Big City Eyes

“Nuqneh,” the boy repeated in a low, gravelly voice.

“Deidre speaks Klingon,” said Sam.

I didn’t know where to begin with all this information. If this boy was Deidre, then either Deidre was a boy’s name and I didn’t know it, or this boy was a girl. As for the language—I’d heard of it, but couldn’t place it.

I dealt with the easier problem. “What is Klingon?”

“Klingon is the official language of the Klingon Empire. Like English is the language of here.”

“Oh, right, Star Trek. I didn’t realize the Klingons have their own language.”

“Yeah. She’s teaching it to me.”

She. That settled it. I examined her more closely.

Deidre’s face was a collection of planes and sharp edges: a square chin, cheekbones like cliffs, blue eyes set so deep they seemed to peer from inside the crevice of a rock. Her skin looked baked, but at a very low heat for a very long time, so it had a flat tone, copper minus the metallic flickers of light, caramel without the mellow richness. Her hair, the eerie white blond of an albino, hung limp—one hank over the forehead, the rest tucked behind the ears with a straight lifeless fringe visible below the lobes. I could not discern the body inside the large man’s workshirt with the tails out. I stared at the pockets under which breasts should be. None were visible.

“Wejpuh,” said Deidre.

Sam laughed, and so did the girl/boy, revealing a thin straight-lipped smile.

“What does that mean?”

“Charming,” said Sam.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling I had learned for the first time what being polite was. Sam’s worst class was French. After two years he barely knew Comment allez-vous, and now he was planning to master Klingon?

“He hangs out with Deidre,” McKee had said. I had envisioned some long-haired adorable teenager, who said, “Cool,” or “It’s a slam.” Not—I could hardly bring myself to admit it—a freak. Deidre was a freak. That meant Sam probably was, too. I had to invent a new category to accommodate this twosome: not even vaguely in the normal range (NEVNR) or not in the normal range by a mile (NNRBM). No wonder McKee knew who they were. Freaks were always famous in small towns. Did Deidre speak Klingon everywhere, or just when she wasn’t in school? Did she speak pidgin Klingon or fluent Klingon? Maybe she’s a genius. That thought actually surfaced, although I quashed it instantly, scorning my own pathetic spunky optimism, the hope-springs-eternal that there could be a saving grace. And … I didn’t want to consider this … but had Sam been necking with this person? His cheeks did have a pinkish hue. If so, psychologically speaking, was he making out with a girl or a boy? Perhaps he was necking with an alien, a creature from his own tribe?

“Do you mind?” Sam asked.

“What?”

“Leaving. We’re busy.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said as he shut the door.

The Sakonnet Times, October 8

Big City Eyes

BY LILY DAVIS

LAST WEEK I stopped at Jake’s Farm Stand. While browsing, I overheard that Charlotte, the niece of the woman buying eggplants, was taking ampicillin for an earache. Perhaps the niece’s name wasn’t Charlotte. It could have been Charlene and maybe she had strep throat. I purchased a Boston lettuce and plum tomatoes. Then, awed by the beauty and variety of harvest vegetables, I bought three acorn squash, two turban, a butternut, and even a large bluish shapeless hubbard. I like to eat squash occasionally, maybe twice a year.

I opened my refrigerator and noticed these squash, all eighteen meals’ worth, last Monday morning just after a mouse had run across my feet and just before several possibly tick-ridden deer breakfasted on my tulip bulbs. These facts don’t justify or mitigate my later behavior, but I did leave home in an agitated state to cover Claire Ramsay’s 911 call. Her daschund, Baby, had his head stuck in a pitcher.

How this event came to pass is still a mystery. After the incident, Mrs. Ramsay refused to speak to this reporter except to say that the pitcher is 1920s English pewter and sells for $95 at her store, Claire’s Collectibles, on Barton Road. According to sources at the Comfort Café, where Mrs. Ramsay buys black coffee to go before work every day, she may sue the police for confiscating Baby and keeping him overnight at the SPCA in Riverhead. According to sources at the Muffin Shop, where Mrs. Ramsay has never been, her baby, whose name they did not know, almost suffocated but is fine now.

Why would a dog poke his head in a pitcher? Was there a treat inside, a trace of spirit or crumb, or was it a whim—one of those moments when an animal does something stupid?

Sergeant Tom McKee of the Sakonnet Bay Police Department ordered me to keep my distance. His exact words were “Stay back, out of our way.” I would like to point out that I did exactly that. The sergeant then carried Baby from Claire’s Collectibles around the corner to LePater’s Grocery. He was accompanied by two other officers, Carl Scott and Denise Woodworth.

Shortly before this incident, Gavin Sturges of East Sakonnet had decided to use his new cell phone, a present from his girlfriend. He grazed a telephone pole, trying to locate the Send button, and ended up in a ditch. I’m sure it was not a whim that caused the police department to dispatch three of its four on-duty cops to rescue a dog but only one to save a human being.

Was it sound police judgment that caused Sergeant McKee to place the dog on the checkout counter at LePater’s and grease his neck with Wesson oil? As everyone knows, since word in Sakonnet Bay travels faster than a response to a 911 call, a hyped-up Baby emerged from the pitcher. He went berserk. Wiggling out of the policeman’s grasp, he jumped off the counter and bit this reporter’s ankle.

I lost it.

Many versions of what I said have been circulating. About this: I would set the record straight, but I don’t want to deprive people of the pleasure of repeating and further mangling the mangled tale they’ve already been told. Gossip is as essential to life here as harvest vegetables. This must be why generation after generation hasn’t moved. It’s not for love of their beautiful village, or the joy and security of having relatives in shouting distance. It couldn’t possibly reflect a failure of imagination, or lack of curiosity or adventure. People in Sakonnet Bay can’t bear to lose their places on the grapevine.

Sergeant McKee kindly drove me to the emergency medical center. During this exciting ride, he took the opportunity to criticize my previous column, insisting that deer do not cross the road looking for love, only for acorns and popcorn. These remarks might have provided additional justification for my outburst. Unfortunately, they occurred after.

All I can say about my behavior is that I’m sorry and have no excuse, except perhaps the squash, the mouse, and the deer. It was one of those moments when a person does something stupid.

CHAPTER 3 (#)

AT THE Monday-morning editorial meeting a week and a half after publication, Art Lindsay announced that my column had riled many readers and he was thrilled. It was provocative in the perfect way: it upset subscribers but not advertisers. He had received twenty-five letters over the past ten days and at least as many phone calls. Responses were still arriving.

“I’m astonished,” I said, which was a bit of a lie. Art broke up laughing. That was a shock. Until now, I’d witnessed only faint chuckles. But his laugh was hearty; the smooth cheeks in his solemn moon-shaped face folded into deep pleats, indicating that sometime in the past (possibly before his marriage, although that assumption may reflect only my prejudice) joy had played a role. “Lily is astonished,” he told the staff, and they all laughed with him.

“I didn’t exactly expect—”

He waved me off like a pesky fly, and then shambled to the cooler, as he did many times a day, to down a miniature paper cup of bottled spring water.

The column had poured out of me. My only hesitation was whether to include the word “exciting” in describing our trip to the emergency medical center. I deleted and inserted it several times before letting it remain. A reminder of our detour. But innocuous. Harmless. Like a secret message in a Beatles song. A kind of “Hello, remember me?” I couldn’t explain the dig, however—that McKee hadn’t used good judgment when he greased up Baby. Or the popcorn business. McKee had actually said that deer like acorns and pumpkins, not acorns and popcorn.

At the time I was typing, I had been distracted by Deidre, who was becoming a permanent fixture. She walked home with Sam after school and stayed until dinner. On the weekend, she remained through the evening. Only once had Sam gone to her house, three blocks away. “Too crowded,” he said. I could not adjust to seeing her and recoiled every time I had a sighting.

She reminded me of a character in the Oz books whose arms and legs were sticks tied together at the joints and who, at least as captured in the illustrations, was always in the middle of an awkward, uncoordinated stride. Deidre usually grunted some Klingon at me before escaping to Sam’s room.

Always up for a mental leap into disaster, I imagined myself the grandmother of Sam and Deidre’s child, born sixty-six inches long, gender unknown, but irresistible nonetheless because heartbreak was guaranteed. Until now, however, I had observed only one instance of physical contact between them. Late on Saturday night, craving some chocolate bits, I’d encountered them side by side in the kitchen, inspecting the open refrigerator. Sam had his head cocked, resting it precariously on the bony shelf that was Deidre’s shoulder. He looked peaceful.

When I was writing my column, in the glassed-in porch I’d appropriated as an office, I could see them through the doorway, lounging on the living room couch. Deidre’s stilt legs stretched across the coffee table, her gigantic boots hanging over the far side, floating free. They were watching Xena, the Warrior Princess, a long-haired buxom type who did forward flips in a leather gladiator outfit. Deidre’s laugh sounded somewhere between a machine gun and a stuttering motor. I looked up from the computer to see them roaring, while they slapped great handfuls of popcorn into their mouths. So I typed “popcorn” instead of “pumpkins” by mistake. And left it.

It crossed my mind that McKee might call to correct me, although it turned out deer did eat popcorn. I had mail to prove it.

Art brought the letters in personally every day. “Dogs, deer, police, you hit all the winners,” he said as he dropped a few more on my desk.

The police chief, Ben Blocker, had composed a formal protest, which the newspaper printed. “On behalf of the entire Sakonnet Bay Police Department, I object to the contents and implications in the article, Big City Eyes, October 8th, by Lily Davis.” He listed three points.

1 1. Sergeant McKee took all necessary precautions in rescuing Baby.

2 2. Any resulting injuries were unfortunate but the consequence of Mrs. Davis’s standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

3 3. The police responded swiftly and appropriately to the minor accident involving Gavin Sturges. At no time does the police department value animal life over human life.

The chief also registered a less civilized complaint to Art by phone, threatening to bar me from the police log. Art beckoned me into his office so I could observe his end of the conversation. He arched his eyebrows dramatically as he listened, shook his head feigning dismay, made a few disapproving sounds, then reminded the chief that I was from New York City.