Desire Provoked

Part One

CARTER, Adams’ boss, has developed a lively system for recognizing merit. Some years ago he returned from a holiday in South America with several insects in a box. They had been treated with a mixture of South American tree saps and preserved in cotton. Though they resembled common tree roaches, these were, Carter assured his associates, intelligent creatures: platula, a species domesticated for over five centuries by the Indians. Native to Peruvian rain forests, the bugs were originally attracted to the aroma of the Indians’ pipes. They would crawl onto smokers’ shoulders and perch there like parakeets. “The relationship of certain South American Indians and their insects parallels that of the American Indian and his dog,” Carter said. When a favorite insect died, it was coated with tree sap and worn around the neck on a string.

Carter bronzed the bugs and made them into pins. He decided to collect insects wherever he went: Carausius morosus from Asia, Bellicostermes from

Africa, Glossina from Saudi Arabia. He had them dipped in bronze, silver, and gold, like Olympic medals, and distributed them to his employees as merit badges. A five-year man received a bronze Dolichorespula Saxonia. Ten years earned a silver Polistes bimaculatus. The Buthus, Orb spider, and Ixodes ricinus were bonus pins. At first the employees of On-Line Information Systems reacted with distaste, but when it became apparent that Carter set store by the bugs, the pins gained value within the corporate structure.

Adams has more bugs than his peers. At work he wears the Ixodes on his lapel. Before leaving the office at night he carefully removes it from his coat and drops it in his pocket.

“Some decisions, Sam, I need to make without you,” his wife insists. Pamela is beautifully pale, Pennsylvania Dutch, a strict guardian of her youthful health and happiness. Her father, a Lutheran minister, told her nightly end-of-the-world stories when he tucked her into bed; she’s fond of overstatement. Often she refers to the topography of her body, the scale of her emotions, and the basin of depression in which Adams has placed her.

Last week, in a long-meditated move, she left with the kids and their fabulous toys.

“An investor and a father, who am I to say whether running from our wives is the problem, a result of the problem, or a symptom of some larger ill,” Adams writes his younger brother. Kenny is a session drummer in Burbank. “All I know is, we are collectively bored, we’re not in love — we’re no longer interested, here, in the pretense of love. Whether this makes us more or less civilized than other men is not for me to say.

“Our wives’ reactions have been standard. They claim that our defections are standard. In a way, our behavior has been entirely predictable. The violence of our daughters, of course, is something none of us could’ve foreseen.

“One positive note: to combat boredom we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on the job. Some marvelous work has resulted. The artists among us have been particularly successful. Last night in the town square a local acting troupe presented a charming skit, ‘The Return of the Black Death,’ in costumes entirely fashioned out of cereal boxes.”

Within days of moving into the new house with their mother, the kids have accidents. First a hot-water heater in the pantry ruptures, a small hole at the bottom scalding Toby’s calf. Then Deidre burns her eyebrows lighting the oven. “I was teaching her to help me in the kitchen,” Pamela tells Adams. “I didn’t know she’d already turned on the gas.”

Sometimes after sunset boys light fireworks in the field behind his house. Rockets glide through the grass. The boys scatter when Adams comes to the window, though he doesn’t mean to frighten them. He remembers the field he played in as a kid (Red Cloud, Nebraska, geographical center of the nation, latitude forty degrees) and enjoys the fragmenting colors. On cool evenings, as the frogs chirp, he stands with a glass of Scotch at the screen door, imagining the miles between his home here in Elgin and the house where he was born. He has never mapped that particular stretch of Nebraska — faded Indian trails, mistletoe high in the trees, a thin pitted blacktop.

Tonight, an unusually warm night in March, he is naked in the dark. He pours himself a Scotch, then opens a package of Rainbo Rolls. From the kitchen window he glimpses a man in a dark blue suit standing in the shadows at the gate. Looking closely, Adams believes it to be young Jordan from the Records Office. Tall, blond, large head and hands. Pamela once remarked at a party that Jordan would be a nice-looking man if he’d cut his hair.

What is he doing in Adams’ backyard?

Adams buckles his pants and steps outside. A heavy mist is falling. Hair prickles on his chest. He is not at all sure, now, that this man is Jordan. Too much paunch.

“Who’s there?” he calls, switching on the outside light. “Who is it?” In the time it takes his eyes to adjust to the glare the man is gone. Adams, barefooted, steps onto the grass, touching the barbecue pit as he pauses to look around. Charcoal blackens his fingers. His feet are cold. He returns to the house, straightens the half-finished map on his table, and picks up a pen. Sketching farm roads and freeways has always helped him calm down.

Pamela phones. “I told my parents, Sam. There didn’t seem to be any sense keeping it a secret any longer.”

“How’d they take it?”

“They were shocked, naturally. Wanted to blame you for everything. I told them that wasn’t fair.” “Thank you.”

“I tried, Sam, God knows I tried. Didn’t I try, Sam?”

“Yes. What can I say?”

Pamela hangs up.

He turns on the television. Lee Trevino misses a putt. Adams turns it off. He walks into the bathroom, smooths the top of his head in the mirror. He is fair-skinned, with slightly reddish-brown hair. Small shoulders.

He calls Pamela back. “Why don’t you stop this and come home?” he says.

“I was thinking of talking to a lawyer.”

“What about?”

“Irreconcilable differences.”

“The only difference is you’re lost and I’m not.” Immediately he apologizes, to keep her on the line. He mentions the stranger in his yard.

“Can you pick Deidre up at dance class?” “All right.”

At six he drops by the studio. Deidre’s flushed from the workout, her hair is damp.

“How’s my room,” she asks.

“Just as you left it.”

“Good.” She’s eight years old and thinks she’s on vacation. His son, Toby, who is twelve, seems to have grasped matters, though he’s been temperamental since he was ten and doesn’t offer his thoughts.

Deidre is silent for two blocks. Then: “I want everything to be perfect.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know.”

“Tell me.”

“When I come back.”

“Ah.” What has Pamela promised? “Does your mother say you’ll be coming back soon?”

Deidre doesn’t answer.

“Well,” Adams says, rubbing the back of her neck. “Everything will be perfect. We’ll see to it.”

“Daddy, what do you do?”

“What do I do?”

“At home. By yourself.”

“Oh. Well. Let’s see. I watch television.”

“Good,” she says. “That’s good.”

They have a night-light in the shape of a bear. It gives them strength — he hears it in their voices when they call. They roar on the telephone, fraying the lines between their mother’s house and his, over stretches of debits and credits. When he drives past their house at night, the porch light sears him to the bone. His tires go bald. He belongs on the other side of that light, a scarecrow guarding his children’s sleep. At home he replaces a burnt-out kitchen bulb. It illuminates things no longer there: a safe-deposit box, a bottle of Old Charter, a gold dish where Pamela placed her rings before washing the plates after dinner.

Their first child, Alan, died in the hospital after three hard days. He was premature, small as a shoe. Adams stood at the nursery window urging his son to hold on, but the little lungs couldn’t do it, Alan turned blue, the nurses wheeled him away. Adams sat in an old green chair in the waiting room, no longer a father. Leave It to Beaver played on a Magnavox TV on a shelf near the ceiling.

Pamela closed her eyes when Adams told her about the baby. The birth had been difficult and she was still exhausted. The room was yellow, square, pungent with alcohol and talcum. The sun was taking a long time to set and Adams was hot in his long-sleeved shirt, his face felt oily. He kissed Pamela’s fingers, she stroked the soft skin above his lip. “It’s okay,” he whispered into her hand.

Later, once she was asleep, Adams rode the elevator. He paced each floor of the hospital, one after the other. Families waited on their doctors. Nurses came and wheeled people away.

Pavarotti is singing “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca. The large mole on the left side of his face somehow looks attractive, riding the crook of his beard. In his right hand he holds a white handkerchief; so far he has done nothing with it. When he raises his head, eyes brimming with tears, Adams is moved, but his attention is continually drawn to either the handkerchief or the mole.

Meanwhile, the chicken breasts on Adams’ cutting board are drying out. They’ve been there since five, when he turned on the television. He goes into the kitchen, pulls chili powder and cumin from the spice rack, then spreads parsley in the bottom of a dish to make a bed for the chicken. He butters the chicken and lays the pieces in a pleasant pattern on the parsley.

Pamela seems to have taken the cilantro.

Returning to the living room, he is in time to see Pavarotti bow. The handkerchief swings from his fingers.

Someone taps on Adams’ door. It’s the Reverend Sister Rosa, a fortune-teller from down the block. “Hi,” she says, adjusting a thin black shawl on her shoulders. “I wanted everyone in the neighborhood to know I’m giving a group discount on Tarot readings. Wednesday nights. If you come with a friend, it’s half off for you and free for the friend. I’ll also have complimentary cheese and coffee.”

“Thanks very much,” Adams says. “But I have a standing engagement on Wednesday nights. I play at a little dance club.”

“Oh, well, too bad.” Rosa sniffs. “You’ve just sprayed your house? I need to spray mine.”

“That’s the chicken,” Adams says.

She gives him a curious look. “I miss those little munchkins of yours. Haven’t seen them lately.”

“My wife left a couple of weeks ago. The kids are staying with her.”

“Vacation?”

“No, we separated.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” She fumbles with her shawl. “You know, I could give you a private reading anytime you’d like. Find out when you’ll be lucky in love.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“See you.”

“Good-bye.”

She walks next door and rings the doorbell.

Adams removes the chicken from the oven, wraps it in foil, and places it in the refrigerator.

Pete and Denny have worked up a new song — Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” They are teaching Bob the chords when Adams arrives. Adams sets up, fills in a standard beat, then adds a few flourishes as he becomes familiar with the breaks. He is still sore from helping Pamela move.

Denny, their lead vocalist, is no King of Soul but he’s funky, and Bob decides to include the new song in the final set.

Morty’s Place is crowded on Wednesdays because Morty serves beer and wine to minors between ten and midnight. “Only on Wednesdays, and only if you’re as discreet about it as I am,” he tells the teenagers. He’s on good terms with the sheriff and in no danger of losing his license. The band begins at nine. Other bands play throughout the week, so Adams has to store his drums in a back room.

Together he and Kenny wore out three copies of Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” featuring rockin’ sockin’ Earl Palmer, when they were young. They played along with the record after school almost every day. Kenny had magic in his wrists. He taped their mother’s Kotex to his tom-toms to get the sound he wanted. Adams played for enjoyment.

The songs become routine after a while, guitarists and vocalists get the spotlight — it’s the positioning of the drums on stage, the tightening of the wing nuts, the tuning, the anticipation that gives him the pleasant edge he needs to perform well. He adjusts the ride cymbals, tightens his snare, loosens the head on the floor tom. Temperature variations inevitably cause the drums to slip out of tune, and he spends a solid hour tapping the tight heads, ears close to his fingers, searching for the right sounds with the drum key. He lays three extra pairs of sticks, 9A (thin), beside the bass drum. Brushes and soft mallets he keeps on an old music stand behind his leather stool, known in the trade as a drummer’s throne.

The drums sparkle dark blue. He bought the set two years ago with extra money he earned mapping the sea floor off Japan. It was his last international assignment.

Bob, the bassist, sells Lincoln-Mercuries. He is Adams’ dealer. Through him, Adams met the other members of the band: Pete, a radio newsman who idolizes Les Paul, and Denny, a local jeweler who likes to flash his rings while sawing on rhythm guitar. For a year they practiced in Bob’s basement; then, billing themselves simply as the “Bob Parke Combo,” auditioned for Morty. In those days Adams still had his first set, which he’d put together over a period of years, buying used drums whenever he could afford them: A Ludwig snare, a Slingerland bass drum, a Gretsch tom-tom. With the purchase of his first Zild-jian cymbal, the top of the line, he felt versatile and whole.

Pamela had infinite patience with his music when they first started dating at the University of Nebraska. At the time he was trying to make an Indian tom-tom from aspen wood and cowhide. In studying ancient maps he had run across Chippewa drums, whose heads were painted to represent the world. On his strip of cowhide he drew a pattern in which the edge represented the ocean, the bisecting lines the fields of the earth, the drapery a battery of storm clouds, the jagged lines lightning, and the spots below thunder. It was one of his earliest maps.

For the Chippewa, the drum had the power of both thunder and the heartbeat. For Adams, it held only frustration; he was unable to carve the wood to his liking. Pamela tried to help, but was no more skilled than he. At night he played with a jazz trio at a coffee house near campus. Each weekend Pamela came to listen, ordering cup after cup of cappuccino. The same songs every Saturday, but she never seemed to sour.

They tune for twenty minutes, order drinks, then with a kickbeat Adams propels them into the blues. Soon they are galloping to Merle Haggard — Bob does a “cowboy shift” in the middle of the song, from C to C sharp, signaling Adams he wants to run with this awhile, and they jam for fifteen minutes. By this time the club is packed — middle-aged men, mostly, still in their business suits, though a number of teenaged girls twist around the dance floor.

Some nights Adams leaves the club exhausted. On other nights he doesn’t want to stop. There’s no accounting for it. Whether the band is up or not has nothing to do with his own physical reaction to the music. He can feel bored when they’re playing well, excited when they’re sloppy. Tonight, when the final set ends, just after two, he’s wide awake, hungry, talkative. So is Pete, so they go for breakfast at Adele’s, an all-night diner.

“I’ll be shit on the air tomorrow,” Pete says. He has a six A.M. news broadcast. “Every morning it’s Nicaragua, Nicaragua. I can’t even say Nicaragua till about noon.”

Adams orders orange juice and pancakes. He remembers the chicken in his refrigerator. At three o’clock, when he finally reaches home, Jordan is standing in his yard. Adams calls the police. “I’m sorry, sir,” the sergeant says. “You’re out of our jurisdiction.”

Adams argues that his neighborhood is well within the city limits. The sergeant insists that county records are unclear. By now the man has disappeared.

Deidre answers the door and leaps into his arms, her hands gummy with peach ice cream. “Can we go to a movie, Daddy?”

“If you want to,” he says, kissing her sticky cheek.

Pamela is dressed to go out. “There’s an opening tonight at Cyndi’s gallery,” she says. “She may be interested in showing my photographs. A friend’s picking me up.”

Adams does not mistake the tone of her voice. She’s seeing a man. As if unsure of his footing, he walks slowly back to the car holding Deidre in his arms.

He treats the kids to hamburgers and Raiders of the Lost Ark. At home, he clears dirty dishes from the coffee table and newspapers from the couch so they can watch TV. He brings them milk.

“Daddy, how old are you?” Deidre asks.

“Forty-one.”

“Is that old?”

“Not too.”

“Are you older than Mom?”

“She’s thirty-eight.”

“Is that old?”

“Horribly old. Your mother continues to astonish scientists.”

While they’re occupied, he carefully searches the backyard, first from the kitchen window, then from the porch. Nothing. He steps into the yard, over leaves he hasn’t raked since fall, circles the barbecue pit and the tree, and returns to the house. The kids have fallen asleep.

He awakes to the smell of something burning, runs to the kitchen, and finds Toby holding a stack of mail over the right-front burner of the stove.

“What’re you doing,” Adams asks.

Toby turns off the stove and tosses the charred envelopes onto the kitchen table. “You didn’t open them,” he says.

“Get dressed,” Adams tells him. “Wake your sister for me.”

He drops Toby and Deidre off at their house. “I’m late.” He kisses Pamela’s cheek — habit — and she steps back. They smile at each other, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says.

On the wall above his desk Carter has a plaque, a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “No duty the executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.”

He introduces Adams to Richard Feldstein, an IBM rep. Feldstein is a short man, thin, with thick black glasses.

“Sam, I’ve asked Dick to speak to our core group. As you know, we’re bringing some hardware in later this month and I want to prepare everyone for the changes.”

“Do you have any experience with computerassisted cartography,” Feldstein asks.

“Limited,” Adams says.

“Usually we encounter a little resistance at first. People aren’t used to computers, they’re intimidated, and so on. I want to assure you that your job will be much easier with our equipment.”

“We’ll allot small amounts of computer time to anyone who wants it,” Carter says. “Of course, since you’ll be doing special projects for me, you’ll have greater access to the software, hmm?”

Adams nods.

“We’re providing firm resolution flatbed plotters which will give you approximately 1/25,000 resolution on any surface area,” Feldstein explains. “Our power of resolution exceeds data currency at this point, but you’ll be prepared when new data becomes available.”

“What all this means, Sam, is that you’ll be freed from map-making tasks,” Carter says. “You’ll have time to select the best techniques. Your decisions, stored in the computer, will be more easily defensible. If a map design is flawed, it can be changed at the last minute.”

“Our new products include video displays, controls to rotate, distend, or manipulate maps in various manners, as well as synchronized real-time displays,” Feldstein says. “The possibilities are astounding. You could provide the medical community with, say, a map of the brain.”

“How does it sound, Sam?” Carter asks.

“Terrific. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Good. Stop by my office tomorrow morning. I’ve got a new project for you.”

The children have a secret — a whistle deep in their throats. They’ll use it against him when he comes to get them, he’ll have to be taken away. Of course it’s his whistle. He gave it to them when he let them have his eyes, nose, chin. It is the whistle his father passed on to him, warning, “Don’t blow on it unless you’re in terrible trouble. It’s a horrible thing that happens when you blow on it. First, a big old hound — he’d be black if you could see him, but no one can see him — leaps on your enemy’s neck. Then eleven pairs of white-gloved hands reach out of the air and drag him away by the head. The main thing is, never never use it against people you love. Okay?”

And he didn’t, but now his children have the whistle and they’re angry. He can see it in the way they whisper together, hands on hips. He’s come to take them for the evening, away from their mother, the box of broken crayons, the houseful of lost buttons, they don’t like it, they don’t want to go, not tonight, we want to watch TV, not now, we’re warning you. They advance toward him, menacing, he reaches for the door. Too late, they’ve sounded the alarm. Hot breath on his neck. Tell us why, tell us why! the children shout. Eleven pairs of white-gloved hands pin him to the floor.

“Sam,” says Carter, “I want you to research twenty-three hundred acres of land in northern Elgin County. The Deerbridge Road area.” He offers Adams a Styrofoam cup full of coffee. “Keep this under wraps, but we’ve got a hell of a real estate deal in the works. I want to know who owns that land and how much they paid for it. Then I’ll ask you to draw a map.”

He explains in broad terms that On-Line wants to develop northern Elgin County for farm production.

Is it a conflict of interest for a cartographic outfit to buy real estate?

“Use the new hardware. And keep in mind, this is an important project for me personally, hmm?”

In the elevator after work, or in the car, invisible fragrant skin rubs against him, a gift of his thoughts. You are a capable man, he tells himself, deserving of rich rewards. If called upon, you could design a more perfect union, or plan a covert action pleasing to all races (especially the oppressed, who have stowed their pilfered M-16s in four inches of rice-water and mud).

An exquisitely capable man. Everything under one roof: his wife’s secret ledger, the children’s active sleep. Each morning he woke before dawn. The car wanted in, just to sit with him, he could hear it tapping the back door with its bumper.

But Dad. A silver, room-length pendulum, up and back. But Dad but Dad but Dad.

He reaches for an unshattered glass. Denial was my only promise, kids, didn’t I teach you? Stand up straight. Don’t flinch, you’ll want to kiss each cut. Place your hands on either side, this way, good, stretch it tight until it tears, let the sweetness breathe.

Pamela has a new barbecue pit and paper Chinese lanterns, a No-Pest Strip and wind chimes made of shells. Her lawn is neatly clipped, azaleas beginning to bloom.

Adams, alone with the kids, shuts the sliding glass door against the evening heat. He feels as though he’s visiting the home of a distant aunt. The furniture is familiar, but the house itself is strange to him, bright, open, feminine: light colors, cotton doilies, perfumed air.

Pamela, visiting a sick friend, had asked Adams to stop by after work to stay with the kids for a couple of hours. “There’s some hamburger in the fridge if you want to barbecue for them,” she said.

Now the kids are rolling on the floor, holding their stomachs. The meat seemed fresh, the pickles and lettuce brand-new. Adams himself feels fine. He feeds them aspirin. Deidre can’t keep it down. He cups her hot forehead as she leans over the toilet.

“I think that’s all.”

“Okay, I’ll get you a towel.”

“No, wait.” Another minute, swaying over the bowl.

“Feel better?” “I think so.”

He helps her unbutton her dress. She turns away from him modestly, pulls the dress over her head, and with her back still to him runs to her bed and hides herself under the covers. Adams hangs the dress in the closet full of blocks and books. The puffy sleeves settle, sighing, over the Grinch and the Slippery-Boo. He rubs her stomach through the covers and turns out the light. “Try to sleep,” he says.

Toby, meanwhile, has put himself to bed.

“How do you feel?”

“Stopped up.”

“Lungs, or just your nose?”

“Just my nose, I guess. And my ears. My throat’s sore.”

Adams places his hand under Toby’s jaw. A slight swelling. He goes into the kitchen and stirs salt into a glass of warm water. “Here, gargle this and spit. Don’t swallow.”

Neither child can sleep, and by the time Pamela gets home Adams himself feels a little dizzy.

“The hamburger must’ve been bad,” he says.

“Fastway’s meat is usually fresh.”

The following morning he feels better, but the kids remain in bed for another two days.

He draws a map of no place in particular, circular, many levels like smoke rings. The bottom ring he fills with leaves. Mixed among the leaves, utilizing their stems as definition, twelve brown hawks, wings folded, talons cramped and curled. On the next level the leaves give way to a grid, open squares within which larger hawks are just beginning to unfold their wings and open their eyes. The grid has become so wide on the next level that it can barely be perceived, and the hawks soar beyond the established border, the uneven edges of their feathers defining a new, amorphous territory. Ground to sky, intimacy to infinite space.

Three families own a total of eighteen hundred acres north of Deerbridge Road. Ownership of the remaining five hundred acres is being contested in court. The area looks fertile, grassy, slightly hilly. Streams wind through limestone gullies.

Carter is delighted. “A detailed map, hmm? Analyze movement from the point of view of convenience and cost. Say, within the week. Use the computer.”

In Adams’ office, a sleek plastic terminal. Keyboard. Blank screen. When he sits in front of the machine his own pale face stares back.

He has two problems: (1) the county line will not be firmly established until the courts act, and (2) he has no starting point.

With a space of uncertain dimensions, where does he begin? In a room, with a piece of furniture — the hutch or the wrought-iron plant stand. But in an undistinguished landscape (i.e., no meteor craters or industrial explosion sites) he is forced to choose at random. If the dimensions of the designated area are in question, the center is arbitrary.

Adams calls the center Point of View. Once this is established, he can arrange all of the territory in sight.

Outside Carter’s office, a young secretary crossing and uncrossing her legs. Her desk is aluminum, her typewriter IBM. When Carter is out of the office she pulls a Sony Walkman out of her desk drawer and types to Men at Work or Eddie Money. Partitions made of soundproof tiles separate her from other young secretaries crossing and uncrossing their legs. The partitions stop short of the ceiling; the secretaries do not enjoy complete privacy. Separated just enough so they can’t talk to one another.

Carter’s secretary smiles at Adams whenever he waits for an appointment. When he speaks to her, he has noticed, she takes her left shoe off underneath the desk. She does not remove this shoe for everyone.

The face of a candidate peeling off a billboard in the rain. Wings of paper whirl to the street, hauling eyebrows, corners of the mouth, the kindly I’ll-care-for-you look. A gentle father falling to earth on the backs of furry animals. They come to roost finally in a dark and fertile sewer where the father feels at home. His best tricks are underground tricks: withholding praise from the children, riddling them with anxiety in order to keep them sharp; tempering the wife with a weekly allowance, not mentioning the actual amount in the checking account. He must guard against free-floating pleasure, the anima, the id. He parcels out, in moderation, Dirty Harry movies to the kids, carefully counts the number of Bonwit-Teller boxes his wife brings home. He wallows in the brackish water, pleased with himself.

Overhead, thick copper cables — naked, uninsulated — break through chinks in the stone. Water drips on chalky bricks, splattering the copper. My God, he thinks, examining the wires, the whole city could blow, am I the only one who knows? Fleck fleck, like the ticking of a bomb. He reaches through the tun-neis for his kids, no use, he can’t find them in time. Sparks burst through manholes, the metal lids go flying, then —

When Deidre was little he held her in his lap and sang

She laughed and laughed and laughed. Then, one night when she had laughed herself red in the face, she paused, squinched up her nose, and thought about the song. Finally she said, “Daddy, what’s the funny of it?”

The children are sick again. Vomiting. Swollen glands. This time, Pamela says, it isn’t food poisoning. “We’ve been eating fresh vegetables.”

The doctor finds no traces of infection in either Toby or Deidre. “These look like allergic reactions,” he tells Adams, pointing out mild rashes on their arms. “Get some calamine lotion and see if that doesn’t clear it up.” Pamela takes them to a specialist, but by now the kids are fine, the swelling in their necks has disappeared. The allergy doctor places them each on a table, face down, and with a needle lightly scratches their backs. Next she pours various colored powders on each of the scratches. “These things contain active agents from pollens, spores, cat and dog hair, and so on.”

The tests come up negative.

“You’ve got two healthy kids,” the doctor says.

But a week later both are vomiting so hard their stomachs ache. They’re crying, awake all night. Pamela is having dizzy spells, too. Adams is convinced they’re being poisoned.

“Are you near a toxic waste dump?” He marches in the high grass of the fields around the house in all directions. Old tin cans, shoe soles, carburetor parts.

“I don’t think so,” Pamela says.

“Then it’s in the house. Something in the house is rotten.”

The gas stove doesn’t leak, the tap water tests fresh. There are no cracks in the foundation, nothing in the attic. “Who lived here before you? A doctor? Were there any old medicine bottles in the trash?”

“No. Nothing. The place was immaculate.”

He peels off a strip of wallpaper and examines the wood and chalk underneath. He takes apart one of Deidre’s Dr. Seuss books and picks at the dried glue on the binding. Everything in the garage he throws out, even clean white rags and unopened cans of motor oil.

Deidre has lost six pounds.

He takes Toby and Deidre back to the allergy specialist. “Something is killing my children.”

She runs another series of tests over the next two weeks. Nothing turns up.

He sits on his bed with a brandy. Evening, changing light. Each minute another noise stilled: birds, cars, plastic pails. Dinner’s over, up and down the street. Same old meats. No one’s going out. His mind turns round.

The glass falls off the night table. Getting up he knocks his foot against the bed. “Goddammit!” he yells. He’ll raze the backyard fence, torch the weeds, drive through the plate-glass window at the downtown office of H&R Block. He’ll commandeer the local CBS affiliate and broadcast nasty rumors about the East Coast, the NRA, the national debt — a lovely day in the neighborhood. Top with pineapple sauce, bake for three hours. Right back, we’ll be right back. One two three four, try it at home now. His rage a clear white river through town.

Adams notices that the grass around Pamela’s barbecue pit is dying. He picks and sniffs a handful of yellow blades. The barbecue pit is rusty — it’s brand-new! — and discolored. With his handkerchief Adams clears away the charcoal. The metal at the bottom of the pit is mottled yellow and green. Heat wouldn’t have done that. He asks Pamela where she purchased the barbecue pit.

“At a wholesaler’s. A big discount warehouse north of town,” she says.

“Take me there.”

Hundreds of cars are parked in the fields around the warehouse, and families of shoppers are walking through rows of plastic birdbaths, lawn statuary, clay pots, wind chimes, garden tools. Inside, fishing corks, tire irons, bicycle speedometers, Coleman lanterns, decks of cards. The barbecue pits, identical with Pamela’s, occupy a corner. The first two salesmen Adams encounters know nothing about them except how much they cost. The third salesman says they’re made from metal drums.

“Where’d you get the metal drums?”

He doesn’t know. Adams presses. The salesman guides him to the warehouse manager.

“We bought them in bulk from a little outfit called Drum Corps.”

“What was in them before you bought them?” “I don’t know. What’s the problem?” “I suspect your barbecue pit is poisoning my children.”

The man laughs, then sees that Adams is serious. “Honestly, I don’t know. They’re a little outfit that collects drums from various companies, cleans them up, and sells them to wholesalers like us for storage or, in our case, barbecue pits.”

Adams insists on locating Drum Corps. The manager tries to talk him out of it, but relents when Adams mentions the Better Business Bureau.

Drum Corps is located seventy-five miles east of Elgin. Adams cannot find a telephone number, so the following Saturday he drives to the address given him by the manager. Meanwhile, he has told Pamela not to use the barbecue pit, and to keep the kids away from it.

An old Sinclair gas station, the dinosaur still on its sign, has become the Drum Corps office. Where the gas pumps were, tortured metal strips twist out of the concrete holding a square of splintered wood, about the size of a car door, with DRUM CORPS painted on it. Rusty barrels and drums, half eaten, badly stained. A grizzled collie sleeps near a stack of metal lids.

Adams parks his car by the side of the road. Old cotton fields, fallow now, stretch for miles behind the station. The sun is clear but cold. A young man in a Pink Floyd T-shirt and dusty desert boots walks out of the station, drinking a bottled Coke. “Help you?”

“Yeah. Are you the people who sold a bunch of drums to the wholesale warehouse in Elgin?”

“Might be. Have to check. My dad’s the one who runs things but he’s out fishing.”

“Could you check for me?”

“Sure.”

They go inside. An Italian auto parts calendar featuring a naked brunette and a shock absorber curls on the wall. The calendar is open to October 1973.

“Yeah, ‘bout six months ago. Why?”

“Can you tell me what was in those drums?”

The boy laughs. “No way of knowing. We get ‘em from all over. California, Texas, Louisiana.”

“Who do you get them from?”

“Chemical plants, oil refineries … you’d have to ask my dad.” He makes a loud sucking noise with the bottle.

“What’s your name?”

“Bo.”

“Bo, does your dad know these things are dangerous?”

“No, man, we steam-clean ‘em before we sell ‘em. Twice. Everything is steam-cleaned twice, kills everything, all the germs and everything.”

“I’ve got a couple of kids at home who’ve been sick for two months — ever since my wife brought home a barbecue pit made with one of these things.”

“Hey, we don’t make anything. We just sell ‘em.”

Adams glances out the dirty window. In the pale sunlight, the sight of the rusty orange drums, with their thin eaten edges, tiny holes like cavities in a child’s teeth, and tarnished yellow rings, makes the back of his neck prickle.

“When will your dad be back?”

“Not till tomorrow.”

Adams nods. A dust devil swirls along the edge of the highway, ripping light weeds from the ground. The collie looks up. “Okay, thanks.”

“Hey, look, we make sure the things are clean. Maybe your kids have colds or something.”

“I’ll be back,” Adams says.

One night several months before their separation, Pamela read to him in bed excerpts from Paul Klee’s diary. “‘I am abstract with memories… What takes place is merely an approximation.’”

“I admire his orderly mind,” Pamela said. “I aspire to it. He numbered every thought.

“‘Many variations on the theme Father and Son. A father with his son. A father through his son. A father in the presence of his son. A father proud of his son. A father blesses his son.’”

The following morning, Adams scribbled on a sheet of tracing paper:

The Better Business Bureau confirms that steam-cleaning cannot effectively neutralize all chemical compounds. Drum Corps has been receiving drums from shipyards in the Texas gulf and from a drilling company in Southern California. In addition, medical centers and utility companies have sent them barrels, some of which contain low-level radioactive waste. Traces of benzene, toluene, and sulfuric acid have been found in the “clean” barrels. Seven months ago the bureau issued a warning to Drum Corps. Adams’ efforts have closed them for good. The wholesale warehouse has been fined two thousand dollars.

Deidre sprawls on the floor reading the adventures of Curious George and Babar, King of the Elephants. Toby wheezes, finishing his homework.

Pamela stands with Adams over the dead spot in the backyard.

“I’ve had nightmares,” she says. “The kids’ bones all twisted.”

The doctors have decided there will be no permanent effects from the exposure, but Adams has dreamed disaster, too: Deidre’s ovaries knotted like thick hard rope, Toby’s lungs exploded like paper sacks. He thinks of their first child, Alan, swimming among molecules as large as billiard balls. He remembers a plastic model of DNA in a college laboratory, the double helix that resembled an unfinished staircase into the hallway of infinity. But he can’t keep his mind on infinity, or Alan, this morning. Babar, King of the Elephants, glows in the dark. Yertle the Turtle, with red unseeing eyes, lights the floor of the sea.