Desire Provoked

Part Seven

DADDY, how do fishes put their coats on? One fin at a time. What kind of jacket does a yellowjacket wear? A jacket made of rice.

What do roly-polies do in the middle of July?

Watch gangster movies in the alley, in the back of the horned toad’s home.

What does a peach tree eat, Daddy, that it stays so thin?

Shoe buckles left in the rain.

What does a falling leaf wear?

A lemonade T-shirt.

Who are you when I’m not here? Daddy?

The children’s questions get bolder. Does he hate Pamela? What happened to Jill? Was she nicer than Mom? (Jill is very happy with her job at Murray State College and her new live-in, a fellow est-ian who once met Albert Einstein.) Adams answers the best he can; he’s comfortable with the kids. There even seems to be less tension between Toby and the rest of the world.

“Did you almost die,” Toby asks.

“No. If I died, you’d get all my money. I didn’t want that to happen.”

“I wish I could’ve gone along.”

Deidre stops what she’s doing to listen.

“Maybe someday you’ll be in a job where you get to go places.”

“I can’t draw,” Toby says.

“You can be a travel agent — ”

“A stewardess,” Deidre adds.

“Or an interpreter. Essen.”

“That means ‘eat.’”

“Your mom’s been teaching you.”

“She says the world’s going to blow up. Is that true?”

“I don’t know. What would you like to eat?”

“Ice cream,” Deidre says.

“Besides dessert.”

“Mom said you almost died.”

“Peach ice cream and strawberries and Cool Whip. And french fries with catsup.”

“One thing at a time. Burger King? And no, I didn’t almost die. Your mother jumps to conclusions.”

“I don’t think she hates you anymore,” Toby says.

“Good.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like you very much.”

He moves the silver-framed photograph of Pamela and the kids to a place on his desk where it can’t be seen.

At eleven-fifteen he receives an unexpected telephone call from Joseph E. Morgan, senior vice president of Comtex. Morgan sincerely apologizes for Adams’ mishap on the ice. If the team had been better equipped, etc. etc. Can Comtex make reparation?

“Well,” Adams says. “Essentially it was my fault.”

“I’m very impressed with the work you’ve done for us. I’d like you to know, we’re developing our own cartographic staff. Any chance you’d consider us?”

“I don’t know,” Adams says. “What did you have in mind?”

“I’d like you to interview, of course, but I can give you a general range…” He mentions the low fifties. Adams promises to get back to him.

At lunch Carter is jubilant. “We’re continuing to expand, Sam. Since you’ve been gone we’ve added two new data bases and increased our statistical and digital capacity.” The Deerbridge Road development has been a huge success and Carter has started a new housing district, early American to modern, geodesic domes.

“I’ve been offered a job,” Adams tells him. “Oh?”

“Comtex wants me.”

Carter closes his menu. “Bastards. Goddamn headhunters. Lend you to them for six months, next thing you know — ”

“It’s a very attractive package.” “How much?”

“It’s not just the money. I’d be happier in research and development. You know that.” “I need you on my projects.”

“Several of the young guys are ready. Rakofsky, O’Connor, Lajoie.”

“They’re kids, Sam. I can’t even speak their language, much less get a subtle concept over to them. Haven’t I given you what you wanted? You wanted an international assignment, I let you go.”

“I have no complaints,” Adams says. “But when a better offer comes along — ”

“What the hell would you do in research and development?”

“Expand our catalog. We can’t do fieldwork in deep space, but the computer can take us there. It’s an area we haven’t touched.”

Carter shakes his head. “I’m not sure there’s a market for the stars, hmm?”

“Oh, I think there is. Despite its setbacks, the shuttle opened things up.”

“You’re squeezing me, Sam.” Carter picks up the check.

I try to picture Austin but can only see the dead dry weeds in the field behind my house. It’s cold here. I miss you. Irrational, I know, but I keep hoping Jack has changed: self-centered, obnoxious, untidy. I don’t know how we’ll work it but I’m happy you want to keep the lines open. I’m used to fixing borders, closing things off.

I can’t seem to get moving. The house is strange. Everything’s noisy. The refrigerator cutting on and off, the traffic outside … it was so quiet on the ice.

When I was little I went into the fields behind my mother’s house and listened to empty grain silos howl with the wind that got inside them. Like the sounds of a dying animal. They frightened me. Coming into town tonight, watching the fields rush by, I felt nostalgic about those silos: attempts at order on the prairie.

You once said the academic environment was it for you. It for me has always been the imagination. I believed we saved ourselves from the size of the world by mapping it, studying it, appropriating it.

Since Svalbard I wonder. I was the dying animal out there in the snow, Carol, huddled inside the horse…

He puts down his pen. Perhaps he’ll just send her some flowers. Probably she doesn’t see many flowers in Texas.

Unless Jack gave her some, had a big bouquet waiting for her when she got home.

He starts to call Kenny; as he lifts the receiver, weariness overtakes him. Too many people, too far away. He places the unfinished letter in the center of his drafting table and, turning off the lamp, goes to bed.

Adams receives an Orb spider and a German chocolate cake in a ceremony announcing the expansion of On-Line’s Research and Development Wing, of which Adams will be the head. For the occasion he has bought a brand-new Brooks Brothers suit, tan, with a white shirt and solid red tie.

Pinning the spider onto Adams’ lapel, Carter says, “This man has been a catalyst in our banner year. From local acclaim to international distinction, he’s an example of what we all strive to be.”

Polite applause from his colleagues. In addition to more money, he’s given unrestricted use of a geodesic dome (Fuller’s most rigorous design) in Carter’s new housing district north of Deerbridge Road. The dome is equipped with a color television, a wet bar, fully stocked, and an IBM PC/XT.

Rakofsky, O’Connor, and Lajoie each receive a bronzed Ixodes ricinus in honor of their promotion into Special Projects.

Rosa’s been volunteering at the women’s shelter and has befriended Pamela. Recently the police asked her if she’d use her power to help them locate a missing baby boy. She closed her eyes, concentrated, and led two officers to an abandoned house, where they found the police commissioner’s fifteen-year-old daughter in an erotic embrace with a tractor salesman. “I kept telling them I’m a medium, not a psychic,” she says, although she knew before Adams even opened his mouth that he had lost a tooth. “What else is new?”

“I’ve become a Black Muslim.”

Adams stares at her. “But you’re white.”

“That’s a problem,” she admits. “I don’t know if the brothers will officially accept a white woman, but I’m a brother at heart, that’s what counts.”

“What brought this on?”

“The spirits told me the balance of world power is going to change very soon. The nation of Islam will rise and smite its enemies, the white supremacists.” Her voice intensifies, like a charismatic preacher’s. “Ike tried to talk me out of it.”

“Ike?”

“Eisenhower. A very conservative spirit. Refuses to admit the cosmic order’s shifting. Malcolm told me the malevolent spirits that have manifested themselves in white racism will soon be brought to their knees. And it’s not just the United States. You know who’s really being victimized in Central America? Blacks, Indians, women.”

“Same old story,” Adams says.

“You bet it is. Ever hear about female political prisoners? No. Women are the poorest people on earth. That’s why I joined the shelter. Grass-roots movements are important, but I’m more of an ambassador type. Hell, I’ve been all over the universe. I’ve got a broader view than most.” She leans back to catch her breath. “The spirits have plans for me.”

Adams doesn’t know how to respond. Finally Rosa says, “Want to see a movie?”

They go to a Shaft double feature at a second-run theater on the south side of town. Kids cheer as the detective empties his gun into the killer’s stomach. There are three other white couples in the audience.

“Isn’t he great?” Rosa whispers.

“Yes.”

After the movie they drive to Adele’s, where Adams orders a sandwich. Rosa wants two poached eggs on toast. “I’m still middle-class in a lot of ways, but I’m working on it. You’re going to have to change your maps when the revolution comes.”

“I don’t mind. As a cartographer, I’m supposed to be objective.”

“And as a person?”

“I’m not very political, Rosa.”

“Beyond politics, that’s what I’m talking about, like caring for your kids — how are they, by the way?”

“The most beautiful little people you’ll ever meet.”

“You don’t sound objective to me.”

“Let me ask you, Rosa, how’ve you managed since your husband died. Living alone, I mean.”

“I can bring the old fool back anytime I want. I have the gift, remember?”

“Ah.”

“You’re lonely?” “A little.”

“Well.” Rosa spreads her arms. “I make a hell of a spaghetti dinner.”

“Pasta won’t be banned, comes the revolution?”

“Lord, I hope not.” She touches the back of his hand. “You need to have faith in something, Sam. An idea, your fellow workers. When the balance of power changes — ”

“Forgive me, Rosa, if I don’t hold my breath.”

“You and Ike.”

Dear Sam,

I’m slow adjusting — seems the cold left an impression on us both. Whenever I hear people talk about work or the goals they’ve set for themselves, their conversation strikes me as silly. I think of the ice; life here seems awfully easy — and empty — in comparison.

You’re the only person I know who understands that.

I’ve decided to re-enroll at the University of Texas. Ph.D. I suppose I’ll teach. I don’t know if that will make me happy, but I think, as I said to you, I’ll be more comfortable in academia.

Jack is moving into my apartment again next week — can you believe I’ve let it come to this when I still don’t know how I feel about him? Anyway, he’s been very nice.

I miss you, Sam. If you’d been here, my decision about Jack would’ve been much harder. But you’re there. A place I can’t even imagine. And I resent the hell out of you for it. (I don’t really mean that.)

Twoo days latrr. I*ve gotten over being angry at you. Forgife the typos but this is Jacks new machine and I’ve just got contacts. Its like putting bugs in your eyes. Anyway I dont know whatt to say to you Sam but I don’t want to quit writing yet. Meeting you was a strange thing in my life. I keep thinking about the last few days, wh^en I hadn’t shaved my legs, how delighted you were at the way the light caught the hair on my thighs. You’re weird Sam but it turned me on, too. What do I do with you?? I can’t picture us together in a η ormal American place. I’d be doing your dishes — it’s what youd expect — and that wouldn’t work. Still, I’d like to see you on solid ground.

At the bottom of the letter she’s drawn a map of Austin, a small rectangle with rounded corners, like a piece of tissue, folded. A blue pencil line labeled Colorado River veering down to make the C in her name.

The first thing he does in his capacity as head of R&D is draw a new world map, aided by the latest satellite photography. He studies records of the moon’s orbital path, which reveal irregularities in the earth’s gravitational tug. The world is pear-shaped, not round, its “stem-end” at the north. Moreover, in the Indian Ocean there is a deep depression. He arranges the information in a computer graphic based on Fuller’s Basic-Triangle-Grid, a far less distorted model than Mercator’s. Also, using data derived from optical, radio, and laser operations, he maps the earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields.

After work, if the night is warm, he heads for the country, to sit at the stone table he has fashioned for himself in a clearing by the dome, light a kerosene lamp, and contemplate his options. Meteors arc slowly across the sky, above the soggy woods, like the boys’ rockets in the field behind his house. Often he imagines himself in an enchanted forest, leaves sparkling on the trees, streams winding like trails of smoke through scented shrubs. He is no Thoreau, he thinks. There is nothing mystical about his isolation. He is simply a restless man worried about his work (where does it lead), his desires (how can he satisfy them with the least amount of tension), middle age (is it really the wilderness it appears to be).

Pamela informs him that Otto has smashed up his car in Michigan. He’s all right but it’s his third DWI. “Daddy’s checked him into a sanitarium,” she says.

Adams is shocked and sorry.

“I can tell you disapprove. Daddy’s just trying to do the right thing.”

“The hell he is.” He notices a couple of pamphlets on her kitchen table: Breast Self-Examination and Five Facts About Mastectomies.

She sees him looking at them.

“Don’t be alarmed, Sam. I had a mammogram the other day and everything’s fine. I just happened to pick those up in the waiting room.”

“Just happened to?”

“Well, I am a high-risk case. My mother had breast cancer and so did my sister. That means my chances are very high.”

“You’ve never had any lumps?”

“No.” She turns on the TV news, very low. The children are getting ready to go with him for the weekend. “You want some coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“They’re doing preventive surgery nowadays. My doctor asked me to think about it.” “What does it involve?”

“They cut out all the tissue and replace it with silicone. It’s called a subcutaneous mastectomy, but that’s a little misleading because you don’t lose your breast. The whole point is to keep your breast.”

“You’re not considering it?”

“I am.”

“That seems pretty drastic, Pam.”

“If there’s a chance I could lose a breast someday and I can prevent it now, it seems reasonable to me to at least think about it.”

“Is this a common practice?”

“It’s getting to be.”

Adams sits at the kitchen table. “You mean healthy women are going in and having their breasts cut up …?”

“They go in from underneath so the scars don’t show.”

“That’s horrifying.”

“I probably won’t do it, but it’s good to know the option is there. Anyway, I wanted to let you know about Otto in case I have to fly up and help Daddy with the details.”

He used to think it was important to keep up with people. They plan new ways of pleasing themselves or endangering others. Their large mobile homes sweep the land, microwave ovens tingeing the edges of their dinners. They buy new pets and have children, moving on.

Why else would he stand here staring at the lines in the map of his palm? He used to think it was important. He used to think he’d live alone someplace and have severely important talks with himself.

Kenny coughs into the phone.

“Did I wake you?” Adams says.

“No, no … just, urn. Sam? Who is this? Is this Sam?”

“Hey, snap out of it, I’m talking to you.”

“Jesus, I just crashed for a second. Nine o’clock?”

“Your watch stopped. It’s ten out there.”

“What are you … did I … so how are you?”

“Just got back from Pam’s.”

“Screw her.”

“No, I don’t feel that way. Really.”

“Well …”

“Just kind of sorry.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me about the ice, man. Were you a Popsicle?”

“It was close.”

“Dad told me.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“Last week. He scared the shit out of me. Said you’d phoned him from London about the trip, and your accident and all. He was really worried.”

“I told him I was fine.”

“It’s not you he’s worried about. He gave me the ‘old man’ routine. He didn’t say it, but he thinks I’m too fucked up to look after him when he goes around the bend, and he doesn’t know where you’re gonna be, running around the world tripping on ice and shit like that. He sent me his CD accounts and his investments. Said he couldn’t track you down.”

“He knew I’d be home.”

“I don’t know, man. You figure it.”

“He’s been like this before.”

“He’s never sent me his stocks before.”

“Well, send them to me. I’ll take care of them. Mom still having headaches?”

“Major pain. The migraine that ate Nebraska.”

“They’re like kids,” Adams says.

“Yeah, but it don’t bother me. I’m a star now. Video King.” His band is called Curveball and they’re appearing on MTV in heavy rotation, he says, “wearing leather and abusing chicks. In our next shoot, we’re going to desecrate a church. We’ve picked an old cathedral in Monterey they were going to tear down anyway. It’ll be like that haunted house, remember?” When they were little, Kenny and Adams crept into an abandoned house that their friends claimed was haunted. Inside they found the shell of a player piano with a few rusty wires still intact, broken boards, exposed nails in the floor, and cracking plaster. Adams, older than most of the boys, wasn’t afraid of ghosts. He tugged on a loose flap of wallpaper and was surprised when part of the wall came with it. The plaster was simply cardboard and chalk, eroded now. He could level this house with his hands. Happily he ran about the room punching holes in the walls. Kenny whooped and joined him. Then, for some reason, Adams felt a presence in the room. He spun around, the heel of his shoe shattering a wedge of glass on the floor, and saw a craggy, vulturous man, hands heavy at his sides. Veins ran like rivers in his temples. Adams trembled at the sight of this horrible ghost; then the man spoke, ordering them out “this very minute.” The boys ran, and watched the tall figure from a nearby field. He owned the gas station across the street from the house. Taking a Coke from his machine, he sat out front in a chair near the pumps.

“Anyway, Mom and Dad know I have a steady gig, but they don’t know what kind of gig. It might shake them up to see me in leather.”

“You’re a long way from your roots.”

Colored lights circle Morty’s eaves like a spangled hem on a Spanish dancer’s dress. Inside, a man is stuffing doves into a hatbox. The birds reappear as bouquets.

From the back of the room Adams sees Pete, Denny, and Bob pick up their instruments. The magician performs his final trick. Pete’s shaved his head. His shirt says YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE. The band launches into a Laurie Anderson tune, backed by a Linn drum machine:

I met this guy, and he looked like he might have been

a hat check clerk at an ice rink.

Which, in fact, he turned out to be.

And I said, Oh boy. Right again.

“They’ve adapted their style to compete with Bullets,” Morty explains. “On the more complicated numbers, Zig sits in with them.”

“They’re awful.”

Morty shrugs, insinuates his hand into Adams’. “Didn’t I tell you this was going to be an entertainment capital? Thursdays, we got chipmunks shimmying to a chainsaw. It’s a dynamite act. Good to see you again, Sam. Grab yourself a beer on me.”

“Things have changed,” Bob tells him at the break.

“For the worse, I’d say.”

“You don’t know the numbers we’re doing now.”

“It’s the same beat over and over. What’s to know?”

“Precisely. We don’t need to pay a drummer — ”

“You sound like shit, Bob.”

“I think we sound just fine.” He turns to Zig for confirmation.

“Leave me out of this, man.” Zig slumps in his chair. “I’m stoned anyway, like on the edge and falling.”

“I’ll audition for you,” Adams says.

“You haven’t been asked, Sam.”

At the next break he rolls out his bass drum and sets it in front of the back curtain, behind the amps. Zig follows with his cymbals. “This is a radical move, man.”

“How do you cut the power to this thing?” Adams says, indicating the drum machine. Zig hits a button.

“What are you doing?” Bob yells from the edge of the stage.

“Folks, I’m auditioning for the band,” Adams says into a mike. The crowd is indifferent.

He settles himself on the throne, picks up his sticks. Twice as many people in the audience as in the old days. Morty’s been hustling.

He hasn’t played in six months. His fingers are nimble from his work on the practice pad, but a solo — cold?

He starts with a standard ride on the hi-hat, one-and-a-two-and, one-and-a-two-and, brushing the snare on the offbeat, then rolls into a rumba on the tom. His foot’s slow, nothing fancy on the bass.

A rim-shot, a machine-gun roll on the snare, snap ‘em to, faster and faster, with hits to the high tom, a little action on the Zildjian, subtle now then loud, make ‘em cry, cowbell in the middle of the phrase, slow it down pick it up, building to a run on the snare, faster, louder, draw it out, make ‘em suffer, like a long, slow hump, then he’s off, rim bass tom high low bass tom high tom bass tom, wrestling with the Dark Angel. A smoky dirge, the heartbreak blues. A series on the cymbals and he’s done. Not quite. Now then. The crowd is on its feet.

Pete and Denny take the stage, laughing excitedly. Zig says, “Teach me that?”

Bob picks up his bass. “All right, you son of a bitch,” he says with grudging pleasure. “Let’s play.”

“An old one,” Denny says. “It’s been a long time.”

When they slide into Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, Art Farmer, he feels the wings close in around him, the heavy thudding of the angel’s many hearts.

Than writes from California:

Things are going well for me here. I just got a raise, and may do some more traveling at the end of the year for Arco. In the meantime I have met a nice young woman who owns a Vietnamese restaurant with her brother in downtown Los Angeles. Nothing serious, but I enjoy spending time with her.

I found your brother’s name in the phone book, but so far he has not been home when I have called.

A Soviet scientist I met defected before I left Svalbard. The story I heard says he stowed away on the Polarstar, which pulled in beside his mining vessel in Barentsburg. The Norwegians discovered him halfway to Longyearbyen, and he asked for asylum. He seemed to me a very smart man, careful about his work. I’m glad to know he’s all right.

I thought of you the other day, Sam. I saw on the news an American military advisor in El Salvador. His goal was to “bring order to Central America.” It reminded me of the conversations we had. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I can’t resist citing one more example of why I distrust the Western passion for reason. At the height of the war in my country, a team of political scientists from Michigan State University arrived to study military tactics, write articles on the special police, and so on. At one time it seemed there were more professors than soldiers in Vietnam. One of the men came up with a blueprint for evacuating villagers. He relocated the entire population of an area into a compound surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. It was like a dormitory, only padlocked and dark. And he dressed the refugees in uniforms — a different color for every village — so he could identify them as he studied their “refugee mentality.” He tried to ease the pain of the situation by placing South Vietnamese, rather than American, guards in the compound. But the place was too crowded, too anguished. In time the guards, under stress, began to shoot noisy children.

People they didn’t like they kept from the food. I heard of one place where they were chopping each other’s hands off — couldn’t tell the refugees from the guards. So I don’t trust order, I’m afraid. It’s not human nature.

Well, forgive me. The news report struck close to home. But it’s impossible to dwell on such things when the sun is out and the beach is warm. Come visit. Perhaps your brother could take us to some concerts, and I could reserve a tee-off time at Pebble Beach. Say hi to Carol when you write.

Pamela drops by. The kids want to spend the weekend with some friends. Does he mind not seeing them? He had baked a pumpkin pie and bought three tickets to a basketball game, but he says, “No, it’s all right.”

She hesitates in his doorway, so he asks her if she’d like a glass of wine and some pie. She accepts.

“I’ve decided to have the operation,” she tells him. “Oh?”

“My doctor convinced me. And it’s not so bad. They can’t get all the tissue, but they can get enough to significantly reduce the chances.”

“But it’s not a hundred percent effective?”

“No.”

He dabs whipped cream onto her wedge of pie. “Well, if you’ve made up your mind.” “I’m scared, Sam.”

He sits opposite her with the spoon in his mouth.

“I’m told that for six to twelve weeks after the operation, the sensation in my breasts will be reduced. Some women never get full feeling back in their nippies, but most do.”

“Your breasts are lovely, Pam.”

She blushes and so does he.

Deidre was a burst of autumn as a baby, red hair, brown eyes, reaching for Pamela’s breast, or tumbling on the pink nursery floor, mouth open, waiting for the words to come. Toby, a beautiful mid-winter snowdrift, pale white skin, thick black eyebrows, blessing Adams with beatific smiles and pleas urable grunts. The range of color in a kid as he speeds toward your life and then away, leaving you wordless in the wake of the brilliant violet-to-red rainbow of the Doppler Shift.

Rosa cooks spaghetti Raphael: garlic, a thick tomato sauce, artichoke hearts.

“I talked your wife — ”

“Ex-wife.”

“Out of having that silly operation.” “Did you?”

“Actually, I shouldn’t take credit for it. She decided herself, but I was against it all along. Parmesan?”

“Thanks.”

“She’s a smart lady. A little naïve, but time’ll take care of that.”

“She’s nearly forty years old, Rosa. If she doesn’t know the ropes by now, she never will.”

Rosa shakes her head. “She lost fifteen years being married to you.”

“Now wait — ”

“I’m not criticizing you. But it’s true — you both figured it was her job or her desire or whatever to stay home with the clothes. It’s the way you were brought up. She has a lot of catching up to do outside the home and she’s sharp. Her heart’s in the right place. She’s committed to art and politics, but she expects too much from them, maybe … really thinks she can make a difference overnight, but she’ll learn. Already I can see her developing a sense of irony about herself. That’s good.”

“This Black Muslim kick you’re on — isn’t that a bit naive?

Rosa rolls her noodles with a fork, like a stockbroker reading ticker tape. “You’re too young to remember Henry Wallace, but in 1948 he ran for president against Harry Truman. He was vice president under Roosevelt until he got fired, sort of, for opposing the war.”

“I’ve heard Pam’s Uncle Otto talk about him.”

“Well, he became a one-man party and say what you will about him, I believe to this day if he’d been elected we’d have avoided Korea, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs — all that crap. I really do. But of course he didn’t have a chance — that’s what I was naïve about. Truman managed to slap the ‘communist’ label on him, and that buried him. So I been there already. I’ve had my hopes up. Frank, my late husband, and I flirted with the Communist party for a while but then we heard about the Stalinist purges. We couldn’t believe that these people, who we thought were going to guide us in establishing harmonious communities all over the world, could be capable of such horror. So I been to the dance and had my foot stepped on. I got the proper sense of irony about myself, but I’ve also got the desire to be active still. Pam just doesn’t know how hard it is yet — that’s her only fault. But she’s not the kind to quit. She’ll learn, and learn to laugh.”

“She quit on me.”

“No.” Rosa looks at him seriously. “The circumstances changed for both of you. But there was no quitting.”

I hope your decision to live with Jack has proved to be a happy one.

I’m lying.

No, not really.

Be smart.

P.S. They found oil on Spitsbergen. We were a good team.

He tapes the card to a rock about the size of a small cat, puts the rock in a box marked FRAGILE. It will cost a fortune to mail, but Carol will be pleased. It is neither pretty nor valuable, just a rock.

“The system is carefully balanced, though operations appear random,” Carter says. “It’s important for the operations to appear random. People need to believe they have some degree of personal freedom, hmm? Freedom is possible only in a random universe. Therefore, if the integrated nature of the process were revealed, people would rebel and destroy the system. There’d be chaos.

“Don’t confuse me with the nature of things, Sam. It’s bigger than all of us. I’m just a component, like you or anyone else. The man on the street fears technology. He thinks the future’s a cloud of waste. I’m saying that the system is self-perpetuating and self-correcting. Minor destruction is inevitable as the system purifies itself, but annihilation is not built into the program. Mistakes condition the future, and I’m telling you the future is preservation.”

Adams remembers his last visit with the children. He stopped at an arcade so Toby could play a video game. Screaming men in motorcycle helmets ran around the screen trampling dim figures called phantoms. Sometimes the phantoms ate the arms and legs of the little men, but as long as the head or torso remained, the player continued to function.

Adams spreads his maps out on the table: the world, the earth’s crust, the planet’s gravitational and magnetic fields. The charts are scientifically accurate and up to date, yet Adams feels something is missing.

Legends are comprehensible. Purposes well defined. Where does the problem lie?

It occurs to him that the world itself is missing from his maps. On one, the planet has been reduced to a photographic reproduction. On another, to a set of numbers. Each new interpretation is an extra inch of kite string, but the string is endless, and the kite, out of sight, keeps tugging beyond his ken.

When Deidre was a baby she learned words quickly: Mommy, Daddy, Toby (which for several months she pronounced simply ‘bee). She picked up personal pronouns — he, she, you — but struggled with “me.” The last name she learned was her own. Pamela would hold a mirror in front of her chubby face, say “Baby” or “Deidre.” She was delighted by her own reflection and dutifully repeated the words, but made no connection with the image until much later.

Most of our words are directed away from us, Adams thinks. Intrigued, he sets out to map the human mind.

For weeks he gathers models, from Aristotle’s theory to the latest neurological research. His first thought is to unify the best models with current ideas to form a definitive map. There are so many models, however, each with its own value and charm, that he decides to make a series.

There are mythic models, psychological models, linguistic, philosophical, political, scientific models. Some choices have already been made by virtue of historical significance. One cannot exclude Freud. Existential philosophy should not be ignored. And thinking of Than, he decides to draw a map of the mind according to Hegel.

A Pennsylvania probate court declares Otto incompetent, closes his bank account, and secures his holdings for the present.

“You’ve stripped him of his civil rights,” Adams tells Pamela on the phone.

Pamela, in Pennsylvania, depressed at having to do family business, leaving her latest work to hostile critics (who have grown tired of her Dangerous Words), snaps, “You sound like his lawyer.”

“I’m concerned about him.” “He’s a drunk.”

“And Jurgen’s a louse for doing this.” “It’s been very hard on Daddy. He’s not in good health.”

“God’s punishment.”

“Let’s not argue about it, all right? Have there been any more reviews?”

Adams had decided not to mention them, but her attitude upsets him and he reads them to her slowly.

To begin with, the base structure of the brain: numerous diagrams exist showing right and left hemispheres, frontal lobe, etc. Problem: how to make a drawing of the brain that isn’t just another wiring chart? CAT scans are colorful, but less precise than the best road maps. After long consideration Adams chooses for his Point of View oxygen and glucose, the two most active elements in the brain.

On the computer Adams sketches gentle hills interrupted by valleys, some in shadow, with deep gullies. Dark sky, cobweb stretched across it like a silvery dome. The cobweb represents the arachnoid, a vaulted bridge connecting the crevices of the brain. Cerebro-spinal fluid flows like a system of rivers into the valleys, widening into lakes where thoughts splash like noisy children. He gives each lake-child an oversized flashlight, representing electrically charged cells. Next problem: Is the brain the mind? Centuries of debate between behaviorists, idealists, dualists, etc., have failed to answer this question.

Constraint (if he agrees that the mind is intangible): a map must refer to a physical landscape.

Whether the mind’s assumptions are learned or a priori he cannot show on his map, nor can he determine whether mind is attached to substance and weight.

“He said they were going to take us all somewhere else because we were involved in subversive activities here. This made us very sad because we did not know what subversive activities were.”

A Guatemalan peasant. Adams has noticed that the Third World makes up most of Rosa’s dead these days, since she has become politically active again. On Tuesday evening Maurice Bishop told her, “In spite of my clash with the CIA, I didn’t understand the true meaning of destabilization until I abandoned my body and entered the cosmic realm.”

Rosa tightens her grip on his hands.

“Compañeros, Christian greetings from a poor Indian farmer, slain shamelessly on the night of the purge…”

Hegel says there are no bare facts. Things enter into our experience because we conceptualize them. The yard. The barbecue pit. The field behind his house. The boys’ rockets. He will never in his life encounter an object he doesn’t have words for. Even when something’s strange to him, he is able to describe its shape, color, etc.

All things, then, exist as ideas. But every thesis has an antithesis. Every positive a negative.

Negation, Hegel says, is the creative force of the mind.

What does that mean? Adams pauses for a moment. He considers the crescent roll lying on the plate on his kitchen table. My consciousness of that crescent roll depends upon my awareness that I am not a roll. I don’t get lost in rollness. Separation (i.e., negation) is fundamental to consciousness.

He wonders how to represent negation on a map, then realizes that maps are by definition negations of territories they do not include.

If every positive implies a negative, it follows that every negative implies another positive, and so on. Self-generation.

The universe is constantly working itself out.

He pours himself another Scotch. The problem remains: What is working itself out in the universe?

He picks up Hegel again. “Reason is the substance and energy of the universe.”

But where does Reason begin? Like a mathematician, Adams must isolate the principles. The beginning of Reason. It must be the most abstract conceivable thought. Being generates Nothing, and vice versa, so this, Adams thinks, is the ultimate abstraction: a blank idea into which anything may fit. Being is the quality without which a thing ceases to be itself. He looks at the crescent roll again. He could remove the brown color from it but it would still be a roll. He could change its shape but it would still be a roll. He could take it apart any number of ways but nothing he does can tell him why, when all of the elements are joined, a roll is formed.

Is language Reason? That seems a little suspect. He marks his place in Hegel, buckles his pants, and walks down the block to the library. A white cat zips across the cemetery, a single bulb burns in Rosa’s kitchen. Adams whistles a tune as he walks up the street.

In the library he settles himself at a scuffed oak table with several heavy volumes. Locke identifies ideas with all objects of consciousness. Consciousness is the mind’s apprehension of its own processes, and the wellspring of knowledge.

But what is an object of consciousness? An object, Adams thinks, is something toward which consciousness directs itself. Words? Thoughts? Ideas?

The intentionality of consciousness: It is always conscious of something.

Locke is no help.

Berkeley says an idea is a mind-dependent Being. Closer to Hegel, though Hegel would not restrict ideas to the mind.

Sartre: Consciousness is an insatiable hunger.

Adams’ stomach growls. He chuckles, catches the eye of a girl who is trying to study. She gives him a severe look and returns to her book. Adams wonders if he has any cheese and crackers at home. He walks back up the street. The wind rises, blowing paper and cans along the curb. He stops and looks at the field of the dead, the chilly marble stones and bent flowers in copper cups.

What we want, as human beings, is to know.

What we look for in other human beings, a knowing that knows our knowing.

Reason seeking recognition of itself.

The light goes out in Rosa’s kitchen. A Volkswagen Rabbit turns the corner, sputtering loudly. Absurd to anticipate Reason in a world that’s running down, where people’s needs are so opposed. Still, when he recalls Hegel — “Nothing remaining but the mere action of subjectivity itself, the Abstractum of Spirit — Thought — ” he feels braced.

Hoping is harmless, he thinks. He bounds up Rosa’s steps, rings the doorbell. She comes yawning to the door, dressed in men’s pajamas. “Sam? What the hell are you doing out so late?”

“Rosa,” he says, “Reason is working itself out in the universe.”

Adams takes a few days off, leaves the kids with Pamela’s friend Cyndi, and flies to Pennsylvania to help Otto adjust after leaving the sanitarium.

“I want to change my will,” Otto says. “Cut those bastards out of it. Pammy’s a good girl, but she listens to her daddy.”

He’s twelve pounds lighter than the last time Adams saw him. A sallow swirl around each eye.

“You don’t have anything left to bequeath,” Adams reminds him.

“I’ll get it back, don’t you worry. Got me a Southern lawyer.”

That afternoon, while Otto sleeps, Adams talks to the lawyer, a Harvard graduate in her thirties. Her name is Sharon Wells. “I’ve been hired on a contingency basis,” she tells him. “My fee depends on the settlement.” She is dressed smartly in a kneelength navy skirt, an Arrow shirt, and a man’s red tie. Her hair is ash-blond; round glasses magnify her eyes. “He has a very good chance of regaining his property. They violated his civil rights.” She is currently drafting a new will in elementary language, echoing Otto’s style, naming Deidre and Toby as beneficiaries, as per his wishes. She intends to videotape the signing in case there is a question about Otto’s competency. Adams leaves the office impressed.

He drives his rented car across town to Jurgen’s house, a white wooden Tudor, brick trim, picket fence in front. Pamela lets him in. She’s thin.

“How are you,” he asks.

“Tired.” She doesn’t seem friendly.

“Your father?”

“Some better. How are the kids?”

“Fine. Cyndi was going to take them to the zoo.”

Pamela nods.

Jurgen is also unfriendly. “Why are you helping that old goat?” he croaks, sitting up in bed. Kleenex and bottles of capsules crowd the night table to his right.

“He has nowhere to go. Somebody’s got to look after him.”

“You think I’d just abandon him?” Adams shrugs.

“He’s my brother, even if we don’t get along.”

“I’m just lending him a hand, Jurgen.”

“Well, it’s not Christian charity, Sam, I don’t believe that for a minute. You’re doing it to spite me.”

“I’m doing it because you stuck him in that sanitarium against his will,” Adams says, glancing at Pamela. She is standing by a window, letting the sun warm her shoulders.

“Well, aren’t we on a high horse?” Jurgen says. “Since when are you so concerned about other people? If you’d worried this much over Pammy, she might still be your wife.”

Pamela turns toward the window.

“I think I’d better go,” Adams says. “I didn’t want to get into this. I just came by to see how you were.”

Jurgen coughs loudly and can’t stop. Three white hairs wiggle in the middle of his forehead. Pamela pounds his back. Adams brings him a glass of water. When Jurgen is calm again, Adams squeezes Pamela’s wrist, tells her he’ll let himself out.

That night, time on his hands, Adams goes to an ice show he’d seen advertised in the paper. Otto is resting comfortably at the sanitarium; Adams’ room at the Holiday Inn is too depressing for anything but sleep. The ice show is being staged in a giant arena downtown. His seat is good, a little high perhaps. The arena looks like an airplane hangar, with a green metal roof and heavy rafters. The crowd moves about restlessly on the scarred wooden bleachers. Everyone’s wearing a coat.

The show begins at eight. Cold vapors rise from the square of ice, big as a basketball court, on the arena floor. A man dressed as Chaplin’s Little Tramp circles the rink, tossing white roses to women in the front row. Adams remembers nights he spent with Jill, the sheen of her legs in the chilly air of her apartment, the warm touch of her hip on his thigh. He thinks of Carol on a bed of snow. He makes a mental note to take Toby and Deidre skating when he gets home, and to buy for them at a hardware store a heavy chain, a fragrant piece of pine wood, a sheet of water-repellent plastic, because these textures are nice to feel.

Otto disappears on the day of the signing. For two hours Adams combs the city. Finally, after lunch, Otto appears in the lawyer’s office, drunk, wearing a checkered flannel shirt. He is covered with hay; he won’t say where he’s been.

The lawyer tells Adams, “Clean him up. Buy him a suit.”

Adams drives Otto to a department store where just this morning, searching the streets, he’d seen a blue serge suit in the window.

“Where the hell do you get off, buying me a suit I don’t want?” Otto snaps.

Ties run two for eight dollars. Adams gets a couple for himself.

Back at the office the lawyer signals her assistant to start the videotape machine.

“Are you married?” she begins.

“No, are you?” Otto says.

The lawyer begins again.

Adams tells Otto, “You’ll need a place to stay while your case is waiting to go to trial. It could take months. Why don’t you come back to Nebraska with me? I’ve got a place in the country now. It’s isolated. You can have it to yourself most of the time.”

“Does Pammy know about this place?”

“She never comes out.”

“She’s awfully upset with me.”

“You’ll never see her. I promise.”

“Sam, my man. What’s shakin’?” Pete has let his hair grow back. He’s wearing a sleeveless jersey.

“I’m trying to map the universe.”

“Heavy,” Pete says.

“Do you ever think about it? I mean, do you have a mental picture of what’s out there?”

“The universe, man, is a single sax note blown in the face of God.”

To Bob, it’s a series of cogs.

To Denny, a case of jewels.

Mary, the teenage girl who flirts with Pete between sets, doesn’t know but hopes it’s soft and cool, like sand at night. “Maybe they’ll teach me in college,” she says.

“No, books published one week are obsolete the next,” Adams tells her.

“Like music, you mean? Heavy metal was in for a while, then disco, then punk?”

“Sort of, yes.”

“Well, shit. What’s the point of going if everything I learn’s a golden oldie before I even get out of school?”

Otto has settled into the dome, an uneasy alliance with the computer. Adams introduces him to Rosa, hoping they’ll hit it off, but Rosa has recently purchased an ammunition belt (dummies) and insists on eating a box of chicken wings she has brought. Otto is leery.

“What makes you love black people so much?” he says.

“It’s not a question of love.” She licks her fingers. “It’s the wave of the future. Even if the spirits hadn’t told me, I’d have seen signs in this world.” “What signs?” Otto says.

“Poetry, music, theater, dance … the most vital art is being produced by minorities.”

“What’s art got to do with it?”

“Art reflects changes in the world. The imagination of the white Anglo-Saxon male has run out of gas. Read their books. They’re all depressed.”

“Let’s eat,” Adams says.

“That woman’s crazy as hell,” Otto tells Adams once Rosa is gone.

“I know.”

“Why do you hang around a woman that’s crazy as hell?”

“She’s kind to the children. Keeps me company.”

“Married?”

“Widow.”

“Probably talked her husband into the ground. Although …” Otto props his feet on Adams’ stone table. “She’s got a point about the signs. I used to figure out what was happening in the country by looking at the ads we painted. Whatever ails you, that’s what we put on our billboards. When I first started painting, it was just stomach disorders and colds, then it was female troubles and I knew if that’s what people were reading signs about they were talking a whole lot more about screwing than they used to. I coulda told you there was going to be a sexual revolution years before it happened. You just got to watch what’s ailing folks.”

The tips of weeds in the field behind his yard sparkle like spurs. Bright quarter-moon. Wooden roofs on nearby houses resemble rough thatch.

The man in Adams’ yard crouches by the fence, elbow on leg, free palm to the ground. The same man who appeared in the yard months ago. Quickly, Adams slips past the front door, circles the house, and approaches the man, stealthily, from the rear. A light mist is falling. He lifts the latch on the gate. The stranger has not moved. Adams steps forward, not too close. “Can I help you?” he says.

The man turns, keeping his face in shadow. He pushes away but trips over Adams’ right foot. Together the men fall in a bed of wet leaves. The stranger tries to rise, slips again. Adams holds his shoulders.

They get to their feet. Adams crouches, ready to tackle. The man is not tall, quick, or imposing. His shoulders are small and smooth beneath the padded suit.

“Pam?”

She loosens her hair and it falls around her face. “Yes.”

“All along …” he asks, astonished. They haven’t spoken since returning, on separate flights, from Pennsylvania.

“Yes.” She is breathing heavily, brushing wet leaves from her arm.

After thirty seconds he recovers his voice. “Are you crazy?”

“Of course.”

She’s mocking him, answering every question in the affirmative. He changes his approach. “Will you tell me what you’re doing?”

“Yes.” She smiles, loosens her tie, but says nothing.

Adams turns to look at his house, the kitchen light, the drawn curtains.

“Oh no no no.” Pamela laughs. “Not a voyeur, Sam. You know me better than that.” She removes her heavy coat. “I’m the Man of the Year, the nuclear threat, a lead pipe, a piston. I’m the Terror of the Prairie, the thundering hooves of unperceived radio waves.”

She’s not drunk. Her eyes are clear and sober. She’s putting him on for reasons he can’t imagine.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Is the performance over? What the hell have you been doing out here?”

“That’s right,” she says. “It’s a performance, Sam.” She rolls up her sleeves. “How long did we live in this house together?”

“Seven years,” he says.

“And married for fifteen?”

“Do you want to come inside? Can we talk about this like we’re not two crazy people?”

“I like it out here. Country of my Fathers. I am Zorah, protectress of the men with no heart.” She laughs.

“Cut it out. What are you doing?”

“I’m making you uncomfortable?”

“You’re acting like an idiot.”

“Remember, Sam, art is imitation. The first time you saw me out here, you thought I was a burglar or a pervert, didn’t you?”

“I thought you were a guy I knew at work. I didn’t know what to think.”

“Street theater’s risky. If you stage a holdup on a sidewalk, people’ll call the police unless you signal them it’s all an act. Art telegraphs its intentions. When it doesn’t, it ceases to be art. Or ceases to be perceived as art, which amounts to the same thing. Why didn’t you call the police on me?”

“I tried. It’s not their jurisdiction.”

She’s greatly amused by that.

“Is that what you call this? Street theater?”

“The Song of the Lorelei, the Poisoned Lozenge, the Terrible Awakening of the Lycanthrope, his wolflike skin, the wrenching echo of his cry across flat country. I must say you disappointed me, Sam. We had one good chase, but that’s all.”

He looks at her as though he’s not seeing her.

“You know the best thing about this house?” she says, absently wrapping the red tie around her hand. “The floor space between the built-in shelves in the living room. Too large to ignore but too small for furniture. You could fill them with wastebaskets, but who needs six wastebaskets in a living room?”

“Come inside, Pam. I’ll make you some coffee.”

“I used to imagine Alan was sitting in one of those spaces — I swept them every day — or lying on a shelf watching TV with us in the evenings. I never wanted a dead child, Sam. It’s hard to know what to do with them.” Mist collects in her hair.

“We have two living children,” Adams says. “Where are they?”

“Playing with friends.”

He rubs the moisture from his face. “You scared the hell out of me. Didn’t you think about that?”

“How old would Alan be?”

“I don’t know. Fourteen, I think. Come inside.”

“I don’t live here anymore.”

“I’m inviting you in. Will you stop this silly game?”

“I know you won’t understand this, Sam, but standing here has given me a wealth of knowledge about the differences between art and life. Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray’s Monument to de Sade, Florence Henri’s Self-Portrait, the formal creation of stillness through stable structures — ”

“Will you come inside?”

“This is important. Jung speaks of container and contained in marital relationships; conversely, in art, the image and the frame — ”

“Then get out of my yard.”

“But I am the Hook and the Eye, Collar Bone Stew-”

“Let’s get the kids. Where are they?” “Mother of Hope Unborn.”

It is now late April. Adams and Otto are sitting at Adams’ stone table, north of Deerbridge Road. Early evening. The roof of the dome glistens in the sun.

“Pam and the kids are coming out here on Sunday,” Adams says. “I thought we’d have a picnic.”

“You want me to disappear for a while?”

“No. She wants to see you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“She’s making a real effort to be fair.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Otto sips his beer. “In that case, can I invite someone?”

“Sure.”

“What if I give ol’ Rosa a call? She’s a crazy old woman,” he’s quick to add, “but you got to admit, she keeps the conversation hopping.”

“She does that.”

“Just to break the ice, you know, in case Pammy’s got a bug up her ass.”

“I understand.”

“She won’t be wearing a suit, will she?”

“She hasn’t mentioned that. Our conversations have been very standard, making plans for the kids.”

“Still got a thing for you?”

“I don’t know,” Adams says. “No. The years we spent together, maybe.”

Otto tosses his bottle into a pile of dirt at the foot of the dome. “Can you draw me some kind of map that shows how funny this country is? I mean, even the smart ones like you and Pammy are crazy.”

Adams nods. “It’s a failure, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“The country.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“Gloriously full. Poisoned, fat, and hungry. A history of odd loves, spurious fights. Rooms that emit high piercing noises just behind the walls. For the next sixty seconds. This is only a test.”

“Where do you get all this stuff? Like that shit you were trying to tell me the other night. About Reason?”

“It’s working itself out in the universe.”

Otto pulls another beer from the Styrofoam cooler beneath the table. “It ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell,” he tells Adams.

Adams says, “We’ll see.”