New World Monkeys

by Nancy Mauro

  Anyway, he wasn’t tied to his roots the way she was. He had come to the East Coast believing it to have obverse properties of Minnesota, a well-turned muscle that would hammer everything provincial out of him. And clocking these years at the agency meant he was now an advertising man. Hawke had once even come into his office and perched on the corner of his desk.

  Duncan, no matter what shit goes down here, he said, ruffling his raven-feather hair, I’ve got your back, buddy.

  Same here, the protégé had replied those several months ago, still secure within the radius of Hawke’s favor.

  Now he looks at the blinking screen of his laptop where concepts swim about the pixels. He’d like to recover that keen spur but feels ham-fisted and crude. Can’t get his fingers under that sheet of glass.

  Saturday night, when the air has cooled significant degrees, they continue their exhumation. Their Friday evening attempt had come up empty. Lily had insisted they channel linear troughs north toward the barley field. Duncan felt they should instead dig concentrically, radiating out from the site of the femur. The garden was supposed to have been his project, though he was being shouldered into the peripheries. Here was Lily digging her own history, here was Duncan providing cheap labor. After an hour of nothing he decided it was easier to avoid a quibble by calling it quits.

  Tonight they’re employing Duncan’s method and are rewarded almost immediately with an articulated little piece they suspect is from the top of the vertebral column. It looks like a thick wishbone with a grooved spanner connecting the bottom of its arch. Duncan has seen whale vertebrae washed up in Montauk, amplified in size, but bearing the similar wing-nut design and hollowed passage for the spine. Alone, the function of the notched bone had been unclear to him. But stack two of these together and suddenly the interlocking shape of the spinal column emerges. In unearthing one of these vertebrae in the garden, Duncan finds himself wondering about what came before it and what comes after.

  They can hear the faint whiz of the Amtrak beyond the fields toward the river. It makes them conscious of the private nature of their project and, should anyone come up the drive—Skinner, the universal aunties of the library, an absent neighbor popping in for a spot check—should anyone poke around to the back of the house, they’ve prepared a statement. We are avid horticulturalists. We are charmed by growing things. Please just leave us alone. Duncan might even raise his shovel with a nuance of threat. The thought sort of excites him. He’s never played the kook before.

  Lily doesn’t even wear gloves now that she’s abandoned her trench system. Her excitement is like the hushed middle section of a fireworks display. She holds a flashlight on the hole with one hand and pulls back soil with the other. Duncan continues with the spadework, sweats a pleasant grassy smell into the night air.

  “I’ve found fault with my Osterhagen lynch-mob theory,” he says, conscious that they haven’t exchanged much tonight beyond the gentle grunt of acknowledgment as one finds a stone, one overturns a root.

  Lily sits back on the grass to wipe the paste of soil and perspiration from her forehead.

  “A public lynching takes some organization,” he continues. “Whelping the hounds, tuning pitchforks, inciting riot—you heard the old man last week. Plenty of time there for a dissident faction to form, right?”

  “What am I agreeing to?” Lily says.

  “Bleeding heart liberals always leave some record of their objection. Someone in town would have leaked the truth about a witch hunt.”

  “Right, and I didn’t find anything else at the library.”

  “You have to admit, your family, they’re kind of private people.” Duncan leans on the shovel, injects a little cross-examination into his voice. “Not the sort to follow a leader like Skinner. I’m thinking this was an inside job. Your relative, the Bavarian count or whoever he was.”

  Lily looks up at him. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No. Your great-grandfather.”

  “You think he murdered the nanny?” Something about the way she locutes each syllable tells him she’s neither buying nor pleased with his supposition.

  “I’m not saying he wielded the ax. But commissioned, maybe.” He knows he’s taunting, but he feels the need to elicit some sort of response from her.

  “So, you’re saying I’m a descendant of savages?”

  Duncan shrugs. “We’re all born naked, wet, and hungry.”

  Her smile suggests something razored into place below the nose. He has to fight back a terrible itch to nudge her with the shovel—hey, remember when you used to think I was funny?

  “It wasn’t such a problem when the savages gave us that down payment.”

  “It’s no problem, Lily. But think about it, why else would the nanny be buried in the garden? And in pieces? If it was an accident, wouldn’t they have made some effort to put her in order?”

  “My great-grandfather did not kill the nanny.”

  They go back to digging. Him flipping soil into mounds and Lily raking her fingers through for any fine details. He continues to watch her; something about the way she squats and digs into the soil reminds him of those Cu Chi tunnels he visited in Vietnam, what it must have been like to excavate miles of underground passages by hand.

  “You’re like the Viet Cong down there.”

  She doesn’t even look up. “Having those flashbacks again?”

  Duncan leans on his shovel. Lily is sort of like the Viet Cong burrowing through layers of silt, like a small mammal chattering a hole through the planet. Of course, if she had agreed to come with him that summer she’d know what he was talking about. How both rudimentary and efficient those passages were for the North Vietnamese Army, providing an escape route into the Saigon River and allowing the underground ferrying of soldiers and supplies. How sly Charlie could remain hidden away underground, while several feet above, the Skinners of the world crouched at the mouth of the hole, weighing the temptation to charge and pump the creatures from their den against the risk of casualty: their own men greased, the sniffer dogs lit up.

  “It’s a hit,” Lily says and stops her foraging. She wipes oily dirt from an ochre surface just now visible through her fingers. She uses one leg to brace herself against the lip of the shallow hole and starts to pull. Duncan crouches beside her but doesn’t help as she tugs something from the grave. Her face changes as she works.

  He watches her profile as she brings two bones up into stray light from the back porch. “The pelvis.” Her voice sticks in her throat with an awe he has never heard before. He thinks she might cry.

  Duncan doesn’t want to touch. Doesn’t want to handle another woman’s privates. Lily sways back on her heels in the way of a person who’s just received some tragic news. She cradles the two halves of bone, their scalloped bowls punched through like knotted pine. He does recognize something about her—yes, the mouth and the eyes—he remembers this flared beauty. This Lily.

  CHAPTER 11

  Sympathetic Nerve

  On the way to lunch on Tuesday, they pause at the front end of the car, united by a common sympathy for ruined metal. Duncan can’t help thinking that given a woman’s bruised face or a bad dent, he knows which one he’d wince at first.

  “Wild pigs, aren’t they more of a Southern plague?” Leetower kneels by the damaged nose.

  Duncan leans casually on the hood. “After we hit the thing, it got back up and charged us. I had to waste it with a tire iron.”

  “Jesus, that’s cool.”

  The fabulist shrugs. “Also, the park ranger said it had rabies. So.”

  “I’d rather hit a hobo.” Kooch flecks some chipped paint from the bumper. “They bounce, but they don’t come back for you.”

  “It’s true,” Leetower says to Duncan. “I’ve been in his car when it’s happened.”

  “You guys got anything on Stand and Be Counted?” Duncan tries to keep the hope out of his voice. He has been itching with anxiety.

  The boys are silent.

/>   “What’s going on with Tide?”

  “Casting for the third Laundry Elf started today.”

  “Local?”

  “Domestic midget search.” Leetower slides up on the intact side of Duncan’s hood. “No budget for anything else.”

  “Fucking Anne. She never learns.”

  “What’s the deal with casting in the Ukraine?” Kooch asks.

  “Chernobyl meltdown in eighty-six.”

  “Anne knows that place is a gold mine of birth defects.” Leetower sighs. “The next generation out of the gate got the full biological effect—like napalm babies.”

  “The Vietnamese that cleans our office is a napalm baby,” Kooch tells them.

  “I thought she was Filipina.”

  “Nah, I was shitting you.” He smiles. “She’s Vietnamese. I told her Pops was an American GI so she’d show me her tits.”

  Leetower knocks on the hood. “The mystery of the stain, solved.”

  “Hold on. I’m not alone in the Asian fetish.” Kooch turns to Duncan. “I just noticed that picture of your wife.”

  “What picture?”

  “On your desk. Where you had her all dressed up like a chink?”

  Duncan feels the skin tighten over his cheeks. “We’ve really got to work on your inside voice, Kooch.”

  “No, I want to thank you.” He’s pulling a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “You inspired me, Chief. My dad’s retirement party’s next week, bunch of vets are getting together.”

  Leetower shakes his head. “Not another subscription to Interracial Spanking?”

  Kooch ignores him. “The guys want me to do a speech. But I’m aiming to go with a narrative.”

  “That’s real ambitious for an illiterate fuck.”

  “Okay. This is about his first tour in ’68, right after Tet.” Kooch clears his throat.

  When he first went to Nam, Stanford—that’s his name—Stan said to himself, “This is gonna be a piece of piss.” The hard line of his jaw was enough to make the slants cross the street when they saw him coming. He had a quick fuse and a proclivity for small women; a sweet tooth easily indulged in that Southeast Asian armpit. The females, when willing, were all paperclip frames hung with floral print silks and gloves. Unwilling, their voices were shrill, nearly optic. Once, a village of farm women surrounded him and a couple boys, trying to stall their inspection for hidden munitions. Like being swarmed by a flock of sparrows; he had to waste a few to get his point across, shake them off his pant leg.

  Kooch folds the page back up. “It’s not done yet.”

  “Your mother’s dead, right?” Leetower slides off the hood.

  Duncan stares at Kooch. His mouth is dry. There are several seconds that his mind slides off its central axis, free of inertia, untouched by traction. There in the parking garage, Duncan is as primed for the arrival of enlightenment as one can ever be prepared for an event precipitated by nothing.

  “You’re a son of a bitch,” he says to Kooch. “But I think I love you.”

  The corkboard in the lobby, community administered and partially ravaged, stands defenseless long enough for Lily to remove a sign-up sheet posted by concerned Osterhagenians. The party assembling on Wednesday will search around Bard College for the Sovereign of the Deep Wood. Today is Wednesday. Lily folds the sheet carefully and walks toward the stacks. She tries telling herself that besides the handful that gathered last week, the boar is of limited interest to anyone. She’s done a little research, knows that in ecological terms, feral swine are an invasive species, environmental hazards. Even the forests of folklore were studded with pigs who terrorized pilgrims and charged cattle. But despite what she’s read, it’s evident that people love the thing; the beast’s ugly snout is posted on every bulletin board in the library.

  Lily finds herself scanning the stacks for Lloyd. While she knows encouraging a friendship with a pervert is not the brightest idea, she can’t help but be drawn by his mastery of logic. Putting aside the content, she’s left admiring his ability to reason through his deviancy and deliver the defense with conviction. She’s heard a lot of horseshit in her time, but there’s something curious about the way Lloyd crafts his portions. Horseshit folded into small paper boats.

  She finds him in the reference section, halfway along the aisle, squatting between two sets of encyclopedias. He’s removed a couple volumes and peers through the gap left behind, the same technique she employed with de Tocqueville last week. Lily backtracks around the shelf and watches as he balances nervously on his haunches. It’s the position of an industrious squirrel tossed a bag of nuts. How and where will one carry off such a grand treasure? She’s taken by his tenure. This is the kind of passion she needs to whip up herself if she wants to get on with the business of the pointed arch.

  She moves slowly down the aisle so as not to startle him, the search party flyer still in her hand. And it strikes her then that Lloyd, with his many foibles, is the perfect confidant. They could trade culpabilities like precious stones.

  She lowers herself on the carpet a few feet away. “What do you got?”

  “No one,” he tells her, squinting between the books as though sighting ships through a periscope. “Just testing the setup.”

  “For?”

  “My great moment.”

  “Let me guess. You’re the poster boy for meticulous felony?”

  He turns, runs an eye over her. “You know something?” A curious twist of his lips. “Don’t get too excited by this, but you’re just about pretty enough to molest.”

  Lily has a sudden memory of being woken one night by a fire alarm in their building. She remembers how her instinct to evacuate had to fight hard against the desire to sleep through the clamor. The same feeling now with Lloyd, a clear warning and conflicting choices.

  She changes her mind. Lloyd cannot be taken into her confidence. Their mutual confessions will never be of a similar nature. Hers are brusque and uncomfortable, divulged only so that she may receive some degree of clemency, while Lloyd’s provide him pleasure. He takes them out of their silk pouch only to hold them up to the light.

  “They’d order in a load of Latino-American ground fighters,” Duncan is telling Anne. “Because unlike their all-American compatriots—big, hulking farmboys from the Midwest—these guys were slender, narrow-boned, and could slip down those Viet Cong tunnels and shafts like ferrets. They’d get smoked, most of them. The VC booby-trapped miles of those tunnels; think metal spikes under a false floor of leaves.”

  “Vietnam. The dark side of the sixties.”

  “Right. We asked ourselves, what else was going on at the time?”

  Anne sits with her legs crossed, chain-smoking on his couch. “The draft was going on. Kooch’s father went over.”

  “Only after he was caught by Canadian Mounties.” Duncan scratches his head impatiently. “But also, Anne, I’ve been to Vietnam.”

  “Yes. You and the little missus.”

  Duncan nods. “That’s why I feel I’ve got the edge on it. Historically.” No need to mention that he went alone.

  “Where do the jeans come in?”

  “We put our girl soldier in the depths of the Cu Chi tunnels—”

  “Women didn’t serve as soldiers.”

  “Creative anachronism. We call them Grunt Girls.”

  Anne looks at the ceiling. “Yeah, okay—reminds me of the Gorilla Girls.” Smoke wads up into a cloud above her head. “Could be a joint promotion in there somewhere.”

  “I’m thinking, photojournalism, khaki-colored TV footage. Our Grunt Girl’s on her hands and knees, strapped to an M-16, and behind her, a Viet Cong soldier literally has her by the flared pant leg.” Duncan sits on his desk. “The tag line is: History Repeating.”

  Anne is nodding slowly. “Double entendre, keep going.”

  “The flare leg is a commentary on war.”

  “Oh yeah? America lost the war because of bell-bottom jeans?”

  “Well, call it the acu
ity of hindsight.” He picks up his stapler, checks the cartridge load. “We were ill-equipped.”

  “This is a touchy subject, Duncan, and you want to make a mockery out of it? Never mind that the little shits buying these jeans are eighteen. What’s Vietnam to them?”

  “They’ll get it, they grew up between Iraq and Iraq.” Duncan shoves the stapler in his computer bag for the weekend. “Look, with History Repeating we position ourselves as the socially aware denim.”

  “Great.” Anne lights a new cigarette. “So we’re saying America’s depraved and destined to repeat the greatest blunders of all time—war and bell-bottoms.”

  “No, we play it from the other side, Anne. Everyone promises you how much better their product’s going to make your life, right?”

  “Everyone overpromises.”

  “All we can say for sure is: Conflict is here to stay. But Stand and Be Counted is going to be here through it all.”

  “Jesus, Duncan. That’s cheery.”

  “It’s truthful, Anne. You’re telling me you still believe in peace in our time?” Duncan has to cringe at his own Chamberlain-Costello appropriation. He stands up. “Look, anyone can sell jeans. But no one is selling what people really want—shrewdness, provocation, skepticism. Give them that and the jeans will sell themselves.”

  She takes a long, thoughtful drag on her smoke. “Maybe a portion of the proceeds could go to rebuilding mud hut villages or something.”

  “Let’s table that until next quarter.”

  Anne is quiet for a moment. Duncan allows her time to take on the idea in her own way. It’s always the same with account people, you give them the baby and then watch them handle the squirming sack. Anne needs a minute to sort out the arrangement of her hands before she can comfortably raise the thing to her chest and figure out if she can sell it—stinking diaper and all—to Upstairs.

  “Well, we would be portraying an experience. Without moralizing,” she says.