Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  “My ex,” says Gordon. “We go way back.”

  Another moment, another five degrees hotter.

  Another man blocks Gordon’s way and there’s more talk about the “doubled order,” and three small kids, all with tired silver eyes and flushy hot cheeks, stop beside Ivy and stare at her striped socks and button-up shoe-boots. Then one looks up at her and asks, “Who are you?”

  “Ivy. And who are you?”

  Only one replies. “Joshua Ridlon.”

  A kid at one of the tables quite nearby bursts into an overtired shriek.

  And the short, red-haired, red-bearded troll-like guy ambles by and a woman with a green face hurrying in the opposite direction pats his shoulder and says, “Hey, Doll.”

  Ivy smiles at this. Doll. Right.

  And the sun swims down through the quadrangle leaves and boughs onto the arms and backs of all these people. And on the tables of food. Spotty lovely light but the air is getting plumper with steam. Hot people. Hot coffee. Hot breads. Hot smoked meat and eggs. Hot metal screens. Hot gritty wooden floors. Hot grass and trees. Hot polleny buttery radiant sweet summer morning.

  Gordon asks, “You want a beer?”

  “I’m a health nut,” Ivy tells him.

  His pale eyes move over her a moment, over the butterfly necklace and then lower, then very quickly back to her face. “Coffee? They have the decaf kind here,” he says, straight-faced but with one eye smoldering drolly.

  “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” she says huskily, and she is straight-faced, too.

  He pokes her arm with a knuckle.

  An eightyish woman in an old-fashioned apron over her equally old-fashioned housedress is now asking Gordon about “the reserve” and “the levels.”

  Ivy stands patiently, her eyes burning from no sleep, her shoulder bag weighing like a dead buffalo carried back from a hunt. She really doesn’t feel that hungry. Just hot and dirty and unpresentable. She feels like shit. Steaming green fresh chicken shit. She stares around. So many young, middle-aged, and senior guys all mobbed together between the tables and the inner wall. Billed caps, tanned arms, wristwatches, some with glasses, some still showing those kindergarten colors of greasepaint in the lines of their faces, though they seem like such a conservative bunch. Hard to believe they’d be game for such a weird spectacle as what occurred on that mountain an hour ago. Greenwich Village, yes. San Francisco, yes. Vermont commune, yes. New Orleans, yes. But not these guys. Not these hard Yankees. Not here.

  Ivy looks back at Gordon, sees that as he talks to the woman, he is turning the small box in his hands distractedly. She realizes that a couple of phrases from the woman’s mouth were in what must be Maine French and that when she goes back to English, she has the accent.

  Nearby, among a bunch of men in straight-backed chairs, there is a white wicker-backed rocker; deep in this chair, like a crab in sand, a woman, young but worn under the eyes, purple-frosty bags there, cavy mouth like missing teeth, but really a jaw and chin that are slight. On her lap is a floppy afghan of purples and creams to match her worn-outness. Her shirt is red plaid and oversized, giving the impression that not long ago she was heavier. Her hair is yellow growing out to brown. A carved wooden toy assault rifle lies on the floor by her foot. She is staring into nothing. Ivy wonders what the first aid crew could do for this woman.

  The Indian woman glides past again, still wearing the cardboard crown. Queen, yes. Her eyes, behind the steel-rimmed glasses, cast purposefully about the big porch. In her hand are a pen and long trailing sheet of paper, some sort of list. Ivy tries to imagine marriage between this woman and Gordon. The woman appears to be older than Gordon. Ivy feels dizzy. And hotter and stickier than a moment ago. Her striped socks slide like goo down into her tall boot-shoes.

  Gordon places the small box on a stack of cubbies next to a closed green door. Ivy sees that it is something automotive, electrical or plumbing-related, packaged in a utilitarian way. He turns around and faces Ivy with, again, that warm look of welcome. He actually places the toe of his work boot lightly on the toe of one of her boot-shoes. But in that instant someone grabs his arm, whispering urgently and now another oldish woman has come up to confer with him and now some little kids stop to ask Ivy, “Are you Linda?”

  “I’m Ivy. Who are you?’

  They laugh. All these giggles and happy smiles and big eyes. “Yoooooooo knowwwww,” one of them says and points at Ivy’s face. This kid is as blond as a thousand-year-gone ghost.

  Now Gordon’s hand closes around Ivy’s wrist, steers her along nearer to the kitchen, introducing her to a fiftyish woman named Celeste, whose hair is black and curly and clipped short. Her dress is a misty green-blue with delicate embroidery around the collar. Believe it or not, she is very pregnant! She is simply standing by a table, holding a glass of water, looking exhausted. How can she be fifty and pregnant? Maybe forty-five. But even then! Something in the water? Something in the food? Oh, ain’t this otherworldly? Ye gods and hot dogs! Ivy’s toes wiggle and bunch with excitement, with fear.

  Gordon introduces Ivy to another woman and another and another and another, a blur of introductions, all first names. Now a man. No name mentioned. Now another and another. Ivy can’t keep all these faces and partial names straight, though she will never forget the overall effect, those swimmy patches of leafy light through which they all move, the kind of oily English-Irish sound of her own name spoken in their Western Hills accent, a little different than the part of Maine where she was raised, where people mix up with outsiders more, where people really hurry. And different, of course, than the French, Maine’s romance language, all those somersault r’s, the o’s engorged somehow, the vortex of j’s and m’s and zhees that pull you in deepest when you have no idea what they mean.

  She frowns.

  His amazing little world. Bloated and strange, rapacious and familiar. Practical but . . . but fun. To give a peek of this miracle to the Record Sun readership would be a big present with a bow tied around it and inside it would be this richness! And inside would also be Ivy’s heart. This is Ivy’s story!!!! Everything else she has written about is shit compared to this.

  But no, she promised not to.

  But yes, the world OUT THERE needs this, needs to know!

  But no.

  Ummmmm . . .

  But no . . .

  Now she again spies the two short and square and sun-ruddy women she met that first night. Both gray-haired (white-haired, actually). “I met them,” Ivy tells Gordon. He nods and tells her, “Yeh-up. That’s the Bev and Barbara team.” He has a nice little grip on Ivy’s wrist again, towing her now even closer to the big kitchen door. “Here’s a nice seat, Ivy. Over here. Right near the kitchen. You need food.” The really nice seat is heaped with hard-living grimy dolls, some one-eyed, most nude. He pitches these on the floor. It is a fine deep upholstered chair between two men who are both eating. Gordon says deeply, “Sit.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep,” she says and groaningly flumps down.

  “The press never sleeps,” says he.

  Ivy yawns violently, her eyes watering. And then there’s no Gordon. Gordon is gone. Poof!

  Ivy looks to the guy on her left. It’s Edward again. Eddie. The clean-shaven guy who she saw that first night outside Gordon’s kitchen and then coming down the mountain this morning. Only now there is no sign of his toucan head. His dirty-blond hair is thinning a bit, and appears combed brutally (and recently) with water. Looks like he’s touched up his shave in the last twenty minutes, too. He smells strongly of soap. A weird soap. Essence of burned clover? He’s not a good-looking man. His light eyes have hardly any lashes and his jaws are so angular. But he has such a sunny aspect, crinkles next to those eyes; a good forty-five years of smiles? And his teeth are white and perfect enough for television or work in sales. And that T-shirt is as white as it gets. And those jeans are as tight as they get. And his belt is doozied up with chrome-plated studs, pewter
animals, a few fake jewels, and coins. Leaping Liberace! Ivy’s inner voice guffaws. He smiles at Ivy, then returns to his conversation in progress with a man in the chair to his left.

  Meanwhile, in the chair at her right is a plain ordinary Mainer-type sixtyish man in work shirt and work pants. Bald on top. Glasses. Smiles at Ivy. But no words. His chewing mouth is full and there’s more on his fork. Big scorched hunk of ham.

  A teenaged boy appears before Ivy, one forearm across his front, one in back. His forearms are incandescent white and willowy. On his feet are weird slippers, pointy and curled like an elf’s. Chinese-style pants. Black silky shirt with no collar. Eyes like a deer, big and sensual and brown. And a strong, bracing, cool, freshly showered smell pours out of him, too, as it does from Eddie, only less burned clover, more minty. The boy does a sweeping bow. “Ricardo,” he says. “At your service, Mademoiselle Morelli. What can I get you?”

  Ivy laughs. “HAW!”

  A girl around twelve, wearing shorts, moccasins, and a cute, flowery, short-sleeved shirt, hair in short brown pigtails, also steps up. “Hi Ivy. We are all at your service. Your wishes are our commands.” She scoots behind Ivy’s big chair and stands there, hand on the back of it. She leans waaay forward to inform Ivy, “After you eat, a bunch of us’r going to give you the tour, Your Queenship.”

  Ivy guffaws. “If I was a true despot, I would ask you to fan me,” and she sees Gordon standing on the next porch by a long crowded table, a brown beer bottle in his hand.

  Ricardo says, “I can start you off with a little something . . . a glass of juice and a muffin, while you decide on the main course.” He is standing with both hands behind his back now.

  Ivy laughs. “I really should be helping out in some way.”

  “Tut tut,” Ricardo scolds. “A gracious guest accepts the gift of being fussed over.”

  Behind Ivy’s chair, the girl’s voice, “Queens must relax.”

  Ivy laughs again, sees that the plain Mainer bald man on her right is stabbing at his eggs with his fork. She heartily tells him, “In some countries, they used to bind the feet of queens.”

  Then she looks over by the two kitchen doors, just a few feet away, into the glittering eyes of a really strapping young woman with thick, wild rivulets of dark hair streaked brassy orange, a really cheap-looking person, whorish-looking actually, dressed in a man’s sleeveless undershirt, huge breasts, braless. The glitter of her eyes makes Ivy think she is wearing contact lenses. But there is something else, too, something like fury and menace, a look someone would give you just before they go to beat the piss out of you.

  Ivy looks quickly back to the elegant teenaged boy’s face. She can almost see her own reflection in his tender and generous eyes. “Anything,” she answers gratefully. “Everything smells so nice. You are so nice . . . while I’m being held prisoner in this chair.”

  Ricardo laughs a tremulous laugh and pats her hand. “Queen, not prisoner.” He turns away toward the kitchen.

  The voice of the girl behind Ivy’s chair says, “That’s my brother.”

  “Nice brother,” Ivy compliments.

  Eddie, paying attention now, says, “High-class.”

  The girl leans over to Eddie and pokes him. “You are low-class, Edward.”

  “I know it,” he admits sheepishly.

  “Eddie, why don’t you go find the trough,” the girl advises.

  He groans to his feet. “Yep, yep, yep. And I’m going to lay in it until the day is over. Don’t tell the sawmill crew you heard that.” He carries his dish away and Ivy closes her eyes a moment, feeling them burn against her lids. She is erasing strict Christian discipline on her list of preconceptions.

  When she opens her eyes, the brassy-haired, angry-looking woman is still standing by the kitchen doors, still giving Ivy that glare. Ivy whispers to the girl behind her chair, “Who is that person by the door there, the one looking at us?”

  The girl seems not to hear the question.

  But the plain Maine man in the chair at Ivy’s right, whose plate is clean now, says quietly, “That’s Bonnie Loo. Don’t get her mad. She’s the world’s best cook.” And he laughs with meaning. And of course Ivy has no idea what the meaning is, not really.

  Claire St. Onge remembers.

  They say when you drink too much, the first things to go are inhibitions and judgment. And we watched nervously as he began to drink for the first time in many months.

  She watches everything, trying to answer her own questions.

  Gordon steps over the outstretched legs of a young man whose arms are crossed over the chest of his camo T-shirt. This young man is snoring loudly, his head hanging off to one side of his chair as though he were freshly dead, but his snore seems to enunciate: I’m alive! I’m alive! I’m alive! His face is a spectacular shade of turquoise. A small, ugly, white, flat-faced dog balances on his lap. Dog has a good view of the steaming table. This is the chair just beyond the chair Eddie vacated.

  Gordon has a six-pack of beer in one hand, an open beer in the other, not the beer Ivy watched him finish off a few minutes ago. This one is full. He stops in front of Ivy and asks, “Beer?”

  She shakes her head. Rolls her eyes.

  In a voice of sorrow, he tells her, “Nobody seems to want a nice warm beer for breakfast. It’s great stuff. Made by a company. Tastes like giraffe piss.”

  Behind Ivy’s chair, the sentry tsks.

  Gordon squints at his open beer. Now his eyes slide to Ivy’s face. Makes his voice deep, Shakespearean sort of, “President! George! Washington wazzzz a randy dandy priggy piggy ear-slicing motherfucker. And Abe Lincoln hung a lot of Indians. He was for trains. And empires. He jailed reporters.”

  Again Ivy rolls her eyes, smiles.

  Her sentry says matter-of-factly, “Here we go.”

  Gordon says with a growl, “Did you know that, Ivy?” He lowers the six-pack to Eddie’s empty chair. “And Eisenhower’s chiefs of staff had something up their sleeve called Operation Northwoods where the CIA spooksters and that sort would do terror and death in the streets of Miami, shoot at ships and planes, and blame it on the Cubans! To get Americans to cheer over a war on Cuba. Kennedy came in and fucked that all up. He was always friggin’ with the spooksters, may he rest in peace.”

  Ivy smiles on and on.

  Gordon sneers, “This stuff would make a good story. Top of the fold. Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Better late than never.” He snorts. Then tips up his beer. Two swallows. Then lowers the beer, making a disgusted face. Licks his lips. “When news happens, it’s not available. When it’s available, it’s not news. It’s olds.”

  The sentry is sighing.

  Gordon stands very straight, chin up, beer held tight against his chest, eyes bore into the eyes of the sentry just beyond and above Ivy’s head. “We’re talking about the guy on the dollar. And the one on the five-dollar bill and the other one, he . . . well you know, postage stamps, tunnels, bridges . . .”

  The sentry leans forward and whispers with hot bacon-smelling breath, “He is drinking.”

  Ivy says, “I noticed.”

  Gordon looks down at Ivy’s face. “Did you know that only ten percent of the American population was legally human under the new constitution and the randy dandy fathers who—”

  The sentry (whose name is Heather but Ivy doesn’t know this) says, “Gordonnnn. Ivy is resssting.”

  He whispers the next part behind three fingers and the open bottle of beer. “George Wash-ing-TON and Ben Franklin and the other fathers did the ear slicing thing. To their slaves.”

  “History is terrible,” says Heather the sentry.

  “History is interesting,” says Gordon.

  Ivy says, “It can be.” About as interesting as golf, she thinks. She rolls her eyes to herself yet again.

  Gordon says, “But it continues. See under the frontispiece of dee-moc-racy . . . ahem . . . of the constitution, you were not human if you were a bonded servant, a slave, a woman, or any of
those poor landless types. Property is the thing. And that does not count the Indians ’cause those were just wild dogs. Had their own nation and all that, lived out there on the horizon doing unspeakable things. Oh GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!! . . . ahem . . . meanwhiles the ten percent that was human . . .” He grins. “They would cut off your ears and other things if you tried to escape . . . or if you tried to revolt against ears and so forth being sliced . . . this since you were property, not human.” He grins again. Very many teeth. “Today it is different.”

  “I hope so,” Ivy says.

  “Today there is still only ten percent who are human, then a vast majority of well-trained beings who believe they’re human until they test the constitution in a court of lawww. Or through so-called representative government. Saw-ree. Not human.” Now he growls this part, “George Washington will cut off your ears, Ivy . . . if . . . yoooo tryyy toooo es-cape. But listen, if you’re a corporation, you’ve been a legal person since 1886 and you will never die.”

  The sentry (Heather) says quickly, “Sometimes good stuff happened in the old days. Tell her some good stuff, Gordie.”

  Gordon says with his eyes shut tight, “The constitution was the first NAFTA.”

  The sentry places both hands ever so gently over Ivy’s ears for a few moments. A glass smashes from a nearby table. The heat cranks up another notch.

  Gordon scooches down in front of Ivy, moves the six-pack from the chair to the floor in a fussy way. And now also his opened beer. He finds a place on the floor for that. He doesn’t face her but stares off down the length of this piazza, to the east, where the mountain behind the row of Quonset huts is a fuzzy hump of deep, heartbreaking green. Softly he says, “It would be a beautiful day if it wouldn’t get so friggin’ hot. Heat is hard. But Jesus, ain’t those hills pretty?” He now swivels toward her, looks at her full-faced, his pale eyes in those dark lashes showing yellow-hot like the sunlight above the Quonset huts.