Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  “I know that she was screaming—screaming—for help,” Eagle said, punctuating each word. “She was screaming long enough for me to wake up, get some clothes on, find my weapon, and run a block and a half—”

  “Why didn’t anyone else respond?” Stuart asked. “If it were as dire as you say, then others should have—”

  “Have you looked at the neighborhood?” Eagle asked, no longer trying to keep the anger from her voice. “You are in the People’s Republic of Berkeley. That’s what you guys call it, right?”

  Brunsan opened his mouth, but Eagle didn’t let him speak.

  “We were under martial law until a month ago. People were screaming for help every day, and they were screaming not because their husband was beating them or they were having a—what did you call it? A domestic. They were screaming because they were being beaten by cops—”

  “There’s no proof of that,” Stuart said.

  She stopped, because a blatant lie tended to do that to her. “I saw it.”

  “The National Guard did occasionally get out of hand,” Brunsan said. “I will give you that.”

  “Shooting unarmed civilians,” she said. “Dropping CS gas on an entire neighborhood. Sending little kids to the hospital with chemical reactions that I haven’t seen outside of Nam. You call that a little out of hand, Detective?”

  “They were provoked,” Brunsan said.

  Eagle took a step toward him, then realized he wanted to goad her into fury. She made herself breathe. She squared her shoulders and summoned her alter ego. The unflappable Captain June Eagleton, no matter what she saw. And the good captain had seen things no human should ever see.

  “We could argue all day,” Eagle said. “I was here, on the street, treating the wounded. You probably were not. Not that it matters. Because politically, I don’t agree with the student shitheads, Detective, pardon my French. I served my country, and when I came home, some of those shitheads spit on my uniform. So I’m not defending them.”

  Stuart looked away, but Brunsan kept staring at her.

  She met his eyes. She wasn’t done yet.

  “I am telling you that what I saw last night was out of control,” she said, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if that woman was dying of her injuries. Or if she was already dead. And some of that blame will go on the Berkeley Police Department for not responding.”

  She whipped a piece of paper off the coffee table and held it out to the two men. “Here’s the license plate number of that truck. It’s a Ford F-350 one-ton. I’ve given this information to your dispatch twice, and to your desk sergeant or whoever took my call this morning. So the information should be at the station, although I doubt it is. Find the goddamn truck. Find the guy who drives it. See if there’s blood in the back. I’ll wager there is. And see if you can find this woman, because someone needs to, and unlike you people, I don’t have the resources to do it.”

  Brunsan was staring at her as if she had grown a third head. He was probably going to comment on her language.

  “Even if there is blood,” Stuart said, “there’s not going to be any way to know whose it is.”

  She waved the paper at him. “You’ve given up before you started, then, Detective?”

  Stuart’s lips had gotten even thinner. “We don’t even know who that woman is.”

  “Yeah,” Eagle snapped. “Doesn’t that concern you? Because it sure as hell concerns me.”

  “It’s a needle in a haystack,” Stuart said.

  She nodded at the piece of paper. “If you take this, you’ll at least know which haystack to look in.”

  Brunsan pulled the paper from Eagle’s outstretched hand, to her surprise. Then he nodded, a slight frown between his eyes.

  “You’re right,” he said quietly. “We should at least track down the truck and its owner.”

  She felt a knot loosen in her back.

  “But,” he added, “don’t you go off half-cocked with that weapon of yours. No shooting—”

  “Detective,” she said sharply, cutting him off. “I didn’t shoot the asshole last night. You should see that as proof that I am not going to indiscriminately use my weapon. Although I must say, if I had shot that son of a bitch, then the woman would be in a hospital right now, getting the care she deserves.”

  Brunsan clutched the paper tightly. “You have an attitude problem, missy.”

  “Not as bad as yours,” she said.

  Stuart was shaking his head. Then he headed for the door. Brunsan was still staring at her.

  She took another deep breath.

  “Look,” she said to Brunsan. “You don’t have to like me to believe me. Just find this woman, okay? Make sure she’s got medical care. That’s all I ask.”

  Brunsan nodded. She had the odd feeling that she had gotten through to him.

  Her opinions had shifted. Stuart might have military posture, but Brunsan was the one who was listening to her, even if he did have to establish dominance over her every fifth sentence.

  “We’ll see what we can find,” he said. “Chances are it’s nothing.”

  Nothing. Beating a woman nearly to death was nothing to them. Eagle bit her lower lip. She waited until the two men let themselves out before she opened her mouth again.

  Even then, she didn’t say what she was thinking.

  She was thinking that it wasn’t nothing.

  She was also thinking that it was probably too late.

  5

  Pammy

  To Pammy’s surprise, Val did not leave after she signed up for the beginner’s exercise class. Val contributed a few dollars to the lunch pot that the women had set up. Instead of getting sandwiches, Jill and Opal had walked the few blocks to Kip’s to get pizza. Someone had called ahead and ordered three pies, which Pammy thought was too much, but she wasn’t going to argue.

  As the women had been saying, it was a special day.

  The women were still standing in the middle of the room, keeping their eyes on the television. The excitement had died down a little, but it still felt electric in here, as if the events thousands of miles away had occurred inside Pammy’s little gym.

  She wished she could shut the television off and send everyone home. Because the special day had an hours-long hole in the middle, as the astronauts did whatever they were doing on the lunar lander to prepare for a walk on the moon. The very idea made her stomach twist. The experts on television were talking about all the dangers—if the men fell over, could they get up? What happened if a rock punctured their suits? What if they couldn’t climb back into the lander?

  What if it couldn’t take off?

  Most of the women ignored that, preferring to believe that everything would work out. But Pammy didn’t.

  She had learned the hard way to prepare for the worst.

  People could still surprise her, though. Val did. Pammy had given her the sign-up form. Val had taken a magazine and a pen, then sat in one of the chairs, and carefully filled the form out. As if it were important.

  Which it wasn’t.

  Pammy didn’t really care if her new students filled out the form or not. She had it because one of her regulars, Stella D’Arbus, convinced her that women expected it.

  Pammy soon discovered that women who had ventured down to Telegraph from the suburbs expected it, as did the women who worked at the university. University students, hippies, and street people balked at filling out the form. Sometimes they drew a fist with the middle finger raised all over the front of the form. Sometimes, they looked at her in disbelief.

  Several crumpled the form and started to leave; Pammy would stop them by telling them filling it out wasn’t necessary. A handful offered to fill it out after they had taken a few classes and realized that Pammy didn’t work for The Man.

  Val was so skittish that Pammy had expected her to refuse to write down anything. But Val handed in the form, covered with neat handwriting, with every space filled out, including address and phone number.

  Pammy had
learned not to look at the details until later. If Pammy studied it, she made everyone nervous. She set the form in a folder that she would take to her office when she had a moment.

  Then Val gave her a tentative smile. Pammy smiled back.

  “How do I start?” Val asked.

  Pammy wanted to say that Val needed to eat more. But lunch would come shortly, and Pammy could watch how Val actually ate without intimidating her.

  Besides, Pammy wasn’t the body police, much as Eagle wanted her to be.

  “I’d like you to come to an exercise class first,” Pammy said. “I just want to assess where you’re at.”

  Val looked down, hands still clasped in front of her torso. “I’m not anywhere,” she said softly. “I don’t think I’ve exercised in my life.”

  “You’d be surprised what you’ve done,” Pammy said, but the response was by rote. Some schools never had Physical Education for girls. Even in the schools that required Phys Ed, girls found a dozen ways to get out of it. All girls were exempted for their periods, because common wisdom said that girls couldn’t exercise while they were having their menses.

  Pammy didn’t exempt anyone for any reason. She had looked at history and realized that historically, if women had stopped exercising for a week every month, nothing would have gotten done and nomadic tribes wouldn’t have traveled.

  Even in this day and age, a lot of women walked everywhere, especially if they lived down here, near campus. Walking gave them a stronger cardiovascular system than the women who sat and drank coffee all day.

  Val bit her lower lip, then asked, “Will I hate it?”

  Her tone seemed level, but that thrum had come back. Val was afraid of everything, it seemed.

  “I hope you won’t hate the class,” Pammy said. “I try to make class enjoyable.”

  But she didn’t want to make promises that she couldn’t entirely keep. Some people did hate the exercise class, on principle, Pammy sometimes thought, and she had no idea if Val was one of those people.

  At that moment, Opal and Jill pushed open the exterior door, carrying three boxes that smelled heavily of garlic and tomato sauce. Pammy’s stomach growled. She hadn’t realized she was hungry.

  Val slid back, almost as if she were trying to disappear. The other women moved forward, taking the boxes and laughing. Jill also carried a greasy white bag that, if Kip’s came through like it usually did, probably held red pepper flakes, napkins, and some parmesan cheese.

  Pammy had to move closer. She used to frown on food in the gym, but she soon learned that didn’t help some of the women, especially the students and street people. Sometimes, someone else’s treat was the only meal they got all day.

  “No food on the mats,” Pammy said. She silently cursed herself. She should have brought a table out here.

  Jill set the greasy bag on top of the counter, then headed toward the foldup tables stacked against the wall. Celeste joined her. Shirley Pettit walked over to the folding tables beside the extra foldup chairs. She was a thin woman with dyed blonde hair, who had taken up exercise to quit her chain-smoking habit. In the six months she’d been coming to the gym, she’d quit smoking seventeen times, each time vowing the latest one would stick.

  “Need help here,” she said to the three women still staring at the television.

  They ignored her. Pammy was about to start over when Val went ahead of her.

  “Where do you want it?” Val asked Shirley, taking one side of the first table on the stack.

  “In front of the counter, I think,” Shirley said. “I’m pretty sure Pammy doesn’t want grease all over her workspace.”

  “You’re right.” Pammy moved one of the smaller mats near the punching bags, but kept an eye on Val. Pammy wanted to see how hard it was for Val to lift something.

  She handled the folded table just fine, but had trouble walking with it. That didn’t surprise Pammy; women who had men in their lives often didn’t do a lot of lifting, hauling, and maneuvering.

  Small details told Pammy a great deal.

  Pammy wiped her hands on the back of her shirt, then helped with the table, putting the legs down. Celeste and Jill moved the chairs around the table, facing them toward the TV.

  “Ah, hell,” Opal said. “Can’t we sit around a couple tables? They’re saying nothing’s going to happen for a while.”

  Shirley went back for another table, and this time, Jill helped her. Celeste moved the chairs into place as Opal opened the pizza boxes.

  “You still got paper plates in the back?” Midge Thornberg had torn herself away from the TV. She adjusted her thin white t-shirt over her cutoffs. She could wear the outfit beautifully, although Pammy had tried to discourage her. Once she moved into the more strenuous classes, the cutoffs wouldn’t protect her legs from bruises and the occasional rug burn. Pammy wanted her to wear loose exercise clothing, but Midge was one of those women who liked showing off her spectacular figure, even when there were no men around.

  “Paper plates are useless against good pizza,” Opal said. “We brought back enough napkins for everyone.”

  Midge made a slight face. Pammy smiled at her. “I have paper plates and paper cups, but I’ll get them. I’ll bring some water out as well.”

  She didn’t have beer or soda, at least not for the group. She tried to keep the food at the gym healthy, saving most of her unhealthy splurges for home.

  She headed toward her private area in the back of the building, taking Val’s file with her.

  Pammy unlocked the door to her office, then set Val’s file on the desk. Pammy closed the door again quickly and went to the kitchen, removing a stack of paper plates and paper cups from the storage shelf on one side of the kitchen. Paper plates would quickly dissolve into a soggy mess of pizza grease, but they were better than nothing.

  She brought the plates to the nearest folding table. The women had already chosen their seats, leaving one for her nearest the television. She handed out two paper plates stuck together to each woman, then set two separate plate piles on each table. Pammy grabbed a slice of pepperoni and sank into her chair.

  The pizza was still warm, but a little too thin. Kip’s had skimped on the cheese. Or maybe that was just her opinion. She preferred Shakey’s or Pepe’s whenever she got take-out pizza, but she hadn’t been part of the discussion.

  The men on the television were recapping what had happened earlier, plus updating other bits of news from the day. She turned her chair so she didn’t have to watch them.

  Val was at the other table, her chair pushed back just enough to separate herself from the group. She wasn’t participating in a conversation either. She was scanning the entire gym, taking it all in as if she were memorizing it.

  Her gaze seemed to focus on the row of sweatshirts and t-shirts that had the gym’s name emblazoned across the front. Pammy hadn’t done that for advertising. She didn’t really want to promote the gym too much. The very idea of the gym seemed to drive some men completely crazy.

  She kept the shirts, along with sweat pants and some baggy shorts, for women who needed looser clothing but couldn’t (or didn’t try) to find it elsewhere. She always felt a bit embarrassed about the shirts, though, as if they were a touch of Madison Avenue that did not belong in her by-the-bootstraps place.

  Then Pammy realized Val wasn’t looking at the shirts as much as she was looking at the boxing gloves. Pammy kept boxing gloves in all sizes, with an emphasis on the smaller sizes—boy’s sizes, the sports equipment makers called them. There were no women’s sizes. She had a lot of extra tape and chalk, and an entire row of women’s tennis shoes, since most women didn’t even own a pair.

  She also had mimeographed handouts stacked on one shelf, telling women the various places in the Bay Area that sold sports equipment—and, most importantly, sold it to women.

  Midge said something to Val and she smiled just a little, returning her attention to the table. She took two more slices of pizza, something Pammy was glad to see. Pa
mmy had worried that Val was one of those women who starved herself just to maintain some unachievable standard of beauty.

  Maybe her thinness came from a long illness. Or maybe, like Shirley, she smoked too much, although Pammy hadn’t smelled it on her.

  Pammy took two slices of sausage and set them on a brand new paper plate, which she placed on top of the old one. She ate and half-listened to the conversation, not really paying attention.

  Usually, she enjoyed the camaraderie of the women who came to the gym. Today, though, she felt just a little out of sorts. If she were honest with herself, she had felt that way all spring, ever since late April when it became clear that the transformation of a nearby vacant lot into a park by students and hippies was becoming an issue with the city.

  Ever since People’s Park blew up into an international event, Pammy had felt like real-world events were taking over her life.

  Even this moon landing, as joyful as the rest of the women seemed to find it, annoyed her. She just wanted a normal Sunday. She wanted to spend time with her classes, do her accounts for the week, and head home for a glass of wine and a little reading.

  But she wasn’t going to go home until the moon events ended, however they were going to end. And, although she could excuse herself from the group, she probably wasn’t going to get her accounts done either. The accounting would have to wait until morning, which meant she would have to arrive early, which meant she would have to go to bed early.

  She sighed softly, her entire schedule shifting because of Jill’s idea to let women watch the moon landing.

  Val stood, wiping off her fingers as she did so. She asked Jill where to put the paper plates. Jill grabbed one of the boxes, now empty of pizza, and flipped the lid up. Val set her plate in it.

  Then she wandered toward the sweatshirts, stopping for just a moment at the gloves, as if they worried her. Pammy watched her, but didn’t walk with her.

  A lot of women did this when they first came to the gym, both familiarizing themselves with everything here, and also silently satisfying their curiosity. Most women had never been inside a men’s gym.