Under Wildwood Read online

  At the command, the men at the table produced individual leather briefcases from the floor and set them on the table; they snapped them open and began to sift through their contents. That is, all the men but Joffrey. He looked around uneasily as he reached into the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket and retrieved a single folded-up piece of paper. He opened it gingerly and studied it; written there in smudged pencil were the words Eggs. ½ n ½. Arugala (sp?). Lightbulbs. Meanwhile, the other men had pulled from their natty briefcases thick, neatly bound volumes of documentation; they began flipping through the pages while Mr. Wigman spoke.

  “Nature, fickle nature, created the seasons. For centuries man was imprisoned by these seasons. He could only eat certain things at certain times. Certain activities had to wait till the appropriate season arrived. But then came the great, golden industrial age, and seasons were nothing to man. Incidental. A piffle! Instead, we count our time by the passing of the great Fiscal Quarter—and we do what we like, when we like. We eat whatever we want to eat. And we eat well, don’t we, gentlemen?”

  A murmur of agreement followed.

  “For here, we Titans have created the ideal state! They call it the Industrial Wastes, don’t they? Pshaw! I say. Pshaw! I call it an Industrial Wonderland! The industrial ideal, made whole. A century of dreamers—Whitney, Edison, J. P. Morgan—and they never achieved half of what we’ve done here. The Quintet: four powerful industries under the watchful control of one dominant one—Wigman Shipping—and we’ve shown the world a force to be reckoned with! A city-state is what we’ve built here. The great Corporatocracy!”

  He was really getting into it. His face was beet red, and a smile was plastered on his face from ear to ear. “Now, my good fellow Titans, what’ve you got for me? I want the headlines.” He glanced over the table. “Mining!” he yelled.

  Higgs, in the coveralls, pushed his chair back and stood. “We’ve increased yield twenty percent, sir!”

  “Fantastic. Petrochemical!”

  Tumson stood as well, holding the lapels of his lab coat proudly. “The South Korean market is ours for the taking, sir.”

  “Outstanding. Nuclear!” Mr. Wigman was really giving the squash ball in his hand a good working-over.

  “Regulations be damned, sir, we’re free to dump in the river.” This was Mr. Dubek. His hazmat suit rustled noisily as he stood.

  “Music to my ears!” Mr. Wigman rounded on Joffrey now. “Machine parts!”

  The room was silent. Joffrey cleared his throat as he went to push his chair back. He accidentally hit one of the many levers that protruded from the underside of the chair’s apparatus and suddenly, with a hiss, the seat lowered dramatically. Joffrey felt his face flush. His fingers searched for the lever to raise the chair again; what proceeded was not unlike a child’s carnival ride, with Joffrey jerkily being dropped and raised as he attempted to get the chair back in position. Finally, he gave up and just pushed himself up from his seat.

  “Well,” he began. He looked at the other men in the room; they were all standing proudly and staring at him. He cleared his throat. “I think I’m closer to getting in there.” He jerked his finger to point toward the foyer, toward the vast treed hills.

  Silence.

  Joffrey thought he heard one of the other men snicker.

  Plump Mr. Higgs was the first to speak. “What, the Impassable Wilderness?” He looked at Mr. Wigman for an explanation.

  “Joffrey, Joffrey,” said Mr. Wigman, dolefully shaking his head.

  Joffrey slammed his hand on the table. “Listen to me: I don’t care what people call it—I don’t care what people say about it. There’s got to be a way!”

  Willowy Mr. Tumson shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “It’s the Impassable Wilderness, Unthank. It’s impassable.”

  “Better left alone, I say,” said willowy Mr. Dubek.

  “What is it with you, Unthank?” injected Mr. Higgs. “It’s like some weird obsession.”

  “But don’t you see?” cried Joffrey, pleading. “If we could somehow get in there, raze those trees, level some of the hilly bits, why, we’d be able to at least triple—quadruple—our holdings! Think how many chemical tanks you could get up on that hill, Mr. Tumson! And water! Enough water to cool a forest of reactors! And Mr. Higgs, dear Mr. Higgs, can’t you just taste what kind of minerals those hills must be sitting on? I mean, the copper veins alone have got to be—”

  Wigman interrupted this tirade by saying simply, “Unthank, sit down.”

  “But—”

  “Sit down.”

  Chastened, Joffrey did so and proceeded to ride the hydraulics of his chair for a few more moments before settling on the appropriate height.

  “Where’s your quarterly report?” asked Mr. Wigman.

  “Pardon?”

  “The quarterly report, Machine Parts.” You knew Mr. Wigman was serious when he began referring to the individual Titans of the Quintet by their industry.

  “Oh, of course,” said Joffrey. “Right here.” He gave the piece of paper before him a final ironing with his hands before sliding it toward Wigman. Mr. Wigman nodded to a stevedore, who marched to the table and delivered the piece of paper to his boss.

  “This is it?” asked Mr. Wigman, holding the paper as if it were a used Kleenex. He glanced at the writing. “This appears to be a grocery shopping list, Machine Parts.”

  “Just down there, on the bottom.” Joffrey wagged a finger, and Wigman looked closely at the few lines above the bottom margin of the paper.

  “It says, ‘Third quarter: looking pretty good.’”

  “Mm-hmm,” said Mr. Unthank. “Not much to report, really. Things are pretty much as they were last time. Mixed sales. Up and down. That’s what I like about machine parts. No big surprises. Steady as she goes, right?” He looked at his fellow industrialists, expecting nods of understanding. Everyone was staring at Mr. Wigman. Mr. Wigman, for his part, was beginning to develop a facial tic. A loud POP suddenly sounded, and everyone in the room jolted in their chairs. Mr. Wigman calmly opened his hand; the shredded remains of the squash ball fell to the floor.

  “Mr. Unthank,” said Mr. Wigman very steadily, “I don’t pretend to know exactly what goes on in that machine shop of yours. And I don’t really care. Using orphans for labor? Good move. More power to you.”

  Joffrey smiled and displayed his hands to his fellow industrialists. Small fingers, he mouthed as he wiggled his digits.

  “But if I don’t start seeing growth …” Here Mr. Wigman’s voice became louder.

  “Growth!” he repeated, even louder.

  “GROWTH!” Wigman slammed his fist on the table. “And soon, I’m going to come on over to that little section of yours and I’m going to bring some of my buddies here”—nodding to the stevedores—“and I’m going to make some GROWTH HAPPEN, GOT ME?”

  Joffrey was plastered to the weave of his chair. A little line of sweat appeared at his brow.

  “Now, you do what you want in your free time. But it better not interfere with your contribution to the Quintet; e.g.: I don’t want to hear anything more about this Impassable Wilderness. Is that clear, Machine Parts?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I said, is that clear?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wigman. Sir.”

  “Good,” said Wigman, sitting back down in his chair. He clapped his hands at one of the stevedores, who dutifully threw him another blue squash ball. “Now, I’m going to spend some time with the other Quintet members who have some real numbers to show me. Come back when you’ve got some too.”

  Joffrey felt his chair jerk backward; one of the maroon-beanied stevedores had yanked it out from the table. Submissively, he stood up and, nodding to those present, walked from the room. Entering the foyer, he placed the fedora back on his head and tried with all his might to avoid the view out of the room’s large windows. It wasn’t until the elevator doors were slowly closing in front of his ruddy face that he caught a glimpse of that wall of green, jus
t barely visible through the haze of the Wastes. And it made him heartsick.

  Once their suitcases were unpacked and their belongings stowed in the little gray lockers that sat at the foot of each of the beds, there wasn’t much for Elsie and Rachel to do. Initially, Elsie was chagrined to watch Rachel wait for her to pick a bed in the giant dormitory room and then pick a bed for herself as far from Elsie’s as possible. This caused Elsie to sit on her bed with her knees to her chest and whimper quiet sobs until Rachel had grabbed her green duffel and marched back to the bed adjacent Elsie’s. Several hours passed; they barely spoke three words to each other. Occasionally, an ancient-looking loudspeaker above the dormitory’s door would squawk some unintelligible babble, and the two girls would start at the noise.

  “What’s it saying?” Elsie asked her big sister.

  “I don’t know,” replied Rachel.

  After a time, Rachel lay back on her bed and, tucking the thin pillow behind her head, listened to her iPod through little white earbuds. Elsie knelt at her bedside and made a volcano-topped island out of the blue blanket for Intrepid Tina to explore; the tinny distant sound of crash cymbals, struck repeatedly, issued from Rachel’s headphones. This was their joint activity for nearly an hour until Elsie, bored, reached over and tugged on Rachel’s pant leg.

  Rachel popped one headphone out. Music blared. “What’s up?”

  “Where are all the kids?” asked Elsie.

  “Dunno.” The headphone went back in.

  Elsie tugged at her sister’s hem again. Rachel rolled her eyes and pulled the headphone out. “What?” she asked, clearly annoyed.

  “I mean, isn’t it weird that we’re here all alone? I thought this was, you know, an orphanage.” Elsie looked around the dormitory. “Where are all the orphans?”

  “Just us orphans,” said Rachel caustically.

  Elsie stuck out a lip. “I’m not an orphan.”

  “Whatever. You’re kidding yourself if you think Mom and Dad are coming back. They’re gone.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Curtis left, and after they were all sad at first, they were, like, hey: This is pretty cool, not having so many kids. So they ditched us. Easy as that.” She pressed the white bud back into her ear; she slapped her hands against her knees to the barely audible drumbeat.

  Elsie glowered. Without thinking, she leapt up and grabbed the headphones from Rachel’s ears and yanked the silver iPod out of her hoodie pocket. It clattered to the floor, and Rachel yelled.

  “Take that back,” howled Elsie.

  “You’re crazy!” yelled Rachel. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You take that back about Mom and Dad.” Elsie reached up and grabbed a handful of her sister’s black hair and tugged, eliciting a yelping scream. Rachel was about to retaliate with a strong punch to Elsie’s shoulder when the speaker above the door whistled into life. A string of abstract barks preceded the only five words the two girls could make out:

  “NO AGGRESSION IN THE DORMITORY!”

  The sisters froze. Elsie let Rachel’s hair fall from her fingers. Rachel dropped her arm to her side. They both stared at the loudspeaker. It crackled a few times, ominously, before falling silent. Elsie edged over to her bed; she grabbed Intrepid Tina and pulled her to her chest. Rachel, in a clear spirit of defiance, walked over to the doors and stood beneath the loudspeaker, studying it. She looked around the room, marking the four corners where the walls met the ceiling.

  “What are you doing?” whispered Elsie.

  “Looking for cameras,” said Rachel. “How else can they know what we’re doing?” She tried the handle of the door and found it was unlocked. She peeked her head into the hallway beyond before turning and gesturing to Elsie. “Come on,” she said. “It’s clear. Let’s explore.”

  As they toed quietly onto the linoleum checkerboard of the hallway, Elsie hissed to her sister, “Did you see any cameras?”

  “Can’t tell. If there are, they’re super secret.”

  The hallway was quiet and dimly lit by a line of grim fluorescent lights on the ceiling. To their left was the stairway down to the first floor; to their right, the hallway ended in a closed door. They listened intently for footsteps. When none came, Elsie followed her older sister as she walked toward the door to their right. She held Intrepid Tina pressed tightly to her chest. The door opened with a loud creak and revealed a set of wooden stairs leading up. Taking them, the sisters found themselves in a vast attic room decorated similarly to their dormitory: a matrix of perhaps thirty beds occupied the wooden floor. The ceiling of the room followed the contours of the building’s roof, all angles and low overhangs. Dangling lightbulbs, contained in small metal cages, hung from a central beam and provided what little light there was. A chill pervaded the room. The threshold of the entryway had a sign hanging down that read HERREN. Elsie pointed to it. “What does that mean?” she whispered.

  “Boys,” responded Rachel, “I think. Or girls. One of the two. I get them mixed up.”

  “It must mean boys,” Elsie puzzled out, “because we were put downstairs. And we’re girls. So this must be the boys’ dorm.”

  “Way to go, Sherlock,” said Rachel.

  “Thanks,” said Elsie, missing the sarcasm.

  A noise startled them. It was a metallic clanking, coming from the far end of the room. They walked toward the sound, Rachel in the lead, Elsie following close behind. They arrived shortly at the noise’s source: a metal grate covering an air duct in the floor behind the farthest bed. The clanking, intermittent and distant, was being amplified through the vent from some other place in the building. Listening closer, Elsie could tell that it was actually many smaller metallic noises, sounding in chaotic syncopation. It creeped her out. She squeezed Intrepid Tina; she wished they’d never left the other dormitory. And so she was relieved to hear her sister whisper over her shoulder, “C’mon.”

  They padded back down the stairs to the hallway they’d left, and Elsie, on seeing the door to their dorm, began walking more quickly. Rachel stopped her. “Where are you going?” she whispered.

  “Back in here,” said Elsie, pointing to the girls’ dormitory. A sign reading DAMEN was affixed to the jamb.

  “I thought we were exploring. What about that noise?”

  “Rachel!” pleaded Elsie. “I don’t care about the noise. I just want to … I just want to…”

  “To sit and wait for Mom and Dad to come home? You’ve got a long wait, Els.”

  Elsie folded her arms across her chest.

  “C’mon,” said her sister, smiling beneath her wiry hair. “What would Intrepid Tina do?”

  The green commercial carpet of the staircase’s runner was deeply worn in the middle, and the wooden steps creaked at the girls’ every footfall. Rachel moved ahead of Elsie to the landing where the stairs took a 180-degree turn; arriving there, she directed her sister to freeze with an urgent wave of her hand. A woman was speaking on the floor below. Her tone was firm and castigating. Elsie joined her sister, pressed against the banister at the landing, and listened.

  “Edward,” the woman said. This was undoubtedly Miss Mudrak. Her accent was as thick as a particularly chunky borscht. “You finishing just now? It is almost end bell.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” replied a boy’s voice. Elsie assumed it to be the boy she’d met mopping. “I’ll be quicker next time, promise.”

  “You will, or back to the shop for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The sound of a large door opening and swinging shut interrupted the conversation. Then: footsteps on the ancient boards of the downstairs hallway. Elsie and Rachel heard Desdemona usher the boy Edward away. She spoke now to the person who’d just arrived. “Darling, you seem to me exhausted.”

  The man’s voice was weary; he needn’t have said a word to affirm Desdemona’s assessment. “Long day,” he said. “Don’t even ask me about it.”

  “And you spoke to Mr. Vigman?”

  “Well, ho
ney,” said the defeated-sounding man, “Mr. Vigman didn’t really want to talk. Let’s put it that way.”

  “Joffrey, Joffrey.” Elsie and Rachel made eye contact; this had to be the proprietor of the orphanage himself. Desdemona continued, “Please. You must relax. Let me take your coat.” A rustling of noise, a large coat being draped on an obliging hook. “But you mentioned to him the film, yes?”

  There was a pause. “Oh, the film,” said Joffrey. “No, I didn’t.”

  “But darling, if we are to make this change in life, we must be … we must be … preactive?”

  “Proactive, Desdemona,” said Joffrey. “The word is proactive. And I’m being as proactive as I can.”

  The voices moved down the hall, forcing the Mehlberg sisters to edge their way along the banister toward the bottom flight of stairs. Elsie, peering between the railing posts, could see the two adults, Desdemona and Joffrey, making their way slowly to a large door at the far end of the hall. Desdemona’s long arm was stretched over Joffrey’s bowed shoulders; he was easily six inches shorter than his companion.

  “And what of the visa?” asked Desdemona. “When can we procure?”

  “Visa?”

  “For Bozhek.”

  “Oh, right, Bozhek. The esteemed auteur. Tell me again: Why can’t he get one himself?”

  Desdemona’s voice dripped like cherry syrup. “Darling, really. You remember. He make art film and drop a bucket of glow paint on Liberty Statue. It is most beautiful; he is deported. But it is America’s loss; he is great artist. He is Ukrainian Spielverg.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “You said you would approach Mr. Vigman about this. He has pull at immigration office.”

  “I did, yes. It’s on my list.”

  They arrived at the door. Following, Elsie and Rachel found themselves on the bottom step of the staircase. They watched, partly concealed by the banister, as Joffrey fished his hand into his pants pocket and procured a large key chain. Selecting one of the keys, he undid the lock on the door and opened it. Elsie could just make out the room beyond: it was an officelike chamber, lined with ceiling-tall shelves. Strangely, there were few books on these shelves; rather, they were filled with odd-sized jars and receptacles of multicolored liquids and powders. The couple faced each other in the doorway.