Natural Enemy

by Jane Langton

  “Yes, but, Mrs. Bewley. DID SHE SAY ANYTHING? YOU KNOW, ABOUT MOVING YOU OUT OF THERE INTO A NURSING HOME?”

  “OH, NO. AND MAXIE LAID AN EGG! IMAGINE THAT! I THOUGHT SHE WAS A BOY!”

  “Well, that’s a relief. THAT’S GOOD. I’M REALLY GLAD. I’LL BET THAT’S THE LAST YOU’LL SEE OF HER.”

  “OH, NO, I’D NEVER GET RID OF MAXIE. YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS NOW? JUST A MINUTE. IT’S SEVENTEEN MINUTES PAST FOUR.”

  “Well, all right. VERY GOOD, MRS. BEWLEY. I’LL HANG UP NOW. THAT’S JUST FINE.”

  Barbara turned to Virginia, who was coming into the house, the front of her skirt full of green beans. “What did she mean, telling me what time it is?” Then it dawned on Barbara, and she whooped with laughter. “You know what Mrs. Bewley did? She stole Dolores Leech’s watch. She did. She just up and swiped it.”

  “Well, is she all right? Did Dolores say she can stay?”

  “I guess it’s all right now. Mrs. Bewley didn’t seem to be worried. Well, how could she be? After all that gruesome work we did? The day is saved.”

  Twenty-Five

  ANOTHER WINDY NIGHT UNSEATED JOHN’S BARN SPIDER ONCE again, and blew her around the corner of the porch to the front lawn. Swiftly she crawled back to the house and made her way up a drain spout beside the front door. Halfway to the lintel of the door she began building a new web between the spout and the shutter of the living room window. In the thickness of the house wall, only a few inches away from the spider as she dropped and climbed and payed out thread, a mouse was suckling nine naked sacs of milk. And at the top of the house wall where the tossing branches of the maple tree brushed against the eaves, a colony of carpenter ants was hard at work, chewing the rotting wood, carving out spacious galleries in which to lay their eggs.

  Next morning Mr. Farley W. Pike, roofing specialist, was pleased to observe the blackened rot in the eavestrough as he drove slowly past the house. It was exactly the kind of trouble he was always on the lookout for.

  Mr. Pike stood with Virginia in the front yard. “See there?” he said, pointing upward. “Them’s carpenter ants. They’ll be into your whole house. Chew it to bits. You got to do something. You get a place like that in your eavestrough, you’re in real trouble. Your whole roof will cave in.”

  “Oh, my God, Mr. Pike, how much would it cost to fix it?”

  “I’ll do it for you special. I mean, see, I’m in this neighborhood anyhow. Do it for four-fifty.”

  “Four-fifty? But surely that’s too cheap for — oh, you don’t mean — you mean four hundred and fifty —? Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Pike. We just can’t. Not now. Those ants will just have to go right on chewing.”

  “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Listen, I could come next Tuesday. You think it over once or twice.”

  Virginia watched Mr. Pike’s small ladder-covered van drive away, and then she went into the kitchen and wrote a letter to the air.

  How long has it stood here really? In the face of carpenter ants and post beetles and poverty and carelessness? It sank in the middle a long time ago, I know that, and then Mr. Pike’s ancestors came along with wrecking bars and dismantled the rotten timbers and put in new ones. And you can see by the cuts across the floor boards that changes have been made, all over the house. Staircases have been ripped out and erected someplace else. They blocked up the fireplaces and put in stoves, and then they took out the stoves and put in radiators, and then they tore out the radiators and put in hot-air registers. Everything in the house has changed places, leaving no trace of what was there before. I wish I could feel them here, all those people who lived here, the earliest ones in their eighteenth-century clothes, or the ones with frock coats and bearded faces, or those women later on in shirtwaists and hats like upside down bushel baskets. It’s strange that I can’t get any sense of them at all, all those people who were born and lived and died here. I can’t imagine their clothes hanging on the iron pegs in the closets. I never think about them at all. It’s my house now, for this flicker of time. Not theirs. Only mine.

  Virginia’s pen faltered. Barbara had told her what Mrs. Bewley had said. Mine, mine, mine. They were just alike in their selfish possessiveness, Virginia Heron and Alice Bewley.

  Fingernails clicked on the glass. Virginia looked up to see a face looking in the window at her. Then a second face materialized behind the first, and stared past Virginia at the refrigerator, the television set, the cast-iron fireplace.

  Oh, no. Virginia turned her head away, unable to bear it. One of the faces belonged to the real-estate woman, Mrs. Gardenside. Warily Virginia stood up and went to the door.

  “Oh, Virginia, Dotty Gardenside, remember? I was here at your father’s —” Mrs. Gardenside was holding up a shiny object, a copper teakettle. “Might we disturb the peace of your lovely home to get water for my radiator? It boiled over. Oh, excuse me, this is Mrs. Hawkins. Virginia Heron, Mrs. Hawkins. Mrs. Hawkins is going to move here with her family from Tallahassee. They’re looking for a new home, you know, a really lovely old — isn’t this a lovely place, Mrs. Hawkins? What did I tell you?”

  Virginia towered in the doorway. “It doesn’t happen to be for sale.”

  “Oh, of course not, of course not.” Dotty Gardenside glanced at Mrs. Hawkins. “But our radiator boiled over. Just down the road. I wonder if I could fill my container at your kitchen sink?” The teakettle jiggled in the air again, a dazzling guarantee to the factual nature of the testimony.

  Virginia backed grudgingly out of the doorway and stood aside, as Mrs. Gardenside and Mrs. Hawkins dodged past her into the living room.

  “Not that way,” said Virginia dryly. “The kitchen is this way.”

  “Oh, of course it is. I remember now,” said Mrs. Gardenside, while the eyes of Mrs. Hawkins raked left and right. “How could I have forgotten? Isn’t that a lovely mantlepiece, Mrs. Hawkins?”

  In the kitchen Virginia took a firm hold on the kettle and filled it at the faucet. Behind her she could sense the silent gestures of Mrs. Gardenside pointing here and there, the delighted murmurs of Mrs. Hawkins.

  “Oh, thank you, Virginia dear,” said Mrs. Gardenside, reaching for the kettle.

  Virginia hung onto it. “No, no, I’ll carry it.”

  “But, really, we wouldn’t dream of troubling you.”

  “It’s no trouble.” Virginia pushed open the screen door and led the way down the driveway.

  “But we’re fine, just fine.” Mrs. Gardenside and Mrs. Hawkins fluttered and clucked at Virginia’s heels all the way to Mrs. Gardenside’s Mercedes, which was parked beside one of the brick gateposts.

  No steam escaped from under the gleaming hood.

  “Well, thank goodness, it’s cooled down,” said Mrs. Gardenside, fussing with the hood, trying to find the latch.

  Virginia found it for her and stood back while Mrs. Gardenside explored the interior, searching among the mysteries of the eight-cylinder supercharged Mercedes-Benz gasoline engine for the cap to her radiator. “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Gardenside, gazing vaguely at the spark plugs, “I know so little about cars.”

  “It’s this thing in front,” said Virginia. With gingerly fingers she touched the radiator cap. It was stone cold. Unscrewing it, she tipped the kettle and began pouring water ruthlessly. Instantly the radiator flowed over. Without a word Virginia handed the shiny kettle back to Mrs. Gardenside and screwed the cap back on.

  “Oh, I’m just a silly woman,” giggled Mrs. Gardenside. “It must be something else. I thought it was the radiator.”

  “The boiler,” suggested Mrs. Hawkins desperately, remembering something from an explanation by her husband about steam locomotives. “I’ll bet it was the boiler.”

  “Our house is not for sale,” said Virginia, turning away. “It isn’t now and never ever will be.”

  Mine, mine, mine, she said to herself, over and over, stalking back up the driveway.

  Twenty-Six

  HOMER KELLY CRANED HIS NECK FROM THE LAWN C
HAIR TO glance at the open window of the kitchen, listening hungrily to the soft clash of dishes in the dining room, where Mary was setting the table for Sunday dinner. “And how are your spiders, dear boy?” he said, turning back reluctantly to his nephew John. “I must say, I don’t miss those eight-legged little creatures at all, not at all.”

  “Oh, they’re fine,” said John. “My crab spider died. And my big Nucteneas all keeled over within a few days of each other. I guess their purpose in life was finished. They made egg sacs and died. I’ll have a lot of new ones, of course, pretty soon.”

  “Horrible, I must say, the animal kingdom and its single-minded concentration on murder and reproduction,” mused Homer. “It reminds me of your mother. Not the murder part, of course, the reproduction. All you passel of little kids. I wish the dear woman had run out of steam before Benny came along. I don’t know if Mary and I are going to survive. We’ll be the helpless victims of the tyranny of the next generation. We’ll curl up our insect legs and die, just like your mama spiders. Listen, John, keep your voice down, and maybe he’ll nap right through dinner. Your Aunt Mary had me taking pictures of the little brute all morning to send to his mother. Benny frolicking on the jungle gym. Benny swinging on the swing. Benny playing in the sandbox. If you ask me, his mother doesn’t want to be reminded.”

  “You know, Uncle Homer,” said John, “maybe Benny will be okay when he grows up. I know it’s hard to believe. But maybe Jean Henri Fabre was something like Benny when he was small. You know, a really smart little kid.”

  “Fabre, your hero? That old guy in southern France?”

  “Listen to this, Uncle Homer. When he was just a tiny little kid, he did this funny experiment. He wanted to know whether he saw the sun with his eyes or his mouth. So he looked at the sun and closed his eyes and opened his mouth, and the sun disappeared. So he knew he saw it with his eyes. Isn’t that nice?”

  Homer was enchanted. “He opened his mouth and closed his eyes? What a clever little kid. He opened his mouth and closed his eyes!”

  “Uncle Homer?”

  “Yes?” said Homer dreamily, inhaling the pleasant smell of roast beef wafting from the kitchen window.

  “Listen, Uncle Homer, I sort of wanted to talk to you.”

  Homer’s gaze drifted back to his nephew’s earnest face. “Talk to me? What about?”

  “Well, it’s so queer. I don’t exactly know how to describe it.”

  “Well, try, boy, try.”

  “Well, it’s just that —” John groped for words. “Well, it’s like the three little pigs. You know.”

  “The three little pigs?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down? Those three little pigs?”

  “Exactly. That’s it exactly.”

  Homer threw up his hands in exasperation. “You’re as bad as your little brother. More idiocy from the nursery. That’s what, exactly? I’m sorry, my boy, for being so dense, but what have the three little pigs got to do with your sense of malaise, of discomfiture, of vaguely unrealized distress and mortification? What sort of huffing and puffing are you talking about?”

  “It’s us, you see. We’re the three little pigs. Virginia and Barbara and me. Only it’s not my house, of course, so it’s really just Virginia and Barbara. It’s their house I mean. The one that’s going to get blown down.”

  “Well, we had a little tornado here in June. Freak wind. Did I tell you about that? It was the same day that —”

  “No, no, Uncle Homer. I don’t mean a real wind.”

  “You were speaking metaphorically? I see. Profound poetic symbolism of huffing, puffing, porcine alarm, wolfish gluttony, grandmaw gobbled up. No, no, that’s another story. John, for God’s sake, get on with it.”

  “Well, it’s Buddy. That’s the whole trouble.”

  “You mean, the wolf is Buddy Whipple? It’s Buddy who wants to blow down that fine house of straw occupied by you three plump little porkers with the curly tails? I see. It’s funny, you know, John. Barbara said the same thing.”

  “She did?” John was amazed.

  “She said he was like a monster, taking over. I said, ‘Why don’t you just kick him out?’ You mean he’s still there?”

  “Oh, he’s there, all right. Barbara doesn’t even try to make him leave anymore.”

  “Well, why not?”

  John’s narrow face worked. How could he explain it? That Virginia and Barbara were like helpless specks in a spiderweb, and Buddy was turning them over and over in his claws. Barbara was still beating her wings and struggling, but Virginia didn’t move. It was as if the spider had already delivered his fatal bite. Somehow or other they must find a way to prey on the spider himself, to grab him and hold him down and destroy him. The trouble was, Buddy would find a way to wriggle loose, or he would let one of his legs go, just like Araneus cavaticus, and carry on. He had seven more legs, after all. No, a hundred legs, a thousand. John’s eyes grew large, imagining Buddy hovering over the Herons’ house with his thousand jointed legs, clutching it, his hairy femurs dangling over the windows, darkening them, crowding out the light. No, no, that was ridiculous. He was just an ordinary guy, just very shrewd and powerful. Next year he would still be living in the Herons’ house, and the year after that, and the year after that. When Virginia was an old, old woman Buddy would still be a mighty presence in the house, crushing everything with his overbearing good will, his clever schemes, his interfering good nature. And Virginia would always be too proud to fret herself. She would escape the way she did now, in indifference, in profound privacy. She would float away in silence above the threatening coarseness of Buddy Whipple. Except that sometimes John feared Virginia wasn’t indifferent any more, that she was giving in, that her fragile resolve was weakening.

  He looked at Homer and said something in a strangled voice. His astonished uncle thought he was going to cry. Then John got hold of himself and said solemnly, “It’s Virginia. I don’t know what it is about Barbara and Virginia, but Barbara wants him to go and Virginia lets him stay.”

  “Virginia wants him to stay?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said she lets him stay. He’s got her, you know, wrapped up in sticky threads, like a —”

  “Oh, come now, John, you’ve got spiders on the brain.”

  “And it isn’t right,” cried John, hitting the arm of Homer’s chair.

  “Ssshhh, ssshhhh,” whispered Homer. “You’ll wake up Benny.”

  “It’s some kind of threat. I don’t know what the hell it is.”

  “Well, John, until you do, I don’t see what I can do about it. Even to help my kith and kin. Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.”

  “But, Uncle Homer,” said John, and then they both jumped, as a happy squeal pierced the sultry afternoon. A small face bobbed up at one of the upstairs windows. Benny was dancing in his cot.

  “Hey, John,” shouted Benny, “listen to this. I know a song about you!” And in a childish soprano Benny sang a song at the top of his lungs about a fox and a goose and somebody named John.

  Homer sank his head in his hands. “It’s Mary’s fault. She’s been teaching him all these nursery rhymes. I don’t know which is worse, the imports and exports of the nations of the western hemisphere, or Jack and Jill went up the hill. I tell you, John, it’s something awful. He’s halfway through the Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes.”

  “Oh, wow, you don’t have to tell me,” said John. “I know what it’s like. Listen, why don’t you get him to help you somehow? Fabre’s little granddaughter was only six years old when she kept an eye on his long processions of ants for him. I mean, a smart little kid like that ought to be good for something.”

  “Help me? Good God, John, how could that little rascal help me?”

  “Dinner’s ready,” called Mary, her face round and flushed behind the screen of the kitchen window. “Oh, Homer, would you take Benny to the bathroom and bring him downstairs?”
>
  Homer groaned.

  “I’ll do it,” said John generously, and for the next hour he manhandled his little brother playfully and ate a heavy meal in the company of his aunt and uncle. But then, picking up his bicycle and riding home along Barretts Mill Road and Lowell Road and across the river, past the Star Market and through Monument Square, down Heywood Street to Walden, down Walden across Route 2, down 126 past Walden Pond, then swooping at last in a clean curve into the Herons’ driveway and bumping along the ruts and gullies to the house, he couldn’t get Benny’s silly rhyme out of his head.

  Oh! John, John, John,

  The grey goose is gone,

  And the fox is off to his den O!

  Den O! den O!

  Oh! John, John, John,

  The grey goose is gone,

  And the fox is off to his den O!

  Twenty-Seven

  BUDDY CAME GALLOPING UP THE STONE STEPS, HEARING THE IN sistent ring of the phone, then stopped cold. He had almost run into a hornet. Backing away, he ran down and around the other way to the south side of the courtyard. Then, throwing open the screen door, he plunged into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” said Buddy.

  “Oh, sorry. I must have the wrong number.”

  “That sounds like William Warren,” said Buddy. “Buddy Whipple here, William.”

  “Buddy?” The voice at the other end of the line hesitated. “Are you still living there with Barbara and Virginia?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. Just keeping an eye on things. You know, taking care of the girls.”

  There was another pause. “Well, Buddy, would you be so good as to ask Barbara to call me back?”

  “May I ask what about?” said Buddy outrageously, in his most courteous executive secretary’s voice.

  “Well — well, all right, I’ll tell you what it’s about.” William sounded more confident. “It’s my new nine-by-nines. Those pictures we took from the plane. They just came in. I thought Barbara and Virginia might like to take a look at their place. You can see it in three-D. The plane takes overlapping pictures, you see, so you can look at them through a pair of lenses, and you get this three-dimensional —”