Sharp and Dangerous Virtues Read online

  Sharis had noticed something about Bebe, the mother of her Texas family. Bebe’s attention to her children was intermittent and intense. She spent hours ignoring them, talking on her perc or reading, but suddenly something would hit her and she would tease or play with them extravagantly, like the mother in a park who makes the other mothers feel dull. Sharis had for years put these happy scenes in her life-edits, which probably explained Bebe’s enthusiasm for Sharis’s work. But these scenes were in essence a lie. The Schneider kids must realize this, too: Sharis noticed that the boy sometimes cringed when his mother approached him, that the girl was spending more time at her friends’. That’s not me, Sharis thought as she watched Bebe. Sharis saw her own attention to her children as running at a steady hum. Of course, she thought, it’s easy to use someone else’s behavior to make your own look better.

  Still, she wondered if Mr. Schneider realized. She could edit a bit differently, show him how things really were. A service to him, really. Sharis’s father used to take her into the basement and lay a bullet on her tongue. “See?” he’d say. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

  If Sharis had told this to her mother, it might have changed things.

  “I don’t know where we’ll go exactly,” Chad said. “Omaha if we have to. We’ll just go.”

  nenonene’s voice

  “YOU DIDN’T PUT out a cup for him,” General Nenonene said. Such an innocuous phrase, and so mildly uttered, but something in it—Tuuro heard it—suggested a moral judgment. The words sent the four men who accompanied the General, as well as Allyssa, all scurrying back to the kitchen.

  Not what Tuuro had expected. Not the Tuesday evening, not the helicopter in the crushed stone driveway, not the puddles of ice melting on the kitchen floor, not Nenonene. The General, wearing gray trousers and a white shirt with buttons and a collar, was the shortest man present. When he shook Tuuro’s hand he gave a quick nod. He did look like his pictures. But those pictures made him larger and more prepossessing, less like an ordinary man. Like a movie star they film on boxes, Tuuro thought. Tuuro glanced back into the dining room: six chairs with high laddered backs and needlepoint floral cushions, placed just so around the circular wooden table. “Thank you,” the General said, plucking the cup and saucer from Allyssa’s hand and turning back to the dining room, the men jostling behind him. Tuuro followed. “Some coffee?” the General asked Tuuro. His voice was very British, and not loud. The media did not do justice to his voice. On the media, his voice could be bargained with. “Yes, sir, please,” Tuuro said. The General turned to the large round metal coffeepot sitting at one end of the sideboard.

  The General pushed the lever on the coffeepot, filled up Tuuro’s cup. His right hand hovered over a small pitcher. “Cream?” Above the sideboard was a painting of a wheat field, the frame of which had shed a ribbon of dust when Tuuro cleaned.

  “Black, please, sir.” Aunt Stella had told him to say sir and ma’am. As a way to elevate the discourse.

  The General handed Tuuro his saucer and cup of coffee, indicated a seat at the table, and sat down just as Tuuro did. The other four men sat down a second later. Allyssa, from the kitchen, shut the door.

  The General sat up very straight, his back off the back of the chair, his bland, smiling face replaced by a prideful self-possession, like the ruler of some obscure country who had made it through Cambridge with honors. “So, Mr. Simpkins,” he said, “we meet at last.” Tuuro hid a smile, because this sentence sounded so much like an actor. But he is an actor, Tuuro realized.

  The General glanced around the table. “Gentlemen, this is Tuuro Simpkins, who found and buried my grandchild.” A heavyset man with jowls and skin like rawhide gave a nod, as did a dark man in a military uniform with medals. A white man with nervous eyes and a blue shirt spotted with some foodstuff reached a hand across the table to Tuuro and said, “Matt Kellogg.” The fourth man, another white man, looked like a grizzled farmer; he wore a loosely knit sweater and eyed Tuuro without any acknowledgment, and it was in reproach for this, Tuuro realized, that General Nenonene dropped his head and said to Tuuro in a confidential voice, “Our sullen guest is Mr. Rafferty, of the Ohio Historical Society.”

  Allyssa had mentioned the Historical Society. Tuuro’s eyes slid over the General to Mr. Rafferty and back. The rawhide man smiled. The air was thick with promises and collusions. Tuuro eyed the arm of Mr. Rafferty’s sloppily knit sweater. Could Nenonene trust a man like that? Then he caught himself: who was he to second-guess the General?

  “Now, Mr. Simpkins—may I call you Tuuro?”—Tuuro nodded—“Tuuro, I’m sure you wonder why we brought you here.”

  It took Tuuro, still wondering about Mr. Rafferty, a second to answer. What good would the Historical Society be to Nenonene? In a practical sense, what could the Historical Society do? “You wish to speak to me about your grandson.”

  A muscle in the General’s jaw leapt. “I know about my grandson,” he said. “My daughter-in-law’s brother, Cubby’s uncle, he killed my grandson. I know this. I understood this when I first heard of Cubby’s disappearance. This brother was what they call a pederast. I had warned my children, but they disbelieved me. Cubby’s murderer has been taken care of. Privately done, in a doctor’s office. I am sure he understood just what was happening. I have my people everywhere, even in Dayton, Ohio.”

  Tuuro nodded numbly, not certain he was understanding. Mr. Rafferty scratched his nose. A chair creaked, and Matt Kellogg looked quickly down. The General’s eyes traveled to Mr. Kellogg, then slowly back to Tuuro. “Mr. Kellogg is our liberal,” he said. “There are certain things a liberal won’t permit himself to understand.”

  Silence. Tuuro ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth. The wheat field painting had been grimy with a sticky substance; Tuuro had used mineral spirits and toothpicks on the corners.

  “Your grandson was a beautiful boy,” Tuuro said. “I tried to honor him.”

  A spasm crossed Nenonene’s face. He sighed. “Mr. Simpkins, we must move on to other issues.” He hesitated. “His skin was well oiled. Here,” the General pointed at the indentation above his upper lip. “I appreciate that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Mr. Simpkins, Tuuro, I would like to enlist you in our cause. As a helper, not a soldier. You know what we desire. We desire peace and prosperity for the entire world. Respect for all. An equal distribution of assets. An end to nationalistic wars and bickering and the beginning of a government that is truly equitable to all.”

  Tuuro nodded.

  “We also desire an end to genetic manipulation. If the children of the rich are created to be advantaged even beyond their parents’ wealth, surely the gap between the lucky and unlucky will grow.” Tuuro nodded, surprised. He had never before heard this expressed as a policy of the Alliance. “The next step, if we allow this genetic tinkering to proceed, will be the production of a tractable, subintelligent working class.” The men around the table seemed to be relaxing, as if Nenonene were turning down a road that they knew well. “A slave class, if you will.” The General looked Tuuro in the eye. “Do you remember your Declaration of Independence? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That statement was indeed a revolution, Mr. Simpkins. A change in the idea of what is human. A king was held no higher than a farmer. In those words, I assure you, the destruction of slavery was foretold. Yet over the last thirty years we have had a backward change.” Nenonene was talking faster now, and some of the precision of his consonants had rubbed away; he was looking in the air, not at Tuuro. “And that change must be stopped. Because people will never have the chance to be equal if they are created …”

  “But it doesn’t really work,” Tuuro interrupted. “They try to make children perfect, but …”

  Nenonene smiled indulgently. “It doesn’t work yet, Mr. Simpkins. But the scientists are busy, and someday, I am sure, they will perfect a human strain. Not a perfect human, you understand. But a human perfect for som
eone’s purposes.”

  “Like a robot,” Tuuro said, his mind filling with comprehension. “Like a human tool.”

  “Perhaps like a very good dog. Hard-working, good-tempered, loyal.”

  Tuuro blinked. Allyssa, he thought. Me.

  “In our world,” General Nenonene said, “every man will indeed be created equal. In our world, a baby will be born into an infinite future. In our world …” But Tuuro was no longer listening. The speech was gathering velocity and volume, reminding Tuuro of the sermons of his former boss the pastor—sermons rife with repetition, with pauses and headlong rushes. Sound without sense. Or: sound with some sense, but not as much as you first thought. Like a herd of buffalo, Tuuro thought. But that wasn’t right for Nenonene. Like a herd of impala. But that could be wrong, too, because who knew what animals lived in Gambia? Tuuro realized in shame that he knew no more about Africa than its general outline on a map. He didn’t know where on the continent his Zulu forebears—if they were his forebears—lived. “But to help us prevent this,” the General was saying, “to help us win, we want to use you, Mr. Simpkins. I put it baldly because I’m a simple man.”

  “Me? Why me?” Tuuro eyed the men around the table; Matt Kellogg smiled at him almost tenderly.

  “We use what’s at our disposal because it is at our disposal. Do you understand? We use it because we can. Cubby’s death was useless, a tragedy. I find as I get older, I hate wastefulness. My Protestant upbringing. You’ll go on the media. You’ll speak clearly; we will tell you what to say. Do you understand me?”

  Yes, Tuuro thought. No. Not in your particulars. “I do,” he said.

  “Good.” General Nenonene nodded. “We will make a life for you in Cleveland. Do you need a woman?”

  “Now?” Surely he wasn’t talking about Allyssa.

  “A wife,” the rawhide man said, surprising Tuuro by speaking. “Do you need a wife?”

  A wife picked out for him like an item off a store shelf? A Cleveland wife? An African wife?

  Matt Kellogg cleared his throat. “What Mr. Colon means, Tuuro, is that there are many lovely ladies in Cleveland. We could introduce you to some of them.”

  “No,” Tuuro said, suddenly embarrassed, glad the door to the kitchen was closed. “No, thank you.”

  Mr. Colon checked his watch. General Nenonene was like President Baxter, Tuuro thought, a man so important his time was parsed into five-minute intervals. Tuuro’s own life was measured in rougher blocks—afternoons, mornings, days, weeks. Perhaps his life was indeed of less value than Nenonene’s. Created equal. Did Nenonene really believe that? For a moment Tuuro had the urge to kiss the General’s hand.

  “You’ll help me,” Nenonene nodded, his face as composed and beneficent as a priest’s. What storms he goes through! Tuuro thought. It seemed to him that in minutes the General had galloped through a month’s worth of emotions. Perhaps that was what a public life demanded.

  “I’ll help you,” Tuuro promised, and the General stood. They all stood. On the way out through the kitchen, Tuuro again noticed the mess of footprints by the door. “Excuse me,” he said to Allyssa, reaching behind her to the utility closet, for the mop still damp from his cleaning that afternoon.

  “Conscientious,” the General said, watching Tuuro as he swiped the floor. “Admirable.”

  “I made it better,” Tuuro thought when the door closed behind the men: his usual contented sensation after working on a room. And it was a wonder to have the simple square of clean brick-pattern linoleum to hold on to, amidst his squall of impressions and feelings. Outside, the bubble of the helicopter’s interior glowed, the shapes of the men climbing into it like shadows on a lamp.

  “What does he want from you?” Allyssa asked, her nose pressed to the window in the door. “When is he taking you?”

  LILA WAS AWARE of grass smushed against her face, making her itch, a scent of wet dirt, and a trickle of something down her leg. She was alive. She remembered a huge noise and the earth moving. Then she was asleep again, but asleep aware of her aliveness, and it dawned on her she needed to get up, that lying prone like this she could be a target. But where was here? Lila couldn’t remember, but when she lifted her head she saw a body with its legs peculiarly splayed, and after considering whether or not it could be her body—but no, because the legs she was looking at were right beside her head, and her legs she could feel in their usual place—she forced her head to turn and her eyes to travel to the body’s head. My God, was that Seymour? She only knew him from his hair. Such a high head he had had, so far from the ground. She thought of the diamond in his tooth. Oh, Seymour … Her eyes moved back quickly to his feet. His boots: for some reason people removed dead men’s boots. She laid her cheek back on the grass—she had a face, her face was intact—and the coldness of the ground made her moan; she felt a trickle down her leg again, and that sensation reminded her that she was the Water Queen. The Water Queen had to be worth something. The water map of the county flashed before her, the pumping stations and the mains and the reservoirs and on top of these—superimposed—the tiny mark, which was here, which was where she was.

  Her face was pressed into the grass, she was drooling, and around her right thigh the sensation of something square pressed into her leg. Michelle? No one ever touched her but Michelle. “No bones broken, but you’re bleeding,” a man’s voice said. “Hold still and I’ll put some sealer on that wound.”

  She thrashed her head around but couldn’t quite see him, and then she sensed him crouching next to her, fishing in something—a knapsack that hung from his shoulder.

  “You’re okay,” the man said. “I’m going to roll you onto your back.” He did this, quickly, and then she was gazing down her body at his profile: short brown hair, full lips, and a hoop earring, a face like a handsome pirate’s. “Don’t worry, I’m army. I crashed my copter over there”—he nodded in the direction of a line of trees—“but I ejected.”

  “I’m water,” Lila said. It came out “Ob wanna.”

  “Sorry.” The man unhooked a canteen from his belt. “Take all you want. I’ve got a tank back in the cow. It was supposed to self-destruct ten seconds after I beeped the all-clear, but I think it missed that day’s lesson. See it?” He pointed across the field. “Or maybe suicide’s against its religion.”

  The man supported her head, and Lila took a sip from the canteen. She understood why she couldn’t speak: her teeth were sticking to her cheeks. How ironic: the Water Queen thirsty and she didn’t know it. She gazed down her own body. Her thigh was bleeding and her pants torn. She saw some yellow globules that must be fat, but the man put her head down before she had a chance to be frightened.

  “That your friend?” The man, squirting sealer in the hole in her leg, nodding toward Seymour’s body.

  Lila nodded. “What happened?” The words were clear enough, although she still had an awful taste in her mouth.

  “Looks like you were shot, to me. From that direction.” The man indicated the Grid barrier. He turned his face to her, and she was startled by the scar on his cheek, a white gash like a crescent moon. He was a pirate. “How many shots did you hear?”

  “Let me think,” she said, but there was nothing to think about, she’d been walking across a field with Seymour, and now Seymour was dead and a man was squirting sealer in her wounds. So this was war. She was exhausted. She drifted off.

  She woke up thinking Michelle was doing that irritating thing again, reaching between her legs when Lila was trying to sleep. She moaned and pressed her legs together, and when she opened her eyes the pirate was crouched beside her. Had he ever left? How long had she been sleeping? She didn’t like his looks even though he was smiling, fine lines erupting from the corners of his mouth up to his nose. “I’m the Water Queen,” Lila heard herself saying. “I know everything about the water supply in this county.”

  “That’s why you were up here? Something to do with water? This is a restricted area, you know.” I’m a government of
ficial, Lila thought in confusion, dimly aware of an injustice. The pirate patted her leg, sat back on his heels. “I’m from Gamma Force myself,” he said. “My copilot’s checking out the houses.”

  Gamma Force? Gamma Force and its equipment were famous. Gamma Force was the one part of the military that was still closed to women. Real American Heroes, Real American Men, read the posters. There were Gamma Force dolls for boys. Gamma Force, it was said, answered directly to the president. They did whatever they were asked to do. They must be protecting the border, Lila thought. She strained over the top of grass to see what the pilot had called a cow. It was a bulbous helicopter, gleaming and white. As she looked at it she realized that Seymour was no longer beside her. “Where’s my friend?” she asked.

  “I buried him.”

  “Did you take his boots?” That was a thing, Lila thought. She’d seen it in movies.

  “No. We have Gamma Force boots.”

  “Can I see your ID?”

  “Sure.” He held it out, with its holographic photo, and she must have seen his name then, she had to have, but it was something she could never later remember. “Can I see yours?”

  Lila reached into the left cup of her bra and held out her card. Susannah Shore was the woman from Consort whose head had turned up in a stairwell. No body had been found. Lila knew Susannah, vaguely, from government meetings. A mother, always frazzled and sloppily dressed. A future fellow uto. Her ears had been cut off, someone said. Trophies, someone else said. Men did that. Something else she’d heard of.

  “That wound’s looking fine,” the pirate said. He reached into his knapsack and took out a wrapped pill. “Antibiotic. You’re not allergic, are you?”

  The antibiotic tasted like wintergreen. He got her upright, but she couldn’t walk. “Here. Drape your arm around my shoulders.” Up close he smelled as cologned as a man at a party.

  “Are you a pirate?” Lila said.

  “Pilot, right.”