Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) (23 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
 
RESPECT!

The strains of Aretha Franklin’s music wafted over them as they exited the plane at Bay St. Lucy Regional Airport.

This was only a coincidence. The giant speakers that had been erected just outside the airport entrance gates were playing Aretha Franklin at the moment; but they could play any of a number of other songs that had been blaring into the balmy wet summer air for the last few days, or since the beginning of the week leading to July 4.

They could have been playing:

Mavis Staples, “A Change is Gonna Come!”

or…

Katie Perry, “Roar!”

or…

KD Lang, “Hallelujah!”

or…

Helen Reddy, “I am Woman, Hear Me Roar!”

or…

Carol King, “You’ve Got a Friend!”

Or any of a seemingly endless chain of songs about strength and sisterhood and power and WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN sung by WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN to WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN who had decided they had HAD ENOUGH and now wished TO TAKE NO MORE!

But these were only words.

More important, by far, were the sights and sounds that were now deluging the entire stretch of coast in which nature had chosen to embed little Bay St. Lucy.

Boats, ships, a floating armada of colors and sails and mastheads and flags dotted the sea for at least two miles out, and Nina had been astonished at their number, at their variety.

The door to the cockpit had opened some moments before they were actually to land, and the captain, smiling, had stuck his head back into the cabin:

“We’re cleared to land if we want to, but I thought you might want to circle the city at least once. There’s some amazing things going on down there!”

“Do it!” shouted Laurencia, who was seated next to Nina, and adjacent to the window.

“Yes, do it!” echoed Dicken Proctor, from two rows further back. “This is what we’ve come to see!”

“All right! Hold onto your hats!”

So they began to circle.

The town itself had been engulfed with mobs of people, who milled and danced and swam and sunned and shouted and pointed up at the plane, shouting and waving signs.

But all of these people were nothing compared to the massive mob that had packed itself into the Bay St. Lucy football stadium, which could hold at a maximum two thousand football fans, who, even at their most excited, could hardly hope to reach the fervor being shown by the immense crowd down below, a crowd packed as thickly as human bodies could allow themselves to be, and singing along deliriously as a woman played keyboard on a huge stage that had been erected in the middle of the field. The woman was backed by two guitarists. The drummer was going crazy as all good drummers do, and the bass player could be seen, even five-hundred feet below, to be in a world of his own.

They were all in a world of their own.

Bay St. Lucy had gone crazy, had eaten its fill of the psychedelic mushroom that animated and drove the soul of the feminine life force.

The woman was dressed all in red, with an even redder scarf; and as the plane circled lower, she looked up at it, perhaps recognized whom it might be carrying—then stood up, jumped away from the keyboard, and ripped off her jacket.

To reveal, of course, a black
Lissie
t-shirt.

She pumped her arm, raised her hands, and bellowed at the sky.

The crowd, which had gone mad some time ago, went madder.

Huge screens that had been erected where the goal posts should have been, flashed the words of the song the woman was singing.

“Who is that?” asked Nina.

Laurencia turned and stared at her:

“What?”

“Who is that? On the stage. Singing.”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”

“Well. I don’t know.”

“Baby, where have you been all your life?”

“Teaching high school.”

“Even so…”

“Humor me, Laurencia.”

“That is Annie Lennox, dear.

“Look at that mob,” said Nina, still stunned.

“Well, you started it.”

Nina shook her head.

“Maybe. Maybe that
no
I said was the spark. But it was all pent up and ready to go. There were fifty million gallons of woman explosives. I just set off the bomb.”

And the bomb she had set off had transformed Bay St. Lucy.

If not the entire country.

If not the entire world.

Still, though, flooded with journalists and cameras and reporters and protesters and demonstrators and Gay Rights advocates and Abortion Rights advocates and Environmental Protection advocates and Rock Music advocates and Rap Music advocates and Animal Protection Rights advocates and Tea Party advocates and Down With the Tea Party advocates and thousands and thousands and thousands of conscientious voters and good citizens and concerned men and women and just plain idiots—

––though flooded with all these idiots, Bay St. Lucy was still home.

The air felt of home as it moved around her, warm and sultry and salt-sticky—as she descended the ramp and put her shoes on the tarmac.

Nina Bannister, who had gone off to Washington D.C. and started a revolution, was back where she had come from.

All her friends were there to meet her, of course.

Margot had driven down from The Candles, and embraced her, and cried on the top of her head.

Alanna Delafosse, several inches shorter, cried on her cheek.

Jackson, several hundred pounds bigger, picked her up and looked at her and grinned and shook her a few times and set her gently on the earth, aware of how breakable she was.

Macy Cox embraced her as heartily as any of the others, and would have cried on her, but was still too happy in her marriage to be able to cry, even tears of happiness, and so just smiled and told her how proud she was, how proud the whole town was.

About fifty yards from the airplane, a small brass band from the high school began to play, and the crowd of fifty or so Bay St. Lucyans that had come to meet the plane attempted to sing:

CHEER CHEER CHEER

FOR THE WOMAN OF THE YEAR

(I TELL YOU)

CHEER CHEER CHEER

FOR THE WOMAN OF THE YEAR

...while waving signs showing Nina’s face and Laurencia’s face.

But this band could hardly be heard over the gigantic loud speakers––four of them that had been planted like massive refrigerators at twenty-five yard intervals along the side of the runway—which continued to channel Aretha, who was now bellowing her famous lyrics, asking for––no––demanding––respect...

…which she was, Nina found herself musing, almost certain to be granted.

All of the introductory formalities, the social fusion of the nation’s capital and Mississippi’s CUTE CRAFTS AND POTS capital, lasted for a little more than an hour.

But finally, it was done for at least a short time. The photographs were made; the brief statements to various newspapers were spoken; a million smiles were beamed out; the DC delegation, Laurencia chief among them, but several other Representatives and two Senators, plus various and sundry staffers—Dicken Proctor being one of them—were taken by limousines to the new high-rise Nina Bannister High School, where they ascended to the fourth floor and looked out the window of the principal’s office, down onto the floor of the now emptying stadium—then to the wharf area, where power boats were to whisk them out to a gigantic luxury vessel—provided, of course, by Gulf Coast Petroleum, where they were to be housed for the next two days.

And Nina was returned to her shack.

It had, of course, been cordoned off, to protect it from, in the words of Moon Rivard, “a slew of rubberneckers.”

But it was the same.

And, as Jackson Bennett eased his big black car to a stop and she felt the oyster shells of the driveway beneath her shoe soles, she exulted at the thought of walking up the familiar rickety staircase…

…which she did…

…and putting her key in the lock…

…which she did…

...and turning it, and hearing the familiar
click
…

...which she did…

…and pushing the door open…

…which she did.

And seeing her living room.

With the kitchen beyond, and beyond that, the deck, and beyond that, the magnificent Gulf of Mexico.

A smile from Jackson.

Then:

“I can’t tell you how proud we all are of you, Nina. But we’re also glad you’re ok. I don’t know how much you’re allowed to talk about it, but the story is that the nut who shot at you is dead.”

“Yes. It seems that way.”

“Who was he, Nina? Details are so sketchy…”

She shrugged:

“We don’t know a great deal, Jackson. He was a drug addict who somehow snapped. He apparently—at least according to his letters—thought he was hearing the voice of God, which was telling him that women were not supposed to be in power. Finally, he thought that voice was telling him that he should put an end to himself. So, he took a fatal drug overdose. He called me just before he died. I was the one who found the body.”

“My God.”

“One of the things that made the whole thing worse was that he looked like Thornbloom. Big guy, silver haired, blue eyes. Stockmeyer, who is head of the Secret Service, thinks that he may have played upon that fact to gain entrance to various offices. Somehow he had my telephone number. We may never know how he did that. At any rate, his old Chief of Staff, Dicken Proctor, actually saw him leaving a letter in my office. Poor Dicken thought he had seen a ghost.”

“It’s incredible.”

“The good thing now is, it’s over. We can think about tomorrow.”

“Yes, we can. The biggest Fourth of July in the history of this town. Or maybe the country. Have you been keeping up with the races?”

She shook her head.

“Not as closely as I would like. I knew pretty well how we stood until day before yesterday. But with all the trip planning…”

Jackson nodded:

“I understand. That’s why I brought a list. Thought you might like to see it.”

“I do. Where are we?”

“The names of thirty-seven new women candidates have been put on ballots across the country. Some are Democrats, some are Republicans, some have gotten on as third party––Lissie Party––candidates. All have been put there as a result of referenda, mostly spurred on by petition drives run by Lissie Movement agitators. It’s amazing. Nothing like this has ever happened. Ever.”