Buttons
By Mark Jude Poirier

Visitors first see a series of large-scale ceramic structures which details the biology of freshwater mussels. The three-foot mucket larva encysting itself on the gill of a salamander is bathed in a lurid red light that accentuates its underdeveloped excurrent siphon - a short tube that's curved into a grin, lips and all, but, as guests read on the plaque below, actually functions like an anus. The hands-on area allows museum visitors to handle shells and identify mussel species from the Mississippi: wabash pig-toes, creek heel-splitters, monkey-faces, winged maple-leafs, pimple-backs . . .

The west wall of the museum is devoted to the Badde Family, once known as The Royal Family of Pearl Button Making. Faded black-and-white photographs feature the Baddes among their factory workers, hunched over trays of finished buttons, or sorting shells from a conveyer belt. One photo shows dapper brothers Thomas and Zilo Badde hosting the variety show at the Button Days Festival in 1947. That year's Miss Pearl Button stands alongside of them, grins strenuously, tosses button samples into the crowd.

No part of the Badde history after the Great Button Crash in the 1950s is presented on the wall.

But the docent, who wears dark glasses, will recount post-Crash Badde Family history to any visitor who'll listen.

In 1965, Zilo Badde II was forced to move his family - his wife Georgia, his sister-in-law Trudie, and his three children: Zilo III, Susan, and Sandra - from here in Muscatine, Iowa, over a thousand miles west to Southern Arizona. When the Japanese started to mass produce plastic buttons in 1956, his family's pearl button company began to lose money rapidly. And besides, three consecutive seasons of skitter-worm plague had rendered half the mussels in the Mississippi rubbery stinky flaps of floating gray tissue - useless for button making. One of his employees, a shell accountant, waxed enthusiastic about Arizona, how everyone there was rich, living off copper-mining money in new stucco homes with peanut-shaped swimming pools they could use nine months out of the year. Zilo II had thought he could sell his family's button-making equipment, machines his father had designed and built himself. But he couldn't even give away the polishing tumblers, grinding wheels, or classifying instruments. No one wanted them. All things associated with pearl buttons were sad reminders to Muscatinites of a time that passed as quickly as it came.

Lucky for us, the town elders had the foresight to enlist the high-school football team in stowing a few button machines in the basement of the town hall, which is why they're here in the museum today.

The Button Boom of the early twentieth century had been a mirthful, prosperous time in this town. Summers brought hordes of hearty young men and women from all over the Lower Mississippi Valley to camp along the river. They spent their days in small boats, trolling for clams with special river-bottom-dragging implements called "crowfoots" - which were, of course, designed by the original Zilo Badde. As the sun set, the clam trollers would dock their boats, pull in the crowfoots, and descend upon Muscatine, crowding the taverns and dance halls.

Before Zilo II moved his family, he sold the emptied Badde Button Factory to an out-of-town businessman who turned it into a roller rink, which soon closed. A few years later, hippie artists bought the defunct rink and used it as cooperative gallery space for their psychedelic paintings. When a well-connected New York coed was found dead in the studio, sprawled on a soiled mattress under a butterfly mural, the hippies vacated.

Bored, the more diplomatic visitors will excuse themselves at this point. Others, intrigued by the docent's mysterious dark glasses and demeanor, will press for more information about the Badde family just so they can continue to watch him.

Today, the factory is a dilapidated storage facility for retreaded tires. It's only three blocks west of the museum. You'll see it on your right as you drive out of town.

This is tragic, if you consider that in 1943, American Laundry Digest featured a four-page spread on the Badde Button Company, in which they called Badde Buttons "the toughest and most attractive pearl buttons in the country." Even more tragic: the Badde Button Company was once responsible for thirty-six percent of all American freshwater pearl buttons manufactured. That was in 1939. In '48, the Badde Button Company produced twenty-eight percent. Not once in the forty-nine years of business did the percentage fall below nineteen.

The docent pauses. Sniffs. He guides the visitors to the rear of the museum where an exhibit begins with a black and white mounted poster of Zilo Badde and the raised plastic words: ENTREPRENEUR, INVENTOR, GENIUS. If one of the visitors wants to know more, if he or she asks relevant and intelligent questions and doesn't make fun of Zilo Badde's wide-set amphibious eyes, if his or her own eyes are full of hope and compassion, the docent will offer a chair next to his metal desk up front, and continue with the Badde family history.

Zilo II never mined copper in Arizona, but instead opened a large chicken farm southeast of Tucson in the Rincon Mountains. He had bought the chicken farm from a Navajo man for next to nothing, and exercised the same Badde business proficiency that his forefathers had. Within a year, it was the top egg-producing plant west of the Mississippi. Two generations later, Zilo IV dug around the Tucson Public Library, typing "pearl buttons" and "Muscatine, Iowa" into the information systems, Xeroxing, printing, cross-referencing - while his twin brother Tommy socialized and pursued athletics.

"Wait," the museum visitors say. "You skipped two Badde Family generations."

"Chickens and eggs," the docent says. "Just chickens and eggs."

Like visitors to this museum, Zilo IV was intrigued by his grandfather's financial sense and his great-grandfather's knack for invention. The pearl button polishing process which Zilo I had invented, where revolving kegs of pumice, hydrochloric acid, sawdust, and friction transformed the crude circles of clam shell into lustrous pearl buttons, had earned him a short entry in his great grandson's favorite book: The Unsung Heroes of American Industry.

"Your great-grandfather's inventions didn't stop at pearl buttons," Zilo II - Grandpa - told Zilo IV one hot afternoon as they collected eggs in the colossal hen house. They examined the shell membranes under microscopes - a treat for Zilo IV. "He invented Chapstick before the Chapstick company did. Mixed ground-up mussel shells with petroleum jelly and sap from river oaks. All the trollers had green lips that summer." Zilo IV's father, Zilo III, a wan man, spent his days slumped in an air-conditioned cubicle above the egg house, talking on the phone, pecking at his keyboard. Zilo IV didn't understand his father, was disappointed that his father wasn't inventing something or actively working to expand the family's business. Grandpa told Zilo IV that he had heard entrepreneurial genius skips every third generation, and that he was counting on Zilo IV and his twin Tommy to carry on the Badde family traditions. Zilo IV was unpopular in school. He was called Chicken-Boy, or Egg-Boy epithets perpetuated by the foul-smelling egg sandwiches he ordinarily brought for lunch. He kept to himself, ignored most of his classmates, and participated in no sports. He couldn't ignore his twin brother Tommy, though. Tommy was seven minutes younger, and quite a charmer, even as a toddler, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance from on top of the coffee table.

Grandpa always invited Tommy to the egg house, whereas Zilo IV had to ask, and was often met with "Why isn't Tommy here to see this?" Grandpa attended all of Tommy's sporting events and cheered loudly, yelled "Show 'em you're Badde! Show 'em you're Badde, Tommy!" Zilo IV and Tommy were the only young Baddes; Aunt Susan and Aunt Sandra were homely and unmarried. Fortunately, from an early age, both Zilo IV and Tommy expressed interest in the family business - Zilo IV more explicitly. Zilo IV spent his spare time in the library, hiding from Tommy's bully friends who liked to punch the wind out of him. He read hundreds of books - mostly about inventors and zoology. In high school, he watched other students from behind fat calculus and physics tomes, convincing himself that their lives, full of juvenile high jinks and intrigue, were nothing to envy.

In the spring of his junior year at Canyon del Oro High, Zilo IV took the SAT. Opening the mailbox in June was like opening an oven - the heat was palpable. But there, under a few bills, sat a large envelope from ETS in Princeton, New Jersey. A 1590. Almost perfect. He'd missed one, and even though he'd expected it, he was enraged. He hadn't known the meaning of uxorious. When he'd looked up the word after the test, he sighed, and spat on page 638 of his Oxford Desk Dictionary. He knew he'd never have a wife, anyway. He was sixteen years old and had never kissed a girl. He hadn't tried or wanted to. He'd resigned himself to asexuality early on.

The listeners, even the most rapt ones, will stop the docent at this point, and ask how he knows all these personal details. The docent replies that Zilo IV documented it all in diaries and continues to chronicle his life today. "Zilo IV is only twenty-nine years old, and knowing that he's a part of one of the most important families in American industry, he's quite divulgent for accuracy's sake. On the last day of each month, another detailed diary, swaddled in bubble-wrap and butcher paper, arrives in the museum's mailbox."

Tommy Badde in high school: Senior Class President, 3.9 GPA in advanced classes, National Honor Society, Treasurer of the Young Republicans, varsity tennis and soccer - senior and junior years, First Place in Tucson Science Fair for The Effects of High Vitamin Diets on Chicken Immune Systems (his grandfather's idea), Volunteer at St. Joseph's Soup Kitchen. But sadly, only an 1150 on his SAT.

After history class one morning, the twins stood by their lockers in the crowded hall. Tommy wore a blue and gold letterman's jacket. Zilo IV wore a lawn-green down vest over a black DR. WHO T-shirt. Both boys had the Badde wide-set eyes and dimpled nose tip, only Tommy was tanned from his afternoons on the courts and fields, and worked his face like an exotic supermodel. Zilo IV didn't work his.

"A dollar per point," Zilo IV said flatly. "A dollar for each point, not a dollar for each point by which I improve your pathetic score."

"That's extortion," Tommy said.

"Your misunderstanding of basic words like extortion is why you scored a measly 1150."

"You're an asshole, Egg-Boy, and I have a complete understanding of the word 'asshole'." But Tommy wanted more than anything to attend Dartmouth, the Ivy League school farthest from Tucson and his embarrassing family, so he paid his highly-intelligent twin brother $1,450 to take the test for him and raise his score. He was admitted to Dartmouth and eventually wrote for the hyper-conservative Dartmouth Review. He penned articles like THREE FRESHMAN WOMEN KILL THEIR UNBORN BABIES, SODOMY CLUB'S MEMBERSHIP DECLINES, and CHECK OUT YOUR MINORITY PROFESSOR - YOU HAVE A RIGHT. Grandpa was proud of Tommy and always taped his latest article to the refrigerator in the back room of the egg house. During holiday breaks, Zilo IV ripped down the articles - he didn't care about the politics, he just hated to see Tommy's name in print.

Zilo IV had been flooded with shiny brochures and catalogs from the nation's finest colleges and universities ever since he scored the 1590. In the end, he chose Caltech, where the average SAT score wasn't much lower than his own.

Everyone at Caltech was as brilliant as Zilo. The fat sophomore tuba-player who smelled of onions: brilliant. The dreadlocked woman from Manhattan: brilliant. The acne-ravaged basketball player: brilliant. Zilo liked it this way. He learned during the first few days that he could talk to people about particle physics, graphic novels, or endocrinology. He could read or play on his computer for hours, and no one would pester him. He could walk across the lush Pasadena campus without being shoved or tripped or ridiculed. Other students sat next to him in the cafeteria and spoke to him. They called him by his real name and invited him to parties. And for once, he wasn't smarter than any of his teachers. When Zilo woke the morning after the first freshman mixer where he had canceled his inhibitions with two warm Millers and danced to German techno music, his face hurt from grinning. He grabbed a pen and his notebook and scrawled the following: "In my four years at Caltech, I will double-major in biochemistry and mechanical engineering with a focus on chicken processing, and I will have sex." He'd abandoned his plans of a monastic life when he first walked into his dorm and saw the young men and women carrying boxes and stereos and potted plants and bulletin boards and suitcases and trunks. His hall-mates. Both genders. Popcorn pajama parties, all-night cram sessions, intramural coed sports, cheap peeks as they headed to the showers! And they weren't mocking him. Most even smiled. The gamy odor of his hall was what he thought sex might smell like. Each time he walked down it, he breathed deeply, and the stink shot from his nasal membranes to his testicles, making them tingle.

The diploma was something he'd have to wait for. He would read the texts, attend the labs and lectures, take the tests, write the papers and programs, and in four years, he'd graduate with honors and move back to Tucson to revolutionize the chicken farm.

He didn't have to wait too long for the sex.

The docent pauses here, and asks the listeners if he should go on. Everyone says, "Yes, go on! Go on!"

"The details from the monthly diaries are quite graphic," the docent warns, but the listeners just sit there, mouths slightly agape, and wait for him to elaborate.

Zilo looked in the Yellow Pages and walked seven blocks to a faded pink cinder-block building: ADULT SHOP. He first noticed the smell inside, like cherry-pie filling. Nothing like his dorm's odor. Then he noticed the bright slickness of it all. Shelves of Silly-Putty-colored dildoes, one shaped like a fist. Books. Magazines with titles like Young Shavers and Newcummers. Mannequins dressed in leather. Inflatable women and men. Wigs on Styrofoam heads.

"Can I help you find something?" the clerk, a skinny, sunburned man, asked Zilo.

"I may need a little time," Zilo said.

"What are you into?"

"I'm not clear on that," Zilo said. "I was hoping something here would pique my interest."

The clerk hefted a large book from a shelf below the dildoes. He placed it on the counter. "This book has everything except animals and children." The title, in squishy, bubble-gum letters: VSECHNO. And just below, in smaller, standard typeface, the poor English translation: EVER-THING.

"It's Czech, and it has it all. Penetration shots, and lots of photos of men with women, women with women, men with men. Everything."

Back in his dorm room, with the door locked and the blinds closed, Zilo flipped through his new book. One page featured two men engaged in sex. The English translation read, "Michael receives to buttocks." A man with an impossibly large penis: "John has spacious bird." A lesbian love-scene: "Zuzan kisses breast-wart of Sally." All the photos and their captions, even the few Zilo found intriguing, left Zilo amused instead of aroused.

"So?" the visitors ask the docent. "Did he ever have sex?"

In his material science lab the following week, Zilo noticed a fair-haired ballerino smirking at him as the instructor drew a schematic on the board. Zilo had seen the ballerino before. Todd from Canada. He had performed with celebrated dancers in Europe and done cancer research in Toronto. He had the face of a mail-away doll: smooth, white, almost shiny, like it had been genetically planned and carefully molded. As the students filed out of the lab, Todd smirked one last time at Zilo and haughtily flipped his blond bangs from his eyes. Zilo followed the ballerino as he swaggered back to the dorm.

In the cross-hatched rays of afternoon light that seeped though the closed Venetian blinds, Todd fellated Zilo. The unsummoned gurgles and coos that slipped from Zilo's mouth were surprising and somewhat ridiculous, especially when Zilo found he couldn't control their loudness.

It was over in less than two minutes. When Zilo zipped his trousers, his heart racing away in his chest, he felt like he was forgetting something important. He thanked Todd, kissed his forehead, and mussed his soft hair. Zilo then meandered around campus for a few hours before dinner, wondering.

A few weeks later, he began to have sex with Linda, the woman who lived in a dorm room below his. They'd eat dinner together in the cafeteria, go to their respective rooms for a few hours of study, then Zilo would walk downstairs and knock softly on her door. He enjoyed her giant frizz of red hair, and her large, pillowy breasts. He spent many hours with his head buried in those breasts, as she yawned and stared blankly at the ceiling.

One night, as he kissed her nipples, he muttered, "I love breast warts of you."

"What?"

"It's from a Czech porno book I have. It's a bad translation," Zilo explained.

"It's funny."

"Not if you have to explain it." She sighed loudly. "I'm bored. And I'm behind in bio-chem. Maybe we should quit this for a while." She sat up in bed and covered her breasts with a pillow.

Zilo wasn't too upset about the break-up. The same uneasy feeling - like he was forgetting something - had nagged him each time he had messed around with Linda. Sometimes he was left with a hollow feeling in his stomach, almost like the early stages of heartburn.

The rugby player was next. His name was Bradford, and with his buzzed hair and muscular neck, he looked like the guys who bullied Zilo in high school. Each time Bradford walked near him, Zilo flinched. When Bradford sat at the same table in the cafeteria, Zilo's throat clenched in fear, and he could no longer swallow his food. This ended one Friday night in November after Zilo had downed his regular three Millers at a dorm party. Bradford busted into the party, flanked by two of his meaty teammates, and handed Zilo a large bottle of Irish beer. Before Zilo had time to get nervous, Bradford leaned down and whispered, "You're just about the cutest."

Zilo woke in Bradford's hairy arms the next morning, bothered again by the nervous hollow in his stomach.

Jill, Dover, Bryce, Bettina, Margie, Courtney, and Ko. Zilo stopped after ten partners: five men and five women, four ethnicities. None of his encounters, even repeated encounters with the same partner, left him feeling good, and that spring, a week before final exams, he made a decision as he pondered his first year at Caltech. He opened his notebook, crossed out "have sex" and wrote, "develop a meaningful (not sexual) relationship."

He listened to psychologists on the radio and read self-help books. When he met someone new, he no longer thought of sex. Instead, he evaluated their demeanor, their poise, their sense of humor. Could I sit across from this person at the breakfast table and discuss the newspaper? Would this person laugh at my jokes? What kind of a parent would this person be? Does this person like eggs? For the remaining three years at Caltech, Zilo had sex with no one. Each time he had the urge, he'd tick off the questions in his mind, and even if the would-be partner passed the test, he'd remember the hollow feeling in his stomach, and his libido would shrivel.

Zilo refined his chicken-processing ideas during his senior year. He had designed and constructed a de-beaking machine to prevent closely-quartered hens from pecking each other's eyes, performed countless hormone experiments, and twice per week, drove the twisting freeways to UCLA where he worked with a world-renowned food engineer from Tokyo.

Zilo's family, even Tommy who had graduated two weeks earlier, traveled to Pasadena for his graduation. They took him out to dinner and toasted his academic achievements. His grandfather sat next to him, and during the main course of enchiladas, he told him that he couldn't wait for him to start working at the chicken farm. "I looked over the papers you sent me, and I think we can implement all your ideas before the summer's over."

"Great," Zilo said.

"You've got a brain in there like your great-grandfather's," he said, as he knocked on Zilo's head. "You're an inventor and a scientist." Zilo grinned. The hair on the back of his neck stood in a ticklish way. His ears warmed. "Hold on there, Grandpa," Tommy said from across the table. "I think my proposal takes precedence over any of Zilo's."

"I've been waiting for your proposal for eight months," Grandpa said. "What could take you so long to propose?"

Tommy cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. "F'neggs," he said proudly.

Often the listener will gasp. "I remember F'neggs! What happened to F'neggs? The Badde family started F'neggs?"

The docent will nod calmly and continue.

"What?" Grandpa said.

"F'neggs. Fun shapes of scrambled eggs for kids of all ages."

"You're joking, right?" Zilo delighted in his grandfather's incredulity, but as Tommy went on to explain F'neggs - how there were already cold cereals, waffles, and oatmeal for kids, so why not eggs? - and his grandfather nodded and repeated, "uh-huh," Zilo became bewildered, then frustrated.

Eggy would be the non-gender-specific superhero marketing mascot of F'neggs. The product would be made in four shapes: stars, crescent moons, planets, and rockets. It would be available in four flavors: Ham, Bacon, Nacho, and Plain. Tommy continued to babble, now about marketing strategies, focus groups, and packaging.

"How would the scrambled eggs retain these fun shapes?" Zilo interrupted.

"Ever heard of aspic?" Tommy said.

"And why the space theme?"

"Eggy's from outer space, Zilo," Tommy snapped. "Try listening."

"I think this Eggy character is wonderful," Grandpa said. "I think F'neggs are wonderful!"

Everyone at the table clapped for Tommy, except Zilo who rolled his eyes, then asked, "How much per unit? I'm assuming each of these F'neggs will be three ounces."

"I haven't determined that," Tommy said.

Zilo did some quick calculations in his head. He saw compounds forming. He followed hormones as they coursed through a hen's system. "If you really want to develop this absurd idea, I can guarantee a three-ounce unit for under seven cents - any of the flavors, any of the shapes. In fact, through intravenous feeding and hormonal manipulation, the hens will produce pre-flavored eggs that will hold their fun shapes without adding gelatin." He thought for a few seconds more, and then promised that the eggs would even contain morsels that resembled ham chunks, bacon bits, or nacho-cheese balls.

"To our Zilo!" Grandpa toasted, raising his glass with one hand, and gripping Zilo's shoulder with the other.

"Remember," Tommy said, "F'neggs were my idea."

The docent becomes silent, closes his eyes tightly, and grips the edge of his desk. His lips move quickly, but he says nothing the visitors can hear. Dark Cornish are crossbred with Araucana. The resultant pullets are used in the F'neggs Project. At nine weeks, pullets are deposited headfirst into Prep-Machine #3, beak aligned with red arrow on the front of the depository. They are de-beaked, and the consequent laceration, 'beak hole', is sprayed with 15 ml of 10 M Sulfacetamide solution, and daubed with .85 g Neomycin/Polymycin B Sulfates ointment . . .

The docent shudders, then proceeds with the history.

In November, the first F'neggs were produced. After government approval, they were test-marketed in Kansas City, Mobile, and Baltimore. Zilo and Tommy spent hours reading returned questionnaires. Common queries and criticisms: "Why are the ham chunks blue?" or "The nacho balls are gritty" or "Eggy is dumb." Nothing serious. No allergic reactions or other medical problems, no complaints of utter disgust. After Zilo adjusted the ham and nacho cheese hens' diets, F'neggs hit the freezers of supermarkets across the country. The Eggy commercials ran on the three major networks, once every thirty minutes each Saturday morning, and all week on Nickelodeon and MTV. Demand was higher than projected. Kids clamored for Eggy merchandise, wrote letters addressed to Eggy, called the Badde Chicken Farm, and www.fneggs.com was often impossible to access because of heavy traffic. Most supermarkets had to start F'neggs waiting lists to avoid the mobs on days when shipments arrived. Ricky Martin and Cher were photographed buying F'neggs. Articles about Tommy and Zilo ran in influential business magazines. The Badde Chicken Farm halted all production other than F'neggs. Several more Prep-Machines were constructed, and millions of pullets were prepped. Oscar Meyer, Louis Rich, and Frank Perdue each tried to copy F'neggs, but their products never held their shapes, and their flavors like Pizza Party, Hot-Dawg, and Buttery were flops. The kids wanted the real thing: F'neggs, each box featuring the smiling cartoon Eggy riding a rocket through outer space, each unit holding its shape better than a kitchen sponge.

Zilo developed a crush on a Pullet Depositor named Gina. He watched her working in the factory from his laboratory upstairs. She stuffed each of the squirming, squawking pullets into Prep-Machine #3F with care, her tongue sticking out a little in concentration. Colorful plastic barrettes held her long white hair out of her face, and every time Zilo walked by, she was humming old disco tunes. Zilo liked her calm nature, how her serene expression never changed. He liked her juvenile hairstyle. Watching her helped him forget his work, the tiresome hours in the lab under fluorescent lights, injecting hens and concocting additives.

Zilo remained true to the promise he had made to himself years earlier: Try to develop a meaningful (not sexual) relationship. He asked Gina out on dates where they'd be surrounded by people. He took her on picnics in crowded parks, to movies, to museums. Whenever they were alone, he'd make up an excuse, and leave. She called him after six dates. "What gives?" she asked. "We've been out a lot, and we haven't even held hands."

"I don't want to rush into anything," Zilo said.

"Is it because I work for you?" Gina said. "I'm not one of those sue-happy sexual harassment sluts, if that's what you're worried about."

"I don't want to feel hollow," Zilo said.

"What?"

"When I rush into relationships, I end up feeling hollow."

"I've started to date Vince, the Placer in Coop Seven," Gina said. "How does that make you feel?"

"Bad," Zilo said, "but not hollow." That evening, as he handed a twenty-dollar bill to an aged hustler kneeling before him in the pungent oleanders on the north side of Himmel Park, he said, "Now I feel hollow." And later in the week, after he had sex with a sun-ravaged prostitute in a dusty South Sixth Avenue motel room, he said to her, "Yup, hollow. Definitely hollow. You know what I mean?"

She smoothed her stockings and fixed her makeup in the mirror. "If you want me to say yes, I'll say yes," she mumbled impassively. "If you want me to say no, I'll say no."

At work, he found himself watching Gina more often, wondering if he was doomed to alternate between polysexual fuck monster - the actual term Zilo used to describe himself in his diary - and sexless monk. Would he ever find someone patient enough to abide his socio-psycho-sexual dysfunction? Probably not. So he focused on work like never before.

"Poor guy," the museum visitors say. "He could have made it work with Gina. He's not a polysexual fuck monster, he's just confu-"

"Zilo is a smart man," the docent interrupts, "but even he couldn't have predicted what happened next."

The first rumor was this: A nine-year-old girl in Seattle who had eaten Ham F'neggs as a midnight snack died. Her mother shook her shoulder to wake her for school, and her head collapsed like a rotten jack-o-lantern, spewing gray, chunky liquid over her pillow. Next, an illustrated letter to the Boston Globe revealed the similarity between the F'neggs logo on Eggy's chest - an egg surrounded by seven stars - to an ancient Wicca symbol meaning "family death." F'neggs were pulled from the shelves in the South. School children gossiped that Cher was losing her hair because of F'neggs and that F'neggs made Ricky Martin gay. Kids everywhere stopped eating F'neggs. Parents and celebrities stopped buying them.

The Baddes responded by changing the logo on Eggy's chest to a smiling planet and adding two new flavors: Arizona Ranch and Texas Barbecue. Nothing worked, though, and the profits plummeted as quickly as they had skyrocketed. Tommy began to hound Zilo in the lab. He yelled, "Think! Think of something new!" Tommy paced the halls above the egg house, began to wear the same oil-stained white dress shirt and khakis every day. He didn't shave. His hair became matted and he began to smell foul. Gone were his robust Ivy-League countenance and cocky swagger. Zilo ignored Tommy for those next months and quietly went about his work, refining the de-beaking antibiotics and the feeding-tube-insertion procedure. He worked, too, on breeding beakless blind hens that could never peck at anything, only lay eggs, maybe even shell-free eggs, eggs that would plop into systems of aluminum gutters. He envisioned huge vats of swirling yolk - no useless shells. Zilo knew he was close to achieving all this the afternoon his grandfather walked into the lab.

"We need to talk," his grandfather said. "We're closing up shop."

"I'm just about there," Zilo said. "I'm close to cutting the unit price to less than three cents."

"Tommy's lost his mind."

"Tommy's always been superfluous," Zilo said. "One twin always is."

"Clean out your bank accounts because we're through," Grandpa said. "We're bankrupt. The world hates F'neggs. They hate Eggy. They hate us."

The docent stops. He refuses to go on, even if the listeners beg-which they often do. "I can't," the docent says. "I'm terribly sorry." He thanks them as they leave, sighs when none of them drops money into the DONATIONS bucket.

In the early evenings, the docent doffs his dark glasses, placing them in his top desk drawer. On his way home, he walks by the former button factory and winces as he breathes in the thick tire fumes. He kicks through the wet grass along the Mississippi, stops to collect old shells with button blanks cut from them. Through the holes in the shells, he gazes at the sparkling water, at the tall river oaks on the Illinois side, at the birds pecking through the soft earth in the dying light. The docent rarely sees another person along the river, but he keeps looking, hoping he'll find someone who won't make him feel hollow.