Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 3

  Ivy looks up at the bald-top mountain with all those openings in rock. Like hot mouths. And something else up there which is now reflecting light as the sun has moved. Something metallic and moving. She snaps a couple of frames of it.

  She backs away farther and speaks searingly. “You are used to having your own way here . . . apparently.” She shivers. “Your own little kingdom?”

  He puts out his hand, pleading.

  “Mr. St. Onge . . . could you comment on the fact that so many people believe this place has a good-sized stash of firearms?”

  He raises one eyebrow. The eyebrow that is over his most crazy-looking wider eye.

  Her fear and anger and lack of caution always get so mixed up. Ivy, young Ivy, ruthlessly brave, stinging, prodding. “Maybe a bunch of your people . . . the men . . . are in those trees now with guns aimed at my head?”

  He almost smiles.

  Ivy presses on. “Sure . . . much can be rumor. But you know the old saying, ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ So what are you trying to hide from the public?”

  He looks at her hands, the camera, the tape recorder. And their power.

  She waits another few moments, filled with his silence. “Okey-dokey,” she says cheerily, then turns from him and starts back down the hill, keeping to the fresh path of squashed weeds. She feels the possibility that he has pulled a gun from under his shirt, squatted now in the weird carousel shade to get a solid aim at her back. A frothy hysteria claims her. She hurries now, grasses and vetch squealing, popping. Bracelets sizzling. In a moment of sheer terror, she turns to look back. He is even closer behind her than she had guessed. His hands are empty. No gun. He gives her a rather dopey smile. Gordon St. Onge, whom a whole town forgives. Well, almost a whole town.

  Again she one-handedly tosses her camera up, a bit of a juggling trick, then snaps off three more frames of him as he strides heavily toward her. His big smile is getting CLOSER.

  “Okay, buddy!” she hollers. “What have you been trying to tell me?!!” She is walking backward now, camera at the ready. “You see, I don’t get it. You aren’t clear!!! Your sign language is . . . is fuzzy! I’m sorry!”

  No verbal answer from the man. Just more goofy big smile. And now, yes, he thumbs his nose at her! And then he pretends to take her picture, pantomiming the handling of a camera with a great long zoom lens.

  “What?! What?!” she demands. “I can’t hear you!”

  Now he is romping toward her, keys jangling wildly, head low, shoulders hunched.

  She turns and runs like hell. She remembers with horror that her sporty little car is trapped between the ash tree and his truck.

  When she at last settles into the deep scorching bucket seat, she rolls both windows up, locks the doors, waits.

  He has slowed down, a nice little stroll, she inside the closed-up sporty car, sweating.

  He finally saunters up to her window, taps the glass, then stands with his thumbs in the pockets of his ratty jeans, arms akimbo. She can only see him from the waist down but she can tell by his stance that he is truly happy and satisfied with himself. And for the first time she gets a look at the belt buckle. A raw homemade thing made of copper. A child’s rendition of that ancient face of the sun.

  The volcan temperature inside the little car reminds her of something. Torrents of sweat move down her neck and ribs. Her fish tattoos have a new satin sheen, more oceany. Her eyes sting. Yes. The Korean prisoner of war camp. A little gagging cry works around the inside of her neck.

  He taps again. She gives the window crank a half twist, window opening an inch.

  He asks, “Want me to move my truck?”

  “Yessssss.” Disgustedly.

  In her rearview mirror, she watches him.

  He climbs into the cab. Seems like a few weeks before he pulls the door shut. What’s he doing? He slaps on a dark-blue billed cap, looks at himself in his rearview, adjusting the cap fussily, stroking his mustache, straightening the points of his shirt collar.

  Time passes.

  There’s the clank of truck gears shifting into neutral. It rolls slowly without his starting the engine.

  The crunch of the tires moving over gravel in the sleepy heat reminds Ivy Morelli of all the past summers of her life.

  Progress.

  Flashlights with a “name brand” are on sale, a buck apiece. Sarah Ridlon in Florence, California, buys five of these. Supermarket cashier runs them over the computer, stuffs them in the bag. Little does Sarah know that none of these work except one. As each flashlight is now tossed in the trash, Sarah will say, “They just don’t make things like they used to.” She doesn’t even jokingly threaten to blow up the flashlight company. Therefore she is a good person. She is healthy. Only insane people get mad. Sane people take it and take it and take it and take it and . . .

  Experts.

  According to Dr. Roger Gould of the American Association of Mental Health Providers, “As Americans learn to adjust and deal with a faster, more high-tech, more mobile world and a less family-community-oriented society and falling dollar, cynicism and anxiety are expected to peak and level off.”

  The grays.

  There are no mouths in our faces. Mouths unneeded, due to this, that grays are not individual but mixed and moored to one another, always whole. The moving mouths of Earthlings, wet and sticky and purveyors of fibs, are amazing to us, as is their ability to receive fibs without detection.

  The screen croons.

  Record-breaking lovely day. Beach weather. Everyone is feeling hot weather joy and shopping joy! Oh, joy! Oh, joy! Soda pop, lotions, fast cars, hair blowing in the wind.

  Present Time, out in the world.

  The multinational corporation Duotron Lindsey, with profits totaling 250 million last year, has laid off 11,000 people in the Midwest and 17,000 in California in its plan to restructure the two locations, primarily to part-time no-benefits positions, and at other levels, “contracting out” (or “outsourcing”), as well as relocating a section of the Chester plant to the women’s prison in Pontooki. All this in order to fulfill a projected 400 million dollars for next year, and of course, an even more ample and sexy figure for the year after that, in order to continue tantalizing investors who, like small children with TV remote controls, are so grimly playful. Varroooom!

  History (the past), 1009 B.C.

  The masters. Sometimes they are like ice or fire or beast. Honestly brutal. Sometimes they are tricksters and pose as good news.

  In the newsroom.

  She is staring at the keen, ready-and-waiting screen of her computer whereupon she must ply the words of her weekly column. Something about the opening show at the Moore Gallery, by that photographer who does things like can openers and razor blades juxtaposed with wrists and ears against cardboard or wallpaper in strong flat light. But she can’t get her mind off the St. Onge school story, though there really is no story. Only supposition. Only gossip. And what else? Something tough and frightening, like her own voice at the age of seven, bawling. Something beyond the scope of language, beyond all gesture.

  Ivy’s column is usually, well, yes, fun to write. And her features, if not fun, are gratifying to her, but the columns are always fun, opinion, her opinion, her humor, her scoldings, her likes and dislikes. Politics. Bad habits of other people. Terrible restaurants to avoid. “That eye steak sat on my stomach like a lonely rock.” Movies and books to savor, mostly to avoid. The ways people can irk you in traffic, what Ivy calls “the mule trains” or “a mule train about to happen,” which are those “partially evolved” people with their “brake lights in your face all the time.” But especially politics. “Another Scary Day at Our Legislature starring Representative Deirdre Ladd and Senator B. Paul Nason.” Except that Ivy makes up insulting nicknames that play up noses and slouching, stuttering, blushing, tendencies toward chapped lips. Ivy personally despises the entire legislature. And not for political reasons exactly. You can hear it in every phrase, the raffish HAW HA
W head-shaking dismissal of their humanity, this, the voice of Ivy Morelli, having fun.

  But as she sits now, staring not at the computer but out the window at the other windows of the six-story building beyond, Ivy isn’t having any fun.

  She glances around the newsroom over the waist-high “corrals” at all the firm backs there working, faces lighted by the deathly blue-gray of each screen, the executive editor and the Sunday editorial page editor in a corner talking . . . a stranger arriving, a man who limps, carrying of all things, a lawn-type campaign poster from an election previous to Ivy’s birth. Everyone stops what they are doing to admire this poster and to do the anecdote exchange thing.

  Two phones pulse simultaneously.

  And now a siren in the street beyond the sealed-shut windows.

  Ivy digs around in her bag and finds the folder with the old clippings about Gordon St. Onge, including another one she sniffed out after her trip to Egypt yesterday. This is one of him speaking to the legislative committee on “Education and Cultural Affairs” at the State House four years ago, a hearing on stricter school testing. Interesting how they show him at the batch of mikes, dressed in what looks like a light blue denim work shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps and a hunting vest with the heavy plaid wool side worn outside, the blaze orange underneath but showing at the edges, his hair, unlike yesterday, combed neatly, the beard less gray, the eyes calm with an intelligence both patient and contemplative, both hands open as one would do in showing the width or length of something, a huge trout for instance. His hands are clean.

  Interesting how the photo caption reads: Egypt resident Gordon St. Onge speaks his concerns at this morning’s committee hearing on school testing. While in the article there’s no mention of him at all, let alone any reference to what he had to say even as an unnamed person. All people who are quoted are named and they are predictable and hardly worth quoting. The whole article has a sleepy jejune business-as-usual don’t-bother-to-read-me feel, even though the subject matter could be seen as monumental.

  How did Gordon St. Onge’s quotable quote get overlooked? Certainly he had said something weird. She is sure of it.

  She squints hard at the grainy newsprint face. “Speak to me!” she commands.

  She lifts the phone receiver to her ear and taps out Gordon St. Onge’s number, her cold cunning eyes shining with single-minded resolve.

  But nobody answers the St. Onge phone.

  An hour passes, she tries that number again.

  No answer. Not even an answering machine. Just those chill suspenseful rings that are like when you watch a set of mousetraps with a mouse circling and sniffing . . . the yet-to-happen snap! The mouse circles and circles, sniffs and sniffs.

  It can drive you nuts watching this.

  Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hello.”

  This is a voice with the majesty of an older mother.

  Ivy asks for Gordon. She does not introduce herself, but this seems not to matter because the woman with no hesitation explains, “They’re all over at Berrys’. They’re finally settin’ the tiles for that well.”

  “You mean a well . . . like for water?”

  Ripply, soft laugh, western Maine accent, “Yes, dear.”

  Ivy goes for broke. “Hey, are there any kids working on this well job?”

  The woman laughs again. Tender wide ripples of hm-hm-hm’s. Then silence. Then, “Who’s this calling?”

  Ivy is tempted to lie. To make up the name of a possible long lost friend of Gordon’s. But you know, that’s just not professional. Or is it? If quotation marks around paraphrases are okay these days, maybe anything goes.

  But the woman is on guard now anyway and the conversation thins out into a harmless exchange about unusually hot weather for June.

  Again.

  “H’lo.” At last. His voice. Too deep. Too beefy.

  “Mister. St. Onge.” She enounces each word and letter carefully.

  “Hey, Ivy.” Deeply.

  Ivy sighs. “Caller ID, right?”

  “No. Just basic black.”

  She gives a nonprofessional snort. Not a pretty sound.

  He grunts happily. Not a handsome sound.

  The newsroom is in a hearty carpet-softened clamor this morning. She covers one ear with three fingers of her free hand. She stares at her computer, the zinc-colored glow that connects one human consciousness to the consciousless computerized heartless whole planet. Someday, they say, everyone will have a phone with a screen, and on that screen you will be able to see the face of your caller or callee. For instance, now it would be Gordon St. Onge’s face and he could hide nothing. And, well, Ivy could hide nothing, for instance, her stark urgency, and the tapping of her trimmed nails on the desk. Total ID.

  But if you have faith in progress, you would not see this as a threat. You would see this as a kind of superextension of the heart, you know, all peoples of the world holding hands, metaphorically, all around the wonderfully round planet, the Eskimos in fur, the Africans in brilliant orange-and-yellow wraps, Hawaiians in flowery muumuus, then those heated purple flashes of Bedouin folk, turbans and tunics and restless dark eyes, and those others out there with the little white caps, and those in dress suits, and those in sweatshirts. And all the faces would be singing, laughing, sharing secrets, passing on info about this Great Information Age, and yuh, doing business. Hearts to hearts. Eyes into eyes across millions of little flickering computer screens . . . and of course electronic language translators. Access! Sweet, sweet world peace!

  “Mr. St. Onge, do you think you’ll ever change your mind about an interview? After all, you changed your mind from yes to no before. Maybe soon, you’ll go from no to yes. We could straighten out a lot of misconceptions the public might have about you.” She simpers, hoping that it comes off as charming, but probably not. Why can’t Ivy be charming? Control, Ivy, control.

  “Hounded by the press,” he says with a weary funny-ish growl.

  She laughs robustly. HAW HAW. She then insists, “This isn’t the New York Times exactly . . . or the National Enquirer. Just a friendly local paper . . . community stuff, you know.” She realizes at once how insulting and patronizing this is, the Record Sun being the biggest thing around and owned by a national chain. She sighs. Her heart sinks.

  He is quiet but for the rustle of moving the phone receiver around a bit.

  She pictures him in some sort of drippy cave, not the grandma-grandpa gray farmhouse with its pink print door-window curtain and blowsy ash tree. She presses, “If I drive over again, it’ll be at your convenience, of course . . . so you can hide everybody again.” She laughs. A tight sugary laugh, which even a two-year-old would know is phony baloney.

  He is quiet. Reeeeal quiet. Then speaks. “Ivy, what’s the angle on this piece? If you were to write it today on what you surmise, what would you tell your readers?”

  “Oh . . . adventures in education. No buses. No basketball courts. No soccer fields. No students.”

  Sounds like he’s sucking his teeth. Or maybe drinking something. Beer or something. Rat poison. Hemlock. With his followers. Everybody on their knees. She remembers his pale eyes, that distracted crazy look, the frequent squint-blinking and nervous tic, the eye that almost turned in when he scrutinized her, the bunched bottom teeth, the awfully sloped shoulders, the heaviness of his walk when he walked versus his rather athletic hump-backed bull-bear routine and nose-thumbing. How does he fit the image of the striking charismatic patriarchal male who gets those three-hundred followers to drink poison for him and God? Or to hold out together behind the thin walls of their home against the murderous FBI? What would you give God’s prophet? Your money? How about your wife? Ah, your teenaged girls? Your life? Indeed, his deepening voice pulls Ivy Morelli’s ear harder to the phone. His tricky charm definitely has more honey than hers, his awkward blunders and doggy humility being creepily believable. Could it be real?

  But what about that place behind his voice, so hollow and dark? Maybe there ar
e no children anyway. Maybe he hadn’t hidden them because there never were any. And maybe the older woman’s voice answering the phone yesterday was really him doing an impersonation. Maybe all the calls of those men and women leaving messages to complain about Gordon were Gordon. Maybe the whole thing is a joke. His joke. Ivy sighs. “Gordon, what have you got against the press?”

  “Think about this,” he instructs her, his voice softening, deepening, softening, deepening. “There was a man named Harry Grommet. He was in a rush, always in a rush. So he traveled light. Small car. Small suitcase. And he found this to be less costly as well, to keep everything light. One Saturday morning, agreeing to a family outing but in a rush as always, he gave himself only five minutes to pack. And only one very small suitcase. It was a terrible and ghastly ending for all. You see, the wife and kids and golden retriever didn’t fit comfortably into a small suitcase. In fact, it was grisly. You see?”

  Ivy laughs, but only half a laugh. A single lonesome HAW. “I . . . ah . . . don’t get it. Come again?”

  “Ivy,” he says softly. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time. There’s just so much at stake.”

  “Sure, I know. So—”

  “Ivy . . . I’m sorry. I can’t do any interviews. I’m sorry . . . I don’t like to disappoint you, but—”

  “You’re not disappointing me,” she tells him ice-cubily, “It’s just a matter of your being dishonest and sneaky. Or not being man enough to face the public. And if I go ahead and print this story without your side of it, you won’t be happy.”

  He speaks now in a thick clay voice. “My side.” Then like feet in a dirge. “There was a woman named Josephine Files. She wanted to photograph two chickens having a picnic. But being unable to find agreeable chickens, she settled on two gorillas. These were huge gorillas. And not agreeable at all. And they wouldn’t fit on the tiny checkered picnic cloth that Josephine had set out for the chickens. The gorillas left. The picnic cloth was left quite wrinkled. And then she took the pictures. Showing the pictures to her kids, she said, “These are my chicken pictures.” The kids, who were used to being told that certain things were other things by Josephine, smiled and everything was okay. After all, who else could they believe? And the sun smiled and the sky was blue. And the children—”