The Rest is Silence by Scott Fotheringham

non-visible pieces of plastic that contaminated soil and water.
    She came home from her job and studied textbooks from the library: Biology, Principles of Genetics, Molecular Biology of the Cell, Microbiology . Her knowledge of biology had been limited to introductory courses in her freshman year. She knew her physics and mathematics, the building blocks for a mechanistic view of the world, and applied them to the workings of the cell. She had studied organic chemistry, including that of long-chain polymers such as silk protein and its synthetic mimic, nylon. She took her GRE, then sent her transcript to Cornell.
    While she waited, she studied the ways that enzymes act on natural long-chain polymers to break them down into their constituent parts so that these can be recycled within the cell. Because plastics are long-chain polymers whose structures are unrecognizable to enzymes found in nature, she would need to engineer enzymes capable of digesting the bonds in inert plastics.
    She received a thin envelope from the Registrar’s Office at Cornell. She turned it over in her hands. That winter, imagining the possibility of rejection, she had searched the literature for other labs, other researchers who were doing anything comparable to Leach’s work. There were labs in Japan that had made some of the initial discoveries, but Leach was leading the pack by a long way. And she wasn’t about to move to Japan. She tore the envelope open. The single page told her, in the language of academic bureaucracy, that she had been accepted, on a full scholarship plus stipend.
    8
    Lily Lake Road
    Art rolls another smoke. After licking the paper, he picks a fleck of tobacco from his tongue with his thumb and finger. He pulls a stick from the fire and raises the glowing end to his smoke.
    â€œWhy are you telling me this?”
    The fire pops and a spark shoots into the sky, one flame of orange against the millions of blue stars. After our birth and before our death we spin a web of stories so intricate that it’s easy to become tangled within it. There are too many reasons and I don’t want to lose the thread, so I pick one and pull it down.
    â€œWe tell stories to make sense of our lives. My dad said that we remember what we don’t understand. Like you told me about getting bombed near Sicily because you haven’t figured it out yet.”
    â€œPhooey. I’m only trying to forget it.” He drags on his smoke, then exhales. “If you’re gonna keep talking, you’re sure as hell gonna have to lubricate my ears.”
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œWhisky. Canadian Club would be nice.”
    At least he didn’t say gin. He puts his hand on my knee to help him rise from his straw bale. He wipes some chaff from his pants. His hand reaches up to straighten his hat, then grabs his rifle.
    â€œHow are you getting home?”
    â€œMy truck’s parked up the road by Martin’s.”
    Once he’s gone, I piss, brush my teeth, and get into my tent. From my sleeping bag I watch the coals of the fire shimmer. This is a hard life I’ve chosen, but there are small things, like the freedom of living in a tent, that I love. There is nothing between me and the stars but canvas, thin enough for that orange firelight to throw shadows on it. I am being hardened off, like a tomato transplant, being made ready for whatever is to come.
    *
    Listening to LPs, Winter 1977
    My earliest true memory, not one that I recorded from the telling and retelling by my dad: A black disc spinning, circle of purple paper in the centre, the sound of mandolin, guitars, and an organ.
    Learning to skate, 1979
    It was cold enough after Christmas to start making the skating rink. Dad rented a lawn roller, filled it with water, and pulled it back and forth over the snow to pack it down. After that he used a sprinkler to turn the snow to ice. Mom was out there every morning, setting up the sprinkler before I was up. After