by John Sayles
In other words, a relationship.
Jewelle, looking over the guy’s shoulder, catches Scorch’s eye and then crosses hers, still crooning in the man’s ear. Jewelle is a real pro– no bullshit, good earner, and since she came up to No Man’s Land here right away when he called, Vic doesn’t charge her to work in the club. He gets cover charge for the guys who come to see her, of course, and a bump whenever she steers one into the Lounge, of which she is the undisputed queen, but for the rest she’s on her own. Class the joint up a bit. And Vic knows she’ll never tell the other girls, just like she won’t rat out the ones who are making dates for later or providing happy endings when Otto, who is also working days on one of Brent’s trucks, is on duty in the Lounge. Once Otto’s on the throne, chin down on his chest copping Zs, a girl could give him a BJ and he wouldn’t wake up.
The pink My Little Pony lunchbox that Jewelle keeps her dance tips and lap revenue in sits on the floor by the chair she cohabits with her regular, though it is her only little-girl touch, unlike Araceli, who claims to be from Panama and does the full plaid skirt and knee socks routine. Araceli has a regular, a headquarters honcho from the look of him, who monopolizes her twice a week and only pays with plastic. Either the guy is not married or he’s laying it on the Company. Maybe that’s what Wayne Lee is pouting about, thinks Scorch, Brent won’t give him an expense account for transporting product and moving it among the drillers and Yellow Earthlings.
The guy Sasha is sitting on starts to moan, eyes still shut tight.
“Oooh, baby,” Sasha gasps, working her buns and checking the paint job on her nails. Vic has a thing about nails, even inspecting them a couple times a week. Rules about how long the glue-ons can be, advice about what colors glow best under the black light. “Ooooh baby!”
Thing is, up here a real pro like Jewelle can knock down as much in a year as one of these oil platform monkeys, even the best of them, and she doesn’t have to wrestle drill pipe twelve hours as day. Scorch pointed the fact out to her one night and she nodded toward one of her regulars, who they called Pizza Face because of the permanent rash on his mug.
“You’re right, Stanley,” she said, somehow knowing his birth name. “Why don’t you go sit on his dick for a while?”
The door opens and “La Tortura” pounds in, Araceli’s favorite number, and Bo is waving for help. There is a camera in the ceiling, Vic glancing at the monitor once in a blue moon but there for inspection and insurance, and Scorch never worries about leaving when Jewelle is working the room. The moaner has his head thrown back like he’s had a heart attack, and now the local sap is whispering into Jewelle’s ear.
“I could of handled it myself,” says Bo as they step out into the big room, “only the guy ast for you personal.”
Brent has Wayne Lee face down on the table, both arms pinned behind his back, leaning down to shout over the music.
“You never learn! You never fuckin learn!”
Only a few of the customers have interrupted their schoolgirl-banging fantasies to look over at the disturbance, Araceli with her plaid dress hiked over her hips and slowly peeling her lace panties down, various assholes shouting “Olé!” and “Más, más! The whole enchilada!”
“I’m done with you, fucker,” shouts Wayne Lee, breath bubbling the puddled beer his face is pressed into. “You are fuckin history, man, and you come after me I’ll fuck you where you live!”
Brent gives one of Wayne Lee’s wrists a quick twist and he cries out, legs buckling a bit. Scorch taps Brent on the shoulder, moving to where he can be seen.
“Nice and gentle,” Brent says, jaw out but voice steady. “But I don’t want him bouncing back in here tonight.”
A huge cheer. Araceli does a thing where she pulls the panties off, then drapes them over the face of one of the front row boys, a souvenir. Must buy the things in job lots.
Scorch takes one of Wayne Lee’s wrists and gets a tight grip at the back of his neck, Brent easing away.
“Come on, buddy,” he says. “We’re going for a walk.”
He lets Wayne Lee straighten up as he steers him through the crowd, keeping the arm twisted behind, ready to put him to the floor if he balks. But Wayne Lee seems resigned, even eager to leave.
“Believe that shit?” he mutters. “Going off like that in front of the whole world.”
Otto gives him a look when they come out the side door, and Scorch shakes his head no. Under control.
“Where’s your ride, hoss?”
“I can find it.”
“Gonna have to walk you there. Boss’s orders.”
He lets go of the wrist but keeps his hand on Wayne Lee’s neck as they walk.
“How can you work for that fuck?”
Brent said he wrestled, hundred ninety-five pounds, and used to wipe the mat with guys.
“I know, he can be a pain in the butt.”
“You can’t trust the dude. I’d watch your ass, Scorch.”
Like they’re friends.
“What you got to do, my man, is settle up and get outa Dodge. I mean way out. Shouldn’t be hard to put this shithole in the rearview mirror.”
“He owes me. Promises were made.”
They are out on the main drag, the usual late night parade of big rigs and pickups rolling in each direction, some kind of techno music and strobe-light effect leaking out from the front of Teasers. Give you an epileptic fit working in that place.
“How many people you think Brent is in the process of ripping off as we speak? It’s what he does, man, you heard him brag about it.”
“You’re not supposed to con the people who work with you.”
“Hey, you lie down with dogs, you get rabies.”
He sees Wayne Lee’s tricked-up Camaro ahead, parked in the light spill of an all-night drugstore that wasn’t there last week.
“You’re going home now, right?”
“Fucking barracks.”
“Tell me about it. I been in county lockups that were way more fun. But you’re not gonna be stupid and antagonize the guy anymore, right? Cause Brent don’t play that.”
Wayne Lee pulls his keys from his pocket and stands looking out at the ugly mile-long strip, neon and sodium vapor lights and vehicle headlights streaming east and west, as if it might be something to fight and die for. Money is being made flushing oil out of the ground and money is being made getting guys’ dicks hard and shit, money is being made, good money, selling razor blades and toothpaste at boomtown prices, but there’s not a thing or a person that Scorch would care to spend it on as far as the eye can see.
“Brent don’t own Yellow Earth,” says Wayne Lee Hickey, “and he ain’t the king of me.”
THE APARTMENT, WITHOUT BRANDI to fill it up, is the biggest space she’s ever had to herself. She doesn’t have to throw anything on to go to the bathroom. She doesn’t have to do her dishes right away. She can play whatever music she likes, keep the lights on late at night if she’s working, floss while she’s watching TV without grossing anybody out. It’s an ideal situation to go mental in.
Leia runs her paper through spell-check, though the program is unfamiliar with some of the scientific terms and leaves them highlighted. It is a bit more of a plea bargain than a thesis and proofs, the computer thesaurus not much help in alternative ways to say ‘invites more study.’ The gist of it is that so many species are under pressure from modern industry and human habitation that there is no objectively ‘natural state’ to investigate, that the norm from which group behavior deviates is not the community but the refugee camp.
In other words, bullshit elegantly stated. She was much sought-after in grad school for her ability to synthesize, to flesh out a malnourished thesis with layers of verbiage, to express somewhat wobbly ideas in academese and transform them into insights.
Depending on how much time the professor had to read.
It’s the community part of the p-dogs that interests her, and if their habitat hadn’t been blitzed she might hav
e found some things out. Is it only a multitude of individuals obeying their selfish genes, hard-wired with a limited repertory of interactive gambits, or do they consider the group before they act? Is Odysseus really cunning or just testosterone-imbalanced? What is the trigger that makes them feel there’s too many of us or too few of us and then do something about it? Are they afraid even when they’re underground?
There wasn’t any moping when they were translocated, she’s got that much in the paper, something like the old coterie up and running within days. Ants are pretty much ruled by what they can smell, to the point where they are easily fooled by parasites. With thousands to choose from, how does a dog tell one hole from another? With a bad head cold are they more likely to get lost? What would a single individual, male or female, dropped out somewhere there wasn’t another prairie dog for hundreds of miles, do?
It invites further study.
Leia looks at the last two days’ dishes and decides she will definitely wash them tomorrow morning. Not that she’s inviting him over, her visible conduct is unusual enough in this place without inviting him into her lair, but she doesn’t want to walk the windy streets of Yellow Earth feeling like a secret slattern. A creature with an untidy nest. Just as there are actions and behaviors to attract a mate, there must be prairie dog turn-offs. Fleas, which would definitely put her off, don’t happen to be among them, but there must be something a gal in heat can do that will drive away the horniest p-male. And with humans, who knows? One look at the playlist on her iPod and he might run screaming–
She thinks of the solo mammals– some predators, some large ungulates, house cats– maybe meeting up with somebody cospecific for a few minutes a year, fulfilling their genetic imperative, and then back on their own. Do they feel alone? Is any one of her study subjects out in the fledgling colony, surrounded by hundreds of near-clones, even the slightest bit alienated? Not with the program? Or do the others sense that kind of thing right away and terminate the imposter?
She can’t read the paper one more time, it is what it is. Her finger hovers over SEND, then takes the plunge.
It doesn’t require physical proximity anymore, she knows. There are coteries of people who play Scrabble online, of people who root for the Golden Gophers, of people who love to watch specially built cars scream around a track again and again and again. And for a while she believed her coterie was the savants who studied animal behavior, who discussed cadre dynamics and pair bonding and published incisive dissertations that increased the store of human knowledge. As soon as her e-mailed offering, her plea for leniency, is read, she’ll be cast out from that secular sodality, and then what? Dwell in the Land of Nod, to the East of Eden?
Leia gets up, finds her shoes. The circulation in the apartment has never been any good. Stale thoughts hang in the air, depression clings to the walls like mold. What she needs, thinks Leia, what will recharge her failing batteries, is to get out and watch some methane pollute the atmosphere.
IT’S NOT LIKE YOU can dance to that stuff. Some of the guys thrash around if they’re wasted enough, but you might as well be playing football in a closet. And what does rap have to do with anything out here? Ludacris? Or for that matter, Megadeth? Really?
There is enough moon that Jolene doesn’t wish she had a flashlight. At least the road home hasn’t been taken over by oil traffic yet, though there’s a story that a pipeline will come through here. She can see their lights moving way over on the 12, a steady stream in both directions, night and day, and four different wellheads in between where they’re flaring the gas off. She’s done this walk in the dark plenty of times, not much more than two miles, but tonight there’s the feeling hanging over it, the bad vibe thing, which started even before she swallowed the pill.
Boys will take over a party if there’s too much to drink or somebody’s got leapers to pass around, and then it’s time to leave. She wanted to pull Fawn out with her but Fawn and Dickyboy were going at it, what’s she been up to, why is she so distant, and it was a temptation to just step in and say forget about her, don’t you know she’s doing it with a married guy who works with her stepfather? I mean, Dickyboy is Jolene’s friend too, sort of, his grandmother used to leave him at her house when they were little so she could go to her job in Yellow Earth, but Fawn and her are like supposed to be friends forever and you don’t betray a confidence. Loyalty comes first, even if sticking with Fawn is a lot of work sometimes. Not just because Fawn has money to spend and she doesn’t– Fawn is really generous when she thinks of it and doesn’t rank people on how they dress or what they can drive. I mean Dickyboy was always in like the world’s oldest pair of sneakers till he went into business and could afford to pimp up a bit. And in junior high Fawn stayed true to Dickyboy even when Armand Fox was after her, and he gets his picture in the newspaper three times a week and might be going places if he can ever graduate. Or Lyle Cunningham, whose family has two wells on their property and owns everything the Apple Corporation ever invented– Fawn wouldn’t even let him give her a ride on his ATV.
Jolene has a shivery feeling but it’s not that cold and there’s no wind tonight. Something terrible is going to happen, she just knows it, knew it even before the pill and before they played “Check My Brain” at full volume for the third time. The whatever that Dickyboy gave her, said it was Ecstasy, hasn’t helped any. He’s a walking pharmacy these days, and she swallowed the mildest-sounding thing he offered, just to get him off her back. Made her feel kind of rubbery and took the edge off the thrash music, but it sure didn’t make her feel good.
What Dickyboy should be looking for is a drug that will help him lose some weight. Not that Fawn was ever into jocks that much, but her stepfather looks like he could still play ball and this Brent guy pumps iron and Dickyboy just keeps getting wider. Hard to get your arms around him to dance, if anybody danced anymore, and there wasn’t a boy at the party you could really get excited about unless you had like a death wish.
She goes over the story in her head, the one she’ll tell her parents about Fawn’s new car breaking down and nobody stopping to help them for an hour. She hopes the whatever doesn’t show, make her eyes look funny or something. They always threaten to pull her out of Yellow Earth, and facing a senior year back at Three Nations is not appealing.
When she was eight there was a tornado, and she remembers her mother talking outside to a friend with the sky changing behind her, clouds like cow’s udders bulging down toward the ground, and she started to cry. She didn’t even know what a tornado was yet or the word for it, but the feeling in the air before it hit made her sick and scared inside. Something terrible going to happen. And if it’s going to happen at the party I don’t want to be there to see it.
Jolene hears something– senses it more than hears it– moving parallel to her at the side of the road. Something walking? Maybe it’s just the pill she swallowed, gives you hallucinations. These are definitely not running shoes she’s got on, so it would be better if it’s not real.
And then she sees the eye-shine.
Yellow eyes. Stopped to stare at her. Jolene stops to stare back. Maybe twenty feet away, yellow eyes, unblinking. And then, maybe it’s the pill putting weird ideas in her head, she hops into one of the routines, shouting as loud as she can–
Vinegar is sour
Sugar is sweet
Yellow Earth High School
Can’t! Be! Beat!
The yellow eyes disappear. She tried out for the cheerleaders, made the squad, then her parents found out and she had to tell Miss Rumbauer she’d wasted everybody’s time. It was a coyote, probably, which are never a problem unless you’re run over by a truck and left alone at the side of the road and there’s more than one of them. Or that’s what people say.
It’s supposed to be ‘beaten,’ according to Miss Rumbauer, but that’s a tough rhyme to make and you want the last syllable to be a plosive. Cheerleading is basically really dumb but it would have been fun to go on road trips with the girl
s and you jump around and yell and work up a sweat without all the competitive thing that’s on the playing field. I win, you lose. Armand Fox is a nice enough guy, but when the Warriors lose he kicks chairs and punches metal lockers and sits alone in the cafeteria the next day, and when they win it’s like he’s bouncing off the walls, more amped than the meth heads at the party tonight, and who wants to deal with all that up and down? “It evens you out,” Dickyboy said about the pill she finally swallowed, as if she needs a drug to do that. This Brent guy, the one time she met him, looked like a Ken doll with lifter muscles and starting to lose his hair on top, definitely not her type, and she’s sure a lot of Fawn’s interest is the drama of the whole deal. Married man, sneaking around, like something you’d see on Glee or one of those reality shows that seem so fakey. Fawn would seriously love to have a camera crew follow her around, the way she screams at her mother even when Jolene is in the room and then five minutes later they’re sitting on the bed looking at catalogs together. Coming from a family where people speak in tongues and believe the Final Judgment is just around the corner, Jolene figures why would you want more drama. An old married guy? Really?
The headlights from behind throw her shadow across the road, then the car passes and pulls over a little bit ahead. She doesn’t recognize the car, but if it’s somebody from the party she’ll turn down a ride. Never know what somebody might be high on.
“Excuse me– you know where Sonny Hardin’s place is?”
Two white guys, oil workers probably, looking lost.
“I don’t know who that is.”
The guy in the passenger seat unfolds a piece of paper. “Can you tell if this address makes any sense?”
Addresses are tricky on the reservation. Unless it’s in one of the towns, people mostly end up telling you the biggest nearest road and then start talking about landmarks. She steps up to read and the guy over in the driver’s seat gets out, maybe to go urinate. She can smell beer in the air, really strong– maybe the Ecstasy gives you super-sensitive smelling abilities. Maybe she’ll be a mutant from now on, like the kids in the X-Men movies.