Yes, this is all very sweet, big molesque cartoon, gift to the Prophet from earnest, shy (or something) Bree, but secretly behind his back the plot thickens, in no small part due to Bree’s scheming.
This, while Gordon is off (miles and miles off) on a delivery of two-by-fours and two-by-twelves and boards. See spread flat on the clothesmaking shop floor a full-sized dark blue flag. Handmade, of course, but resembles the state of Maine flag, except for the addition of golden yellow letters along the top. It says: THE TRUE MAINE MILITIA. One Settlement girl fusses (fumes actually) over the “Dorky lookin’ moose!”
Eight more girls crowd into the room within the hour. The moose is discussed.
“It’s his eyeball,” one young seamstress whispers. “Too square-
shaped.”
Work on a replacement eye takes a couple of hours. The seriousness of the task gives each girl’s face a grimace. Then the flag (and hornbeam pole with mighty eagle on top) are sneaked through the velvety cloudy blue-black of a late August night to “Bree’s” truck to be hidden “until it’s time.”
SEPTEMBER
Privacy.
A building crew begins work in one of the Quonset huts, making one of the lesser-used upstairs storage rooms into a double studio for Catherine and Bree. Hammers pound, saws zing and there’s the cutting away of metal roof for two tall round-roofed dormers. Big fans for ventilation of artists’ paint fumes. Big PRIVACY sign on the one shared door at the top of the stairs.
Inside the room, a temporary wall of store-bought corkboard dividing Catherine’s space from Bree’s space. Temporary because apparently Catherine is temporary. “I’m not really Settlement material!” she says laughingly on various occasions. “I need to be close to things.” But for now, this time and place, her space is treated as reverently as Bree’s.
And isn’t Catherine as fragile as Bree? Some here think so.
Inside the PRIVACY-marked door is a small shared entry space, then two inner doorways, hung with tarps. Again, that temporary feel.
Catherine says with delight, “Our own artists’ colony!” yet she, herself, begins no work. But she teaches Bree wonderful things, like how to stretch canvas and build frames for canvases.
While Bree has painted large, mural-sized canvases and has drawn tirelessly several hours a day on her side of their “artists’ colony” all the first week since the studio was finished, Catherine either goes out, or meditates, naps, or digs into university paperwork while listening to soft tapes and CDs of spiritual new age music or atonal symphonies. She asks Bree if the music bothers her. Bree assures her that she doesn’t mind.
Bree asks if her cigarette smoke is flowing over the twelve-foot temporary wall, over the open top, what isn’t sucked out by the purring fans. Catherine says, “Not in a way that bothers me.” This isn’t really true. Catherine hates cigarette smoke, even if it didn’t stink and kill. She hates everything it personifies: “patent stupidity.” But Catherine, so far, has been angelic here at the Settlement. Her chin a little high. Her quirky beauty having a shockingness to it whenever she enters a room or group. Her knot of black frizzy hair is the size of an acorn but has the texture of those wiggles of heat that come from a hot biscuit. She glances at her watch almost continuously. She dresses in jeans, camp shirts with patch pockets, and cuffed short sleeves. All in the most gentle colors. But she often goes barefoot. Not a tough barefoot look but a casual urban indoors barefootness. Claire watches her like you watch the sky for weather, weather being such a stunning range of possibilities.
Meanwhile, Bree and Catherine honor each other’s space, though sometimes Catherine calls Bree into her part of the studio to talk. Catherine tells of her marriage to Phan. “Our life . . . our love . . . it’s like being two really small hardworking little bees inside a huge white flower filled with total stillness. It has been sweet.”
Bree looks impressed. “Sounds romantic.”
“So much on his mind, which . . . well, makes him quiet at home. Whereas, when my work is going well, it makes me chatty, his work doesn’t make him chatty at all. At least, not with me. He’s like a general studying his maps. He’s gone for weeks, then home for a day or two with a tongue of stone.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” says Bree.
“Oh, it’s really okay. It’s not painful at all. I don’t depend on him like that.”
But each time Catherine tells the story, Bree says she is sorry.
Meanwhile, at the university the new chairman of the department is in place so the interim chair, Catherine, is free of that load and Catherine celebrates it by being gone somewhere for a few nights. And then Catherine’s classes at the university begin full force. But also she is shopping or seeing friends, or back at her house in Portland, collecting things to bring to the Settlement, so she is gone more than she is here, yet she is edging closer. And Robert is always here. She thanks and thanks the mothers and teens and men who spend time with him.
Bree returns to her painting each day, her booted feet spread apart, arms at her sides like a gunslinger, studying the filled and yet-to-be-filled regions of her huge canvases. She works with her roaring red hair pinned tightly back, exposing all her face (a little bit of Catherine Court Downey influence?), her spaced golden eyes narrowed, her nose with its flat flared pale blue bridgeless bridge looking less like a birth defect than the courageous scar from a war she has been on the winning side of. Her physique is limber, as when she works in the woods with her brothers and father, the untroubled swing of hips, thighs, and arms, her mind only on the job.
Bree shows Catherine long and short versions of The Recipe. Catherine reads the short version aloud. She does not praise the “Abominable Hairy Patriot” cartoon, artist to artist. She just smiles a knowing professorial smile and says, “It’s healthier to focus on personal growth. It’s so hopeless out there.” She waves a hand to the tall arched dormer she has already filled with glass and pottery from home.
Bree says, “I didn’t do this alone. Gordon and I did it together.”
Catherine raises an eyebrow. “Yes. Claire says he is a regular Mr. Revolution.”
Bree says, “Well, I don’t know about that.” And she sighs.
In another two days, Catherine’s side of the studio begins to heap high with stuff, a lot of stuff, but no “works in progress.” She has shown Bree slides of her old work, holding them to the light. Watercolors. None of the actual pieces are larger than eighteen-by-twenty-four inches. They are like bruises of blue on cream, or blue on gray, as shadows would hesitate on a vertical plane of dimpled sand. At first, so mysterious. But when you look with a knowing eye, you see Catherine’s own face ghostishly apparent, sometimes just one side of her face, as if she hides behind a doorway, a silvery hand at the edge of the door frame. And there, a bodyless transparent gray dress against frosty space. And there, hands and feet but no head . . . just a figure of smoke . . . but no, see there on the chest area, look close, Catherine’s face, like a face photo printed on a T-shirt.
In another one she is dancing. Her face and head recognizable and placed where they should be. The body naked and starved. Bare of living tissue but for skin and skeleton, the anorexic nightmare. And what is that on the pelvic area Scotch taped on, as if by a child? The uterus and ovaries.
Catherine brings a few Settlement women one at a time up to view the slides of her work held up to the big dormer’s shouting light. Bree can hear them whispering beyond the wall and sometimes she joins them, sometimes not. Three different times she hears Catherine say how much she misses her TV, and then the other person explains the no-TV rule here, Gordon’s biggest rule. And each time Catherine says, “Now isn’t that silly.” Not an exclamation. Just a gentle observation.
Bree is surprised when after all this, Catherine tells her, “When I bring my little TV here, I’ll show you the tapes of my opening shows. You’ll get to see Gus and Candice (friends she has so often spoken of). I have all kinds of tapes . . . safe things. Nobody wi
ll mind. Nothing to upset anyone here. All very good educational material. I promise.” And she gets an extra mischievous look, a look that’s quite becoming on her unconventionally beautiful face. “I’ll pick up a bottle of Chardonnay and you and I can have a little party! And then an open studio when your work is ready! Really, we do need to bring some of the finer things to this . . . this . . . farm.”
Bree laughs. “Oh, boy.” Then mimics the very same mischievous look which, on her deformed face has a different effect.
Meanwhile, Catherine continues to heal, has taken the last of all but one prescription, still sleeps at Claire’s place with Robert, shows no sign of ever fully leaving the Settlement. At the early breakfasts, the only meal she is a regular at, she places many bottles around her plate of toast. She has always taken ten million vitamins and trace elements and minerals and homeopathic remedies for every sort of cramp or hitch or unpleasant sensation or to prevent disease, but now she’s added a few more, including the St. John’s Wort (which Gordon points out can poison a cow) and ginkgo and some other sort of “healthy” capsules that smell like glue.
Robert roams the tables, sometimes sitting with his mother, sometimes not. At times, he just stands beside her with his hand on her arm like riding on a subway, a pleasant look on his face, his sun-face belt buckle hanging heavily from the stretch waistband of his shorts or jogging pants.
In the meantime, Bree’s mural-sized canvas paintings (her art now released from the confines of her rag-paper books), bulge with power. They take up all the generous wall space of her studio. She thrashes away at three all at once.
The paintings are crowded with human figures. Anguished people in events of brutal confrontation. People up against lousy odds. Religious and Renaissance-like. Much flesh and tortured trees. And whipping streaked skies. Masterfully rendered. Most include mythical creatures, too, something like a Minotaur and plenty of angels. Devils and goats with human torsos and striped enamel-looking horns, hooded spooks with ancient faces and pursed lips and wary eyes. Fire. And rage. Devastation. Hundreds of undiapered babies, plump as cherubs, but without wings, no wings necessary. They pour lavalike from a fissure in the rocky treeless mountainside. Angry babies.
Catherine has seen none of these. No one has. Catherine promises never to look at these works in progress without invitation. Between young Bree and the beautiful degreed, distinguished, mysterious Catherine, there is a trust. “I definitely understand your need for privacy,” Catherine tells her. “We artists know these things.”
One afternoon.
Gordon and Rex in their respective trucks pass on the road. Both stop. One on each side of the road.
They talk of a meeting Rex has planned with a guy from a Virginia militia. “Not sure which weekend yet,” Rex says.
Gordon asks, “What’s he about?”
“He seems to have inside info on something not meant to be leaked out. We’re talking video tapes. The MJTF and FIN-CEN. FEMA. The whole thing. The camps. Maps of the transshipment locations.”
“Concentration camps,” says Gordon.
“Correct,” says Rex.
Gordon squints. “Well, keep me posted.” Then he shuffles through papers and bags and jackets on the seat of his truck across the road and presents Rex with the new shorter version of The Recipe. “Don’t read it now. Just sometime when you’re bored with your breakfast or something. This can’t be speed read. What did you think of the other one? The long one?”
Rex folds the paper up without looking at it. “I haven’t read it yet.”
Gordon smiles. “This one is shorter.”
Rex flushes. “Well, I’ll read this tonight. Thanks. I appreciate it.” He says this warmly, though the sun is in his eyes and he is scowling against the light.
History as it happens (as recorded by Gabe St. Onge).
We went to a militia. At the Rex man’s. We did first ade and how to drag people out windows in a fire. We alredy knew the stuff on CPR. Next they might come see our shotwav where they wish they could do shows wich peepil can here for miles. Dee Dee’s Dad is Willie Lamkastir. Iv seen him before but not his shotwav setup. Ours is bigger than Dee Dee’s Dad’s but Mum said DO NOT BRAG.
Out in the world.
A little convoy of Settlement cars and trucks driven by seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds sweeps into the parking lots of post offices and IGAs in four nearby towns. The flyers are of both the typed wordy kind and the cartoon flashy kind, many touched up in crayon or Settlement-made weed and berry and beet paints to give that personal feel. Tacked to telephone poles, stuffed under windshield wipers, placed smilingly into hands, it is a busy day. Most flyers entitled REAL HISTORY. NOT BORING.
See there among them.
Riding along in one of the trucks is redheaded Brianna Vandermast, a small cagey smile on her young normal-looking mouth . . . yes, her pretty mouth. On her lap are two bundles of what she calls The Recipe. One pile is the fifteen-page version. These are in case she runs into someone who shows an interest in reading more than the shorter one-page flyer. Over the last few weeks, she and Gordon decided not to waste them on people who will just toss them into a corner, or in the trash! Heavens! See Bree’s strong tanned hands grip both bundles lovingly, like a mother with her children.
The following letter arrives wedged in one of the many saggingly full boxes of St. Onge mail.
To the Principal of the School on Heart’s Content Road, Egypt, Maine 04047
Hello—
I am a teacher at SAD 78. I have in my hands here materials that several of your students were passing out at the post office here a few days ago. Today, America’s children are subjected to so much violence and cynicism as well as drugs and parental apathy. I feel obligated to stand up for today’s youth whenever I can.
And so now I’m going to tell you it is wrong to teach children this awful stuff (which I hold here in my hands) about our government. They need to grow up with a healthy attitude about this country in which they live.
I certainly hope you will stop this crap before you poison the minds of your students any further. This might fall under the category of child abuse, at least to my way of thinking. And you can bet the right-wing terrorist element you people are immersed in would put you at a disadvantage with the Department of Human Services should there be a complaint. My advice is to soft pedal your antigovernment lessons to your youngsters. Teach respect.
Sincerely yours,
Mr. Keith McKinnon
In a future time, Claire St. Onge remembers that late summer. She speaks.
He was spending a lot of time alone with her. Alarms went off in the hearts of us women who knew of Bree’s “secret” book and what that meant about how fragile Bree might be if Gordon made one of his moves. I can name you eight women who wore his ring who were only seventeen or eighteen when he made the move. That’s not a big difference from fifteen, is it?
It was this little project they had going, called The Recipe. Perfecting and perfecting it. You’d see them at one of the piazza tables after supper with their heads bent over their papers. You’d hear him getting loud. You’d hear her low, smoky voice and her giggles. With him, she giggled a lot. Early before breakfast, they would sit in one of the parlors. Or sometimes they met downhill at the farmhouse. And sometimes it was very late. I mean like two-thirty in the morning. He seemed to be in a very good mood during this time. And we knew this mood was because of her, this very special child. Then we knew it was time to tell him a few facts of life about the Vandermasts.
Gordon and Penny St. Onge alone, taking an evening walk over the bristly, newly mowed field northeast of the Settlement.
The late summer chill draws dampness into the short stiff grass. Crickets are creaking mightily. The sunset is a pile of flabby blue-purple clouds lined in headachy-to-look-at gold. The foothills are close and spiky and blue-black. This Penny, mother of teenaged Whitney, is “prettier than Whitney,” some have said. Penny wears a long dress, as she would out on a
date. Her blonde hair, the kind that looks baby fine and bunny soft, is held back with a large, fresh, powdery strong-smelling maroon and orange marigold. She looks forward to evenings alone with Gordon, as few as they are. Even when he’s overly warm and yakky during the nights he spends at her little place, the little cottage she shares with her daughter. But she loves the evenings and nights he is not there, too. She has a lot of social life here with her “sisters” and others here, and outside the Settlement, too. She loves to read in bed at night. She is nourished by silence.
As they reach one of the irrigation ponds, glassy with reflected gold and cumulus blue and the ripples of feeding frogs and fish, Gordon puts an arm around Penny, tightly. And it’s as if his name were squeezed out of her, “Gordon.”
“What?”
“It’s about Bree.”
“Yuh?”
She leans her face against his shirt, places a hand over that place where his heart is. “As far as any of us know . . . you’ve only seen Bree’s social comment drawings, the ones her brother brought here.”
He says nothing. Just a suspicious grunt, sensing something not very handsome, a curse, perhaps, coming soon from Penny’s handsome mouth.
“You have seen only those, right?”
“Uh, yep.” He narrows his eyes, knowing, yes, there’s been one of those keep-it-from-Gordon conspiracies among the women. This would not be the first time.
They are still walking along, though slowed a bit, and the ground is rough here, where the old tractor and the electric buggies have made ruts in the spring, all hidden in the tall weeds and grasses. You have to feel with your foot as you go.
Penny says, “You haven’t seen the pictures of what her family does to her . . . the forced prostitution.”
He drops his arm. Stops walking. Turns away from her, looks off toward the “view” of Promise Lake, which is all in dark shadow now, blocked from the sunset by this very hill he and she stand on, this the part of nature that is powerfully pleasant, unlike the part of nature Penny is describing to him, which is foul.
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 49