Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  He is nearly finished when he hears someone coming. He half turns in the twilight and makes out two pale circles floating toward him. Gives his heart a creeped-out hop. Yeah, it’s her with some of that putty-like turquoise war painted around her eyes, that paint the kids spilled instead of prettying up their small windmill models as planned. He groans, stuffs himself back into his fly, zips.

  She arrives with a sigh, a poof of breath smelling of soda pop and donuts, all that fun Christian food. It drifts serpentinely around his head.

  “Imagine being Adam and Eve,” she whispers with a happy shiver. “No one else but these trees and us.”

  “I’m sorry. Really—”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m sorry, Brianna, that we aren’t a real couple.”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No bones and no weeping.” Her whisper has that usual smoke-harshened edge to it.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “No tools. No slaving. No birth pains. No hell. Just peace. And mushrooms. And nuts. Edennnn.”

  “Right.”

  She plays with the hemmed neckline of her T-shirt, trying to decide something, her pale hands appearing as brutish spiders in the dark.

  He says, “Hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The woods.”

  She is listening.

  He says, “The silence, you hear it?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s fear. That’s what that silence is. That’s what peace is.”

  “Sure,” she says.

  Says he, “There are hundreds of creatures but no sound. Only sneaking.”

  Says she, “Well, some of the silence is stalking . . . you know, hunting.”

  “But even the hunter is afraid. If there’s a miss, there is terrible hunger.”

  “Sure,” she admits.

  “And,” he goes on, “In the spring . . . the birds . . . that birdsong isn’t joy. And the woodpeckers beating on ladders. It’s not play. It’s strain. Trying to beat the other guy at winning the lady lest you become the end of the line. It’s all fear. All strain.” He squints to see perfectly her turquoise encircled eyes, less clown, more primal jubilation. He touches her cheek, one rough finger against the still-wet putty-like paint. “Why’d you do this?”

  “Kids did it. Kids are the thing, remember?” She giggles. “Winning the lady. Building up the population.”

  He draws back his hand. His heart begins to pound. He has learned to truly fear her.

  She explains. “It had to do with round things. Eyes first. They were all fascinated with my face. First they felt my eyes. Like research. The kids that live up here said they never saw a face like mine. So they painted me. To make me pretty, they said.”

  His sadness rocks him.

  She laughs sassily. “Kids. Kids are the thing.”

  He listens to his own fear. And his vapidness. How unplayful he has become lately. He listens to his plunking heart, not the rich silence around him.

  She strikes a match.

  He takes one step back, away from the stink of cigarette.

  The sound of her lips and lungs, teeth and nose and audacious throat, are mixed with the silence like a big lake lapping its beaches. Not even one single giggle. She smokes. And smokes. Ashes fall to her boots. She bends to smoodge them out on the leather. What is there to say? Moments fly off in smoke.

  Then he leans into her, a hand at her back. “Who are you, Brianna? I need to know.”

  “One of your wives.” She giggles. Finally. She stomps out the cig. She takes his free hand and kisses his palm. “I’m still mad. So don’t take this for forgiveness.”

  He bear hugs her. Then, “Don’t take this for forgiveness, either.”

  She coos against his worn-softest chambray (leaving turquoise paint?), her voice forced into high melodious register, like poetry. “Once you and me, it was perfect. And clear. Now it’s complex.”

  “Muddy,” says he.

  Her painted goggle eyes hover not far below his for she is, yes, a tall young woman. “Yeah, muddy.”

  In a few moments she turns to go back to the shushy murmuring tents, one kazoo now pitching out into the consuming dark a melody that would be painfully sweet if it were on fiddle or flute, but the kazoo gives it a tickle.

  Gordon still alone in the trees pats his pockets for the aspirin bottle.

  History as it happens (as recorded by Jane Meserve, edited by Alyson Lessard).

  Lincoln was fun. People took pictures of us. A girl got a whole can of paint on her, which fell off a truck and messed her hair and outfit. We stayed late because people wanted to tell Gordie their troubles. Some losing their houses. Some with too many jobs but poor. One man cried. But Gordie hugged him a long time. People wanted Gordie. Some weren’t crying but they wanted hugs anyway. I ate FIVE brownies and guess what. There was Coke.

  The mail increaseth.

  A brown paper envelope from Bangor, stuffed with a full-page “feature” arrives in the St. Onge mailbox down at the farm place on Heart’s Content Road. Color pictures of the smiling sun on the truck door and dribbling words: SUNSHINE ARMY, and then a close-up of three painty, dirty children. One of Samantha Butler and Margo St. Onge passing out flyers into outstretched hands. One of Gordon with his arms raised, yes, looking like a prophet on the hill, a bit higher on that hill than the crowd before him. And the windmill shows up there behind him on the higher hill, and some seamless sky, all framed by the dark lethargic boughs of a hemlock behind which the photographer stood across the tar road. This was when someone pestered Gordon to do his speech, though he didn’t really hesitate. His cup runneth over.

  Meanwhile, there was a great close-up photo of the sea-captain-bearded hefty militia guy and two Lincoln area teens picking deep fried zucchini slices (as good as potato chips) from a platter on the goodies table. The photo clearly shows the Border Mountain Militia patch on the man’s sleeve. In fact, the patch seems central to this picture. And then, of course, one close-up of Gordon with Rex.

  It’s the photos that take the stage. The article is short, the size of a cracker, riddled with misquotes and misconceptions, not necessarily intentional, mostly just the way things are viewed through the eyes of people who see the world in a certain way.

  Gordon tosses this article into a cardboard box under his desk, sits back down in the old oak office chair and swivels away from the desk, puts his face in his hands, listening to the silence of the dimly lit farmhouse kitchen. The phone rings on the wall behind him, maybe the fortieth time today, and beyond the screened window, the tall grass bugs sing their ancient same song, over and over and over and over.

  Geraldine St. Onge (wife of Gordon, cousin to Claire).

  One night at our big meal soon after Lincoln, Gordon stood and banged a jar with a fork to get everyone to shut up. He made this announcement. “If media and sightseers show up to look at us when you’re coming or going, like out by the gate here, this is not cool. Hey, nobody talks to a reporter, okay? Even if one lays down in front of our wheels. There can’t be any conversation. This craziness with the press has gone far enough. Okay?”

  He even had a couple of youngsters go down and nail up another sign on the gate. It read, ANYONE TRESPASSES WILL BE SHOT. TRY IT.

  I told him this word choice was a bad mistake. Aurel and Eddie and Raymond and Paul and Stuart and John all told him it was a bad mistake. Maybe “mistake” isn’t the word. Maybe it was something already out of our hands, a future already written and Gordon was just a tool of destiny.

  Rex.

  At first the dream is ordinary, the usual illogical chopped-up flutter of memory but Rex senses it is about to swerve. Like horror movie music, but not, it sets the stage. In the dream there is simply a window and he is lying down. Gordon’s face glides into view and stops. No, but it is not Gordon’s big face filling the window. Well, it was, but now it is a planet that has gone off course and hovers within
inches of the glass. The thing is all lighted up as the moon is, only this one is swirled in blue and red on white like a prized knocker marble. So it’s not Gordon’s face. It has no eyes. No mouth yakking away. But, somehow it is Gordon. Rex’s terror-knowledge tells him so. And it is beyond humankind to stop it, this vast mass of rock, gaseous seas, and light bouncing off Rex’s house. And what comes next is unknowable. You can’t prepare for what is buried by night daze. Heart belting out blood, he wakes, having already made his usual girlie scream. The shame of his daughter or mother waking to such a sound.

  Carmel St. Onge, one of Gordon’s daughters, almost thirteen at the time, recalls from a future time.

  The True Maine Militia intensified. But Gordon was back to red light again, soured over the Bangor action, even though HE WAS THE ONE who messed it up, so our plans for a State House siege were secret. We met in the woods, at night. We made contact with Senator Mary, who would give us up-to-date intelligence on when the governor would be in his office. We had almost every little kid at the Settlement recruited. Their mums were to help with costumes and protest signs. A bunch of older boys were coming along and we stole one of Rex’s men, fifteen-year-old Mickey Gammon, stoic as ever. Gawd, those predator gray eyes!

  So we were ready and waiting for when Senator Mary would give us the word.

  OCTOBER

  The plot thickens thicker. Down in North Egypt Village, Gordon, on his way home from out-of-town errands, sees the old farm jeep owned by a neighbor, Danny Wicks, parked outside the new Egypt House of Pizza, and decides to stop now to settle some business.

  It is about the sale of sheep. Four sheep Danny wants to buy. He and Danny stand next to the jeep, under the lights of the pizza store’s entrance, while inside the jeep, Danny’s wife waits, stroking her little dog and smoking. Danny has strawberry-blond hair and clean-shaven businessman looks from the neck up. He’s wearing a blue and gray plaid flannel shirt and has farmer’s hands.

  Two diagonally parked vehicles away, in front of the blazingly lit but closed real estate office, a group of young people stand in a fat, thick, sly little cluster. Gordon likes “loitering” young people better when they are loud. The car they lean and slouch against is small and white. Nondescript. No bumper stickers. And then he looks up, right into the eyes of Glory York, who is among these young people. Rex York’s only child, the face, like the face that launched a thousand ships, whose kiss, just one kiss, could make men immortal. Or damned. Nineteen-year-old Glory York. Chewing gum slowly. Staring at him.

  Danny Wicks is now relating to Gordon details of the theft on Mushy Meadows Road, Elmer Hanson’s heart attack, Ron Brackett’s son joining the Masons, and how next year there will be an epidemic of brown tails.

  Gordon has heard how wild Glory has become. He hadn’t heard it from Rex. Rex never talks about life, only strategies.

  Gordon feels it is necessary to give her a little friendly smile, wiggles his fingers hello, looks away again, nodding as Danny fills him in on the two site possibilities for the proposed town salt shed.

  She used to be pudgy. With clammy little hands and a happy smile. A million freckles. Sweet-natured. She loved games. She was good at board games; outdoor games, too. Not always a winner. But dogged and good with rules. A cheerful loser. Her dark auburn hair back then was in two short fat sawed-off ponytails. She was a good swimmer like her mother, Marsha. Often in summer, Marsha and Glory were there at Promise Lake with dripping hair and towels around their shoulders. Glory was likely as not goose-bumped. But chattering happily. Not complaining.

  He looks up now to take in more of this picture. One of those little strappy tops cut short to show the belly. Mostly unbuttoned. In fact, he thinks it isn’t buttoned at all, but there does seem to be at least one button. At the bottom. And between her semi-exposed breasts, a twinkle. Some sort of crystal on a delicate chain. And “across the eyes,” she looks just like Rex.

  Two nights later. At 9:45 p.m. Parking lot by the Quonset huts, Gordon and Aurel get out of the cab of the flatbed truck that puts off the almost smoky scent of the just-delivered load of cedar shingles.

  Aurel, ever quick, lunges off toward his house with a cardboard box under each arm, some stuff neighbors left down at the new gatehouse.

  Gordon stays behind to see why there is a light left on in a nearby car. Then he hears weeping. And Alyson Lessard’s whisper, “I think it is! I can’t leave you like this!”

  Gordon smells reefer. He walks closer.

  He sees Alyson scooching down by the driver’s door of the car and he sees it is not a Settlement car. He sees that it is a small white car and now Alyson is hopping up. “Gordon! Please come see! She’s hurt her ankle bad! It’s swelling!”

  And now stepping around Alyson, he sees Glory York. All that tangly dark auburn hair. Never wears makeup. Still a bit freckled, as when she was a kid. Blue eyes, very blue. A face that displays no range of expressions but seems cast. Classically handsome. No makeup needed.

  But that’s not what catches his eye now. Not her face. But her two long legs, and her flouncy rose-colored skirt hiked way up. A chilly night. Cold leather-like seats.

  “She fell,” Alyson explains. “She hurt her ankle bad. It’s swelling, isn’t it?”

  Gordon now realizes that Alyson is holding a chicken in her arms. A black sex-link hen, the one that has become such a pet with many of the Settlement kids and adults, too. It’s one of those birds with “personality.” He sees that Alyson (Paul and Jacquie Lessard’s girl) is nothing like the fast-lane Glory, but such a softie, the hen held tightly against her oversized jacket. Long skirt. Thick socks. Moccasins. Little pixie haircut. Small cheery face . . . well, usually it is cheery. Brown eyes that tonight are worried.

  Glory’s voice, “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Which ankle is it?” he asks, putting a hand on the back of her seat.

  She raises one of her silky-looking tanned knees. Draws in her breath sharply.

  He doesn’t smell any alcohol. Just another little whiff of the marijuana smoke, which seems more outside the car than in it.

  He scooches down and takes the foot and ankle into his hands. Glory jerks now, cries out, “oooooo,” then laughs a little. Nervously. “I’m so sorry. I’m so embarrassed.” And then, “Do you think it’s broken?”

  He works the ankle joints a bit and again she howls, prettily. He thinks she is faking this for attention but the ankle does feel thick. He takes the other foot and ankle in his hands. In order to compare, yes.

  He looks up to her face, lighted by the dome light that is a cheap sort of light, a thin gray, and he asks, “Where are your shoes?”

  She laughs. “I hate shoes.” She does this little shivery business with her arms and shoulders that draws his eyes to her unbuttoned little jacket and black little short shirt thing, mostly unbuttoned. No bra. Something that looks like an old coin twisting on its long delicate chain between her breasts. “I can’t really bear shoes.”

  But she loves shoes. She loves clothes. She’s a dresser.

  He asks, “What happened?”

  “She tripped,” Alyson answers quickly.

  “It’s so dark out here, Gordon!” Glory scolds. “You need those big pink lights like Shop ’n Save.” She laughs. “I promise I won’t sue you.” No pouting of the mouth, no scowls. Her beautiful face remains strictly composed. “You know I wouldn’t sue you.”

  He suggests she wait before seeing a doctor, till morning at least. “Just keep the foot up and use ice.”

  “Ice?” She stretches her leg, worming her foot out the open door, her knee brushing his arm. She points her toes. “Owwww.” Then, “Oh, I just don’t want to bother any of you guys! This is so embarrassing.”

  “Is the old man home?”

  Her face softens. “Oh, Bumpa gone nighties, all poopy out from big hard day.”

  Gordon tries to remember. How many years since the child sat nowhere else but on her father’s lap, snuggling, eyes cast down, doing
this baby talk thing and Rex’s arms around her, sometimes tightly, his face like stone but he would, yes, he really would whisper back to her lovingly, something possibly not quite language.

  Gordon shakes his head, smiling. He says, “Well, the hospital will cost. And for something like this, you’ll be there all night in the waiting room watching people cough. I’ll get somebody to drive you home and if you can get through the night, your regular doctor can look at it cheaper and quicker.” He stands up. “You sit tight, okay?” He turns away, takes a few steps.

  Behind him, Glory has burst into tears. He makes a disgusted face to himself and Alyson shouts, “Gordon! Come back! Pleeeeze!”

  Glory’s crying is real. Nothing fake about those sobs. He feels horribly guilty that he has doubted her. He reappears at the open car door beside Alyson, who is still hugging the quiet hen to her jacket. He says, “Hop over, Glory. I’ll take you home. Alyson, get in the back. We’ll swing around and tell your folks so they won’t miss you. And we can get rid of the hen.”

  “Pooky,” Alyson corrects him. Then she’s in the backseat in a flash. With Pooky, the hen.

  But Glory can’t seem to get up. She sobs, “You hate me!”

  Gordon squints an eye.

  “When I was little . . . do you remember this? You kissed my nose to make it better. I never forgot that. I had a nosebleed. So you kissed my nose and it stopped! And I have always loved you for that . . . but now I hurt and you hate me. You act funny and cold. You. Hate. Me.”

  “It isn’t that,” Gordon says, patting the top of her car.

  She tries to sniff through her tear-stuffy nose. “Alyson, he’s gotten so mean! Fame has changed him. He used to be nice.”

  “Come on outta there,” Gordon says. “If you get in the other seat, I’ll drive you home. See, I’m nice.” He speaks this in a warm playful way.

  She sighs, “Alyson . . . help me reach my bag. It’s on the floor here . . . in front. It hurts to reach.”