Desire Provoked

by Tracy Daugherty

  He treats the kids to hamburgers and Raiders of the Lost Ark. At home, he clears dirty dishes from the coffee table and newspapers from the couch so they can watch TV. He brings them milk.

  “Daddy, how old are you?” Deidre asks.

  “Forty-one.”

  “Is that old?”

  “Not too.”

  “Are you older than Mom?”

  “She’s thirty-eight.”

  “Is that old?”

  “Horribly old. Your mother continues to astonish scientists.”

  While they’re occupied, he carefully searches the backyard, first from the kitchen window, then from the porch. Nothing. He steps into the yard, over leaves he hasn’t raked since fall, circles the barbecue pit and the tree, and returns to the house. The kids have fallen asleep.

  He awakes to the smell of something burning, runs to the kitchen, and finds Toby holding a stack of mail over the right-front burner of the stove.

  “What’re you doing,” Adams asks.

  Toby turns off the stove and tosses the charred envelopes onto the kitchen table. “You didn’t open them,” he says.

  “Get dressed,” Adams tells him. “Wake your sister for me.”

  He drops Toby and Deidre off at their house. “I’m late.” He kisses Pamela’s cheek—habit—and she steps back. They smile at each other, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says.

  On the wall above his desk Carter has a plaque, a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “No duty the executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.”

  He introduces Adams to Richard Feldstein, an IBM rep. Feldstein is a short man, thin, with thick black glasses.

  “Sam, I’ve asked Dick to speak to our core group. As you know, we’re bringing some hardware in later this month and I want to prepare everyone for the changes.”

  “Do you have any experience with computerassisted cartography,” Feldstein asks.

  “Limited,” Adams says.

  “Usually we encounter a little resistance at first. People aren’t used to computers, they’re intimidated, and so on. I want to assure you that your job will be much easier with our equipment.”

  “We’ll allot small amounts of computer time to anyone who wants it,” Carter says. “Of course, since you’ll be doing special projects for me, you’ll have greater access to the software, hmm?”

  Adams nods.

  “We’re providing firm resolution flatbed plotters which will give you approximately 1/25,000 resolution on any surface area,” Feldstein explains. “Our power of resolution exceeds data currency at this point, but you’ll be prepared when new data becomes available.”

  “What all this means, Sam, is that you’ll be freed from map-making tasks,” Carter says. “You’ll have time to select the best techniques. Your decisions, stored in the computer, will be more easily defensible. If a map design is flawed, it can be changed at the last minute.”

  “Our new products include video displays, controls to rotate, distend, or manipulate maps in various manners, as well as synchronized real-time displays,” Feldstein says. “The possibilities are astounding. You could provide the medical community with, say, a map of the brain.”

  “How does it sound, Sam?” Carter asks.

  “Terrific. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Good. Stop by my office tomorrow morning. I’ve got a new project for you.”

  The children have a secret—a whistle deep in their throats. They’ll use it against him when he comes to get them, he’ll have to be taken away. Of course it’s his whistle. He gave it to them when he let them have his eyes, nose, chin. It is the whistle his father passed on to him, warning, “Don’t blow on it unless you’re in terrible trouble. It’s a horrible thing that happens when you blow on it. First, a big old hound—he’d be black if you could see him, but no one can see him—leaps on your enemy’s neck. Then eleven pairs of white-gloved hands reach out of the air and drag him away by the head. The main thing is, never never use it against people you love. Okay?”

  And he didn’t, but now his children have the whistle and they’re angry. He can see it in the way they whisper together, hands on hips. He’s come to take them for the evening, away from their mother, the box of broken crayons, the houseful of lost buttons, they don’t like it, they don’t want to go, not tonight, we want to watch TV, not now, we’re warning you. They advance toward him, menacing, he reaches for the door. Too late, they’ve sounded the alarm. Hot breath on his neck. Tell us why, tell us why! the children shout. Eleven pairs of white-gloved hands pin him to the floor.

  “Sam,” says Carter, “I want you to research twenty-three hundred acres of land in northern Elgin County. The Deerbridge Road area.” He offers Adams a Styrofoam cup full of coffee. “Keep this under wraps, but we’ve got a hell of a real estate deal in the works. I want to know who owns that land and how much they paid for it. Then I’ll ask you to draw a map.”

  He explains in broad terms that On-Line wants to develop northern Elgin County for farm production.

  Is it a conflict of interest for a cartographic outfit to buy real estate?

  “Use the new hardware. And keep in mind, this is an important project for me personally, hmm?”

  In the elevator after work, or in the car, invisible fragrant skin rubs against him, a gift of his thoughts. You are a capable man, he tells himself, deserving of rich rewards. If called upon, you could design a more perfect union, or plan a covert action pleasing to all races (especially the oppressed, who have stowed their pilfered M-16s in four inches of rice-water and mud).

  An exquisitely capable man. Everything under one roof: his wife’s secret ledger, the children’s active sleep. Each morning he woke before dawn. The car wanted in, just to sit with him, he could hear it tapping the back door with its bumper.

  But Dad. A silver, room-length pendulum, up and back. But Dad but Dad but Dad.

  He reaches for an unshattered glass. Denial was my only promise, kids, didn’t I teach you? Stand up straight. Don’t flinch, you’ll want to kiss each cut. Place your hands on either side, this way, good, stretch it tight until it tears, let the sweetness breathe.

  Pamela has a new barbecue pit and paper Chinese lanterns, a No-Pest Strip and wind chimes made of shells. Her lawn is neatly clipped, azaleas beginning to bloom.

  Adams, alone with the kids, shuts the sliding glass door against the evening heat. He feels as though he’s visiting the home of a distant aunt. The furniture is familiar, but the house itself is strange to him, bright, open, feminine: light colors, cotton doilies, perfumed air.

  Pamela, visiting a sick friend, had asked Adams to stop by after work to stay with the kids for a couple of hours. “There’s some hamburger in the fridge if you want to barbecue for them,” she said.

  Now the kids are rolling on the floor, holding their stomachs. The meat seemed fresh, the pickles and lettuce brand-new. Adams himself feels fine. He feeds them aspirin. Deidre can’t keep it down. He cups her hot forehead as she leans over the toilet.

  “I think that’s all.”

  “Okay, I’ll get you a towel.”

  “No, wait.” Another minute, swaying over the bowl.

  “Feel better?” “I think so.”

  He helps her unbutton her dress. She turns away from him modestly, pulls the dress over her head, and with her back still to him runs to her bed and hides herself under the covers. Adams hangs the dress in the closet full of blocks and books. The puffy sleeves settle, sighing, over the Grinch and the Slippery-Boo. He rubs her stomach through the covers and turns out the light. “Try to sleep,” he says.

  Toby, meanwhile, has put himself to bed.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Stopped up.”

  “Lungs, or just your nose?”

  “Just my nose, I guess. And my ears. My throat’s sore.”

  Adams places his hand under Toby’s jaw. A slight swelling. He goes into the kitchen and stirs salt into a glass of warm water. “H
ere, gargle this and spit. Don’t swallow.”

  Neither child can sleep, and by the time Pamela gets home Adams himself feels a little dizzy.

  “The hamburger must’ve been bad,” he says.

  “Fastway’s meat is usually fresh.”

  The following morning he feels better, but the kids remain in bed for another two days.

  He draws a map of no place in particular, circular, many levels like smoke rings. The bottom ring he fills with leaves. Mixed among the leaves, utilizing their stems as definition, twelve brown hawks, wings folded, talons cramped and curled. On the next level the leaves give way to a grid, open squares within which larger hawks are just beginning to unfold their wings and open their eyes. The grid has become so wide on the next level that it can barely be perceived, and the hawks soar beyond the established border, the uneven edges of their feathers defining a new, amorphous territory. Ground to sky, intimacy to infinite space.

  Three families own a total of eighteen hundred acres north of Deerbridge Road. Ownership of the remaining five hundred acres is being contested in court. The area looks fertile, grassy, slightly hilly. Streams wind through limestone gullies.

  Carter is delighted. “A detailed map, hmm? Analyze movement from the point of view of convenience and cost. Say, within the week. Use the computer.”

  In Adams’ office, a sleek plastic terminal. Keyboard. Blank screen. When he sits in front of the machine his own pale face stares back.

  He has two problems: (1) the county line will not be firmly established until the courts act, and (2) he has no starting point.

  With a space of uncertain dimensions, where does he begin? In a room, with a piece of furniture—the hutch or the wrought-iron plant stand. But in an undistinguished landscape (i.e., no meteor craters or industrial explosion sites) he is forced to choose at random. If the dimensions of the designated area are in question, the center is arbitrary.

  Adams calls the center Point of View. Once this is established, he can arrange all of the territory in sight.

  Outside Carter’s office, a young secretary crossing and uncrossing her legs. Her desk is aluminum, her typewriter IBM. When Carter is out of the office she pulls a Sony Walkman out of her desk drawer and types to Men at Work or Eddie Money. Partitions made of soundproof tiles separate her from other young secretaries crossing and uncrossing their legs. The partitions stop short of the ceiling; the secretaries do not enjoy complete privacy. Separated just enough so they can’t talk to one another.

  Carter’s secretary smiles at Adams whenever he waits for an appointment. When he speaks to her, he has noticed, she takes her left shoe off underneath the desk. She does not remove this shoe for everyone.

  The face of a candidate peeling off a billboard in the rain. Wings of paper whirl to the street, hauling eyebrows, corners of the mouth, the kindly I’ll-care-for-you look. A gentle father falling to earth on the backs of furry animals. They come to roost finally in a dark and fertile sewer where the father feels at home. His best tricks are underground tricks: withholding praise from the children, riddling them with anxiety in order to keep them sharp; tempering the wife with a weekly allowance, not mentioning the actual amount in the checking account. He must guard against free-floating pleasure, the anima, the id. He parcels out, in moderation, Dirty Harry movies to the kids, carefully counts the number of Bonwit-Teller boxes his wife brings home. He wallows in the brackish water, pleased with himself.

  Overhead, thick copper cables—naked, uninsulated—break through chinks in the stone. Water drips on chalky bricks, splattering the copper. My God, he thinks, examining the wires, the whole city could blow, am I the only one who knows? Fleck fleck, like the ticking of a bomb. He reaches through the tun-neis for his kids, no use, he can’t find them in time. Sparks burst through manholes, the metal lids go flying, then—

  When Deidre was little he held her in his lap and sang

  “A bottle of beer turned upside down

  Now all the beer is gone”

  She laughed and laughed and laughed. Then, one night when she had laughed herself red in the face, she paused, squinched up her nose, and thought about the song. Finally she said, “Daddy, what’s the funny of it?”

  The children are sick again. Vomiting. Swollen glands. This time, Pamela says, it isn’t food poisoning. “We’ve been eating fresh vegetables.”

  The doctor finds no traces of infection in either Toby or Deidre. “These look like allergic reactions,” he tells Adams, pointing out mild rashes on their arms. “Get some calamine lotion and see if that doesn’t clear it up.” Pamela takes them to a specialist, but by now the kids are fine, the swelling in their necks has disappeared. The allergy doctor places them each on a table, face down, and with a needle lightly scratches their backs. Next she pours various colored powders on each of the scratches. “These things contain active agents from pollens, spores, cat and dog hair, and so on.”

  The tests come up negative.

  “You’ve got two healthy kids,” the doctor says.

  But a week later both are vomiting so hard their stomachs ache. They’re crying, awake all night. Pamela is having dizzy spells, too. Adams is convinced they’re being poisoned.

  “Are you near a toxic waste dump?” He marches in the high grass of the fields around the house in all directions. Old tin cans, shoe soles, carburetor parts.

  “I don’t think so,” Pamela says.

  “Then it’s in the house. Something in the house is rotten.”

  The gas stove doesn’t leak, the tap water tests fresh. There are no cracks in the foundation, nothing in the attic. “Who lived here before you? A doctor? Were there any old medicine bottles in the trash?”

  “No. Nothing. The place was immaculate.”

  He peels off a strip of wallpaper and examines the wood and chalk underneath. He takes apart one of Deidre’s Dr. Seuss books and picks at the dried glue on the binding. Everything in the garage he throws out, even clean white rags and unopened cans of motor oil.

  Deidre has lost six pounds.

  He takes Toby and Deidre back to the allergy specialist. “Something is killing my children.”

  She runs another series of tests over the next two weeks. Nothing turns up.

  He sits on his bed with a brandy. Evening, changing light. Each minute another noise stilled: birds, cars, plastic pails. Dinner’s over, up and down the street. Same old meats. No one’s going out. His mind turns round.

  The glass falls off the night table. Getting up he knocks his foot against the bed. “Goddammit!” he yells. He’ll raze the backyard fence, torch the weeds, drive through the plate-glass window at the downtown office of H&R Block. He’ll commandeer the local CBS affiliate and broadcast nasty rumors about the East Coast, the NRA, the national debt—a lovely day in the neighborhood. Top with pineapple sauce, bake for three hours. Right back, we’ll be right back. One two three four, try it at home now. His rage a clear white river through town.

  Adams notices that the grass around Pamela’s barbecue pit is dying. He picks and sniffs a handful of yellow blades. The barbecue pit is rusty—it’s brand-new!—and discolored. With his handkerchief Adams clears away the charcoal. The metal at the bottom of the pit is mottled yellow and green. Heat wouldn’t have done that. He asks Pamela where she purchased the barbecue pit.

  “At a wholesaler’s. A big discount warehouse north of town,” she says.

  “Take me there.”

  Hundreds of cars are parked in the fields around the warehouse, and families of shoppers are walking through rows of plastic birdbaths, lawn statuary, clay pots, wind chimes, garden tools. Inside, fishing corks, tire irons, bicycle speedometers, Coleman lanterns, decks of cards. The barbecue pits, identical with Pamela’s, occupy a corner. The first two salesmen Adams encounters know nothing about them except how much they cost. The third salesman says they’re made from metal drums.

  “Where’d you get the metal drums?”

  He doesn’t know. Adams presses. The sale
sman guides him to the warehouse manager.

  “We bought them in bulk from a little outfit called Drum Corps.”

  “What was in them before you bought them?” “I don’t know. What’s the problem?” “I suspect your barbecue pit is poisoning my children.”

  The man laughs, then sees that Adams is serious. “Honestly, I don’t know. They’re a little outfit that collects drums from various companies, cleans them up, and sells them to wholesalers like us for storage or, in our case, barbecue pits.”

  Adams insists on locating Drum Corps. The manager tries to talk him out of it, but relents when Adams mentions the Better Business Bureau.

  Drum Corps is located seventy-five miles east of Elgin. Adams cannot find a telephone number, so the following Saturday he drives to the address given him by the manager. Meanwhile, he has told Pamela not to use the barbecue pit, and to keep the kids away from it.

  An old Sinclair gas station, the dinosaur still on its sign, has become the Drum Corps office. Where the gas pumps were, tortured metal strips twist out of the concrete holding a square of splintered wood, about the size of a car door, with DRUM CORPS painted on it. Rusty barrels and drums, half eaten, badly stained. A grizzled collie sleeps near a stack of metal lids.

  Adams parks his car by the side of the road. Old cotton fields, fallow now, stretch for miles behind the station. The sun is clear but cold. A young man in a Pink Floyd T-shirt and dusty desert boots walks out of the station, drinking a bottled Coke. “Help you?”

  “Yeah. Are you the people who sold a bunch of drums to the wholesale warehouse in Elgin?”

  “Might be. Have to check. My dad’s the one who runs things but he’s out fishing.”

  “Could you check for me?”

  “Sure.”

  They go inside. An Italian auto parts calendar featuring a naked brunette and a shock absorber curls on the wall. The calendar is open to October 1973.

  “Yeah, ‘bout six months ago. Why?”