The Fool's Progress

  We done it that time, he said.

  We did it. I could feel it. Now we’re really in the animal soup.

  Henry pulled up his jeans as he struggled from beneath her relaxed weight. It’s raining, he mentioned, tugging her to her feet. Hand in hand they ran for the lookout cabin. Ribbons of pink lightning skittered across the black sky—an insane scribbling, a blind demented fury. They laughed and slammed the door, stripped off their soaked clothes and tumbled into bed and slept for ten hours. Blue light flashed and vanished beyond the windowpanes. Thunder echoed thunderblast as the rain came down in advancing then retreating waves.

  Henry dreamed of woodsmoke. He awoke at sunrise to see two pine snags flaring like torches a mile below. Naked as a jaybird he switched on the forest radio to report the fires while Claire, wearing nothing but her pink ruffled apron, made coffee, folded an omelet of eggs, peppers and tomatoes in the skillet and quartered two fat oranges into eight golden sections. Facing each other across the tiny foldout table they drank the coffee, ate the omelet, sucked on the oranges and strove but failed to contain their idiotic smiles. Henry stuck a section of orange over his gums and offered her his patent golden grin.

  Henry, Henry….

  He removed the orange. I know, he said.

  I can’t bear it. I’m so happy I want to weep.

  I know, he said. Me too—happy as a dead pig in the sunshine, like Grandma always said.

  I think I’m going to cry.

  Me too.

  They wept for a while together then wandered off through a mist of fog and the tang of smoke to hunt for mushrooms.

  XII

  In August she announced that she was pregnant. I’m preggers, she said, the rabbit never lies.

  That night on the rimrock? When it rained? That was the night. I hope it’s twins, he said. Might as well have an instant family, get this thing going whole hog. How nicely you put it. He embraced and kissed her, letting his hands slip down to her haunches. How nice it is to put. You’re so vulgar. Henry H. Lightcap here. Man of the people. Voice of the common man. L’homme sensual, as the Frogs say. That’s not quite the way the French pronounce it. What can you expect from a Frog?

  Mildly panicked, he worried about money. She reminded him that she would receive an income of her own in only a few more years. That was some comfort but small consolation to Henry: assuaged his fear but provoked his pride.

  Your money is your money, he said. I’ll support my family myself. Somehow. (Furthermore, he thought, there’s something tainted about trust fund money.)

  I see, she said. What’s yours is mine but what’s mine is mine?

  That’s right. (Would have to talk to her about that. That matter of unearned income. Someday.)

  That’s not right, that’s a double standard. Well goddamnit you’re a woman I’m a man. There’s your double standard, built into biology. I’ve got a million years of mammalian tradition behind me. Some of us don’t accept that kind of thinking anymore. I’ve read about it. I’ve read Beauvoir and Friedan too and that long-nosed goon-eyed harpy Virginia Woolf. Those lilies of the valley. A room of their own? They should each have a cell in a nunnery. On Lesbos Island.

  You can be so cruel. There’s a mean streak in you, Henry. That’s one of the things I don’t like about you. Only one? What else? Oh—the way you blow your nose on the ground then wipe your hand on a tree. Can’t you use a handkerchief? Did you ever hear of Kleenex? What else? Come on, let’s hear it. Peeing in the bathroom washbasin. You’d rather see me piss in the kitchen sink? Why can’t you use the toilet like everyone else? Because the damn things are built for Puerto Ricans, that’s why. If I piss in the toilet bowl I splash piss all over the wall. Try sitting down. I’m a man. An American. Only Hindus squat to piss, for christsake. Hindus and women. Anyhow I usually piss off the back porch, you know that. It’s unnatural to piss indoors. Unsanitary.

  I give up. Suppose the baby is born deformed or something? What are you talking about? You heard me; what should we do? Suppose it’s a Mongoloid idiot? You mean Down’s Syndrome? I mean Mongoloid idiot; what should we do?

  She stared at him. Tears welled up in her eyes. Henry, please, don’t even think such a thing.

  Well…. Ashamed of himself, he tried to hug her to him. She turned away. Just thought…he said. But he wasn’t thinking very well.

  Visitors appeared from time to time. Claire’s friends from the music department at the University—a violist, a cello player, another violinist. With Claire and her fiddle they played a Haydn quartet and a Mozart quartet among the noble columns of a grove of Ponderosa pines. Henry on duty in the fire lookout heard the music ascending past his tower and thought of Vienna, the Hapsburgs, elegant salons lit by a thousand candles, ladies in powdered wigs and hoopskirts, gentlemen in pigtails and satin knee britches, the silent stream of servants flowing from kitchen to salon and back, the greasy slaveys in the scullery, the ragged prisoners in the dungeons, chains on the wall, torches burning in the darkness of an inquisitorial chamber, the sweating ogre in the black leather hood…

  Mozart. Papa Haydn. Them good old rococo times. Or as it should be spelled, he thought, R*o*C*o*C*oo.

  Without torturers like Igor, explained Le Duc de Camembert (a soft dense mellow fellow) to Le Duc d’Angoisse-Frisson, there could be no gentlemen like us. Ipsissima verba. The very words.

  But Henry had a sick imagination, obsessed with history. Aloft in his tower too long he’d been reading too much Gibbon, Mommsen, Acton, Toynbee, Becker, Wells, Braudel, Prescott, Beard, Wittfogel…. Torture, massacre, slavery, peonage and serfdom, rank and caste and hierarchy, the nightmare unfolding for five six seven thousand years or ever since the first Pharaoh hissed, uncoiled and rose like a hooded cobra from the slime of the Nile and our hydraulic tyranny began its self-perpetuating growth.

  Sometimes he heard voices:

  It is not enough to understand the world of man. The point is to change it. He looked around. Who said that?

  Dr. Harrington arrived one day, accompanied by Lacey and Arriaga and their wives. There was a picnic on the rim at evening and a liberal flow of wine, beer, Pepsi-Cola. From white-haired Keaton Lacey, a gentleman bowman and gunner, Henry learned that one of their favorite Arizona game ranges would soon be closed to hunting.

  How come?

  Lacey explained: An outfit called Lovers of Fur Bearers has received a big bequest from some millionaire animal sentimentalist in California. They bought out the cow ranch at the mouth of Turkey Creek Canyon. That means they control access to about ten-by-ten miles of state land and federal land. Sixty-four thousand acres. They’re gonna make it what they call a wildlife preserve. Closed to hunting.

  That’ll make a lot of people very unhappy.

  It makes me unhappy.

  Those critter freaks are going to need a gamekeeper.

  They sure are. About a dozen gamekeepers. Well-armed gamekeepers. Drunk and ignorant suicidal gamekeepers.

  Sounds like work for you, Lacey. You and Hooligan.

  We’re not that drunk and ignorant.

  Henry drove into town on his next day off and applied for the position himself. He would soon be a family man, needing steady employment. He was interviewed by Mr. Joseph S. Harlow, III, stockbroker by trade, who occupied an office suite on the top floor of the Pioneer Building in downtown Tucson, only two blocks in fact from the green spittoons, rancid air, creaky floorboards and eroded slate pool tables of the Dirty Shame Saloon. But what an abysm yawned between.

  Mr. Harlow, gray-haired and square-headed, peered at Henry over spectacles lowered to the tip of his nose. Feet on desk, he clipped the tip from a Macanudo, passed a lighter to Henry, brushed copies of Forbes magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Audubon magazine and the Sierra Club Bulletin to the side. Henry lit his cigar—a huge fat gentleman’s smoke of a quality to which he was not, actually, fully accustomed.

  Any background in law enforcement, Mr. Lightcap?

  Henry mentioned his year and
a half with the Military Police in Italy, his six months with the Border Patrol in Big Bend, Texas, his seven or eight intermittent years as a park ranger in Utah, Arizona, Montana, Florida.

  Six months with the Border Patrol?

  Yessir.

  Why only six months?

  I didn’t really like the work.

  You’re a liberal, I suppose?

  No sir, I’m a bigot. It was shooting those damn Mex cows with the hoof-and-mouth disease that got me down. Can’t stand the noise a hollow-point bullet makes when it hits a living body.

  A brief pause.

  Married? Yessir; twice. Divorced? Yep; once. Childen? None on the streets; one in the oven.

  Pause. Lightcap and Harlow puffed on their great rich turdlike cigars, blowing ragged clouds of smoke at the ceiling. Portofino fog.

  Are you a Harvard man, Mr. Lightcap?

  Me?

  You’re wearing a Harvard tie.

  I am? Henry looked down and lifted the crimson pennon, like the parboiled tongue of a cow, that dangled from his collar. He gazed at the thing in wonder. A gift from my mother-in-law, he explained. The Snag. No sir, as a matter of fact I went to school in New Mexico.

  Familiar with horses?

  Yes. But not too familiar.

  Good. We understand each other. Most of the Turkey Creek preserve can be patrolled by jeep but some will require a horse. Extremely rugged terrain. You’d have eight or nine horses in your care, about forty miles of fencing to keep up, three windmills, two alfalfa fields and a small citrus orchard to look after. From time to time you’d be expected to give the grand dames of our organization a tour of the premises—and they’d be very disappointed, I might add, if our caretaker failed to produce a few live deer, javelina, coatimundi, a bobcat or two. Keep that in mind. But of course the difficult part of the job involves public relations with the local citizenry. Have you ever confronted a group of drunken pig hunters, Mr. Lightcap, on the opening day of javelina season?

  No sir.

  Demanding access over private property to public lands?

  No.

  How do you think you would handle such a situation?

  Henry paused for thought. Thought seemed appropriate here. Inwardly he decided, I’d have Lacey with his steel crossbow and Hooligan with a light machine gun enfilading from the shrubbery. Aloud he said, I’d treat them with tact and delicacy, sir, but politely forbid access.

  Suppose they offered violence?

  I would honor the offer.

  A pause. Harlow considered that remark, savoring its facetious ambiguity, then said, This could be dangerous work, Mr. Lightcap, at least for the first few years or until our legal rights are respected.

  Yessir. Well, it sounds like interesting work to me. I’m ready to try something different.

  You sure?

  You only live once.

  True; a comforting thought. A pause. Now as to emolument, Mr. Lightcap, we could offer something in the neighborhood of, say, twelve thousand per annum?

  Henry looked thoughtfully at his cigar.

  Plus expenses, of course: fuel for vehicles and horses, fencing and equipment repair. Living quarters provided, including utility bills. Not a bad deal. The organization has a group medical-insurance plan and a pension plan. I’m sure our wildlife caretaker would be included in both.

  What kind of pension? A widow’s pension?

  Disability, retirement or death. Whichever comes first.

  I’d need a little extra help during hunting season.

  Certainly. That would come under annual operating expenses.

  Henry paused for reflection while Harlow continued his study of Henry’s physiognomy. I’ll take the job, Henry said.

  Mr. Harlow lowered his feet from the desk and rose gracefully from his chair. He extended his right hand. Goodbye, Mr. Lightcap. We’re not taking employment applications yet actually, not formally I mean, but if you will leave your name and address with my secretary out front…

  Yessir. They shook. Henry departed, satisfied. He felt he had made his point.

  He was correct. In early September came the letter on official Lovers of Fur Bearers stationery offering Henry H. Lightcap, Esq., the position of “wildlife warden” at the newly established Emily Ives Bancroft Sanctuary for Fur-Bearing Quadrupeds. Prompt reply requested. Signed, Caroline Currier Mills, Executive Director, Washington, D.C. Among the trustees listed on the letterhead was Joseph S. Harlow, III, Tucson, Arizona.

  What about fur-bearing bipeds? asked Claire. Such as Mother.

  Good point. As a matter of fact the javelina is not a fur-bearing beast. Hairy yes, piglike yes, but not furry.

  Like yourself?

  Yeah—like me.

  XIII

  The first thing Henry did was hire a part-time assistant. Twelve thousand dollars a year—one thousand a month, two hundred and fifty a week! plus expenses!—was twice any salary he had ever earned before in his life. It seemed to him easy, then, only natural, to share part of such bounty, such booty, with his friend Lacey, a Vietnam veteran with hunter’s eyes, the panther’s caution, a 50 percent (mental) disability allowance from the VA and a sound wholesome distrust of the human race. He didn’t need the work, Lacey agreed, but he could use the money. His Ford 250 needed a new engine.

  Claire disapproved of these procedures. You shouldn’t do this without consulting Harlow, she said. He may not like it. And I don’t trust that man Lacey. He’s crazier than Hooligan.

  They’re war vets, honey. You’ve got to make allowances.

  I don’t care for self-pity. Those two may have suffered. No doubt they witnessed some terrible things. But—

  Yeah, like seeing their best buddies torn open by mortar shells. Like seeing children roasted in napalm.

  Henry, I can’t bear that kind of talk.

  I’m sorry. He enfolded her in his arms and drew her close. Here’s the beauty of hiring Lacey, he said, murmuring in her ear. With that bandit installed out at Turkey Creek I can spend more time here in town with you. You and our incipient child. Due when?

  She liked that. Due in February.

  Henry and Lacey went to look at their new home in the country, 120 miles from Tucson. Eighty miles of pavement and forty miles of ranch road—dust, mud, sand, rock. Both were familiar with the road and neither distressed nor surprised by the leaky-roofed puncheon-floored urine-smelling log cabin that served as main ranch house or by the weed-grown garden, the unpruned orchard, the pastures rank with prickly pear, mesquite, cheatgrass and tumbleweed. Cow country.

  Not bad, said Lacey, not half bad. It’s all bad. How much you say those Fur Bearers paid for this weed ranch?

  About three hundred thousand. Down. You don’t have to live in the house.

  I don’t intend to.

  They checked out the rolling stock, a tractor, a cattle truck, the four-by-four Chevy pickup. All three needed work but they would function.

  And the outbuildings: the workshop-smithy looked usable. A ton of baled alfalfa was stacked in the hayshed. The tack room contained three repairable roping saddles and the cannibalized remains of a dozen medieval rigs with rat-chewed leather that must have seen their best days on the Goodnight-Butterworth Trail. Okay, sighed Henry, let’s have a look at the horses.

  He led the way into the pasture. Lacey—a city man—followed at a distance, keeping to the outside of the pole fence. The horses stood watching in a group from the far end by the creek but when they noticed the bucket of grain in Henry’s hand first one then the rest came sauntering up. He studied their approach with appraising eyes. Neglected-looking cow horses, a mixed breed, shaggy in their winter coats.

  What do you think? asks Lacey.

  Cannery meat, replies Henry. But he liked the look of the tall bay mare coming in front. She had the deep barrel, square straight-legged gait, black feet, wide and shapely ears that he liked. She’ll do, thought Henry, and when the horse came close, snuffling at the grain, and he got a good look into her big d
ark kindly eyes free of white and set wide apart—like his own—he was convinced. He let the bay have at the bucket for a moment, as the other horses crowded around, and felt the withers and stroked the short back and well-muscled rump. As he talked to her attentive ears, he felt and heard at the same time a hot heavy liquid drumming on the toe and instep of his right boot.

  That other horse is pissing on your shoes, called Lacey.

  This was a gelding sorrel even bigger than the bay, with dark skin for a sorrel, which Henry approved of, and long stout legs, but he noticed at once the white ring of rolling eyeball and a rough knobby appearance about the head, as if some wetback cowboy had been training the sorrel with a section of lead pipe. Your name is Hook, thought Henry, and if it isn’t it should be, and I don’t think we’ll get along too good.

  The rest were a mixture of fair to bad, like low-class citizens anywhere: a pretty palomino mare with sloping pasterns and too round a chest; a hopeless ewe-necked hammerheaded gelded wreck of a gray; a small sluggish bay mare with a ganted yearling colt that looked as if it had found a near-fatal patch of locoweed; a fair buckskin, a reasonable part-Appaloosa roan and a friendly little pinto pony that a growing child could probably ride.

  Off by itself, in its eyes an expression of ironic, calculating suspicion, watching Henry carefully, stood a brown mule with a dark stripe down its back. Nothing better than a good mule, thought Henry, and nothing worse than a spoiled one. A good mule, like a human being, can be worked for thirty years. They can be that dumb. And a bad one has a kick like a rattlesnake’s strike. And will wait thirty years for a chance to show it.