by R.P. Burnham
Even on Saturday mornings Patti and Chris were early risers. He had made a pot of coffee, and they were sitting at the kitchen table drinking their first cup. Outside the sky was perfectly blue, and through the open kitchen window above the sink the warmth of the mid-May morning could already be felt. Patti had just finished her last final of the semester yesterday and was feeling expansive and free.
“We should do something special today. Unless you’ve got something scheduled, that is.”
Chris savored the taste of the rich Colombian coffee. “No, nothing special. But what do you mean? A movie? A day trip somewhere?”
She thought for a moment, crinkling her pretty little nose before smiling broadly. Her eyes sparkled. “How about a drive to some place beautiful and then afterwards dinner at some nice restaurant? My treat,” she added after reading his face.
“Okay, you’ve talked me into it. Fifty-fifty, though.”
She got up to rinse her cup. At the sink she turned to ask if he had any ideas, and when she did he could see her breasts through her T-shirt in the bright light of the sun. He felt a stirring and was embarrassed and perplexed. He had been thinking of Patti differently lately, and he couldn’t understand it. He liked Virgie and enjoyed the two trysts they’d had since the afternoon they returned from the Kimballs’. But the woman who was in his mind when he thought about women was Patti. It had been distracting him so much that he tried to avoid thinking about where his thoughts were leading him—and yet he couldn’t forget that when he was on the west coast and considering returning to Maine, it was Patti who was always the one who called him home.
“I do want to get more evidence on Ridlon. So far that bastard hasn’t been charged with anything. He has some lame excuse about a lazy worker of his, and public opinion seems to be on his side.”
“How can that be?” Patti asked. She didn’t really seem to want to know.
“You know that old saying of Mencken’s, don’t you?”
She thought for a moment, looking up into her mind before her eyes flashed with recognition. “Nobody ever went broke—”
“Underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” he finished for her. “Slimy politicians, especially Republicans, live by that observation. They pass some energy bill that allows power plants and the like to keep on pouring their poisons into the air and tell the public the bill will lead to a healthier environment. They roil up people with emotional issues. They’re fascists, really. I know what I’m up against with Ridlon. He has friends in high places. But pols are also cowards—look at all the spineless toads of Democrats voting for Bush’s wars—so if the heat gets too hot they’ll save themselves and throw him to the sharks.”
“Greed and cowardice go together,” Patti said as a summation to his screed. “But what about our plan?”
“How about Bedford Point? It has a wildlife sanctuary and a nifty walk on the rocks. We can see a lot of birds and if the tide is right some waves crashing against the rocks.”
“Sounds great. You want some more coffee?’ She was pouring herself another cup.”
He felt his cup. There was coffee left but it had grown cool as he talked. “Yeah, pour away the rest, willya. I got talking and it’s cooled. You like this stuff, by the way?”
“Very much,” she said, taking his cup. “It’s the best coffee I’ve ever had.”
He watched her breasts again as she crossed the beam of sunlight. It was warm and yet her nipples were erect.
“I still need more proof, though,” he said as she sat down. “But we can have our outing.”
She reached over and plucked a grape from the bowl at the center of the table. He watched her nibble it until she became self-conscious; then he dropped his eyes.
“What do you mean by more proof?”
“I’d like to get hold of his computer files, but I don’t know a hacker.”
She smiled broadly. “There I can help you.”
“You?!”
Her smile turned into a laugh. Her sweet face crinkled up and she was beautiful. “Geez, not me. I mean I actually know someone, not very well, but I know he’s a good hacker. He’s the brother of Lexi Kovac, a woman in the nursing program with me.”
“Where’s he live?”
“Near Longfellow Square.”
“And he’s the brother of one of your nursemates?”
She giggled girlishly. “Nursemate? That’s a strange way of putting it. Yes, one of my fellow students is the sister of this guy.”
“Classmate, nursemate—what does it matter? His politics are okay?”
“I don’t think he has any—except maybe hating authority.”
“He’s in no danger of being a Republican, then.”
“No, but he likes to hack just for the thrill of it. It’s a game with him. You ask him to break a computer’s security, and it’s like asking a gambler to play poker.”
They both turned to look through the dining room to the stairs. To their surprise Alex, wearing lavender silken thigh-length pajama bottoms and a red T-shirt, was coming down the stairs. He usually slept in on Saturday mornings.
When he got to the kitchen and yawned, Chris said, “What occasions this miracle?”
“Miracle?” Alex sniffed, still half-asleep. “There’s no law says I have to sleep in on Saturdays.”
Patti smiled and exchanged a glance with Chris. “I thought there was since this is the first time it’s been violated in my memory.”
Alex was getting a cup of coffee. With his back to them he said, “It’s no big secret. I met a guy last night and we hit it off. His father owns a cottage on Peaks Island. He wants to show it to me.”
“A special guy?”
Alex sat down, placed his cup on the table, yawned and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t answer.
“I thought you were foregoing the entanglements of love while you concentrated on law school?”
“The semester’s over, isn’t it? And besides, you know the saying about Jack being a dull boy. The same applies to boys named Alex.”
“Alex,” Chris said, “this guy sounds like a morning person. Are you sure he’s right for you?”
He favored Chris with a sardonic expression. “Ha, ha, very funny. It so happens it’s a question of a boat being available at nine o’clock. He wasn’t happy about the time either.”
“Interesting that you have an outing planned,” Patti said. “Chris and I are going to take a day trip too. We’ll wave towards Casco Bay when we reach the shore.”
“I’ll be looking for you,” Alex said, again in his best sardonic mode.
“Patti, is it too early to call the hacker?”
“Oh, yes. Alex, I’m making some toast. You want some?”
He shook his head no; then when he saw she was leaning into the refrigerator he said, “No.”
“We have eggs. Would you change your mind if I made French toast?”
“I would. Consider it changed.”
“Chris?”
“Yes, that’d be great. What about our hacker friend?”
“I think he does his hacking during the bewitching hours, then sleeps in. That’s what Lexi told me.”
He felt uneasy. “What if the man sleeps in until noon? What about our outing?”
He glanced up to see that look in her eye and knew why it was there. She was whisking the eggs in a large blue bowl. Usually he was the one who put everything behind his ecological work. He felt vaguely embarrassed as she said, “Well, he wouldn’t do it now, I don’t think. All we have to do today is ask him about doing it for us and giving the details. That shouldn’t take long.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Alex asked.
When they explained the plan to him, he said, “I know what the guy will say. If Ridlon doesn’t have a cable modem he can’t get in. And by the way, did you ever talk to my father about the case?”
Chris had seen Mr. Ryan just last week. It was like a job interview. He sat at a chair facing the old man at his desk, where
he sat stiffly with his back erect, his elbows on the desk and his fingers entwined as he spoke. He always called Chris “Christopher” and maintained a stiff formality. Patti had informed him of Chris’s intentions, and for some time he talked about his knowledge of Ridlon, telling Chris mostly things he already knew. Ridlon was a powerbroker in the Republican Party. Occasionally there had been talk of his running for office himself. He was certainly vain enough to run, but when testing the water he was found to be unpopular. Mr. Ryan had met him a few times and did not like the man. He was a bully by nature, arrogant and full of himself. He was also stupid. He didn’t really understand that politics was the art of persuasion and compromise. He swore like a pirate, a character trait that Mr. Ryan seemed to abhor most of all. He told Chris about a time eight or ten years ago when Ridlon got into trouble for illegal contributions but used his influence to get off with a slap on the wrist. Mr. Ryan seemed quite sure that he would do so again, though for Chris to see this conclusion he had to read between the lines. The old man had no conception of his tenacity; he still thought Chris was riffraff; he didn’t think him equal to the task. Chris had expected as much and, thinking of Patti, had held his temper. Often during the twenty minutes he was in the book-lined law office his mind wandered. He noticed that the old man had developed a tremor in his right hand. He observed how absurdly neat the man’s desk was with documents in in- and out boxes, a blue phone with a console on the right, a framed picture of his children and dead wife on the left, a leather-bordered blotter with blue paper to match the phone in the center. He wore a conservative charcoal-gray suit, white dress shirt and red bow tie. His fingernails were manicured. He found himself thinking that Alex’s careful attention to his appearance had less to do with any stereotyped homosexual trait than an inheritance from his father. The only question he was really interested in having answered was the one thing Mr. Ryan refused to address. He wanted to know the names of politicians who were in Ridlon’s pocket, but the old man said in a careful, lawyerly way, “We’re talking about the realm of hearsay here, Christopher. I have no proof and will therefore tell no tales.”
All in all a very unsatisfactory interview. Thus to Alex’s query he answered laconically, “Yeah, I saw him, but he wasn’t particularly helpful. He didn’t like Ridlon, but he didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know.”
“He could still be useful,” Alex said. “I mean, if at some time you need to know where people fit in, who’s owing whom, he’s the one to ask.”
Chris watched Patti dipping bread into the egg mix and transferring it to the frying pan. “There you’re wrong. He wouldn’t tell me who was in Ridlon’s pocket. He said he didn’t want to spread hearsay.”
“Yeah, he’s a lawyer, remember. But ask him something specific, he’s the one to know. You were saying last week you needed more on that guy. I take it things haven’t changed?”
“No. I’m paying a kid to keep an eye on the shed. He told me Ridlon’s men did a cleanup job. Ted Autello, my friend at USM, couldn’t find anything in the pond. The bottom was thick muck and metal would have sunk deep into it.”
Patti brought the first of the French toast to Alex. He got up to get some maple syrup. “So who’s the kid?”
“The teenage brother of the boy who was poisoned.”
Alex began eating while Chris watched Patti. The sound of Alex’s knife and fork and the sizzling pan became background noise, and Chris began thinking of the day trip. He hoped Virgie had something planned. He wanted Patti all to himself.
As if reading his mind, Alex said, “Virgie was late last night. I got home at two and she was just getting in. She was at a party’s at Donna’s boyfriend’s place.”
“She’ll sleep ’til noon,” Patti said from the stove.
Chris got up to get some orange juice. He asked Patti if she wanted some, and Alex said, “Pour me a glass too, willya, Chris.”
He poured three glasses and told Patti to fry her two pieces of French toast before bringing his over. He went to the front door to get the Portland Press Herald. The paperboy’s aim was errant this morning. He found it in the bushes without causing a neighborhood scandal. Unlike Patti and Alex, he put his dungarees and T-shirt on when he got out of bed.
Soon after breakfast Alex left. Chris did the dishes and started reading the paper while Patti took a shower. She came downstairs dressed in dungarees, a pullover blouse and sneakers, ready for their outing. He showered, and in the living room they finished reading the paper together with a discussion on an article about the many trade agreements the U.S. government had signed and their effect on the world environment. Patti said it was because profits were put before people; Chris fumed about airborne pollutants that resulted when corporate trade and profit were put before the earth. At this point they smiled at each other in mutual recognition that they were talking about the same thing from different perspectives.
It was ten o’clock now, late enough to talk Patti into calling the hacker’s sister to ask about her brother’s sleeping habits. Good news was forthcoming. She had just talked to her brother, and he was very much awake. A weird case of telephone tag ensued. Lexi called her brother and then called Patti. Patti called the hacker and then called Lexi to thank her.
Immediately they got into Chris’s car and drove up to Congress Street, parking on a shabby side street a few blocks from Longfellow Square and then walking two blocks perpendicular to the square until they came to a brick building painted white with black shutters that Adam Kovac had described. There were four apartments in the building. D, his apartment, was on the second story.
The man who answered Chris’s knock was short and stocky with wild, kinky reddish-brown hair worthy of Albert Einstein on a windy day. He had a square face and wore large square-framed black glasses in front of eyes that darted about like sparks from a campfire. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that had a graphic of what Chris assumed was a computer-game hero. This muscle-bound hero had long flowing blond locks and wore only an animal skin around his middle. His right arm was raised and held a broad-sword.
Without even greeting them, Adam said, “Tell me about this case.” He also did not invite them in; rather he merely backed up as he spoke, and they followed him inside.
The room was sparsely furnished. In the far corner was a leather recliner and a floor lamp. Across from it was a large television set. A table with two wooden chairs sat in front of the kitchen counter in the efficiency apartment. The sink was full of dirty dishes, and the wastebasket had at least three pizza boxes stuffed in it. To their right was a plain wooden table with two monitors and several other devices, all entangled in a maze of wires. Below the table were the two computers. The walls were decorated with four posters of more video or computer-game characters, but all four of these were bosomy females in various stages of undress. All of them had some kind of weapon in their hands—either a sword, machine gun or science-fiction ray gun. Through an open door they could see the bedroom consisted of a mattress on the floor with disheveled bedding and piles of dirty laundry scattered across the room.
For several minutes Chris explained the situation to Adam, emphasizing how helpful additional proof obtained from computer files would be. Adam asked how Ridlon was spelled and then went to his computer table. He woke one of the computers from sleep and turned to Chris. “Before I begin, let me ask you something, Chris. Are you a football fan?”
“Not really.”
“But you know the game, I assume, and you’ve heard of quarterback ratings?”
“Well, vaguely. It’s something like a batting average in baseball.”
“Yeah, supposedly. Or like a pitcher’s ERA—supposedly. The difference is this, though—a batting average or ERA actually tells you something about the skill of a player. Quarterback rating is bullshit. Why? Because football is a team game. A quarterback can’t be a quarterback alone. He needs offensive linemen to block for him. He can’t complete passes if big bozos are swarming all over him. He can’t ge
t touchdown passes off. He’ll probably throw interceptions. Yards, completion percentage, interceptions and touchdown passes are the four things factored in the rating. See? You take the greatest quarterback who ever lived and put him on a team with bad linemen, and he’s going to have an abysmal quarterback rating. To the extent it shows anything, it shows that the whole team, not one individual, is doing well or badly.”
“What’s your point?” Chris asked impatiently.
“Everybody’s eyes are on the quarterback, but the real game is in the line. It’s the same with everything. People look at the computer security system and think that’s the security. It’s the programming that’s vulnerable, not the password. The programming is the linemen. That’s where we attack. Most programs are vulnerable. Most people think because they’ve used their uncle’s wife’s maiden name they’re safe. They aren’t.”
“I see your point,” Chris said. “People think the capitalist makes the company and not the workers.”
“I suppose,” Adam said without any conviction. “Mind you, the password can be vulnerable too. But,” he said, swinging his chair around, “let’s see what we can find. Ridlon is R-I-D-L-O-N?” He clacked away for some time, doing first a Google search and then bringing up Ridlon.com. More clacking went on before he announced, “He’s renting this space for his web page. As you probably noticed, it’s just P.R. bullshit. I checked his e-mail and that’s carried by the same place he rents. In other words, he probably has a dial-up modem and is only online occasionally. Without his computer in front of me, I can’t do much.”
“You mean the only place I could find his computer files is if I have his computer?”
Adam nodded. “But you’d have to break into his place to do that.”
“Suppose I did. Do you have software that could get into his computer?”
“Chris,” Patti said in a worried voice. She didn’t like where this was going.
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if this bozo doesn’t even have any password security. I do, though, have software that has algorithms that can try a zillion combinations in a nanosecond. It’s not mine, so it can’t be traced. I could give you it on a floppy. You’d need to know how to transfer files you see. I could teach you how to do that.”
“But not now,” Patti said. “We’ve got to get going.”
Chris, ignoring her, asked about the Windows operating system and got a quick lesson. Then Adam asked him if he had space online where he could transfer files. He did. He had 100 Mb of space on his Internet service provider’s computers. A quick lesson on how to transfer files ensued while Patti exhibited signs of impatience. She stood with her arms folded across her chest and her head tilted. Her expression said: “Chris, are you serious?”
As soon as they were out the door of the apartment building, Patti turned to him. “I hope you’re not serious about breaking into Ridlon’s office. If you were caught it could be jail, you know.”
He looked away, pretending to be interested in a passing car. “It’s not a plan, just keeping my options open. You wouldn’t want that creep to go scot-free, would you?”
“No, but I wouldn’t want you to be the one who goes to jail either.”
“Well,” he said in a tone that announced he was changing the subject, “it’s only a quarter past eleven. Shall we go to Bedford Point now?”
They were walking towards his car, but she stopped. “It’s too early. We’d have to spend five hours there. I’m not sure the place is that interesting.”
He smiled. “It’s not.”
“Okay, then. I need a new pair of sandals for the summer. What say we walk down Congress Street and go to the L. L. Bean store. We could have lunch somewhere afterwards and then head to the coast.”
She tried on several pairs of sandals when they got to the store, asking Chris each time if they looked good.
“Everything looks good on you,” he said after the fourth time.
He spoke casually, but her eyes in searching his were not casual. Embarrassed, he looked away.
She decided to take this pair. “Anything you need?” she asked.
“No, not really. I did lose my Swiss army knife somewhere. Maybe they sell them here.”
So they both made a purchase, and leaving the store they headed for the Old Port section. Patti was respecting his wish not to discuss Ridlon, but he saw it was on her mind. At Monument Square they went into a bookstore and browsed for a while, leaving without buying anything. As she had several times, Patti was lost in thought outside the store. Suddenly becoming aware of her inattention, she cast her eyes about for something to say and seized upon a group of street kids.
“Donna says runaways from all over Maine come to Portland. It’s sad, really.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at a threesome. One of the males had a Mohawk hairdo and the other pigtails. The girl had orange hair. All of them were decked out with eyebrow pins, nose rings, and the like. “I don’t know why they have to mutilate themselves, though.”
She looked at him. “Yes, you do. They’re expressing their rebelliousness. We would have probably done the same thing when we were at Portland High if it was the style.”
“They’d be better off doing something about their rebelliousness. I mean actually fighting the system.”
“They will. They’re young now. At the soup kitchen Donna talks to a lot of these kids. They know the system screws them.”
“They do drugs too, I know. Again, instead of self-destructive behavior it’d be better… Well, I see your point. They are young.”
“Young and victims. A lot of them have been molested.”
At lunch they talked about Bedford Point. Patti had never been there. He told her that there was a lighthouse across the bay, smaller than Portland Headlight but pretty. There should be lots of birds they might see. He had binoculars in the trunk that they could take with them. Depending on the tide, the waves crashing on the rocks might be spectacular. They were eating in a seafood restaurant after considering and rejecting Mexican and Indian restaurants. They had clam chowder because, as Patti laughingly said, this was their outing-to-the-ocean day.
On the drive to Bedford Point Patti talked at length about her recently completed finals. Some of the science Chris was familiar with, and several times they went off on tangents, discussing mitochondrial DNA and by extension the Eve hypothesis whereby a woman living in Africa over 100,000 years ago was the supposed mother-ancestor of all human beings alive today. After that pharmaceuticals came up and led to Chris giving a long screed on the outrageous pricing of medications. He’d recently received an e-mail that showed the markup the pharmaceutical firms slapped on their pills, most of which were actually manufactured overseas. He gave some examples of well-known drugs that he could remember. For Celebrex the active ingredient in a 100-mg pill cost the pharmaceutical company sixty cents and was sold for $130—a markup of over 21,000%. For Claritin the markup was 30,000%, and many, many others had even higher markups. The gouging on Prozac came to over 224,000%, and another one whose name he couldn’t recall was actually marked up over 550,000%. He ended his screed with the remark that “That’s the way these unspeakable pigs exploit human illness for obscene profits.” By this time there were driving through Waska, which gave rise to a more benign and pleasant conversation about some of Chris’s associations. The public library was where he would spend hours reading about nature, the drugstore downtown where, with great embarrassment, he had purchased his first condoms, and the hotdog stand at lower Main Street, which in his day was a truck and now was a building, was where everyone went for a late-night snack.
After Bedford, they turned east to drive to the coast. Soon they came upon a huge tidal pool, partially filled with water now (which informed them that the tide was coming in), and drove past it and then through streets of the little village. Some of the houses were the summer homes of wealthy families and were large ghastly carbuncles upon the land; most, though, were of a more modest scale t
hat showed human beings inhabited them. They could smell the salt air and feel the coolness of the breeze blowing in from the ocean. In the summer parking was a difficulty, but this beautiful spring day was still the off-season time, and they were the only car in sight.
They walked through a tunnel-like path lined with tall, thick bushes on both sides and after a hundred yards came upon an open field. Above them the sky, mostly blue with only a few wispy clouds scattered across its expanse, was already crowded with soaring gulls, one of which swooped down to inspect them. The trail, bordered by small shrubs and grass where wild roses, daisies and dandelions grew abundantly, led to the left. They followed, seeing only sky before them until they came to a slight rise. Here they found themselves on a high bluff some fifty to seventy-five feet above sea level. Before them was a panoramic view of the Maine coast, irregularly comprised of bays and rocky peninsulas with a few sandy beaches. In the distance the coast disappeared into the haze and looked like an impressionistic painting, but below them everything was sharply delineated. The outcroppings of rocks were like fingers reaching out into the sea. These rocks were dark from ocean spray and the approaching tide. Above them on higher ground huge granite boulders were mostly beige in color. Some nearby they could see were layered geological formations that had been turned on their sides by immense movements of the earth’s surface. The sea itself showed intricate patterns of color—deepest blue at the horizon, lighter blue towards the shore, and aqua-green in river-like eddies randomly snaking across the water. Several sailboats and one lobster boat were offshore. Lobster buoys bobbed in the waves near shore along with resting gulls and eiders, the females nondescript brown and the males with whiter backs than the whitest lobster buoy.
The trail followed the edge of the bluff. They passed two paths closed to the public for ecological reasons and stopped frequently to examine distant sights and birds with Chris’s binoculars. Presently they came to a large open bay. Across it was the lighthouse Chris had told Patti about. It was small, painted white with a dark top, and attached to a house. In front of them were steps leading to the rocks. As they descended Chris looked for a familiar rock formation that had an indentation allowing one to sit with a backrest.
To that rock six years ago he had come to make a decision about his life in the summer between his junior and senior year at the University of Massachusetts. His father had moved back to Waska from Lowell, a move that at first distressed Chris because he would have to pay out-of-state tuition, but then in the summer one of his professors of ecology had secured for him scholarship money and it didn’t matter. He’d worked as a house painter for his summer job, spending many nights and weekends in Portland with Patti, Alex and Virgie. But one Sunday afternoon he had left his house to come to the point to be able to think about his future without any distractions. He was already an activist in ecological demonstrations and, more generally, various progressive causes. He was an excellent student in the life sciences and had the grades to verify that fact. The question before him was to choose between graduate school and an academic career or to commit his life to activism for the sake of the earth. Already he knew how America marginalized those who dared to criticize her. He knew the activist life would be lonely and filled with hostility. These were grave and grim considerations, but he also knew that America was the land of lies. Almost everything the government did was for the benefit of the capitalist class and the giant corporations. Both parties were filled with toadies who did the bidding of the moneymen and then, when they spoke to the public about bills they had passed, always used democratic values to describe the mischief they had done. So he knew what he was up against. He knew that to be on the side of humanity and the earth in the bizarre right-wing politics of America would lead most people to regard him as a dangerous, unstable and even evil person. So supposedly his choice was a difficult one, but when he recalled the thrill of joy he’d feel when Green Peace disrupted French nuclear testing in the South Pacific or rammed a whaling ship in the Atlantic, or when activists in the west spiked trees or lay before bulldozers to stop lumbering, he knew his choice was already made. He knew he would have to get a job for a few years to pay off his college debts, but after that was done (and to a limited extent even during that time), he would join the army who defended the earth. He had spent about an hour and a half at that rock six years ago and left it a dedicated spirit.
He approached the rock with an excitement that was hard to hide. He could tell that Patti noticed something was afoot, but she chose for the moment to make no comment. She was unused to clambering over rocks, and they were making their way with difficulty. He had to give her his hand several times. Her hand in his was warm and gave rise in him to a feeling of connectedness that warmed him even more. For a long time they surveyed the landscape, both with the naked eye and with binoculars. Patti tried to see if there were any signs of human habitation across the bay at the lighthouse. Seeing nothing, they concluded it operated automatically. Birds were not varied. They saw more gulls and eiders and one loon in summer plumage still lingering on his wintering grounds.
They sat without speaking for some time until Patti said, “I can tell this place is special to you. Is the reason why a secret?”
He looked at her and smiled, happy that she could sense things about him. He had an impulse to kiss her and wavered for a moment. Then he looked out at the sea. “No secret. It was here I decided to commit myself to environmental activism.” Briefly he described how it was a question of an academic career or activism and how he had thought about it for a long time.
“Well, you became what you wanted. I’m glad. I’m still worried about your plan, though.”
“I know you are. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. Even six years ago when I was here that was part of what I was thinking about.”
“I know you don’t mean a life of crime was being contemplated. But what do you mean?”
“I was thinking about the law. Ninety-five percent of all laws are to protect property. I was thinking of what good people were already doing—spiking trees, that sort of thing—things that I’m sure ol’ Henry David would approve of. It was against the law, but, again, laws are made by the haves to keep the have-nots down. Ethical behavior and obeying the law are two different things. Remember Thoreau spoke of higher laws.”
“Well, yes, he did. And I know what you mean. U.S. presidents don’t show much respect for the law either. And the millions of people in the world we’ve killed or helped kill from Vietnam, Indonesia, Palestine, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala through Iraq is unspeakable. But, Chris, obeying the law is also a matter of prudence.”
She gave him an imploring look, which he ignored. Instead he picked up on what she said about presidents. Shifting his weight and turning to face her, he said, “Even when I was a little boy I could see Reagan was a creep. You could see in his eyes that he was a mean-spirited and spiteful man and also an egotist who liked approval. He fooled the American people but not us. Maybe I have to thank my father. He was the same mean-spirited phony that Reagan was.”
“We were definitely in the minority. I remember my father, Mr. Democrat, clearly admired the man.”
Chris chose not to comment. They watched the waves for a while and waved at another couple walking by on the path. Finally Patti asked, “So what specifically made you decide on activism?”
“It was what I saw about America, how it was hypocritical, talking about democracy ad nauseam but not practicing it. America, the land of lies. I knew choosing activism would put me on the margins. We’ve talked about that before, you know. How only corporate truth is allowed. How the country that produced Henry David Thoreau is now filled with frightened conformists who believe everything the government says. How the Ridlons of this world prosper but good people with a sense of ethics and a decent regard for others are treated like criminals or madmen.”
“I’m so used to it I hardly notice it anymore. I expect lies; they don’t surprise me.”
“You’re lucky. I can’t forget it. There’s such a bizarre attitude towards truth in present-day America. Even facts, or especially facts, things that are actually true, are attacked—like the Iraqi embargo. It killed a million and a half old, sick and young people because not only had we bombed their water treatment plants but wouldn’t let them get the materials to repair them or any medicine. But if you say this to the defenders of the land of lies, you become the one who is bizarrely bringing up arcane knowledge not relevant. Ditto with the weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda. Facts aren’t facts to these people if they criticize America. Chomsky’s observation about the boundaries of permissible thought is totally accurate. Unreality reigns.”
“You have to remember that most people are just struggling to get by. They haven’t got time to investigate facts.”
“Sure, but I’m thinking of those who know exactly what’s happening and don’t care because they’re too busy making the big bucks. Every once in a while I meet one of my classmates from UMass, you know, the MBA types, the corporate lawyer types. I can tell what they think of me. Remember your father called me riffraff. That’s what they think.”
“That’s really because he was mad at me, you know. He was trying to get me to think about a career.”
“Well, maybe, but he meant it too. So do most of these hotshots. They don’t say it, but they’re thinking it. I get my revenge by thinking they’re pigs. I told one of them who was my roommate freshman year that even if you win the rat race you’re still a rat. He didn’t like that.”
“Of course he didn’t. It would have been wiser to say nothing.”
“When have I ever been wise like that in a worldly way?”
She smiled. “Never.”
“But I’m not so unworldly that I think it’s impossible to serve the cause of the earth and humanity within the system, but it’s difficult. I know you will, and I think Alex will, but we’ve all heard of sixties radicals who become bankers. The system can easily corrupt. Before you know it you’re a self-serving greedy swine.”
Patti was silent for a while as she looked from the shore to the horizon. Following her eyes, he began thinking of the ocean. It seemed so eternal, so different. Right there in front of you was a different reality with different rules, gills instead of lungs, fins instead of feet. Incessant motion and eternal sameness. The horizon, like a goal that never could be reached, always moving away, exactly one foot for every foot you took towards it.
Her voice called him back. “I want to help people. I want to make a difference. That’s why I keep thinking of being a doctor.”
Chris stood and picked up a small rock. He hurled it towards the sea, but it fell short, clattering from rock to rock before falling silent. “I bet nurses have more effect on patients than doctors do. Most of ’em are money-grubbers.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that kind of doctor.” She seemed peeved. “One of the ones I work with goes to the soup kitchen once a week and takes care of the street people. He’s living up to his oath.”
“Yeah, he’s exceptional, though. Out in northern California there was this huge development near a town—houses, a golf course, a mini-mall, the whole bit. And of course they were building on virgin land. Take a guess who the swines were who were financing it.”
“You mean doctors?”
“Yeah.” He threw another rock, and this one went into the water with a satisfying kerplunk. “Imagine having so much money you destroy the earth to make more.”
“Those doctors give the profession a bad name. It’s possible, though—to be a decent doctor, I mean.”
He sat down. “You’d be, I know. But that’s because you’re decent.”
They both looked up to see a yacht going by. It had sails, but they were furled. They could see a wake behind it and hear the low rumble of the diesel engine. “Probably belongs to some doctor,” Chris said with a grin.
“No, it’s less than a hundred feet. Probably a plumber.”
“How many people do you think actually think of the earth and what they’ll leave behind for a legacy for future generations?”
“Now you’re getting serious. I don’t know. Not many. You’re a rare species. How’d you get that way?”
“You know—I’ve told some of it. When I was a kid we moved around a lot. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I was often lonely. One of our moves was to the country. That’s when I discovered birds and mammals and insects. They lived their lives without hypocrisy or greed, you know? They were wary and didn’t trust people—neither did I. I started feeling, like, I was home and among my own people. That’s before I met you and Alex and Virgie.”
“I see,” she said quietly. She looked at him searchingly. “Why do you hide that side of yourself, your love of the earth?”
He shrugged. “You tell me.”
“You’re really not cynical at all. It’s what everyone thinks, but it’s not true.”
“There’s plenty I’m cynical about, and rightly so.”
“I know, I know.” She took his hand. “But your soul isn’t cynical. That’s what people don’t know.”
“You seem to know it,” he said flippantly.
She let go of his hand and stood. “What’s that black and white bird in the surf?”
He looked, shading his eyes. “A black guillemot, I think. What’s he doing here? I thought they bred further north.”
Their talk over, they took a hike, following the trail around the rest of the peninsula and through the forest of shrubs, bushes and small trees, where they found a place to pee. Patti had brought her digital camera and took many photographs. They came upon the couple whom they had seen earlier and asked them to take a picture of them. Arm in arm and smiling, they posed. The couple, college students from Ohio (the woman) and York, Maine (the man), were very much in the first blush of love. They fell far short of any ideal of beauty, whether Hellenic or otherwise. The man had a big nose, thick glasses and a neck so long it looked as if it had been stretched. The woman was plump, had a poor complexion, and was squinty-eyed. And yet viewing each other through the lenses of love, they found beauty. Their eyes shone, and it was clear they thought the world was a wondrous place because of their love. They made Chris feel uneasy. Once they wandered off arms entwined, Patti and he continued their own ramblings. They saw more birds now, spring migrant warblers, vireos, thrushes, and most interesting, a loggerhead shrike. Patti had never seen one and was intrigued, having often heard of the notorious butcherbird. Chris told her it was distinguished from its close relative, the northern shrike, by its larger size, wider mask and shorter bill. They watched it for a long time with binoculars and the naked eye—it was only fifteen feet from them, resting on a dead branch of a high bush. Back at the point the tide was now full, and they paused to watch the waves crashing against the rocks in primordial fury. Patti took many photographs and squealed with delight when spray lashed at them.
At their early supper at a seafood restaurant in the Camp Melton section of Waska, they talked about their day. Patti was never more appealing and vivacious than when she spoke of her excitement at seeing the shrike and experiencing the crashing waves. He had something on his mind and was more subdued, trying to think of a way to bring it up. When she started noticing his distraction, he decided on the direct approach and said, “I’ve been thinking of something.”
She looked up from cracking a lobster claw. “I noticed.”
“Well, first it’s still early. We’d have time to…”
“To what?”
“Well, you were worrying about the breaking and entering of Ridlon’s office. It’s more evidence I need. I don’t care where I get it. Suppose we were to drive upcountry. I know a back way to get to Ridlon’s shed.”
She frowned thoughtfully and asked why it was important just now.
“If I could find some more proof there, it’d be all I needed.”
He could see her mind working as she mulled over the information. She didn’t wan
t him to get caught breaking and entering; the lesser of two evils was a visit to the shed. “I thought you already got your evidence there?”
He swirled a French fry in ketchup and ate it. “You mean the shed?”
“And the pond.”
“I got plenty of readings from the pond, but no artifacts. I got very faint readings in one sample I took from in front of the shed. I’d like to look for more.”
“Okay,” she said with a smile. “Anything to keep you out of jail.”
With that matter settled, good cheer returned to the table and they finished their meal in pleasant conversation about their day. Half an hour later they were driving in the countryside outside of Waska on a road that paralleled Route 177 through a couple miles of woods. They were going to approach the shed from the back way so that their visit could go unnoticed.
They parked across the road from a rambling white farmhouse that had a large apple orchard and a produce stand. This patch of pastureland was used for spill-over traffic doing the busy fall season. Judging from the fresh tire tracks, it was also used during the off-season, probably by hikers and bird watchers who used the old lumber roads they were going to follow according to Malcolm Kimball’s directions. Patti, ever cautious, was afraid they were on private property, but relented when he pointed to all the fresh footprints.
They began walking down the narrow lumber road. They passed through mostly pine forest of middling to small trees. At eye level their view was often obscured, but lower down where the pine branches were brown and dead and where spring ferns were just unfurling, piebald patches of light from the low sun were scattered across the forest floor like diamonds thrown by a giant. The air was sweet with the scent of pine and more faintly of spring flowers. Birds, especially warblers, trilled from every direction. Far off they could hear the rhythmic drumming of a woodpecker. Twice squirrels scolded them as they passed through their territory. Patti’s eyes shone. Like Virgie she was a city girl, but unlike their friend she loved nature. Presently they came to an area where birch, poplar and oaks were prevalent, and here Chris started looking for a landmark. Malcolm had told him to look for three birch trees growing so close together they seemed to have a common trunk. When they saw that, they were supposed to bear left, going downhill towards the river bottom a quarter of a mile away. After five minutes, however, he was sure they had missed the birch triplets. After pausing and considering, they decided to simply go through the woods in the direction they knew would lead to the pond.
Sometimes entangling and thick brush or thicker groves of young pines made the going rough, but following the areas with hardwood trees was easier. Still they got rather lost until Chris got his bearings by spotting the sun in a clearing. They had been going east when they should have been going northeast. Starting in that direction, they were surprised to come upon a fence of chicken wire and posts every six feet. Signs saying NO TRESPASSING were posted every twenty yards. They started going around the fence when their eyes beheld an extraordinary sight.
Before them was an edifice resembling a Mayan temple. A pyramid was mounted on a wall consisting of stones tightly fit together without mortar and rising some ten feet above the wall in incremental layers of stone of a foot and a half. With the wall six or seven feet in height, the top of the pyramid was over fifteen feet from the ground. It appeared to be incomplete so that the completed structure would rise another six or eight feet. Chris guessed that at least two more layers were needed before it came to a peak. The side they were looking at also had the central stairway characteristic of Mayan buildings. The stone looked like highly polished granite.
They looked at each other in wonder. “Why would anybody build this in the middle of nowhere?” Chris asked.
They started walking around the fence to see the rest of it. On the other side was a portico about eight feet high and extending about eight feet from the base of the building. It was supported by three columns on both sides.
“I have a better question. Why would anybody build it period?”
He smiled in acknowledgment of the justice of her remark. “The only thing I can think of is some weird hobby. I heard of a guy who collected vomit bags from airlines. If a guy can do that, another guy can certainly build a temple.”
“There’s a difference, though. The guy who collects vomit bags is an unimaginative idiot, but this is strangely beautiful.”
“You notice it mostly looks Mayan? But look at that portico and the columns—they’re Greek architecture.”
They had moved around to a frontal view of the portico. At the top, chiseled in stone, were the words PHOEBE VIVET.
“Phoebe lives,” Patti said.
“A woman’s name, you think?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s someone’s memorial to his wife, her name being Phoebe.”
They were able to see the third of the four sides now where a large mound of gravel pitched at about a twenty-degree slope went to the top. They had both seen documentaries on Egyptian pyramid building and knew instantly that the mound of gravel was the means for transporting the blocks of granite to the heights. They noticed something else as they examined the building more carefully—that was the exquisite craftsmanship of the work. Each block was so carefully fitted that they could see only the faintest line where each block met another.
“How many people are working on this?” Patti asked.
“I don’t know. The labor must be stupendous. But interesting as this is, we only have an hour and a half of light. We’ve got to get going.”
They continued conjecturing about the strange temple as they cleared the woods and came upon the wetlands. Mostly they were wondering why they had never heard any mention of the temple. It didn’t seem to be something easily kept secret, and yet they could almost not believe they had actually seen what they had seen.
They could see the shed now but had to make a detour to avoid the wetlands. In five minutes they reached their goal.
They were greeted by another sign. This one said in bold red letters: NO TRESPASSING. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
Chris pointed to the sign. That’s new. Looks like Ridlon’s getting worried.”
“I don’t like it,” Patti said. “Maybe we should leave.”
He was examining the door. It was locked with a padlock, and the hasp looked loose—something that he didn’t recall noticing the first time he looked at the shed. It leaned out from the old wood as if overcome with exhaustion. He turned to Patti as he kneeled down and opened his backpack. “Patti, walk up the road a bit, would ya.”
She looked uneasy. “What are you planning?”
“Something you don’t need to know.”
She saw the small crowbar in his hand. “Chris, don’t.”
“Then turn away,” he said. “You don’t need to see this.”
He waited until her back was turned and then inserted the crowbar behind the hasp. The wood was close to punky, and it gave without hardly any effort. Inside he looked around. It was dim, but he could see a workbench across the small room. Two cardboard boxes were empty, but he took samples of the cardboard ripped from the bottom of the boxes and put them in a plastic sample jar. A wheelbarrow leaned against the back wall. He turned it over, and with his eyes adjusted to the light he could see that some dried mud was caked on the surface. He took a sample of it and labeled it. There were some old ropes hanging from hooks, a pile of rags and another cardboard box on the floor. By now it was obvious that Ridlon had had the shed emptied out. Taking one of the rags and another sample of cardboard, he came out of the shed and closed the door behind him.
Patti was standing with her arms crossed and her head tilted and staring at him exactly as she had at the hacker’s apartment. For the second time today she was very displeased; only this time it was even more intense. On the way back to the car she was so furious she could hardly speak. She kept muttering “That was so stupid” over and over. Then when they were on the lumber road—this time finding their way with
out getting lost—she said, “What good will it do even if you prove there was mercury in the shed? You can’t use it in court.”
“What do you mean? I can say the door was open.”
The daughter of a lawyer glared at him. “Unbelievable! The no-trespassing sign makes that impossible. The evidence will be inadmissible. You didn’t think it through, did you?”
He didn’t answer, but he knew she was right—about his being stupid and about not thinking it through. The same could be said for the aborted plan to hack into Ridlon’s computer. That could have embarrassed Ridlon but not convict him. He walked on in silence, feeling foolish and angry with himself. When they reached the car, she asked him what he’d been thinking.
“That you’re right,” he said. He spoke bitterly, still angry with himself.
She nodded grimly. She took no pleasure in being right, and for that he was thankful.
At first the ride back to Portland through country roads was a continu-ation of their walk back to the car: little was said and both brooded. Then the countryside, dressed in twilight’s glow, exuded such a serenity that slowly they both recovered their spirits. Coming over the crest of a hill and seeing farms on both sides of the road, with rich green fields for haying and freshly plowed land for planting, and with the dark pine forest bordering the cultivated land like sentries while a red barn gleaming in the low sun cast a long, long shadow, it was so beautiful that Patti gasped. She looked at Chris and smiled. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
He slowed down so that they could drink it in. They passed a pond where wild geese and mallards had joined together with white domestic ducks.
“Chris, promise me you won’t do anything like that again without talking it through with me first.”
He kept his eyes straight ahead on the road. “I was stupid. I can’t deny it.”
“So you will?”
“I will.” He wanted to get Ridlon too bad. That was what clouded his mind and made him act like a fool kid. Maybe, too, Patti threw him off, made him forget himself. He reached over and patted her hand. Their eyes met for a moment. He had the impression their silent glance spoke more than words could say. Maybe he didn’t have to understand the feelings he had for her. Maybe he just had to feel them.
“That temple was the strangest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” he said, changing the subject.
“Well, yes,” she said ambiguously, “but you can be stranger.”
Can I See Another’s Woe?
