Sweet Creek

by Lee Lynch

  “Now you sound like your friend Rattlesnake.” Cat’s smile was teasing.

  “R? My friend? No way!” she protested. “Dottie said to check out music therapy. I’m thinking if I had the moves, what couldn’t I do for some kid?”

  “Jeep, I know Dottie lives and breathes her work, but I get indigestion mixing school and chocolate milk shakes, especially on a Friday afternoon. Can’t we be passionate about something else right now?”

  “Whatever. I’m thinking out loud.” She slouched into her seat and sucked on her straw, bummed. She had to remember that Cat wasn’t Sarah and didn’t want to hear every thought in her head. Donny would give her a ride to the county library tomorrow. She’d research music therapy on one of their computers.

  Cat crinkled up her hamburger wrapper and said, “I promised one of my old high school friends that I’d stop at her garage sale. Her daughter’s one of my all-time favorite kids. We can still make it if you’re willing.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Maybe Cat had been right to stomp on her newfound dream. Poor Cat was the one who had to listen to all her enthusiasms. Last week she’d been stoked about med school to cure the kids. The week before, she’d been researching orchestras in Seattle. The truth was that she wanted to do all of it. Was Katie right? Had they been drawn to Waterfall Falls to, like, find their capital-P paths? Life seemed like such a little scrap of time that she wanted to do it right. Why wasn’t there someone she could ask what choices to make?

  They climbed the hill on the west side of town—Cat’s side—turning onto streets she hadn’t known were there until they reached a dead end cut from the side of a cliff. She got out of the truck and saw the whole town below her and the maze of streets they’d driven. Cliff Street began as a stately cypress-lined boulevard down where Cat lived. Her place was one of a row of large homes built early in the century by prosperous merchants, bankers, and city fathers. At the next level, where power shovels had begun to dig for new residential land, like some twentieth-century version of the gold rush, a dozen houses crowded together on each street. Here at the crest claimed by the new town gentry there were only four homes, well-insulated by green plots of land that backed onto thickets of a tiny thinned forest of evergreens and manzanita bushes. A water tower was surrounded by barbed wire.

  “Zowie,” she said as Cat came up behind her. “The town pretty much starts at Natural Woman Foods and crashes to a stop at the casino.”

  “Waterfall Falls, my personal minitown,” said Cat with what sounded like great satisfaction.

  “Have you ever considered living somewhere else?”

  “Not seriously. I spent four years at Western Washington U in Bellingham, and it never felt like home. I love being able to see the whole town at once by driving up a hill.”

  “Yeah,” Jeep said, shivering a little in a mountain breeze, “it feels good, like it’s a place I can wrap my mind around. But it’s still the whole world, isn’t it?”

  “Minus war and natural disasters except for forest fires. Those are nasty.”

  “Auntie Cat!” cried a plump-cheeked little girl with long dark hair.

  “Hi, Gretchen. Hi, Gretchen’s mom. This is Auntie Jeep. She teaches at Waterfall School too.”

  “I get to go there next year,” Gretchen told them. And not, Jeep thought, looking from the child to the large new house she was growing up in, not in a special-ed class. Was she way off, or were most of the kids in her class unlikely to live in a place like this?

  “We were about to pull everything inside for the night,” Gretchen’s mom told them. “Haven’t had even a looky-loo for over an hour. Do you need anything special or are you visiting?”

  Jeep noticed a bass fiddle in the back of the garage. She said she’d take a look around and managed to make herself linger over Christmas decorations, small appliances, and neatly folded sheets that smelled strongly of fabric softener. Cat was looking through the children’s books, chatting with Gretchen about which ones to buy when Jeep, making her tone as casual as she could, pointed at the bass and asked, “Do you store this thing out here?”

  “I’m afraid so.” The woman held out a hand and said, “I’m Myra.”

  “Jeep.”

  “Jeep as in the car?”

  “Yes, but short for G.P., my initials.”

  “Oh!” Myra lowered her voice and her eyes sought the child. “Not Gretchen Patricia? That’s my little girl’s name.”

  “No,” Jeep assured her, thinking, ‘Don’t worry. Your girl won’t grow up to be a dyke with a crew cut. If you’re lucky.’ Oh yeah, she thought, this upscale little enclave looked down on more than the town.

  “My husband’s father played in a big band in the forties and fifties. We hauled the bass down from the old place in Greenhill when they moved to Arizona. A lot of this garage sale is my attempt to get rid of their old household items.”

  With all the critical concern she could muster, hands glowing like coals of embarrassment, Jeep asked all in one breath, “How long has it been here? I hate to think what the damp winters and dry summers do to the wood—not to mention the strings.” She sniffed for mustiness. She had a feeling the minute she touched the bridge it would collapse. “May I?” she asked and stepped to the instrument. She plucked a string and it snapped, almost lashing her face. “I’m sorry!” she said.

  The bridge listed, but didn’t fall. She could fix that with the right tools. She had some of the glue her dad used in his repairs. All those hours spent watching him bring old instruments back to useful lives might pay off yet. He repaired all of the school district’s instruments and kept pretty busy with all the musical entertainment in town. His father had done the same thing before him. Her little brother was being prepped to join in the business. She’d kind of thought the sign would one day say Chs. Morgan and Daughter, but then the Jill thing happened. Oh, well.

  Cat’s friend was exclaiming, “It’s not your fault. It needs a good home with someone who’ll take proper care of it.”

  “It does,” Jeep said, moving away from it. “We could use it in the band, but I can’t keep it in a tiny trailer.” She laughed. “Or lug it across town on my skateboard.” She was watching herself set up this negotiator stance and was surprised that it came so naturally, although she shouldn’t be, given all she’d learned at Sami’s shop.

  Sami had started leaving her alone in charge of the shop from day three. That was how long restless Sami could stay indoors. She had to see her business connections, she had to score, she had to buy something for the shop; any excuse, and she was gone. Sometimes Jeep wondered if Sami chose all her lovers by how good they’d be in the shop. Gawd. She got disgusted with herself at the thought she’d stayed with Sami a year and a half. The woman was a cokehead and ran a sleazy business, not to mention that she was probably seeing other women half the time when she was out of the shop. Sami sucked in anything that came her way and moved through the world saying mine, mine, mine.

  Then, before she beat herself up totally, Jeep remembered the shop. That’s what she’d fallen in love with; Sami was a nuisance factor. While there, she’d learned by trial and error what to offer someone selling their sax or bootlegged early Miles Davis collection and what to come down to when a customer made an offer. She’d learned fast how to read faces and how to say no, and more about what was a real problem with a used instrument and what was a minor ding. She’d even learned bookkeeping. Most importantly, she learned what she’d be able to fix herself and what Sami would have to pay an expert to repair.

  Slowly, as if an idea was forming in her mind as she spoke, Cat offered, “You could store it at my place. I never use the old dining room except for our rehearsals. I might even learn to play something like that if it’s living there. Right now,” she told Myra, “I play the harmonica and sticks.”

  “Well,” Jeep said, and silently reviewed her finances, “I have about $25 to my name after the rent, laundry, food, and change to call Mom and Dad, but I could
pay $10 a month.”

  “In the shape that’s in I don’t think it would take you more than three months to pay it off,” Myra told her. “My father-in-law would be pleased that you rescued it.”

  A bass fiddle for $30? Ka-ching!

  “Will you teach me to play?” Cat asked.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I’ll go halves on the bass and store it if you’ll teach me. You could come by and play it anytime you wanted.”

  “Deal!” They paid Myra, who threw in a mildewed bedspread and army blanket to wrap the instrument for the ride downhill. Jeep secured it with her bungee cords and brought the skateboard up front.

  “I’ve never seen you this excited,” Cat said as she maneuvered carefully out of the driveway.

  “Boy, oh boy. What a deal. A new instrument for peanuts, to fix and to play and to teach and to have in the band. That’s like about four Christmases in one.”

  “And it got your mind off school. And off your little pal.”

  “Now that you mention Luke—”

  “Did I speak too soon?”

  “No! I mean yes, you did. It was your bass lessons that got me thinking about how if I could pick up a drum pad, cheap, I could teach Luke to play. Just some practice exercises. He’s got a way excellent sense of rhythm.”

  “Ask the music teacher. The school may have one.”

  “Du-uh. I never thought of that. And maybe a place to practice? If they don’t go for it, I can call it music therapy. Who do I talk to?”

  Cat laughed. “Go to the music room at the very end of the blue corridor. Wynn Schneider is the music guru.”

  “Am I kind of like, nuts, trying to do stuff for this kid? What if the parents object? He’ll drive them around the bend banging on anything that makes noise.”

  Cat pulled into her driveway. Two band members were already seated on her front porch. She looked at Jeep with steely eyes. “These parents may not even notice. It is never nuts to do stuff for a kid, amigo. Not ever.”

  “Got it. Music lessons. Full speed ahead, Sulu.”

  As they got out of the truck the mandolin player called, “Need to practice, Cat! Let us in!”

  Cat slowly shook her head. “Lesbians. The neighbors are going to worry about property values. Do you need help with the bass?”

  Jeep had already gotten out of the car and was attaching the violin to her back. “I’m all over it.”

  Cat walked backwards, shaking her head again as Jeep mounted the bass on her skateboard and started rolling it toward the steps.

  Chapter Twenty

  Donny and the Raiders

  “Hey, Don, you taking Abeo back to the Ridge?”

  Donny whirled, dropping her flashlight with a clatter in the gutter. “Shit!”

  “Hush up, Jeep!” said Abeo in a loud whisper.

  “Don’t wake Chick!” said Donny.

  Jeep, skateboard under her arm, joined them at Donny’s pickup. “What’s happening?”

  “What’re you doing here? It’s midnight,” Donny asked, damning small towns. “You can’t keep a secret from one side of the street to the other around here.”

  “I go for an interview at the music therapy school tomorrow. I’m too hyped to sleep so I came to hang out in your garden with the other gayfeathers.”

  “You have some very weird friends, Don,” said Abeo.

  “What can I say? I don’t have a garden of my own. When I was a kid that’s where I used to hang out to get away from everybody.”

  “Only one thing we can do,” Donny said. “We better take you along. Abeo?”

  “Better another guilty party than a witness.”

  “Wha—” Jeep yelped as they hustled her into Donny’s little pickup, one on each side of her, skateboard between her legs.

  “Here’s what’s going down, little buddy,” Donny said as she turned toward Mule Butte Road. “I’m getting my girl back tonight.”

  “Dude? Clue me in? I thought I saw Chick at the store today?”

  “I told you I was worried about her. She hasn’t been my laughing lady for such a long time.”

  “You said she had a blue outlook. I thought that was temporary.”

  “For months, Jeep, months. I thought it was her time of life, you know?” Jeep nodded. “Your ex, Katie, found out this fucker she knew in her hippie days is messing with Chick.”

  Abeo explained, “Pulling shit like shadowing her, making rude remarks, starting scenes at the store.”

  “Why didn’t she tell you? Or the sheriff?”

  Donny shook her head.

  “Because she knew Donny would try to kick the stuffing out of the guy,” Abeo said. “And she was right. The sheriff wouldn’t have kept it from you.”

  “I could kill his ass. He calls himself M.C. He thinks he can mess with my girl? I am tired of white boys acting like they own the world. I am tired of asking politely for them to stop. I am ready to take one of them out.”

  “Chill, Donalds. You’re going to crash the truck before we take care of him if you don’t calm down.” Abeo turned up the volume on the Temptations tape Donny had been playing. Donny switched it off.

  “Is that where we’re going? To kick the stuffing out of him?” Jeep asked, sinking back into the seat. “I don’t think I want to know about this.”

  “Don’t worry,” Donny said with a sour glance toward Abeo. Nobody was going to shut her up, especially not this little two-faced retired dealer. “We don’t have to get violent. His setup, from what Katie found out, makes him easy to get at. We’re going to permanently remove him from decent society, right, Abe?” They slapped hands across Jeep.

  “Katie always was a primo investigator.” Jeep sighed. “So he’s, like, stalking her?”

  Abeo said, “Exactly like.”

  “And we’re going to blast him into space junk?”

  “I like your style, Jeep,” said Donny, with a laugh. She felt tight as a fishing line pulling in a catch, as much for sneaking out on Chick as for this operation itself. “I was all for dynamiting him, but girlfriend here persuaded me otherwise.”

  Abeo smoothed down an eyebrow. Donny thanked god that Spirit Ridge had a no-fragrance policy or Abeo would give them away with the first breeze, the way she usually piled on the perfume. “I am so brilliant,” Abeo said. “M.C. is Lord of the Drugs in this valley and covers himself by being in that vigilante group. We’re going to feed him live to his own vigilantes.”

  “And rescue Chick too? That’s beaucoup de cool!” Jeep said with her little bray of a laugh.

  Donny waited for Jeep to ask the question.

  “Can we get in trouble for this?”

  “Joan and me set it up. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Child,” Abeo said, “it’s bad enough we have to be all smashed together on this ratty old seat without you bouncing up and down on it.”

  Donny took the truck as far as she dared up M.C.’s dirt road. Every time she pressed on the accelerator she revved up her own fury. Rocket fuel, that’s what had been flowing through her veins since she found out. It explained everything—why Chick had seemed to be hiding something, why she’d return from her talks with R looking like she’d been crying. Donny had tried to take R’s head off every time the woman got near her, but it wasn’t R; it was this asshole M.C. Why hadn’t Chick said anything?

  She still didn’t know the whole story. Katie had been interviewing M.C. for that documentary she wanted to do, and M.C. had talked about this dyke chick he wanted to put in her place. She’d been the only woman he’d wanted back in the late sixties who wouldn’t trade him sex for drugs. She’d be normal by now, he’d told Katie, if she’d given him a chance. Now he had kids growing up in this town, and he wanted them to know their dad took a stand against queers. The town council was one thing, but this chick was his personal mission. Katie had finally realized that he’d meant this Chick—with a capital “C.”

  Donny hadn’t said a word to Chick. It would only be worse for
her if she had to worry that Donny would get herself in trouble over it. She’d lain awake nights thinking about what she’d like to do to him. Tonight she’d ruin the man legally.

  Two days ago she’d followed M.C. from town and driven brazenly up his road. She’d come this far and found the narrow clearing she backed into now. She’d crept into the woods enough to see that Katie was right; M.C. wasn’t exactly growing cobra lilies back here. It had been easier in daylight, but a clump of fire pokers grew at the edge of the clearing to mark the spot. Tonight her anger had a nervous edginess to it.

  She whispered, “Don’t slam the doors.” She didn’t want the dogs she’d heard the other day to sound an alarm. Maybe she should have told Chick where she was going.

  As they crunched and crackled their way into the brush, grabbed by blackberry brambles each tried to hold back for the next, Jeep whispered, “I’ve heard some of these growers booby-trap their land?”

  “Then be careful and don’t blow up your cute white butt,” Abeo suggested.

  “Cute?” Jeep echoed, craning her head back toward her bottom, acting like this was fun.

  “Quiet.” Donny stepped carefully, but without any light on this overcast night she cracked every twig in her path. She didn’t know if she was shivering from the night chill or from nerves. Her biggest worry was that M.C. would catch them before they could do any good. She sensed the next clearing before she saw it. “Yo, ladies, look at that.”

  “Reefer in the raw,” Abeo pronounced. “What’s this wire?” Donny followed it with the beam of her flashlight along the trees they’d be passing through. “Shit. This could be very bad news.”

  “Maybe he knew we were coming,” suggested Jeep. She sounded terrified now. “Maybe he’s got a plant at the cop shop.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Donny joked. “It looks like he’s got plants everywhere else.”

  Jeep poked her in the side. Donny smiled—she was really as excited as Jeep. This would fix things for Chick. If, she thought, this really was all that was bothering her.