Chapter 11

Dana actually sort of enjoyed spending the morning on a smallish prop plane, a fact that she did not fully appreciate until she had spent the afternoon on a smallish ferryboat. The ferry was the only way to cross the Straights of Morrell, the 60-mile wide stretch of ocean separating the largely irrelevant Greater Morrell Island from the totally irrelevant Lesser Morrell Island. 
 Should the need to cross the Straights of Morrell in a smallish boat arise again--and it seemed certain to arise at least one more time if she ever intended to leave the island--Dana swore she'd remember to take some Dramamine. Assuming Dramamine was available n Lesser Morrell Island. Which it almost certainly wouldn't be, since a seafaring people like the Lesser Morrell Islanders weren't likely to need such a thing. 
 The pair of Lesser Morrell Islanders with her on this final leg of her journey certainly showed no signs of seasickness. The men, it developed, were returning from Greater Morrell Island with consumer items unavailable on their island, which is to say pretty much everything except for fish and coconuts. They were Dana's first Lesser Morrell Islanders, and she was eager to make a good first impression. But as it is notoriously difficult to make a good first impression whilst one is busy vomiting over the side of a boat, Dana settled for not accidentally vomiting on them, which figured to be a social faux pas, differing local customs or no. 
 One doesn't so much get over seasickness on a short trip as one gets used to it. Dana eventually got used to hers enough to say hello to her fellow passengers. Fortunately, they spoke very credible English, which worked out very well for Dana, who spoke little Morrellitian. Most Morrell Islanders spoke English, the men explained, or at least a Pidgin English that in terms of clarity falls somewhere between proper English and the version of English spoken by the English. 
 "The missionaries taught us the language," the men explained.
 "There are missionaries on Lesser Morrell Island?" Dana asked, surprised.
 "Not for a while now. We had some differences."
 "Differences?"
 "They were always going on about this man who wanted to tell us how to do everything. We told them that if it was so important, then this man ought to come and tell us himself."
 "What did the missionaries say to that?"
 "They said this man was busy with running the universe, and anyway that he'd been dead 2,000 years, not that that had slowed him up too much. Eventually we reached a compromise with the missionaries and they left for another island."
 "What was the compromise?"
 "We agreed to eat fish on Fridays and maintain their church."
 "And do you?"
 "Sure. We eat fish everyday anyway."
"And the church?"
"Where do you think we keep the fish?"
The men were William and George, brothers who ran Lesser Morrell Island's only established business, the Island Bar. Owning the bar made them very big men on Lesser Morrell Island, even if the enterprise did consist only of warm Cook Island Beer sold on the front porch of their hut. On Greater Morrell Island, however, they were very small men, as was anyone from Lesser Morrell Island. 
 "They think we are backwards people because we don't own telephones or cars…or anything else we can't buy in Greater Morrell Island and bring back on this ferry," explained George. 
 "And they own the ferry," added William.
Both brothers said they'd be happy to get back to their own island where they could once again look down on other people. William looked towards the boat's captain, a Greater Morrell Islander who wasn't about to return the gaze of a Lesser Morrell Islander. 
 These first two Lesser Morrell Islanders seemed nice enough, Dana decided. They expressed concern for her sea sickness, and they did their best to stifle their laughter when they exchanged what almost certainly were jibes at her expense in their own language. But there were some troubling signs that Lesser Morrell Island might not be as unspoiled as she had hoped. To begin with, there were the names; William and George. That was hardly authentic, even if the men did assure her that their last name was Mo'oouloughibili!olo, which more than met with her approval. There was the men's wardrobe: tee shirts, blue jeans, and baseball caps, not the grass skirts Dana had been more-or-less expecting. "Grass skirts really do itch," explained William. There was the importation of Western consumer goods; such things could irreparably alter a culture, although deep down Dana was pleased to know she would be spending the year in a place that understood the value of a good toilet paper. Finally, there was the fact that William and George were not surprised that she'd be spending a year on their island. 
 "What are you going to do on Lesser Morrell Island?" William asked.
 "Good," Dana explained.
 "That's what they all say," said George. Then George said something to William in their own language and both broke into laughter. 
Dana politely excused herself to throw up.
 
The worst thing about being unemployed, I had decided--even worse than the lack of food or a 401(k) plan with 100% matching--was the lack of purpose. Every day was just another day, without challenges, without accomplishments, without the possibility of success or the threat of failure. This is why I had of late become obsessed with thoughts of manure. Manure, spread on a field, helps crops grow. In other words, even excrement has a purpose. I didn't. If spread on a field, I would just lie there waiting for a combine to roll by and end my misery. Few people are lucky enough to know exactly where they stand in the grand scheme of things. I had established beyond debate that I was somewhere below shit. 
 I'd grown complacent, I realized now. When the summer began, I'd hated the fact that I was unemployed. And I still did. But at the beginning of the summer I'd also tried to do something about it. Now I just sat around hating it. At this particular moment, I was hating unemployment while lying on Dave's desk under the telescope staring at clouds. 
Dave was right. They did look like bigger clouds. 
 "I've got to get up and do something," I thought. But nothing happened.
 "I've got to get up and do something," I said, out loud this time. Still nothing. It seemed like something was supposed to happen after one makes such a statement, but just what that might be eluded me.
 "What's wrong with me?" I wondered. "I used to have so many plans, so many ideas. Now all I can think about was where my next meal is coming from." As soon as I thought this, I was sorry I had. Now I really had to get up and do something or I wouldn't be able to get my mind off my stomach. So I got up and paced.
 I had visited virtually every office in the Bridgeton area in search of work with no luck. It's not as though this had required weeks of pounding the pavement. The Bridgeton business district consisted of exactly one street. It wasn't a particularly long street. There were campus jobs, but these were reserved for current students. Curt Nissent, a classmate of mine who had flunked a few courses this spring and therefore not graduated, had a campus job. Since I had earned passing grades, I wasn't qualified.  
 The answer, of course, was to leave Bridgeton for a larger city with more employers. But I was hesitant to lit off for a new city with no job secured and no place to live. Here at least I had free housing. How could I possibly move to New York or Boston? I didn't have the bus fare to get there, let alone the thousands of dollars I'd need to pay the first-month's rent, last-month's rent, and security deposit that landlords worldwide consider their birthright. 
 Or there was grad school. I had no particular desire to spend any more of my life in classrooms, I couldn't think of any subject that might warrant an additional two-though-six years of my attention, and the application deadlines for the coming term had long since passed anyway. But none of this had stopped me from weighing the option of late, a sure sign that my desperation was on the rise.
 Not for the first time, I even considered that when the summer ended, I'd have little choice but to ask my parents for money. I might even have to return home to Kansas. 
Kansas, mind you. 
"Kansas is the death of hope," I explained to the clouds. Kansas. That was enough to get me out of the house and in search of some employment.

June 23

Kerns hated the second half of June. Hated it with all his heart. Not just the second half of this June, you understand, the second halves of Junes in general. Kerns despised the very idea of the last half of the last month of the first half of the year. He wasn't altogether fond of the first half of June either, but that was only because he knew the second half was looming, not because of anything June 1-15 had done to him personally. 
 Kerns did have a good reason to hate the subsequent fortnight-and-change. Specifically, it was easier than hating his wife, Katherine, whom of course he loved very much--except in the second half of June, when he loathed her with a passion. Well, as much passion as an economist could muster. 
 It was in the second half of June each year that Kerns' wife, a tenured Bucklin professor as Kerns himself had been until two months before, took a fifteen-day sabbatical to attend a conference and catch up and all the latest developments in her field, 19th-century French literature. During the early years of his marriage, Kerns had looked forward to these weeks with great anticipation. Not that he took full advantage of the freedom as many married men would, mind you--economists only think about sewing wild oats if they're studying agricultural production--but it's always nice to have some time to oneself, especially when one knows it won't last too long.
 In recent years, however, Kerns had become convinced that his wife's real reason for leaving town each year was to cheat on him. He was virtually certain of it. All he lacked was even the slightest bit of credible evidence. Kerns found this lack of evidence troubling, as he was an economist, and economics is a science, and a good scientist must be careful not to jump to conclusions without due cause. So Kerns had set out to find the evidence as only an economist can. With a chart. He had graphed his wife's amorousness in the days following her return from her conference each year using a set of objective criteria. Then he'd measured that against the days following other stretches in which he could be certain she had not had sex for a period of two weeks. His results to date…were inconclusive. But, then, some trends take decades to develop. 
 In fairness, Kerns was forced to concede that a significant amount of evidence in fact pointed away from his affair thesis. For one, if his wife was cheating on him, she must be doing so only in these two weeks each June. For the rest of the year she was either at home with him, teaching classes on campus, or in her office. Until Kerns had moved to the administration building that April, Katherine's office had been only 50 yards from his own. He had been able to see right into her window from the comfort of his desk chair--assuming the desk chair was rolled into the northwest corner of his office, and he was standing on its armrests. Kerns didn't spy on his wife, mind you. As a caring husband, he just wished to confirm her safety. Four or five times an hour. The upshot was, unless Katherine was having an affair only on the left side of her office where Kerns' view was obscured--and that seemed a bit brazen for a woman who had of her own free will married an economist--it must have been just these two weeks each June. 
 Kerns wasn't ready to consider the lack of evidence fatal to his thesis. Evidence only took one so far. Economics might have been a science in a sense, but it was a social science, and there's always been a place in the social sciences for rank speculation unsupported by anything except suspicion. The entire field of psychology is founded on this principle. So Kerns decided that he'd go right on being suspicious. And the more time he spent being suspicious, the more certain he became that he was correct. Katherine seemed much too excited about this year's conference…and why was a French literature conference being held in Cancun, anyway? 
 "There's probably nothing to worry about," Kerns tried to convince himself, in his better moments. Perhaps he was just being overly sensitive about Katherine's trip because now of all times he needed a wife's unbending support. Not that Katherine had ever really provided him with unbending support in the traditional sense. Usually when Kerns had something important to say, Katherine heard him out, mulled over the facts for a moment, then called him an idiot. But she called him an idiot in a loving, patient way that Kerns had come to appreciate, and with just that trace of a French accent Kerns found so adorable, even if he knew that Katherine was from Nutley, Connecticut and had only affected the accent because she taught French Literature and it seemed appropriate. There have been marriages based on less. But Kerns didn't have even that to help him now. It was late June and Kerns was alone, all alone, without a soul in the world he could trust, except his dog, a Pekinese named Roger, who, truth be known, preferred Katherine and didn't think much of the second half of June either.
 
"Please roll up your sleeve." 
I suppose I'd found a purpose in life. The same way that a maple tree finds a purpose in life. While all of the region's other employers had slammed their doors in my face, the fine folks at Portland Biotechnics had taken me in. And all I had to do was sell them my blood. 
 Well, technically, you can't sell your blood. People expect you to donate your blood. Cheap bastards. But there is something of a loophole, in that it is possible to sell one's blood plasma. As it happens, swapping one's blood plasma for cash isn't exactly like giving away one's blood. First off, while the blood donation people are content to stop themselves at a pint, plasma buyers feel entitled to drain a bit more. I believe it's something in the neighborhood of a gallon. At least that's how it appears to the naked eye as the plasma flows out of one's arm. And second, the plasma removal process is a bit more complex than a quick needle in the arm. Specifically, there are two quick needles in the arm. One leads to, the other from a device that can best be visualized by imagining what the Slurpee machine might look like, had it been invented by Dracula. This device separates the plasma from the rest of the blood, keeps the former, and returns the latter to one's person. Portland Biotechnics uses this device because it allows them to take more syrup from their human maple trees each time they visit while not actually killing them, which would add to their clean-up costs. An additional benefit is that these maple trees now can be drained not just more but more often. The Red Cross won't let you donate blood more than once a month even if you weren't planning to use the blood yourself anyway. But Portland Biotechnics will buy your plasma every week at $20 a pop. This comes to over $1,000 a year, which wasn't what I'd hoped for in a starting salary, but it was five times what your typical Bangladeshi makes, so who was I to complain?
 Okay, maybe I'd complain a little. I'd just have to remember to cut it out around any Bangladeshis I might happen across. 
 Thing is, this wasn't a perfect plan, a fact that I had found myself admitting about every plan I'd had in recent months. For starters, there was little room for growth. It's not like I'd be able to work harder and produce more plasma next week. And there were transport issues. Plasma clinics are not located in well-to-do college towns. Portland Biotechnics was, coincidentally enough, located in Portland, half an hour by car, a fact that presumed, incorrectly as it happened, that I had a car. 
 This meant hitchhiking. For those who have never had the pleasure, hitchhiking is a time-consuming and degrading procedure whereby you stand by the road while dozens of cars swoop by, deem you too questionable-looking to be worth the risk of stopping, and drive on. If you persist, eventually someone will happen by and determine that you represent no risk to them. Most often they reach this conclusion because they so clearly represent a greater risk to you. This individual then stops, offers you a ride, and for the duration of your journey treats you to his opinions about politics, religion, or how quickly the country is going to hell and with what caliber its problems might best be solved. 
 There was an additional nuisance to my new vocation as well, one that in retrospect can only be considered the expected price of a career in bleeding oneself. Specifically, the weekly plasma loss left me tired and woozy for the return trip to Bridgeton. Orange drink and cookies were available in the clinic, at very reasonable prices, to help the recently bled regain a bit of strength. But such luxuries cut deeply into the profit margin from a $20 plasma sale, so I kept my consumption to a minimum. The result of this economy was nearly disastrous. After my first visit session I stumbled hazily into traffic while attempting to thumb a ride home. Fortunately, the driver of the oncoming vehicle was an experienced motorist who was able to slam on his brakes, swerve to avoid me, and still have the presence of mind to flip me the bird and call me an asshole before passing, as prescribed by state law. 
 I was a bit curious to know what would have happened if the car had hit me. The whole incident occurred right in front of Portland Biotechnics. I've theorized that someone from the clinic would have rushed out to my side and offered to sell my own plasma back to me at a slightly inflated price. Or perhaps the nurse would have dashed out into the street with a big sponge to gather the rest of my blood before it spilled into the gutter. 
 So it wasn't a dream job. But then when one's housing is free, and when--unlike in Bangladesh--the need for flood insurance is minimal, $20 a week can go a long way. That is, assuming that one doesn't expect the finer things out of life. As in anything finer than spaghetti cooked on a hot plate seven times a week followed by an evening gawking at stars. "If only I'd majored in astronomy," I thought one Saturday night as I stared up through the telescope, "I could at least think of myself as a devoted eccentric and not just a total loser."
 As it happened, it was in the evening following a Portland Biotechnics visit that I first met Roger, the individual who was destined to change my life. I'd been half-heartedly studying stars in the descending darkness, waiting for my body to get on with replacing its lost plasma so I could once again think straight, when I heard something moving near the door. I'd left the door open in the hopes of catching a breeze. There was no breeze, but I had, it seemed, managed to catch a small dog. Or perhaps it a mid-sized woodchuck. At the time I wasn't sure, since it was pretty dark and Roger, like most small dogs and through no fault of his own, looked more like a woodchuck than he did any sort of legitimate dog. But even at that early juncture, I'd felt confident in guessing dog, in as much as the animal was trailing a leash behind it, and woodchucks never have caught on as pets. 
 The likely dog gave a quick glance in my direction, then focused most of its attention on sniffing around my hotplate. 
 "Sorry little dog, the food's all gone," I said. "But don't worry. It wasn't very good to begin with."
Finding nothing requiring its immediate attention around the hotplate, the dog came over to the second most interesting item in the room, me. "I see by the leash that you've escaped from someone, little dog," I said to the little dog. "You'd better head home. Take it from me. If they're feeding you regular and there's a roof over your head, you've got it better than you think."
 I scratched the dog's head and it licked my arm, a symbiotic relationship if ever there was one. The dog had tags on its collar. I probably could find an address on a tag and return it, except I'd have to start by getting up and turning on the lights, which would have taken more energy than I had available at that moment. This proved to be just as well, as the dog's owner, panting considerably harder than his charge, followed m new friend through the door only a minute later.
 "Roger?" the owner asked hesitantly, groping around in the dark.
When the dog--who I now was able to identify as Roger--made no particular effort to respond, I decided the prudent move would be for me to answer in his place. Otherwise the lights would come on, this person would see someone there lying in the dark, get scared, scream, call campus security, and cause a general unpleasantness for all concerned that, like most general unpleasantnesses, I'd just as soon avoid. 
 "If Roger is a smallish dog with an interest in sniffing around saucepans, he's over here."
The man reacted with a start to my voice. "Yes, that sounds like Roger all right," said Roger's owner. His apprehension was appreciable. But this was to be expected. He was speaking to a stranger lying on a desk in a darkened observatory. "I'm sorry to intrude. Roger seems to be conducting a search for someone who'll make a better owner than me until my wife gets back to town."
 "It's no trouble," I said. "I was just explaining to Roger that he'd probably be wise to head back home." The truth was Roger had shown few signs that he had taken my advice to heart, although he did follow the conversation, or at least look in the direction of whoever had last said "Roger."
 "I'm glad to hear he's getting sound advice," the dog owner offered. "I could use some myself."
 "Well, I'm a little groggy on account of the blood loss, but I'll give it a whirl if you like." Any conversation was welcome after a few hours lying in the dark watching stars.
 "Blood loss? Some Native American ritual?"
 "Something like that," I said. Must be someone who knew about recent developments on campus. "What's the problem?" I considered trying to sound more Native American, but in as much as it seemed unlikely that your average college-educated Native American sounds very much like Jay Silverheels, I set the idea aside.
 "I suppose the problem is that I'm terrible at my job and everyone's out to get me."
 "Technically that's two problems," I noted. "Perhaps we should focus on just one or the other."
 "Oh yes, I suppose it is two problems. Well, why don't we focus on the everyone being out to get me. If I could take care of that, I could live with the being-terrible-at-my-job thing."
 "Fair enough. Any idea why everyone's against you."
 "Mostly it seems to be because I'm so terrible at my job," Roger's owner admitted. Roger himself had lost interest in the conversation now that no one was saying his name and had returned to my hotplate to give the saucepan a good licking. "But I think it might also be because they all seem to be insane."
 "I see."
 "I'm not paranoid, you understand. They really all hate me, and they're the ones who are crazy. I'm not crazy."
 "I don't think you're crazy," I said, mostly because whether or not he was crazy, saying he wasn't seemed the prudent move when it came to conversing with strangers in unlit observatories. 
 "What do you think I should do?"
 "Give me a moment to think about it," I said. "You want those you work with to like you, or at very least not to hate you. Getting someone to like someone else is not a simple thing, in as much as most people are, at their core, self-interested jackasses."
 "It's a tricky problem all right."
 "Fortunately, there is a loophole. While other people are notoriously difficult to like, just about everyone has a significantly more positive opinion of themselves. From this we can deduce that there is an answer whether one was trying to ingratiate oneself with a woman or a co-worker. If you want people to like you, all you have to do is agree with them."
Roger's owner mulled this over for a moment. Roger finished with my saucepan and continued his exploring. Roger had no need for such advice, as everyone already liked him on account of the fact he was furry. "But how can I agree with them if they're wrong?" Roger's owner asked finally.
 "I'm not telling you to believe what other people say, because if they're like the other people I know, they're almost certainly wrong. And I'm not suggesting that you act on what they say, because to do so would assuredly be disastrous. I'm just telling you to agree with them."
 "To agree with them?"
 "That's right."
 "To agree with them without actually agreeing with them."
 "Exactly."
 "So if someone comes to me and says I need to give them money for some reason or other that doesn't make sense to me?"
 "Tell them they make a good point and that you're on their side."
 "Even if they make a bad point and I'm not on their side?"
 "Now you've got it."
 "And won't they then expect me to give them the money?"
 "Probably."
 "But I don't?"
 "Of course not."
 "Won't this make them even madder?"
 "Yes, it will. But it doesn't have to make them madder at you. If you remain steadfast in your agreement with them, their anger can be diverted elsewhere."
 "Isn't this unfair to whomever eventually receives this anger?"
 "Potentially. Fortunately there always seems to be someone around who deserves such treatment for one reason or another."
 "Yes, I suppose that's true. But what if this person is clever enough to point the anger back in my direction?"
 "Be clever yourself. You must find a way to turn it upon someone who cannot turn it back…try turning the anger back upon itself…or better yet, try turning it upon someone who doesn't exist."
 "It all sounds very Machiavellian. I was unaware that Native American philosophies could be so practical."
 "Well, it's not all spirit guides, you know. We've had to change with the times."
 "I can see that now. I can see everything very clearly now. I must get home to plan." Roger's owner called Roger to his side with such unexpected conviction that Roger found himself complying, if only out of surprise. The tall man took the far end of the leash and strode purposefully from the observatory with Roger following as quickly as someone working with four-inch legs can manage. For my part, I fell into a deep blood-loss-induced sleep and forgot the whole encounter by morning.