Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

by Carolyn Chute

  On with the prayer. Pastor Lon’s hair is as thin as scribbles and it is white. His tiny mustache is gray. He has taken off his army cap. He’s a gentleman in stuff like that and his voice is honey. He is maybe ninety years old, though Mickey hasn’t reached the age where he can judge ages of those over sixty. But the turkey buzzard neck is a clue. Meanwhile, Pastor Lon’s honey voice slides through the prayer. “Sodomizers will head the line, two by two, into Lucifer’s gates . . .” This sort of prayer is usually screamed by a sweaty guy in a suit and he’d be jumping around with his arms raised and everyone yells, “Amen, brother!” but this voice is tender and nobody at this table is making a noise, either. Everything is floaty.

  Mickey sees two of the guests from upstate Maine both sneak peeks through partly open eyes at Gordon. They are officers of the Knox County Militia. They seem to really admire Gordon. In a restrained manly way, of course. But Mickey figures it has been the news and talk radio that has got them twittipated, which is extra funny since Gordon smells like weeds and so forth due to his lack of news and commercials. It’s a total one-way street St. Onge-wize.

  Pastor Lon’s voice (and Mickey now notices one missing tooth near the front) rolls on in its warm wave, “Into Lucifer’s gates will also be forced those wicked who defy the Constitution that Your hand has written using the hands of the divine founders of this great and Christian nation. Who among us does not recognize the Constitution as a page from Scriptures?”

  Mickey thinks Pastor Lon’s old eyes might fly open now to take count of those who have a problem with “recognizing” whatever it was he just said. But his eyelids stay mildly closed. He seems to feel real comfortable in this room and probably everywhere he goes.

  “Now,” the pastor speaks with weight on each word, not louder, but just good ’n’ solid. “The true sons of the true sons of the true line from the seed of Abraham must prepare for battle in accordance with Your will and Your law and in Your name. Amen.” He opens his eyes. Brown old shaky eyes that now stare straight ahead out the window into the glow of the October trees.

  One of the Knox County guys says time is limited and he’d like to get on with everyone coming to some agreement about the e-mail that will be sent to the governor as well as a hand-signed “snail mail” letter.

  Mickey had seen the document; Butch showed him last night. But Mickey cannot make out written words. At the moment, this meeting reminds him of school a little bit.

  The squares of window-shaped pinky-purple-gold tremble more contemptuously on the blue walls.

  Rex’s body shifts but his face and eyes remain frozen upon all details of this scene.

  The guy asks if everyone received a copy last week. “Have you all had time to study it?”

  Rex doesn’t move and none of his men (outside the Settlement) are on this guy’s mailing list, nor did Rex, as we know, feel they should be at this meeting, and so they aren’t. Rex is here, though, like the enamel cherub. A gritty spirit image.

  The Settlement men have had a chance to meet hurriedly after breakfast on this. Gordon had showed them the one copy the Settlement received. He had already scribbled changes on it in his forthright barbed-wire-looking handwriting. John Lungren added three words. Then there was a vote. Beneath the hands of Settlement men here at this table are photocopies of the one that was changed.

  Gordon says deeply, “We offer some revisions.”

  The other guy from Knox says, “Yeah? Like what?”

  Old Pastor Lon is one of the three New Jersey militia members. All three are positioned with their copies of the original on the table before them. One of them, a guy with shaved head, says, “We have sent this very same document to the governor of our state. Before your changes, that is.”

  “The same?” This is John Lungren, gray-haired, no camo jacket or patch today, but a sherpa-lined hunting vest over dark “chamois.” His light eyes under raised eyebrows target the upstate Maine guys who are pushing for the letter to go out. “Is this a nationwide thing?”

  “Sure is,” says Pastor Lon.

  “Who wrote the first?” John studies all the guests.

  The upstate Maine guy shrugs. “Got it off the ’net.”

  John grimaces. “And who put in on the ’net?”

  Gordon has pulled more copies of the Settlement’s version from a folder and passes them around, one first to the guy beside him.

  Rex has offered no revised version. He accepts a copy from Gordon’s hand and looks at it almost sideways, then drops it on the table, folds his hands.

  The New Jersey guys read slowly through Gordon’s bouncy handwriting.

  The shaved head guy looks discomfited. “What’s this stuff you put in about corporations? It’s the commie government that’s the problem.”

  Gordon looks up at the ceiling, big mustache flicks, crazy eye flicks. How can he begin to unfurl the last twenty years of his hard study of the global system, the reading and thinking and seeing in, say, five minutes to people who are . . . are what? He refuses, even in his head, to use all the words overused to describe these men. He wants to love them? To respect them? To honor them? To own them? To redeem them? Deliver them?

  “My brother,” he says, “the shadow government of big finance and bottom lines and intel agencies, which controls all the media and finances all our elections, which is set above our observable national and state governments, is a fake god that challenges the god that most people of the world see in the blue sky and in the blue sea, and in the two-leggeds and four-leggeds and winged ones and in the woody and grassy beings who photosynthesize.” He throws a hand to the window.

  “Well, whatever,” says the shaved head guy, slightly sneering.

  The New Jersey guys are quiet. Pastor Lon’s eyes are closed, his chin shaking, his neck shaking, all his old self shaking. The skinhead now looks hard and haughtily into Gordon’s written words.

  The third New Jersey man, a white-haired and naturally balding fifty-year-old, looks at all the faces around him, then settles on Gordon. Yeah, he admires Gordon, it seems, even if the Gordon-philosophy is silly. Gordon, who has been reprinted in patriot newsletters and patriot web sites shouting “God Save the Republic!”, arms extended, a crowd pushing to get closer, closer, closer. This Prophet who is a thunderbolt, and the liberal press hates him.

  One Knox County guy says, “We have at least four other outfits here in Maine who will sign the original version. Before it goes to Augusta, I’d have to show it to them again . . . if this new stuff goes in.”

  Gordon says, “The document was great before, just not complete. Takes a lot to round out a good thing.” He had almost added his Maine-seceding-from-the-union idea, which he has begun to feel stirred over and because he believes that that’s what he sees in Rex’s eyes, too, along with the ice and snow, and doesn’t he want to please Rex, his brother, who at the moment is receding away? But still there is that hot extravagance of feeling in Gordon’s chest for all these guys, their darker edges, their vicious little edges erased by his wish to do right. And to please his effervescent kids, which would include Bree. Certainly not to save the world. Save the world from what? From life? But then . . . ahhhh. A great red roar there in Gordon’s head now. Once again, he has webbed himself up, tangled in the thickety woolly wholeness of the great Mother and her cruelties, logic subtracts logic and multiplies the deep-most, the bare-assed verve. He at last looks at Rex. Rex seems to be chewing on one side of his tongue.

  Pastor Lon’s eyes widen. Something in the window there.

  Gordon turns sideways to look. Nothing. Sighs. But what he now sees is a bundle of papers on the floor, several boxes of old .22 ammo and some black markers. Those weren’t there before this moment, or before today anyway. Who has been messing with him? He doesn’t look at the faces of these strangers yet to see who looks shifty, though he hadn’t seen shifty exactly before, just fucking right wing. But now he is sure he will see a betrayal in one face. Maybe.

  Again Pastor Lon’s eyes
widen on the window, then squint.

  One Knox guy says, “What’s out there?” then turns to see for himself. Everyone turns, even Rex, who is still chewing on his tongue. Or something.

  Gordon again sees nothing.

  Pastor Lon shakes his shaky head slowly.

  “What?” asks the skinhead.

  “Light. Like orange light, “ Pastor Lon says gravely.

  Gordon says, “Trees. Sun on the trees.” He opens his hand to the walls, but at this point the lavender glow has moved on, sun headed west, blocked by the house.

  The fifty-year-old New Jersey guy with white hair on the sides says, “Well, gentlemen. We’re being watched.”

  Butchie laughs. “You guys aren’t planning the overthrow of anything. Let ’em watch. We have nothing to hide.”

  Cory smiles.

  Rex’s eyes target each face of the New Jersey guys. Then looks at Gordon, sort of sighting between his eyes.

  Gordon tiredly grins. He realizes Rex has said nothing this whole time. He can feel the man’s wrath placed squarely on him, even though Rex was all for this meeting until now.

  John Lungren says, “The media can take the thing you aren’t hiding, the thing that is not even air and create a masterpiece as solid as pig iron.”

  “Amen,” says Pastor Lon.

  “And agents,” says the skinhead.

  “Take your pick,” says the younger Knox man, blond with a goatee. His army jacket is solid olive drab, so popular in the 1970s. Maybe a hand-me-down from his old man.

  Eddie Martin snorts. “There are a lot of magic wands out there.”

  Gordon stands up, edges between the blue wall and the row of elbows and the booted foot of Pastor Lon, who is at the end of the table.

  The yard behind the house is full of arched leafy canes of raspberry purpled by frost. The raging red maple, now a bit less sunny but still frisky from breeze, stands alone as ever.

  No sign out there of Secret Agent Jane or NBC or some guy in a trench coat (Gordon’s idea of an agent). But Gordon is bothered by the bundle and .22 shells on the floor. And he is bothered by Rex because he cannot read Rex’s ugly silence.

  Gordon is disoriented. Too many unfamiliar clues. Too much that buzzes. His darkly bearded green-eyed face wrenches around, the Tourette’s-like and poltergeist’s possession of his countenance, bewildered lunatic.

  One New Jersey guy slides the Settlement version of the document into an envelope.

  The older Knox County guy sees and folds his in half. “I think the stuff you guys put in is okay. I’ll let you know what the others say.”

  But now someone is standing behind Gordon at the windows. It’s Pastor Lon, who is, yes, shaky, but not stooped, and wears a camo vest over a blue-white dress shirt. Gordon steps to the side to let the guy press his nose to the glass.

  “Weird,” Pastor Lon says. “I was not imagining it. There was a column, a beam, maybe like a laser, straight down from up there.” He points to the sky between the gnarly big-armed redheaded maple and the house.

  The room feels instantly refrigerated. Drafty, actually. Januaryish. Like a door left open in January, yes. Just like that. Gordon looks needlessly at the closed door.

  The grays.

  Whoops! It happens. A lull in our speed of motion normally slower or faster than any Earth being’s rudimentary eyes can see, becomes synchronized, and the translation of colors collide so that as we observe their witty bitty earthly efforts (our scouting for possible samples to abduct) one or more of those beings will detect the streamy airy aura’d pull of our goof up.

  The spy.

  Gordon goes back to the table, standing over his copy of the document but not ready to sit, just staring into the print.

  Pastor Lon is still searching the sky. But then he cocks his head, head turning slowly on his buzzardly neck like a cheap-made kitchen appliance. “What’s this?” he asks, not in his honey voice but his voice of alarm. “Did you hear it? Something’s in that cupboard.” He takes a step toward the corner hutch. “Somebody.”

  Rex breathes audibly, like a reverse drag on a cigarette.

  Gordon turns back and approaches as Pastor Lon tugs on one of the knobs at the bottom. There’s a giggle. All eyes widen as Gordon hauls Secret Agent Jane out and she is trying to keep her glasses of white-trimmed pink heart-shapes lenses from going askew and giggling and her rough velvety voice scolds, “You guys are sooo bad.”

  The skinhead is extra stunned. “Where’d you come by one of those? Here in Maine.” He means “nigger.”

  Gordon lifts Jane to his shoulder, caveman style, and she whines, “Noooo, Gordie. Let go!”

  All eyes are on Jane, except Mickey Gammon’s and Rex York’s, these two just staring into their private tunnels of frettings.

  Meanwhile, Cory and Butch look at each other, eyes twinkling utterly. Cory clears his throat, now runs a hand along his lengthening tail of blackest hair and yes, it has grown an inch today. And his shoulders are broader today, broader than Gordon’s, Gordon his father. And he had reached page 80 of Pacifism of Pathology last night and he is not tired at all. He never needs to sleep anymore.

  The skinhead adds no more to his little joke, just smiles thinly around the table. Pastor Lon says nothing, indeed nods into the child’s eyes with gentlemanly bearing.

  Jane’s legs, longer every day, dangle with ease and trust. Her Settlement knitted sweater, pants, and tunic thick with cable stitch, a fir tree green.

  Gordon’s massive camo-clad arm, the one with the olive and black mountain lion near the shoulder, presses her in place as her heart-shapes gaze memorizes faces and camo or olive caps and coffee cups. For inclusion in her spy notebook, of course.

  “This is even worse than I thought,” she shudders.

  All the men (but Mickey and Rex) pleasantly laugh. Such a cutie. Such a gorgeous little spy. And Gordon feels the power of fame, or so it seems, that maybe he does have something, what it takes to change the world, their stinging trust and admiration, though fame came to him accidentally. Whatever, it seems to bring an extravagant blush of sweet justice to this room. Or so it seems to him. He raises his chin, the short beard scratching Jane’s cheek.

  But then an hour later. Jane gone upstairs to her old room to “find things.”

  As all are standing around the hallway and kitchen, working their way out, Rex stays behind and draws Gordon’s eye.

  Gordon turns back. Only then does Rex rise from the table, slipping his cop-looking sunglasses on even before he’s anywhere near the light of outdoors. But this is better, maybe, than the coldness of his eyes. He hisses, “Nobody who wears the Border Mountain Militia emblem is to sign that piece of paper . . . to . . . the . . . governor. And nobody here at the Settlement is to ever again make these decisions. I never saw that stuff you wrote until this meeting. Are you trying to take over?”

  Gordon nods. “I see your point, Richard. I’m s—”

  Rex interrupts crustily, “Do you, Mr. Democracy? You can start your own militia if you want but don’t fuck with me in this one.”

  Gordon slumps his shoulders, his chin. “So the document bothers you because of the changes? Or the one even before the changes?”

  Rex’s eyes are unseen behind the glasses. His mouth tightens, the crawling dark mustache rises and falls over a clenching of the jaw. He loses all remaining color. He mutters, “Some guys of the Border Mountain Militia have indicated that they believe you are a stupid fuck. I don’t want to believe that.” He adjusts his sunglasses and pushes past Gordon out toward the kitchen, past Mickey, who was hovering near the hallway door.

  Hogs eat snakes.

  Pastor Lon with the crepey version of the Mona Lisa’s smile has repeated his prayer as before, but adds a thanks for the abundant food. Glennice wearing her plaid flannel of two shades of blue unbuttoned over her dark T-shirt and a fly-sized gold cross has been leaning in just as the old fellow opens his eyes. “Coffee?” she wonders. Note also that Glennice’s hair tonight
is in pigtails. And here we are in the warm winter kitchen.

  “Oh, yes, thank you.” He raises his chin, gives her a wink.

  Glennice pours coffee so well, she need not look at the opening of the cup but into her husband’s eyes. “Gordon.” She speaks his name swallowing a perfect squeak. “You must say your prayer.”

  Gordon looks down at his hands.

  Glennice says, “I myself love the part of the Bible and Gordon’s prayer where Jesus our Lord teaches about giving away one’s vest and then one’s shirt.” She gives Pastor Lon’s quilted camo vest a tender pull.

  The noise of dishes and chatter and chair-scrapings of the big room all drowns itself out.

  Glennice stares into the eyes of the shaved-headed younger militiaman. She giggles.

  Little blond child, maybe four years old, name Rhett, pulls at the sleeve of one of the Knox County Militia guys and asks, “Do you like compos’ toilets? It’s sawdust. You like it?”

  “You want to see a hog eat a snake?” Rhett’s buddy, a dark-haired Passamaquoddy girl (of the same age as Rhett) asks the militia guests.

  Gordon laughs too suddenly, the release of a tight throat.

  Glennice says, “More coffee, just holler,” and moves on.

  Now one of the pies arrives, too hot to handle, Tante Lucienne’s own raisin pie with the fleur-de-lis cut into the center of the buttery-looking crust.

  Rhett says, “Pigs eat acorns.” Rhett’s face has the one expression he always wears. Balefulness.

  “He meant compost toilets,” Eddie Martin chuckles two seats beyond Gordon. “Rhett is proud to be a tour guide when the opportunity comes up.”