Homeland and Other Stories (24 page)

Doreen took a U-turn and almost ran over Cecil Smoot, and they beat it back to town like bats out of hell. Ten minutes later here come her car back up the hill again. Only this time her husband Milton was driving, and three other men from Saint's Grace was all in there besides Doreen. Two of them are cops.

“I don't know what they're up to but we don't need you getting in trouble,” I told Vonda. I took the bat away from her and put it over my shoulder. She looked real white, and I patted her arm and said, “Don't worry.” I can't believe I did that, now. Looking back.

They pulled up in front of us again but they didn't get out, just all five of them stared and then they drove off, like whatever they come for they got.

 

That was yesterday. Last night I was washing the dishes and somebody come to the house. The kids were watching TV. I heard Tony slide the dead bolt over and then he yelled, “Mom, it's the Boot.”

Before I can even put down a plate and get into the living room Larry Trevizo has pushed right by him into the house. I come out wiping my hands and see him there holding up his badge.

“Chief of Police, ma'am,” he says, just like that, like I don't know who the hell he is. Like we didn't go through every grade of school together and go see
Suddenly Last Summer
one time in high school.

He says, “Mrs. Morales, I'm serving you with injunction papers.”

“Oh, is that a fact,” I say. “And may I ask what for?”

Tony already turned off the TV and is standing by me with his arms crossed, the meanest-looking damn eleven-year-old you ever hope to see in your life. All I can think of is the guys in the meeting, how they get so they just want to bust something in.

“Yes you may ask what for,” Larry says, and starts to read, not looking any of us in the eye: “For being a danger to the public. Inciting a riot. Strike-related misconduct.” And then real low he says something about Vonda Fangham and a baseball bat.

“What was that last thing?”

He clears his throat. “And for kidnapping Vonda Fangham and threatening her with a baseball bat. We got the affidavits.”

“
Pa'fuera
!” I tell Larry Trevizo. I ordered him out of my house
right then, told him if he wanted to see somebody get hurt with a baseball bat he could hang around my living room and find out. I trusted myself but not Tony. Larry got out of there.

The injunction papers said I was not to be in any public gathering of more than five people or I would be arrested. And what do you know, a squad of Boots was already lined up by the picket shack at the crack of dawn this morning with their hands on their sticks, just waiting. They knew I would be up there, I see that. They knew I would do just exactly all the right things. Like the guys say, Vicki might break but she don't bend.

They cuffed me and took me up to the jailhouse, which is in back of the Ellington main office, and took off my belt and my earrings so I wouldn't kill myself or escape. “With an earring?” I said. I was laughing. I could see this old rotten building through the office window; it used to be something or other but now there's chickens living in it. You could dig out of there with an earring, for sure. I said, “What's that over there, the Mexican jail? You better put me in there!”

I thought they would just book me and let me go like they did some other ones, before this. But no, I have to stay put. Five hundred thousand bond. I don't think this whole town could come up with that, not if they signed over every pink, purple, and blue house in Bolton.

It didn't hit me till right then about the guys wanting to tear into the plant. What they might do.

“Look, I got to get out by tonight,” I told the cops. I don't know their names, it was some State Police I have never seen, seem like they just come up out of nowhere. I was getting edgy. “I have a union meeting and it's real important. Believe me, you don't want me to miss it.”

They smiled. And then I got that terrible feeling you get when you see somebody has been looking you in the eye and smiling and setting a trap, and there you are in it like a damn rat.

What is going to happen I don't know. I'm keeping my ears open. I found out my kids are driving Manny to distraction—Tony told his social-studies class he would rather have a jailbird than a scab mom, and they sent him home with a note that he was causing a dangerous disturbance in class.

I also learned that Tommy Jones was not in any accident. He got called off his shift one day and was took to Morse in a helicopter with no explanation. They put him up at Howard Johnson's over there for five days, his meals and everything, just told him not to call nobody, and today he's back at work. They say he is all in one piece.

Well, I am too.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER'S
ten published books include novels, collections of short stories, poetry, essays, and an oral history. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. In 2000, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through the arts.

Ms. Kingsolver grew up in Kentucky and earned a graduate degree in biology before becoming a fulltime writer. With her husband, Steven Hopp, she cowrites articles on natural history, plays jazz, gardens, and raises two daughters. Their family divides its time between Tucson, Arizona, and a farm in southern Appalachia.

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