by Smiley, Jane
But he hadn’t. All he had was some little In Short about a first novel of growing up in Indiana somewhere.
But he did have that editor’s name.
He took a chance, since the editor’s name was Pearlman, of calling the Times Book Review. The editor answered on the first ring. Forty-five minutes and two intermediate Times reporters later, he was talking to an environmental reporter who was filing a New Year’s story about lobbying efforts by oil companies against required use of double-hulled tankers in the Arctic even in the wake of the Valdez oil spill, and there he was, promising to deliver, in two or three days, Gift’s report for whatever that company had been, though he didn’t know where Cecelia could possibly be and who would have another copy of the report, since Margaret had sent the original back to Gift.
Finally, it was a nice way to spend Christmas, on the phone, cooking up the downfall of Dr. Lionel Gift and all his allies and minions.
54
Happy New Year
As A WAY of greeting the New Year, all the authorities (Medicare, the insurance company, the state health care authority, and the board of regents of the rehab facility) in charge of Loren Stroop’s recovery had let it be known to him that they weren’t going to wait forever for Loren to rise in the percentile rankings and walk out of the facility. Finally, his bad luck in being genetically predisposed to high blood pressure, and his bad judgment in failing to faithfully safeguard his health belonged to him alone. If, as of January 1, he did not begin making timely payments for his care, well, he was out. Each agency noted in its letter that he was possessed of considerable assets in real property. Sale of these assets and placement of the proceeds in a trust would take care of his financial and health needs for the foreseeable future. The insurance company informed him that they were prepared to oversee every aspect of this process, from the real estate transaction (“Our brokers are uniquely equipped to find you the best buyer. We specialize in bringing together enterprising investment groups with valuable real assets like yours!”) to the setting up of the trust (“Whether your needs are income, growth, or high-yield, our brokers are uniquely equipped to manage your precious nest egg!”) to the distribution of payments (“Save yourself from the complex and time-consuming chores that rob you of the time you would prefer to devote to your passions. Our brokers are uniquely qualified to act as your agents in all fiscal matters!”).
It was readily apparent to Loren that the CIA, the FBI, and the big ag companies had found him at last, and that they had him in a tight spot that it was going to take considerable ingenuity to get out of.
They had gotten to his doctor, that much was clear as day. His doctor’s former chivvying manner, telling him he had to do that walking, had to work hard with the speech therapist, in general just stirring him up and getting him going, had relaxed. Now he was suspiciously reassuring—yes, there were many patients who regained significant function after the first months. Only last year, one man he had treated—
One, thought Loren, wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until your percentile rankings were in the nineties that you could pay attention to one man last year.
The nurses, too, were always telling him now to take it easy. Even his favorite, a thick blond woman who would have known just how to treat the prisoners in a Soviet work camp, had been bought off. How else could you explain the fact that one day she was scowling at him and demanding that he eat with his left hand, then chastising him for spilling, and the next day she was smiling and setting his chow on his right? Nope, those agents had gotten in and bought everybody off, and no doubt the doctor had cost them a pretty penny, that was Loren’s only consolation (though they had all the money in the world, the CIA, the FBI, and the big ag companies). So, the long and the short of it was that they could write him all the letters they pleased and he would pretend that he didn’t understand them, and they could come talk to him, and he would pretend that he couldn’t hear them, and they could take him to court and bring papers for him to sign, and he would pretend that he couldn’t work his hand, though he could, well enough to scrawl on dotted lines.
He didn’t care about the farm for itself. It was good land, and he would have liked to see it go to Joe Miller, but he didn’t have much sentimental attachment to it. His dogs were gone, and though he would have liked to see them again, they were better off where they were, where there were some kids to play with. The thing, of course, was his machine. As long as the farm was in his name, Joe Miller wouldn’t let anybody trespass there. As soon as the farm went out of his name, they would come in and dismantle that machine and make it like it had never been, like Loren’s brain had never borne fruit, like his life had never happened and they had won forever—forever into the past as well as forever into the future.
Nevertheless, he knew from the letters he got that he was in pretty dire straits and he had to come up with an idea right quick because it was a far cry from sitting up in his bed, happily ignoring everything on the left and willing himself to speak rather than to moo, to cooking, cleaning, plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, drying, and selling, activities you needed a fully operational left side even to contemplate, much less to perform. It was clear from the letters that all the authorities assumed he would never perform these activities again, and that once he had taken care of the detail of payment, they were prepared to make sure that he never had to.
Here was where he saw the telltale hand of the CIA, the FBI, and the big ag companies. It was one of their long-standing policies to screw you, but to always make sure that whenever possible you paid for it. That was federal farm programs all over.
The nurses were all aware that New Year’s was his last day. Darla gave him an extra muffin for breakfast, and buttered it for him before setting it on the right side of his plate. Not a word about cholesterol or sugar or any of that stuff she tried telling him about other mornings. Darla and Samantha, an aide, tied some balloons to the foot of his bed that were from a New Year’s party they had gone to the night before. They were black and white, which Loren did not think was especially festive, but he smiled anyway. They let him watch CNN for an hour, all through the protests of the others, who wanted to watch football, or at least listen to it, or at least be in its blaring presence. Football, Loren clearly saw now, was meant to distract you from what they were doing to you, and he did not intend to watch football anymore.
In the afternoon, he had to struggle out of his chair and into the hallway with his cane, just to show that he was going to take his walk or else, and when Darla said, “Oh, Mr. Stroop, I thought you might like to take a little vacation today—it’s a holiday!” he saw that though she may have regretted being bought off, she was going to follow their orders anyway. He shook off her hand and walked by himself, up and down the corridor, the green wall on his right side and the Void on his left.
For dinner, they brought him a little cupcake with some sprinkles on it and pink icing, and there was a card, too, one of those big ones, signed by all the nurses, saying what a great guy he was and how they would miss him, and Darla said that her second cousin was actually the visiting nurse who would be coming by to look after him every few days, and so she would hear about him, and send him messages, but she had tears in her eyes, and so did he, as it turned out, because even though they had all betrayed him and gone over to the side of the CIA, the FBI, and the big ag companies, what choice did they have? Underneath they weren’t bad people, and surely they knew not what they did.
After supper, he had to admit that he felt kind of down. All during his time in the hospital and then his time here at the rehab center, a little softness had crept in, a willingness to let things be done for him after a whole life of doing for others. That must have happened, because it was the only explanation for the way he felt—a little fearful of what he would find in the new year and a little hesitant to leave. Even his roommate, a real old guy who had never said a word, took on the patina of affection as Loren looked over at him. His name—Leo Gift—was al
l Loren knew about him other than the sound, smell, and timing of his bodily functions. He never had visitors, he didn’t seem to have a doctor, he couldn’t speak. Half the time his eyes were open, half the time his eyes were closed. Once Darla told him how old the old guy was. Turned out he was eighty-six, five years older than Loren. He looked a hundred, though Loren would never have told him that, had he been able to speak instead of moo. Loren did not feel that they had a relationship, since old Gift hadn’t ever acknowledged him, but he was a presence, and Loren would miss him.
What he would really miss, though, was how simple everything was here. The residents and the nurses all gathered here like passengers on a train, and all they carried was a suitcase or two. You could open any cupboard or any chest and you would find everything in there laid out, one two three, pajamas, toothbrush, bedroom slippers. They had escaped from their former lives with only a few pictures to show or to look at, if they could make out the images. All sorts of things had fallen unregarded from their grasp—knitting needles and crochet hooks, books and checkbooks, tools and musical instruments, paintbrushes and the keys to cars and trucks and houses and offices. Now they lived in the television or in their own heads, and there was soil, yes, the remains of the body, but there wasn’t any clutter.
Clutter was the name of the game back home, though, and after getting used to the swept surfaces and well-lit corners of the rehab facility, moving back to that clutter wasn’t going to be easy. And it was the middle of winter. The way he thought of it was, that clutter would be lit by a few sixty-watt bulbs, and it would weigh upon him, and because he had less strength than he had ever had in his life, he would make less headway against it, and before spring it could very well eat him alive.
His late wife had always said, “Clean as you go, you won’t regret it,” and he had always honored her opinion, but the flesh was weak.
And getting weaker.
It wasn’t so rare in his neck of the woods, a solitary old farmer or a lonely old woman disappearing one day, then at church or at the gas station in town, people starting to wonder, and then, the breaking down of the door, the calling out, the piercing odor, the strange spectacle of the corpse among the clutter.
All things considered, old Gift was better off than Loren, far gone as he was.
Well, these were thoughts that came to you when you were down and got you even farther down, and Loren made up his mind to throw them off. He pushed back his covers and grabbed his cane and pulled himself up by the bed rail. He saw on the wall clock that it was 10:45, late by rehab center standards. Old Gift was snoring. Loren made his way out to the corridor, and looked to the right, then, carefully, by turning his whole body, to the left. The dimmed lights and the closed doors were peaceful and relaxing. Loren turned left and began making his steps. First he cocked his head to the left and with his right eye made sure that he set the black tip of his cane against the floor molding. He had found out that that would hold him up even after he had turned back to the right and lost the sense of his left side. Then his right leg swung forward, reliable and trusty. After that, there was a moment of fear that he had learned to ignore, and then the surprising sight of his left leg swinging into view, and the conscious effort of shifting his weight leftward into nothingness. Then his right leg swung forward again. He started passing the doors. Early on, he had expected making steps to become more automatic. It had not.
In the nurses’ room, Ida, Dorothy, and Jack were sitting in front of the TV. They were almost at the bottom of a blue bowl of popcorn. “Hey, Mr. Stroop,” said Dorothy as he came up behind them. “You’re up, eh?”
“Ball’s about to drop,” said Jack. “Thirty seconds.” He took a swig of his Pepsi.
“Ten,” said Ida.
“Nine,” said Jack.
“You wanna sit down?” said Dorothy.
Loren shook his head. He could do that in a way that people understood.
“Three,” said Jack.
“Two,” said Ida.
“There she goes,” said Jack. “It’s the nineties in New York.”
“Still the eighties around here,” said Ida. “More’s the pity.”
Nevertheless, Loren felt catapulted into the future. The nineties! His dad had been a young man in the nineties—he and a pal had jumped a boxcar on the Chicago & North Western and ridden out to Seattle for a lark, stopping in North Dakota to work on a harvest gang for the spring wheat. In Seattle, they worked in a salmon canning factory for a time, and then they returned as passengers on the same train, buying food in the dining car and sleeping in white sheets. They’d arrived back home with the same amount of money they’d left with—none—but their own dads had understood—it was a lark, that was all, the prologue to a life of hard work and unremitting responsibility. And now it was the nineties all over again.
Here was another thing. If it were the nineties, it might just be too late to revolutionize American agriculture.
“You want a Coke, Mr. Stroop?” said Dorothy. “You sit down and I’ll get you one.”
He shook his head, and turned to the right, carefully bringing his left leg around until he could see it again. He made steps back to his room. Well, they had him. Time to stand up and admit that. What with the clutter and it being the nineties, they had him.
He pushed open the door to his room and made steps to his bed. Old Gift was still snoring. Loren sat down facing the window, hoping to look out at the half-moon and a few stars, but the light in the room reflected his own face back to him. Half of it was frowning, furrowed with anxiety. No amount of looking on the bright side, of hoping for better things, of redoubling his efforts, seemed to have affected that in the end. Half of his face, without his permission, reflected years of worry and disillusionment and sadness, and that was the living half. The other side, equally without his permission, looked smooth and serene, a bit droopy, perhaps, but mostly accepting. It was a strange thing, these two halves of his face, better than television, and he sat quietly on the bed gazing at them until the nineties had fully taken hold.
55
Death and the Maiden
DEAN HAD NOTICED that science was different from life in that in life much happened suddenly and in an unexpected way, and in Dean’s opinion, life was inferior to science in this respect. If you wanted to get downright philosophical about it, the goal of his field, animal science, was to ease the oxymoronic disagreement between the two sides of the phrase. Animals, being powerful, inquisitive, and dull-witted, were particularly susceptible to sudden and unexpected events. Science intended to raise the threshold of that susceptibility. Dean had rediscovered enthusiasm for his project, for he saw that through the manipulation of bovine pregnancy, he could eliminate much of the heartbreak that had accompanied dairying since that first man had milked that first little cow. When you got right down to it, a calf embryo in the womb was just an accident waiting to happen. And he had already begun to think about future projects. Later manipulation of environment (no more pasturage, for one thing) would eliminate still more potential accidents. “No more pasturage, no more tragedy” was how he said it to himself.
It was therefore all the more surprising that Joy got so hysterical when he discoursed on this idea at the dinner table the night one of her horses had to be put down after falling on the ice in the pasture and breaking its stifle joint. It was not as though Joy were unacquainted with equine mishaps. A horse herd was, in its very essence, the manifestation of the expression “It’s always something.” The useful or beautiful beasts that Joy had had to sell, put out to pasture, reserve for breeding only, or put down over the years were countless. And yes, Dean admitted, over their turkey burgers and leftover fried rice from the Chinese restaurant, each event was sobering, “but only because we’re in the habit of treating them as individuals. You see, Joy, their individuality is an illusion. They don’t experience themselves as individuals. They are herd animals, pure and simple. Now take cloning. The brilliance of it, really, and I use the word
‘brilliance’ with the full awareness that I did not invent cloning, the BRILLIANCE of it is that it takes that very uniformity of the herd and carries it a step farther, and so the advantages of herd-ness, that synchronicity of needs and even desires that make life in a herd possible, those advantages are enhanced. I just can’t help believe that the farther we travel in this direction, the better off we’ll be, really, the better off the ANIMALS will be. They’ll fit better into the herd, for one thing, and then once the herd is genetically programmed to live in, and be HAPPY in, controllable conditions, no pasturage no tragedy, you know, then really each—the thing is, there’s an incredible opportunity for profit here, too, because you would have to charge the farmer a great deal for his clone herd, a great deal for each animal, he would have to mortgage the herd—but then, you see, he would tend to take care of each individual animal, so the life and the longevity, of course, of each beast would—Well, isn’t it obvious that the individual animal as it is RELATED to the HERD, as it is IN and OF the herd, would be enhanced?”
She moaned.
Dean decided that the kindest thing was to simply ignore this. He went on. “But calf-free lactation, if I may say so, is an even simpler and, between us, an even more brilliant idea. What I envision now, in these primitive stages, is actual manipulation of the hormones. For example, the first thing we have to do is prevent the regression of the corpus luteum without there actually being an embryo in place, thereby maintaining progesterone secretion during the early stages. Now, a mechanical insertion of an inert object in utero, or perhaps a progesterone-secreting IUD—”