BURLINGTON, Vermont. When Charles Verburne retired in 2021 the last thing he wanted to do–unlike some senior citizens–was “see the world.” “I’ve been everywhere. Papua, New Guinea, Borneo–even Schenectady,” the 70-year-old says with a laugh. “Just kidding about that last one, I only passed by on the New York State Thruway.”
“They were living in primitive conditions, without a home espresso machine, and could only be reached by Amazon Prime drones.”
Verburne was a professor of anthropology at the University of Northern New England whose early years in the profession were taken up by visits to faraway lands to see primitive peoples. “I didn’t really have time for a family until I was tenured,” he says, and he didn’t marry until he was fifty. As a result, even though he’s entering his “golden years,” his children are just entering their twenties. “They’re great kids, my wife did a wonderful job raising them,” he says, smiling at his spouse Hilda, who he proposed to when she was a graduate student twenty years younger than him. “With the gap in our ages she was always closer to them than I was.”
“Dad, those are last night’s Cool Ranch Doritos.”
And so when Verburne began to contemplate what he wanted to do in retirement, two paths converged. “I wanted to keep my hand in research, but I’m too old to roam the world now,” he says pointedly. “On the other hand, I hadn’t really gotten to know my kids, and they were in and out of the house all the time.”
So Verburne decided to do field research in a locale where he could sleep in his own bed every night. “I checked the literature, and as it turned out there were no studies–none–about the members of the Verburnes, who are a tribe that has lived in isolation in Northern New England for centuries after migrating from Europe,” he notes as he picks up several manila folders from the desk in his home office. “Who are these people?” he asks with an air of intellectual curiosity. “Why do they live the way they do? How can it cost so damn much to feed them?”
“Members of the tribe live in primitive squalor.”
Verburne’s first opportunity to observe the patrilineal clan came last fall when his two daughters Chloe and Amy returned to school at nearby Sarah Chilton College, where they share an apartment with two friends, Janie Sullivan and Tomas Walczek. “The unmarried males–they cohabit with females?” Verburne asked Chloe as she made him a pallet on the floor of the room she shares with her sister.
“Dad, shut up!” Chloe whispered with a hiss, hoping that her roommates wouldn’t hear, become offended, and ask the sisters to take on a larger share of the rent.
“I’m only asking,” Verburne replied apologetically. “It’s hard-wired into me, it’s my job.”
“Just keep it down, please,” Amy said. “We have to live with these people until June.”
“Those odd markings on the female–what do they signify?” Verburne asked, checking his tape recorder to see how much battery life he had left.
“Limit one per customer.”
“Her tattoos? I don’t think they ‘signify’ anything,” Chloe says, glaring at her father as he writes “butterfly, unicorn” in his notebook.
“Do you worship those animals–are they ‘totems’ of some kind?” Verburne asks Sullivan.
“No, I just . . . like them.”
“And your parents–do they have similar markings on their bodies?” Verburn asks.
“If they did, I wouldn’t have gotten them,” she replies, causing the four young people to explode in laughter.
“Your dad’s okay. For a dork.”
Later, everyone gathers around the kitchen table for dinner, a potpourri of vegan dishes that includes stewed lentils, stuffed peppers, brown rice, and for dessert, lentil chiffon pie.
“The tribe has barely moved past a subsistence economy,” Verburne whispers into his tape recorder, “They depend on plant-based protein. Their diet is bland and high in fiber, which may explain their use of incense to mask odors.”
After the meal is done Chloe and Amy take their turn doing the group’s dishes, while Walczek and Sullivan excuse themselves and discreetly enter their shared room. As Verburne begins to write down his impressions in a spiral notebook, low moans are heard coming from behind the closed door, and he cocks his ear the better to hear them.
“Sounds very familiar,” he says.
“To what, dad?” Amy asks.
“A bitch wombat in heat.”