My name is Tommy Orange, my fiction writer from Oakland, California. I wrote a short story called the team for the De Cameron Project for the New York Times magazine, but D Cameron projects based on a novel or written by Giovanni catch you during that time of the black plague, the camera project. Mirrors it? It's a collection of stories put together. Everyone wrote it in time. The above krona virus happening. I think it's interesting to write fiction that is trying to be relevant to its time period. Often fiction is written after years having passed, especially when the new news is moving as fast as it is, but I think something that stays constant infection when fiction is doing its best is its ability to build our empathic intelligence by reading about

no lives you get inside the characters heads in their hearts and you understand their context and I think We need more nuance when it comes to thinking about Their people in their lives can really help end. I sometimes in times where the divide seems so massive, and our fellow Americans seem so far from each other S to be almost a different species fiction can help us understand our humanity better in ways that sometimes journalism in the news chat. So here is my story. The team led by me Tommy large, as well. Their story, written in red, bad, waged, Anti.

You ve been staring at a while in your office for what amount of time you weren't sure time slip that way lately is. If, behind the curtain, and back out again is something else here is an internet hall. There is a walk on your street. You, They sit on calling a hike with your wife and son. Here is a book your eyes. Look at pay. You dont comprehend. There is crippling Depression here is observing circling Turkey vultures is your ever imminent anxiety. Here's a failed zoom call. There's a homes calling shift with your son here is April may already gone. There is the obsession over the body count. The nameless numbers rising on endless graphics of animated maps, I was not on your side or anyone's. It was dreaming its waste with you, as you hidden in loud, is the sun. Behind a cloud. You were thinking of when you were last in public

Wasn't counting the masked and panicked weekly she store, runs for the Post Office box, scramble you with your precariously stacked boxes of the other heaping as much distance as you could from anyone. You especially after hearing a podcast that introduce you to the discussion. Idea of mouth train. You, don't you make eye contact with anyone anymore so afraid are you of the spread? the last mass gathering public type thing you done was running your first half marathon There's your metal in your office hung like a deer, had path earth and doesn't sound like a whole lot. It is being the half, but it was a big deal to you. To run and run for thirteen miles without stopping when you, first started training the actually paid money to join a running team, gathered together and unto up about how gruelling it all was it a chance listen to your team leaders. Rant about the race times and superior foods and energy sources

carried in plastic sacks around their waists. You, the team training, see quit and started to think of your whole body and health and routine and running. Songs playlist, as the team. Early to run, and you want on more than just one run a day. Sometimes you kept to them Would you planned and came to the door prescribed by the EP. You downloaded to train. The add them is also part of the team. The team kept its promises to itself The team was your hard keeping healthy in your lungs, keep a clear in determination remaining determined to do this thing, you decided you needed to do for reasons you don't even remember,. Running a surely is old. His legs been doing it yourself for quite a while, mostly to say off the ever increasing pounds the come with age. We're running to race was new running for the distance for a time to cross the finish line.

This was a strange kind of obligation need taken on a mantle ago with the finish line. Running before modern times with serious business It was running away or towards something with urgency, hunting being hunted for delay in a critical message. The first official met what happened at eighteen, ninety six Olympics and was one. Greek mailmen, the race length, with a nod to the ancient Greek lead of a runner had been running a message about victory just before collapsing and dying right then, and there there could be countless other again pulse of ancient running, Surely Indians were running Oliver American Countryside before Cortez brought iberian horses to Florida and fifteen nineteen And yet you are stuck with the image of the Indian on horseback and when the image should represent If people share adaptability stands for the static dead, indian, you ve always known this image to reflect an aspect of you that was both true and not true, some kind of centre

in truth, because your dad is native American, a shame, in your mom is why. Both of them were runners, which is why you, to run in the first place, but regardless ancient running and family heritage and half truths. There is no way to really know what kinds of running activities humans were up too since the beginning of lakes, after the race he went back. The mountain to removed when Oaken became a cost. He couldn't afford. Five years ago, my back up to isolation and you were mostly say from what others had to risk being together so closely in cities, but after the race you're done running The world came to a screeching heart, and so did you could feelings about it being aware they endeavour something worth working for when the old white mine? at the top through crumbs and ate heartily from the ridiculous played. That was the stimulus package. You felt the sick need to stop every you and watch it all burn, but you lose its breath with all the talking heads

blocking their talk, saying almost nothing or you can do, is watch and his eye. You did what you thought you could do Which, like doing something, even though, is doing nothing to watch to listen to reason, Like something new might come of it more than new death, even while you thought the deaths could mean, the old white monsters, would suffer, but they didn't and it turned out to be the same people who always suffered at the expense of the pigs having more than their fair share of the crop, slotted because they didn't needed a level of good so beyond. Need you can't even conceptualizing? was all in the name of freedom, he returned in school, and it was written in textbooks. The sanctimonious the free market, the constitution and the declaration of independence, which referred instead First to Indians as merciless savages, the new team your family, the one you're at home with now. This was your wife in your son.

Your sister in law and her two teenage girls. It was isolation itself what you did with it against it. The new team was not running was meals together and sharing news of the outside world is read about and listen to from. The inside of your insular lives from the inside of your blue tooth base heavy headphones. The new team was a new future, which we had to be determined machine to be decided by individual communities and whether they believed in the number of lives lost now related to them. Your new team was made up of frontal workers scanning your groceries in delivering your deliveries. It was made up of your old family. The one that in broken up for so long. It seems absurd to even think of picking up the pieces, not to mention putting them back together. You were learning Cheyenne together from your dad. It was his first language in your sister. It become an understanding, a new language for like something everyone needed to be thinking about

given that you lost the threat of truth somewhere back when he thought Believed anymore, in anything close to hope, was it before Obama? during Obama, hereafter Obama. This all wasn't for in point in time to understand where he stood. What you understood to mean the future of the country which flagging stood under what did it mean that white people were moving toward the minority? Nevermind hope, never mind prosperity? Would you survive. No, he didn't run anymore and it showed me Well, maybe once a week and forgot about your teeth, he drank too much and smoke more cigarettes than ever. You would improve once things seem to improve once you got a glimmer of hope from the news you're watching something will come a cure, a drop in numbers, a miracle drug antibodies, something

Nothing else you back at the wall staring at it, unable to do anything but watch. It was this work being done by the whole new world, while those- directly affected to watch and wait to stay put would be a marathon of this ice It was the only way the team could make it humans well, damn race. I didn't do it. We know that millions are struggling financially, including many. Were unemployed or self employed. So we are offering financial guidance. Hope. You understand your options. Guidance to help, navigate

Claimant benefits information on the cares, act and benefits for those who are self employed and resources to help. You understand what benefits you may qualify for and for how long, because we want to help you move your finances forward, get financial guidance that into a dot com, sash financial tips, one thing written by it: we don't seeker, she's dreaming of caves and the rocks and minerals with which he is obsessed and the dream he tells her that touching one of the columns rising from the cave floor could cause the Stalag might to die she laughs and tell him that This might be one reason. People no longer live in caves. He correct sir and says maybe not in Brooklyn, but some people elsewhere do forced by whether maybe doing or after Hurricane

are doing a war hiding for protection. He reminds her that their breath taking though he no longer use that particular word envy ably beautiful. He might a million new caves. He would love to see caves with mile long pits, canyons and shafts even waterfalls and with explosions of colors from marble, arches sellen night crystals ice pearls are glow, warms caves that are so striking. They could burn pupils with their beauty. We can no longer speak this way, his body. Vibrating with word his face, then exhilaration his head, bouncing from side to side as His always trying to generate a wombs worth of enthusiasm for the high school, juniors and seniors to whom he teaches

Earth and environmental signs at home, his sentences had grown short include even before he became visibly ill. He was beginning to sound like some of her newly arrived cousins curtly speaking about time While the language they ve been hearing since birth slowly slipped away this summer, they were planning to visit the grottoes in caves of her parents, birth. Waste near the town were her mother was born in the south of Haiti. One of the caves is your namesake. He said when they decided to solicit huh moon funds for the trip on their wedding registry, the cave and like her be named for nurse and soldier. Jeanne Senior, addressed as a man to fight alongside her husband against french Colonial army during his Revolution

Who would I have to dress as to be able to see you and fight for you with you? She asks him now would have to be a doctor or chaplain. Are you? The atheists even allowed a chaplain, just in case you wake up and demand conversion. A recollection of his racing breath jolts her awake. What scares her most now in this recent hierarchy of terrors is not his silence or the gasping beats the ventilator, which is ours old, But when the shift changes and some one speaks into, the phoned had been place next to his ear, the exhausted female voice, on the other end a voice she imagines, as amidst the soprano and an Capello,

from the way her intonation rises and fall so quickly and dramatically. That voice purposely perks up and says good morning speaking to the love of real life. How did you know she wants to ask? Of course they take notes on ipads are no pads for one another to read small details to differentiate Individualise the night nurse might have been able to make out her words. After all, he might have written down exactly what my region had bald and blubber through His name is ramen, but we call him re. He is the love of my life. What did you to spend it? talking about the morning. Nurse asked for reminding her to be charged. The phone, so she can speak in his ear again later that morning

be in the afternoon and perhaps again tonight my genes sleepily answers in her scratchy, mostly base voice caves. We were talking about caves. They didn't always talk about caves during their for money. Courtship between the new signs, teachers orientation and their new year's Eve wedding in the Flatbush Avenue restaurant on by his parents. They talk more generally of travel. This was one advantage of their profession after all their great fortune and having the summer is to check off bucket list items he liked to describe their plan trips as though that already happened. He wanted them to write esteem train between the river Gorges of Zambia's lower. As I'm busy national Park and Victoria falls bridge.

And hope that before they had children, they would climb Matthew Peach to swim with penguins and the Galapagos Gay at the northern lights from inside a glass igloo, but first they had Go on the delayed honeymoon to her namesake cave ass, soon, ass. She hangs up with the nurse she imagined striving to the hospital encircling the main building should park under the sweep gum tree by the fight gate and ordinary times this tree, It would be a conduit to a lobby where visitors sign end before finding their way and cite the hospital maize the day before she dropped him off. On the other side of that building, at the emergency admission section, two people and what looked like space suits had wheeled him, Side he could still breathe on his on then and was even able to turned his head and wave in her direction.

It was not a goodbye wave. Go on now he seemed to be saying: under the face: mask his night, shade eyes obscured by fagging aviator glasses There is a long line of people behind you wonders now where in the hospital he might be what floor, what room the night nurse won't say. Perhaps so she and others don't stormed the building and rushed to those floors to hold their loved ones hands. The nurse simply says that they were taken good care of him. I know she said much in the way he might have. I know you're doing the best you can. She thinks that tonight on the phone she will play some of his favorite Nina Simone again last night she played while this the wind sixteen times

for the sixteen weeks they ve been married at their wedding. Everyone was expecting some kind of gag Hiphop interlude in the middle of their first stands and his abysmal break dancing interrupting the mournful jazz. They dance. The entire seven minutes of the life recording cheek to cheat you kiss me with your kiss. My life begins Listen to all things to me

no you don't you know your life is so she could call back and ask the nurses to may the song for him right now. Lack of the ward might be too busy during the day. Both words and melody might be muffled by the stream of hurried movements and rushed to beeping machines. In any case, the night is when relief. I'd be most needed from both his and her nightmares. She doesn't realise that she's nodded off until the phone rings and then once with movement, she grabbed said from the fall

of the yellow? Do they on their bed while wiping the sleep from her eyes, she can hear the curl news broadcasts blasting from the radio, that's always on in her parents apartment as they think her for the grocery she's had delivered to them. When they ask how her husband is doing, she says same his parents call she asked if they want her to add them to her called to him later on that night, they could tell him stories folk tales or family anecdotes remind him of things he loved and treasured when he was a boy give him a reason. Come back to us. His mother summarizes what my genes is struggling to say it's not fully up to him. Is it his father interrupts. He sounds distant as those speaking

another extension in another room rather than one speaker on his wife's cellphone? I know he wants to come back to us. Her mother in law says we're, praying all the time. I know he well there's a funeral that may be. And help them watch online. The father says a service for good friends who have fallen, he says fallen, in such a literal way that my Jean at first things his friends, have slipped in the tub or on the stairs. We were sent a link in a password. Her mother in law, says she sends the link and password to my shop yeah text, along with the instructions and somehow Malaysia manages to talk them to joining the private funeral group on their laptop before she hangs up mice here's her mother in law. Ask her husband. Are you sure

You can watch my young uses the link to connect to the service. The camera seems to be recording from a corner of the funeral home capitals ceiling. It's a double funeral a couple married forty five years who died three days apart. They had been at her way being. They contributed two hundred dollars to the honeymoon funds. They are among the oldest friends of her and laws. The couples three daughters, their husbands and for their oldest grandchildren are sitting. Chairs arranged on what looks like every other square of a giant chessboard. The two coffins are draped with identical velvet purple pause, my genes swipes too, green before hearing a word her name's, say cave is three miles long in more than a million years old. The first chamber with the equal colored floor, is too stories high

said father in their chambers with style side shaped like the Virgin Mary and wedding cakes inside one of the caves deepest and darkest chambers with explorers have named the abyss. You can hear echoes of your own beating heart tonight. She might we tell him everything. He told her about the caves. She would remind him two of how, when she seemed too hesitant to plunge in so soon after they had met, he asked her to pick one thing about him to focus on at a time. One thing that could make her forget everything else today. That thing is the caves Timor. It might be Nina Simone again, the next day it might be the bar.

Of his head when he was talking about something he loved or how she would predict his next move by looking pass the nerdy glasses and into his eyes the phone rings and once more in her arm instinctively reaches for it before she realizes what she's doing the same nurse trying to sound so a b a little while ago is now carefully parsing. Her words I intended to mention this earlier. The nurse says there are few words meant for you on your husband's admission file. I dont know if they were shared with you waiting for some graver pronouncement to follow my region. Answer's no and such a loaf. Is that she has to repeat the word. Would you like me to read them to you? The nurse asked my age and pauses purposely stretching the time

so if there was some other news she might delayed for awhile, whatever the words are, she does not want to hear them in a strangers voice that much she knows she wants to hear herself reading them or better. Yet she To hear him saying them, I can email, you a screenshot. The nurse says somebody's already taken a picture, please, my user name is when the email alert pops up on her cell phone. She knows even before she reads the words. What they will be re had written on a plain white piece of paper, energy wild is the wind, the worst look as though they ve been scribbled in a hurry. Cursive with a trembling hand, M J is written in a straight line, but the rest of the words collide down. The paper

the generating in shape and size to the point that she's not a hundred percent sure that the last word is not wing She remembers him once telling her that inside the marriage and cave sound, carry weight and Evelyn waves, strong enough to possibly cry some of the most fragile cars. She imagined herself standing at the lowest depths of this cave in the abyss, And hearing again what he whispered in her ear doing, though, waiting dance, one thing m j: this is one thing This was recalled by our optimism, you can download to listen to lots of audio stories from publishers such as the New York Times.

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