Sandhill Street: The Loss of Gentleness

by Rob Summers

Chapter 4 Wittily Plots Revenge

  “There’s no problem I can’t solve,” Wittily Dread said to herself unconvincingly. She was quoting her high school art teacher, who had told her this in relation to her sculpting project. When Mrs. Modern had said it, it had seemed true enough, but looking at the present state of her work, Wittily felt defeated. Everyone in the class was to sculpt an interpretation of the concept of freedom, and accordingly Wittily had reached down inside herself for creativity and inspiration and had come up with—this. Though she was talented, her clay modeled effort looked like a stiff and ugly imitation of the Statue of Liberty. It was worse than derivative, it was junk. She had brought this junk piece home to try to fix it before it was due—in just a few days! It was worth a third of her grade for the semester.

  Of course, the assigned subject was part of the problem. What did she know about freedom? She had spent her life fitting in, adjusting, and pretending. Yeah, tell her to sculpt something about prison, or fear, or slavery, and she would do just fine. Or how about collapse and Relocation, after what had happened only a few days ago to her friend Slothie and the Sluggard family? Maybe that catastrophe, with the loss of her friend, was what was impeding her inspiration.

  Of course, Wittily had not believed what Quake had reported seeing in the Sluggard backyard. She had a theory, one her parents had hastily and gratefully adopted from her, that the lizard faces the kids had seen had been Halloween masks worn by some prankster policemen. In the dark it had worked so well that the Sluggards had been frightened and had screamed a bit. OK, more than a bit. Even from across the street in Leasing House it had sounded awful, and Slothie’s terrier had howled beside Wittily in sympathy. But masks were the explanation, a prank carried too far. Everyone knew that Relocation was a necessary and humane measure that took people to some distant country where there wasn’t such a severe housing shortage. And demonic lizards don’t exist. Quake insisted they were real, but he had been looking through the eyeholes in his mask, and a narrow opening in a fence, and the darkness. Quake was an excitable and easily frightened boy. He and the other kids had fed on each other’s fear, that was all.

  After taking another depressing look at her ‘Freedom,’ she decided that a break might help her to refocus, so she went downstairs. As she passed through the living room, her little brother and sister, Grovel and Snivel, were watching a “Munsters” rerun. Through the open door of his study she could see her father seated in an easy chair and reading the newspaper. His stereo was on, droning Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

  When she detoured to the kitchen to tell her mother what she was doing, she was reminded by Chamelea to be back in time to eat, since the Mammons would be dining with them. “It’s very important for business,” her mother said. “And don’t forget we all have to be at the Bon Voyage for the Sluggards at seven.”

  Wittily groaned. “I’ll never get my art project done, Mom. But yeah, I know we have to go.”

  She took a jacket from a hallway closet and went out the front door. Uh-oh. Here was Prevarica Leasing, wearing a black sweatshirt that bore the message ‘It’s all about me,’ and followed as usual by several neighborhood kids. They were approaching the front of Dread House—probably to get Grovel and Snivel to join their play group.

  Prevarica had recently become a sort of cousin to Wittily, because Wittily’s Uncle Mockery had married Prevarica’s widowed grandmother Arctica. Wittily regretted this union for two reasons: first because Uncle Mockery, the Dread family’s black sheep, had moved into Leasing House, which was right across the street, but also because it meant that Wittily’s parents were always pressuring her to be civil to Prevarica. They didn’t seem to realize that Prevarica interpreted civility as weakness, as an opportunity to score points against you.

  “Well, I was right, Wittily, wasn’t I?” Prevarica challenged her before the older girl had a chance to say anything. She pointed to the empty lot next door. “You should have believed me.”

  “Why? Because you hit on a wild guess?” Wittily said. “Anyway, I don’t want Grovel and Snivel hanging around with you this evening, especially if you’re going to be saying there were monsters in the Sluggards’ backyard.”

  “Why would I talk about monsters?” Prevarica said. “Quake, he’ll tell all kinds of stories like that. There’s no such thing as monsters.”

  This was unexpected. “What did you see then?” Wittily asked and had a split second to realize that she had made a mistake. Never, never give Prevarica a normal conversational opening. She would always use it to take advantage of you.

  “Wittily believes in monsters!” Prevarica crowed to the others, and the smaller kids laughed on cue. “Wittily, you’re much too old to believe in monsters.”

  Wisdom had trailed in at the back of the group. Wittily said to him, “What about you? What did you see?” She could expect truthfulness and politeness from any kid raised in Grace House; she had come to know that.

  But Prevarica gave Wisdom no time to answer. “He makes things up like Quake,” she said quickly. “And like you!”

  Wittily tried never to lose her temper with Prevarica, but this was too much. “Listen, the rest of you kids,” she said hotly, “I’m sick of seeing you following Prevarica around and believing everything she says. I think it’s about time we broke this up. Go find something else to do besides listen to Prevarica.”

  At this, Prevarica tapped her younger brother Rage on the shoulder, and as if by pre-arrangement, he began to scream in fury.

  “You’re hateful!” Prevarica shouted at Wittily over Rage’s bellowing. “You’re stupid! On Halloween you called me a liar! You don’t know anything! I know what I’m talking about! Go home, go inside! Now!”

  Wittily despaired of making herself heard over these two. She didn’t want to back down to a couple of kids, but she very much did want to go inside and get away from them. They were vicious little animals, not to be reasoned with. As she turned to leave, she caught a glimpse of Prevarica’s face, lit with manic and triumphant glee.

  “Yeah, go back in!” the little girl shouted. “Go away!”

  All this noise had drawn Grovel and Snivel out of the house. When Wittily tried to grab them and pull them back in with her, they avoided her and ran to Prevarica.

  “Be back here in time for dinner with the Mammons!” Wittily yelled after them.

  Back in her bedroom, Wittily came close to crying. She was very angry, and considered possible means of revenge. She knew she was a lot smarter than Prevarica, and she understood how the neighborhood kids’ minds worked, so she was confident she could break Prevarica’s hold on them. Whatever she did was for the good of those kids, including her own little brother and sister. Casting about in her mind for some way to belittle the Leasing girl, she remembered the neighborhood children’s love for chanted insults. She took a piece of paper and started writing.

  Prevarica Leasing is slender and sly,

  With a laugh on her lips and a roll to her eye…

  She wrote on with increasing satisfaction until dinnertime. Her father kept a little copy machine in the basement, and she intended to make enough copies for every kid in the neighborhood. She did not, of course, tell her parents what she was doing.

  Mammonette Mammon ate lightly at the Dread’s table, demonstrating how she had kept herself so thin well into her fifties. She was doing most of the talking while her husband, old Mammon, slumped in a wheelchair beside her.

  “No, no, Conformity,” she said to Wittily’s father, “there are always ways around these things. You owe some money, yes; but your business is sound. We’re always looking for sound businesses to partner with.”

  “Your sound is firm!” said grizzled, fat Mr. Mammon. “Firm is sound. Sound as a dollar. Ha, ha. Sound firms to dollar with.”

  Mammonette waited patiently till he had finished and returned to his steak, th
en continued from where she had left off. In the few minutes the Mammons had been in the house, Wittily had begun to observe that, if Mr. Mammon had not been fabulously rich, they all would have had to admit that he was cackling with senility.

  When an opportunity came, Wittily’s father put in a few anxious words. “Yes, that’s great, Mammonette. It’s an honor that you would think of Dread Printing for a deal like that. But I’m being honest with you when I say that our recovery depends on Mayor Strawman’s getting reelected. We not only need that government contract renewed, but we could use additional City work. Anyway, the polls for the primary don’t look so good for Strawman, so I’ve got troubles.”

  “No troubles you can’t solve!” said Mammon loudly while pointing to him with a fork that dripped steak sauce. Wittily started. This sounded too much like her art teacher’s motto.

  “Maybe you’re not thinking flexibly enough, Conformity,” Mammonette said. “Who relies on one party nowadays? Let’s talk about the other candidate, Dr. Therion.”

  “But I don’t know him.”

  “Oh, but we do,” she said, glancing at her drooling husband. “He’s a personal friend. And let me tell you, Mr. Power puts a lot of confidence in Dr. Therion. He’s going to win, and when he does, he’ll revitalize this town.”

  “Power has changed sides then?”

  Mammonette chilled her smile, as if to suggest a faux pas. “No, he’s on the side of the City as always. It’s Strawman who you might say has changed sides, because he doesn’t have Mr. Power’s backing. Whoever isn’t with Power has changed sides, you see?”

  Wittily thought she did see, but this certainly was nothing like what she had been taught in civics class. Had the influential Mr. Power changed Mayor Strawman from one side to the other? She read her father’s face as he struggled with this and came to terms with it. Conformity Dread had never been one to protest against political reality.

  “And this Therion, he’s strong on small businesses?”

  “On every kind of business.”

  “No business like show business!” Mammon erupted merrily and immediately returned to his plate.

  “He’s, uh, foreign born?” Conformity asked Mammonette.

  “Yes, and no law against that, is there? He has an accent. His background is, I’ll grant you, a little mysterious even to us. From somewhere in Eastern Europe, I believe. But he’s immensely talented and intelligent, and able to make this City hum. A no-nonsense sort of person. Conformity, I’m in a position not only to get you into partnership with Mammon Arts, but also to—informally, mind you—assure you that the City contract can remain yours.” She smiled knowingly. “Nothing on paper, of course, about the contract. You know how these things have to be kept quiet until the proper moment.”

  Conformity nodded. “Well, that sounds great, then.”

  “Yes, it is. Only, let me be honest with you, it’ll cost you. She wrote something on her napkin. “That’s what it takes to be partnered with us.”

  Conformity leaned over and looked at the figure she had written. His eyes widened. “But I tell you, Mammonette, I’m already in debt. I can’t go back to my bank and ask for something like that. And the risk!”

  “You want to play with the big boys, don’t you?” she asked. “Then you take a few risks. But what really is the problem? To ask an amount like that under ordinary circumstances would be fatuous, it’s true. But we can guarantee you the contract that will keep you in business. You see, most of the money is not for us. It’s really for you, it works for you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because Mammon Enterprises is about to make a hefty contribution to Dr. Therion’s campaign. Now if that contribution were heftier yet, if we were able to tell Dr. Therion who his good friends are… Well, you see.”

  Conformity’s face was flushed with anxiety. “I’ve already contributed to Strawman.”

  “Fine. It doesn’t matter. That was then. Therion needs television ad dollars now. Of course, you could just contribute to him directly, but—”

  “But Strawman would throw a fit and maybe ruin me with some of my other customers.”

  “And maybe even cancel your City work orders before Therion takes office.”

  Conformity leaned back and took a few deep breaths. “But I still can’t raise the money.”

  “Not with your bank you can’t. You’ll—” Mammon interrupted with a drunken sounding chorus of “Sixteen Tons,” and she waited till it died off. “Naturally, as hush-hush as this has to be, you’ll need to get the money from Mammon Loans.”

  Wittily’s keen mind reeled at this. How could her father pay the Mammons with money borrowed from them? What kind of economics was that?

  “How much interest?” Conformity asked quickly. When Mammonette named a figure, he relaxed visibly. “That’s more than fair,” he said.

  “We want a friend, a partner,” she said.

  Conformity smiled. “So that’s it? That’s all I have to do?”

  “Just come around to my office in the Mart tomorrow,” she said, “and we’ll have some papers for you to sign. Also, keep in mind that a real friend of the administration may also get to have a City seal placed on his house. I wouldn’t be surprised if your neighbor Mr. Leasing is honored that way before the year is out. It’s very visible, great for business, great for contacts.” She looked at her watch. “Are you going to the Bon Voyage for your neighbors? Mr. Mammon and I like to put in an appearance at these things. You are? Good, we’ll see you there. Maybe we can talk some more then if you have any more questions. Personally, I feel happy about this evening.”

  Conformity began to catch up on eating, for his plate was almost untouched. While he chewed he looked across with a smile to Chamelea and Wittily. Chamelea smiled back but Wittily did not. It all sounded fishy to her.

  Nevertheless, she did her best to forget about it when she returned to her room after the meal and took up again the poem about Prevarica. She finished it with pleased vindictiveness and, just before it was time for her to dress for the Bon Voyage, ran down to the basement to make copies. For once she was glad to find that Grovel and Snivel had shown up to find out what she was doing, the dear little snoops. They were to stay home this evening with a sitter, Goodness Orchard from down the street, so Wittily could make use of them while she had to be away.

  “Here,” she said, handing them a stack of copies. “While we’re gone to the Bon Voyage, I want you to give these out to every kid in the neighborhood.”

  Each snatched up a copy and began to read aloud. Before long they were giggling.

  Prevarica Leasing

  HER PERSON

  Prevarica Leasing is slender and sly,

  With a laugh on her lips and a roll to her eye;

  With a skip to her step and a slight overbite,

  She trips forth with all troubles surmounted.

  But the oddest thing is that she’s always been right,

  As often as anyone’s counted;

  As often as anyone’s counted, my dears,

  With all of her troubles surmounted.

  HER PARROTS

  Prevarica Leasing is angry at those

  Who watch little TV and put on the wrong clothes,

  But she loves everybody with clothing and views

  Just the same as Prevarica Leasing’s

  (Or as like as her parrots can come), for they choose

  To promote her with praises unceasing.

  They promote with sweet praises increasing, my dears,

  All the views of Prevarica Leasing.

  HER HATRED

  The world spins around, and the seasons go by,

  And some houses fall down, and some rivers go dry,

  But her house and her river are not going to fail,

  For she is who she is, and that’s final;

  And she hates those who say that her stories are frail

&nb
sp; Fabrications of paper and vinyl.

  Some creations are paper and vinyl, my dears,

  But she is who she is, and that’s final.

  HER SCORN

  She chops and she flails with the steeliest words,

  And dismisses with scorn as completely absurd,

  And cuts off in silence, and locks from her mind

  Anybody who questions her glory.

  For she makes herself cleverly deafened and blind

  When she lawfully sticks to her story.

  She truthfully sticks to her story, my dears,

  While they callously question her glory.

  HER INSIGNIFICANCE

  Prevarica Leasing is little and weak

  With a nose like a sneak and a voice that goes squeak,

  And her brain’s in a knot, and her temper’s a fright,

  And her stories make everyone doubt her.

  But the oddest thing is that she thinks she’s so right

  When she’s only a punk and a pouter.

  She’s only a punk and a pouter, my dears,

  So why are we talking about her?

  Why are we talking about her tonight?

  Prevarica’s only a pouter!

  She carefully explained to them the meanings of the more difficult words and then sent them on their merry way.