by Evan Dara
He looks off, smiles, briefly shakes his head. A few seconds later, he raises his palm to the side of his face, at the hairline. But, you see, I got somewhere now, he says. Well, I’ve moved in, in a sense, it’s a nice old house up on – well, you know, let’s leave it address unknown – but the owners are gone and no one’s using it – except now someone is. So I’m there and, man, I ain’t going anywhere. I got me a place to put my lever.
He smiles again. So if you’d ever consider, he says. I mean I’m trustworthy, that’s for sure. And I ain’t afraid of muscle aches, and, well, I heard your shit – sorry – and, like, hoo, I just go running … To, I mean … Sorry …
Carol reaches across the table, takes Ian’s hand. Ian looks at her. His hand is warm, raging warm, from the ordered teacup.
—Well sir, you know, now that sounds pretty good. Makes sense, is reasonable, is rational, I think I’m going to go ahead and do it. They’re offering insurance against a dip in the value of your home. It goes down beyond a certain bit, they make it up. Fifteen percent below appraised value, you get something. That’s valuable protection right there, and the flyer gives some rates that don’t sound too bad at all. Sounds quite good, in fact: almost nothing, a few dollars a week. Edsel Insurances been on North Willard since I was a kid, they know the lay of the land here, they’re uniquely attuned to what we need. Yes sir I’m going to give this some serious consideration and then, I think, I’m going to do it—
—Now please please no please don’t tell me now Crow Books, too …? I loved that place, the paperbacks shoved behind the other paperbacks on the metal racks because there wasn’t space, the jostly sense that they just want to have all those nice books in there for you, waiting for you if you want – need – to discover something, and the bad lighting, and the rumply chair with its bottom rupturing stuff, and Mr. Shelling and his rectangular moustache and no employee recommendations and discovering Denis Johnson and Virgin Suicides and I just can’t, I can’t—
—Why, did you see – was that Henry Jenkins over there? Was that Henry Jenkins toting that big rucksack bag over his shoulder down Sherman Street and chewing on fruit leather from his other hand and then just knocking into a man passing in the other direction, and I know that passing man, he works in Ann Taylor – Don, I think his name is, I think his name is Don – just knocking him out of the way and clobbering him and spinning him down til he had to grab a sharp wire wastebasket so he wouldn’t hit his face into the pavement …? Then Henry just continuing on without looking back or saying any kind of pardon me – where’s his manners?, where’s what all he learned around here? – and then just keeping moving forward until he stops – then he stops, he stops when he’s about to pass some man wearing penny loafers whom I don’t believe is from A-burg, I’ve never seen him here, and then Henry pulls himself and his sack to the side and lets this man walk by all easily? Well, I’ve known Henry Jenkins twenty-two years, I know his coat and his shirt, I don’t care what it means for the housing prices—
—I mean, is there going to be enough around here? With Global closed and Kui’s Asian closed and that small market on Archibald Street, the one that used to be open Sundays and at night, where am I – am I going to have to drive all the way across town just to buy groceries? Spend forty-five minutes in my car going and dodging and parking just to get basics and essentials? I don’t care what anyone says, and I voted against Proposition Fifteen, the library extension – the city has got to step in here, step in here hard, and make sure we have, that there is, that we have—
—Now Jonah you wanna take a little wheeze here? Just one little taste …? OK, OK, here you go, sip on that, that’ll get you where you’re going, meanwhile I’ll … But hoo now, come on brother, easy does, sure it good but I ain’t a man for ashes—
—I – I am not a tissue, a Kleenex, a plastic bag! A thing smacked by winds or pinned against fences or wrapped just like that around the tops of trees! I am not that thing! I am not going any—!
—I go for a walk around downtown and: Steinbach, closed. Kitchen Etc., closed. Of course, Abernathy’s, closed! And you know I want, I really want not to just click on Amazon, but what can …? Because like Amazon’s nowhere so they can be anywhere, and sure that’s handy but what I want, what I’m missing is what – here-ness, OK?, herity. Damn, there isn’t even a word for it, not a one that gets close, it must be important … But that’s it, you know, the grace of the heart that comes from something being here, just, right, here. Where you can maybe drag a finger across it. See it in a window reflection. Not when I want it, not when I need it, but enduring, earth-solid, a part of—
—John Kostyo, last week … Craig Nowels, just Tuesday … Cashiered. Skimmed. Good people! I mean, the Ringels and the Landstroms up in Hill Section – they aren’t budging, they aren’t taking their Jaguars or their Maseratis anywhere except for this week’s waxing. They got too much at stake here, they can buy all the fortification they need … Shit, can continue to buy it. They own this place in ways that have nothing to do with deeds and liens and property lines … Contracts’re just pieces of paper, they own the world before there’s laws … But no one from the South Saint Paul Street apartments is upstaking, that you can be sure of. Couldn’t pay for the suitcases. Couldn’t afford the fan belt. Wouldn’t need the suitcases. Swayback city, its middle carved away, the poor beast has become ungainly and impossible to ride, hacked at and bludgeoned til they, we—
—Well, sure. Course that’s the way it is. These people – this generation – they can never resist anything, these young people can’t say no to the tiniest nothing that’s waved in front of their faces. No Steel. No distance. No grit. Only credit cards. Nothing but immediate self-gratification, and permanent indulgence, cat-chasing whatever wafts in the wind like—
—Of course I hold back the tears. I hold them back til I can’t hold them back any more and I’m ashamed that my son will see them, but when he turns around and we are looking eye to eye I’m not ashamed any more, I am not ashamed. I reach my hand to his shoulder and say best of luck, Hugh, Jr., I’m proud of you, my tears are of pride. They say Iraq isn’t the safest so if you’re sent watch out for yourself, but you’ll be fine, you’ll be eating well in Fort Drum, they have your cheesesteak many Wednesdays and the training is the best in the world and by all accounts you’ll be fine. You’ll be—
—Dear Ms. Witherspoon,
My name is Amanda Karls and it is a pleasure and honor to be in touch with you. Firstly, thank you for your time. As president of your admirers group in Anderburg, Vermont, I am writing to ask if maybe you could help us (not with money) in a time of some need. Thank you for considering this.
My mother works in an offset printing store and my father is in sales for Vermont Fasteners up in Swanton. For this he has to travel a good deal. I am in my second year at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School and something terrible is happening here—
—I am a member of a democracy, a free country. I am – legally and ethically – a free agent. What other people do is no concern of mine. It has no significance for me, save the immediately practical. And what I do that is within the law should have no bearing on anyone else – on anyone, do you hear this? Do I make myself clear?
—Exactly. It’s obvious what we need. Obvious. What we have to do is—
—What we really need to think about is—
—We can only move forward when we—
—The thing we must pay attention to is—
—What’s essential for us now is—
—Our tragedy is that—
—If only we could, or would—
—Our condition is such that we—
—Paramount – paramount in our vision must be—
—What’s lacking here is that—
—Salvation will only come through—
—The whole point is—
—Yeah, but it’s a cover story, Chace says they have no choice and that current conditions blahdy-blahda, that their han
ds are tied or they’re down for the count or whatever they’re instructed to say that day right before the words we regret. But just run the numbers: its one hundred and sixty fewer American salaries, people work for what, eighty cents a month in Malaysia, and now Chace’s been handed the best excuse they could hope for, that with fewer workers available salary demands are going higher. Of course its absurd: the first thing they fire is logic. Believe me, the mills been looking to do this for years, I first heard about it maybe four years ago when I still had three hundred people under me – loom-maintenance men, guys doing felting and spread tow, back-ropers – all of them driving or walking in, and carrying or buying lunches, making livings for themselves and for their families and their—
—Wait … Is this …is this Pomeroy Playground? Is this where …? Am I on Booth Street? So what’s …? Why isn’t there—?
—So the A-burg Chamber Orchestra—
—Ho, we’re the anti-Oakland: There’s no here here—
—Yet Blossfeldt’s photographs can be seen not only as study guides for the cabinet carvers and academic painters of the late 19th Century, but as objects of reverence. In his monochrome portraits of buds, stems, seed capsules and flowers, all shot in a rigorously limited depth of field, the neutrality or cleanness of depiction, and the accountantlike valorization of minuscule detail, bespeak a nearly Franciscan exaltation brought on by the presence, the very existence, of—
And, like, your values?, Carol says.
And, like, everything we’ve ever spoken about?, she says, tone rising.
I mean, it’s obvious the man’s not where he should be, Carol says. He’s down there, OK?
Evidently, Rick says.
So that’s precisely the reason to lend a hand, Carol says. Not the reason to hold back.
Rick nods. Yeah, he says. When you’re right, you’re—
And like in what: months?, weeks?, we’re gonna want someone around, Carol says. This thing’s gonna be so happening, no way we’ll be able to do it on our own.
Though I’ve got to warn you, Carol continues. All altruism stops at profit-sharing.
—Right, and the one thing that should go stays. OK? Keep everything that’s on the ground – the associations, the undertakings, the churches, the businesses, all the other human institutions. Just get rid of the Government.
—C’mon … Who do you think is behind all this …? Who else could it be …? You think Town Hall has any intention to make good on all the pensions …?
—I must run so as not to be run from. I must leave before the will for leaving leaves me. I go to keep my kaleidoscope alive, filled with drenched and fragrant panes, and not faded into compensations, and not distanced in frames. I—
But enough. The spiral swells. The more I say, the more I see I have more to say. If I do not go now, I will be submerged in useless meanings, I will never be able to outrun the words …
—And it’s predictable now, most every day, starting around 2 p.m., right after lunch: Traffic jams, lasting for hours, usually three or four hours, building up on Shelburne Road and fully clotting near Flynn Avenue and Home Avenue and all through the bus terminal area until it hits 189. Engine-hawk and jolt-recoil and stinking air and tail exhaust particling up in the heat, and cars edging and cars pressing and cars budging bit by bit, jumping lanes then grinding in grief when the new lane stalls, grabbing every fraction of inch to make it past that next light before it turns red, or to at least get deep enough into the intersection, minimum halfway through the hood, so that they have to keep grille-ing forward. Elbows cropping from side windows, tipping cigarettes kicked for ash, metals sheening and windows filled with load. Just walk to the road and they’re there, every day. Every day.
—And what next?, I mean my God what can possibly – when our hospital closes down, when Fletcher Allen Hospital that’s the only one within forty-five miles and that we have turned to rushed to for everything from births to falls to fixes to arm burns to food poisoning to hearts fraying in the backseats of moving vehicles for what, fifty years?, so now what are we, what are we supposed to dammit what are we—?
—That’s it, I tell you, I am getting on the phone and calling down to Washington and taking care of this, of the situation, find someone to tell me how to move the hell to Chengdu—
22,112
I have laid in wrought-iron support trusses for miles, many miles of pipeways underneath this city’s streets. I have helped replace literally hundreds of traffic lights all through these interchanges when the county switched from eight to twelve inch lamps. And that anti-radio noise initiative, and I have three children … I do not need to list further.
And now? What will become of … Of everything that I—? Does it now mean noth—?
—Is there not one room, one corner of lawn, one hacked bench in this entire damn city that anyone wants for—?
—For—?
—Can’t there—?
—Can I not—?
—No. Do not. Don’t you—
—Don’t you talk to—
—I have nothing to say to—
—Don’t – don’t—
—And how about this: someone I know, lives up on Holbrook Road, his next-to-next-door neighbor put his house up for six twenty-nine, it’s a good-sized place can definitely handle a family, freshly painted white hardwood with lots of like four bedrooms, maybe three-quarters of an acre and a porch and a big open kitchen with an island, and like its only been like three weeks and the guy, from over six, the guy’s already down to four fifty—!
—To —!
—And on Cherry Street, the condo development they put up there—
—And over on Moss Glenn Lane—
—And the A-burg Chamber Orchestra—
—And on King Street, all up and down the block, then turning onto South Chamoon and Pine and in through all those side streets, then coming up to South Winooski, a truck, I assume it’s from the city, City Hall, crawling along with a loudspeaker on its roof saying There will be enough food. There will be enough—
—So where—
—Where is Marco?
—She said she was going to call me—
—Where, how could he—
—How can I—
—It’s like this animal’s been—
—But my whole life is in this house … For eighteen years I have given and replaced and maintained, first the back-porch roof then the Tamaracks when they had their run-in with the porcupines then the foundation slippage then everything else I’ve done. I’ve brought everything I have into this house, piece by piece, everything that I’ve acquired over nearly twenty years, the convertible couch and the matching lowboy, and the aspidistras, and the new sink then the whole new kitchen and finally, oh it took years, enough big pillows for my bed. And now that I am comfortable in my bed, my inner shoulders have finally learned to relax, now I can’t—?
—And in town, what do I see …? All over the place …? I see people running—
—On Maple Street, a man runs behind a CCTA bus—
—There, in front of the parking building across from the cathedral, a girl, in yellow pants – she looks foreign, Asian – she’s like charging over to the—
—And—
—And he, they—
—I mean, what I’m hearing is—
—What they’re saying is—
—It can’t be avoided—
—Nothing can be—
—They – they say they’re going because—
—My friends are upstaking because—
—They say there’s too much—
—Just too much—!
—That nothing’s being—
—That no one’s—
—Everywhere, just everywhere there are far, far too many—
—That the city doesn’t—
—And there aren’t enough—
—That everybody’s—
—The whole things—!
—That the problem is—
—That no one—
—No one—!
—That no one in any position to—
—No one who’s supposed to—
—That the system always, always—
—That the structural, the systemic—
—The instinctive—
—I – I must not be here—
—I must not be—
Now it’s Carol and Ian, walking upright on the Street. On sun-sheeted College Street, twisting through whitewatery thrusts of sidewalk activity – limby bodies charging, chugging, ricocheting, eddying – they are laboring to distribute the flyers they’d prepared, notifying one and all of their new employment business.
They have been at it for hours, all over downtown, consuming their Monday stamping walls, collaring poles, adding complex geometries to shelves and amenable checkout counters. To outfox the anti-flyer brigades who, in their yellow-lime uniforms, continue to range over the city, Carol had her bills prepared in the same pomegranate color and portrait-shape half-page layout as the flyers for Danform Shoes, which she’d seen lingering on many varieties of verticals throughout A-burg. Danform, of course, is managed by Don Fleet, the mayor’s brother in law. That she knows where the shoe shop has its bills printed goes without saying.
Carol is in a pucker-sleeved white cotton top, brown jeans, and sandals, Ian in a flock of scuffs hovering upon a dark-green linen coat. They marshal their technologies: Staples, cellophane tape, pushpins, gravity; soon, lampposts, office-building entryways and more have been conquered. They’d decided, early on, not to remove anyone else’s flyers, but are disconcerted to find prior arrivals six or seven deep on several big-intersection poles, and in certain obvious drop spots. And these hanging, melding, stratifled masses of paper had accumulated only since the mop-up brigade had last been by, no more than two days earlier.