Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  She marches on with a hard soldierly expression. She considers stopping to pick a bouquet. But why? It would only wilt in this heat. Why are our hands always in some reflex to outmoded practices? Will hunting and gathering always be with us? It is a query that to Ivy feels dirty, sneaky, and fleeting, like thoughts of nudity while in midconversation in a formal place. All this nature! All this breathing, unbraiding, sexy nature! Ivy laughs. “HAW! HAW!” Shakes her shimmery metallic hair.

  She hikes onward, up into the deeper brighter heat. So much silence and yet her eardrums feel assaulted and swollen. The heat buzzes louder than any insect would. Louder than a small sporty car. Her stripy tight dress, her bracelets, her shoulder bag, her camera all weigh her down . . . the weight of that other world outside this place, her world. The world where child abuse is considered a crime.

  She turns, pushes her sunglasses up on her head. Snaps a few pictures of the St. Onge house with her solitary car in the yard as seen from this higher elevation. She says to herself in a husky way, “With this fort unmanned, all this is at my mercy.” She cackles evilly.

  Treks onward. Higher and higher.

  Well, the rusty roof does not shelter pigs or prisoners of war. Instead it is a merry-go-round of every sort of wide mouthed, big jawed, horned monster. No pretty high-stepping stallions here. No, indeedy.

  Observe “bloody” eyes and teeth made from jackknife blades and 16-penny spikes. Ivy Morelli steps very close. Some of these merry-go-round faces look human, as weird and anguished as faces frozen in death. Bad death. Now the epic-sized flashback of that movie returns, runs scampering cool through her hair again. What kind of merry-go-round is this? So many wide joyless eyes. Not many flashy tails and manes. But yes, a lot of color. Black and yellow. Red. Purple. Warrior colors. But for one creature spray-painted all over with gold, like the gold leaf on state capitol domes and other monuments to human arrogance and audacity.

  Ivy’s editor, Brian Fitch, has been on her back these past few months. He suggests that she get more quotes than she tends to for her feature stories, even for her columns! Readers like quotes, he says. Does he insinuate she kind of well-meaningly invent quotes? Maybe paraphrase, then put speech marks around these as if spoken? This, the not-so-well-guarded secret of “the press” and therefore a norm of the institution? For surely interviewees seldom actually speak in conveniently condensed newspaper-length statements. If honesty matters to you too much, the muscles of your jaws and neck will be forever knotted and your heart will crack. The wishes of business, the wishes of the clock, are all bigger than you. Bigger than humanity. Yielders are survivors. To yield is to be strong.

  Funny how those things go. Honesty? Like the hunting and gathering reflex of the fingers, there is shame in these outmoded things we’ve evolved away from.

  Down on the road (Heart’s Content Road), an engine strains, that steep wriggling-like-a-viper hill making the gears hum down as with “mi re do.” Can’t see the road from here. Down that way, the woods are thick and tight as a green and gray weave. But indeed, there is a vehicle. A busload of manacled kids maybe. A shipment of bazookas. Replacement Bibles to replace the others worn out by wet sobs.

  Through sweaty eyes Ivy studies a red merry-go-round face. Its black eyes are penetrating. Rusty teeth leering. She prints carefully on her lined reporter pad: CHILDREN ARE INHERENTLY EVIL. “I’ll quote myself,” she says with a low playful chuckle. Is it supposed by Ivy that kids made these in the image of their inner selves? She leans even closer through the hot blue shade of the carousel roof, her sunglasses slipping from the top of her head. Immediately a deerfly swings around her hair, a chainsaw-like buzz, and works a chunk out of her face. “ACHH!” she cries out. Feels her cheek, smearing blood.

  She caresses the all-golden merry-go-round creature whose body is silky to touch, like human shoulders. But its two heads are lumpy and scarred. “Some little dear beat this with a board,” she whispers into the hot stillness. They say violence is a cycle. Maniac schoolmaster beats kid, kid beats the golden watchamacallit.

  She peers closer. “Yeah . . . that linty stuff in the eye sockets . . . that’s glue. This thing used to have eyes.” She gives one of the glowing bald heads another sensuous rub. Neither one of the hideous eyeless heads speaks a quotable remark.

  But now the engine out on the road is making real slowing sounds, like turning, and Ivy catches her breath in anticipation. This could be the interviewee with an excuse and an apology for his tardiness. “Tsk. Tsk.” Who is the audience for Ivy’s cavalier attitude? Ivy is the audience. Ivy who wishes her sporty car were closer.

  Another deerfly chips off a piece of her neck. Another grips her forehead. She whacks at them. Misses, of course. Now another. Another. They swing around her violet hair, buzzing, fast-thinking, intelligent, famished. One chisels at her arm, yum yum. “Ow! Jesus!” She whacks them away, and hops, her shoulder bag and camera clomping, her bracelets all aclatter. Sunglasses hit the ground. Stepped on, snatched up.

  “What’s this?” she asks herself. Then answers herself, “It’s a lever, Ivy. A cable running to this . . . small . . . er . . . open-sided little doghouse thing . . . ah, a generator . . . gas generator with . . . yes, a pull cord. This is . . . neat.” She describes this discovery in her notepad, meanwhile whacking deerflies.

  A pickup truck is pulling into the dooryard below. She sees it ease in snug behind her own car, which is parked snug against the ash tree. As if to block her escape? Plenty of room in that sandy lot for it to park otherwise. A man steps from this truck, stares directly across the field at her as though he had been forewarned of her location by secret guards or hidden cameras.

  She turns her back and scribbles, stout bracelets bonking together, pink and blue angelfish flexing pleasantly in the everlasting mini sea of her arm as she reads aloud some of what she writes. “Truck . . . old piece of junk . . . dark green with white cab roof.” She peers around as the guy begins the long trudge up through the flowery field. “Tall . . . broad face . . . cheekbones . . . Slavic? . . . Nordic maybe . . . Viking type. No horns but would look all right with horns.” She whacks at a fly. Again she misses. “His hair is dark brown. Not long. Not short. Not combed. Green work shirt. Sleeves rolled up. Unusual belt buckle. Can’t tell from here what it is.” She sneaks another peek as he gets closer, then scribbles, “Jeans. Ratty as hell. Filthy hands.” She tsks to herself schoolteacherishly. Then, “Not going to win any Mr. Maine contests . . . a little too slope-shouldered . . . rugged . . . but . . . but slopy . . . all those guns and Bibles and teenaged wives dislocating something.” She scribbles on and on, more details, more fun, keeping her head down and her back solidly to him as he comes closer and closer. She considers. Yes, this has to be Gordon St. Onge. He looks quite a lot like the guy in the clippings from the little local paper, Your Weekly Shopping Guide, stuff printed about him all during the time he was selectman in this town eight years ago. He was a young and popular selectman then, notable mentions paid for by the beneficiaries of some of his gracious deeds. Fair. Friendly. But not for long.

  After about ten months, he quit. Just vanished. Nobody in town knew where to. Nobody saw him for quite some time. No one she’s interviewed knows for sure why he quit, though speculation runs the gamut. In more paid notices in Your Weekly Shopping Guide, some townspeople expressed sorrow at democracy betrayed, considered his disappearance at the very least, irresponsible, at the most a sort of treason.

  So at what point did he reappear? His reappearance doesn’t seem as memorable. Some folks she has spoken with told her he just shamelessly eased back onto the scene, back at the bank clowning with the tellers, yakking with the state cops, the road commissioner, the game warden, and truckers at the diner . . . and in the thick of town meetings (though not as a selectman now) speechifying to the thirty or so upturned faces, engaging as ever.

  “Gordie,” some call him with affection and a shake of the head. Or “Gordo.” Some have told Ivy he is a real comedian. Oth
ers use the word “earnest.” Some say he is too “softhearted.” Some have called him “loud.” Some have called him “quiet.” “A drunk,” others have confided. “Respectable,” one said. “Sad,” offered another. Mostly these have been the storekeepers and town office people, the easy-to-locate types.

  But yes, the first logical step for Ivy was to check with the Superintendent of Schools of the administrative district that Egypt is in. And the state’s Department of Human Services. But the “supe” is never around, can never be tracked down, and all the messages she left with his secretary have dissolved. Why? Why? Why? Then she tried the Department of Education in Augusta only to be bounced back to the superintendent here. And D.H.S. Ha! What a runaround there! Agencies that behave as if they have something to hide. Yessir. These, the official, the authorized, the expert. The prized quotable quotes. Everything else is rumor, isn’t it?

  Arlene Day, the only caller so far to give Ivy her name, admits she has never laid eyes on Gordon St. Onge. But she insists there are children who may actually be buried in the woods at “that place,” their cause of death being “disciplinary actions.” This is the common denominator among those who describe the school with repugnance: They do not know Gordon St. Onge, have not been bewitched by him. While many of those who know him are amused by the school idea. “Probably like having your desk at Disneyland,” chortled Ed Mertie at the hardware store.

  And what about religious fervor? Ivy had grilled them all. And “gunzzz”? Different answers. “Oooo, there’s church,” one grinned. Another said, hushily, “Watch out.” Another, “There’s one who lives up there . . . named Glennice Hayden . . . she told my neighbor she believes St. Onge is God.”

  Ivy Morelli is only twenty-four years old. She is here representing a hotshot conglomerated daily. In her fledgling career, people already know her all over the state, some with a twinge of discomfort. Her column has a bit of a bite. Never predictable. Meanwhile, her people features in the paper have nearly brought trumpets and confetti from many good souls. Sometimes her photos are quite good, her wild and chancy photos. Though sometimes too wild and chancy. Then her editor, Brian, will shake his head and send someone from the photo lab to do the photo over. A real photographer.

  So who is Ivy Morelli? And is this a kind of high point in her life? Yes, this is the very moment. This moment is tantalizing, tinged with the creepy. After all, Ivy Morelli is not so far removed from the day when she, a wiry scrappy little kid with a silky black ponytail would have hopped on the back of this gold two-headed monster and cried out “Giddyup!”

  Behind her now, the heavy walk of Gordon St. Onge, the wild grasses whispering and gossiping around his pant legs. His keys, dangling from a belt loop, speak before he does. “There’s probably gas in it.” And he steps past her into the hot blue shade and stoops at the generator to check its oil and gas and then yanks on the cord hard, then harder and harder till the engine sputters to a struggling hum. Then another adjustment and the engine purrs pleasantly. Now the lever. The circle of monsters creaks into motion.

  Reflections of the monsters’ creepy colors swipe across Ivy’s face, her small mouth even more clover-colored now and the somewhat pointed top lip showing more expression than those eyes of hers. The eyes. In their dark lashes, a diamantine blue.

  She sees the man’s hand on the lever. One nail smashed. The seams of his knuckles white with paint. The ordinary hand of a plain workingman. Now she is again staring into the traffic of beasts and the only one that actually rises up and down merry-go-round-like is yellow and black and glossy with hornet wings. But it moos like a cow for her calf. Now it farts. Jesus. For eyes, there are red Christmas tree twinkle lights. One eye begins to warm up. Twink!

  Beyond the baneful circular traipse of creatures, Gordon St. Onge’s face. Pure madness? His eyes squint and blink. Looks like something between doubt and befuddlement. Ivy Morelli doesn’t know whether to fear this face or feel endearment. For a long moment he is caught in this distracted expression, then suddenly looks straight into her eyes. The look is so keen and unwavering that one eye actually seems to slightly cross. His beard is spotty, short, darker than his hair, and graying. Heavy brown-black mustache, untrimmed. His crowded teeth are unveiled now as he wags his head and gives her a grin. He says happily, “You have to imagine your own calliope music.”

  Somehow they have missed their formal handshake, formal hellos, exchange of names. This feels like a ball that’s started rolling by itself.

  Ivy asks, “Did the students make this masterpiece?”

  He replies with a most notable fawning courtesy, “There aren’t any students here.” He watches her hand scribbling with the pen, down across the pad.

  “You mean they are . . . off for the summer, right?”

  He looks at her face, back at her hand. His right eye and most of that side of his face seem to be on short circuit, several involuntary winks, a sort of nervous tic, and such wild unreadable eyes. The carousel is creaking, moaning, mewling, farting, bellowing, sniffing, twinking. The generator hums. There are no more quotable quotes. Nothing even to dice, rephrase, and pretend is a quote.

  She says, “Gordon St. Onge. That’s your name, right?”

  He says nothing. Or is it that his voice is softened so much that it is lost in the hubbub of machinery?

  Ivy’s really hard modern woman look goes into effect. She narrows her eyes. She is pissed. In the fuzzy heat the look of her paling forehead can be imagined as either cool or hot to touch. Her small, almost pointy clover-color mouth, which is more deeply clover-color in this light, is set in a way that makes it seem as though it must have never known smiling, kissing, sucking, or cooing, only the declarations of terrible judgments. She speaks plainly. Clearly. “Rumor has it that the students of this school of yours usually don’t learn to read until they’re seven or eight years old . . . or even never . . . that—” She looks down at her fingers as she flips a page. Now a thump makes her look up quickly.

  He isn’t standing on the other side of the carousel. He is now standing very near. And he is a huge guy. Like another race of people, not giants exactly, but significantly large, while Ivy is so small and now feeling even punier. His fingers, which are not only swollen and bruised and painty, are also blackened by grease or paint, or grease and paint, these close in around her fingers and the pen, and then slip down between, so that his fingers are now under hers. In one move he withdraws his hand with the reporter pad and Ivy is stumbling backward as she takes a swipe at him and scratches one of his forearms, not enough to draw blood, more like you scratch an itch, but she meant to draw blood. And she is coming to remember that size does matter. That natural laws outweigh everything.

  He says, gesturing with the stolen paper pad, “Kids don’t need you to do this to them.”

  Ivy shrieks, “I was invited here! You knew I was a reporter, Mr. St. Onge. This wasn’t a trick!”

  “I changed my mind,” says he.

  She narrows her eyes on the churning creaking horde of the steel-roofed nightmare-go-round. “Is there anything of a religious element to the St. Onge compound, Mr. St. Onge?” She looks down at her shoes. She exhales deeply through her nose, trying to retrieve her civility, her charm . . . which works better than anger and insults, doesn’t it? She needs his trust. Charm, Ivy, charm. “Are you people deeply committed to God?”

  His eyes flicker. Pale, pale eyes in dark lashes. Paler than hers. But not pretty pale. Not blue like Ivy’s. More a yellowish, cooked-cabbage green, and because part of his face is in shadow, part in sun, one eye seems to glow even paler and more penetrating than the other. He makes no shrug or flinch or word of denial, just wipes across his mouth and mustache and one eye with the top of his blackened hand, like a tired kid. Ivy feels a pang of endearment.

  But now he crosses his arms over his chest, a powerful threatening stance. The reporter pad is no longer in his hand.

  Ivy stares at his hands, the magic of this. Again she is pissed. She
snaps off some surprise shots with her camera, the holding and snapping done all with one hand and with her other hand she snatches her tape recorder from her shoulder bag. This is her magic. “I’ve been running this baby all along!” she tells him jubilantly. (A fib, actually, she is miffed.) She wags the thing from side to side and a wire with a black mike swings stiffly. “I plan to write this story.”

  He moves.

  Ivy’s muscles clench, ready for flight. Her anger and fear are alloyed into one solid dry-mouthed flavor. Run, Ivy, run!

  But he is only turning toward the generator, squats to shut it off, gets to his feet again. And his full height, as he is standing on higher ground, fills up the sky. He suggests, “Why don’t you go over to the real schools, the school system, and hear ‘Polly wants a cracker’?”

  Ivy smiles. “This assignment sure is turning out to be a damn dazzling sizzly scary little piece. Thank you!” She is now totally ready to run, one thigh thickening, pulling slightly at the knee. She has had no experience with the fanatically righteous religious, only those two borderline off-the-wall neighborhood ladies she remembers from childhood and then the famous ones who die in newsy ways, those headline-getters, like at Waco, but nobody Ivy has ever stood this close to.

  Snap! There now. She has snapped his picture again. Snap! Another. Snap! Snap! Her grip on her camera gives her knuckles the proverbial whiter shade of pale. The bracelets traveling up and down her slim arms make their clonky music.

  Gordon St. Onge’s face is now grave and newly aged. Wretched wet trickles of heat and worry slip through his gray and brown beard onto his neck. He pleads softly, “Please don’t.”