Russell Banks - Trailerpark

Merle nodded sympathetically. “I sure understand how you feel. It’s like when I won the lottery, that was back a ways, before you come here, and everybody thought I had a whole heap more money than I had, so everyone was after me for some.”

That interested Flora. She had never met anyone who had won the lottery. In fact, she was starting to believe that it was all faked, that no one ever won, that those people jumping up and down hysterically in the TV ads were just actors. Now, because of Merle’s having won, her faith in the basic goodness of the world was magically restored. “This means they probably went to the moon, too,” she said with clear relief.

“Who?”

“The astronauts.”

“You didn’t believe that, the rocket to the moon? I thought you used to be in the Air Force.”

“That’s why I had so much trouble believing it,” she said and stood aside and waved him in.

Inside, when his eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light of the room, this is what Merle saw: large, wood-framed, chicken-wire pens that were waist-high and divided into cubicles about two feet square. The pens were placed in no apparent order or pattern throughout the room, which gave the room, despite the absence of furniture, the effect of being incredibly cluttered, as if someone were either just moving in or all packed to move out. As far as Merle could see, the rooms adjacent to this one were similarly jammed with pens, and he surmised that the rooms he couldn’t see, the bedroom at the back and the bathroom, were also filled with pens like these. In each cubicle there was a pair of grown or nearly grown guinea pigs or else one grown (presumably female) pig and a litter of two or three piglets. Merle could see and hear the animals in the cubicles a short distance away from him scurrying nervously about their cages, but the animals nearer him were crouched and still, their large round eyes rolling frantically and their noses twitching as, somehow, Merle’s own odor penetrated the heavy odor of the room.

Flora reached down and plucked a black and white spotted pig from the cage it shared with a tan, long-haired mate. Cradling it in her arm and stroking its nose with her free hand, she walked cooing and clucking over to Merle and showed him the animal. “This here’s Ferdinand,” she said. “After the bull.”

“Ah. May I?” he said, reaching out to take Ferdinand.

Merle held the animal as Flora had and studied its trembling, limp body. It seemed to offer no defense and showed no response to the change in environment except that of stark terror. When Merle placed it back into its cubicle, it remained exactly where he had placed it, as if waiting for a sudden, wholly deserved execution.

“How come you like these animals, Flora?”

“Don’t you like them?” she bristled.

“I don’t feel one way or the other about them. I was wondering about you.”

She was silent for a moment and moved nervously around the cages, checking into the cubicles as she moved. “Well, somebody’s got to take care of them. Especially in this climate. They’re really not built for the ice and snow.”

“So you don’t do it because you like them?”

“No. I mean, I like looking at them and all, the colors are pretty, and their little faces are cute and all. But I’m just taking care of them so they won’t die, that’s all.”

There was a silence, then Merle said, “I hate to ask it, but how come you let them breed together? You know where that’ll lead?”

“Do you know where it’ll lead if I don’t let them breed together?” she asked, facing him with her hands fisted on her hips.

“Yup.”

“Where?”

“They’ll die out.”

“Right. That answer your question?”

“Yup.”

Merle stayed with her for the next half-hour, as she showed him her elaborate watering system — a series of interconnected hoses that ran from the cold water spigot in the kitchen sink around and through all the cages, ending back in the bathroom sink — and her cleverly designed system of trays beneath the cages for removing from the cages the feces and spilled food, and her gravity-fed system of grain troughs, so that all she had to do was dump a quart a day into each cage and the small trough in each individual cubicle would be automatically filled. Because she had constructed the cages herself, she explained, and because she was no carpenter, they weren’t very fancy or pretty to look at. But the basic idea was a good one, she insisted, so that, despite her lack of skill, the system worked and consequently every one of her animals was clean, well-fed and watered at all times. “You can’t ask for much more in this life, can you?” she said proudly as she led Merle to the door.

He guessed no, you couldn’t. “But I still think you’re headed for troubles,” he told her, and he opened the door to leave.

“What do you mean? What’s going on?” Suddenly she was suspicious of him and frightened of Marcelle Chagnon again, with her suspicion of the one and fear of the other swiftly merging to become anger at everyone.

“No, no, no. Not troubles with Marcelle or any of the rest of the folks in the park. Just with the breeding and all. I mean, Flora, in time there will be too many of them. They breed new ones faster than the old ones die off. It’s simple. There will come a day when you won’t have any more room left in there. What will you do then?”

“Move out.”

“What about the animals?”

“I’ll take care of them. They can have the whole trailer, they’ll have lots of room if I move out.”

“But you don’t understand,” Merle said calmly. “It goes on forever. It’s numbers, and it doesn’t change or level off or get better. It gets worse and worse, faster and faster.”

“ You don’t understand,” she said to him. “Everything depends on how you look at it. And what looks worse and worse to you might look better and better to me.”

Merle smiled, and his blue eyes gleamed. He stepped down to the ground and waved pleasantly at the grim woman. “You are right, Flora. Absolutely right. And I thank you for straightening me out this fine morning!” he exclaimed, and whistling softly, he walked off for Marcelle’s trailer, where he would sit down at her table and drink a cup of coffee with her and recommend to her that the best policy was no policy, in the matter of Flora and her guinea pigs, because Flora would be more than capable of handling any problem that the proliferation of the guinea pigs might create.

Marcelle was not happy with Merle’s advice. She was a woman of action and it pained her to sit still and let things happen, especially things that seemed to her to have no other possible consequence, if let go, than disaster. But, as she told Merle, she had no choice in this matter of the guinea pigs. If she tried to evict Flora and the animals, there would be a ruckus and possibly a scandal; if she brought in the health department, there was bound to be a scandal; if she evicted Flora and not the guinea pigs, then she’d have the problem of disposing of the damn things herself. “It’s just gone too far,” she said, scowling.

“But everything’s fine right now, at this very moment, isn’t it?” Merle asked, stirring his coffee.

“I suppose you could say that.”

“Then it hasn’t gone too far. It’s gone just far enough.”

At this stage, just before Christmas the first year of Flora Pease’s residence at the trailerpark, everyone had an opinion as to what ought to be done with regard to the question of the guinea pigs.

FLORA PEASE:Keep the animals warm, well-fed, clean and breeding. Naturally, as their numbers increase, their universe will expand. (Of course, Flora didn’t express herself that way, for she would have been speaking to people who would have been confused by language like that coming from her. She said it this way: “When you take care of things, they thrive. Animals, vegetables, minerals, same with all of them. And that makes you a better person, since it’s the taking care that makes people thrive. Feeling good is good, and feeling better is better. No two ways about it. All people ever argue about anyhow is how to go about feeling good and then better.”)