Boonville (28 page)

John hadn't heard that expression before and pictured a gang of leather-clad lesbians carrying knives and ice cream cones, castrating everything in their path.

“Better put on yer nard-guard,” Kurts said. “Them dykes know more than their way around a three-pronged outlet.”

“Prarieb Mamab moo,” the other Kurts stammered.

It took a second for John to understand what he had said.

“What'd Franny say 'bout them stands?” the first Kurts asked.

“He's getting more crosses from the Waterfall commune,” John said, realizing again, everybody knew everybody in this town and in their own way had a relationship, even if it was an understanding to leave each other alone. Franny had probably worked with Kurts' great-grandfather, just as Billy Chuck's and Lisa's grandfathers had spent time together logging. John wondered when Franny had moved to the valley. How long did it take to become established as a local, truly accepted, not just acknowledged to fill out a softball team or a drunken pause down at the Lodge? Was Grandma's name coming up for membership before she died? Did that give him a leg up? Or one foot in the grave?

“Tell 'em we'll take care of the stands,” Kurts said. “By my account, Hank still owes us for losin' to Stafford Loggin'.”

John noticed the pair of cleats hanging from Kurts' rearview mirror. He told himself that Hank probably had a woodpile and the Kurtses would liberate a few sticks. It was a good cause and they were on the same softball team. What more explanation did
anyone need?

“You got the crossbow in case he wakes up?” Kurts asked his brother.

“Yeb.”

“Be back in an hour, Squirrel Boy,” Kurts said. “You can count on us.”

They burned rubber down the road, launching one last bottle at the Datsun, hitting it where the grille would have been if it hadn't already fallen off. John got out of the car to retrieve the crucifix that had been cut in half during the Kurtses' stunt. Pensive would have to stitch it together with her nail gun. He put another crucifix in its place and continued his work, telling himself there was nothing to worry about, everything was falling into place. This was the way things got done in Boonville.

Setting the last of the load's crosses in place, John could see the Albion Nation had arrived, dressed in overalls and hiking boots. Pensive was explaining the project to them. The women seemed to be coupled off, half of the group wearing baseball caps pulled down low. It didn't take a genius to understand John didn't fit the description Pensive had offered to garner their support. Who knows what she had said? “The sex change is coming soon”? He could see them thinking that this breeder couldn't be the reason that they had taken to the streets. He was the evil rapist Margaret Washington had cautioned them about. Not that they were what John had expected; no leather, knives, or ice cream cones. There was a standstill of misconception.

If they hated men so much, John wanted to know, why did they dress like them? They shouldn't be allowed to wear jockey shorts, sweat socks, or rodeo belt buckles. No Bruce Springsteen bandannas or crew cuts either. No hating your cake and eating it too. If he were a lesbian, he would accentuate his feminine curves with dresses and skirts. Which was probably the kind of thinking that made homosexual women want to ban straight men from discussions. But being ignorant didn't make him homophobic. He was a big Jodie Foster fan, Marlene Dietrich too. Instead of marking him as the enemy, they should try to educate him. Not that any of them appeared to be the official spokesperson for lesbians, but they did call themselves a nation. There must be a manifesto lying around somewhere. There seemed to be a dress code.

John would have liked to ask what they thought about his theory that aside from people born gay, women were more likely to turn to homosexuality than men, becoming gay after bad experiences with the opposite sex, failed marriages, physical abuse, rape. Something a man would rarely do, partially because of the larger taboo of homosexuality among men, but mostly because men, along with most women, didn't view other men as sympathetic. You never heard a man say, “I feel I can be vulnerable around you, Bob, in a way I can't around Mary. Let's fuck.” Also the overwhelming media opinion was that women were beautiful. You couldn't blame them for wanting to sleep together. Men were portrayed as clunky and dumb. How could you screw someone you couldn't trust to order a pizza?

Maybe men were missing an opportunity, not branching out within their gender. It would be a battle won for population control. Fewer arguments on Super Bowl Sunday. Not that men and women were that different, although sometimes they seemed to be. Maybe they just wanted different things out of sex and relationships. John wouldn't be the first to propose such a notion. What those things were, he didn't have a clue. But there seemed to be a liberating power these days for a woman not to need a man, some of it economic, some of it spiritual. For whatever reasons, biological, social, or both, John was attracted to women and what they could or couldn't offer him. He almost wished he was gay, to widen his options. As he introduced himself to the Albion Nation, sensing their misplaced anger, he also realized that if he ever did become gay, he would never hate women entirely.

“John,” Pensive said, helping him speed up the process, “This is Chris, Steph, Pat, Reggie, Sue, and Mike.”

Mike was the only one who smiled. It was clear God had played a trick with her body and she had received more than her fair share of testosterone. She reminded John of a boy who hadn't gone through puberty; clear complexion, youthful face, soft demeanor. But Mike also had an understated strength. Unlike the others, she seemed comfortable to be out at night in Boonville.

Reggie averted her eyes when John said hello. She was the youngest, the rest of the group was somewhere in their thirties or earlier forties. Reggie couldn't have been much past drinking age. She stood, slouching. Uninvited fingers seemed to be jabbing at her sides with pins and needles. She was a voodoo doll of herself.
But aside from her bad posture, she was pretty, with wet brown eyes and a sensual but down-turned mouth that appeared to be in a permanent pout.

“We don't allow the male species on the grounds of Albion Nation,” Sue said, trying to blame John's presence for Reggie's discomfort. “That goes for everything; humans, birds, animals. No penises on the premises.”

John knew Reggie had bigger problems than proximity with males. She wasn't allergic. Someone had hurt her in a way she couldn't forget and she was going through life waiting for the next bruise.

“Well, I appreciate you all coming here tonight,” John said, trying to focus on Reggie to show he meant no harm by being male. “We really needed the manpower.”

Oh shit, John thought, realizing his slip, trying to recover with platitudes and by praising Pensive's contribution. It wasn't that careless a thing to say. What was the substitute word, “personpower?” He would have felt like an asshole using that term. And if he had said womanpower, he would never have forgiven himself.

“My grandmother would have been grateful, too,” he said, trying to end his blundering. “She believed art was a binding force, one that reaches across race, religion, and gender, bridging prejudices to our commonality. An organic language. In the end, I think this project will reflect all of us.”

Unfortunately, there was no keynote speaker or podium to step away from. John stood among the lesbians, holding his broken squirrel cross. There was a hard silence, followed by a scary moment when he realized that all of the Albion Nation had brought hammers. He could feel everyone trying to figure out the next move. Then Pensive stepped forward and took the pieces of wood from John's hands, firing nails through them at an angle that reconstructed the cross and its martyr. Without this gesture, John was certain the Albion Nation would have climbed into their van and driven away. They had their own order and didn't need it upset by some oppressive hetero who chose his words ineptly. But they seemed to accept this ritual as part of John's apology. He didn't know where he had conjured the art jargon or cleverness to attribute their sentiments to Grandma. California must be rubbing off on him.

Before the Albion Nation dispersed to erect squirrels, Franny returned with the final load of crosses, greeting them with a hardy “Evening ladies.”

Back to square one, John told himself. So much for an organic language.

Franny didn't seem to have any intention of demeaning the women with the word “ladies,” but he was demanding that they use his reference point instead of theirs for any interpretation of the salutation. They seemed to take it in stride. Old age inspired respect if not tolerance in most people. Apparently, they also knew Franny. Mike appeared to be genuinely flattered by his greeting, a cordiality rarely offered in her direction.

“Aren't you dead yet?” Mike said, jokingly.

“You know statistics show women outlive men,” Franny answered, with a wink. “I just haven't found the right one to bury me.”

John could see Mike was enjoying the novelty of talking with a man, any man, especially a flirting octogenarian. Franny was past posing any kind of threat to her sexuality or politics. It was like someone saying you looked good when you were in a hospital bed. You didn't call them a liar, you just waited for the doctor.

“I'll bury you,” Sue said, clearly the hard-liner of the Nation, the only one who hadn't extended Franny her regards.

She was half Franny's age, with the body of a gymnast, limber and powerful, ready to spring into a series of somersaults and flips if the need arose. The features of her face also leaped at you, angular jaw and full lips, dark eyes and thick brow. There was something about her that spoke of cobblestones, black market vegetables, and cast-iron pots. Winters spent in the pelts of dead animals.

Rather than spin a cartwheel, Sue took off her baseball cap and ran her fingers through her stubbled hair. Her muscles flexed. John wondered if she and Mike were a couple, or had been, even though they were both wearing baseball caps. Did butch date butch? He hoped not. Mike seemed nice. Sue was a ballbuster.

“I'll dance on your grave when all of your archaic sexism is dead,” Sue said, staking territory nobody had laid any claim to.

Franny looked up from his truck, where he had walked to start unloading crosses. In another time, John could tell, he would have taken a swing at anyone who addressed him with such
animosity, male or female. He didn't now, not because he was too old for fisticuffs or was afraid of losing a fight to a fitter member of the opposite sex, but because there was no winning.

“I survived two world wars, young woman,” he said, lifting down the tailgate. “I lived through the Great Depression, when I saw people stronger than yourself lining up for stale bread. I've seen things, the depravity of the human condition, that I hope you can't imagine. But never in my eighty-two years did I ever look someone in the eyes and wish them dead.”

“Times have changed,” Sue said, trying to goad Franny into a cruder reply. “You haven't had to live your life as a woman, then or now, bombarded by repressive language in a male-dominated society.”

“However hurtful you may think words are, they aren't bombs,” Franny told her, the tailgate locked into place. “Slander isn't hunger. Name calling isn't the end of a rope. They can lead to those things, but there's a difference between the two. I've been called names during my lifetime, believe me. Words nobody uses anymore, Wobbly, Red, slacker, bum. They once kept me from work and incited me more than once to strike my fellow man. And I'm not the tallest fellow in town. Nor am I the lightest of skin. Swarthy. Another word not often used kindly. Not too many people know a Greek when they see one. I've been called most everything, Hebe, Wop, Spic, Kurd. But I allow my actions to describe me, not other people's words.”

“You don't know what it's like to be a homosexual in this country,” Sue said.

“It's always difficult to be yourself,” Franny answered. “When I saw Emma Goldman arrested in Portland for passing out pamphlets, and then again after a lecture in a workers' hall in Walla Walla, talking sense about one big union, only to be deported from this country, I protested her deportation and was clubbed by policemen and thrown in jail. I did it not because I believed in what she was saying a hundred percent, Russia didn't turn out so well, Stalin was no panacea, but because she had a right to say what she thought. She lived under the conditions you described. In my book, no woman more thoughtful or principled, humanitarian or forward thinking, has walked this earth.
She
was a lady.”

The Albion Nation was stunned that someone in their midst had seen Emma Goldman lecture in person, and had been arrested
on her behalf; it made campaigning for Geraldine Ferraro seem lame. Even Sue was speechless. What could you say to out-feminist that unless you had gone down on Virginia Woolf?

“I'm sorry if I offended you with my wording,” Franny said, with diplomatic bite. “It was my mistake. It's clear you are no lady.”

John could tell the Albion Nation would no longer object to being called a lady by Franny. From his lips, they would consider it both a polite term for an adult member of the feminine sex and a compliment, the way he had intended. But John wasn't sure, if she were alive today, Ms. Goldman wouldn't have objected. Grandma hadn't liked the word either, but was tolerant of “civil lumpings” as she referred to them. Her official line was: “There are larger battles to fight than semantics.”

Sue had a point, there was a psychological load behind the word “lady.” It had become a cheesy term implying manners and compliance. John didn't know a better alternative; dame or broad didn't seem any more liberating. Womyn, as he had once heard suggested, was ridiculous. Given a vagina, he thought he would rather be a broad. It sounded stronger and put you in company with the femmes fatales of the forties; Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall. Seduce and destroy. Heels and a gun holster. John was certain that someday women would reclaim all those words as a part of their history and a source of pride, eventually every group did, among themselves anyway: nigger, fag, redneck. Any unacceptable term could become safe, just as any acceptable label could turn offensive if it were continually used in a derisive manner. It was more tone, intent, and circumstance that mattered. Money and a good army.