Finch nodded.
‘And the mind is a powerful thing.’
‘But haven’t you ever wondered that?’ I asked. ‘Haven’t you wondered whether you being sick is all just in your mind?’ And Finch told me, yes, he had thought about it, because he was a scientist, after all. Or he had been once, anyhow. But no, he did not think it was in his mind.
‘If it was,’ he said, ‘it’d be a damn sight easier to fix than sleeping on porches for ten years and pulling houses to pieces.’
Huh. That’s for sure, I thought.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it is. The history of medicine is full of diseases that were once thought to be nothing, or nonsense, or all in the mind. Until some smart aleck found out what was really wrong, and from then on people took them seriously. And MCS is just another one of those things. I told you that already, didn’t I, Snowflake? We are filling the world full of chemicals that we have precisely no idea about, and one not-so-fine day the chickens will come home to roost. With the canaries.’
And he smiled at me and I felt smiled at, but it didn’t warm my innards like when somebody else I knew did it, and a while later Mona swung by to take me home and I rode in the little Japanese car thinking about folks who died of a broken heart.
O
Obviously you know what
sex a goat is when you buy him.
Or her. Or him.
Christmas was coming and I knew that because Snowflake was white. I mean, I woke up one morning in my shed, and even with all my blankets and everything that had been Bly’s, I was cold, and when I pushed the door open, it had snowed.
Now, this being Arizona, and at five-heck-six, all sorts of weird stuff could happen with the weather. And that was not the last time I saw snow in the desert, but it was the first, and it did not look right at all.
Mona made me a hot breakfast of her best buckwheat porridge that morning and for once we sat inside her house staring at the desert, not on the porch. But by the afternoon, the sun was out and the thermometer climbed right back up and it was hot enough to set in a T-shirt and watch the snow melt before your very eyes.
That afternoon, Mona and me put our masks on and rode into town in her little yellow car. And though I was still sick, by this time I was walking a little farther, and Mona wanted me to keep her company, even if I couldn’t do much else of anything.
On the way, in the car, she told me she was worrying about Socrates.
So I asked her what was wrong with the old goat and she said, well, I wonder if he oughtn’t have some company.
‘He’s got us,’ I said. ‘And the mutt.’
And Mona said, yeah, but none of us was getting any younger. ‘Specially not Cooper,’ she said. ‘He’s one real old hound now. Real old.’ And I didn’t want to think none about that, because I did not like the thought of Cooper not being around.
‘But no,’ said Mona, ‘that’s not the thing. The thing is, I wonder if he oughta have some company of his own kind.’
‘You mean another goat?’ I said, and Mona looked over at me as she drove and said, ‘That’s what I mean. That’s exactly it. See, I always wanted to have more’n one. But someone said I oughta see how I get on with one, because goats can be a handful.’
She had that right. I had lost track of the things that dumb goat had eaten that he weren’t supposed to. And when he wasn’t eating sneakers or socks or what-have-you, he was eating a vast amount of regulation goat food. Mona had a deal with the animal supply place on the edge of town and she picked up a bundle of hay every few days, and that was one place we were heading that afternoon, to get Socrates his hay and his treat of a salt lick, which was a big lump of salt on a stick. It’s kinda like crack cocaine for goats.
‘So what happened?’
‘Well,’ Mona said, ‘I guess one goat is a lot of work for an old girl like me. And then I got one, and you know that business about how I thought I was buying a nanny and then when I got him home I realized I’d made a mistake?’
And so then I thought, how do you mistake a big something like that? I mean, it’s obvious what sex everyone is, ain’t it. Ain’t it? And then I thought, maybe it ain’t. Maybe we make a lot of what they call assumptions, and maybe we all can be a bit more complicated. Animals, and people too.
Mona was yakking.
‘So when I got him home, and I realized he was a he and not a she, I took him back to the farmer I bought him from and he said fine I could have another one but if so he’d be sending the little boy off to be dog meat, because he only needed one buck to do his breeding and he had one already and then he told me how boy goats were a lot of trouble and how they stank worse than the girls and how they were meaner and more aggressive than the girls too.’
‘That so?’ I said, and I wondered if goats could get toxoplasma too. But Mona was telling me how she couldn’t let him go off to be killed, because by then she already had fallen in love with him, on account of how he was so cute, so she told the farmer she’d keep him. And I said, ‘Cute? Socrates was cute?’
That was hard to believe.
‘You have to remember, Snowflake, he was just a few weeks old. He was so sweet! So I kept him. But, I have to say…’
‘What?’
‘I feel kinda bad.’
‘You do?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Why? You saved his life!’
‘Uh-huh, but the thing about boy goats is, unless you’re gonna use ’em to breed with, you have to take their… you know… you have to have ’em done.’
‘Done?’
‘Seen to.’
‘Seen to?’
And I still wasn’t getting it, till Mona said, ‘Heck Ash, you have to cut their nuts off!’
‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ I said. ‘I know that.’
’Cept until I came to think about it, I hadn’t realized that there was something missing from Socrates’ rear view.
‘Time to suit up,’ Mona said, which meant it was time to put our masks on as we were near into town, and that was good because we couldn’t talk when we had our masks on and I had heard all I needed to about that subject for the time being.
I remember too, that day, the first time I saw snow in Snowflake, and we rode into town in the afternoon, because something happened in town that I will not forget. And it wasn’t the first time and it wasn’t the last time this kinda thing had happened. But it’s the one that’s stuck with me.
We did our errands and went to Socrates’ dealer to buy him his fix, and on the way home we stopped for gas. And all this time we’d had our masks on and even though I had stayed in the car I’d learned that just being in and around town was bad for me, would set me back for a day or so. So Mona was pumping the gas into her little yellow car and wearing her mask and then she went inside to pay and I was staring into space thinking about imagine how funny it would be if you couldn’t tell boys from girls, not ever, and then I was thinking maybe it wouldn’t just be funny. Maybe it would be good, and weren’t there some species, like of insect or whatever, or maybe it’s worms, where they didn’t have two different sexes. And maybe that saved a whole heap of trouble. And my last thought maybe on this subject was that, if you can’t tell the difference, like, you can’t tell what sex someone is, then does it really matter?
So I was thinking all this and then there was a bang on the window but it weren’t Mona come back, it was these four guys, like more or less my age, and they were laughing and pointing at me and one of ’em started miming like how he was dying, suffocating or something, with his hands around his throat and his friends were falling about laughing.
I stared at ’em and then I stared back ahead of me through the windshield with my cheeks burning but they did not stop, not until Mona came out and though she was half the size they were and though she was wearing her mask she started telling ’em off real good, and though all I could hear was ‘shih-hehs’ that seemed to be enough and they slunk off but still funning me behind Mona’s back
.
We drove home.
*
At the town limits we pulled off our masks. Usually I kinda liked that bit: a) because it meant you could breathe again, which is always good, and b) because it made me feel like we was bank robbers and we had just completed an advantageous raid on a financial institution, and c) because it meant you could talk again too. But I did not feel like talking.
‘Don’t mind it,’ said Mona. ‘They’re just morons and don’t know no better. But one day they might, so we oughta feel sorry for ’em.’
Feeling sorry for ’em was a step too far for me, though I saw what Mona meant.
‘Out of towners, probably. I’m sorry, Ash.’
I gave a good Snowflake shrug and said, ‘Right. Like, can they help it if they’re untelligent?’
And Mona saw what I said and said ‘untelligent?’
Then I saw and said ‘un-intelligent.’
But Mona said no, she liked untelligent better and she was never gonna use the word unintelligent again. From now on, it would be untelligent.
And already I was feeling better and that was what Mona Mochsky could do for you.
‘Mona,’ I said then. ‘Mona, Snowflake sure is white.’
There was a little snow still left on some of the roofs and on the sidewalks, but that ain’t what I was talking about, and Mona knew it. I had lived in many a state and many a town, but I had never seen a place that was just so much of one color.
‘Yuh, well, there’s a Nigerian family live somewhere in town. They’re something to do with the church. Then there’s the Indian reservations either end of the county. And that’s it. Otherwise it’s all white. All white and all right.’
All white and all right, she said. And when she said right, what she meant was Right.
‘That ain’t so diverse, is it?’ I said.
‘It surely ain’t,’ said Mona. ‘Of all the right-wing-voting places in Arizona, Snowflake is right up there. But the funny thing is, out in the Forties, we’re the biggest bunch of hippies you could imagine, more or less. I’ve sometimes wondered if being EI makes you a hippie, or being a hippie makes you EI.’
‘And?’
‘I have no idea, but that’s how it seems to have worked out.’
Then Mona said, ‘Hey! You know, I think Socrates is fine. I ain’t gonna get another goat.’
And I saw what she meant. She meant there we were: a bunch of humans of all sorts of sizes, an old dog and a grumpy goat, and we was diverse and we all got along just fine.
Then Mona said, ‘Huh. Untelligent,’ and we both started laughing like crazy and that was good. There was still laughter then, even in the middle of it, even as I learned to become someone else. And I won’t blame us for it, even now when I know we was laughing on the side of the volcano, on the side of the volcano.
P
Polleux
How was I doing with learning to be someone else? Well, I was learning, but the thing about learning is, you never stop. As Mona always said. But there were signs and symbols of my evolution. For one, my dreams changed. To start with, when I dreamed, I was well again. I would be the Ash before I got sick. I could walk and run and take little things like standing for granted. But after a while I was sick even in my dreams and then I knew I had passed a turning point of some kind.
I could see how smug I had been, being well. How complacent. Never thinking anything really bad could happen to me, like I was immortal. I’d had never a thing wrong in my life till the headaches and the rashes come along, and they hadn’t been much to write home about. So I never had. And now even the little joy of standing on my own two feet for more’n three minutes was gone, and I realized how dumb I’d been up to that point, because we’re none of us immortal, never was one of us that was immune from disease, and surely not from death. And now all I was fit for was setting on the porch in a red plastic chair with my hair standing on end if I moved too much, or on Mona’s couch. So what did I do? I read. There was nothing else for it. And I swear that reading saved my life, and if being sick was changing me, then reading changed me every bit as much.
I read everything. I read stuff about being sick, but I soon got bored of that and then I started reading books, real ones I mean. Stories. Thin ones and fat ones and good ones and bad ones. I did not care. Not at first. But the more I read, the more I came to like some things and dislike others, and the more I could tell a smart book from a dumb one. At least to my way of thinking, and that’s important, because no two of us are alike. Not exactly. And like Mona, and like Finch, I began to read the news. Not the news from the Silver Creek Herald. I mean the news of the world. I would challenge myself to find an article or a story about something interesting that Mona or Finch hadn’t heard already. And so I learned.
The single most important thing I learned was this: people are weird. But like I said before, the weirdest thing of all is, they think they’re normal. And I guess the real truth of that remark is that it applies to all of us. Every god-dang one of us, as Mona might say.
Now, one day, Cooper went missing. It was the middle of December more or less. Mona didn’t seem too vexed. She said, well, it looks like he’s gone on his rounds, and I said what?
Mona said that every once in a blue moon Cooper would get a mite bored and go off to pay visits to some of the other folks. She called it going on his rounds, and it was just a matter of getting in her little yellow car and going to find him before he outlived his welcome.
I thought that would be hard, he was the nicest dog anyone ever knew. I couldn’t see how anyone would get tired of him, but he was Mona’s dog and she wanted him back. So we climbed into the car and started off.
We drove past Mary’s truck, and there she was as usual setting on the tailgate with her letters.
‘Seen the dog?’ Mona called from the window and Mary shook her head. Then Mona said ‘well?’ because Mary was still deciding whether to use the tinfoil lawyer or not, and Mary shrugged.
We drove past Finch’s and the Sick Birds’ and then over to Jenny. And there was Steve, Jenny’s boyfriend, standing at the gate, and her not letting him in because she said he had to learn when was appropriate to call, but none of ’em had seen Cooper. And we even rode all the way out to see Detlef, but Detlef had seen no one for days, unless you counted jackrabbits and we didn’t.
‘Where is that durned dog?’ Mona said as she made a U-turn on Detlef’s front yard, by which I mean the bit of the desert he’d put a fence around.
So I asked if he always went the same places and she said yuh. And then she said, ‘I’ll bet I know where he’s at,’ and she said it like she was cross with him. And that was where Cooper was, hanging out at some place Mona didn’t want him to hang out. In case bad thinking rubbed off on him. That and the fact that Harry would feed Cooper too much beef jerky, which was why he liked to hang out there.
So we set off to Harry’s place.
Harry was the last of the canaries I hadn’t met yet. (No, not quite, because there’s what’s coming later.) I soon figured out that Mona had kind of been keeping that from happening, because Harry was a Bible-humping gun-thumping loon. What Mona had said about how everyone with MCS in Snowflake was a liberal lefty? Well, Harry was the exception that proved the rule.
Mona explained all this on the way over, so I wouldn’t get a shock when I got there. As it fell out, I did get a surprise, but for a different reason. Mona forgot to explain probably the most important thing about Harry.
So anyway, we got there, and there was Cooper chewing stick after stick of jerky, and slobbering like only a happy dog can slobber. He was sat by the side of the woman feeding it to him. She was lounging in an aluminum chair, staring at the desert. No sign of any Harry, but then the woman gets up and Mona says, ‘Hey Harry,’ and the woman waved a hand and that’s why I got a surprise because it turned out Harry was short for Harriet. Mona forgot to explain that part, and I guess I just felt like an idiot. For making an assumption about someone jus
t on account of their name, I mean.
So, maybe diseases don’t have no politics; they ain’t choosy who they choose to infect, and Cooper, it seemed he had no politics neither, because he was hunkered down at Harry’s place, and seemed he would be as long as the dried cow lasted.
Still, Harry was as sick as anyone in Snowflake. She was real tall, maybe even six foot now she’d stood up, and skinny, and her cheeks were sunk in, but she wasn’t pale like the Sick Birds. She was more kinda gray. Seems she had everything wrong with her: MCS, EI, and then she had some of them long-term infectious things, Bartonella, I think.
And she read too. But the things she read were different from the things Mona read. Not ten minutes had passed before she started in on Mona about some nonsense she’d read about how the coloreds commit more violent crime than white folks, and Mona was sticking it back at her. She was saying she didn’t suppose it was a watertight piece of research she’d read and asking her which lunatic website she found that on and how you could believe anything if you only read the things that told you what you wanted to believe in the first place. Cooper was chewing jerky and I sat in a blue plastic chair on Harry’s porch the way we sat on red plastic chairs over at Mona’s, and watched ’em go to it.
By now somehow they’d stopped talking about Harry’s racist delusions and had moved through immigrants and had now got onto climate change and I couldn’t even work out how.
So now, the thing is you probably don’t like Harry, and that’s all down to me, because of how I told you about her. Like, I could have started out with how we got there and how Harry said hello and was polite and asked all about me, and asked about Bly, and got me a drink and said did I want anything to eat. I didn’t tell you that she was quietly spoke and listened to what Mona had to say without interrupting her. But I didn’t, although she did do all those things. I told you about what a loon she was, even before you met her, and now you know these bad things about her, well, there ain’t no way back for Harry, there surely ain’t. And why, you ask me, why should there be, when you’ve told me how she was a racist-sexist-gun-loving wildebeest? And if you asked me that I don’t know that I would have a good answer.
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