by Alan Russell
“Excuse the vernacular,” I said, “but you don’t exactly strike me as a mercy fuck.”
“Why are you being so harsh?” she asked.
It was a good question. I answered as best I could. “I took this case because a man I admired died. I believed his PR, believed in this man-myth who cared only about planting trees and working for a better world. But now the Gilbert and Sullivan line keeps playing through my head: ‘Things are seldom what they seem/Skim milk masquerades as cream.’ The more I hear about Shepard, the less I like him.”
“You wouldn’t have said that had you known him,” she said.
I didn’t spare the sarcasm. “To know him was to love him?”
“Something like that. Christopher was an innocent.”
There was a wistful tone to her voice, the kind you envy, the kind you wish had been reserved for you.
Disbelievingly: “Innocent?”
“Yes.”
“From what I’ve heard, he was a wannabe cult leader.”
Ashe shook her head. “Christopher was charismatic, but he wasn’t a megalomaniac. His cause was what mattered to him.”
“He conducted services in the woods,” I said. “He initiated rites.”
Ashe sighed. “I heard the stories,” she said, indicating by her tone that they were negligible. “You have to understand, that was Christopher. He was a little boy.”
“Your little boy acted like a Druid priest,” I said. “Your little boy liked exposing his tumescent self.”
“Of course,” she said. “He was primal. He was show and tell. He didn’t have a great philosophy, at least not in a conventional sense. In a seed, he saw all the answers of the world. Water it, tend to it, and nurture it, and you’ll find salvation.”
“You underestimated him.”
“No, Stuart,” she said. By using my first name, Ashe allowed us a familiarity we did not have before. “It was in his simplicity that Christopher was so very strong. He did so much. What other mortal could have planted millions of trees? I always think of the saying ‘When all’s said and done, a lot more is said than done.’ Christopher was the opposite of that. He might have had only one idea, but he succeeded where a thousand deep thinkers could not.”
“You say he wasn’t complex. How is it that he always had some quote handy? How is it that he seemed so wise?”
“Anything that had to do with trees,” she said, “he remembered.”
“If this elephant of the trees was so simple,” I said, “why were you his lover?”
Ashe thought about that. “Maybe I needed something uncomplicated back then,” she said.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that sex simplifies matters.”
“With Christopher,” she said, “it was almost that way. I think he viewed sex as an extension of nature. Something that was fun. Something that shouldn’t have any hang-ups.”
“The birds and the bees and the trees. That about covers him, right?”
“Yes,” she said, raising her chin to my skepticism. “Rhythms, growing seasons, and fertility. He knew those things very well.”
“And where did you come in?”
“I needed pruning,” she said. “I was carrying the wrong kind of baggage, growing crookedly. When it came to trees, Christopher could always tell right away if something was wrong, could explain why they were stunted or growing funny. Intuitively, I think he had that same kind of understanding of women. It wasn’t that he thought he was God’s gift to us, just that he thought things should grow right.”
I made a disparaging sound. “The all women need is a good lay theory, huh?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t a macho thing with Christopher,” she said. “It was more like a healing. Sex without being sexual, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron. Pleasure schooling.”
“You sound nostalgic,” I said. There was a little tightness to my voice.
“I probably am,” she said. “You know how I think he seduced me? His story. Just a stupid little story, really.
“I met him in southern California. We were planting coast live oaks along the Kern River, trying to restore the riparian habitat as it once was. I had heard of the Green Man, of course. You know how it’s always an anticlimax to meet a famous person? It wasn’t that way with him. By his own example, we were all encouraged to work twice as hard. Everyone loved him, and everyone shared his vision.
“One day he approached me when I was by myself. And he said I reminded him of a beautiful statue. And then he asked me whether I wanted to hear a story about two statues. I told him that I did.
“One of the statues was a male,” he said, “and the other a female. They were locked in a close embrace, twined together over the years. To those that looked upon them in the park setting, they were passion and dispassion, stone by nature, but clearly flesh in disposition.
“One day a good spirit passed over that park and looked upon those statues, and the spirit saw the unfairness of their positions, and was moved to melt the stone to flesh.
“The former rock lovers suddenly faced one another, he, strong and comely, and she, voluptuous, and desirable. In a twinkling, they knew what had to be. Hand in hand, they ran into the bushes. And there the spirit heard rustling, and laughing, and great communion.
“Before leaving, the spirit decided to take a peek at their bliss. Just a peek, mind you. And when that spirit peered through the shrubbery, he found the man and woman madly relieving themselves on every pigeon they could find.”
I started laughing, and Ashe laughed too. “I expected something dirty,” she said, “something tawdry. Back then I didn’t care for jokes, didn’t like laughing. I felt that left me too exposed. But he made me laugh. He lightened my spirit. And over time I learned it was all right to have passions that weren’t only politically or environmentally oriented. When I was with him, I learned how to be free.”
She stopped talking, did a little remembering, but it wasn’t all serious. Every few seconds one or the other of us laughed. We only had to say “pigeons,” or flutter our hands like birds trying to escape a flood, to start us laughing again. A few times I looked at her and wondered what had happened to the woman who had been so stern and humorless, so like a woman of stone. She looked warm now, and soft.
In the middle of a laugh we touched. And then there were no more laughs. We came together and started kissing, and feeling. She began to make little sounds, which built to groans and sighs. The friction increased, human sticks rubbing. Our clothes came off, not in orderly progression, but in jerks and spurts, in spasms of activity and exploration.
We were down to socks and sounds, our lips, and tongues, and hands, making mad dashes at each other. We rolled on our discarded clothes, the grit from the unswept floor cracking beneath us.
I felt along her thighs, and she slowly spread them for me. For us. She made sounds in the language of passion, but at a telling moment she remembered English and said, “No.”
I retreated slightly, hoped I hadn’t heard correctly, but my denial didn’t help. She stood up and took a step back. I got to my feet also and wondered what to say. I thought of reassurances, words to rekindle the fire, but in the end I mutely obeyed the stop signs.
Naked, we stood facing each other. I saw a statue again, finely chiseled, flawless, but I would rather have seen human imperfections, and human desire.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said.
“Who were you with?” I asked. “Christopher or me?”
“Both of you,” she said.
Only half insulted, I thought. Or half lied to.
I picked up my clothes and started walking toward the door. It would be easier, I decided, to dress in the truck.
“Leaving?” she asked.
“Looking for pigeons,” I said.
16
I KNEW A GOOD place to look. I had a gutful of mean and knew where I wanted to take it out. I drove to Bayshore.
There wasn’t much wind left to the Blo
w Hole. Four tipplers were hanging on at the bar. One of them was Red. Tina must not have liked the look on my face. She didn’t wave, just moved her thin arm under the bar, probably atop the ax handle.
I sat next to Red. The bar got quiet. I think I was remembered. Red’s eyes were mostly closed. He hadn’t bothered to look my way yet.
“Beer,” I said.
Two of the men said their good nights. They weren’t in the mood for a hangover and didn’t seem keen on protecting Red’s virtue. The third was snoring. That left Red and me and Tina.
She put the beer in front of me, looked like she was about to deliver it with some advice, then decided not to.
Overloud, I announced, “I’m back, Red.”
He blinked his eyes a few times.
“Figure you owe me some answers.”
He looked around. I don’t think he liked what he saw. “Got to drain the monster,” he mumbled.
“There an exit from the bathrooms?”
Tina shook her head.
“Go on,” I said. “I’ll wait.”
Red stumbled off. Tina and I exchanged glances. “Couldn’t be more than five minutes ago he visited that bathroom.”
Her hint wasn’t lost on me. Red wasn’t answering the call of nature; he was making a call. That mean Cincy and Coop would likely be showing up any minute.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Figured you’d come back,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because men are stupid.”
“I’m not quite stupid enough to argue.”
“That’s a first for your species.”
“Red talk about the Green Man after I left?”
“Nope. Talked mostly about how he was going to kill you if you came back.”
I didn’t say anything, but Tina must not have liked what she saw. “Oh, God,” she said. “He’s got his ‘here I am’ expression. What brought that on? Woman trouble? Bruised ego?”
Her needling took a little of the Neanderthal posturing off my face. “So he still does have a brain,” said Tina. “Better remember that, Stu.”
Red walked back into the room, made a point of zipping up his zipper just as he arrived at the bar. “So, the San Francisco dick is back,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“You like fairies?” Red asked.
I nodded. “The tooth fairy especially. Even though he’s not very smart.”
Red looked genuinely confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The stupid tooth fairy. You see, I keep getting into situations where I have to knock out the teeth of some asshole. And I collect those teeth and put them under my pillow. And that fairy keeps paying out.”
Red announced, “You’re full of shit.” But he was leaning away from me when he said it.
I shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted the fairy tale.”
“What I want is another fucking drink. For the road. That’s where we’ll talk.”
Tina poured him his drink. Wild Turkey, of course. Red didn’t make any move to pay. I threw some bills on the counter. With my money came another long-neck bottle of beer and a cluing look from Tina. The beer arrived capped. I slipped it into my coat pocket.
“You tip the little lady well, Mr. Private Dickhead? Because she does give good service. Oh my, doesn’t she give good service.”
Red gulped down his drink, took off his cap for a moment, and ran his hand through a shock of curly red hair. His eyes were almost as red as his hair. He rose a little unsteadily, made his boisterous farewell to Tina, then attempted a drunken insouciance. He had the drunken part down real well. He led me away from the river and took me down an alley, where he said he knew just the place to talk.
The alley boxed us in. On one side was an old, crumbling warehouse, on the other a rotting plywood wall. Some of the lights along the warehouse were still operational, but most were not, leaving patches of gray amid the darkness. I tried to figure out where the ambush would come. Walking away would have been the smart thing to do, but I had already done that once. The alley was piled with trash and lined with old truck tires. I was watching Red, waiting for him to react. He was looking intently from side to side. I slipped the beer bottle from my pocket just before they jumped me.
Coop had a baseball bat. He tried to pull my head into left field but should have gone with the pitch. I ducked under his swing, moved inside his batting range to try a swing of my own. The beer bottle slammed into his face. In the movies, the glass would have shattered. In real life it remained intact. But I couldn’t say the same thing about his face.
He was screaming, but he wasn’t the only one. I was doing my banshee imitation. I was scared as hell, and I wanted everyone else to be. I made a move for Red. He was a knife man, but his reactions were a night of drinking slow. I feinted, and he brought his arm down in what was supposed to be a slashing motion. I kicked out, caught the fleshy underpart of his forearm, and watched the knife go airborne. Then I grabbed him by his hair and swung his head into the wooden wall. There were still a few solid boards left after the impact, but a few less than there had been.
Behind me a voice screamed, “Stop! I’ll shoot! I will!”
I didn’t turn around, at least not immediately. I raised one arm, the one with the bottle. It probably looked like surrender. The other arm I still had wrapped around Red’s head. I didn’t move quickly, instead acted in a very deliberate manner. Cincy’s voice had sounded desperate, and I wasn’t anxious to see how desperate. I broke the bottle I was holding and positioned it in the same steady motion. When I turned, I had the jagged edge in Red’s neck. I pinked him a little, and he squealed nicely.
Cincy wasn’t holding the gun very steadily. And this time he wasn’t laughing.
“Your call,” I said. “A philosophical question: Better Red than dead?”
Red managed to spit out a tooth with minimal facial movement. Then, through clenched teeth, he cursed Cincy. The muted profanity sounded a little odd, but, with the glass pressed up against Red’s neck, there wasn’t much room for his jaw to operate. The upshot of his speech was for Cincy to drop his gun, which he did. I retrieved it. With the gun in hand, I offered a few other suggestions, and Red was quick to whisper his agreement with them. Among my recommendations was that Red and I needed to be alone for a little chat. No one argued.
After Cincy and Coop left, I pushed Red to the ground. Without a shard muzzle, he wasn’t quite so pleasant. “I already gave to your fucking tooth fairy,” he said, “so what more do you want?”
“Maybe a few more donations.”
I showed Red my teeth, displaying more than smiling. He weighed his options. “We wasn’t going to kill you,” he said. “We just brought the gun along for insurance.”
Insurance. I suppose that’s how we justify nuclear stockpiling. I let him get a good look at his insurance, casually kept the gun aimed at him. He started sweating, his body odor adding to a number of other bad smells in the alley, including dry rot, and wet rot, and urine, and garbage. I breathed through my mouth. Occasionally a light river breeze passed by, and I took to snapping at its freshness like a dog at flies. Red had to endure my mad dog act, as well the darkness and dankness of his dunce corner. He started talking even before I got around to asking him any questions.
“I got a call,” he said, “and this guy asks me whether I want to make some money. Good way to get your attention, right? Man says we don’t do something against them Ever-Groaners, none of us will be working. So I says I got no argument there.
“To make a long story short, I got money, and I got instructions. I had them Green Man posters made up, and me and my friends posted them. And that’s about all.”
I hardly thought so, and made that apparent with a look. Red started talking again, said he didn’t know how he had been singled out. He had never met with the caller, said he only talked with him twice by phone. Red was advised that other jobs would be forthcoming if he could keep his mouth sh
ut, which he did, at least for a time. He was sent ten bills, all hundreds. That provided him with a little extra spending money for a few weeks and also gave him the idea he was a lieutenant in a secret campaign. When no other calls came, Red decided to pursue some mischief of his own. Without a bankroll behind him, his pranks had been minor, just as Tina had guessed. The biggest boast he could come up with was the night he and his friends had snuck around the Sweetwater camp collapsing tents while the campers slept.
I didn’t look impressed, so Red decided to give me the grand finale. He said that he and his friends had done some surveillance on the “Green machine” and were privy to a lot of their secrets. Someone should have coached him on a better beginning than “It was a dark and stormy night.” But his story quickly got better.
“It was a bitch of a night,” he said, “windy, you know? You could tell the sky was about to piss buckets, but me and Cincy and Coop figured it was as good a time as any to get us a look-see at what was going on at River Grove. Spy time on the Green Man.
“Thing is, what we saw mostly was his green ass. It was doing plenty of moving up and down. He was a seed planter all right. He was putting it to some slut right outside that tree of his.”
Red spoke lower, more confidentially: “I’ve had some pieces of ass in my time that set the walls to shaking, but this one beat all. She had lungs in her that wouldn’t quit. Had the words to match her screams too.”
Red told me the words. Nothing original but a few creative combinations.
“She was screaming to wake the dead,” he said, “and doing a hell of a job on the living, if you know what I mean. We got us closer and closer, but they was in their own world, going at it like dogs.”
“How long before you awarded best of show?”
“Huh?”
“How long did they make love?”
“I don’t know. They were still going strong when we left.”
That didn’t sound right. Not those three. “Why?”
A shrug that attempted indifference. “It got old.”
Same question, as if I hadn’t heard the first answer “Why?”