Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Something happen out there?” His smile was challenging and sympathetic at once.

  “No.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Just walking around.”

  “I saw you run off that hill.” He indicated towers, and then a slope, with his hand. His gesture was so specific that Pella felt he still saw her route there, sketched in air.

  “I like to run,” she said, and drank her water, letting it dribble down her chin, not caring. Droplets rolled, coated by the dust at her feet.

  “You didn’t look like you were running for the pleasure of it.”

  “Hey, Pella!”

  David walked up, with Morris Grant. They were each carrying sticks, resting them on their shoulders. Morris had a fraying comic book curled into his back pocket.

  “That’s Efram,” said Morris to David.

  “Hello, boys,” said Efram.

  “What are you doing?” said Morris Grant.

  “Talking to this young lady here,” said Efram. He gestured elegantly. Pella felt a shiver of excitement.

  “That’s my sister,” piped David.

  Morris tapped David lightly with his stick. “He knows that.”

  “We’re hunting household deer,” said David.

  “David—” started Pella angrily.

  “That’s all right, they can’t catch them,” said Efram softly, to her alone. To them he said, “Mr. Wa giving you a bounty?”

  “Nope,” said Morris. “He doesn’t care about anything he can’t eat or sell, the dumb old Chinaman—”

  “Watch the talk, Morris,” said Efram. “That’s out of line, and you know it.”

  Morris’s unit of value was attention, unqualified, and he looked ecstatic to be rebuked so extensively by Efram. He writhed with pleasure as he corrected himself. “I just meant we’re not working for Wa, not like Bruce. He spends all his time digging up potatoes ’cause Wa gives him a nickel—”

  “Tell you what,” interrupted Efram. “You two want to work for me?”

  David widened his eyes and looked at Morris. Morris nodded at David and then at Efram.

  “You want to hunt household deer, go up to my place. Don’t kill them, just roust them out. Tell Ben I sent you. If I don’t see any around there before I go to bed tonight, I’ll give you each a dollar tomorrow. How’s that sound?”

  “Not kill them?” said Morris.

  “Nope.” Efram winked at Pella. “Just send them on their way. Herd them up west, where Diana Eastling lives, and Hugh Merrow. They like having those things around.”

  “I like it too,” volunteered David.

  “I’d like to kill one,” said Morris.

  “Well, I don’t want carnage all over my farm,” said Efram. “Just chase them out.”

  “C’mon,” said Morris. Howling out a sort of hunting call, he raised his stick and charged past the house. David ran after him, adding a high-pitched echo to Morris’s battle cry.

  And they were gone, screaming off into the valley. Pella watched them disappear in a cloud of kicked-up dust. As badly as she wanted to torture Morris Grant with his own stick, she wished she was with them, running away from the house. She didn’t want to host Efram alone for a minute longer. The pressure of it had her wanting, for once, to lose herself among the children, not be taken for someone older.

  Efram just stood, emanating silence.

  “Why do they like them?” she said, trying to fill the vacuum.

  “What’s that?” said Efram.

  “Diana Eastling and the other name you said. Why do they like household deer?”

  “Hugh Merrow. He’s a painter, lives out on the western end, off alone. You know Diana Eastling?”

  “She came by to see Clement. Like you.”

  “She recognizes your dad’s name. That’s what brought her out.” Efram seemed to be talking to himself. Then he smiled. “I’m just humoring the boys. They won’t be able to herd those deer to Merrow’s place, or Diana Eastling’s, or anywhere else. Like chasing grapes around a plate with a knife. But I’ll give them each a dollar tomorrow anyway.”

  “But why do Diana Eastling and Hugh Merrow like them?”

  “You hold on to your questions, don’t you?” He squinted at her, smiling.

  “I guess.”

  “Well, Eastling and Merrow, they’ve got different excuses. She’s a scientist—she’s studying this place. Merrow’s a painter, an artist.”

  He seemed to think no further explanation was necessary.

  “And why don’t you?” she asked.

  “I’m sure you’ll find out about that,” he said. “The question is what you’ll do about it.” He stepped off the porch, and stood with one arm crossed over, the way he had when he’d first appeared on the hill. “I’ll see your dad another time, Pella.”

  “Find out about what?” She heard her words come out panicked. Suddenly he was leaving, teasing her with what he knew.

  He smiled. “We’ll talk later, Miss Marsh.”

  He raised his big hand and held it up, until she felt compelled to wave. Then he dropped his hand and turned. Pella felt the air go out of her. She watched him track off slowly into the valley, not in the direction the two boys had gone, but toward Wa’s.

  Was he glad the new family was here? Did he want there to be a real town?

  Would he sit in a rocking chair and drink Wa’s coffee?

  Pella stood staring after him, thinking.

  Five minutes later, Clement came back, riding a bicycle painstakingly over the cracked ground. It was as though he’d been hiding until Efram was gone.

  “Where were you?” she said. “I was waiting—”

  “Look what I bought, from Joe Kincaid.” Clement dismounted and admired the bicycle like a Christmas present, stroking the handlebars, the fender. “Joe said it was just sitting around. Great way to get around here, very ecological. Needs air, though.”

  He leaned the bicycle against the porch and went past her into the house. Pella stared at the bicycle for a moment. She imagined slashing the tires.

  Then she followed Clement in, marveling that traces of Efram’s visit weren’t somehow evident to him.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, his back to her, as he sliced at a green potato. He’d been quick to learn to cook the Archbuilder food, and now it was all there was in the house. At dinners he exclaimed over Raymond’s and David’s reluctance to eat it, as if it were burgers and fries, or chocolate-chip cookies, something he and they had been eating for a lifetime.

  Pella found she couldn’t answer the question.

  Chop, chop. “Joe and I were talking about pooling together for some kind of school. They’ve been teaching Bruce and Martha at home, on Joe’s computer. But now that we’re here—and more kids will be coming. We’re raising the new house tomorrow. Joe says the digging machine’s almost finished the well—”

  Then he noticed her silence. “Is something the matter?”

  She looked at him helplessly. The question was inadequate. “I was just waiting for you and you weren’t here,” she gasped out in frustration.

  Clement put down the knife and the potato he was holding. “What’s wrong?”

  What was wrong? There was nothing she could say. Not without saying that Efram had been at their house. And that would take explaining who Efram was. Which she didn’t know. Anyway, describing what was so disturbing about meeting Efram would mean speaking of her waking dream, her trance, out among the towers. The two went together. And neither half of the story fit in words.

  If she closed her eyes she might still be on that hill.

  She found that she wanted to protect Clement from the fact of Efram’s visit. Clement never had to know, she thought crazily, never even had to meet Efram—

  But no, she realized, David had come by, with Morris Grant. He’d seen Pella talking to Efram on the porch, and then had gone off to Efram’s farm. He might even see Efram again before he came home.
And then he would mention it, innocently, to Clement. At the dinner table.

  Anyway, Efram had meant to meet Clement. He’d surely succeed soon. The town wasn’t that big.

  Pella felt disastrous, compromised.

  The thing she was hiding: if only she knew what it was.

  But nobody had seen her out among the arches, not David, not Efram Nugent. Nobody knew about her strangeness, her visionary seizure, her dream. That was her secret with herself, a secret she might even be able to keep from herself. It wasn’t part of any other story, was it?

  “Pella?”

  She moved toward her father, slowly, giving him time to catch the hint. He sat just in time, and she climbed into his lap. She didn’t really fit there, but she drew up her knees and pretended. It was strange how Efram had mistaken her for a grown woman even as he towered over her, made her feel small. Whereas Clement, with whom she was still unquestionably a child, was nearly her same size. She might have been trying to sit in Raymond’s lap.

  The tears came so steadily and simply that she almost felt they were another kind of lie she had decided to tell about her impossible self on this least simple of days. It didn’t keep her from crying them anyway.

  Seven

  Their first stop was the site of the new house. They snuck up. The girl didn’t object to the childishness of it. For the moment she wanted to be lost in childishness, in her own ebbing childhood. So she followed Bruce Kincaid, the exploring boy, the leading boy. He guided the group of children up a ridge, an embankment of crumbled Archbuilder architecture laced with potato vines. Moving in quiet unison, they crept to the edge and peered over at the site. Viewed from above, as their shadows merged on the bleached rock, they might have appeared as a single six-legged creature, crawling with brilliant coordination.

  The new homestead was a staked-out portion of the valley, the same as all the others. The girl wondered how the men chose where to put the homes, this one, or the one before, where she and her brothers and father lived now. Arbitrary, but then so was the town. The planet, if you thought about it hard enough. The girl tried not to.

  The shape of the house-to-be was marked on the ground by the largest pieces, the beams, the unraised skeleton. Stacked in neat piles at the edges of the site were prefabricated panels, wallboard and flooring, hardware, plumbing, and disassembled furniture, all of it driven out from Southport on the back of Ben Barth’s truck and made ready for this day. The new place would be identical to all their houses, that was obvious, even seeing it in pieces. It waited only to be buckled and bolted together.

  Clement stood below, with Joe Kincaid, and Morris’s father, Snider Grant, and Ben Barth, and Hiding Kneel. They were oblivious to the group of children poised above them, watching from the ridge. They stood squinting in the sun amidst the splayed panels and beams, a puzzle in two dimensions that had to be assembled into three. Ben Barth was the leader. He spoke in a low voice, and the other men, the fathers, listened. Pella imagined Ben Barth and his Archbuilder putting up the first of the homes, before any of the families had come. Or had Efram helped, then? What about Diana Eastling? Now it was the fathers, the family men, paving the way for the next family, and Ben was the odd one in the group, the bachelor. He and Hiding Kneel.

  “New people coming,” whispered Bruce Kincaid, turning to Pella and the other children.

  “Yeah, lesbians,” said Morris Grant, louder.

  “Shut up,” hissed Bruce.

  “Fuck you,” said Morris. “They are lesbians. My brother told me.”

  “Yeah, well your parents are drunks,” said Bruce. “Look at your dad—he can’t lift a piece of wood. He should’ve stayed home.”

  It was true. Snider Grant staggered. He looked like he could barely stand the sunlight.

  “Shut up, you fucker,” said Morris.

  Bruce turned and in one smooth, fierce motion shoved Morris down the embankment, away from the men and the house, out of earshot.

  Morris slid downhill in the dust, teetering, as if in emulation of his father. But he stayed on his feet. When he skidded to a stop Bruce went and stood over him.

  Pella and Raymond turned to watch. David and Martha Kincaid, less interested, remained at the edge, peering intently at the men below.

  “It’s true!” said Morris. “I swear. Doug heard it from Ben Barth.”

  “So what, why do you have to say it like that? Nobody cares.”

  “Lesbians, lesbians, lesbians,” said Morris defiantly, even as he squirmed in retreat from Bruce.

  “Shut up.” Bruce advanced on Morris. Pella was surprised by his ferocity.

  “I can say lesbian if I want,” said Morris.

  “Just ignore him,” said Pella.

  “What are lesbians?” said Raymond to Pella. He asked it earnestly.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said. Saying it, she reminded herself of Efram, of his warning that she’d learn about the household deer, his promise that they’d talk about it later.

  The Planet of Withheld Explanations.

  “Let’s go,” Bruce said to David and Martha, ignoring Morris suddenly, averting his eyes. “C’mon.”

  “I want to watch them make the house,” said David hopefully.

  “It’s boring,” said Bruce. “Takes forever.”

  So the group trudged away silently, their presence undetected by the men below. Bruce led them out to the west end of the valley, the direction, Pella knew, of Efram Nugent’s farm. Morris righted himself and followed. No one objected. The group of six children had an awkward integrity, a completeness by now. Even Morris belonged in his place at the rear, scapegoat, outcast.

  Bruce pointed at the house below the next ridge and said, “Hugh Merrow.”

  Morris Grant giggled. While they stood watching, a lone household deer skimmed past them, over the ridge, toward Hugh Merrow’s house.

  “He keeps to himself,” said Bruce, in his adult-quoting voice. Then, more conspiratorial, “But Martha got in there once. He was going to paint her.”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t sit still,” said Martha. She sounded pleased with herself.

  “It’s all full of paintings of Archbuilders,” said Bruce. “He loves to paint them. Guess they can sit still. Plenty of time on their hands.”

  The thought of Archbuilders and their time and their hands quieted the group.

  “Let’s go,” said Bruce after a minute.

  They took up another of their outposts, this time in view of Diana Eastling’s house. They were making a kind of survey of the outer valley now, the zone of the solitary adults, the ones on the edge of the town, outside the world of families. Clearly it was also a spying mission, carried on in secret, even if it had never been declared one. They didn’t mean to be found out. No sooner had Pella thought this, however, and they were discovered, caught off guard. Diana Eastling came up the hill behind them, out of the blinding sun, not from the direction of her house at all. It was as though she’d set a trap for them.

  “Hello,” she said when she saw them. She wore a big hat, like Efram Nugent’s, and carried a shoulder bag.

  Nobody returned the greeting. Diana Eastling didn’t seem to notice. “You’re Clement Marsh’s boys,” she said, nodding at Raymond and David.

  “Yeah,” said Raymond.

  Pella wanted to speak, but couldn’t. Just as she would have preferred to have the other children around her when she bumped into Efram, she would have liked to be alone now. Diana Eastling drew some feeling out of her that she couldn’t identify. Diana Eastling’s manner seemed civil and earthly, a relief from the fathers and the other men and the Archbuilders, from the grim and dusty feelings they inspired in Pella.

  And Diana Eastling knew to be impressed with who Clement was, before. As impatient as Pella could be with Clement’s political self, he’d at least been important. Here Clement seemed to be blithely willing himself into the dusty anonymity, gathering potatoes, riding bicycles, building houses.

  “Carry on, scouts,”
said Diana Eastling, almost laughing. Her eyes were bright. “Go on with what you were doing. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  Pella opened her mouth again, but nothing came out.

  Diana Eastling turned, smiling, and went down toward her house.

  Bruce led them through a pass that looped back east, and north. They fell into a line in the narrow gap between two hills clustered with fallen architecture, and one miniature arch that was a throwback, a living memory. Whole, unruined, it almost seemed to sing in the open air. Pella stared at it until she couldn’t stand to anymore.

  On the rise they caught a brief glimpse of Efram’s farm, then it disappeared as they followed the dipping path. Efram didn’t live so far away. The houses out in this direction weren’t any farther apart than those the three families lived in. It was as wrong to consider the place Efram and Diana Eastling and Hugh Merrow lived the outskirts as it was to call the houses to the east a town. They were each only clusters of crumbs on a vast plate.

  The only real difference Pella could see was the presence of the children themselves.

  “I’m thirsty,” said Martha, lagging, scraping her feet expressively.

  “If you drink you’ll just have to pee more,” said Bruce.

  “I’m still thirsty anyway,” said Martha.

  “We’ll get something. Maybe at Efram’s.”

  “Let’s be in bed, let’s be in bed,” chanted Morris Grant from the rear of the line. He slurred the t, and ran the words together.

  Bruce turned and glared at him.

  “Let’s all be in the lesbian bed,” Morris went on tauntingly.

  Then they turned a corner, and the view opened before them. A spread of enormous ruins, shapes Pella hadn’t seen before, including another intact arch, huge, that framed a lopsided heart-shaped chunk of sky. And below, almost directly beneath them, was Efram Nugent’s place.

  The house was made of the same prefabricated panels, but that was the only resemblance. Attached was a greenhouse, a miracle of sparkling glass, a palace. The porch of the house was enclosed by screen, and the path through the compound was laid with gigantic flat stones, arranged like a solved puzzle. The buildings were surrounded on every side by a chaos of planting boxes, holding plants big and small, each protected by a sprawling canopy of wire mesh. Behind the house sat a chicken coop, full of brown hens, and a pair of metal tanks, which looked like they’d been salvaged from a crashed airplane. One of them had a hole punched in the top, rending the metal, and from it issued a steady stream of gray smoke. A few yards from the house stood a broken-down shed, the oldest-looking human thing Pella had seen on the Planet of the Archbuilders. Encircling it all was a crooked wire fence. Other homes clung to the floor of the valley like shells on a beach; this farm carved out a portion of the planet.