The Angel on the Roof by Russell Banks
“Yeah, it’s cool,” Terry said lightly from the corner.
Marcelle shot a scowl in his direction. “I don’t want no dope dens in this park. I got my job to look out for. You do anything to make my job risky, I’ll come down on you,” she said to Terry. “And you, too,” she said to Bruce. “And you, too, sister,” she said to Flora. “Like a goddamned ton of bricks!”
“No big thing, man,” Bruce said, closing the door behind her, wrapping them all in the gray light of the room. Now Marcelle noticed the sharp, acidic smell of animal life, not human animals, but small, furred animals—urine and fecal matter and straw and warm fur. It was the smell of a nest. It was both irritating and at the same time comforting, that smell, because she was both unused to the smell and immediately familiar with it. Then she heard it, a chattering, sometimes clucking noise that rose and ran off to a purr, then rose again like a shudder, diminishing after a few seconds to a quiet, sustained hum. She looked closely at what she had thought at first were counters and saw that they were cages, large waist-high cages, a half dozen of them, placed in no clear order around the shabby furniture of the room, a mattress on the floor, a rocker, a pole lamp, a Formica-topped kitchen table, and, without the easy chair, a hassock. Beyond the living room, she could make out the kitchen area, where she could see two more of the large cages.
“You want a hit, man?” Terry asked, holding his breath as he talked, so that his words came out in high-pitched, breathless clicks. He extended the joint toward her, a relaxed smile on his lips. Next to him, Flora, who lay slumped against his muscular frame like a sack of grain dropped from several feet above, seemed to be dozing.
“That’s what she looks like, like she got hit.”
“Ah, no, Flora’s happy. Ain’t you, Flora honey?” Terry asked, chucking her under the chin.
She rolled her head and came gradually to attention, saw Marcelle, and grinned. “Hi, Mrs. Chagnon!” she cried, just this side of panic. “Have you ever smoked marijuana?”
“No.”
“Well, I have. I love to smoke marijuana!”
“That right?”
“Yep. I can’t drink, it makes me crazy, and I start to cry and hit people and everything…”
“Right on,” Bruce said.
“…so I drink marijuana, I mean, I smoke marijuana, and then I feel real fine and everything’s a joke, just the way it’s s’posed to be. The trouble is, I can’t get the knack of rolling these little cigarettes, so I need to have someone roll them for me, which is why I asked these boys here to come in and help me out this morning. You want a seat? Why don’t you sit down, Mrs. Chagnon? I been meaning to ask you over to visit sometime, but I been so busy, you know?” She waved toward the hassock for Marcelle to sit down.
“You sure you don’t want a hit, Marcelle baby?” Terry offered again. “This’s some dynamite shit. Flora’s got herself some dynamite grass, right, man?” he said to Bruce.
“Oh, wow, man. Dynamite shit. Really dynamite shit.”
“No, thanks.” Marcelle sat gingerly on the hassock in the middle of the room. Bruce strolled loosely over and dropped himself on the mattress, plucked the joint from Terry’s hand, and sucked noisily on it. “So you’re the one who smokes the marijuana,” Marcelle said to Flora. “I mean, these boys didn’t…”
“Corrupt her?” Bruce interrupted. “Oh, wow, man, no way! She corrupted us!” he said, laughing and rolling back on the mattress. “Dynamite shit, man! What fucking dynamite grass!”
“He’s just being silly,” Flora explained. “It makes you a little silly sometimes, Mrs. Chagnon. Nothing to worry about.”
“But it’s illegal.”
“These days, Mrs. Chagnon, what isn’t? I mean, honestly.”
“Yeah, well, I suppose it’s okay, so long as you do it in the privacy of your own home, I mean.”
“Really, Mrs. Chagnon! I would never be so foolish as to risk being arrested by the police!” Flora was now sitting pertly, her legs crossed at the ankles, gesturing limp-wristedly as she talked.
Marcelle sighed heavily. “I came over here looking for Terry to help me finish winterizing, because we got a cold snap coming. But I can see he won’t be any good today, all doped up like he is…”
“Hey, man!” Terry said and sat up straight, his feelings hurt. “You paying time and a half, you got yourself a man. In fact, you pay time and a half, you might getcha self two men,” he said, waving toward Bruce. “You need a few bucks, man?”
“No, no, not today. I gotta study for a quiz on Monday, and I haven’t even looked at the stuff…”
“Right, right,” Terry said. “College boys gotta study for quizzes and stuff. But that’s okay. More for me, as I always say.” His voice was crisp and loud again, which to Marcelle was cheering, for she had been made anxious by his slurred, quiet, speech as if his voice had an edge she couldn’t see—if he was going to say things that cut, she wanted to be able to see them coming, and usually, with Terry, she could do that, so she was relieved to hear him yammering away again, snapping and slashing with his sarcasm and bravado.
“Hey, Flora,” Terry suddenly said, “now that you got the boss lady here, whyn’t you show her all your little furry friends! C’mon, baby, show the boss lady all your furry little friends!” He jumped up and urged Marcelle to follow. “C’mere and take a peek at these beasties. She’s got a whole heap of ’em.”
“Not so many,” Flora said shyly from the mattress.
“I gotta go,” Bruce said. “I gotta study,” he added and quickly let himself out the door.
Marcelle said not now and told Terry that he could start work by putting the winter skirting around Merle Ring’s trailer, which was the most exposed in the park, located as it was out there on the point facing the lake. She reminded him where the sheets of homosote were stored, and he took off, not before, as usual, synchronizing watches with her, so that, as he put it, she wouldn’t be able later on to say he didn’t work as long as he did. “I’ve been screwed that way too many times,” he reminded her.
Then he was gone, and Marcelle was alone in the trailer with Flora—alone with Flora and her animals, which to Marcelle seemed to number in the hundreds. Their scurrying and rustling in the cages and the chittering noises they made filled the silence, and the smell of the animals thickened the air. Flora moved about the room with a grace and lightness that Marcelle had never seen in her before. She seemed almost to be dancing, and Marcelle wondered if it was the effect of the marijuana, an effect caused by inhaling the smoke-filled air, because, after all, Flora was a heavy, awkward woman who moved slowly and deliberately, not in this floating, delicate, improvisational way, as if she were underwater.
“Flora! You can’t keep these animals in here anymore!”
Flora ignored the words and waved for Marcelle to follow her into the kitchen area, where the babies were. “The babies and the new mommies, actually,” she went on with obvious pride. As soon as they were weaned, she would place the mommies back with the daddies in the living room. Soon, she pointed out, she was going to have to build some more cages, because these babies would need to be moved to make room for more. She repeated what she had told Captain Knox: “When you take care of them, they thrive. Just like plants.”
Marcelle Chagnon said it again, this time almost pleading. “You can’t keep these animals in here anymore!”
Flora stopped fluttering. “It’s getting colder, winter’s coming in. I must keep them inside, or they’ll freeze to death. Just like plants.”
Marcelle Chagnon crossed her arms over her chest and for the third time informed Flora that she would not be able to keep her guinea pigs insider the trailer.
Finally, the words seemed to have been understood. Flora stood still, hands extended as if for alms, and cried, “What will I do with them, then? I can’t put them outside. They’re weak little animals, not made for this climate. You want me to kill them? Is that what you’re telling me? That I have to kill my babies?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re going to do with them!” Marcelle was angry now. Her head had cleared somewhat, and she knew again that this was Flora’s problem, not hers. “It’s your problem, not mine. I’m not God. What you do with the damned things is your business…”
“But I’m not God, either!” Flora cried. “All I can do is take care of them and try to keep them from dying unnaturally,” she explained. That was all anyone could do and, therefore, it was what one had to do. “You do what you can. When you can take care of things, you do it. Because when you take care of things, they thrive.” She said it as if were a motto.
“Then I’ll have to call the health board and have them take the guinea pigs out. I don’t want the scandal, it’ll make it hard to rent, and it’s hard enough already, but if I can’t get you to take care of these animals by getting rid of them, I’ll have someone else do it.”
“You wouldn’t do that!” Flora said, shocked.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll have to get rid of me first,” she said. “You’ll have to toss me into the cold first, let me freeze or starve to death first, before I’ll let you do that to my babies.” She pushed her square chin defiantly out and glared at Marcelle.
“Oh, Jesus, what did I do to deserve this?”
Quickly, as if she knew she had won, Flora started reassuring Marcelle, telling her not to worry, no one would be bothered by the animals, their shit was almost odorless and would make fertilizer for the several vegetable and flower gardens in the park, and she, Flora, took good care of them and kept their cages clean, so there was no possible health hazard, and except for their relatively quiet chitchat, the animals made no noise that would bother anyone. “People just don’t like the idea of my having guinea pigs, that’s all,” she explained. “The reality of it don’t bother anyone, not even Captain Knox. If people were willing to change their ideas, then everyone could be happy together,” she said brightly.
In a final attempt to convince her to give up the guinea pigs, Marcelle tried using some of Leon LaRoche’s calculations. She couldn’t remember the specific numbers, but she understood the principle behind them. “You realize you’re going to have twice as many of these things by spring. And how many have you got now, seventy-five or a hundred, right?”
Flora told her not to worry herself over it, she already had plenty to worry about with the trailerpark and winter coming and all. She should forget all about the guinea pigs, Flora told her with sympathy, and look after the people in the trailerpark, just as she always had. “Life is hard enough, Mrs. Chagnon, without us going around worrying about things we can’t do anything about. You let me worry about taking care of the guinea pigs. That’s something I can do something about, and you can’t, so therefore it’s something I should do something about, and you shouldn’t even try.” Her voice had a consoling, almost motherly tone, and for a second Marcelle wanted to thank her.
“All right,” Marcelle said brusquely, gathering herself up to her full height. “Just make sure these bastards don’t cause any trouble around here, and make sure there isn’t any health hazard from … whatever, bugs, garbage, I don’t know, anything … and you can keep them here. Till the weather gets warm, though. Only till spring.”
Marcelle moved toward the door, and Flora smiled broadly. She modestly thanked Marcelle, who answered that, if Flora was going to smoke pot here, she’d better do it alone and not with those two big-mouthed jerks, Terry and Bruce. “Those jerks, one or the other of ’em, will get you in trouble. Smoke it alone, if you have to smoke it.”
“But I don’t know how to make those little cigarettes. My fingers are too fat, and I spill it all over.”
“Buy yourself a corncob pipe,” Marcelle advised. “Where do you buy the stuff from, anyway?” she suddenly asked, as she opened the door to leave and felt the raw chill from outside.
“Oh, I don’t buy it!” Flora exclaimed. “It grows wild all over the place, especially along the Old Road where there used to be a farm, between the river and the state forest.” There were, as part of the land owned by the Corporation, ten or fifteen acres of old, unused farmland now grown over with brush and weeds. “They used to grow hemp all over this area when I was a little girl,” Flora told her. “During the War, for rope. But after the War, when they had to compete with the Filipinos and all, they couldn’t make any money at it anymore, so it just kind of went wild.”
“That sure is interesting,” Marcelle said, shaking her head. “And I don’t believe you. But it’s okay, I don’t need to know who you buy your pot from. I don’t want to know. I already know too much,” she said, and she stepped out and closed the door behind her.
The trailerpark was located three and a half miles northwest of the center of the town of Catamount, a mill town of about five thousand people situated and more or less organized around a dam and millpond first established on the Catamount River some two hundred years ago. The mill had originally been set up as a gristmill, then a lumber mill, then a shoe factory, and, in modern times, a tannery that processed hides from New Zealand cattle and sent the leather to Colombia for the manufacture of shoes.
To get to the trailerpark from the town, you drove north out of town past the Hawthorne House (named for the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who stopped there overnight in May of 1864 with the then ex-president Franklin Pierce on the way to the White Mountains for a holiday; the author died the following night in a rooming house and tavern not unlike the present Hawthorne House, located in Plymouth, New Hampshire, but the legend had grown up in the region that he had died in his bed in Catamount), then along Main Street, past the half dozen or so blocks of local businesses and the large white Victorian houses that once were the residences of the gentry and the owners of the mill or shoe factory or tannery, whichever it happened to be at the time, and that were now the residences and offices of the local physician (for whom Terry’s sister, Carol Constant, worked), dentist, lawyer, certified public accountant, and mortician. A ways beyond the town, you came to an intersection. To your right, Mountain Road sloped crookedly toward the hill that gave the town its name, Catamount Mountain, so named by the dark presence in colonial times of mountain lions and the rocky top of the hill. Turning left, however, you drove along Old Road, called that only recently and for the purpose of distinguishing between it and New Road, or the Turnpike, that ran north and south between the White Mountains and Boston. When, three and a half miles from town, you crossed the Catamount River, you turned right at the tipped, flaking sign, GRANITE STATE TRAILERPARK, posted off the road behind a bank of mailboxes standing like sentries at the intersection. Passing through some old, brush-filled fields and a pinewoods that grew on both sides of the narrow, paved lane, you emerged into a clearing, with a sedge-thickened swamp on your left, the Catamount River on your right, and, beyond, a cluster of somewhat battered and aging house trailers. Some were in better repair than others, and some, situated in obviously more attractive locations than others, were alongside the lake, where they exhibited small lawns and flower gardens and other signs of domestic tidiness and care. The lake itself stretched beyond the trailerpark, four and a half miles long and in the approximate shape of a turkey. For that reason, for over a hundred years it had been called Turkey Pond until Ephraim Skitter, who owned the shoe factory, left the town a large endowment for its library and bandstand, and in gratitude the town fathers changed the name of the lake. That, in turn, gave the name Skitter to the large parcel of land that bordered the north and west sides of the lake, becoming by 1950, when the Turnpike was built, the Skitter Lake State Forest. All in all, it was a pretty piece of land and water. If you stood out on the point of land where the trailerpark was situated, with the swamp and pinewoods behind you, you could see, out beyond the deep blue water of the lake, spruce-covered hills that lumped their way northward all the way to the mauve-colored wedges at the horizon, the world-famous White Mountains.
In the trailerpark itself were an even dozen tr
Two of the twelve trailers, numbers 5 and 9, were vacant at this time, number 9 having been vacated only last February as the result of the suicide of a man who had lived in the park as long as Marcelle Chagnon and who had been extremely popular among his neighbors. Tom Smith was his name, and he had raised his son alone in the park, and when his son, at the age of twenty-one or so, had gone away, Tom had withdrawn into himself, and one gray afternoon in February he shot himself in the mouth. He had been a nice man, everyone insisted, though no one had known him very well. In fact, people seemed to think he was a nice man mainly because his son Buddy was so troublesome, always drunk and fighting at the Hawthorne House and, according to the people in the park, guilty of stealing and selling in Boston their TV sets, stereos, radios, jewelry, and so forth. Tom Smith’s trailer, number 9, wasn’t a particularly fancy one, but it was well located at the end of the land side of the park, right next to Terry and Carol Constant and with a view of the lake. But even so, Marcelle hadn’t yet been able to rent it, possibly because of the association with Tom’s suicide, but also possibly because of there being black people living next door, which irritated Marcelle whenever it came up, bringing her to announce right to the prospective tenant’s face, “Good, I’m glad you don’t want to rent that trailer, because we don’t want people like you living around here.” That would be the end of the tour, and even though Marcelle felt just fine about losing that particular kind of tenant, her attitude certainly did not help her fill number 9, which cost her money. But you had to admire Marcelle Chagnon—she was like an old Indian chief, the way she came forward to protect her people, even if with nothing but her pride, and even at her own expense.