Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver

  Suddenly he could not bear another minute in that room, breathing its depleted air. With a look of sympathy for his trapped friend, he signaled the door at the side of the stage and moved toward it. Polly caught up to him and out they slid, a pair of cats.

  It opened onto the street. The cold air hit his lungs. “Strooth!” he cried.

  Polly giggled. “You can say hell or damn. I won’t tell Mother.”

  “Hell, then.” They both laughed, ice needling their lungs. “Damn!”

  “Thatcher, you were bricky! It was just as you said, he didn’t even know you were started until you had him in the noose.”

  “He’s not in the noose yet. We still have a second round.”

  “You’ll take the egg. I know you will.”

  “I’ll do my best. And I won’t tell your mother you’ve learned to talk like a paper hanger. Is that what they teach now at the Spring Road School?”

  Polly lifted her proud chin and stamped her boots to warm her feet. “We still have your pictures to show. Oh! I left the easel and drawings at my chair, all your perfect fossil creatures! They are so good, Thatcher. Mrs. Treat was very impressed to see how well you draw. Someone might want to steal them for their parlor walls.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about that, darling girl. She will keep them safe.” Thatcher smiled to think of his neighbors coveting heretic animals for their parlor walls. Polly’s faith in him was a gift beyond his experience.

  He felt his bones shudder from the cold, like prey in the jaws of a terrier, and wished for the wool overcoat he’d left in the hall—precisely where, he couldn’t remember. He had been blind with nerves when they arrived, and everything had happened quickly. Polly had also left her mantle behind for Mary to guard. Poor Mary, who despised all hubbub but had braved it tonight for his sake. How she must be suffering in that hall. If Mr. Campbell ever finished with her, the botanical society ladies would pounce. Mary called them her Flower Mites.

  “We should go back in. If I let you perish out here, your mother will make a nice new pelisse of my hide.”

  “I’m not cold!” Her cheeks were bright roses. But she did have the advantage of wool gloves, a bonnet, God alone knew how many crinolines and shifts.

  “I think you’re fibbing. If it’s true, I envy women all your folderol. It must be horrid in summer but useful in January.”

  “It is!” She shivered, more prettily than a shudder ought to be, he thought. More like her sister by the day. “I never ever thought I would want to wear thirteen petticoats.”

  “Until you lived through winter in a house that is falling to pieces. I’m sorry.”

  “The worst is having to share with Mother. Oh, Thatcher. She snores.”

  “I’m sorry. We’ll get it fixed up.”

  “I know you will.”

  He’d spoken with Mr. Martini about razing and rebuilding, but an estimate of ten thousand dollars had made it a brief conversation. Thatcher felt his eyes go sticky, as if freezing to their lids. He looked up through the bare-armed trees at a sky full of stars, and even their blaze seemed ruthless. The Italian matron in the audience came to his mind, and in the round face and strong eyebrows he suddenly saw his peerless pupil Giovanna. It was Mrs. Persichetti, hoping to greet him at the interlude and hear praise of the humble family’s shining daughter. Any normal man would have done it. Blast his shyness.

  He blew on his fingers, feeling some sympathy for the wooden-handed man. “This weather is treacherous. I worry your sister will be frozen to her steed.”

  “Frozen Rose, Rose is froze! Oh, poor froze Rose, her nose and toes!”

  “Goodness, you must have a heart. I’m truly worried. It seemed unwise for them to ride so far out in this weather.”

  Polly bit her lip, looking up at him as if stung by a bee. In his fondness for Polly he played at this secret alliance, the two of them against Rose, but it was no game for her, he saw. Too late. He had risen to the enemy’s defense, and now little feathers would need smoothing. “I’m not a bit angry. I know you care for your sister. We wouldn’t wish the smallest harm on her nose or toes.”

  “My sister would never put up with anything unpleasant. I’m sure she is all chickaleary now, drinking chocolate with Louise and stupid Leverett at their cottage.”

  “They have a cottage?”

  “On Union Lake. Rose didn’t say? I suppose she thinks you’ll be jealous of old jollocks and his bags of money.”

  “Mr. Dunwiddie can have all the money he likes, why should I mind?”

  Polly lifted her chin and said nothing. Thatcher wondered if he would regret having matched his wife with Louise Dunwiddie, who ended her dancing classes the moment she took up riding with Rose. She’d come to the school on a lark in any case, Rose reported, to rankle her father, who disapproved of female employment. His wife, prior to decease, had been seeking a mate for Louise among the Philadelphia baronets, and Mr. Dunwiddie found himself at a loss to continue the project. Aurelia was sure to interject herself—having failed so badly with her own daughter, Thatcher thought acidly.

  Polly looked direly cold, but seemed unready to cede her grievance. Thatcher worried the interlude might be ending, people returning to their seats. Cutler looking for a victory by default. He needed to go back inside and forget whatever he had stepped in here. He had long known Polly’s capacity for pique, but never as its victim.

  “You’re right of course, your sister can look after herself. Only it’s a long ride back from Union Lake. I don’t like to think of them being out so late in the cold and dark.”

  “Don’t be silly. The Dunwiddies have their carriage.”

  “But the horses. They can’t just leave them at the lake.”

  Polly let out a little bark. “The Dunwiddies have servants and hired men to do anything dreadful, Thatcher. Like bringing back the horses in the dark.”

  Over that little barked laugh he grieved, foreseeing the loss of Polly. Just like her mother and sister, she so easily grasped what Thatcher never could: the power of money to disperse any worry. “Of course,” he said. “Silly me.”

  They stood watching the breath escape their mouths in frosted clouds. He thought miserably of Mary, abandoned to the Campbells and the Mites. If he succeeded tonight, the success would be Mary’s as well. If he failed, she would think no less of him, but absorb his pain as her own. How like a friend she was in this way, and unlike a woman. Unlike Rose, at any rate. He had not known very many.

  “You mustn’t be cross, Polly,” he said, in a tone he did not like. “I only wonder why Rose would have gone along with the adventure on a day like this.”

  “She wanted it to be today, Thatcher. Because of your forum.”

  “She had no need to contrive an excuse. I told her she needn’t come.”

  Polly looked suddenly twice her age, shaking her head as women did when making ready to lance your heart: as if life left them no choice. “She didn’t want them to come. Leverett saw it in the paper and was going on about it until Mother and Rose got beside themselves, afraid the precious Dunwiddies might attend and find out you are on the side of Indecency. Rose was the one who suggested they all ride out to the lake.”

  Nausea rose in Thatcher’s craw. Had she been that certain he would make a pitiful showing? Even Polly, his loyalist, seemed to believe it. “I need to go back inside,” he said, more testily than he meant.

  Instantly Polly was a child again. The little eyebrows pinched together. “But we should practice. You were good at the first part because you remembered to do everything we said.”

  Forgiven, then. He reached out a hand to tug her bonnet string. “My excellent taskmistress, I won’t forget. I shall be bricky.”

  *

  Cutler had made use of the interlude to locate a fresh batch of confidence. “And how did the Arctic hare arrive in the Arctic? Before it underwent a putative ee-volution?” He strutted from his podium to Thatcher’s, wheeled, walked back. Behind his bottom the lone hand clasped its woo
den friend. “Did Noah sail his ark to the northern seas and fling out his pair of black hares on some desolate plain for which they were badly suited?”

  The audience chortled a little, then went still. Cutler was earnest.

  “Noah did no such thing!” he bellowed, snatching a Bible from his podium. “I read to you from Genesis 8:19. ‘Every beast and every fowl went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour and said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.’”

  Cutler offered a grand little pause, and Thatcher leaped into it. “May I ask a question, sir? About the animals burnt on the Lord’s altar?”

  Cutler affected surprise. “I see my opponent does not read his Bible. Well, naturally, it has so many pages.”

  “I do read it, and admire its capacity to stir a curious mind. For example. Noah took on his ark only one pair of every kind. Is this true?”

  “At the Lord’s command, yes. Even a child knows this.”

  “And then he burnt some of them on the Lord’s altar. I have wondered for years, how did their widowed mates manage to go forth and multiply after that, all alone?”

  “You will find it in here. Every answer is here.” Cutler quickly turned pages, his hairless cheeks trembling. “Here we are, here we are. God blessed Noah and his sons, saying, ‘Everything that lives will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.’ I give you everything! What could be more plain?”

  “What seems plain to me is that an animal needs a mate to reproduce.”

  “For pity’s sake, can we keep this discussion above lewd debauchery?”

  Crinolines shifted audibly; female gazes dropped. Cutler’s bizarre accusation of lewdness had made itself true. “We can,” Thatcher conceded, mortified. “Of course.”

  “On God’s authority!” The hand slammed down, wood upon wood. “We were not put among the creatures of this world to live with them as equals. This world is ours!”

  Someone in the audience slowly clapped, inciting a scattering of followers, like gravel thrown at a roof. Thatcher labored to keep his head. He was prepared for this. Polly had spent weeks helping him comb the Bible for nonsensical facts. She’d done it at night so Aurelia could see her reading by candlelight in the manner of a young saint.

  “I understand Noah lived to be nine hundred fifty years old. Is that also true?”

  “So says Genesis. So it is true. Yes, he did.”

  “And here is God’s advice on discipline, from the Psalms.” Thatcher read from copied notes, having brought no Bible to his podium, now wishing he had. “‘Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. That taketh the infants from their mothers’ arms and dashes out their brains against a rock.’”

  Silence seized the hall.

  “Professor Cutler, do you obey God’s word in our school? Our audience would want to know you follow the Bible by dashing out the brains of misbehaving pupils. Our new building has a rock foundation, I assume for this purpose?” Thatcher scanned the audience for smiles, finding none. Mrs. Persichetti looked alarmed.

  “We do not murder children sir. That you should suggest it.” Cutler paced, he shook his head. The audience watched him march across the stage and back. “Piglets!” he finally erupted, to the sound of exhaled breath in the room. “Now I recall the verse you quote. It refers to suckling pigs being prepared for a feast. To celebrate God’s glory.”

  It referred to the prophecy of vengeance on Babylon, Thatcher happened to know, with the Almighty in full support of the child bashers. Cutler had yanked his suckling pigs out of thin air. A fabrication that so relieved the audience, Thatcher would have to let it live.

  “The idea. Bashing children’s brains.” Cutler shook his head. “I’m sorry the ladies had to hear it. I promise you, we keep a close eye on the likes of my opponent at Vineland High School. We are vigilant against atheists and Darwinists.”

  Suddenly the house was set on its edge. Several ladies gathered capes and overcoats, preparing to leave.

  “Ladies, gentle neighbors, calm yourselves!” This was Landis, up out of his chair with one arm raised like a Baptist, and no surprise. The captain’s home territory was fracas, and his genius was for the precise balance of terror and mollycoddling needed to keep a public suckling at his teat. They settled now under his benediction. “You fear the world’s evil and are sustained by its goodness,” he crooned. “We’ve come to sort it out. Trust in our citadel, its protections will prevail. Let the gentlemen speak.” Landis did not sit down then but remained midstage near Cutler, like a soldier of the professor’s bodyguard.

  “Thank you,” Cutler said. “I was about to explain my theory of animal distribution, to refute the story of Noah flinging black hares onto the ice—”

  “Excuse me,” Thatcher pressed, without result.

  “—We know that all beasts left the ark on Mount Ararat, in the Near Orient. The modern scientist asks: How did the grizzly bear and elk arrive in North America, which are not on the Asian continent? Now, the Bible tells us of many perils that confronted God’s chosen, particularly in the realm of waters. God parted the waters of the Red Sea. He made the River Jordan stop flowing to let his priests pass. It was his method, you see. God imagined our continent to contain elk and bear, so he parted the waters and let them pass to their home.” Cutler bowed so expertly, the audience could not help applauding.

  Landis joined the applause. “Well now. What can we say against that?”

  Thatcher stared at both of them. “Are you suggesting God rolled back the Atlantic so bears and elk could walk across a dry ocean floor?”

  “I don’t suggest it. I conclude it.”

  “Why stop with the bears? The mammals found only on our continent are so many: bison, jackrabbit, coyote. Muskrats, raccoons. Let’s not forget birds, we have prairie chickens, which can hardly fly. They would have marched across the dry coral beds with the bears and bison. It must have been a regular circus parade.”

  “It must have been,” Cutler agreed. Landis nodded also, refusing to sit down.

  “Are there any written accounts of it in our history books?” Thatcher asked.

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “How do you suppose no one noticed when the Atlantic rolled back on itself to make way for the carnival of the animals?”

  “I suppose it happened at night.”

  Thatcher glanced at the audience and saw no amusement in this citadel, only apprehension. He tried for the tone of a sympathetic uncle. “Mr. Cutler, the Atlantic between Europe and our continent is nearly four thousand miles wide. A prairie hen on her best day might manage to walk four miles. If she struck out from Brittany in early spring, let’s say, we could expect her on Cape Cod by Christmastide, not of the following year, but the year after. Quite a weary little hen.”

  “To be sure,” Cutler agreed.

  “And what of the insects? Did they join the parade? We haven’t even mentioned the plants. Thousands of species grow nowhere else but here. How did this happen?”

  “There is considerable evidence the seeds of plants clung to the coats of the mammals and arrived by the same route.”

  “Considerable evidence,” Thatcher repeated, watching Landis pull from his waistcoat a fat gold watch, the equal of a year’s salary for Thatcher, and fondle it with lurid affection. He was bored. The captain preferred bread and circuses. “Evidence!” Thatcher said again, loud enough to startle Landis, who put away his watch. “He pretends to lean on evidence for this wildly problematical theory, when another explanation of animal distribution sits before us in perfect simplicity. Descent with modification—”

  “Simplicity?” Cutler interrupted.

  “—explains how one single natural force, universally ap
plied—”

  “Is it a point of pride for you, being a simpleton?”

  Thatcher made himself pause. “It’s a brilliant act of imagination, Professor. This Atlantic parting. Your literary training shows itself in the grandeur of your story.”

  Cutler looked wary. “Thank you.”

  “A poet can make a story as fanciful as he likes. In science we’re constrained by cause and effect. We collect data and examine it. We’re allowed to use nothing outside the evidence to make our explanations. When multiple explanations confront us, we have a rule. We assume the simplest one is best.”

  “Ah, here he goes,” Cutler said to Landis. “Defending the simple brain.” A hiss of suppressed amusement escaped the audience like steam from a pot.

  “The law comes from a better brain than mine,” Thatcher said. “It’s a principle we call Occam’s razor. Natural philosophers have applied it for hundreds of years.”

  “A razor!” Landis said, stroking his splendid door-knocker. Cutler, with his paucity of whiskers, said nothing.

  Thatcher appealed to the audience, assuming more brains out there than hereabouts. “William of Occam was a man of God, a Franciscan friar in the fourteenth century. He argued that a complex explanation, when it does not hold water, will always grow more complex as it attempts to patch its own holes. The less adorned explanation is the one more directly tested, and more plainly proven. And in science, proof is all.”

  Cutler put a finger in Thatcher’s face, standing so close the smell of hair tonic filled his nostrils. “You cannot prove a thing that already happened. Waters parting, wolf pups magically growing legs, it is done. Without witnesses. There ends your science.”

  “No.” Thatcher edged forward to hold his ground. “We can observe transmutations of species by several methods. The study of life-forms of the past is called paleontology. I have drawings to show the audience. Treasures from an ancient time.”