and set it out for him and Joe.
Bill hardly ate, which was usually a signal that he was thinking. George
left him half of the dinner and waited for him to speak. Bill picked his
way through the rest, then pushed his plate away. George cleared it and
brought them both mason jars full of muddy water from the swamp out
back. Bill took his jar out front of the cabin and leaned against the wall
and stared out into the night, sipping. George joined him.
"We're getting old," Bill said, at last.
"Every night, the inside of my uniform is black," George said.
"Mine, too. We're getting very old. I think that you're at least thirty, and
I'm pretty sure that I'm twenty-five. That's old. Our father told me that
he thought he was fifty, the year he died. And he was very old for one
of us."

George thought of their father on his deathbed, eating the food they
chewed for him, eyes nearly blind, skin crazed with cracks. "He was
very old," George said.
Bill held his two whole hands up against the stars. "When father was
my age, he had two sons. Can you remember how proud he was of us?
How proud he was of himself? He'd done well enough that he could
lose both his thumbs, and still know that his sons would take care of
him."
George shifted and sighed. He'd been thinking about sons, too.
"I've wanted a son since we came to the Island," Bill said. "I never did
anything about it because I couldn't take care of Joe and a son." Bill
turned to look at George. "I think Joe's finally taking care of himself."
George didn't know what to say. If Bill had a son, then he couldn't.
They couldn't both stop working to raise their sons. But Bill always
made the decisions for them. George didn't know what to say, so he
said nothing.
"I'm going to have a son," Bill said.
#
Bill did it the next night. He told Orville that he'd need a month off, and
after eating the dinner George made for them, he made a nest of earth
and blankets on the floor of their cabin.
George sat in the corner and watched Bill as he stared at his thumbs. It
was the most important decision one of their kind ever made: a clever
son of the left hand, or a strong son of the right. George knew that his
son would come from the left hand. In the world his father had put
them into, cleverness was far more important than strength. After all,
Bill was having the