Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver

  “I wasn’t to tell you until another week on. We have hardly told anyone, except Mrs. Clark, of course. Mother will need a dress. But they want it to be very quiet and proper without a fuss.”

  “Of course. Mrs. Clark.” In the Scala Naturae of his household, Thatcher wondered how far he stood below Mrs. Clark the dressmaker. “And when Aurelia becomes Mrs. Dunwiddie, will she move into his domain?”

  “Perhaps, although. Well.” She clasped one hand with the other. “As you know, Mother is the rightful owner of this house. She inherited it when Father passed away.” Still Rose refused to meet his eyes, and in the avoidance he sensed something more complex than anger. Rose, guilt stricken, was a new sight before him. With a falling sensation Thatcher understood he was about to learn more than he wished to know.

  “I see. So there is talk of Dunwiddie rebuilding this house. He would have the resources to try it. I suppose that would please Aurelia. The domain will move here.” He tried to make sense of this reordering of his small universe. “I don’t quite understand where that leaves us, Rose.”

  “Where it leaves us,” she said. And nothing more. It was a statement. Now finally she looked at him directly, the pale eyes like windows thrown wide. He saw the gathering of self-protective outrage that would see Rose through to the end of whatever she wanted.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That I would also like to move into that domain.”

  “You and Louise are friends …” He felt himself thrashing about foolishly. “No. You don’t mean with the, with Leverett? Are you fond of that man?”

  She reacted with a brightening of her whole countenance. Maddeningly, she smiled. As if this were a parlor game of guessing, and Thatcher had got it right at last. He took a few steps, put his hand on the back of the settee, and stopped there, allowing his stunned heart to settle. He nodded, seeing what any sentient being could have predicted. Thatcher would soon have to leave this place, and Rose never would.

  *

  “I can only speak as a scientist, because that is what I am.” Thatcher wondered how many more times he would be made to say this, and how a truth so obvious could cost a man so much. Carruth had known better friends than Thatcher, but none with his education, Thomas had explained. None with the gift of sounding so impartial.

  The courtroom was not as large as Plum Hall, and less oppressive than the high school auditorium, with banks of reassuring sunlight streaming through its windows. The area before the judge’s bench, where Thatcher now stood, was separated by a sturdy fortification of railings from the crowded pews where spectators murmured and perspired in their morning coats. An upper gallery spanning the back of the room was packed with women and children, to judge by the skirted knees and small faces pressed between the balusters. None had paid fifteen cents to be there.

  “As a methodical man, then,” Thomas said with a little smile, “you will give us a trustworthy impression of the late Mr. Carruth. First, tell us how you were acquainted.”

  “The same way anyone in Vineland might have known him. He sometimes attended meetings and lectures where I also found myself. First, at a meeting of the school where I was employed. Next, at a Plum Hall lecture. We happened to leave at the same time, we spoke in the street. He was congenial.”

  “You formed a friendship.”

  The murderer sat with his lawyers at a small round table not five yards away, hands folded on the green table linen. Thatcher felt repulsed by the sight of him. “We met on only a few occasions, sir. I regret there were not more, and never will be.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The regret? Because I enjoyed his company. I admired him. He was the rare man who put others ahead of himself. He dedicated himself to the aid of working men whose lives were damaged by dishonest promises. He told me he’d had two brothers killed in the line of loyal duty, both to overseers who were careless of their workers’ safety. He was from the Badger State, he said. But decided he would not be a badger.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I suppose he meant he would not hide in a burrow, even if bravery should cost him. Which it did, terribly.” Thatcher made himself look at Landis, but the man seemed absent. He turned then to address the stone-faced jurymen in their solemn rectangle of benches. “Now the third brother is dead.”

  “Do you mean to say he was belligerent?” Thomas asked.

  “He was honest. Determined to tell the truth. A newspaperman.”

  “Would you say he was mean spirited?”

  “The opposite. He was probably too kindhearted.”

  “Not the sort of man, then, who would deliberately drive another man mad.”

  The other lawyer interrupted then, and while spectators shifted in their seats and pined for fresh air, the legal men had a wrangle as to whether and how anyone might speculate on a dead man’s motives. Thatcher had watched this lawyerly two-step for days, and its absence of heart had nearly broken him. Now, on the last day of argument, he was called to speak impartially on behalf of his murdered friend, with the hope of influencing a jury that must be woefully confused, if not lulled to outright torpor. Thatcher knew no more of the law than they did; he was only a scientist. As he’d said.

  Thomas was allowed to rephrase the question.

  “Can you comment on the possibility of any man causing another to become violently insane?”

  Thatcher felt in danger of suffocation. “It might be possible, or it might not. The question seems beside the point.” He now gave himself a good look at Landis, who avoided his gaze. The man looked pathetic. No velvet waistcoat, no gold watch or fob, all grandiosity reined in by his keepers for the theater of this trial. Thatcher allowed himself a rush of anger, as a drowning man might take hold of a timber. “Look at this man! Lord and mayor of our town. He decided to shoot another man because he did not like hearing the truth. I understand I am not meant to comment on the morality of that act. But every person here knows it was murder. It was heinous!”

  Thatcher looked around the room, completely uncertain how any words, measured or furious, could break him out of this cell. “I believe I am called here to speak of our times. From a darker era of fear and magical thinking, we move toward an age of reason. Landis was beloved, is still beloved, because he claims he can protect us from mythical beasts that prowl the swamps at the edge of our understanding. Perhaps he does protect us. Some of us. But in this courtroom he alleges he has lost his capacity to make out the difference between myth and fact. He declares he is mad.”

  The men in the benches and ladies in the gallery looked on, probably sore afraid. “Madness is a disorder of the brain,” Thatcher told them. “Not a spell or enchantment, to come and go at a whim. Natural laws apply not only to the beasts of the field but also to us, whether we like them or not. They do not cease to apply when we find them no longer convenient. If Landis is mad today, he will also be mad tomorrow and the day after.”

  The jury regarded him warily. Thatcher mustered his best imitation of power and might. “You came to Vineland looking for what every man wants: a safe home. After you make your judgment today, nothing can be the same. You will find a man guilty of murder, or innocent. If you decide on the latter, you cannot go on seeking shelter from a man who has no capacity for reason.”

  He turned from the jury, closed his eyes for a single second, and opened them on the heaven-sent vision of the court recorder dragging open the sash of a window. Through that breach Thatcher drew light and breath, and there was his answer, this would be the last of it. He was finished with declaring himself to a public without ears to hear his language. Without shelter, we stand in daylight, she’d insisted once, and he had thought only of death. Simple man. He might sleep in a bed of cactus thorns or a tree under the stars, but he could choose the company he kept and it would not be this fearful, self-interested mob shut up in airless rooms. They would huddle in their artifice of safety, their heaven would collapse. His would be the forthright march through the downfall.


  17

  The Downfall

  It began as a family celebration, with Zeke driving in from Boston. Jorge’s sisters and their kids would also be invited, of course, and Tig’s employers and coworkers at the restaurant, who also had kids. From there it expanded to include friends, which meant almost nobody would be left in the vicinity to report them when the partiers made too much noise. By a quick count Willa estimated more than a hundred big and little people in their yard, on a Thursday evening no less, for the neighborhood cookout-potluck that was Dusty’s first birthday party. Jorge had set up a borrowed sound system in the doorway of the newly wired carriage house. Sondra and Lara made a cake, and some kids from the training school brought a concoction they called “Worms and Dirt,” chocolate cake and icing mashed to a mud-like texture, laced with gummy worms, obviously a hit.

  Tig moved through the crowd making sure plates were filled and everybody knew somebody. Jorge operated the keg, and was taking his commission, Willa noticed. She was keeping an eye on Dusty as he got passed around among the guests. Tig had dressed him for the fiesta in a Che Guevara T-shirt and a baseball cap he kept pulling off and throwing on the ground. He’d attracted a cadre of training school kids who followed him around picking up the little cap and replacing it on his head, always backward. Willa tried not to hover as he cycled through the arms of dozens of people she’d never seen before. Dusty bore up to the socializing better than Willa did—hullabaloo was not her gift—but when he started getting cranky she swooped in and took him to the picnic table under the big oak. She sat on the bench facing out, watching the crowd, while Dusty crawled around finding acorns that she dissuaded him from eating.

  The sound system pulsed and people kept arriving to fill a yard that was already congested with debris from the ongoing house project. Willa watched a toddler wander into Tig’s garden and pick green tomatoes. She watched Iano at the grill talking with an older guy in a do-rag, so wrapped up in conversation he was ignoring whatever he’d put on the fire, and completely missed the two dogs that came out of nowhere and ran off with a package of hot dogs. The playlist kicked out a bomba and she watched scores of bodies simultaneously struck with undulating rapture. Whatever else they were holding—plates, babies, conversation—they moved, hips and shoulders, as if this were some Holy Roller church of sexual revelation. She thought of something Tig had told her once about Cubans: that they’d perfected all the kinds of fun that didn’t cost anything. Willa couldn’t recall the exact list, only that it was sultry enough to end in a need for good child care.

  Zeke emerged from the crowd, walking toward her carrying a plastic cartoon glass full of beer. “Hey. Is this the misanthropes’ table?”

  “Join us. The birthday boy was getting a little overwhelmed.”

  From the careful way he sat down next to her, and because she knew him so well, Willa realized Zeke was working on getting plastered. At his son’s birthday party. Some instinct—either hope or defiance—made her pick up Dusty and set him on Zeke’s lap, while deftly relieving him of his beer.

  “Thanks, I needed this.” She took a quaff. Then examined the cup. “Wow. The Powerpuff Girls come of age. Where in the heck did you get this?”

  He shrugged. “Somebody gave it to me. I couldn’t find the Solo cups.”

  “Your sister vetoed them. She asked people to BYO drinking glass.”

  “Wow. The recycling Nazi.”

  “I’ve noticed people are keeping track of their drinks, though. Instead of leaving them all over the place and starting a new one. I’ll be glad tomorrow when I don’t have to pick up a thousand plastic cups with two fingers of beer in them.”

  “That was the best deal of the party, when we were kids. Sneaking the leftovers.”

  “Oh for the good old days.” Willa studied the Powerpuffs, with their little white socks and big, angry eyes, preparing to deliver their trademark whoop-ass. Tig had been quite the fan. “You weren’t thinking of driving back to Boston tonight, were you?”

  He seemed to be there now. Not quite here, at any rate. “No,” he said after a pause. “I brought some work I can do from here, so I can stay through the weekend.”

  Zeke was no longer self-employed, his start-up had unstarted, and he’d been hired by a real firm. He remained passionate about microfinance and his new area of interest, brokering carbon credits, for which Tig was trying pretty nobly to give him the benefit of the doubt. Behaving kindly toward her brother was another condition Willa had placed on becoming Dusty’s guardian. Zeke was the natural father, and no arrangement could function unless some bridges were repaired. This threatened to be a deal breaker for Tig. “All bridges burned,” she’d reported, to which Willa curtly suggested she build some new ones with whatever scraps she could find. That being her specialty.

  But Willa carried the burning on her conscience. Since her talk with Tig in the cemetery, she’d accepted that their history transgressed the norms of sibling teasing. Tig had been fierce, it was true, but Zeke was older, and cast his charm so easily over others. She could beg Tig to forgive and Zeke to atone, but that maternal currency was exhausted long ago, and probably misspent. Now Willa had only Dusty, and no decision she made for him could be grounded in favoritism or reparation. It was a King Solomon situation.

  Zeke now looked close to tears, as he stared down into the crown of Dusty’s wild head. The little baseball cap had been successfully ditched, along with the attendants, and he was squirming to get free of Zeke’s grip. Dusty no longer consented to being held on a lap for long, and yet Zeke held on. Willa reached over to wrest away a long splinter of wood he’d managed to pry off the edge of the seat.

  “I’m sorry, honey. All this celebrating, and nobody’s giving her much thought. I am. I promise.”

  Zeke lifted his mournful gaze to her, surprised. “Thanks, Mom. It’s just, damn it.”

  “Yeah, damn it. She should be here. To see her beautiful boy turn a year old. It’s wrong, and it’s never going to be right. All we can do for Helene is what’s best for him.”

  “I know that. Everything you’re doing is … I’m really thankful. I was thinking when I’m more stable financially, like in another year or so, maybe I could take him part-time in Boston. I could get somebody to come into the house. Like an au pair.”

  Willa exhaled. “That’s a subject that calls for clear heads. Right now isn’t the time.” At other times, she had certainly tried to open this conversation. She suspected it was terror of his own failure that made Zeke so evasive about Dusty’s future. And now this, out of nowhere. “I don’t think Michael and Sharon are going to want an au pair in their spare bedroom. You need to think about getting your own place.”

  “Oh. So, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m moving in with Priya.”

  “With Priya?”

  He widened his eyes without looking at her. “Sorry you don’t approve.”

  “Approve? Two hours ago I’d never heard of this girl. Now you’re moving in?”

  “We’ve been dating awhile. She has a nice apartment, I’m over there a lot, so it’s the logical next step. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew we were, you know. Serious.”

  Willa could just see this Priya: cool, accomplished, raven haired, with the traditional overbearing family and consequent work ethic. Maybe there was a nice boy lined up for her from the home country, and Zeke was her one act of rebellion. Willa was girlfriend-profiling, she did realize, but nothing she’d heard yet was off-type. Priya worked in finance, she was on the fast track, the gift she’d sent for Dusty was expertly wrapped in silver polka dot paper, obviously an in-store job. Probably ordered by phone, between meetings. Willa could see it right now on the gift table, lording it over a motley tribe of reused bags.

  Mothers and sons. She sighed, knowing she would have to try harder than this. Just talking about the girl had switched some lights back on for Zeke; Willa had watched it happen. So she could get herself on board. Anyway, a little professional polish cou
ldn’t hurt this ramshackle family.

  Abruptly she looked at him. “Okay, but where the hell is she?”

  With a beer-slurred reaction time he looked confused, then defensive. “Boston.”

  “You know what I’m saying. Why isn’t she here?”

  “She sent a gift.”

  “But couldn’t find the time to come and meet her partner’s son.”

  “She will.”

  “Zeke. This matters. Your sister turned out about a hundred people today who all count for something in this little boy’s life. And you couldn’t even bring one?”

  “Mom, don’t tell me how to do this. I’m taking it slow, okay? You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I do. You’re scared.”

  “Getting attached to somebody again is like, Jesus. I don’t even know the words. Driving way over the speed limit. Honestly, I didn’t want her to come. It’s just going to take time.”

  “Honey, I know.” She put her arms around both her boys, the sad one and the restless one who needed to climb onto the table. It would take time, and no clocks stopped for a child. With or without Zeke, everything would keep moving.

  She looked up to see Jorge headed toward them with a plate of Worms and Dirt.

  “Hey! Junk food for the birthday boy.” Jorge set the plate down on the picnic table, and Zeke swiveled around to face it with Dusty still on his lap. Jorge moved quickly ahead of Dusty’s two-fisted grab to pick out the M&M’s that lay half exposed in the cake-crumb mound.

  “Nice move, dude. Stealing candy from a baby.”

  Jorge regarded Zeke with a neutral eye, for a moment whose length surpassed neutral. Given the combined blood alcohol numbers there, plus testosterone, Willa made ready to grab the child and run.

  “Choking hazard,” Jorge said finally. Then tossed the whole handful into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

  “I’d look out for the worms too,” Willa gently warned Zeke. “They’re soft, but I’d pull them apart first. He’s never had anything like that before, as far as I know.” Or chocolate, or very much sugar. After the first tentative fistful, Dusty set himself to the earnest labor of stuffing his face with cake. Zeke’s attention remained fixed on Jorge.