John’s grandma had always smelled of gin and vaginal infection. He remembered crawling onto her lap as a child, careful not to spill her drink, getting a big whiff and then gagging like he’d swallowed a mouthful of vinegar. The scent of heredity. As quickly as he could, he scrambled away from her to hide. From the closet in his bedroom, he could hear her calling to him, “What’s the matter, John? Come back to Grandma, my love.”
As John awoke, that same smell bit at him, producing memories of holiday dinners, family squabbles, and the first time he had oral sex. Noon sun slashed at his eyes. He realized he was outside on what must be the porch of Grandma’s shack, crumpled into a wicker love seat. He shoved his fists into his eyes and rubbed them as two 20-foot squirrels flanking his position came into focus, wearing the same carved expression he had modeled on Grandma’s lap. His stomach surged.
After going for the Big Spit, John felt ready to face the squirrels. He imagined how pitiful he must appear to them, red-eyed, unshaven, encrusted in what he hoped was his own vomit. The squirrels were definitely frowning. But aside from their totemic silence, there wasn’t much else in the front yard of his new domicile. Grandma’s cabin was situated in the middle of a hill, trees rising left and right, madrone, redwood, fir, pine, land sloping ahead of him toward a wire fence covered with brambles of blackberry bushes, then dropping drastically to give him a view of the valley; across to the east were hills of scrub oak; a receding fog bank covered the north; to the south his sight line was obstructed by forest. Down in the flat, he saw an airstrip, a field of horses, a school, a cluster of houses, and part of a small town. Boonville.
His head was pounding. But all things considered, he thought, it wasn’t such a bad thing to wallow in your excrement—a certain womblike quality—the way he had felt as a boy discovering he had wet his bed, warm and safe, as long as the morning air didn’t get between him and the pee-soaked sheets. But then he moved.
Lifting from the love seat, pain shot through his body, tearing at joints and nerve endings, screaming for him to sit back down. Even his hair hurt. He limped to the shack’s front door, which he found to be locked. Fuckup number one, he had failed to get the keys from Grandma’s friend Pensive Prairie Sunset. He tried a Bruce Lee entrance, a flurry of kicks and karate chops to the midsection of the door, yelling, “Why, why, why!” But his kung fu was no good here. The outburst made him feel nauseated. He tried another approach, through cracked lips pleading, “Open sesame.” Both strategies failing, he sent Plan C into action, the standard “find an open window.”
Circling the cabin, John saw Grandma’s shack had five windows, one each in the bedroom and kitchen, two curtained picture windows in the living room, and one small screen window partially open in the bathroom that he could squeeze through if he could find something to stand on. He also discovered Grandma’s Datsun was parked behind the cabin, smashed and missing parts; gone were the headlights, hub caps, hood, bumper, grille. To compensate for their loss, a mountain of steel had been stacked on the roof. Coming closer, he realized the sheets of metal were road signs, some still attached to their posts.
“Hmm,” he said, calmed by the alcohol still flooding his bloodstream. “This, I don’t remember.”
He tried to open the Datsun’s door, but it was locked. All doors were locked, including the trunk, while his possessions remained where he had put them in the backseat. He spied the keys dangling from the ignition and an empty whiskey bottle in the passenger’s seat.
Dilemm-o-rama, John thought, staggering off in the direction of a rock planted at the base of a shrub. He dug the stone from the dirt with his fingers. Unearthed and in his hands, it felt as heavy as a mountain. Wasn’t there a parable about burden, involving a boulder, a saint, and a bottomless chalice? Or was that the beginning of a dirty joke? Unable to distinguish Bible stories from borscht-belt humor, John carried the stone to the Datsun and hurled it through the driver’s side window.
The car started on the first try. He steered it to the cabin’s bathroom wall, set the brake, then climbed on top of the car roof and road signs, reading the warning beneath his splattered shoes, “Deaf Child Near,” and tore away the window screen. He slid open the window and hopped into the opening. There was a moment of precarious equilibrium in which John was balanced half in and half out of the bathroom before he tipped the scale with a wriggle, dropping to the floor on his head.
He was tempted to lie there on the linoleum, let the day go by, but a miniature squirrel sculpture he had knocked off the window sill glowered at him. He got to his feet and flicked on the light switch. They were everywhere, bathtub, toilet tank, medicine chest, hallway, kitchen, living room, coffee table, bookshelves, bureau, nightstand, various widths and heights, well over a thousand, all with a look of sour disapproval. Squirrels, squirrels, squirrels. John suppressed a scream, hurrying to open the rest of the cabin windows, hoping fresh air might change the squirrels’ expression, or more accurately, his own.
Then he piled his belongings from the Datsun into the center of the living room, sweating 120 proof and flaking hardened gastric juices. He didn’t feel all there. Or maybe he was “all there,” but with more of himself on the outside than he was used to. He looked through his luggage for a towel to take a shower, deciding that the best thing about being hung over was the totality of effort it took to conquer simple tasks. Moving at half-speed, there wasn’t enough energy to expand your focus beyond survival, causing you to disregard those obstacles that persuaded you to get swacked in the first place. It was the after-effects of alcohol that helped more than intoxication; John had wanted to get back to basics, to separate the neurotic from the necessary, and now he could accomplish that goal, wash, unpack, try not to vomit, and feel like he had put in a full day.
In the bathroom, the water trickling from the shower head was brown and smelled of sulfur. Enamel had been eaten away in spots from the tub’s bottom. Rust stains circled the drain. The sliver of soap in the soap dish was an unnatural color. It took a while for the water to get hot. When John finally entered the spray, it had the effect of smelling salts. Nose espresso, he thought, trying to convince himself that tourists paid top dollar for this kind of free-flowing mud bath.
Toweling off, he negotiated all odors with a splash of cologne Christina had given him. John didn’t like cologne, believing natural scents were sexier. He thought he had left it behind, taking only his toothbrush, travel toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, comb, and a few hotel freebies of shampoo and conditioner from their bathroom. Somehow the cologne had made the trip. Today, it was a welcomed accessory. He wished he had snared some of Christina’s other products accidentally-on-purpose, a moisturizer, an exfolient, shaving rasage. He wouldn’t know where to buy some of that stuff. You might have to speak French to get it. They weren’t going to stock it in Boonville.
John dressed, and after bagging his former clothes to be washed or thrown out later, he felt ready to settle into his new home. Someone, presumably Pensive Prairie Sunset, had already swept and vacuumed, mopped and dusted. There were no major cobwebs or ghost turds. The coffee table glistened with a wet sheen. The trash can beneath the sink had been lined with a new bag. The refrigerator was clean. John checked the cupboards, satisfied with Grandma’s supply of pots, pans, glassware, plates, and utensils. The telephone was dead. He would have to get it connected. In the bedroom, he stuffed his socks, underwear, T-shirts, and sweats into the chest of drawers, hanging his good pants, ties, and dress shirts in the closet. He made a pile of Grandma’s clothes for the Goodwill. When he realized there was no cable, he stuck the TV in the closet as well, finding a shotgun and three boxes of shells sitting in the corner. He remembered the rumor that Grandma had shot someone. He left the gun and ammunition alone, wondering what the real story was and why Grandma felt she had needed a gun.
Feeling motivated, he decided to make a general upgrade of aesthetics. With a whisk of his arm, he cleared a chessboard’s worth of squirrel sculptures from the coffee table in the living room. Mud-glazed ceramic forms joined the squirrels in empty fruit crates for storage. There were too many cushions on the couch. He cut the number in half. He took decorative baskets, flowers, and feathers off the walls. He let hang a Georgia O’Keeffe print of an aroused lily and a photograph of Grandma as a girl, staring into the camera like a gunfighter. A painting of a seascape done on cardboard with glue and sand crumbled in his hands when he tried to center it. There was a rusted wheelbarrow full of broken glass standing near the front door as if someone had intended to dump the shards onto the living room floor as a prank. John decided it was sculpture. Instead of rolling it outside, he moved it closer to the front window so it could catch the light. Lastly, he placed a picture of Christina on the nightstand near his bed.
Just a bit of torture, he told himself. Just a bit of home.
That done, John shut the windows and looked for a newspaper to start a fire in the woodburning stove that stood on bricks in the corner of the living room. It had never been cold enough in Miami to start an actual fire. People didn’t have central heating there, let alone fireplaces. Children didn’t go through a pyro stage in Florida because it was so hot. There was only air conditioning. John’s nose twitched.
Not finding any newspaper, he turned to the bookshelves. Except for Grandma’s copy of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, most of it looked like metaphysics, stuff he could torch without much moral conflict. He selected a book by John White Eagle Free Soul, a discourse on inner peace through intuitive strength. Where did they get their names? What was Free Soul supposed to be? Irish? And White Eagle? He must have picked that up in the seventies when everybody was claiming to be half Cherokee or part Seminole. If they were going to change their names, those authors should be forced to name themselves Horseshit or Asshole, he thought, and then number themselves off like Muslims: Horseshit no. 1, Asshole no. 56.
Another book of poetry caught John’s eye, Puppies Make a Porch More Cute by Margaret Washington. He knew she lived in the area and Grandma had belonged to her Radical Petunia Arts Community. He also knew the film based on her book Cecilia was touted as an important feminist statement. After seeing it, John had wanted his money back and two hours of his life returned. Christina had cried. The theater was thick with Kleenex. Leaving the cineplex, John saw a line of moviegoers wrapping around the block, waiting for their turn to weep. He didn’t want to ruin Christina’s experience, so he said nothing on the ride home. But his silence revealed to her that he had not been moved. She accused him of insensitivity. He was going to tell her that he cried every time he saw Dumbo, but she switched on the radio and turned away from him. They didn’t have sex for a month.
John opened Puppies Make a Porch More Cute to see it had been inscribed: “Ruth, Remember in order to give birth you have to experience labor pains, Peace and love, Margaret Washington.”
Flipping pages, John read a poem entitled “All White Men Are Evil Rapists.”
Our foremothers cooked and cleaned and smiled
as they stirred the pots that fed us all,
sweat slipping down beautiful black skin
while being repeatedly abused,
though always standing strong.
But if the world were perfect,
we would sit in a green field holding hands;
a calm constructive conversation,
even the cows would join in.
But no white men,
because all white men are evil rapists.
John tore that page out first, feeling it crumple in his hand before he tossed it into the stove. Without reading another sentence, the rest of the book followed. He threw on a dozen squirrel sculptures for kindling, a large one for a log. He lit the fire with a foot-long match, feeling the heat on his face. Lying down on the carpet, he tried not to think about Grandma or Margaret Washington, instead concentrating on the silence that surrounded the crackling flames.
He had only experienced quiet like this on mornings when Christina jogged. Not knowing what to do, he usually fell back to sleep, reawakening to the sound of her shower, a Billy Joel cassette, the steaming gurgle of the coffeemaker. He had been reared on stimulus and distraction; introspection had not been encouraged as a pastime. Silence was as forbidden as masturbation. As a boy, John watched children’s shows where men in animal costumes introduced cartoons, lusted after Girl Scouts, and ran around, yelling, “Hold that bus!” In high school, he studied while Meatloaf screamed and Frampton came alive at 200 watts per channel. College was the drone of the campus radio station and students singing the theme to “The Love Boat” outside his door. Even in bed with Christina, Johnny or Dave delivered their late night monologues with the sound of the city as background, boom boxes, screeching tires, stray gunfire. Never silence.
John resisted the urge to sleep, pondering instead the unfinished business he had to complete before he would feel established in his new residence. First, he had to call Christina and let his friends and parents know he had arrived. He still needed to get the keys from Pensive Prairie Sunset so he could lock the cabin. He had to buy groceries, do laundry, get rid of those road signs. Wine tasting was out of the question for a few days, but he could go to the coast, explore the area, write postcards, read that biography on Jim Jones. He also wanted to talk to that blue-eyed Sarah.
Enough quiet time.
Outside, he shoved the signs off the roof of the Datsun. Taking the helm of the battered vehicle, he wound down the hill toward town, his stomach protesting at each turn. He reached for the whiskey bottle in the passenger seat, running it along the edges of the broken driver’s side window, eliminating the remaining glass fragments. Unsullied air blew against his face. The drive straightened. To his right, he saw a red house on a knoll and the field of horses he had spotted from Grandma’s cabin. The tiny airstrip and the Anderson Valley Junior/Senior High School were on his left, then basketball courts, a pair of strange geodesic domes, a “Home of the Panthers” sign, a creek bridge, a stop sign, and Highway 128. The crossroads.
John looked both ways, letting his sight settle for a moment on the asphalt where he had blacked out. A truck trailing a load of grapes roared past followed by a camper, a logging truck, and a group of teenagers in a green AMC Hornet. Someone behind him honked. He clicked his turn signal and drove, wincing at the sight of the brick building next to the Pic ’N Pay. The Lodge’s beer sign winked its neon eye. He steered into the parking lot of the Boonville Hotel.
No alcohol this time, he told himself. Caffeine.
“If it ain’t the Squirrel Boy,” the bartender greeted him. “Rumor had it, you died.”
“The way I feel,” John said, the bartender’s voice booming between his ears, “maybe I did.”
“You don’t waste no time takin’ over where your grandma left off,” the bartender observed. “What can I get for you? Hair of one of the dogs that bit you?”
“You got cappuccino?” John asked, thinking how Christina would take care of him if he were home: coffee, grapefruit juice, ice pack, kisses.
“Guess you’re on the dissie stool,” the bartender grinned. “Cuppa cappa comin’ up.”
John didn’t know if he was on the dissie stool or not; his seat looked like all the other empty ones in the bar. He figured the phrase meant something like “on the wagon.” He didn’t bother asking the bartender to clarify the term. The energy he had generated at the cabin had disappeared.
When his coffee came, he held his face above the cup, letting the steam play against his skin. Cooling slightly, he bottomed it in two gulps. The milk had been scalded and the espresso was bitter. He asked for a refill of regular coffee, which he loaded with sugar. His insides began to warm. On this trip into town, he had noticed the Horn of Zeese, the truckstop from the news article he had read about Boontling. It was across from the hotel and not too far down the road. He thought about braving it for some eggs, but his stomach didn’t feel ready.
“You got a pay phone?” John asked the bartender.
“Cross the street at the market, ours is out of order,” the bartender said. “But if you’re callin’ your hornin’ buddies, none of ’em got phones. Billy Chuck don’t pay the bills, Sarah’s too far outta town, and the Kurts ain’t good with numbers.”
“I take it word travels fast anyway,” John said.
“What else do we got to do in this town?” the bartender replied. “Sounds like you had a night. You remember any of it?”
“Up to a point,” John answered.
“Which one?” the bartender asked
“How many were there?” John replied.
“I heard you were higher ’n Dwight’s flagpole,” the bartender said. “Laid out in the road with the Kurts and Billy Chuck, sniffin’ after that hippie girl’s yeast-powder biscuit when I told you she was trouble.”
“Can I ask you a question?” John said, uncertain if he wanted to know the answer or if he would be able to translate the bartender’s reply into Basic English. “How did my car get wrecked? And how did I get home?”
“That’s two questions,” the bartender told him, then inquired if John’s car had collected any road signs.
Not wanting to admit guilt, John took a sip of his coffee. Smiling, the bartender informed him that he was now an eco-terrorist, a soldier in Judy Bari’s army. John had never heard of Judy Bari and was even less enthusiastic about being linked to the word “eco-terrorist,” thinking it sounded worse than “dissie stool.”
“Those hippie girls are environmentalists,” the bartender explained. “For kicks they hunt road signs. They think they’re ugly and bring the wrong kind of business to the valley. But that ain’t all they do. You weren’t at any lumber sites or LP land, were you?”
“I don’t think so,” John answered, rummaging through his short-term memory.
“Good, ’cause they’re also monkeywrenchers,” the bartender said.
“Do monkeywrenchers and eco-terrorists sniff yeast-powder biscuits?” John asked, letting the bartender know he wasn’t following him.
“Ain’t you heard of Earth First!?” the bartender said, surprised. “Protesters spikin’ redwoods and sabotagin’ lumber equipment, savin’ old growth and the spotted owl? Ain’t you never read The Lorax? Don’t you watch ‘Sixty Minutes’?”
John had read The Lorax, but he didn’t know how the children’s story applied to the topic at hand. But he didn’t watch “Sixty Minutes” anymore; Andy Rooney annoyed him and Diane Sawyer was at the top of his list, with new-entry Margaret Washington, as one of the top ten women he would hate to be stuck in an elevator with. All that smug nodding, the person interviewed forced to respond to questions whose answers were later edited into whatever slant the network thought would earn better ratings. John used to fill his quota of Orwellian hate for the week by tuning in, but he saw a segment they did on the poultry industry and to this day couldn’t eat chicken. He figured if he watched long enough, he would develop the same reaction to all his favorite foods.
“I try to miss it,” John admitted.
“Earth First! is big up here,” the bartender explained. “I’m for the trees, but I sympathize with the loggers; like the steel workers, they’re losin’ their industry to bigger profits made elsewhere, mostly Mexico and Japan. But in a few years there ain’t gonna be any trees or jobs left. Everybody loses. I ain’t gonna climb up on a soapbox though.”
“I appreciate that,” John said, then added. “Do you know how I got home?”
“Eee tah, Squirrel Boy, invite me out with you next time, then maybe I’ll know.” The bartender extended his hand across the bar. “Folks call me Hap.”
“What’s your real name?” John inquired, shaking his hand.
“Hap,” the bartender said. “That’s why folks call me Hap.”
“Nice to meet you, Hap,” John said, unsure whether he was being made a fool of. “You have a strange way of talking. Is that the local language I heard about?”
“I’m a kimmie can harp Boont,” Hap said, proudly. “But lemme tell you one thing before you go. If I heard you was with that Sarah, you can bet her ex did too. Keep your eyes peeled. Leek bee’n. Get me?”
“Leek bee’n,” John said, understanding Hap was telling him to watch his ass.
He paid for the coffee and thanked Hap again. In the parking lot, two kids with skateboards were evaluating the damage to the Datsun, one saying to the other, “Dude, he’s totally foiled.” The other, seeing John approach, observed, “He’s the poster child for hating it.” John looked at his car, the loser in a demolition derby. With a wave of his hand, the first kid said, “Adios, Mr. Morose,” then both teens scooted off down the center of the highway, doing a few tricks as they rolled away.
John drove to the pay phone at the Anderson Valley Market. The telephone booth had a sign above it, “Bucky Walter.” John wondered if the booth had been memorialized for some local motor mouth or if it was independently owed. Maybe it was more Boontling. He’d ask Hap about it sometime he didn’t want a straight answer.
John searched his pockets for change. Depositing a quarter in the telephone, he remembered when the cost was a dime.
“Hello,” he said, into the receiver.
“Peace and love,” a voice answered.
“Could I speak to Pensive Prairie Sunset?” John said.
“I am she and she is me,” the voice replied.
“This is John Gibson,” he identified himself against his better judgment, thinking he shouldn’t get involved with anyone named Pensive Prairie Sunset who spoke in Beatles lyrics. “You left my grandmother’s car for me at the San Francisco airport.”
“How are you?” Pensive cut in. “Did you have a safe trip? I hope you ordered a vegetarian or low sodium meal for the flight. You can suffer severe autointoxication from just one in-flight meal, especially when you combine it with that terrible recycled airplane air. Last time I flew, I had to fast for a week after I ate the apple pancakes on a red-eye to Cleveland.”
“I’m in Boonville,” John said.
“Fantastic,” Pensive replied, no pauses or pitch change in her voice, coming at you like the flat groan of a Ray Manzarek keyboard solo. “We must be doing O.K. then.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I called to get the keys to my grandma’s cabin.”
“Where are you calling from?” Pensive asked.
“A pay phone that says ‘Bucky Walter’ outside the Anderson Valley Market,” John said.
“That means telephone,” the woman informed him. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Click. Dial tone.
Some unwanted force was now bearing down on John like in a 1970s disaster film: Airport, Earthquake, Towering Inferno, Billy Jack. There was nothing he could do. He dialed zero, trying to place a collect call to Christina, but the line was busy. 911 seemed extreme.
Stepping from the pay phone, he peered into the Anderson Valley Market past a stand of magazines and romance novels. John’s eye caught the headline of the local paper: “Congressman Calls Coasters ‘Hippie Potheads.’” The cashier was counting out change for a man with a nylon Bush Hog hat. A woman dragged a little girl whose face was smeared with chocolate from the store, screaming and kicking. Dogs barked from the back of a truck. The woman stopped to swat the girl, but the girl broke loose from her grip and darted toward the truck with the dogs. “I want fudge!” the girl howled. The woman looked on the verge of violence. Nearby, a group of Mexicans in cowboy hats conversed in Spanish, their accents sounding different to John than the Cubans in Miami. They weren’t wearing guayberas either or playing dominoes. Peterbilts loaded with logs whizzed past, diesels roaring, chrome nude girl silhouette mud flaps. The man with the Bush Hog hat walked past the Mexicans and joined the woman and girl at the truck with the dogs. With a voice offering no room for argument, he told them both to get into the truck, the girl wasn’t getting any more fudge until after lunch.
“When’s lunch?” the girl asked, swiftly obedient.
“When your mama makes it,” the man said, petting the dogs and looking without affection at his wife. “Sometime before dinner.”
“We’ll eat when we get home,” the woman said. “Fish sticks and chili.”
For the sake of his stomach, John tried to put the woman’s lunch menu out of his mind. But what time was it? He checked his watch, black and silver, with flecks of green fluorescence. Waterproof up to two hundred feet. “In case you take it snorkeling,” he remembered Christina had said, before he could see what it was he had unwrapped. He kissed her, setting the watch aside, and they rolled into wrapping paper. Tinsel reflected bulbs of red and green. Pine needles fell into her hair. She kissed his hairless chest. His hands pushed at soft cotton and lacy underthings. Tiny lights pulsed. He felt the curve of her thighs, her firm buttocks, and the full of her weight came down to swallow him. His body stilled in paralytic ecstasy. She pressed wet lips to his, and whispered, “Merry Christmas.”
1:12 p.m.
He had been gone less than two days and he couldn’t quite remember why he had left. The air-conditioned nightmare. His eyes blurred the parking lot of cars and high-riding trucks parked parallel to the store, three rows wide. Some were penned in and couldn’t leave until other drivers came out of the store and moved their vehicles first. The Datsun was one of the trapped cars.
“Kinda makes you wonder,” a voice said. “Maybe aliens really did kill Kennedy.”
John turned to see a man sitting on a picnic table in front of the market. His face was serious, almost grim, like he had lost something important but couldn’t remember what it was. The man spit a glob of tobacco.
“I’m sorry,” John apologized. “Did you say aliens assassinated Kennedy? John F. Kennedy?”
“Haven’t you seen the videotape?” the man asked.
John shook his head, half because he hadn’t seen the tape, half because he couldn’t believe he was entering this conversation.
“Where have you been?” the man said. “I saw that video six months ago. It wasn’t really the aliens, it was the show-fer. They slowed that Zapruder film down and you seen the driver plug the president like a fish in a barrel. Blowed his head clean off. That’s why Jackie O was crawlin’ out the back. She seen it was the driver. The same people coverin’ up the UFOs. They had the real E.T. and nobody knew it, except government agents, and when he died they destroyed the body. They got more, but their fingers don’t light up. It’s complicated and linked to drugs and patterns in cornfields and LBJ not runnin’ for a second term. And Incas. But it’s really this secret government run with aliens. That’s why I wonder if it wasn’t aliens killed Kennedy. It would explain the ‘magic bullet.’ You know aliens got ammunition like that.”
John tried to grasp the concept of a secret government of drug-selling aliens assassinating President Kennedy and denying President Johnson a second term in office.
“Kennedy sure is dead,” he offered.
“Yep,” the man said, spitting. “There’s a lot we don’t know about. Like Einstein said, ‘Anything’s possible.’”
“Was that Einstein?” John asked.
“I watch out for ’em,” the man answered. “Like you say, Kennedy sure is dead.”
“No doubt about that,” John replied, entering the market and leaving the man outside to worry about conspiracy-oriented extraterrestrials.
Scanning the shelves of the Anderson Valley Market, John noticed that whoever did the purchasing had gone heavy on beverages and sugar-coated cereals. A shopper told him if he wanted to buy more than Budweiser and Frosted Flakes, he should drive over the hill to Ukiah where they had several supermarkets, including an Albertson’s. John saw that the rear section, some one-third of the store, was dedicated to wine. He guided his cart back toward the front, searching hard for merchandise, having logged too much media time not to buy something. He could always be persuaded by packaging, cookies with a midget or an elf on the wrapper, a thirst quencher, a quick-and-easy, light-and-tasty, new-and-improved, thirty-percent-more, half-the-calories, cholesterol-free taste treat. John dutifully filled his cart.
At the checkout there was a wrinkled woman in a green smock manipulating an ancient cash register. Her hair had the pink glow of a home-brewed dye job. Her eyes peered through bifocals at John’s pile of groceries.
“Having a party?” she asked.
“No,” John answered, riding the consumer high. “It’s all for me.”
“Lotta food there,” the woman observed, bagging the supplies.
“I get hungry,” John replied. “Three times a day, at least.”
“You ain’t the Squirrel Lady’s grandson, are ya?” the woman squinted over the top of her glasses.
“Yes, I am,” John admitted.
“Ain’t that somethin’?” the woman said, like someone had told her that with a good pot of beans, you never added bacon. “Even the devil’s got relatives, I suppose.”
“That’s right,” John said, trying to be agreeable, but wondering what the people here had expected. He was Edna Gibson’s grandson, not Josef Mengele’s clone.
Before he could give the matter more thought, he was outside stuffing his groceries into the Datsun. He heard a car horn and an orange Pacer approached the market looking like something conceived by minds in Michigan overwhelmed by Japanese efficiency. In an effort to cover up their mistake, bumper stickers had been plastered on bumper stickers; “One nuclear bomb could ruin your whole day,” “Greenpeace,” “Skateboarding is not a crime,” “Mondale/Ferraro 84,” “Carter 76,” “Have a nice day,” “Honk if you’re Jesus!” The car gave the impression that if someone were to scrape off the bumper stickers, there would be nothing left but a giant fishbowl. It rolled to a stop in front of John. He heard a grunt of physical effort. The driver’s side door opened and the car’s frame lifted another foot from the ground. Out stepped Pensive Prairie Sunset.
John had seen fatter women before, lying on hotel beaches, cellulite craters digesting sand, naked or with a bathing suit in there somewhere. But they all seemed to have been old. Pensive Prairie Sunset was young. He guessed late thirties as she waddled from the car, flesh rolling against flesh, breasts hanging to her beltline, calves like loaves of head cheese. Her dress defied any specific pattern or culture. It was a freak-show tent, catastrophic paisleys and mongoloid camels drowning in a purple ocean. Was it Indian? Hawaiian? French? He stopped counting chins when he ran out of fingers. She held out her arms for a hug.
John felt his cappuccino rising.
“I’m Pensive Prairie Sunset,” she said, as if it were a reasonable enough excuse to embrace a stranger.
“I’m John Gibson,” he said, taking a step back.
“I figured,” she said, understanding, not forcing the hug. “Your energy resembles Edna’s, but not as released. You also have the same nose. You must be an Aries.”
“I guess it runs in the family,” John said, unsure which statement he was commenting on.
“Not always,” she said. “Spirits circulate, kundalini rises and flows depending on your ability to breathe.”
Kundalini? John thought. Kumbaya.
“Edna and I spent six years together at the Radical Petunia Arts Community,” Pensive continued. “You’ve heard of Margaret Washington, haven’t you? They made a fabulous movie of her book Cecilia. The Radical Petunia Arts Community is an extension of her creativity and her understanding of women’s needs.”
“That sounds great,” John lied. “I’d like to go to a meeting some time.”
“You can’t attend seminars, they’re for women only,” Pensive said, adding, “I do abstract pottery.”
“I’m sorry,” John said, wondering if the ceramics he had trashed had been her work. “I had a long flight and I didn’t sleep too well. I don’t want to be rude, but could you please give me the keys to my grandmother’s cabin?”
“Hey, I hear you,” Pensive said. “I know where you’re coming from. You don’t have to bombard me with half-truths. Be honest, it sets a good vibe. I know you were out last night and that’s O.K., men are like that. But could you get past your needs for a moment? I have an inflamed sixth disc and I have to get some bulgur and mung beans down at the Boontberry, and I did come here with Edna’s keys, so it would be nice if you could help me carry my groceries.”
John’s head was throbbing, his car was blocked, the caffeine was gone, and the appropriate response of “fuck you” hadn’t come fast enough. He found himself walking at Pensive’s side, passing the Lodge with his head down.
Luckily, the Boontberry Health Food Store wasn’t far. With the ringing of bells strapped to the door by strips of leather, they entered a shed loaded with wicker baskets containing a strange assortment of kiwis and gooseberries, string beans and red bananas, avocados and cucumbers. There was another room connected to the main store, housing an old-fashioned glass-doored refrigerator, which held cheese, yogurt, tofu, brown eggs, and other perishables. A few hippies milled about barefoot. Pensive filled her hands with an array of edibles and ordered a burrito from the deli. The purchasing counter overflowed as she added to her booty, a mountain of health, on top of which she threw a loaf of Oat Bran Bruce Bread.
Stepping from the front door to the counter in two strides was a giant standing almost seven feet tall. He had a beard clumped into tufts by rubber bands and bushy eyebrows connected at an Arab’s nose. His eyes were as dark and watchful as a raven’s. John saw his hair had been braided into a ponytail that reached his butt, whose half-smile could be seen grinning from beneath the tie-dyed sarong slung over his shoulder. Holding a key tied to a plunger, he confronted an effeminate man who was minding the store.
“Here’s the key to the bathroom, Garrett,” the giant said, with a trace of an Eastern European accent. “Tell your gerbil-jamming friends the gel works for extraction and with each dozen, I’ll throw in a Grand Inquisitor.”
“Let’s talk about that later,” Garrett said, eyes darting to see who was listening.
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” the giant replied. “This is business. I’d throw God off the Bay Bridge if he fucked with me on this one.”
“Let’s just talk later,” Garrett urged.
“Remember how good that crystal meth was?” the giant demanded. “This is better. This is flesh and blood, something that can sink its teeth into you.”
“I’ll come up and take a look,” Garrett promised, giving John an uncomfortable smile. “Now I have to help the customers.”
“I’m helping customers help themselves!” the giant yelled. “My system’s so clean if you rubbed watermelon on my head, I could taste it.”
John was afraid the giant might try to prove it. He looked to Pensive who was holding a family pack of whole wheat fig bars. She didn’t seem alarmed. The other hippies in the store didn’t seem worried about the behemoth either, continuing to finger jicama roots and carob clusters. John pretended to be interested in the wheat germ bin, casually moving to the other side of Pensive.
“I’m like this,” the giant said, jumping back from the counter, jerking his neck and writhing his body like a break-dancer. “I’ve been anointed as a seer. And you, Gay-rat, have a front row seat to the end of the world!”
The giant plunged his hand into Pensive’s loaf of Bruce Bread, popping the plastic bag and squeezing the ten grain into a ball of dough. He held it above his head, almost touching the ceiling. Crumbs cascaded to the floor. Garrett flinched, ready to be assaulted. But the giant dropped the bread harmlessly. He looked at it on the ground for a moment as if he were reading tea leaves, then leaped a step and a half across the store, out the door. A bleary-eyed hippie poked his head from the dairy room, but seeing nothing, continued to shop. The others noticed nothing.
“How are we today, Pensive?” Garrett said, stepping around the counter, picking up the mess and selecting another loaf of bread for Pensive’s pile.
“I’m fine,” she replied, John staying behind her, one eye on the door. “But it looks like Aslan’s self-medicating again. I hope it’s not a solstice-long experiment.”
“I try not to be judgmental,” Garrett said, returning to the register. He tabulated her foodstuffs, then asked, “Will that be all?”
Pensive said it was, producing a blank check from a pocket of her dress or maybe it came from a wrinkle in her flesh. John wasn’t sure which.
“That will be $64.58, Pensive,” Garrett said.
But there was nowhere for her to fill out the check. The counter was covered by her bags. Without hesitating, Pensive took a pen from a plastic cup near the register, leaned back like she was looking into a telescope set up too close to her face, and wrote out the check using her right breast as a desk. She handed the check to Garrett who was as unimpressed with her ingenuity as he had been with the giant’s outburst. Pensive scooped up the smallest sack, commanded John to take the others, and they were outside tramping back toward the Pacer. Not a giant in sight.
All right, John told himself, enough is enough. It’s time to go home and stay there for a while, regroup, detox, sleep. I’ll call Christina and make contact with Sarah sometime when I’m more myself.
But with a burst of doors, two men stumbled from the Lodge, one pursuing the other. At first, John thought one was the giant, but he could see they were regular-sized men, although one was much huskier than the other.
“Shit, I was just jokin’,” the smaller man said.
“Shut up!” the other told him.
“Sarah ain’t even your wife no more,” the smaller man argued.
Wham! Crack of knuckles, spray of blood.
“You broke my nose!” the smaller man cried. “My fuckin’ nose is broken!”
Wham! Head snapped back, animal grunt.
“My eye! Damn, Daryl, I can’t see out of my eye!”
“Get the hell outta here before there ain’t nothin’ left of you to see,” Daryl warned.
The smaller man ran to his truck. Pensive kept walking, uninterested. John had stopped in his tracks. Daryl looked around the parking lot, mad-dog crazy. His eyes met John’s.
“What are you lookin’ at, yuppie?”
John was unable to move or look away. A grocery bag fell from his hands, a container of hummus rolling to Daryl’s feet.
“Wait a minute!” Daryl’s voice slammed John’s head like a hand against a cigarette machine. “Don’t move!”
John was stiff from fright.
“I know who you are!”
Please God, John thought, let it be quick.
“You’re the Squirrel Boy!”