Boonville (30 page)

Kurts looked to his brother, who was readjusting his lip with a finger. Pensive drifted back to her workstation. Billy Chuck started breaking slats of fencing with the heel of his boot to make stands for the crosses.

“I should have known somethin' was fishy when she shaved
her pooter,” Kurts said, starting in with a hammer. “Those k.d. lang cassettes were a hint too.”

John wanted to know if the rest of the Albion Nation was going to continue to help. They weren't going home in their van unless Sue came back for them. It was a long way to Albion on foot. Someone would give them a ride after they finished with the exhibit. If they didn't have something against men driving. Until then they could lend a hand or start walking.

Behind their truck, John saw Billy Chuck share a consolatory line of white powder with Kurts, who rubbed at his nose and gums after jerking his head away from a piece of mirror with a rolled up bill in his hand. His eyes watered. Billy Chuck lifted the mirror toward John. He declined, climbing into the Datsun to do a cross count. He drove by the Albion Nation working vigilantly under Mike's direction. They must have been curious where their other members had gone, but maybe they thought they were running an errand or making out. John didn't say a word. He calculated they were eight crosses short, not including the special cross they would have to construct for Sarah's statue. Twenty-nine more squirrels were also going to be needed. He didn't want to retrieve them alone because Daryl would surely follow him, insisting on a showdown.

John turned to look for Daryl's idling car, thinking he had heard the noise of the engine coming from somewhere else. It was gone. He listened, trying to discover its new location, but the revving seemed to come from everywhere at once in the echo of the valley. It could have been another car. Maybe Daryl went home. Psychopaths had to sleep too, John thought, although probably not as much as normal people. As a precautionary measure, he sent Pensive to his cabin for the last squirrels, relieving her of the nail gun.

In an hour, he was standing in the middle of Highway 128 in the predawn light, near the spot where he had blacked out. The exhibit was coming together, gathering force with each erection. Looking down the road toward the south end of town, he was flanked by two growing rows of crucifixes. Everyone was making stands now and the hammering was as loud as a stampede. In another hour they would be done. Tonight he wouldn't need a bed with Christina in it, he would just need a bed.

He saw another car turn from Manchester Road. It was
moving slowly, taking in the squirrels as it cruised the strip, waiting a good hundred crosses before switching on its flashing lights.

Cal didn't bother to get out of the car. John saw he was still in his pajamas, his gun holster looped around blue flannel marked with little gold badges.

“Your friend Daryl says you're keepin' him awake,” Cal said, not angry so much as perturbed. “You want to explain to me what the fuck you're doing?”

John squatted next to the cruiser so he was eye level with Cal. The morning air was cold and full of potential. He looked at his hands. They were blistered and cut from hammering and handling the wooden squirrels and slats of fencing. Then he turned his head to see Franny putting up another crucifix, not bothering to stop even with the police car present. The others continued as well, the town more than the exhibit looking like it had been built overnight.

“I wish I could,” John said, and knew he was speaking for all of them, even the residents of Boonville who hadn't helped in the project other than to be counted in their own way, up on the cross in effigy or in their homes for real, but would wake up to confront the spectacle of 715 squirrels nailed to crosses lining their small town, and be forced to make some kind of connection. “I think it has something to do with Christ.”

“T
he road don't even end in Katmandu,” Sarah reminded herself, walking the path to the main house, ready to say goodbye to Mom, the Waterfall, and Janis Joplin, all with one tearless farewell, hating that Janis's bit of lame improv had been imbedded in her brain and recalled like a line from Keats. Like it actually meant something. It was a stupid thing to say, even during a live performance when you're reaching for something extra, high on dope and Jack Daniel's, in front of an audience full of hippies and bikers, all potted and plowed themselves, even considering the gobbledygook political mysticism of the times when Katmandu must have meant something to a bunch of freaks in training. Nepal, wow! Sitars, wow! They've got good hash and the Dalai Lama, right? Janis was a dead drunken dipshit. She almost had an excuse. But it was an unforgivable thing to quote to your daughter whenever you conveniently failed her as a mother.

“I know you're upset, but I can't drop what I'm doing every time you need me,” Mom would say for any number of reasons, forgetting to pick Sarah up at school, leaving her with perverts in potential rape situations, and Sarah could feel it coming, whether it made sense or not, more of a crutch in Mom's speech than words of wisdom. “You know, hon, the road don't even end in Katmandu.”

Sarah would rather listen to the whole Bob Seeger song “Katmandu,” than hear Mom or Janis say that one line ever again. Bob Seeger was another dipshit. Dad listened to him. At least Dad had the good sense not to go around quoting him, telling Sarah when something went wrong, “You know, hon, it's funny how the night moves.”

Sarah paused, trying to steady herself by putting a hand to a tree and bending at the waist. Her body felt hot and swollen, insides pressing to get out. Having Janis stuck in your head was enough to make anyone physically ill, but she knew this was a different kind of nausea. Shutting her eyes, she cursed Daryl and felt her stomach muscles tighten. She inhaled deeply, but the air had gone sour. “Shit,” she said, and her dinner from last night at Cafe Beaujolais came up almost as it had been served; salad, mushroom soup, grilled rabbit with new potatoes and baby carrots, and an acidic local Cabernet that no longer complemented the meal.

Wiping her mouth with her shirt sleeve, Sarah couldn't wait to have the rest of it out of her body too. Before Lisa had shown up at the restaurant last night in Mendocino, she had to fight back tears. The sound of the ocean crashing in on itself, couples from the B & B's coming in for romantic dinners, holding hands in candlelight, walking the beach looking for shells. She wanted to scream at them, “There are no shells on this beach, just broken bits in the sand!” She had to go to the bathroom to compose herself. A waitress was washing her hands. Sarah didn't know how, but every woman on the planet could tell when you were pregnant. They saw it in the pallor of your skin. Prenatal curves. Men didn't have a clue, they were beasts. They couldn't even tell when a child was their own. Women were mammals, they knew, sensing when one of their own was manufacturing milk and if that female didn't want to be gestating. They knew by the way you skulked past, not looking into their faces when you should have been happy to greet the world.

“I'm sorry,” the waitress said.

She wasn't talking about using the last of the paper towels either, although she acted like that's what she meant after she saw Sarah recoil and hustle toward the lone bathroom stall, which was occupied. Sarah rattled the door, freaking out the patron on the other side who yelled, “I'm hurrying! I'm hurrying!”

“I'll be all right,” Sarah reassured the waitress.

“I hope so,” she said. “I'll be out here if you need anything.”

Sarah didn't want her sympathy; that wasn't solidarity. Fuck sisterhood and fuck motherhood, you couldn't rely on anyone but yourself. She was making the right decision. Her body was just switching on its defense mechanism of hormones and guilt, trying
to have its voice heard. It would be quieted soon. And if the waitress understood, she would wipe that stupid merciful look off her face and get back to her tables. Someone must need their overpriced sprigs of salad identified.

When the waitress left, Sarah realized that she had to get out of the bathroom without the woman in the stall seeing her, otherwise she wouldn't be able to sit through the meal knowing that the woman was somewhere in the restaurant watching her. Lisa would sense something was wrong. And Sarah didn't plan on telling Lisa she was pregnant. They had pledged they wouldn't go through this shit again, even if they had to raise a baby together. But Sarah didn't want Lisa raising her child. It wasn't a houseplant. Lisa was great, Sarah loved her dearly, but it was still Lisa, not a real father. They weren't a lesbian couple who wanted to live an alternative lifestyle. They were friends who had told necessary lies in order to distance themselves from what had happened, trying to convince themselves it wouldn't happen again and that they could take care of it together if it did. But here she was. The toilet flushed.

Sarah splashed some water onto her face and hurried from the restroom. She grabbed a napkin from the busing station and dried herself, then threw it into a bus tray. If Lisa asked any questions she would blame her mood on her period and the stress of moving, the redness of her eyes on allergies. She would call her in a couple weeks when it was over. They'd go shopping with harvest money and get sloppy on sidecars and eat foie gras, forget about the whole thing.

“You want me to come down with you?” was the first question Lisa asked.

She would have just offered to help move if she didn't know, Sarah thought. “Coming down” implied emotional support. For what, unloading boxes? Sarah didn't need help dumping Daryl. Leaving Mom at age twenty-six? Ordering rabbit probably put a weird vibe into the air, telling Lisa this wasn't the only dead bunny Sarah was responsible for lately. Why did she think Lisa would be less perceptive than other women? She was her best friend. Sarah could say, “Remember that guy at that place that time?” And Lisa could fill in the blanks. They were linked at the subconscious.

“Is something wrong?” was Lisa's second attempt to elicit a confession.

“No,” Sarah said.

The lie sat there between them, untouched, like an hors d'oeuvre neither wanted to taste but both knew had taken a long time to prepare. Lisa loved her too much to call coup. It wasn't in the nature of their relationship. Lisa worshipped her, had followed her through years of trouble and bad fashion, would rob a liquor store in white pumps after Labor Day if Sarah gave the order. Since Sarah's first day at the junior high, she was the older sister left in charge. But it wasn't supposed to be acknowledged. With this lie, Sarah had told Lisa that despite all they'd been through there were things she didn't trust her with. Didn't trust anyone with.

From now on, Sarah told herself, looking at her closest friend, who seemed a million miles away, no man is going to enter me without protection. But that's what she had said last time. Then came the heat of the moment, her defenses falling away as easily as her panties, believing she could create something miraculous from her fumbling limbs. It was becoming more difficult each day to maintain faith in the future. Sex was easy, the next day was hard.

Sarah spilled her wine. The waitress from the bathroom arrived to clean the mess though it wasn't her table. Sarah didn't apologize for the overturned glass, but tried to keep her eyes from the waitress. She took an inventory of the diners as a diversion, coast hipsters and tourists, dressed in a way that suggested that they spent their paychecks on patio furniture instead of clothes. Nothing revealed in their faces, the comfort of wine and anticipation of the meal. Nobody in the restaurant had noticed the spill except one woman who must have been in the bathroom stall Sarah had rattled. She was whispering to her husband, who nodded in a consoling manner, reaching across the table to pat her hand. The waitress didn't bring a fresh tablecloth, but replaced their napkins and Sarah's wine. Sarah wanted to leave. She felt like a fish in an aquarium, the one everyone suspects of eating the other fish.

To get back on track, she and Lisa talked about old times. Some things never changed, regardless of how hard you tried. You only had the available materials to build from. Sarah ate her dinner and thought about the blood spots she sometimes found on the embryos of eggs, because her rabbit tasted a lot like chicken.

On the trail to the main house the air still seemed rancid. Sarah took a deep breath and on the strength of it straightened herself. Harvest was over. She was reaping what she had sown,
eighty grand and a belly full of Daryl's love child. At the close of the sixties it wouldn't have been so bad a proposition, but it was twenty years later and she had seen where that same deal had landed Mom. She was climbing to that very place.

She had been going to cut out without saying goodbye to Mom, but the Squirrel Boy had left her a note in the form of a poem, too good for him to have written, but appropriately confusing: “Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!” Whatever, Squirrel Boy, she had thought, what did you do, fix your lopsided porch? But then he had added, “Your mother hopes to see you before you leave. She has a present for you.” It was enough of a guilt trip to work. For Mom, not the Squirrel Boy. It was going to take more than a couple, copied verses of poetry for a man to get on her good side right now. Squirrel Boy was sweet, but in his own way as clueless as anyone else around Boonville. Sarah had packed her truck and was ready to vamanos, roll with the momentum that told her to run and don't look back. After her dinner with Lisa, she didn't want to face anyone. She had decided to skip Squirrel Boy and forgo the farewells to everyone but Mom. She would write. Or she wouldn't. The whole town must know the dirt and that she was leaving by now anyway, for whatever that was worth, about a pound of catshit in her book. They could read about her someday in
Art Digest
, the ones who could read. The rest could look at the pictures.

She had told Lisa that she could stay in her cabin rent-free until she decided what she wanted to do with it. Sarah would rather not grow dope next season, though it was hard to pass on the easy money since the irrigation system was already in place and that was the difficult part of growing, aside from worrying. She would rather sell her portion of the commune, but who knew how much she could get for it? Without a good lawyer, nothing. When push came to shove, hippies were litigious; all those arrests in the sixties had gotten them used to going to court. And Communists knew the value of everything, never relinquishing any capital without bloodshed: “What's yours is ours” was their underlying sentiment. A historical fact. The contracts were in Wesley's and the Poobah's names too, and they would try to screw her worse than Daryl. A clean break sounded better. They could fuck themselves, which she knew they did anyway, in twos, threes, and
clusters. It would be a cold day in hell before she had another conversation with any Whitward or any Waterfall resident.

She tugged at her lucky red hat. She didn't like to wear it unless she was doing something artistic, or harvesting, not wanting the magic to run out by using it in an unwarranted context. Lucky red hats didn't grow on trees. And there was probably a specific kind of hat for leaving town or talking to your mother, most likely a helmet, but she needed something extra to get her on the road. Sometimes the definition of creation was to keep something alive. Her survival would be an achievement in itself. Dad would understand. If he knew anything, it was the art of making an exit.

When Sarah reached the main house, after stopping twice more to heave on the way, she found Jeremy Roth lying on the deck looking like he would lick his balls if he could. She heaved again. Jeremy seemed amused. Sarah knew Mom was inside because when she had checked her cabin she found an empty video-store bag, the first sign of a Jill Clayburgh festival. Or something equally foreign. The main house had the VCR. So she had no questions for the Princeton Primitive who probably had one of his own questions answered when she puked. He was laughing at her as she climbed the steps. Sarah thought it was a breach of his grunting oath. Not wanting him to stray too far from his natural self, she kicked him as hard as she could.

“Hasta los huevos, butthole,” she said, putting all of her weight behind her foot.

Jeremy didn't retaliate. None of the other Primitives were around and they didn't get tough without the pack. She had only managed to kick him in the leg too, missing his vitals when he moved at the last second to cover himself. It probably hurt though, and there would be a bruise. He deserved worse. For years she couldn't bring friends over to her house because of these assholes; either she was too ashamed of the freak show or her friends' parents wouldn't let them come. Rednecks may be stupid, but they had sense enough when it came to hippies. Lisa had been the first, only because her mom was dead and her dad was a drunk. It was a month before she came back, asking if the nude giant was going to be there before she accepted an invitation to dinner. There was a certain lure and fascination with human oddities, as long as you didn't have to live with them. But from the first day, Sarah would have paid her quarter not to look.

She paused before going into the main house because it seemed Jeremy was ready to break his Primitive vow and speak, maybe even stand and attack. Sarah picked up a rusty antique iron lying on the deck seemingly for the purpose of smashing across this pervert's skull, or maybe it was a door stop. Take your pick. Jeremy thought better of it and limped to a corner of the deck. He didn't want a piece of her. Not the piece he was going to get anyway.

“What are you going to do with that?” Mom asked, when Sarah walked inside carrying the iron.