Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  Miles and miles and miles of such slim thread between Boston and Maine makes voices tired. And faces are erased, except in memory. But when you are six years old, memory has no pluck. Memory is jelly.

  So here we are today, the now of it. Lisa seems to no longer have much to say. Her lips mostly just breathe. And Jane? Just gasps and sighs. So there is no actual conversation tonight.

  Jane keeps her face to the wall, like shame, here where she sits at Gordon’s largest desk, her oh-so-elegant long fingers flicking the cards of one rotary file, although she has no idea her fingers are doing this.

  Eventually, the six-year-old and her mum say “bye-bye” and “I love you” and “call you soon.” What will there be to say next time. The mothers here have promised to fly with Jane to visit the California prison where Lisa is being sent to soon. This has been discussed drearily. Many times. It is losing even its thin clarity. Maybe Jane will become somewhat bored in time, bored by this thing against her ear, this barely warm plastic appliance.

  From a future time, Clair St. Onge remembers.

  There wasn’t much hoopla about Lisa’s fate in the news now. Lisa’s lawyer told Lisa’s father Pete (Granpa Pete to Jane) that the drug bureau and FBI had begun playing this one down, fearing that Lisa’s little Scottie dog’s bad death from heat when the police left her in Lisa’s car could make a lot of bad press for them.

  The voice of Mammon.

  Growth! Growth! Growth! Growth! Growth! Growth! GROWTH! GROWTH!

  Rex York revised.

  No computer. No “patriot movement” web searches. No Border Mountain Militia meetings on the kitchen calendar. Lost a few customers due to what the whole world knows of him now but he still has enough jobs to go him. And the steers that he shares with his brother Bob next door. He and Bob and their back and forth favors.

  Hurrah! The ’Nam dreams are gone. Gonzo. Because he does not fall asleep. No sleep, no dreams. In his La-Z-Boy with the TV blathering on, he drifts. At the supper table with his mother Ruth’s many-ringed hand reaching to lift away the empty biscuit pan, Rex’s eyes are blistered with tiredness as some people’s are after too much fun.

  Rex has had something like dreams. They are paper color. But that sleep-eye we all have between our daytime eyes, his will not shut. Over the white starkness of this new so-called dream’s background, numbers crawl laboriously, like math problems in fifth grade. And his brain is crammed with “tin foil.” Crackling. Oh, maybe that’s just the clean sheets as he tosses himself over again.

  So Rex is not going to land in prison for attempted murder, aggravated assault. Or manslaughter or murder which COULD have been the case had Gordon crossed the river, if he hadn’t so stoutly hung on. And then forgiven.

  But Rex knows one thing for absolute and perfectly certain. This torture of sleeplessness is God’s hand at work. God does not forgive.

  And so the world turns through another cold crunchy moon, several snows, and much hot soup.

  Five men enter the first piazza and shake and stomp themselves of snow. And apologize for being a half hour early. The Settlement man who leads them to the cook’s kitchen says that early is okay.

  Gordon is in his usual rocker, asleep, maybe a little too close to the largest cookstove with it’s kettles of simmering water for keeping the air moistened. Most other rockers are empty. One woman with a baby on her shoulder nods to each stranger, her eyes holding their eyes until each of them looks away, even the eyes of the older guy with the steely glasses, his bravery must only extend into territory more dangerous.

  He, this older one, stands as most alphas do, not bristly, just something in the shoulders, a certain angle of the chin and the way the four younger men glance at his responses to all the dimensions of this kitchen and the words that rock between teenaged pot scrubbers and way too many women. And this kitchen is overly warm so one of the men pulls off his jacket, another unbuttons. A tall skinny old lady in apron, jeans, and moccasins, is quick to point out the coat hooks on that same wall that the archway of cubbies makes.

  In both kitchens, along the back wall, the tall floor-to-ceiling windows of small panes frame the majestic slow-motion descent of the thickening snow. Almost simultaneously, like an orchestra, several tall hand pumps at the sinks squeal and slosh into action. A rack of loaded canning jars, so seedy and tomatoey, a winter comfort, borders one set of sideboards. And underfoot, hand-painted tiles, each one different, the many loud colors toiling away there are, as a teenaged voice explains, warmed almost hot by the copper tubing underneath. Another visitor’s jacket is slipped off and the lightning-quick frizzy-haired old woman finds another untaken coat hook to hang it on.

  Mostly the men’s eyes are riveted on Gordon’s face, which is different from when they last saw him. Torn and tracked with stitch marks. One eye covered in freshened gauze. An ear that is a cupboard knob, so it seems.

  The visitors had very little to say to Gordon the day of the True Maine Militia event. You’d never have guessed they were impressed with Gordon or anything about that day, so cautious they were . . . faces stony. They just wandered around in their camo pants, dark T-shirts, and military boots, their faces looking as friendly as bricks. Today, wools and flannels, their hellos just a knot of restraint.

  The Settlement man who stands with them, murmurs, “Gordo. The guys that called are here.” Even as this moment unfolds like a hand of individually familiar cards, full house or royal flush, many others like these guys are roused by their impending ruination to stop in on the Prophet. When Gordon’s one unpatched eye lazily opens, the visitors don’t look at all familiar to him, nor unfamiliar. But he understands the need for dignity in their just-flickers-of smiles.

  They are offered seats and soup by “the family.”

  The replies are yes.

  The soup is thick, brown, and weedy, lumpy with potatoes. Some corn cakes come around in yellow saucers. Coffee, some black, some creamed.

  The visitors’ rocking chairs are now a constellation around Gordon. Another jacket comes off. These men have plenty to confess to that one green eye. His decimation seems to be of no consequence, his queer pauses and silences, no matter. In fact, to them, his agonized presence emanates a perfect sacrificial thunder. And he calls each of them “my brother.”

  Secret Agent Jane observes other observers.

  Due to my powerful secret agent glasses, I can see a thing spinning. I am underneath. It is up there. Actually only part of it is spinning. It is partly black like new shoes. But also some dull. Sort of rough. Like the tall tombstone things in the cemetery for olden days’ people with names and stuff. You would never believe this. Out sprays some light sort of blue but pinkish if you wear these secret glasses. It is not real dark out yet, nowhere near supper. So why lights? I mean really, I can see for miles, all the snow and frosty trees. But I think The Thing is flashing me a message.

  “Hello!” I call up to see if anyone’s listening.

  A cracklish noise like when you open presents and even more wonderful blue light swooshes down and covers me, blue and pink and warm. You would love it, too. I put up my arms and dance and laugh wicked. This is so funny. Scary and funny. Honest, this is a real flying saucer thing. Next comes sparkles soooo powerful and soooo many they lift me up totally off the ground about a whole inch! Then I drop back. Both feet. I have a feeling this is top secret. It is not something I can tell. Cuz this is so wicked pure and precious and important and scientifish. My lips are sealed.

  The grays.

  Actually we took the little human aboard but she won’t remember it.

  Secret Agent Jane in the privacy of her tiny room at the Soucier home.

  . . . ten, eleven, twelve. Okay. So twelve whole pages of the flying saucer in my secret book. I drew them exact. Except the stuff that doesn’t show. Like the way the light tickles and tastes. Like sugar. I’m serious.

  And then no way can I draw the way the big thing flew back to the mountain and into space or whatever. It was wick
ed quivery and floppy like a bat but faster than nature. Quite perfect. At first I thought it might be cops, so of course I was terrified.

  Penny St. Onge recalls.

  One night we had a meeting with Gordon in the library. Adults only. A lot of parents but others here, too, who had no kids of their own. Like Bev and Barbara. And Stuart, who is one of the single men here.

  We talked. Gordon mostly listened, his one eye with the loose bottom lid moving all over each one of us, that look that meant hearing too many words was a strain on his injured thinking. It was a look that said we were . . . well, not poisonous snakes but that we were a people the likes of which he’d never seen before. Our discussion was about getting on the Internet. Most of us thought it best. We understood that droning out on system-manipulation TV was destructive. And more dependency on the grids. But this! A source of information! And there would be just the one computer. Down in the unused shed way behind his house. We could fix up that shed way to be a really comfy Internet shop. It would have to be down there because it would have to be connected to the phone line.

  He admitted he had, himself, been thinking over the pros of getting “online.” BUT, for REASONS, now, reasons that he stammered to articulate, then stopped. Then, “We should be shrinking, not expanding our . . .” dependencies. But instead of “dependencies” he searched through the ruined connections of his brain and blurted words like “nipples,” “litter,” “weight,” “bags.” Nobody laughed.

  He looked us all over again, his hands in a prayerful pile on the table, those big hands, those wronged, still raw, forever marred pale eyes for the moment chilly.

  He stood up from the long library table where all of us were still sitting. He reached for his cane. We watched him. We were all humbled.

  Above the filing drawers, up on one wall, a little picture on thick Settlement-made paper, little houses, smoking chimneys, smiling sun, floating hearts, and a childly scrawl: CHEZ NOUS. Our home.

  History as it happens (as recorded by Lorraine Martin).

  Something new is coming to the Settlement. It is the Internet. Should be installed by the end of next week. We are all very happy about it. I think.

  History as it happens (still handwritten by the way) by Katy St. Onge with help from Harry and Theodan.

  Kirky and his Dad got into a big fight. His Dad is Eddie in case you read this 100 years from now. Kirky is one of the big kids in case you read this 100 years from now. Eddie said Kirky is very smart about electrines electronics and is wasting all his jeanus genius on the fucking computer. He said a fucking computer. He said once Kirky loved the fucking windmills and the fucking solar cars and inventing things like his fucking table town. Now it’s just the fucking computer. He said that. Those words.

  Once people here shot a TV. It was the lady who lived here once, her TV. Everybody was talking about it. Next they will be shooting the fucking computer.

  Ivy Morelli.

  Slouching before her computer with the soft-but-annoying pulsing of three phones at her back, other desks, other cubicles, other concerns, she picks open the manila envelope with the Egypt return address at the corner and the name G. St. Onge above it.

  Out from the envelope a reporter pad flops into her hand. She thumbs it open. Yessireee. It’s the one he stole from her last spring. A small scuffled-and-scrumped-looking piece of paper taped to the back reads: Greetings and stuff. Warmly, your friend, Gordon.

  Ivy frowns. Some might see this as a friendly joke, an apology, a courtesy, or just what it says, greetings. But to Ivy, this feels like a gentle good-bye.

  The grays with more testimony.

  Again and again we have wooshed the little human aboard. Almost every day. One word we have picked up (through eavesdropping) concerning this action is “abduction.” But that word is flawed. We place the creature on the laboratory table. During the first “abduction” we were astounded by her face, how she looked back at us with seeming savviness (or caginess) through her strange eye protectors that were shaped like none we’ve ever observed on humans before.

  One of us asked her, brain-to-brain, in a voice she would perceive as the vocal cords of the gentlest of men, if we could get a look at her eyeballs behind the eye protectors.

  With her mouth she made sounds to match the consent that wove through her brain and also cautiously nodded. Undulating in her heart valves was a tune we recognized as b*sΔk and veeop. She was enjoying herself!!!

  She took the eye protectors off by herself. Her eyeballs warbled and oozed us. Such eyes! The anguish! The lovely! Black as the farthest space travel! She considered each of our faces. Monster faces to her? She managed her fear and repugnance quite courteously, inside and out, for her heart still frisked like fun or perfect interest even though we had slowed our speed of motion down to match hers so that she could see us as clear as the world that was hers because we were terribly curious as to what her response would be.

  She re-covered her eyes with the white and pink device after only a few moments, saying, “I need these. Without them I don’t have the power.” She tapped one of the pieces that curved over and behind her ears. She did this rather expertly and had certain adult human mannerisms that intrigued us.

  Such a specimen of an Earthling! Our best ever.

  She was covered in woven materials that keep warm blood warm and organs functioning in Earth’s remaining sputtering ice age atmosphere in the short-span solstice-time. But how her woolly colors whistled and percolated! Sticking out of pockets were mittens the color of Mars. But better. Her cap a thunderbolt of titillation factor that breaks all our records. She had a frilly collar sticking out, a sort of scrappy mushroom pink that burned our nerves.

  Meanwhile, as we are ever-snooping, it is no secret to us that this is one of thousands of little humans whose mothers and fathers are sealed alive in cages. The cage-vault surrounds the parent who is on the inside and the little human is left behind over much distance in Earth measure. The reasoning for this is not complete as we eavesdrop upon the reedy vapors of human voices. Humans as with their warm, feather or fishy counterparts are not steered by reason but by that which is bigger than their will. They are pushed along by the magnificent Mother Force, the forces of nature, that is. It is humorous to watch the humans strut about as if this weren’t so. But today we don’t laugh. The damage is too close and for a while we stand still in awe of the pain behind the eye coverings.

  “Would you like something tasty? For your mouth?” one of us inquires, brain-to-brain each time we bring her aboard, for she has no memory of the previous “abductions” in spite of our calibration of movements.

  “You mean a treat?” she asks with her mouth, which can speak and smile simultaneously. Such a skill!!!

  The bonbon is the size of a plum (pretty close) but leaden with sugar and other refined Earthly tongue stimulants blended. She mashes the WHOLE THING inside one cheek painfully (so it appears), straining out in a plum-sized bulge. She swings her left foot around over and over. With the tongue tucked and lopped over and stuff squeezing around in there, this creature muffingly speaks with a slight heave of the chest, “Thank you very much. You are so nice whoever you are.” Crashing out through the pink parts of her eye coverings are thousands of minute newborn stars. This makes us even more still. More awed. How can this be?!!! This is it! Finally. Our aisles and aisles of compartments of Earth samples, vegetable, mineral, gasses, and these heads (ours) full of data. The billions of centuries of our labors here, to bring our hypothesis to its moment of truth, the great grunting lurid truth that this planet is the only location in the whole universe where exists both torment and delight at the same time, in the same place.

  Sleeping late on a Saturday morning in her city apartment, total submission for Ivy.

  She is really dug in under the covers, eyelids fluttering. Her dreams are always in color and this one is no exception. YELLOW is prominent.

  Yeah, in this dream, she’s a heavy equipment operator.

&nbs
p; The end.

  P.S.

  (see next page)

  JANUARY

  Two ounces.

  This place, this hour is just plain ol’ Maine. Gordon feels today as though there is nothing left to know in life. Nothing that matters more than this bright white-gray day. He feels thin, and sad, and wise. Though he has had some days lately where his old silliness has visited him, that teasy twinkle in one eye. Yeah, outrageousness and goofballness are like weather. Somedays his weather is fair. The kids walk with him out to the edge of the woods. They say they have a surprise. They all wollumph along, the snow semideep. The surprise is behind the large solar cottage where Aurel and Josee and their kids and Jane live.

  And Jane is along for the adventure. No secret agent heart-shaped glasses today. Just a new look in her eyes. A stirring.

  The air is nice. The day is not cold, smells perfectly of the inscrutable, goodly-drear woods!

  All over the snow are the heart-shaped tracks of gray squirrels who have been here earlier, hop-bounding from tree to tree. And now the marks of human feet and the round print of Gordon’s cane.

  So Jane and Carmel, Erin, Lindsay, and Dara have been sticking with him, but Ricardo has abandoned them, way off ahead there, pulling the baby fast on the toboggan. This is Natty’s baby. Natty, one of Gordon’s “wives.” Baby not very old. And so someday the baby will not remember this, only in some whiffy, gray way.

  This baby has no thumbs. Ten fingers instead. A birth defect. He’s dressed in a way that makes him look like a troll, layers and layers of flannel and “fur” and wool. All in bright colors and embroidered in more colors. Purple and goldenrod gold, scarlet, blue, forest green. Pointed hood. Tassels sewn onto the point.