“Everything you want to know about solar!” a husky voiced young’un shouts.
“And buggies!” another adds.
“We have buggies!” yet another offers.
“She knows that,” another one says with a “tsk!”
“Hey.” (A quiet hey.) There is a really squirty little guy at Ivy’s elbow, maybe five years on earth. He has hair pale as snow, snowy eyebrows, doleful blue eyes. Some fresh bug bites. Ivy recalls him from the tour crew. It’s Rhett. He again murmurs, “Hey.”
But an older girl with little square-lens glasses (the latest outside world fad) and frizzy brown hair and a quivery voice is telling Ivy something physics-esque, about how and why they made the passive solar collectors from scratch, and this goes into an explanation of why homemade labor-intensive solar is king in the way that “force times distance equals work. See?” She is going on about how fossil fuels cannot be beat for work. “Weaning ourselves off of them means more work for people, even with the best known alternatives. So the idea is to make the work part for us humans irresistible! To make it like a party! One can’t expect individuals and regular-ish modern families to want to take on this thing the way we do.”
The girl with the honey braid says, “On a massive scale, such as this nation, it takes fossil fuel to develop the non–fossil fuel transition. If they’ve started, it’s been kept secret, I mean in the way of commercial processes meant to supply the whole population. It’s no secret that most regular folks are still using fossil fuel for everything. But it appears that most industry is, too. And the bloated military. This has a mega uh-oh factor.”
Ivy smiles pleasantly, trying not to appear sleepy. This kid is dishing prime goobledy goo poo.
A golden girl with black, black hair and a vaguely Indian face, age twelve or thirteen, wearing a salmon color halter, compares fossil and solar, adding that “hydrogen is too flammable, and you have to get it with use of the fossil . . . at least as it’s developed today. So there’s no point in discussing hydrogen as a replacement to the fossil for manufacturing, heat, electricity, and cars in time for the transition we need now before the available and processable fossil is gone, like . . . you know . . . can’t be got. So hydrogen is . . . you know . . . just political distraction.”
“Or yet another corporate scheme to outdo the sneakiness of all other corporate schemes,” states a girl with earrings almost as wacky as some in Ivy’s earring collection. But can you believe this? Earrings made with chicken eggs! Hollow, Ivy presumes. Eggs painted robin’s egg blue but no robin could have laid those corkers. Meanwhile, the girl’s brown hair is in a fanciful do. From the head up, she looks ready to go to a ball. But her halter is thin and tight and tiny. Red. A real sexy glamour puss, but all sorts of sciency and political goop poop pours out of her mouth. Her bare shoulders are freckled. No tan. A lotta time in studies maybe? Or in the Quonset huts under cars? Anything is possible here.
She goes on, flicking her sexy little wrist, “You hear that big industry is hot to develop more efficient hydrofracking . . . but that is still Peak Oil because the cost of massive water use and ruining prairies . . . and the gasoline used to do this is totally goofball. Totally!”
A small-for-her-age blonde in much embroidery (and some tan) intercepts the blue eggs girl with, “the hydrogen thing, you see, it exists chemically bound with oxygen as water or with carbon in fossil fuels. It would use too much energy to separate it.”
“It sucks,” says a wee soul who stands beside Claire, across the table from Ivy so all she can see is the top of his face. Thick chestnut hair.
An older boy standing behind Ivy remarks, “Hydrogen is definitely overrated. People just don’t understand it. If they did, they’d see through all the optimism.”
“Meanwhile,” another boy says quickly, “It’s wars ‘n stuff over the last easy-to-get oil and natural gas. And even . . . wherever . . . it’s dirty, dirty, dirty.”
“Human bee-ings are dirty,” a toddleresque person says with a long exhale.
Another small solarist pipes up, “We can’t do hyjrin ourselv, so it’s not democrissy anyways. So—”
“Hydrogen, Ethan, hydrogen.”
“Nuclear is creepy,” says another.
“Has vibes,” says another.
“Rays,” corrects the same voice that had corrected the other kid.
“Radiation,” says another small scientist.
“Hey,” the snowy-haired little Rhett again murmurs up at Ivy.
Ivy replies, “Hey. Yuh. Hey, hee hoo.”
“If nuke power is going to work and they can get all the deadly bugs out of it, fine. But right now, too many bugs,” a ponytailed teenaged ever-so-wanly-bearded boy explains.
“Yeah, bugs,” says a small kid, shivering.
Several giggles.
Does Ivy look vague? Eyes. Blue. Cold. Vague.
“Then there’s biomass,” reflects one of the seated older girls (one with that important look about her, not la-la-la-dee-dah self-importance but a person who is regarded highly and listened to. A silence happens as she speaks). “It’s turning out to be a big gang rape on the rain forests, along with all the other stuff they’re hitting on the rain forests for . . . soy and meat. Even in the Middle Ages they depleted their forests over in Europe. Construction and fuel. And the Nazis were resource depleters. Just to name a few. But with the population and consumerism and wastefulness today . . . and all the networks of importing and exporting, and legislative systems with no accountability to anybody but mammoneers, you can just see what’s coming. Earth becomes moon. A few woodstoves, fine. But maybe if it were hemp. Hemp grows fast and doesn’t deplete soil . . . but even then . . .”
“So using miles and miles of trees for biomass is suicide,” a crackling crunching future baritone warns. “Whatever they come up with involves the fossil, like for equipment and trucks . . . so we have climate change. That’s a huge cost. You have to figure in the climate mess. The peak, the climate. It’s all one . . .” On and on.
Ivy’s attention seriously wanders. The goo poo is running uphill. Yes, Ivy’s attention is in scan-the-room mode.
Screen door nearest this table has weeeeked open and some new arrivals step in. A familiar-looking girl who looks about twelve years old, with a sly, inward smile like people get when they are stoned, only her eyes do not seem stoned. Her eyes are gray, and bright. She is as “big as a house with child,” of course, and there’s a newspaper under one of her skinny arms.
“Dee Dee! Hey there, good woman!” someone at a farther-over table hoots.
“Oh, no, here’s trouble!” another admiring shout.
“Jeez, Dee Dee, what happened to nine o’clock?”
Pregnant twelve-year-old (or so she looks) popular Dee Dee wrinkles her nose. Bows.
Accompanying her are three young guys, one a tall youth with a long, Oriental-type beard, you know, tapered and straight and undercharged. And black. It trickles over the front of his shirt. Ivy’s eyes widen. She had just seen him at the sawmills. And he’d been at Gordon’s farm place with Eddie right after her confrontation with the “strong” coffee. His shirt is a summer weight flannel of purple and black checks. Big, flappy, hot-looking mountain man, felt hat on his head. And again that heavy revolver hanging in a holster from a loose lopsided belt. His hips are narrow as a child’s. Shoulders, narrow. Head and face, small. But he’s a good six feet, yes, the guy looks like a weasel, a sawdusted-over weasel.
“Hey. Hey.” The small boy, Rhett, with snowy hair is now poking at Ivy’s shoulder bag, which is on the floor beside her foot. He knows how to get a city woman’s attention. Ivy’s stony blue eyes flash first to his foot, then to his face. As we noted before, Ivy does not have friendly eyes. The child’s eyes are doleful and round. His voice, matching his eyes, says, “You know about Peak Oil and cli-mitt?”
Meanwhile, the rest of the solar crew has been vying for Ivy’s ear and eyes, going on about hydroelectric, “a nice idea but displaces peop
le’s houses. Sometimes whole towns.”
A twenty-something young Indian woman’s face floats out of the heat and clamor. “But small hydro projects are a must. Like small dams at mills. As long as it’s not where salmon run.”
A twenty-something young white guy with his arms folded over a muscle-filled, lime green T-shirt, speaks ever so softly. Ever so grimly. More gobbeldy poo Ivy doesn’t bother to hear.
A fifteen-year-old red-haired boy with eyes full of sparks, gives more sciency info to Ivy’s glazed expression.
“Less consumption!” another middle-teen voice bellers from the edge of the group. “That’s the thing we need!”
A nearby face agrees. “A new way of life.”
“Even if a new commercial discovery or invention works, it’ll be out of reach for most people. Wicked expensive,” This from behind Ivy’s head, so there is no face, only decibels. “Think about fracking, just another expense to taxpayers. Corporate tax loopholes. Jobs only for a while.”
“Village-sized democracy. It’s the thing we can do!” Another squealer there.
“Peak Oil,” the little snowy-haired Rhett says again. Quietly. Firmly. No doubt in his mind. “You know it, Inee?”
Ivy says, “Well, of course,” and her cold eyes flash off to the left to activate her memory. Peak Oil. A children’s mantra. Little small mouths giving up these empty words to the day. Words that are empty to Ivy. Is Ivy curious? Is Peak Oil worthy of pause? Could it ever be the headline that titillating St.-Onge-as-child-fucker-type stories get? How about somewhere between a sofa ad and retirement of a Nebraska police chief? And what izzzzz Peak Oil? Two empty words trapped in a wee pocket of woods in Egypt, Maine. THAT is not news. If it doesn’t come over the wire or from the lips of the governor, it is NOT NEWS. Unless it has “human interest.” Or violence. Ivy has thought all this Peak Oil stuff in a flash and discarded it. Leaping Lizards! Droning ducks! Everybody just shut up!
The snowy Rhett is clearing his throat but already two more squeaky voices fill the space like mice in a pail. “The silicon solar panels . . . ones we buy. We’ll show you pretty soon.” Nod nod nod. Confirmation of this by others, too. All these little nodding heads.
“You can really see the difference and besides Mark and Oh-RELL—” This tyke interrupted by another tyke, the interrupter sounds almost angry, little thin angry squeaking voice, “No! She is going to the mills.”
“After,” the interrupted voice insists.
“She has already DONE the mills,” a deeper voice intercepts.
“Hey,” the little snowy Rhett persists. Doleful finger. Taps Ivy’s arm. Little taps of sorrow. “Inee, listen, Inee, hey.”
Ivy looks down at his finger and then his face.
“It’s awful,” he insists.
Ivy turns in her seat and studies him square on.
Voice of a teen girl somewhere in the hot mob, “Rhett, she knows about that. She’s a news person.”
Ivy smiles blinkingly. Raises her chin. TRIES not to sound condescending or SARCASTIC. “Peak Oil?”
“It’s awful, Inee,” the snowy little Rhett tells her gravely.
But heads are turned and more turning. Some chatter in the nearer distances has stopped.
Teen girl voice, “You don’t know about it?”
Claire’s eyes burn through the spectacles, through the heat, through the mists straight into our Ivy’s frosty blues, Claire’s eyes as dark as past and future, just as a twelve-year-old (thereabouts) gives a nervous giggle and announces, “Hot oceans with acid, dead soils, floods, fires, famine, peak water. It could be the end of the world for millions if we don’t—”
An interrupter bursts in, “Wars. The whole world will be fighting over the last little bit. All wealth and resources going into boots for soldiers. Like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, that book by the man—”
A voice overlaps, “Orwell!”
The first interrupter goes on, “All resources will go into war. That means millions of people who are just regular people now are going to become bums.”
“Homeless, Derrick. HOME-less.”
“Or soldiers!” another small eardrum-puncturing voice stabs into the mix.
“Or police!” cuts in another.
“Or dead.”
“It’ll be feudalism. People will make lace by hand for lords and most of us will get squeezed into barbed wire like Palestine!”
“Cement!”
And now another interrupter-overlapper quite close to Ivy’s right elbow asks in a voice full of wonder, “What kind of news do you do?”
“Well, I only do official news, not . . . conspiracy theories.” She blushes. “I mostly do just news about people, not science anyway. Or politics. So either way, I’m not about . . . that.”
“Peak Oil is about people?” a teeny-weeny Minnie Mouse voice sort of states, sort of asks, quite bewildered.
“Dead people are people,” a husky boy-man voice plainly states. “Dead from no food, no heat and stuff. The fertilizer that agribiz uses is made from the fossil. From natural gas. No fertilizer equals no food.”
Meanwhile, faces all around stare at Ivy dumbfounded.
Ms. Ivy Morelli. The press.
The grays.
WE are NOT dumbfounded.
Conspiracy theory 101.
Yes, the older kids stare at Ivy dumbfounded, and the women at the table aren’t saying anything, but the younger kids have no idea what just went down and continue to squeak and chatter at Ivy about oil.
Oil oil oil oily gobbledy gooo. Pooey poo. Animal sounds. Ivy floats on the hot wet waves of oily mouths, open, close, open, close.
Claire’s formerly steady gaze is now lowered to her plate as if the moment has become uninteresting even to her. She lifts a forkful of oily salad and stuffs it in.
Ivy smiles quirkily.
One of the important-looking girls says sweetly, overly sweet, like sarcasm, “There are people who have no problem figuring out that what goes on behind closed doors might be conspiracy. Isn’t that the definition of conspiracy?”
Ivy says, “Sure.”
Girl goes on. Sweeeeetly. Brat. Unblinking silky-white hotshot babe. “Some people believe that learning things is good. It’s the basis of democracy. Right?”
Another sweeeet girl trills, “You don’t make fun of most science theory, or police investigators with theory? Only science that has political ramifications, huh?”
Several important-looking girls slip out a snicker, but then hold back. Many unblinking but lathered hotshot babes. Fucking brats.
Tall boy steps closer. Tall thin boy about seventeen. “But Peak Oil and climate change and acidification of oceans is documented.”
“Yeah,” says a woman, standing behind Ivy. “But these things are not announced through the media by scientists hired by the oil, gas, or coal companies. Just like climate change isn’t. And water shortages. Food wars and mineral wars. And serious soil erosion. They’d rather we be surprised. Like pow!”
“They want to keep these things as divisive issues,” croaks a pimply boy with a nose like a banana.
Important-looking girl dives in, “Independent scientists who aren’t on a leash are considered originators of conspiracy theory, right?”
“Theory leads to investigation,” booms a deep-voiced man-boy.
Everyone is looking at Ivy. Ivy is all alone.
Gail mutters around her chewy bread, her cheek rounded, “Officials are fascists. Corporatists. Government and big biz and big finance all blended through foundations, campaign finance, revolving doors. They aren’t going to tell anything. Big media are shills. Madison Avenue fashions the news. All mixed up. Same guys. They call it democracy. We used to call it conflict of interests. But there are new developments in terminology. Look up Fascism in the dictionary, Ivy. You’ll see what it means . . .” Gail’s voice now has a dusty surface. Irritated. Dry. Oh, sweetie pie, look innnn the dictionary.
Yeah yeah yeah. Fascism. Peak Oil. And flying sauce
rs. Ivy says, “I see what you mean.” She does not want to turn them off. She doesn’t want to lose them. So close now. But the heat is bringing out Ivy’s rough side, her snarly side. Her operating a bulldozer side. She swallows. She thinks of hearts and flowers. Her eyes drift for a moment. Across all the heads and arms and shoulders of the solar crew, she sees the bearded and armed (with handgun) weasel-shaped guy with the big hat and purple-checked shirt holding the screen door open ever-so-thoughtfully for a broad-chested, big-headed, short-legged black Scottie dog who hops up onto the piazza and stands surveying the situation. The dog’s head is huge. Eyes dark and gleaming. The thick erect tail quivers like the tail of a rattlesnake. A child’s voice in a tattling nah-nah mode calls out, “Uh oh, Cannonball is here!”
The young bearded weasel guy’s eyes meet Ivy’s now. Ivy decides that these golden-green-brown eyes (which are in the blackest of lashes and are so lost in the bluish privacy under the brim of his big hat) are the MOST beautiful brown eyes yet, surpassing all the other glorious browns she has witnessed so far here.
Someone at one of the farther tables calls out, “What’s that dog doing here again? She bites!”
No reply.
Another voice, this time from a group of men in rockers along the inner wall, “How’d you wind up with a hound like that anyway, Dee Dee?”
The pregnant twelve-year-old-looking girl with the newspaper who has arrived with the guy with the eyes and gun answers heartily. “Dad stole her. She was tied out somewhere in a yard in Vermont. Tied OUT. Night and day. You know Dad. He flipped his cookie.”
“Hey,” the snowy-haired little Rhett grasps Ivy’s arm now, his palm feeling like mailing tape against her skin. He’s gaining confidence, gaining ground. He’ll be crawling up around her neck next.
A woman’s husky chiding voice snarls, “Well, you don’t steal a breed dog like that. She looks almost like a show dog. Look at those long whiskers, eyebrows, and everything. Cops’ll be at the door. Maybe a lawsuit. Maybe jail.”
With quickening blood, Ivy realizes this is Bonnie Loo, standing between the two kitchen doors as usual.
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 19
