T. Boyle - A Friend of the Earth

Inside, it's about what you'd expect after fifteen years or more of neglect — or not only neglect, but an active conspiracy of the elements to bring the place down. The tree that rests like the propped-up leg of some sleeping giant across the peak of the roof is the biggest problem — and it's going to be an insurmountable problem when the storms come — but we'll just have to work around it. Andrea, standing there amid the wreckage with all the determination of her squared-off chin and thrust-back shoulders, is thinking along the same lines. "We'll just have to live out of the back rooms in winter," she says, bending idly to pluck a bit of yellowish fluff the size of a pot holder from the floor. It takes me a minute, and I have to feel it, rub it between thumb and forefinger, but then I understand what it is — the remains of the lion rug, gnawed upon by generations of wood rats and the like. And birds. Don't forget the birds, because they're still out there, they're still alive, some of them anyway. I get the sudden image of a junco lining its nest with lion fur, and why does that make me want to smile?

For the rest, the sable and bushpig, the tribal shields and rifles have long since been pried from the walls by the looters who seem to have taken everything else of value, including the bathroom fixtures, there are holes in the floor you could drop a bowling ball through, the hot tub is a stew of algae and mosquito larvae, and at least 75 percent of the cedar shakes — the lion's share, that is-have been torn from the roof and flung off over the continent like so many splinters of nothing. And in the wreckage of the kitchen, sprawled out ignominiously on the floor beneath a heap of battered pans, broken glass and dish towels, is the Maneater of the Luangwa himself, still snarling and still affixed to the heavy iron stand via the stake running up his spine. Andrea lets out a little exclamation, and then she's fishing a cold, hard glittering sphere out of the bottom of a frying pan filled with sawdust and mouse droppings. And what is it? The maneater's glass eye, a big golden cat's-eye marble with the black slit of the pupil sunk into it.

That relic, that object, fills me right up to the back of the throat with emotion, and I can't say why. There it is, in my palm, the glittering manufactured thing, succedaneum for the real. All I can think to say is, "Poor Mac."

Andrea's rolling up her sleeves, looking for a broom, a mop, heavy-duty garbage bags, yet she pauses a minute to take my hand in hers. She nods in a sad, slow, elegiac way, but she's the optimist here and make no mistake about it. "As horrible as it was," she says, "at least it was, I don't know, special."

"Special? What are you talking about?"

The light through the high, shattered window behind her is like syrup spread over the rafters of the ceiling and the belly of the big tree poking through it, night on earth, night coming down. It's very still. "Think about it, Ty-of all the billions of us on the planet, he's the last one ever to-to go like that. It's really almost an honor?'

For the rest of it, time takes hold of us and we find ourselves drifting through the days in a pattern as pure and uncomplicated as anything I've ever known-it's almost like being in the wilderness all over again. Up with the sun, to bed at nightfall, no thought for anything but making a life, minute by minute, hour by hour. We bag up the trash and haul it away, scrub the floors till the tile comes back to life and the wood glows under a fresh coat of wax. We crush carpenter ants, battle wasps, chase mice and birds and bats back out into the wild, where they belong. Andrea takes the Olfputt into Orsonville and comes back with sixteen precut and measured windowpanes and wields the putty like a glazier's apprentice, or maybe the glazier himself. Do I know how to mix cement? Sure, I do. And before long I've gathered up the tumble of bricks in the yard and rebuilt the chimney so we can sit around the hearth when winter comes, sipping that fine red wine, gnawing beef, listening to the wind in the hollow places and the whisper of the snow. There'll be no lack of firewood, that's for sure.

The locals are here still, living out there amid the devastation in reroofed cabins, gathering at the lodge on Thursdays for potluck suppers, nothing but time on their bands. With the help of the stumpmen and a few of the others, we're able to restore Pine Street as a viable, if rutted, means of ingress and egress, and we've even got the major portion of the tree off the roof. Even better, Andrea reveals a hitherto unsuspected talent-her father taught her how to split cedar shakes when she was a girl in Montana. "Nothing to it," she says, and there she is out in the yard spitting into the callused palms of her big hands and swinging the ax over her head. And don't forget GE. They've hooked us up — the thinnest black cable buried in a trench alongside the street like nothing so much as a long extension cord — and we've got electricity now, the house glowing against the gathering dark like some celestial phenomenon set down here on earth in a nest of fallen trees and the deep shades of the night.

And there's something else too. The woods — these woods, our woods-are coming back, the shoots of the new trees rising up out of the graveyard of the old, aspens shaking out their leaves with a sound like applause, willows thick along the streambeds. At night you can hear the owls and the tailing high shriek of coyotes chasing down the main ingredient of their next meal. We haven't seen any squirrel hunters yet, or any survivalists either — and that suits us just fine.

Then there comes a soft pale evening in the middle of the summer, wildflowers on fire in the fields, toads and tree frogs in full song down by the creek, and my wife and I strolling down the verge of the open street, arm in arm, Petunia trotting along beside us on a braided leather leash I found in one of the cupboards in the basement. She's adjusting pretty well, Petunia, and so am I, because I'm through with contradictions. We don't need the muzzle anymore, or a cage either. She sleeps at the foot of the bed, curled up on the throw rug, no memory of any other life in her canine brain. "Come," I tell her, "Sit,"" Stay."

"See if she'll heel, Ty," Andrea says, and I dig into my pocket for a Milkbone, pitch my voice low- "Heel," I command — and she tosses up her ears and sits right down at my feet on the warm pavement.

That's when the girl appears, dressed all in black, a slight hunch to her shoulders, the long stride, high-laced black boots and hair the color of midnight in a cave. She's got her head down, watching her feet, and she doesn't see us until she's almost on us. "Oh, hi," she says, not startled, not surprised, and I can see the glint of the thin silver ring punched through her left nostril. How old is she? I'm a poor judge, but I'd guess thirteen or fourteen. "You must be the new people, right?" She says, and there's a chirp to her voice that brings me back thirty-seven years.

Andrea's giving her a world-class smile. "We're the Tier-waters," she says. "I'm Andrea, this is Ty."

The girl just nods. She's looking at Petunia now, the smallest frown bunched round her lips. "Isn't that a, what do you call them, an Afghan?"

"That's right," I say, "that's right, she's a dog." And then, for no reason I can think of, I can't help adding, "And I'm a human being."