Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  Gordon is favoring his right arm since he hurt it this morning. No, not the wounds of work. This was a casualty of ridiculous heavy horseplay. He does not need cider to become a twelve-year-old.

  Jetta asks croakily from her pillow, “Is it night?”

  Gordon directly crosses over the soft complicated layers of hooked and braided rugs to Jetta and lifts her and lets her long bare legs hang down from his hip. She wipes her nose on his work shirt. Oops. At five, she’s not a lady yet.

  Gordon says, “It is a dark and rainy night. Aoooooooo!” Then he nuzzles her.

  Claire says, “Mr. St. Onge.” She nods to the open book on the cable spool.

  Both Gordon and Jetta stare down at the picture with its verse: Rabies.

  Again I offer the man from Skowhegan coffee, tea, maple candy. The rain beyond the open windows begins to drum heavily. Lightning and quick-on-its-heels thunder speak to us of apotheosis.

  Bonnie Loo, in bald honesty, looking back on that evening, when they “discovered” Brianna.

  I felt a sickening wave seeing how beautifully she had re-created him on the page. With pen and brush, she owned him.

  That night, Gordon St. Onge dreams.

  He meets a faceless woman with soft white fog for a face, though her body is normal, her hands vivid, the lifelines, branched thick with many futures. He smiles at her. She begins to melt. Just as silver does. Or other metals will do when rendered hot.

  He groans.

  He wakes.

  In a future time, Claire reflects on the summer when Catherine Court Downey became part of the Settlement story.

  What I taught at USM were adjunct history courses. So I was not a real teacher but, you know, I had real meetings. Ha! Ha! But this being late June, meetings took the form of a picnic. Like a toad pretends to be a prince. Picnic phooey. It was a commitment and for me and a few others a long drive. Okay not a picnic exactly, but a kind of cookout thing on the lawn between Payson Smith and Luther Bonney Halls, the only open space that hadn’t been paved yet on that campus.

  My friend, Catherine, who was an interim department head, left the cookout early. Everyone thought so. But later, I found her sitting in her little metallic mint green car next to my Settlement car, down in the lower parking lot where she knew I always liked to park away from things.

  She looked up at me, startled.

  I put my hand on her closed window. It wasn’t cool enough to be sitting in a car with all the windows up. Unless you have air-conditioning and your car is running. Her car was not running.

  I tried to open the passenger’s door but she had it locked. She reached over and unlocked it, keeping her eyes on the building across the street, where her office was, as if waiting for a signal from it.

  She had recently discovered through mutual acquaintances that I lived at the Settlement in Egypt. Though nothing was written in the papers, word about calls to the authorities about us was burning its way around the universe, no galaxy left unsmoldering. And she probably suspected a lot of things anyway. I don’t believe that in the coming days, as she got further into our lives, that she didn’t know what she was getting into, though she later would swear it had all been a nasty surprise.

  She had tried, just an hour or so earlier, to lead me into talking about him, Gordon, while we filled our plates with gourmet cookout stuff. But . . . how can I say this? . . . I didn’t trust her with my heart. I couldn’t bear her disapproval but I knew it was coming. This was a woman deeply steeped in extreme feminist doctrine, and I’d seen her at various university get-togethers in full attack mode, scolding male professors and students a hundred times less “sexist” than Gordon . . . and women professors and students a hundred times more “converted” than I.

  The first thing she said to me when I had settled into that bucket seat and rolled the window down was, “I’m having some kind of attack. Heart or something. No, really. I just shouldn’t have mixed all those incompatible proteins together.” Then she laughed and looked at me face on. “It’s worse for some people.”

  I smiled and kneaded her shoulder. She did not really seem at first glance old enough to be even just an interim chairman of her department. Early forties in reality. But a proud chin-up little ball of fire. Her wide black band-like eyebrows almost grew together, but in a most appealing way, and these eyebrows curved up sharply over each eye, like mischief. Her black hair was always managed in a hard frizzy knot on the very top of her head. She had a beautiful small round brown mole near her mouth. She was gorgeous, sexy, but not flirty. A married professional woman and mother who looked full of mischief. And normal.

  Artistically, but for some medium-sized out-of-state grants, she was only recognized in local circles. Work that had feminist messages. Work that reflected one obsession, herself, her undefined spirit. And her body as spirit.

  Yeah, she was always pretty queer about food and funny little pains. But I had never seen terror in her eyes as was there this day. Never was it out of control.

  I asked what was going on.

  She said it was “him.” I thought she meant her husband, Phan, but she was rambling, pausing, swallowing as if her neck hurt. She quoted some old poets on the subject of being mortal. Then she laughed.

  When I got her to be a little clearer, turns out “him” meant Robert, her son, not Phan.

  This little guy I had never seen, even though I had stayed at her home at least four times prior. He was always elsewhere. And he never came to the university. I had seen her pregnant. But I never saw the baby. She was gushing now with very concrete details about the boy . . . he recently vomited for two days . . . he reads her mind . . . he wants a pet . . . “we can’t have pets” . . . he got into her talcs and mixed them together . . . he mixed coffee and bleach together. In the mornings he wakes before she does and mixes things together.

  In the newsroom of the Record Sun, Ivy’s editor, Brian Fitch, tells Ivy—

  that Gil Zaniewski in “Sports” is acquainted with Gordon St. Onge. “Give him a call at home. He’s on vacation this weekend painting his house. Also a guy Randy King used to see St. Onge around Portland a bit. See if you can track Randy down. I think he’s in Vermont these days. Something to do with their state parks department. I’ll have a couple numbers for you after lunch.” Brian winks. “Might give you more fuel for this fire.”

  Ivy goes out on the sidewalk for a few minutes, like some people do to smoke, only she just breathes in the city air: exhaust, and hot cement, hot tar. Fuck the little Settlement bitches and squirts. Ivy loves global industry and black grease. Go oil, go! Oil wins. Brats get a D-minus. The St. Onge story. What more is there to it? She holds her ears, closes her eyes, turns around. People pass around her to go inside. She opens her eyes. It’s all still there. This world. This day. This hour. The smell.

  When she reaches Gil Zaniewski, he says, “Yeah, yeah. Gordo was friends with Rich and Di Harbert when they had their big but casual dinner parties . . . before they had kids and dogs and three jobs apiece.” He chuckles. “Well, that was before we all had kids and dogs and three jobs apiece.” Chuckles again. “That was back when us reporters and your average schoolteacher and all manner of people could sit around and toke one up after dinner freely. This was before Nancy Reagan took the stage to murmur ‘war on drugs,’ and then all of our politicians were screaming ‘WAR ON DRUGS!’ so you wouldn’t notice what their hands were doing, which is an old, old wrestling technique, by the way.”

  Ivy asks quickly, “Did Mr. St. Onge smoke the stuff?”

  The guy laughs heartily. “You mean, did he inhale or just clasp the joint between his lips, quivering with moral indecision?”

  Ivy tsks. She doesn’t like this Gil guy.

  Gil says, “Ivy, we all smoked in those days. It was a fad, not a federal crime. We all looked quite adorable. Young and hairy. And patchy. Rags were cheap. Ah, those were—”

  “Okay. So what else did Mr. St. Onge do that was noteworthy?” This is patronizing-plus.
She really hates this Gil guy. Jerk. Asshole. She’s not five years old.

  “He was likeable.”

  “Yeah, what else?” she presses on, tapping her soft, almost-silent computer keys, with her lip curled.

  “At that time, late seventies, he was in the construction biz . . . heavy equipment . . . schools, banks, the big jobs. His family were the Depaolos.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, you know of the Depaolos, of course. And they were . . . are political . . . the family, you know, in the way any good-sized, successful, monied contracting outfit looks after its interests. Friends in Augusta. Family in the House and Senate. Connections all over the place. And hired lobbyists. The smile guys.”

  Ivy is typing all this Depaolo info into the computer.

  “But I remember that Gordo himself was not political that way, and not the other way either . . . not like we nice liberal kids were . . . not a no-nuker . . . no antithis or antithat. He was just a . . . a . . . a redneck Schopenhauer. You know, he was out there. And he was cynical.”

  “Crazy?”

  “No. He just bored a lot of people. But some love that kinda stuff . . . those other ‘out there’ hate-the-world people.”

  “What else?”

  “He married very young. I mean like maybe eighteen. He was the kid. Younger than the rest of us. Younger, much younger than his wife.”

  She waits quietly, fingers light on the keys, ready.

  He goes on, “To a gal from one of the reservations. Indian Township, or Princeton. Not sure now. But Passamaquoddy, the guys who had the land claims deal. Later, I heard they divorced. No kids.”

  “What else?”

  “He drove a brand-new four-wheel-drive truck . . . with Depaolo Bros. printed on the doors. Everyone had a hauling favor to ask of him, especially when we moved from one shabby apartment to another. Nobody else had a truck. In those days, trucks were too ‘working class.’ We all had Volvos. Old Volvos. Old Opals. Old Saabs. And VWs. Old, of course. Went nicely with our rags. And hair.”

  “Anything else about him?”

  “He loaned me a thousand smackeroos once to help me out of a mess.” Gil makes a smacking sound with his lips close to the phone. “Jesus Christ. Think how much a thousand dollars was back in the late seventies!”

  “You pay him back?” Ivy laughs one of her deep raffish HAW HAWs.

  “Yeah. It took me a while. But shit, that little loan really saved my ass.”

  Ivy chortles. “So, Gil. You owe him your life.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Ivy Morelli in the newsroom.

  On her trusty computer screen in vertical list form, are these words:

  Fiddles.

  Solar gear

  Big ideas.

  Leaded glass.

  Windmills.

  Printing press.

  Municipal law.

  Pigs, chickens, goats. Sheep. Cows.

  Machining.

  Chanting and kazoos. Masks.

  Furniture making.

  Quilts and homemade clothes.

  Sawmills. Three.

  Sap house.

  Water with no chlorine.

  Christmas trees.

  Wood ticks in a jar.

  Pregnancies. Too many.

  No tractor.

  Tree houses. Cute little bridges.

  Plays and skits.

  Embroidery. Too much.

  Hot food. Too much.

  A few bruises (normal).

  Beer, cider, eggs, Godzilla.

  First aid.

  Beauty shop.

  Warm swim.

  Now she says aloud: “No computers. No George Washington. No mommy. One gun.”

  Peak.

  So our Ivy isn’t REEEEEEEL curious about Peak Oil. Peak Soil, acid seas, hurricanes, and Bible-type floods. She still feels the sting of their creepy zeal. It was for Ivy a public ravishment, a flogging. Stripped and flogged by a bunch of brats.

  But today, while roaming the Internet (yes, the COMPUTER, the Devil’s handiwork, Mr. St. Onge), she finds a mention of Peak Oil that seems credible. Also Peak water. Peak soil. Peak food. Leaping cold and thirsty lizards!

  And our Ivy is swept away into the documented official real-life absolute scary.

  The hands of the clock move around as fast as used-car dealership searchlights. Somehow three hours disappear and though several people were roaming around the newsroom when she started, she is now alone.

  Wiggling eyebrows.

  Next day in the newsroom, Ivy arrives with ruffles and ripples under her eyes. She had lost herself in cyberspace again once she had gotten home last night. Read, clicked, watched to four a.m. Even had a cyberchat with a local engineer who was frantic over Peak Oil and was sending her a book.

  She finds Brian at his desk. He is staring into his computer with a small smile, hears Ivy’s brushy step on the carpet and turns slightly.

  Ivy says in a robotlike voice, “Brian. Peak. Oil. Acidic. Oceans. Climate. Change. Why. Isn’t. It. A. Headliner?”

  Brian stops smiling. He turns to face her, then he cranks his chair to face slightly past her, his eyes slide to the executive editor’s door with the frosted glass window and moving shadow beyond. He wiggles his eyebrows. He moves his eyes back to Ivy’s hands, which are loaded with Peak Oil and devil weather documentation and discussion by EXPERTS and OFFICIALS and SANE GENIUSES who are not connected to the St. Onge Settlement.

  Then he looks back toward the frosty window and wags his eyebrows some more. Then he says in a robot voice, “How. Are. You. This. Morning. Ivy?”

  Ivy squints. She blushes. Her heart thuds. She swallows. She says in a robot voice, going with the flow, “Brian. Silence. Is. Censorship.”

  He turns away from her and goes back to his screen. Then he whispers, “Remember you were hired because you are a people person. You write about people.”

  She says, “I was hired because I’m slow.” Then turns on her heel, her new earrings, bronzed peanuts (in shells), thrashing stormily from side to side.

  The cruel joke.

  That night, Ivy lays spread eagle on top of the covers (her quilt of an unconventional insect pattern), too upset to get UNDER the covers. She had thought of herself as a sleuth. A Lois Lane. An INVESTIGATIVE reporter. But the Record Sun just sees her as what? A Girl Scout? A stenographer? A shill?

  If Ivy is to survive, she has to pretend that the Settlement people are all crazy and that the geology and meteorology and environment experts she has connected with don’t exist.

  If. She. Is. To. Survive.

  Trying again (Part I).

  The silver car moves like cool water into the St. Onge farm place’s sandy lot. Again the long-fingered crisp but fluid person steps out, eyeing the many doors. The leaves of the rivulated old ash with its misspelled sign (OFICE) speak imperceptibly.

  Again nobody seems to be in or about, no flutter of a curtain, no running steps respond to the woman’s thumps on the door.

  Again she presses her calling card into the crevice of the closed inner door.

  Again she studies the contents of the screened-in porch, listening, the long fingers of the one hand tracing the edge of the thickness of forms of her clipboard.

  Again she and her car are gone.

  Trying again (Part II).

  Gordon slows the truck at the tipsy silver mailbox, swings down into the steep yard. A somewhat matted collie dog runs out from the pole barn, and, tail spinning, wastes no time wetting down all of Gordon’s tires before Gordon has even stepped out. The truck is one of the Settlement work rigs. Cumbersome thirty-year-old flatbed with an overload of sweet blond two-by-fours and strapping. On the passenger’s seat, young Jaime Crosman, eyes closed, billed cap pulled down over his face.

  The collie sniffs Gordon’s pant legs in a friendly, bounding, light-footed way, making graceful helping circles around Gordon, showing him the way to the front door.

  The front doorstep is a stone. A massive chu
nk of granite like you see at most old farm places around here, though this house isn’t really old.

  Again, like his previous visit, Gordon doesn’t knock. Just stands there, arms folded across his chest.

  The collie hustles back to the loaded flatbed, stands on his hind legs trying to get a better look in at the open window at Jaime, but Jaime doesn’t stir. Collie’s claws squeal against the old red-orange paint.

  Gordon looks around. There are no other working vehicles, just a blue and rusty doorless thing up on the tree line across a field, looks like an old DeSoto. And the two unregistered trucks and station wagon here at the edge of the yard. Timberjack gone from the pole barn. A new-looking compressor stands there. He walks around the house, looks up at a little gable window of the tiny attic above the addition. A screened octagon. He sees movement. He steps back to get a better look. Then bellers for all he’s worth, “BRIANNA!”

  No response.

  He again crosses his arms over the chest of his work shirt. He looks, yes, Vikingish. A Roman-Irish-American-Indian Viking. He keeps his eyes on that funny little window a good long minute, waiting.

  Another minute passes.

  He waits. No cars pass up on the road. No bugs (well, not many). No birdsong. Just that hot ticking sound from the Settlement truck, big engine cooling down. Even the collie dog is quiet.

  Another long minute, Gordon watches the window. Then gives up, turns.

  A low flutelike whistle floats from that octagon window.

  Gordon pivots, tries to imitate her whistle but his whistle just comes out bad. He wipes his wrist and hand across his mouth.

  The collie veers back. He barks up at Gordon, coaxingly, his panting mouth looking like a dumb but very nice smile. His honey coat and white chest shake around like a Hawaiian’s grass skirt. His head is so long and narrow. Small, funny, slanty, nice-guy eyes. Gordon, not normally an animal person, opens his hand on the firm head and murmurs, “Lassie . . . get help. Get help, Lassie.” The collie appreciates this joke and his smile intensifies.

  A UPS truck comes banging and jolting along the road, around the curve, then disappears.

  Now Gordon tries another whistle for the girl. It’s one he knows, one he has always thought since childhood was Indian. It’s the call of the mourning dove. Rather dreary. But nice. It says, I mourn. I mourn.