Chapter 1 #14
Not long after, the new administration changed tack, decided to double down on the more traditional, time-tested energy strategy (sensible decision there), withdraw from that Kyoto debacle.
The EPA head (bit of a greenie), feeling ignored, resigned in protest. Rory “Red” Randall (“our” lobbyist, sure, but also a damn fine scientist) urged the new administration to shit-can Mick Watson, chair of the (as Red called it) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Crap.
And Watson, perceived to be standing in the way of the more robust approach favored by the vice president (a good friend to this day, by the way), got, guess what?
Shit-canned. Two other greenies with hostile agendas, Sprunt and Briley, holdovers from the previous administration, left the IPCC on their own, under pressure, almost as if—now, this was just his interpretation, mind you—the scales had fallen from the eyes of those running the country.
They’d seen the light, reversed course.
And the course had stayed reversed to this very day.
Because of that speech.
Best part? It gave his enemies fits. Threw them into absolute conniptions. Lord, what a hoot. Some Luddite idiot had characterized it as “one of the most irresponsible speeches any American has ever delivered.”
Ha.
What a hyperbolic statement.
Those were the kinds of idiots he’d had to constantly be fending off.
As for the folks on his side (the free-market side, the pro-progress side), if they’d found some value in it?
Having seen it as a road map, a blueprint, a much-needed, long-overdue bit of pushback to those who preferred to yell halt at anyone actually trying to do a thing instead of just ignorantly yapping about it?
The knee-jerk objectors, the panty twisters, the doom sobbers?
He’d take that.
He was proud of it.
Took cojones to speak a difficult truth.
To wade in against the prevailing tide.
The pain that had tormented him all evening had slightly receded in the face of these happy memories.
That was Aarhus? I said.
I can’t believe you never heard of it, he said. Where’d you live? Under a rock? How old were you? When you croaked? A newborn?
Frankness on my part might sometimes encourage a corresponding frankness on the part of my charge.
Twenty-two, I said. Indiana.
Married? he said. Kids?
Yes, I said. No.
What’d you do? he said. For work?
Phone operator, I said. Waitressed a little.
Ever go anywhere? he said. Other than Indiana?
Ohio once, I said. They had the state fair over there.
How? he said. How’d you go?
Drove, I said.
No, how’d you die, dummy, he said.
Got blown up, I said.
Like, exploded? he said. Hoo boy. There’s one you don’t hear every day. Blown up. In Indiana.
Yes, I said.
By? he said.
Enemy of my husband’s, I said. By mistake.
Hold on, he said. You got blown up by mistake? By some enemy of your—He thought he was blowing up hubby and got you instead?
Correct, I said.
I waited for the cruel joke that must be forthcoming.
But his mind had drifted back to Dell.
Because he found me dull.
He’d gotten a strange letter from Dell a few years back.
Seemed Dell regretted having been involved with that Aarhus speech.
Called it “deceptive, cynical, anti-truth, sly.” “Vicious, in its way.” Well, that turkey’d had no objections at the time.
He’d be there fifteen minutes early, big shit-eating grin on his mug, pencils all sharpened.
Goddamned eager beaver. Used to send a Christmas card every year.
Always, somewhere on there, he’d have found a place to write “MindMeld.” In his weird hippie calligraphy.
Dell’d been all-in. At the time. “Even if this theory’s correct, twenty years won’t make a bit of difference.
” That was Dell’s. “The world has actually, over the last fifteen years, grown colder, not warmer.” It was Dell cherry-picked that zinger.
A year or so later, Dell had the nerve to call the house, leave a message.
Crazy, rude message. Seemed like he might be having mental issues.
He’d always been high-strung. Once he’d told a whole kickoff meeting what it was like to get a coffee high colonic.
Advised the whole room to get one asap. Used to wear these weird ties, with cow faces on them.
He had, like, six different cow-faced ties.
At the time of the call, Dell had been retired for three or four years and had moved to Oregon or some such.
Then here was his voice, on their machine.
Hello, motherfucker, cocksucker! Dell shouted.
Outrageous.
Viv’s eyes went so wide.
What was Dell, drunk? On top of being mental?
Bastard, punk, shyster, wielder of bad influence through your loathsome wry charisma!
Dell ranted on. I was so puffed up! With pride!
How I bragged! At the club! About my proximity!
To you! Proud of the many clever concealments, distortions, and misrepresentations we cooked up, as we attempted to craft a “less negative take,” to “gain some breathing room for this essential industry we all love” and “push back against the hyperbole” regarding “this whole gosh-darned issue”!
He’d raced across the room, picked up the phone.
What are you doing, Ed? he said, almost tenderly. What do you want?
I want you to go back in time and get someone else to help you write that piece of shit, Dell said.
Well, I’m good, Ed, said my charge. But I’m not that good.
The whole thing makes me sick, Dell said. To think that that’s what I did with my life, with my talent.
Your talent, my charge thought. Ha. Oh, boy.
We sinned, brother, Dell said. Against the world, against God.
In the face of this hollow sanctimony, my charge felt an urge to twist the knife.
Well, I never could’ve done it without you, Ed, he said. Truly. That speech was more yours than mine. For sure. One hundred percent.
In response, Dell emitted this pathetic little yelp of—what?
Despair?
Agony?
Butt-hurt?
Then hung up.
So that had been fun.
Sometime later Dell moved down to Mexico, got addicted to something, tried and failed to hang himself.
Sad, I said.
Not sad, he said. Pathetic. A bottom dweller has one bright, shining moment and can’t help shit the bed about it.
Lovely, I said.
My charge’s wife swept in, set some clean towels on the love seat, went rushing back out again.
The stacked towels toppled off the love seat.
All but one.
The fallen towels landed in a heap of plastic detritus from his various medications, near a set of fresh, folded pajamas, which he now would never wear, and a stack of books he now would never read.
Everything in the room was touched with the chaos that disrupted the operating energy of a household at such a time and showed that, all along, the appearance of control had been an illusion.
From somewhere down below came the shrill repetitive shrieking one of our ilk will emit when wishing to attract to themselves another of our ilk for urgent consultation.
A sound it is not within our power to ignore.
—
I sank through the floor into the kitchen.
The cry was sounding from somewhere below that.
I sank through the kitchen floor into the basement.
The cry was sounding from somewhere below that.
I sank through the foundation into the underlying soil, past a rotted wood beam from an ancient barn, half a wagon wheel, a cluster of three cow skulls, and a writhing closet-sized mass of living worms, which, as I passed, came alive with awareness of my presence.
And there found the source of the cry:
A spindly old woman with a shriveled, apple-like face, in a rocking chair lying on its side, there deep within the earth.
He sent me to ask two things, she said.
Who did? I said.
Spoke foreign, she said.
French? I said.
Coulda been, she said. How about set me up?
I set the chair upright.
That’s better, she said. What they done to my cabin? This aren’t it.
You’re dead, I said.
Think I don’t know it? she said. I hurtled over here.
Through space. From where I was. From where they put me.
In the graveyard, in Arkansas. Was taking my rest there.
I’m always on the run but sometimes I go back for a rest. On my grave.
But then that foreign feller showed up. Said I should come here and ask you two things. First was: Are you ready?
For what? I said.
How should I know? she said. I’m just an old former weaver-lady in a rocker. As you can plainly see. Who died the day the big war ended. And missed every damn parade about it. But I’ll tell you a secret. If you lean in. Lean in, girlie.
I leaned in.
All them years, of my marriage to Joe? she said.
And winked, and spread her legs apart, then closed them, then opened them up again.
That’s right, she said. Any and all takers.
If they was handsome enough, nice enough.
Tell the truth, didn’t have to even be all that handsome.
Just nice. That’s why I’m still afoot. Supposed to be looking for Joe, to say sorry.
But I ain’t. Ain’t looking, ain’t sorry.
So there. So be it. I’m happy enough. With my memories.
That mean little ogre, I did him dirty again and again, but he did me dirty again and again.
The taking of me by force, I mean. And when he passed? I never came near his stink.
Good Lord, I thought.
Taken by force?
By her own husband?
Got to where he only got me when he made me, she said. And then I started scratching and a-biting.
Lucky me, to have been loved by a man as gentle as Lloyd.
It was cool and dark there below the surface of the earth and dim celebratory sounds drifted down from the wedding, making me vulnerable to certain recollections.
Such as: