White People (15 page)

I don’t usually resort to this kind of string pulling. I’m averse to it on principle. But I’m fighting here for my husband’s safety. There is nothing really personal, Miss McPhee, in my wanting to see your head on a platter.

You,

In addition—any steeple, any kids praying at bedtime while their parents look on, any cross or cross-shaped structure, the star of David, any and all angels. Allusions to the so-called Holy Eucharist, any group of singing persons holding what might be missals or hymnbooks. Anybody wearing miters, starched collars, rabbinical getups or choirlike garments. Anything even faintly touching on what I’ve mentioned. If I find this stuff up on that wall come July, stand by for retribution. We all know who picked.

Dear Dorothy at the Fundament,

Did I tell you that our farmhouse was built in 1819? A first cousin of Herman Melville lived here. Supposedly, Melville himself cut the tin weathervane, a prickly mermaid. My wife’s family gave us this place. Lucia has an inheritance. Her greatgrandfather McCloud made his money through cotton mills back before unions and child labor laws. Lucia is very protective of me. She thinks I’m somewhat sickly and unstable. Maybe I am. Would you consider advancing the deadline so I won’t get more? I seem to be falling behind. The stacks certainly do grow. The mailman now takes the packets straight to our chicken coop. I’ve taped copies of the contest rules over the kitchen sink and near our four-poster and alongside the toilet. I’m so glad it says “Not responsible for others’ loss or damage.” That’s some relief, anyway.

You told me that my being the judge would be kept strictly secret, Dorothy. You promised. I’ve begun getting phone calls here. Only two of our best N.Y. friends have this unlisted number. We’ve intentionally stayed somewhat aloof from the villagers (Lucia’s idea and probably a good one). So it’s always an event when the phone rings. Last night, I had three long-distance calls from some crazy man in Los Angeles who’s sure I’m going to put up another Sistine ceiling. (If one were submitted, I’d leap at the chance.) This person growled about the pope’s
“nephews,” a whole fleet of Vatican callboys. I said I didn’t want to know and I hung up. I was afraid Lucia would phone and be worried so I put it back in the cradle and it rang right then. Some woman from Billings, Montana, reversed the charges. I’ve always loved that name Montana. Dakota, Montana: words so dry and beautiful. I accepted the charges. I don’t know why. She was calling from a bar. I could hear country and western music in the background and sometimes war-whoops like in Wild West saloons. She whispered. She told me that a wren had good feelings about me. The jukebox was still blaring when, over and over, she started whistling bird imitations into the pay phone. I hung up, then took the receiver off. It whined so I slid some socks over it, wrapped it in an Army blanket and stuffed it into a desk drawer. I’m scared, Dorothy.

The mailman arrived again this morning. I’ve started giving him five or ten dollars a day. This is a sleepy town and he’s never worked so hard. He came in with three new boxes and said, “Tippie Wilkins is my niece.” I told him, All right. I went in and found Tippie’s application right on top. Her idea concerns an endangered species: whales. Tippie’s just thirteen. She sent me her school photo. Tippie says there are fewer survivors each year. Extinction, I’ve found, is a favorite theme among our younger contestants. I’m keeping notes on trends in applicants’ ages and geography. Our country is so vast. Regionalism will never die, will it? My notes are around here somewhere. How much longer do I have to judge? I’ll level with you, Dorothy. My reputation as a painter is mostly based on one rave review, one show of seven paintings in 1969. I’ve been gliding on that ever since. I teach part-time but really live on Lucia’s money. I haven’t sold a large painting in four years. If this makes you feel I’m unfit to judge a national competition, I understand.

But please keep me a secret, Dorothy. Why don’t
you
call me (let it ring twice then hang up and call again)? You haven’t written me since this judgment began. I’ve only seen your handwriting on the check you sent. Tell Lucia to call the same way, in our code.

I didn’t know there
were
so many Americans over eighteen. Dorothy, send me an assistant. It’s getting lonely up here.

K.

Kermit dear,

I’m sorry our splendid phone talk was cut off just now. I’ll repeat the details for good measure. I arrive by Greyhound at Northampton, Mass., on April 2, at 2:30 p.m., your time, Eastern time. I’m not sure how far from Northampton your farm is, but during the drive we can get even better acquainted. From the tone of your sad gentle voice, I feel I know you so well already. You’ve been too too kind. I wonder if you even understand what a terrible thing isolation is. Especially isolation in Montana.

This town made me its laughingstock when I was just eleven. You know what they say when I go by? “Look who’s
loose.”
They all say that. I know it’s hard for an established artist such as yourself to believe. How does it happen that I, the one person for miles who loves Art, who aspires to create, should be their favorite victim? Now I’m over thirty and it still goes on. Every day another little slight or humiliation. You can hardly shop. Luckily, we’ll have time to talk things over, my new friend. Thanks to your encouragement I won’t ever have to come back here again. Someday, they’ll all regret these years they’ve taunted and hurt me. Oh well, see you very soon now,

All the love on earth, from us,
Mirabelle
and
Jenny the Wren

Judge of It,

Still we wait for Daddy Eagles. Every day at the mailbox I don’t find them yet. Miss Martin the teacher says you all have plenty of time by now to pick. If you mess up the only Eagles he sketch down on place mats I mighty upset. My boys are big as I was then. They say to say they will come looking for the one that failed to send their grandads only Eagle drawings back here. Like I said my dad he died. There will never be another Eagle drawing done at the counter while he waited for Momma
to finish up her last customers. My boys get mean sometime. They all have pickups and will really come to find the missing Eagles no matter how far. I cannot control my boys when they get the idea I been treated wrong or that my dead dad gets treated bad either. I just ask you to respect a persons property and also our feelings. It is within my rights to ask back what is really mine. Somebody dead drew those ones. There can be no new ones from someone who dead. I should not of mailed the only ones of something. I just wanted somebody outside our family to say his Eagles had something extra. Everytime that mailtruck leaves us nothing I feel that much more low and the boys they get madder.

Dorothy, Fundament,

Yesterday morning, I decided to answer the phone. I wanted Lucia to call so I put it back on the hook. I wanted you to call. Jenny the Wren reversed the charges, this time from Cleveland. I was smart and wouldn’t accept. I could hear the train or bus departures being announced and, over the operator’s voice, Jenny kept chirping at me. Then it was an atheist shouting something about graven images and firebombing the wall.

Around three, little Tippie got on the phone. She played me a whole phonograph record of whale voices. Tippie held the receiver near the speaker. Have you ever heard whales singing, Dorothy? Have you ever heard anything so sad? It was like an echo of an echo of a human cry. The Russians and Japanese slaughter them for face cream. They shouldn’t. Tippie told me step-by-step how they do it. She started to whimper. I hung up, then yanked the phone out of the wall. I hope everyone will understand.

All afternoon I’ve worked on my own application. I’ve decided to apply. My entry would incorporate all the worthiest aspects of those who have no chance at all. What
is
our country
if not pitching in to help the other person less fortunate?

I went for a nice walk just now all over our land. My breath showed blue. It’s chilly here now and nice. There were berries on some trees yesterday but not now. I think the cedar waxwings ate them. The moon came out early, it was silver over our weather vane. I wandered home and crawled under a quilt my grandmother made me. It’s done in shades of pink and is comforting. My mother took elocution lessons as a girl. She also studied scarf dancing and poise. She learned this and every time she got the least bit drunk she’d say it with real expression as they’d taught her to:

Miss McPhee,

I’m sending this to your former place of employment, hoping they will forward it. I wanted you to know what I found in Massachusetts. The phone went out of order and I rushed right up there. Just two nights before, when my call finally got through, he sounded tired but otherwise quite lucid. I want you to know what you’re responsible for. I walked into an abandoned house. The place was absolutely filthy. I won’t bother with details but I saw that Kermit had lost control of his hygiene and faculties. All the applications were missing, every one. I’d had the good sense to bring along someone from the village, a handyman who’s done work for us. Mr. Bryce went into the bedroom first and came out with a strange expression. He said, “It should be covered up.” A cardboard suitcase blocked the doorway. I stepped over this, and there, curled up in our bed, was a tiny elderly woman asleep and naked. She wore only high heels and a feathered hat. When I woke her, she looked around
so startled she began whistling for help. She kept doing it, so shrilly, these bird imitations that were absolutely credible and absolutely horrifying. Finally I convinced her I meant no harm. I asked where Kermit was. I begged her to use words. At last, hiding completely under sheets, she whispered in English, Today he’s gone off to decide.

Mr. Bryce and I rushed out and wandered all over the farm calling Kermit’s name. Bryce went down by the pond since I was too frightened to look there. I tramped around for an hour or more, still in my city heels, still holding my purse, screaming his name hysterically. Then at the edge of the woods, I saw our red wheelbarrow. A few drawings were in it, and beyond that, uphill, in a little clearing under the evergreens, Kermit had hidden himself among the applications. He’d piled all those packets neatly into four-foot stacks. Stacks stood like columns and, as a roof over these, he had placed a large stretched canvas, as yet unpainted. Draped across this was a patchwork quilt he’d inherited from a relative. I struggled up the hill in my ridiculous shoes. He seemed pleased to see me, he beckoned me into his little shack. I squatted on the spruce needles and crawled in. He needed a shave but otherwise looked all right. He looked wonderful, in fact. Very animated.

He’d torn one corner off each of the hundreds of drawings. These lay spread before him, like a puzzle. He kept trying to fit all these colored shards together. I sat there, crouched beside him, watching. I could hear Bryce’s voice echoing across the pond, calling Mr. Waley, Mr. Waley. Kermit told me quietly, “This is our winner, Lucia. What do you think?” He went on contentedly arranging the torn pieces. He was humming. I put my hand on his shoulder, so soothed to see him alive. The strangeness of this hut we were in, of his activity, didn’t strike me till much later.

Bryce took the woman to a nearby bus station. I never found out who she was or how she came to be in our bed. I’m not at all sorry that you’ve lost your job, Miss McPhee. We sold the farm. We had to. For now, we’re living at my uncle’s retreat on
Bimini. We sit in the sun a lot. Kermit is beginning to talk again. He hasn’t gone near a paintbrush in over ten weeks. I’ve had to hide all the art books in the house, even books on decorating. When we venture out to dinner, I do detours to avoid even the hotel’s postcard racks. Anything might remind him. Anything could set him off. He’s beginning to make jokes again, though he still looks so fatigued. Just after it happened, he kept repeating, “We are one big unhappy family, and poor, aren’t we, Lucia?” To appease him, I said, “I suppose we are, dear.” He has been stunted as an artist and a man by what this competition has shown him, Miss McPhee. I hope you are satisfied. Since all of this occurred, I have felt a great need to write down these details for you.

Lucia McCloud-Waley

The National Fundament of the Arts regrets announcing cancellation of its mural design competition. Appropriations formerly earmarked for the Humanities have, in this time of international tensions, been deemed more urgently needed in areas crucial to our national defense.

The newly appointed Fundament director is Randolph Gleason, till recently Senior Vice-President of Boeing Aircraft. Gleason stated that, should rerouted funds ever be returned to the Fundament, future contests will probably offer themes far more specific, far less open-ended and inflammatory than that of this year’s competition.

When asked if art jurists revoked the mural competition due to a lack of national interest, the new director commented that, on the contrary, if anything there had been an excess of response. The entries, Gleason explained, tended to be “highly individualistic and single-issue oriented.” Questioned further, Gleason would not elaborate beyond his prepared text. He then stood and pronounced the mural competition dismantled and—in turn—official withdrawal of its all-too-provocative theme question, “America, Where Have You Come From, Where Are You Bound?”

Applications cannot be returned.

1976

I’ve got an extra tenderness. It’s not legal
.

I
SEE
a twelve-year-old boy steal a white Mercedes off the street. I’m sitting at my official desk—Superintendent of Schools—it’s noon on a weekday and I watch this kid wiggle a coat hanger through one front window. Then he slips into the sedan, straight-wires its ignition, squalls off. Afterward, I can’t help wondering why I didn’t phone the police. Or shout for our truant officer just down the hall.