by Nancy Mauro
The exterminator scribbles something on his clipboard, doesn’t look up. “No, I’m saying to keep the upstairs one sealed for twenty-four hours. I fogged it again after getting out the nest.”
“Oh,” Duncan says, with transparent relief. He grabs the checkbook Lily’s left on the hall table. “Sure, we can do that.”
“Meanwhile I’m going to get the ladder. Where’s the best spot to get on the roof?”
“The roof?”
The man looks up. His mouth, crooked as an accidental gash, expresses his growing impatience. “How’d you think wasps got in—by ringing the doorbell? Read your contract. Part of our service agreement is that we fix up the point of entry for you too.”
Duncan nods unhappily; the complications are endless.
“Lots of the other guys just get out the nests and call it a day. We even do a follow-up check in a few weeks.”
“Right, okay.” He stares at the red welt on the hooked bridge of the man’s nose. “Only now’s not a good time. I’ll have to get back to you when my wife’s home.”
“I tell you, the longer you wait, you’re just inviting back whatever got away.” He lifts his clipboard and uses it to scratch his chin. “But if you gotta consult with the pants, go for it.”
“It’s just the arrangement with the Historical Society,” Duncan says. “They need to know anytime we, uh, do anything structural.”
“Well, you folks don’t have to be around for me to get up on the roof. You only here part-time, right? I can come back anytime.”
“Actually, we’re here pretty much the entire summer.” He skims quickly around his own absence.
“Really?” The man rips an invoice off his pad, his business number printed with the crude and deliberate serifs of Middle English. “You been hearing that cannon at night?”
Duncan folds the invoice carefully. No point in feigning ignorance with the locals. “Yes, we’ve heard it.” After all, a yard full of men saw him at Skinner’s that night. “Guess it’ll stop now that he found the pig.”
“Well, that’s damn unlikely.” The exterminator laughs. “That crazy old bastard’s not looking for a thief anymore. We’ve got a killer on our hands.”
CHAPTER 23
Muscular Coat of the Stomach
It’s been a long time since she’s seen any of his work and she is curious. Duncan is a talker by nature, an opinion-seeker who freely solicits the views of cabdrivers and checkout girls, who is always deferential to the taste of the house sommelier. And yet, he hasn’t once asked Lily for her opinion on his spots. She slithers into the sunroom. He has rarely been so tight-lipped or guarded about a project and she takes this as an indication of his growing confidence in the campaign.
OPEN ON: Morning sky, South Vietnam. A battalion of paratroopers hang like poppies over a rice field. Once they’ve pulled their chute cord, all that’s left is the silent acrobatics of drifting into battle. No soundtrack here, just the accelerated breathing of a first-time search-and-destroy.
Lily flips through the first of the overturned pages. It’s natural, isn’t it, to want insight into her husband’s work? His achievements? As discordant as their relationship may be, she does know how fervently he wants to be a success.
CUT TO: Rice paddies, jump boots touch down. What follows is a frenzy as soldiers disengage from parachute twine, struggle to discard the canopies, to slosh across wet fields, leaving prints on the yellow silt. (Think: the first thirty minutes of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan—minus the explicit carnage.) Across the road they spot the stronghold of the Viet Cong, a complex of villages they’ve been ordered to take out. The ground between them is littered with the conical shade hats of farmers, runners in flight. In the clover patches, sheep are bleating. Several jump cuts here as they storm the rice paper village. This segment’s shot with a handheld camera to produce that stuttering shutter quality of a newsreel. Film is sapped of color.
The random camera action illustrates the thought: What does one soldier mean in the swarm that descends on the cluster of muck and straw peasant domes? Some GIs use fire-throwers to ignite the grass-roofed huts. Others use historically accurate Zippos. (Anne—check if we require an OK from Zippo Manufacturing Company.) Throughout the village, any hole in the ground—whether it be full of vegetables or munitions or children—is treated to a grenade. (Note for set design: ideally, we want to re-create burning huts from the famous Morley Safer footage of the Burning of Cam Ne.) The actual detonation of the grenade is preceded by a shout, “Fire in the hole,” a phrase that acts as a guarantee or a rabbit’s foot. If I say it, it shall be. As though the mechanical energy of the grenade is just an extension of the young soldier’s will. As though the young soldier’s will is just an extension of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s will. This chain of command must exist; without it the 173rd becomes an illusion cloaked in the reek of blue cordite.
Jesus. Lily looks up from the script. When did Duncan start writing this? She walks between the sunroom and front hall, trying to move out of the pocket of odor surrounding this spot. She glances down the drive to make sure he’s not coming. When did this happen, when had words acquired smell?
CUT TO: Close-up shot of young paratrooper, removing helmet. As helmet comes off, long hair tumbles down, we realize the soldier is female! She is our American Paratrooper Girl in jump boots and flare-legged Stand and Be Counted jeans. The ville is ablaze now, all around, soldiers removing helmets—all of them female! Livestock run in all directions, adding to the confusion. A pig runs into frame and our girl raises her M-16 and shoots it. She’s a crack shot. This to foreshadow next scene. She lifts a door flap with the butt of her gun.
CUT TO: Interior hut. We see four women, shoulders draped with small children, squatting against the back wall. They begin screaming in the high pitch of the province. Why don’t they surrender? The roof collapses on them. Paratrooper Girl staggers away.
SUPER UP OVER PICTURE: All War is R-rated.
But Paratrooper Girls are following orders. The chain of command being the cornerstone of all military operations. Without it, young soldiers would be setting fires to a circle of huts, silently wondering if they’ve got the right town, wondering what the hell are they fighting for.
SUPER UP OVER PICTURE: History Repeating.
Lily opens the front door in hopes of a breeze. She moves through the hall and back toward his desk, trying to fit this new direction into the groove of Duncan’s original brief. He was supposed to be writing a commercial for women’s jeans. So where did this stuff—the slaughter of farm women—come from? Even with her scant knowledge of war, she’d say the borrowing and cursory handling of the Vietnamese conflict is highly inappropriate for a denim campaign. And vulgar. It’s obvious Duncan’s portraying a war without bothering to develop the historical dimensions of the subject. His references lack solid materiality; it reads like pulp. Just an amalgamation of battle scenes stripped of context to allow more on-screen gore. And the use of women? Lily shakes her head. This isn’t advertising, it’s misogyny.
Which is why Stand and Be Counted will love it. She slides the script under the pile where she found it. It’s sick, bordering on satirical, and just the sort of troubling and sensational Hollywood-studded television fodder that Duncan’s client will eat with a spoon. Lily’s never doubted his talent for work. For understanding the risks and offenses sometimes necessary to break through the clutter reel of trash out there. In fact, if she knows anything about ads from the years she’s spent with him, she’s willing to bet he’ll take home an armload of awards for this. Perhaps another gold One Show Pencil. In terms of the moral scope of advertising, Lily herself has no battle to wage. She’s known Duncan far too long to be troubled by industry details. If she wanted to whine about hypocrisy and lack of societal value, she’d start with her own career and the university. Lily touches the knoll on her forehead and remembers Kitten’s loud and hopeful spousal abuse accusations. No, what worries her isn’t the platform. It’s the g
enesis of the creation, the source of his inspiration.
Duncan knows he’s being watched. He’s got the countenance of a criminal; the slouch, the eyes all viscous shift along aisles of hardware, his beard growing in at awkward angles. When he walked in, old Wakefield nodded from behind the counter. I got my eye on you, buddy.
He buries his hands in his pocket. Doesn’t help that he’s totally forgotten what he’s come for. Something for the nanny, for digging out the nanny. He feels scattered today, but also strangely useful. Earlier he’d cracked open the upstairs bathroom to tape plastic over the crumbling ceiling plaster. Now he’s taking a break from the TV scripts he’s been pounding out. He’s decided to present the scripts as monologues, starting with a ninety-second launch spot, describing the action first and then showing storyboards at the end. He thinks the Stand and Be Counted client needs more performance than presentation. After all, at first even he was surprised by his own outrageous manipulation of Vietnam. But if Duncan’s learned anything from men like Hawke, it’s how much you can get away with if you look like you know what you’re doing. He’s seen it work on Anne and Leetower. Even Kooch. They intuit the strength of his belief in the work, and with just that, they climb on board.
Duncan stops in front of a rack of shovels. It’s hard to believe the garden was his project, initially. Lily had ordered him here to pick up something. A fine-point spade? For the smaller bones. Or a brush and pan to sift dirt. Duncan lifts a broad trowel, turns it over in his hands and then puts it back on the display rack. He’s read that over half the bones in the human body are in the hands and feet. So it seems impossible that they haven’t come across more of the small ones. He can’t imagine Oster holding any back; who would risk that sort of link to a vanished nanny?
Duncan’s been chewing over the lumber baron’s culpability. If you want to call it culpability. After all, once Oster had set up a successful sawmill, the next logical step was to produce an heir to that mill. He wanted to replicate himself—a man of importance. Why not create a family to rival the Vanderbilts? The Astors, maybe. Thinking about it in those terms, Tinker really had brought about her own brutal fate by attempting to rob him of this lineage. Later, to ensure there was no evidence, she was disposed of in the one place where he could keep an eye on her. What man worth his salt wouldn’t have done what Oster had? Yes, Duncan’s quite certain that Tinker is all down there. They just haven’t dug deep enough.
“Something I can help you with?”
The voice jars him, seems to come from an aisle over but Wakefield is actually standing shoulder to shoulder with him. Has puddled together in the periphery.
“You the guy at Skinner’s the other night? Mr. and Mrs. up at Oster Haus?” The man wears a leather apron with bulging pockets. His nails are ground down to the quick, the thick fingers of one who sorts staples and drill bits for pleasure. “Doing some gardening up there?”
Duncan hasn’t spoken in hours, has no clue what polyphonic and crazed sound he might make if he opens his mouth. But the old store owner is waiting for some reply.
“Thinking about it.”
“Sure, saw you buying a shovel the other day.” The guy frowns. “Looking for another one already?” He looks Duncan over as if drawing up details for the clan report.
“Can’t have too many.” Duncan shrugs. Does Wakefield have an idea of what’s been going on in the backyard? He might. It’s a small town; all it takes is someone out for a drive, stopping to take a look at the historical Oster Haus, the acres of Dutchess County barley surrounding it. Then Tinker will be taken away from them. Even if it was her own fault she ended up where she did, Duncan doesn’t want anyone else poking around the bones of his nanny.
“Well, least we know you’re not trying to bury the pig up there, hey?”
Duncan snorts, startling the both of them with this attempt at laughter. This is no way to deflect suspicion. The man takes a step back, picks a slipped coil of garden hose off the floor. “You hear Skinner’s on a real tear now?”
“I think I heard something,” Duncan says.
“That bloody pig.” Wakefield shakes his head and winds the hose back on the shelf. “They fished it out of a dumpster. By the old sawmill—that restaurant. Imagine it’s been rotting to hell in this heat.”
“Dumpster?” Duncan fights for neutrality in his inflection.
“I do have it on good account that the boar’s head was bashed in.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, sir. I am not.”
“Who’d put it in a dumpster?”
“Well, ain’t that the million-dollar question.” Wakefield leans against a rack, raps his knuckles against the flat pan of a shovel blade. “Tell you what. I know Skinner now for a number a’ years. And to him, nobody is above suspicion around here.” He looks at Duncan as though inspecting the quarter-inch shank of a carbide router bit.
It’s unclear whether there’s an element of threat in this last section of speech. An informal notification that he and Lily have risen to the top of the perpetrator list? Dismissing the fact that he’s technically guilty of the crime, Duncan finds himself skipping to the defense. We have no motivation. He’s told Lily this a number of times to reassure her. But then, how relevant is motivation in these parts? Here, in the heartland of cow tipping, their motivation need be as simple as getting a kick from wrongful death.
“You’ll excuse me.” Wakefield moves down the aisle toward the back room.
To call the posse.
Duncan heads for the exit. He needs to get out of there. To move quickly, but not too quickly. He feigns composure, takes his time as he approaches the storefront. An odd unguent is collecting in each palm, making it tough to ease the door open without triggering bells. He stumbles out of the place. Cuts across the parking lot. Believes he could have executed a hammer and anvil tactic on an enemy camp with more grace.
Calm down, Chief, he tells himself, disoriented and blinking against the Sunday sky that has, since he’s been in the shop, acquired the same gray, pixilated waver as his computer screen. The Osterhagen witch hunt is about as accurate as a game of Telephone. Both he and Lily had been amazed by yesterday’s stories. How could two hundred pounds of pork make its way from a dry creekbed into both the downstream roll of the Hudson and a taxidermy shop in Kingston?
Still, knowing what is truth and what is outrageous gossip brings him little comfort. For each new kink in the narrative is maliciously wrought. He suspects the nature and scene of the crime are changing to suit Skinner’s secret indictment plan.
The one good thing, Duncan thinks, the one saving grace in the latest incarnation of slaughter is that the modus operandi has actually evolved past his own capabilities. The deluded band of old farts can trick themselves into believing the hog was killed intentionally, but there’s no way to accuse him of single-handedly hoisting that dead weight up and over the rim of a dumpster.
Instead Duncan tries to focus on what he came to town for. A half-hour walk for what reason? Maybe it’s just a sign that work is going well. You forget things. He starts walking back up the hill toward the house, kicking the same stone all the way. Has to chase it out of the ditch a couple times. Duncan has just over a week until he presents to Stand and Be Counted. Until he easels up his sweat for those tasteless cloth merchants. As he turns onto the dirt road, the rain starts coming down. The drops are well spaced but large enough that it takes only a few to turn his green T-shirt the colors of variegated foliage. He realizes he’s going home to Lily empty-handed. This wasn’t the plan; he’d like to hide his hands behind something, however small. Duct tape or bolts or a double-headed hammer. But it hardly matters. Something tells him all they could possibly want is already there, under the soil.
Lily carefully squares up the stack of sheets so that her spying is less obvious. She goes back and stands in the open door. Duncan could be back at any time with the wheelbarrow. They’ve managed, in the course of their clumsy night maneuvers, to snap
the wheel off their old one. Drove it into some pothole or other. The backyard had looked ravaged this morning. As though a Paratrooper Girl had launched several grenades from an upstairs window. Their intention was just to stretch the garden a bit, extend the perimeters and gather up the rest of Tinker without making too much of a fuss. Surely she wasn’t scattered across the entire yard? But this perimeter extension had turned into nibbles that have now turned into great bites of lawn.
Maybe Duncan’s found his game. Maybe hitting his stride means he’s writing about things that he’s never actually experienced. But even this thought isn’t pleasing to her, as if his stride is a train he may or may not catch. Does he get off on this? No wonder he hasn’t showed any interest in her—his tastes have evolved, or devolved—he’s gone to the dark side, hardcore and militant. And she can’t ask, can’t bridge the divide from indifference to familiarity. There’s still no spirit of ease between them to allow this. It would be as difficult as trying to explain her hours with Lloyd, his knowledge of rooftops and kitchens, her own abnormal curiosity. Or the fact that she has quietly shelved her dissertation—so quietly, she realizes, it’s even news to her—believing that if the pointed arch really wants her, it’ll come and get her.
She shifts her discomfort back and forth. Outside the air seems to hold its breath as the sky gathers up a turbulent mash of clouds. Of course, this isn’t the first time she’s suspected all writers of being megalomaniacs, sparking characters to life just so they can reach down and play them like the hand of God. Dance, monkey, dance. She just wonders why he’s decided to sell jeans by burning women and babies to a crisp.
And what about that five-fingered smack to her ass? The painful cannon kiss? No. This is faulty logic, of course. An oversimplification of the thousand wishes and desires firing through his brain each hour. Arriving at a creative concept is not masonry; it doesn’t adhere to a formula. She knows better than to take his work personally.
