The Humanity Project

by Jean Thompson

  ALSO BY JEAN THOMPSON

  NOVELS

  The Year We Left Home

  City Boy

  Wide Blue Yonder

  My Wisdom

  The Woman Driver

  COLLECTIONS

  Do Not Deny Me

  Throw Like a Girl

  Who Do You Love

  Little Face and Other Stories

  The Gasoline Wars

  Published by the Penguin Group

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  Copyright © 2013 by Jean Thompson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Thompson, Jean, date.

  The humanity project / Jean Thompson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-101-61105-0

  I. Title.

  PS3570.H625H86 2013 2012028041

  813'.54—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  ALSO BY JEAN THOMPSON

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  We were afraid of so many things: Of our children, who lived in their own world of casually lurid pleasures, zombies and cartoon killers and thuggish music. Of our neighbors, who were buying gold and ammunition and great quantities of freeze-dried food, and who were organizing themselves into angry tribes recognizable to one another by bumper stickers. We feared that our lives had been spent in piling up not treasures but great heaps of discardable and wasteful things. Television voices exhorted us to buy even more, and often enough we did, even though money seemed to be draining away from us like water in a leaky sink, and most of all we feared a future of privation and loss.

  Our politicians were no help at all.

  We feared those people who we believed meant to do us harm, although such fears fluctuated along with the most recent headlines. There were people who hated us with ancient, inexplicable, and undying hatreds. They might look harmless enough, unexceptional, but without warning they might precipitate some majestic destruction that we could not imagine, or no, we could imagine it all too well, the fire, the choking ash, the impossibly small spaces that our bodies would be made to fit.

  We feared the very earth itself and took bad weather personally. The glaciers were melting, the oceans would soon boil like soup. Earth was visiting its slow revenge on us, payback for a million insults and crimes committed in our names. We might stop using plastic grocery bags or lawn chemicals, but our private virtue did nothing to prevent the next huge industrial discharge of molten silt. We felt powerless and ineffective, but also entirely guilty.

  One bad year followed another. More and more of us lost jobs, houses, marriages. We were losing the future that had been promised to us, although now that we thought about it, we couldn’t remember getting anything in writing.

  But we could start over. It was our last and best hope, one we couldn’t be cheated out of. We could reinvent ourselves brand-new. New! We had always liked new things.

  We would cast off our old, damaged selves, peel back our layers of failure and sadness. The past would no longer count, would no longer have a hold on us. We would be born again, like the church people said. And indeed, some of us found our way to religion, different flavors of religion, new and passionate creeds. Some of us invested in ideas that had made other people rich. Some shed themselves of old wives or husbands and acquired different ones. And still others of us did what those down on their luck had always done: swept out our empty rooms and headed for a new place. As if “place” was what had defeated us.

  We would think of ourselves not as refugees but as pioneers. We would find somewhere in the world that wasn’t yet ruined, somewhere with clear skies and fresh mornings and orderly streets and people going about their business in expected ways. We would offer ourselves up, be recognized and welcomed there for our true worth.

  And in our new place, our new selves, we would be better, smarter, saner. We would not make the same mistakes. We would give up our bad habits, bad food, late nights, lethargy. We would shape up, trim down. Because hadn’t the entirety of our old lives been fat, bloated, and overstuffed with false desires?

  Although if we were honest, we had to admit there were a lot of our old unworthy purchases that we would miss.

  We would be calmer, wiser, braver. We would face down our fears. We would do a better job of loving. We would be more worthy of love.

  ONE

  Dad?”

  Gray morning. He’d fallen asleep in front of the computer again. The screen was gray too. “Yeah,” Sean said. His voice was more awake than he was. He swung around in his chair. His son was standing in the doorway, tall, shaggy-haired, peering in at him.

  “Yeah,” Sean said again. “OK, buddy.”

  “You’re supposed to call that guy.”

  “OK.” Sleep was racing away and for another second he let himself follow it, his mind unraveling back into a dream that still held him under some impossible weight. Then he pushed the dream away, shut off the computer, planted his feet, and rose to meet the god-awful day. “Conner? Do I smell coffee?”

  “I got some started.”

  “Thanks, bud.” Coffee, then he’d call that guy in Santa Rosa to see if he could get a few days’ work lined up, and if he couldn’t, well, that was the next heap of crap to deal with.

  “Conner?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Quit worrying.”

  Sean got the first of the coffee into him, then dialed. He could hear Conner moving around upstairs, getting ready for school. The phone in his hand came to life. “Hello, Mr. Nocera? Sean McDonald here, I was wondering if you could use me today.”

  He listened for a minute, then said, “Sure. Well thanks for your time. Have yourself a good day.”

  Nocera had already hung up, but Sean heard Conner coming down the stairs, so he pretended he was still talking while Conner opened the refrigerator and the cupboards, found a carton of chocolate milk, peanut butter crackers, a banana, and a handful of Oreos, which was either a weird breakfast or a weird lunch. “Dad?”

 
Sean put his hand over the phone, shielding his imaginary conversation.

  “I already fed Bojangles.”

  “Thanks. Knock em dead out there.”

  “You too.”

  He waited until Conner was out the front door before he put the phone down.

  Bojangles wanted in from the yard. He did his happy begging dance. “Scram, you con man,” Sean said, and the dog went to his corner and lay down without complaint.

  Another day of nothing stretched ahead of him.

  He showered, fixed himself some eggs, then sat back down at the computer. The whole world was in the computer, if you knew how to figure things out, and you had to believe that somewhere out there were answers, solutions. Work and money, mostly.

  He checked Craigslist for help wanted. It was the same old stuff—scams, mostly. Winter rain was going to start in soon and work would be even slower. He could fight the Guatemalans for landscaping jobs he didn’t want anyway. He could enroll at the community college to take computer courses and be qualified for a whole new category of jobs where no one was hiring. Last month he’d printed up five hundred flyers advertising himself as Handyman Services—No Job Too Small! Stuck them under windshield wipers in parking lots, came up with two jobs cleaning gutters and another hauling brush, and somebody who wanted a garage framed but didn’t want to pay white man’s wages.

  He’d get by. He always had. Things would turn around and you wouldn’t feel like you were beating your head against the brick wall of the world. It wasn’t just him. Times were bad for everybody, everybody had it coming. He guessed he was just a little farther ahead in the line than most people.

  Finished with the job listings, he let his fingers do the walking over to the personals. Women seeking Men. Like the help wanted, he’d seen most of them before. Princess looking for her prince. Where did all the great guys go? Friends first. Looking for something real. None of them attached pictures, which was smart, he guessed, but made you waste a lot of time. Here was a new one: Pretty Lady, 38.

  Maybe not pretty. Maybe not thirty-eight. Who knew? Sean clicked, and read:

  So how was your day? Mine too. I miss having somebody I can talk to.

  If you ever want to get out of the house some night for a while, you can pretend I’m your best friend and tell me all about it. Me: normal in most respects. You: tired of reading these ads.

  Well at least she had a sense of humor. Sean thought for a minute, typed in the address.

  Hi Pretty Lady,

  I hear you loud and clear. I’m a single dad. My son is seventeen.

  He already puts up with enough of my griping. Not that you have to put up with it either. But yeah, it would be nice if

  Here he paused for a long time. Nice if you could just lie down with a woman, have some naked good times, not worry about anything more. But you couldn’t write that.

  I could get together with you some time and compare notes. I’m 45, work as a carpenter, self employed, meaning I’m broke most of the time, but I can always spring for a couple of drinks. I’m 5’10” and as for looks, well, dogs don’t bark at me. I’m free most nights, hope that doesn’t make me sound like a social reject, ha ha.

  He signed it Sean, then sent it off before he changed his mind. She wanted to talk. He was hornier than an eight-peckered toad, but he guessed talking had to come before anything else.

  He took his second cup of coffee outside and sat on the deck. The day was going to work its way into hazy heat. The hillside beyond his back fence was a tangle of manzanita and scotch broom and blond grass. So dry the least spark would send it up in flames and then he guessed it would be good-bye, house—that is, if Bank of America didn’t get to it first, but there he was getting down again, letting the negative thoughts in, and so he put his feet up on the railing and smoked a little pot just to take the edge off things.

  It wasn’t the life he’d planned for himself but it was the life he’d grown used to, it had its comforts, and it would be a sad and low-down thing if he got kicked out of it.

  His phone rang. Sean dug it out of his pocket, stared at the screen. Floyd. “Talk to me.”

  “What are you doing, pencil dick?”

  “Your girlfriend.”

  “Want to help me with some drywall?”

  “When, today?”

  “Whenever you can get over here.”

  “Half an hour,” Sean said. Sat for a moment longer to clear his head, then stood and stretched, and even if his body was sending out its usual SOS’s (back, shoulders, elbow), he just had to get moving, work a few kinks out, tell himself he was thirty-five, not forty-five—well almost forty-six. Floyd would buy him lunch and throw a little folding money his way, a bad day turning into a not-bad one, and you had to have faith that things would work out eventually.

  He called to Bojangles and the dog leapt up, excited without knowing why, followed him out to the driveway, and ran in circles. Sean opened the truck’s passenger door for him and the dog jumped in, happy all over again for no reason. Dumb dog. Sean checked the toolbox, grabbed a couple of Red Bulls from the fridge, and headed out.

  Now that he had the day back on track, he was able to look out on the world with something close to pleasure. His house, his street, his neighborhood might be a little shabby, the whole town mostly a place where old hippies came to plant backyard pot and gradually fall apart, but he’d been here fifteen years now, almost all of Conner’s growing-up time, and it was home. He liked the who-gives-a-shit attitude of people who let their gutters drip rust, and strung Tibetan prayer flags across the front porch and kept too many cats. The younger ones he wasn’t so sure of, thought they were probably cooking meth or some other nasty business and Conner had better not ever get mixed up in anything like that, he’d beat his ass.

  But live and let live and anyway, there wasn’t a sweeter place on the planet than Northern California, with its soft winters and golden grass and yeah he guessed he was still a little stoned.

  Floyd was trying to get his house in shape so he could put it on the market. He was one of those optimistic people who thought you could still get money out of a house. Floyd’s house sat well back from the street in its own cruddy yard of foxtails and thistles. A pile of PVC pipe lay to one side of the driveway, along with two sawhorses and a sheet of plywood set up as a workbench. To the left of the house was scaffolding, and a blue tarp spread over the flat roof, and ten-gallon buckets of sealant. Also odds and ends like an orange heavy-duty extension cord snaking out of the open front door, a nail gun, a roll of fiberglass insulation, knuckle-shaped pieces of gutter. If you didn’t know any better, you might think the house was being dismantled, not built up.

  Sean parked and let Bojangles out to run around. Floyd was inside, in the bedroom at the end of the hallway. He’d taken it down to the studs and he was standing there like he was confused about where his walls had gone. He was a big guy who was going to fat, with a baseball cap jammed down on his ears and a beard that grew up practically to his eyeballs, so there wasn’t much actual face visible.

  “I just love what you’ve done to this room.”

  “Funny.”

  Sean popped one of his Red Bulls. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “I can’t believe you drink that shit. It’s nothing but chemicals.”

  “You get the sheets already, or are we going to Home Depot?”

  “I got everything. We need to do the cutouts.” Floyd took his cap off, scratched and pulled at his ears, replaced the cap. “This house is gonna kick ass by the time I get it finished.”

  “It’s going to be sweet, Floyd.” He would never get it finished and even if he did, it would still be a junky little undersized house.

  They’d moved the first sheet into the room and leaned it up against the studs when Floyd asked, “You ever think about taking vitamins, you know, taking some of those formula kinds?”
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  “What kinds, the manly ones?”

  “I’m just saying, it’d be nice not to have to get up and piss four times a night.”

  “You really should get that checked out,” Sean told him.

  “You mean that test where they shove a fist up your ass?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Would you let somebody do that to you?”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t tell you about it. Let’s hit it.”

  There was a rhythm to any kind of work and it always took a while to find it. You had to be patient with yourself until then, try not to bust up your hands or trip over your feet or break equipment. Just dig in, think it through, gradually let your muscles take over from your brain. He’d done plenty of jobs with Floyd. It made it easier to get to that smooth place where you used the least amount of energy to get a task accomplished. They sanded, did the cutouts for the electrical boxes, sanded again, then drove the screws, and even the first piece went up without too much of a fight.

  Sean peeled off his sweatshirt and filled a plastic bowl with water for the dog, who lapped up half of it and then went back to sleep on the cement floor of the back porch. Floyd said who told him he could use his fine china for the damned dog and Sean said he’d had to look around a long time before he found anything the dog would consent to drink from.

  It wasn’t a big room but it took them most of the day to get the drywall up, and that with only a couple of breaks for smokes and a quick lunch from the Taco Shack. Floyd brought out two Coronas and they sat in the patchy shade of the yard to drink them. Floyd dug out his wallet and handed Sean two twenties. “Here you go. Buy yourself something nice.”

  “You want me to come back and help you mud?”

  “No, I think I got it under control,” Floyd said, and by that Sean knew Floyd couldn’t afford to pay him for another day’s work, probably couldn’t even afford the little speck of cash he’d come up with. Everybody he knew was broke. It was beyond depressing.

  Sean said, “You know what we are? Modern-day peasants. The guys who used to live in mud huts and sleep in straw and live on potatoes.”