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of slightly different stalks would be razed to the dirt. Where was the lesson in that?
    There was none; it was just a field of corn. But even if the universe has no use for right and wrong, humans do. My affair with Karen had left me feeling very, very wrong. I needed to make amends.
    So, with the stalks of corn as witnesses, I said aloud, “I’m going to help you, Chase.”

    I met Chase in person for the first time three months after he’d come home. I invited him and Karen—she pushed his wheelchair—to the BES superportation lab late on a Sunday afternoon, when I was sure I could be alone with them. After I met them at the door and we introduced ourselves, they followed me to our experiment chamber. Karen rolled Chase carefully behind me; she was terrified of crashing into some multi-million dollar piece of government equipment.
    The first time I heard Chase speak, he said to Karen, “Why the fuck are you going so slow?”
    “There’s no rush,” she replied.
    “Fuck you there’s no rush. The game starts at 7:30.”
    Karen stopped moving; though I was studiously pretending not to hear any of this, I paused too. “You said you’d hear him out.”
    Chase craned to glare at her. Then, low and angry: “You owe me.”
    When he turned back to me, he was smiling: but like a hyena sizing me up. I sized him up right back. His hair was bristly and straw-colored, like he’d picked up a handful of hay and stuck it on his head. Harley Davidson muscle shirt, cargo shorts, nothing to cover the puckered, scarred ends of his legs. The tan he must’ve developed overseas had largely faded and his skin was returning to its default papier-mâché color, though freckle-speckled. His solid build wasstarting to slacken and fatten; he was starting to melt into his wheelchair.
    And he had good hyena-teeth. He was smiling when he said, “Before we go any farther, Doc, why don’t you explain to me what I’m doing here? See, that way, once Karen hears how full of shit you are, we can go home and I don’t have to miss the opening pitch.”
    I put my hands in my pockets and paced toward him. “You’re not talking about the All-Star Game, are you? You actually watch that?”
    He said nothing. He was shocked that a scientist could know anything about baseball.
    “Look, Chase,” I said, “I get it. You think this is just a waste of time. You think I’m some clueless egghead, or worse, some fraud who’s out to rip you off. You’re only here because of Karen. She’s the only person in the world right now who could’ve gotten you here on a Sunday.”
    He folded his arms. “So?”
    I closed the distance between us and took a knee in front of him. “You’re here because you love her. Because you want to make her happy, even when you know she’s wrong. Because now she makes your life possible. What would you do without her, Chase? If she got sick of your foul mouth and your bad attitude and the burden of caring for you, and left you?”
    I glanced up at Karen. She was stone-faced. It had taken me this many months to convince her I wasn’t plotting some kind of secret revenge on her, like some morning talk-show revelation/confrontation/
conflagration. She kept telling me she still loved me, that she only wanted the best for me, and why would I ruin the wonderfulmemories we had shared together by destroying her life: or Chase’s, who, I should remember, was a war-hero and deserved better?
    Only after weeks of repeating that I only wanted to help Chase did she finally halfway believe me. Now, though, her strained face told me she thought I was indeed about to betray her. She was stoically preparing herself for the ugliest moment of her life.
    Chase, meanwhile, reacted just like I thought he would. A guy like him is a tea-kettle; his shame at being disabled always boiled just under his skin, looking for any weak point through which it could escape, whistling. He bowed his head and, with a voice thick with self-pity, said, “Karen