Fourth of July Creek

Pinkerton had met Pearl at a loggers’ swap meet in the Idaho woods. He was undercover, had been coming and going in the area for the past three months by the name of Joe Stacks. He’d done odd jobs—every man was a handyman up here—and lived in a cabin the ATF had bought just the other side of the Montana border in Boundary County, Idaho. He’d gone to the meetup with a swarthy dimwit by the name of Ruffin, a big-talking hyperactive conspiracy freak.

This is where he meets Pearl, a country roundup where the folks in the region trade stories and sell chain saws, rhubarb, and crafts made of pie tin and rope. There was nothing inherently political about the gathering, just rumors that so-and-so was Posse Comitatus, Truppe Schweigen. Or not. And among the people Ruffin introduced Stacks to was one Jeremiah Pearl. The real deal, Ruffin says. Tribulation-ready, Race War–ready. Set up to handle the National Guard, the Shit-Covered Fan, the feds, the unraveling of the social compact.

Pearl introduces the missus, the kids. Missus is rubber-gloved to the elbows stirring a pot of preserves over a campfire. Grins wanly, waves. A quiet, serious woman. Gorgeous kids, knees as ruddy as red apples. They sit arrayed around Pearl in the pickup bed like a kinder court. The baby boy in Pearl’s lap and little Paula and Ben right close, and Ruth and Esther sitting beside him and the oldest boy, Jacob, standing on the ground between where his father’s legs dangle off the tailgate. It was like Pearl drew some strength from the brood, the way they climbed on him, the way he goosed them.

Joe Stacks, Pearl says. That’s an interesting name. Asks is it a nickname.

Pinkerton says No, no it isn’t. Asks does Pearl want to see his driver’s license.

Pinkerton’s bosses want informants. The Truppe Schweigen did the synagogue job in Portland, blew the front wall and doors into kibble, killed three. Pinkerton is to run down every last lead, even though he knows Ruffin and Pearl aren’t involved with anything. Ruffin’s a dipshit, and Pearl, he’s got all those kids. It’s just obvious that he loves his family too much to get into that kind of trouble. But the ATF wants somebody inside, inside of something, anything. It’s a pissing contest anyway, the Department of Treasury vying with the FBI. The ATF wants somebody up fucking in there. Yesterfuckingday.

So six weeks later, after several informal visits in truck stops, Stacks, Ruffin, and Pearl meet in Ruffin’s truck in Sandpoint, Idaho. It’s cold and windy on the city beach, the gusts off Lake Pend Oreille buffeting Ruffin’s pickup. Ruffin’s shit-talking as usual. He’s gonna knock over the First Interstate branch in Boise. He’s gonna pick off the marshals when they come for him. Then he’s gonna find a nigger church and toss a Molotov cocktail into it.

Stacks mentions he’s got some friends in Seattle who could use some sawed-offs for a job or two. Double-barrel, preferably.

Stacks says he isn’t sure. Pinkerton can go three, but he doesn’t want to seem too eager.

I have to have three, Pearl says, sad as hell, like he’s having to ask Stacks for a set of kidneys. Pinkerton thinks maybe there’s something wrong with one of the kids. The guy doesn’t say a word for forty minutes of Ruffin’s shit-talking and then out of nowhere, How much, I have to get three.

The guy is just busted-ass broke, Pinkerton realizes. He asks Pearl to give him a few days. He’ll call.

I don’t have a phone, Pearl says. Call Ruffin. I need three and I gotta move quick if we’re gonna do it.

Pearl and Stacks start to meet up without Ruffin, because the deals run a lot shorter without him. Cash, shotguns, I’ll meet you in two weeks for more. Seven transactions total.

Once, Pearl muses how strange it is that he could get in trouble, how he could do time for sitting under a pine tree with a hacksaw and a couple of bird guns. Some kind of world, he says. This is the same occasion where he announces that he needs $350. He has to be careful, buying up all these guns. He has to drive farther and farther, gas money and everything cutting into his profits. Gas and money, he mutters. Shekels and oil the world over. And Ruffin has been bitching. Thought he should’ve been cut in on the deal, so now he and Pearl are on the outs.

Pearl looks sad. It’s like he already knows. For a minute there, Pinkerton thinks Pearl’s going to do something stupid. Pinkerton can feel the pistol in its holster against his calf, wonders can he get it out before Pearl does something stupid.

You’d be burned by now if I was, Stacks says, wedging a laugh into the air. I bet you’re the fed, you crafty fucker.

It’s always hard to tell exactly what Pearl is thinking behind that beard of his. Is he as world-weary as he looks. Is he ready to die already. Without his kids around, the guy’s like a lump of oatmeal, like something on the bottom of your shoe. He’s saying again he needs the $350. He just needs the money, the damn money.

The thing is, the ATF is done throwing money at Pearl. Pearl is over. Pinkerton’s supposed to be setting up other buys, moving up the chain. But there isn’t a chain to move up. There’s just this sad guy in the sticks who will go all the way to Miles City for a shotgun to chop. $350, and it’ll be worth it. The sum total of his prospects is what the ATF pays him to break federal law.

Stacks sighs, says he’s been meaning to talk to Pearl about this, that his partners are flush with shotguns. But does Pearl know where to get anything with a little more bang for the buck. Does Pearl have a line on anything like that.

No, he doesn’t have a line on anything like that. Lump of oatmeal. Shit on your shoe.

Weeks of no word. Pearl didn’t set up another meet and Ruffin’s not talking to Pearl and pretty soon Ruffin isn’t even talking to Stacks. His bosses decide Pinkerton’s been made. They’re going to relocate him to California. He did fine work, it’s just time to bag it.

He’s mucked out the cabin and packed everything (sleeping bag, pistols, cast-iron cookware) when Ruffin comes barreling up the road in his truck. Asks where Stacks is headed. Pinkerton thinks fast, says the owner of the cabin’s selling the place from under him. Fuckin asshole, Ruffin says. But you’re in luck, Ruffin says. I just leased some property, have a trailer already up on it and everything.

It’s a nice Airstream trailer, on the other side of the meadow from the Pearls’ house, abutting a stand of buckskin tamarack. Wild mushrooms and carpets of moss and bumblebees turning figure eights in the slashes of sun in the woods, as if they too are stupefied by the beauty of the place. It’s a slice of heaven, Pinkerton can see right away.

Ruffin racks out a couple nights with Stacks, and Pearl sloshes through the mucky meadow every evening, and they even drink a little beer together. Pearl looking over his shoulder up toward the house.

He says the old lady has the spyglasses on him. Hand to God, she’s the brains behind the whole operation.

There’s maybe a little rift there. Money worries and the stresses inherent to their worldview.

Ruffin says Pearl’s allowed a beer every once in a while. Especially now he’s got a job harrowing a large farm out near Three Forks and the money from the timber lease. Working puts food on the table, he can have a little beer now and again.

So Pearl is off on his harrowing gig in Three Forks. Pinkerton is whittling his time in the trailer, wondering what the hell to do with himself. How exactly to proceed. Watching the kids and the old lady. It’s like the kids have been told let him alone, taking the long way around the trailer when they go by with baskets, when they come back with baskets of huckleberries and mushrooms, with fish. He kind of wishes they wouldn’t. They’re nice enough folks, just trying to get by. But the woman is not neighborly. He sees her watching him from the house, but she doesn’t wave.

One night, he takes a walk. Full moon or nearly so. It’s warm and clear and he hikes up the hill and takes in the view from the cliff overlooking the place. He’s sitting on the edge and when he gets up to leave sets a few rocks tumbling over, cracking the quiet. When he climbs down, he’s nearly blinded by a powerful jacklight.

She traipses away to the house, tells the kids who must be sentried there to go on in, get back to bed.

In a few days, Ruffin returns, in high psychotic spirits as usual. He’s brought a used chain saw and a splitter and also a few sawhorses for some undisclosed project.

The fuck for. I have bills, you know. I need this firewood money to get liquid. Cover my nut for winter, we get cracking.

Ruffin asks what the hell did Stacks think he was up here to do? Drink beer and live free? This is how Stacks is gonna cover his rent on the Airstream.

That next morning, Ruffin’s gone and Stacks goes to work. He gets after the deadfall, but it’s wet through and some of it downright mucky inside, all the rain they’ve been having. For about a day and a half, he’s clearing out the useless wet wood and then he starts the standing tamarack. He’s cutting rounds when he feels someone near. Pearl’s old lady yelling at him from ten feet away. He kills the chain saw.

She’s holding one cowboy boot that came off in the meadow and is shaking the mud out of it.

That’s not what he said. I was sitting right here with your husband when he and Bob were talking—

Look, Bob said for me to do it to pay my rent. He comes back and sees I haven’t done it. . . .

She’s already turned around and started back up to the house. Pinkerton has no idea what that means, should he stop or not. She just goes.

It’s about suppertime anyway. He eats a can of chili and observes the children running around the house and then going in for dinner. There’s good couple hours of light left. He figures he’ll get after it again. The tree is already down. Might as well cut the rounds. Maybe talk to her tomorrow. Maybe see about finding Ruffin and squaring all this with him. Hell, the Pearls can have the firewood for their winter. It’s just one log.

So he’s got a barrowful of rounds and is dumping them on the high ground near the trailer for splitting. Something claps him on the eardrum real good. Sarah Pearl’s open palm. She swings again. He catches her arm and she flings the other one, and he pushes her over a round into a spot of muck, and then she’s up again, and he’s saying he’s sorry, he didn’t mean to push her, and he’s trying to stammer out an explanation—

He’s tumbled against the trailer, sliding along the siding. Everything keeling. He rights himself as the trailer window just over his head shatters. Something rattles around the countertops inside. He looks up as something nails him in the shoulder. It was the boy, throwing rocks. The eldest. Jacob. The other boy trudging with difficulty through the meadow, and Sarah Pearl, she ain’t calling off her son, and Pinkerton doesn’t know what to say or do. And does she know this. Does she know he won’t hurt the boy.

Of course she doesn’t. Or the bitch is crazy, doesn’t care what happens to her kids.

He doesn’t hear what he says until he sees Sarah and the boys hear him, their mouths and eyes gape wide: I’m going in my trailer for my goddamn gun.

Sarah Pearl runs for the house like he’d drawn down on them already. He isn’t even sure if his pistol is in the trailer or down at the drive in his truck with half of his other things, but she tears off through the meadow with her boys like he’s firing at them.

But Pinkerton, he’s jammed up. He feels like he must stay, must wait until Pearl gets back, and make everything okay. Fuck the case. If he just sticks out this rough patch, he can make it square with Pearl.

Pinkerton steps inside the trailer. He’s in there a minute, then a while, then it’s sunset, then it’s dark and there are no lights on at the house. Now leaving seems impossible. Fact is, he’s afraid to go outside. If he’s honest with himself. Are they watching him. Is she watching him. Are they outside right now. He can’t hear a thing. Just the owl and the stream and the sighing trees. The moths kissing the screen. He locks the door and closes the curtains. Finds his pistol in his bag and beds down with it. He’ll go in the morning.

His sleep is so light it’s some smallness of sleep, some rumor of sleep.

He can hear the boy—somehow the footfall sounds like a boy coming through the grass and nettles at the backside of the trailer. Pinkerton moves just as the glass crashes and he’s crouched behind the counter as it rains down. He fires out the window, up into the sky from his position on the floor in the glass. There’s a moment in the wake of the shot where all he hears is the ring and the fade of it. There’s a stone on the floor. One of the kids is throwing rocks. Again.

The metal teapot caroms off the stove to the floor and pisses the carpet. The report of the gun that Sarah or one of the children shoots echoes off the mountains. Kids playing little Indians on the high ground. He thinks of carbines and face paint and warbonnets.

Another bullet hole appears in the wall near the ceiling. He can see a single night star just off center in it.

He grabs the jacklight off the counter and flips it on. He leaps out the front door and holding it level with his pistol, sweeps the nearby area for anyone and then around the meadow. Nobody. He fires in the air and throws the light as hard as he can in the direction opposite the one he’s running—to the truck—as gunfire erupts from the house. He dives in and starts the pickup and bounds across the meadow in pitch-black. Trees rear up and he hits the brakes and then pulls on the lights and turns and guns the engine spitting mud. He still gets turned around and nearly high-centered on the zigzag out but then, his heart racing, he finally bounds through the brush onto the dirt road.

Pinkerton touched crumbs of piecrust onto his finger and licked them off and burped silently into his fist. It was night now and had taken him an hour to eat the slice of pie and tell the story.

“No. Of course not. I was trying to avoid anyone getting hurt. That’s why we arrested everybody. Ruffin was bound to go up and catch hell for what happened with me—”

“Pearl and his wife, yes.” Pinkerton looked at his hands a moment. “I was still thinking that if they just gave us something, just a name, I could make it all go away.”

“Took a few weeks, but they eventually came down the mountain to get supplies.”

“A couple agents pretended to be broke down on the side of the road when Pearl and his wife were driving into town together.”

“Look, the shotguns were small fry. The FBI had never even heard of him. And we all at the ATF knew the only thing he’d possibly be good for was getting us near some real bad guys.”

“After everything that happened, you really thought he’d just turn informant?”

“When we got them to Spokane, we laid out the charges and what they could do to make them go away.” Pinkerton palmed the table, as though he were spreading relevant documents for Pete to see. “Most people take the deal. But they wouldn’t play ball. They posted bail and blew off their lawyer and their court date. They didn’t understand what a big deal this wasn’t, how easy it would’ve been—”

“Are you deaf? These are federal charges. The US Marshals are serving the bench warrant. And it’s not like Pearl is standing down. Right after this, he sent a letter threatening the president. A month before the president was shot. And dozens more threatening letters. Governors. The Fed chairman. The chief justice of the Supreme Court. Ranting about currency, and then these coins start showing up? Shit, Snow. You got the Secret Service involved now, as agents of the Treasury and as security for the president. Even if he wanted to, Pearl can’t get off the radar.”

Pinkerton tore his napkin in half, seemed amused that he’d done so, and set it on his plate.

“He gave you all those coins. To distribute, right? He trusts you that much.”

“Yes, she ran away. The coins were just . . . there in my car. I dropped some in the machines for the hell of it. Or I don’t know why.”

“But you see what’s coming, right? You see how bad this can all turn out.”

“I’ve only been with the middle boy. Benjamin. I haven’t even seen the wife or the other children,” Pete said.

“Is there a single thing that’s normal about this? Pearl already thinks the whole government is one huge conspiracy to fuck him over. And how’s that not what we’re doing right now? You want me to help you and the US Marshals and Secret Service? Christ, can we really call him paranoid at this point?”

“He’s around the fucking bend,” Pinkerton said. “Hiding up in those mountains—”

“Who wouldn’t be? You put him up to committing a federal crime? You pretend to be his friend and then you arrest him and threaten him with prison if he doesn’t inform on guys he doesn’t even know?”

“Look, I’ll be the first to admit that this has gotten out of hand. I’m trying to avoid trouble—”

“My whole job is about helping people avoid trouble. That’s what I was trying to do today. Keep somebody out of trouble. And after what’s happened to me, it’s pretty easy to see Pearl’s side of things.” Pete zipped his jacket. “So here’s a novel fucking idea: drop it. Leave him the hell alone.”

Pete threw wide his arms, and Pinkerton looked around the restaurant at the people who had ceased eating, who were now watching the two of them.

“If you’re gonna arrest me and charge me with something, then let’s go back to that little makeshift jail of yours and I’ll wait for my lawyer. In fact, I can’t wait to get in front of a Rimrock County jury.”

Then Pete announced to the room that the man sitting there was an ATF agent named Jim Pinkerton who had agreed to let him go. Pete said he just wanted to have witnesses that he wasn’t being charged with anything.

When he got outside it was full dark and he was a few moments in the parking lot looking for a car that was probably still in front of Debbie’s house in Tenmile if it hadn’t been towed to God knows where.

They bummed rides to places where they stayed. They bunked with a guy named Ira in Tacoma who tried to feel Rose up and she let him because she’d had a lot to drink, but then didn’t let him when she was tired and crawled into the blankets next to Pomeroy and Yolanda. When it didn’t rain, they slept in a tent that Pomeroy kept in another bus station locker with his outdoor gear.

Nickels a day. Potatoes they cooked over small fires in Viretta Park that they were careful could not be seen from the street. They got by by being on the move at dusk and tucking into some spot or other that Pomeroy knew about, someplace where he had secreted a blanket and some cans in a plastic sack. A condemned apartment in Medina, a bridge in Clyde Hill, an overpass on Mercer Island. They got by on Pike Street simply sitting in front of a hat.

Dine-and-dashing. They took turns: Yo would eat and then break for it and, if necessary, Pomeroy would obstruct the cashier charging out after her.

It was a lucky thing, eventually. She was assigned a social worker, a guy named Norman Butler who wore a porkpie hat and smoked thin cigars. Because she’d turned seventeen, she was eligible for a program that got her an apartment. Pomeroy was reluctant, but when he found out they could get a bigger place if he signed up too, he did. Norman told them they’d have to take classes for job training. They said, yeah yeah, sure thing, Normal. They called him Normal to his face.

Rose cried over it. They were leaving her out. She was nearly frantic when they didn’t let her help move their few things in case the social worker came by. Normal wouldn’t understand their arrangement, Pomeroy and two gals. They were giving Rose the heave-ho.

She walked to a crowded diner downtown and read and reread the menu at the counter until one of the booths emptied. Then she slipped the tip into her palm and walked to another diner. Looking over her shoulder the whole way. She was near Pike and could see some kids she knew and Kenny and the girls who were getting into cars. Dates, they called them. At first she thought all they did was really go on dates. To the movies. What a sucker she was, what a country mouse.

For a minute, but then an old guy with horn-rimmed glasses pulled a girl out of his Pontiac, and she was yelling and carrying on. Kenny and some of the street kids coming over. At the sight of Kenny, the man jumped into his car and tore off. The girl shrieking and throwing her things, her compact, her hairbrush. A cop pulled up. The crowd melted.

She went to the diner and wondered what to do until dark getting the shakes on the thirty-five-cent coffee. The neon and night sounds downright terrifying now. Catcalls and wolf whistles and the like. Tires on the road. She looked over the counter and into the kitchen. The cook at his regular job. A proper address. A Social Security number. She didn’t have any of those things. She didn’t even know how to do the stuff a waitress does. How to wash dishes even.

Then she spotted Pomeroy. He was in the door, scanning the room. He was wet with rain mist and his black hair shone. He looked on her like a relieved, disappointed father and that corkscrewed into her heart like the feeling of being loved. She stood. She ran to him and began to hug him, but he wrenched her around by the arm and she cried out. People watched, people did nothing.

Where the fuck you go? He was dragging her out of the place. Where you been? Yo and I been fuckin worried. . . .

He was rough with her all the way to the bus stop, but when they got on, he put his arm around her, and she fell into his chest and he petted her head and the sounds that came out of her were coos from before she could talk.

Did they heat chili in its can over the hot plate and pour it over hot dogs and drink Rainier beer? Did they put on the radio and hear the cartoon motorcycle purr of “Electric Avenue” for the very first time in their lives? Did Pomeroy make another beer run and return with a quarter of weed and Kenny and Dee? Did the girls brush their teeth with their fingers because Normal gave them toothpaste but forgot the brushes, and did they get in the dark with Kenny and Pomeroy and become an elegant harem, smoking from Kenny’s long brass pipe?

And the next day it was like winter in August, the radiators knocking throughout the building, the hallways showing your breath and sounding your steps. The second-floor communal bathroom was wet in the mornings, and a peppered rime of stubble coated the sink that was the only evidence of other boarders. But she felt good, like a squatter, like they were getting away with something, squatting over the pissy, splattered toilet seat to pee and shuffling down the hall in Pomeroy’s heavy duster and back into bed with him and Yo.

And Rose and Pomeroy would be quiet all week, except to play checkers with pennies and bits of paper or to have a quick fuck in the bed. She took up smoking in earnest, and Pomeroy sent her down for Camels from the machine in the lobby. A Hmong man about the size of her and four times her age made change from behind the front desk, and eyed her with suspicion, but didn’t say anything.

You send me out for everything and I’m not supposed to be here, she said, tossing the cigarettes onto his bare chest.

He didn’t come over, and instead went and sat at the kitchen table. She straddled his lap and ran her hands through his hair. He leaned back and she felt perfectly adult. She lit a cigarette and gave it to him.

Was it hard for him because he’d been falling in love with her? Had all this time without Yo brought them close, sharing cereal from the same bowl and just smiling at one another across the Formica table? Did he need to cut the cord? Not that she had anywhere else better to go, but did she stay because she thought he was falling in love? Real love and not like Cheatham’s love? Was she actually acquainted with his heart in a way that he himself was not?

What he did was, he left. Three days. She ate what was in the pantry and stared at the door and cried and expected any minute the Hmong man would come and kick her out onto the street.

Rose asked and Pom told her. He gave her some money, and sent her out for hair dye.

TWENTY-SIX