“Move out.”
“What about the animals?”
“I’ll take care of them. They can have the whole trailer, they’ll have lots of room if I move out.”
“But you don’t understand,” Merle said calmly. “It goes on forever. It’s numbers, and it doesn’t change or level off or get better. It gets worse and worse, faster and faster.”
“You don’t understand,” she said to him. “Everything depends on how you look at it. And what looks worse and worse to you might look better and better to me.”
Merle smiled, and his blue eyes gleamed. He stepped down to the ground and waved pleasantly at the grim woman. “You are right, Flora. Absolutely right. And I thank you for straightening me out this fine morning!” he exclaimed, and whistling softly, he walked off for Marcelle’s trailer, where he would sit down at her table and drink a cup of coffee with her and recommend to her that the best policy was no policy, in the matter of Flora and her guinea pigs, because Flora would be more than capable of handling any problem that the proliferation of the guinea pigs might create.
Marcelle was not happy with Merle’s advice. She was a woman of action and it pained her to sit still and let things happen, especially things that seemed to her to have no other possible consequence, if let go, than disaster. But, as she told Merle, she had no choice in this matter of the guinea pigs. If she tried to evict Flora and the animals, there would be a ruckus and possibly a scandal; if she brought in the health department, there was bound to be a scandal; if she evicted Flora and not the guinea pigs, then she’d have the problem of disposing of the damn things herself. “It’s just gone too far,” she said, scowling.
“But everything’s fine right now, at this very moment, isn’t it?” Merle asked, stirring his coffee.
“I suppose you could say that.”
“Then it hasn’t gone too far. It’s gone just far enough.”
At this stage, just before Christmas the first year of Flora Pease’s residence at the trailerpark, everyone had an opinion as to what ought to be done with regard to the question of the guinea pigs.
FLORA PEASE: Keep the animals warm, well-fed, clean and breeding. Naturally, as their numbers increase, their universe will expand. (Of course, Flora didn’t express herself that way, for she would have been speaking to people who would have been confused by language like that coming from her. She said it this way: “When you take care of things, they thrive. Animals, vegetables, minerals, same with all of them. And that makes you a better person, since it’s the taking care that makes people thrive. Feeling good is good, and feeling better is better. No two ways about it. All people ever argue about anyhow is how to go about feeling good and then better.”)
DOREEN TIEDE: Evict Flora (she could always rent a room at the Hawthorne House, Claudel Bing had and, God knows, he was barely able to tie his own shoes for a while, he was so drunk, though of course he’s much better now and may actually move out of the Hawthorne House one of these days, and in fact the man was starting to look like his old self again, which was not half-bad), and then call in the S.P.C.A. to find homes for the animals (the ones that couldn’t be placed in foster homes would have to be destroyed — but really, all they are is animals, rodents, rats, almost).
TERRY CONSTANT: Sneak into her trailer one day when she’s in town buying grain, and one by one, set the animals free. Maybe you ought to wait till spring and then just set them free to live in the swamp and the piney woods and fields between Old Road and the trailerpark. By the time winter came rolling around again, they’d have figured out how to tunnel into the ground and hibernate like the rest of the warm-blooded animals. The ones that didn’t learn how to survive, well, too bad for them. Survival of the fittest.
BRUCE SEVERANCE: The profit motive. That’s what needs to be invoked here. Explain to Flora that laboratories pay well for clean, well-fed guinea pigs, especially those bred and housed under such controlled conditions as Flora has established. Explain this, pointing out that this will enable her to continue to breed guinea pigs for both fun and profit for an indefinite period of time, for as long as she wants, when you get right down to it. Show her that this is not only socially useful but it will provide her as well with enough money for her to take even better care of her animals than she does now.
NONI HUBNER: Bruce’s idea is a good one, and so is Leon LaRoche’s, and Captain Knox has a good idea too. Maybe we ought to try one first, Captain Knox’s, say, since he’s the oldest and has the most experience of the world, and if that doesn’t work we could try Leon LaRoche’s, and then if that fails, we can try Bruce’s. That would be the democratic way.
LEON LAROCHE: Captain Knox’s idea, of course, is the logical one, but it runs certain risks and depends on his being able to keep Flora, by the sheer force of his will, from reacting hysterically or somehow “causing a scene” that would embarrass the trailerpark and we who live in it. If the Suncook Valley Sun learned that we had this kind of thing going on here, that we had this type of village eccentric living here among us at the trailerpark, we would all suffer deep embarrassment. I agree, therefore, with Doreen Tiede’s plan. But my admiration, of course, is for Captain Knox’s plan.
CAROL CONSTANT: I don’t care what you do with the damned things, just do something. The world’s got enough problems, real problems, without people going out and inventing new ones. The main thing is to keep the woman happy, and if having a lot of little rodents around is what makes her happy and they aren’t bothering anyone else yet, then for God’s sake, leave her alone. She’ll end up taking care of them herself, getting rid of them or whatever, if and when they start to bother her — and they’ll bother her a lot sooner than they bother us, once we stop thinking about them all the time. Her ideas will change as soon as the guinea pigs get to the point where they’re causing more trouble than they’re giving pleasure. Everybody’s that way, and Flora Pease is no different. You have to trust the fact that we’re all human beings.
NANCY HUBNER: Obviously, the guinea pigs are Flora’s substitutes for a family and friends. She’s trying to tell us something, and we’re not listening. If we, and I mean all of us, associated more with Flora on a social level, if we befriended her, in other words, then her need for these filthy animals would diminish and probably disappear. It would be something that in the future we could all laugh about, Flora laughing right along with us. We should drop by for coffee, invite her over for drinks, offer to help redecorate her trailer, and so on. We should be more charitable. It’s as simple as that. Christian charity. I know it won’t be easy — Flora’s not exactly socially “flexible,” if you know what I mean, but we are, at least most of us are, and therefore it’s our responsibility to initiate contact, not hers, poor thing.
CAPTAIN DEWEY KNOX: It’s her choice, no one else’s. Either she goes, or the animals go. She decides which it’s to be, not us. If she decides to go, fine, she can take the animals with her or leave them behind, in which case I’m sure some more or less humane way can be found to dispose of them. If she stays, also fine, but she stays without the animals. Those are the rules — no pets. They’re the same rules for all of us, no exceptions. All one has to do is apply the rules, and that forces onto the woman a decision that, however painful it may be for her, she must make. No one can make that decision for her.