by JoeAnn Hart
Narrow treads as steep as a ladder continued up to the third floor, where the servants once slept. As they ascended the stairs, the heat rose. Twenty years before, the board had resigned itself to the fact that live-in servants were a luxury of the past. The only workers willing to indenture themselves these days didn’t even speak English, so how could they be left to fend for themselves in the building at night? The board installed air-conditioning in the rooms to make them rentable to the members and their guests. The long chute of a hall, however, was hopeless and hot. Gerard could smell. . .poultry. They quickened their pace while Vita fished in the pocket of her pants for the key to #13. “This room’s getting quite a history,” said Gerard. “It’s where Eliot Farnsworth was caught canoodling with a call girl at his own engagement party.”
“A meathead belongs in a meat locker,” said Vita, and she flung open the door. Gerard reeled. More than two dozen fully feathered upside-down geese were tied by their ankles to clothesline, their wings flopped open like falling angels. They filled the room. It was still and earthy. A fly buzzed.
“How long do they have to be like this?” he asked, not following Vita in. She elbowed birds out of her way like swinging doors.
“Mrs. Suarez said they’re done when the eyeballs drop out of their heads. Here.” Vita flipped out a couple of Glad bags. “Don’t just stand there. Bag a bird.” She stood up on the bed and untied the first goose from the clothesline. She remembered with what fatigue and satisfaction she had strung the line a few days before, thinking she wouldn’t have to deal with the geese again until the plucking. But life was never so simple or straightforward. Nor would she want it to be. If her original trajectory had never changed, she would be a married professional like her mother wanted, instead of preparing the dinner of her life. She would not change a thing. She snorted a laugh. As if she could! You can’t retrieve a bunch of grapes from a bottle of wine.
Gerard glanced up at Vita, worried about her mental state, then continued in his struggle to fit the goose cadaver into the black plastic without looking into its eyes, which were very much in its head. “It doesn’t fit,” he said. Two dark, webbed feet stuck out of the bag’s opening, pulled tight with the yellow cinch.
“Put a bag on both ends,” said Vita, lowering goose after goose to the beige carpet. Then she untied the last bird and bagged it with amazing efficiency, tucking the neck and wings under the torso and folding up the legs. Hers fit quite tidily in a single bag. “Hurry up.”
A little jealous, Gerard devised a two-bag system of his own. It was not as pretty, but it worked. That’s what counted. Well, that wasn’t true. Looks certainly did count in this world—he’d built his career around that very maxim—but in this case, a little rough edge here and there would have to be borne in the name of expediency. He and Vita labored furiously, and in a few minutes, they made their first of many trips up and down the outside fire escape, slipping unseen in and out the kitchen door. They kept their eyes open. The pile of body bags on the floor of the walk-in was growing, and Vita realized that the birds would soon block off her supplies for the rest of the day. “Gerard, I’ve got to be able to put my hands on some of this later,” she said, holding a tray of marinating halibut in one hand and a bag of kiwis in the other. “I’ve got to do some rearranging. You go get the last of the birds, and be careful.”
“Careful is my middle name.” It was almost over now, and Gerard was feeling good, even cocky. He took the front steps two by two, stopping again on the landing to survey the parking lot. Still no Clendenning.
Back in #13, he knelt to attend to the remaining three birds. He pulled out one bag from the box, then the second. Then the last. The box was empty. He dug his hand frantically around inside and felt nothing but panic. What could he cover the feet with? He tried, and failed, to make a more compact package, as Vita had, but there was no way around it. He would have to take them as they were. After all, he’d be able to see everyone coming and going in the parking lot. There would be no surprises. It was better to just get the job done now, rather than wander around looking for more bags, attracting attention.
Before leaving, he coiled up the clothesline and put it in the closet, opened the window to allow the thick air to recede, then vacuumed up a few downy feathers. When he picked up a stray wing feather and stuck it in the pocket of his khakis, he felt like he was cleaning up after a crime scene. Who said being a country club manager was such a bore? Some ex-girlfriend or other, if he remembered correctly, but how wrong she was. A new day, a new challenge.
He grabbed the heavy bird bags and ran, letting the door shut and lock behind him. The fire escape was at the end of the hall. In all the many decades when staff lived on the third floor, the fire department never noticed that there was no escape, but when the fire chief found out the Club was renting rooms, he ordered one built. The House & Grounds Committee at the time, not wanting the place to look like a tenement, had held firmly against iron grid. The chief, after a round of golf and cocktails on the terrace, jovially agreed to the wooden stairs. They switchbacked down the gabled end of the building, fitted handsomely with solid landings, steps, and an elegant rail supported by widely spaced posts. Gerard peeked out the window.
And there it was, Clendenning’s SUV, heaving into view like some predatory animal, the teeth of the grille bared. The vehicle seemed to sink into the hot black macadam as Clendenning, hunched over the steering wheel, paused to choose a parking spot.
Gerard scrunched down, shoving the scaly feet of the geese deeper into the bags, but one began to rip, so he decided to leave well enough alone. He watched and waited, taking no rash action. Evaluate the situation carefully. Prepare to move with decision. Clendenning maneuvered himself almost directly beneath the escape and got out of the car. His granddaughter jumped down from the passenger side, tugging at her golf skirt. Her presence did not augur well. She had been there on that horrific day when goose guts dropped from the sky. It had almost been the end of his job.
But he didn’t lose it then, and he wasn’t about to lose it now.
Gerard watched the two Clendennings unload their golf clubs. Good. They would go directly to the locker rooms and onto the course, and he would be golden. He knew how to handle these things. It was all well under his control.
He heard footsteps and laughing on the hall stairs. Do not panic! Breathe in. Breathe in again. Just one more challenge to overcome. Moving as slowly as a snake swallowing a rat, he lifted the bags through the window and out onto the wide landing of the escape. Then he threw one leg, then the other, over the windowsill, keeping his back low and humped. He peeked back into the hall. It was the irritable Mr. Stillington, of all people, shutting the door of Room #9 behind him, shushing the laughter of a man already inside, a friend of his who had rented it out for the week.
Gerard turtled his head to make himself even smaller. As much as he liked to keep his fingers on the pulse of what was going on at the Club, there were some places he’d just as soon not touch, and Mr. Stillington’s private life was one of them. He looked back at the ground. The Clendennings were gone. Leaving the birds on the landing, he leaned over to make sure, too late realizing that a yellow pull-string was caught on the heel of his loafer. The bagged weight of the goose teetered on the edge of the landing, and Gerard felt the blood leave his brain and pour into his liver. He lunged at the bag, causing its weight to shift in favor of the greater gravity. Catching the bag by the yellow cinch was no problem, but that was all he had—the bag. The goose had sprung through the torn opening, free at last, obliquely grazing the next step before tumbling sideways under the railing and out into the atmosphere. It hurtled through the air, down, and down some more, spiraling with wings akimbo in an air ballet before thumping down in a grotesque sprawl on the hood of the golden SUV.
Gerard was never able to fully separate what he saw from what he thought he saw. The granddaughter had come running from Barry’s office, summoned by the sound of bird hitting metal, but had
she screamed? Or—and this was not easy to admit—did he scream? Was she alone? Did she look up? And could she have spotted him on the landing even if she had? All of these things were seen as if submerged in water. He knew this much, though: Forbes followed at her heels and stood beside her in horror. One screamed and the other honked. The crows swept in from the skies in battalions, cawing with delight, knowing that the cry of any species hinted at the possibility of fresh flesh. Humans screaming, geese honking, crows cawing. Screaming, honking, cawing, until the air filled with one single syllable of hysterical alarm. The noise they made. It would be years before Gerard would be able to get the sound out of his head.
Chapter Twenty-six
The Fairway
OUCH.” Phoebe’s feet were raw as she pumped and pedaled her mountain bike through the dark, shortcutting from the frontage road to her back gate, with her rubber sandal straps eating at her instep. She’d made that vow about not wearing the skin of other species, and besides, she couldn’t have gone to an ALF meeting with leather on her feet, no matter what. But her blisters, ouch. The meeting had been downtown, over Tom’s Smoking Supplies Shop, and when she’d gotten there, she’d dropped to the floor all sweated out and Denise asked her why she hadn’t just taken the T.
“You know,” Phoebe had panted, “exercise?” Though, truthfully? She didn’t take public transportation because it smelled funny. Next time she’d drive her VW bug and hide it so ALF dudes wouldn’t find out she was consuming the earth’s resources to go to meetings, and that was that. Sometimes the end justified the means. Didn’t it? Could it ever justify a gun? She hadn’t taken it on the turkey mission because she’d chickened out. Then she laughed at her silly joke but shut up because she didn’t want that manager dude, Gerard, to come running out in some sort of frenzy, even if he was kinda hot. Sometimes she looked at him in his uptight clothes and wondered why some people were the way they were when they didn’t have to be. Him and his stupid BusinessWeek. But why did he seem so familiar?
What-ever. As far as the gun was concerned, it was just as well she hadn’t brought it with her to the turkey job. That would have messed things up even more, what with the dogs barking and the turkeys gobbling. Denise had said the birds would be sleeping, but she was so wrong. Lights were kept on 24/7 to trick them into eating to get bigger quicker and murdered sooner. What humans did to animals was a crime. But for some reason the big birds put up a fight when she and Denise tried to lead them to freedom, and that’s when the dudes in the farm-house woke up. She’d grabbed one bird and Denise another, and they ran, and the guys at ALF were not especially impressed. Now, to-night, trying to make nice, she had offered up the gun for the next rescue mission, liberating experimental pigs from an MIT lab.
“Excellent,” Lionel had said, their sort-of leader, there being no official dude because they did not hold to social or political hierarchy. That’s what had attracted her to this particular group. If there were no leaders there could not be someone like Eric ruining her life—but even so, it seemed as if they all marched to Lionel’s drum, and she was getting a little prickly about that. He was always saying how he once worked at Out of the Fog, the tea-house in Eugene where all the tree-spikers hung out, like that was enough to make him boss. And what was up with the facial hair? Pointy sideburn things and some crazy smudge of fuzz under his lower lip. When he talked, the smudge moved up and down, up and down, like it had a life of its own. “Speak power to power,” he’d said, leaning back in his folding chair. “It’s the only thing they understand.”
“Well, I don’t have bullets, you know,” Phoebe had said from her spot on the floor, fiddling with the amber at her neck. “It’ll just be for, I don’t know, emphasis, right?”
“I don’t think bringing a gun along, loaded or unloaded, is a good idea,” said Grace, sitting comfortably cross-legged on the bare floor next to Phoebe, who was a little stiff in the hips herself. “The violence has to stop with us.”
“We should get bullets, man,” said Adrian, who paced the edge of the room. “We should fucking blow a few holes in the roof to let them know we’re serious. This insanity of eating other species is never going to stop without a show of force.”
“Can’t Phoebe, uh, get in trouble?” asked Denise, Phoebe’s old partner in turkey crime and Lionel’s current squeeze. “I mean, if she goes to jail, who’ll take care of the animals?”
“It’s more of an issue of whether it’s right, rather than legal.” Lionel let his chair smack upright again. He planted both palms on the board resting on file cabinets that served as his desk, which, other than his chair, was the only furniture in the room. “It’s about drawing the line. Either this is worth going to jail for, or we’re just sitting around playing games.”
“Where a man draws a line in the sand, there he’ll be found dead,” said Grace as she offered a plate of pale vegan oat bars to Phoebe, who passed.
“Why don’t you hold the gun, Lionel?” asked Denise. “You’d be really good at it.”
Phoebe knew Denise had fantasies of going underground with Lionel, baking bread and stirring soup in some abandoned farm-house while he saved the world. It wasn’t a bad fantasy as far as it went, the bread and soup part, but it seemed a lonely way to live in the long run. Wasn’t it possible to be in the world and save it at the same time?
“Me? Who’ll run everything here?” Lionel spread his hands out at the room, stacked with pamphlets, picket signs, bumper stickers, buckets of red paint, and cardboard wings folded up in the corner. Not to mention the giant collapsible cage they used when the circus came to town. Sharon had painted her naked body in black and orange tiger stripes and sat scrunched up in the cage, crying to passersby that the circus was killing her. Phoebe had wanted to be the tiger, but Lionel said she could never look that wild, and maybe he was right, but she wished she could have had a turn anyway. Sometimes she really just wanted to be an animal.
Christine, sitting way in the corner, holding her knees against her chest, started to cry. “We can’t imitate the worst behavior of our own oppressor.”
“It takes all the tools in the toolbox to dismantle the master’s machine,” Adrian shouted, punching a fist into his palm. “I say we bring the gun and bullets.”
Christine cried even louder, and Grace, straining her overall clips, climbed over Phoebe to comfort her. Phoebe stared straight ahead, like nothing was going on, then closed her eyes to meditate, but the more Christine cried, the harder it was to concentrate on infinity, or what-ever, and the next thing she knew she was just sort of inching to the door, moving along the floor like a crab. Let them sort out their shit without her. Right? She’d bring the gun, not bring the gun, have bullets, not have bullets, what-ever they wanted as long as she didn’t have to sit in that room listening to Christine cry.
She continued pedaling in the dark over the golf course. There was no moon to light her way, but she knew each curve and bump and tweak of the course, so when she hit the boggy part she didn’t freak, but she was sure getting nowhere fast. Then she heard one of her roosters, and it gave her strength. Poor confused thing, cock-a-doodling in the dark. It would be his undoing. The neighbors had registered a complaint with Animal Control, and if she couldn’t shut the birds up they would be impounded. She and Denise planned to crate the boys up the next day and bring them to the country to free them, where she hoped they would settle in with their wilder relatives and not get eaten by them. What else was there to do? If she got rid of the roosters, maybe the neighbors would let her keep the goats. And the rabbits. And the turkeys. She’d gotten really attached to the big one, Olson, and he was so funny, the way he wandered out to the golf course last week and scared the golfers. That Gerard dude, he was so pissed.
She changed gears and changed gears, finally got some traction, and whizzed by those gross new houses along the course, and as she did she could smell malathion. Yes, maybe the goat pen could use a cleaning—as Grace said, just because it was natural didn’t mean it
didn’t smell—but it was nothing compared to this chemical assault. These dudes, they panicked after every West Nile alert and bombed every living thing around them to crush the enemy. They lived in constant fear of everything except for what they should be terrified of, complete environmental annihilation. If they hadn’t killed all the birds and bats and frogs with their lawn chemicals, maybe they wouldn’t have to be bombing the mosquitoes now. Tomorrow she’d call the Conservation Commission and make them come and see for themselves that this soggy turf was wetlands and the houses were too close for spraying. She was on a roll, after all; hadn’t her persistence won the poison battle at the Club? Her moment of glory had come the week before, when she saw Barry ordering his dudes around, spraying this and spraying that, and she marched out there to stop them and, whoa! He was obliterating the aphids with a little soapy water. She wondered if she shouldn’t have argued in defense of the bugs because they totally deserved to live too, but you know what? She liked roses. Roses or aphids, roses or aphids? That sort of thing drove her cross-eyed sometimes.
Barry had told her to come over to the utility shed because he wanted to show her something, and she’d thought, This dude had better not try anything or he’s going to go the way of the aphids, obliterated. But he had Forbes under his arm, and well, this guy, if he’s so attached to this other species, he can’t be an ogre. Right? So she went in, and he showed her all sorts of sprays, from hot peppers and seaweed to the whirled bodies of the bugs themselves, because he said they were their own worst enemies. Before she left, he gave her a handful of biodegradable golf tees made from soy protein.