That’s all I can recall for you,
Luther Corey
I made a mental note to find out the bartender’s surname at the Aviator, to see if he was near kin to either of these correspondents.
The final response fit on a blank USPS postcard, but in script so crabbed I had to rest my eyes three times before the signature:
If this can please be forwarded to the person that does the show on ghosts, I am answering your request for stories of happenings in the valley that was flooded. Round about the Great War (or WWI you call it now) my father and some others moved down from Quebec because the farming was too hard up there. They bought a great parcel of land cheap that had been seized for taxes and they divided it. Well my father’s dream to make good on his own was not meant to be. At the edge of his fields there was woods on the top of a ridge. He and my mother and two brothers had not been working their fields a month when a cloud of gray dust blew over from the other side of the ridge. It was during a terrible windstorm, so bad it became my first memory, when I was only a year or two old. The dust got into the furrows and in the feed bins and the troughs, and it was easy to see against the soil and the cast iron which were both darker. I also remember my father was mad as a hornet after the corn stalks and the squash vines turned every color but green and then became black and died. After that the livestock took sick and he started to slaughter them but the meat was black, and at that he got scared and moved us away and let the devil have his own, as he always said later. We were lucky, though, because it was a boom time during the war and by winter my family had jobs at the burlap factory in Houghton, where I worked for 50 years starting at age 10 as a bobbin boy. Some people were leery about the reservoir at first but the water tests say it’s okay, so thank God for something good. I’ve never had any problems with the tap water and I’ll be a hundred next year. Write to me if you have any questions and I’ll see what I can do. Gerard Heroux
What I should have done was pen a few lines of thanks to each informant, but with a mild twinge of self-denigration I doubted I’d ever get around to it. Blaming even an uneventful life like my own for chucking too many roadblocks between me and basic etiquette.
Gerard’s was the only communiqué to raise a question, and a disturbing one at that. Unfortunately, writing him about it would have availed me nothing. The meat of his father’s butchered livestock was “black,” was it? Had it stunk like the irate codger’s rotten trout from the reservoir? A tenuous connection to weave across the better part of a century, but that made it no less unnerving as I dwelt on how that fish I’d seen with corpse-light attached might taste. What kind of anomaly could exert baneful effects then and now, in dry earth or lake-bottom mud? I needed more dots to connect into a clear picture.
5
I sat listening in my Adirondack chair on the back deck of my shabby little bungalow. On my lap was a bowl of the bachelor’s archetypal supper, refried spaghetti, the second of several this week. I loved the din of cicadas and crickets from the woods beyond my weedy yard and tried to let it soothe me in the wake of an insane blowup at work.
Sneering history had seemed to repeat itself. After midmorning break, another memo sheet stood waiting between the rows of dingy computer keyboard at another wobbly desk where I’d been posted for the day. This note purported to be “From the Office of Humphrey Westcott,” and stated simply, “See me.” No time, no reason. Westcott was the City Collector, and a notorious grinch, and someone with whom I’d had the pleasure never to interact. That misspelled hazing memo from two Thursdays ago sprang to mind, so I dismissed this one as a hoax. A bid at luring foolish me into the den of a lion who seldom suffered fools gladly. What could Westcott possibly want with me? I disposed of this imposture as casually as its forerunner.
Within the hour, to my shock, the formidable Ms. Lathrop was looming over me, scanning my pitted desktop in vain for something. The memo sheet? She was one of those secretaries upstairs who knew the administrative gears and pulleys better than any elected official, and without whom the city would stall like an obsolete lawn mower. Cross her at your peril! “Mr. Westcott wants to see you right away.” Borderline scolding me. “Didn’t you get his message?” Best to slowly shake my befuddled head. She traipsed off, mission accomplished. Why squander valuable time on me? In a few more keystrokes, I finished what I was transcribing. Followed her lilac trail to the third floor. Still more perplexed than apprehensive.
No receptionist, Ms. Lathrop or otherwise, at the City Collector’s anteroom desk. I lightly rapped on frosted-glass inner door. “What?” I could have been anyone, but the inflection imputed I was a fool till proven otherwise. Grasped the brass doorknob. Into the breach!
Westcott’s office boasted oak wainscoting and substantial bolection moulding and gilt-framed mayoral portraits from the heyday of sideburns and ascots. Most impressively, it boasted air. It had sash windows that opened. Westcott, striking an imperious stance behind his massive desk, arms folded, was a WASP among WASPs. His linen suit matched his opal-blue eyes. He had a basset-hound nose and a mouth carved of flint and a dose of Grecian Formula 16 in his thinning hair and impeccable goatee. Despite the ventilation, a scent of cigars lingered, in disdain of the rules for everyone else.
“I heard about your TV show,” he greeted me. Aware of who I was by other means than actual viewing, apparently. Dispensing with friendly preamble, he affected a tone that wavered between fatherly and domineering. “Now don’t you agree it’s on the reckless side to go stirring up old rumors and falsehoods? Why would you want to reignite baseless fears about the water we all have to drink?”
Wow, had I done all that? “I’m just collecting folklore, Mr. Westcott. No harm intended.” Fretted inwardly that it was impossible to sound conciliatory enough with some autocrats. I also saw no need to mention that my household water came from an artesian well and ended up in a septic tank. “We” didn’t drink the water.
“Eh?” I gathered he was too busy staying on-message to listen. And that he really didn’t wish me to repeat myself. “Don’t you think it would be the responsible thing to edit out any defamatory statements about the reservoir? Or add a disclaimer that the drinking water is perfectly safe?”
Since this was conspicuously not a frank exchange, I dared not imply my “superior” was overstepping his bounds. “Once I submit a show, Mr. Westcott, it’s out of my hands. Sorry. The cable provider doesn’t want to hear from me again till they’ve broadcast the show four Wednesdays in a row, and then they want a new one.” Of course I could have phoned the company and had the episode pulled and replaced with a rerun, but this arrogant patroon was rubbing me the wrong way. “I don’t know who told you about this particular program, but I guarantee you there’s nothing derogatory about the reservoir, and I never get any feedback or indications that people are watching, anyway.” Aside from my detractors and those three retirees, that is.
“I hope you’re right. And I hope we won’t have to discuss this again.” His look bore down on me. As if he were appraising me through a jeweler’s loupe.
“I hope not too. Sorry to have caused you any concern.” I dearly wanted to take my leave, but an intensity in his expression held me there. I wished he’d say something, then wished he hadn’t.
“I know bullshit when I smell it!” he erupted, smacking his palms against mahogany desktop, thrusting his face forward. His bulbous nose was reddening like an ember. “You don’t think I can deal with fucking pipsqueaks like you? Consider yourself warned. You better be careful who you piss off around here. Now go.”
After Westcott’s roaring escalation from snide wheedling to almost transparent physical threat, I had difficulty moving. On the verge of tears. Outraged, indignant. And buried deep under the smoking emotional rubble, pitiful seeds of defiance.
Ms. Lathrop sat typing at anteroom desk. Hunched over glowing monitor, which tinged her doughy face a grayish green. I slunk by as if invisible. Or as if she’d overheard nothing out of the ordinary.<
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The bad vibes were still going strong as the sun set on dinner hour. Didn’t want stress to increase my odds of indigestion. Detoured my thoughts onto the high road toward understanding why that bullying s.o.b. had made so much ado over nothing. Went no further than blaming August. Maybe summer, in a less plainspoken fashion than winter, also wears out its welcome. Too hot for too long, and tempers combust with impatience for relief. In the 1950s, wasn’t this dubbed the “silly season,” when level heads lost ground against credulity? And moodiness? I chewed it over. Nope, that didn’t excuse the bullying s.o.b., though it did add a potential, extenuating dimension to Lucinda’s late-term temper.
Days were appreciably shorter. The one universal regret about summer on the wane. Dusk had already dissolved into a night rank with stars. Back here, I faced away from the brightness of Occam, and from sprawling development, and from the reservoir. That Saturday in the boat, Wil had seemed enchanted by a smattering of meteors. A shame the city light pollution wouldn’t let him savor the Perseids in full swing. The northeastern sky was swarming with silver streaks, like minnows crowding a dark aquarium. I spaced out on the spectacle, and upon snapping out of it, wasn’t hungry for the half a bowl of cold supper in my lap. Scraped it back into the iron skillet on the stove and slid skillet back into fridge. More for the rest of the week! The phone rang. Speak of the devil, it was Wil.
Please, would I come meet him in front of the house? He had no one else to turn to. Elsie had run away. Elsie was the elkhound, I presumed. Yes, I’d help him shout the dog’s name around the neighborhood. Might even be salutary immersing myself in someone else’s awful day, to divert me from my own.
As the woods on townbound road thinned into suburbs, my headlights revealed several more strays trotting purposefully in the breakdown lane. A golden retriever, a bichon, a boxer, among others, all heading for the wilderness. No Elsie. Normally I would have stopped and corralled the more tractable pets for their worried owners, but I had to put Wil’s anxiety first.
He was sitting on the granite steps of Dyer Hall and sprinted over while I parked. Had Lucinda already hit the streets? Maybe in the family Outback? No, she was up in bed. Sedated. Way too agitated for any part in this. Or for driving under any pretext lately. Wil led us toward town center, which was 180° wrong according to my gut, but this was his gig. Without result and meeting no one, we circled block after block of tacky triple-deckers and funeral homes and daycare centers and convenience stores. We had to shout twice as loud to compete with barking that bombarded us from porches and windows and yards, but which wasn’t directed at us, because it was also audible from afar during quiet interludes.
Meanwhile, plenty of meteors were visible in spite of milky urban sky, but Wil, like the dogs, seemed too distraught to take an interest in cosmic spectacle. Or were the roiling Perseids somehow inciting canine unrest, unlikely as that seemed?
We’d reached the periphery of Commercial Street, where half the façades were boarded up. And stapled to the plywood and to telephone poles, and taped to mailboxes, were upward of a dozen different flyers for lost dogs and cats, and only now did it hit me that we’d been passing these all along. Was this an epidemic of runaways, or merely the average number, to which I was more sensitized tonight?
Since I wasn’t a father, I was pretty hoarse before thinking to ask if anyone was minding Morgan. Wil chose words with scrupulous care. “He’s a sound sleeper. I don’t foresee any problem staying out as long as we want.” An undertone of reserve dissuaded me from prying deeper into family matters.
Wil was less reticent about how the dog had gone AWOL. “After supper, Lucinda let Elsie out front as usual. People are indoors, and it’s getting dark, and the streetlights aren’t on yet, so the dog can take a quick dump on the lawn with nobody the wiser. But this time she just sniffed the air and bolted. In the foyer Lucinda screamed and screamed at her to come back till I coaxed her, my wife I mean, back in and sent her to bed with some meds. We love that dog.” If they did, they could have done better than flout leash laws because they were too lazy to escort her to the curb, but why pick an argument now?
We plied back lanes to either side of the main drag. On these subsisted more marginal businesses that lent Occam its aura of “Salem West.” A botánica, New Age herbal pedlars, Tarot readers, Wiccan accessories. Whatever attracted them here, I’d have been happier without them. As it was, OGAM rated precious little respect. We didn’t need these charlatans and screwballs around for less discerning folk to associate with us. Wil and I had patrolled within smelling distance of the river, and within hearing of the traffic hum on the bypass, that demon brainchild of ’70s city planners which had killed Commercial Street by rerouting everyone over the river and directly into the suburbs.
“I can’t stand this any more,” Wil confessed. “There’s too much ground to cover, and my voice is giving out. It’s futile. We’ll just have to notify the pound and put up fliers and hope people see ’em among all the others. Let’s go home before this barking drives me crazy.” I had tuned out the racket a while ago. And reckoned it hadn’t entered Wil’s overwrought consciousness, or he’d have griped about it blocks ago.
“Are the dogs usually this noisy around here?”
“Couldn’t tell you. We’re always inside with the windows down and the air conditioner on. Elsie was fine till this evening, to my knowledge.”
Across the street, a dalmatian sporting a day-glo green collar glanced at us as it padded ahead. It was panting instead of vocalizing, and its spade-like tongue lolled straight out. Its eyes hinted at some impending crisis. A minute later, a bug-eyed, breathless blonde in shocking pink jogging suit and clutching a day-glo green leash caught up with us, and we both waved her in the fugitive’s direction before she uttered a word.
“So what do you figure all this ruckus means?” I kept the blonde in my sights purely because she was the only moving object on the landscape.
“They say animals act up when an earthquake’s about to happen. Or a tidal wave.” Wil had adopted a disarmingly cool tone for prophesying disaster. Perhaps too much grim reality weighed on his mind to treat misery on spec seriously. “If you go in for that sort of thing, shooting stars are also supposed to presage calamity, and based on what’s up there tonight, this ought to be the end of the world.” Wil did have a talent for perceiving more than he let on. And maybe more than he was aware of. Whether in terms of barking dogs, teeming meteors, or domestic troubles that he swept under an ever more convex rug. A style of housekeeping with a very limited future.
We hiked back on as few of the same streets as possible, for all the good it did. Should I have told him about those several dogs fleeing town? Didn’t see how it would have helped. Much as I hadn’t seen how harping on Lucinda’s luminous water would have helped at the time. After which, I didn’t want to be accused of withholding information. The only word out of either of us till we stood in front of Dyer Hall was “Elsie.”
The ponderous glass door flew open, and Lucinda, the antithesis of “sedated,” raced out to us. She gripped a sheaf of 8½ x 11 papers in one hand. She pulled Wil aside, and the only words I heard her whisper in Wil’s ear were “Morgan” and “jelly.” Wil imperfectly hid his alarm, and Lucinda skipped uncomfortably close to me. Within range of her hot, swampy breath. I tried not to stare as she thrust the papers upon me and blurted, “You have to put these up for us. You’re the only one now. You have to help us.” I nodded gravely, and she scurried inside.
Wil was thanking me, but his eyes were on the glass door. “I’ll be in touch soon.”
“What’s going on with Morgan? Is he okay? What’s his pediatrician been saying?” Wil was poised to bolt, but I felt I’d been too long in the dark and deserved a scrap or two of confidence if I were really “the only one” in the implied sense.
“No pediatrician. Not in the last month. They’re a bunch of quacks around here.” Formerly I’d have expected that kind of telegraphic, disjointed verbiage from
Lucinda. “We’re not wasting any more time and money getting bamboozled. Nothing but misinformation.”
“How about a specialist in Boston then?”
“Jeff, I’m sorry. I have to get going.” And with that, he was off. Leaving me with a couple of dozen ink-smudged, hand-printed fliers about Elsie. She’d included no phone number or address on any of them, and shaky penmanship had undermined every attempt at a straight line. All right, guess I could see my way clear to adding contact info and posting these before clocking in tomorrow. Probably just as well Wil had vamoosed before I’d plucked up the nerve to speak of one more oddity I’d never dare broach again. For as long as Lucinda was violating my personal space, I’d have sworn that her eyebrows were standing on end, quivering, as if prey to static electricity. I retreated to the Taurus. Somewhere down the street, a guy with a Latino accent was wearily hollering for his dog.
6
An item on the local news at 11 scared me into committing workplace espionage. Tucked between perv kidnapper foiled by heroic crossing guard and a preview of Saturday’s Civil War reenactment on Sentinel Hill was a breezy fluff-piece on hive collapse across the “Occam metro area.” Blasé state official trotted out the standard suspects of virus or parasites, and a doe-eyed effervescent reporter trivialized the silence of white bureau-like hives around her as “a bitter blow to a sweet commodity.” No apparent inkling of what this portended for agriculture. Or that bees were disappearing in the wake of dogs and cats.
Pushed the Mute button on my remote. Hard to concentrate while another doe-eyed correspondent nattered about Gettysburg with a husky faux Confederate whose Bluetooth protruded from one muttonchop. Hive collapse. Yes, absolutely, one more piece in a puzzle that included corpse-lights and olden days’ haunted woods and toxic dust from nowhere, and something that stampeded dogs and bees and had accumulated in Lucinda’s womb and ipso facto her bloodstream. One additional piece, and I was positive I could correlate these mental contents into a theory of what was besetting Occam. I almost had it, and it was taunting me like a word unreachable on the tip of my tongue.
The Color Over Occam Page 4