Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  The baby has big eyes.

  Gordon feels he has big eyes, too.

  Out here is one birch tree and it is hung with brightly painted bird feeders.

  The surprise is a trick where they lay a baby in the snow and cover him with sunflower seeds. Today, this baby will do. Then everybody leaves the baby alone, waving his arms, talking to himself.

  In no time, the baby is covered with chickadees. Kind of creepy at first thought. But after you see the baby is talking louder and waving harder and singing “zzzzzzzzzzzzheeeeeeee!” you realize it’s okay to the baby, awesome actually.

  Gordon stands with both hands on the cane, smiling crookedly and all around him the girls and Ricardo are also smiling, glancing at each other to connect without words. And while the chickadees flit to and fro, removing all the seeds from the baby, the gray sky grows whiter and more fortified, readying itself for another big snow.

  It is so soft, so quiet, so full. Sound could be something that is part of ancient history, this earth having evolved now to perfect silence.

  Until Gordon huskily whispers in his new stammering way, “If I lie down . . . here, will . . . you cover . . . me with seeds? Got . . . enough seeds?”

  “We got ten million seeds!” Lindsay assures him.

  They watch while Gordon arranges himself in the snow, his legs out straight, arms spread eagle, his dark hair long enough again to open out halo-ish around his head. Then the seeds go on.

  “I feel like a bagel,” Gordon jokes.

  Lindsay and Carmel pat him, pretend to press the seeds in. “Funny bagel,” Carmel teases.

  Gordon aches from the push of many palms, that bright ache of the Settlement’s inexhaustible heart and mind, of its risks and of its careenings. He hears the boot-scrunches of them all standing back.

  And almost instantly, he is blanketed with little feet and wings that go “brrrt” like soft breaths. The birds do not weigh anything, perhaps all together they weigh as much as the human soul, which is said to be two ounces. There are even seeds on his face, and in his dark and graying beard, so a chickadee walks on his forehead; its little toenails, he can feel them, but so lightly he wonders if he’s mistaken. He feels the seeds lift away. Mostly, what he feels is the “Brrrt! Brrrrt!” of the wings, the little disturbance of air caused by the wings.

  The end.

  Please—

  Stay tuned.

  Author’s Notes

  Since the rude invasion of computers into our formerly gentler slower society, I would not be able to publish my work if not for my neighbor Sara DeRoche, her patience and her skill. I can’t remember the number of drafts she’s done of this book and often from handwriting that looks like razor wire and blobs of blood. Thank you’s to Sara!

  My old friend Jacquie Giasson Fuller made it possible for the Maine Acadian French (“Acadian patois” or, as some would say, “North American patois”) to be spoken on these pages. She is translator of some, while of some she is their author, their grace. She told me to be sure to say that she couldn’t have done it without her mother and sister-in-law, Lucienne Merservier Giasson and Lorraine Bissonette Giasson. Before approving these particular pages, they all got together and went over the nuts and bolts of this beautiful, mostly oral, language of love, work, and home, no better experts anywhere than they, and I am grateful. Also thank you Mary Bradeen for extra last minute checks, Mary of THE County!

  Peter Holmes of Liberty Hall, Richard Grossman of POCLAD, CELDF and “FEAR ART!”, Thomas Naylor of the Second Vermont Republic, and the Honorable Julian Holmes. All gone from us (in Heaven). But your places at our table are still reserved. Your voices of reason live on. The 2nd Maine Militia salutes you! (by shooting twenty-one TVs).

  Official and Complete

  and Final ☺

  List of

  Acknowledgments

  While working on Treat Us Like Dogs over the last twenty years, so many friends, family, and other heroes would, in the nick of time, save the day for this author who was in need of moral support or inspiration or groceries or information or the opportunity to do research. Through the years I put their names in a hat, took a bunch out to thank in The School on Heart’s Content Road, which was at one time all part of the same manuscript with Treat Us Like Dogs and The Mother of Men, the one I’m firming up now. So I include here some of those names remaining in the hat, drawing them with closed eyes. Next book I’ll include the rest. No order, alphabetical or otherwise, only as I draw them, all equally important. Huge gratitude goes to:

  Maureen DeKaser, Jenny Pap Hughes Yoxen, Ann Searcy (Little Falls, second grade, 1970s. My daughter’s teacher but inspirational to me always), the Kukka-Roberts family (Chris, John, Jin, Molly, Lemony, and Daisy), Cecelia and Tabitha Waite (two sisters, curled up in chairs asleep while the grown-ups talked into the night), Sandy and Cyndy (my sisters), Dr. Arthur Chapman III (thank you for the typewriter!), Laurel MacDuffie, David Orser, Carolyn Eyler, Elizabeth Olbert (I wish my mother had been an anarchist!), Dana Hamlin (in Heaven), Stephen and Tabitha King (without you there’d be no security office, thus no solitude, thus no novel), Jim Page ♫, Jonah, Sara, Ceiba, Kana, David “Howlin’ Wilkie” Wilkinson, Janet Beaulieu (in Heaven), Frank Collins (in Heaven), Balenda Ganem, John Sieswerda, Rick and Jeff Libby, Phil Worden, Reverend Ken Carstens, Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, Michele Cheung, Ruth Webber, Russell Webber (in Heaven), Reverend Leaf Seligman, Dave Haag, Hal Miller (in Heaven), Patrick Quinlan, Andy Yale, Christina, Cullen and Sarah Stuart, George Garrett (in Heaven), Jean and Alfred Eastman, Sally and Mike Leahy, Eunice Buck Sargent, Nick Kingsbury, Morgan MacDuff (in Heaven) and Samantha, Bendella Sironen and David White and all, Tina Gilbert, Ellen Weeks and Rose Metcalf Postmistresses Extraordinaire!, Wayne Burns (in Heaven) and Stephanie Johnson (Dragon of the West) and Effi (in Heaven), Evelyn and Joe Butler, Yelena and Todd, Stasik and Charlie, Joy Scott, John Muldoon (without you and Henry and Douglas there’d have been no security office, thus no novel), Elisabeth Schmitz, best editor on planet Earth (Cork, you are the best editor in Heaven), Gwen North Reiss (one of the only publicity people I’ve known who didn’t talk like a nurse in an old-age facility) and also you are my dear friend, Sheila Smith ♥, Secret Agent Jane Gelfman ♥♥, “Miss Cathy” Gleason, Cousin Katie Raissian (another world’s best editor!), and Caroline Trefler World’s Best Copy Editor (If Earthling is capitalized in this book, it’s not because Caroline didn’t try to make it right. Grays seem to have their own ideas). And thank you Robyn Rosser (sister), Michael Rothschild and all our friends on Tory Hill (especially Ana and James), Jamie Gleason, Bill K., Don Kerr, Tom and Alison Whitney, Sub Steve Kelley, the Parsonsfield Union Church Society (which has too much fun), Peggy and Ray Fisher (for our friendship, for a place to work, for The Lovell News!), Will Neils (thanks for all the memories!!), Jim Bancroft of New Jersey, Mark Hanley,

  Lisa Gardner, Ed Gorham, Wendell Berry, Mike Ruppert (in Heaven), Anagreta and Glenn Swanson, Audrey Marra, everybody at BPCP in Brunswick, Fenderson cousins Jesse, Judy, Jake, and Cookie (deer meat, food pantry rides, dog searches, and good company), Joanna Morrisey, Katy and Chris Barnes, Victor Lister, sheriffs Scott and Tom for assistance in apprehension of three runaway Scottish terriers, also Marcie and Finley (you save lives!), Ken Rosen, Little Elise Rau, Peter Kellman and Rebekah Yonan, all at the Limerick Library, Linda DeArmott and Donna’s church, University of Michigan’s NELP and NELPers, Rob Waite, Hillary Lister, Isabelle Trodec, Madison Bell and Beth Spires, David Diamond, Cynthia Riley, Michele Cheung, Angelo Roy of “THE County,” Marlene Livonia, the Federal Food Stamp Program for helping us (welfare encourages productivity!), Jeannie and John Matthew, Gloria Hermantz and Diane Morrill, W.D., Rita and Kathy, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Bowman, Ret., Alexander Cockburn (in Heaven, I think), Lance Tapley (who suggested the Anti-Rich Society), Helen Peppe, all at JED, Pal Tripp (storyteller-wiseman-friend, in Heaven), John Lesko, Guy Gosselin, Dan C., Roger Leisner, Steve Kelley, Bill Pagum, Charles Wo
ods and Gretchen and their cover solutions extraordinaire, Lynn C., Laura Childs, Michael and Carol of the Victory Gardens, Edie and Harriet, all our family: Prindalls, Pennys, Chutes, Morrills, Bowies and Goodriches, insiders and X’s. And very special thanks to my woofers who lived, died, and some still going strong throughout the long years of work on this book, your interruptions were inspiring.

  Character List

  The Prophet

  Guillaume (Ge-yome hard G like golly!) Gordon or Gordo or Gordie St. Onge, aka the Prophet. Age thirty-nine until September. He is six-foot-four or -five, depending. In the winter gets a thick waist and an extra neck but in summer works it off. Work, work, work, work, though not without talk, talk, talk, talk, and preach, preach, preach, preach. Darkish hair. Darkish beard with a splutter of gray beginning on the chin. Dark brows and lashes with weird pale greenish eyes. Significant French-Italian nose. Add to that a Tourette’s sort of flinch to one side of the face, especially the eye. Not a forgettable face. Drink is a problem for him at times, during spells of getting worked up over life’s cruelties and injustices, bothered and stirred, moody and broody. He has been accused of loving everyone in the world equally; that his love is too easy, too diluted.

  In an earlier time when Gordon was first married to Claire, married by the laws of the state of Maine, he got some cousins and friends together to start the Settlement on land his mother gave him, land and an old farmhouse where he had grown up. This wasn’t just some ol’ hippy commune but a statewide cooperative in furniture, alternative energies, farm produce, and trade. The Settlement is thought to be a school by some who live out in the world. Citizens of the Settlement see it as home.

  The Fourth Estate

  Ivy Morelli. A native Mainer, Ivy is a reporter and columnist for the Record Sun, the big daily. She is twenty-four, petite, with a big raspy haw-haw of a laugh. Her eyes are blue with black lashes. Her facial expressions at times would serve her well as a murderess or sorceress in an Elizabethan play (when evil truly reigned and the commons were being emptied). Her hair is bowl-style, very black, tinted violet. Wacky wardrobe. Wacky earrings. A tattoo of tropical fish circles her arm. Drives fast. Is rude to fellow motorists. Her editor is Brian Fitch, an ordinary-looking guy about forty, editorly pants and shirt and shoes. Twinkling gray eyes. Editorly hair trim. He is good-natured about all of Ivy’s quirks.

  Secret Agents

  Jane Meserve (yes, a secret agent), age six (almost seven). Tall for her age, hushy velvety voice, tells us (very curious people that we are) much about what she observes. Our Jane is a gorgeous child with a head of dark ringlets, which she generally wears up in a queenly, countessy way, high on top with a glamorous spangled squeegie or flowery one. Jane is a fan of MTV, fast food, and great clothes. Some of these pleasures may have been developed through her mother, Lisa, but Granpa Pete blames it on Great Aunt Bette, long dead, a strong-willed lady who must have seen many personal demands fulfilled. Jane always walks in a graceful royal fashion, unless she’s having a tantrum.

  Her father, Damon Gorely, is handsome, she is told by her mum, and talented in rap. He is an African mix person, Lisa–Mum–is a European mix person. Yes, like most Americans, given time, the Heinz “57 Varieties” type.

  Secret Agent Jane’s spying career begins after a Settlement person gives her a pair of sunglasses that have pink heart-shaped lenses. Frames are white plastic. Jane’s mother, Lisa, says those glasses will give Jane special viewing power. She suggests they are real secret agent glasses and that Jane can report to her all she sees. Lisa, is in jail, in deep trouble.

  Jane’s Family

  Lisa Meserve. Dental assistant before her arrest. Hair a textured blonde from a product called Light ’n Streak. Less strong-willed than Jane. Before jail, wore lipstick. Noticeable blue eyes. Actually Lisa isn’t guilty of crime, but with prohibitions you don’t have to be guilty to be guilty, just poor.

  Cherish. Like Cannonball, Cherish is a Scottish terrier. Though this is not a common breed, there are, yes, two in this story, completely unrelated. Not everybody in America has a golden retriever. Cherish dies when cops leave her in a hot car. This happens before this story begins. So Cherish is a memory and a ghost.

  Peter Meserve, known as Pete or Granpa Pete. Owns a gas station. Old friend of Gordon St. Onge’s. Father of Lisa.

  Secret Agents Continued

  Names sometimes mentioned, sometimes alias, sometimes real. Some of these are Special Agents (S.A.), others operatives. Agents appear in many scenes, scheming and plotting for “America.” There are times when the Settlement is crawling with them.

  More Spies

  The grays. Sometimes you see them. Sometimes you don’t.

  Queen of the Settlement

  Claire St. Onge. About age fifty. Once she and Gordon were legally married, but then divorced. She left. Now she’s back. Claire is a short woman, short and fat. Graceful and seemingly light on her toes. Both of her parents are Passamaquoddy. She grew up in Princeton, upstate. Has many cousins, some who visit from the reservation, some who live at the Settlement. Claire’s long black hair, beginning to gray, is often worn up in a bun for that teacherly effect when she has classes at USM (the University of Southern Maine), she being an adjunct history teacher. But often she wears it down and it is comely. While in the Settlement gardens, she wears jeans and long shirts but much of the time she wears homemade skirts with those frequent displays of embroidery many Settlement women also show off. One of Claire’s most striking features are her old-timey spectacles: turn of the century, round steel frames. These give her a severe and grim sepia, quite managerial aspect. She is one of those who wears the red sash.

  Some Others Who Wear the Red Sash

  Bonnie Lucretia (Bonnie Loo). Her legal last name is Sanborn as she was married before to a young man by that name. He died in a tractor-trailer wreck. Bonnie Loo’s maiden name is Bean. She is age twenty-six. A tall, rugged person, she wears her dark hair streaked orangey blonde from the bottle. She has a child, Gabe, from the trucker husband who died. Two additional youngsters by her present husband (wed by Settlement law). She wears regular glasses at times, rather bulky ones, but her contacts are her favorites. Her eyes are golden green-brown. Movie star eyebrows curved exquisitely, one of her best features but she is raw to look at sometimes, and snarly of manner. But also curious and smart and witty. Most people at the Settlement think of her as the head cook.

  Penny. One of the first Settlement citizens, one of the founders. She is a tall honey-haired woman, late thirties. She is the mother of the oldest Settlement-born child, fifteen-year-old Whitney (Whitney is Penny’s legal last name by outside law). Penny is a pleasant, easygoing person who enjoys Settlement life. She loves books and quiet evenings alone but also she’s there for the social stuff. She has a lot of overly full daytimes. She enjoys long walks in the fields. Many people swear that Penny is so classically lovely she is prettier than her daughter who, though a handsome and bright girl, has too many goofy expressions.

  Stephanie (Steph). In her early forties, she is a rosy-cheeked, brown-haired quiet type. Her daughters, Margo and Oceanna, (pronounced O-shi-ahna) are twins. Margo looks “just like” Steph and has her mother’s wallflower ways. Oceanna looks more like a skinny feral cat, but wears a lot of purple.

  Gail. About age forty-five, mother of Michelle. Gail is another early Settlementer. Michelle is fourteen, only a bit younger than Penny’s Whitney. Meanwhile Gail, an ex-biker and recovering alcoholic, a semirecovered smoker, still has a biker-style of dress and her collarbone and entire neck have a ring of roses tattooed there forever. Her voice is husky. Eyes dark and close together. Nose a big puggy. Hard lines in the skin from hard livin’. Quiet. Reserved. Hair is straight, dark, shoulder-length and sometimes neglected, sometimes silky and fresh.

  Lee Lynn St. Onge. Witchy. Looks witchy. Has witchy ways. Mid-thirties, has a year-old tyke named Hazel. Lee Lynn is busy collecting healing herbs, makes salves and tonics, herby teas. Very affect
ionate with everyone. She has wild hair, early gray. She is always braless and wears long flowing dresses, clanking bells (at the throat, for instance), and around one ankle a rusty leg iron (looks like the real thing) like a slave. Her high thin voice is cutting to some ears, and her roaring enthusiasm over everything goes against the grain of some of the more curmudgeonly personalities and maybe even some patient ones.

  Beth. She is rough of speech. You might say “like a sailor.” She has longish blonde curly ringlets. A short stocky shapely person. Two kids: Montana, age eight, and Rhett, five.

  Glennice. A Christian woman. Late forties or fifty. She was married before to a man who left her with an envelope of money (his week’s pay), their kids, and their home, taking only his beagle puppy and guns. Glennice grew up around tractors and trucks and farming. She’s very good with vegetables and machines. She loves the Settlement life and is a wonderful teacher of all the Settlement youngsters. Glennice is a churchgoer and believes in a big biblical God. But she also sees Gordon as a supernatural godlike being, which is a bit of a joke for other Settlement people, who see Gordon as full of the weakness of mortals. Glennice has features too small for her large face. Big glasses. Light brown hair sometimes permed.

  Brianna (Bree) Vandermast. She is only age fifteen. Her hair is thick, ripply orange; orange like a crayon. Honey-color eyes. She has always, and still does, work in the woods with her brothers and father on their logging crew. She is a strong, fit girl, sort of tomboyish. She has zealous revolutionary intentions. Does lyrical writing in bold calligraphy and stunning drawings and paintings. Studies and reads and schemes all the time. Has a girlish giggle and romantic hungers. She was born with a deformed face, her honey eyes too far apart, the bridge of her nose stretched wide. She is the founder of the True Maine Militia.