Moo

by Smiley, Jane

  33

  Why?

  THE PERPLEXITY of Mrs. Loraine Walker at the acquisition of the Seven Stones Mining Corporation by TransNational turned out to be shared by the Wall Street Journal. Although the Journal devoted to Seven Stones only a single paragraph toward the end of a long article about the decline of the great mining corporations, that paragraph made some interesting observations, in Mrs. Walker’s view. Previously, as noted by the running-dog-lackey-of-the-imperialist-class writer, TransNational had been known for acquiring small companies just as, or just before, its innovative techniques or products gained general corporate acceptance—TransNational owned more than twice the number of patents owned by the average conglomerate of the same size. Arlen Martin was well known for his disdain of “stumbling white elephants,” into which category he consigned every company from Exxon and IBM to Reynolds Tobacco and General Foods. He had been quoted as disdaining someone he knew who ran Jell-O. “There’s a guy,” he had said, “who spends his time thinking up salad recipes and telling folks that canned pineapple in green Jell-O won’t kill them. Me, I’m not in the maintenance business. I’m in the revolution business.” But the Seven Stones Mining Corporation was an old and top-heavy company, doggedly working nearly played-out seams in the teeth of declining, you could say collapsing, profits. Its main feature of interest, detailed by the writer with typical Journal-style covert admiration, was a colorful history of stealing land, buying elections, possibly arranging the death of a UMW official, intimidating government inspectors and agents, and resisting mandated safety measures.

  In addition, according to the rest of the article, there wasn’t much of a future in mining, at least in the U.S. The Mesabi Range, the Upper Peninsula, the Mother Lode country, Wyoming, Montana, what with reduce, reuse, recycle, even the biggest companies were saying, “Why bother?”

  Of course there was Kennicott. Mrs. Walker’s lips thinned to a disapproving line. Digging a lead mine in Wisconsin. Hmm. Right on the Flambeau River. Hmm. Though Mrs. Walker had spent her childhood rather east of there, outside of Shawano, she knew the Flambeau River, the pristine, immaculate, one-of-a-kind, dark deep teeming chill delicious avenue through the forest Flambeau River. Lead was something Mrs. Walker preferred bound up in ore, safe in the ground. She didn’t like it in paint, in trash, in soil, in the air. She certainly did not like it seeping into the Flambeau River. Kennicott. Her eyebrows lowered and approached each other. She made a note to call one of her cousins, who still lived on the reservation.

  But the riddle at hand was Arlen Martin. She accessed the computer files of the geology department. She found no outgoing correspondence addressed to any of Martin’s companies, no reference at all to Seven Stones Mining. With some reluctance she admitted that she was, at least for the time being, stumped. To console herself, since it had taken so long for the library to find and print out her article, she accessed the athletic budget and transferred enough money out of there to the library budget to pay for two more two-thirds-time work-study students in Reference.

  Part Three

  34

  Why Not?

  AS HE FINISHED up his report for the TransNationalAmerica Corporation (he always got down to contracted tasks right away, another of his virtues), Dr. Lionel Gift reflected upon how satisfying it was, once again, to do a good job for a good cause. Of course the report, as Dr. Gift well knew, was only one of the services he had contracted for. They would hardly have approached a man of his intellectual and moral stature for a mere report. Once he was finished with the report, then the real work of wheedling, persuading, and setting a good economic example for his friends and admirers in the Costa Rican government would begin. And it would have to begin soon. Seven Stones Mining was toppling faster than Martin had foreseen, and it was costing the other branches of TransNational a fortune to keep it out of bankruptcy. Martin had a thing about bankruptcy, one of those unsophisticated Depression-boyhood things that Dr. Lionel Gift found poignant and vulnerable in the man. And anyway, he was right that if the banks took hold, there was plenty of costly equipment that Martin might not be able to transport out of the country to, say, Costa Rica.

  And if you wanted to dig a gold mine under the hemisphere’s last primeval cloud forest, you couldn’t do it without costly equipment.

  In Dr. Gift’s considered opinion, there was no rational case to be made AGAINST such a gold mine, and a significant case to be made in its favor. He had spent the last two weeks accumulating that case grain by grain, point by point, and as a result, he himself was convinced. It was a pleasant feeling.

  On the other hand, Dr. Gift had weaknesses of character just like any other man, and he knew that one of these was that he could not have made so persuasive a case for, say, a molybdenum mine, a cobalt mine, a manganese mine. Even a silver mine. Precious as these minerals were to the world of modern technology that Dr. Gift revered, what had sustained him through the composition of his report was the thought of that hidden thread, that filament of sunshine and prosperity running through the lightless depths of ore—GOLD! It reminded him of the universe, how rare and priceless light was in that vast blackness, how humans, who lived upon that light, had to seek it or die. Now geologists at Seven Stones Mining had discovered a golden seam at the very top of the South American granodiorite intrusions, an unlikely and unlooked-for offshoot of those legendary lodes now dug up and abandoned. The land around the cloud forest that International Cattle, another TransNational subsidiary, had quietly bought up surrounded the seam but did not contain it. This ray of light and life ran under the forest, rising to the surface here and there, producing for the birds and monkeys and snakes golden-flecked streams, sparkling soils, glittering motes on the floor of the forest. It was inspiring in a painful, anxiety-making way, the thought of that gold going unclaimed, unpossessed. It mocked consumer insatiability. Dr. Lionel Gift couldn’t stand contemplating it for very long. Neither could Arlen Martin. It was a bond between them. Better not to know about it.

  But they DID know about it, and knowledge demanded action.

  It was also better that no one else know about it. The deposits contained duller metals, molybdenum, for one, and the forest, of course, had other profit potential in its medicinal plants, wood products, and tourist allure. For the preservation of these, sound management demanded that the sort of low-level rush of individuals possessed of an insatiable but inconvenient desire for gold, as well as of sieves and pickaxes, etc., that California and Alaska had seen be avoided at all costs. As a man of the nineties, Dr. Gift made these environmental points a prominent part of his report.

  In fact, very few persons were on a need-to-know basis in regard to Dr. Gift’s report. The grant money, of which the university would get half (10 percent less than the university’s usual take, a perk that recognized Dr. Gift’s unusual contribution to university life), would go through Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek’s office directly into Dr. Gift’s G-account. Had he written this report as a paid consultant rather than a grantee, Dr. Gift would have received more money, but, of course, it was Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek who had set them up and circumvented Ivar (Dr. Gift perfectly remembered the chicken feed controversy). Dr. Gift would never cheat a middleman or middlewoman. The market, in fact, the divine market, was the inspired creation of middlepersons everywhere who had nothing to offer but reliable intuition about what prolific producer needed what insatiable consumer and vice versa.

  Nevertheless, as a grantee, Dr. Gift had to supply a copy of his report (and later a summary of his persuasive activities, especially if he planned to travel on the university expense account, which he did) to Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek’s office. The importance of secrecy was great enough, Dr. Gift felt, that once he had composed it on his word processor, once he had printed out three copies—one for himself, one for Martin, and one for Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek—he erased the file (what a chill that gave him!) and stored the copies in his fire-proof, theft-proof, tornado-proof, and flood-proof household safe. It was scary, in a
way, having only printed copies. It reminded him of ephemerality, human mortality, the transience of objects. How quickly he had gotten used to the safety of storing his documents all over the campus—in the computer archives, on his own hard disks at the office and at home, on a backup disk, as printout, and, finally, in journal articles. Storage itself enhanced the perceived value of information, didn’t it?

  He made a small note to that effect for his knowledge and information paper.

  35

  The Consequences

  MARY HAD a fever of 102, and every time she tried to stand up, it felt as though chills were cascading down her body. So, she was lying in bed, covered up to her chin, with a cool washcloth on her forehead that Keri had put there as some sort of rural folk remedy. Nor would Keri allow her to take aspirin, hadn’t she heard of Reye’s syndrome? Only Tylenol, but they didn’t have any Tylenol, so Keri had gone to get some.

  Otherwise Mary would have left the room and gone to the lounge, in order to avoid listening to Sherri whine over the telephone to her mother and father, who had just received her midterm grades.

  She whined, “It’s really hard here. I wasn’t exactly prepared.”

  She whined, “I did learn things. I haven’t been wasting time.”

  She whined, “I know it costs a lot. Geez, I know exactly how much it costs, for Christ’s sake.”

  She whined, “I’m sorry. No, I haven’t learned to talk that way from my roommates.” She looked over at Mary, and made a face. “I’m just frustrated, is all.”

  She whined, “I know it’s a privilege you and Daddy didn’t have. Well, I am sorry.”

  She whined, “I am. I really AM. I thought I sounded sorry. I tried to sound sorry.” A pause. “Because I AM sorry!”

  Mary’s grades had not gone home, because she had gotten no F’s or D’s. She had even gotten a B– on her calculus test, which meant that statistically (in her calculus course, the computer grading system spit out a merciless curve) she was above the fiftieth percentile, which meant that more than 50 percent of the students had an even more tenuous grasp on calculus than she did, which was, in its way, almost frightening. At least it was if you had a fever of 102 and discrete, unpleasant ideas were rolling around in your head like steel pinballs, making a lot of noise and lighting up various feelings, all of them negative.

  Sherri whined, “Well, it’s hard for everybody. Nobody did great, not even Diane. I don’t see why you’re so mad. Daddy isn’t that mad, and he’s the one who’s paying.”

  She whined, “I know. I’m sorry. I AM sorry. I know. I know.”

  Sherri had gotten two F’s and a C–, which meant that her grade average was .94, not even a D, and that if she didn’t bring it up, didn’t in fact double it, she would be out at the end of the semester.

  Sherri whined, “Yes, my hair is red. I dyed it. Can we talk about that another time?”

  She opened her little refrigerator and took out a pack of cigarettes. Then she brandished a mineral water in Mary’s direction, but Mary shook her head. An open one that she hadn’t been able to finish sat on the desk beside her bed.

  Finally, Sherri whined, “Well, I AM going to do better, okay? I promise. I PROMISE. Okay, then. Okay, bye.” She hung up and went over to the window, where she lit her cigarette. Between puffs, she held it out the partially opened window. When Mary assayed a little cough, she said, “I know, I know. Tobacco is bad for the soil, bad for the workers, bad for the public health, and bad for the body. I’m a sucker.” This litany, made up by Keri, was something the other girls had employed to persuade Sherri to stop smoking, but so far it hadn’t worked.

  She whined, “God! She just went on and on.”

  Mary felt like her bed was rocking, or her head was sloshing. One or the other. One or the other. One or the other.

  Sherri said, “You going to throw up again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sherri stubbed out her cigarette and ran for the bucket in the maintenance closet in the hall, where Diane had left it to dry after washing it out from the last time. She set it by the bed, then she felt the washcloth, which had heated up, and carried it over to the sink and wrung it out in cold water. She seemed to share this belief in the efficacy of the washcloth. She and Keri had been faithful and firm about keeping it on Mary’s forehead.

  What with Mary’s virus and Sherri’s grades and some kind of snit Diane was in about Bob, the girls had been spending more time together and it hadn’t been so bad, really. Okay, Mary admitted, they were taking the opportunity to hide out in their room, to not go forth in the various ways that demanded bravery of them, or at least fortitude. They were eating chicken soup made on a hot plate, and popcorn, and Cheez-it crackers, and tortilla chips with salsa. They were doing their hair and their nails and their laundry. They were turning down dates. Mary had even told Hassan not to come see her—he could give the stuffed grape leaves somebody in married student housing had made for her to Keri.

  Keri had turned into the mom, and that was okay, too. She made the soup and the popcorn, picked dishes off the floor and washed them, took Mary’s temperature, called Student Health for advice, set the example of how to huddle in close quarters by keeping her bed made and her clothes folded and put away. She had bought the mineral water. Soon she would be back with the Tylenol. The cocoon was warm and comfortable and private. Outside it was chilly and gray. Mary closed her eyes.

  Sherri went over to the window and lit another cigarette. She held it out as far as she could, but it was starting to rain. She bent down and put her nose to the crack of the open window. The moist, cold air felt good on her hot cheeks, but she didn’t want to go out into it. She didn’t want to do anything but smoke and sit around. That was her problem. She could see that Mary was falling asleep. It would be a perfect time to go over to her desk and at least read her English assignment, a relatively painless activity compared to the others. But she couldn’t move, except to bend down from time to time and feel the outer chill. She knew this sloth was a sin, a sin to match all the others she had committed since coming to school—lust (she had slept with three different near-strangers, one of them twice), gluttony (she had gained at least five pounds going out for pizza after supper), covetousness (one of the guys she had slept with was going with a girl from her high school, and she’d only gotten interested in him because Doreen had always dated the cutest guys and made a big deal of it, which pissed her off), anger (every time her mother called), envy (she kept it quiet, but it circulated—Keri could eat anything, Mary had great clothes, Diane, at least until lately, had fallen into this great sex thing), and pride. Well, pride. Pride was what kept you from admitting you had any problems, even when everybody knew you did.

  The thing was, whether or not virtue was in fact its own reward, it did seem like sin was its own punishment.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t think about changing her ways. She did. But the thoughts came to her idly, without conviction. Just as now she thought idly about reading her English assignment, she often thought idly about stopping smoking, which she had, in fact, just started, and didn’t like all that much, she thought idly about going to classes, she thought idly about going to the library, she thought idly about going to her computer station and accessing her geology problems. She thought idly about not taking two desserts when she went through the dinner line. The food in Dubuque House was good—everyone helped cook and one of the rewards of multiculturalism was a spicy and delicious diet. The thing was, she had let down completely. The thing was, every thought of her family served to show her a way to let down even further than she had suspected was possible. It seemed like every brick wall that she ran into, that was supposed to hurt her enough to shake her up and give her some conviction, just turned into a door and she passed through it into deeper inertia. She stubbed out her cigarette and lay back limply on Diane’s bed.

  The thing was, one day last week when she’d gotten to her English class, the teacher and some of the students
who always sat in the front row were laughing about a memo the teacher (whose name Sherri still wasn’t quite sure of) had gotten in which the students were called “customers.” Now it was true that Sherri had come in late, and also true that she owed the teacher two papers, so she hadn’t wanted to attract the woman’s attention any more than necessary, but she’d found the laughter confusing at first, then aggravating. When the teacher tried to widen the discussion by asking what the others thought about the difference between “students” and “customers,” Sherri had maintained the same appearance of benign ignorance and noncommittal good will that the other freshmen had, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t have an opinion. In fact, they all had the same opinion, which they expressed to one another after class—if they were paying all this money, then they must be customers, and if they were customers, then why was that particular English teacher so bo-o-o-o-ring? Factory reject? Candidate for manufacturer’s recall? Obsolete model? Was the total tedium of their class due to mechanical failure or pilot error? Well, it had made them all laugh afterward in the hall outside of class. But now, limp on her bed, Sherri decided it wasn’t funny. The fact was, she wasn’t getting what she was paying for, which was—what? She couldn’t define it, exactly. But she knew this limp, irritable feeling well enough. It was the sensation of consumer dissatisfaction, and it was soooooo annoying.