G.H.
When Sarah woke he was sitting, slump-shouldered, on the foot of the bed, facing the crawl space door, a hammer in his hand. She watched him silently for a long moment; he did not move. Finally, softly, she said, “Hi.”
He jumped up, spun around to face her. “Holy shit, you startled me.”
“Let me guess. Either our little visitor is about to get whacked or you misplaced your toothbrush.”
He looked at her blankly. She nodded at the hammer. “Oh. This. I was just waiting for you to wake up so i could go in there and pry that board off.”
“You must be exhausted. Sweetheart. Need some help?”
“I’m fine. I’m just wonderful. I’m just jim-crackin’ dandy.”
“You need coffee.”
“I need sleep. I already put the coffee on, but you could bring me some while I’m doing this.”
“Of course. Sure you don’t need me to hold the flashlight or anything?”
“Nah. I think there’s enough light in here.”
“He watched her cast a dubious look at the pallid light that drooped in when she opened the blinds above the bed. He was intricately busy finding and putting on jeans, socks, and shoes, until she left the room—he did not want her to see the plastic containers inside the crawl space. He was sure she’d have wanted to talk about it: what time he’d decided to do it, had the animal eaten it, what they should do next—no. Not now, anyway. So, before he pried the board off he rinsed out the containers the animal hadn’t emptied and hid them under the bathroom sink. He saw nothing, heard nothing, as he undid his work of the night before.
A mile or so away, as Matthew and Sarah were beginning their breakfast, a crew was already at work burying another section of the Park River. South Main Street was cacophonous with the heavy machinery, vehicles crawled around the construction site in rutted paths, and from a distance the thrum of their engines sounded as the low growl of domestic animals at the edge of some disaster they do not understand. Matthew, sitting at the table, scanning the Courant’s account of a delay in the work, was stricken by the thought of the raccoon on the banks of the river, the disappearing banks, one displacement precipitating another. Right into my goddamn house. (He scanned the article on his phone, Mrs. Morel having arrived particularly early this morning.)
“Want to try this? Berry told me about it. Supposed to be good. It’s got bananas in it.”
Matthew jerked himself, with some difficulty, back to the present moment: materializing beneath his eyes was a steamy, farinaceous substance, pungent with artificial sweetness, horribly flecked with a drastic yellow. He pushed it back across the table to her. “Not only don’t I want to try it, I don’t even want to be in the same room with it.”
“You are not sweetness and light when you’re this exhausted.” She shook her head at the ashy discolorations beneath his eyes. “Poor love.” She picked up the bowl of cereal, sniffed it, then escorted it to the sink. She returned to the table, flicking back her long hair with the same twitch of distaste a cat might use on getting caught in the rain, but knowing it must nevertheless continue on. “So. What d’you think, you think maybe we should call the dog warden, or animal control, or whatever they call it? Maybe the Humane Society? We can’t be the only people this has ever happened to, they’ve got to know something. More than we do, anyway.”
“No.” Matthew was looking back down at his phone.
She waited. “No? Just ‘No’? As in, what? As in, ‘No, the problem’s solved now?’ As in ‘No, I have it on absolutely no authority whatsoever that they won’t know anything more than we do?’ As in ‘No, don’t talk to me about this now because I’m extremely snarky from lack of sleep?’ What ‘No?’”
“No, as in I’m snarky, as you put it, and this isn’t a problem and we don’t have to make a big deal about it, okay?”
“Okay, fine.”
Above the screen of his phone he watched her stand abruptly, fix each of them bowls of cold cereal, milk, and authentic bananas, and return to the table. She set his bowl before him, then began to eat in miffed silence. Contrition pricked him. He dropped the pretense of newspaper, sagged in his chair, rolled his empty juice glass listlessly between his hands. He knew she was watching him, but he was helpless, unable to speak, as if a stranger were asking for some unknown thing, urgently, in an unknown language.
“Do you think it’s still up there?” she asked suddenly, “I want to see it.”
“What am I, appointment secretary for the animal kingdom? Sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know, go look.”
But the idea of her seeing the animal—for some reason he thought ‘witnessing’, not ‘seeing’ it—this brought him to his feet. The juice glass clattered to the table; as he snatched it up and stilled its sound he heard another.
“What’s the matter?”
He stood as rigid as the animal had stood in the flashlight’s beam. “Didn’t you hear that? That’s it, that’s him. Our friendly neighborhood fiend. Or I think it was—go, go on, take your look.”
Sarah walked quietly, rapidly, out of the kitchen and up the stairs, all the while making hushing motions behind her back at Matthew, whispering as he followed her that the squeak of his shoes on the bare wooden stairs would frighten the animal away.
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing here?” And he grinned and placed his hands on her hips as she went up. And now he saw what an absurdity all his upset was. Embarrassing, really. As if he’d shouted out the contents of an infantile dream while sleeping on a crowded aeroplane.
In the bedroom doorway she stopped. Matthew could hear nothing now, and whether Sarah could or could not, she crossed the room with her head at a listening angle, opened the crawl space door, bent her head and entered. Gingerly pushed at a carton with the toe of her shoe. Paused, then backed out and closed the door. “I didn’t see him. You sure he’s still there?”
“I’m not sure of anything. Hope he’s not there. With the board down, now, he probably already took off. But if he’s still there, it’s probably just as well he wasn’t where you could see him. Or him, see you. He could be rabid. He might bite.”
“I don’t think—oh, my God, d’you see what time it is? I’m supposed to be at that curriculum committee meeting, it’s the first one and I can’t be late—I’ve got to run.”
And soon they were both gone, and the animal, this morning, unseen.
This hiddenness and other questions about the raccoon, and related questions, such as whether the burial of the river really was in some way responsible for the animal’s presence: these questions swarmed up at him as soon as he was in the car, undistracted, alone. Soon he would pass the construction zone, soon reach the haven of work. But the thought of work really provided no refuge: answered questions buzzed distractingly, circled laden with germs of apprehension. As he jostled over the torn and buckled pavement, he wondered if the burial of the river here would change its course behind his house. Not that that branch of the river could even be called a river, really. Most of the year it was a slow, shallow stream; only when it was spring-quickened with the rush of melting snow and rain, could you honestly call it a even a brook. But he’d miss the sound of it, if the heavy machinery sucked it dry, regret the loss of light trickling through the trees, pooling on the water.
The river had been, his grandfather told him, one of the reasons that the small house—the one Matthew still lived in—had been bought. The other reason had been that Matthew’s grandfather had once lived, in a much larger house, across the street. Of the house before part of the roof was raised to create the larger bedroom he now occupied—and whose room it was before it was his grandfather’s—Matthew’s memory was dark, but the stream behind it he remembered in silvered slants: while uncomfortably perched atop a boulder, dangling a vain line for fish; while his grandfather, on a bony folding chair in a rag of shade behind Matthew, chatted about the glory days of his grocery store, or about baseball; while his reading of a Hardy Boys’ adventure is interrupted by his grandfather’s shouting to Eddie to get his tuckus out of that tree Or Else.
Or else, orelse, orelse? Eddie singsongs down.
Or Else I’ll give you What For.
What for, whatfor, whatfor? Sings Eddie, his skinny legs kicking chunks of air.
What For is sweeping the kitchen floor, that’s What For, and maybe you mop it, too. And Eddie scrabbling his way down from the tree, his grandfather calling, Go around, little monkey, the other way, other way, Kahtscup, so you don’t fall in the river.
The river’s banks were ravaged now, by beer cans, condoms, plastic cups and other trash, but these you could clean up, these you could look beyond. Beyond even the light, the sound, the boy in his tree and the old man in his rag of shade was a sort of idea. That a river must have a source that you could follow it to, that it ran where it ran for a reason, abiding by its own necessary laws. Unless, of course, someone decided to dam it, or change its course, or bury it. And even then you couldn’t change its source.
But who is to know, really, about sources, how things come about, and whether causes really matter? The longing for explanation, the desire to know is, however, in some souls very great. It is also a craving demanding of satisfactions the world, most often, most resolutely, denies.
My subject, for example, this Matthew Goldsmith. From my brief observation he appears to be an ardent angler in the river of knowledge, a fearful and perhaps chronically hungry angler who becomes so tangled in speculation, so becoiled in the slippery filaments of first causes, cellular origins, that he often misplaces ready nourishment—the present moment, with its hangnails, glances, and tea-stained pots (with their own sorrows and glories) may simply be lost to him, it seems, exactly as if it were the detritus of a half-forgotten dream. Which, moreover, someone else may have dreamt. But in following the line back to causation he seems convinced that if only he can get it unsnarled he could deftly flick his wrist, make the perfect cast, and catch the fat fish of conclusion that will satiate. I suspect he rarely stops to consider whether the line is worth untangling, whether edible fish even swim in this particular stream. But perhaps these considerations are unimportant to him; perhaps the purpose of these speculative fishing trips is merely to get away? From what, I am as yet ignorant.
I see that I’ve begun to obtrude my own reflections into these notes and observations, something I hadn’t intended to do. But there they are. There, alas, am I. And as I am, most helplessly, an opinionated being, I suppose my I was bound to give a wink somewhere in this chronicle (I admit my affection for the pun, a low device but of admirable lineage). Having thus let my I loose upon the scene, and in the interest of making this record a more complete one—particularly as I contemplate a more active role in the events herein detailed, I may as well introduce myself. Well then.
My name is George Hooper. Some individuals, indeed, have accorded me the title of honor, and called me Sir George, although the pages of Debrett fail to ratify this. (The circumstances surrounding this omission are of no concern here, though I feel compelled to confirm my connection to the illustrious Sir Ferris Hooper, known to all literate denizens of England as Hooper of Malmsea.) I reside, at present, in the environs of Hartford, Connecticut.
My profession, if I may so dignify an amateur’s passion, is natural science; the work I completed most recently was a monograph on the effects that certain weeds and wildflowers of English origin have had on the plant ecology of the United States—as well as the reverse effect, of certain American originals now flourishing in England. But that is not the subject here, nor is the details of my life. Which has, in any event, been an exceedingly quiet one. I’ve traveled, of course, but most of my too many years have been devoted to rather undramatic pursuits. Reading and inquiry, none of it terribly systematic; long walks companioned, until recently, only by thought. Well. But now I’ve discovered a most compelling interest—intellectual curiosity or simple boredom or other factors have led me to—in short, I am now performing a very different sort of research. My first attempt with a human subject. The effects of sleep deprivation. And so on. On this young man. Quite without his knowledge, I must admit, and chosen quite at random: chanced upon as he, like me—like all of us, at least once in a while—was walking alone in the dark. Of course I understand there is a prevailing ethic of informed consent and so forth, but the design of the experiment is such—and at any rate, I intend the young man no harm.
Very well, then. This explanation, or introduction, if you will, having been duly entered into these notes, I can return to my subject.
Given the questions of his morning, it is not at all surprising that toward the middle of Matthew’s day of sketching and figuring, amid the rising of possibilities that he demolished with the next second’s thought—it is not at all surprising that somewhere between a parti and a phone call he saw a small masked face peer out between the carefully ruled lines of a set of schematics. Not that these were anywhere in sight; they were old ones, carefully filed away, of their first residential job. A master bedroom addition for the Rivers. Rivers buried. The shadows of fleeing animals—
No. He was here, drafting ordinary lines. And therefore could shake his head and refresh the screen of his computer and will himself to hear, in the soft hum of the HVAC system, in the staccato of Katie’s computer in the carpeted middle distance—even in the beeping of the phones—the reassuring notes of an orderly existence. His.
For several more hours, then, Matthew felt, in all but total honesty, that any discordant note in the harmony of his mood derived only from the janglings of complex and unfinished ideas. At the end of these several hours, however, he chanced to look up and notice, through the doorway, a Wall Street Journal neatly folded on the edge of the conference room table. Which newspaper now unfolded for him his morning’s stolen paper, and so Mrs. Morel, his empty house, his wife rushed out, his unempty house. The animal thrumming and scratching on the dusty subflooring of the crawl space. The draft pushing its way out from under the crawl space door to become a late September wind flooding his house with cold, a wind rising up so far away he couldn’t even imagine the incalculable distances it had blown across nor for how long, such a long wind, long time—
His head fell off the fist it was resting on and the sudden loss of support woke him. What was he shivering for? Wasn’t cold here. And as if to demonstrate to himself that he was not only awake but firmly, comfortably here and could fend off, like Prospero, all harm-wielding spirits, he got up and paced the tastefully laid byways of his domain.
The Sturniday Building, home to Gordon and Goldsmith Architects, as well as other small concerns bold enough to venture into this part of the city, was the beribboned champagne bottle that had launched their firm. Matthew’s design work on the old typewriter factory had won the firm two local awards (fossilized in Lucite and on display in the reception area) and several columns of compliments in the local press (see clippings in rosewood frames, same display), which Timothy had used, quite skillfully, to chart their success. In other words, Timothy pitched, and Matthew hit. Timothy was pitching now, swaying from side to side beside his desk, talking on speaker, his arms invisibly winding up, for a potential client, enthusiasm and conviction. Matthew went quickly by: the pitches Timothy was throwing these days were for renovations rather than new construction—pitches Matthew had little interest in hitting.
Still, this place was good, a decent piece of work. The smooth curves and smartened brickwork betrayed no hint of the wretched interior he’d first surveyed, no drafty corner in which to kneel and finger a pile of miscast typewriter keys, misshapen symbols never kissed with ink to make a word. Never stroked on paper pulped from a forest full of trees risen among the fragrance of midsummer ferns and the rustlings of animals, never to go forth fresh and crisp on the world’s business, not even so much as to leap across a cheap leaflet urging parents to attend a meeting about the desegregation of the city’s schools—a leaflet never to find its destiny as a blurred and shredded element of the reeking, cat-soaked paper piles that graced Mrs. Morel’s living room. No, the miscast typewriter keys Matthew found participated in nothing until he came home that night and mentioned them to Sarah, and in due course the sculpture she welded of them sprouted in crooked metallic splendor in the lobby of the building. So that surely there must be some decipherable connection between that day and this, between seeing that Wall Street Journal lying on the conference table and whatever obscure impulse it was that was making him prowl the office like a hungry bear. But he couldn’t see the connection, couldn’t name the impulse. He didn’t know anything. He was tired.
He pitched the folded Journal into the wastebasket on the way to his desk, then dropped into his chair. Glancing out into the golden late September afternoon he began to follow the rising of a dead and brilliant leaf, thinking of the unseen wind that was lifting the leaf and how a man watching from behind a window could deduce that wind, affirm its presence through indirection, in the red dance of the leaf. How we rely on such deductions to reach conclusions: a leaf pirouettes and therefore wind, scratching noise and therefore Pick up the goddamn phone, Matt animal in the crawl space. Light flashing on the phone and therefore a phone call. He stared at the phone.
Katie appeared, leaning against the door frame, mighty arms folded beneath the bolster of her breasts. The rings in her fleshy ears gleamed annoyingly, the spikes of her prematurely grey hair looked alarmingly sharp. “’Peace, peace! He is not dead, he doth not sleep–/ he hath awakened from the dream of life—’ Percy B. Shelley. Call for you. Been a call for you the last five minutes. Sarah. Told her you were here but should’ve told her you were composing an ode to the west wind and couldn’t be disturbed. C’mon, Percy, what’s your problem? Pick up the goddamn phone, Matt, so I can get back to work. Some of us do work around here, you know.”
It was the first time in his life that anyone had accused him of sloth. Shame, sticky and hot, dribbled over his ears and neck in a red mess as he waited for Katie to lever herself from the door frame, to take her mocking smile and righteously cocked head to the safe distance of her desk, before he picked up the phone.
next, 25 September, cont’d.
previous, 24 September
The Nature of Things 