There was a Decree against James.

Not him personally—everyone like him, kids who were born after their parents had already had given birth to two children. Actually, James didn't know if there was anyone else like him. Maybe he was the only one of his kind? Maybe he was the only one. He wasn't supposed to exist. They did things, which he didn’t fully understand right now, to women after they had their second baby, so they wouldn't have any more. And if there was a mistake, and a woman got pregnant anyway, she was supposed to get rid of it.

That was how Mother had explained it, years ago, the first and only time James had asked why he had to hide all the time. He had been just six years old at that moment.

Before that, he had thought only very little kids had to stay out of sight. He had thought, as soon as he was as old as Billy and Mark, he would get to go around like they did, riding to the backfield and even into town with Dad, hanging their heads and arms out the pickup truck’s window. He had thought, as soon as he got as old as Billy and Mark, he could play in the front yard and kick the ball out into the road if he wanted. He had thought, as soon as he got as old as Billy and Mark, he could go to school.

They complained about it, whining, "Jeez, we gotta do homework!" and, "Who cares about spelling?" But they also talked about games at recess, and friends who they shared candy with at lunchtime or loaned them pocket knives to carve different stuff with.

Somehow, James never got as old as Billy and Mark. The day of his sixth birthday, Mother baked a cake, a special one with raspberry jam dripping down the sides, his favorite. At dinner that night she put six candles on the top and placed it in front of James and said, "Make a wish." Staring into the ring of candles, proud that the number of his years finally made a ring, all around the cake, James suddenly remembered another cake, another ring of six candles. Mark's. He remembered Mark's sixth birthday. He remembered it because, even with the cake in front of him, Mark had been whining, "But I wanna have a party. Robert had a party on his birthday. He got to have three friends over." Mother had said, "Ssh," and looked from Mark to James, saying something with her eyes that James didn't understand.

Startled by the memory, James let out his breath. All of his candles flickered, and one went out. Billy and Mark laughed.

"You ain't getting that wish," Mark said. "Baby. Can't even blow out candles."

James wanted to cry. He'd forgotten even to make a wish, and if he hadn't been surprised he would have been able to blow out all six candles. He knew he could have. And then he would have gotten—oh, he didn't know. A chance to ride to town in the pickup truck. A chance to play in the front yard. A chance to go to school. Instead, all he had was a strange memory that couldn't be right? Surely James was thinking about Mark's seventh birthday, or maybe his eighth. Mark couldn't have known Robert when he was six, because he would have been hiding then, like James. James thought about it for three days. He trailed along behind his Mother as she hung wash out on the line, made strawberry preserves, scrubbed the bathroom floor.

Several times he started to ask, "How old do I have to be before people can see me?" But something stopped him every time. His mind hesitated to ask the question he wanted to ask as if deep down he knew the answer and he just feared asking it would make it a reality.

Finally, on the fourth day, after Dad, Billy, and Mark scraped back their chairs from the breakfast table and headed out to the barn, James crouched by the kitchen's side window, one he wasn't supposed to look out from because people driving by might catch a glimpse of his face. He tilted his head to the side and raised up just enough that his left eye was above the level of the windowsill. He watched Billy and Mark running in the sunlight, the tops of their hog boots thumping against their knees They were in full sight of the whole world, it seemed, and they didn't care. They were racing to the front door of the barn, not the side one off the backyard that James always had to use because it was hidden from the road. James turned around and slid to the floor, out of sight.

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"Billy and Mark never had to hide did they?" he asked. Mother was scrubbing the remains of scrambled eggs out of the skillet. She turned her head and looked at him carefully.

"No," she said.

"Then why do I?"

She dried her hands and left the sink, something James had almost never seen her do if there were still dirty dishes left to be washed. She crouched beside him and smoothed his hair back from his forehead.

"Oh, James, do you really need to know? Isn't it enough to know—things are just different for you?"

He thought about that. Mother was always saying he was the only one who would ever sit on her lap and cuddle. She still read bedtime stories to him, and he knew Billy and Mark thought that was sissified. Was that what she meant? But he was just younger. He'd grow up. Wouldn't he be like them then?

With unusual stubbornness, James insisted, "I want to know why I'm different. I want to know why I have to hide all the time."

So Mother told him. Later, he wished he'd asked more questions. But at the time it was all he could do to listen to what she told him. He felt like he was drowning in the flow of her words.

"It just happened," she said. "You just happened. And we wanted you. I wouldn't even let your dad talk about... getting rid of you."

James pictured himself as a baby, left in a cardboard box by the side of a road somewhere, the way Dad said people used to do with kittens, back when people were allowed to have pets. But maybe that wasn't what Mother meant.

"The Population Decree hadn't been around long, then, and I had always wanted lots of kids. Before, I mean. Getting pregnant with you was like…… a miracle. I thought the Government would get over their foolishness, maybe even by the time you were born, and then I'd have a new baby to show everyone."

"But you didn't," James managed to say. "You hid me." His voice sounded strangely hoarse, like it belonged to someone else. It felt like it was not James who was talking but someone inside of him was doing all the talking because whoever was talking to Mother right now wasn’t something James would had ever done when Mother had always showed so much love.

Mother nodded. "Once I started showing, I didn't go anywhere. That wasn't hard to do…… where do I go, anyway? I didn't let Billy and Mark leave the farm, for fear they'd say something. I didn't even say anything about you in letters to my Mother and sister. I wasn't really scared then. It was just superstition. I didn't want to brag. I thought I'd go to the hospital to give birth. I wasn't going to keep you secret forever. But then...”

"Then what?" James asked.

Mother wouldn't look at him.

"Then they started running all that on the radio about the Population Police, how the Population Police had ways of finding out everything, how they'd do anything to enforce their ways. James glanced toward the hulking radio in the living room. He wasn't allowed to play it. Was that why?

"And your dad started hearing rumors in town, about other babies..."

James shivered. Mother was looking far off into the distance, to where the rows of new corn plants met the horizon.

"I always wanted a John, too," she said. "Billy, Mark, James, and John, bless the bed that I lie on. But then I thank the Lord that I have you, at least. And it's all worked out, the hiding, hasn't it?"

The smile she offered him was wobbly. He felt he had to help her.

"Yes," he said.

And somehow, after that, he didn't mind hiding so much anymore. Who wanted to meet strangers, anyway? Who wanted to go to school, where, if Billy and Mark were to be believed, the teachers yelled, and the other boys would double-cross you if you didn't watch out? He was special. He was secret. He belonged at home, where his Mother always let him have the first piece of apple pie because he was there and the other boys were away. Home, where he could cradle the new baby pigs in

the barn, climb the trees at the edge of the woods, throw snowballs at the posts of the clothesline. Home, where the backyard always beckoned, always safe and protected by the house and the barn and the woods.

Until they took the woods away.