Economist v. Editor

After winning the duel, the Economist quietly stands over the burial of the Ecologist, then retires to the base of the oak.

It's there that he sees the dusty leather pouch of the forest dweller, and carefully inspects the inside of the bag. Each of the items he lays out on the table. Of special fascination is the marble bust of the plain-looking woman, dressed in homespun 19th-century garb, and the bullet cartridges.

Removing two of the primed cartridges, he reloads both pistols. He examines the hot, used shells just discarded and sees that they - like the other empty shells in the primitive's satchel - are decorated with light, ornately patterned etching. Similar, he notes, to the patterns of a certain indigenous baskets.

Curious, he finds and opens the small drawer under the circular tabletop. Four cartridges roll clumsily into view. He examines all four. Each show similar markings to the cartridges and empty shells from the satchel.

He calls out to the Grave Digger.

Where was this satchel found?

The Grave Digger thrusts his shovel into the loose earth and walks to the oak. He nods at items on the table.

Found alls that on the body of a nativist. Another one shot him a few days ago. He was threatening, spying.

Even so, voices the Economist softly, I think the death may have lead us to a scarcity.

He look down, watching the cartridges roll in his fleshy palm.

How many have come before me? How many duels have you seen?

The Grave Digger swallows. He looks off. He can't remember the number off hand, he can't remember their faces. It's been a month now, maybe more.

Tens, dozens, hundreds?

Dozens, dozens on dozens.

And where have the bullets come from for each duel? I didn't bring bullets. The caretaker?

No. Never him. Never me either. We never brought none.

Someone did. I have a feeling it was the primitives to the east. They've maintained a pre-industrial cottage industry, a cycle of manufacture. Last night I heard the dog barking into the forest. Why they insist on secrecy, on replenishing the ammunition by night, is a mystery. But it explains why the man who was killed was lurking by the border, and why he had these in his pouch.

I was there, says the Grave Digger fearfully, pinching each word. He points. Up in the woods.

So have I, says the Economist sympathetically.

The Grave Digger walks off.

That night, again, the dog barks at the border of the forest.

The Editor's a thin, severe man with a keen eye and a quick tongue. He wears a sweat-stained blue Oxford tucked into a pair of khaki slacks.

Where is she? he spits. Where's my Correspondent?

The Economist tells him he has no clue to whom the Editor refers.

Called from here, I'm sure of it. Just like she described.

The Editor takes a look around again, then squares up.

Just like she said: right from the movie. Right from Swingo!. Tree, creek, cabin, woods, hill. Right from Swingo!.

Ecologist v. Economist

It wasn't the rationalization given by the Drill Instructor that brightened the Ecologist's mood, but the fact that the Drill Sergeant sought to rationalize - regardless of his oversimplified and (to the mind of the Ecologist) laughable reasoning. It brightened his mood because it seemed to prove a long-held belief proposed by his academic colleague, the Philosopher (Continental): namely, that all actions (including his) are necessarily unconscious biological reactions to stimuli, and not open to choice, regardless of the feeling that we are subject to chose, itself an illusion.

Thus, at the time, the Ecologist felt more detached from matters of good and evil.

Except now, post-duel, he doesn't; he feels tremendous guilt and grief on looking at the splayed body of the Drill Sergeant beneath him, and the schnauzer nuzzling the Drill Sergeant's hand, as if to coax a pat.

This is rotten, he says.

The Grave Digger buries the body and begins straightening the tumult he caused to Stetson's cabin. The schnauzer, after the burial, sits on the Drill Sergeant's grave. Then, later, joins the Grave Digger. After cleaning the cabin and righting the furniture, the Grave Digger takes residence.

The next day when the Ecologist and Economist meet they, knowing each other in passing from their time at the university, discuss the one thing that happily separates them from unfortunate aspects of reality: their fields of study.

I wrote a paper, says the Ecologist, on the natural reforestation of abandoned farmland and its effect on large mammal populations. It took place in this region. With almost unrestricted private funding we hired a team of townies to act as porters. They carried the observational equipment, the kits used to build electronic monitoring stations throughout the woodlands. We came under attack twice, each time losing a few dozen porters - but more tragically, the wife of my good friend, the group's Ethnologist. But the data we collected - before the stations were found and taken down - showed what I'd expected: an exponential increase in the population. Deer, fox, wolves, bears - in profusion.

As luck would have it, the Economist also did research in the area as a student:

It was just a simple market study, but it played on some historic curiosities: the origin of current day intra-tribal trading amongst anarcho-primitive forest communalists. All communities are intrinsically - often religiously - shy to trade with other communities, especially of different socialist ideological bents (Noyesians, for example, would rather die than exchange with New Harmonists), and of course the ritual patterns of warfare and revenge killings, but they will under certain material conditions. Usually if both parties' receive a mutual, favorably interpreted omen, and if the necessities of each are high enough, and if armed raiding is strategically inadvisable. Some tribes are different than others, of course: some never trade; some have, over years, ritualized the event, leading to regular market gatherings reminiscent of the standard extra-tribal rendezvous, held in different mountain glades each summer season. But these are usually among the more southern tribes, near the coal mining regions. We documented three communities over two years, all in the hills and forests to the east. Facinating people, in a way, however morally reprehensible.

The Ecologist agrees.

Imagine living without order, part of a pack. Regardless of whether I agree with them or not, it's not difficult to see why colleagues started the petition to reclassify the communalists as a particular sub-human species. They way they act, they might as well be studied as animals.

My last lecture, in fact, touched on that topic exacly: I used them as an example of a culture without a stable division of labor.

The Ecologist is about to extol the freedom he and the Economist have to chose their own paths - when he suddenly remembers the Drill Sergeant's act of rationalization. He's thrown into an unexpected spat of doubt.