Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  Vancy. Also quite young. Pregnant. Not considered pretty but she is a skilled midwife and natural with elderly and the sick and therefore she is a precious jewel to Settlement life. She has a rather square boxy face, square boxy body (even before pregnant). Her hair is flat and rumply brown, never fussed over. She tends to wear big white blouses (even before pregnant). Her eyes are sort of lashless, bottom lip erect, jawline primitive.

  Leona. One of Claire’s cousins, also from the reservation. Leona was one of the first Settlementers, a founder. Leona has many kids, including Cory, who is younger than Whitney by only a few weeks. So Cory is also age fifteen but almost six-foot-two. Katy and Karma are two of the youngest of Leona’s kids. Andrea a bit older. Many in-betweens such as Oz, Shanna, and Draygon. Leona has a great tail of black, black hair. Has a thing for peasant blouses.

  Geraldine. Leona’s sister. Short hair in various cuts. Very attractive gal. Not married. No kids of her own but does a lot of activities with Settlement kids. Enjoys horses and Settlement trips.

  Natasha (Natty). Age eighteen (almost). She is sharp-featured, blonde. Until arriving at the Settlement she was a prostitute in Boston, a runaway girl from Ohio. She loves working in the orchards and leatherworking, cobbling, and sugaring. She’s a storyteller, always draws a circle around her of listening ears. By late summer has a new baby who has a nice head of dark hair but no thumbs.

  Misty. Short dark hair. Lovely neck. Graceful, almost tiptoey ways. No kids of her own. Lots of snobby cats live with her in her cottage. But she enjoys reading to kids in the library or hearing one read aloud, one at a time, yes, her and one tyke, one-on-one. She understands shyness. But also she thinks up a lot of artful projects such as the sign she and a couple of nine-year-olds made for the wall over the smallest library loveseat: LIE BERRY made entirely with acorns painted different colors and glued on. Most of the acorns have stuck to this day.

  Mother

  Marian Depaolo St. Onge. Actually, her name isn’t Marian but Mary Grace but she is into name-changing for status purposes. Her husband (deceased), Guillaume, she called Gary. Guillaume, the son, is Gordon. She is tall (taller than her husband had been). She has light eyes. Her dark hair has a lot of attractive gray. Her glasses are of an attractive style. She has wonderful posture. Gordon is her only child. Her brothers and uncles are Depaolo Bros. Construction. They do huge projects around New England such as schools, banks, malls, big box stores, office complexes. They always have a family member or close buddy in the state senate. Marian lives in Wiscassett, a bit of a drive. Gordon visits her once a week. They argue.

  Brother

  Richard (Rex) York. Captain of the Border Mountain Militia and blood brother to Gordon St. Onge. Does not live at the Settlement. His age is about fifty. Keeps his thinning hair trimmed and tidy. Wears military boots, usually with pant legs over. His pale eyes have a way of gauging you totally. He is not shy but seems unable to verbalize information unimportant to meetings and maneuvers of the citizens’ militia movement of America or the work he does as an electrician. He has a dark walrussy mustache. He doesn’t eat desserts. He has an exceedingly fit appearance, possibly due to all the push-ups, deep-knee bends, and sit-ups he has done every day since Vietnam. Lives with his mother, Ruth. She is quiet. Bakes desserts for the American Legion, which she is involved in since her dead husband was alive and an active member. Also she makes desserts for home. Rex doesn’t eat desserts but his militia does.

  Glory York. Almost twenty. Rex’s only child. Her mother lives in Massachusetts, divorced from Rex and remarried. Glory is quite freckled, has long, thick, wow-type hair, dark auburn. She is beautiful in every way. But also she flaunts it and has a drinking problem and causes mess and havoc wherever she goes. She is not evil, just young and foolish.

  Cousin Who Is Like a Brother

  Aurel (pronounced Oh-RELL) Soucier. Still wears his bush hat from the Vietnam war. Speaks with oceanic rolling Rs, the accent and sometimes grammar of “THE County,” more specifically, the Valley of “THE County,” where the Acadian patois is still spoken by his generation. He is one of the founders of the Settlement. Has intense glittering deep-set dark eyes, trim dark beard. A trim-in-all-ways gentlemanly fellow. Short. Wiry. Works caring for livestock. Also busy with the solar and wind projects. Like Gordon, he is a motormouth.

  Josee Soucier. Her identical twin is Jacquie. Her husband is Aurel. She wears large-frame glasses, fashionable through the 1990s. Hair blonde. From a bottle. Shoulders sloped and soft. She dresses youthfully. She is a lively person. Speaks English with the accent of the patois of “THE County.”

  Kids of the Souciers. Included but not limited to Lydia (Liddy), Rachel, Rusty, Tamya, Michel.

  Jacquie and Paul Lessard. Yes, Jacquie Lessard is Josee Soucier’s twin. She and Paul have a daughter Alyson, a pleasant gentle adolescent, loves animals, wears long skirts a lot. Paul’s father is Reggie Lessard who speaks very little English. Loves music. All except Alyson started off life in “THE County.”

  Some Other Settlement People

  Bev and Barbara. Actually they live in town but arrive every day to teach and tutor kids, or to be on various crews. They are always in the midst. Both are short, square, and ruddy, gray-haired, wear glasses. Bev has a Maine accent, Barbara a New York accent. They have a yellow house with a swimming pool, which probably explains their ruddiness.

  Stuart Congdon. Head sawyer of the sawmill crews and active in various committees. He is the image of the troll dolls of the 1970s, bit of a belly, bright blue eyes, stand-up red hair, a red beard in his case, and short, technically a midget, thick legs and arms. Sturdy. Likeable and gently supervisorly.

  Nathan Knapp. Known to the young people as their “peace man,” he lives with his wife in one of the cottages. You never see her. She works outside the Settlement and neither one comes for the big meals. But Nathan, spiritual and well-read, is the leader of Settlement salons and other discussiony get-togethers. He wears a lot of black. His hair is very black and combed wetly to submission. His eyes are black. His skin is sallow. He seems underwater and distant but always watching you.

  John Lungren. A Settlement man about age sixty more or less. High hairline, gray, shaved. Light eyes. Wears jeans, work boots, T-shirts, plaid shirts, billed caps. Not a motormouth but not shy. One you can depend on, a rock.

  Cindy Butler. Only been at the Settlement a couple years but her kids fit right in. Chris has a love of piano and group discussions and field trips but rests, too, due to a severe skin affliction he was born with. Samantha (Sammy) is quite the ticket, often wears an Apache rag around her straight white-blonde hair. She is flashy and mouthy. And central.

  Eddie and Lorraine Martin. Lorraine, short hair, tidy, schoolteacher-looking. She’s from THE County but Eddie is not. Eddie ordinary-looking in a crowd except when he wears his bejeweled studded belt. Also he wears a very nice smile. Their youngest son is twelve-year-old Kirk (Kirky) who loves flashy clothes and inventions. Evan is about fifteen, dark-haired, struggles with acne. Butch (real name is Edward, Jr.) about twenty, then probably twenty-one by fall, not awfully chatty but sometimes teases, always dependable for hard physical work and working with oxen and on cars, keeps a kazoo in his pocket. Muscular, dark-haired, light-brown eyes, somewhat handsome, maybe in part due to his silence. Later in the summer he grows a big dark “military” mustache. He’s not tall, or short, but being older than his two brothers gives him stature.

  Ray and Suzelle (Gordon’s cousin) Pinette. Both from THE County. Their teenage daughter is Erin, homely by most standards but nobody notices due to her smiles and her always having been part of things.

  Catherine Court Downey. Comes to live at the Settlement from Portland. USM art teacher. Rather beautiful, interesting eyebrows, green-brown eyes, dark hair. Nervously assertive. Her son is Robert, age five.

  Brady and Sadie. Brother and sister. Both blond and sort of elegant. Reserved. Brady is dying.

  Michael (Mickey) Gammon. Fifteen years
old. Not a big guy, a bit scrawny and shrimpy, with a blond and brownish ponytail so thin and insignificant it twists to one side and up. He does not bathe or change routinely. He stays too busy going and coming back, walking for miles, smoking. His eyes are gray. He has a cold aspect. Not a talker. Much of the time, his jeans and T-shirts are rags. Lives in a treehouse on Settlement land since his older brother kicked him out.

  Neighbors

  William (Willie) Lancaster. A wild unpredictable thirty-nine-year-old. In some ways he is predictable. Meanwhile, he is a member of Rex York’s militia. Willie is gray-eyed and somewhat bucktoothed. Hair, brown. A brown beard, sort of pointed. And an insincere mustache. He’s medium height. Has the athletic qualities of a squirrel. His work involves climbing trees with ropes and cleats. Tree expert. Landscaper. He wears the single dog tag of his brother’s dead body returned from “the conflict.”

  Delores (Dee Dee) Lancaster St. Onge. One of three daughters of Willie and Judy Lancaster. She is age nineteen but looks eleven. A small, smiley person. She spends a lot of time at the St. Onge Settlement. Her cheery manner has no small effect on the atmosphere of Settlement life. Brown hair, which has natural spurts and catlicks. She is very pregnant.

  Lou-EE St. Onge (Dee Dee’s young husband). Also about age nineteen; (Louis is pronounced Lou-EE as they do up in the St. John, Valley of Aroostook “THE County,” whence he has come), is a cousin to Gordon. Lou-EE had lived at the Settlement awhile before he married Dee Dee. Now they live in the dooryard of the Lancasters’ mobile home complex. The Lou-EE–Dee Dee residence is a weird five-stories (each story only sixteen by sixteen feet), painted pink. Lou-EE is built like a tapeworm, no shoulders, just arms, legs, long neck, little head. On top a big brown mountain hat made of felt. Long black beard protects his significant Adam’s apple from view, though the beard is thin, just a scraggly, smoky swirl of a thing. While his father-in-law, Willie, is loud and full-throttle, Lou-EE is like a quaint stage prop but with wonderful eyes, the irises green and golden brown, ringed in black-brown.

  Cannonball. A Scottish terrier, huge teeth, broad chest, short legs. She is black, though some Scotties are brindle. She is round and solid, like, yes, a cannonball, cast iron. She likes food and Lou-EE. Willie rescued her from a life tied to a doghouse. Yes, Willie stole her. But she loves Lou-EE. She is not fond of kids. Hates other dogs.

  Other Lancaster dogs. A churning mass of homely squish-faced curl-tailed free-as-the-breeze short-haired small white smelling-of-the-swamp thieving piss-on-everything dogs.

  Jaxon Cross. One of the central figures of a gang (or “collective” depending on your views) of anarchists called the Anti-Rich Society. Looks like a pirate. His smile seems more threat than friendship but his accent is not just a bit Southern but full-rolling, full-embrace, full-summer North Carolina. Intensely well-informed. Always pushing books and articles and essays on you. A philosopher. Has EMT training but no job, no car of his own. Eats only seeds and nuts and such but is not gaunt. His one dangling earring resembles a doubloon. Bad acne scarring. Short beard, brown shortish moody hair. Eyes gray like his father’s, his father Lyman (Ly) Cross who he is at war with, it is said.

  Vandermasts. These are Brianna Vandermast’s father John (Pitch) Vandermast, her brothers Dana and Mark (Poon), and a married brother Ben who lives elsewhere. Only Ben has kids.

  Table of Contents

  Also by Carolyn Chute

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author's Note #1

  Welcome

  Author's Note #2

  List of Icons

  History

  Contents

  Excerpt

  Year 2000

  Epigraph

  Here's the Story

  BOOK ONE

  JUNE

  JULY

  AUGUST

  BOOK TWO

  SEPTEMBER

  OCTOBER

  BOOK THREE

  NOVEMBER

  DECEMBER

  P.S.

  JANUARY

  Please--Stay tuned

  Author's Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Character List

  Back Cover