Primitive People

by Francine Prose

  Poor Rosemary, indeed! thought Simone. What defense did she have against this onslaught of articulate, conspiratorial, fatherly charm?

  “Get it?” Geoffrey said.

  “Got it!” George saluted.

  “I get it.” Maisie drew the words out, projecting extreme irritation and boredom.

  Geoffrey looked up at Simone. “Maisie wants the world to know how tiresome she thinks this has gotten—all the times these martyred children have had to keep their father’s non-secrets.”

  He put his face up close to the children’s. “All right, men. Back to the trenches. Fortitude. Be brave. In case of enemy capture, what and how much do you disclose?”

  “Name, rank, and serial number?” said George.

  “Report for action!” Geoffrey said.

  MAISIE AND GEORGE INTRODUCED Simone to the addictive pleasure of hickory nuts, small wild nuts with a vein of sweet meat you had to dig out with a pin. Partly it was the labor itself, the minuscule reward, the disproportionate joy of prying loose a slightly larger crumb—it kept you hungry and desirous in ways a bag of shelled walnuts could never. How wasteful that the difficult should seem so much more precious, so that the practically unattainable was valued most of all. In that way shelling hickory nuts was like being in love, Simone thought. Rosemary had called it a triumph to show up as a blip on Geoffrey’s radar screen, and Simone had never loved Joseph so much as when she knew she had lost him.

  Simone and the children spent evenings at the kitchen table picking at the hickory nuts with catatonic concentration. Their lives took on a squirrel motif that persisted to bedtime, when Maisie insisted Simone read aloud from a book in which talking squirrels discoursed tediously about the acorn supply. Simone and the children were hoarding, too, stockpiling nuts for the winter whose approach they felt in the wet chill wind already slapping at them from the Hudson. They had grocery bags full of nuts stored up—but suppose they ran out, and snow fell, and they couldn’t find more? This seemed, as the autumn wound down, an unendurable prospect.

  Often Simone thought of how Joseph imagined America: a land of white people with black servants bringing them cellular phones by the pool. Where in Joseph’s vision was the celestial peace of being with the children in the drafty kitchen, digging out nutmeats with safety pins? Joseph had imagined California, where it was always warm and never damp and icy, as it was now in Hudson Landing.

  One afternoon the children came home from school and the sky was so blue and bright that it tricked Simone into forgetting how short the days had grown. She and the children decided to hunt for hickory nuts in the woods, and as they crossed the lawn Simone said, “Look up. What do you see?”

  “Clouds,” George said.

  “What do you see in the clouds?” Simone asked.

  Maisie was wearing large heart-shaped sunglasses she’d got as a present from Shelly, and now she tilted them forward to better see the sky.

  “Seafood,” George said finally. “An octopus and a lobster.”

  “A horse’s head,” said Maisie.

  They walked on in silence until they reached the trees. Maisie said, “I can make clouds move by concentrating on them.”

  “Sure you can,” said George.

  “Let’s talk about our fears,” Maisie said.

  “Let’s not,” said George. “She always wants to talk about her fears.”

  Ordinarily Simone might be curious about what Maisie was afraid of, but it was the last thing she wished to discuss walking through the woods with the children. She had been frightened of the forest since she found the dead sheep.

  “My worst fear is horses,” Maisie said.

  “We found a dead horse,” George said.

  Before Simone could decide whether or not to pursue this subject, Maisie said, “I mean live horses. The most beautiful thing in the world. I wish Mom would let me take riding lessons. I would be scared that I’d get trampled. But that would be a good way to die. Not like the guinea pig baby at school where the guinea pig mother ate it.”

  “Hamster,” said George. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “Guinea pig,” said Maisie.

  “Hush,” said Simone. Absurdly she was seized with fear that Maisie’s talking about horses would somehow cause them to find another dead one dangling from a tree. She looked around for the shaggy bark that would mean nuts had fallen nearby.

  “A lot of times I’m afraid of old people,” said George. “Sometimes you don’t know what they’re going to say and—”

  Just then something whistled past and smacked Simone on the side of the head. In fact, it had not hit her, just hit the air near her face, hit the air with the violent crack of a diver cannonballing into water. It felt like someone blowing into her ear through a long thin metal pipe. Pressure galloped in her skull and swelled inside her throat. Then something struck a birch tree, and splinters exploded off the bark.

  The last yellow leaves showered down like a hail of coins. Afterward the tree kept shaking for a very long time.

  “Was that a gun?” asked George.

  The answer was a crackle of gunfire, the delicate pop of a shot. Simone threw the children to the ground and covered them with her body.

  “What’s going to happen?” said George.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” snapped Simone. Another bullet streaked overhead. Maisie buried her head in Simone’s shoulder and began to cry.

  A minute passed, then another. There were no more shots. “Stay down,” said Simone. “Stay down until I tell you to get up.”

  “What’s going to happen?” repeated George.

  “Nothing. Nothing,” answered Simone, and this time nothing did. In a while they lifted their heads and looked at each other. They squirmed around till they lay with their heads together, their legs like the spokes of a wheel. All three of them could have been children playing in the dead leaves.

  “Are we allowed to talk?” George whispered.

  Simone said, “I guess. Don’t move.”

  “There’s this kid?” said George. “In our school? His dad grew up around here? And one year when his dad was in high school there was this squirrel population explosion and kids got paid fifteen cents for every dead squirrel they brought in?”

  “Cheap,” said Maisie.

  “So this kid’s dad took his gun and popped fifty squirrels and took them home in a bag? But his dad, I mean, the dad’s dad got mad and made the mom skin the squirrels and put them in the freezer? The mom—the dad’s mom—had to figure out all different ways to cook them? The kid’s dad still eats squirrel. He takes the squirrel legs to work and cooks them in the microwave.”

  “Gross,” pronounced Maisie. Then she said, “Maybe hickory nuts have feelings. Maybe God was punishing us for eating them.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said George.

  Maisie whispered, “The shooting stopped.”

  “Who was that, anyway?” asked George. “Who was shooting at us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Simone. Why did the children think she had answers? “Not at us. Just near us. Maybe it was a hunter.”

  Maisie said, “Hunting season starts Monday. It’s all Mom’s talked about for weeks.”

  “Or a serial killer?” suggested George.

  “What’s that?” Maisie asked, and then said quickly, “I don’t want to hear.”

  “They go around killing people?” said George. “It’s what they do on vacation? They’ll stab somebody in Florida and then take a car ride up the coast and strangle somebody in Maine?”

  “Kids, too?” Maisie said.

  “Some specialize in kids,” said George. “I think they’re called something else. Did you hear about that kid whose dad set him on fire with a can of gasoline?”

  Simone tried to listen through their talk to the sounds of the forest. She felt somehow that they were alone, that the danger had passed, though before the shooting started she hadn’t felt anything special, either. How strange, she thought, that she’d
grown up in a country where killings were a daily occurrence, and she’d had to come to this peaceful American forest to nearly get herself shot.

  “Be quiet for five minutes,” she said. “Then we will very quietly and slowly get up and go home.”

  Maisie said, “I don’t think we should go home. I don’t think we should tell Mom.”

  Some instinct signaled Simone and the children: Rosemary must not be told. If she found out she might forbid them to leave the house ever again, or she might even fire Simone for having put George and Maisie at risk. Alternatively, perhaps more likely, Rosemary might not react at all. Then Simone and the children would feel cheated of their experience, with no excuse for the tremors that still shook their legs and shocked them into functioning as one creature with three heads and a single brain that knew they needed to get away—go somewhere and tell someone.

  “Let’s go see Kenny,” Maisie said, and they piled into the car. Simone had never driven at dusk; the prospect was unnerving. But whatever spared them this afternoon would just have to save them again.

  Everything about driving to Short Eyes tested the limits of Simone’s courage. She could never have managed if she hadn’t so recently been so afraid. The only route she knew was the one she took that first day, small roads into larger roads and finally onto Route 9. She wondered if she would always have to recapitulate the beginning; in Port-au-Prince there was a crazy woman who used to get stalled on the street and had to go all the way back to her house to get herself going again.

  Kenny seemed genuinely happy to see them, which in itself moved Simone. She always felt so indebted when a man registered her presence.

  A little boy sat in Kenny’s chair—a tiny, dark-haired prince. “Modified spike,” his mother was saying. “Modified is the operative word.”

  Kenny abandoned his victim when Simone and the children walked in, a reprieve for which the little boy dazzled them with a smile.

  “You know that kid?” George asked Maisie.

  “No,” whispered Maisie. “Do you?”

  “Ola!” said Kenny. “Bonjour! Yo!”

  George said, “Yo!”

  Maisie said, “Kenny! Bonjour!” The children seemed more cheerful already.

  Kenny came closer and said to Simone, “Jesus Christ. I’m sorry about the other night. Shelly’s dinner party—Nightmare Alley, right? I don’t know what comes over me whenever I’m with Shelly. I cannot believe the evil shit I hear come out of my mouth. My whole vocabulary changes. Fucking this, fucking that. This is shit, that is shit, it’s all a fucking motherfucker.”

  Kenny became aware of the children and the boy’s mother, staring. To the children he said, “You guys have heard shit like this before. Christ, I mean bad language.

  “Women secretly love it,” he said. “The more outrageous the better. They never tell their husbands.” Was Kenny still talking about language? Was that what women loved? Did he mean the little boy’s mother? She shot a hostile glance at Simone.

  “Isn’t Shelly a killer?” Kenny asked. “And I use that word advisedly. Whenever she comes to the salon—which, thank God, isn’t often—I’m always super aware of where the scissors are.” Simone noticed on the counter large apothecary jars full of pointy scissors, like torture implements, stewing in blue disinfectant. How unreassuring they must be to the timid child!

  Kenny said, “It’s not that there aren’t women around. Some really beautiful women. But I’m terrified of Shelly. She would definitely rip your balls off and serve them—hush puppies, am I right?—to a close family member. I’d love to spend some time with you, Simone. We could drive to Connecticut. I would have to cross state lines before I felt safe from Shelly.”

  Simone said, “My boyfriend gets jealous, too.” Why was she lying like this? Joseph never once asked what she did when she wasn’t with him. He thought she died when he wasn’t around and came back to life when he was. Sexual jealousy was not in the range of things you would logically feel for a zombie, nor was it a problem if you believed you were the only man in the world. But it seemed important to establish the fact that there was a boyfriend who would ride along like a ghost chaperon if she took a trip with Kenny.

  Kenny said, “If he’s in Haiti, he’s got no business being jealous. If Shelly was in Haiti, I’d be cutting a fairly wide swath through the local female population. But speaking of doing damage—you guys look like a total wipeout. You look like somebody dragged you here from Rosemary’s house on your faces. You want a Valium, Simone? How about you, kids? A baby Tylenol? A Pepsi?”

  “A baby Tylenol and Pepsi,” replied Maisie.

  “Someone shot at us?” said George. “We were walking in the woods near our house and someone shot at us. I think it was a .357 magnum? You should have seen what it did to our tree.”

  “A .357? I doubt it,” said Kenny. He looked at Simone for corroboration.

  “Someone shot at us,” said Simone.

  Kenny laughed. “The Count, I’ll bet. Your neighbor to the south.”

  “Really?” said George. Kenny’s salutary effect on the children evaporated in a flash.

  “Joke,” said Kenny. “The Count is a criminal and a freak but not a murderer. Or anyway, not of humans. Listen to Uncle Kenny. This is hunting season. You are considered a nine-point buck until you are proven human. Only the desperate or deeply impaired venture off the blacktop. After two six-packs you guys look like Bambi’s mom and two Bambis. Simone, didn’t Rosemary warn you? Some years she can’t talk about anything else.”

  Simone was trying to remember the story Rosemary told about seeing a earful of hunters and fleeing to the city. Where were George and Maisie then? That had not been clear. It was often hard to tell from Rosemary’s stories when they happened or whom they happened to, or what exactly they meant.

  Abruptly the little boy’s mother said, “I saw the most adorable item. Two doors down they’re selling these darling Red Ridinghood capes, cute and warm and made for kids who have to go anywhere near the forest during the annual bloodbath the locals call deer season. The capes made me wish all over again that I’d had a girl. But I’m not having another child, not even to get a daughter. She did have these terrific red baseball caps. I got one for Max.”

  “Two doors down from here?” said Kenny.

  “Good Witch of the East,” said the woman. “Where did you think I meant?”

  “Oh, Glenda’s place,” said Kenny. “Glenda’s my buddy. Far out. Another total fuzzball with a blue-chip business sense.”

  He finished cutting the little boy’s hair. The boy and his mother left.

  “Button up,” Kenny told George and Maisie. “Let’s hit it. We’re out of here. Uncle Kenny is going to treat you guys to one red cape and one red hat.”

  Shooing Simone and the children out, Kenny said, “Hey, dig it. Over there’s the jingling cash register, and I’m leaving the joint unlocked.”

  He led them several doors down to a store with a crowded, dusty window and a sign that said, in swirling letters, GOOD WITCH OF THE EAST. Zither music played on a stereo, crystalline and frantic. The air smelled of potpourri, like the soap shop under Geoffrey’s office, but with a faint insecticide edge.

  Guarding the door, large sinister wooden frogs affected debonair poses. On a table were drinks trays made from butterfly wings. A large stone cherub pouted, unappreciative for having been rescued from somebody’s tombstone and set down among the painted hatboxes full of rolls of watered-silk ribbons, soft-sculpture bedroom slippers representing Nancy and Ronald Reagan in bed, brightly colored, overdesigned toys that failed to catch the children’s attention except for one tiny expensive set of doll’s woodworking tools. Simone wondered what principle of selection had gathered these items together.

  “Good taste and magic.” A trilling voice rang out as if in answer to Simone’s unspoken question. A stout, sweet-looking woman swayed in from the back of the shop in a two-piece outfit ingeniously knotted from many flowered silk scarves. “I’m Gl
enda,” she said. “Simple introductions are not Kenny’s strong suit.”

  “Eat shit,” said Kenny genially. “Simone, Maisie, and Big George. Glenda, what it is, babe?”

  “Same old,” said Glenda, and a lovely smile glorified her doughy face. It was always instructive to see what women turned into around Kenny. “The usual shnorrers and kleptos. Did I tell you about that old Native American guy the Sweat Lodge Church flew in from Utah and dumped. He came in trying to sell me some kind of animal pelt. He put it down on the counter and it was crawling with maggots! Little white blind grubby things wriggling down the display case. I started screaming, I made him take it away. Then I went next door and bought a six-pack of Black Flag. Very unorganic. Can you smell it?”

  “Yuck,” Maisie agreed.

  Glenda turned to Maisie. “Whooo are yooou?”

  “The caterpillar!” said Maisie. “In Alice in Wonderland.”

  “Exactly,” Glenda told her. “I love your look. I could sell you in here.”

  “Yeah,” said George. “Give her away!” This aspect of George troubled Simone even more than his sadness: how quickly he allied himself with whoever was on the offensive, especially when it was at the expense of his sister or his mother. When Geoffrey made fun of Rosemary, it was George who chimed in, though at home he showed her a puppylike, unrequited devotion.

  “How’s Shelly?” Glenda said.

  Kenny turned over a cobalt-blue vase, as if examining it for listening devices. “Russia will be a democracy,” he said. “But we’ll still have Shelly.”

  Glenda said, “What about you, Simone?”

  Simone replied, “I take care of the children.”

  “Simone takes care of the children,” said Kenny, “while she reconnoiters and marshals her forces to take New York City by storm. She could be a model or an actress like Cicely Tyson’s niece. Look at her, Glenda? Don’t you think Simone could be a movie star?”

  “Absolutely,” Glenda answered.

  The children were appraising Simone with new interest and concern. They had never considered that they might be a way station on her road to success. That this disturbed them pleased Simone, though she knew it was wrong of her to want the children to worry more or feel less secure than they already did.