Either Terry didn’t find the opportunity to tell anyone about Flora Pease having “lots” of guinea pigs in her trailer or he simply chose not to mention it, because it wasn’t until after he had returned to the trailerpark, two months later, in early October, that anyone other than he had a clue to the fact that, indeed, there were living in number 11, besides Flora, a total of seventeen guinea pigs, five of which were male. Of the twelve females, eight were pregnant, and since guinea pigs produce an average of 2.5 piglets per litter, in a matter of days there would be an additional twenty guinea pigs in Flora’s trailer, making a total of thirty-seven. About two months after birth, these newcomers would be sexually mature, with a two-month gestation period, so that if half the newborns were females, and if the other mothers continued to be fertile, along with the four other original females, then sometime late in December there would be approximately one hundred fifteen guinea pigs residing in Flora’s trailer, of which fifty-four would be male and sixty-one female. These calculations were made by Leon LaRoche, who lived at number 2, the second trailer on your right as you entered the park. Leon worked as a teller for the Catamount Savings and Loan, so calculations of this sort came more or less naturally to him.
“That’s a minimum!” he told Marcelle. “One hundred fifteen guinea pigs, fifty-four males and sixty-one females. Minimum. And you don’t have to be a genius to calculate how many of those filthy little animals will be living in her trailer with her by March. Want me to compute it for you?” he asked, drawing his calculator from his jacket pocket again.
“No, I get the picture,” Marcelle scowled. It was a bright, sunny, Sunday morning in early October, and the two were standing in Marcelle’s kitchen, Marcelle, in flannel shirt and jeans, taller by half a hand than Leon, who, in sport coat, slacks, shirt and tie, was dressed for mass, which he regularly attended at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Catamount. It was a conversation last night with Captain Knox that had led young Leon to bring his figures to the attention of the manager, for it was he, the Captain, who had made the discovery that there were precisely seventeen guinea pigs in Flora’s trailer, rather than merely “lots,” as Terry had discovered, and the Captain was alarmed.
It hadn’t taken much imagination for the Captain to conclude that something funny was going on in number 11. When you are one of the three or four people who happen to be around the park all day because you are either retired or unemployed, and when you live across the road from a woman who announces her comings and goings with loud singing, which in turn draws your attention to her numerous expeditions to town for more food than one person can consume, and when you notice her carting into her trailer an entire bale of hay and daily emptying buckets of what appears to be animal feces, tiny pellets rapidly becoming a conical heap behind her trailer, then before long you can conclude that the woman is doing something that requires an explanation. And when you are a retired captain of the United States Army, you feel entitled to require that explanation, which is precisely what Captain Dewey Knox did.
He waited by his window until he saw Flora one morning carrying out the daily bucket of droppings, and he strode purposefully out his door, crossed the road and passed her trailer to the back, where he stood silently behind her, hands clasped behind his back, briar pipe stuck between healthy teeth, one dark bushy eyebrow raised, so that when the woman turned with her empty bucket, she met him face to face.
Switching the bucket from her right hand to her left, she saluted smartly. “Captain,” she said. “Good morning, sir.”
The Captain casually returned the salute, as befitted his rank. “What was your rank at retirement, Pease?”
“Airman Third Class, sir.” She stood not exactly at attention, but not exactly at ease, either. It’s difficult when retired military personnel meet each other as civilians: their bodies have enormous resistance to accepting the new modes of acknowledging each other, with the result that they don’t work quite either as military or civilian bodies but as something uncomfortably neither.
“Airman Third, eh?” The Captain scratched his cleanly shaved chin. “I would have thought after twenty years you’d have risen a little higher.”
“No reason to, sir. I was a steward in the officers’ clubs, sir, mostly in Lackland, and for a while, because of my name, I guess,” she said, smiling broadly, “at Pease down in Portsmouth. Pease Air Force Base,” she added.
“I know that. You were happy being a steward, then?”
“Yes, sir. Very happy. That’s good duty, people treat you right, especially officers. I once kept house for General Curtis LeMay, a very fine man who could have been vice president of the United States. Once I was watching a quiz show on TV and that question came up, ‘Who was George Wallace’s running mate?’ and I knew the answer. But that was after General LeMay had retired…”
“Yes, yes, I know,” the Captain interrupted. “I thought the Air Force used male stewards in the officers’ clubs.”
“Not always, sir. Some of us like that duty and some don’t, so if you like it you have an advantage, if you know what I mean, and most of the men don’t much like it, especially when it comes to the housekeeping, though the men don’t mind being waiters and so forth…”
The Captain turned aside to let Flora pass and walked along beside her toward the door of her trailer. At the door they paused, unsure of how to depart from one another, and the Captain glanced back at the pyramid of pellets and straw. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, Pease,” he said, pointing with his pipe stem.
“Sir?”
“What is it?”
“Shit, sir.”
“I surmised that. I mean, what kind of shit?”
“Guinea pig shit.”
“And that implies you are keeping guinea pigs,” he said.
Flora smiled tolerantly. “Yes, sir. It does.”
“You know the rule about pets in the trailerpark, don’t you, Pease?”
“Oh, sure I do.”
“Well, then,” he said, “what do you call guinea pigs?”
“I don’t call them pets. Dogs and cats I call pets. But not guinea pigs. I just call them guinea pigs. They’re sort of like plants, sir,” she explained patiently. “You don’t call plants pets, do you?”
“But guinea pigs are alive, for heaven’s sake!”
“There’s some who would say plants are alive, too, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”
“Yes, but that’s different! These are animals!” The Captain sucked on his cold pipe, drew ash and spit into his mouth and coughed.
“Animals, vegetables, minerals, all that matters is that they’re not like dogs and cats, which are pets because they can cause trouble for people. They’re more like babies. That’s why they have rules against pets in places like this, sir,” she explained.
“How many guinea pigs have you?” the Captain coldly inquired.
“Seventeen.”
“Males and females as well, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling broadly. “Twelve females, and eight of them is pregnant at this very moment. If you take good care of them, they thrive,” she said with pride. “Like plants,” she added, suddenly growing serious.
“But they’re not plants! They’re animals, and they produce … waste materials,” he said, again pointing with the stem of his pipe at the pile behind the trailer. “And they’re dirty.”
Flora stepped onto her cinderblock stairs, bringing herself to the same height as the Captain. “Sir, guinea pigs are not dirty, they’re cleaner than most people I know, and I know how most people can be. Don’t forget, I was a steward for twenty years almost. And as for producing ‘waste materials,’ well, even plants produce waste materials. It’s called oxygen, sir, which we human people find pretty useful, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir, and as a matter of fact, come next spring you might want me to let you take some of that pile of waste material I got going out back for that little vegetable garden you got going out in back of your place.” She shoved her chin in the general direction of Captain Knox’s trailer, where indeed there was a now-dormant ten-foot by ten-foot garden plot on the slope facing the lake. Then she turned and abruptly entered her home.