Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  “Obviously you are a woodworker and wood-carver, too . . . and a little papier-mâché there, maybe?” Bree observes as she stares into the whizzing traffic, and then the dark areas of woods, impossibly detailed tiny trees (wooden?), wee creature eyes glowing among them. A church with a cross. Catholic. Then a couple of white churches. Protestant. And there the Star of David. Synagogue for Barbara (remember Barbara and Bev?). Little tune playing from one of the white churches. Music-box-like. “Amazing Grace,” yes.

  The undulating bubbly buzzing creaking of the table city is . . . well, it’s profound. Bree looks at Kirk’s businesslike face. She slowly shakes her head. “Amazing grace. That’s what you are, Kirk.”

  He flushes; the flush, however, barely detectable in the wondrous light.

  The children all around Bree titter.

  Bree wishes that for a few hours, she could shrink to be a tiny person and play among the tiny tail-wagging cows and above her, the dignified kindly God Kirky would never let anything bad happen, a world where even the monsters are lovable and stay put in their pond of rigidly serene water. She sighs.

  But now appearing in the doorway to the dimly lighted hallway is six-foot-two, fifteen-year-old Cory St. Onge, Gordon’s oldest son, who has the thick black Passamaquoddy hair of his mother, Leona, and her eyes, and his father’s everything else. He wears a forest green Settlement-made shirt, a 1770s French workingman’s smock pattern, what Jacquie and Josee and Suzelle call habitant. And now behind him, Paul Lessard. Paul, small and dark and pointy-faced, sees Bree. He turns away quick. And now stepping around them is Gordon, with a section of newspaper in one hand. Has a look like he wants to thwonk somebody with this newspaper. As you do to housebreak a dog. (Well some people do that to dogs. Jerks.) He sees Bree. “Everybody but Bree clear out,” he commands in a-don’t-dare-argue-back fashion. Paul Lessard is somewhere out in the hall, not visible now. Cory hovers. Bree can see a shoulder and elbow of his green shirt just beyond the door frame.

  As the little kids and Kirk Martin leave, they aren’t quiet about it. They whine and groan and the eloquent-most-of the time Montana runs her tongue out at Gordon as she passes him. Bree smiles at Gordon but he shakes his head at her smile. Now Bree hears all the doors shutting downstairs, the kid voices trailing off.

  She says, “We could have gone someplace else to talk.”

  Gordon just says, “Brianna.”

  She knows now not to smile. And she quells a nervous giggle.

  Gordon looks like he wants to break her, kick her, KILL her. He steps closer. “Something tells me you never, in all your fifteen years, ever got a good strapping with a goddamn belt, though my guess is you’ve been driving your family nuts with your pigheadedness for a long time.” He pushes, slowly but hard, the newspaper into her hands.

  She shrinks back a little. But then she stands taller and one little scornful spitting snort escapes from her nose and pretty mouth.

  He looks hard at her mouth a long time. Loooonnnnng silence. Kirky’s town twinkles happily, Kirk’s stars glow, the mussels creak with their tiny terrible threats.

  Bree says, “I’m not your kid. I’m your wife.”

  Gordon turns away, steps over to the big table and seems to be staring down into the heart of civilization with a wish to end it. He says, “Our home here is in danger now, Bree. Because you have taken so much into your own hands. You are smart, yes. But you are young . . . and impulsive . . .” and then he stresses. “With too much freedom.”

  Bree frowns. “You want the Puritan thing here?”

  Gordon looks up at the wall, still facing away from Bree. “Yes!”

  “You don’t really mean that. Cuz you have done things Puritans would give you the strap for. Maybe hang you . . . uh burn you.”

  He says nothing.

  She pipes up, “Following all your teachings of democracy, we all decided together to do it.”

  “We?” He turns and looks at her.

  “Yuh, all of us. We took a vote.”

  “You mean you and the other kids. You don’t mean you and the other women and men who live here. You mean you and the other kids.” He turns back to the town, running a hand through his hair.

  Bree sees Cory is still in the doorway, like a guard. His back against the hallway wall and door frame, an arm and foot visible. She supposes he and Paul are just waiting, had been with Gordon on their way to join one of the evening crews working at the sawmill, or that other big thing that’s been taking the men and some women and youngsters away from suppers, the planning of the new machining Quonset hut. There’s always some chattering bunch of Settlement people bent on some mission of importance, no matter the evening hour. But nevertheless, she has an ugly flash that these two men have been recruited by Gordon to help hunt her down, and then guard the door while he thrashes and smacks and bonks her around a bit.

  But . . . of . . . course . . . not.

  Bree says, “The older people are . . . too stuffy . . . about some things. And you know they hate militia. Your other wives.”

  Gordon says, “One minute you insist you be treated like a wife, an adult. Next minute—”

  Bree says, “Some could say that about you.” And she smiles. “Part man, part big kid.” She sighs. “Well, by law I’m a kid. Maine law. Maybe USA law. And some people here say that you having a relationship with me was rash and childlike. And you yourself called yourself Baby Man, remem—” She giggles. “So here we—”

  He turns. “This is not a discussion,” he warns her.

  Bree’s face drains of color. “What is it then?” Without taking her eyes off Gordon, she calls out to the hallway, “Cory?”

  “What?”

  “He ever use a belt on you?” She knows the answer is no. She knows Gordon is just pissed and bluffing.

  Cory shifts slightly. Cory’s voice. “Yep.”

  Bree looks exaggeratingly shocked.

  Gordon is back to glaring angrily at the town, neck muscles hard and hurting, palms and fingers open on the table’s edge.

  Bree giggles, steps toward Gordon, his dark shape and glowing face. “What about a wife? You use a belt on Claire?”

  Out in the hall, Cory laughs.

  Bree smiles.

  Cory’s voice says, “Might be the other way around.”

  Gordon says, “What do you think is going to happen now, Bree? To us? Our family?”

  Brightly, Bree replies, “We have work to do, Mr. Man.”

  He pushes down on the table with his fingers in a way that makes his hands stand like spiders.

  Bree says, “I never knew you hit kids.”

  Gordon raises his left hand over his head, like a classroom student asking a question but with two fingers up. “Two times. Two times I lost it.” He keeps his eyes on the town, hand dropping with a slap against his thigh. “Two times and nobody forgets it. Or forgives.”

  Bree says, “I thought you’d be proud of what we did. Kind of a little birthday present to you.”

  “No, Brianna. You did not think that.”

  “Oh, okay, yuh, I knew you would be worried . . . but that duty would speak to you.”

  He shifts. She can see that befuddled business of his face, the way at times he’ll squint-blink, one eye wide, one eye narrow. His psycho look. Now he shifts again so that none of his face shows to her. Yes, he had taken his belt to children, though it has been some years now. All the family knows this. And they’ve seen him drunk. And they’ve seen him wrastle and act out too playfully, knocking over furniture, acting stupid. But they have never seen him break into tears. Tears now, running, twinkling with the table town’s fantastical light, streaming into his beard. He keeps his head turned away, lest these tears be seen, and remembered. For when you break, you have betrayed all the people who count on you, and now more than ever they must count on him, for even at this moment back down at the old farmhouse, the phone is ringing and more cars are parking along Heart’s Content Road, pulling right up to the KEEP OUT signs nail
ed to the gate. For a moment he actually visualizes running them all off with his .32 Special.

  At the university.

  In the art department, in Ms. Court Downey’s office, the desk has been getting a little heaped. Ms. Court Downey has been distracted these days. Not drugged out like before. But something else. A plain unadulterated sadness.

  She is alone. She takes out some university stationery and begins.

  Dear Phan, Yes, I have received all of your messages on the machine at home and from the department secretary and from Nan. Yes, yes, yes, yes, American Express, Mastercard, Citibank, Fleet Bank, Sears. Yes, yes, yes. You are the machine. You have no understanding. Perhaps my writing you with this cold pen on cold paper will appeal to you. Better than my voice, always crying, my “mush-heartedness,” as you like to call it, is at the core of our troubles? That I am without CONTROL, without your brand of CONTROL? But you would live in a bare hotel room with no homey touches, happy as a pig in shit. It’s all an issue of needs, isn’t it? Some need, some don’t.

  I am staying with friends. There is fresh air and peace and Robert is like a new child, a whole child.

  You hinted to Nan that you have seen an attorney. Oh, yes. So have I. No problem. Carry on. Go away.

  Catherine

  In a future time Claire St. Onge remembers the days following the article.

  Well, kaboom. The dam breaks. Dozens and dozens of someones calling, asking about the True Maine Militia. As soon as it was back on the hook, the phone would come alive again. People harried. They weren’t apt to use the word “revolution” or call themselves radicals but they were “coming out.” A few professional-class leftists and progressives. But mostly working-class, small city, town or rural Mainers lured by the militia word. Some would probably call themselves middle class, whatever that meant. Whatever. The silent presence. Until now. Surprising to me, actually. I never realized how many people were ready once you put it to them in a way that touched them personally . . . which Bree and the others, mostly Bree, had done, the losing your home stuff hit home, no pun intended. Our kids were red hot and contemplative. So young! Our darling insurgents.

  So now the call-in talk shows were about nothing else. “The True Maine Militia.” Radio listeners wanted in.

  Those warning of “the mad prophet” and references to “his blatant polygamy” and “child abuse.” These accusations were vague. No particulars. No naming Brianna. Some called the True Maine Militia “crazies running through the woods with hand grenades.” Some referred to them as “men” so they obviously had never seen the article.

  But here it was, the people were stirring. Democracy was in the air.

  But Bree had disappeared again. We knew where she was. But the Vandermast men said even they couldn’t get in. She seemed to have “about forty locks on her bedroom door.”

  The voice of Mammon.

  This is the room. No way for you to know anything about this room because this is private property. No way for you to whine for FOI applications because one should never forget that the corporate charter that is made of paper is really “a person,” while you the common worker, the taxpayer, the consumer who is yolky and greasy to touch is really a resource. All are in their places like concrete and sky.

  Meanwhile, the revolving door goes whump! whump! Steve in. Bob out. J.T. in. Steve out. Bob in. Jenny out. Les in. J.T. out. Whump! Whump! Sometimes Paul is both in and out. Or in two important places at once if you know what I mean. No law against it. Virtue is the word.

  Today we discuss some ugly mooing, oinking, and whinnying coming from the masses (sorry for the commmie word).

  As an example, Phil passes out copies of an op-ed article from a paper in Maine. Everyone skims, gets a chuckle, then back to work.

  Inner voice of the bureau.

  You see, hotshot, if everybody stopped shopping and started oiling guns and loving their neighbor and wiping their noses on progress, there are people bigger than you who would lose. And losing is not their style.

  You know we’re not really mean guys. Some are real sweethearts to their wives and kids and pets. But there are always people we need to answer to on a regular basis. If you chafe them, definitions of words apply where they say they do. But also, remember, you are gold. You will make their train go choo-choo if you can be used to terrorize America. As things are looking now, we’ll have all green lights before the month is out. Then the patsies will have their day in the sun.

  Next day, late afternoon, metallic mint-green-color car comes buzzing up into the lot.

  Having a couple of young mothers in her confidence, Catherine has help getting the television and VCR up the stairs of the near Quonset hut, and into her studio.

  Next afternoon. Brianna reading about international banking. Banking bubbles. Banking lobby.

  She is on one elbow. Bed made up in an old scarlet and black quilt, razzy and scratchy. Octagon window opened inward. The sound of a mean rain, all sticky fists and sleepy drumroll. It has kept the clop-pause-clop-pause-clop-pause of metal-shoed hooves on pavement from reaching her ears. Even the collie dog downstairs hasn’t heard or suspected.

  Bree turns a page. She is a slow reader, stopping to underline and “talk back” in the margins. “Right, you clowns,” clowns being the kind of people who would fund both sides of wars, design a dollar born from debt, and debase all life into stark figures on a spreadsheet.

  She tosses down the pen, the book, sits up to dig her feet into her boots, lace them, still digesting the latest banking deregulations. For instance, the annihilation of the old sentry Glass-Stegall Act.

  When she stands, a presence out in the yard catches her eye. Her own eyes, that raw honey-green-brown-yellow, widen. It is an old dirty wet white horse, a pinto horse without much “paint,” black Rorschachs and apostrophes and splats only on his face and one fetlock and hoof. Also streaks of black in the tail. Big ears, clownish, mulish, sad in the rain. Head hanging. There is a wet man in the saddle. A wet crusher hat, looks black, probably started out dark green before he set out to ride here. Brim of hat awfully relaxed, but not enough to cover the eyes, which are hot and grating, driving into her honey ones. He wears a darkened work jacket, cuffs too short, possibly not his jacket, the Settlement shamelessly communal at times.

  Bree clicks open the little octagon screen.

  The eyes under the crusher watch. Horse’s head comes up, big ears revolving to try to understand the sound of Bree flinging some shredded paper pieces out. Horse’s shoulders shift. A little stumbly stepping back.

  The flakes of paper fall. “Snow in the forecast!! Better brush up on your winter driving skills!!” Bree calls through the drumming rain. Then she giggles. What has she torn up? Recall there was no marriage license. So it is not that.

  The man remembers her old giggles. Shy. Nervous. Horny maybe. These new giggles are different. In such a short time she is someone else. He watches as her hand withdraws.

  “Going to hit me?!!” she calls, her perfect mouth more tremble than tease.

  He calls back in his big-necked voice, which carries through the downpour like a ship, “Going to beat the wickedness out of you!”

  Now the collie barks.

  Bree giggles.

  The green eyes under the drip-drip of the crusher hat brim still stare, like true threat, but really this is a spark of teasing. But the spark doesn’t carry to the octagon window.

  She screams, “Fuck with me, Mister, and see what happens!!!”

  He drags a hand across his mustache and mouth, now turning his head to something interesting out there on the nearest cold blue hill.

  The collie down in the kitchen commences a frantic “shout.”

  A skin-crawling, squeally, bray-bawling pours from the little window. Bree’s wounded laugh.

  “All this stuff about beatings! That’s no way to get forgiveness!” Bree calls. “A bouquet of flowers is more traditional. Norrr-malll people think that waaay. But for you, you—”

&
nbsp; “This is not an apology!” he booms. “Would you rather have a stake in the heart!” Again, twinkles of teasing in his eyes.

  But those are gone in the rain as though down a drain. Again he looks toward the distant misty wooded mountain. Then raises a pleading hand to the queer little window. “Get down here now, Brianna and get your lickin’! I’m too busy to screw around here with talk of flowers!”

  “Then you shouldn’t have ridden old twinkle toes! You shoulda taken a jet!” She giggles teenagerishly. Slams the screen shut. Slams the window.

  Gordon and the pinto gelding remain hunched and motionless, a mini mountain.

  Out in the world.

  The people work. The people shop. The people hurry. The people wait at streetlights, grumbling. The people now talk on phones while driving . . . and chewing, swallowing, on their way. Work, shop, drive, talk, chew. Tinted windshields. Flashing mirrors. Automated voices and hidden cameras. The people are on their way. Credit cards. Interest. Faster money. Longer days. Lighter meals. Memories of no past. Catalogs. Packaging that crinkles. Packaging that opens faster.

  History as it happens (as dictated by Benjamin

  St. Onge with the help of Rachel Soucier).

  The world is scary. It could happen anytime. Look out when you answer the door. Butchie says insurance men are scary too when they come to look in your house and catch you with a broken smoke detector. Then there’s Drug War. They bust in and smash everything and take your mother and kill your dog. Like Jane. Mother gone. Dog gone. House gone. All her stuff gone. Nothing left but Jane. Then there is IRS which takes your money for rich people. And schoolteachers who have GRADES for honor kids and “trash you.” I used to think that means they put you in a big trash bag. Finally I got the difference. Here it is safe. We have a GATE. And a sign that says: KEEP OUT. Evan says we also need to get our own army. That’s pretty funny.

  Next day, an even colder meaner rain.

  One of the Settlement flatbed trucks, boarded-up sides. Cow, hay, oil, lumber remnants mixing into one smell of hard use, that trucky smell. It stops not down in the Vandermast yard, but out on the shoulder of the road. Engine goes silent. Resembles a siege. Gordon slides out into the rain, work boots, jeans, sleeveless black sweater vest over plaid, no hat.