Chapter 11: The Standard Paste Company, Inc.
“Who are you?” Naomi shouted.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to answer a question with a question?” said the woman. She wore a pinstriped skirt suit and glasses. Her bright red shoes sparkled as if they were encrusted with rubies. She crossed her legs and bobbed one foot up and down while she swiveled in the chair. The woman adjusted her glasses. “Are you going to answer me? I don’t have time for little girls disturbing our shareholders. What do you think you are doing here?”
“Your shareholders?” Naomi said.
“Oh, very well,” said the woman. “I am the Chief Executive Officer of Standard Paste Company, Inc. What you are so ungraciously interrupting is the company’s fourth quarter shareholder meeting.”
Naomi looked at the televisions. “Are shareholders puppets?” she asked.
“They aren’t puppets,” said the CEO. “They are important people. Rich people. They tell me how to make money and I do what they say.”
Naomi pointed at a TV on the floor. “There was definitely a puppet on that television. He had strings.”
The CEO said, “Oh, how naïve you are. We’re all puppets really. Something in the sky pulls our strings and we jump at the commands.”
“Nothing pulls my strings,” said Naomi.
“That’s what everybody would like to think. But really, we all are just part of the market, and we do what the market demands.”
Naomi thought of the market where the farmers lived. Where Sammy lived with his family. It didn’t seem to Naomi that the market demanded anything of anybody. That was the problem, wasn’t it? The farmers didn’t have any food to sell. Naomi said, “Farmer’s Market doesn’t demand anything.”
The CEO stopped swiveling the chair. “Ha,” she said, and began to swivel again. “Not that market. Those farmers are lazy slobs. A bunch of whiners looking for handouts. You really are a naïve little girl. I’m talking about the economy. You know, commerce? Buy low, sell high.”
“I know what the economy is,” Naomi said. “And farmers aren’t lazy. You took away their horses.”
“I didn’t take away their horses. They lost their horses because the market demanded paste. We live and die by the market. That is the economy. Besides, if they want jobs so bad can come and work here. We have plenty of jobs for everyone at the Standard Paste Company, Inc. As a matter of fact, we have all the jobs. Everyone in the town that works, works for us.”
“I know,” said Naomi. “My mom works for the Pastery.”
The CEO pushed her glasses higher on her nose and smiled. She cocked her head to the side and said, “One day you’ll work for us.”
“I will not,” said Naomi. “You ruined this town.”
“We didn’t ruin the town,” the CEO said. “We just brought something popular into the market.”
Naomi said, “But people want to eat something else.”
“Impossible,” said the CEO. “There isn’t anything else to eat.”
“Because the farmers can’t water their crop because you took all the horses,” said Naomi.
“What horses?” said the CEO. She looked around as if checking to see if there were any horses in the room. “There aren’t any horses here.”
“There are horses here. I saw them downstairs,” Naomi said.
“There are no horses,” said the CEO more sternly.
“There are, and I am going to free them.” Naomi held up the horse-flavored T-shirt.
“What’s that old rag?” asked the CEO.
“It’s my horse-flavored T-shirt,” Naomi said. “It’s what the horse speakers wore when they called the horses out of the fields.”
“Sounds silly,” the CEO said. “Wouldn’t you prefer some of our paste merchandise? We have paste T-shirts and sweatshirts with our white paste can logo on them. We have little shorts with ‘Paste’ written across the bottom.”
“I don’t want anything that has to do with paste,” said Naomi.
“But you need paste or you will starve,” said the CEO.
“You are a terrible person,” said Naomi. She was tired of the CEO.
“Terrible?” The CEO made a face like she had been slapped. “How can I be a terrible person when the shareholders just voted to give me a big raise? I make 400 times more money than someone like your mother. How could I be terrible if I make so much money?”
“I think you’re terrible because you make so much money,” said Naomi. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”
The CEO swiveled in her chair. “You’re such a bleeding heart. It must be great to be a dumb little girl.”
Naomi said. “I’m no dumb kid. I know what paste really is.”
“Oh do you?” the CEO said, as she pushed up her glasses. “Do tell.”
“Paste is made from horses!” screamed Naomi. “You’re turning the horses into paste!”
“Hup, hup, hup, hup.” The CEO doubled over with hiccupping laughter. “Hup, hup, hup, hup.” Her glasses fell to the ground, she was laughing so hard.
“What’s so funny?” Naomi asked.
“Oh, you are a dumb little girl, aren’t you?” the CEO said. “Hup, hup, hup, hup.” The CEO turned towards the TVs remaining on the table. She shouted, “She thinks we make paste from horses! Hup, hup, hup, hup.”
A string of laughter poured out from the TVs. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” The puppets were laughing at her. They weren’t even real and they were making fun of her. Her face flushed.
The CEO’s laughter finally subsided into short little hiccups. “Hup…hup…hup.” She leaned over and scooped her glasses up from the carpet.
As she reaffixed her glasses she said, “We don’t turn the horses into paste.”
“I don’t believe you,” Naomi said, not quite sure what she believed.
The CEO said, “That would be useless. If we ate the horses, how would we generate electricity?”
“I don’t understand,” said Naomi.
“Of course you don’t. You’re just a dumb little girl. Do you have electric lights at your house?” the CEO asked.
“Yeah,” said Naomi. Who was asking the dumb questions now? she thought.
“Well, aren’t you lucky. And do you have TV?”
“Yeah,” Naomi said.
“You wouldn’t have electric light and television without horses.”
“Why is that?” Naomi asked.
“Didn’t you ever wonder where electricity came from?”
“I know it comes from the paste factory just like everything else,” Naomi snapped.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” said the CEO. “Many years ago—let’s say a hundred . . . no, two hundred . . . oh, it might as well have been a thousand years ago—the world ran on the bodies of dead animals. Once, an even longer time ago, these dead animals were alive. They died and were buried in the ground. Then people came along and dug up their bodies. But their bodies weren’t bodies anymore. And that’s how people used to make electricity to run the lights and the television.”
“You’re just talking about gasoline,” said Naomi. “Everybody knows the world used to run on gas.”
A teardrop slipped down the CEO’s face. She said, “Apparently there was a limited supply of it. You wouldn’t understand the science behind it.”
“Are you crying?” asked Naomi.
“Of course not,” said the CEO. She made a grab for the horse-flavored T-shirt in Naomi’s hand, but Naomi jumped backwards out of her reach.
“Stop that,” Naomi said. “You are crying!”
The CEO sniffled. “I need a tissue.”
“There’s a handkerchief sticking out of your jacket pocket,” Naomi said. The CEO yanked it out, but it was only a bit of fabric stapled to a piece of cardboard. She blew her nose on it. She dabbed her eyes from beneath her glasses and dropped the handkerchief on the carpet. She adjusted herself in the chair, giving her skirt a little flip so it didn’t fold ben
eath her.
In the next moment, all emotion disappeared from her face. The CEO fixed Naomi with a cold stare.
A bit scared now, Naomi said, “Are you going to finish telling me about the horses?”
“Oh,” the CEO said. “Right. Anyway, it was a tragic day for the free market economy. Without the gas to run everything, none of the companies could make their products. All the companies closed and people starved because the companies couldn’t get the food to the stores.”
“My teacher told me all this,” Naomi said, thinking of Mr. Heller. “It’s terrible.”
“It’s not really that terrible,” said the CEO. “People are only really alive to buy things from companies. When there are no companies, there is no need for all those people.”