Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  Inside the screen, tidy odorless fruit-color humans carry on with no apologies as the awful music subsides and the mood relaxes. Now, suddenly, a slobbery lifeless water flings the glasslike screen aside and a waterfall thunders at our feet. Thousands of scarlet fish‡ zigzag through the deepening tide that rises up to our shins, knees, thighs.

  ‡ Red herrings.

  Oh, dear, this contraption is a specimen that we cannot keep. We buzz open the hatch and out it goes.

  In a future time, Claire St. Onge remembers.

  Again he was going in and out of his . . . his spells. One day he’d just be horseplaying with the kids and working hard and eating his meals with gusto. Just the workings of the Settlement heating his blood. Then snap! He was going on and on about this or that ruthless policy of “America” or “the corporatists” or “the Mammon worshippers.” He’d snarl, “The humans are ee-vile!” Then he’d do some charming stunt to jerk us back. His glob of keys jangling, he’d drop agilely to kiss somebody’s feet. He was a notorious foot kisser. And he’d call you “my dear one.” Hoarse, stirring theatrics.

  Many sisters here confided in me that they felt so sick inside and edgy.

  Which was more dangerous, the world or Gordon?

  The screen explains.

  The governor has worked hard to make Maine appealing to FDNA, the credit giant, and now one of Maine’s old coastal working class towns, previously “jobless,” is host to FDNA. Hats off to the governor! FDNA will employ up to 2,000 people from many area towns and cities in two counties. And there’s GREAT pay and benefits. Thank you, Governor. Our hats are off. We should be thankful for these jobs. These jobs could have gone to another state!!! And that would have been terrible!!!

  Uh-oh . . .

  While applications were being taken for the jobs, it has been revealed that there will be a policy of NO PERSONAL CALLS WHATSOEVER IN OR OUT. NO EXCEPTIONS. For employees using sick days, A DOCTOR’S NOTE IS MANDATORY. ANYONE EVEN THINKING THE WORD “UNION” WILL BE FIRED ON THE SPOT. There will be STRICT WORK MONITORING. STRICT DRESS CODE. And ROUTINE SURPRISE URINE MONITORING. NO FAMILY PHOTOS ALLOWED IN CUBICLES. ALL MANAGEMENT POSITIONS WILL BE BROUGHT IN FROM OUT OF STATE.

  Concerning the aforementioned.

  The screen is blank.

  More to mull.

  Somewhere in New England, another family farm is lost. Another one is sold because the grown children don’t like farming. Another is lost and another and another. Crunch. Zoom!! Grrr! Cul-de-sacs. Foundations. Bedroomy homes. Grass to groom. Another moment passes. Another farm is lost. Another cluster of bedroomy homes. Empty till dark? Always empty but for beds. But no dark. Big security lamps light up the stage. Pink like insalubrious plasma. Another moment passes. Another barn gets made into a studio. Another. Farms dying. Families dividing. Another father looks into his young child’s face and sees only the reflected glow of the kid’s costly but cheapie computer. Lost in unimagined space.

  Out in the world.

  More studies coming in that reveal an increase in America’s cynicism. Four major 1993 surveys showed between 15 and 20 percent of Americans were somewhat cynical, more than 10 percent very cynical. In two major 1999 studies cynicism on the whole had risen 46 percent. And 60 to 75 percent of those cynical were deemed to be very cynical.

  Wedged in the screen door, an envelope. In the envelope, a letter in bold calligraphy.

  Dear Teacher—

  You do not need to see me for us to exchange a few ideas. I think I saw some of your students today, passing in two cars on the road. I always like to imagine that they are armies of goodwill. Well, I guess that’s just what they are!

  Oh, I love letters. I can write much better than I speak. So don’t keep trying to find me.

  I saw some more of the letters to the editor you wrote in 1980 and ’81. Six different newspapers. Don’t ask me how I got them. Ha-ha. I have friends on the inside (Settlement). But even that’s not where I got them.

  Yes, I am hiding from you. But I have reasons. But you are hiding, too! You are hiding from the people. I have heard of your passionate mealtime speeches in detail (through my spies ha-ha), so in a way I AM ALWAYS RIGHT THERE WATCHING YOU!!! And I can plainly see that you know what a good leader must do.

  Good leaders are not bosses, are not bullies, working with a whip. Good leaders are like sunrises. They stir us from slumber, make our muscles go twitch-twitch and get us all to do what we need to do, what we actually wanted to do to begin with. To be brothers and sisters. To roar.

  I have been reading a lot of stuff on the lobbying in Washington and also the Trilateral Commission, Bildeberger, Council of Foreign Relations, IMF, World Bank, W.T.O., Business Roundtable, Project for the New American Century, Chamber of Commerce. These are God. They want everyone in all countries to be in debt. To be slaves. To work with no labor laws, no environmental protections. They want more and more privatization and no laws for themselves. The system has evolved. Poised to enslave the world. There are terrible secrets. But I also like to read Chomsky and Zinn and I get CounterPunch. And there is the little book called Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher. And do you know Wendell Berry? There is so much. Have you seen the book Ishmael? About a gorilla who talks . . . sort of.

  You want to know a secret? I am really scared.

  Your friend,

  Bree

  She opens the letter, which has come by US mail. The handwriting is large and spiky. The note is written on scrap paper.

  Dear Brianna. I have a secret for you. I, too, am really scared.

  Your friend,

  Gordie

  (or Guillaume. That’s my real name.

  Can you pronounce it?)

  Very quickly, another envelope appears, this one not wedged in the door, but on the table.

  Dear Teacher—

  Have you heard about Radio Free Maine? It is a series of audio tapes of lectures. Chomsky! And Zinn! There are others, too. What do you think of the Leftists?

  I’ll enclose the address for the tapes. They would be wonderful for your library.

  And would you tell me another secret about yourself? I love secrets.

  Your friend, Bree

  Look! See!

  RADIO FREE MAINE

  P.O. BOX 2705

  AUGUSTA MAINE 04338

  She sits on her bed in her little attic bedroom and reads the large spiky handwriting.

  Dear Brianna—

  Yes, I will see to it that some of those tapes go into the library. And we already have the books you mentioned in your first letter.

  Another secret about me personally? Okay. Here’s one. My life is filled with witches. I am not the big guy you think I am. I am not a world leader. I am nothing. I am a kind of fire-tongued toad. But the witches . . . now THERE is a force to be reckoned with.

  Your friend,

  Gordie

  He stands at the table, rubbing the back of his head, reading with his cheapie drugstore reading glasses, frowning.

  Dear Teacher,

  There are three witches who go with you at all times. Duty. She is the physician. Dark eyes and silver hair. She rides your shoulders with her canteens, flasks, and contraptions. No doorway is closed that she and you pass together.

  The second witch is Passion. She does not ride your shoulders. She carries you. She has neither eyes nor hair. She is the mob, hysterical, and too hot, a thing of blood and fluids and heart’s delight. She flies left when you say “right.” She flies right when you beg for left. She howls when peace and quiet is needed. She is a troublemaker, especially when she and Duty conspire behind your back.

  The third witch is Sophia. She has a thousand eyes. She is Wisdom. She waits at the end of the journey. Though most of us race toward her, almost no one ever really sees the face of Sophia. By the time we reach her, our old eyes are failing, our chests are caved in and our aged muscles flutter. We can’t even hear her voice because we have lost our hearing. Oh, poor Sophia has so few guests!


  But she will receive you, Teacher. And you will still be young. But you will die in Sophia’s arms while Duty and Passion stand near.

  Which witch am I?

  Your friend,

  Bree

  P.S. You forgot to answer my question about the Left.

  She reads.

  Dear Brianna—

  I didn’t forget to answer your question about the Left. I remembered NOT to answer it.

  You are Sophia. That is which witch you are.

  Listen to me. Forget all the reasons you think I shouldn’t see you. We need to talk. If you don’t want the crowds here, I can pick you up at your house and we can ride around. How about ice cream at Kool Kone? Or we can just come back here and find a quiet room. And you can meet Claire. She knows your brothers from when we all met on the road one night.

  By the way. You are a plagiarist. You’ve read Macbeth. Shakespeare’s three witches, you know: “When the hurlyburly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.” No, not a plagiarist. Just teasing. Time has passed enough that we live in Shakespeare’s tradition. He won’t mind a bit.

  Meanwhile, I read a review on The Liberty Men and the Great Proprietors, a book by Alan Taylor on a revolt here in Maine after the so-called American Revolution. Some of the kids here are doing a series of skits on that era.

  You ought to see our library, Brianna. We have collected books, yes, but also letters and journals, and so much that is beyond partisan, beyond ideology. It’s a vast jigsaw puzzle, this world, this life.

  I also enclose a copy of Macbeth. Happy reading. I look forward to yakking with you about all this. This is important to me. I won’t go OUT THERE and be the leader you imagine. I can’t. Soon, you and I will discuss this reality. It’s big.

  Your friend, Gordie

  And in elegant calligraphy, she writes.

  Dear Guillaume (Ge-yome),

  Wrong. I am not Sophia. I am Duty. I nag. Ha-ha.

  I am still hiding. Don’t ask to see me. It isn’t just my face. I can nag you better this way. Ha-ha.

  Your friend,

  Bree

  P.S. No, I have never read or heard or seen Macbeth. Just a

  coincidence. The world turns. But thank you for the copy.

  I’m eager.

  Standing, he writes with a ballpoint pen, using the wall for firmness under the piece of lined paper.

  Dear Bree,

  Okay. I understand about your reticence. But if you ever have the need to come see me, I’ll be here. And meanwhile, your spies, whoever they are, can tell you what a nice person I am! How pleasant! How fascinating! Ha-ha.

  Your friend,

  G.

  P.S. Concerning the “coincidence” of witches, I have to say you spook me.

  Inner voice of the Bureau.

  The job of some Americans is to find purpose for the low-use segment of the American population. Say you have a workhorse that isn’t working to put dollars into your pocket, in this case the economy, you sell these horses for meat. Chop! Chop! Doggie food. Instant purpose. The economy is saved.

  When some horses smell horse blood, they kick their masters in the face, or worse, these horses TALK to other horses and then you have a stampede that gets in the way of progress. The Bureau’s job, you see, is to go the extra mile and whoa! . . . get these garbage scum groups, protester-extremist-crud, street-blocking-anarchists, terrorist home boys, treasonists and whatever other mess-causing-disorderly-useless types into cans, so progress can continue.

  It’s not as easy as you think, even with the Internet, our eyes in the clouds. For reasons known to some, there is today a mushrooming rumble of hooves. Uh-oh. Even what used to be decent people are starting to talk bad and horsey.

  (The next p.m.) Unexpected visitors.

  Bulging hot blank sky tonight, blank as a closed door. Heat and humidity tend to erase stars. The wide open bay of the larger Quonset hut blazes with frothy muggy light and toward this light, Gordon St. Onge walks, eating some sort of dried fruit chewy bar (Settlement-made this time). “Hey!” someone calls to him from the clump of parked vehicles in the sandy lot quite near. Part light, mostly shadow.

  He turns, sees a familiar truck and three figures.

  He winds his way around the two nearer trucks, brushing crumbs off his fingers, then reaching up to flatten down his hair. No billed cap tonight. Just that giddy wild mess of hair that needs to be cut according to the Settlement women, and the lengthening beard, which needs to be trimmed according to his mother (although Marian would rather see the whole thing scraped completely off, revealing his beaming boyhood aspect).

  When he reaches the visitors, there’s not much talk; Dana and Poon Vandermast, as ever, are closed-mouthed as bread-box mice. Their round faces are silvery on the left side, from the light of the Quonset hut bay, dark on the right, two eclipsed moons. Light color T-shirts. Bare arms. And someone standing between these two, a young girl, nearly the same height as they. She stands in work boots, her legs a little apart. Jeans and one of those old dark green work shirts, old enough to still be cotton, faded seams. No polyester. No scratch. It is tucked into her belt. A shapely girl, noticeably shapely, distractingy shapely. A lotta thick squirmy hair. Frizzed by humidity. The night gives it a blonde-brown look but Gordon knows it is really carrot red. And, yes, that face.

  It is the kind of face that was meant perhaps to be two faces, a fertilized Vandermast egg beginning to divide into twins, but somehow changed its heartless mind? Her eyes are great big pale eyes in long, pale lashes, lovely eyes but for the creepy reptilian distance between them.

  The mouth. Just an ordinary frowning young girl’s mouth.

  Gordon feels his own face tingle in sympathy now that he’s getting over that first instance of reflexive full alarm.

  For only a moment, both of this girl’s strange eyes bore into his, but now she lowers her face quickly so that her plentiful hair falls to cover one eye, one cheek, but Gordon keeps staring with his most terrible mad-scientist scrutiny, and he says deeply, “I know you.” Only children and Gordon St. Onge stare.

  She says, “Yep.” Her one word is a soft squishy pelt-like piece. And yuh, a bit cigarette-hoarse.

  Gordon now looks to Poon and to Dana, “You hog-tie her to get her here?”

  The girl, Brianna, giggles, a full throttle giggle, almost a cackle. One might say ghoulish. Not musical, but a stippled shriek.

  Dana says, “She heard we were comin’ over and said maybe she’d come along, right?” He looks to her for agreement.

  Gordon gazes at her. She is keeping her face lowered, hair sort of damp and clumpy from the day, maybe oily from neglect, too busy with her woods work and her plots? There it hangs. Her one large pale visible eye travels up across his shirt, springs to his face, then lowers again. She giggles. A plain and girlie laugh this time.

  To Gordon, the night is now stranglingly hot. He says, “You guys heard we’ve been going all night on the Purple Hope, right? Three nights . . . and now this one.”

  Dana says, “Yessir. That’s why we’re here.”

  Gordon turns to the great blazing bay with the jouncing human-shaped shadows and yakking racket of a good-sized mob beyond. “The work of dreams,” he says, folding his arms across his chest, glancing now over each Vandermast face.

  “Drummond said he was going to be here,” says Poon.

  “Everybody’s here,” Gordon tells him, glancing over the packed parking lot. “It’s my cousin Aurel’s big idea to go nights for a while. Usually not as hot. It’s been one thing or another an’ we’ve been all fucked-up without sleep . . . makes people paranoid . . . women get bitchy . . . kids bratty, even the easy ones ain’t themselves. An’ guys go around with their backs up. We even got a rooster now that crows at midnight.” Again he is glancing over each Vandermast face. With his arms crossed, one knee bent, he has his usual contented settled-in look, his yakking-it-up-with-neighbors look. He dips his head toward the lighted bay. “Electric buggies. Electri
c sedan.” He laughs. “Next, we do electric snowmobiles!” He winks.

  Poon says softly, “Electric skidder. Gonna do one’a them?”

  Gordon raises a hand to stroke the graying chin of his beard. He whispers, “Hell, yeah.”

  Two of the Vandermasts chortle. Gordon throws out a hand toward the light and noise. “Come see! Come on in and check it out.”

  Poon Vandermast steps away from where he has been leaning against the truck, rubs his hands together.

  Bree leans against Dana and says softly, “I’ll just stay and have a smoke.”

  Dana sounds a little irritated. “You gonna pull one of your disappearing acts?”

  “I’ll be right here.” She sneaks a peek at Gordon with her one uncovered eye.

  Gordon is staring at her. At her hands. At her bared forearms, the sleeves of the work shirt rolled to the elbows, where there are many dark patches like bruises or tattoos. Or pine pitch. Or paint.

  The two brothers trudge along toward the light, stop, turn to glance back.

  Gordon, hanging back, tells Brianna, “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Bree tips her head forward so her tumbling hair covers almost her whole face. She giggles. Hoarse and thick, this time a donkey bray but not what you’d call freaky, just a teenager lacking restraint. Her elegant artwork and letters don’t match this raw discoordination of youth. Gordon reaches with two knuckles to brush one of the dark spots on her left forearm. “Paint?” he asks.

  “Cadmium Red,” she replies.

  Gordon returns to the parking lot alone.

  He finds Bree reading in the cab, slumped low in the seat, one knee up, dome light glowing overhead.

  She hears his step at the open window. She snaps off the dome light, lowers the book, drops her knee.

  “Whatcha reading?” he asks, resting his hand on top of the rolled down window. He smells tobacco smoke, though he sees no lit cigarette.

  “Oh, a love story.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “The Populist Moment.”

  He laughs one big hoot, blinks both eyes.

  She says, “It most definitely is a love story.”

  He looks back toward the lighted bay. He inhales the pussy-willow-thick night. The gray of it. And he is lost for words. He now shoves both hands into the pockets of his work pants and looks at her. All he sees is hair. “If you come back tomorrow at our noon meal, I’ll give you a nice tour,” he says. “You can check out our library. We have four copies of The Populist Moment.” He grins. “In case you wear that one out.”