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WE DROVE past Tiny Polskiâs mansion house to the main road, and then the five miles into Northampton, Father talking the whole way about savages and the awfulness of Americaâhow it got turned into a dope-taking, door-locking, ulcerated danger zone of rabid scavengers and criminal millionaires and moral sneaks. And look at the schools. And look at the politicians. And there wasnât a Harvard graduate who could change a flat tire or do ten pushups. And there were people in New York City who lived on pet food, who would kill you for a little loose change. Was that normal? If not, why did anyone put up with it?
âI donât know,â he said, replying to himself. âIâm just thinking out loud.â
Before leaving Hatfield, he had parked the pickup truck on a rise in the road and pointed south.
âHere come the savages,â he said, and up they came, tracking across the fields from a sickle of trees through the gummy drizzling heat-outlines of Polskiâs barns. They were dark and their clothes were rags and some had rags on their heads and others wide-brimmed hats. They were men and boys, a few no older than me, all of them carrying long knives.
Fatherâs finger scared me more than the men did. He was still pointing. The end of his forefinger was missing to the big knuckle, so the finger stump, blunted by stitched skin folds and horribly scarred, could only approximate the right direction.
âWhy do they bother to come here?â he said. âMoney? But how could it be money?â
He seemed to be chewing the questions out of his cigar.
It was mid-morning, already too hot for Massachusetts in May. The valley looked scorched from the dry spring we were having, and the shallow ditches were steaming like fresh cowflap. In the furrows that had been torn from one fieldâs end to the other, only tiny palm plumes of Wonder Corn were showing. Not a single bird twittered here. And the asparagus fields, where the men were headed, were as brown and smooth as if the green scalp of grass had been peeled off and the whole baldness steamrolled.
Father shook his head. He released the brake and spat out of the window. He said, âIt sure as heck isnât money. These days a dollarâs only worth twenty cents.â
Beyond Hatfield and Polskiâs house, and at the top edge of the valley trough, were leafy battlements, some as pale as lemonade froth and others dark bulges and beetle heaps of bush, and stockades of bursting branches that matched my idea of encircling jungle. A few hours before, when we had woken up, the ground had been covered in glitter beads of cold dew. I thought of it as summer ice. I had breathed out clouds of vapor then. There were pouches of cloud in the sky. Now the sun was up high, filling the valley with light and heat that blazed against those men and made them into skinny demons.
Maybe this was the reason that, though I had seen the men beforeâthe savages, in that very place and close enough to notice the way the sun left black bruises on their leather-brown skinâthe sight of them had alarmed me, like Fatherâs finger.
âThis place is a toilet,â he said as we entered Northampton. He wore a baseball cap and drove with his elbow out the window. âItâs not the college girls, though theyâre bad enough. Look at Tugboat Annie over there, the size of her. Sheâs so big it would only take eleven of her kind to make a dozen. But thatâs fatâthatâs not health. Thatâs cheeseburgers.â And he stuck his head out the window and hollered, âThatâs cheeseburgers!â
Down Main Street (âTheyâre all on drugsâ), we passed a Getty station and Father howled at the price of gas. TWO SLAIN IN SHOOTOUT was the sign on a newspaper stand, and he said, âCrapsheets.â Just the word Collectibles, on a storefront, irritated him. And near the hardware store there was a vending machine that sold ice by the bag.
âThey sell iceâten pounds for a half a buck. But waterâs as free as air. Those dingbats are selling water! Waterâs the new growth industry. Mineral water, spring water, sparkling water. Itâs big newsâwaterâs good for you! Low-cal beerâknow whatâs in it? Know why it keeps you thin? Know why it costs more than the regular? Water!â
Father said it in the Yankee way, wattuh.
He cruised around, getting grumpier, until he found a meter with time left on it. Then he parked and we walked back to the hardware store.
âI want a rubber seal, eight feet of it, with foam backing,â Father said, and while the man went to get it, he said, âAnd thatâs probably why gas is so expensive. They put water in it. You donât believe me? If you insist thereâs morality in merchandisingââbut I hadnât said a wordââthen maybe youâd like to explain why two-thirds of government-inspected meat has substantial amounts of cancer-inducing nitrates in it, and junk foodâthis is a proven factâhas no nutritional value whatsoeverââ
The hardware clerk returned with a coil of rubber and handed it to Father, who examined it and gave it back.
âDonât want it,â he said.
âThatâs what you asked for,â the man said.
Father made a pitying face. âWhat are you, working for the Japanese?â
âIf you donât want it, just say so.â
âI just said so, Jack. Itâs made in Japan. I donât want my hardearned bucks turned into foreign exchange for the sons of Nippon. I donât want to bankroll another generation of kamikazes. I want an American length of rubber seal, with foamâDo you work here?â And he cursed, because the man had walked away and begun serving another customer.
Father found the rubber seal he was looking for at a smaller hardware store on a back street, but by the time we got back to the pickup truck he was having fits over what he wished he had said at the first hardware store. âI should have said âSayonara,â I should have made a scene.â
A policeman had his hands clasped over our parking meter, resting on it, with his chin on his fingers, like a goldbricker leaning on a shovel handle. He looked at Father and sort of smiled hello, and then he saw me and chewed his lips.
âShouldnât he be in school?â
âSick,â Father said without breaking his stride.
The policeman followed Father to the door of the pickup and hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and said, âHold on. Why isnât he in bed, then?â
âWith a fungal infection?â
The policeman lowered his head and stared at me across the seat. âGo on, Charlie, show him. He doesnât believe me. Take off your shoe. Give him a whiff.â
I jerked at the laces of my sneakers as the policeman said, âForget it.â
âDonât apologize,â Father said, smiling at the policeman. âPoliteness is a sign of weakness. And thatâs no way to combat crime.â
âYou say something?â The policeman clamped his jaw and hovered. He was very angry. He looked cautious and heavy.
But Father was still smiling. âI was thinking out loud.â
He said nothing more until we were back on the Hatfield road. âWould you really have taken off your shoes and showed that cop your healthy toes?â
âYou asked me to,â I said.
âRight,â he said. âBut what kind of a country is it that turns shoppers into traitors and honest men into liars? No one ever thinks of leaving this country. Charlie, I think of it every day!â
He kept driving.
âAnd Iâm the only one who does, because Iâm the last man!â
âŠ
That was our life here, the farm and the town. Father liked working at Tiny Polskiâs farm, but the town gave him fits. That was why he kept me out of schoolâand Jerry and the twins, too.
Later in the day, fixing a pump by the side of a field, we saw the savages again.
âTheyâre from the jungle. Migrant workers. They didnât know when they were well off. Iâd have traded places with them. They think this is paradise. Should never have come.â
Father had invented the pump for Polski a year ago. It had a sensitized finger prong like a root in the ground, and when the soil dried out, this nerve-wire activated a switch and got the pump going. Father, an inventor, was a perfect genius with anything mechanical. âNine patents,â he liked to say. âSix pending.â He boasted that he had dropped out of Harvard in order to get a good education. He was prouder of his first job as a janitor than his Harvard scholarship. He had invented a mechanical mopâyou held it tight and it jigged across the floor, then squeezed itself dry. Using that mop was like dancing with a headless woman, he said. He called it The Silent Woman. What he liked best was taking things apart, even books, even the Bible. He said the Bible was like an ownerâs guide, a repair manual to an unfinished invention. He also said the Bible was a wilderness. It was one of Fatherâs theories that there were parts of the Bible that no one had ever read, just as there were parts of the world where no one had ever set foot.
âYou think thatâs bad? Itâs anything but. Itâs the empty spaces that will save us. No funny bunnies, no cops, no crooks, no muggers, no glue sniffers, no aerosol bombs. Iâm not lost, like them.â He pointed at the savages. âI know the way out.â
He touched the different parts of the pump with his fingers, like a doctor examining a baby for swellings, and still he talked about empty spaces and savages. I raised my eyes and saw them. They seemed to be creeping straight out of the wilderness he had just described. We watched them making for the upper fields, and though I knew they were only going out to cut more asparagus, they looked as if they were searching for some fingers to chop off.
âThey come from the safest place on earthâCentral America. Know what theyâve got down there? Geothermal energy. All the juice they need is five thousand feet underground. Itâs the earthâs bellybutton. Why do they come here?â
Across the fields they went, the savages, hunched over and flapping. They had huge shoes and tiny tucked-down heads, and as they passed by the woods they scared the crows and started a racket of caws. The birds flew up like black gloves jerked from a line, rising backward and filling out their feathers with each wingbeat.
âNo TV where they come from. No Nipponese video-crapola. Pass me that oil can. Up here, nature is young. But the ecosystem in the tropics is immensely old and hasnât changed since the world began. Why do they think we have the answers? Faithâis that what youâre saying? Is faith just playing âCome to Jesusâ in A-flat?â
He locked the wrench over the threads of the protruding pipe, then poked the spout of the oil can at the pipe joint and squirted. With both hands he freed the pipe, and he sighed.
âNo, sir. Faith is believing in something you know ainât true. Ha!â He put his short finger inside the rusty trickle in the pump housing and pulled out a brass valve and a gush of water.
âYou canât drink the water where those savages originate. Itâs got creatures in it. Worms. Weeds. They havenât got the sense to boil it and purify it. Never heard of filtration. The germs get into their bodies, and they turn green, like the water, and die. The rest of them figure itâs no good thereâspiders big as puppies, mosquitoes, snakes, floods, swamps, alligators. No idea at all about geothermal energy. Why change it when you can come here and go to pieces? Give me the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Have a Coke, watch television, go on welfare, get free money. Turn to crime. Crime pays in this countryâmuggers become pillars of the community. Theyâll all end up mugging and purse snatching.â
The water was now pouring out of the pump, and the inside circuits ticked and measured.
âIâm not going into Northampton again. Itâs too upsetting. Iâm sick of meeting people who want the things Iâve already had and rejected. Iâve had every dollar Iâve ever wanted, Charlie. And donât mention education. That cop this morning was educatedâthat Truant Officerâand all he wants is what they have on TV. I wouldnât send that guy out for sandwiches! Iâve had all thatâwhat people crave. It doesnât work, and itâs irritating to hear it praised ignorantly.â
He grinned at me.
He said, âItâs an imperfect world.â
Now he was grinning at his cut-off finger.
âWhat are the Russians doing while those people are watching TV? Theyâre conducting some very interesting experiments with water. They de-gas it, bubble everything out of it, including oxygen and nitrogen. When theyâve flattened it they seal it up in Mason jars, like preserved peaches. Put it aside for a while. Then, when they use this water on plants, they grow two or three times as fastâbig healthy monsters. Beans climb off their poles, summer squashes like balloons, beets the size of volleyballs.â
He motioned to the water.
âIâm just thinking out loud. What do you think? You figure thereâs something wrong with the rain? Say something.â
I said I did not know.
âFigure someone ought to talk to God about rethinking the weather? I tell you, Charlie, itâs an imperfect world. And Americaâs in gridlock.â
He cupped his hand under the spurting pipe and raised it to his mouth. Then he slurped it. âThis is like champagne to those savages.â
Smacking his lips he made it seem wonderful stuff.
âThings you and I take for granted, like ice. They donât have it in their country. If they saw an ice cube, theyâd probably think it was a diamond or a jewel of some kind. Doesnât seem like the end of the worldâno ice. But think about it. Imagine the kind of problems they have with no proper refrigeration.â
âMaybe they donât have electricity,â I said.
Father said, âOf course they donât. Weâre talking about the jungle, Charlie. But you can have refrigeration without juice. All you need is suction. Start a vacuum going and youâve got refrigeration. Listen, you can get ice out of fire.â
âWhy donât they know that?â
âNo way,â he said. âThatâs what makes them savages.â
He began putting the pump back together.
He said, âMust have all kinds of diseases.â He gestured with his wrench in the direction the men had taken. âThemâtheyâve got diseases.â
He seemed both fascinated and repelled by them, and he communicated these feelings to me, telling me something interesting and then warning me not to be too interested. I had wondered how he knew these things about the men he called savages. He claimed he knew from experience, from living in wild places, among primitive people. He used the word savages with affection, as if he liked them a little for it. In his nature was a respect for wildness....