‘Road trip! Road trip!’ Todd woke me at six o’clock the next morning, with a bucket of coffee and an eye-opening wardrobe selection.
‘Where the hell did you get those trousers?’ I said, sitting up groggily and reaching for the cup. ‘Are they navy blue?’
‘French-navy chants,’ said Todd. ‘Not a chino, but not quite a pant. You love ’em, don’t you?’
‘I almost don’t love you anymore, simply because you’re wearing them,’ I said. ‘We’ve vetoed the fashion singular, by the way. Only a dollar, though, because I’ve got a crush on Tan France. And did you know there’s an alligator stuck to your left pec? Seriously, Todd, you look terrible. They’re going to know you’re not for real.’
‘Wait till you see what you’re wearing,’ he said. ‘I went to Target, last thing before bed last night, and got you the most adorable little calf-length shirtwaister. It’s yellow.’
‘Jesus,’ I said.
‘And you can cut that out. Taking the Lord’s name.’
I sank back against my pillows and started the slow, steady sipping of coffee that gets me from a readiness to stay in bed all day and sob, to a readiness to move and face another morning. Then my eyes shot wide open. ‘What’s Noleen wearing?’
‘Hers is pink,’ Todd told me.
I threw the covers back and leaped out like a kid at Christmas.
As it turned out, I couldn’t laugh at Noleen or at Kathi when I saw them in their dresses with their wool hats pulled on low to hide their short hair.
‘I’m not sure she’s worth this,’ Kathi said. ‘I feel naked. And pantyhose are just wrong.’
‘Della’s in the office and Devin’s in the launderette, right?’ I said. ‘And Blaike’s going to cover lunchtime and hang out with Diego the rest of the time? So the motel is ticking over?’
‘And we’ll be back tonight, because we’re going to call Mike and tell her where we are and tell her we’ll call again once we’re back out. So there’s no way we’re not getting out,’ Noleen said. ‘I mean, right?’
‘I’m still worried about Roger,’ I said. ‘I don’t think this place is going to be much of a rainbow, do you? Or salad bowl or chess board or whatever the expression is.’
‘He’s a big boy,’ said Noleen. ‘Plus there’s no way he’d let Todd go without him.’
‘My husband!’ said Kathi, and we all shared a look. ‘Is there any chance they’re going to believe these three couples?’
‘People believe what you tell them,’ said Noleen. ‘Blaike believed his dad died hunting elk. Then he believed the guy never existed. And we all believed Brandee had been kidnapped.’
‘Why was there a ransom note?’ I said. ‘It raised suspicion instead of quashing it.’
‘All will be revealed,’ said Noleen.
‘In Patriarchyville,’ said Kathi. ‘That’s so annoying. It sounds so dumb.’
‘Patriarchistan scans much nicer,’ said Noleen. ‘I might suggest that to them. They’d love it.’
We tried to laugh, but it was more of a groan. ‘When we get back tonight,’ I said, ‘pizza, margarita and Moonstruck. OK?’
We don’t usually even shake on things. It was a sign of how high feelings were running that, at that moment, we went in for a group hug. When Roger rolled up in a rented minivan, he leaped out and joined it.
I had forgotten what Todd was like on a road trip. Which is strange, because Todd is quite a lot at the best of times and confining him to a car for a couple of hours only distills it a little bit. He had bookmarked a lot of useful websites about modesty, family values, biblical living and God’s plan for man, which woman should shut her face and listen to, and he regaled us all with it at length on the way up the road. I don’t know what everyone else was doing, but I let it wash over me and looked out at the passing landscape, as almond trees gave way to rice fields, and rice fields gave way to mountains and forests, sudden dramatic vistas, and snow on far-off peaks. We had crested the summit and were back down on to rolling land again when, all of a sudden, he started mock interviews, based on the information he’d been sharing.
I didn’t acquit myself all that spectacularly.
‘If they ask you whose idea it was to change our life, dearest,’ he said, ‘what are you going to tell them?’
‘I’m going to say we talked it over together and the plan just sort of hatched,’ I answered. ‘Who can say?’
‘You can!’ said Todd. ‘You need to say it was my idea and you’re going along with it because you’re my wife.’
‘OK,’ I agreed.
‘Is that it?’ said Todd. ‘“OK”?’
‘For God’s sake!’ I said. ‘I was going along with what you were saying because I’m your wife. I was literally doing exactly what you said I should be doing, right that very minute! And you’re still sniping at me!’
‘I’m going to go the other way,’ Noleen said. She was sitting right over the back, in the jump seats, with Lenny. ‘There’s no point in me trying to act like the perfect wife—’
‘I think you’re OK,’ Kathi interrupted.
‘—so Ima go with, I’m lost in the swamp of feminism and I need a change before my family – that’s Lenny, our daughter Della and our son Devin – drown in the sins of this world.’
There was a moment of awestruck silence throughout the minivan.
‘Bravo,’ said Lenny. ‘Were you raised Baptist?’
‘Presbyterian,’ said Noleen. ‘But they really meant it.’
‘Della and Devin,’ Lenny said. ‘How old are they?’
‘You choose,’ said Noleen. ‘I thought sixteen-year-old twins, but it’s up to you, oh master.’
‘OK, so we’re good,’ Roger said. He was the antsiest out of all of us, and who could blame him? ‘But what are we actually going to say, first off, when we roll up at the gate? That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Who wants to hear?’
‘Go for it, honey,’ Todd said.
‘We hope they don’t mind us just showing up,’ Roger said. ‘And maybe we should have emailed first, but we just got to the point that we’d had it. Let’s try and tag it to something. Pity it’s not International Women’s Day or Pride Month or something. But anyways the story is we decided to come and see what they’ve got. Because our friend Brandee Lancer talked about them before she left town and they sounded like a way forward, for people who’re wandering in the desert.’
‘Genius,’ said Todd. ‘Straight in with her name. You’re an asset to the team.’
‘Or,’ I said, ‘Todd could pretend to be a polygamist and you could wait for us in the nearest town. Aren’t you scared, Roger?’
‘Every day,’ he said. ‘But sometimes flushing ’em out is the only way to go.’
‘Valentine’s Day,’ said Noleen, from the back. ‘Not to change the subject or anything. Could we hang it off that?’
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘Oh my God, yes, of course we can! It’s sickening, fake, commercialized nonsense, commodifying romance and lumping a ridiculous burden on mums everywhere to write cards out for the whole bloody class at their kid’s school, and then still be in her chiffon babydoll at sundown.’
‘Or,’ said Todd, ‘just tell us how you feel.’
‘And that’s not the way to go,’ said Roger. ‘They won’t care about burdening women with the work of motherhood, and I don’t think they’ll care much about protecting the sanctity of romance from getting steamrollered by Hallmark.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, and thought for a while. ‘It destroys childhood innocence by forcing kids to think about sexual partners when they’re too young, and it encourages young adults outside marriage to engage in dangerous mingling and ungodly thoughts.’
‘There’s the bunny!’ said Todd.
‘Five dollars,’ said Kathi, who hated that expression like the dentist’s drill.
‘So, what did we all do for Valentine’s Day, then?’ said Kathi.
‘I consoled my daughter about getting no cards,’ Noleen said. ‘And Lenny stayed at work to avoid the pressure. You two, Kathi and Roger, you went out for dinner, but they played lewd music and you had to leave.’
‘Barry White,’ said Roger. ‘With the bass turned up.’
‘And I cooked you a nice dinner, Todd,’ I said. ‘Because I do love you, but I don’t hold with saints. Unless this lot will be into saints, in which case we lit a candle to St Valentine.’
‘And St Cyril,’ said Todd. ‘He invented the alphabet. It’s his day too.’ There was another short, impressed silence. ‘Catholic school, baby!’
‘Bullshit Catholic school,’ I said. ‘That was in the pub quiz at the Randy Shamrock, last month. And you didn’t get it.’
‘I don’t think we should talk about saints,’ said Lenny. ‘If these guys have Bible-verse licence plates, I reckon they’re not much for candles.’
‘We’ll soon find out,’ Roger said. ‘Because here we go.’
He had found the place on Google Earth at home and plotted the point where we needed to leave the road. Avis wouldn’t be pleased about the minivan’s suspension, but we knew now there was no road in any direction. This was the best way in.
At least this time we didn’t have to abandon the car and crawl the last half mile; we drove up to the slatted fence as if we had every right, and then circled it until the gate lay dead ahead.
Power Purpose Prosperity
The arch didn’t look any less creepy face-on in the cold, grey light of this cloudy day. Under it, the gate was shut and padlocked.
‘No trucks,’ Todd said. ‘Someone must be out on the Saturday errands.’
‘Which are God knows what,’ Noleen said. ‘Do you think they know what that gate looks like?’
‘My great-grandma didn’t make it out of the camps,’ said Lenny. ‘She gave her daughter – my grandma – all her food. They know.’
In the night, everything about the place had looked sinister, not just the arch writing; but today, on a damp February morning, with the scrubby grass still green from the winter rains, it looked more of a camp than a compound, like maybe they were meditating and baking sourdough in there, not drilling and plotting and burying tinned food in secret bunkers underground. It was hard to say which was more likely, and I still hoped that we were freaking ourselves out for nothing. I hoped that, in an hour or two, I’d remember how I felt in this minute – pulse pounding and palms sweating – and feel foolish for being scared.
But then the gate opened. And the guy who’d opened it had done it one-handed because, in his other hand, he was carrying the biggest, bulkiest, most over-the-top-looking gun I had ever seen in my life. And he was wearing head-to-toe cammo too – not like Todd wore it sometimes, ironically.
‘Oh shit,’ said Noleen.
‘Enh,’ said Roger. ‘I’m from Stockton. And the safety’s on.’ He opened the driver’s door and stepped down.
‘And I did two years of nights in the ER in Sacramento,’ said Todd, and slipped out of the passenger door.
Watching the two of them walk towards Cammo Guy, with his big scary gun, I felt my stomach turn and my guts move. I had to get out of the car before I messed it up, but I didn’t know whether to lean forward or squat. And now Lenny was on the move too. He didn’t give voice to his tough-guy credentials; maybe he thought the moustache would do the talking.
The three of us still in the van couldn’t see a damn thing, except the three of them, like not quite half of the Magnificent Seven, strolling towards the gateway. Then Noleen shot out of the back door, and that was it for Kathi; she let herself down, out of the middle door. I had got ahold of myself, top and bottom, but I didn’t want to be the only coward, and so on shaking legs I descended too, and scampered to catch up with Kathi and Noleen, who were holding hands as they walked forward. I grabbed Kathi’s free one just as Lenny and Todd parted and gave Cammo McGun a view of us.
‘Int that nice?’ he said. ‘Int that a purty thing to see?’
Yes, he said purty. And he meant it. I got a sudden flash of what we must look like, the three of us, in our petal-coloured dresses, holding hands and looking at the ground.
‘Thought you were the press,’ the man said. ‘Wouldn’t put it past those dirty cops to tell the enemy of the people what they done.’
‘Cops?’ said Todd. ‘You get a lot of trouble with cops, all the way out here?’
I raised my eyes and looked past the guy, into the compound itself. There were huts with ropes of washing hung between them. A goat stood tethered to a stick in a patch of grass, and beds of dark earth looked ready to be planted up. I put my head down again.
‘We did the world a solid,’ the man was saying now. ‘Removed some profane images from the view of the innocent. But they didn’t see it that way and they came all the way out here to haul a pile of wood and iron and even plastic back out into the world.’
I didn’t move and neither did the others, but I bet I wasn’t the only one who did an internal fist-pump.
‘And arrested four of our good men,’ Cammo said. That was about right: the strapper, the sawer, the driver and the acrobat. ‘So now our elders have had to go and post bail, then there’s gonna be an arraignment and trial and fines and more press … We wanted to escape the world, not be held up in ridicule for it. We should never have strayed from our true path. We never will again.’
‘That’s good to know,’ Roger said. ‘That’s exactly what we’re looking for.’
‘You’re looking to join us?’ said Cammo. ‘Well, well, well. Any other day, I’d pepper your ass for even asking. But today …’ He was looking at Roger with an expression I couldn’t begin to read. ‘Damn lawyer said “hate crime” about us taking those scarecrows out of view. Be hard to make that stick, with you right here.’
‘What about the rest of us?’ Roger said.
‘Oh, sure!’ said Cammo. ‘Three couples, two of them young? That would be a nice little boost for our patriarchy.’
I looked up again at that. It’s not often you hear the word used so mildly.
‘As long as you didn’t breed with your white wife,’ he went on, ‘we could make this work for everyone.’
Todd’s feet moved in the dust, as if he was having to try hard to hold himself still.
‘Oh,’ said Roger. ‘Hm. She didn’t tell us that. That might be a sticking point then. My wife is actually four months gone, right now. Aren’t you, honey?’ He turned round to look at Kathi, crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out.
‘Like I said, though, the elders ain’t here, right now. They might see it different. There are others here bearing the marks of old sin. Tattoos and divorces and whatnot. We wash clean when we join. Your wife could be cleansed and the baby baptized. No cleaning you off, though, huh? No offence. Just kiddin’.’
Roger frowned and then threw his head back and laughed, as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
‘But who’s this “she”?’ Cammo was saying. ‘Who told you about us? We don’t allow our women to go out into the world. Where would you have met one?’
‘It was before she came,’ Roger said. ‘We spoke while she was preparing to join you. Brandee Lancer?’
Cammo’s voice had been loud all along, but it really started booming now. ‘Brandee Lancer,’ he said. ‘Brandee Lancer? That whore? That serpent? That dentist?’
‘Uh …’ Roger said.
‘Get outta here!’ he yelled. ‘She came up here, weekend after weekend, talked big about moving in permanently, free dental for everyone, and all her money. Happy to marry our patriarch and start him a family. We never saw a penny, after her down payment. And she talked more than any woman ever should. Talked us into taking those statues and talked us into poisoning that shameless charade, and then she disappeared and left us to the cops and lawyers and press, and garbage like you. Go on, get outta here, before I give you what you’re begging for.’
‘OK, OK, we’re leaving,’ said Roger, and he started walking very slowly backwards, with Todd and Lenny flanking him, like a game of Grandma’s Footsteps, but backwards and with guns.
‘Did you send the notes with the body parts?’ I said. ‘Or was that her too? I’ve always hated her. Never trusted her. I’m only here because my husband brought me.’
‘“Make a splash,” she said,’ Cammo spat. ‘“Stir up recruits,” she said. Send them to her kid and her friend, and rake in free publicity for the cause.’ He sniffed and spat. ‘You do well to obey your husband, young woman, but your instincts were good. We strayed far from our true path, listening to a Jezebel like that. She is black-hearted and dangerous. You shoulda listened to your wife,’ he said to Todd. ‘Every so often, a fool of a woman can hit on something.’
This fool of a woman had hit on something else too. ‘The acrylic nail,’ I said.
He wasn’t alight with intelligence at the best of times, but he went cross-eyed trying to work out what that meant. Which told me everything I needed to know.
Kathi and Noleen were back in the minivan. Roger was in the driver’s seat. Lenny climbed in and I jumped up too. Only Todd was still standing out in the open, squaring up to the guy. Roger started the engine. Todd still didn’t move.
‘You coming, honey?’ I said, leaning out of the window.
‘Go and discipline her,’ said Cammo. ‘Don’t let her talk to you like that in front of other men.’
For some reason, that little homily revolted Todd so much, it pushed him right over the edge. He turned away in disgust and climbed into the minivan beside me, leaning forward and kneading Roger’s shoulder as he manoeuvred the van round and drove away.
When we stopped at a bar in the town of Weed – yes, really – we must have looked like the world’s lamest folk band, or maybe the world’s giddiest polygamists. There was a lot of hugging all round and ripping off of woolly hats to throw them in the air. Then we went inside and ordered quite a lot of whisky.
‘I’ll drive,’ Lenny said. ‘I’ve been sober seventeen years, and I’m staying that way.’
‘Aren’t you angry?’ I said to Roger. ‘How did you keep your shit together back there?’
‘You can’t stay angry all the time,’ Roger said. ‘It’s bad for the digestion.’ But he necked the first whisky in a oney and then squeezed Todd’s hand.
‘So,’ Kathi said, ‘Brandee wanted to leave and she wanted to take all of Blaike’s money with her, so she decided to fake a kidnapping by that bunch of losers. My God, it almost worked too.’
‘The statue heists were supposed to make them look so unhinged, no one would believe they hadn’t kidnapped her,’ I said.
‘And who did they poison?’ said Noleen. ‘I wasn’t really following, by then. Shameless … Who was it?’
‘Not a person,’ I said. ‘It was a shameless charade. And I’ve almost … It’s right on the tip of my … Valentine’s Day! What would make a bouquet of flowers an Addams Family bouquet of flowers?’
‘If they’re all dead, isn’t it?’ Kathi said. ‘Or they’ve got no heads on. That’s it. Morticia tends her dead roses by chopping off their heads, remember.’
‘And she sneaked across the road and killed her neighbour’s roses before she left too,’ I said. ‘Barbra Streisand, Princess Elizabeth and Dick Van Clark.’
‘Dyke,’ said Kathi.
‘Look who’s— Never mind,’ Todd said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The florist was sold out of flowers on Valentine’s Day,’ I said. ‘I thought that meant business was booming but I bet if we check, we’ll hear that she had to shut up early because they were all dying. And I saw a bunch of roses on a yard-waste pile on Valentine’s Day and thought it was the last week’s flowers, out for the bin men. But, if there were flowers at the house every week, I’d have seen them before, wouldn’t I? You know that one little cottage left in the downtown, just the other side of the tracks? I pass it all the time. No, I think that was the Valentine’s flowers and they were dead already. And then, of course, there was the break-in. At the department. That caused the problem. At the Lode.’
‘What happened there?’ Lenny said, and then was taken aback when five of us all said, ‘Nothing!’
‘So I bet if we scout around,’ I went on, ‘we’ll hear of a lot of florists and growers in Northern California and Southern Oregon that had flowers all die on Valentine’s Day. Brandeee sabotaged Cuento, but the so-called patriarchs probably did the same elsewhere.’
‘Ahem.’ The waitress who had brought our whisky was back at the table again. ‘Are you talking about the dead flowers?’ she said. ‘You mean it wasn’t just Weed? We were scared it was something in the water table. We thought we were headed for Erin Brockovich country.’
‘No, it was sabotage,’ Todd said.
‘Someone killed my grandma’s rambling rose that my dead grandpa planted round the door? Who would do a thing like that?’
‘It was a bunch of men’s rights twats, up the road there,’ I said.
‘Oh, them!’ she said. ‘We call it Peckerville.’
Which was so perfect, we bought another round to toast her, and tipped her 40 per cent too.