Harrow

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by Joy Williams


  The car with its lustrously rude medallion flowed imperiously past, many of the vehicles in its wake pulling boats wobbling on trailers’ worn wheels. The boats were beyond repair, warped and splintered, the strakes gaping, the shrunken seams uncaulked. Of beautiful design, now shorn of purpose, illegitimate. In Kafka’s story, the boat, the bark, originally belonged to no one but then it had masters, who were Gracchus’s masters, too, yet they died, they were ever dying, their last thoughts of Gracchus.

  Behind the hearse, the mass moved forward, a paste of humans and machines, a retinue of the impatient—cursing the fates that had stuck them behind this horrid thing again.

  * * *

  —

  “What!” Nolo cried. “Who!”

  He had just nosed into the wildlife tunnel under the highway to take a piss. There weren’t supposed to be any pedestrians down here, to say nothing of wildlife. It was for official use only. But he’d detected something. Maybe it was some nature of non-human animal that could understand a directive and was trusting and therefore totally fucked.

  The tunnel had been part of an old mitigation effort. Mitigation. No one knew the meaning of the word now. Words died like everything else.

  He rolled down the window. There was just the sound of the truck’s serpentine belt, loose again. He cut the engine. “Hey!” he called. When he was a kid, his mother would always correct him: Hay is for horses…her attempt at elevating him in the social niceties. His ma. The only one who knew he was incapable of doing what they had suspected him of doing. The only one! And they said: It’s because she’s his ma and she’s not that bright either…She knew he was blameless, and so he was found to be. But no one apologized to him. No one said: Sorry man, forgive us man, for thinking you did the unspeakable…No one.

  The tunnel stank of trapped diesel fumes and was beginning to leak. After it exited under the highway it ran under the lake. The paintings of the animals had long ago blistered and faded in the dampness. A bunch of autistic ladies in hats had done them. You had to be certifiably autistic to get any of the public artwork jobs in those days. It had been a flaky idea to paint animals on the walls as though it were a child’s nursery. What was the link between animals and babies anyway? It was just a marketing convention. It was obvious as soon as a kid was old enough to throw a rock that there was no pact between them. After that the deal was pretty much: I get to kill you and you get to be dead.

  Now anyone could create art as long as it was for consumption in public spaces. But it all had to be of the harrow. Goddamn harrow was everywhere.

  He started the truck again and fishtailed away. Nothing was going to answer him down here. The tunnel weirded him out.

  When he returned to Denver Erie Ford’s the television was still on but the hockey game had been replaced by a film of babies crawling around a room.

  “What are you doing?” Nolo asked.

  “I’m trying to avoid the channel that just shows minutes of silence. They describe what the minute of silence is for and then they broadcast it. It’s all some people watch. You know Crispy in billing?”

  “No.”

  “It’s all Crispy watches. Crew goes all over the world capturing solemn minutes of silence. Sometimes they lighten things up by showing people placing flowers and cards and teddy bears at some location, or another. You know from whence the idea of the teddy bear originated? It was in Colorado, my place of origin. Teddy Roosevelt was on a bear hunt and was unsuccessful. His friends presented him with a freshly dead cub to comfort him, in commiseration like. Tiny little thing. Cuddly. The idea caught on, with certain alterations. So what’s going on out there, First Responder?”

  “That is a shitload of babies,” Nolo said, staring at the screen. “Where are they anyway? What are they doing?”

  “It’s some investigative projection into society’s future needs, I think.”

  “I was a babysitter once.”

  “That I cannot believe.”

  “I was screwing the mommy.”

  “You devil.”

  “The baby had such a large head. There might have been something wrong with her from the start, actually.”

  “No, no, babies have big heads and I’ve got a theory as to why. Our relatively small heads have to do with civilization. Civilization provides us with buffers and protections separating us from the natural world. Once, you were connected to the world and had to have continual awareness. Your brains had to be bigger and more receptive and your head had to be bigger to hold the brains. You had to know everything about your environment and now you don’t. Babies are a throwback. Their heads get smaller soon enough.”

  “I gotta wash up,” Nolo said. “You don’t still urinate in the sink, do you?”

  When he returned, Denver was saying, “I’ve fathered six kids all by different ladies and the remarkable thing is each mother considers theirs an indigo child. The women don’t even speak to one another but they all came up with this loony indigo theory. The kids are all ADHD, disruptive and destructive and narcissistic as hell, but each mom, bless her heart, thinks her kid is a leap in human evolution, a shift in vibrational energy, a harbinger of changing consciousness. The kids just have serious psychiatric disorders if you ask me, too much Chardonnay in the womb.”

  “A tragedy,” Nolo said, shrugging.

  “The Tragedians asked Plato to let them put on some tragedies. Plato said, ‘Very interesting, gentlemen…’ ”

  “He did not say that.”

  “ ‘…very interesting gentlemen, but I must tell you something. We have prepared here the greatest tragedy of all. It is called the State.’ ”

  “I love the State.”

  “I know. You depress me. Anesthetizing state run by amoral functionaries. Tell me about the call you answered.”

  “Two old malcontents trying to blow up a facility. Fire’s still burning. Nonetheless, damage was slight.”

  “Where do they come from? They keep coming.”

  “The babies?” He looked at the television where the babies were bumbling about, like trout in a hatchery. No commentary was involved, or the sound was off. The set was immense and old-fashioned, a layer of visible dust clinging to the screen. How long had it been since Denver was given a leave of absence anyway?

  “No, the grannies and pappies in their senile delinquent crusade.”

  “There are fewer of them all the time.”

  “You’d think they wouldn’t bother. Did I ever tell you my pop’s deathbed advice?”

  “Yes.”

  “No I didn’t. I’ll tell you what it was. ‘Try to get yourself killed.’ His last words. He died after an extremely long illness. He lingered and lingered.”

  “What did he die of?”

  “Environmental issues.”

  “I like that he said it but you lie, I think.”

  “But my pop was a loner. These old people are like a cult. Fanatic believers in the unsustainability of sustainability. How do they communicate with one another do you think? Gastric thumpings? Coded whistles at the knee replacement clinics? Pigeons?”

  “Pigeons!”

  “Homing pigeons, ice pigeons, passenger pigeons, Whoops no. Not passenger pigeons…”

  He squinted at the television. “I swear that’s one of my kids there. See the one punching the other one?”

  They were silent for a while, watching the babies. Occasionally, another one was introduced into the mix, or so it seemed.

  “Is one of those really yours?” Nolo asked.

  “Look at the lighting fixtures, man, look at the smocks. This thing was filmed fifty, sixty years ago, and God knows where. Look, if I told you that if you were going to stay much longer I’d pass out and not wake up because in your absence I ingested a number of pills as well as a considerable amount of alcohol, what would you say.”

&
nbsp; “Say?”

  “Say, do, whatever,” Denver said irritably.

  “Well are you shitting me again like with the kid?”

  Denver burped. Then he frowned.

  “I’d say you were shitting me again like with the kid, that kid being your kid. You’re discouraged because of your work. That work doesn’t suit you. Nothing to be ashamed of. You got sick of people requiring assistance. Who wouldn’t. The goal is to become transhumanized. The times demand it. This is something those people who require assistance will never understand. You have any pineapple? I could make us some pineapple spears.”

  “Look in the refrigerator,” Denver said, closing his eyes. “Maybe Santa brought some.”

  There was nothing in the refrigerator save for a few badly misinformed flies. He had a keen longing for pineapple. It was a fabulous detoxifier as well as good for the skin and hair. Just because he never looked at himself didn’t mean he was insensitive to appearance. He returned to the living room where Denver remained in his rat-colored La-Z-Boy staring glassily at his television.

  Nolo turned it off.

  “Thank you,” Denver said. His face shone with sweat. “You know I couldn’t get up right now if you paid me.”

  “Why would I pay you?”

  The room in its silence sounded funny, like the woods—whatever was left of the skinny junked-up woods through which he sometimes ran—as though it were conscious, as though it was troubled. Then he heard sirens going off somewhere, then traffic and the sound of the refrigerator turning over, turning over, which is how his mother would put it as: that refrigerator turns over too much, it’s always waking me up…

  He pulled the phone from his pocket but then put it back. He picked up Denver’s phone instead.

  “What is the nature of your emergency?” a man’s voice inquired.

  “Denver’s not well.”

  “Is this an individual or is it the bustling metropolis of several million cradled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and weaned on gold and silver wealth that once flowed from nearby mines?”

  He was silent.

  “Sorry,” the dispatcher said. “We get a lot of crank calls. So this Denver is a person?”

  “He’s your predecessor. He’s the guy who answered the phones before you.”

  “Where you calling from?”

  “We’re catercornered from you. We have a partially obstructed view of the Emergency Room awning.”

  “Catercornered?”

  “Kitty-cornered.”

  “Oh, kitty-cornered.”

  “We’re very close. It should take you a minute max to get over here. He’s barely breathing.”

  “Is he breathing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is his situation the result of any weapon? Guns? Knives?”

  “No.”

  “Is anyone at this address armed? Would anyone at this address pose a threat to rescue personnel?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “And who is this? With whom am I speaking?”

  He turned the phone off and left, propping the door open with one of Denver’s shoes. He had enjoyed shooting the breeze with him. And he hoped Denver would get through this and accomplish his stated intention of metaphysical progress which personally Nolo did not believe in, though he could respect Denver’s delusions about it. Everything was delusionary anyway, fleeting forms, empty fancies. Everything obliterated to make room for something else—that was the way of the world. This being the case, it always puzzled him that people expected so much from life.

  He stopped at a supermarket, nodding at the armed guards in brotherly regard, and bought two outrageously priced pineapples. They were perfectly ripe. The stifling of their maturation had been calculated to the very moment they hit the shelves. He would eat both of them when he got back to his mother’s house. Home. He shouldn’t be living there still, he knew, he should get a tent, wickiup somewhere extremely noxious where he could be alone. He should burn the place down and walk away. He knew a girl once—it was right after the incident with the baby—who burned her house down after her mother died. One minute they were half-heartedly arguing about whose turn it was to change the kitty litter and the next minute the woman fell prey to a busting aneurysm. On the first month’s anniversary, the house went down. The girl hadn’t even let the cats get away, her mother’s cats. Everything had to go, everything went. It was a gesture of devotion.

  My clothes and makeup, my Cuban heels, the girl had said, every pricey piece of electronic shit you can imagine. I had nice stuff but then I realized the impermanence of all things. It was as though someone poured ice water on my head. The revelation was that shocking.

  This discovery moved her deeply.

  No one wants to know the ramifications of this, she said. I know and I’m branded a freak. You’re a freak, too, for different reasons of course.

  He protested this. He was not a freak. He was merely a dupe of fate implicated in a foul rumor. Nothing had happened to that child, that infant, but the mother had acted as though he’d sent the whole world over the edge. She’d gone nuts, like, that very night. And it had certainly changed his life. He’d never had another woman, for one thing. He’d become a scapegoat, cast into the wilderness.

  His own mother believed in God’s mysterious ways all the more avidly. You’re the misunderstood innocent, she assured him. The fact you are blameless is all to the good, God’s good. He’s calling you, PeterPaul, calling you to a life of atonement, of reconciliation and reparation.

  He thought not, and said nothing.

  The girl thought it obvious that they should be together, two outcasts scaling the watchtowers, skelter-helter, throwing away their lives at every opportunity.

  But her father installed her in a clinic from which no juvenile had escaped in all its many years of covert and controversial operation, remarried, and moved away. PeterPaul, now utterly friendless, was expected to move away as well but he did not. He and his mother stayed on, objects of avoidance and distrust. His mother grew flakier by the day, saying her rosary, smoking her weed, dreaming of the poppy-red Mercedes that would run on old cooking oil.

  I want to tell you something, son. I’ve been fibbing you. I don’t like God all that much. That little baby He had you watching and then Him visiting her in that weird way He did and putting you in that awful position. It colored your whole life.

  But maybe that was God’s plan for me, Ma, to give me a darkly colored life.

  He did not say this in earnest.

  He don’t have a plan for any of us, PeterPaul. He just uses us or not, willy-nilly. But we won’t show the white feather, will we.

  We don’t have the white feather, Ma. We’ve never had it.

  We get along good, don’t we, son.

  They got along good and then she was gone.

  He emptied his pockets on a table of scratched plastic.

  There was the old dead guy’s little scroll, a pack of gum, his own truck keys. He thought of the countless awful meals he and his ma had shared at this table, the mumbled prayers, the soiled napkins, all the while something was passing, happening, unobserved. He picked up the keys. He would drive back to Denver’s. He would access the minutes-of-silence channel with him. He missed Denver. He should have done more. Instead he had tossed him away like a used match.

  * * *

  —

  Jeffrey was in his chambers, dipping a cookie into a glass of milk.

  It doesn’t make sense he said soundlessly and widened his eyes.

  It’s not fair he mimed and pouted.

  The milk wasn’t satisfactorily cold. It wasn’t easy to keep milk cold once you started to drink it. It was well nigh impossible.

  I don’t understand why I’m here he whined soundlessly in imitation.

  Usually he wasn’
t this mean. He did not mock or presume. He did not take his position for granted. He was dignified and appreciative. He loved his work, the law. He was born for the bench. Because of his seniority and at his request, he didn’t get the drunks. The drunks gave him hives, and they made him very, very impatient. He’d take a mass murderer or technological utopian over a drunk any day.

  But in general those who came before him were all pretty much the same. He kept in mind the note Darwin had scribbled to himself when he was hashing out evolution. “Never use the words higher and lower.” He’d buy that note if he could. Get a nice frame for it. Maybe it would come up for auction. Stuff always did. There’d always be collectors, always vaults. Better to store seeds than scribblings in his informed opinion, however.

  He put the cookie and milk aside. Best part of his day, cloying aftertaste and all. He’d wearied of the frightened surprise the majority exhibited in the courtroom when they perceived him, a mere child.

  At the age of ten, neurological development is pretty much complete, he’d sometimes take the bother of telling them. You knew that, did you not?

  They did not.

  There were things he’d like to do, sure. He’d like to change his name. He’d like to be called…Enoch. From henceforth, Enoch…who was taken from earth by the Almighty without passing through death.

  You’d think more would have been made of such an accomplishment.

  He’d like to play in the snow. He’d like to make a snowman. But there was no snow.

  He’d like to shout Clear the courtroom!

  He’d always wanted to do that, though it would be frightfully irresponsible.

  Yet he’d had that interesting case this morning. Her visit was not totally unexpected. You, he thought. All but born you.

  He ruffled himself in his black robes much as a bird would in her feathers.

  Clear the courtroom, he said without speaking. Playfully.

  Jeffrey—Enoch—went to the windows and looked down toward the park. There was the interesting case. Quite alone. As an interesting case she could anticipate no present moment, she possessed only the future, which she was still powerless to change.

 

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