He nods and is grateful when she puts an arm around him. She holds him all the way to Cordia Agricultural, where Jack climbs out to help Connor pile forty-pound sacks of ammonium nitrate into the flatbed. After Connor clangs the tailgate shut, Jack and Beth buy tarts from the quarter candy machine.

“Mm,” Beth says, crunching a tart in her small white teeth. “Sour. Love these. They taste like radioactivity. Like they ought to glow. Does that make sense?”

Jack nods, unable to reply. He’s sucking on a whole radioactive mouthful of sour tarts. The way the sugar makes his heart race, it’s easy to imagine that his bloodstream is nothing but sweet poison now.

5.

The greenhouse has a curved roof like an airplane hangar’s, only the walls are made of heavy-duty plastic. The world beyond seems blurred, a child’s watercolor of field and sky. Beth leads Jack to one of the plywood tables and finds a few cheap plastic flowerpots.

“Too bad we didn’t get these started a couple weeks ago,” Beth says. “We had frost on the ground yesterday morning, but I think Mr. Winter is gone for good now. The weather is turning, and mums need to get a good running start on spring. We’ll begin them inside, just to be safe, and in six weeks they’ll be big enough we can move them outside.”

Beth has an associate’s degree in agricultural science from the U of Iowa and knows what she’s talking about. She has seen to Jack’s education in biology and natural sciences for years. Bloom handled English and history and civics. His father is supposed to be doing that now, but they meet only a couple of times a week, when Hank isn’t busy with the farm or off visiting friends in the Patriot movement. Jack has to say he preferred Bloom’s reading list. They had Harry Potter and the Narnia books. For his father Jack is making his way through Behold a Pale Horse, which is less like a book, more like a collage of manifestos, rants, and confessions.

Even Connor gives Jack lessons. Connor taught Jack how to drive the F-150 through an obstacle course, how to assemble an AR-15 blindfolded, and how to make a pipe bomb. Connor’s lessons are obviously the best, but they are infrequent, as Jack’s cousin is often out of state doing “recon.” Reconnaissance of what, Jack asked Connor once. Connor got him in a headlock and said, “What you don’t know, you can’t tell, even during enhanced interrogation, like this.” And he twisted Jack’s nipple until Jack squealed.

Beth hefts a white plastic bag of soil, and Jack leaps to help her with it. They fill pots with earth as damp and black as crumbs of chocolate cake. Jack peels open the manila packet and sticks a finger in to dig out the seeds.