Right Livelihoods Page 5

  Suffice to say, there is a direct linkage between the hallmarks of modernism as I understand them and murderous, barbarian thugs who would do us in because they hate us and our freedoms.

  When my wife arrived at the end of the hour, I was feeling a little tired, and I made no attempt to bring her up to speed on the developments of the case. As long as she believed I was incapacitated, there was little danger of her taking note of my political activities.

  8. Online Ordering as Part of the Resistance

  Because I am a man of dignity with many important activities to pursue and enjoy in my twilight years, I had as yet failed to take advantage of the so-called online lifestyle. The online lifestyle, in my view, the Internet, the Web, however you might call this thing, was just a highfalutin set of Yellow Pages. Mainly, I allowed my wife, Helen, to do any and all Internet surfing, while I watched television and, where necessary, used the phone to upbraid employees and other hangerson who were not producing results for our family in a timely fashion. Helen would explain to me things she had seen on the Internet, and I’d have a good chuckle. However, once confined to the canes (or the walker), as I was after being restrained by government-employed medical experts, I found that I had more time on my hands. Accordingly, it became important to gain Internet facility on an accelerated schedule. I am not much of a typist, and in the past I used to pay people to type for me. But there was no getting around the fact that I was going to need the vast Internet databases to facilitate my investigation into the Omega Force and its dark-complected conspirators.

  How I did this, initially, was by ordering any number of common household items through so-called online vendors. In fact, when I got home from the meeting just described, after a short nap, I fetched my son, Skip, who’d been watching the afternoon light on his sneaker, and I invited Skip to come upstairs with me to where my wife kept the extra computer, an old machine with few bells and whistles upon it. I promised Skip that we would select some toy or other for his occasional amusement.

  “You do want a toy, don’t you?”

  It was difficult for me to get these words out, as I have explained, by reason of traumatic neurological event, and Skip, since he was not the sharpest of the Van Deusens, though a fine rhymester, was stricken with the recognition that something was not right with his father. I could see that he was overcome with confusion. In fact, Skip began dabbing at his eyes. He had a nervous way of doing this that was often embarrassing to me, though I had long ago resolved never to be embarrassed by my son. He was worried about his father, who was normally so robust. His father could not speak clearly, was not moving easily, and he could not even have a glass of wine with dinner.

  “What about a beach ball? Here, look at this one.” I pointed out a beach ball that had the whole of the earthly globe printed on it, and I instantly realized that this would make a very fine purchase for my son, Skip, who sometimes did not seem able to discern between various countries. For example, he was unable to locate Myanmar, though this may have been because he’d never really made the transition from Burma. And what about the Congo? It’d been Zaire and now it was the Congo again. I had Skip read my credit card numbers to me, and then I hugged him. At least I could still do that.

  After the beach ball there was a set of fire irons, after the set of fire irons there was a baseball glove for Skip, and then a matching baseball glove for me, and then there was some new bedding for the divan in my office, and then there was a new set of beach towels, and then I ordered entire sets of compact disc recordings of various baroque composers, and then I ordered the great books as selected by professors at important national universities, with special attention to Heidegger and other Germans. When my wife, Helen, began to complain about the online ordering, I changed tactics and began ordering jewelry for her. First I ordered jewelry from Native American artisans in the Southwest, because my wife was very fond of the jewelry of that region, and when she began complaining further about having to drive down to the ferry dock to negotiate with the men in the freight office about the excessive room all my packages were taking up there (it was true, they were moving my packages around on pallets), I then began ordering items from Tiffany and other high-end retailers. All of this so that I could get more time here on the Internet to research germs.

  Here were some of the germs that had begun to attract my attention. Brucellosis. Venezuelan equine encephalitis. African swine fever. Sandfly fever. Dengue fever. Yellow fever. Marburg virus. Foot-and-mouth disease. Bacillus anthracis. Rift Valley fever virus, Zagazig 501 strain. Rinderpest. Miscellaneous shellfish toxins, such as MSX. Dutch duck plague. Avian flu. Ebola fever. Hantavirus. Leishmaniasis. Heartwater. Bluetongue. Staphylococcal enterotoxin B. Serratia marcescens. Bacillus subtilis. Coxsackie B-5 virus, Louping ill, contagious ecthyma, Nairobi sheep disease, feline cytauxzoonosis.

  I scoured the available databases for descriptions of how to weaponize these ailments. Had they hurdled the species barrier? Had some poor government worker been spat upon by an infected cow and then had himself necropsied like the rest of the nameless cows, goats, sheep, and rodents at the various laboratories? I waited for Helen to turn in. Each night, I waited until she cracked the spine of some dusty tome by Thackeray or Dickens, and then I got up, in my nightshirt and nightcap, and began to limp around the premises.

  It was a large old house, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White in the 1920s according to the elegant rigors of their style. The porch was well-known as a gem of this sort. Since we were on a grassy knoll above the bay side, the wind whipped up like nowhere else. As I’ve said, our island is sweet and gentle and full of breathtaking views and lovely residences, but in the off-season the wind does stay on duty. You can imagine how this kind of island living used to drive men to distraction. Late at night, I listened to the winds, and I read about germs, about how these germs were being manufactured only six miles from here, despite demurrals from the Department of Agriculture, whose officials I knew well back when I was in the public sector. After all, the Centers for Disease Control had been under our jurisdiction. I knew that with one good explosion, air-dropped from the appropriate height, the PIADC would be dust. Then the millions of innocents on the South and North Forks, and here on our own little island, would be hemorrhaging within days.

  With Rift Valley fever, you know, the hemorrhaging is through the eye socket. First you have the high fever, and then the hemorrhaging through the eye socket, and the blood clots in the lens, resulting in blindness in most cases. When President Eisenhower first rubber-stamped the initial experiments with Rift Valley fever, he was reported to have found solace in the fact that the bug was incapacitating but not fatal. That was before the Egyptian variant, Zagazig 501. Now it’s fatal.

  You would be right to ask if I was lonely during these nights. When my wife called for me to come to bed, was I lonely, knowing what I knew? I am pleased to say that I am given to such Yankee optimism about things that I knew we could somehow prevent these dark machineries of death from reaching our shores. With my rather unsteady hands, I moved the cursor across the screen, turning up any online remark no matter how trivial or alarmist. I felt rather buoyed knowing that I could make sure that my wife and son would not develop painful ulcerous blisters on their mouths and hands that would then give way to harmful secondary infections, ultimately condemning them to anguished, quarantined deaths. Nor would they bleed from the eyes.

  When I was done looking for leads, I inevitably checked the weather for the region. The fact that we had not had a major, category-five hurricane in some years did not mean that we could not have one now. And it was with a grim satisfaction that I recognized one night that there was a powerful category-four storm working its way up the coast. Having bypassed the Carolinas and Virginia Beach, the storm would likely be upon us within days. Of course, any such storm would serve as convenient cover for dark-complected persons. The Omega Force, according to the reports of elite government counterterrorist Stuart Hawkes-Mitche
ll, awaited the hurricane, awaited the night, awaited the blizzard, awaited the war that breaks out elsewhere, awaited a major disturbance in the markets, awaited the Super Bowl, awaited the national holiday, awaited the religious festival, awaited the assassination, awaited any movement or weakness. The Omega Force waited for Plum Island to secure itself, waited for Plum Island to batten down its hatches, and then by amphibious assault in the thick of the storm, the Omega Force would come to liberate the island from the Capitalist running dogs. And the first thing it would do: free the animals.

  By coincidence, the hurricane in question was called Helen.

  I gummed my food. I ate soup and those small custardy yogurts that practically cried out gerontologist-approved. Knowing what I knew relegated me to a singular status, in which there was no one to whom I could talk, no one to whom I could turn. My two brothers died alone. The Van Deusens’ success in the world was matched only by their mute, solitary suffering in the personal realm. Neither one of them ever asked to see me before he was gone. No heroic measures were performed. These Van Deusens slipped from consciousness so quietly—as in the case of my brother Chalmers, the venture capitalist—that it was almost as if they’d never actually been conscious. Terrence, who inherited the mattress business, was lost in a hunting accident. He was doing what he loved to do, alone in a duck blind, and he simply didn’t turn up later in the day, having been struck by a stray bullet. They were gone, I was left, I was provided for, and here I was up in the attic.

  I went for a walk before dawn. I think it was Monday. It might have been Thursday. One of my online purchases was a clam hoe. My wife considered this a reasonable therapeutic activity that I might take up in my dotage, looking for clams on the shore, clams that had not already been infected with a deadly shellfish toxin.

  I had a rather unusual garb on that morning. I thought it rather jolly. I wore pressed white boxer shorts, slippers (ordered from L.L. Bean of Freeport, ME), and my purple dressing gown, which was a princely robe. It had a bright yellow lining. I thought of waking Skip, who still slept in the adorable fetal curl of a young child. The wind was howling and beckoning to me, and out I went into it, with my cane and my clam hoe.

  When I reached the edge of the sea, which even on the bay side was quite rough, I encountered the former lobsterman Ed Thorne. I suppose I had been expecting him. I had no idea when it was going to take place, the transfer of dossiers, what week, what month. But I was prepared. Ed was just where he was supposed to be, wearing foul-weather gear of the sort you might find in a Winslow Homer painting. We exchanged pleasantries. I asked after his family, whom I had always liked. Then I said, “Ed, are you here with information?”

  His ominous reply: “I will no longer be known by the name Ed, Dr. Van Deusen.”

  “Why certainly, Ed,” I agreed. I’d expected it would be so much more difficult to speak, but, here on the threshold of revolution and international instability, I found I was feeling rather energized. There had been an influx of adrenal juices in my compromised system. “Tell me what name to use.” I faced the coast of the Nutmeg State. The lights twinkled against violent seas.

  “My name,” Ed said, “is Ernest Piccolo.”

  “I’ve heard of you.” I didn’t bring up the Hawkes-Mitchell book, of course.

  “The reason we have brought you here,” Ed continued, “is to let you know that there has been another sighting. An aircraft. At the other end of the island. Just two nights ago. An isolated event, according to the NSA, would be considered a transient sighting, in which the hostiles, understanding that the situation was too hot, aborted the mission. A second visit presents much more serious parameters, and the situation, naturally, has now been expressed up the chain of command. We believe, in fact, that we have a Code White. As you are one of our reliable local informants, Dr. Van Deusen, we will require your services.”

  “Anything you say, Ed,” I replied, “uh, Ernest.”

  “We charge you with looking into aircraft design. We have ideas about the design of this aircraft, and we have managed to locate the registration numbers, which are as follows: DB-81404. We suggest that you begin looking into the FAA databases. We suggest that you pursue the licensing information, the insurance information, anything you can find about this aircraft in particular.”

  I was speechless. The brazenness of the perpetrators! Right here in our resort community! To use a nationally registered aircraft, licensed by our own federal licensing authorities.

  “Did you make contact with the hostiles?” I asked. “Did they say anything?”

  “Contact was made.”

  “Were they taken into custody?”

  Ernest Piccolo’s surf-casting rod never once ceased from its pendular motion. The lure belly flopped on the surface of the black, storm-addled sea. He reeled it in. I could see now that he also had a pail beside him, and that a pair of snappers, in a gallon of briny water, fought back against their imprisonment. Piccolo was loath to tell me what he had learned. Government values secrecy above all. And yet had I not proved that I was a willing participant in the struggle for our values and for our community? Had I not managed this, if little else, in my seventy-three years? Piccolo deliberated before going on.

  “During the course of the field interview with the hostiles, I asked what they were doing, and they said they were taking pictures. I told them it was a private airfield, and they said this was news to them, that they had been training here for takeoffs and landings for years. They mentioned Yankee Airlines of Groton. I told them not to be coming around again, that they should consider themselves warned from the highest levels.”

  “Are you able to identify their nationality?”

  “They were dark-complected, as has already been reported. Time’s growing short, Dr. Van Deusen. We don’t have the luxury to be going over points that we’ve already covered.”

  “Are you certain it was the same men?”

  “Rendezvous here this evening with whatever information you locate. We’ll have further assignments for you at that juncture.”

  Dawn was breaking again. I lost myself in its consideration, wondering when the hurricane would come, if the evildoers would come, when exactly, and why me, what had I done to merit the burden that had been so precipitously thrust upon me? Piccolo, departing surreptitiously, left behind his pail. And evidently he was practicing catch and release, for the pail was empty.

  In order to preserve my own cover, I spent the next hours attempting to harvest clams.

  9. Contemporary Aircraft Design

  What a welcome coincidence that my wife had elected to go to the mainland. For some time she’d wanted to locate a secretaire for the guest room. Oddly, it became imperative to her that she locate this piece of furniture before the hurricane. Of course, as I have discussed earlier, it is possible that my wife was a hostile agent. It’s possible that she knew the island was now a locus of intrigue. It is possible that she’d been intercepting conversations between myself and Ernest Piccolo, that she knew about the Omega Force and its diabolical intentions, and that, though she loved me, she now realized that she had no choice but to leave me to my uncertain fate.

  My wife left on the early boat, trusting that I would not get into any of the locked cabinets in the dining room and that I would agree to return to the self-help meeting, which reconvened in the afternoon. Also, with the aid of our trusty domestic staff, I was to look after Skip. The weather was unseasonably warm and moist, and the sky was bleached white, as if it were the pad on which a momentous story was soon to be written.

  I got down to work on the question of the aircraft.

  As you know, our airstrip, since it was first created by the military, is sturdy enough to withstand the weight of a full transport plane, with its complement of fighting men. Therefore, as I’ve said, it’s possible that an aircraft as large as a jet could land here. A small jet would be more effective at eluding government capture and could ditch at one of the laboratories on Plum Island, scatte
ring contaminated slurries on the breezes. Or it might collide with the nuclear power plant, likewise broadcasting radioactive materials. Helicopters have also been known to land on our airstrip, as when the most successful of the younger set tries to make it into work on Monday mornings.

  These aircraft I have mentioned were theoretically feasible for any assault, and this I told Skip as we breakfasted on sugary cereals. “Skip,” I remarked, “I don’t want you to tell your mother any of what I’m about to tell you.” He nodded solemnly because except on those days when he glimpsed the enormity of his disability, the days when he railed at the world and destroyed household items, he was docile and accepting. He liked secrets, or at least the intimations of secrets. “I’m having trouble thinking all of this through,” I said. “There are just too many variables in my head. But here’s what I suspect. I suspect that the aircraft the hostiles used was not a jet or a helicopter, because it would attract too much attention. We need to think in terms of small single-engine or twin-engine propeller planes. What do you think, Skip? Piper Cub?”

  Skip cried out the name of the plane, “Piper Cub!”

  Cereal made him energetic.

  “What about the Cessna?”

  “Piper Cub!”

  A single-engine plane can typically fly five hundred to nine hundred miles before refueling. That would greatly increase the number of available targets. Though it did depend, of course, on where the plane was hangared. The great Lindbergh sparked the interest in general aviation of this sort, and it was shortly after his flight, as you no doubt are aware, that William T. Piper purchased the Taylor Aircraft Corporation and received the appropriate licenses to develop its “cub” model. In 1938, the J-3 Piper Cub was introduced, and it became popular immediately. It was the training aircraft of choice in the postwar years. My own father, in fact, “Dutch” Van Deusen, was known to fly one.