But when the box was in Sarah’s hand, she knew what it held. It was the same feeling in a cemetery that draws you to a family grave. There was a heat emanating from the box like she was holding one of the biscuits Mom used to make before cooking became identified as part of the conspiracy against women. “Careful, don’t burn yourself,” Mom would caution and Sarah would take a big bite anyway, the taste of milk and butter filling her mouth. Dad chirping, “That’s my girl.” But maybe that never happened. Maybe there never were drop biscuits and happy family dinners. Maybe she invented them to have something to long for, telling herself another convenient lie for survival. Sarah was more afraid now to open the box than she ever was to burn her mouth on one of those biscuits. She swore to God, Mom used to bake.
“You might not believe this,” Mom said, waiting for Sarah to accept her present, “but having you was the best thing I ever did.”
Sarah snapped open the jeweler’s box and stared at Mom’s wedding ring. Of course Mom didn’t throw it away, she wasn’t nearly the revolutionary she wanted to be. How could she toss ten years of her life into the ocean and pretend they didn’t happen? There wasn’t enough water to cover it up.
“It’s hard to peak when you’re twenty,” Mom told her. “Knowing you’ll never create something as beautiful ever again.”
Sarah was going to start crying, and not stop.
“I was happy once, you know,” Mom said, and Sarah knew she hadn’t invented anything, there were simply different versions of the same facts. “As delusional and short-lived as that happiness may have been, there were days in my early twenties when I didn’t have to think, I just was. That’s what happiness is, not having to think. Doing everything right on instinct. But when the time came for your father to be the bullfighter and for me to feel like a princess, it didn’t happen.”
Goddamn, Sarah hated goodbyes.
“Take it,” Mom said. “It’s yours.”
Sarah’s first instincts were to shut the box and return the gift. But she knew there was more to it than that. She decided whatever bad luck followed the wedding ring was a spell cast upon the world and it could be broken by the promise of the hope and strength of the original giving. She slipped it on, remembering how she had cried the day she and Mom left for the Waterfall, knowing it was truly over between Mom and Dad, and the day she herself walked down the aisle and how Mom’s tears mussed her mascara. The ring fit snugly on her friendship finger, up against Daryl’s offering. A true marriage.
Mom put down her wine and stood. Sarah was unable to remember the last time they had hugged. There was a distinct smell to Mom’s flesh that Sarah recognized as being not unlike her own, masked slightly by stale dope smoke and the leather couch. It was important to Sarah not to cry and to be the one to release her hold first. Mom clung to her after she had stopped squeezing. Sarah focused on a spot beyond the walls of the main house where she would soon be living the rest of her life.
“I love you, hon,” Mom said.
“I love you too, Mom,” Sarah said, breaking from her grip, “but I’ve got to go.”
Before she knew it she was inside her truck, driving the winding road she had traveled a zillion times away from the Waterfall. Go, go, go, she told herself, the sun powering the heat of an Indian summer that couldn’t quite get rolling, one of those days twenty degrees cooler than you thought it was when you looked out the window. It would become hot soon after this cold front left, but until then leaves were beginning to turn and it was the start of another fall. Sarah’s favorite season. She opened the window to feel the air against her face, temporarily relieving her nausea, and pushed her Cowboy Junkies tape into the cassette player. It was always fall in San Francisco, cool and a bit damp. “Put on a sweater if you’re cold,” Mom used to say, but Sarah didn’t want to remember any of that now.
Don’t look back, she reminded herself.
But she should have been looking forward with more care. As Sarah approached Boonville, near the Anderson Valley Way turnoff, she didn’t see the lamb that had wandered into the highway and she hit it squarely in an explosion of mutton and wool before it could bleat a defense. The wheel jerked in her hand. She applied the brakes with a rush of adrenaline. She could feel the animal’s life force rushing through her. She turned off the music. When she backed up to the lamb, she saw it was dead. There was nothing she could do. It wasn’t her fault. Dumb fucking animal. It should have stayed in its pen. She was too rattled to get out of the truck for a closer inspection or to assess the dent that would be imprinted in her bumper. She’d wait until she had to stop for gas in Santa Rosa or made it to the St. Francis before she checked the damage. She couldn’t look the sheep in the eyes. The sight of blood would make her puke. It was a bad omen.
I’ll stop in town and tell Hap or someone at the hotel, she thought; the lamb probably belonged to Hank. He should check his fence before the whole flock got out, stupid goddamn redneck. If the leader had got loose, the rest would follow. Sarah wasn’t certain she would stop. She wanted to put distance between herself and Boonville, not go back on any of her decisions. But when she reached the turnoff for Manchester Road, there was a traffic jam and a mass of sheep milling within the sporadic movement of cars.
It was a sign.
She knew it was a sign even before she saw the first squirrel nailed to one of her crosses. And then the next one. And the next. And the next. And realized there was a row of them on each side of the street as far as she could see. People were inspecting them, causing more of a delay. Hank had his big rig and was trying to round up his livestock, causing more congestion. Sarah spotted Billy Chuck and Kurts laughing at him from the back of their truck. Cal’s cruiser was parked nearby and he was explaining things like there was an answer other than the end was near and the Messiah was walking amongst them. Sarah could see a group of angry motorists calling for the messenger’s head, giving Cal an earful. Franny was standing next to him with Pensive Prairie Sunset and Ms. Manly Mike of the Albion Nation, smiling at the commotion. Sarah was certain that Franny was somehow involved with this, but the others, although capable of deviant behavior, who knew why they’d become a part of this spectacle? Franny waved at Sarah but she didn’t acknowledge him, more determined than ever to find her way through this maze.
It was like the project she had planned, “The Blood of Christ in Wine Country,” except the Squirrel Lady’s squirrels had replaced the wooden sculptures of the town’s population. They scowled at her as she passed. This was what Squirrel Boy must have meant by his note, “Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand.” He knew it wouldn’t last. As soon as the locals counted the number of squirrels and made the connection, they wouldn’t stand for the effigies of themselves to remain. Frightened by their reflection, they would destroy that part of themselves they couldn’t heal.
As Sarah drove past the hotel, she could see Hap with a microphone stuck in his face. There were two network news vans and a small crowd in the parking lot, rubberneckers bringing traffic to a halt. Sarah could hear Hap harping Boontling above the noise of the sheep. She never paid much attention to the local tongue spoken by a few of the old-timers. She could only pick out the general meaning of some of the words. Hap would be tonight’s local-color sound bite.
“Bahl or nonch,” he said, “You got a classic johnem of a crayzeek cock-darley and a lizzied appoled ready to pike. Turn this cow-skullsey Boont into a skype region, a kingster of squeekyteeks. Any oshtook ridgy could see that. But I ain’t one to harp lews ’n larmers.”
Sarah felt her pulse in her ears. She tried to remain steady in the driver’s seat, not looking toward the cameras. Her life was nobody else’s business. Gawkers. They had the same problems as her, whether they knew it or not. Minus the sheep. An image of the animal she had left in the highway resurfaced as she watched its family filling the streets to stop its killer from leaving the scene of the crime. The squirrels resembled a jury of her peers ready to bring in a guilty verdict. She kne
w Boonville was the jail, but who would dare preside as judge? There was no God. Her early days at Catholic school were enough to teach her that.
Her heart was pumping fifty miles an hour faster than her truck was moving, her mind running at a pace close behind. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired, she ran through the H.A.L.T. list again, reminding herself to breathe. Too much was happening. She knew she was partially responsible for the chaos, but she wanted off this fucking merry-go-round.
“It’s aliens tryin’ to communicate like them patterns in the wheat fields in Iowa,” she heard Skeeter telling someone outside the market. “A sure case of first contact.”
The traffic lessened as she neared the edge of town, but it was more than simple road rage she felt building as she approached the city limits. Something was about to burst. Something the St. Francis, an abortion, wedding rings, or leaving Boonville could not repair. Not all the king’s horses or all the king’s men. Not any man, woman, or child. Nothing could put her back together again.
Sarah checked her rearview mirror and saw Boonville in an upheaval, sheep and locals, tourists and cars roaming the highway, hemmed in by the two rows of crucified squirrels as if their expression of shame and disgust would forever contain them. She thought she saw Daryl’s Camaro in the middle of the turmoil but turned her eyes away, having seen enough. But there before her, at the end of the row of squirrels, in front of the town’s population sign, looming above the hood of her truck, was the carving of a woman affixed to a cross with a nail pounded through her head and stomach. She steered to the side of the road, parking in front of the crucifix, and studied the image of herself that she had created.
Sarah began to cry.
17
John was dreaming when he heard the knock on his door. In the dream, he was a teacher correcting tests for an English class at Anderson Valley High School and the students were getting perfect scores by answering all the true-false questions true. At first he thought they were cheating or it was his mistake for having designed a test with only true answers. But when he graded the essay question, “How can art affect our daily lives?” he discovered their responses were unique and insightful, although written in a language he didn’t recognize as English but was able to understand anyway, a slangy dialect of American full of odd nouns. He looked up from one of the exams to praise a student, but found himself looking out on a classroom of squirrels, all with a red apple in front of them, missing a bite.
John decided to answer the door, thinking it would be Blindman or Cal or one of his cohorts come to tell him that the crucifix project had been dismantled and a mob was forming to string him up. “Dancing at the end of a rope without music,” he told himself, forgetting where he had heard that expression. He walked from his bedroom, tucking his shirt into his pants, having slept in his clothes again. He wondered if there was special attire for a hanging, aside from the rope necktie the guest of honor was required to wear. He didn’t want to be underdressed.
“Hello,” Sarah said.
The sun was bright behind her. John could hardly see. By the glare, he figured it was late afternoon.
“Nice work down in town,” she said. “What better way to spend your Sunday than to see yourself crucified? You really know how to get a girl’s attention.”
John raised a hand to shade his eyes. He saw Sarah’s eyes were red and her nose needed wiping. She was trembling and looked like she had climbed out of an over-chlorinated swimming pool, except she wasn’t wet.
“I borrowed your crosses,” John said.
“I saw that,” Sarah answered. “You hammered a few nails through my sculpture too. It was quite a statement. Tell me, what did I ever do to you, Squirrel Boy?”
John felt the stare of the two squirrels towering behind her. He had grown tired of their criticism and sledged two smaller squirrels into their sides when he had returned home this morning, trying to use the smaller squirrels as handles to rotate the big ones to point away from the cabin. But they were too heavy to move by himself. He almost threw out his back trying. They remained frozen in their position and dissatisfaction.
“I meant it as a compliment,” he said, noticing Sarah’s face now looked as much like one of the frowning squirrels as his own.
“Next time send flowers,” Sarah suggested. “I like tuberose.”
John could tell she wasn’t exactly angry, more disturbed by the experience of the crucifixes. He couldn’t have expected any less of a reaction, but there had come a point in the project when he was no longer in control, working on instinct, uncovering a piece of himself that had been hidden. It was strange, but when he was finishing the exhibition, he didn’t care or think about any specific individual. There seemed to be a greater force guiding him. It surpassed his needs or Sarah’s, a common agony and indefatigable hope that was bigger than Boonville. That became his motivation.
“It was your idea,” John said, getting his bearings.
He wasn’t trying to deflect blame. The truth was that without Sarah he never would have conceived of the project. He tried to explain to her the events leading up to the first nail, starting with his visit to the Waterfall and meeting her mother and the giant and the troll, then rambled into stories about his family, Grandma, and Christina. He mentioned the others’ involvement, Pensive, the Albion Nation, Billy Chuck, the Kurtses, and how they had put their own marks on the crosses. He tried to lay bare his intentions, but it still wasn’t clear to him why he had done what he had done or its full significance. The meaning would vary depending on the understanding and compassion each viewer brought to the work. For him, like Franny had suggested, it meant release. He had pieced together order, a reflection of himself that felt truthful, linking him to a specific time, place, and community.
“I hope you’re not mad at me,” John said. “I heard you were leaving and it was all I could think of to do.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she said, shaking her head, turning to face the valley, then setting her eyes directly back to his. “In fact, you might be the only person in the world I’m not mad at right now.”
“Maybe this isn’t the time to tell you,” John said. “I made a deal with Cal to keep the crosses up so you could see them.”
“What kind of deal?” she said, eyebrows lifting.
John told her about Balostrasi and the earring and what the giant at the commune had said about “burying strangers.” Sarah asked how that affected her. John said that, without naming names or telling him what he was doing on the side of the mountain that night, he told Cal the approximate location of the ear they had uncovered. In return, Cal guaranteed to guard the project until she saw it, providing it was no later than tonight. John figured with the dope harvested and Sarah out of town, they were off the hook if Cal found the stomped site or the other patch, which would be a miracle because his directions were vague to say the least.
Sarah shook her head, asking John if he knew how long it took to set up an irrigation system, to find natural springs and water sources, to lug hoses and dig trenches. How expensive it was to start from scratch? How hard it was to scout locations? The risk involved? How everyone in the valley knew who was growing on that ridge, so the Waterfall was in deep shit if there was an investigation. And with her gone, everyone at the commune would think she ratted them out. Unless the Feds found her first.
“Cal doesn’t care if you’re growing dope,” John said. “Especially if it’s gone. That’s not his job.”
“That’s what you think,” Sarah said.
“I couldn’t have it on my conscience,” John said. “If Aslan killed Balostrasi he should be put away.”
“Poachers disappear in these hills every year,” Sarah said. “They know what they’re getting into. Not that that makes it O.K., but I didn’t set up the dynamic. I wouldn’t kill someone trying to boost my crop, but I wouldn’t steal someone’s hard work either. If he’s guilty, I hope they lock the Poobah up and throw away the key. But let me tell you, if he did do it, it’s
the least of his crimes.”
“What could be worse than murder?” John said.
“I’ll let you answer that yourself,” Sarah said. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“I’m sorry if I got you in any trouble,” John said.
“Don’t worry, the Feds coming after me is a long shot,” Sarah said, cutting short the lecture. “The Poobah’s been surfing a wave of bad karma for years. It’s about time it closed out on him.”
Enough said, John thought, ready to leave the subject alone. He knew a lawyer who could get him out of whatever he had stumbled into so far, as long as he didn’t fall any further. Bean Bean’s cousin routinely cleared citizens in Miami unlucky enough to be in the proximity of large quantities of cocaine at the wrong time, usually a straw’s length away in a Porsche parked in a stakedout parking lot of a convenience store. They walked with probation, donating their vehicles to the judge’s favorite charity. That sort of help was a telephone call and a nonrefundable cash retainer of five thousand dollars away. But he was worried about Sarah. Although she seemed to be taking everything in stride, it could be more out of habit than choice.
“The golden goose always dies,” she said. “I’ll be all right, nothing’s in my name up there. I needed to make a clean break anyway.”
John could see that despite the problematic nature of the information he had disclosed, it had come as a relief for Sarah. Decisions had been made. It was out of her hands now. She seemed grateful for the intervention, regardless of the outcome. She could take care of more pressing issues.
Boonville Page 30