You Can’t Count What Isn’t There
Some days it just doesn’t pay to be alive. For instance, one time Judas just plain refused to do what Poncey told him, so Poncey had to beat him. He beat his ears back, to the point where finally Judas would follow orders. This result turned out bad enough for Judas. But then later he sat on Poncey’s lap – while Poncey was trying to read – and emptied his bladder. From that moment on Poncey suspected that the world would always have the last laugh on him, no matter how much smarter he was.
Judas was Poncey’s mongrel dog. As a puppy he was called Sparky, but in time Poncey came to realize the son of a bitch needed a more appropriate name.
Poncey Muldoon stood around like a typical doughy, barrel-chested youth of pure but indistinct European descent, heavy enough to be strong, but light enough to play defense for his high school football team, during a bad stretch. He held his body solidly, walking with something of a swagger and hanging his arms loosely to his sides, elbows out and the backs of his hands always rotated forward. Early in life his hair was a rusty blond, but what color it was now nobody could say for sure, since a number of years ago he had taken to wearing a beaten-up baseball cap all the time. Poncey’s mother’s maiden name was LaFayette – pronounced La-Fay-yet – and she fancied herself of French stock. “You gotta remember the people you’re from,” she would often say. “You gotta remember who you belong to. If you’re not sure of that, you can never be sure where you’ll end up.” She well remembered her childhood in New Orleans – her family having fought with Jackson against the British – and as a result a story arose that she had actually named her son La Ponchartrain, but fortunately for him only “Poncey” stuck, if indeed that was the case. On the other hand, his father’s forebears had arrived in the area long ago and for one reason or another had failed to bring along their history. Poncey’s father was an old railroad man who spent most of his time pining after steam locomotives.
“Them 4-2-2 engines, now there was a beautiful sight,” he’d say. “Them engines looked like a whale, spoutin’ their smoke, and the engineer’d give a blast on the steam, and it was like knowin’ you was alive for the first time ever.”
“Well, you wouldn’t’ve been alive long,” Poncey would explain, deeply versed in the history and development of mass transit in the United States. “That smoke was why nobody could breathe. Diesel engines are cleaner, they’re quiet an’ don’t kill everybody.”
Poncey had attended community college for two years, which was more than anyone else in his family could say, and that gave him a natural advantage when talking.
“I’d give a pretty to see one of them ol’ 4-2-2s runnin’ again. Don’t give a flip ’bout no diesel engine.”
“Well, it don’t matter what you give, they’re all diesel now anyway. Might as well face it.”
Poncey had lived all his life in the tiny Tennessee town of Skullbone. Nestled under groves of sassafras and sweetgum, surrounded by small patches of cotton rows, the little community seemed to survive within a Medieval novel. Skullbone was shrouded in mystery, being both the capital and the entirety of the Kingdom of Skullbonia. Nobody ever figured out quite what this meant, but the state said it was so, and everybody went about their business quietly and tried not to let it become an issue.
Before the war the area was best known for its strawberry crops, led by gentleman farmer Will Butler. He favored the name Stillwater for the little town that had sprung up by his fields, but most of the populace had already taken to calling it Skullbone, after the bare-knuckle boxing matches that drew crowds from far and wide every Monday night. Joe Smith – then the richest businessman outside of Jackson, what with his mercantile, smithy and livery services – was the leading voice on the Skullbone side of the argument, and he was easily able to persuade the incorporation committee. This loss so vexed Butler that he took to trying to run down Smith in the streets with his horse and carriage, but his aim was so bad he never succeeded. Smith endured this petulance for a while, but eventually the inconvenience became such that once he had the opportunity, he stuck a pistol in Butler’s’ mouth and pulled the trigger. After awhile stories spread that the feud had nothing to do with the town’s name at all, but rather that Butler was running a still, and Smith planned to turn him in, but the first version is more colorful. Now most of the strawberries come from Mexico.
Some decades later a gubernatorial decree set the area apart – the Kingdom of Skullbonia – by virtue of its history of the boxing, as well as hillbilly musicales and other knavery – and not, in a blatant breach of convention, because of any political fooling around. This alone naturally set people on edge – Skullbonia just was, for no good reason, it sat there taking up space. At least that’s the way Poncey thought of it.
Obviously, what with his advanced education, not even the nebulous borders of Skullbone could contain Poncey’s fortunes, and now as an accomplished adult he tested his horizons in the nearby town of Rutherford – pronounced Relaferd. As a child he had often visited there, tagging along on otherwise pointless shopping trips, and the long lines of traffic lights and dingy businesses never failed to inspire awe and excitement in him. Back then it seemed to him filled with wonder – signs ablaze with color, display windows stocked with bizarre machinery and mannequins decked out in hunting gear – sights more dazzling than what any reasonable boy could ever aspire to attain. But now Poncey raised his ambitions to a new level, in a way expecting to cash in that old inspiration, and prepared to benevolently impose himself upon Rutherford’s little people. He believed his grand store of knowledge would open doors to great career opportunities in Rutherford, and eventually the government believed it too, and hired him on to watch over the Davy Crockett Replica Cabin (and Mother’s Gravesite).
The structure was pure Americana, massive timbers stacked upon each other with rough-hewn precision. A clean rail fence separated the grounds from the parking lot, neatly defining the centuries. Old-growth trees extended their branches like a protective deity over the wooden roof, leaves waving welcome in the gentle breezes, and Poncey imagined himself living ruggedly independent on the old frontier. He saw to his duties well – sit and wait, dust, police the area, sit and wait, shoo off children from the school next door. Visitors who wanted a tour after regular hours had to call him special, and he would decide when they could come. He pretty much memorized the two-room cabin and its contents. In his heart he felt like close friends with the mounted animals – in some way testaments to Davy’s hunting skills – the rocking chairs, the stone fireplaces. His greatest affinity, however, was to Davy’s deceased mother, Rebecca, buried on the property under a proper headstone that listed her date of death as “about 1834.”
“He was a Congressman,” Poncey reasoned to himself. “Never mind that he lived in a log cabin – he was a Congressman. How can they not know when his mother died?” In his mind, this uncertainty was a gross affront to the eminence of learning.
“What you mutterin’ ’bout?” Poncey’s father said.
“Now, Davy’s grave is another thing,” Poncey continued, more loudly. “No tellin’ if he’s got a grave or not. But his mother, she was right here where we sit, right here where she’s buried, even right now today. How could they not know when she died?”
“Son, what does that matter now?”
“It matters that we know the facts.”
“It don’t matter what all you know,” his father rose to leave. “There’s still always ample opportunity to be stupid.”
Poncey took it upon himself to learn every detail he could dig up about Crockett and his kin. He checked out all the books he could find in the community college library and filled his head with all sorts of legend and trivia. He absorbed all the new and revolutionary theories hatched by experts set on dissecting the Crockett clan, those lives really witnessed only by the depths of the wilderness. He even sneaked out the first edition of Davy’s autobiography from its display in the cabin, flipping delicately t
hrough the flaking pages for clues. The book’s unschooled words flailed at the nearly two-century passage of time like a dull blade against a buttonwood, but Poncey fought through the bramble to make sense of it. Still Rebecca remained elusive, a ghost in the wind. Davy himself had little to say about her, except that since he was reasonably sure that he’d been born, then it would figure that he also had a mother. He only allowed that he loved her dearly, and that she was old and Irish. Poncey felt personally betrayed by fickle history.
“Everybody knew Davy Crockett. He was a hero already, before he ran for Congress. How could they not know when his mother died?”
In spite of this nagging frustration, Poncey prospered at the cabin, nodding hello and goodbye to visitors, chasing off schoolchildren, sitting and waiting. But, just when things look like they’ll never change, that’s when they choose to whirl around into a new direction. One spring after hard times had hit the country, the government spent eight hundred billion dollars to preserve Poncey’s job, but the next year it did not, and he found himself no longer engaged to protect the legacy of the Crockett name. Deep down he still believed he was smart enough, in spite of Davy’s mother. Deep down he clung to the belief that the government had made a great mistake letting go someone of his abundant knowledge.
So Poncey, disgusted and disconsolate, was looking at the job listings in a relatively recent newspaper when Judas did his number on him. After throwing the dog across the room and changing pants, Poncey took up the paper again, and his eye fell upon the article about a census of all U.S. residents. He quickly checked his calendar, and indeed the nation’s decennial inventory was due to come around again. The government had mailed out forms, the paper warned, and held every recipient responsible for filling them out and sending them back. Poncey’s eyes lit at the notion: For the first time, he would fill out his own census form. In years past he’d been no more than a cipher within his father’s house; this time around, he would be recognized at last as an individual. The old man could now wheeze about steam locomotives on his own, officially. Poncey glanced back down at the story. Whenever a form was not returned, it said, a census worker would be sent to the address for a personal interview.
Poncey’s appearance genuinely glowed. A census taker would come – a government worker. He let his hands fall to his lap, bunching the paper into a damp and crumpled mess, and stared into the future. Possibilities danced in his head, flashing images from a silent movie, much too fast to keep up with. Opportunity beckoned him to redeem his bad fortune, and Poncey was not about to let it pass. Once and for all he could prove to himself and everyone in charge that, as highly educated as he was, the government should never have allowed him to slip away. Some government worker, one with a job, soon would come face to face with his superior, and boy, would Poncey let him have it.
His first step was easy – Poncey watched for his census form, then didn’t send it back. The second step he was used to: sit and wait.
Sure enough, after a handful of rude warning letters, the cheap doorbell to his worn apartment went off with a sound like a spoon against a frying pan. Poncey had a feeling this was his official visit, since nobody had ever come to his home before. This guy’s going to pay the price, he thought, this guy’d better watch his step if he knows what’s good for him.
He opened the door to a young woman.
“Hi, I’m LaTarika. I’m from the United States Census Bureau,” she smiled as she quoted her introductory materials. “Are you – La Ponchartrain S. Muldoon?”
“Poncey,” he stumbled. “Just Poncey.”
“May I come in?”
Poncey didn’t know what to say, so he stared stupidly, but did manage to stumble aside so she could enter. The dingy place didn’t offer much to look at – a couple of ratty chairs and a wobbly coffee table with fake wood veneer. Judas scurried behind the couch, from whence arose muffled growling and an acrid odor. The walls stood bare except for smudges of dirt and a framed picture that had probably been clipped from a magazine. The hallway led back to a dusky bedroom, past the compact kitchen off to one side – complete with a pile of dishes rising out of the sink to peek over the bar-style counter.
Poncey looked around his surroundings nervously. He hadn’t counted on a woman; not that she posed any intellectual threat to him, but she threatened him in every other way. Not since the seventh grade had he trusted a girl of any sort besides his mother, and he wasn’t all that sure about her. Not since the time “Jazzy” Luray accompanied him to a movie. Her name was really Jacine, but she’d earned the nickname Jazzy by age ten; even as a naïve youth Poncey was suspicious when she agreed to try dating with him. But for some reason she did; anxiety over the impending date drove him to toss and turn sleeplessly the whole night before. After yawning through their burger and shake at the Diner, he fell fully asleep in the flickering theater light.
Jazzy was not one to let such an opportunity escape. As Poncey snored through the battle scenes, she applied a generous layer of rouge and lipstick to his face, accented by subtle eye shadow. She roused him gently as the closing credits rolled, to his eyes appearing never more pleased to be in anyone’s company. Even the townsfolk they encountered on the walk home seemed more friendly toward him than any time before. People who had never given him a second glance just beamed upon crossing his path that night. When he dropped her off at home, Jazzy agreed that she’d happily go out again anytime and do the very same thing with him all over again. Poncey was so encouraged, he brazenly kissed her cheek, then stared with horror at the bright red lip prints he’d left on her grinning mug.
Poncey hid in his room the rest of that weekend. He was too sick to go to school on Monday, but eventually his mother rooted him out of bed and sent him to his doom. “You’ll not learn anything if you don’t go to school,” she told him, but Poncey knew she was wrong – he’d learned plenty already. For years classmates called him “Glamour Boy,” or “Poncettia,” or just plain “Bozo,” and he still saw Jazzy’s mocking glee in every woman’s eyes.
The census taker carefully surveyed the room and gingerly moved a couple of wrinkled t-shirts so she wouldn’t have to sit on them, then settled stiffly into one of the chairs.
“I’m here because you failed to send in your census form,” she informed him.
“I know,” Poncey replied. He was off to a good start.
“So you did receive your form in the mail?”
“I didn’t send it back. I wanted to get a government worker.”
“Okay,” she drew the word out. “I’ll just ask you a few simple questions. You are La Ponchartrain S. Muldoon?”
“Poncette – uh, Poncey.”
“All right, then, Poncey.”
“I worked for the government myself.”
“We’ll just be filling out the short form, so there’s no need for that information,” the woman replied politely, pretending to study her paperwork. She was tightly overweight and had little lap upon which to brace her clipboard, so she held it out slightly. Bronze dreadlocks fell to her shoulders and over her eyes, stray hairs catching lightly on mascara-encrusted lashes. Her face glowed with youth and enthusiasm for serving the public, and she couldn’t wait to get out of Poncey’s apartment. She had never visited Skullbone before and had never thought she would, and she wasn’t sure why anyone would want to count what was there. Unfortunately, people who lived in interesting places like Memphis or Nashville seemed to know how to mail in their forms, and the people she had to track down personally all seemed to live in wide spots in the road like this one.
“I went to the community college,” Poncey offered.
“Really? I’m going to state right now. Actually, I’m taking this semester off to work. Got to make some money, you know? But I’m going back.”
Poncey shifted uncomfortably. A hacking cough came from behind the couch. “I finished. I’ve been finished. I worked for the government.”
“Yes. Now, how many live here?”
&nbs
p; “How many what?”
“Residents. How many residents live in this apartment.”
“Me. It’s just me an’ Judas, but he’s a dog. He doesn’t count.”
“No.”
“I worked at Davy Crockett’s house, in Rutherford.”
“Do you own this apartment?”
“It’s his cabin, but it’s only a replica, most of it. It’s the last house he lived in,” Poncey was full of formidable information, but not at all the kind the census taker was looking for. He let fly. “His mother’s buried out there, headstone an’ ever’thing. She died circa 1834. ‘Circa’ means nearabouts.”
“Yes, I know. Do you own this apartment or rent?”
“I rent for now. But I’ve got my eye on a house, soon as I get back to work. It’ll be a big house. Davy Crockett’s house was just a two-room cabin.”
“That’s very interesting,” the woman intoned. “What’s your telephone number?”
“Hain’t got nam,” he sputtered. Apparently this girl had an attention problem. “There’s all sorts of things in that cabin. Ya been there? Animals an’ things. Did you know that he was a Congressman?”
“Yes, I think I had heard that.”
“He was elected, but then he lost. So he says, ‘Tennessee’s gone to hell, I’m goin’ to Texas,’ an’ he goes an’ gets himself killed at the Alamo.” Poncey began to enjoy himself, and he rocked back a little in his chair. “He says, ‘You all go to hell, I’m goin’ to Texas,’ ” he laughed.
“Sex?” the woman asked.
“What?” Poncey’s voice cracked. He came to a sudden stop and moved his hands about uselessly.
“Male, right?” she smiled. “I’ll put down male.”
“Yes,” Poncey tried to sound confident. He regained his composure enough to attempt the high ground again. “He’s buried somewhere out there. At the Alamo. But I expect his grave’s harder to find than his mother’s.”
“Probably. Age and date of birth?”
“His mother’s grave is out by the cabin. Doesn’t even say for sure when she died, only ‘about 1834.’ He was in Congress, but nobody even knows when his mother died.” Poncey paused to let this notion sink in. He felt that his teaching was going to waste on this girl. She needed to appreciate that he was every bit as good as her – he lost his job because of a fluke, not because he didn’t have skills like hers.
“Age and date of birth, please.” Her eyes began to take on a dead look.
“They don’t know. They can only guess.”
“Your age and date of birth,” she said sullenly.
His gaze darted about as he tried to think of something to cover his mistake. Instead he just told her: age and date of birth. Hoping to sound trustworthy, he added, “They don’t match up because I haven’t had my birthday yet. The math will work out better after October.”
“Yes, I can see it hasn’t passed yet this year.”
Poncey realized she could figure out his age herself, and he panicked. He felt the visit slipping through his fingers, and he hadn’t made his point at all.
“I worked for the government. I wasn’t fired – they just stopped payin’ for my job. It wasn’t my fault they dropped my job.”
“I’m sure that’s true. Are you of Hispanic, Spanish or Latino origin?”
“French. My mother’s French.” Poncey looked defeated.
“No Hispanic background?”
“My pap coulda been, but he won’t say. He never talks ’bout that. He only talks ’bout trains.”
“So I can put down Caucasian?”
Poncey knew that meant white, so he nodded. “I didn’t send my form back on purpose. I wanted to talk to a government worker. I wasn’t counting on a girl. I could still be a government worker, but they stopped payin’ for my job.”
The woman looked at him now with even less patience. “Do you sometimes stay someplace other than this apartment?”
“Sometimes with Mam and Pap. But they don’t count me on their form any more. I count by myself now. That’s how I knew you’d come out, if I didn’t send in my form. I wanted to see a government worker.”
“Well, you’re just lucky I came all the way out here, then,” she scolded, gathering up her belongings. “We don’t always try to find single-dweller homes that have not seen fit to comply with the law.”
“What? You don’t look for folks?”
“The government isn’t obliged to hunt down people like you.”
Poncey sat there, stunned. “You do have to. Ever’body has to count. I have to count.”
“Oh, we know what to expect. The computers automatically count the people we don’t get forms from.”
“What?”
“The Census Bureau doesn’t need to see you to count you.”
“But you’re supposed to find ever’body. This isn’t 1830.”
“No, honey, we don’t have to find everyone,” she batted her lashes matter-of-factly. “The office makes its numbers whether we see somebody at each address or not. The bureau knows who exists regardless of whether they’re here, or there, or nowhere.”
Poncey stared, his purpose completely lost now. “You can’t count what isn’t there.”
She stood up. “You were counted last time on your father’s form. Social Security knows you’re still around. You were on payroll, for goodness sake. Our computer models know to expect you. They know where people are supposed to be. The statistics see you even if nobody else can. You’re no more real than the marks on this paper.”
She waved the forms before his face, then neatly into her attaché. Poncey could feel time running short, but his swirling thoughts were too jumbled now for him to take hold of one. He had wanted to show he could out-think any person the government could throw at him, but now he was under siege by a computer as well.
“Why’d you even come out here, then? If computers figure that I’m here anyway, why’d you show up?”
“It’s a job. I want to get paid, and the government wants to pay me. It makes them look good. You should know that – you worked for the government yourself, before they dropped you, remember? A job sitting in a cabin! But we like to get paid, don’t we?”
The woman moved toward the door, and Poncey could only lamely follow after her. All his schemes through the months of waiting faded into futility, and he would never have the chance to prove his worth again. His confusion gave way to the distaste he’d felt before she arrived and threw him off with her gender – but now it focused even more on those who used to employ him. A new thing stuck to the inside of his skull: He was no more than a blip on a hard drive. The government never did know what a bundle of scholarship and talent he was; it never knew him at all. It wouldn’t care if he lived or died, he’d be just a number either way.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go now,” the woman told him as she let herself out. “I’ve got to find some place called Sweet Lips. You have a wonderful day, you hear?” and she disappeared beyond the closing door.
“Thank you,” he said without irony. His mind was elsewhere.
As the days passed, the encounter ripened and fermented in Poncey’s brain, its torment only serving to infuriate him more. “I know I’m smarter than all them fools up at the capital, and their blame computers too!” he fumed. I’ve got to prove it, he thought, I’ve got to show them. Only one thing could rectify his sad situation – the injustice of it all drove him to apply to get his job back, and what do you know if they didn’t find just enough money in the new budget to re-hire him. A letter arrived instructing him to reclaim his post at the Davy Crockett Replica Cabin (and Mother’s Grave) at the beginning of the new year, kind of a Christmas present from a government that openly acknowledged neither Christ nor Poncey. Maybe they’d learned their lesson after all. Poncey carefully filled out all the employment forms and dropped them in the mail.
So on an unusually sultry day for January, Poncey arrived at the cabin to re-establish his value to the U.S. government, to sho
w them once and for all the great contribution he had to offer the world. Again he took up his calling to dust, sit and wait, and open the door to visitors who called in special. He lovingly surveyed his surroundings, happily studying the stuffed animals and quilts draped over crude furniture, making sure everything sat correctly in place. Outside it looked like rain. Poncey felt like a European baron in a rustic castle, no doubt how Davy felt himself long ago. His sight lit upon the aging autobiography.
Late in the morning he heard hollow pounding on the porch out front. He recognized the sound all right – the rowdy kids from the school next door – but why would they need chasing so early in the day? School wasn’t due to let out for another three or four hours.
“Hey, you kids, get offa there!” he burst from the cabin door. “What are you doin’ here? Why aren’t you in school where you belong?”
“Got out early,” an escaping boy shouted back. “Let us out on account a’ the weather. Look!” And he pointed behind Poncey and over the horizon.
For the first time Poncey noticed the heavy veil of black clouds milling about overhead. The sky below seemed to hang suspended, glowing a sickly, luminescent green. Trees stood at uneasy attention, wavering as though they were about to faint. The siren mounted upon the school’s roof slowly revved into a mournful wail.
“Look out!” the boy yelled.
Poncey ducked his head and vaulted off the porch, running to the relative shelter of the brick school building. A slowly turning section of cloud picked up speed. Poncey watched as a twisting finger reached down and touched the cabin’s roof, sending shingles exploding into every direction. He heard the sound of one of his father’s locomotives screaming through the neighborhood, although he could not see it, nor any tracks. The tornado flexed its shoulders and lifted the huge logs of the cabin fully off the ground, tossing them end over end in a titanic game of mumblety-peg. Items from the cabin danced into the sky like escaping ballerinas, some laid carefully upon the soft grass while others were sucked into oblivion. Once more Poncey’s eye caught Davy’s autobiography, its pages flapping like a bird in flight, driven by the wind into a wild chase. The storm shimmied like a woman over the site, grinding its hips in a terrible demonstration of allure and judgment. It passed across the street, furiously ripped a chain-link fence from the ground and flailed it like a ribbon, and finally retreated once more into the billowing atmosphere.
Poncey stood silent in the pattering rain, gaunt like a mourner at a funeral, and gazed at the remains of the cabin. All the twister had left was the final resting place of Rebecca Crockett, still buried there for nobody knew how long.
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