Shya Scanlon: The Guild of Saint Cooper

Three small children, maybe two years old, sat in a triangle in the middle of the street. They were rolling an orange ball back and forth, and it bounced over their legs as often as not, sending one of them scurrying along to retrieve it. I had only recently become able to see children as children rather than as symbols of selfishness and irresponsibility — a success or a defeat, depending on one’s perspective — and I watched them for a few minutes, watched them clumsily negotiate the subtleties of independence, until an older kid came up and kicked the ball over a fence. See, Mom?

After having slept most of the day before, my mother had confronted me about Fred.

“My bed is right above the yard,” she’d said, “and my windows are always open.”

“He didn’t mean any harm,” I’d responded.

“Well, it’s like you said: he’s apparently not the man of principle we thought he was.”

“I was joking, Mom. That was a joke. Who wouldn’t leave?”

“I’m just saying it doesn’t make me feel too safe. He knows about the gas, he’s now stolen some of it — what’s to stop him from telling other people?”

I’d thought about this, especially after his response to the news that I’d taken his TV. But something about my mother’s complaint struck me as insincere. She’d never been anxious about this before.

“What do you propose we do? Get a dog?”

“A community looks after itself.”

“A community!” I said. “Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll pick one up next time I go to the market.”

She’d said this, of course, without the slightest idea of what communities were available. And here one was, right next door, intact from what I could tell. Active. Cooperative. At least two generations, possibly three.

But what could it offer us?

The house under construction was shrouded in semi-transparent netting hung on the outside of the scaffold, and I could see the outlines of men and women standing along its two stories. The trees on either side had also been shrouded and were held away from the house with ropes staked to the ground in neighboring properties. Whatever was being done, immense care was being taken in doing it.

A whistle blew and people descended from the scaffolding like bugs from beneath skin. They gathered in the front yard and stood before a man, who read something from a book. Most of the group, maybe twenty in all, looked to be my age and were dressed in a way similar to Zane — dark, ragged clothing carefully deployed. I couldn’t quite hear what was being read, but the orator’s enunciation was broad, dramatic, filled with pauses and barks. It sounded like poetry. People sat in silence for a few moments once the man had finished and then took out bags and boxes and began to eat.

Knowing I wouldn’t be disturbing anyone’s work, I decided to approach, but before I could take a step I felt a tug at my pants. It was one of the children who’d been playing with the ball, and here he was, standing just behind me, looking up with a quizzical frown.

“Are you a homosessul?” he said.

Wild, near-white hair covered his head and waved about in slow motion. He hadn’t yet lost his little teeth.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I’m glad you asked. What’s your name?”

The kid made an airplane noise and ran past me to the group, sitting down beside a long, lanky woman gnawing on a turkey leg. The group took little notice of me as I neared, but seemed kind enough, some eyes just skittering across my face during a pause in conversation, others accompanied by a smile or a quick nod. I stood a few paces off, staring up at the house and waiting. I could now make out something of what was going on behind the scrim: they were painting. But it was not the usual house job. Rather than a uniform coat, the siding was covered with bright patches of color. I squinted to make it out and the dark fabric billowed, rippling in the breeze, obscuring my view.

“Take a look,” someone said.

It was the lanky woman, her head cocked in the direction of the back yard.

“There’s a ladder on the side,” she went on. Her mouth shone with grease from the bird.

“He’s not a homosessul,” her son confirmed, nodding solemnly.

I frowned, feeling outed. “He asked…”

“Turns out his father’s gay,” the mother said. “So he’s been asking around.”

“What is this place, anyway?”

“Birth house,” she said.

“Whose?”

“Dale Cooper.”

The boy ran off to greet someone coming down the street on a bicycle, and we both watched as he tripped in the grass, fell down, picked himself up, licked his hand, and continued running.

“Scrappy little guy,” I said.

“You have kids?”

I shook my head. “No. But I do have a mother.”

The woman wore dreadlocks pulled back behind her head and gathered like a bird’s nest at the nape of her neck. “Well,” she said, “I guess that’s a start.” She began to pack away her lunch, and without looking up stated again that I was welcome to climb up and look at the house. “But we’re going back to work in a few minutes, so be quick.”

I thanked her and walked down what had once been the driveway. Empty paint cans of various brands, styles, and colors littered the ground, and I stepped in a small puddle of light purple before ascending the loud metal ladder. Behind the veil, even before the color, I noticed the smell. It was intensely toxic, and what little ventilation there was, was insufficient. The house had been painted like the side of a middle school: artists of wildly varying skill levels had drawn animals and trees and large, blotchy objects that were doubtless attempts at something recognizable. A small, flawless elephant cascaded across a blue field of broken chairs that upon closer examination I concluded were likely giraffes. I began to feel lightheaded. I kept walking, determined to make it once around the house before puking or passing out, and came across a likeness of Dale Cooper himself, just as I remembered him from Twin Peaks: the black, slicked-back hair, the ’50s suit. He was holding out his hand, accepting a key from a Native American, an old man with a grim expression whose wide mouth turned down at the corners, his eyes nearly closed. If it was depicting a scene from the show, it wasn’t one I remembered.

Having circled the house, I climbed down and stepped aside, taking several deep breaths while I watched people return to work. Did they simply get used to it? Perhaps they had killed so many brain cells already they didn’t notice the difference caused by oxygen deprivation. I looked for the woman I’d spoken to, wanting to ask about the Indian, but spotted her son instead. He was throwing pebbles at a squirrel that ran along the fence in the back yard. The squirrel had a bit of carrot in its mouth and stopped to nibble it, looking down at the boy with what seemed like disappointment. Before I could ask after his mother, I noticed it: there in the middle of the back yard, planted in the ground like it had been there always, was Fred’s sculpture.

Startled, it took me a moment to notice it had been put together incorrectly. The flames that had once shot out of its mouth had somehow found their way to the top of the animal’s head, giving it an over-proud, foppish look. I walked around the sculpture, looking, I think, for signs of Fred, until the dreadlocked mother joined me and squinted up at the mythical beast.

“I see you’ve found the cock,” she said.

I didn’t understand what she meant.

“The cock,” she said. “The cock.”

“The cock,” I repeated.

“It’s a symbol of Cooper’s dedication to protecting our natural environment.”

“You know what’s funny? The guy who had this before worked for a gas company.” I tried to think what roosters had to do with environmentalism, but I could see I’d insulted the woman, and back-peddled. “Well,” I said, “I think it looks like a rooster too.”