The Locals

by Jonathan Dee

  “There’s nothing to handle, that I can see,” Hadi said. “People are allowed to assemble. Is there some question about a permit or something? Do we even have those here?”

  Constable said he thought not, though he could check.

  “Forget it,” Hadi said. “Obviously if there’s any destruction of property or anything like that, you’d have to make an arrest, just as you normally would.”

  “I’m a little concerned they’ll go after the cameras,” Constable said.

  Hadi waved his hand. “Those cost nothing,” he said.

  Then there was a silence, in which Constable could see, or feel, the engine of Hadi’s cognition.

  “Why did you come to me with this?” Hadi said at length. “Was it just, you know, ass-covering?”

  “Sir?” Constable said.

  “It’s okay, I can understand that. But why do you think this guy flatters himself that I’m watching him? Why does he need a fake name?” His tone was colorless and calm. “Projects come and go, you know. Interests come and go. I took this on because I have a genuine affection for this place, and because frankly democracy doesn’t really work anymore—that’s something I guess you’re not supposed to say in polite company but it’s objectively true. I wanted to help it out if I could. I have the means to do that, but that doesn’t make me some kind of mad dictator. It just means I have means. You know?”

  Constable made a noncommittal face, since he wasn’t really sure what his boss was asking.

  The First Selectman sat up a little straighter in his chair. “How selfish soever man may be supposed,” he said, “there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”

  Whatever that meant, he delivered it in a different voice: slower, almost theatrical. There was another long pause, so long Constable grew worried he was expected to say something.

  “So thank you for seeing me,” he offered, and feinted toward the door.

  “Remind me what you make?” Hadi said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What’s your salary? What do we pay you?”

  Constable’s mouth worked soundlessly.

  “I’m asking because I’m wondering about the feasibility of hiring more of…you,” Hadi said. “Just thinking out loud about the cost.”

  The door to the outer office was open, had remained open the whole time. “Thirty-nine thousand four hundred dollars,” Constable said, feeling humiliated, though not by the amount. “Plus benefits.”

  Hadi looked relieved. “Okay then,” he said, “good. Good to know. I mean not that you aren’t doing an excellent job on your own. But should it come to that. Thank you.”

  Constable saluted and went back to sit for a while in the little office—really just a desk and a chair and a door that closed—the Town Hall provided for its resident trooper.

  When the eleventh came, he made sure to position himself in a spot on the Main Street sidewalk with good sight lines to either end, so that he could see the cameras, and the cameras could see him. A few people smiled and stopped and asked him what he was doing there. Every moment, as the afternoon wore on, he waited for the appearance of some homemade sign, or the sound of a chant or a megaphone, or the advent of some group of locals or outsiders marching in an organized fashion around one or the other corner. The foot traffic in town seemed the same as it always was, on a weekday, in the off-season, after work. You couldn’t tell what was in their hearts, of course, not even the one middle-aged guy who came up and asked him, sort of hopefully, if there was anything unusual going on. Maybe the curious had come out and been warned away by his own presence there, by the authority of his uniform, like a scarecrow. Or maybe it was all a phantom, this whole notion of unrest, and as afternoon turned to evening no one was registering Constable’s presence there at all, except of course the cameras.

  —

  Evidently one of Gage’s sons had plugged up the kitchen sink and then let the water run overnight. The cabinet and the floor beneath it were ruined, Barrett reported, and the subfloor might be a goner too. Did Mark want him to start tearing stuff out, or to go to the new property in Sheffield, as previously planned, and work on the renovation there? Mark sent him to Sheffield and drove to Egremont to inspect the water damage himself, trying unsuccessfully to calm down the whole way. What was wrong with people? That was the bug in his business: he had built-in protection against their being financial deadbeats where the rent was concerned, but not against their utter lack of personal responsibility. How could you let your kids get so out of control? It’s not like Mark knew nothing about this subject. He had a kid. She didn’t vandalize his house. It wasn’t so hard.

  He knocked on the door and Gage opened it about an inch. There was a chain on it that Mark had not ordered to be installed. Belatedly Mark was surprised to find him there; why aren’t you at work, he wanted to ask him. “Good morning,” Mark said civilly. “Mind if I come inside?”

  “Why?” Gage said.

  Why? Mark, who often struggled for authority, in this case felt the authority of ownership surging through him quite naturally. “I understand you’ve damaged—further damaged—this property, and I need to see it. Let me in.”

  “I’d really rather not,” Gage said. “I mean, this has become a situation now. And you’re, you know, the landlord.”

  “You let Barrett in, right?”

  “Who’s Barrett? Oh, that dude. Yeah, he came in. That’s different.”

  Mark wanted to ask why this was, but the tenant was not the one setting the terms of this discussion. “Look, this is ridiculous, just open the door, please. I can’t possibly make a decision about repairing the damage you’ve caused until I see it.”

  “I didn’t cause it. My son caused it.”

  “Well, aren’t you responsible for your son?”

  “Well, aren’t you responsible for me? I mean you rent this place to me, to my whole family, we have no other place to go, you have the power to put us on the street, or to not do that. So you’re responsible for us.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Mark said. “I’m talking about you being a father, man, about looking after your own child.”

  “My child has problems,” Gage said. “I’m sure your kids are perfect.”

  “You know what?” Mark said. “I don’t give a fuck about your kid’s problems.”

  “And there it is,” Gage said. He sighed and licked his lips. They stared at each other through the crack in the door.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” Mark said.

  “Nope,” Gage said. “I mean you can bring the sheriff back or whatever. If you want to go next-level.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense!” Mark said.

  “I know it doesn’t. But I got my pride, still.”

  What Mark wanted to do was break the door down. The impulse was almost overwhelming. He felt that the clear moral rightness of his case should endow him with the necessary strength. It was his house, and the guy wouldn’t let him enter it. He knew enough to know the law was on the tenant’s side. The law was always on their side.

  He took a deep breath. “The next time I come back,” he said, “will be with the trooper. You’ll be served with an official eviction notice, and you’ll have a set amount of time to vacate the apartment completely or the trooper will enter the premises and put you and your family and your belongings out on the sidewalk.” He wasn’t sure about any of this, never having gone through the process, but it all sounded right. “Do you understand?”

  “I thought you were a good guy,” Gage said sadly. “I thought you were looking out for me. Think about it, man, what it means to have the guy who owns the roof over your kids’ head to be, like, your enemy. But hey, you do you.” He softly shut the door, and then locked it.

  Mark got back in his truck. He was due in Sheffield to check on Barre
tt’s progress in dividing the units there. On the drive over, he tried to think about the necessary steps for eviction—figuring out which court had jurisdiction in Egremont, calling the lawyer he’d used to incorporate his business to see if he handled this type of work or knew anybody local who did—but he couldn’t: instead his mind kept returning to fantasies, detailed daydreams in which the encounter just ended had ended instead with a physical confrontation, and Mark, left no other choice, took the house back by force. In his mind’s eye he saw the tenant taking a swing at him, which he ducked, backing away, saying “You don’t want to do this,” then Gage maneuvering him into a corner or against the porch railing and raising his fist again, at which point Mark dropped him with one punch to the chin. He saw this so clearly he ran a Yield sign and got honked at by someone in a Lexus merging onto 7 just north of Great Barrington. He could see the driver cursing at him. It was completely Mark’s fault but Mark gave the guy the finger anyway.

  The wall Barrett had put up to divide the living room in Sheffield looked good enough; it was never going to look great from a design standpoint, it was completely inorganic, but it was sturdy and Barrett had done the best, probably, that anyone could have done. Barrett seemed to see in Mark’s gaze that he was not thrilled, but he took that to be about the quality of his work: “I mean, we could do crown moldings there or something,” he said.

  “No,” Mark said.

  “Make the eye follow the new line, you know. Not that much more labor, really. I should have asked you before.”

  “No,” Mark said. “Fuck it.”

  He went out onto the still-handsome porch and sat on the top step. Barrett followed. He sat with a loud groan of relaxation, cracked open a can of beer at ten thirty in the morning, and said, “Fuck what?”

  Mark looked at the beer and put his chin in his hand. Part of him was offended Barrett didn’t offer him a beer of his own. He told the story of his trip to Egremont, and how Gage wouldn’t let him through the door. Barrett listened sympathetically while polishing off the can.

  “I can’t calm down,” Mark said, “is the weird thing. I just keep fantasizing about beating the shit out of this guy. But I know violence isn’t the answer.”

  “People always say that,” Barrett mused. “But what if it turns out violence actually is the answer?”

  Mark ignored him. “I mean where do guys like this come from?” he said. “Where does that come from, that sense of entitlement? Were you raised that way? I wasn’t raised that way. Just no respect for anything. Total self-interest.”

  Barrett appraised him. “Respect,” he said. “That’s the key. You’ve hit the nail on the head, dude. The thing people forget is that there is a physical component to that, you can try to deny it but it’s always there. It’s the bottom line. Instinct, man. Instinct. It still controls us.”

  Mark’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m back to the idea,” Barrett said, “that you should have hit him.”

  “Come on.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Because for starters I’d get sued, or arrested, or both.”

  “And is that really what rules you, even in a man-to-man moment like that? Fear of the law? Are you thinking about the law right now, this moment, while you and I are talking?”

  “No. Hey, just out of curiosity, was that your first beer of the day?”

  “Because I think you are more of a man than that. Even I, who don’t really like you all that much, can see that there’s a real man somewhere deep down inside of you, that’s just been suppressed by this, by this modern world. Stand up.”

  He took Mark by the arm, not roughly, and Mark, too baffled to resist, stood up with him, on the top step of the porch.

  “Tell you what, man,” Barrett said. “You clearly need to go at someone. And I know how that feels. I’ve been there. I’m there all the time. So go ahead. Hit me. Take a free one.”

  “What?”

  “Go ahead,” Barrett said kindly. “It’s okay, I swear. I know it won’t hurt.”

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” Mark said. He turned and stared across the road at the garage there, the undergrowth, the wildflowers. His eyes stung.

  “I’ll make it easier for you,” Barrett said. “Look at me.” Mark turned to look at him, and Barrett slapped him hard across the face.

  “It’s okay,” Barrett said supportively, his arms down at his sides. “You know you want to. Come on, let it out. I promise it’s okay.”

  Mark couldn’t speak right away. He could feel the redness spreading across the left half of his face. Gingerly he walked down the porch steps, where he was out of Barrett’s reach, then turned and stared back up at him.

  “You fucking lunatic,” he said, “you’re fired.”

  Barrett sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, that’s disappointing,” he said. “I actually had my hopes up there for a second.”

  Part of the internal mythology of Mullins Day School was that it was always about to get much harder. Every year you’d hear, from upperclassmen and teachers alike, how the following year was the academic watershed, the year your homework load would turn overwhelming and stay that way, so you’d better enjoy your childish paradise now, while you could; but for Haley that transition never really happened. Not that she was some prodigy or runaway genius. Her grades were always good. They had an Honor Roll there, which wasn’t that hard to make, but she was never first in her class, or even close. She hated class rankings anyway. They seemed designed to encourage the kids to compete, but the kids would not be outfoxed by such tactics. It had become fashionable to mock the class rankings (the middle-school office had even stopped posting them on the main bulletin board, because they were so routinely defaced) and there were rumors that Grace Waltz would refuse to accept the Top Scholar award at the Prize Assembly that year, as a protest. Top Scholar hadn’t been determined yet—it was still only March—but everyone knew it would be Grace.

  By seventh grade Haley suspected that the promised descent into drudgery was never going to come, that the increase in what was expected of you academically was incremental and not overwhelming and that that must have been by time-tested design. And then she began to understand a central truth of Mullins Day School, which everyone said was one of the three best and most prestigious and certainly most expensive preparatory schools in the Berkshires, which ran K–12 and sent some of its grads to Ivy League schools every year (if not as many as in the old, pre-diversity days): the whole point of the school was not to go there, but to have gone there, to be from there.

  So in a way, the important work was already done. This changed how everything looked to her. After the school’s Holiday Concert back in December, after she’d taken her place in the Middle School Chorus and sung songs from a conspicuous variety of cultures to a group of parents and teachers with maybe one or two nonwhite faces in it, she and Tom Kerrigan and Boyd McDowell and Amy Andersen and Dustin Cates slipped through the fire door behind the theater building and shared a joint in the freezing cold. They only had the one: it had come from Tom’s older brother, who was a junior. Haley was pretty sure Tom had stolen it from him. Maybe he had some fantasy that it made girls take their shirts off and thus was worth the almost certain beatdown whenever his brother next counted his stash and figured it out.

  They were passing it around, burning their lips, trying and failing to inhale, when an amazing thing happened. An adult opened the fire door, maybe thirty feet away; the light from behind him kept his face in shadow, but it seemed, from his stillness especially, like he was looking right at them. They all froze—Boyd tried to hide the lit joint in his pocket, which under different circumstances would have been hilarious—and then after a few seconds, the man just turned and went back inside the theater and let the door click shut behind him without a word.

  Amy started crying. “It’s cool,” Tom said, “everything’s cool,” but the frightened way he said it made it worse tha
n saying nothing. Haley got a ride home, as planned, from Amy’s parents, and spent a sleepless night; winter break began the next day, so she wasn’t sure what to expect or when to expect it. She was too nervous to call Amy or Tom or the others, even though she knew it was crazy to think they were being surveilled or anything.

  They waited through the break, through Christmas and New Year’s, and through the first day back at school in January, and the next day was the first day they allowed themselves to accept that nothing was going to happen to them.

  “He had to have seen us,” Tom said at lunch, smirking, but speaking in a whisper. “There’s no way he didn’t see.”

  “And so?” Amy said.

  “And so he decided he didn’t see it,” Haley said, trying to understand the ramifications of what she was saying. “He saw it by accident, he wishes he hadn’t seen it, he’s going to pretend he never saw it.”

  They didn’t want to deal with problems, at that school. They didn’t want problems at all. They didn’t want to be a school where seventh graders got expelled for smoking pot at the Holiday Concert. And so they weren’t. Poof! It was all about seeing what you wanted to see in order to make happen what you wanted to happen.

  “It’s just like Iraq,” Haley said.

  They stared at her and burst into relieved laughter; they were used to her and her non sequiturs. “What,” Tom said, “the ever-loving hell are you talking about?”

  The more she tried to explain the comparison, the harder they laughed. She wasn’t a political person, but it did amaze her how little interest her friends had in the world outside their world. It was like you had to make an actual, conscious effort to be so unaware.

  That whole attitude, that sense of innate achievement and proud ignorance of whatever did not affect them directly, was tolerable when they were all at school, but whenever she got together with even her best friends from Mullins on a weekend or over vacation, out in the real world, it embarrassed her and she lost her taste for it. In any group of more than two, it never took long for their elitism to emerge. In their body language, in the things they said. Even if they were sitting in Boyd’s TV room, or in Allegra Durning’s house, where her parents barely seemed to live. Even just watching a movie, or pretending to enjoy some drink somebody had tried to make, a Negroni or a Black Russian or whatever else you could make from a bottle that didn’t get checked that often.