The Way of a Siluan
Chapter 7: Hiding Devin Strong, part II
Ever since they got the news that his mother had passed away, Shie kept a close eye on her husband Devin. Devin knew his parents only briefly: as an infant before he was taken to the Jedi temple, and as an adult after he left the Jedi Order to marry Shie. Though his adult acquaintance with his parents was brief, Devin formed a deep, intuitive bond with his mother. Her death was an unexpected blow, but the quiet groundedness he had cultivated as a Jedi served him well, and he bore her passing with strength in the face of his sadness. It was only after the funeral that Shie noticed something change in the way Devin carried himself. He looked through things, not at them. He seemed broken, shattered even.
Nevertheless, she had no chance to talk with him about it. Devin's father Vince was a workaholic in the truest sense of the word, and where some men might have drowned their sorrow at the bar, he buried himself in work, and dragged Devin and Shie into helping him haul up the old well pump that served the farm house and re-service it down to the last O-ring. By the time they'd reinstalled the pump and reconnected the control box, it was dark and well past dinner time. Vince gulped a can of Galactic Star Meal Replacement and went to bed, leaving Devin and Shie to themselves.
It was the first chance they'd had to be alone together all day, and so Shie was surprised when the first thing Devin did was to turn on the radio.
...price increase will continue to be a dominant factor affect farm revenues in cycles to come, the radio said. Shie looked at Devin quizzically, and he motioned for her to wait.
This is Quid Haney. Join me again next time for Mind Your Farm Business on Galactic Ag Radio! There was a short music interlude, and the radio voice changed to another announcer. Now for your hourly news briefing from the Galactic Rural News Service, now brought to you by the Imperial Ministry of Communication. Today's top story: The war is over! Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is now hailed as Galactic Emperor after putting down a treacherous uprising by the Jedi Knights and negotiating a favourable end to the Clone Wars. We'll have more of this important story on News In Depth at 1300h. In other news, a reactor malfunction at the AgriCorps station on Deema has killed the majority of agricultural extension agents gathered for a symposium there. Fertilizer prices are up as investors speculate...
Devin reached over and flicked the radio off again. Shie sat stunned for a moment.
"But how could that even be true?" she said.
"It isn't. Garth was there, on Deema. The reactor didn't malfunction, the Republic's own troops blew it up. And in the temple, they didn't just put down an uprising. They killed every person there down to the last child."
"So then you can't go back to work at the AgriCorps station."
"There is no AgriCorps. They're all dead, Shie, they're all dead, even guys like me who weren't part of the Jedi Order anymore. Everyone. Virk, Lemma, Master Lu, they're all..." Devin broke down.
As she held her husband in her arms, Shie felt it would nearly break her to see the way he cried. But when she had finally led him to bed and gotten him to sleep, she too chugged a can of Galactic Star Meal Replacement, and started to work out a plan.
The next morning, as soon as Devin was finished eating a solid breakfast, she began, "Devin, what do you think of coming to live here?"
"Here, like here in Moosachu?"
"Here on the farm with your dad."
"But Shie...the Moosachu Plains are nothing like Deema. It gets cold here. We've never had to face prairie winters before. And this has got to be the most backwater part of a backwater planet."
"Yes, I know, but you need to hide. I need you to hide," she said, and hugging her rounded belly. "And this kid needs you to hide."
"Yes, but here?"
"Vince is the only grandparent our kid's going to have."
"But what about your work?"
"I'm sure Vince would be happy to have both of us helping on the farm, and I want to be home for the first couple years anyways. Besides, I already called Nechako AgMech...they always have part-time work for a farm mechanic. I'm not so keen on working at Deema Farmserve that I have to go back there."
Devin leaned back in his chair and looked out the window at the endless fields. Maybe Shie was right and Garth was right and staying in Moosachu was a good idea, but he still felt to grief-weary to settle on where to go now that they couldn't go back to Deema. And there were other problems. "I mean, we could stay here," he said slowly, "but even here at some point I'll have to use my ID card for something, and then some government computer goes 'ding ding! Devin Strong here!' and they've found me."
"Devin Strong doesn't exist anymore," Shie said, with a wave of her hand. "Devin Strong was at the AgriCorps symposium with all the other support staff when the reactor blew up. Devin Baxter, on the other hand, Devin Baxter is the prodigal son who just came back to help his poor old dad on the farm."
"Everyone and their droid is called Devin Baxter!"
"Exactly!" Shie said. "We'll be just another Devin and Shie Baxter, just another Jane and John Doe."
"And what slime bag on the black market are we going to have to deal with to get fake ID?"
Shie smiled. At least she had Devin worked up now. "I was about to get to that. If we claim to have lost our ID, Vince can vouch for us to get replacements, and sharing his surname will make it seem all the more legit. All we have to do is go down to the Co-op to fill out the forms. I already called the planetary admin office to check about that."
Devin looked down into his empty mug. He was about to speak when his father Vince trudged in without a greeting and poured himself a cup of coffee without sitting down.
"So I suppose you'll be taking off again this morning, or shall I say this afternoon?" Vince looked pointedly at his watch, and then at Devin.
"Well, we were just talking about that," Devin said. Perhaps it was the need to give a no-nonsense answer to his non-nonsense father, but whatever the reason, as Devin spoke he realized that he'd made up his mind. "We were thinking with the kid on the way it might make sense for us to come live here in Moosachu, and with mom gone it might make sense for me to help out on the farm. What do you think?"
"I'd say you were a damn idiot to leave behind a decent job on Deema to come to a backwater place like here," his father said.
Devin sighed. "If you haven't already heard on the radio, I don't really have a job to go back to, between the reactor blowing up at AgriCorps and what's happened with the Jedi Order in general."
"Oh, that's right. Damn Jedi! So they finally stuck their necks out too far. I told your mother not to let that 'Master Lu' take you to the temple. Pah!"
Shie cast a worried glance at Devin, unsure how he would take this, but with perfect Jedi dispassion he simply said, "It would seem advisable for me to leave all things Jedi behind and start over here. If you'll vouch for me, I'd like to get a new ID card with your surname instead of mom's and just focus on helping you here at the farm."
"So you're going to take your wife away from a decent job? Don't forget you've got a kid on the way!"
"Vince, it's OK," Shie said. "Really. I want to stay home for the first few years at least, and I was just a cog in the machine at Deema Farmserve anyways." Shie spoke with more confidence that she felt; leaving Deema meant leaving behind everything she'd ever known, but Vince was satisfied with her show of confidence.
"Well, if you're both stuck on it, you can put up another house here on the south ridge," Vince said, and drained his mug. "There's plenty of work to be done here by anyone who has a mind to do it, and I sure don't have a mind to. The farm was your mom's idea, not mine. If you want to run it it's all yours."
Devin was surprised at this. His dad wasn't normally supportive of his ideas. "Thanks, Dad," was all he managed to say.
"Well, if you aren't leaving I won't say goodbye. There's a to-do list on the computer in the barn, de-worming the herd and stuff like that. I've got a job to do over at the Larkin's place." With that Vince plunked his empty mug down on the table and turned to go. "If you want to make dinner tonight that's fine by me!" he called from the door, and was gone again.
Devin looked out the window again at the unpeopled grassland. The Moosachu Plains were so vast, so lonely. "Shie, how in the galaxy are we going to make a life here?" he asked, turning to face his wife again. What he didn't ask aloud was Who am I now without the AgriCorps? Am I the only one left?
Shie reached out and put her hands over his, and their eyes met. "We can do this," she said. "We'll run the farm, we'll raise our kids, and everything will be OK."
I am so lucky have this woman, Devin thought. I only hope she's right.