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Excerpt
The winter had not brought rain and there were no flowers, there would be no
flowers. Still, the land in the spring of the year when Alice would turn sixteen
could not be said to be suffering from drought. The desert knew no drought,
really. Anything so habitual and prolonged was simply life—a life invisible and
anticipatory. What was germinative would only remain so that spring. What was
possible was neither dead nor alive. Relief had been promised, of course.
For more than a month now, after school, Alice had been caring for six-year-old
fraternal twins, Jimmy and Jacky. They lived with their mother, who was away all
day, cutting hair. Their father was off in another state, building submarines.
Hair, submarines, it was disgusting, Alice thought. She did not find the
children at all interesting. They cried frequently, indulged themselves in
boring, interminable narratives, were sentimental and cruel, and when frustrated
would bite. They had a pet rabbit that Alice feared for. She made them stop
giving it baths all the time and tried to interest them in giving themselves
baths, although in this she was not successful. She assisted them with special
projects for school. It was never too early for investigative reporting. They
should not be dissuaded by their teacher's discomfort; to discomfort teachers
was one's duty. They were not too young to be informed about the evils of farm
subsidies, monoculture, and overproduction. They should know, if only vaguely at
first, about slaughterhouses. They shouldn't try to learn everything at
once—they'd probably get discouraged—but they should know how things come into
being, like ponies, say, and how they're taken out of being and made into
handbags and coats. They should get a petition going to stop the lighting of
athletic fields, since too much light obliterated the night sky. Excessive light
was bad. On the other hand, some things perceived as bad were good. Wasps, for
instance. They should not destroy the wasp nest they discovered in their garage
with poisons because wasp-nest building was fun to watch in a time-lapse
photography sort of way. They should marvel at the wasps' architectural
abilities, their insect awareness of a supreme future structure they alone were
capable of creating. Wasps were cool. The queens knew how to subsist in a state
of cryogenic preservation in the wintertime. Jimmy and Jacky could get special
credit for their understanding of wasps, agribusiness, slaughterhouses—just to
name a few possibilities.She was willing to make learning interesting for them.
But she didn't help much with homework. Mostly the three of them just hung out.
Little kids didn't instinctively know how to hang out, Alice was surprised to
learn. Sometimes they'd walk down to the Goodwill store and see the kind of
stuff people had wanted once but didn't want anymore. She usually didn't buy
anything because she didn't believe in consumption, but once she bought a nun in
a snow dome. The nun was only fifty cents because the snow had turned brown and
clotted and fell in revolting clumps when you turned the thing upside down. What
was a nun doing in one of those snow domes anyway? Alice had never seen anything
like it. The twins had never seen anything like it either. But Goodwill was only
good for once or twice a week. The rest of the time they'd sit around in these
tiny plastic chairs the boys had in their junk-filled room and Alice would
discuss things with them, chiefly environmental concerns. Alice liked talking
about animals and excess packaging. She opened their small eyes to the world of
drift nets, wetland mitigation, predator control, and overpopulation. She urged
them to discuss the overpopulation problem with their mother. Sometimes their
attention wandered. They had a bunk bed in their room, and they both slept on
the bottom bunk. When they were seven, they'd be permitted to sleep on the top
bunk. They could hardly wait.
Their mother hadn't paid Alice yet, and near the end of the second month Alice
asked for her money.
"Yes, yes, sure," the mother said. "I have to go to the bank tomorrow. How about
Saturday?"
She appeared Saturday morning at Alice's house in her big sloppy station wagon.
Alice and her granny and poppa were sitting on the patio drinking coffee and
watching the birds at the feeder. Actually, only Alice was watching the birds,
since her granny and poppa were talking avidly about compost. Alice couldn't
talk about compost so early in the morning, but they could. Compost was as
munificent as God to them, just as interesting as God certainly. They said that
the reason healthy plants repel pests is that they have such intense vibrations
in the molecules of their cells. The higher the state of health, the higher the
vibrations. Because pests' vibrations are on a much lower level, they receive a
distinct shock when they come into contact with a healthy plant.
Why not? Alice thought.
Alice sauntered down to the station wagon, which was packed with luggage. "You
taking a trip?" she asked.
"Didn't Jimmy and Jacky tell you? Oh, that's right, I swore them to secrecy.
Let's go out and have some breakfast. I'll buy you a donut."
The mother gave Alice the creeps. She wore large, shapeless dresses she called
her "jelly bags."
"I've had my breakfast," Alice said.
"I'd like to talk to you," the woman said. "Breakfast really isn't necessary.
Why don't we go out to the state park—that's a nice ride."
Alice looked back at the patio, but her granny and poppa had gone inside. She
shrugged and got into the car. Cars had never charmed her, and this one seemed
particularly vile. They sped off to the park about fifteen miles away. The
lovely, lovely mountains tumbled across the horizon.
The kids' mother moved one big arm and groped around in the backseat. The car
veered down the road, Alice staring stoically ahead, until she retrieved what
she was after, a cocktail in a can. "Want a pop?" she said. Alice shook her
head. "Sure?" the woman said. "It's mostly fruit juices."
I want . . . a scar, Alice thought. A scar that would send shivers up peoples'
spines but would not elicit pity. She didn't want that kind of scar.
"Where are Jimmy and Jacky?" Alice finally said.
"With a babysitter."
Alice looked at her.
"I'm trying out somebody new just for the morning, then we're leaving. Back to
the husband. We're going to be a family again."
"You owe me three hundred dollars," Alice said.
"I do? Those hours added up, didn't they?"
"Do you want a receipt for tax purposes?"
"I'd love a receipt," the mother said.
They entered the park. A small deceased animal was lying in the road, and the
car ahead of them ran over it. They ran over it. A herd of men in fluorescent
shorts jogged by.
"God, I hate this place," the woman said. She rummaged in the backseat for
another pop.
"Why did we come here, then?"
"I mean the whole place, the state."
She turned abruptly into a parking lot. There were some benches and a few little
structures for shade. She turned off the ignition and got out of the car. "Gotta
tinkle," she said. Alice sat and gazed at the mountains. When you climbed, you'd
move from cholla to juniper and pinyon, then to firs and aspens. Zero to eight
thousand feet in forty miles. To live in a place where you could do something
like that was sensational, like living exceptionally fast or living in two
different bodies. The little animals of the desert didn't know that the little
animals of the mountains, only moments away, even existed. Or the big animals
the big animals for that matter.
Alice looked around the littered seat for paper and pencil to compose her bill,
her legs sticking to the stinking vinyl of the car seat. She got out and stood
in the shade. A tinkle, she thought. The awful woman was probably taking a dump.
At last she and her jelly bag appeared. She had red hair today, though sometimes
it was chestnut. She was a genius with hair color, there was no denying that.
"You know what keeps going through my head?" the woman said, "DAK's incredible
blowout price. . . . We're getting a new stereo. Can't get it out of my head."
Alice handed her the bill she'd tallied. "It's in crayon, unfortunately, but I'm
sure it will be acceptable. You could give me a check, though I'd prefer cash."
"That's what's going through your head, huh, like DAK's incredible blowout
price?" The woman laughed and dropped the piece of paper to the ground. "If you
think I'm paying you, you're crazy. Pervert. Bitch. You'd better watch out."
Alice looked at the piece of paper. What was wrong with it? It just lay there.
"My boys say you say the world would be better off without them. They say you
killed a pony and a farmer and that you make them eat lettuce-and-rabbit-pellet
sandwiches. They say you hate nuns and say not to flush the toilet every time
when it's only yellow water. But it was the wasp nest that did it. I'm
excessively susceptible to the stings of bees and wasps and could go into
anaphylactic reaction and die. And they shrieked at me when I sprayed the damn
thing. It was as big as a beer keg. They cursed me for destroying a thing that
could have killed their own mother."
"Fatal anaphylactic reaction is actually rare," Alice said.
"Half the stuff they told me is even on the list."
"What list?" Alice said. Her voice sounded peculiar. You could give me a check,
though I'd prefer cash kept sliding through her mind.
"The checklist of symptoms of satanic ritual abuse compiled by an after-midnight
radio psychologist who's a nationally recognized authority on the subject. The
list includes but is not limited to preoccupation with feces and death,
questionable acting out, talk of mutilation and dismemberment, and fear of being
normal and cooperative." She ticked them off on her fingers.
"Why, that's just stupid," Alice said.
"You're the one who's stupid, dumbass," the woman said, "thinking I'd pay for
your time. I've got better things to do with my money."
"Jimmy and Jacky misinterpreted my remarks a little," Alice said. It was
probably the hair and submarine emphasis in their background that made them
somewhat wobbly in the comprehension department.
"You'd better watch it," the woman said. "Get away from me." Alice hadn't moved.
"You'd better watch it," she said again, laughing, as she got into the station
wagon. Then she drove away.
A black bird, a phainopepla, rocketed past and alighted on a trembling mesquite
bush. Alice felt that the desert was looking at her, that it kept coming closer,
incuriously. She stared into the distance, seeing it as something ticking,
something about to arrive. A brief, ferocious wind came up and a Styrofoam cup
sailed by and impaled itself upon an ocotillo. She started back toward the
park's entrance, walking not along the road but through the desert itself. Cars
and vans occasionally passed by. Tiny heads were what she saw, behind closed
windows. She walked quickly, sometimes breaking into a run, through the gulleys
and over the rocks, past the strange growths, all living their starved,
difficult lives. Everything had hooks or thorns. Everything was saw-edged and
spiny-pointed. Everything was defensive and fierce and determined to live. She
liked this stuff. It all had a great deal of character. At the same time, it was
here only because it had adapted to the circumstances, the external and extreme
circumstances of its surroundings.
Plants were lucky because when they adapted it wasn't considered a compromise.
It was more difficult for a human being, a girl.
(Continues...)
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The Quick and the Dead