style="font-size:15px;"> Last but not least, a six-foot-five-ish, age fortyish man with a tigerish and yet oxlike heavy way of carrying himself, the tallest man in the room. Wears a spotless bleached chambray work shirt under a lopsidedly knitted black sleeveless cable-knit sweater. Dark green work pants. Worn work boots. Lots of keys like a janitor. No wristwatch. Beard trimmed, lightly grayed on the chin, but a dark heavy mustache. Noticeably pale eyes with dark lashes. One eyebrow raised. Like a misgiving. As if he is in the wrong place. He, too, eyes the overloaded satchels toted by the kids. He must not be privy to the meaning of the satchels. For sure, he himself is not schlepping one.
Now Janet Weymouth of the old money and blue dress and cloud-sweet breath steps from another table and instead of her usual wrist-grip, places her long arms all the way around this man and, close to his ear, whispers.
And he grunts like an animal.
She releases him. She is now flushed. She spins around and introduces him to the people at her table, all the while gripping his wrist.
There is, among the thirty-two governors’ wives and their bodyguards and twice as many hosts, a subtle disturbance, nothing visible yet, much as a field of tall weeds ripples when a short-legged browsing critter moves through it. You can’t see the animal. You see just the grasses and flowers being bothered.
The invisible blood pressure gauge in the air is rising, members of “the committee” are still smiling, though, and a man with a high cheery voice takes a few moments to play with the mike at the lectern, then welcomes the prestigious visitors (the governors’ wives), generously thanking certain groups for their hard work, tells a harmless joke, and after a whispery moment with Janet Weymouth, introduces the speaker, “Gordon St. Onge, historian, educator, and theologian,” which causes the tall speaker in his work shirt and sweater vest to turn questioning eyes on Janet Weymouth, now three tables away. And she smiles a sly smile, winks. And then after a little more introduction, there’s a lot of nice applause as the speaker steps up to the lectern and yanks on the mike to bring it up to his level, though he still has to lean down some, which gives him a sensual crouching intimacy with the little lectern.
Two men of “the committee” are murmuring with the black-suited men near the door. “Yep, it’s him. The right-wing separatist with all the guns and wives.”
The speaker thanks the introducer, awkwardly and off-mike, then picks from a pants pocket a folded-up speech and then from his chest pocket under his sweater a pair of cheap-looking reading glasses.
Now he lays the folded reading glasses on the lectern and spreads and smoothes the speech with his work-thickened hands. Absorbed in this task a few moments, he finds a full water glass in the cubby under the lectern, then looks around the room . . . happily. He looks, it seems, at each and every face, his sort of weird dark-lashed, pale eyes widening, then softening, blinking with humility like some faithful, elderly, perhaps forgetful servant. The room is deathly still.
And then the lecturer speaks into the mike: “A brief history of my home,” the word home drawn out in a low warning growl.
This is met by more silence. One of the governors’ wives in the second cluster of tables leans forward as if to sip from her coffee but instead whispers, “Charming” to the others at her table. Her tone could be sincere.
Then, without looking up, the speaker says quietly into the mike, “Welcome to Maine. Terra Onde di Mala Gente.” He is not smiling. Therefore, not joking. So no one chuckles. The silence has thickened into a perfect ice.
As the speaker fumbles his old-mannish-looking glasses onto his face, he murmurs into the mike, “My home is a town called Egypt, Maine. In the mountains.” Now he stands there silently, just staring at his written speech squinting as if he’s lost his place. The audience has allowed itself to shift a little, clear a throat or two, swallow chewed-up coffee cake, and breathe, while the speaker’s youthful companions paw through satchels and pockets, zippers going zip zip.
The speaker sighs a sigh magnified by the sound system into an enormous sad thing. You see, he had asked one of his teenage daughters to retype his speech, but what he is now looking at is nothing he has ever seen before. He reads to himself now, not moving his whiskery mouth, moving just his dark-lashed hornworm-green eyes and a finger digging into his bearded chin absently. This is what he sees:
Brothers and sisters, sisters mostly, I am here before you, a mere redneck man. But I’m of the same species really truly as you, brothers and sisters. With a glance anyone can tell you are proud of yourselves.
You are all stinking apes but you are proud nevertheless. Your DNA is less than one percent different from a chimp’s but you still hold your chins high because, as anyone can tell at a glance, somewhere you have assets and accounts obscenely bulging and all these men in black here are bulging with guns, encircling you to draw the line between yourselves and—
The lecturer stands back from the mike and, tugging off his glasses, looks through the great arched window of many small panes at the sea that is pushing sluggishly in around a deep cleavage of rocks. He does not look at the audience, just replaces his glasses and goes back to looking at his written speech, which he has yet to read from or vocally refer to in any way. He does not notice, even though there is that scratchy rustling zipping sound behind him, that the youngest kids are opening their huge satchels and anchoring onto their heads larger heads. Papier-mâché likenesses of chimps or monkeys. Obviously kids made these raw works of art. Perhaps to go with the speech? All that conspiring behind his back!
And so now the audience is laughing. There’s release and relief.
The speaker is smiling broadly. Shows his crowded bottom teeth. His pale eyes watch them all as they are laughing, the governors’ wives and various agency hosts. Their laughter is nice. Human and nice. He nods, although stubbornly he doesn’t look behind him to see what’s so funny. One of his weird pale eyes shows a spark-flash of foreboding.
Now he slips his reading glasses back on and looks at his paper where he left off and again reads to himself, then closes his eyes. Tightly. Like pain.
Now the monkey-headed children begin to step away from their tables, barefoot. Like monkeys. Some now have armloads of three-foot-long awfully yellow papier-mâché bananas. Some are turning real steering wheels as they rush around erratically between tables and in the open space by the grand fireplace, their primate feet slapping. Signs pinned on their clothing read: American MOTORIST. There’s tailgating, there’s passing, “Honk! Honk!” One gives another the finger. Now there are crashes. Victims lie dying, moaning, some perfectly still, a stiff head rolling away under a table among VIP legs and feet.
Now with an unpleasant growl and a sign, HAMMERHEAD FELLERBUNCHER OPERATOR, a monkey steps through the bodies to the fireplace and kicks the decorative birch logs apart. Here comes another monkey with a sign: TANK OPERATOR. Another: FIGHTER JET PILOT. Lots of growling and shoving each other about. Here, dragging a length of hose, is a CHEMICAL BROADCASTING TECHNICIAN. Must be only about two years old, rear end fattened by a diaper.
Coming along next is a CARBON EMISSIONS MISINFORMATION PUBLIC RELATIONS EXPERT. Also in a diaper, he/she holds with two pudgy hands a cardboard TV with aluminum-foil-covered antennas. On the “screen” is a face with a leering smile.
It takes five medium-sized monkeys to heft a cardboard box that reads: THE WALL STREET ECONOMY, while a baby, the youngest yet, no monkey head, smilingly carries a mashed-looking tiny box that kitchen matches come in, on which, if you are close enough, you’d read: MAIN STREET ECONOMY.
