Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

  Way to go, Barry. A greens crew that was finally green. All that nagging had finally paid off, and it gave her strength to get serious and carry the gun around. She stopped to catch her breath. Didn’t it?

  She bent to adjust her sandal straps because her insteps were chopped meat and decided it would be more comfortable to walk the rest of the way, but just as she dismounted, she saw this whopping big rat and she got back on the bike. Her mom, who must be going through the change or something, told her that the rats were all her fault because the members didn’t want to drive by her anarchist friends, so they had to use the employee lot. The Dumpster got moved closer to the homes, and now they all had vermin.

  “Good,” Phoebe had said. “Let them see their own waste for once and suffer from the consequences of excess.” But it was like her mom never heard a thing and just went on about the Dumpster and the rats and the crows and the neighbors, who blamed it all on the Lamberts.

  “It’s too much,” her mom had said, and collapsed at the kitchen table and put her head down, and Phoebe thought for a moment she might even cry. She felt bad, but here she was, ready to sacrifice her freedom in the name of animal dignity and her mom couldn’t even handle a few icy stares?

  She started to pedal again, and she thought, wow, was she really ready to sacrifice her freedom? What had Denise said? Jail. She could be locked up even if she never fired the gun, even if it wasn’t loaded, and how unfair was that? But what was her freedom compared to the senseless slaughter of animals in the world? Like Lionel said, only outrageous actions could bring attention to that level of carnage, and if the group decided she should carry a gun, so be it. They were always teasing her, saying her family was a safety net, giving her money and a car and stuff. But she knew better. A safety net was nothing more than a spiderweb, and she was going to show them all she could do it on her own.

  She stopped. Right over there by the Dumpster, lit by the distant glow of a security light, was a bear. No—not a bear, but something, something really big. Wait, it was wearing pants. Was it a bum? The neighborhood didn’t used to have bums, but she’d been away for a while and what with the economy, who knew?

  But no, it was just one of the kitchen workers standing on a cement block and digging around in the garbage looking for something or other. Phoebe inched closer with her bike and saw what that something was when he lifted it up with both hands. A box of soggy hamburger patties.

  “Oh, gross,” she said.

  Pedrosa froze, trying to hide the box behind his back. Phoebe held her handlebars with one hand, and with the other, pointed at him. “Don’t eat that. A car can drive twenty miles on the fossil fuels it takes to create a single patty.”

  “Lo siento, lo siento.” He apologized, his eyes wide with fear, and stepped down off the block, pressing his body against the red metal Dumpster. “Me los hallar. Hallar.” He held out the burgers, then pointed to the Dumpster.

  She knew he’d gotten them from the Dumpster! That wasn’t the problem, even though it was disgusting. She stamped her foot. “You shouldn’t be eating meat.”

  Just then, Vita walked out of the unlit path from the club-house, glowing in her kitchen whites, her toque seeming to float above her head. She carried an armful of crumpled, empty Glad bags.

  “Que tal?” she asked, looking at Pedrosa.

  “He’s going to eat those things,” said Phoebe. “Make him stop.”

  Vita groaned. Would nothing go right today? First the AC breaks and she almost loses her birds; then that idiot Gerard drops a goose right on Clendenning’s car. He deserved to be fired on the grounds of stupidity alone, but she was pretty sure there’d be no repercussions. In the middle of all the commotion, she’d run out and grabbed the bird, and said to the granddaughter, “This must be my goose delivery.” Then she was gone, and that was the last she heard of that. After all, the girl and Forbes had been the only witnesses. Clendenning had run out of the locker room too late to see the evidence. If Clendenning was smart, and he was, he’d encourage the girl to keep her mouth shut. He was no fool. He knew where the banquet geese were coming from. When she’d showed him the menu, he had raised a single silver eyebrow, which read, “Don’t get caught.” And then Gerard starts flinging geese all over the place! If she’d seen him, she might have strangled him, but when she sneaked back up to the fire escape for the other geese, he was gone. Barry told her later he was waiting in his office to be fired, in case anyone wanted to know. He was still there as far as she knew, waiting for the gallows, and she had done nothing to reassure him, just to teach him a lesson. She had not even sent him something to eat.

  Now this. And all because she was not paying more attention to the eating habits of her staff. A delivery of organic beef had arrived at noon and she’d had to make space in the goose-filled walk-in. So she moved a pot of stock to the freezer and put the frozen burgers in the snack bar refrigerator. She told Ping to push the burgers because they could not be refrozen. What Vita did not know was that Ping had recently fallen prey to the vegetarians and was evangelical in her new religion. She would not touch meat. At the end of the day the box was still full, and defrosted, because Ping had substituted Boca burgers for every hamburger plate. Vita shook her head. What was all this about food these days, kids deciding to not eat meat or eggs or anything at all? Now good food was wasted.

  Or was it? She stuffed the Glad bags into the Dumpster, plucked a feather off her sleeve, then held her hands out to Pedrosa. He gave her the box, and she opened it. No sign of rat damage. She gave it a good sniff and touched the meat. Still cold. According to Health Department standards, they were no longer fit for food service but they were still safe and edible. She had regretted tossing them, what with all the hunger in the world. Once again, she thought how efficient it would be to have a few pigs.

  “Translate for me,” said Phoebe. “Tell him it’s unhealthy to eat ground-up dead cows.”

  Vita looked at her without speaking, then turned to Pedrosa, giving him the box and waving him off. “Vamos,” she said.

  So he left, keeping his eyes on Phoebe before disappearing into the darkness.

  “Hey,” said Phoebe. “He’s got to put them back or I’ll call the police and tell them he’s stealing.”

  “You would do that?” asked Vita, keeping her voice neutral and low. “Get him in trouble with the law when the man doesn’t even speak English?”

  Phoebe flushed and fiddled with her handlebars. “Someone’s got to save him from himself. Besides, I was only making a point. I don’t tell the police everything I see around here, after all.”

  Vita put a fractured smile on her face and folded her arms to keep her hands from shaking. Did Phoebe know about her geese? “Oh?”

  “I’ve seen you at the Club pretty early.” Phoebe narrowed her eyes meaningfully, but she couldn’t match Vita’s gaze. “You know, like that time you were hanging out on the course when Mr. Bellows shot the goose? Maybe good food gets thrown away all the time. You know. Accidentally.”

  “Stealing?” Vita was so shocked she laughed. Then she sobered up and lied. “Please. My day is very long, so if I want to gather wild greens, I have to wake up early. And you should be thankful I’ve been playing with foraged food. Barry’s switched to integrated pest management because of it. And, of course, for Forbes.”

  Phoebe slumped down, leaning on her handlebars, totally dejected. “Really? Not because of me?”

  “In spite of you.” Vita moved a step closer. It was dangerous to talk to a member, even a junior member, in anything other than placating tones, but at this point, if Phoebe were out to get her, it didn’t matter what Vita said, so she might as well just say what needed to be heard. “Besides that, you’re the one who called the police that morning to tell them hunters were on the course, then you tell them it must have been a backfire. What happened in between? Recognize one of them as your father?”

  Phoebe laughed, then rolled her bike a few inches closer to Vita. “Don’t be craz
y. If it weren’t for my mom, Dad would’ve joined me at the gates.”

  Vita smirked. “Why do I find that hard to believe?”

  “It’s not your job to believe.” A shiver ran down Phoebe’s spine because for one gross moment she sounded just like one of the members. She smiled to undo the horror of it. “Anyway, you shouldn’t let your staff eat from a Dumpster.”

  Vita tightened. “The burgers were fine, and Pedrosa’s family doesn’t have the luxury of deciding what they will and won’t eat.”

  Phoebe lifted the front of her bike up by the handlebars and slammed it down. “It’s wrong to kill animals. Don’t you get it?”

  “It’s wrong for people to go hungry,” said Vita, with a patience that drained her. She took another step. She and Phoebe were now an arm’s length from each other, and they could see each other quite clearly.

  Phoebe slumped on her bike seat. “There’d be plenty for everybody if we all ate grain instead of feeding it to cows.”

  Vita shrugged in concession. “But we can’t eat grass, and they can.” She held her hand out to the darkened landscape. “All this is useless except as a carpet for a small white ball. But if poultry were allowed to forage, and then we ate the poultry. . .”

  Phoebe leaned forward, putting her weight on her handlebars. “That doesn’t even make sense. Eating meat is only a preference.”

  “So are a lot of things.” Vita leaned forward herself until they were almost nose to nose. “Sex is unnecessary these days too, but that doesn’t mean people will stop doing it.”

  “What?” Phoebe tugged at her amber. “You are just so. . .unreasonable. Food and sex are not the same thing at all!”

  Vita smiled for the first time, flushing lightly from some pleasant memory. “I beg to differ.” Then she realized Phoebe had tears on her cheeks, and she softened. “Phoebe, food doesn’t have to be your only moral concern. Put your energies into social programs so that people like Pedrosa don’t have to Dumpster-dive to get by.” She clicked the light on her wristwatch, then clicked it off. “I’ve got to go help close up the kitchen. Everyone wants to go home. It’s been a long day. As usual.”

  And then she left. Phoebe sniffed and watched her disappear through the woods, heading back to the club-house. She dried her eyes with the back of her hand. She wasn’t very effective in changing the world, was she? She could hear car doors slam and engines start, and see beams of light flash across the course as cars turned around in the lot. Another day was over. Had she helped to make it a better one? Not really. Offering up a gun to scare some security dude to death was not good, and neither was yelling at some hungry kitchen worker. She wiped her face with the bottom of her peasant shirt and heard a nocturnal bird trill up in a tree, like it was asking for help or something, and she took it as a sign. She wouldn’t give up. She could change something, after all. Like her Karma. She’d put that gun back where she found it; then she’d figure out some other way to bring attention to her mission. Some nonviolent demonstration. Something that would make the people at the Club—and Vita—come to their senses.

  The bird called again. Earlier in the summer, she was thinking about doing a tree sit-in to make the course go organic. Maybe this was her chance to go for total victory, inside the club-house as well as out. She’d already won over Ping and the snack bar—now it was time to confront the food at its source. Vita and the restaurant. She started peddling again, getting all excited. She would start right now, to-night. She’d return the gun, then bring out the chain and tie herself to a tree, maybe that oak near where the hunters were, somewhere symbolic like that.

  Ouch. She stopped to look at her feet, made a mess from rubber, a stupid petroleum product. First things first. She was going to have to change her shoes before she changed the world.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Par for the Course

  GERARD STUMBLED out onto the course. It was late. His exquisitely trained eye could tell that his beloved club-house was empty, even of Pedrosa. Poor guy, always the last to leave. It was enough to make a grown man puddle up. And so he did, catching his tears with the sleeve of his red linen jacket, whose satin lining now blistered out at the wrist. He hadn’t put his coat on the wrong way since he was a toddler. Look what degradation Clendenning had reduced him to! He uncapped the flask of cognac he carried in his jacket pocket (sterling silver, monogrammed, available at the gift shop for $89.99, a present from the board at Christmas) and took a swig to calm the wounded beast inside. Then he swung in the direction of the lake to congratulate the geese on their victory, letting their rank odor lead him to them.

  He wandered blindly in the moonless night, stumbling up sand bunkers, sliding down knolls, tripping on cups. All without injury. The landscape was more familiar to him than his childhood home, a place he worked hard to expunge from his memory. But here, not even the night’s shadows could hide the Club’s beauty from him. His domain. His world. Gone, gone, gone. He hadn’t been fired, but it was coming as surely as Armageddon. Clendenning had not been kind with a quick hatchet job, the humane thing to do. No, no. That was not Clendenning’s way. Even a public horse-whipping was better than this. Let him get on with it, for mercy’s sake!

  He took another sip of cognac from his flask to fortify himself, then removed his tartan tie before it choked him, and put it in his jacket pocket. All that long day Gerard had sat perfectly dressed and composed behind his desk, waiting. He waited for the kids at the gate to storm the premises looking for the dead geese. He waited for the Boston Globe to document them for posterity and stir the public’s wrath. He waited for the police, for Fish & Game, for the ASPCA. How long could mere brick and iron hold them back? They hadn’t come today, but they would surely come tomorrow. It was just a matter of time. And then some inferior person with low standards would get his job and sit at his desk, looking out at his perfect view. All because he had tried to make the Club a better place.

  Then he saw them. The geese. He took a thoughtful swallow of the cognac, then leaned his palms on a ball washer and looked around, a preacher at his pulpit contemplating his flock. Most were in the safety of the water, but others had spilled over onto land, up the sloping embankment. This hill was once some landscape architect’s pride, but now it was spoiled with dark humps of sleeping meat. He hated the birds for their peaceful slumber while he had to stay awake, fully conscious to await his end. He hated them for having no knowledge of their mortality. He released the pulpit to reach for his flask and lost his balance on the slick grass. He recovered in time to keep from sliding facefirst in an ocean of goose shit, the very thought of which steeled his spine against his fate. What kind of a man was he that he was standing around waiting to be terminated? If he was going to be axed anyway, then he would die like a pit bull, with his prey between his teeth.

  The geese rustled. A few muttered, their beaks tucked demurely under their wings. Look how passive they were. He could kill them in their sleep right now. Even the score. Think of the trouble Clendenning would be in if he arrived at the Club in the morning, dragging his hairy tail in the grass behind him, to fire his innocent, well-meaning manager and found instead the golf course littered with dozens of geese carcasses!

  Hee, hee, hee. He took a very long pull of his cognac. Stuck to the flask was one of the wing feathers he’d stuffed in his pocket earlier in the day. Another lifetime ago. He peeled off the feather and whipped it through the air, like a rapier. Even if he could no longer have his job, he could still have control. After he killed the geese, he would tell the kids at the gate that there had been a slaughter and let them have a go at Clendenning. Then he would call the press and invite the outside world in.

  How to do the job right? Unlike Vita, he could not just open a vein and let the earth turn red. Rat poison? There was plenty of that around, but how to make them eat when they were asleep? Plus, it might take too long. As much as he loathed the birds, he didn’t want to see them suffer the way Clendenning was making him suffer. Never mind w
hat humans did to animals, it was what humans did to humans that was the real atrocity. Were we supposed to treat animals with more mercy than we treat one another? He thought not. He had tried to bring civility to these people, but no. Still, he was going to be kinder than his own tormentor. A club? He could whack the birds sharply in the back of the head with a heavy stick and be done with it.

  Gerard stuck his feather behind his ear and began to kick around in the rough for a big stick, but Barry and his crew had done too good a job of cleaning up the course for the Fothergill Cup. He would miss Barry. He would miss a great deal. As he looked around for the proper tool for the job, he wondered what would become of him now. He’d lived and breathed the Club for three years, and without it he would have no purpose. Even if he stayed in the business, he would have to move elsewhere, where no one would know that he’d been fired from one of the country’s great exclusive clubs. He might even have to return to the Midwest, back to a city with so little ambition it was like a pumpkin pie: no upper crust. To think he had once dreamed of his own chapter in some future edition of the History, with a snapshot or two of an impeccably turned-out, self-assured manager seeing to everyone’s needs—by the pool, in the dining room, on the terrace—amiably and attentively wandering among the rich. “Good old Gerard,” the members would be quoted as saying. “Like a faithful dog, he was.”

  Where, oh where, was a stick? Never mind. Just another challenge to overcome. He would make his own. Feeling very elemental, he grabbed hold of a low maple branch and swung on it like an arboreal ape until it snapped off at the trunk. Maybe in his next job he could do something with his hands. Get closer to nature. He could join the migrant farmworkers who came to the Club every spring and fall to pick up the acorns by hand, finding every seed, every nut. Those were standards. He stepped on the branch and broke off the end piece, then peeled the leaves to fashion his club. They might not be able to call him Good Old Gerard anymore, but from now on, he would be remembered as One Blow Gerard.