Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

The picnic table is really pretty tiny. Gordon is now lapping his plastic dish. “Yummmm,” he says. There is chocolate between his fingers, a slimy chip of walnut on his beard.

  Ivy checks her watch. “Are you missing a meal back at the Settlement? Are they wondering where you are?”

  “Nah,” he says, pushing his well-lapped little boat dish away. “They saw us go, remember? And besides, the meals go on . . . for hours.” He is mashing his bandana to his mouth.

  “All meals last hours? Every day?”

  He shrugs.

  She hears his keys, sees him looking down and feeling his keys that always hang in a chunk from his belt. But also sometimes when they’ve been walking together, Ivy has noticed a pocket watch dangling there with the keys.

  She holds her eyes on him. Admiringly. “How do you fit so much work and so many activities in with three long meals, too?” Now a raised playfully doubting eyebrow.

  He squashes a mosquito with a thumb on his forearm. Again, he grins sheepishly, guiltily. “Highly organized chaos.”

  She uses the only two paper napkins, already squinched and gooey, works them between her gunky fingers.

  Gordon burps softly against the top of one hand. Just a suppressed “Bft!”

  Ivy smiles. “Tell me more about CSAs. The Community Supported Agriculture. I saw some of it on my tour.”

  And so there is again his voice and there is this day, both of which Ivy is sinking into. Hot velvet. Chin in hand, she says, “That’s nice.”

  “Yes, ’tis. It’s not going to save the world, but it’s a good thing, a dear goodly thing.”

  She smiles. “I mean . . . you’re not exactly sequestered up there, are you, Mr. St. Onge?”

  “Yes and no.”

  She drops her hand. “Tell me, Allah, man of wisdom, knower of all life’s answers and government secrets, would you say that you and your people are headed for a fiery end? The Armageddon? As prophesied by Revelation 16:16; I think that’s the number. Sixteen something.”

  Another shrug. Another one of his rare no comments. And he grooms the long dark mustache on both sides with thumb and forefinger and he stares into her eyes, first one of her eyes, then the other, back and forth. As he does this, raising one eyebrow and raising his chin, he just really is preening away on that big mustache.

  She holds the gaze. She fears she might faint (yeah, faint, the thing women never really do). And of course she won’t faint. Even though she is overcome with crazy feeling, even though the heat cranks up another notch and the whole Kool Kone parking lot seems to fog over and tip sideways and ooze. No, she won’t faint. Yes, those fainting ideas are just throwbacks from the old sexist patriarchal culture of her grandmother’s time. Books and films with hundreds of women fainting all over the place.

  During the speedy ride back to the Settlement, especially during Ivy’s reckless tailgatings and double-yellow-line passings.

  Gordon covers his face and murmurs, “The Armageddon is here! The Armageddon is here!” and grips the bucket seat with both hands and bows his head, “Lord God Almighty, forgive me all of my trespasses!”

  Ivy says disgustedly, “I read once that people who complain about other people’s driving are control freaks.”

  Back home, she has a message on her machine.

  “Hi Ivy . . . it’s five-twenty-two. I’m heading out of the building now. I should be home in an hour and twenty minutes. I have a couple stops to make. Call me when you get this message. Call me at my home** number.”

  ** This was when cell phones were even more echoey and sloshy than they are today. Especially in Maine. Thus cell phoning not an option.

  Ivy taps out Brian’s home number. She’s really puzzled. He has never asked her to call him at home before. Now she gets his machine. She leaves her message. “Hi, Brian. It’s me, Ivy. It’s a quarter past eight. I’ll be around for the rest of the evening. Call when you can. Bye.”

  Ivy sleeps only on the edge of real sleep. Her dreams are a tangle of Gordon’s voice and Brian’s voice and her father trying to fix a sawhorse that has six floppy legs and won’t stand up. Occasionally she wakes, thinking she heard the funny little pulsing sound of her phone but the phone is quiet. No Brian.

  In the morning, she makes toast and sings a melody from childhood.

  As Ivy is pounding up the winding old marble stairs of the newspaper building (never the elevator), Brian Fitch pushes open the fourth-floor door (the cafeteria floor), and, seeing Ivy, points at the step nearest himself, which is the command for her to come to him. And he says,

  “St. Onge humps kids.”

  Ivy, breathless after the four flights, hikes up the strap of her bursting shoulder bag, blows air up across her face to make her dark bangs hop, and frowns, frowns, frowns.

  Brian glances out through the caged-looking stairway window to the street. “But don’t quote me.”

  “Fuck the anonymous callers,” Ivy says.

  Door eases open one flight above and hard-heeled ladylike shoes snap along down and around, on the old echoey marble and metal.

  Brian says, “Well, but there were six calls yesterday while you were out . . . all St. Onge-related . . . some just continuing gossip with Bertie and them at DHS . . . but, yes, mostly these anonymous types. One did actually sound like a crank call. Young guy and other young sounds in the background, banging and bomping . . . music . . . maybe street sounds. Anyway, a sporting kind of call.” Brian nods at the woman in the lightweight mauve dress and Ivy steps aside to let the woman and the cool tornado of her perfume pass.

  Brian cocks his head. “But then Duane at the sheriff’s department called to say a woman he knows well called a few days ago urging the department to send someone to the St. Onge property because her sister is in an emotional state about her step-daughter’s friend, who is thirteen and pregnant and not allowed to leave the St. Onge premises alone. The sister says St. Onge has a whole harem of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds and that St. Onge is a God figure . . . it’s David Koresh all over again, only different. So a couple of sheriff’s guys go talk to the sister, but she won’t talk. But she was very strange-acting, they said. Like terrified. Or embarrassed. Or both. Cops are rotten at sorting out civilian emotions, you know. Then these guys take a little drive up to the Settlement . . . which is situated up there in Remoteland, as . . . you . . . know . . . and they talked with a few people and asked if everyone was okay and there were all these old ladies and middle-aged women who were all chatty and normal and said everything was just fine. No sign of the Prophet. Just these friendly chatty ladies all friendly to these sheriff’s men. More friendly than they are usually to the press.”

  Ivy says quickly, “They are friendly to me. But, so, when was all this happening with the sheriffs?”

  “Yesterday, late morning.”

  “I was with him!”

  “Koresh? I mean, St. Onge?”

  “Yes. We—”

  He puts up a finger. He says slowly, squinting, as if watching an ant walking up the wall behind Ivy’s head. “Supposing none of these rumors are true, suppose there’s no Satan worship, no twelve-year-old wives, no forced labor, no drugs, no snake handling, no . . . uh . . . what else?”

  “Stockpiles of firearms.”

  “Yeah, stockpiles of firearms. So let’s suppose none of those things are true. Let’s say that where there’s smoke, there just isn’t any fire. Okay . . . but now . . . I’m just so fascinated by this. What has come over these people who call us? How does something like this take off?” He swings one arm to loosen the stressed-out muscles of that shoulder and says, “It’s unsettling, and—” He rubs one eye hard. “You know? It’s creepy.”

  After midnight. Big moon. Not a full moon yet. But a moon with a well-fed contented shape.

  No big security lights at the Settlement. No welcoming porch lights. No glowing TVs and canned laughter and zippy car ads. A small patch here and there of a single lighted window, somebody up with a baby or a restless old person or up
with a page-turner book. But mostly there is moony darkness. And rest.

  But Gordon St. Onge doesn’t rest. He walks. He washes his flashlight over black shadows. This! The family. So much to account for. To protect. He walks on. To protect. He crosses the quad slowly. To protect.

  He steps up to a screen door. Door heavy, well-made. Wood. The strain of the spring always reminds him of the tense aimless singing of the fretted instruments of the Middle and Near East. He doesn’t let the door slam but turns to face it and allows it to ease shut against his palm.

  He turns. Might there be a smoldering cigarette left in a chair? A gas stove burner left on in the summer kitchen or cooks’ kitchen. Maybe one of Willie Lancaster’s dogs locked in one of the parlors chewing on a book (this happens a lot).

  No rest. Protect. Protect. Protect. Sometimes protecting makes him panicky. Sometimes it makes him insane. Especially when those moments hove into view that give him the desperation of wishing to protect the whole writhing world. It has started to rot his vitals. Or is that the aspirin?

  He walks to an open shop door, swipes the light over the floor and worktables, then trudges on to the next.

  There on the next piazza, sitting alone, is a man with a marble face. Or so it seems. Sits very straight, eyes closed. Perhaps praying. Perhaps meditating. Or maybe a little stoned. The shaved pallor of his face is enhanced tonight by the riveting blue-white work of the moon. His hair is wetly black and combed straight back. He wears a black jacket. Hands in the pockets, gripped against his sides. As Gordon trudges toward him, he doesn’t look Gordon’s way, but he does open his eyes. His eyes are round and slightly protruding. Like piping hot painful restraint.

  Now Gordon turns in to the kitchens and when he returns to the piazza, he, Gordon, is eating something. Chomping. He sees what looks now like fear on the man’s face. But he knows this is probably just maximized spiritual concentration.

  Gordon pushes through a batch of wind chimes, sets them to clanking and donging, some singing in a haunting entreaty, but they go quiet quickly because the air is calm. He eases into a chair beside the man.

  Gordon knows that if he says, “Howzit goin’, Nathan?” he might not get an answer, as Nathan won’t answer you if he’s praying or meditating or deeply concentrating. So Gordon figures he’ll wait it out. He just chomps away on his carrot and rocks slowly back and forth in his chair, reaches to set the flashlight on the floor.

  A steer murrs on the nearest hillside. The clock in the library chimes a muffled thronnnnnnngggggg on the quarter hour.

  When the deeply composed man is finally ready to speak, his voice is business-like. “Hello, Gordon.”

  “Nathan.”

  Nathan Knapp. A man of enormous inner geography. Alone in a dark and unadorned cell for years, Nathan Knapp could keep his wits, not scream, “Let me outa here!” He would simply travel in his mind. The kids call him “our peace man.”

  Nathan Knapp. Mostly a loner. He lives in that tiny, sweet, natural-shingle solar house up in the field there under the moon . . . with Jenny. His wife. She works outside the Settlement as a legal secretary in Lewiston. She is focused, fussy, and uptight. Well, Nathan is focused, too. But in a blooey-ahhh kind of way.

  Nathan is well-read. Aggressively well-read, with almost a photographic memory for detail concerning his interests: ecosystems, the macrobiotic diet, Shakespeare, Greek tragedies, ancient cultures including, especially, those that worshipped the goddesses, and then on into the scholars on all religions and all churches, much focus on Jesus and Gandhi. As a faith, Gandhi is the god, the model for salvation. Gandhi twenty-feet tall, Nathan, five-foot-eleven.

  Nathan abhors references to current events. He finds them too rattling. The past is pendulous and in its place. For present-time interests, he looks mostly to the latest discoveries in personal well-being. He is a slave to therapeutic massage, Reiki, and yoga. He speaks the word pacifism with an almost en garde! challenge, the kind of pacifism where you would protect a child from attack only with a powerful and peaceful stare, eyes into eyes with the aggressor. One of his favorite expressions is “What would Gandhi do?”

  Yet Nathan is considered suspect by so many here at the Settlement. He is despised by some. How can that be, Gordon wonders? When disagreement breaks out about his ideas, Nathan never raises his voice; there’s no name-calling, no buried insults, and, even as his opponents present arguments frustratingly uninformed, he maintains a fine priestly bearing. He is a patient teacher of the young. Gordon feels both annoyance and respect for Nathan Knapp.

  Nathan says, “I heard that the Record Sun reporter was here again.”

  Around a huge cheekful of chewed carrot, Gordon replies, “And you heard about . . . the calls she’s been getting?”

  “Yes.”

  Gordon grunts, stretches his legs out, crosses one boot over the other. Chomps more carrot.

  Nathan closes his eyes. “Something is about to happen.”

  “We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

  Nathan looks at Gordon. “Those people who make the laws would disagree.”

  Gordon chomps chomps chomps. No words of defense.

  Nathan closes his eyes. Sighs.

  Gordon says, “Those hides ’n’ bones Eddie and Aurel threw over the drop-off . . .”

  Nathan’s total silence is black and thunderous.

  Gordon says, “After we got the bears up here . . . digging in the compost bins.”

  Nathan, still nothing.

  Gordon, “You remember, the not-so-good night of the bears and one of Seth Miner’s dogs.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, that’s why the meat-cutting crews stopped putting foody materials in the bins for a while, just the toilet waste.”

  Nathan nods, but Gordon doesn’t see the nod. Gordon wags one foot patiently, then says, “And nobody wanted porcupines. You have bears who can rip the wire, even the boards, and porcupines who can climb.”

  Nathan nods.

  Gordon misses the nod again. “Whatever move we make to do right, the tail of the deed slaps some face.” Gordon points toward the hills with the thick bad-tasting end of the carrot. “So for a while, they pitched a lot of stuff over the drop-off.”

  Nathan doesn’t even nod. He is riveted in some cold iron way.

  Gordon chuckles. “Soooo, some summer people over off the back road found some of the bones and skulls.”

  Nathan leans back, weary of where this is going.

  “They say we’re into Satan worship.”

  Nathan squinches his eyes. This eye-squinching is the way Nathan laughs. There is never a laugh noise with his laughs. No teeth or open jaws. But this is, indeed, a bitter laugh.

  Gordon thonks the chair arm gently with the carrot end.

  Nathan folds his hands into one thick relaxed fist on the crotch of his jeans. He looks off toward the long, oblong, fleshy cloud that is unhurriedly swallowing the moon. He takes a deep, deep breath of the night. This night that is of the sweetest kind, the newly hayed fields and the heavy cool wetness beaded up on each leaf and flower and hard green fruit. And in each droplet is a thin moon reflection, being swallowed by a tiny, ravenous, oblong cloud. And he says, “I fear you.”

  Gordon makes a disgusted sound.

  Nathan raises a hand, like a blessing, but he really means, whoa, let me finish. “Each and every law you and others here have broken is nothing really. No hurt. They are foolish man-made laws. Some are self-serving laws made by the politicos. And yeah . . . I certainly got my little illegal stash. But I’m peaceable. Man, you speak sometimes in a way that makes me realize . . . that the law that you hold most in contempt isn’t a pale one . . . it’s a law that is the law of God as seen through the eyes of hundreds of peoples, of nearly every nation on every continent, for—”

  “Contempt is not the word.”

  “Contempt is the word. It’s there on your face right now.”

  Gordon leans forward, arms folded across his knees, buries his face
in his arms. “There is no simple way of looking at any of this.”

  “If I tell you I’ve had a dream about this, a vision, will you laugh?” Nathan wonders.

  “No,” Gordon says into his arms.

  “I ask only that if things become more . . . difficult . . . that if they do come down on us . . . come down with all fury . . . that you’ll go passively. That you’ll submit. That you won’t take up guns.”

  History as it happens (as written by Theodan Darby age almost ten, with slight help from his sister).

  We are almost done with the solar car. The frame was bent then we fixed it. But it is fixed. Then wire stuff went wrong. Brakes next. It is called Purpil Hope. It is the best ever car. Dad said next we make fuel for deezil from plants. That would be better because the solar ones are to quiet. Loud is best. It is good to have POWERRRRRRR!

  Dad says the Purpil Hope is a sweet machen.

  History as it happens (as written by Jane Meserve, age six).

  There sole car they are so prowd of is a peice of junk. Looks made by hands.

  Brianna’s secret book.

  Tonight the rebellious little group of teens has really had their heads together with plans to “wake up the world!” and it is past eleven before the first ones leave. “It’s just like the radical solar car work in the Quonset hut, the work of any kind of revolution is hard work, long before it becomes a revolution,” Bree has said with joy. Uh-huh, yes, joy. She sees battle as fun? Romantic? Poetic? Gorgeous?

  As Bree and Samantha walk toward the parking lot, Bree smokes. Samantha is gossiping. Nice air. Cool on their bare arms. The great swath of brightness from an open Quonset hut bay and the headlights of a couple pickups leaving is what illuminates their way along the brick paths. Samantha is getting into the really juicy details of Toon Clyde’s haircut that turned out “horrid.” Seems Jane Meserve (yes, seems like she’s getting out a little) had given it the finishing touches, Jane being a new apprentice in the beauty shop. Seems Toon never should have trusted such a little kid with her hair. “Maybe brain surgery. But not your hair!” Samantha gasps.

  Bree giggles. “Was she wearing those heart-shaped sunglasses Eric just gave her? “