“You leave our school alone! You caused enough trouble while you were there.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the school, but maybe you have a point…”
“This isn’t over yet. Believe me,” Cheryl says as she climbs into her car. She slams the door and drives away.
That dangerous glimmer is back in MacKenzie’s eyes.
I turn to her. “No more empty bottles,” I plead. “Remember what happened last time. Imagine if Cheryl moves in, too!”
MacKenzie watches the teenagers over on the hill. Then she goes into the restaurant and reemerges with an apple pie for them.
“I’m not sure you should be feeding them,” Alejandro mumbles.
“Hold the fort here tonight, okay?” MacKenzie tells him. “I’ve got a few things to do in Baker City.”
* * *
The sound of a car horn cuts through the night.
I sit up in bed, confused, almost as drowsy as Michael. I had allowed my thoughts to drift, not quite asleep, but almost, when I suddenly heard…
There’s that irritating sound again. Loud and impatient. The display on the clock radio reads 02:47.
“What the hell…” Michael mutters to himself as he pulls on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He doesn’t seem any the wiser when he opens the door. MacKenzie’s pickup is parked outside, and in the darkness beyond her headlights, I can make out the shape of the motel’s longest ladder. The end is hanging perilously over the roof of the car.
MacKenzie looks unashamedly alert. She is warmly dressed in a thick coat, cut-off gloves and a colorful scarf, and seems to be radiating energy.
“Get in,” she says. “We’re going for a ride.”
Michael looks down at his bare feet. “Give me a minute,” he says, disappearing into the cabin.
Before long, he is back. Dressed but sleepy. His hair is sticking up in all directions, and his eyes are squinting at the world around him. But the cold night air seems to perk him up.
Camila is already in the truck, but she shuffles over to make room for Michael. She seems to be suffering patiently, with no idea what is going on.
I glance back and forth between the full car and the cold truck bed where the ladder is resting, then I climb inside and sit on Michael’s lap with my head pressed against the windowpane. It isn’t dignified, but it’s better than being alone, beneath a ladder, in the bed of the truck. I don’t need any more bad luck.
“What’s going on?” Michael asks. He isn’t questioning MacKenzie; he barely even sounds curious. It’s more like he has just noticed that he’s in a car in the middle of the night.
Camila tries to shrug, but she is so hemmed in between the others that she can’t quite manage. “Don’t ask me,” she mumbles.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” MacKenzie says.
At three in the morning, the town is deserted. The shops, cafés, and bars have all been closed for hours. The streetlamps illuminate empty streets, and as we drive through a residential area, all of the windows are dark.
The school is definitely empty at this time of night. There are a couple of lights on over by the football field, as though to suggest that football never sleeps, but the school itself is bathed in darkness.
MacKenzie parks by the windowless end of the building, the truck’s headlights shining onto the wall. She leaves them on, walks around to the back of the truck, and climbs up into the bed. Michael and Camila help her to unfold the ladder and take everything she passes down from the truck.
Before long, there are a number of cans of paint, a bag of rollers, and a long handle on the ground.
Michael watches skeptically as MacKenzie starts opening the cans of paint.
“Christ,” he says quietly to Camila. “She’s going to paint a rainbow flag.”
“What do we do if someone comes?” Camila whispers.
“Run, I guess. We’ve got the getaway truck ready, in any case. But we’re definitely leaving the ladder.”
I move away from them to keep a lookout, but it’s pointless. My eyes are constantly being drawn back to MacKenzie.
She pushes the first roller onto the handle, clamps it beneath her arm, grabs the can of bright-red paint, and quickly and confidently climbs the ladder. It stretches at least halfway up the school building, and with the long handle, she has an even bigger reach. She dips the entire roller into the can of paint and then rolls it along the wall several times, until she has broad horizontal strip measuring roughly two feet in length.
“Are you sure you should be doing this?” I ask nervously. She’s very high up. And the ladder seems a little unstable.
Once MacKenzie is happy with the first color, she climbs down, grabs a new roller and the can of orange paint. She climbs back up again. Michael grabs the first roller and drops it into a plastic bag so that it can be reused, then moves back over to Camila, who is leaning against the hood of the truck.
“When I said I wanted the old MacKenzie back, I didn’t necessarily mean literally,” Camila says. “They’re going to be so pissed.”
Michael laughs. “I think that’s the point.”
“They’ll just paint over it.”
“Maybe. But no matter how many coats they cover it with, we’ll know it’s under there.”
“She’s incredible, isn’t she?” Camila says quietly.
“Yeah.”
And she is. MacKenzie moves the roller back and forth in long, powerful strokes. I’m sure she has paint on her nose, and there’s definitely some in her hair. She is humming to herself the whole time, as the enormous rainbow flag takes shape above us.
* * *
MacKenzie paints the last few inches of the bottom purple stripe, and climbs down to the ground.
It’s as though her body has suddenly realized how tired it is. She stands in the glow of the headlights, totally confused, not seeming to know what to do next.
Michael and Camila tidy up for her. They lift the ladder into the bed of the truck and make sure it’s secured in place. They clear away the paint, and then Michael kindly but firmly takes the keys from MacKenzie.
She crawls into the passenger seat and leans her head against Camila’s shoulder. Michael and Camila are still on an adrenaline high, relieved at having gotten away with it. The whole way home, they talk about how they would love to see the kids’ faces when they get to school tomorrow, about the statistical likelihood that there must be several LGBT people among the students, about the revenge of the duct tape…and then Camila glances at MacKenzie and realizes she has fallen asleep.
MacKenzie is sleeping! Real, deep, relaxed sleep!
Camila cautiously points to her, and Michael nods. They drive on in silence. All I can hear is the sound of the engine and MacKenzie’s gentle snoring. As they approach the motel, Michael slows down.
“Let her sleep,” Camila says quietly. She tries to look at MacKenzie, but it’s difficult with her resting against her shoulder. “I don’t think she’s had a proper night’s sleep in a long time.”
And so Michael drives straight past the motel. We drive all the way to Baker City, until the sun comes up, when Michael turns around. On the way back, we pass the early-morning drivers lining up outside the McDonald’s drive-through, but other than the rear lights of a truck in the distance, I-84 is empty ahead of us.
Michael drives, Camila is a pillow, and I remember.
All the while, MacKenzie sleeps.
Chapter 29
More of Us
None of the other students cared about the proposed measure, despite the fact that it centered around schools. We might have been the battlefield the two sides were fighting over, but none of our schoolmates seemed to think the war affected them.
It was our last year in high school, but it felt like it was never going to end. Like nothing would ever happen. Most of our classmates w
eren’t going on to college, and few had any idea what they were going to do instead. We were caught between the safety of our former lives and an uncertain future that would, at the very least, allow us to get away from the classroom.
Looming in the distance was the school prom. What did a proposed change in the law mean in comparison? We weren’t old enough to vote, and the majority wouldn’t have bothered even if we had been.
Still, we weren’t the only ones in town who were against the measure. Some of the adults formed a working group, and notes were put up in the post office. MacKenzie forced the whole school group to attend their first meeting. We met on Broadway, at a house belonging to two of the women. They lived right next door to Michael.
I think we were all pretty nervous about going over there, but once we arrived, we realized the women were just as nervous as us. There were ten or so of them, most in their forties, all looking acutely uncomfortable as they sat on the sofa and in the armchairs and chairs that had been brought in from the kitchen.
MacKenzie was the only one who wasn’t nervous.
“Hi, I’m MacKenzie,” she said. “And I’m gay. This is Henny. She’s heterosexual, but she’s here because she’s my friend. Michael, also heterosexual, and Camila, hetero too.”
Or so we thought at the time. I suddenly wonder how Camila remembers those days. MacKenzie felt so liberated now that she had finally come out, and I was focused on Michael. But Camila didn’t argue. She just looked from MacKenzie to the others with sarcastically raised eyebrows, as though she knew exactly what they were thinking.
They were thinking that she didn’t look especially macho.
MacKenzie turned expectantly to the women gathered there. The ice cubes in their glasses clinked as they rushed to reassure everyone that they were perfectly straight but that they were, of course, against the measure, which was possible even if you were heterosexual. Very heterosexual. Married. Their husbands were against the measure, too. Because they were married. Every one of them.
All but the two women whose house it was. They glanced at each other and then shrugged as if they had already made up their minds and were just waiting for the right moment. “Actually…” said one of them.
“We’re not just friends.”
“We’re not married, either. We were, but then we met.”
“We got together and moved here a few years back. No one seemed to care that two women were living together. I guess they thought we were only doing it so we could afford a house. I know that a few people knew, but no one talked about it. Until now.”
“Until now,” the first one repeated.
“I don’t know why they’re suddenly so obsessed about gay people,” McKenzie said. “And why they’re suddenly all talking about it. We’ve avoided talking about things for generations. Why change a winning concept? But I guess now we have to stop people around here from acting like complete idiots.”
Carol and Pat.
Those were their names. I remember their names, but when I think back now, everything else is oddly hazy. I’m almost unsure they even existed. Did we just make them up because we needed them, or were they really so similar to all the other fortysomething women in town that I can’t remember a single feature from their faces? What color was their hair? Who knows. Light brown, maybe. Warm smiles, like all the others.
I remember their home as a series of short clips. My brain zooms in on the random things it has saved all these years. The kitchen window: white lace curtains and the brightest red geraniums I’d ever seen. A fridge magnet: Home is where the heart is. Embroidered cushions on a beige sofa. A dark hallway. Rubber boots. A garden spade and a pair of forgotten gloves outside. A…cat? Old, grumpy, fussed over.
We stayed behind afterward to help clear up. MacKenzie and Camila even helped with the dishes. Once that was done, MacKenzie volunteered to do the drying, gazing with fascination at Carol and Pat. She probably memorized their faces.
To her, they were unique and unforgettable. Their very existence seemed magnetic to MacKenzie. Every time one of them came into the kitchen—to check how it was going or to return a forgotten coffee cup or to repeat that we really didn’t have to do the washing up—she would look at them as though she expected them to perform miracles at any moment.
Once there was absolutely nothing left for us to do, and MacKenzie had offered to come back and cut their lawn, we headed home together. MacKenzie practically skipped along beside Camila, and Michael and I ended up behind.
“There are more of us!” MacKenzie said. “I always thought I was the only dyke in town. How is that possible? And another thing: if I missed them, how many others have I missed? There could be a whole load of us out there! See, something good has already come out of this madness.”
Camila didn’t speak, but I think she had also been inspired by Carol and Pat. Though she had been accused of being heterosexual, she seemed to be looking at MacKenzie with something very much like admiration.
Chapter 30
“Take a Cookie, Mr. Broek”
We get back to the motel just in time for breakfast. I’m enjoying the new color in MacKenzie’s cheeks and the new sense of camaraderie that seems to have developed between her, Michael, and Camila.
They’re onto their third cup of coffee when MacKenzie suddenly says, “I wish I could see their faces.”
Michael and Camila quickly make her promise that she won’t drive over to the school, not even to innocently ask who decorated their wall. MacKenzie mutters to herself, steals a little of Camila’s scrambled eggs, and reluctantly agrees that it would be undiplomatic to annoy them any further.
Not until she’s managed to get the paint out of her hair, anyway.
That’s probably smart, I think, but it doesn’t mean I can’t go over there. I’ve been neglecting my duties as a ghost.
I leave them in the restaurant, smiling as Camila half-heartedly tries to save the last of her eggs, and head off toward town.
* * *
By the time I get to the school, classes have already begun, but there are still plenty of kids milling around outside. A few teachers too, I think. Maybe the sudden arrival of the rainbow flag has disrupted their lesson plans.
There are a couple of upset parents, of course, but the teenagers seem to think it’s funny. I wonder whether that’s because times have changed or because they just appreciate something new happening.
A young girl with pink hair laughs and takes a selfie in front of the rainbow flag. Her friends are waiting nearby, and as I move closer, I notice that one of them is wearing a Basic Rights Oregon pin on their jacket.
So. Things do seem to have gotten better. The mothers’ upset voices don’t concern me.
* * *
On my way back to the motel, I almost run straight into Bob and Derek. Bob seems to be dragging Derek around town, introducing him to everyone they pass, and I decide to follow them for a while.
Derek smiles and shakes hands and struggles valiantly to look as if he understands everything. People are friendly, but they’re also a little standoffish: they size him up, remembering his football career. It seems like most still haven’t decided whether it counts as a merit.
“I guess he knows what it’s like to win,” one of them says before Derek is quite out of earshot.
“And to fail,” says another. “He came back from college pretty damn quick, didn’t he? And what’s he done since?”
Derek’s jaw tenses.
Next up is a fiftysomething couple who show all the signs of being comfortably well off. The man’s jacket is well cut, and the woman’s hair is professionally dyed a natural-looking shade of honey blond. Derek’s smile widens even further to show that he is taking in everything they say.
“I don’t know whether I trust a politician who smiles that much,” the man says afterward. Derek hears this, too.
Cheryl and another woman intercept Bob and Derek on Elm Street. The other woman has a toddler balanced on her hip, and both have the air of being someone who knows she has Jesus on her side.
“Right at the top, Bob Parker,” Cheryl says. The other woman nods so violently that the child bobs up and down and laughs in amusement. The women’s dogged faces look even more frightening in contrast to the laughing child.
“How are we going to paint over it?”
“I told you I’ll deal with it,” Bob begins. “Don’t you worry, we’ll fix it.”
“It’s MacKenzie Jones who did it, I’m telling you,” Cheryl says.
“Of course it was MacKenzie,” Bob agrees.
“Must’ve taken a whole load of brushes,” Derek chips in, an admiring tone in his voice. “But painting over it will be easy enough. Why not just paint the whole school? I’ll be damned if it isn’t in a state these days.”
Bob pulls him off to one side and mutters: “Money. You’ll hear that answer pretty often, let me tell you. There’s no money. Ned from the paint shop usually donates a can or two when the graffiti gets a bit too…interesting. The school board has been nagging me to paint it for years, but there’s no money for it. And it isn’t just the paint. It’s the labor, too.”
“There was enough money for the new football field. Looked pretty damn good.”
“Football isn’t an ugly, old school building,” Bob says quietly. He turns back to Cheryl and the woman.
“We want to know what you’re going to do about this,” Cheryl says.
Bob holds up his hands. “All right, ladies. All right. The school district will take care of it. Do you know Derek? Fantastic football player, and he’ll be an even better politician.”
They give Derek an uninterested glance, nod almost impolitely, and then turn their attention back to Bob.
“The school is already a mess!” the other woman says. “Many of the parents are upset about this. I hope you realize that. Sheer homo propaganda!”
Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC) Page 24