He selects one of the older girls nearest Whitney on the big couch.
“The Christian right wing! Those guys say no abortions and no gay love. If you do the things they don’t like, they say Jesus is coming with a sword to bloody the world up.”
Nathan bows his head in deep thought, then a young voice behind him bursts out, “The Christian right wing . . . they call conservative and fundamentalist. How’s that? They aren’t anything like Jesus taught, his giving away shirts and vests. And they aren’t conservative . . . such as waste not, want not. They are just . . . mean.”
“Words get twisted as we go along,” offers a girl with Passamaquoddy eyes.
“Like car wrecks!” a young boy adds.
“And old trees!” another youngster cries.
Nathan wonders of them all, “So what are right-wing Christians? What would be a more accurate title? Right-wing applies to politics, generally speaking. How do politics and religious beliefs get mixed?”
Bree sees his eyes move her way. She launches in, “The foundations, those big organizations set up to protect the interests of the American lords and ladies. I bet they’ve shaped right-wing Christian thinking. Foundations would call it public policy. Through grants and public funding, they infiltrate schools, school books and computer programs, public schools, probably Christian schools. The media, natch. People are easily led. They want to follow. We are so much like ants.”
Silence.
Small voice. “More people need to drink hemlock and die for keeping their brains straight.”
“Death!”
“Death!”
“Death!” the whole room screams except Nathan, who sullenly watches.
Then laughter.
“But they shape the liberals, too!” blonde Samantha snarls. “Liberals aren’t as smart as they think they are. They’re also a religion. All isms and schools of thought are faiths.”
“Indeed,” says Michelle, standing near the tea table, pouring more water onto her hemlock sprigs.
“Man, we are an out-of-control pocket of scot-free brains,” Samantha says with a hoot.
Someone suggests discussing what Franz Kafka meant by “There is plenty of hope. But not for us.”
Nathan rejects the question.
Several young voices screech, “Free inquiry! Freeeee inquiry! Censorship is wrong!”
“But most of you aren’t familiar with Kafka. I’m just trying to be nice.” He sort of smiles.
“Okay, let’s do the one again about which is better, freedom or happiness?” offers Draygon.
Nathan groans, holds his face, speaks the first two words through his fingers. “You’ve wrung that one out. Is there anything new to say on that? You guys must have the whole routine memorized like ‘Oh, Susanna.’”
Giggles. Laughs. A whistled refrain to “Oh, Susannah!”
Bree squares her shoulders, breathes deep of such a room. She looks up. This ceiling isn’t cedar as she has heard of the other parlor, but grooved boards painted vanilla and milk. She wiggles her toes.
Claire St. Onge remembers.
Yet another meal where he had come not to eat but to rev everybody up with his latest flush-faced diatribe, this time specifically about the “megamen’s” intention to “profitize the Social Security system” and public schools “like big, boxed presents with bows!” working most everybody up into the chant: “EVIL GROWS!” Whomp! “EVIL GROWS!” Whomp! “EVIL GROWS! . . .”
I went up to my little house, my sanctuary, and stretched out on the bed. No one could be more upset about Gordon’s behavior these days than I was. It was Mechanic Falls all over again. The time of the abortion. Yes, I had an abortion. My only child. He had feared for the baby’s future that much that he’d want him or her vacuumed away. And now was he starting again to see the world as a place he didn’t want children to be born into? Was he coming to understand that the Settlement and all the CSAs and co-ops were not going to guarantee a child be spared from the world’s horror? It’s big, Gordon. It’s very big, said I to the ceiling. And all the Settlement children, Gordon, they are already here. Born. So, what now, Gordon?
Another evening. Another note left on the table at the St. Onge farmhouse.
Dear Teacher—
You didn’t see me, but I was there last night at your supper tables . . . well, I was with some girls at the far end of the other piazza. And I watched you and I watched them, all of your people, how you and they become one. People outside the Settlement are no different. The longer you wait, the more the evil that you speak of grows. Please help us! Please go outside your gates!
Your friend,
Bree
P.S. Tell me another secret. Not the one about you being afraid. Tell me more about the witches. Not my witches or Shakespeare witches. What did you really mean when you said you were surrounded by witches?
The grays.
We are warmed by the girl human whose face is a little bit like ours. Wherever she goes we are handy. If she has a stutter, a pause, a need for help in her interior or exterior dialogues, her wonderments, we want to beam to her something special, not the word itself, but the heat, the gist, the odors of her journey. But we are committed to noninterference. All there is for us is to observe, take samples of the human hive’s manufacture and try to understand.
Noon.
Bree puts out her cigarette as she sees Gordon St. Onge striding across the grassy sunny part of the quadrangle, heading right toward her, where she stands with four young women, three being mothers, all being smokers, all together in a loose huddle. Toddlers creep and stagger and tip over under the legs of the giant wooden Tyrannosaurus rex, so grassy and shadowy underneath there, and now the three little ones have disagreed, one pinching and pushing, one whimpering, one screaming.
The sky is a full and honest blue. Clouds solid, unmoving. They look man-made. Arranged for show.
One mother jerks her young one from the shadowy fray, raises him to her hip. “We’re goin’ to eat in a minute. You wanna eat? You hungry for yum yums?”
And oh, the air smells of the hot grass! And grass clippings stick to the children and the mothers’ shoes. And the stale chemical mix of four cigarette smokes, like the mixing of four uneasy souls, weaves into everything, unsanctified.
“Yum yums go,” the rescued toddler tells his mother gravely.
Gordon nods to everyone, scooches under the dinosaur, which is nearly three stories tall, a true focal point among the tall trees of the quadrangle.
He speaks in a general adultlike way to these persons who are babies, and he rubs the palms of his hands together over and over, which makes a soft scratching sound.
A few moments later, Bree and Gordon are walking toward a screen door of the nearest piazza. Their arms are laced, like a lady and a gentleman. But she keeps her head angled so that her face partially hides inside her magnificent wild red hair. He asks, “How long have you been here?”
She tells him she just arrived.
Up on the piazzas, set for dinner (noon meal), the kazoos are warming up. Dishes clang. People calling back and forth cheerily beyond the dark and sun-spotted screens.
“Oh, Bree! Please stay and eat!” calls Glennice from beyond the screen. Glennice, one of the mothers, a kind of tomboy person, much like Bree. Except that Glennice is also churchy.
Bree calls up to the screen that she’s definitely staying. She has already promised Whitney and Michelle and Lily that she would.
“Your spies,” Gordon says deeply, after Glennice backs away from the screen. “Whitney and Michelle and Lily.”
“Yep,” Bree admits with a breathless giggle.
“I got your note.”
She giggles, this giggle being just a row of gooselike blip-blips. She tips her head farther from him, to more completely hide her face. He squeezes her arm. She giggles. He says, “I hope you will let me introduce you formally to some of the family, so you’ll know how . . . what good people they are . . . which . . . is what
. . . I uh . . .” He lowers his head, trying to see around her hair. He has always conversed best with eye contact. He hates phones. And he hates this hair-hiding thing of hers. He says, squeezing her arm again, “I want you to love them.”
The grays.
We fear for our scarlet-haired cherishling. Oh, grinding merciless Earth! Do not hurt her!!!
Brianna Vandermast, alone in her little bedroom with the octagon window. She speaks.
Mothers die. They can. Like anyone. People who pass on hills trying to get somewhere faster than someone else, they crash head-on. Their car, made of metal like a war machine, comes into your mother’s face.
At nine days old, there is nothing else but that face, while you suck. The universe is in that swimmy face and in your selfish swallowing. And boy, oh, boy you would miss THE FACE if it vanished. But imagine you are nine months. Everything about you responds to everything she is, her scoldings and praise, her hair smell, her hotness. She is your Portland Head Light, your North Star. She vanishes. There is the echo and the reverse echo that precedes the empty thud.
Now at age fifteen, you have photos of her. They are all over the house, on the walls, on top of the TV, in envelopes, at the houses of aunts and uncles. Like thin brown leaves after a season long gone.
Mama, I am my own.
Editor Brian Fitch with his Virgo coffee mug and an amused smile . . .
Strolls over to the desk where Ivy Morelli is, as usual, talking to herself and mad at her computer. Brian says, “Okay, we’ve talked with a Mr. Jeff Gerrity. A name. And here’s his phone number.” Hands her a pink While-You-Were-Out slip. “Which, of course, reminds me. How izzz that ol’ Home School human-interest feature coming along? You. Know. The. School. The. One. That. Bothers. People.” The way he says this, it’s as if Ivy is fuzzy in both memory and hearing.
“Well . . . it’s not amounting to much, really. Just harmless . . . very likeable . . . creative people. No story in it.”
“Okay. But I want you to be real nice to them some more. No copy yet. I want a relationship.”
She looks at his face. She is smiling her get-serious smile.
He laughs. “I talked with Mert this morning and he thinks something is up over there in St. Ongeland. There’s a guy, Ivan, who knows something. Something with the Department of Human Services . . . someone he knows there in Protective . . . uh . . .” He bends to carefully print the name on the reporter pad on Ivy’s desk, one-handed. He straightens back up, coffee mug now covering his mouth and nose, his Adam’s apple rising and falling with two slow gulps, his eyes held onto Ivy’s eyes. He lowers the mug real slow, his eyes twinkling. “I think you are a brave gal. If you refuse this story, I’ll understand. But . . . if you do it and it turns out to be something we could go with in a big way at just the right time, they—” He rolls his eyes up. “Upstairs will love you. Why not fool with this some more? See what you can come up with, since you have this little rapport with the St. Onge people . . . which I have heard is not something Gordon St. Onge likes . . . he doesn’t usually cotton to newspaper people. You know this. I know this. So it would be reeeeeal nice if we had a whole spread ready to go with if DHS or the police or BATF or MDEA or god knows who else he’s offended makes a move. Get some pictures. You know. Faces. Group action shots. The whole spread.”
Ivy sighs, “Sure.”
The screen earnestly explains to us:
See Lisa Meserve, the drug trafficker, in handcuffs. Brrrrr. Police say Ms. Meserve is no amateur but a hard case, and that the marijuana deal involved MILLIONS at street value, those very streets where your little children walk and play. Good thing this criminal is being held without bail! Our fatherly government will be sure the likes of Lisa Meserve will not be putting potentially dangerous drugs in the hands of your little Megan or your little Ryan. Look! Here we have two politicians and a police chief making official statements on the Meserve indictment. Oh, when will marijuana and other deadly dope disappear from the face of the earth! Not until we get tougher. We sorely need to erase THIS VERMIN such as Lisa Meserve and make everything NICE. GOD HELP US ALL if we didn’t have the DRUG WARRIORS to PROTECT US. Look! Watch this frightening woman as the cops and agents escort her to court. See how she does not look sorry! If not for those handcuffs and leg cuffs, she would do MOST ANYTHING, probably GET AWAY and vanish into THE STREETS to hunt down your darlings Megan and Ryan, holding out to them a huge bag of marijuana, gateway to heroin! Which leads to AIDS and shame and death and destruction!
The voice of Mammon.
Tell me of one properly placed businessman, even at the lowest level, who will not tell you, “There are no problems, only opportunities.” And for investment? Oceans of opportunities.
For instance, you hear there’s a plague, so you buy up all the coffins and jack coffin prices up to the sky. Tsunamis? You bulldoze what’s left of those squashed huts and build magnificent steel-reinforced hotels. And lots of subsidies available to build holding pens and security lights for the ones who used to be in the huts. Supply and demand, kiddies! And friendly brother-sisterhood on Capitol Hill and Madison Ave. It’s basic Biz Ed. You see that billions of workers are losing their jobs, losing their homes, losing control over their own destinies (even the most modest control), losing their self-respect, losing their kids. Well, that’s all very sad, but hurry, you need to buy up as much of the pharma industry as possible, and even the self-help magazines and books and tapes, audio and visual. You invest, baby, you INVEST in that antidepressant manufacturing. And the jails . . . oh, yes, you especially invest in THE PRISON INDUSTRY. ABOVE and BEYOND all, you buy their DEBT. The frenzy and fervor of all this buying and selling leads them to more DEBT. This makes GROWTH imperative, right? DEBT! Growth! DEBT! Growth! Moola moola moola. You see another man’s loss, you make it your gain. It sounds terrible but after all, that’s life, that’s the way life is. If you don’t take this opportunity, SOMEONE ELSE WILL. Don’t be a fool. This is what any good businessman or smart investor will tell you. YOU AND I DID NOT CREATE THE SYSTEM. NATURE DID.
Jane speaks of Lisa Meserve.
My mum! Her eyes like blue stars! Her letting me drive once on dirt! Her cooking! She is more sweet than a billion cakes. If I lived at the jail with her we could laugh about stuff and whisper. But everyone says no way. But it makes NO SENSE for me to be here, her there. You ever see baby birds, baby horses, baby bears way over there and the big ones waaay over somewhere else? You do not. Because that would be sick.
Ivy’s editor, Brian Fitch, moseys over to her desk again.
And when she looks up, he is standing with his hands full of pink While-You-Were-Out messages.
Ivy has just got in. A little late for that staff reporters’ meeting (hopefully over with), her denim skirt droops damply around her legs and feet and the wheeled desk chair, another one of those mad dashes through the rain. Her top is a lightweight, light yellow V-neck thing with sleeves enough to bury her tattoo. At her throat a tiny heart locket. This is kind of conservative for our Ivy. But that hair, the thrilling purple sheen of her black bowl of hair!
Brian is squinting at her and continues to squint at her as she flashes him a reflex smile, then she’s looking down into her shoulder bag on her lap, feeling for her comb. She touches up her damp hair and says, “I know I’m late . . . for the meeting.”
“No problem,” he says. “For all I know, you were at the state police barracks or with Jeannine Frazier in her kitchen getting her view on this St. Onge thing.”
Ivy’s hand with the comb deep in her hair slows to a standstill, then pitches the comb into her bag. She looks hard at the pink paper messages still a thick wad in Brian’s fingers. And he still squints. But now he’s squinting off into thin air. And now his squinty eyes slide back to Ivy’s face and one eye opens wide and his voice speaks ghoulishly, “Pa-gann worship. Satan-worshhhhip.”
Ivy smiles crookedly, “Come again?”
Brian drops his arms, sorts through the messages. “A wom
an named Jeannine Frazier.” He places one of the messages in Ivy’s hand. “She and I had a nice talk. She said talking with me was okay, but she didn’t want to leave a voice mail for you or anyone . . . no recordings. She’s sensitive.”
Ivy studies the pink slip. Brian has drawn devils and people dancing naked with long streaming hair in the margins. The Settlement’s largest windmill flashes and rotates in Ivy’s mind. On back, he’s written HELL-Oh-WEEN. And he is still talking, “She’s a summer person. A decent normal sort. Has property on Promise Lake, which borders the St. Onge experience. She said she and guests were out doing a nice nature walk and got a little off the beaten path . . . a little lost . . . onto St. Onge land . . . we’re talking woods here. They found, at the foot of a seventy-foot cliff, a huge, decomposing pile of bodies. Animals. Mostly heads. Skulls. Bones. Some possibly charred. Probably just remnants of butchering. That’s my guess. She said she called the state police dispatcher and they said they’d send someone out, but four hours later, she called back and they said she needed to speak to Lieutenant Craigie but that he was out. And then when she called again, he was off duty. For days, he’s been out or off and the dispatcher won’t give her another guy. I’ve been trying to reach Craigie myself. But . . . you know, Ivy, these are not human remains and if no nearby neighbor’s pets have turned up missing in unexplainable ways . . . or at least none reported, Craigie might just laugh. But then, you know, Satan worship sometimes leads to—”
“That’s nuts!” Ivy says with a snort.
Brian folds and unfolds the other messages. “Very,” he says.
Ivy says, “What I mean is, I don’t think it’s true.” Now swelling to billboard size in Ivy’s memory, the sun-face belt buckle. Pagan, oh, yes. But no. Kids must have made that buckle. Just as they painted the old-country windmill and schemed up the solstice March. And kids are innocence, right? Not pagan worship. No? Yes? No? Ivy’s ears crackle.
“See what the lieutenant has to say. Truth is, what officials say, remember? But even if he says no, it doesn’t mean no. It might just mean not now because the cops haven’t gotten their warrant or have something BIGGER that they’re waiting for, the really big bust. Maybe tortured sacrificed animals is just small potatoes compared with the BIG BAD THING. And you know this Ivy, how that works.” Brian looks around the city room with a kind of crazy killer look. “Maine. It’s such a dull place. We never get goodies like this.” He winks both eyes. Strolls away, folding and unfolding the remaining pink slips in his hand.
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 28
