Benchere in Wonderland

by Gillis, Steven;

  Mund shuffles his feet. His sandals are soft leather, impractical for the desert. He stares at Daimon filming. Benchere moves closer to the dinner fire, has a sudden idea and says, “You know, Dan, if it’s the free market you’re after, we’ll have to make some changes. In a real market economy capitalism is all about efficiency. I’ll have to pay people for their labor and let those of you who are inessential to my project go. That’s the way a free market works. Dog eat cat, right? If you want this let me know,” Benchere gives the others a stare. “I’ll get rid of almost all of you then, trim the fat and reduce the cost of running the grounds.”

  Mund falls silent. Jazz comes over and sniffs his shoes. The others whisper among themselves. Deyna watches Benchere as Mund continues to calculate his response. He smiles cautiously and says, “Ok, Mike. Point made. No reason to go to extremes. For now let’s do this,” he changes his demands for a second time, suggests setting up the market only for supplies. “Forget about the land and everything else. We’re good with that. Let’s start with dinners and personal possessions.”

  Benchere weighs the retreat, considers the worst that can happen, thinks of what Rousseau wrote about those in positions of power who aren’t quite smart enough to apply their Might as Right effectively and lose their authority. He looks at Mund, looks at the others. Having prevailed, he examines the course of small victories, the consequence of extending Mund and the others a minor taste of what they want. Hell, Benchere raises his hand, measures an inch between his fingers and presents the group his offering.

  KYLE PARKS AND waits for Cloie outside the Taubman Center. He has the windows down, the radio off. The distance from the curb to the front steps of Taubman is approximately 100 feet. Groups of students walk past. Cloie comes and kisses Kyle as she gets in the car. In the back seat are books on Africa: Laurens van der Post’s The Lost World of the Kalahari, Rupert Isaacson’s The Healing Land, two works by Mark and Delia Owens, and Samuel Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies.

  Cloie turns the radio on, finds WNRU and Miguel in mid-song. Yesterday she finished reading Bernd Heine’s treatise on the two thousand languages of Africa. Within the four major dialectical groups – Afro-Asiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Saharan – as well as the Austronesian and Indo-European subsets, there are hundreds of etymological variations. Cloie lists for Kyle some she can remember: Hausa, Swahili, Yoruba, Dahalo, Shabo and Laal. She thinks of how, 10,000 years ago, languages evolved out of isolation, as tribes living no more than a mile apart created territorial boundaries. “Today, with everything overlapping, there’s no reason for all these dialects, and still people use them as a source of separation. It’s sad, really,” Cloie says. “Language is supposed to bring people closer together, but the variations are divisive. Everyone talks but no one knows what the other is saying.”

  “Ha,” the statement is perfectly Cloie. Kyle values her talent for synthesizing things down to their most human root. Earlier that morning Kyle Skyped with Benchere, discussed similar themes. Kyle talks with Cloie now about Benchere’s situation in the desert and Mund’s latest effort to overhaul the economic construct of the camp. Despite Mund’s chatter, Kyle is convinced something positive is evolving in the Kalahari. “You have more than a hundred people coming together and learning to live collectively and what is more impressive than that?”

  He envies Benchere his experience, wonders if there isn’t a way of applying the lessons learned in the Kalahari to the south side, and what if they could take the best parts of the desert and work them in here? “What if we weren’t building sixteen separate row houses but an interdependent co-op where people came together communally for a united benefit? Suppose we redefined urban renewal by creating a cooperative on Broad Street, and from there we took the model and expanded out?”

  He says all this excitedly, brings the car down Manning Street, reaches over with his right hand as he drives and touches Cloie’s arm, her shoulder and leg. Cloie laughs and slaps, tells Kyle to wait until they get home. “Cooperate,” she says and he agrees.

  ZOOIE FINDS BENCHERE early the next morning. The sun is hill-high, already yellow-white. Together they walk with Harper, Daimon and Linda to the Maule, climb in and fly east. An hour later they land sixty miles west of Serowe. Out in the flats, the water wells Marti first constructed and returned to update over the years continue to operate. The wells as modified are solar. The tubular pumps work their way 100 feet beneath the sands. An incongruous landscape, devoid of rivers or spring-fed lakes, yet one of the world’s largest freshwater deposits lies just beneath the desert, in the basin of what was once the Makgadikgadi.

  Several years ago, Debswana Mining Company drilled holes and installed casings throughout the area as part of their deal to gain the rights to diamond explorations. Many of those same holes are used now to retrieve the water supplied to nearby villages. Benchere stands by one of the wells. Its teepee posts are fifteen feet high. The pump emits a hum. A humid scent rises from the hole. The site itself is solitary. Zooie treats their visit as a reunion, is glad they’ve come; has photographs of Marti at this same spot.

  Linda smokes with Harper. She calls the miles of water beneath the desert a cruel tease. “Like me, baby,” she pokes at Harper’s side. In her sober state she has developed a different level of awareness. She waves Daimon over, tells him to stop filming, puts a hand to his lens and reminds him why Zooie wants him here.

  Benchere sets his fingers around the first metal post. He can sense the vibration through the ground, the churning, churning, churning of the well as part of its own unbroken cycle. Today marks the first time in weeks Benchere hasn’t worked on his sculpture. The brief respite is nicely timed, the visit to the wells overdue. With all else that is going on, coming here is palliative.

  The post inside his grip is warm. For a moment there is comfort. Benchere closes his eyes. The physical proximity helps him to remember. It also produces urgency. As much as he feels Marti there, he experiences the endless draw forward. The hum at the well is constant. The vibration alive. He remembers all and at the same time thinks, I am here.

  Zooie stands beside Benchere, takes his hand.

  12.

  “WHAT NOW?”

  “What?”

  “Now.”

  ONE HUNDRED YARDS east of the main camp, a second group begins to gather. These are not Americans or Europeans but Africana who have learned about the sculpture through the handlers at the docks, the clerks in Maun, in the markets, on the buses and trucks transporting goods to the parks and reserves, out into the desert where Hereros and Wayeyi, Barolong and Basubiya, San and Shona carry Benchere’s story and spread the word.

  They come from west Botswana, Namibia and further south, from Swaziland and Johannesburg, Mpumalanga and north-east from Zimbabwe. Uprooted from their homes, their villages and cities by famine, rebellion, poverty and war, disenfranchised and without jobs, having heard about the sculpture and camp above Tshane, they arrive as pilgrims hoping for refuge, for physical and spiritual asylum. They assemble in silence, set up their own camp a safe distance from the others and sufficiently out of the way.

  BENCHERE WORKS ON welding the third and fourth armaments in place. Atop the scaffolding, he applies the heat. In the distance, he can see the new group standing back near the baobab trees, watching him. Unconcerned, he keeps all focus on his sculpture. The Munds are not as accommodating. No sooner does Benchere finish with the day’s weld than Dancy wants to know, “What are these bergies doing here?”

  Benchere wipes his forehead with the end of his shirt, answers Mund with, “They’re Africans in Africa. Where do you want them to be?”

  Dancy’s hair has been trimmed by Gabriella, is combed neatly and treated with a conditioning gel. The limp he exhibited when first reaching camp has become almost a swagger, his popularity heightened by the creation of a marketplace. Just yesterday he expanded his enterprise to include the sale of labor. A green marker and flat board are used to
post information on who is selling what and the current price. Each trade is monitored and the Munds extract a fee. Dancy takes a step forward, says about the Africana, “We have supplies and they have nothing. This is not a good combination. What assurance can you give us there won’t be trouble?”

  Benchere treats such babble jabber as another straw on the camel’s back. He shakes the sweat from his hair, pictures the second group quiet in their assembly, how they first arrived, two men and a child sitting in the distance, near the baobab, in the soft shade as the main group woke. Harmless and half-dressed. Today there are more than thirty women and children, young men and old. How they get by Benchere can’t be sure. They seem to have no food or water, though they’ve made a fire and obviously know the lay of the land. Benchere has not spoken with them and they have not moved closer or sought him out.

  He pulls at the front of his t-shirt, the old sweat on his chest sticking as he looks for his towel. “I need to shower,” he says, only Mund doesn’t care, is already going on again about the gravity of the situation. “These people have come here because they have nothing. Eventually,” he says, “they’re going to want what we have. How can you know they aren’t sizing us up right now?”

  “Christ.”

  “We’ve paid for the supplies,” Dancy’s voice rises, his face squeezed tight. “We are here under your watch. You have a responsibility. You need to do something.”

  Benchere scoffs, “So now it’s my camp again.” He considers his options, weighs what he sees as his responsibility. “Alright. Alright,” he replies and begins to walk in the direction of the common area. Both Dancy and Jazz follow. A path runs between the first series of tents back to the main communal area where meals are prepared and served. Benchere grabs an empty crate from beneath the first serving table, drops in a loaf of bread and three freshly baked potatoes before continuing on.

  At the storage unit he unlocks the door and adds a gallon of water, some dried beef – biltong – and a bag of flour to the crate. He heads next to the garden where the fruits and vegetables are kept above and in the ground. He removes oranges and an onion, radishes and carrots. Jazz trots alongside. Benchere sets the crate down, pulls a few loose bills from his pocket, $27 in total which he stuffs into Dancy’s front pocket. “Cash and carry,” he says, and lifting the crate again, proceeds to cover the distance between the two camps.

  On his bad leg Dancy can’t keep up. Others now trail behind. Some twenty yards from the new group Benchere is met by three people, a woman and two men who’ve come to greet him. Benchere sets the crate down, wipes his brow with the rag in his pocket, dries his fingers and extends his hand. The reception cordial. Benchere laughs. The sound echoes above the desert. Deyna and Zooie stand together with the sun at their backs. Benchere lifts the crate and hands it forward, bows at the hips, laughs again, loud enough for the sound to travel and everyone to hear.

  ROSE STUDIES THE scene below, says to Stern, “Apparently what we have now is urban sprawl.”

  “Endless developments.”

  “A constancy.”

  “There is that.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  THE AFRICANA BUILD a fire in the evening and prepare their foods. Dancy remains uneasy. He has organized a patrol in order to maintain the integrity of the border between the two camps. Six men in rotation now monitor the Africans’ activity. Benchere finds the enterprise ridiculous, whistles The Colonel Bogey March as the patrol practices its maneuvers.

  EVERYONE GATHERS IN the common area at dinner where they argue heatedly about the Africans. Mund and his supporters insist Benchere has gone too far, that assisting the bushmen has created a dangerous precedent. Others find the sharing of provisions morally exact. The horse trainer and the ex-senator from Sioux Falls see Benchere’s enterprise as neither virtuous nor threatening but practical; like soup kitchens and shelters keep those in need from rising in revolt. Meanwhile Deyna and Zooie, Linda and the BAA students, Daimon and two of the Iowa three believe Benchere has not gone far enough, that he should invite the second group to merge with the first and create one unified camp.

  Benchere lets the others have their say. His own position clear, when pressed to clarify how he views the main group managing the Africana, he says only, “I don’t see us managing them at all.”

  He looks at Deyna, recalls what she said before, how every action has consequence and things are bound to happen in the desert that he can’t foresee. No doubt. Beyond those events involving the camp, he thinks of things more personal, how surprised and confused he was the other day when Deyna removed her mask as he finished welding. He blamed the mistake on a momentary lapse, a blurring of then and now, and yet it happened again at the wells, while resting his hand on the side of one of the posts; the pulse through his fingers so insistent and alive that he couldn’t help but give into the urge, and there again was Deyna. The intrusion upset him, made him angry, as he released his grip and looked about to see if anyone else had noticed.

  After dinner, Benchere walks with Harper and Deyna and Jazz out toward the hills. It is habit in the evening now for Benchere and Deyna to find time alone and talk but this evening he is more acutely conscious of her and invites Harper along. The conversation is still about the Africana though soon segues into related topics. Harper says of Mund’s reaction to the Africans, “People never cease to amaze.” He tells of getting into an argument with a man back in Providence, on West Exchange, after he had given a homeless woman a dollar. “The bastard accused me of supporting a con, said most beggars were either secretly well off or flat out lazy criminals who would just as soon stab us in the eye and steal our wallets as get a job.” Harper’s response was to curse the man with a quick fuck off friend, while labeling his insights as sloppy fictions and saying, “The only thing criminal is not helping people down on their luck. Assholes like that want to go all Darwinian and let defenseless folks die, but that sort of bullshit just exposes the underside.”

  Benchere jokes with Harper, says, “Soft as soup, what did I tell you?” He has a story of his own, describes the time soon after he left L/L and was restarting his career as an artist. “I was working out of a studio which was actually an old warehouse converted into divided areas where a half dozen other artists rented space. We were a block away from Hartford Park and the housing projects. Every day I saw a man with a small brown dog set up a table and a stool and work with cheap copper wire and pinch-nose pliers to make bracelets and miniature figurines. It was a rough neighborhood and Marti and I had spent a lot of time meeting with civic groups to try and mend relations between the people in the projects and the police. Seeing the man each day took the edge off the neighborhood for me, created an almost sanguine effect.”

  The other artists in the building did not agree. Benchere explains, “As we were not allowed to sell our art inside or out on the street, the others objected to the man getting special treatment. These were folks who claimed to be serious artists, and each complained that the man and his little dog were cheapening their effort to make great art. It was ridiculous and petty,” Benchere says. “It was hard to believe, but time and again the others would call the cops on the man, would walk outside and deliberately knock over his table, would kick his dog, would stomp on the little things he made. I got into it hot and hard, verbally and physically, yes. I threatened to buy the fucking building and throw them all out, told them if anything happened to the man or his dog I would hold them responsible. I brought the man supplies, better wire and metals and tools. I tried to get him to come inside and work with me, offered him a job but he didn’t want to leave the street.

  “The cops came and hassled him, said he couldn’t sell his stuff without a license, that he couldn’t create his little wire pieces in a public space. He would disappear for half a day then come back. The cops took his dog, said he needed a license there, too. I went downtown and bailed the pooch out. The hassle continued until others in the housing project noticed and came to the man
’s defense.”

  Benchere recounts the artists looking down from their studio windows and cheering as riot police were called in to confront those trying to protect the man. “Everything got crazy fast. There was shouting and then the cops turned physical and made arrests and the newspapers misreported what happened, accused the protesters of inciting violence. It was nuts, and yet here’s the perfect ending.

  “I came down, and let’s just say I got involved in the protest, and wound up arrested. The news found out I was there, and after Marti bailed me out, I made a statement, described the man as a great artist, a street legend, and called out the assholes in their studios as jealous turds, called out the cops for overreacting, spoke of the city’s need to embrace the man as a unique local talent even though his wire works were little more than trinkets. All this noise got the media’s attention. Galleries came calling, took an interest, began to sell the man’s art. As fast as he could make it, they pitched and sold his stuff at high-end prices, until the man was firmly established and well enough off to move to Barrington with his little dog.”

  “Ha now,” Harper knows the story, is amused each time. “You have to give the world credit,” he says, “for sometimes getting it right.”

  Deyna is walking between the two, takes in both stories. She thinks again about the Africans, considers the way things turn on all that came before, then teases and calls both Benchere and Harper inveterate do-gooders, laughs at this and offers them a tale of her own. “One of the first field studies I joined was in Puerto Rico, where we were gathering data on peasant communities and looking at the impact of changes in the outside world on provincial cultures. I was still a grad student and my mentor at the time was Peter Whitle. As I was young and Peter was highly accomplished in my chosen field, as he was almost handsome and had a significant influence over my career, I developed a certain attachment toward him. In the academic setting Peter was charismatic and I expected the same away from school.