by Smiley, Jane
Amy is hot and mostly asleep, tangled in her knitted blanket. Her head has an acrid, feverish fragrance that Beth feels guilty relishing. They all smell that way only when they’re sick, but it’s such a delicious smell. The coughing subsides slightly as Beth sets the toddler upright against her shoulder, but it still sounds as if it is coming from a loudspeaker rather than a child. She cuddles Amy and carries her into the bathroom, where she turns on the shower, hot. The small room begins to fill with steam. Beth sinks down on the mattress they’ve carried into the bathroom, with her back and head against the wall. Amy’s arms encircle her neck and her darling head shifts over to one side. The breaths she draws begin to quiet. Beth closes her eyes. Sometime later, she wakes up. Amy, too, is awake, and pulling at her nightgown. At fourteen months, she is still nursing once or twice a day. Beth unties the bow at her throat, and exposes her breast. Amy smiles. Her breathing seems normal. She finds the nipple and begins to suck. Beth settles herself into this profound relaxation and closes her eyes again.
DR. LIONEL GIFT IS in bed with Arlen Martin, billionaire, but only in the Washington, D.C., sense. Martin himself is back in Dallas, working late and pleased, when he happens to think about it, with the success of his brief trip to the university. Dr. Gift’s dark, richly furnished chamber contains only his dream, but the dream is thrilling, and actually passes no more quickly than the sensual self-abandonments of the others.
His dream concerns just that word, “billion.” In a normal waking state, Lionel Gift isn’t much impressed by a single billion. In terms of things like the national debt, the budget deficit, the gross national product, the number of stars in the Milky Way, the net worth of corporate America, the debt load and interest payments of corporations that participated in leveraged buyouts in the eighties, and, his own special field, Third World development through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, one billion isn’t much, and he would disdain it. But $1 billion attached to the personhood of Arlen Martin has unexpectedly moved him—the small, poignant mortality, the “poor, bare, forked animal” with the jug ears, the eager smile (Dr. Gift can tell that Martin has heard of his own work, and has been anxious to meet him), the deceased wife (though he has never married, Dr. Gift finds deeply romantic the idea of all deceased wives, women he pictures in their lost youth, reddened roughened hands deep in suds, wearing some rag of a housedress, staring down the long, say, Oklahoma vista toward the oil fields just for a glimpse of the ambitious young man with jug ears to whom they joined their fates until some early, sudden cancer or accident of childbirth took them away smiling and rewarded only by their own virtue, never to be corrupted by idleness), the shoes more comfortable than stylish, the belt high rather than low. How does a simple economist solve this mystery—the relationship between the hard, glittering sum of money and the soft, particular man? Dr. Gift feels that this spiritual conundrum, more than other allurements, is what secures his attachment to Martin’s project, which after all is just a project like most others, where one thing in one place, currently without value, will be transferred to another place and endowed with value. Ho hum. But Arlen Martin himself as an object of contemplation! Well—
Dr. Lionel Gift’s dream contains no actual human figures, only what, in Hollywood, is known as a voice-over, his own voice, it seems, counting. How many houses in Orange County, average price $10 million? (A hundred.) How many Maseratis, average price $150,000? (Six thousand.) Rollses? (Five thousand.) Apartments in Paris? (A thousand.) Apartments in Tokyo? (Two hundred.) In his dream, houses and cars and apartments and paintings parade by, all the ones he’s seen over the years and coveted, a kaleidoscope of goods, goods to touch once, to contemplate for a few moments before something else comes up and takes its place, goods to know you own, whether or not you have time to actually use them. In his professional life, Dr. Gift has met many many people who know and control numbers, but somehow, until Arlen Martin (who clearly reciprocates his respect, on intellectual grounds) he has never met so Godlike a figure, either consumer-wise or production-wise. And his glad duty, thanks to Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek, will be to serve. How many times might Arlen Martin buy and sell Dr. Lionel Gift himself? Well, apart from the enigma of the worth of knowledge, exactly two thousand times. In his dream, the thought of being personally bought and sold by Arlen Martin two thousand times brings him to such a pitch of excitement that he wakes up and can’t go back to sleep.
21
It’s Ironic
IN THE TWO WEEKS since his extension dean, Dr. Nils Harstad, had agreed to do his duty and look over his invention and his plans, Loren Stroop had lost and gained his courage five or ten times every day. His self-confidence and exhilaration, for example, had drained away almost the very moment he had expected it to burgeon—the moment he returned from the university, went into the barn, turned on the light, and viewed his machine. He had not noticed before how patched-together it looked, how unshiny and low-tech it seemed. No longer was one of the machine’s virtues that it climaxed Loren’s life of making the best of things by making the best of every one of its parts. Now Loren looked at it and saw the harrows, windmills, tractors, bicycles, planters, corn pickers, pumps, automobiles, refrigerators, and disks that had supplied those very parts; the machine looked like a jumble, never mind that it worked. It DID work—Loren had used it himself on all sorts of fields.
And the plans, so carefully put together, were drawn wrong. Nils Harstad not only wouldn’t understand them, he would be repelled by them, since they were stained here and there, soiled here and there, continued here and there on the back of the sheet. You could see, if your gaze were cold enough, and Nils Harstad’s gaze WOULD be cold enough, that the enthusiasm that had motivated and thrilled Loren Stroop through every step had also made for carelessness.
What had impressed its inventor for what it had grown from now depressed him for what it had not turned out to be—something sleek and handsome, revolutionary impact evident in every line.
Which is not to say that Loren was disheartened or deflected from his goal. No no no. He merely did what he had done all his life—after every hailstorm, every gully washer that washed away the new, vulnerable seedlings, every drought that burnt them up, every breakage of machinery, every fall in the markets that erased his profits—he redoubled his efforts. This was his virtue and his flaw, a quality that may have been merely a habit, a quality that may have been imposed from outside, by farmer-peer-pressure, a quality that may have been something he brought to farming, that had enabled him to succeed (or at least survive) as a farmer where so many had failed (but Loren would never judge them—he would be the first to say that impossible circumstances got the best of them, or bad luck, or, most likely, the collusion of the USDA, Cargill, Iowa Beef Processors, Pioneer, Ciba-Geigy, Deere, IH, the Big Banks, the CIA, the FBI, and the Trilateral Commission).
The first thing he did was get a couple of friends to harvest the rest of his crop—he’d gotten enough in and sold it so his costs were covered, and he could always eat out of the garden and do a little hunting later in the fall. After that, he spent his nights and days in the barn, straightening this, fixing that, tightening the other thing, putting on a coat of enamel—off-white, because people seemed to like that. Most computers you saw at the computer store were off-white. Must be for a reason. He got out, but only when he was called out. It was harvest season, after all, and now that the nearest implement dealer was eighty miles away, lots of his neighbors had come to depend on him to repair their combines, so that’s when he ate, when they offered him a meal. It was dependable enough. Anyway, he didn’t notice when he didn’t eat.
He wore his bulletproof vest night and day. He wasn’t going to be gulled into thinking that the pressure was off. Quite the contrary, the pressure was more on than ever. They had ways of knowing when you were about to make your move. You could see that every night on TV—the closer you got to your goal, the harder it was to get there, and the more likely some big explosion, say,
or a car wreck would intervene. Getting lost in your work tended to make you careless right at the time you could least afford carelessness.
He got the plans drawn on special paper he bought, the right paper, and he took them down to the copy center, where they said they had to keep them overnight. He didn’t like to leave them there, but they insisted.
He weighed the likelihood of the copy center being broken into by the big ag companies, but he was almost certain no one had followed him and seen which copy center he had chosen.
He had purposely not titled the plans or indicated top and bottom. That was some protection. He gave his name as “Joe Miller.”
He left the plans nonchalantly, just as if they were insignificant, as if no one would ever care about them. He told the boy behind the desk that he would be there first thing in the morning, when the doors opened. He saw the boy write that on the paper—“Joe Miller, 8 a.m., ASAP overnight.”
He felt dizzy as he drove away, leaving them there.
Then he felt dizzy again, as if his vest were a little too tight, as he drove into the real Joe Miller’s yard, where he’d promised to stop and look at the differential on the combine. He noticed that Joe was about three-fourths done with his corn. Then he noticed that after he turned off the truck with his right hand, he couldn’t make his left hand take hold of the door handle. Then, it was the funniest thing, when he opened the door with his right hand, he couldn’t put his left leg out, and when he pushed it out with his right arm, it didn’t hold him, and he fell. And then when Sally Miller came running over with all those kids behind her, he wanted to laugh at how silly it was, but he didn’t seem to be able to get a word out, and she ran off and here came Joe. And the little girl, whose name seemed suddenly far away and impossible to get a hold of, kept patting his hand and saying something in a language he couldn’t understand.
Part Two
22
Trickle-Down Economics
State Journal, October 1, 1989: In a surprise move today, Governor O. T. Early slashed the state budget by more than $200 million, with cuts affecting many state programs and agencies, but not all. While some cuts had been foreseen for a number of weeks, the scope and depth of the final cuts took most observers by surprise. “This is a victory for the fiscal health of our state,” declared Governor Early, “and will ease the tax burden on our citizens. I consider these necessary cuts the boldest and most courageous accomplishment of our administration so far, and I know that the citizens of the state will applaud them.”
Most severely affected are social services agencies, education, health care programs, and public works programs. The cuts will go into effect January 1. In some agencies, whole programs will be cut; in others, a proportion of the personnel will be laid off across the board. The Governor’s office will press a “last hired, first fired” policy, which may have the effect of gutting recent affirmative action gains. “Sacrifices are always painful,” said the Governor.
The Governor went on to say, “I’ve been on a diet before, and I know how it feels. For the first few days, you think you’ve got to have those donuts and hot fudge sundaes you got so used to. Later, though, you know how much better you feel with a little salad and a piece of broiled fish for lunch. This state has been on a binge that we can’t afford. I came into office with a mandate to end that binge, and this is the first, hardest step. There’s going to be clamor and complaining, but I vow to the citizens of this state that I will be strong and resist. No more hot fudge sundaes!”
Governor Early has often been praised for the homely, down-to-earth way in which he communicates his ideas to the voters.
When asked specifically about health care, the governor remarked, “This state has some of the best doctors and hospitals in the world. It doesn’t make sense to me to keep open, at the citizens’ expense, a bunch of little hospitals scattered here and there, when folks are just going to have to go to the medical centers after a few days anyway.”
Of education, the governor had this to say, “Education is an investment. The trouble is, they don’t run it like an investment over there, with the students as customers, because that’s what they are, you know. Now they run it like welfare, but I’m telling you, if they won’t turn it around themselves, we’ve got to turn it around for them. This administration believes strongly in education.”
Governor Early’s office will issue more specific plans for how the cuts will be made before October 15.
One year ago, after the majority in both houses of the legislature passed a line-item veto, something the Governor had been working for for three years, Governor Early made some cuts in the budget by vetoing phrases, words, numbers, and even letters in the budget document. When those cuts were overridden by votes in both houses of the legislature, the governor declared, “They ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Sources in the legislature today expressed doubt that the governor’s newly announced cuts would meet with much opposition. “The handwriting is on the wall,” said state senate minority leader John Dealy (D-Rock City). “We can read it as well as anybody.”
The World Trade Center, the Capitol Convention Center, the Governor’s Program for Enterprise Development, the new maximum security facility in Sidekick, the budget for the state government, and plans to build a riverfront mall in the capital city are among those programs that will be unaffected by the cuts.
Memo
From: Provost’s Office
To: All Departments and Faculty
Subject: Budget cuts
As some of you know, severe cutbacks will affect many programs in the spring. While our office had been expecting a budget reversion of some $7 million, the actual sum now demanded by the state is closer to $10 million. Nor do we guarantee that this will be the only reversion of this fiscal year. Each department is therefore required to supply, by October 20, a schedule of prioritized cuts, some or all of which may go into effect on January 1. In addition, no hiring is authorized for next year, even to replace departing faculty members. All searches must cease as of the date of this memo.
Memo
From: Chairman
To: English Department Faculty
The department can no longer pay for the following:
1. Long-distance telephone calls concerning professional business.
2. Xeroxing, copying, or dittoing of any kind, even for departmental business.
3. Office supplies not used by the secretaries. THE SUPPLY CABINETS WILL BE LOCKED. DO NOT ASK FOR THE KEY.
4. Faculty or student computer time on the university mainframe.
5. Travel expenses of any kind.
In addition, faculty offices will no longer by cleaned by the janitorial staff. Brooms, mops, buckets, and rags may be checked out through the secretaries from the janitorial supply room on the first floor. Trash should be carried to the Dumpster outside the east entrance.
Memo
From: Provost’s Office
To: University Physical Plant Services
Subject: Old Meats
Please act as quickly as possible to find a suitable buyer or buyers for the interior equipment of Old Meats, and for the building material that will be generated by the demolition of the building. Please, also, take bids on the demolition itself. Application has been made to the state to remove Old Meats from the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Following action on these applications, demolition will begin immediately. As a personal note, Howard, I’m sorry the planned renovations are now out of the question because of these cutbacks. We can barely put together the funds for structural repairs to the dome of Columbus Hall, but we hope to do something through alumni. Unfortunately, alumni attachment to Old Meats isn’t all that strong. Too bad, Ivar.
Memo
From: Office of Classroom Scheduling
To: Professor Lionel Gift, Economics
Please make a note of the new room for your Spring 1990 “Introduction to Economics,” MWF 10:30 to 11:30:
Old roo
m: Red Stick Lecture Hall #2, seating capacity: 450
New room: Clemson School of Art and Design Theater, seating capacity: 1,500
The range of video monitors attached to the ceiling of the theater, which you have indicated that you plan on using, must be run by a certified university engineer, Class 1 or above. Please contact our office for a list of names. You are reminded that under new university policies, faculty members using work-study engineers in the classroom are required to pay these students themselves. THE UNIVERSITY CAN NO LONGER PROVIDE THIS FREE SERVICE. Class 1 engineers are paid $8.50 per hour. Class 2 engineers are paid $10.50 per hour.
One more note—in your last memo to this office concerning your spring course, you referred to certain “customers.” Does this indicate that you intend to seat more than the enrolled number of students? If so, these nonstudents will be billed a “seat charge” of $35.00 for the semester.
Memo
From: Dean of the Library
To: Acquisitions Department
Subject: Budget cuts
There will be no acquisitions until further notice. Orders should be withdrawn for any volumes that have been ordered but not received by the library.
Memo
From: University Computer Center
To: All University Personnel
Subject: Computer log-on fee
As of November 1, a computer log-on fee of $.25 per log-on will be charged to every user. Users’ monthly accumulated fees will be added to their regular university bills. Please note that this log-on fee will be assessed EVERY TIME YOU LOG ON, EVEN IF YOU HAVE JUST LOGGED OFF.
In addition, charges for printouts will be raised from $3.00 per hundred pages to $.05 per page.
Memo