The Humanity Project

by Jean Thompson

  —or maybe it was his head sending some scrambled electrical message to his ankle, because his vision went white and fizzy, like static, and he pitched sideways into a bush that wasn’t dense enough to support his weight and he tried to catch himself but his hand went right through and then he was inside the bush itself. Twigs in his mouth and hair. He tasted them, a dry taste. He saw the patched sky through their crosshatching. He opened his mouth to speak, but the bush choked out any words.

  It was the most extraordinary thing.

  The black dog was nosing at him, almost delicately. Foster was aware of the snuffling, the small nudging. The racket of the leaf blower had ceased. Somewhere outside of the bush someone, a boy, he remembered, was saying something in tones of rising concern.

  “Sir? Sir? Are you all right, sir?”

  It was such a relief not to have to do anything. Be anything. Other than part of a bush.

  “Sir? Can you hear me?”

  Gradually, he came back to himself. Different portions of him—legs and feet—were on the ground, while the rest of him was suspended in the dense leafless branches, which both supported and imprisoned him. In another moment, he was pretty sure bad things would start to happen, and here they were. Damage reports from his neck and back. Places his skin had been scraped and scratched. His glasses knocked loose. Somewhere out there were all the unwelcome human components of alarm, fear, confusion, and embarrassment.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m . . .” He started to say “all right,” since that was what you were meant to say, but there should be something else you could say instead. It was all the way back in his mouth where he kept the words. But now he had to contend with this boy, who was leaning over him and pushing through the branches, saying give me your hand, give me your hand, but Foster wasn’t any good at that, so the boy had to stoop and try to get an arm beneath Foster’s shoulders, all the while shooing the interested dog away. It was the kind of dog who wanted to be part of everything.

  Getting himself upright took some effort. The bush had nearly swallowed him whole, and Foster wasn’t much help, and the boy had to wade halfway into the tangled space. Back in the hospital Foster had been similarly helpless and other people had moved him this way or that. But then he had been drugged and punchy; now he was mostly curious about the whole procedure.

  The boy hauled Foster back onto the path, still supporting his weight. “How about we get you inside,” he suggested, and Foster said Yes, good idea, or tried to say it, but it was hard to do more than one thing at a time, and breathing seemed an even better idea. He hadn’t gotten very far from the back door, so that when the boy draped Foster over his back like some big broken bird, it only took a few steps to get across the threshold. “Stay,” the boy told the disappointed dog, closing the door behind them. Then, to Foster, “Is anybody else home?”

  “Nnnn,” Foster managed. He thought he could walk on his own now but nope, here he was falling over again, until the boy got a kitchen chair underneath him and he managed to land properly in it.

  “I can call somebody for you. Like, nine-one-one . . .”

  That joggled Foster’s words loose. “No, don’t. Call.” His tongue unfurled, regained its strength. “Just need to catch my breath.”

  The boy had been bending over him and now he straightened and took a step back, seeming cautious, as if Foster might start flailing around again, or weeping, or any other unseemly thing. He went to the sink, ran water, found a glass on the drainboard and offered it to Foster. “Thank you,” Foster said. He was aware that he was being monitored, and that he was going to have to behave reasonably if he didn’t want ambulances and calls to his wife and every other fuss-making thing. He drank a little of the water. It seemed to stay in his throat a long time. “I guess I just lost my balance out there.”

  Cunning was needed. His head still felt gauzy, he scrabbled to hold on to the certainty that he had been, if only for a few moments, something other than himself, but he had to thrust it down and keep talking. “I have some problems with my blood pressure,” not exactly a lie. “I probably stood up too fast.”

  He watched the boy weigh this as a reasonable explanation. He wasn’t very old, a high school kid, Foster guessed. One of those god-awful rat’s nests of hair. A baby face, but with something cautious and adult in his manner. His eyes never met Foster’s. Foster said, “My wife will be home a little later. Really, you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “You got a couple of pretty good scratches there.”

  He was going to have to explain those, he supposed, but first he had to establish himself as a competent person who did not need minding. “I guess my wife must have hired you,” he said cheerily.

  “How about I get you something for your face.”

  Foster closed his eyes again, giving up. He heard the boy in different parts of the house, looking for what he needed, something else his wife would not have liked. He felt weakened, defeated, a soiled old man. The boy was back. “I’m just gonna clean these up first.”

  Foster kept silent. The boy pressed a warm wet cloth to his face, then dabbed ointment. “This might smart a little,” he warned.

  Oh Jesus did it. Foster tried not to squirm. He flicked his eyes open, saw the boy’s face close to his own, then the boy backed off, put a little more respectful distance between them.

  “Thanks,” Foster said. “I’m good as new.”

  “Sure.” The boy’s gaze lifted to the window, thinking of the undone job, or the job after that, Foster guessed. Or maybe trying to keep track of the dog. But he didn’t seem ready to take himself off yet, since Foster might topple over again or worse. “This is a really nice house you have,” he offered.

  “Thank you.” It was in fact a nice house, although Foster couldn’t remember the last time he’d given much thought to it, and right now, in the aftermath of his peculiar episode, he had to look around him and consider it. Not just this particular house, his own, but the whole idea of houses. So much empty, complicated space, when all you needed was a few twigs. And wasn’t the body also a kind of house? Foster shook his head loose from the strangeness of his thoughts, forced himself back into some familiar notion of himself: brisk and businesslike. “If you want to finish up back there, I’ll just sit and rest. Then it’s fine if you go.”

  “I need to put my dog in the truck,” the boy said, which Foster guessed was a way of saying he was staying put.

  The boy crossed the kitchen and the back door opened, shut. Foster would have liked to swear. He didn’t think he had enough breath in him. Even if he could manage to get up and lock the door, shoo the boy away, that wouldn’t be the end of it. Someone else would come tapping at the glass, breaking down the door, prodding at him with latex gloves. He guessed he’d be better off taking his chances with the boy.

  There was a small, floating space of lost time—that is, of no time at all—before the door opened again. A draft of cold air walked along Foster’s spine. The boy shut the door. “How are you feeling?”

  “Ah. Lousy.” Dumb answer maybe, but he didn’t think “fine” was going to fool anyone.

  “I could help you lie down.”

  “No, I think I want to stay more awake.” He felt not sleepy, but vague, weak, diffuse. “What I really need is—”

  “OK. Let me give you a hand.”

  The boy bent down and helped pull Foster out of his chair, then slow-walked him to the bathroom. Foster was aware of the boy’s smell—something faint but unpleasant, unwashed clothes or unwashed body—he hadn’t noticed before. Well, boys. What did you expect. They reached the bathroom and the boy said, “I can wait outside. Call if you need me.”

  For which Foster was grateful. He’d had enough of strangers helping him pee, watching him pee, enough of not being able to pee or not being able to stop, a whole universe of piss he hadn’t been aware of until his troubles began
. He closed the bathroom door, supported himself on the sink, and then the windowsill, and in this way managed to do the chore standing up, although there had certainly been days when this was not possible.

  He flushed, got his clothes together, ran water in the sink, avoiding as much as possible the mirror above it. He couldn’t escape it entirely. A gray-faced skull peered sideways at him.

  When he came out, he didn’t see the boy. Too tired to worry much about it, he hitched his way into the den and lowered himself onto a couch. The windows here faced the backyard. He saw the boy rolling up an extension cord into a coil, then scuffing around in the beds he’d raked.

  The back door opened. Feet crossed the kitchen, halted.

  “I’m in here,” Foster called, his voice coming out thin and piping. Ridiculous.

  The boy looked in at the door. “I was just clearing some things away.”

  Foster lifted a hand: Fine.

  “The lady said you’d pay me.”

  Foster opened his eyes—he was not aware he’d closed them—sighed. “How much?”

  “Thirty-five. It’s OK. I was going to hang out and wait for her anyway. You know, in case you needed anything.”

  “Desk.” Foster pointed. He couldn’t get air all the way into his chest.

  The boy scanned the desktop, held up Foster’s wallet. “This?” He crossed the room with it. “But, listen, I’m sorry if the dog got in your way. He didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Foster shook his head. He wanted to say, the dog hadn’t done anything to him. Or only in the most roundabout way, since if the dog had not been in the yard, Foster would not have stepped outside as he had. But maybe whatever had gone wrong would have gone wrong anyway, in the bathroom or standing at the refrigerator or arguing with his wife. Whatever it was didn’t feel like the cancer, unless all the burning and poisoning and cutting they’d done to smack the cancer down had made something else in him fail. He hadn’t wanted to think it, and now the thought took root in him. So this was how it would happen. A bad thick taste was climbing up the back of his throat. He would have the boy call the doctor, because in spite of all his cheap, brave posing he was getting scared. He said, “Dogger.”

  The boy held the wallet out to Foster, then, when Foster didn’t take it, he set it down next to him. “You could give me less, on account of the dog. I completely apologize for that. I hope you aren’t too mad about it. Because I’d really like to do some more work for you guys. Also if you know anybody else around here who needs yard cleanup, fencing, anything like that.”

  Foster let his head fall back against the couch. It was easier to breathe that way. His hands had been fisted and now he let them uncurl. There was something about a dog?

  Dogdead dogdead dog.

  “I’ve been trying to get a business going, you know, landscaping. People sure have nice yards in this place.”

  The boy waited to see if Foster meant to answer. When Foster didn’t, he said, “Everybody has these great houses. This whole town is like, people here have it made. You drive around downtown and look in the windows of all those restaurants, everybody having a good time, eating and drinking, you’d think the whole world was one big party. You wonder where these people get all their money. Sorry. That was kind of rude of me. I didn’t necessarily mean you.”

  Another space of waiting. The boy said, “Twenty-five bucks. Even twenty, that would be something. Maybe I should just shut up and let you rest.”

  Not just dog. All the poor dumb, baffled, nearly extinct creatures. They tried fighting back, making their noise. Roar, said Foster. Roaring here.

  “Sir?”

  Foster said, Afraid. The boy leaned over him, trying to make out the sound Foster was producing. There was that smell again, stale boy. Or maybe it was his own stink.

  Afraid.

  It did not take very long at all for Foster to die, not as the boy or anyone else watching would have measured it. Enough time for more of Foster’s weakened blood vessels to give way and his secret bleeding to run its course. The boy had only just begun to realize there might be something serious happening here, something alarming, some mistake resulting from his inattention, and by then it was all over.

  But for Foster, it went on and on. There was a sensation of something rolling, something heavy and extremely slow, along a chute or track, and once it reached the end, another rolling object took its place, and then another, and they were not thoughts, but the spaces between his thoughts. The frightened animal within him quieted. He had not wished to bother with thinking, and now the capacity to do so was leaving him. He recognized this new condition from his time within the bush. It was Not Be. It was a weight rolling away, a little heavier every time. The weight balanced on an edge and then dropped off. Not Be would allow you, if you wished, to look down on the leftover husk of yourself with gratitude, and in the last choice available to him, he so chose. His breathing had already ceased, and now black stars exploded behind his eyes. Then one by one, went out.

  The boy had never seen a dead person before but there was no mistaking it, and soon enough he realized that nothing could be done. He took a few steps away from Foster, whose name he had not known, then back again. He spent some time looking at Foster, taking him in. With every moment, he seemed to become a little more dead.

  Foster’s wallet was on the edge of the couch where the boy had left it. Now he picked it up, opened it, and sorted through the bills. Then he stopped, replaced the money, and put the entire wallet in his back pocket. He went to the desk in the corner and rummaged through the drawers, finding those things worth taking. He left the room and from other parts of the house came more sounds of opening and shutting.

  Finally, in the kitchen, he looked into the refrigerator and took some packaged lunch meat and a brick of cheese. From the cupboards he picked out a few canned things, boxed things, then loaded everything into a plastic garbage bag he found beneath the sink. He let himself out the back door, careful to flip the latch so that it locked behind him.

  The truck started up, accelerated smoothly down the driveway, and was gone.

  The house went about its business as before. The thermostat registered a drop in temperature and sent a warm wind through the vents. The water pressure in the pipes maintained itself. Electric current whispered in the wires behind the walls. The refrigerator’s motor cycled.

  The phone rang, and after the fourth ring the answering machine clicked on, unspooling its recorded message. Foster’s voice said, “Sorry, we can’t come to the phone right now, but leave us a message at the beep.”

  Foster’s wife came on the line. “Lou? Are you there?” A listening silence. “I wanted to remind you about your medicine. Lou?” Her voice rose. “I know you can hear me. Or maybe you’re in the bathroom? Anyway, you need to call me back.”

  The silence flattened. It could almost be heard, as if it were itself a sound.

  “Lou?”

  FOUR

  Art Kooperman had been teaching himself Vietnamese: Hoan ngênh, welcome; Chào anh, hello! He often got takeout from the Saigon Palace, and he thought it would be nice to be able to speak to the people there in their own language. And anyway, learning Vietnamese was the kind of knowledge-for-its-own-sake project he enjoyed. He was practicing some of the basic phrases, , good morning; how are you? as he stood just beyond the security entrance at the San Francisco airport, waiting for his daughter’s plane to arrive.

  Not that his daughter was Vietnamese or anything. She was a normal, vanilla-flavored American. He should have been thinking about what to say to her, or getting his head wrapped around the imminent fact of her, but these were the last free moments he had, his last appearance as a nonparent, responsible to no one but himself, entirely unconcerned with his minor child’s nutrition, hygiene, education, socialization, not to mention her seriously fucked-up behavior. please speak more slowly. please write it d
own.

  He didn’t know what she looked like these days. In his memory she was still a chubby, staggering two-year-old. Too late, he realized he should have asked them to send a picture. Maybe some other, less problematic fifteen-year-old girl would show up to claim him as her father, and maybe his daughter would attach herself to some other, more competent dad, and everything would work out for the best, since the chain of events and bad decisions that had resulted in her arrival, indeed in her very existence, was turning out to be the greatest dismal circumstance of his whole shitcan life. Help!

  But then, he had to keep in mind the absolute evil of what had happened to her.

  His daughter was coming to stay with him as a kind of test drive, an exile, a visit of uncertain length. She had been having difficulties, and these difficulties had been explained to Art during an alarming phone call from his ex-wife, Louise. The fact of Louise calling was alarming in itself. It served him right for being incautious enough to keep the same phone number all this time, and for assuming that since Louise had not called him for more than ten years, she was finally off his case.

  At one point in the phone call, Art had been imprudent enough to ask, “Well, is she seeing a counselor or anything?”

  There was a silence, and he could hear Louise debating whether or not he was even worth the effort of sarcasm: My God, counseling! Why didn’t we think of that? Instead she said, “All the kids got counseling.”

  Then she said, “Do you think I would call you if I wasn’t desperate? We can’t keep her here anymore, it’s not fair to anybody, especially Jay, can you imagine how Jay feels? He lost his own daughter.”

  Art had begun to say something along the lines of commiseration when Louise added, “That’s usually thought of as a tragic thing. Losing a child. You think I’m rubbing it in? Fine. I am.”

  They both listened to the silence for a time, then Art said, “What makes you think I’d know what to do with her? That I’d be any good at it. Huh?”