White noise

36

Now and then I thought of the Zumwalt automatic hidden in the bedroom.

The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Wanner weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the air, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to the grandparents of the growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.

What happens to them when the commercial ends?

I got a call myself one night. The operator said, 'There's a Mother Devi that wishes to talk collect to a Jack Gladney. Do you accept?"

"Hello, Janet. What do you want?"

"Just to say hello. To ask how you are. We haven't talked in ages."

"Talked?"

"Swami wants to know if our son is coming to the ashram this summer."

"Our son?"

"Yours, mine and his. Swami regards the children of his followers as his children."

"I sent a daughter to Mexico last week. When she gets back, I'll be ready to talk about the son."

"Swami says Montana will be good for the boy. He will grow out, fill out. These are his touchy years."

"Why are you calling? Seriously."

"Just to greet you, Jack. We greet each other here."

"Is he one of those whimsical swamis with a snow-white beard? Sort of fun to look at?"

"We're serious people here. The cycle of history has but four ages. We happen to be in the last of these. There is little time for whimsy."

Her tiny piping voice bounced down to me from a hollow ball in geosynchronous orbit.

"If Heinrich wants to visit you this summer, it's all right with me. Let him ride horses, fish for trout. But í don't want him getting involved in something personal and intense, like religion. There's already been some kidnap talk around here. People are edgy."

"The last age is the Age of Darkness."

"Fine. Now tell me what you want."

"Nothing. I have everything. Peace of mind, purpose, true fellowship. I only wish to greet you. I greet you, Jack. I miss you. I miss your voice. I only wish to talk a while, pass a moment or two in friendly reminiscence."

I hung up and went for a walk. The women were in their lighted homes, talking on the phone. Did swami have twinkling eyes? Would he be able to answer the boy's questions where I had failed, provide assurances where I had incited bickering and debate? How final is the Age of Darkness? Does it mean supreme destruction, a night that swallows existence so completely that I am cured of my own lonely dying? I listened to the women talk. All sound, all souls.

When I got home I found Babette in her sweatsuit by the bedroom window, staring into the night.

Delegates to the Hitler conference began arriving. About ninety Hitler scholars would spend the three days of the conference attending lectures, appearing on panels, going to movies. They would wander the campus with their names lettered in gothic type on laminated tags pinned to their lapels. They would exchange Hitler gossip, spread the usual sensational rumors about the last days in the führerbunker.

It was interesting to see how closely they resembled each other despite the wide diversity of national and regional backgrounds. They were cheerful and eager, given to spitting when they laughed, given to outdated dress, homeliness, punctuality. They seemed to have a taste for sweets.

I welcomed them in the starkly modern chapel. I spoke in German, from notes, for five minutes. I talked mainly about Hitler's mother, brother and dog. His dog's name was Wolf. This word is the same in English and German. Most of the words I used in my address were the same or nearly the same in both languages. I'd spent days with the dictionary, compiling lists of such words. My remarks were necessarily disjointed and odd. I made many references to Wolf, many more to the mother and the brother, a few to shoes and socks, a few to jazz, beer and baseball. Of course there was Hitler himself. I spoke the name often, hoping it would overpower my insecure sentence structure.

The rest of the time I tried to avoid the Germans in the group. Even in my black gown and dark glasses, with my name in Nazi typeface over my heart, I felt feeble in their presence, death-prone, listening to them produce their guttural sounds, their words, their heavy metal. They told Hitler jokes and played pinochle. All I could do was mutter a random monosyllable, rock with empty laughter. I spent a lot of time in my office, hiding.

Whenever I remembered the gun, lurking in a stack of undershirts like a tropical insect, I felt a small intense sensation pass through me. Whether pleasurable or fearful I wasn't sure. I knew it mainly as a childhood moment, the profound stir of secret-keeping.

What a sly device a handgun is. One so small in particular. An intimate and cunning thing, a secret history of the man who owns it. I recalled how I'd felt some days earlier, trying to find the Dylar. Like someone spying on the family garbage. Was I immersing myself, little by little, in a secret life? Did I think it was my last defense against the ruin worked out for me so casually by the force or nonforce, the principle or power or chaos that determines such things? Perhaps I was beginning to understand my ex-wives and their ties to intelligence.

The Hitler scholars assembled, wandered, ate voraciously, laughed through oversized teeth. I sat at my desk in the dark, thinking of secrets. Are secrets a tunnel to a dreamworld where you control events?

In the evening I sped out to the airport to meet my daughter's plane. She was excited and happy, wore Mexican things. She said the people who sent her mother books to review wouldn't leave her alone. Dana was getting big thick novels every day, writing reviews which she microfilmed and sent to a secret archive. She complained of jangled nerves, periods of deep spiritual fatigue. She told Steffie she was thinking of coming in from the cold.

In the morning I sped out to Glassboro to take the further tests my doctor had advised, at Autumn Harvest Farms. The seriousness of such an occasion is directly proportionate to the number of bodily emissions you are asked to cull for analysis. I carried with me several specimen bottles, each containing some melancholy waste or secretion. Alone in the glove compartment rode an ominous plastic locket, which I'd reverently enclosed in three interlocking Baggies, successively twist-tied. Here was a daub of the most solemn waste of all, certain to be looked upon by the technicians on duty with the mingled deference, awe and dread we have come to associate with exotic religions of the world.

But first I had to find the place. It turned out to be a functional pale brick building, one story, with slab floors and bright lighting. Why would such a place be called Autumn Harvest Farms? Was this an attempt to balance the heartlessness of their gleaming precision equipment? Would a quaint name fool us into thinking we live in pre-cancerous times? What kind of condition might we expect to have diagnosed in a facility called Autumn Harvest Farms? Whooping cough, croup? A touch of the grippe? Familiar old farmhouse miseries calling for bed rest, a deep chest massage with soothing Vicks VapoRub. Would someone read to us from David Copperfield?

I had misgivings. They took my samples away, sat me down at a computer console. In response to questions on the screen I tapped out the story of my life and death, little by little, each response eliciting further questions in an unforgiving progression of sets and subsets. I lied three times. They gave me a loose-fitting garment and a wristband ID. They sent me down narrow corridors for measuring and weighing, for blood-testing, brain-graphing, the recording of currents traversing my heart. They scanned and probed in room after room, each cubicle appearing slightly smaller than the one before it, more harshly lighted, emptier of human furnishings. Always a new technician. Always faceless fellow patients in the mazelike halls, crossing from room to room, identically gowned. No one said hello. They attached me to a seesaw device, turned me upside down and let me hang for sixty seconds. A printout emerged from a device nearby. They put me on a treadmill and told me to run, run. Instruments were strapped to my thighs, electrodes planted on my chest. They inserted me in an imaging block, some kind of computerized scanner. Someone sat typing at a console, transmitting a message to the machine that would make my body transparent. I heard magnetic winds, saw flashes of northern light. People crossed the hall like wandering souls, holding their urine aloft in pale beakers. I stood in a room the size of a closet. They told me to hold one finger in front of my face, close my left eye. The panel slid shut, a white light flashed. They were trying to help me, to save me.

Eventually, dressed again, I sat across a desk from a nervous young man in a white smock. He studied my file, mumbling something about being new at this. I was surprised to find that this fact did not upset me. I think I was even relieved.

"How long before the results are in?"

"The results are in," he said.

"I thought we were here for a general discussion. The human part. What the machines can't detect. In two or three days the actual numbers would be ready." "The numbers are ready."

"I'm not sure I'm ready. All those gleaming devices are a little unsettling. I could easily imagine a perfectly healthy person being made ill just taking these tests."

"Why should anyone be made ill? These are the most accurate test devices anywhere. We have sophisticated computers to analyze the data. This equipment saves lives. Believe me, I've seen it happen. We have equipment that works better than the latest X-ray machine or CAT scanner. We can see more deeply, more accurately."

He seemed to be gaining confidence. He was a mild-eyed fellow with a poor complexion and reminded me of the boys at the supermarket who stand at the end of the checkout counter bagging merchandise.

"Here's how we usually start," he said. "I ask questions based on the printout and then you answer to the best of your ability. When we're all finished, I give you the printout in a sealed envelope and you take it to your doctor for a paid visit."

"Good."

"Good. We usually start by asking how do you feel."

"Based on the printout?"

"Just how do you feel," he said in a mild voice.

"In my own mind, in real terms, I feel relatively sound, pending confirmation."

"We usually go on to tired. Have you recently been feeling tired?"

"What do people usually say?"

"Mild fatigue is a popular answer."

"I could say exactly that and be convinced in my own mind it's a fair and accurate description."

He seemed satisfied with the reply and made a bold notation on the page in front of him.

"What about appetite?" he said.

"I could go either way on that."

'That's more or less how I could go, based on the printout."

"In other words you're saying sometimes I have appetitive reinforcement, sometimes I don't."

"Are you telling me or asking me?"

"It depends on what the numbers say."

"Then we agree."

"Good."

"Good," he said. "Now what about sleep? We usually do sleep before we ask the person if they'd like some decaf or tea. We don't provide sugar."

"Do you get a lot of people who have trouble sleeping?"

"Only in the last stages."

"The last stages of sleep? Do you mean they wake up early in the morning and can't get back to sleep?"

'The last stages of life."

'That's what I thought. Good. The only thing I have is some low threshold animation."

"Good."

"I get a little restless. Who doesn't?"

'Toss and turn?"

'Toss," I said.

"Good."

"Good."

He made some notes. It seemed to be going well. I was heartened to see how well it was going. I turned down his offer of tea, which seemed to please him. We were moving right along.

"Here's where we ask about smoking."

'That's easy. The answer is no. And it's not a matter of having stopped five or ten years ago. I've never smoked. Even when I was a teenager. Never tried it. Never saw the need."

'That's always a plus."

I felt tremendously reassured and grateful.

"We're moving right along, aren't we?"

"Some people like to drag it out," he said. 'They get interested in their own condition. It becomes almost like a hobby."

"Who needs nicotine? Not only that, I rarely drink coffee and certainly never with caffeine. Can't understand what people see in all this artificial stimulation. I get high just walking in the woods."

"No caffeine always helps."

Yes, I thought. Reward my virture. Give me life.

"Then there's milk," I said. "People aren't happy with the caffeine and the sugar. They want the milk too. All those fatty acids. Haven't touched milk since I was a kid. Haven't touched heavy cream. Eat bland foods. Rarely touch hard liquor. Never knew what the fuss was all about. Water. That's my beverage. A man can trust a glass of water."

I waited for him to tell me I was adding years to my life.

"Speaking of water," he said, "have you ever been exposed to industrial contaminants?"

"What?"

"Toxic material in the air or water."

"Is this what you usually ask after the cigarettes?"

"It's not a scheduled question."

"You mean do I work with a substance like asbestos? Absolutely not. I'm a teacher. Teaching is my life. I've spent my life on a college campus. Where does asbestos fit into this?"

"Have you ever heard of Nyodene Derivative?"

"Should I have, based on the printout?"

"There are traces in your bloodstream."

"How can that be if I've never heard of it?"

"The magnetic scanner says it's there. I'm looking at bracketed numbers with little stars."

"Are you saying the printout shows the first ambiguous signs of a barely perceptible condition deriving from minimal acceptable spillage exposure?"

Why was I speaking in this stilted fashion?

"The magnetic scanner is pretty clear," he said.

What had happened to our tacit agreement to advance smartly through the program without time-consuming and controversial delving?

"What happens when someone has traces of this material in his or her blood?"

"They get a nebulous mass," he said.

"But I thought no one knew for sure what Nyodene D. did to humans. Rats, yes."

"You just told me you'd never heard of it. How do you know what it does or doesn't do?"

He had me there. I felt I'd been tricked, carried along, taken for a fool.

"Knowledge changes every day," he said. "We have some conflicting data that says exposure to this substance can definitely lead to a mass."

His confidence was soaring.

"Good. Let's get on to the next topic. I'm in something of a hurry."

"This is where I hand over the sealed envelope."

"Is exercise next? The answer is none. Hate it, refuse to do it."

"Good. I am handing over the envelope."

"What is a nebulous mass, just out of idle curiosity?"

"A possible growth in the body."

"And it's called nebulous because you can't get a clear picture of it."

"We get very clear pictures. The imaging block takes the clearest pictures humanly possible. It's called a nebulous mass because it has no definite shape, form or limits."

"What can it do in terms of worst-case scenario contingencies?"

"Cause a person to die."

"Speak English, for God's sake. I despise this modern jargon."

He took insults well. The angrier I got, the better he liked it. He radiated energy and health.

"Now is where I tell you to pay in the outer office."

"What about potassium? I came here in the first place because my potassium was way above normal limits."

"We don't do potassium."

"Good."

"Good. The last thing I'm supposed to tell you is take the envelope to your doctor. Your doctor knows the symbols."

"So that's it then. Good."

"Good," he said.

I found myself shaking his hand warmly. Minutes later I was out on the street. A boy walked splay-footed across a public lawn, nudging a soccer ball before him. A second kid sat on the grass, taking off his socks by grabbing the heels and yanking. How literary, I thought peevishly. Streets thick with the details of impulsive life as the hero ponders the latest phase in his dying. It was a partially cloudy day with winds diminishing toward sunset.

That night I walked the streets of Blacksmith. The glow of blue-eyed TVs. The voices on the touch-tone phones. Far away the grandparents huddle in a chair, eagerly sharing the receiver as carrier waves modulate into audible signals. It is the voice of their grandson, the growing boy whose face appears in the snapshots set around the phone. Joy rushes to their eyes but it is misted over, infused with a sad and complex knowing. What is the young- • ster saying to them? His wretched complexion makes him unhappy? He wants to leave school and work full-time at Foodland, bagging groceries? He tells them he likes to bag groceries. It is the one thing in life he finds satisfying. Put the gallon jugs in first, square off the six-packs, double-bag the heavy merch. He does it well, he has the knack, he sees the items arranged in the bag before he touches a thing. It's like Zen, gramma. I snap out two bags, fit one inside the other. Don't bruise the fruit, watch the eggs, put the ice cream in a freezer bag. A thousand people pass me every day but no one ever sees me. I like it, gramma, it's totally un-threatening, it's how I want to spend my life. And so they listen sadly, loving him all the more, their faces pressed against the sleek Trimline, the white Princess in the bedroom, the plain brown Rotary in granddad's paneled basement hideaway. The old gentleman runs a hand through his thatch of white hair, the woman holds her folded specs against her face. Clouds race across the westering moon, the seasons change in somber montage, going deeper into winter stillness, a landscape of silence and ice. Your doctor knows the symbols.