University of Northern Iowa
Why We See What We SeeAuthor(s): Richard JacksonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 268, No. 3 (Sep., 1983), p. 57Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124434 .
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maunder on about the life she had led on military bases around the world,
the bridge parties and sewing circles; but eventually her eyes would begin to water and her teeth to chatter and
she would launch into the history of her abduction by the aliens.
"They're not at all like devils," she insisted, "but more like angels,
with translucent skin that glows almost as if there were lights inside their bodies." And their ship bore no resemblance to saucers, she claimed.
It was more like a diamond as large as a house, all the colors of the rainbow
streaming through the facets. The
angelic creatures stopped her in the
parking lot during one of her stargaz ing walks, spoke gentle English inside her head, took her on board their craft and put her to sleep. When she awoke she was lying naked, sur
rounded by a ring of princely aliens, and the landscape visible through the diamond walls of the ship was the
vague purple of wisteria blossoms.
"They weren't the least bit crude or
nasty," she said, the words coming so
fast they were jamming together in her throat, "no, no, they examined
me like the most polite of doctors, because all they wanted was to save
us from destroying ourselves, you
see, and in order to do that, first they had to understand our anatomy, and
that's why they had chosen me, don't
you see, they had singled me out to teach them about our species," she
insisted, touching her throat, "and to
give me the secret of our salvation, me of all people, you see, me."
My sister had the good sense to
keep mum about our babysitter's sto
ries, but I was so razzled by hopes of
meeting with these aliens and learn
ing their world-saving secrets that I
blabbed about the possibility to my mother, who quickly wormed the entire chronicle from me. We never
visited Mrs. K. again, but often we
would see her vacuuming the lawn in front of her house. "Utterly crazy,"
my mother declared.
Mrs. K. was not alone in her
lunacy. Every year or so one of the
career soldiers, having stared too long into the muzzle of his own gun,
would go berserk or break down
weeping. A guard began shooting deer from his jeep and leaving the carcasses in heaps on the roads. A
janitor poured muriatic acid into the
swimming pool and then down his own throat. One Christmas time, the
lieutenant colonel who played Santa Claus started raving at the annual
RICHARD JACKSON
WHY WE SEE WHAT WE SEE
for Gary Margolis
In another room my daughter is holding a steel globe, and thinks the world
isn't so big. Maybe she's right. Do you remember how, when we sat
one evening reading to each other,
the clouds gathered, darkened, and we joked to imagine the power our words might hold?
Whatever we said, the wind said
again, south of there, where horizons
were visible and important. South of there is
here, where you asked about the bird
that sang: "don't you see?" "don't you see?"
We didn't, but my daughter says she can
see the other side of the world.
In the sound of that bird, we should've seen
another time or place. You asked its name?
the Rufous-Sided Towhee, who nests
and scratches on the ground or low bushes,
and doesn't see much more than we do.
My daughter says we live in a place
larger than the world, if we could only see it.
I don't know, finally, what isn't invisible.
There's no time anywhere we can touch
which is exactly what the wind had to say.
gift-giving and terrified the expectant children out of their wits. It took five fathers to muscle him down and
make him quit heaving presents from his bag of gewgaws. To this day I cannot see Santa's white beard and
red suit without flinching. Life on
military reservations had also crazed
many of the army wives, who turned
to drink and drugs. Now and again an ambulance would purr into the Circle and cart one of them away for ther
apy. When at home, they usually kept hidden, stewing in bedrooms, their children grown and gone or off to school or buried in toys. Outside,
with faces cracked like the leather of old purses, loaded up with consoling chemicals, the crazed women tee
tered carefully down the sidewalk, as if down a tightrope over an abyss.
The Arsenal fed on war and the rumors of war. When the Pentagon's
budget was fat, the Arsenal's econ
omy prospered. We could tell how
good or bad the times were by read
ing our fathers' faces, or by counting the pickup trucks in the parking lots.
The folks who lived just outside the chain-link fence in trailers and tar
paper shacks did poorly in the slow
spells, but did just fine whenever an outbreak of Red Scare swept through
Congress. In the lulls between wars,
the men used to scan the headlines
looking for omens of strife, the way farmers would scan the horizon for
promises of rain. In 1957, when the Arsenal was in the doldrums and par ents were bickering across the dinner
table, one October afternoon
between innings of a softball game somebody read aloud the news about the launching of Sputnik. The moth ers clucked their tongues and the fathers groaned; but soon the wise
heads among them gloated, for they knew this Russian feat would set the loadlines humming, and it did.
Our model rocketeering took on a new cast. It occurred to us that any
57
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