One time, when Gordon’s name drifted into our conversation, whatever it was I said made both of her eyebrows go up and she said sharply, “He’s not a feminist?”
I got this really crooked smile. I tried to make the smile go away before I spoke. I touched one of the bows of my glasses professorially and squared my shoulders. I was older than her by only six years but I have seen much life, the wriggling squirmy uninstitutional kind. And here my whole world was being called to the carpet in four sharply spoken words. I said, “Gordon finds today’s feminism obscene. He feels it is not about . . . people. He says it is about a system, equality, yes, but equality between men and women within an aggressive elite, and a buffer class elite, an honored group within a subculture of ‘success’ types in a crappy system . . . a system that defines humanity in industrial terms . . . a system that is a tournament. Like an evil version of musical chairs. He says—”
“Well!” she interrupted. She was looking at me dumbfoundedly. “I’m glad you severed the knot on that one. He sounds like a real shit.”
I said, “Most of the people back at the reservation would probably agree with Gordon. You wouldn’t really like Indians, Catherine. Most Indians are rednecks.”
She flushed. “But of course I like Indians!” Her dark, bushy-in-a-sexy-way eyebrows were raised, amazed at such a charge. “Claire, you know that given a chance, Native Americans wouldn’t think like that. Education would enlighten them. Why, look what education has done for you!”
I smiled another funny smile.
She said, “If you weren’t educated, you’d probably be living with Mr. Dumb Schmuck still . . . living under his thumb.”
A car without a muffler roared past on the street below. I glanced at the wall clock. The minute hand was moving right before my eyes, faster than a minute hand should move. I could hear the stomping of feet, fists on the supper tables. “EVIL GROWS! WHOMP. EVIL GROWS! WHOMP . . .”
I looked at Catherine’s pretty face, her lovely and safe outrage, her lovely and nonperilous impatience, her self-absorbed, self-conscious, positive-thinking loveliness.
Meanwhile, Ivy Morelli in her living room of kooky posters and simple furniture. Her eyes are wide. She had fallen asleep sitting up with the lights on. She had dreamed.
It was a scream dream. But had she really screamed? She’s not sure. Maybe a whimper. But in the dream, it was a scream. A field of tawny waving grasses. She was there alone. Miles of grass. No one to help her. A mountain lion, also tawny, trudging along, long-bodied, heavy, and yet, effortless. Big head. In real life, a long dark-tipped tail would be following behind the big cat’s body as it sensuously parts the pale grasses. But in the dream she can’t recall a tail.
The face fills the screen of Ivy’s dream. The face flickers as on a TV with poor reception. The white fire eyes are on her.
Again the reception flickers and is blistered with white dots. But this only gives it more power. The lion’s black pupils are trained on Ivy’s mind. The tawny jaws clench.
Ivy screamed (or something) then. And so she woke.
She is not a fan of big cats.
West parlor. Rainy Evening. Bonnie Loo speaks.
Tonight with the rain, Claire and I are looking over the kitchen records, itemizing a bunch of kitchen-type stuff we bought since the first of last month. We do our best. Not perfectly accurate. Not to the penny. But it’s something Gordon leans on us about. Once a month, he calls a powwow. And he’s hard. He doesn’t like spending gobs of money. Fine.
So Claire and I have the books out. And we have our feet up. Shoes around on the floor. Both my youngest kids are asleep on the floor. Very big room, this parlor. Only one lamp is on, bright on our business but the orangey pine walls are peaked and jagged with shadows. And the cedar ceiling is pumping out its cloudy orgasm of scent. Then there is the sweetness of the rain, the sleepy drumming sound of it coming to us through the open windows. And there’s the zooming and crashing of June bugs and moths against the screens every time the rain lets up a moment.
And it seems Poon Vandermast just materializes out of thin air, standing by the arm of Claire’s deep chair. Rain-darkened brown T-shirt. Jeans. Rain glistening on his arms and face. He never seems to age much, no matter how many years rush away. Poon. Mark’s his real name. But we always called him Poon in school . . . you know . . . back in school.
I says, “Oh, hi, Poon. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
He says, “I know it.” Says it real nice. He has a round baby face, little mustache, lotta dark hair, blue worried-looking eyes. Soft mouth, very innocent-looking. Too shy for girlfriends when we were in school. See how weird life is! Beautiful guy like that had no love life. Me, I was a mess, had bad teeth and pimples . . . I had a love life. All I could handle.
My Ma says Poon has got some married woman over on Morrow Road who reels him in on a big hook every couple months when her old man’s out to sea on a merchant ship, and she has kept Poon Vandermast in and out of her bed since graduation, so the story goes. That’s mighty pitiful. Even now, he doesn’t get one whole woman to himself.
I glance at what Poon holds in his arms. Something heavy-looking, wrapped in a black trash bag.
Claire adjusts her glasses, those round kind like Woodrow Wilson’s or John Lennon’s or whatever. She doesn’t drop her feet from the cable spool. But she nods to Poon and says, “Coffee or something? Maple candy? Bonnie and I have a wicked stash of maple candy here. A secret stash. Don’t tell anyone.”
Poon says, “I’m all set. Thanks anyway.” And he tugs away the trash bag to reveal a big scrapbook, looks a lot like one of our History as it Happens books.
Claire says, “So I suppose you and Bonnie Lucretia here are related . . . everybody in Egypt is connected somehow.”
Poon laughs. “Prob’ly.”
I says, “Wasn’t Kay Benson some relation to the Farnsworths?”
Poon nods. “Sister . . . or sister-in-law. Ma knew all that stuff. I can’t keep track.”
Claire is staring at the big book in his arms.
I say, “Well, that would make us sixth . . . seventh cousins through Farnsworths, once or twice removed.”
Claire says, “I’m from outa town. Fresh blood.” She raises her chin, proudlike.
Poon smiles.
I get up from my chair, stretch a little, hug myself, slip into my moccasins, worming each foot in. And Poon is still just gripping the big book and Claire and I just keep glancing at the big book, then back up at Poon’s worried blue eyes.
Claire says, “Well, I just met Poon the other night on a lonely dark road.”
Poon smiles.
I nod. I know all this. Everyone in the Settlement knows. Vandermast boys are trying to get their sister to come hang out with us here. The kid with the bad birth defect. I’ve not really seen her close up. Sometimes, when we were kids, I got a glimpse when she was waiting for the second-run school bus, but never in the halls. She’s younger than my brother Dale, three or four years behind him.
Claire wonders, “Why do they call you Poon? I like that. Sounds Indian.”
Poon shrugs. “I can’t recall. Some baby name, I guess.”
“Better than Bubba,” she says solemnly. She points at his big book with her pen. “Watcha got?”
He squats down by the cable spool next to Claire and Claire jerks her feet down off the spool and grunts, shifting her wiggly round self into a more upright sitting position. Poon lays the book there on the spool with a flourish.
Claire raises the stiff cover of the big book. The inside pages are grayish rag paper. Artist’s paper. Each piece glued to a larger sheet of glossy poster board so that the poster board is the part that is bound. I can tell you that that artsy paper and the poster board aren’t neither one a thing they give away. I rest my hand on the back of Claire’s chair, lean in.
We look at the first page.
“Jeepers,” I say. I reach over and snap on a brighter lamp.
Claire is sil
ent, her eyes moving over the page.
It is a painting. Not a print. But the real thing. Not some juiceless bowl of fruit like most of us would do. Here are thicknesses of gold paint, gold as wedding rings, which frost the wrinkles of pale blues and brick and maroon and ruby, blood red and pink, dark blue and black. Some of this is oil paint, some of it oily pastels, ingeniously friendly. And then fine hairs of a fountain pen, that fancy real ink. All these things working together as lazily as the hand of Mother Nature. The picture is of the faces of a bunch of kids.
I can’t believe those hands! Almost three-dimensional. Probably because the background is a little foggy. The way kids breathe through their mouths, not yet knowing what it means to be a lady or gentleman. And eyes. Too direct. The sleepers and jerseys are in the foggy part of the picture, a sleepy texture. I can almost smell the detergent.
A verse is written beneath with fountain pen in masterful calligraphy:
The little ones are tough inside and red hot. Not at all what you think. Out of earshot, they talk like men, voices deep, making complicated earnest plans for skyscrapers, world travel, and war. Do not underestimate! And do not wish for what you don’t want, because they honor wishes.
I can’t help but look over at my sleeping son and daughter, Zack and Jetta. Zack on his back with arms open like he has fallen from the sky, Jetta on her side with her whole head buried down under a stripy dirty pillow, disgusting pillow, embarrassing to have someone from the outside world see it.
Claire slowly lifts the page. Her wicked-thick wicked-black wicked hair is in a barrette, swings down across her right side and behind the fleshy arm that draws back from turning the big page.
We stare into the world of the next painting. A dark human figure, a silhouette actually, stands in a window as seen from outdoors while beyond the corner of the building it is all smoke and pink dawn and again speckles of wedding ring gold. And there is a hump of land, stony and treed with black silhouette firs and winter-bare maples and patches of snow and fog. It is the kind of place and the kind of moment I have known all my life here in these hills.
I look at Claire. She looks at me, but only a quick peek. I want to cry. You know, a kind of proud cry.
I look at Poon. Beautiful Poon. Our lives innocently tangled.
I look back at the painting, at those impossible little flecks of gold. How did they get put there by a human being’s hand with a paintbrush?
In calligraphy again, the words beneath.
The position for prayer is as a child in the crib waits to be lifted to arms. Submission. This is very common in our world. Prayer’s prescription. But my people here, Poon and Dana, Benny and Dad, some mornings alone in the kitchen, not knowing I watch, one of them, usually Dad, will go to a window and roughly take the sides of the framework, one side to each hand, and squeeze as he looks out at what God has made today. Can this be prayer!!!! And his hungry stomach in his waist growls. And the dark morning lays mean on the hills, Egypt and beyond that, all of Maine, broken by cruelties, both earth and human in painful tandem.
I don’t look at Poon or his rough hands. I just kinda smile. This is about us! This is our story.
I say stupidly, “Yikes.”
Claire says, “Okay. Time’s up. Tell us who the artist is. Your sister, right?”
He flushes. “Yep. Wicked, huh?”
Claire says, “You mean your fifteen-year-old sister.”
He flushes again. Nods a bunch of quick nods. He says, “She’s about to bust out.”
Claire’s eyes spiral all over him. She gets a pretty mean look when she’s trying to figure something out. “I . . . can’t believe this.” She laughs. “Not that you’re a liar. I just mean . . . I am jolted. This is . . . wonderful!”
I reach down across Claire’s arm and I turn the next page. This one shows two shadowy figures . . . a girl and a collie dog? . . . against a night of heavy woods and jillions of stars, some closer, some far, some so far they are just a gelid smear. Distance beyond distance. Must have taken months to paint all those stars.
The calligraphy verse reads:
In history books, there are no kisses, no back scratches, no first words of babies, no dogs. There are only conquistadors and their blows. Yet in the real past, there has been as many kisses as there are night stars. All forgotten.
Meanwhile, out in the world.
It is evening in a small Florida town. The streets are wet with rain. Smell that tonnage of tropical sweetness drifting through the trees!
On the gray plastic rear bumper of a chocolate-color SUV that is passing another SUV and a line of smaller cars, there is this bumper sticker: MY CHILD IS A MAE DANIELS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT. There is almost an accident here as an oncoming car brakes, causing the tailgaters behind it to practically pile up. Horns blare. Someone gives the finger to the brown SUV. But the culprit, proud in all ways, just keeps on rolling.
Meanwhile, back in Egypt, Maine, Bonnie Loo speaks.
Claire hoists herself up onto her little-girl-sized bare feet. Claire, so much shorter than Poon, looking up at the face of the brother of this suddenly larger-than-life fifteen-year-old Brianna Vandermast. She says, “Where is she? Your sister. Home watching TV?”
Poon says, “Gone with Vid and Stacey to the mill.” No one asks who Vid and Stacey are, but “mill” means a load of pulp or chips and the snarling and grunting of an engine stout enough to draw it there.
I lift another page, but I feel Claire’s eyes on me and look up. Her glossy black tail of hair has found its way over the front of her work shirt, she uses both hands to flip it back over her shoulder as she marches out of the room and then we can hear her beyond the library out on the piazza, calling “SLAVES! SLAVES! ARE ANY OF MY SLAVES STILL ABOUT!!!”
Then the squeakiness of some kid, sounds like a Soucier.
And Claire, “WHERE’S GORDON!”
And squeak squeak squeak, is the reply.
Now Claire, “Tell him to come here now, on winged feet!”
I look into Poon’s flushing face. He says with a shy smile, “Lady of action.”
“Yep,” I say. I feel like I need a smoke. I peek over at the kids. Zack hasn’t moved. But Jetta has one sleepy open eye on us. I turn another page of the big book. “Poon, your sister . . . she’s really something.”
“She’s about to bust out,” he says again.
The next picture is of two beat-ta-shit small skidders, one yellow, one orange. One is jacked up in the open bay of a pole barn. Massive tires on rims against the wall. This is pen and ink and washes of watercolor. Arms, elbows, shoulders of men showing at the edges. And feet in work boots and sneakers sort of telescoped through the underneaths of these two machines. This artist has made the peeling skidder cages look like aged porcelain with virtuous little ladylike cracks. I’ve known skidders all my life. Until now, would I have called them beautiful?
Brianna’s calligraphy verse reads:
I work the binders, the chokers, the winch and cables, the pewy scream of a Jonsereds. I am strong. I have gone with my fingertips into the greasy dark stink of hoses, rings, and warm manifolds of my father’s bright fleet, and my shirt billows against the skidder’s hub as I climb. I climb her all over. Her tire chains come thick as wrists. Always in the company of my brothers and father. We are all genius here. Noesis!
Noesis. What the hell does that mean? You’d never know I had some college. I would’ve told you Noesis was a Christmas word.
Claire is back beside me. Has her hands on her fat squishy hips. She says, “He’s just across in the east parlor.” She whispers this part, “He and that Skowhegan solar guy are plottin’ up something.” Then, “Said he’d be one more minute.”
I see Poon is looking around at stuff. He smiles at Godzilla sitting in the chair with the lizard book and the size eighteen sneakers and the big nice eyes. Made by yours truly.
And I really hate sewing. But this was special. Me and lizards have a thing. And rats, too. Smooch! So I
did the big G all by hand. Took six months. Except Paul Lessard helped me get those sneakers, through someone where he used to work. Aren’t those corkers?
Poon’s worried blue eyes move from Godzilla to my face.
Claire whistles, admiring the next page of Brianna Vandermast’s big book.
The painting now is of a man standing between a set of gas pumps and a flatbed truck loaded with what looks like old aluminum culverting. Head cocked, the man is listening to two others, one a guy who is gripping a bag and a gallon jug of milk. All three sets of hands are vivid. Almost reach out of the page. But the rest of the picture is soft and dreamy including two of the figures and faces, one a profile. I can tell you without a doubt that the man next to the gas pumps, the one with the clearly-rendered face, is Gordon St. Onge.
The verse reads:
Rabies
I don’t get it. Rabies?
Without taking her eyes off the picture, Claire asks, “Is your sister any more interested in hanging out with us up here than she was a few days ago?”
Poon shakes his head once. “If she knew I sneaked this book, she’d throw me against a wall.”
Claire chortles in her thick-neck fat-person fashion.
Poon says, “I think if one of you comes over tomorrow morning, you’ll catch her home. We’re not working till afternoon. Just moving some equipment. We’ll be in and out. Bree’ll be around I think.” He is looking intently at Claire. “I can get this book back so she won’t notice. Just don’t tell her you ever saw this.”
Claire chuckles, probably still imagining Poon getting thrown against the wall by his little sister.
Gordon’s voice. In the library now, just through the open door. Gordon has a real thick-type voice, like talking while swallowing, which is often the case . . . ha! ha! . . . but not always. Not now. The Skowhegan guy’s voice is also deep but sharper, narrower, more tang, less slobber, err, I mean less vehemence than our dear one. And as they appear in the doorway, I see that the visitor wears a dressy short-sleeve shirt with his work pants. Face shaved. A reserved smile. Like zippered-up lips. Maybe he just needs to warm up to us. Some people take a while.
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 22
