Eat the Document

by Dana Spiotta

  “Thing about the Beach Boys, it’s not that they’re too corny or whatever. I don’t mind that. But they are completely not sexy—”

  “Yes, that’s true—”

  “Utterly sexless, even. Unless you are twelve years old.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What else could be the point?”

  “Loneliness. Longing. The sadness that leaks through all that enforced sunny cheer. It’s heartbreaking.”

  Berry shrugged. “This is a cool song.”

  “It’s in the sound, not the words. It’s the way you feel, or rather the feeling you get. Like slightly off, rancid America, you know?”

  Berry turned to her and smiled. Her blond braids glittered in the sun. “When you move somewhere new, it’s good to have someone or something from your past there with you, reminding you of who you are, don’t you think?” she said.

  I don’t know where but she sends me there

  “Listen to the harmonies. Why is it that harmonies can give you chills? Why do they please so deeply?”

  “Like it is so easy to lose track of yourself, in a way, if you go somewhere new,” Berry said, her voice choking a little bit. She laughed at the sound.

  “Are you feeling nostalgic?”

  “Emotional, maybe. What do you expect with all the free-floating estrogen around here, right?”

  Caroline tied the long braids with leather laces. She got up and brushed tiny pebbles from the backs of her bare thighs. It was cold already. As soon as the sun went down it got cold in these old mountains. Berry got up, and the two of them walked slowly down the path. As they approached the community from the north, Caroline glimpsed the common house through the trees. For the first time she thought Mother G’s house looked beautiful, particularly with the gentle diffusion of the dusk light making the purple paint a nearly unnoticeable natural brown. Usually the flush clapboard and lack of adornment seemed too plain to her. No flourishes in the returns at the edges, no fluid, fanciful lines, nothing for its own sake at all. No embellishments to discover in a lintel or in a dormer. Not a hint of whimsy in a molding or a cornice. But now, when she glimpsed it through the trees, she noticed its symmetry. Its economy and its balance. The harmony of the lines of the perfectly straight clapboards and the mullion lines between windowpanes. Repetition and order. The sturdiness of it. And the beauty of it, quiet, modest. Even, perhaps, despite itself. But there was a slight pretense in all this simplicity, though, wasn’t there? It was just as deliberate, just as constructed as the most ornate Victorian house; just as contrived as the elaborate and distinctive Greek Revival houses that dotted the surrounding countryside. Its absence of style was never that, was it? Just as contrived as the simple, reduced culture of the commune. Nature had nothing to do with any of it. Artifacts, all of us, no matter how deep in the woods.

  “The tech-nos will be gone in another month. They spend their winter in the Southwest,” Berry said.

  “No kidding,” Caroline said. “That’s funny. I’ll bet this whole place gets halved in the winter. They get stacks of snow up here.”

  Caroline reached the end of the path first. Berry ran to catch up to her and swung an arm around her shoulders.

  “What are you thinking?” Berry said.

  “What am I thinking at this moment? I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind a beer and some men.”

  “Really? ’Cause that is completely what I am thinking.”

  “No kidding. You?”

  “Shut up. Look, I mean today. Let’s go take a break. We can hitch down to Little Falls and stay in a motel overnight,” Berry said, clapping her hands together.

  “And eat some hamburgers and smoke and go to a bar.”

  “Candy bars.”

  “Men.”

  “TV and newspapers and—”

  “Men.”

  “Yeah.”

  Neither of them had been farther than the tiny town of New Harmon since they arrived. Caroline thought of it: men. Young and dumb. Old and mysterious. Unshaved faces. Whiskers, what it feels like to kiss a man with whiskers. The prickle of it. Handsome, square-jawed men with short haircuts. Beer bellies. Large hands. Some men had gnarled veins that poked out from the muscles of their arms. An arm that fit around her waist. Some men, Bobby for instance, could reach an arm around her when she lay beneath him, lifting her gently to him by her midsection. They were all like him, and yet none of them could compare at all. But still, having not seen any men for so long did make her giddy and almost delirious with anticipation. Surely that wasn’t the intended effect of a women’s community?

  Clothes changed, money in pockets, the two women walked the long trail to the road and hitchhiked to New Harmon. They waited and hitched a few more miles. They waited and hitched some more until they reached Little Falls. The Big Town. They ate dinner in a small Italian cafe on Main Street. Berry was thinner and tanner than when they’d first arrived in New York. Caroline could see that now. She hadn’t sat across from Berry and really looked at her the way other people might. Berry ate and spoke and drank all at the same time and in the same way—fast. They were receiving what seemed to Caroline an excessive amount of attention. Both of them felt a little overexcited, and this feeling radiated from them. As they left the restaurant, the people at the other tables stared at them. They both wore dirty jeans and gauze blouses with angel sleeves and tiny embroidered designs. Berry had sewn them out of scarves. The bottoms of the blouses came to points in the front and the back, but the sides were cut high, so if you reached an arm up, a flash of waist peeked out. Caroline’s red hair dye was fading and starting to grow out. She wrapped a scarf around the roots and tied it by the nape of her neck, the ties hanging down, gypsy-style. She wore large hoop earrings that, along with the dangling scarf tips, brushed her neck and tickled her whenever she turned her head. When they got outside, Berry undid her braid and pulled her curls loose.

  “Do I look okay?”

  Caroline nodded. “That choker looks good with your hair down. You look like a fallen Gibson girl. You look really great.”

  Berry rolled her eyes.

  “Like a former lady who has been shipwrecked and still clings to a few scraps of her past gentility.”

  “All right already.”

  They shared a hand-rolled cigarette, herbal in taste and sweet in scent. Caroline felt suddenly very happy.

  An older man slowly walked by, staring at Berry from her legs to her neck.

  They walked to the edge of the Mohawk River. Several bars were situated on a sort of barge between the river and the canal. All of them were dives, but one called the Waterfront had loud music and some traffic in and out. They went in, and Caroline immediately noticed two men drinking at a table. Their long hair reached well below their shoulders and looked incongruous with their tan work boots and mashed-up carpenter hands. Since she had arrived in New York, she’d noticed more and more of the shit-kicking truck-driver types let their hair grow long. It was no longer a sign of grooviness. Good old boys, rednecks and freaks became hard to tell apart. They all even smoked pot. The bar was full of similar men, but these two were the best prospects. For the first time Caroline had no problem thinking of sex as something abstract that she could want, independent of someone, and then find a man to fulfill her want, instead of the other way around. Sex floated around her. It seemed mystical, magical. The last person she was with was Bobby. She knew that this would have nothing to do with that.

  Berry went to the bar to get drinks. Caroline watched the two men sitting by themselves. They talked and sipped beer. Occasionally they would look up at the room but not with the focused determination of men on the prowl. She watched them for only a minute, then she turned away. She looked back again and caught the men staring at her. She examined her hands and smiled to herself.

  Berry returned with two schooners of dark beer. “Let’s stick together tonight. Maybe find two guys already hanging out, if we can.”

  Caroline barely turned toward
the two men, and Berry gave a once-over to the whole room to check out who Caroline indicated.

  “Like those two,” Berry said, turning back to Caroline. “Maybe.” Caroline glanced at the men again. Neither was actually very good looking, but they also weren’t unattractive. The men leaned back in their chairs and sipped at their beers and smoked.

  The driving riff of a Creedence Clearwater Revival song came on over the speakers.

  “We could just get high with them and see how we feel,” Caroline said. “Or we can get a motel room. I mean just us, if you want.” She realized then, in the course of speaking her last sentence and with a sigh of relief, that the thought of the unencumbered sex was enough really; she was almost ready to call it a night. She suspected that this was a real difference between men and women. How easy it was for her to live with the unrealized fantasy, already imagining the reality to be more complicated than sexy. The dynamics, for instance. They might both be more attracted to Berry, and they would be subtle about it (or not), but she would still pick up on it somehow. She would be with the disappointed one. Or up close they might not smell or taste good. Or they would do or say something hopelessly sad or corny. And then she would be stuck in some compromised position with these flawed fantasies. What were the chances they would not disappoint?

  Now The Band was playing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

  Besides, so much of what seemed fun about the idea was feeling the desire of someone else for her. Because being wanted was an essential part of her desire. Having to deal with some man’s disappointment, no matter how faint, felt way too depressing.

  That was what they looked like, these two men, like the studiously unscrubbed and unglamorous members of The Band. With the big, shaggy Civil War sideburns. What were they called? Muttonchops.

  “We’ll see,” Berry said and held up her beer to Caroline. They tapped their glasses together and then took two foamy sips. She could feel, to the depths of her body and without even looking around, the stares of the two men. Caroline watched Berry glance toward the two men, who had now stopped smoking and seemed fully occupied with looking at them, half-smiling, one tilting his chair all the way back and the other leaning into his elbows on the table.

  “Wow,” Berry said. She took a long swig of beer, and then Caroline looked past Berry’s shoulder, in the opposite direction of the men, and noticed what hung on the wall behind Berry.

  The Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice” started next, with its big raunch gospel chorus up front before the lead kicked in, and Berry sang along with the ohs of the female backup singers—except they were really front-up singers at this point—shaking her head back and forth, then switching to singing with the lead vocal when that kicked in, messing up the words.

  The wall behind Berry was decorated with posters from the Wild West. A desperado-outlaw theme halfheartedly accomplished with Jesse James and Billy the Kid wanted posters. Caroline noticed a black-and-white poster that said “FBI Most Wanted” over a large picture of the Weather Underground siren Bernardine Dohrn. She was in a leather miniskirt and knee-high boots. It showed her fingerprints and vital stats just like a real FBI poster, but surely doctored to feature an alluring body shot of Dohrn instead of a mug shot. Caroline had seen the body shot before, of course, it was one of the reasons some women distrusted Dohrn, the way she seemed to play into the porno of outlaw chick with great legs. But she did look great, didn’t she? But Caroline was not thinking long about Dohrn because she soon noticed other, smaller FBI wanted posters. These were not altered but actual tear sheets, like at the post office. Some were covered over partially and hard to read. At Bernardine’s left toe she could see a poster of another woman fugitive, whom Caroline took several breathless seconds to realize was her, Mary Whittaker, a.k.a. Freya. It was, after all, her high school photograph, a photo five years old and not a picture she particularly cared for. But it looked remarkably like her. Anyone who saw it, particularly with her sitting right beside it or under it, would easily recognize her. Naturally no one was actually looking at the wall except Caroline, who felt her mouth slowly fall open.

  “What is it?” Berry said.

  Caroline shook her head and forced herself to turn her gaze back to Berry at the table. “Nothing.”

  Berry glanced over her shoulder at the wall behind her and then back at Caroline. “What?”

  “I don’t feel very good.” A completely true statement.

  “You don’t?”

  “Let’s leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Can we just go and get a motel or something? Can we just get out of here?” she said.

  “What about the Allman Brothers over there?”

  “Forget them. C’mon.”

  They got a room in a small, clean motel with prints of the Erie Canal on the wall. Berry flipped on the TV. Caroline went to the bathroom and closed the door. She splashed water on her face. She let the water run and took several deep breaths, staring in the mirror. She looked like herself, no question about it. Everyone could see it, would see it, the whole town, the whole world. But would anyone notice her picture, so upstaged by dangerous Dohrn’s eye-enchanting legs?

  They put the brown quilted bedspread on the floor in front of the TV. They sat cross-legged on it and smoked a joint. Caroline could feel her body slowly relax into the night. They watched Johnny Carson and then the late movie. They ate M&M’s candies one after the other and chased them with bottles of beer. And they talked to each other, or Berry talked and Caroline listened. Berry told her she didn’t want to spend the winter at the commune.

  “Where do you want to go?” Caroline asked.

  “You mean where do we want to go. I’m taking you with me.”

  Caroline smiled and let Berry stroke her hair. She loved Berry, she did. She cared for her, she trusted her. And then Caroline made her mistake, or walked into it, or let it happen:

  “What happened in the bar? Why did you look so upset? Were you thinking about Bobby?”

  “Sort of.”

  Berry looked at her, waiting. Sometimes you are expected to give something to people. It is hard to resist. Sometimes you might even trust people.

  “Look, I haven’t been completely honest with you about my past. I want to be honest with you. I trust you. But what I tell you has to be a secret forever,” Caroline heard herself say. She sounded stern, even harsh.

  Berry sat up, intent. “What! What is it?” she said.

  “This is really serious.”

  “I will never tell, I swear. I know what it is, though—”

  “Listen—”

  “You’re Bernardine Dohrn.” Berry laughed.

  Caroline shook her head and looked at her hands. Later she would recall this moment and consider what had transpired. Everyone will swear never to tell and mean it. No one can resist, or very few people can resist, the chance to learn a secret. The question was, did Caroline, in her need to tell someone, think to explain to Berry what would potentially be at stake for Berry if she kept Caroline’s secret? Caroline didn’t think enough about it then, but she often thought about it later, after it was too late.

  Caroline told her, Berry heard her.

  That night Berry bathed Caroline in the warmth of acceptance and intimacy. Even, perhaps, admiration. But as Caroline tried to fall asleep, the relief of confidence faded. The fear set in. A person who knew your secrets stayed part of your life forever. She would always have to be connected to Berry.

  When Caroline woke the next morning, it all came back to her. She watched Berry sleep and felt profound regret. Berry was as kind and benign and loyal as they came, but she had a big mouth, she would slip up, she would get drunk and tell a boyfriend. Caroline watched her sleep and sort of hated her, hated all her flaws and weaknesses.

  They ate breakfast in silence. Caroline tried not to panic, and then she gave up.

  “Look, Berry, what I told you last night, we should never, ever speak of it, no matter what.” They sat
across from each other in a diner booth, and although no one else was anywhere near them, Caroline spoke in an angry whisper.

  “He made you do it, didn’t he? Men are always getting caught up in violence,” Berry said. She poured syrup over a mound of pancakes and butter.

  Caroline took a deep breath. And then, from somewhere it came, this feeling she had not had since before she went underground. She felt outrage and anger, a chemical burn.

  “That’s not it, not by a long shot. I’ll tell you once. One time. Then no more questions, right?” Caroline stared into Berry’s face.

  Berry stopped eating.

  “It wasn’t his idea, it was my idea.” She paused, pleased for a second at saying it. She wished she could leave it at that, and she already felt weary of trying to explain herself. But she continued. “I’d had enough of demonstrating against the war. We’d all had our fill of it—years of it. It changed nothing. I wanted to actively oppose. Not protest, some form of symbolic speech or gesture. We wanted tangible, unequivocal action. It was not necessarily the right tactic. I will say this, though, I was sure it was right at the time. I had to do something, I had to put myself at risk, personally. I had to meet the enormity of what they were doing with something equal to it. There was no end. They were sending troops home but with such bad faith; they knew that would placate the antiwar movement, but then they stepped up the bombing. They had no intention of not continuing. Napalm, someone makes that, you know? Someone sits in an R and D lab and thinks, Let’s make it burn, but hey, let’s add plastic so it will also stick. But look, they just jump in the water, so let’s add phosphorus so it burns underwater, burns through to bone. So people on the board of Dow or Monsanto or GE decide that this is a good way to make money, and they are so removed from the consequences. These men are at such remove they could help prolong it, a year, two years, and is it right that that should cost them nothing? We are invisible to them. How smug they were, ignoring us. I wanted them to feel some consequence, pay some price for the terrible things they did for pride or power or profit.”