They will attempt to insinuate themselves into the very fabric of our emotional lives, demanding the dissolution of the distinction between beloved and enemy, friend and foe, neighbor and stranger. They will, citing equality, deny our right to make critical moral distinctions. Crying peace, they will deny our right to defend, in whatever manner is most expedient, the beloved. Under the guise of impartiality, they will demand we disavow all notions of tradition, family, friends, tribe, and even nation. But are we animals, forced to look blankly upon the rich variety of life, disallowed the privilege of making moral distinctions, dead to love, forbidden from preferring this to that?
– Bernard "Ed" Alton,
Taskbook for the New Nation,
Chapter 3. "Are We Not We? Are They Not Them?"
Mt. Terence Rackman
Leadville Courier-Examiner
Leadville, PA 13245
Re: "Not in This Town, Friend," June 15 issue,
"My Turn" Lifestyle Section
Dear Mr. Rackman,
Very much enjoyed you recent article and wish to weigh in with some of my thoughts on this troubling matter. I agree with all you had to say. Like any sane person, I am against Same-Sex Marriage, and in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban it.
To tell the truth, I feel that, in the interest of moral rigor, it is necessary for us to go a step further, which is why I would like to propose a supplementary constitutional amendment.
In the town where I live, I have frequently observed a phenomenon I have come to think of as Samish-Sex Marriage. Take, for example, "K," a male friend of mine, of slight build, with a ponytail. "K" is married to "S," a tall, stocky female with extremely short hair, almost a crewcut. Often, while watching "K" play with his own ponytail as "S" towers over him, I have wondered, Isn't it odd that this somewhat effeminate man should be married to this somewhat masculine woman? Is "K" not, on some level, imperfectly expressing a slight latent desire to be married to a man? And is not "S," on some level, imperfectly expressing a slight latent desire to be married to a woman?
Then I ask myself, Is this truly what God had in mind?
Take the case of "L," a female friend with a deep, booming voice. I have often found myself looking askance at her husband, "H." Though "H" is basically pretty masculine, having neither a ponytail nor a tight feminine derrière like "K," still I wonder: "H," when you are having marital relations with "L," and she calls out your name in that deep, booming, nearly male voice, and you continue having marital relations with her (i.e., you are not "turned off"), does this not imply that you, "H," are, in fact, still "turned on"? And doesn't this indicate that, on some level, you, "H," have a slight latent desire to make love to a man?
Or consider the case of "T," a male friend with an extremely small penis. (We attend the same gym.) He is married to "O," an average-looking woman who knows how to fix cars. I wonder about "O." How does she know so much about cars? Is she not, by tolerating this non-car-fixing, short-penised friend of mine, indicating that, on some level, she wouldn't mind being married to a woman, and is therefore, perhaps, a tiny bit functionally gay?
And what about "T"? Doesn't the fact that "T" can stand there in the shower room at our gym, confidently towelling off his tiny unit, while "O" is at home changing their sparkplugs with alacrity, indicate that it is only a short stroll down a slippery slope before he is completely happy being the "girl" in their relationship, from which it is only a small fey hop down the same slope before "T" is happily married to another man, perhaps my car mechanic, a handsome Portuguese fellow I shall refer to as "J"?
Because my feeling is, when God made man and woman He had something very specific in mind. It goes without saying that He did not want men marrying men, or women marrying women, but also what He did not want, in my view, was feminine men marrying masculine women.
Which is why I developed my Manly Scale of Absolute Gender.
Using my Scale, which assigns numerical values according to a set of masculine and feminine characteristics, it is now easy to determine how Manly a man is and how Fem a woman is, and therefore how close to a Samish-Sex Marriage a given marriage is.
Here's how it works. Say we determine that a man is an 8 on the Manly Scale, with 10 being the most Manly of all and 0 basically a Neuter. And say we determine that his fiancée is a -6 on the Manly Scale, with a -10 being the most Fem of all. Calculating the difference between the man's rating and the woman's rating-the Gender Differential-we see that this proposed union is not, in fact, a Samish-Sex Marriage, which I have defined as "any marriage for which the Gender Differential is less than or equal to 10 points."
Friends whom I have identified as being in Samish-Sex Marriages often ask me, Ken, given that we have scored poorly, what exactly would you have us do about it?
Well, one solution I have proposed is divorce-divorce followed by remarriage to a more suitable partner. "K," for example, could marry a voluptuous high-voiced N.F.L. cheerleader, who would more than offset his tight feminine derrière, while his ex-wife, S, might choose to become involved with a lumberjack with very large arms, thereby neutralizing her thick calves and faint mustache.
Another, and of course preferable, solution would be to repair the existing marriage, converting it from a Samish-Sex Marriage to a healthy Normal Marriage, by having the feminine man become more masculine and/or the masculine woman become more feminine.
Often, when I propose this, my friends become surly. How dare I, they ask. What business is it of mine? Do I think it is easy to change in such a profound way?
To which I say, It is not easy to change, but it is possible.
I know, because I have done it.
When young, I had a tendency to speak too quickly, while gesturing too much with my hands. Also, my opinions were unfirm. I was constantly contradicting myself in that fast voice, while gesturing like a girl. Also, I cried often. Things seemed so sad. I had long blond hair, and liked it. My hair was layered and fell down across my shoulders, and, I admit it, I would sometimes slow down when passing a shopwindow to look at it, to look at my hair! I had a strange constant feeling of being happy to be alive. This feeling of infinite possibility sometimes caused me to laugh when alone, or even, on occasion, to literally skip down the street, before pausing in front of a shopwindow and giving my beautiful hair a cavalier toss.
To tell the truth, I do not think I would have scored very high on my Manly Scale, if the Scale had been invented at that time, by me. I suspect I would have scored so Fem on the test that I would have been prohibited from marrying my wife, "P," the love of my life.
And I think, somewhere in my heart, I knew that.
I knew I was too Fem.
So what did I do about it? Did I complain? Did I whine? Did I expect activist judges to step in on my behalf, manipulating the system to accommodate my peculiarity?
No, I did not.
What I did was I changed. I undertook what I like to think of as a classic American project of self-improvement. I made videos of myself talking, and studied these, and in time succeeded in training myself to speak more slowly, while almost never moving my hands. Now, if you ever meet me, you will observe that I always speak in an extremely slow and manly and almost painfully deliberate way, with my hands either driven deep into my pockets or held stock-still at the ends of my arms, which are bent slightly at the elbows, as if I were ready to respond to the slightest provocation by punching you in the face. As for my opinions, they are very firm. I rarely change them. When I feel like skipping, I absolutely do not skip. As for my long beautiful hair-well, I am lucky, in that I am rapidly going bald. Every month, when I recalculate my ranking on the Manly Scale, I find myself becoming more and more Manly, as my hair gets thinner and my girth increases, thickening my once lithe, almost girlish physique, thus insuring the continuing morality and legality of my marriage to "P."
My point is simply this: If I was able to effect these tremendous positive changes in my life, to avoid finding myself in the moral/legal quagmire of a Samish-Sex Marriage, why can't "K," "S," "L," "H," "T," and "O" do the same?
I implore any of my readers who find themselves in a Samish-Sex Marriage: Change. If you are a feminine man, become more manly. If you are a masculine woman, become more feminine. If you are a woman and are thick-necked or lumbering, or have ever had the slightest feeling of attraction to a man who is somewhat pale and fey, deny these feelings and, in a spirit of self-correction, try to become more thin-necked and light-footed, while, if you find it helpful, watching videos of naked masculine men, to sort of retrain yourself in the proper mode of attraction. If you are a man and, upon seeing a thick-waisted, athletic young woman walking with a quasi-mannish gait through your local grocery, you imagine yourself in a passionate embrace with her, in your car, a car that is parked just outside, and which is suddenly, in your imagination, full of the smell of her fresh young breath-well, stop thinking that! Are you a man or not?
I, for one, am sick and tired of this creeping national tendency to let certain types of people take advantage of our national good nature by marrying individuals who are essentially of their own gender. If this trend continues, before long our towns and cities will be full of people like "K," "S," "L," "H," "T," and "O" "asserting their rights" by dating, falling in love with, marrying, and spending the rest of their lives with whomever they please.
I, for one, am not about to stand by and let that happen.
Because then what will we have? A nation ruled by the anarchy of unconstrained desire. A nation of willful human hearts, each lurching this way and that and reaching out for whatever it spontaneously desires, trying desperately to find some comforting temporary shred of warmth in a mostly cold world, totally unconcerned about the external form in which that other, long-desired heart is embodied.
That is not the kind of world in which I wish to live.
I, for one, intend to become ever more firmly male, enjoying my golden years, while watching P become ever more female, each of us vigilant for any hint of ambiguity in the other.
And as our children grow, should they begin to show the slightest hint of some lingering residue of the opposite gender, P and I will lovingly pull them aside and list all the particulars by which we were able to identify their unintentional deficiency.
Then, together, we will devise a suitable correction.
And in this way, the race will go on.
Sincerely,
Ken Byron
115 Delton Way
Leadville, PA 13246
Next night, walking out where it happened, I found her little red bow.
I brought it in, threw it down on the table, said: My God my God.
Take a good look at it and also I'm looking at it, said Uncle Matt. And we won't ever forget it, am I right?
First thing of course was to find the dogs. Which turns out, they were holed up back of the-the place where the little kids go, with the plastic balls in cages, they have birthday parties and so forth-holed up in this sort of nest of tree debris dragged there by the Village.
Well we lit up the debris and then shot the three of them as they ran out.
But that Mrs. Pearson, who'd seen the whole-well she said there'd been four, four dogs, and next night we found that the fourth had gotten into Mullins Run and bit the Elliotts' Sadie and that white Muskerdoo that belonged to Evan and Millie Bates next door.
Jim Elliott said he would put Sadie down himself and borrowed my gun to do it, and did it, then looked me in the eye and said he was sorry for our loss, and Evan Bates said he couldn't do it, and would I? But then finally he at least led Muskerdoo out into that sort of field they call the Concourse, where they do the barbecues and whatnot, giving it a sorrowful little kick (a gentle kick, there was nothing mean in Evan) whenever it snapped at him, saying Musker Jesus!-and then he said Okay, now when he was ready for me to do it, and I did it, and afterwards he said he was sorry for our loss.
Around midnight we found the fourth one gnawing at itself back of Bourne's place, and Bourne came out and held the flashlight as we put it down and helped us load it into the wheelbarrow alongside Sadie and Muskerdoo, our plan being-Dr. Vincent had said this was best-to burn those we found, so no other animal would-you know, via feeding on the corpses-in any event, Dr. Vincent said it was best to burn them.
When we had the fourth in the wheelbarrow my Jason said: Mr. Bourne, what about Cookie?
Well no I don't believe so, said Bourne.
He was an old guy and had that old-guy tenderness for the dog, it being pretty much all he had left in the world, such as for example he always called it friend-of-mine, as in: How about a walk, friend-of-mine?
But she is mostly an outside dog? I said.
She is almost completely an outside dog, he said. But still, I don't believe so.
And Uncle Matt said: Well, Lawrence, I for one am out here tonight trying to be certain. I think you can understand that.
I can, Bourne said, I most certainly can.
And Bourne brought out Cookie and we had a look.
At first she seemed fine, but then we noticed she was doing this funny thing where a shudder would run through her and her eyes would all of a sudden go wet, and Uncle Matt said: Lawrence, is that something Cookie would normally do?
Well, ah… said Bourne.
And another shudder ran through Cookie.
Oh Jesus Christ, said Mr. Bourne, and went inside.
Uncle Matt told Seth and Jason to trot out whistling into the field and Cookie would follow, which she did, and Uncle Matt ran after, with his gun, and though he was, you know, not exactly a runner, still he kept up pretty good just via sheer effort, like he wanted to make sure this thing got done right.
Which I was grateful to have him there, because I was too tired in mind and my body to know what was right anymore, and sat down on the porch, and pretty soon heard this little pop.
Then Uncle Matt trotted back from the field and stuck his head inside and said: Lawrence do you know, did Cookie have contact with other dogs, was there another dog or dogs she might have played with, nipped, that sort of thing?
Oh get out, get away, said Bourne.
Lawrence my God, said Uncle Matt. Do you think I like this? Think of what we've been through. Do you think this is fun for me, for us?
There was a long silence and then Bourne said well all he could think of was that terrier at the Rectory, him and Cookie sometimes played when Cookie got off her lead.
WHEN WE GOT to the Rectory, Father Terry said he was sorry for our loss, and brought Merton out, and we watched a long time and Merton never shuddered and his eyes remained dry, you know, normal.
Looks fine, I said.
Is fine, said Father Terry. Watch this: Merton, genuflect.
And Merton did this dog stretchy thing where he sort of like bowed.
Could be fine, said Uncle Matt. But also could be he's sick but just at an early stage.
We'll have to be watchful, said Father Terry.
Yes, although, said Uncle Matt. Not knowing how it spreads and all, could it be we're in a better-safe-than-sorry type of situation? I don't know, I truly don't know. Ed, what do you think?
And I didn't know what I thought. In my mind I was all the time just going over it and over it, the before, the after, like her stepping up on that footstool to put that red bow in, saying these like lady phrases to herself, such as Well Who Will Be There, Will There Be Cakes?
I hope you are not suggesting putting down a perfectly healthy dog, said Father Terry.
And Uncle Matt produced from his shirt pocket a red bow and said: Father, do you have any idea what this is and where we found it?
But it was not the real bow, not Emily's bow, which I kept all the time in my pocket, it was a pinker shade of red and was a little bigger than the real bow, and I recognized it as having come from our Karen's little box on her dresser.
No I do not know what that is, said Father Terry. A hair bow?
I for one am never going to forget that night, said Uncle Matt. What we all felt. I for one am going to work to make sure that no one ever again has to endure what we had to endure that night.
I have no disagreement with that at all, said Father Terry.
It is true you don't know what this is, Uncle Matt said, and put the bow back in his pocket. You really really have no experience whatsoever of what this is.
Ed, Father Terry said to me. Killing a perfectly healthy dog has nothing to do with-
Possibly healthy but possibly not, said Uncle Matt. Was Cookie bitten? Cookie was not. Was Cookie infected? Yes she was. How was Cookie infected? We do not know. And there is your dog, who interacted with Cookie in exactly the same way that Cookie interacted with the known infected animal, namely through being in close physical proximity.
It was funny about Uncle Matt, I mean funny as in great, admirable, this sudden stepping up to the plate, because previously-I mean, yes, he of course loved the kids, but had never been particularly-I mean he rarely even spoke to them, least of all to Emily, her being the youngest. Mostly he just went very quietly around the house, especially since January when he'd lost his job, avoiding the kids really, a little ashamed almost, as if knowing that, when they grew up, they would never be the out-of-work slinking-around uncle, but instead would be the owners of the house where the out-of-work slinking uncle etc., etc.
But losing her had, I suppose, made him realize for the first time how much he loved her, and this sudden strength-focus, certainty, whatever-was a comfort, because tell the truth I was not doing well at all-I had always loved autumn and now it was full autumn and you could smell woodsmoke and fallen apples but all of the world, to me, was just, you know, flat.
It is like your kid is this vessel that contains everything good. They look up at you so loving, trusting you to take care of them, and then one night-what gets me, what I can't get over, is that while she was being-while what happened was happening, I was-I had sort of snuck away downstairs to check my e-mail, see, so that while-while what happened was happening, out there in the schoolyard, a few hundred yards away, I was sitting there typing-typing!-which, okay, there is no sin in that, there was no way I could have known, and yet-do you see what I mean? Had I simply risen from my computer and walked upstairs and gone outside and for some reason, any reason, crossed the schoolyard, then, believe me, there is not a dog in the world, no matter how crazy-
And my wife felt the same way and had not come out of our bedroom since the tragedy.
So Father you are saying no? said Uncle Matt. You are refusing?
I pray for you people every day, Father Terry said. What you are going through, no one ever should have to go through.
Don't like that man, Uncle Matt said as we left the Rectory. Never have and never will.
And I knew that. They had gone to high school together and there had been something about a girl, some last-minute prom-date type of situation that had not gone in Uncle Matt's favor, and I think some shoving on a ball field, some name-calling, but all of this was years ago, during like say the Kennedy administration.
He will not observe that dog properly, said Uncle Matt. Believe me. And if he does notice something, he won't do what is necessary. Why? Because it is his dog. His dog. Everything that's his? It's special, above the law.
I don't know, I said. Truly I don't.
He doesn't get it, said Uncle Matt. He wasn't there that night, he didn't see you carrying her inside.
Which, tell the truth, Uncle Matt hadn't seen me carrying her inside either, having gone out to rent a video-but still, yes, I got his drift about Father Terry, who had always had a streak of ego, with that silver hair with the ripples in it, and also he had a weight set in the Rectory basement and worked out twice a day and had, actually, a very impressive physique, which he showed off, I felt-we all felt-by ordering his priest shirts perhaps a little too tight.
Next morning during breakfast Uncle Matt was very quiet and finally said well he might be just a fat little unemployed guy who hadn't had the education some had, but love was love, honoring somebody's memory was honoring somebody's memory, and since he had no big expectations for his day, would I let him borrow the truck, so he could park it in the Burger King lot and keep an eye on what was going on over at the Rectory, sort of in memory of Emily?
And the thing was, we didn't really use that truck anymore and so-it was a very uncertain time, you know, and I thought: Well, what if it turns out Merton really is sick, and somehow gets away and attacks someone else's-so I said yes, he could use the truck.
He sat all Tuesday morning and Tuesday night, I mean not leaving the truck once, which for him-he was not normally a real dedicated guy, if you know what I mean. And then Wednesday night he came charging in and threw a tape in the VCR and said watch, watch this.
And there on the TV was Merton, leaning against the Rectory fence, shuddering, arching his back, shuddering again.
So we took our guns and went over.
Look I know I know, said Father Terry. But I'm handling it here, in my own way. He's had enough trouble in his life, poor thing.
Say what? said Uncle Matt. Trouble in his life? You are saying to this man, this father, who has recently lost-the dog has had trouble in his life?
Well, however, I should say-I mean, that was true. We all knew about Merton, who had been brought to Father Terry from this bad area, one of his ears sliced nearly off, plus it had, as I understood it, this anxiety condition, where it would sometimes faint because dinner was being served, I mean, it would literally pass out due to its own anticipation, which, you know, that couldn't have been easy.
Ed, said Father Terry. I am not saying Merton's trouble is, I am not comparing Merton's trouble to your-
Christ let's hope not, Uncle Matt said.
All's I'm saying is I'm losing something too, said Father Terry.
Ho boy, said Uncle Matt. Ho boy ho boy.
Ed, my fence is high, said Father Terry. He's not going anywhere, I've also got him on a chain in there. I want him to-I want it to happen here, just him and me. Otherwise it's too sad.
You don't know from sad, said Uncle Matt.
Sadness is sadness, said Father Terry.
Blah blah blah, said Uncle Matt. I'll be watching.
WELL LATER THAT WEEK this dog Tweeter Deux brought down a deer in the woods between the TwelvePlex and the Episcopal Church, and that Tweeter Deux was not a big dog, just, you know, crazed, and how the DeFrancinis knew she had brought down a deer was, she showed up in their living room with a chewed-off foreleg.
And that night-well the DeFrancini cat began racing around the house, and its eyes took on this yellow color, and at one point while running it sort of locked up and skidded into the baseboard and gave itself a concussion.
Which is when we realized the problem was bigger than we had initially thought.
The thing was, we did not know and could not know how many animals had already been infected-the original four dogs had been at large for several days before we found them, and any animal they might have infected had been at large for nearly two weeks now, and we did not even know the precise method of infection-was it bites, spit, blood, was something leaping from coat to coat? We knew it could happen to dogs, it appeared it could happen to cats-what I'm saying is, it was just a very confusing and frightening time.
So Uncle Matt got on the iMac and made up these flyers, calling a Village Meeting, and at the top was a photo he'd taken of the red bow (not the real bow but Karen's pinkish-red bow, which he'd color-enhanced on the iMac to make it redder and also he had superimposed Emily's Communion photo) and along the bottom it said FIGHT THE OUTRAGE, and underneath in smaller letters it said something along the lines of, you know, why do we live in this world but to love what is ours, and when one of us has cruelly lost what we loved, it is the time to band together to stand up to that which threatens that which we love, so that no one else ever has to experience this outrage again. Now that we have known and witnessed this terrific pain, let us resolve together to fight against any and all circumstances which might cause or contribute to this or a similar outrage now or at any time in the future-and we had Seth and Jason run these around town, and on Friday night ended up with nearly four hundred people in the high school gym.
Coming in, each person got a rolled-up FIGHT THE OUTRAGE poster of the color-enhanced bow, and also on these Uncle Matt had put in-I objected to this at first, until I saw how people responded-well he had put in these tiny teeth marks, they were not meant to look real, they were just, you know, as he said, symbolic reminders, and down in one corner was Emily's Communion photo and in the opposite corner a photo of her as a baby, and Uncle Matt had hung a larger version of that poster (large as a closet) up over the speaker's podium.
And I was sort of astonished by Uncle Matt, I mean, he was showing so much-I'd never seen him so motivated. This was a guy whose idea of a big day was checking the mail and getting up a few times to waggle the TV antenna-and here he was, in a suit, his face all red and sort of proud and shiny-
Well Uncle Matt got up and thanked everyone for coming, and Mrs. DeFrancini, owner of Tweeter Deux, held up that chewed-up foreleg, and Dr. Vincent showed slides of cross sections of the brain of one of the original four dogs, and then at the end I talked, only I got choked up and couldn't say much except thanks to everybody, their support had meant the world to us, and I tried to say about how much we had all loved her but couldn't go on.
Uncle Matt and Dr. Vincent had, on the iMac, on their own (not wanting to bother me) drawn up what they called a Three-Point Emergency Plan, which the three points were: (1) All Village animals must immediately undergo an Evaluation, to determine was the animal Infected, (2) All Infected or Suspected Infected animals must be destroyed at once, and (3) all Infected or Suspected Infected animals, once destroyed, must be burned at once to minimize the possibility of Second-Hand Infection.
Then someone asked could they please clarify the meaning of "suspected"?
Suspected, you know, said Uncle Matt. That means we suspect and have good reason to suspect that an animal is, or may be, Infected.
The exact methodology is currently under development, said Dr. Vincent.
How can we, how can you, ensure that this assessment will be fair and reasonable though? the guy asked.
Well that is a good question, said Uncle Matt. The key to that is, we will have the assessment done by fair-minded persons who will do the Evaluation in an objective way that seems reasonable to all.
Trust us, said Dr. Vincent. We know it is so very important.
Then Uncle Matt held up the bow-actually a new bow, very big, about the size of a ladies' hat, really, I don't know where he found that-and said: All of this may seem confusing but it is not confusing if we remember that it is all about This, simply This, about honoring This, preventing This.
Then it was time for the vote, and it was something like 393 for and none against, with a handful of people abstaining, which I found sort of hurtful, but then following the vote everyone rose to their feet and, regarding me and Uncle Matt with-well they were smiling these warm smiles, some even fighting back tears-it was just a very nice, very kind moment, and I will never forget it, and will be grateful for it until the day I die.
AFTER THE MEETING Uncle Matt and Trooper Kelly and a few others went and did what had to be done in terms of Merton, over poor Father Terry's objections-I mean, he was upset about it, of course, so upset it took five men to hold him back, him being so fit and all-and then they brought Merton, Merton's body, back to our place and burned it, out at the tree line where we had burned the others, and someone asked should we give Father Terry the ashes, and Uncle Matt said why take the chance, we have not ruled out the possibility of airborne transmission, and, putting on the little white masks supplied by Dr. Vincent, we raked Merton's ashes into the swamp.
That night my wife came out of our bedroom for the first time since the tragedy, and we told her everything that had been happening.
And I watched her closely, to see what she thought, to see what I should think, her having always been my rock.
Kill every dog, every cat, she said very slowly. Kill every mouse, every bird. Kill every fish. Anyone objects, kill them too.
Then she went back to bed.
Well that was-I felt so bad for her, she was simply not herself-I mean, this was a woman who, finding a spider, used to make me take it outside in a cup. Although, as far as killing all dogs and cats-I mean, there was a certain-I mean, if you did that, say, killed every dog and cat, regardless of were they Infected or not, you could thereby guarantee, to 100 percent, that no other father in town would ever again have to carry in his-God there is so much I don't remember about that night but one thing I do remember is, as I brought her in, one of her little clogs thunked off onto the linoleum, and still holding her I bent down to-and she wasn't there anymore, she wasn't, you know, there, there inside her body. I had passed her thousands of times on the steps, in the kitchen, had heard her little voice from everywhere in the house and why, why had I not, every single time, rushed up to her and told her everything that I-but of course you can't do that, it would malform a child, and yet-
What I'm saying is, with no dogs and no cats, the chance that another father would have to carry his animal-murdered child into their home, where the child's mother sat, doing the bills, happy or something like happy for the last time in her life, happy until the instant she looked up and saw-what I guess I'm saying is, with no dogs and no cats, the chances of that happening to someone else (or to us again) went down to that very beautiful number of Zero.
Which is why we eventually did have to enact our policy of sacrificing all dogs and cats who had been in the vicinity of the Village at the time of the incident.
But as far as killing the mice, the birds, the fish, no, we had no evidence to support that, not at that time anyway, and had not yet added the Reasonable Suspicion Clause to the Plan, and as far as the people, well my wife wasn't herself, that's all there was to it, although soon what we found was-I mean, there was something prescient about what she'd said, because in time we did in fact have to enact some very specific rules regarding the physical process of extracting the dogs and/or cats from a home where the owner was being unreasonable-or the fish, birds, whatever-and also had to assign specific penalties should these people, for example, assault one of the Animal Removal Officers, as a few of them did, and finally also had to issue some guidelines on how to handle individuals who, for whatever reason, felt it useful to undercut our efforts by, you know, obsessively and publicly criticizing the Five- and Six-Point Plans, just very unhappy people.
But all of that was still months away.
I often think back to the end of that first Village Meeting, to that standing-ovation moment. Uncle Matt had also printed up T-shirts, and after the vote everyone pulled the T-shirt with Emily's smiling face on it over his or her own shirt, and Uncle Matt said that he wanted to say thank you from the bottom of his heart, and not just on behalf of his family, this family of his that had been so sadly and irreversibly malformed by this unimaginable and profound tragedy, but also, and perhaps more so, on behalf of all the families we had just saved, via our vote, from similar future profound unimaginable tragedies.
And as I looked out over the crowd, at all those T-shirts-I don't know, I found it deeply moving, that all of those good people would feel so fondly towards her, many of whom had not even known her, and it seemed to me that somehow they had come to understand how good she had been, how precious, and were trying, with their applause, to honor her.
I was twenty-six, beyond broke, back in my home town, living in my aunt's basement. Having courted and won a girl I had courted but never come close to winning in high school, I was now losing her via my pathetically dwindling prospects. One night she said, "I'm not saying I'm great or anything, but still I think I deserve better than this."
My uncle called in a favor and soon I was on a roofing crew, one of three grunts riding from job to job in the freezing open back of a truck. My fellow-grunts, Tyrell and John, were the only black guys on the crew, and hence I was known as the Great White Hope. Once everyone had seen me work, I became the Great White Dope. Our job was to move the hot tar from a vat on the ground to the place on the roof where the real roofing was done. Tyrell had a thick Mississippi accent and no top teeth. He stayed on the ground, pulleying the smoking buckets up to us, muttering obscenities at passing grannies and schoolgirls. John was forty-two, gentle-voiced, and dignified, with a salt-and-pepper beard and his own roofing tools, which he brought to work every day, even though he was never allowed to do anything but lug tar. John had roofed all his adult life, and claimed to have virtuosoed his way into this job by appearing on the job site one day and outshingling the best white shingler.
"I guess I don't remember that," said Rick, our supervisor.
"I don't think you were there that day maybe," said John. "It was Lawrence hired me."
Lawrence was dead now, a famous Fezziwiggian presence, mourned by all.
"You are so full of shit," said Rick. "If you were so fast then, why are you so shitty now?"
"You roof like my mother," said Terry, the owner's brother.
"Maybe your mother roofs good," John mumbled.
"She don't," said Terry. "But still she's faster than you."
All that fall, John grieved over the fact that he was not allowed to do the real and dignified work of a master roofer.
"It ain't right," he'd say to me. "I can do it. They need to give me a chance. I'm an older man. Got responsibilities. Can't just keep carrying tar my whole life."
In late November, talk turned to the yearly Christmas party. Drinks and food were on Walter, the owner. People got shitfaced. Also there was gambling.
"Then we're gonna see," Rick said one day. "We're gonna see if John here is a better gambler than he is a roofer."
"You gotta hope," said Gary.
"As a roofer, John, face it, you suck," Rick said. "Nice guy, shit roofer."
"Too fucking slow, John," Terry said. "We keep giving you chances and you keep screwing it up."
"But maybe why he's a shit roofer is, he's a gambling man," said Rick.
"What y'all are gonna find out is I'm a roofer and a gambler both," said John.
"Excuse me saying it," Rick said when John had gone down to help Tyrell load the cauldron. "But that is a prime example of nigger-think. He thinks he's a roofer because he says he is. Thinks he can gamble because he says he can."
"Has fourteen kids and lets the welfare pay," said Terry.
One payday John asked could I give him a ride home. I gave him a ride, but, it turned out, not to his home. We drove deep into South Shore, past houses we'd roofed, then into an area too poor to roof, down a block of slumping two-flats.
"My friend's place," John said. "I'm gonna get you and your lady some Sherman Juice so you can have a little party."
What was Sherman Juice? We'd started drinking at the shop and I was now too drunk to ask. In the kitchen, under duelling photos of M.L.K. and J.F.K., sat an ancient black woman in a rocking chair. A mad kid dashed around, humming at me: You devil, you white. John's friend did not have any Sherman Juice but did have a Polaroid of his girlfriend going down on him. In the photo, taken from his P.O.V., we could see, in addition to his penis, his feet, in black socks. She was looking at the camera, smiling, sort of.
"Wow, is she pretty," I said politely.
The friend and I sat there together, admiring her. Then John and I went somewhere else. Where we went was John's wife's apartment. They lived apart. Living apart, they got more money, and with more money they could buy a house sooner. In the apartment was a TV and fourteen kids around it. John named them, rapid-fire, with only a few stumbles.
"You really have fourteen kids," I said.
"Yes, I do," he said. "Every one mine. Right, baby?"
"I should hope so," said his wife.
No chairs, no couch, newspapers on the windows. John and his wife cuddled on a blanket.
"When we get our real house, you come over," John's wife said. "Bring your lady."
"Bring your lady, and we'll all of us have dinner," John said.
"I hope that day come soon," said John's wife.
"I hope it come damn soon," John said. "I don't like all this living separate from my babies."
The kids giggled that he'd said damn. He went around kissing them all as I paced and lectured myself in the hallway, trying to sober up for the long drive home.
As long as it didn't snow, we could roof. Every morning, I woke at four, checked for snow. If there was no snow, I called in. If someone skill-less and slow might be useful that day, Warner told me to come in. I rose, put on all five of my shirts (I had no coat), and drove down in my Nova, de-icing the windshield as I went, via reaching out the window and hacking with a putty knife I kept for that purpose.
From the roofs, the city looked medieval, beautiful. I wrote poems in my head, poems that fizzled out under the weight of their own bloat: O Chicago, giver and taker of life, city of bald men in pool halls, also men of hair, men who have hair, hairy men, etc., etc. On the roofs, we found weird things: a dead rat, a bike tire, somebody's dragon-headed pool floatie, all frozen stiff.
Mid-December then, and still no snow. Strange Chicago crèches appeared in front yards: Baby Jesus, freed from the manger, leaned against a Santa sleigh half his height. He was crouching, as if about to jump; he wore just a diaper. Single strings of colored lights lay across bushes, as if someone had hatefully thrown them there. We patched the roof of a Jamaican immigrant whose apartment had nothing in it but hundreds of rags, spread across the floor and hanging from interior clotheslines. Nobody asked why. As we left, she offered us three DietRite colas.
Then it was the Christmas party. The way we knew it was festive was the garage had been cleared of dog shit. It had also been cleared of the dog, a constantly barking mutt who even bit Warner. He bit Warner, he bit the shovel head Warner thrust at him, sometimes we came in and found him resolutely gnawing the leg of the worktable with a fine sustained rage. Tonight, festively, the dog was locked in the cab of a truck. Now and then, he would hurl himself against the windshield, and somebody, festively, would fling at the windshield a plastic fork or a hamburger bun. The other components of the festivity were a plate of cold cuts on the table where normally the gutters were pre-bent, a garbage can full of iced beer, and a cardboard box holding some dice.
We ate, we drank, the checks were distributed, we waddled drunkenly across South Chicago Avenue to the Currency Exchange to cash the checks, after which the gambling began. I didn't know a thing about gambling and didn't want to. I rolled my four fresh hundreds and put them in the front pocket of my tar-stiff jeans, occasionally patting the pocket to make sure they were still real.
Finally, in terms of money, I got it: money forestalled disgrace. I thought of my aunt, who worked three jobs and whom I had not yet paid a dime for food, and of my girlfriend, who now paid whenever we went out, which was never, because my five shirts were too stained with tar.
"You ain't gambling, Tyrell?" said Rick.
Tyrell said something nobody understood, and disappeared out the door.
"I suspect Tyrell is pussy-bound," said Terry.
"Smart man," said Rick.
John did gambler things with his shirtsleeves, spat on his hands, hopped around on one foot, blew on the dice. Then he laid his four hundreds out near the craps box and gave them a lecture: They were to go forth and multiply. They were to find others of their kind and come scampering back.
Rick had gone to the bank that morning. He showed us his roll. It held maybe three thousand dollars. His wife didn't dare say shit about it. Who earned it, him or her? "I do," he answered himself.
The gambling began. One by one, the guys lost what they felt they could lose and drifted back to stand against the worktable and diddle with the soldering irons. Soon only John was left. Why was John left? Rick kept taunting. A whole autumn of such taunts now did their work. All belittled men dream of huge redemption. Here was John, dreaming. In response to John's dreaming, Rick and Terry began to speak with mock-professorial diction.
"Look at this, kindly look at this," Rick shouted. "John is not, after all, any more a gambler than he is a ergo roofer. That is, he is a equally sucky gambler as he is a suckass roofer."
"Are you saying," said Terry, "that his gambling, in terms of how much does it suck, sucks exactly as much as does suck his roofing?"
"Perzackly, yup, that is just what I am saying, doctor," Rick burped.
John burned. They were going to see. They were going to see that the long years of wrongs done him had created a tremendous backlog of owed good luck, which was going to surge forward now, holy and personal.
And see they did. Soon John was down to his last hundred, and then he broke it, and then he was down to his last twenty. Then Rick cackled, and John threw his sole remaining five at Rick's chest. Rick caught it, kissed it, added it to his tremendous wad.
A light went on in my head and has stayed on ever since: It was all about capital. Rick could lose and lose and never really lose. Once John dipped below four hundred, he was dead. He was dead now.
Which was when Walter came in and passed out the bonus checks.
Walter was the owner, the big man. Tonight he was wearing a tie. Afternoons he drove from site to site in his Lincoln, cranking out estimates, listening to opera, because, he said, though it was fag music, it floated his boat.
John took his check, made for the door. I followed him out.
"You're doing right," I said. "Go on home."
"Ain't going home," John said, and numb-footed across South Chicago again.
"No, no, no," I mumbled, vividly drunk, suddenly alive. What had happened to me? Christ, where was I? Whither my promise, my easy season of victories, my field of dominant, my dominant field of my boyhood, boyhood playful triumph?
It was so cold my little mustache had frozen.
Our bonuses matched: three hundred each.
The man at the Currency Exchange looked at us either sadly or suspiciously, I couldn't tell which. When I doubled back to ask, he reached for something under the counter.
"Go home, man," I said to John out on the street. "You at least got your bonus, right?"
"Can't, can't," John huffed. "Got to get all that back. No way that man's taking my Christmas money for my babies."
"You're not going to get it back, John," I said.
"Ain't I, though," he said.
The same law that had broken him the first time broke him again. Rick took it and took it.
"Rick, Rick," I said, so drunk I was unsure I was actually speaking.
"What am I supposed to do?" Rick said, glaring at me. "He's a man, right? He wants to play. Ain't nobody forcing him."
"Ain't nobody forcing me," John said.
Rick had a fat round face and little black glasses. He was Polish but looked Kamikaze. His cheeks were red and his glasses were fogged, it seemed to me, from the gross extent of his trickery.
"You want to quit, John?" Rick said. "Great White Dope here thinks I'm hustling you. Maybe you should quit. So what if you suck as a gambler? Just walk away, right?"
"Nobody hustling nobody here," said John.
"See, Dope?" Rick said to me. "John's a man."
"I am that," said John.
Soon John was wadding and throwing his last ten.
"Fair's fair," he gasped, and lurched out.
I followed. Should I offer him mine? If I offered him mine, he might take it. So I offered him a portion of mine in a way that simultaneously offered and made it clear I was not offering. He said he didn't want none of mine. He had to get home. His babies were waiting. He didn't know what his wife would say, or what he would say to her.
"I'll have to just tell her, I guess," he said. "Just up and say it, get it over with: Baby, they ain't no Christmas. And don't give me no lip about it."
He wiped his face top to bottom, the saddest gesture I'd ever seen.
Then he walked off into the side-blowing snow.
I was sad yet happy. I was drunk. I was deeply, deeply glad I wasn't him.
Back inside, Rick was protesting, though nobody was asking him to.
"A man's a man," he was saying. "You play, you lose, you accept it. John's a man. He knows that. He gets that. I admire that."
"He's gonna have a shit Christmas, though," somebody said.
"These people live for shit Christmases," Rick said. "They run right directly toward shit Christmases. It's all they know. It's in their blood." Then he put his wad back in his pocket.
The craps box was cast aside, and the roofers bent to their drinks. Somebody hauled over a length of gutter and a few of them went at it with tin snips, proving some point or other.
I stumbled out to my Nova, putty-knifed myself a sight-hole, drove home.
There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to really stop losing, and continue losing. The losing goes on and on so long you begin to watch with curiosity, wondering how low you can go.
All that winter, once a week or so, I'd been stopping at a pay phone off Stony Island to call the Field Museum, where a kind woman had once praised my qualifications.
"Anything yet?" I'd say.
"Not yet," she'd say. Once, she said, "We need a security guard, ha-ha, but that, of course, is way beneath your level."
"Oh, ha-ha, right," I said.
But I was thinking, Could I work my way up? Could I, in my security-guard uniform, befriend a doddering curator, impress him with my knowledge of fossils, my work ethic, my quiet respect for science?
"Keep calling, though," she said.
"Oh, I will," I said.
And I did, until finally it got too embarrassing, and I stopped.
Early spring, I fled town, leaving my aunt unrepaid, my girlfriend convinced, forever, I suppose, that this snivelling lesser Me was the real one.
I went somewhere else and started over, pulled head out of ass, made a better life. Basically, I've got stores. If you've ever had a store that supports a family, a family that actually brightens when you come in at night, you know what a good thing that is. And I wouldn't go back to that roofing Me or that roofing time for anything in the world.
But sometimes I imagine myself standing at that pay phone, in my tar-hardened clothes.
"This is so great," the Field Museum woman is saying. "Come down, come down, we finally have something suitable for you. I'm so happy to finally be able to tell you this."
"I'll be right there," I say.
Then it's a few weeks later, after first payday, and I pull up to my then-girlfriend's house, wearing clean clothes. All day long, I have been, say, writing about the brontosaurus. I have certainly, at this point, learned a lot about brontosauri. In fact, I have been selected to go to a Brontosaurus Conference in, say, Miami, Florida. We go out to dinner. My aunt meets us there. I have by now repaid her for all the food she fed me those many months. Also, I've bought her a new dress, just to be nice. The dinner is excellent. I pay. After dinner, the three of us sit there laughing, laughing about the fact that I, an Assistant Curator at the famous Field Museum, was once a joke of a roofer, a joke of a roofer so beat down he once stood by watching as a nice man got cheated out of his Christmas.
I never could stomach Adams and then one day he's standing in my kitchen, in his underwear. Facing in the direction of my kids' room! So I wonk him in the back of the head and down he goes. When he stands up, I wonk him again and down he goes. Then I roll him down the stairs into the early-spring muck and am like, If you ever again, I swear to God, I don't even know what to say, you miserable fuck.
Karen got home. I pulled her aside. Upshot was: Keep the doors locked, and if he's home the kids stay inside.
But after dinner I got to thinking: Guy comes in in his shorts and I'm sitting here taking this? This is love? Love for my kids? Because what if? What if we slip up? What if a kid gets out or he gets in? No, no, no, I was thinking, not acceptable.
So I went over and said, Where is he?
To which Lynn said, Upstairs, why?
Up I went and he was standing at the mirror, still in his goddam underwear, only now he had on a shirt, and I wonked him again as he was turning. Down he went and tried to crab out of the room, but I put a foot on his back.
If you ever, I said. If you ever again.
Now we're even, he said. I came in your house and you came in mine.
Only I had pants on, I said, and mini-wonked him in the back of his head.
I am what I am, he said.
Well, that took the cake! Him admitting it! So I wonked him again, as Lynn came in, saying, Hey, Roger, hey. Roger being me. And then he rises up. Which killed me! Him rising up? Against me? And I'm about to wonk him again, but she pushes in there, like intervening. So to wonk him again I had to like shove her back, and unfortunately she slipped, and down she went, and she's sort of lying there, skirt hiked up-and he's mad! Mad! At me! Him in his underwear, facing my kids' room, and he's mad at me? Many a night I've heard assorted wonks and baps from Adams's house, with her gasping, Frank, Jesus, I Am a Woman, You're Hurting Me, the Kids Are Watching, and so on.
Because that's the kind of guy he is.
So I wonked him again, and when she crawled at me, going, Please, Please, I had to push her back down, not in a mean way but in a like stay-there way, which is when, of course, just my luck, the kids came running in-these Adams kids, I should say, are little thespians, constantly doing musicals in the back yard, etc., etc.-so they're, you know, all dramatic: Mummy, Daddy! And, O.K., that was unfortunate, so I tried to leave, but they were standing there in the doorway, blocking me, like, Duh, we do not know which way to turn, we are stunned. So I shoved my way out, not rough, very gentle-I felt for them, having on more than one occasion heard Adams whaling on them, too-but one did go down, just on one knee, and I helped her up, and she tried to bite me! She did not seem to know what was what, and it hurt, and made me mad, so I went over to Adams, who was just getting up, and gave him this like proxy wonk on top of his head, in exchange for the biting.
Keep your damn, I said. Keep your goddam kids from-
Then I needed some air, so I walked around the block, but still it wasn't sitting right. Because now it begins, you know? Adams over there all pissed off, saying false things about me to those kids, which, due to what they had seen (the wonking) and what they had not seen (him in his underwear, facing my kids' room), they were probably swallowing every mistruth, and I was like, Great, now they hate me, like I'm the bad guy in this, and all summer it's going to be pranks, my hose slit and syrup in my gas tank, or all of a sudden our dog has a burn mark on her belly.
So I type up these like handbills, saying, Just So You Know, Your Dad Was Standing Naked in My Kitchen, Facing My Kids' Room. And I tape one inside their screen door so they'll be sure and see it when they go to softball later, then I stuff like nine in their mailbox, and on the rest I cross out "Your Dad" and put in "Frank Adams" and distribute them in mailboxes around the block.
All night it's call after call from the neighbors, saying, you know, Call the cops, Adams needs help, he's a goof, I've always hated him, maybe a few of us should go over there, let us work with you on this, do not lose your cool. That sort of thing. Which was all well and good, but then I go out for a smoke around midnight and what is he looking at, all hateful? Their houses? Don't kid yourself. He is looking at my house, with that smoldering look, and I am like, What are you looking at?
I am what I am, he says.
You fuck, I say, and rush over to wonk him, but he runs inside.
And, as far as cops, my feeling was: What am I supposed to do, wait until he's back in my house, then call the cops and hope he stays facing my kids' room, in his shorts, until they arrive?
No, sorry, that is not my way.
The next day my little guy, Brian, is standing at the back door, with his kite, and I like reach over and pop the door shut, going, Nope, nope, you know very well why not, Champ.
So there's my poor kid, kite in lap all afternoon, watching some dumb art guy on PBS saying, Shading Is One Way We Make Depth, How About Trying It Relevant to This Stump Here?
Then Monday morning I see Adams walking toward his car and again he gives me that smoldering look! Never have I received such a hateful look. And flips me the bird! As if he is the one who is right! So I rush over to wonk him, only he gets in the car and pulls away.
All day that look was in my mind, that look of hate.
And I thought, If that was me, if I had that hate level, what would I do? Well, one thing I would do is hold it in and hold it in and then one night it would overflow and I would sneak into the house of my enemy and stab him and his family in their sleep. Or shoot them. I would. You would have to. It is human nature. I am not blaming anybody.
I thought, I have to be cautious and protect my family or their blood will be on my hands.
So I came home early and went over to Adams's house when I knew nobody was home, and gathered up his rifle from the basement and their steak knives and also the butter knives, which could be sharpened, and also their knife sharpener, and also two letter openers and a heavy paperweight, which, if I was him and had lost all my guns and knives, I would definitely use that to bash in the head of my enemy in his sleep, as well as the heads of his family.
That night I slept better until I woke in a sweat, asking myself what I would do if someone came in and, after shoving down my wife and one of my kids, stole my guns and knives and knife sharpener as well as my paperweight. And I answered myself: What I would do is look around my house in a frenzy for something else dangerous, such as paint, such as thinner, such as household chemicals, and then either ring the house of my enemy with the toxics and set them on fire or pour some into the pool of my enemy, which would (1) rot the liner and (2) sicken the children of my enemy when they went swimming.
Then I looked in on my sleeping kids and, oh my God, nowhere are there kids as sweet as my kids, and standing there in my pajamas, thinking of Adams standing there in his underwear, then imagining my kids choking and vomiting as they struggled to get out of the pool, I thought, No, no way, I am not living like this.
So, entering through a window I had forced earlier that afternoon, I gathered up all the household chemicals, and, believe me, he had a lot, more than I did, more than he needed, thinner, paint, lye, gas, solvents, etc. I got it all in like nine Hefty bags and was just starting up the stairs with the first bag when here comes the whole damn family, falling upon me, even his kids, whipping me with coat hangers and hitting me with sharp-edged books and spraying hair spray in my eyes, the dog also nipping at me, and rolling down the stairs of their basement I thought, They are trying to kill me. Hitting my head on the concrete floor, I saw stars, and thought, No, really, they are going to kill me, and if they kill me no more little Melanie and me eating from the same popcorn bowl, no more little Brian doing that wrinkled-brow thing we do back and forth when one of us makes a bad joke, never again Karen and me lying side by side afterward, looking out the window, discussing our future plans as those yellow-beaked birds come and go on the power line. And I struggled to my feet thinking, Forget how I got here, I am here, I must get out of here, I have to live. And I began to wonk and wonk, and once they had fallen back, with Adams and his teenage boy huddled over the littlest one, who had unfortunately flown relatively far due to a bit of a kick I had given her, I took out my lighter and fired up the bag, the bag of toxics, and made for the light at the top of the stairs, where I knew the door was, and the night was, and my freedom, and my home.