Trailerpark

by Russell Banks

  Days went by, however, and for one reason or another, Marcelle left Flora alone, let her come and go as usual without bothering to stop her and inform her that guinea pigs were pets and pets were not allowed in the trailerpark. Terry came back, evidently from New York, where he’d gone to hear some music, and she put him to work winterizing the trailers, which, for another week, as she laid out Terry’s work and checked after him to be sure he actually did it, allowed Marcelle to continue to ignore the problem. Leon LaRoche thought better of the idea of bringing up the topic again and generally avoided her, although he did get together several times with Captain Knox to discuss Marcelle’s obvious unwillingness to deal forthrightly with what would very soon turn into a sanitation problem, something for the health department, Captain Knox pointed out.

  Finally, one morning late in the month, Marcelle went looking for Terry. It was a Saturday, and ordinarily she didn’t hire him on Saturdays because it brought forward speeches about exploitation of the minorities and complaints about not getting paid time-and-a-half, which is what anyone else would have to pay a man to work on Saturdays, unless of course that man happens to be a black man in a white world. Marcelle more or less accepted the truth of Terry’s argument, but that didn’t make it any easier for her to hire him on Saturdays, since she couldn’t afford to pay him the six dollars an hour it would have required. On this day, however, she had no choice in the matter—the weather prediction was for a heavy freeze that night and Sunday, and half the trailers had water pipes that would surely burst if Terry didn’t spend the day nailing homosote skirting to the undersides.

  He wasn’t home, and his sister Carol didn’t know where he’d gone, unless it was next door to visit that woman Flora Pease, where he seemed to spend a considerable amount of his spare time lately, Carol observed cautiously. Yes, well, Marcelle didn’t know anything about that, nor did she much care where Terry spent his spare time so long as he stayed out of her hair (Carol said she could certainly understand that), but right now she needed him to help her finish winterizing the trailerpark by nightfall or they would have to spend the next two weeks finding and fixing water pipe leaks. Carol excused herself, as she had to get dressed for work, and Marcelle left in a hurry for Flora’s trailer.

  At first when she knocked on the door there was no answer. A single crow called from the sedgy swamp out back, a leafless and desolate-looking place, with a skin of ice over the reedy water. The boney low trees and bushes clattered lightly in the breeze, and Marcelle pulled the collar of her denim jacket tightly against her face. The swamp, which was more of a muskeg than an actual swamp, lay at the southern end of about three thousand acres of state forest—most of the land between the northwest shore of Skitter Lake and the Turnpike, Route 28, which ran from the White Mountains, fifty miles to the north, to Boston, ninety miles to the south. The trailerpark had been placed there as a temporary measure (before local zoning restrictions could be voted into action) to hold and initiate development on the only large plot of land available between the town of Catamount and the Skitter Lake State Forest. That was right after the Korean War, when the Granite State Realty Development Corporation, anticipating a coming statewide need for low-income housing, had gone all over the state purchasing large tracts of land that also happened to lie close to cities and towns where low-income people were employed, usually mill towns like Catamount, whose tannery kept between seventy and eighty families in the area of the marginally poor. As it turned out, the trailerpark was all the Granite State Realty Development Corporation could finance in Catamount, for it soon became apparent that no one in the area would be able to purchase houses if the Corporation built single-family dwellings, or pay high enough rents to justify the expense of constructing a town house apartment complex. Soon it became clear that the best use the Corporation could make of the land and trailers was as collateral for financing projects elsewhere in the state, in the larger towns and cities where there were people who could afford to buy single-family dwellings or rent duplex apartments. In the meantime, the Corporation maintained the twelve trailers just adequately, paid the relatively low taxes, and came close to breaking even on its investment. Marcelle had been the first tenant in the trailerpark, moving out of a shabby woodframe tenement building in town because of her kids, who she believed needed more space, and she had immediately become the manager—when the company representative recognized her tough-mindedness, made evident, as soon as there were no more vacancies, by her ability to organize a rent strike to protest the open sewage and contaminated water. They had installed septic tanks and leach fields, and she had continued as resident manager ever since.

  Flora’s door opened a dark inch, and Marcelle saw a bit of cheek, blond hair and eye looking through the inch. She shoved against the door with the flat of one hand, pushing it back against the face behind it, and stepped up the cinderblocks and in, where she discovered the owner of the cheek, blond hair and eye—Bruce Severance, the college kid who lived in number 3, between LaRoche and Doreen.

  “Hold it a minute, man,” he said uselessly, rubbing his nose from the blow it had received from the door and stepping back into the room to make space for the large, gray-haired woman. The room, though dark from the venetian blinds being drawn, was filled with at least two other people than Bruce and Marcelle, batches of oddly arranged furniture, and what looked like merchandise counters from a department store.

  “Don’t you have any lights in here, for Christ’s sake?” Marcelle demanded. She stood inside the room in front of the open door, blinking as she tried to accustom herself to the gloom and see who else was there. “Why are all the blinds drawn? What the hell you doing here, Severance?” Then she smelled it. “Grass? You smoking your goddamned hippy pot in here with Flora?”

  “Hey, man, it’s cool.”

  “Don’t ‘man’ me. And it isn’t cool. You know I don’t let nothing illegal go on here. Something illegal goes on and I happen to find out about it, I call in the goddamned cops. Let them sort out the problems. I don’t need problems, I got enough of them already to keep me busy.”

  “That’s right, baby, you don’t want no more problems,” came a soft voice from a particularly dark corner.

  “Terry! What the hell you doing here?” She could make out a lumpy shape next to him on what appeared to be a mattress on the floor. “Is that Flora over there?” Marcelle asked, her voice suddenly a bit shaky. Things were changing a little too fast for her to keep track of. You don’t mind the long-haired hippy kid smoking a little grass and maybe yakking stupidly the way they do when they’re stoned with probably the only person in the trailerpark who didn’t need to get stoned herself in order to understand him. You don’t really mind that. A kid like Bruce Severance, you knew he smoked marijuana, but it was harmless, because he did it for ideological reasons, the same reasons behind his diet, pure vegetarianism, and his exercise, T’ai Chi, and his way of getting a little rest, transcendental meditation—he did all these things not because they were fun but because he believed they were good for him, and good for you, too, if only you were able to come up with the wisdom, self-discipline and money so that you, too, could smoke marijuana instead of drink beer and rye whiskey, eat organic vegetables instead of supermarket junk, study and practice exotic, ancient Oriental forms of exercise instead of sit around at night watching TV, learn how to spend a half-hour in the morning and a half-hour in the evening meditating instead of sleeping to the last minute before you have to get up and make breakfast for yourself and the kid and rush off to work and in the evening drag yourself home just in time to make supper for the kid—if you could accomplish these things, you would be like Bruce Severance, a much improved person. That was one of his favorite phrases, “much improved person,” and he believed that it ought to be a universal goal and that only ignorance (fostered by the military-industrial complex), sheer laziness, and/or purely malicious ideological opposition (that is to say, a “fascist mentality”) kept the people he lived among from p
articipating with him in his several rites. So, unless you happened to share his ideology, you could easily view his several rites as harmless, mainly because you could also trust the good sense of the poor people he lived among, and also their self-discipline and the day-to-day realities they were forced to struggle against. A fool surrounded by sensible poor people remains a fool and is therefore seldom troublesome. But when it starts to occur to you that some of the poor people are not so sensible—which is what occurred to Marcelle when she peered into the dingy, dim clutter of the trailer and saw Terry sprawled out on a mattress on the floor with Flora Pease clumped next to him, both with marijuana cigarettes dangling from their lips—that’s when you start to view the fool as troublesome.

  “Listen, Bruce,” she said, wagging a finger at the boy, “I don’t give a damn about you wearing all them signs about legalizing pot and plastering bumper stickers against nuclear energy and so on all over your trailer, just so long as you take ’em down and clean the place up the way you found it when you leave here, and I don’t mind you putting that kind of stuff on your clothes,” she said, pointing with her forefinger at the image of a cannabis plant on the chest of Bruce’s tie-dyed tee shirt. “Because what you do behind your own closed door and how you decorate your trailer or your van or your clothes is all your own private business. But when you start mixing all this stuff up together like this,” she said, waving a hand contemptuously in the direction of Terry and Flora, “well, that’s a little different.”

  “Like what, man?” Bruce asked. “C’mon in, will you, and hey, calm down a little, man. No big thing. We’re just havin’ us a little morning toke, then I’m headin’ out of here. No big thing.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool,” Terry said lightly from the corner.

  Marcelle shot a scowl in his direction. “I don’t want no dope dens in this park. I got my job to look out for, and you do anything to make my job risky for me, I’ll come down on you,” she said to Terry. “And you, too,” she said to Bruce. “And you, too, sister,” she said to Flora. “Like a goddamned ton of bricks!”

  “No big thing, man,” Bruce said, closing the door behind her, wrapping them all in the gray light of the room. Now Marcelle noticed the sharp, acidic smell of animal life, not human animals, but small, furred animals—urine and fecal matter and straw and warm fur. It was the smell of a nest. It was both irritating and at the same time comforting, that smell, because she was both unused to the smell and immediately familiar with it. Then she heard it, a chattering, sometimes clucking noise that rose and ran off to a purr, then rose again like a shudder, diminishing after a few seconds to a quiet, sustained hum. She looked closely at what she had thought at first were counters and saw that they were cages, large, waist-high cages, a half-dozen of them, placed in no clear order around the shabby furniture of the room, a mattress on the floor, a rocker, a pole lamp, a Formica-topped kitchen table and, without the easy chair, a hassock. Beyond the living room, she could make out the kitchen area, where she could see two more of the large cages.

  “You want a hit, man?” Terry asked, holding his breath as he talked so that his words came out in high-pitched, breathless clicks. He extended the joint toward her, a relaxed smile on his thick lips. Next to him, Flora, who lay slumped against his muscular frame like a sack of grain dropped from several feet above, seemed to be dozing.

  “A hit. That’s what she looks like, like she got hit.”

  “Ah, no, Flora’s happy. Ain’t you, Flora honey?” Terry asked, chucking her under the chin.

  She rolled her head and came gradually to attention, saw Marcelle and grinned. “Hi, Mrs. Chagnon!” she cried, just this side of panic. “Have you ever smoked marijuana?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I have. I love to smoke marijuana!”

  “That right?”

  “Yep. I can’t drink, it makes me crazy and I start to cry and hit people and everything…”

  “Right on,” Bruce said.

  “… so I drink marijuana, I mean, I smoke marijuana, and then I feel real fine and everything’s a joke, just the way it’s s’posed to be. The trouble is, I can’t get the knack of rolling these little cigarettes, so I need to have someone roll them for me, which is why I asked these boys here to come in and help me out this morning. You want a seat, why don’t you sit down, Mrs. Chagnon? I been meaning to ask you over to visit sometime, but I been so busy, you know?” She waved toward the hassock for Marcelle to sit down.

  “You sure you don’t want a hit, Marcelle baby?” Terry offered again. “This’s some dynamite shit. Flora’s got herself some dynamite grass, right, man?” he said to Bruce.

  “Oh, wow, man. Dynamite shit. Really dynamite shit.”

  “No, thanks.” Marcelle sat down gingerly on the hassock in the middle of the room. Bruce strolled loosely over and dropped himself onto the mattress, plucked the joint from Terry’s hand and sucked noisily on it. “So you’re the one who smokes the marijuana,” Marcelle said to Flora. “I mean, these boys didn’t…”

  “Corrupt her?” Bruce interrupted. “Oh, wow, man, no way! She corrupted us!” he said, laughing and rolling back on the mattress. “Dynamite shit, man! What fucking dynamite grass!”

  “He’s just being silly,” Flora explained. “It makes you a little silly sometimes, Mrs. Chagnon. Nothing to worry about.”

  “But it’s illegal!”

  “These days, Mrs. Chagnon, what isn’t? I mean, honestly. I’m really not surprised.”

  “Yeah, well, I suppose it’s okay, so long as you do it in the privacy of your own home, I mean.”

  “Really, Mrs. Chagnon! I would never be so foolish as to risk being arrested by the police!” Flora was now sitting pertly, her legs crossed at the ankles, gesturing limp-wristedly as she talked and manifesting a somewhat over-intensified effect.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Marcelle said, and she sighed heavily, “I came over here looking for Terry to help me finish winterizing because we got a cold snap coming, but I can see he won’t be any good today, all doped up like he is…”

  “Hey, man!” Terry said and sat up straight, his feelings hurt. “You paying time-and-a-half, you got yourself a man. In fact, you pay time-and-a-half, you might getcha self two men,” he said, waving toward Bruce. “You need a few bucks, man?”

  “No, no, not today. I gotta study for a quiz on Monday, and I haven’t even looked at the stuff…”

  “Right, right,” Terry said. “I forgot, you college boys, you gotta study for quizzes and stuff. But that’s okay. More for me, as I always say.” His voice was crisp and loud again, which to Marcelle was cheering, for she had been made anxious by his slurred, quiet voice. It had made her nervous, as if his voice had an edge she couldn’t see—if he was going to say things that cut, she wanted to be able to see them coming, and usually, with Terry, she could do precisely that, so she was relieved to hear him yammering away again, snapping and slashing with his sarcasm and bravado.

  “Hey, Flora,” Terry suddenly said, “now that you got the boss lady over here, whyn’t you show her all your little furry friends! C’mon, baby, show the boss lady all your furry little friends!” He jumped up and urged Marcelle to follow. “C’mere and take a peek at these little beasties. She’s got a whole heap of ’em.”

  “Not so many,” Flora said shyly from the mattress.

  “I gotta go,” Bruce said. “I gotta study,” he added, and he quickly let himself out the door.

  Marcelle said not now and told Terry that he could start work by putting the winter skirting around Merle Ring’s trailer, which was the most exposed in the park, located as it was out there on the point facing the lake. She reminded him where the sheets of homosote were stored, and he took off, not before, as usual, synchronizing watches with her, so that, as he put it, she wouldn’t be able later on to say he didn’t work as long as he did. “I’ve been screwed that way too many times,” he always reminded her.

  Then he was gone, and Marcelle was alone in the t
railer with Flora—alone with Flora and her animals, which to Marcelle seemed to number in the hundreds. Their scurrying and rustling in the cages and the chittering noises they made filled the silence, and the smell of the animals thickened the air. Then Flora was moving about the room with a grace and lightness Marcelle had never seen in her before. She seemed almost to be dancing, and Marcelle wondered if it was the effect of the marijuana, an effect caused by inhaling the smoke-filled air, because after all, she knew Flora was a heavy, awkward woman who moved slowly and deliberately, not in this floating, delicate, improvisational way, almost as if she were underwater.

  Marcelle Chagnon, the resident manager of the trailerpark, called across to Flora as she drifted by on her way to the kitchen area. “Flora! You can’t keep these animals in here anymore!”

  Flora ignored the words and waved for Marcelle to follow into the kitchen area, where, she explained, the babies were. “The babies and the new mommies, actually,” she went on with obvious pride. As soon as they were weaned, she would place the mommies back with the daddies in the living room. Soon, she pointed out, she was going to have to build some more cages, because these babies would soon need to be moved to make room for more babies. She repeated what she had told Captain Knox: “When you take care of them, they thrive. Just like plants.”

  Marcelle Chagnon said it again, this time almost pleading. “You can’t keep these animals in here anymore!”

  Flora stopped fluttering. “It’s getting colder, winter’s coming. I must keep them inside, or they’ll freeze to death. Just like plants.”

  Marcelle Chagnon crossed her arms over her chest and for the third time informed Flora that she would not be able to keep her guinea pigs inside her trailer.