Butch Karp: Absolute Rage Part 3

Karp himself had never gardened, and as far as he knew, Marlene's vegetable expertise was limited to windowsill herbs and houseplants, but Giancarlo had decided to grow veggies on what seemed to his father an absurdly large scale. He had studied books on the subject and arranged for the rental of a rototiller and talked his brother into helping him break the soil for it. Then he had laid the garden out with mathematical precision, using stakes and strings, and had planted and watered and fertilized and weeded. Now the taut strings were nearly obscured by young growth. Karp had no idea what any of it was, although he thought he recognized young corn. They showed it a lot in the movies.

Giancarlo was in the field with a hoe. He was wearing bib overalls over bare skin, and on his head was a ragged straw hat, once Marlene's. When he saw Karp standing by the wire fence, he stopped, pulled off his hat, wiped his brow theatrically, looked up at the heavens, and said, "Paw, if it don't rain soon, we gonna lose the farm."

"Yes," said Karp, "we'll have to move to the city and live in miserable tenements, but someday your grandchildren will go to college. What're you doing?"

"Hoein'."

"I see you are. Why exactly does one hoe?"

"To rip out the weeds. You can use herbicides, too, but I don't like them. I like hoeing. It's hard work but it's also really like restful. You want to try it?"

"Sure, if you think I can."

"Well, I don't know, Dad, it's totally tricky." The boy grabbed up another hoe from a collection of tools lying by the fence. "You see, the metal part here, that goes down in the dirt, and the wood part, you hold in your hands."

"Met-al? Down?"

Giancarlo giggled. "Sorry, I guess I was going too fast for you there. See, you kind of chop down and then up and pull the weed out roots and all. You have to make sure you rotate your hips and always keep your eye on the weed. Follow through the weed." He demonstrated.

"Got it. Point me at some weeds."

It was restful, Karp found. After half an hour he had taken off his shirt and tied a bandanna around his head and was going down the row of feathery plants with a will, making the dirt fly. At first, his mind was full of the office, and he took out his several frustrations on the dandelions and plantains. Later on, however, these thoughts faded, and he became interested in the hoeing itself, how to lift the weed with a minimum of effort, how to keep a gentle rhythm going. At this stage it was very much like shooting baskets, he was thinking, and he briefly speculated that athletic prowess largely depended on the constant repet.i.tion of acts that were essentially as boring as pigs.h.i.t. Both of the boys were reasonable athletes, but neither was as yet outstanding. They didn't seem impelled to practice in the way he had. Still, it was early for them. He had not pushed them at all yet. Should he? He hated the men he had observed who lived their athletic dreams out through their kids, and though his own athletic dreams had been more or less blasted, he had firmly resolved not to do this to them. He had himself been a high school all-American and a standout in college until he had screwed up his knee. The knee was an artificial one now, an emptiness there that worked well enough when it worked, as now. Gradually even these thoughts faded, replaced by mere sensation: the beat of the sun on his back, the shock of impact in his hands, and the dull burning of friction where he gripped the handle. Mindless work; what he needed.

After an unknowable interval, he stopped to stretch and saw that his wife was standing by the fence, staring at him in wonder.

"I never thought I'd see the day."

"Bring me little water, Sylvie," sang Karp.

"How did he talk you into it?"

"He promised me a quarter of the crop and a peck o' salt. I thought it was a pretty good deal."

"But now you're ready to go to the beach and have a picnic, which your wife has lovingly prepared, despite the urgencies of running a vast and complex enterprise. You look remarkably s.e.xy as a peasant, by the way."

"Mistress like Ivan?" said Karp, throwing down his hoe and advancing on her all sweaty and filthy, and she shrieked and they had a little chase around the garden, while Giancarlo looked on with benign interest, like a faun.

At the beach, they found Rose Heeney and her daughter, and Marlene set up her blanket and establishment adjoining and made the introductions. The boys and Karp ran off to splash around. Marlene looked sympathetically at Lizzie, who was making a good show of pretending that she did not care and rolled her eyes at Rose. "Men!"

Rose's smile in return was weak, and her face showed more strain than it had the previous day. She said, "Lizzie, go off and play with the boys. They have a raft."

"I'd rather stay here."

"No, go. Build a castle, swim. Go ahead."

Lizzie took the hint and wandered off.

"Something wrong?" Marlene inquired.

"Oh . . . yes, as a matter of fact. Red called late last night. He came back from a meeting and found someone had shot Lady, our dog. She was dead in the yard. A big stupid mutt, loved everybody. Completely useless as a guard, of course. Dan used to say she was a reverse watchdog. She barked continuously until a burglar arrived and then she'd shut up and go lick his hand." Rose pulled her sungla.s.ses off and stared out to the water. Marlene saw that her eyes were wet. "Stupid dog. I don't know how I'm going to tell Lizzie. She practically grew up with her."

"Do they think it was a burglar?"

"No. It was some evil son of a b.i.t.c.h working for Weames. Escalating the threat."

"Weames is . . . ?"

"Lester Weames. Red's running against him for the union presidency. The Union of Mining Equipment Operators. Known as UMEO. It's a small outfit, basically covers strip mine operators in three or four states, very Appalachian and totally corrupt. Weames has been in there for eighteen years, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the workers and staying cozy with the mine operators."

"I thought they didn't allow that anymore. I thought the feds came in . . ."

"Well, you thought wrong," said Rose bitterly. "Southern West Virginia is not really that much a part of the US of A when you come down to it. Weames keeps the coal flowing, and the coal keeps the lights turned on and the Internet humming. Yeah, there've been investigations, but he's smart. He lives modestly and he's got a gang of loyalists around him who keep him clean. On the few occasions the feds picked up something, they threw them a couple of small fry and they went back inside the Beltway feeling they did a good day's work. The bottom line is n.o.body much cares, except Red."

"Will he win?"

"Oh, he might get the most votes. Red's real popular among the rank and file. But whether Weames will let him actually take office is a whole other story. His guys count the ballots. It would be better for Weames, though, if Red just forgot about it. That's been suggested in very strong terms."

"Threats?"

"Expressions of displeasure, yeah. Phone calls in the middle of the night. A dead skunk in the mailbox. Tires slashed. Now, Lady . . ." Rose sighed. "That's why I'm spending the summer here with Lizzie, instead of supporting him in McCullensburg, like a good wife. When they started to get rough, I discovered I was easily distinguishable from Mother Jones." A self-deprecating laugh here, but Marlene saw it was eating at her. "He's coming up here next weekend to try to talk me into coming back with him."

"Will he succeed?"

"Oh, I guess. I don't know. It's really confusing. A life of struggle and relative deprivation, that I can deal with. Dead dogs and death threats? I don't know if I can take it. It's a whole different thing, especially with kids."

"Uh-huh, I know what you mean."

Rose looked at her sharply. "Do you?"

"Oh, my, yes indeed," said Marlene fervently.

3.

D ANIEL H EENEY, RUNNING LATE, TOOK THE LAST OPEN SEAT IN THE CAR. The westbound Amtrak out of Boston's South Station was full with a weekend crowd. As he sat, he glanced at the girl sitting across the aisle from him in the way most young men glance at girls on public transportation, in quick appraisal, and the first thing he took in were the legs. They were long, extremely long, too long for Amtrak's mingy accommodations, and she had to park a dozen inches or so of them in the aisle. They were well shaped, too, with slender ankles and bare, all the way from her leather sandals right up to where they vanished into baggy khaki shorts. When people moved past in the aisle, she hiked her knees high, presenting him with an appealing glimpse into the shadowed higher reaches. The rest of her was not so appealing, however. Homely, was his first take. Very short hair, nearly a buzz cut, a big nose, too. She was wearing a black T-shirt with some kind of red design on it, and it hung loose in front. A shame, he thought, nice legs, no t.i.ts, and that face. He pulled a physics text and a yellow highlighter out of his pack and began to study.

When the train stopped at Providence, he became aware of a low muttering coming from across the aisle and he looked up from his book. The girl had equipped herself with a set of headphones, hooked into a tape player sitting on the tray table. The phones were not the flimsy kind that come with tape players, but big, padded Bose jobs with a tiny red LED glowing on the side, which indicated to his experienced eye that they had sound-damping electronics built in. At first he thought she was voicing the words to a song, in the annoying way some people did while using earphones, but as he observed her, it became clear that something else was going on. She had a notebook out and she was writing rapidly in it, occasionally stopping to reverse the tape and repeat a section. Her mumbles seemed to be in a foreign language. Listening to a taped lecture, he thought. And a foreign student, too, probably. The train started again and her mumbling faded against the ambient sounds of the train.

When study at last paled, his gaze moved again from his text to the girl. She had a fat volume on the tray now; it looked like a dictionary. One of her legs was thrown up over the arm of her chair, her sandal hanging loosely on her toes, moving slowly with the motion, like a plumb bob. She seemed completely at ease, oblivious to her surroundings. There was something erotic about studying her he found, like spying through a dorm window. He liked the way the armrest dug into the meat of her thigh, exposing its tender inner skin. The shorts were so baggy, he could see almost up to her crotch. His eyelids twitched with the strain of peripheral visioning.

She looked up just then and he flicked his glance back to physics, to a page of equations whose meaning he had quite forgotten. He felt stared at, and his ears reddened. A minute or so later, he got up and went to the lavatory. His face in the spotted mirror looked even less attractive to him than it usually did. Dan Heeney owned the visage of a rococo cherub: milky skin, red-rose mouth, silky golden curls, the sort of face that was entirely out of fashion in an age that preferred the dangerous, hard-bitten, stubbled look. Although he had found that a certain kind of woman doted on such a face as his, he did not dote in return upon that kind. They reminded him of his mom. He had a taste for the crazy ladies, with the piercings and the spiked hair, but by and large they did not have a taste for him.

He finished, flung open the door, and almost walked right into her. She looked him full in the eye for an instant, made a polite noise, moved past and through to the next car. In the brief encounter, he had time to notice that the geometry of her face changed when seen full on, its strong planes snapping into a configuration that might with justice be called interesting or exotic rather than homely, more like the faces of the women who get to be stars in foreign films. Her mouth was wide, with full, slightly everted lips that seemed to balance the prow of the nose. Mainly he noticed the eyes. They were the palest possible brown, with yellow lights in them, just the color of cigarette tobacco.

These observations flashed through his mind in a moment and stimulated only the faintest curiosity, and little interest. She was, after all, just a face on the train, probably going to New York or D.C., probably a foreigner. He went back to his book and to the Fitzgerald contraction, its fascinating mathematics and its cosmological implications, none of which had to do with girls on trains, unless they were traveling at speeds approaching c.

But she was not going to the City, it turned out. She got off at New London as he did and took the shuttle to the ferry dock, boarding the Sea Jet along with him. He took a window seat, where he watched the shining Sound bounce along for forty-five minutes, his mind occupied with the various fears and hopes attendant on a family reunion in a family with some history of discord, and recent additional stress. Still, he was oddly aware of her presence on the craft, like an itching spot on his spine just beyond reach.

When the hydrofoil docked at Orient Point, Long Island, he found himself a few feet behind her, amid the crowd of debarking pa.s.sengers, moving with their luggage to cabs and other vehicles jockeying into the curb. She had a soft cloth suitcase at her feet, and a military bag hung off one thin shoulder. The design on her shirt he now saw was Chinese calligraphy. He thought, I should ask her what it means, or make something up. You will meet a redheaded stranger who will change your life. The foreignness put him off, however. What if she spoke broken English, or none at all? No, she had a Boston College b.u.t.ton on that bag, so a student there, so she had to speak English. Him being MIT would impress a BC girl. Or maybe not, given the nerdy rep. What was a foreign girl doing at the tail of Long Island on a summer weekend? An au pair, maybe, or an exchange student. He would never know, unless she happened to drop something and he picked it up. Maybe she would take the bus to Southold, in which case he would grab a seat next to her and say something. Maybe she was European, lonely, of casual European morals, looking for love. . . .

In the meantime he stared at the legs, at the way she stood on one of them and slowly rubbed the crown of her foot against the back of her calf. He rehea.r.s.ed pickup lines. Come here often? What's your major? Are you Polish? French? I couldn't help noticing your . . . I couldn't help noticing your legs. Do you think you would ever let me chew on them, like you do on a spicy Buffalo wing?

Too late. A red pickup truck had honked from across the street. In the back of the truck were two boys waving and shouting, and also an immense, black, slavering dog. Two women were in the cab. The girl waved, grabbed her bag, ran across to the driver's side, spoke briefly to the driver, and then jumped up into the bed of the truck. Which oddly enough did not move away, but honked again. He looked up. The woman in the pa.s.senger seat was calling his name and waving. To his immense surprise (together with a little jolt of pleasure, which followed soon after) he recognized his mother. He crossed the street, where he observed that his sister, Lizzie, was also sitting in the front seat. A quick kiss, a brief explanation, and he found himself in the rear of the truck, being drooled on by the dog, with his knees within inches of hers. The boys stared at him shamelessly. Twins, he noted.

"Small world," he said.

She grinned, showing small, even white teeth. "That's what they say." She stuck out her hand. "Lucy Karp. These three are Zak, Giancarlo, and Gog."

"Gog is the dog," said Giancarlo. "You can tell him from Zak because Zak doesn't drool as much." A brief flurry of friendly punches and nuggies, to which Lucy put an authoritative, physical halt.

"They know they're not supposed to do that in the truck," she said, sitting again. "Who are you, by the way? I saw you on the train and the ferry."

"Did you think I was following you with evil intent?"

"No. You don't look like the following kind. Or evil."

This was said in a flat tone that did not invite banter. Deflated a little, Dan introduced himself, and they spent the rest of the short trip exchanging information. After the usual school and job stuff, he asked, "What were you doing with the headphones on the train?"

"Translating. A speech by the Polish finance minister into French."

"You can translate Polish into French?" he asked, not keeping amazement from his tone.

"Yes, and if you think that's impressive, I can also crack my toes." She demonstrated.

"No, really . . ."

"She can speak fifty-seven languages," said Giancarlo.

"My agent," she said. "And a lie." To the boy: "How's the garden coming?"

The boy told her, at length, interrupted from time to time by interjections from his brother on the subject of suppressing vermin.

From time to time she looked at Dan, to draw him into the family chatter, but not too far. A strange bird was his thought. Clearly some kind of genius but diffident about it, used to keeping it under wraps. He wondered what the real girl was like.

"Ah, the ancestral mansion," Dan exclaimed as they pulled into the drive. It was a large, two-story, brick house, painted white long ago, with the brick underneath showing pinkly through. The paint on the green shutters was peeling off in strips, and the lawn was high and ragged. Weeds thrust up from the gravel drive.

"Your ancestors need a lawn mower," Lucy said.

"My ancestors have gone to their ancestors, leaving debts and not much else. The place is in hock. My mom has the use of it for her lifetime, if she can pay the taxes and maintenance, which she can't, so it's up for sale."

Everyone left the truck and there were more introductions. Rose Heeney led them all around the side of the house and into a huge kitchen, where she served out sodas and iced tea to all. Rose announced that her husband and her elder son were coming in that Friday, and she invited the Karps to join them in a beach cookout.

"Why not," agreed Marlene. "Butch will be here, too. You'll get to meet him."

At this juncture, Giancarlo, who had wandered out, came back in and asked, "How come you have no furniture? Are you moving in?"

"Out, I'm afraid, dear," said Rose. "We have to entertain in the kitchen like the peasantry. It's the only inhabitable room in the house besides the bedrooms." The furnishings in the remainder, she explained, had all been sold off or taken by Rose and her brothers after their parents' death. "It's terribly d.i.c.kensian, or maybe Chekhovian, I don't know which. The decay of a distinguished old family. The Wickhams settled here in 1741." She added to Marlene, "I'm sure you'll want to hear all about them."

"You will even if you don't," said Dan.

"That's his father talking," Rose said. "I'm not allowed to be a bourgeois oppressor of the poor even for one tiny instant."

An uncomfortable pause here, which Marlene ended with a remark about how pretty the house was, after which Rose suggested a tour. Dan said to Lucy, "I'll show you around the grounds. It's included in the package. You also get a brochure printed on recycled paper and a handy souvenir key chain."

"Keep an eye on the children," said Marlene, "and take Gog," at which Lucy made a mumbled agreement and said, "Let's go, brats!"

Lucy and Dan left the house through the empty front rooms, preceded by the three children running with the dog, their footsteps echoing loud on the hardwood. They walked across the sketchy lawn to a low stone pumphouse. The boys and Lizzie ran into it and emerged with sc.r.a.ps of lath, pirate swords. Dueling and shouting, they ran off toward the dunes.

"Now this pumphouse is where George Washington and John Adams planned the American Revolution," said Dan.

"Really? Gosh, it doesn't look big enough."

"Yeah, it fooled the redcoats, too. This is the place. We used to have a plaque but the birds got to it. And I believe this"-here Dan kicked at a weathered b.u.t.t-"is one of the cigarettes Jefferson smoked while he was writing the Declaration. Our home is indeed rich in history."

"I'll say! Why, compared to your ancientness, my family is just off the boat. And those dunes! Why they look just like the ones Columbus landed on . . . but . . . but, that's impossible."

"No, those are the very ones," said Dan in a plummy voice. "Let's explore among them. Who knows? Maybe we can find important artifacts of white imperialist hegemony."

They went up through the line of low dunes and sat down with their backs against the warm sand. Below, the three children raced in circles with the dog. Their screaming came back in s.n.a.t.c.hes on the sea wind. They goofed some more about historical obsessions, about the scene in Boston, about their school life. Lucy mentioned that she had often been at MIT.

"Taking courses?" he asked.

"Oh, right-I can barely do fractions. No, I have sort of a job with the computational linguistics people. They pay me to inspect my brain."

"You're kidding."

She had an urge to say yes. She did not want to interrupt in any way this unexpected pleasure, sitting here on the dunes with a luscious boy who did not seem afraid of her-not of her height or of her face or of her other peculiarities. Of course, he did not know about those yet. For an instant, she was aware of an intense desire to be someone else, before she said, "No, I'm not. I'm a language prodigy. My brain is a national resource."

"Like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?"

"Except smaller. What kind of prodigy are you?"

"Oh, you know, the usual MIT c.r.a.p-grades, boards, Intel Scholarship. Except I come from West Virginia and I'm not Asian." A little bitterness here, she thought. She didn't know anything about West Virginia. Coal? Hillbillies? That song. It must not have been fun growing up a nerdy, pretty boy in a rural high school.

"So . . . are you going back to Boston?" she asked.

"I don't know. I have a job up there if I want it, you know what I mean, just computer s.h.i.t, but it pays. I kind of like the idea of kicking back here for a while. I mean I've been working my b.u.t.t off this year."

That was interesting, she thought: his accent was drifting from middle American to something more regional. This yee-a. Y'know whut a mean. He's relaxing a hair.

She said, "So? Kick back."

"Can't do it. I need the money. And if I'm not working, he's going to want me to go back home. My father." Dan looked blankly out at the Sound. "We all have to support the struggles of the working folks."