Soft fingers gripped the tiny paper envelope, clean-clipped nails tore at it, and a stream of granulated sugar ran into the coffee in the cup on the desk. A thin plastic straw, red with two white stripes, was manipulated by these same fingers into stirring up the coffee and the sugar. They swirled, a dark whirlpool, and when it pleased the fingers to release the straw it was momentarily caught up in its own motion, dancing around the cup for a revolution or two. Then the fingers gripped the sides of the cup and lifted it, and the man who the fingers were a part of drank the sweetened brew, and it sloshed over his tongue and down his throat, and into his stomach where it joined breakfast, as well as a few remnants of steak from the previous night's dinner.

A few miles away and above, another man stirred another cup of coffee and glanced out the small round window on his left. Beyond the plane he could see clouds and sky, the same sky that sheltered the airport that the plane was descending to meet, the same sky that held the fascinated interest of a child on a suburban playground not far away from the plane's destination.

The child was a girl of seven, brown hair cut short, gleaming teeth brushed regularly. She looked into the sky, where the small plane could be seen descending.

The cup descended from the man's face, straw still present, a sentry ready for duty. The man pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose from where they had slid down. He rested the cup on his desk and smiled slightly as his eyes fell on a framed photograph.

In the plane, the other man turned his attention back to his magazine. He was reading an article about street kids. He studied a photograph of ragged children on a jungle gym.

The girl played with a stick and some leaves for a few minutes.

Her father forgot about the photograph of his daughter on the desk and began flipping through paperwork.

The man on the plane glanced out the window and was surprised to see how close they were to the ground.

The leaves rustled at the end of the stick.

The paperwork shuffled in the man's stocky fingers.

The magazine crinkled.

And within the plane's melange of electronics and mechanics several components failed and sparks flew, and oil ran, yearning to be quicksilver in a plastic maze.

And when the plane lurched and cried out the man spilled his coffee in his lap, and he cried out, too.

And the girl looked up, and saw the plane coming in over the tops of the trees, and it bore down on the playground.

And the phone rang, and the man answered, and found out his daughter was dead.

There was an obstacle.

A hundred yards away, a large artifact of mankind lay in a smoldering ruin, at the end of a torn stretch of earth that charted its final moments. Somewhere in those moments the plane had snuffed out the life of his child, and while the body was gone and the life was gone he thought that perhaps the reason remained, and so he had come to the playground instead of meeting his wife at the hospital, and he wanted to know the answer.

But there was an obstacle.

Between him and the tangled skein of motive and raison d'etre there stood a number of powerful men in uniforms, keeping the reasons contained, holding sense back on a leash, allowing the raging lions of pointlessness free reign. He stood in the midst of a crowd, all come to find out why.

And the obstacles remained.

To one side of him a large elderly woman stood and jostled for a better view. "Let me see!" she cried intermittently, in the shrewish voice of a crawdad. He sympathized with her request, but saw her need as no more valid than his. To his other side two young people held each other's hands and looked at what was before them. Their faces showed a mingling of fear, curiosity, desire. They, and everyone there, knew there were secrets locked in the scene before them.

But still there were obstacles.

Within a week the secrets were buried, tasseled with dirt and enclosed in mahogany. Standing before the hole in the earth that was now filled, the man was empty and he wondered what secrets tasted like. Were they rich and clogful, a sweet loam? Small and tart and hard in the center? A fresh supply lay before him, ready to be experienced if only he would get his hands dirty. But he had other uses for his hands; he comforted his wife with them, held his young son's shoulder, rubbed his face to make sure it belonged to him and that the things happening to him were supposed to be.

"I'm never going to see her again, am I?"

"Sure you will, we all will."

"But she's gone, the plane landed on her and she's gone."

"We'll meet her again, we will, and she'll be glad to see you."

They were small comforts he offered his son, who took them like peppermints from the old man that greeted you at the church. Three weeks had passed, and the two of them were driving in a place that the city did not reach. On either side of the road tall rows of corn stood in rapt attention, the wind pushing them forward, desperate eavesdroppers trying to catch a wisp of conversation from the travelers on the road.

The boy was a quiet child. In the time since his sister had left them he had spoken even less than usual, seeming concerned with questions inside himself. When he did bring to voice his inner curiosities, the answers he was provided with were unsatisfactory.

The car slowed, as the man pressed his foot on the brake and his eyes gauged the distance to the stop sign. Wheels made fewer revolutions, less ground was gained, and the boy opened his door and jumped out.

With a squeal like crushed rodents the car halted and the man put it in park and undid his seat belt and opened his door and got out and closed his door and did all of the things he was trained to do that suddenly took a lifetime. His son had jumped from the moving vehicle into the grasses on the side of the road. He looked back at the spot where the boy had taken flight and saw him running into the corn.

Then he was running, too, into the rows of corn as tall as he was, and he caught a glimpse of his son several rows over and he ran after him. The corn was dry and mean-spirited, protesting with the breaking of thousands of fibers the injustices heaped upon it by the pushing, panting man. After a few moments he stopped and looked, and thought he caught a glimpse of the boy somewhere off in the corn. He ran some more, and looked some more, and couldn't see his son anywhere in the rows nearby.

So he stood and listened and could hear the noises the boy made as he ran, cracklings and rustlings, and he pursued the sounds as if they were things he could catch, but he knew that the boy was no longer there. He had been transformed into sound, uncatchable sound, and only existed as the fleeting trail he left behind moments before fading away.

For an hour he rushed and thrashed and tore and swore, and at the end of that time he had not found his son and would not find his son. The corn rustled its secrets and passed them on with tongues that the man did not possess. With the tongue he did own he cried, screamed to the heavens his son's name, and his voice fell on the deaf ears that enclosed him.

Hours passed, and things happened as they do in the modern world, and then he was in bed. His wife lay next to him, a woman he loved and yet could not understand, could not reach in his present state.

At some point during the night he awoke, hungry for the supper he had missed. In a half-slumbrous daze mixed of grief and weariness he arose and stumbled to the kitchen.

There he smelled a thick, greasy odor. It promised heat and warmth and taste and sensation. It emanated from the oven, repository of flavors. Curious and dozing he opened the oven door.

As he lowered the hinged front, his son's small hand flopped down, palm up, sizzling brown. The boy was neatly folded into the oven, naked, flesh crisping. The pattern of the rack was already burned into his skin. Moisture coated the soft body, sweaty fluids and occasionally bubbling grease running down smooth arms and neck. The child's eyes were open and sweating, not yet hot enough to burst. As the man looked into the eyes a line of white milky fluid ran from the tear duct of the boy's right eye and fizzed when it struck the inside of the hot oven door.

The man inhaled his son's scent and stepped back, throat scrambling to cry out.

He did so, sitting up bold awake in bed, his wife at his side. He gasped and wheezed and breathed and knew the experience for what it was. A dream, nothing more.

Then a thought struck him with the full force of hope. Where had the dream begun? With the oven? The corn?

The plane?

He jumped out of bed and ran into the hall, calling the names of his children, crying for them to come to him. He ran into his son's room, and found four blank white walls enclosing gray carpet and nothing else. In the adjoining girl's room lay old furniture, a broom in the corner, sheets folded up in a closet. No bed, no dresser, no little clothes, no stuffed animals. Where had it all gone?

Seeking release, he ran again, back into the hall, through the house, back to his bedroom. In the bed his wife lay. Blood pooled in the covers, the mattress, the sheet, from her savaged wrists.

"Dad?" his son asked from behind him, and he turned and no one was there and he looked back and his wife was sitting up in bed, half awake, hair in front of her face, asking him what was wrong, and he looked back to where he had heard the voice and couldn't tell if he was smelling baking flesh and he looked back at his wife who looked at him, and the world circled the sun, and the stars winked in and out, and none of it made a damn bit of sense.