The Color Over Occam

by Jonathan Thomas

  Instead, I dialed up the Department of Labor to apply for Unemployment, banking on Westcott and company to pay me off, in effect, rather than risk answering questions about my dismissal. Or else they might choose to kill me as the lesser evil. Barring all that, funny if Workmen’s Comp proved the vehicle to drag everything out into the open.

  But these were the possibilities of a hazy future, sometime after the ages I squandered trying to file. For the balance of the morning, I was shunted to and fro among flacks who uniformly insisted it was someone else’s job to help me, and more than once I was put on hold till the third full replay of “Daniel” by Elton John obliged me to slam down the phone, only to punch redial after a momentary cooldown and submit to the same rigamarole all over again.

  At noon I desisted. Idiotic to believe I’d make it further than canned oldies during lunch hour, or to torture myself with canned oldies till 1 o’clock. And then I had to jump through the same infuriating hoops of misdirection for another everlasting stretch, till at a whim some world-weary civil servant saw fit to transcribe the sordid facts re me and my former livelihood. Tempting to fib and paint my departure as a layoff, just to see if City Hall would go along with it in following the safest, quietest course of least resistance. But by the same token, I probably didn’t have to lie, so why bother? Hell, did Mr. Marsh even know I’d been axed? Inevitably, the nasal drone hovering between me and my benefits harped on the problems posed by getting fired, but would look into the matter and set up an appointment for Tuesday when I’d come in for “adjudication,” whatever that meant under the circumstances.

  The clock on the wall read half past three as I hung up. Debated kicking myself for neglecting to brave the Department of Labor while I was still downtown this morning. Might have wrapped up this business before noon, or I might have butchered the same precious time in dismal offices as opposed to the comforts of home. Case in point, at work or in the dole queue, I couldn’t have responded to sudden fatigue by bedding down for a nap. A paltry ten minutes to relax was all I asked.

  My little lie-down ended in the dark, and it took me a while to place where I was. Today had exacted a dearer toll than expected. At least I’d skipped over those hours of twiddling my thumbs before Herb was back home. Slapped together a grilled cheese, the kind of supper I’d better get used to as a man of leisure, and plunked it in the ticking toaster oven while I tried the Metcalfe residence. Herb answered on the second ring. I forwent the niceties, loath to discuss how my day had gone. That could only be counterproductive. Let’s aim for the bull’s eye. Had he received any updates about closing the reservoir since this morning?

  Well, he hated being the bearer of disappointment, but the Resources Authority was holding off on a water ban or any official announcements. Only temporarily! Some test results hadn’t come back yet, and the directors were ordering more research with the aim of understanding the first thing about whatever the hell was going on down there. Made sense to him, and these guys must have been cognizant of the urgency involved, so don’t fret, it’s not like they were stalling or giving us the runaround.

  To burst his bubble of childlike faith would have been cruel. Still and all, his egregious blindness to the neon script on the wall began pissing me off. Granted, Westcott hadn’t spelled it out for him as he had for me. Not that anyone should have to spoon-feed a grown man the subtext of “ordering more research” or of waiting on test results, not when the initial findings were so scary. Nor was it incumbent on me, or pragmatic, to cuff the scales from his eyes.

  “Okay, sit tight you say, then we sit tight. Nothing to stop us from sizing up that derelict shack in the woods, is there?” Meeting him on any workday afternoon or morning would be fine, I volunteered. Babbled some malarkey about sitting on a lot of vacation days.

  A tropical system was due to move in tonight, he informed me, but was supposed to be out at sea as of Thursday morning. By 1 P.M., definitely.

  Great! See you at the Control Center at 1 on Thursday, then. Pretended I had to get going, to forestall Herb asking how I’d been. Sooner or later I’d have to admit how I’d joined the unemployed and what that boded for our “crusade.” Forty-eight hours to tinker with my phrasing couldn’t hurt.

  What the hell, meanwhile, was burning? I had studiously ignored everything during my chat with Herb, but now the odor pushed past my peripheral awareness. Had thugs from City Hall torched the house? From eye level to ceiling, the kitchen air was gray with stinging smoke. Plumes of it were streaming from the loose door of the toaster oven. Shit! My grilled cheese! I yanked the plug, threw open the windows, and climbed on a chair to silence the smoke alarm on the third obnoxious beep. Speared my blackened supper with a butter knife and dragged it to the counter. Scraped some of the charcoal off and ate the charred remainder over the sink, palatability be damned. Most people might have written it off as a total loss. I, however, had to get used to living under reduced means.

  Herb was right about that tropical system. And now that I’d been canned, at least I didn’t have to commute in a deluge. Or go anywhere. Plenty of time to brood in a conducive atmosphere. There lingered the riddle of what more I could do as a whistle-blower. Especially after my last best shot at going over municipal heads had misfired so abjectly. But honestly, these ruminations had become a parlor game for my conscience. Rainy-day busywork of the soul. Let’s see, I hadn’t explored talk radio. For the life of me, though, couldn’t tease out how to describe the looming tribulations without sounding like a “homegrown terrorist.” And no worse place to end up than jail under the Patriot Act as zero hour ticked down. Much as my ex-bosses would love the excuse to put me away. Nope, might as well roam the streets of Occam in a sandwich sign proclaiming The End Is Near!

  Tuesday’s lashing downpour carried on through Wednesday. Drove me deeper into my hapless funk till the mailman delivered a soggy bill from Pabodie Cable. For the last four weeks’ basic service. As if those bastards had never fraudulently cut me off for nonpayment. Grabbed the phone to give them an earful, then let it ride. What the hell, the cable company would likely be a bad memory before those charges went to collection. The upside of unspeakable disaster! In fact, guess I owed Pabodie one for goading me out of my brown study.

  22

  Midmorning on Thursday, dismal overcast was still shedding mist and showers. A broken promise of clearing. I warmed up the computer. Herb had sent an e-mail late last night, and as breakfast reading went, it was no aid to digestion:

  Jeff,

  Hope you’re still up for that excursion tomorrow. I think you would have spotted the house yourself last time if so much else hadn’t been going on. In winter when the trees are bare it’s visible from the reservoir shore, only a couple of hundred feet west of the yellow trail after it makes that steep descent and crosses a rocky glade of black birches.

  Also I had another thought about our hazmat site. Because of those human bones down there, which seem to have slipped the Water Authority’s attention, we’re dealing with a crime scene, which is something the State Police and/or FBI have to analyze. And bingo, we have our publicity after all. Will start making calls early in the morning, once I touch base with the guys in Boston to make sure they haven’t brought in law enforcement themselves. Kind of hard to imagine they wouldn’t have, and leave themselves open to allegations of criminal negligence. I’ll definitely be in by 1 anyway, so don’t worry about that. See you then!

  Good grief! Stupid of me not to have raised a stink about those human bones myself. Pestering the Water Authority again, though? Didn’t sit well with me. Any intention of his to enlist the Staties or the Feds might travel the grapevine back to City Hall, from whose thuggery Herb misconceived himself immune. Tried Herb’s home number. Got his voicemail. Left no message. Let’s not leap at too extreme a conclusion yet. One o’clock would roll around soon enough.

  Pulled up punctually at the Control Center. The drizzle had been less punctual about letting up. And Herb, according to his two co
lleagues, had never shown at all. Called in sick at 10. That sat worse with me than his e-mail, and so did the rangers’ signs of galloping decline since the summer. Maybe they’d aged twenty years in a season too incrementally for Herb to have noticed. Or else I was uniquely sensitized to how the freckly, beefier man had deflated, his arms dangling flaccidly when not in creaky operation, and to how his lanky, well-tanned comrade had parched into a caricature of brittle planes and sharp angles, like a mummy or a mangled catalpa pod. That “pollen” harassing them during path maintenance had plainly set up permanent occupation. It had recruited two more passive receptacles like the kid at Radio Shack or the benchwarmers at the auto glass joint, imbued with enough inertia, enough force of habit, just that much of their “old selves,” for guiding them to workplace and home again. To go through the motions till anatomy failed them. “I’ll be off on a little hike now.” I had refrained from stepping in past the threshold. “How’re you guys doing?”

  They favored me with a couple of bobble nods. As firmly planted behind their desks as dashboard ornaments. I hastened into the much less oppressive damp and gloom.

  I had my rough directions, my camcorder in a watertight case, and a plastic satchel of tawdry faux calfskin for any papers or artifacts worth looting. No trouble to follow the yellow trail’s dots, but grass and weeds and debris hadn’t endured a tidying hand for weeks, had they? A moot point where substandard labor ended, and overstimulation by reservoir water began.

  Similar lapses in upkeep must have been creeping inexorably across Occam, in broadcast studios, supermarkets, public transportation, banks, with a semblance of business-as-usual tottering along where employees were a mix of townies and the non-residents who could take up the slack for those who were “down with something.” Special sympathies went out in advance to those intrepid out-of-towners whose reward for holding down the fort might be their ill-timed presence in the fort when it went to hell.

  And how would the aftermath look? The yellow dots led to a possible preview. The path became almost impassably unkempt, and the off-trail vegetation more matted and intertwined, as if stalemated in one mass deathgrip. The taller oak and maple foliage that should have lent this dismal afternoon some red and yellow respite was already mottled brown. The cluttered path conducted me ’round the bend where I’d first stumbled upon Wil’s sweating, bedraggled coworkers, but now I met with before-and-after views of impending devastation. The forest and its understory still stood to my left. Straight on and to the right, however, the gray dust clung to the lifeless ground, and only trunks of mature trees languished upright, though leafless, mostly branchless, and of a necrotic black. August’s initial consumption of greenery around the cove had become voracious. The trail itself was free of dust, like some dubious demilitarized zone. The drizzle and humidity seemed to weigh down the powder. With less than sturdy confidence, I stole onward.

  On the verge of the steep incline, I had to reappraise the terrain and my nerve. Had never laid eyes on this panorama before, but it wasn’t exactly new to me. Then a flash of pattern recognition made my breath catch and rattle in my throat. I owned this view. It was leaning against my laundry hamper. Scarcely earned a passing glance anymore. The Blasted Heath! A nightmare scape whose essence had been captured as expertly as anyone had to by a Sunday primitivist of 1926. I committed myself to the descending path as to a dire prophecy. No more clumps of grass for footholds.

  Accelerated to the bottom without tripping onto my face, incredibly enough. Scanned past the boulders and birch trunks projecting from the dust, and a few hundred feet away, as described, was the house, its weatherbeaten, sun-bleached clapboard walls an arrestingly colorful brown amidst the ashen land and charcoal trees. With shallow breaths and a handkerchief pressed to nose and mouth, I emulated a weightless moonwalk into the realm of desolation.

  Halfway there, a barbed-wire fence delayed me. It ran to the vanishing point to either side of me, but hung slack like a detuned fretboard, and the highest wire drooped at hip level. Dereliction of upkeep these days must have included straightening posts and tightening boundaries. A steel sign adorned with a few rusty bullet holes was clamped to the nearest iron stake, and it warned, “Posted! State Property. Unlawful to Trespass Beyond This Point.” Didn’t think they’d mind making an exception for me at the Control Center. Pushed down on the wire midway between barbs and lifted one leg over, and then the other, in even more exaggerated slow motion. Thank Christ the gray dust wasn’t slippery when wet!

  I soldiered on. Extraordinary how a ruin that would have huddled sinister and forbidding in the healthy forest of past months had become a haven, a godsend today. And extraordinary how the gambrel roof, for all its absent shingles and swayback beams, hadn’t caved, and how the door at the center of the squat, bulging façade was attached by even one hinge, and how several courses of brickwork remained to indicate the dimensions of stout central chimney. Window frames, less remarkably, were altogether vacant, and to one side, the solid rust door for a fieldstone bulkhead was stuck straight up, generously admitting the elements and anything else into the cellar. The granite stoop was so worn that rain had pooled in the middle. I vigorously scuffed off vile dust to left and right of the puddle. Grasped the door by a hand on each side and eased it around to let myself in. Couldn’t help sighing with relief, prematurely or not, at being out of the dust, and out of the resurgent rain.

  Tensed up again at the patently obvious, that I had barged into the den of someone or something feral that might spring from any direction. Damn my eyes for not adjusting more quickly to the gloom. They probed back and forth, bored into shadowy recesses, finally gave me leave to breathe easier. I had the place to myself.

  Either the vandalism of natural processes or aborted efforts to refurbish this as Parks Service HQ had reduced the interior to one big room. The ponderous chimneystack alone bridged the space between floor and ceiling, and in cavernous Colonial-era fireplace, raindrops pattered into residual soot. The floor was an uneven wasteland of fragmented, rotten plaster and lathing and horsehair fill that had crumbled off the four walls around me or mapped the downfall of dividing walls. Whatever wallpaper and plaster clung to vertical surfaces was overwhelmingly black with water stains, and scraps of plaster between the ceiling’s naked beams were likewise darkened. Toward the rear, at the end of a hypothetical front hall, a cupboard-like enclosure must have supported stairs to an upper half-story, but only a few splintered bottom steps survived. A marvel, and a testimony to the strength of a simple box frame, that this shell had survived at all.

  That same solidity, to its discredit, had trapped the stink of mildew, of a pervasive, nameless putrescence, and of a lifetime’s piss. Which in its sordid way bespoke inhabitation, along with the straightback chair at a humble oaken table with hand-turned, bulbous legs, and beside it, a Victorian trunk with convex lid and brass ribs green with tarnish. Thankfully, the furniture was a mere pace or two across the squalid, perilously sagging floor.

  A viscous film of plaster dust and grime overlay the table and everything on it. Black-and-white photos of quaintly clothed people, letter-size envelopes and their scribbled contents, postcards of beaches and main streets, and newspaper clippings were barely readable and nothing I cared to touch. Had to transcend my aversion, though, in light of something portentous about a sheaf of various papers, veterinary bills, feed store receipts, Grange announcements, splayed out like a poker hand but fastened at one corner by a twisted loop of baling wire threaded through ragged slits inflicted by a knife or screwdriver.

  My skin couldn’t help but crawl as thumb and forefinger hoisted the bundle by its wire loop. Turned it tentatively to and fro in midair. Aha! A positive development, for once. Blank backsides had functioned as stationery. An elderly hand had mostly won the struggle for legibility, and blue ink hadn’t faded too badly. Best of all, for however long these sheets had been lying facedown, they were largely free of the disgusting film. I carefully lowered the pages to the table and
perused them from a standing position, bending the minimal distance to bring penmanship into clarity, refusing to acknowledge the ache that soon radiated from between shoulder blades. The manuscript seemed to commence in media res, or else some of it had come detached:

  What it left behind was like a mustard seed, weak and tiny yet destined to blossom into something a millionfold more powerful. I told that surveyor in ’26 I’d be glad when the valley flooded, but it didn’t help. The thing was never going to drown, though I prayed the water might slow it down or confuse it. Then I find that Nahum Gardner’s and the Blasted Heath aren’t even the first places to go under. Now the blight has that much more time to spread toward me inch by inch, and the color those extra months to cross the heath and bedevil my dreams and my will as it pleases. I am fearful about it, but I can’t hold anything against the state engineers, who have their obligation to the reservoir’s best interests and not mine.

  Up until the U.S. entered the Great War, Canucks, Poles, and Italians tried tilling the abandoned farms between my land and the Gardner well. The thing haunted them and sought me out less often in those years. In hindsight I should have moved away then, but I couldn’t raise the gumption to do so when the problem belonged to other people and mostly left me alone. Afterward, as soon as the foreigners fled, it was too late, and the color came prowling every week or two. I was glad to be a widower without issue, lest what had happened to Nahum’s family would have happened here as well. This was still by and large how matters stood in ’26, when I had tricked myself, or the fiend had tricked me, into thinking I had the situation in hand, and that I was holding off the hateful thing on my own.